RYCOTE’SInternational Sound Forum In mid June, Rycote hosted a Sound Forum in Gloucestershire. A group of international audio professionals convened for a series of talks on issues relevant to location recording for motion picture and broadcast television. AMPS’ member Ian Richardson was there. This is his report. 
Morning Session: from left - Jackie Green (Audio Technica US, Jorg Wuttke (Sehoeps,. Rolf Meyer (Sennheiser), Dave Malham (University of York), Stephan Peus (Neumann). Friday, 16th June 2000 - “a date to remember” my diary said. Well the event started the evening before with guests arriving in little groups. The event being Rycote’s Sound Forum at the Hatton Court Hotel. Robin, Vivienne’s right hand man, (well woman actually) was at the hotel entrance greeting us as we arrived. It was a sunny evening, and 1 felt that the most ecological mode of transport was my motorbike; if it had been raining, it would have been the Volkswagen - so much for environmental concerns! After a quick freshen up it was tally ho to the bar. It doesn’t matter whether you’re from Belgium or Bolton the lure of the bar is second only to sex it seems! Thursday evening had been put aside for an informal getting to know each other, which proved perfect. The weather was perfect and most of us, drink in hand wandered outside to enjoy the glories of the Gloucestershire countryside. Now I don’t know everybody in the sound business. I find I work as a little island (trolley) set away from the madding crowd, and therefore I have read and heard of other people in the business but never actually met them! Maybe at a convention of boom operators I wouldn’t feel quite so isolated! Vivienne had appreciated this and so this first evening was a chance to put names to faces. The only problem was that nobody had put on their name tags, myself included! So it came down to “I’m Ian, who are you?” This netted a group of varied persuasion, among whom was, Tim White a recordist who champions IMAX features, Alex Bernardi of Katamount Enterprises in Canada (if you’re ever on location in Canada, Alex can always help you out with information and equipment), father and son Edgar and Filip Peeters of Wolec Electronics (Rycote dealers as well as other sound related equipment in Belgium). | We were joined for that evening by Martyn Richards of Filmtech and Tom Cryan from Audio Developments. Quite a varied range of talent! It is always surprising how quickly time goes by when one is enjoying oneself! And, sure enough, midnight turned up and the general consensus was that in order to keep a clear head we shouldn’t spend too long at the bar! The Forum proper was due to kick offata sensible 9.3Oam, which gave everybody time to have a chat over breakfast. Dave Malham of York University chaired the morning session which began with a very entertaining chat from Rolf Meyer. President of Sales & Marketing, Sennheiser. I say a chat because Rolf had us all laughing at some of the time trodden concepts of our Audio industry and the inaccurate perception of various people and bodies to them. One amusing story was of an ongoing project that Sennheiscr are involved in, namely monitoring gas pumping stations. Skilled engineers can tell, just by standing close to the station and listening to the sounds emanating from it, whether there is a problem with a pump and/or valves and how potentially serious it is. The human ear and brain is a formidable tool. But with the growth in the number of these stations there aren’t enough engineers to go round. So Sennheiser were asked to find a solution for remote checking. They did it with microphones and clever electronics. Two things were apparent - one was wind at the open pumping stations, and no amount of clever electronics can solve that (so that of course was solved by, yes, RYCOTE windshields). The other was that the size of the unit was so small that questions were asked as to it’s effectiveness! The answer came that even the indoor versions were to be put in Rycote windshields, so they could be seen!!! Yes it’s a mad world we live in - more of that later. Sennheiser, like many companies, feel our future lies in our children and how they view their future. It’s reassuring to find companies such as Sennheiser investing in children. The demand for quality sound both in music and speech based entertainment is paramount to our survival. Sennheiser is to be commended in every respect in involving children in developing an awareness of sound and the 
L to R : Dave Malham Vivienne Dyer, Robin Williams |
