Here’s an update on the progress of 3Bone Audio’s ambitious DVD-A project, first reported by HFR in November 2001. Readers will recall that 3Bone Audio is a group of Radio and Television Arts students from Toronto’s Ryerson University who are working the production of a DVD-A disc on a non-profit basis.
Reza Dahya, the disc’s producer, recently briefed High Fidelity Review on the project’s progress:
‘We are mixing the album on a Nuendo System sponsored by Steinberg and Dynamix. We have a new relatively souped-up PC (P4 1.7, 1GB of RAM) at Ryerson running the latest version of Nuendo Surround Edition with a Nuendo 24/96 soundcard. Everything is being done internally, as we are simply taking the outputs from the Nuendo System directly to the six speakers in the room i.e. no board, no external effects or processors.
We are putting Nuendo to the test as far as 24/96 goes and so far it is handling it beautifully. It would be nice to have dual processors, as we do get glitches and drag on playback when there are too many effects and reverbs on a project – the .wav files are so big at 24/96…we’ll have songs that easily reach near 1GB of Broadcast Wav information. Regardless, the great part about the whole thing is that the mixing process is being done at Ryerson, making it probably the first educational institution to tackle something like this (to my knowledge anyway) and presumably the first place in Canada to do so also… The recordings sound amazing, we’re all really excited about getting the surround mixes done, and then trying to figure out the authoring stage, and trying to see what type of deal we can get from 5.1 Entertainment as far as authoring and distribution goes…..! Keep in mind, however, that the disc is still for promotion only, and will not be for sale……
Let’s see…what else….We have had two fundraising parties, Choctails and Choctails 2. They were both great (check picture gallery on the website – http://www.3boneaudio.com/Gallery1.html) raising enough money for us to buy an external SCSI harddrive for backups, to cover rental costs for recording equipment like Avalon compressors etc…as well as some left over for whatever comes our way in the near future. We are still looking for anyone interested in investing in the project, as I am foreshadowing costly authoring prices (in American dollars) even with a deal from 5.1…..
Other than that…..we’ve basically been sleeping in the studio at school.’
Our thanks to Rez for the detailed update. We will continue to follow the project with great interest. And remember, it’s not too late to be a sponsor of this project. See the 3Bone website for details.