Greg Crawford, CAS with the Atlanta Section. AES Atlanta Section July 15, 2023
We took a members only tech tour of Smart Post Atlanta with master recording engineer and sound designer, Greg Crawford, CAS. Greg took us through Smart Post's state of the art mix stages, audio rooms, VO booths, and machine room while he talked about the space's history and how the studio spaces were built and designed. He shared many wonderful, unique anecdotes about his experience in post sound and in the studios, and gave us detailed walk-throughs of the setups and workflows that are in use there for various types of ADR and VO. Greg uses Sounds In Sync's EdiCue software to import ADR cues into Pro Tools from pdf versions of the ADR scripts from clients, MIDI triggered streamers for the cues, and a sampler to sample and play the bits some actors need to replicate so he can play them on demand if that is their preference. He talked us through a complex and impressive set up that he sometimes uses to record the voices for animated features and games. For this, in addition to the main Pro Tools recording/playback rig in that is commanded from the control room, this setup also uses 3 video cameras to record the actors' faces with time-of-day timecode. Simultaneously, there is a second Pro Tools system online recording the audio that also uses time-of-day timecode. This facilitates locating the audio that matches the select video performances. Greg introduced us to the versatile live room and showed us a custom sound-proofed cable pass-thru on the wall between the main control room and the stage for any time extra cables are needed for a session setup. There were also a couple custom guitars there and he introduced us to the Snowden Cigar Box Guitar which sounded amazing when he played a few chords for us. It uses open tuning and was built by local artisan, Mike Snowden. We talked microphones and various setups in use. There was a lively Q&A and it was over before we knew it. Time flies when you're having fun...
