Brett Buddin

Software Engineer & Field Recordist

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I’m a software engineer with over 15 years of experience building platforms. In recent years my work has centered on query execution and data ingestion for observability and telemetry databases. I currently work on Cloud Observability at ServiceNow.

I have a lifelong interest in sound and music, and in recent years that has evolved into a regular practice of deep listening through field recording. In 2020 I started publishing these recordings as a podcast called Phonogrifter. I also build tools for audio production. Most of these projects are experimental, but I do publish generally useful work on occassion. Notable among these are QUARK and Shaden.

You’re welcome to send me email or connect on GitHub, Glass, and LinkedIn.

Projects

Phonogrifter

Podcast, 2020–now

A collection of field recordings published as a podcast. Each episode is an exploration of a particular place through its sounds.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and RSS. Headphones are recommended.

QS

Library, 2023–2024

A library that provides encoding and decoding for the QS Regular Matrix format. QS is bundled as a module for the JUCE audio framework, and is the open-sourced core of QUARK.

We extracted and open-sourced QS as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts through dublab so others could leverage the QS math to build new quadraphonic tools.

QUARK

Plugin, 2017–2024

Free DAW plugin that provides a workflow for mixing/mastering quadraphonic content in the QS Regular Matrix format. It provides an encoder capable of 4-2 channel encoding and a decoder (mostly used to A/B test mixes) capable of reproducing original discrete channels from an encoded signal. Encoded mixes can be distributed via any normal stereo distribution method (vinyl, radio, streaming services) for playback.

KamranV and I built QUARK with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts through dublab.

Mixed with QUARK:

Shaden

Instrument, 2015–2018

A modular audio synthesizer. Patches for the synthesizer are written in a Lisp dialect. A REPL and HTTP interface are provided for interacting with the synthesizer in real-time. Watch the lightning talk from GopherCon 2018.

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