Dan Dugan (audio engineer)
Encyclopedia
Dan Dugan is an American audio engineer
, inventor
, and nature sounds recordist
. He was the first person to be called a sound designer
, and he developed the first effective automatic microphone mixer: the automixer
.
, on March 20, 1943, after his father had shipped out to the Pacific War
. (Two months later, U.S. Navy
Commander P. F. Dugan took command of the attack transport
, and led her in support of five invasion operations.) "Dan" Dugan was raised in San Diego, California, where his parents took him to the Old Globe Theatre
and summer musicals at the Ford Bowl
—he always wanted to go backstage to see the lighting control console
. As a young man he sang bass
in the church choir, in the San Diego Bach Chorus, in choral workshops under Roger Wagner
at San Diego State University
, and in madrigal
groups for Dancing on the Green. Dugan obtained a four-year scholarship to the University of San Francisco
and majored in physics and math. He dropped out in 1963 to pursue stagecraft
, specifically lighting design
. His early lighting designs include ones for the San Diego National Shakespeare Festival at the Old Globe Theatre, the San Diego Opera
, and the Actor's Workshop
in San Francisco.
(ACT) in San Francisco. Dugan's complex and atmospheric theatrical sound solutions led to a new title: during ACT's 1968–69 season, he was the first person to be called a "sound designer". He presented a paper about his sound design to the Audio Engineering Society
(AES) at their 37th convention, and his paper was published in their Journal in December 1969. Dugan described a system in which the signals from three stereo tape players were routed to ten loudspeaker
zones in the theater.
Dugan designed sound for three regional productions of Hair
, the musical: ones in Chicago, Las Vegas and Toronto. The Chicago production ran in 1969 and 1970 at the Blackstone Theatre
, operated at that time by The Shubert Organization
. Dugan was able to design sound but not allowed to operate the mixing console
because he was not in the stagehands union: International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).
When Margrit Mondavi
founded the Mondavi Summer Music Festival in 1969 at the Robert Mondavi Winery
, primarily featuring jazz artists, Dugan mixed sound for many seasons. As well, he recorded independent record albums, including Kate Wolf
's first two: Back Roads (1976) and Lines on the Paper (1977). He designed sound for the Sacramento Music Circus.
Though the algorithm was good, the reference microphone was an unpredictable variable: it had practical placement problems. If it was near the audience, audience noise would skew the algorithm. If placed backstage, crew and equipment noises could be a factor. Thus, the Dugan Music System was not immediately developed into a product. Dugan studied the problem, researching alternative solutions. In 1975, Dugan filed a patent for the "Dugan Speech System", and in 1976 produced 60 copies of what he named the Dugan Model A. The automixer with serial number 1, a unit Dugan fabricated by hand, "was installed in the conference room of Bell Labs
by Harvey Fletcher
". Significantly, the external microphone reference of the Dugan Music System was replaced by a reference composed of the total signal received from all of the active microphones. Dugan described the process some three decades later:
Dugan licensed this more practical system to Altec who produced 4- and 8-channel automixers for commercial installations such as hotels, conference rooms, courtrooms and city council chambers. The Dugan Speech System was the first commercially successful automixing algorithm. Over the next 15 years, other manufacturers designed competing automixers, and the market segment was born.
In the late 1980s, Dugan developed a gain-limiting improvement to the automixing algorithm. The Dugan Gain Limiting System was patented in September 1989 and presented to the 87th AES convention in October. Dugan described for the AES his prototype of an automixer to be inserted
into selected microphone channels of a mixing console, operated by a person, to help in mixing multiple live microphones to have less reverberation and noise, more focus on the desired sound, eliminating the mixing engineer's problem of too-slow human reaction time. The gain limiting system provided smooth, continuous control over the equivalent number of open microphones (NOM) that the automixer would send at its outputs. The NOM could be set anywhere between 1 and 10, with higher settings sounding more natural for a recording in a studio, and lower settings offering greater control of acoustic feedback in the presence of sound reinforcement loudspeakers. An embodiment of Dugan's three patents was produced as the Model D Automatic Mixing Controller, a 3U rack unit
handling 8 channels which could be linked with up to 11 other Model Ds to automatically mix as many as 96 channels simultaneously.
Dugan's original 1974 patent expired in 1991, and the Dugan Speech System patent in 1993. Other manufacturers began to sell automixers incorporating the Dugan algorithm. In 1996, Dugan produced the Model D-1, an automixer for speech-only applications. The Model D-2 returned to having applicability for both speech and music, and the Model D-3 as well. In 1997, Dugan licensed his system to Protech Audio of Indian Lake, New York
, yielding the Protech 2000 model series.
In September 2006, Dugan produced the Model E, the E standing for economy. This half-rack-sized automixer was much smaller and less expensive than previous ones. It could be linked with another Model E to control up to 16 channels; two units could be mounted side-by-side in only 1U of rack space. The Model E's popularity came with many critical requests for features, and in May 2008 the Model E-1 was introduced; an incremental improvement to replace the Model E. It allowed ADAT Lightpipe
interconnections between linked units and a digital mixing console
, helpful with Yamaha
, Mackie
and other digital audio gear containing ADAT inputs and outputs. Its user interface was a simple web browser page, accessible by computer connected with Category 5 cable
.
In February 2011, Dugan demonstrated an automixer card, marketed by Yamaha, to plug in to the accessory slot of a Yamaha digital mixer such as the LS9, M7CL
or PM5D. This card, the Dugan-MY16, could mix up to 16 channels of microphone inputs, assigned to selected inserts in the mixer's graphic user interface. Like the Model E-1, the automixer could be adjusted through a web browser interface, allowing remote control with an iPad
, touchscreen computer or laptop over wireless network.
, he was attracted to the sounds found in pristine natural settings—environments without human noise. A board member and webmaster of Nature Sounds Society, Dugan has conducted equipment training sessions since 1994, and has given talks about his experiences in nature recording. He has traveled to New Zealand
in pursuit of recordings, but mainly devotes himself to U.S. National Parks and Monuments such as Yosemite
and Muir Woods
. Other national parks and monuments at which he has recorded sound include Joshua Tree
, Pinnacles
, Lassen Volcanic
, Yellowstone
, Haleakala
, Olympic
, Zion
, Bryce Canyon
, Kings Canyon
, Sequoia
and Lava Beds
.
Dugan and his wife Sharon Perry, Nature Sounds Society chair, recorded the dawn chorus
of Cathedral Grove in Muir Woods once each month for a year. He has partnered with the National Park Service
and the California Library of Natural Sounds to document the various sounds heard in U.S. parks. Regarding his reasons for doing so, Dugan wrote in 2008:
In 2006, Dugan assisted a group of researchers studying soundscapes and human use at Muir Woods. The researchers presented their findings at the Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium, produced by the United States Forest Service
, a work titled, "From Landscapes to Soundscapes: Understanding and Managing Natural Quiet in the National Parks". They concluded that human-generated noise "is a potentially important indicator of quality" of soundscapes in parks.
Audio engineering
An audio engineer, also called audio technician, audio technologist or sound technician, is a specialist in a skilled trade that deals with the use of machinery and equipment for the recording, mixing and reproduction of sounds. The field draws on many artistic and vocational areas, including...
, inventor
Invention
An invention is a novel composition, device, or process. An invention may be derived from a pre-existing model or idea, or it could be independently conceived, in which case it may be a radical breakthrough. In addition, there is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social...
, and nature sounds recordist
Field recording
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside of a recording studio. The recording is typically recorded in the same channel format as the desired result, for instance, stereo recording equipment will yield a stereo product...
. He was the first person to be called a sound designer
Sound design
Sound design is the process of specifying, acquiring, manipulating or generating audio elements. It is employed in a variety of disciplines including filmmaking, television production, theatre, sound recording and reproduction, live performance, sound art, post-production and video game software...
, and he developed the first effective automatic microphone mixer: the automixer
Automixer
An automixer, or automatic microphone mixer, is a live sound mixing device that automatically attenuates the strength of a microphone's audio signal when it is not being used. Automixers reduce the hiss, rumble, reverberation and noise that occur when several microphones operate simultaneously...
.
Early career
Daniel W. Dugan was born in Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, on March 20, 1943, after his father had shipped out to the Pacific War
Pacific War
The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...
. (Two months later, U.S. Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
Commander P. F. Dugan took command of the attack transport
Attack transport
Attack Transport is a United States Navy ship classification.-History:In the early 1940s, as the United States Navy expanded in response to the threat of involvement in World War II, a number of civilian passenger ships and some freighters were acquired, converted to transports and given hull...
, and led her in support of five invasion operations.) "Dan" Dugan was raised in San Diego, California, where his parents took him to the Old Globe Theatre
Old Globe Theatre
The Old Globe is a professional theatre company located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It produces about 15 plays and musicals annually in summer and winter seasons...
and summer musicals at the Ford Bowl
Starlight Bowl (San Diego)
The Starlight Bowl is an amphitheater located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It was constructed for the 1935-1936 California Pacific International Exposition and seats 4,300...
—he always wanted to go backstage to see the lighting control console
Lighting control console
A lighting control console is an electronic device used in theatrical lighting design to control multiple lights at once...
. As a young man he sang bass
Bass (voice type)
A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...
in the church choir, in the San Diego Bach Chorus, in choral workshops under Roger Wagner
Roger Wagner
Roger Wagner, KCSG was an American choral musician, administrator and educator.-Early life:Wagner was born in Le Puy, France. His younger brother was actor and voiceover artist Jack Wagner. Roger Wagner was immersed in music from his youngest years...
at San Diego State University
San Diego State University
San Diego State University , founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, is the largest and oldest higher education facility in the greater San Diego area , and is part of the California State University system...
, and in madrigal
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
groups for Dancing on the Green. Dugan obtained a four-year scholarship to the University of San Francisco
University of San Francisco
The University of San Francisco , is a private, Jesuit/Catholic university located in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1855, USF was established as the first university in San Francisco. It is the second oldest institution for higher learning in California and the tenth-oldest university of...
and majored in physics and math. He dropped out in 1963 to pursue stagecraft
Stagecraft
Stagecraft is a generic term referring to the technical aspects of theatrical, film, and video production. It includes, but is not limited to, constructing and rigging scenery, hanging and focusing of lighting, design and procurement of costumes, makeup, procurement of props, stage management, and...
, specifically lighting design
Lighting designer
The role of the lighting designer within theatre is to work with the director, choreographer, set designer, costume designer, and sound designer to create an overall 'look' for the show in response to the text, while keeping in mind issues of visibility, safety and cost...
. His early lighting designs include ones for the San Diego National Shakespeare Festival at the Old Globe Theatre, the San Diego Opera
San Diego Opera
The San Diego Opera Association is a professional opera company located in the city of San Diego, California and is a member of OPERA America. It was founded in 1950 to present productions by San Francisco Opera in the San Diego area...
, and the Actor's Workshop
Actor's Workshop
The Actor's Workshop was a theater company founded in San Francisco in the 1950s. It is considered by many to have been a seminal part of the modern theater movement in America. Its co-founders, Herbert Blau and Jules Irving, were professors at San Francisco State College...
in San Francisco.
Sound design
Dugan changed from lighting design to sound design in 1967. He designed sound for the Shakespeare festival in San Diego and for the American Conservatory TheatreAmerican Conservatory Theater
American Conservatory Theater is a large non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. A.C.T. was founded in 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Carnegie Tech by theatre and...
(ACT) in San Francisco. Dugan's complex and atmospheric theatrical sound solutions led to a new title: during ACT's 1968–69 season, he was the first person to be called a "sound designer". He presented a paper about his sound design to the Audio Engineering Society
Audio Engineering Society
Established in 1948, the Audio Engineering Society draws its membership from amongst engineers, scientists, other individuals with an interest or involvement in the professional audio industry. The membership largely comprises engineers developing devices or products for audio, and persons working...
(AES) at their 37th convention, and his paper was published in their Journal in December 1969. Dugan described a system in which the signals from three stereo tape players were routed to ten loudspeaker
Loudspeaker
A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...
zones in the theater.
Dugan designed sound for three regional productions of Hair
Hair (musical)
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
, the musical: ones in Chicago, Las Vegas and Toronto. The Chicago production ran in 1969 and 1970 at the Blackstone Theatre
Merle Reskin Theatre
The Merle Reskin Theatre is a performing arts venue located in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. Originally named the Blackstone Theatre, it was founded in 1910. The Merle Reskin Theatre is now part of DePaul University, although it is still used for events not affiliated with the...
, operated at that time by The Shubert Organization
The Shubert Organization
The Shubert Organization is a theatrical producing organization and a major owner of legitimate theatres based in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded by the Shubert brothers, Sam S. Shubert, Lee Shubert, and Jacob J. Shubert of Syracuse, New York in the late 19th century in upstate New York,...
. Dugan was able to design sound but not allowed to operate the mixing console
Mixing console
In professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board, mixing desk, or mixer is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...
because he was not in the stagehands union: International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).
When Margrit Mondavi
Margrit Mondavi
Margrit Biever Mondavi is Vice President of Cultural Affairs at Robert Mondavi Winery. A pioneering woman of the modern-day California wine industry, she joined the winery in 1967, pursuing a life-long interest in uniting wine with fine arts, music and culinary artistry...
founded the Mondavi Summer Music Festival in 1969 at the Robert Mondavi Winery
Robert Mondavi
Robert Gerald Mondavi was a leading California vineyard operator whose technical improvements and marketing strategies brought worldwide recognition for the wines of the Napa Valley in California. From an early period, Mondavi aggressively promoted labeling wines varietally rather than...
, primarily featuring jazz artists, Dugan mixed sound for many seasons. As well, he recorded independent record albums, including Kate Wolf
Kate Wolf
Kate Wolf was an American folk singer and songwriter. Though her career was relatively short, she had a significant impact on the folk music scene, and many musicians continue to cover her songs...
's first two: Back Roads (1976) and Lines on the Paper (1977). He designed sound for the Sacramento Music Circus.
Automixer
While designing sound for the musical Hair, Dugan began to appreciate the problem of a human operator not being fast enough to control multiple microphones. He saw the show's audio mixing person "working rotary knobs for 16 area mics, 9 hand mics, and 10 mics in the band". Dugan thought that a microphone should not be on unless it was getting some worthwhile signal, more than just the room ambiance. His frustration with microphone mixing led him to experiment for a few years, finally developing the "Dugan Music System", shown to the AES at their 49th convention, held in New York in 1974. This system used a novel proportional gain algorithm whereby the total gain was divided between all active microphones. The microphones were "continuously and automatically adjusted" to bring them up or down in the mix, based on how much signal they were sending relative to the signal received by a reference microphone placed somewhat distant from the other microphones. Dugan's patent application for a "Control Apparatus for Sound Reinforcement Systems" was accepted and published on June 4, 1974. This was the first useful automatic microphone mixing algorithm, the basis for all of Dugan's later systems.Though the algorithm was good, the reference microphone was an unpredictable variable: it had practical placement problems. If it was near the audience, audience noise would skew the algorithm. If placed backstage, crew and equipment noises could be a factor. Thus, the Dugan Music System was not immediately developed into a product. Dugan studied the problem, researching alternative solutions. In 1975, Dugan filed a patent for the "Dugan Speech System", and in 1976 produced 60 copies of what he named the Dugan Model A. The automixer with serial number 1, a unit Dugan fabricated by hand, "was installed in the conference room of Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
by Harvey Fletcher
Harvey Fletcher
Harvey Fletcher was an American physicist. Known as the "father of stereophonic sound" he is credited with the invention of the audiometer and hearing aid...
". Significantly, the external microphone reference of the Dugan Music System was replaced by a reference composed of the total signal received from all of the active microphones. Dugan described the process some three decades later:
Dugan licensed this more practical system to Altec who produced 4- and 8-channel automixers for commercial installations such as hotels, conference rooms, courtrooms and city council chambers. The Dugan Speech System was the first commercially successful automixing algorithm. Over the next 15 years, other manufacturers designed competing automixers, and the market segment was born.
In the late 1980s, Dugan developed a gain-limiting improvement to the automixing algorithm. The Dugan Gain Limiting System was patented in September 1989 and presented to the 87th AES convention in October. Dugan described for the AES his prototype of an automixer to be inserted
Insert (effects processing)
In audio processing and sound reinforcement, an insert is an access point built into the mixing console, allowing the user to add external line level devices into the signal flow between the microphone preamplifier and the mix bus....
into selected microphone channels of a mixing console, operated by a person, to help in mixing multiple live microphones to have less reverberation and noise, more focus on the desired sound, eliminating the mixing engineer's problem of too-slow human reaction time. The gain limiting system provided smooth, continuous control over the equivalent number of open microphones (NOM) that the automixer would send at its outputs. The NOM could be set anywhere between 1 and 10, with higher settings sounding more natural for a recording in a studio, and lower settings offering greater control of acoustic feedback in the presence of sound reinforcement loudspeakers. An embodiment of Dugan's three patents was produced as the Model D Automatic Mixing Controller, a 3U rack unit
Rack unit
A rack unit or U is a unit of measure used to describe the height of equipment intended for mounting in a 19-inch rack or a 23-inch rack...
handling 8 channels which could be linked with up to 11 other Model Ds to automatically mix as many as 96 channels simultaneously.
Dugan's original 1974 patent expired in 1991, and the Dugan Speech System patent in 1993. Other manufacturers began to sell automixers incorporating the Dugan algorithm. In 1996, Dugan produced the Model D-1, an automixer for speech-only applications. The Model D-2 returned to having applicability for both speech and music, and the Model D-3 as well. In 1997, Dugan licensed his system to Protech Audio of Indian Lake, New York
Indian Lake, New York
Indian Lake is a town in Hamilton County, New York, United States. The population was 1,471 at the 2000 census. The name is from a large lake partly inside the town.The Town of Indian Lake is on the east border of the county and is northeast of Utica....
, yielding the Protech 2000 model series.
In September 2006, Dugan produced the Model E, the E standing for economy. This half-rack-sized automixer was much smaller and less expensive than previous ones. It could be linked with another Model E to control up to 16 channels; two units could be mounted side-by-side in only 1U of rack space. The Model E's popularity came with many critical requests for features, and in May 2008 the Model E-1 was introduced; an incremental improvement to replace the Model E. It allowed ADAT Lightpipe
ADAT Lightpipe
The ADAT Lightpipe, officially the ADAT Optical Interface, is a standard for the transfer of digital audio between equipment. It was originally developed by Alesis but has since become widely accepted, with many third party hardware manufacturers including Lightpipe interfaces on their equipment...
interconnections between linked units and a digital mixing console
Digital mixing console
In professional audio, a Digital Mixing Console , is an electronic device for combining, routing, and changing the dynamics of digital audio samples. The digital audio samples are summed to produce a combined output. A professional digital mixing console is a dedicated desk or control surface...
, helpful with Yamaha
Yamaha Pro Audio
Yamaha Pro Audio, Inc. is a company that offers a complete line of professional audio products for the live sound and sound reinforcement markets...
, Mackie
Mackie
Mackie is a brand of the United States-based company LOUD Technologies. The Mackie brand is used on professional music and recording equipment, such as mixing consoles, loudspeakers, and DAW control surfaces....
and other digital audio gear containing ADAT inputs and outputs. Its user interface was a simple web browser page, accessible by computer connected with Category 5 cable
Category 5 cable
Category 5 cable is a twisted pair cable for carrying signals. This type of cable is used in structured cabling for computer networks such as Ethernet. It is also used to carry other signals such as telephony and video. The cable is commonly connected using punch down blocks and modular connectors...
.
In February 2011, Dugan demonstrated an automixer card, marketed by Yamaha, to plug in to the accessory slot of a Yamaha digital mixer such as the LS9, M7CL
M7CL
The Yamaha M7CL is a digital mixer manufactured by Yamaha Pro Audio. Two models with onboard analog input currently exist: the M7CL-32 and M7CL-48. These models have 40 - and 56 -input channels respectively, counting mono channels...
or PM5D. This card, the Dugan-MY16, could mix up to 16 channels of microphone inputs, assigned to selected inserts in the mixer's graphic user interface. Like the Model E-1, the automixer could be adjusted through a web browser interface, allowing remote control with an iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
, touchscreen computer or laptop over wireless network.
Nature sounds
Dugan made his first sound effects recordings to augment his theatrical sound designs. As he grew more interested in field recordingField recording
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside of a recording studio. The recording is typically recorded in the same channel format as the desired result, for instance, stereo recording equipment will yield a stereo product...
, he was attracted to the sounds found in pristine natural settings—environments without human noise. A board member and webmaster of Nature Sounds Society, Dugan has conducted equipment training sessions since 1994, and has given talks about his experiences in nature recording. He has traveled to New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
in pursuit of recordings, but mainly devotes himself to U.S. National Parks and Monuments such as Yosemite
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park is a United States National Park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in east central California, United States. The park covers an area of and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain...
and Muir Woods
Muir Woods National Monument
Muir Woods National Monument is a unit of the National Park Service on the Pacific coast of southwestern Marin County, California, north of San Francisco and part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area...
. Other national parks and monuments at which he has recorded sound include Joshua Tree
Joshua Tree National Park
Joshua Tree National Park is located in southeastern California. Declared a U.S. National Park in 1994 when the U.S. Congress passed the California Desert Protection Act , it had previously been a U.S. National Monument since 1936. It is named for the Joshua tree forests native to the park...
, Pinnacles
Pinnacles National Monument
Pinnacles National Monument is a protected mountainous area located east of central California's Salinas Valley, just miles from the town of Soledad...
, Lassen Volcanic
Lassen Volcanic National Park
Lassen Volcanic National Park is a United States National Park in northeastern California. The dominant feature of the park is Lassen Peak; the largest plug dome volcano in the world and the southern-most volcano in the Cascade Range...
, Yellowstone
Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park, established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872, is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho...
, Haleakala
Haleakala National Park
Haleakalā National Park is a United States national park located on the island of Maui in the state of Hawaii. The park covers an area of , of which is a wilderness area...
, Olympic
Olympic National Park
Olympic National Park is located in the U.S. state of Washington, in the Olympic Peninsula. The park can be divided into four basic regions: the Pacific coastline, alpine areas, the west side temperate rainforest and the forests of the drier east side. U.S...
, Zion
Zion National Park
Zion National Park is located in the Southwestern United States, near Springdale, Utah. A prominent feature of the park is Zion Canyon, which is 15 miles long and up to half a mile deep, cut through the reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone by the North Fork of the Virgin River...
, Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon National Park
Bryce Canyon National Park is a national park located in southwestern Utah in the United States. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon which, despite its name, is not a canyon but a giant natural amphitheater created by erosion along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau...
, Kings Canyon
Kings Canyon National Park
Kings Canyon National Park is a National Park in the southern Sierra Nevada, east of Fresno, California. The park was established in 1940 and covers...
, Sequoia
Sequoia National Park
Sequoia National Park is a national park in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California, in the United States. It was established on September 25, 1890. The park spans . Encompassing a vertical relief of nearly , the park contains among its natural resources the highest point in the...
and Lava Beds
Lava Beds National Monument
Lava Beds National Monument is located in northeastern California, in Siskiyou and Modoc Counties. The Monument lies on the northeastern flank of the Medicine Lake Volcano, with the largest total area covered by a volcano in the Cascade Range....
.
Dugan and his wife Sharon Perry, Nature Sounds Society chair, recorded the dawn chorus
Dawn chorus (birds)
The dawn chorus occurs when songbirds sing at the start of a new day. In temperate countries, this is most noticeable in spring, when the birds are either defending a breeding territory or trying to attract a mate. In a given location, it is common for different species to do their dawn singing at...
of Cathedral Grove in Muir Woods once each month for a year. He has partnered with the National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
and the California Library of Natural Sounds to document the various sounds heard in U.S. parks. Regarding his reasons for doing so, Dugan wrote in 2008:
In 2006, Dugan assisted a group of researchers studying soundscapes and human use at Muir Woods. The researchers presented their findings at the Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium, produced by the United States Forest Service
United States Forest Service
The United States Forest Service is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands, which encompass...
, a work titled, "From Landscapes to Soundscapes: Understanding and Managing Natural Quiet in the National Parks". They concluded that human-generated noise "is a potentially important indicator of quality" of soundscapes in parks.