Naturally Digital Expands Into Mixing And Mastering

David Vanderploeg, a respected loudspeaker designer formerly with Paradigm Electronics, has officially launched the next phase of his audio services company, Naturally Digital. With a special focus on mixing and mastering, Naturally Digital caters to the independent music community by offering a wide range of services including recording, consulting, project management and assistance for artists, engineers and producers working in the burgeoning project studio market.

For over 10 years Naturally Digital's primary focus has been on location recording and full-length CD production. Now, with the move to a 1000 square foot dedicated studio space, the focus has shifted to the critical, final stages of music production. Not willing to compromise on the acoustic qualities of his new space, Dave designed the studio himself. Inside an acoustically isolated shell, he created a large mastering room, editing suite, workshop and dedicated server room. Servers are all dual-processor machines, networked in a cluster arrangement and dedicated solely to processing audio. For real-time or advanced processing tasks, each machine is loaded with DSP accelerator cards. File storage is provided via SCSI hard disk arrays and there is a machine dedicated to FTP file upload/download. The playback environment is quite unique, avoiding the traditional console and hence, acoustic interference that results from such a large reflective surface. Custom acoustic treatment lines the walls and ceiling while a floating floor offers true isolation and damps resonances. Monitoring is via custom-modified speakers that Dave himself designed while working at Paradigm.

Dave recognizes the demand for reliable, affordable support in the independent music community. Besides consulting to other small studio owners, his plans include an extensive website at www.naturallydigital.ca, a forum, newsletter and blog where he can freely share his knowledge with the community. "I want everyone to experience good sound and to create the best music they can. It's all about the greater good!" says Dave.

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Dave uses a combination of applications in his daily work but he says his secret weapon is a program called SAWStudio (or Software Audio Workshop) for which he offers sales, support and training. "This application is rock-solid, sounds great and is designed entirely by one person, Bob Lentini. Bob is an audio engineer himself and he designed SAWStudio to serve his own needs. When I was researching software, I took note that much of SAWStudio is coded in assembly language. As a result, it's very fast, and has a small footprint. I can do things in SAWStudio that aren't even possible with other applications."

Online Mixing and Mastering
In an ever more decentralized world there are virtually no limits on where we work or who we work with. Dave recognizes this and he's getting prepared; "I have massive FTP capability so clients can upload their files to my server from anywhere. I encourage people to send me their mixes. I'll offer my comments, even if they decide to go somewhere else for their mastering." As greater bandwidth becomes even more widespread, Dave is anticipating a growing demand for online mixing. He explains; "Online mastering is becoming more and more common. It's true that big budget productions may follow the traditional model for years to come but I think we'll see a shift on the indie scene where the artist will take care of the recording, edits and rough mix and then send their files off to a another studio for final mixing

For more information, visit their web site at www.naturallydigital.ca.