The Sound Blog - Audio Insights

Hi Friends, A few years ago, I was asked to be the A1 for a wrestling show to be shot in India! For those who don't know what an A1 is, in the USA, the Chief Audio Engineer on a television show is called the A1. This wrestling show was to be telecast on a General Entertainment Channel in India and the Director of the show as well as many of the wrestlers were coming over from the USA. I had never mixed a wrestling show in my life! I imagined there would be two or three commentators, some in-ring announcers and the wrestlers fighting it out in the ring. In fact, the primary mics would be just the hand mikes with the in-ring announcers. But how wrong was I to think that this was going to be simple! Very soon, I found myself sending e-mails left, right and center to people in the USA who wanted to make sure that everything is done according to the way they do things out there. I was briefed in great detail about how they normally do such shows back in the US. I learned that...

Hi Friends, Before I continue with my post today, I just thought I should clarify once again, that in this blog, I am posting my personal views and comments. I just want to share my experiences of the past 33 years with my readers. Today, I want to write about the evolution of sound in the television industry in Mumbai … purely from my point of view. I started working in Mumbai in the field of audio from 1986 onwards, but serious work for television began in 1994. My friends Dileep Subramaniam and Inderjit Neogi asked me if I would be interested in working along with them on a daily soap. I said yes and started working as a freelancer on UTV’s daily soap SHANTI, sometime in 1994. This was India’s first daily soap and telecast on Doordarshan. It made Mandira Bedi a household name! We used to shoot 6 days a week. Since Dileep and Neogi were established freelance recordists and also had many other projects going on simultaneously, they would ask me to go on the shoot of SHANTI whenever t...