California Soundscapes with Dan Dugan

California Soundscapes – Recording Natural Environments with Dan Dugan

The San Francisco Audio Engineering Society, the Nature Sounds Society, and Meyer Sound will present a special presentation of California Soundscapes, a lecture/demonstration about recording natural environments in immersive formats.

This presentation will emphasize the technical aspects of Dan Dugan’s work including “heavy” systems, which use professional mics and cables, and “light” systems, designed to be backpacked. The differences between one-point mikes vs. near- and wide-spaced mikes will be demonstrated, and a current controversy about height mikes will be briefly discussed. There will be immersive playback of recordings from regions of California ranging over the coastal zone, the Valley, the deserts, and the Sierras.

Doors at 6:00 pm. Light refreshments and networking.
Presentation: 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm, followed by Q&A

Space is extremely limited. Ticket information is being sent directly to our AES SF email list members.

Dan Dugan has always been fascinated by combinations of art and technology. As a child, when he was taken to the theater he always wanted to go backstage to see the light board. In his teens he built a huge model circus and two small pipe organs. He was very active in music, singing bass in the church choir, the San Diego Bach Chorus, Roger Wagner’s summer workshops, and in madrigal groups performing on the green at the Shakespeare Festival. In college he dropped out of a four-year scholarship to work full-time in the theater doing lighting, which became his first career. He did lighting designs for the San Diego National Shakespeare Festival, the San Diego Opera, and the San Francisco Actors’ Workshop.

At age 24 Dan switched to doing theater sound, working for the San Diego National Shakespeare Festival and the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. The title “Sound Designer” was created in 1968 to describe what Dan was doing. He provided sound services for many seasons of the Mondavi Jazz Festival, and engineered several independent record albums, including Kate Wolf’s first two albums, which are still in print.

Dan is well-known in audio engineering as the inventor of the automatic microphone mixer. His patented equipment is used in thousands of churches, courtrooms including the trial of Saddam Hussein, and on television shows including the PBS NewsHour, Washington Week, presidential debates, and ESPN sports commentary. Currently he works in his laboratory in San Francisco designing new versions of his inventions and editing his surround-sound nature recordings.