Lights, Camera, Magic…with Disney Engineer and Aston Artist Dan Scott

When you wish upon a star, you may just end up with the job of your dreams. Such was the case for Dan Scott, who engineers and sound designs for The Walt Disney Company as well as such star-studded studios as Lucasfilm, ABC, Fox, Cartoon Network, Ubisoft, MTV, and ESPN. Dan took some time out from the Magic Kingdom to chat with us about how it all came to be.

Dan was studying in Orlando when he got his foot in the door as an intern with the Disney Music Department,. Now, with Ty Fy Studios, Dan is responsible for music and audio production at Disney Parks and cruise liners all over the world, where his work is seen by more than 175 million people a year.

On location the team mix with portable Pro Tools HD rigs, while for sound effects, Foley and voiceovers Dan records with his Aston Spirit, preferring its versatility to the old standards.

“In my world we have our universal go-to utility microphones that we’ve used forever, but the truth is I’ve come to realize they don’t always pair very well with a lot of our preamps. The Aston Spirit just works on pretty much everything; voice over, instrumentation or group recording. Spirit just gets the job done!”

Dan also uses Starlights for instruments, Foley and sound design, garnering much attention from his peers.

“[Starlight’s] super linear off-axis response makes for really natural distance decay and the voicing options can totally transform an otherwise dull sound and make it sit back or cut through a scene straight off the mics. I would use them even more if I could just stop lending them out to everyone who wanted to try them!”

In addition to Starlight and Spirit, Dan uses an Aston Halo in an unconventional way for commentary sessions:

“We have always had a problem with one of the commentators being crazy loud next to an analyst who is way quieter. The Halos being set up between them cut at least ~10db of bleed from her mic and made it way easier to edit and clean up in post.”

Read our full exclusive interview with Dan here