Spotlight: Somos Spring Branch Podcast & Personal Music Projects Thrive in the DMC Audio Studio

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We’re excited to share some glowing feedback from recent users of the newly soundproofed DMC Audio Studio, where both community storytelling and personal creativity are flourishing.

Community Voices Amplified: Somos Spring Branch Podcast

Somos Spring Branch, a local nonprofit focused on community organizing, recently launched a podcast to elevate the voices of Spring Branch residents. Their goal is to spotlight the neighborhood’s vibrant culture, address pressing issues like gentrification and underfunded schools, and spark conversations around policy solutions.

Somos Spring Branch team recording podcasting episode in the DMC Audio Studio
Somos Spring Branch team recording a podcast episode in the professionally soundproofed DMC Audio Studio on July 28, 2025.

David Lopez, a Rice graduate student in Education, participated in the recording of the podcast episode. His experience in the DMC Audio Studio was overwhelmingly positive:

“The upgraded soundproofing did its job well. While editing, we noticed very little ambient noise, and the audio quality was excellent.”

Thanks to clear setup instructions and responsive staff support, the recording process was smooth and efficient. As a volunteer-run nonprofit with limited resources, the team appreciated having access to professional-grade equipment that made high-quality production possible.

“Your studio made a high-quality production possible for us and, by extension, supports a community that often lacks a platform.”

They plan to return for future episodes, and we’re proud to feature their work in the DMC Project Gallery.

Personal Music Projects Benefit from Professional Soundproofing

In addition to community projects, the studio has also supported personal creative endeavors. Ahi Ajayan, Rice class of 2026, shared her experience recording music for personal use and online sharing. Check out her singing recording in the DMC Audio Studio – Touching Toes on YouTube.

“Both the sound system and soundproofed room have been great and helped create high-quality recordings. Due to the soundproofing, the audio itself is very clear and has no interference or noise in the background.”

This feedback highlights the studio’s versatility—not only is it a hub for community storytelling, but it’s also a space where individual artists can produce professional-grade audio without distraction.

DMC Audio Studio is a dedicated resource for Rice community members. To improve the recording quality, Friends of Fondren has generously funded the DMC to professionally soundproof the studio spaces. The project was started in August 2024 and completed in June 2025. It made the wall thicker, installed sound insulation materials in the wall and sound panels on the wall, and added heavy acoustic doors. We are thrilled about this upgrade!

Whether you’re launching a podcast, recording music, conducting audio interviews, or exploring audio storytelling, the DMC Audio Studio is here to support your creative journey. Interested in booking the space or sharing your project? Reach out—we’d love to feature your work next!

Rice professor Richard Baraniuk was interviewed by NPR’s On Point in the DMC Audio Studio

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On Friday, May 16, Rice professor Richard Baraniuk from the electrical and computer engineering department was featured on the nationally syndicated radio show On Point, produced by WBUR Boston, an NPR affiliate. The topic of the episode is a deep dive into the expected shortage of real-world data to train AI models, the use of synthetic data as a solution, and the benefits and risks of synthetic data.

The producer didn’t require anything in particular. The audio interview was recorded over a Zoom meeting. It’s aired on Monday, May 19. It’s available to listen to: What happens when you train your AI on AI-generated data?

To hear the host’s questions, tune in at timecodes 33:24 and 38:28.
To listen to Professor Baraniuk’s responses, go to 34:13–34:31 and 38:42–39:02.

Podcasting in the DMC Audio Studio

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Rice professor Scott Solomon started a podcast of Wild World with Solomon in January 2023. Several of the podcast episodes were recorded in the DMC Audio Studio, such as Episode 7 – Launching to Space with Scott Parazynski. Tune in to listen to the interesting stories. “What separates a decent podcast from a good podcast is the audio quality, and you want to start with a good quality recording. DMC audio studio is very useful.” He said.

Katherine Wu, a Rice undergraduate student, interviewed Dr. April Carpenter, a physical therapist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, in Fall 2020. The interview was conducted over Zoom. April recorded her voice on her iPhone. Katherine’s voiceover was recorded in the DMC Audio Studio. The published podcasting episode is available to view and listen to at https://www.metastasispodcast.com/the-martini.

Both of them use the recording with GarageBand.

DMC collaborated with a Postdoc on creating a cover art for a journal article

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Sohini Bhattacharyya, Rice Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and Ph.D. in Materials Sciences, approached Mario Norton, DMC supervisor, for making a covert art for reclaiming precious minerals from batteries, which brought in a wonderful collaborative opportunity for both parties. The main idea of the image is that critical metals for energy, e.g., Li, Co, and Ni, can be recycled from Li-ion batteries using a green Deep Eutectic Solvent following a hydrogen bond mediated chloride coordination mechanism.1   Mario modeled it in Blender, rendered an image, and made the final touches in Photoshop. The image is published as an alternate cover art of  the May 8, 2023, Volume 11, Issue 18,  American Chemical Society publication “ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering”.

Reference

Alhashim, S. H., Bhattacharyya, S., Tromer, R., Kabbani, A., Babu, G., Oliveira, E. F., Galvao, D. S., & Ajayan, P. M. (2023). Mechanistic study of lithium-ion battery cathode recycling using deep eutectic solvents. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, 11(18), 6914–6922. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c06571

Rice professor Tomás Q. Morín was interviewed by Arts & Letters Radio in the DMC Audio Studio

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Rice English professor Tomás Q. Morín was interviewed about his most recent publication Machete by Arts & Letters Radio in the DMC Audio Studio on Nov. 18, 2021. The podcast episode Machete was Published on January 27, 2023 and is available to hear at  https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/show/arts-letters/2023-01-27/machete.

Portrait of Professor Tomás Q. Morín
Professor Tomás Q. Morín. Picture from Arts & Letters Radio website.

Arts & Letters Radio is located in Little Rock, AR, and is a regional NPR affiliate program that airs in the mid south.  Its podcast has a large national following. They have a total of about 500,000 listens a year. DMC was thrilled to facilitate the interview. When scheduling the interview, we mentioned that a Rice English professor was ever interviewed by BBC in 2018 and the interview was recorded in the DMC Audio Studio, Mary Ellen Kubit, the Producer at Arts & Letters Radio commented, “BBC is the industry standard, so we have great confidence on Rice’s end. ”

The interview was conducted remotely. The host at Arts & Letters Radio just needs the DMC to record the subject side of the interview . The host will record their side of the interview and they will do a tape sync.

The host called the professor over his cellphone. To have a clean audio recording of Prof. Morín’s answers, no bleeding from the host’s end, below is our settings.

To have the host and the professor to see each other during the interview, we also started a Zoom meeting. But the Zoom meeting was only used for the video. On our end, the audio for the Zoom meeting was disconnected.

FOTO 205/210 Use of the Photography/Video Studio

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Images courtesy of Zeisha Bennett

Photography Lecturer Angela Chen brought her FOTO 205 and FOTO 210 classes to the DMC for a demonstration on use of the lights and backdrops in the Photography/Video Studio. The new seamless paper backdrops and high output lights give a lot of flexibility and allow for creativity in lighting schemes, which a number of the students made use of for their projects.

VR/Desktop game for Architecture technology class

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The DMC has collaborated on a multi-year project staring in Nov. 2020 to assist professor Juan José Castellón in creating a digital means of experimentation for his students. Professor Castellón’s class includes assignments which require students to physically create form finding models from wood, chain, cloth and other material. The DMC has supported the Architecture assignments by allowing students to create digital versions of these models using a videogame created with Unreal Engine. The game was created using the collab viewer template which is actively used in Architecture firms to collaborate and display architecture visualizations. DMC Supervisor Mario Norton added features into the existing template enable users to quickly create relevant models and explore forms that could be created physically. Several hired student researchers from the Architecture department contributed ideas and feedback and development suggestions.

game screenshot

 

The current game allows students to play the game simultaneously in a Desktop and/or VR environment. Added features include the ability to create hanging chains, height map displaced cloth which can be sliced and configured, simulated “cloth” meshes, add common shapes, rigid body simulations with parenting, and import of 3D geometry from Rhino and other packages.

The game was installed in Rice Architecture’s RAVL lab in July, 2021 and updated in Nov, 2021. Professor Castellón’s students were able to experience the game as a practical component of their course. For more details and blueprint code of this project, please visit https://dmcgraphics.blogs.rice.edu/unreal-engine/collab-viewer-additions/

Hanging chain experiment:

Height map “cloth” experiment:

Draw polygon, extrude and slice:

Rice environment, add geometry, rigid body sim, and multiplayer: