The distance electric vehicles have to be closer to subjects before they can hear them
Professional and Lotus Engineering (hence, HALO). The system combines technologies created by each company: from Lotus, a software algorithm originally created to rapidly process active suspension systems on F1 cars. From Harman, synthesis and sampling technology that can employ algorithms used in Lexicon reverbs and delays, HardWire’s “staggeringly brilliant” guitar pedal technology (think of how you accelerate in a car) and the amp modeling algorithms found in DiGiTech software. It was Levine who initially saw the potential to exploit Harman’s pro-audio technology for HALOsonic. “I pointed out the hardware connection to them,” says Levine. “It didn’t seem to dawn on them. It puts Harman in a unique position because not everybody has access to such a huge, diverse set of technologies. The work is in creating those algorithms; once you’ve got them you can do a lot of other things with them.”
The idea behind HALOsonic’s soundsynthesis isn’t much different to that of plug-in architecture. Impulse responses are made of the individual components that make up a vehicle’s combustion engine; spark plugs, cylinders, cam shafts, pistons, etc. An infinite number of subtle changes to the sound are possible to from that “core DNA” of modeled components, “rather than sampling the sound of an engine as a completely ‘dumb’ thing,” says Levine. Although Harman’s own survey suggests that, for the
time being, drivers still want their electric vehicles to sound like a conventional car, Levine imagines it won’t be too long before we are customising car sounds the same way we customise ring tones, or even creating them ourselves. “It’s very interesting because no one ever imagined phone apps taking off the way they did but Apple gave people the tools with which to create them and I think that’s what we’d like to try and do,” he concludes. www.halosonic.co.uk
UNITED KINGDOM
studionews
THE TEAM from Bang Post Production, based in Cardiff Bay, have beaten off stiff competition at the Television Craft Baftas to win the Sound (Fiction) award forSherlock – A Scandal in Belgravia.
Steve Levine working at British Grove, London
Bang’s Doug Sinclair picked up the award alongside John Mooney, Jeremy Child and Howard Bargoff. He said: “We’ve worked on all three episodes of Sherlockwhich were aired on the BBC earlier this year. We’ve also done the previous Sherlock series and I can honestly say it’s an absolute pleasure to be
involved with. Everyone who works on it is at the top of their game.” Also nominated was Birdsong,
The Hour and Great Expectations. Bang co-director Paul McFadden added: “This award is the highlight of our career. For a small company like ours to win such a prestigious award when we were up against the big boys of London is a fantastic honour.” Pictured, left to right is Will Everett, Doug Sinclair, Paul McFadden and Jon Joyce, of Bang Post Production.
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