A dear friend of mine is having a rough time right now. A very creative and talented recording artist, but currently weighed down by the onerous combination of the demands of artistic development and the realities of taking care of one’s self at the same time. In replying to a call for help and advice, one particular paragraph I wrote stands out in my mind as something I need to remember for myself:

Sometimes, those of us with great creative desires feel the urge and need to plough forward with our creations at any cost… to bring our desires and dreams to fruition as quickly as possible. We set (typically artificial) deadlines for ourselves to try to keep on track and give ourselves something concrete to aim for. But the world and process of the creative arts is anything but concrete, and it requires the absolute best of care and nurturing of the creator in order to achieve the absolute best of results. In most cases, even with outside support, this care still needs to come from within. There is only so much time, energy, and money available to us at any given moment, so it is important to pace ourselves and balance our focus to ensure only the best for our art and ourselves.

Sometimes I find myself disappointed with the timeframe within which I can tackle a new idea or task, expecting myself to have complete success and perfection on the first attempt. I will forego things important to sustaining myself in exchange for extra time or energy to put towards a given project. But in reality, I need to be equally careful not to fall into this trap. There is plenty of time to create and develop, and no one is putting extreme time pressures and expectations on me – at least no one but myself.

This isn’t to say that anyone should strive for anything less but the best, but to ensure that every plan is laid out in context, keeping everything else surrounding the plan in mind. I will forever have high expectations for myself, but perhaps I need to temper those expectations somewhat in order to keep them in line with the realities surrounding a given intent or project.

An amazing evening. Mike Nunan did an outstanding job of the live mix from the stadium. The opening sequence and the opening essay turned out really well. And overall, I was feeling just a bit overwhelmed hearing so much of my music mixing/production work being played back on air after so many months of hard work.

Having the lighting of the cauldron occurring just outside of the IBC was an amazing finish to the evening. I’m mixing the music for the Olympic Morning broadcast in about 2 hours, and setup was a couple hours ago. Yup, long day… been going for nearly 21 hours now. But definitely a good day (or, more accurately, days).

More photos on flickr…

I’ve had a quite a few folks ask how the whole room is strung together, what Digidesign interfaces we are using etc. The short answer is none, as we’ve opted to use 3rd party solutions for getting audio into and out of Pro Tools, and have amassed a wealth of benefits and flexibility as a result.

The rig is centred on a distributed synchronous optical network called Optocore. They make various flavours of boxes that contain AES, MADI, or analog I/O, and all of the boxes interconnect using fibre optic cable into a redundant ring topology. You can have up to 700 meters between devices, with the ability to go up to 70 km in certain situations. The network (currently) will carry 512 channels of audio, 3 channels of video, a handful of serial control data, plus 100 Mbps ethernet. You can provide or accept word clock sync at any device, and each device has several serial ports as well as a video input and output. Since the entire ring is a distributed router, you can route any given input to as many outputs as you require – no mults or patch bay required.

In the control room, we have a MADI unit and an AES unit. The MADI unit has two sets of I/O, one of which is connected to the SSL Delta Link, allowing for 64 channels of I/O to Pro Tools. The other is connected to an SSL Alpha Link, providing 24 channels of analog conversion in each direction, plus an additional 24 channels of AES I/O.

The AES unit has 64 channels of connectivity, which you can mix and match as inputs or outputs in groups of 8 channels. It sounds like a lot of AES I/O, but when you have a large number of external digital devices (TC System 6000, multiple Dolby devices, etc.) it becomes necessary.

There’s an additional MADI unit in the Central Equipment Room providing interconnect with the central broadcast router, and bringing sync (synchronous video black and wordclock) into our setup.

Finally, we have a rolling stage rack that contains an AES base device. In that rack, we also have 20 channels of Neumann SolutionD digital microphone interfaces, 8 mic/line analog inputs, and 8 analog line outputs. All the interfaces and preamps are remote controllable from our suite, so despite the fact that the rack is nearly 300 metres away, we have full control as though they were in the same room as us, including mic pattern switching in the case of some of our digital mics. Very convenient when this room goes live to air during some music events, and the only cables that had to be run were a pair of fibres!

I don’t even want to think about what this would have taken to pull off in the days of using copper to string all of this gear together. Granted, trying to plan out and execute the routing matrix for all of the signals takes a bit of head scratching, but if you make a mistake or need to adjust to a new situation, all it takes is a click of the mouse – no soldering iron or patch cables required.

Welcome to the Canadian Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium (COBMC) 5.1 Post Sound Suite. Today, I completed the build of this room, with only the task of testing out all of the wiring and interconnects tomorrow before being able to mark the task as done.

This mobile setup will be used to mix the features, promos, being cut by the many Avid editing suites at the IBC, as well as some live-to-air music performances during the games. It was also the rig used to record and mix the Olympic Themes Suite over the past several months.

For those interested in gear, the room is made up of:

• Pro Tools HD|4 Accel (although currently assembled from other rigs as an HD|6 in order to pull of the massive music mixes for the themes suite project)
• D-Control 16 with panner module
• Avid Mojo SDI
• SYNC HD
• SSL Alpha Link and Delta Link
• Optocore digital audio network for audio transport between racks, audio/video router matrix, and stagebox
• Dolby LM100, DP564, and DP570
• V-Mon monitor control plugin with V-Tac controller
• RTW Multichannel Meter
• K|H monitors plus K|H subwoofer
• Stagebox containing 20 channels of Neumann Digital Microphone Interfaces for using our selection of Solution D microphones

I opted not to bring my PMC TB2-A2 monitors out here since the K|H monitors work quite well for broadcast work, and PMCs would comprise a lot of extra gear to bring along. Not to mention, the PMCs are my own, so I would fear them getting damaged during transport. That said, the themes package was ultimately mixed on the PMCs back in Toronto, and I love those monitors.

The noisy bits (computer, expansion chassis, etc.) are located out in the hallway in a separate rack. The room is reasonably quiet given that it’s literally a set of partition walls and a drop ceiling set up in the giant convention centre, and given the minimal walls/ceiling, actually should provide a reasonable “virtual” air volume despite the smallish floor dimensions, which will hopefully minimize any acoustic oddities in the space.

Despite the relatively portable nature of the kit, it still takes a healthy amount of time to build, especially considering the time required to build the D-Control (which doesn’t normally leave CTV in Toronto).

Assuming I didn’t mix up any connections, we’ll be pushing sounds through the system by midday tomorrow!

Welcome to the International Broadcast Centre, or IBC… also known as my home until early March. This is the building into which all of the venue feeds go, where the broadcast studios for all of the CTV networks (along with several other broadcasters) are housed, and where everything is edited, mixed, and polished before being streamed back to Toronto for distribution. I hope to be able to give you a tour as the week progresses, but I need to find out what the boundaries are at this point as far as publication are concerned – the toes to be potentially stepped on here are large and sensitive indeed!

So, given that my ability to geek out at regarding the facilities at this point is on pause, I’ll keep myself focused on the basics. I arrived in Vancouver yesterday on a smooth but rather squishy flight from Toronto, and I’m staying in a rather nice condo on Richards street in the Yaletown district. Nice area – very trendy though… I’d equate it with Yorkville in Toronto, perhaps? I don’t know the area well enough yet to say for sure. Just a couple stops on the new Canada Line away from the IBC, so I can get back and forth to work in about 15 minutes.

I have to say: I’m loving the fact that I can get around by simply walking and taking transit again. Perhaps this experience will give me the drive to want to take transit to work in Toronto instead of driving? Should probably at least give it a try when I get back. Won’t take only 15 minutes though, that’s for sure!

The condo itself is super nice, with a gorgeous view of the city. The most time consuming part of the day yesterday was being fingerprinted as all of the building access is controlled by biometric fingerprint readers. Seems to work very well, and it’s nice not to have to worry about keys for the gate/main entrance. However, it seems they’re still working out some kinks in the system as far as enrolling new tenants is concerned.

Spent the day today starting work on setting up the post sound suite. Yes, that would be a god-awful photo (courtesy of a colleague’s iPhone) of me crammed into the corner of the room attaching the boots to the legs of the D-Control, and swimming in cables.

Pretty successful first day though. Managed to assemble the control surface, run most of the cabling around the room, and get a healthy amount of gear hooked up. Should be hearing some sounds through the speakers by end of the day tomorrow… assuming all goes well with the remaining set up. I’ll have some pictures of the post sound room tomorrow as well. It’s certainly not big, it’s not especially glamourous, but it’s going to work very well for the duration of the games, and we’ve got some amazing kit that carried us through the Olympic Theme project, and will be around for some undoubtedly interesting projects in the future as well. Stay tuned…

For the first time since last Christmas, I’m on vacation. And it’s great. Sure, we’ve got plenty to do before the big day on Friday, but it’s still a break from the busy days at work and the renovations and organization at our new home, and these are both very welcome things indeed.

The shutter on my trusty 20D finally gave up the ghost. Managed to exceed the expected lifespan by more than 20,000 exposures, so I really don’t feel like the camera owes me much at this point. I now am the proud owner of a Canon 5D Mark II, and I couldn’t be more excited. Yesterday, my friend (and groomsman) Daniel and I wandered the city to shoot some photos. He is somewhat new to photography, and recently got his first DSLR camera, a Nikon D90, which seems to be serving him very well.

There were several spots in the city that we were wanting to hit, but in the end we wandered around in the Weaselhead Flats area at the west end of the Glenmore Reservoir. Worked out very nicely, other than being eaten alive by mosquitos (have I mentioned that I HATE mosquitos?!), and managed to get a few nice shots.

After we’d had enough of that, we proceeded to Shaw Millennium Park to take some shots of the skaters and bikers at the skate park. The guys there were more than happy to have their photos taken, and were really great about having us around while they did their thing.

A great day with a great friend, and a fantastic introduction to my new rig.

• Remove old hardwood from 2nd level and install new hardwood
• Strip out the two old knob & tube electrical circuits and install all new electrical on the 2nd floor and portions of 1st floor
• Frame for built-in cabinets and an alcove in the master bedroom
• Install potlights in living room
• Paint most rooms

The removal of the old strip flooring was relatively easy. I had the old floor torn out in a day, and then it took a couple evenings to remove all of the nails that were left behind. Nothing difficult, just very monotonous. My friend Jonny helped out with gutting out the living room ceiling and one wall, along with a portion of a wall in one of the upstairs bedrooms – a gross and messy job given how old and crumbly the plaster was. Once again, no surprises there, and the job went very quickly thanks to his help. The framing in the master bedroom was a nice and easy task, and turned out perfectly.

Meanwhile, Mel’s been painting up a storm, and packing up our stuff in our apartment. The dining room is now painted a beautiful warm brown (apparently with some green tones – colour isn’t my strong suit), and the first coat is done in our new master bedroom.

Where things started to get interesting was when we dove into the electrical. The home inspector recommended the removal of the old knob & tube electrical, and our insurance company has given us 60 days to remove it and have the work inspected. No big deal – dealt with the stuff in our current apartment… or so I thought.

When I shut down the breaker for the old lines in the living room and front half of the upper level, I thought it interesting that a few other random bits around the house shut off, namely one of the counter plugs and the under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen. A little surprising since the kitchen is at the back of the house. When Brian (a friend who happens to be a contractor) and I went downstairs and pulled down a few of the panels screwed to the ceiling in the basement, we caught a glimpse of what was to come. We found nearly a dozen hidden junction boxes in the basement ceiling. A quick follow of the line from the panel led us to a junction, then another junction, and then to a junction poorly tying the “new” circuit into the old knob & tube circuit at the front of the house. A quick removal of the line from the prior junction box, and we’ve now successfully isolated the first knob & tube circuit. Onwards and upwards…

Then we figured out which breaker would shut off the remaining lighting and outlets upstairs that all were running on the second remaining old circuit. Oddly, the microwave, rear outdoor lighting, dining room light, kitchen pot lights and island lighting also went dark. Oh boy… here we go…

In chasing the line from the panel, we first reach a junction box tucked on top of the bathroom in the basement, which only appears to be acting as an extension since someone felt too lazy to run a line all the way back to the panel. Then we hit another junction that split the incoming line three ways. Turns out one goes to the microwave, one to the back yard lighting, and the other leads onwards to another junction box (guess the cable was cut too short, again), which then doubles back towards the panel, takes a right, then a left, and then another left, and disappears up into a wall upstairs.

To cut a long story short, we couldn’t find where the circuit was splitting (in yet another junction box) to feed the old circuit along with the kitchen lighting. Finally, we decided we should lift up some of the floor boards upstairs to see what was left behind when the kitchen was renovated about 5 – 10 years ago. Upon opening many troughs in the old floor, we discovered yet another 8 junction boxes hidden in the ceiling above the dining room and kitchen, splitting and combining circuits in a seemingly random fashion. We also discovered evidence of arcing (scorched wood framing) near the uncovered junction boxes where the knob & tube lines were poorly tied into and out of – it’s amazing the house hasn’t had a fire before now. More than 50% of the outlets and fixtures in the house, along with the microwave and garage, were all on a single circuit relying heavily on some of the old runs of knob & tube – very bad!

At this point, it quickly became clear that it was going to be simpler to shut everything off, strip all of this crap out, and start fresh, running new lines to all of the fixtures, switches and outlets impacted by these poorly wired circuits. There were more junction boxes than there were fixtures and outlets, and it was so difficult to reverse engineer the cross-wired mess that I really wanted to have nothing to do with the old work. Out it went.

I can’t decide whether it was a past homeowner who was decidedly lazy or ignorant, or if it was a lazy/ignorant contractor. I can’t imagine that even the laziest electrician would risk their license with such poor work, and a quick call to the ESA showed that my permit is the first electrical permit ever pulled for the house, so it has never been inspected in the past. I feel bad for the last owners who lived in the house for the past 4 years with no knowledge or understanding of what dangers and hazards lurked behind their walls.

The frustrating thing is that you could never have a hope of knowing how messed up and dangerous a state things were in from the home inspection. Everything that was in plain sight was very cleanly done (around the panel etc.), and everything that was to be concerned about was entirely hidden in the ceiling and walls. If I weren’t able to do the work myself, I can’t even fathom what sort of an invoice we’d be in for from an electrician, because they too would have to rewire the entire house – any quote based on the original scope of the work would be undoubtedly null and void by this point. Most of the “damage” was done during the kitchen reno, while the walls and ceiling were wide open, and everything could have been done properly the first time.

Anyway, things are going along smoothly again now, and I hope to have all of the new wire strung into place by the end of the day tomorrow, or at least by the end of the day on Saturday. I’ll try to take some pictures tomorrow and post again this weekend… hopefully with lots of good news to go with them.

In very exciting news, we took possession of our new house today!

Although much renovating is to come in the next few weeks, and hopefully some great blogging to go with, here’s Mel giving a tour of the new place!

Not my best audio post production work, but what can you do with a point and shoot camera? :-)