Spring 2007 - University of Massachusetts Lowell

CampusNews
The new “Vision” sound mixing console enables the SRT program to remain at the forefront
of audio education.
SRT Program Installs New ‘High End’ Audio Console
The Music Department’s Sound
Recording Technology program has
installed a new analog mixing console—which
looks like it belongs in the
Starship Enterprise—that will offer
seniors and graduate students what
Prof. Will Moylan calls “cutting edge”
education.
Made by API (Automated Processes,
Inc.) of Jessup, Md., this new piece of
equipment with its myriad of colored
lights, switches and dials is more than
seven feet long. The cost, including
installation and options, was slightly
more than $300,000.
“We’ve chosen to stay with analog
technology because of its sound quality
and its applications for teaching and
research,” Moylan explains. “There’s
more flexibility in this kind of high-end
analog console —which is high-end to
a factor of three or four compared with
where the technology had been in previous
iterations. It allows us to explore
things in graduate courses and some
undergraduate courses that we couldn’t
on a digital-audio computer platform.”
Colleges - Arts and Sciences
The new unit, which has been
installed in a refurbished room on the
second floor of Durgin Hall, replaces
one that was bought in 1989 and
which, Moylan says, “was showing its
very advanced age.”
Named “Vision” by its manufacturer,
the new console has some old technology
that is used in very progressive
ways. It also can be interfaced with digital
technologies.
“It’s also the only analog device
that’s been designed for mixing surround
sound. That’s very significant.
Surround sound has become a very
important part of the film industry and
multi-media experiences. So it’s very
important for our students to have
advanced skills in that area.”
This new console and surround
sound capability “is one more way that
the SRT program is staying at the forefront
nationally in audio education—
and one more way that we’re
positioning ourselves to assist industry
in the further development of
technology and recording techniques,”
says Moylan.
$27 Million Funding Goes
to Submillimeter-Wave
Technology
Out on the battlefield, the radar
shows you something’s there. But what
is it? You should know before you shoot.
Answering the question—“What is
it?”—is where the Submillimeter-wave
Technology Lab (STL) makes itself useful—so
useful that the U.S. Department
of Defense has appropriated $27 million
to fund its research for five years.
“We and our government sponsors are
the only research program that uses terahertz
frequency measurement systems to
collect real-world radar signature data,”
says Dr. Robert Giles, STL director and
professor of physics, in explaining the
lab’s unique position.
The STL is a member of the Expert
Radar Signature Solutions consortium,
developed by the Army’s National
Ground Intelligence Center.
Radar signatures collected at STL are
high quality and low cost. But “low cost”
is a relative term when dealing with
sophisticated equipment and extraordinary
precision.
Guy Demartinis, one of STL’s radar engineers,
evaluates the high-resolution terahertz
imagery of a scaled aircraft.
2 UMASS LOWELL MAGAZINE SPRING 2007