Notes from the studio.

Release

3 Aug 2026

Specula 1.2: custom loudness targets and raw PCM import

The delivery spec a client sends you, entered once and treated like a built-in target: verdict badge, Match, Normalize, reports. Plus headerless PCM dumps under a declared format, in the app and on the CLI, and a readability pass.

Release

29 Jul 2026

Specula 1.1: spectral editing, fix what you measure

Select a hum, a cough, or a chair squeak on the spectrogram and attenuate, erase, or repair it, without leaving the app that found it. Plus Record mode through the analyzer's meters, AU plugin hosting in Edit mode, and a test-signal generator.

Loudness

27 Jun 2026

Why streaming TV is measured on the dialogue, not the mix

Streaming-TV loudness specs are dialogue-gated: you measure the speech, not the mix. On a music-heavy file the two numbers can drift several dB apart - enough to send you the wrong way.

Audiobook

26 Jun 2026

The one loud chapter - per-chapter loudness for audiobook delivery

An audiobook can read fine on the whole-file loudness number and fail chapter by chapter. Chapter mode segments the book at its silences and flags the one that drifted from the book's own centre, before the distributor does.

Audiobook

26 Jun 2026

The noise floor problem - why audiobooks get rejected on the quiet parts

Noise floor is the ACX gate narrators trip over, and the one you can't fix in mastering. Measuring it correctly means gating to the silence between words - which is what a neural VAD over the file makes possible.

Lyra

15 May 2026

Wiring Lyra into every Mac automation surface

Lyra 1.5 is scriptable from every Mac automation surface I could find. Shortcuts, Spotlight, Focus Filters, Stream Deck, Keyboard Maestro, Raycast. One change underneath, several different shapes on top.

Hearing health

2 May 2026

The musician tinnitus number is 43%

A 2026 meta-analysis of 28,000+ musicians pooled across 67 studies puts hard numbers on tinnitus, hearing loss and hyperacusis - and finds classical players at no advantage over rock ones.

Workflow

27 Apr 2026

Calibrate once, recall forever - pairing Audita and Lyra

A pink-noise sweep, a name, and one keystroke replace fifteen years of guessing what "Mix" actually means in dB SPL. The integration closes the gap between SPL meter and monitor controller.

Hearing health

27 Apr 2026

The 3 dB rule - how loudness halves safe listening time

Every 3 dB increase halves your safe listening time. Every 3 dB decrease doubles it. The arithmetic is unforgiving and most engineers have never run it on their own habits.

Practice

20 Apr 2026

Monitor at a number, not a vibe - the case for calibrated studio listening

Translation, consistency, lower hearing dose, less fatigue. The case for calibrated monitoring has been made for fifty years; the tooling finally caught up.