WELCOME ON OUR STS DIGITAL WEBSITE
On this site we would like to tell you with how much love we work on a number of radio, CD, and Television recordings.
STS was founded in 1980, and engages in a variety of activities, from air-photograpy to film and video recordings, TV productions, radio recordings, CD, DVD and SACD recordings. We would like to pay extra special attention to the latter few activities on this site.
2. STS VIDEO PRODUCTION
The TV department works for public broadcasting companies, commercial broadcasting companies and foreign broadcasting companies like BBC, ZDF, WDR, and BRT. For these companies Dutch watersportsprogrammes have been made like 'Ronde om Texel/Skutsjesilen/KWS Schuttevaerrace/Sail/Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race/Sneekweek, 13 watersportsmagazines. All of these programmes were either made in full, or partially in co-productions.
2. STS VIDEO PRODUCTION
Here video-productions are being produced for companies and organizations.
3. STS PROJECTS
At this department various productions have been made either payed for by different companies, or financed on our own. A few examples:
- Hello Here I Am; an educational video/DVD for women who are pregnant for the first time.
- DVD 5.1 project Beets Brother Live.
- Dazzling Dolby Digital edition 2; a demo DVD
Contents and philosophy from the audiophile test demo CD's
The test/demo CD's aren't ones where popular tunes have been plucked off the shelf. All recordings on this CD were made exclusively for this test/demo CD and have been recorded digitally.
On these CD's are musical pieces that do not always appeal to the taste of the listener. But, like we have said, these pieces plus the musicians have been chosen because they can add in an important way to a large diversity of musical text-fragments. In short: the performance and the instruments are more important than the musical choice, popular or not. .
As a sound-technician I always look for 5 keypoints and disciplines in master recordings:
1. The warm sound, that acoustic instruments posess on their own, but is often not captured by sound-technicians. We attach a great deal of value to the warm sound and try to get this through carbon-fibre and quality microphones, plus an AD-convertor.
2. The acoustic placing and recognition of the musicians in the recording space, feasible with the STS-3 and the STS-6 recording system. For us, the horizontal and vertical resolution in a recording are very important.
3. The phase purity of a recording, both the electric phase (good cable/fibre connections etc), and the acoustic phase must be acquired through proper placing of the microphones. This can be checked by a set of headphones, and ofcourse a phase meter.
4. The symmetry in the recording; this means always placing the microphones in such a way that on both the left and the right side there's an equal division of signal, and not placing mono suport microphones on the extreme left and right. These will disturb the symmetrical sound and will give sound-peaks that do not coincide with the total acoustics of the space.
5. Transparency and clarity in a recording. This does not mean an overly sharp recording, but one of softness in tone and clarity, in which especially the 3-dimensional recording-space is being displayed.
Equipment
Microphones : CAD E 300 and Schoeps CMC6/ MK2H-MK2
Cable/fibre : Siltech HF-9-G3
Interlinks digital and analogous : Siltech ST-38b-G3
Recorder : Marantz CDR 640
Mixer : Soundcraft LM1
A.D. convertor : Weiss A/D convertor
Speakers : Kharma Ceramique-Ce 2.2
Amplifier : Marantz PM 14
CD-player : Marantz SACD SA-1
CD-R : Emtec
Headphone : Philips HP 890
Mastering:
Mastering, the last place where decisions still can be made. After the recording is finished and everybody is happy about the endresult, the digital master has to be made. I use the Mastering Studio at The Masters to judge the final stereo-masters on quality, corrections and possibilities for improvement.
Here I balance the tracks on the album, I give them the finishing touch and take care of the transfer to the digital Master Tape on the highest possible level.
To reach this, I use, among others, the Marantz CD10 player and Weiss Mastering equipment, which is being regarded as the absolute top in professional mastering. Every signal is, before it is edited, first upgraded to the 24 bit / 96 KHz level. I use the POW-R system by Weiss. This is the only system that can translate 24 bit to 16 bit without any loss. The acoustics of the studio has been designed for the highest possible perfection, so I can analyze the finest details and look them over critically. When I work on someone else's creativity I must be absolutely positive that what I hear is the truth and that all improvements and corrections are completely to the benefit of the music and the listener at home. That is what I call the art of Mastering