About Iain

Freelance Sound designer and Audio engineer

My fascination for sound and music began during my teenage years. I played the violin (badly) in the school orchestra and taught myself how to play the electric guitar. Various attempts at converting old bits of hi-fi into a guitar amp started my fascination with audio technology.

I began my professional audio career as a trainee audio assistant with the BBC in Edinburgh in the 1980s and I progressed to lead an audio team in Bristol. I’m really proud of the work we did to bring high quality, creative content from around the world to audiences on TV and radio. I personally not only developed my technical skills but also had some incredible experiences, ranging from being part of the Outside Broadcast team covering three Olympics and delivering live broadcasts from music events in Miami, Cyprus and Ibiza.

Throughout my career I have enjoyed the very technical aspect of working with sound, but equally value the more artistic, creative side. I feel this enables me to interpret more effectively the ideas of writers and producers into audio content that is exciting/interesting/emotive to listen to, whilst maintaining the highest quality technical standards. Audiences will always pick up if something is wrong with the sound they hear, without necessarily understanding why, and this may make them stop listening completely or take their attention away from the message of the piece. My role is to make the sound they hear as authentic and believable as possible.

Throughout my career I have been lucky enough to record hundreds of audio dramas for the BBC, and still enjoy the challenge of transforming a script into audio.  Since leaving the BBC in 2018 I have continued making audio content for BBC Sounds, Independent podcast producers and audio books. I’ve enjoyed the challenge of working remotely under Lockdown to continue to make quality audio content.

I am a member of the Institute of Professional Sound. IPS

I still play the guitar and very occasionally my violin… when nobody is around to hear.