Hey Rod - "I think you have a great natural talent for this " -
Yeah, kind of like the "overnight success" that's only practiced his/her instrument and studied for 1/3 of their life-span...
Still, I've always been a "troubleshooter" of sorts - the main thing I found to be different when getting into acoustics after years in the electronics field wasn't so much a change in mindset, as it was a change in "rules of logic" - the more familiar I get with the correct set of rules, the easier it is to apply them to a given situation.
The main difficulty I find in doing this by "remote control", is the LACK of control - it's difficult to get people to give adequate info to solve a problem, when if they KNEW enough to include all the right information they wouldn't NEED us.
Case in point - more often than not, when people new to the acoustics field give me room dimensions, at least 9 times out of 10 they only mention TWO. I can always tell when someone's done a fair amount of research before asking questions - it takes at least 4 less posts to get to a point where I can answer their original questions with some degree of confidence...
Being in the field of industrial instrumentation, I get into a pretty varied range of technical fields, one of which is high vacuum arc melting - we have a saying about vacuum that could easily be stolen for Acoustics/sound proofing - "We Strive For Nothing"
Gotta run for now, several questions left and I'm trying to finish up my small network redo; one DSL modem, one router/firewall, one switched hub, one print server, 3 printers, scanner, card reader, 2 XP machines and one 98se machine (so far) - almost there... Steve
Soooo, when a Musician dies, do they hear the white noise at the end of the tunnel??!? Hmmmm...