Martin Rieger Sound

13/10/2026

One of the largest microphone networks in the world isn't in a studio. It sits on poles across Ukraine and listens for drones.

More than 10,000 acoustic sensors. It reportedly started with a microphone and a mobile phone taped to a pole.

Radar needs the object to be big enough. A microphone only needs it to be loud enough. Compare when the same sound hits each sensor and you get a position - the same thing your two ears do with a car coming from the left.

Meanwhile my industry is still arguing about which spatial audio codec is best.

A microphone is not a recording device. It's a cheap sensor that we mostly point at singers.

Correct me if you know this better. I'd rather learn than be confidently wrong.

13/10/2026

13/10/2026

13/10/2026

12/10/2026

11/10/2026

10/10/2026

WAV is the Stone Age of audio. And the entire industry still runs on it.

I spent money on another 8 TB drive last week. Most of it will be used to store silence.
At 24-bit. Uncompressed. Across hundreds of tracks.

That's because our entire industry still runs on WAV.
A format from the 90s.

The math on a multichannel job: 8.6 MB per minute. Per channel.
One hour of a 128-track ADM master: 66 GB.
Go 32-bit float at 96 kHz, and you're at 177 GB.

Here's the part that still feels insane:
A sound that lasts three seconds gets its own full-length WAV file from
start to finish. We literally store silence at studio quality.

I'm not saying lossy is the answer. MP3 or AAC inside a production chain?
No. But lossless compressed already exists. FLAC is bit-for-bit identical
and roughly half the size. Some field recorders write it today but it's not like it's a standard.
Then Pro Tools converts it to WAV anyway, while Reaper handles anything you throw at it just fine. Correct me if that changed.

And credit where it's due: next to my video colleagues I'm a rounding
error. They move terabytes a day. I move gigabytes. Factor 1000, easily.
First world problems, audio edition.

Which is probably the whole reason nobody ever fixed this for us - you can just buy another hard drive.

Honest question, yes or no: would you record straight to compressed audio tomorrow
if your DAW let you?

10/10/2026

07/10/2026

Motorbike sound effect in 3D. Headphones on, it drives right past you 🎧

06/10/2026

DJ scratch on vinyl, in 3D. Headphones on, it jumps from ear to ear 🎧