Interview with David Scorteccia

Sound Engineer and Product Developer of The Sonnect Sound Bullet

Meet David Scorteccia, creator of The Sound Bullet, and a Sound Engineer who has been in the live sound industry for 12 years. The Sound Bullet is a pocket-size I-O audio tester that is extremely useful in the audio world. Here at SoundTools we love making and finding new innovative tools that help troubleshoot and make life easier for us Sound Humans. David shared with us what sparked his idea for The Sound Bullet, how long it took to get in production and how the Pandemic has affected him in Scotland.
SoundBullet

What sparked the idea for The Sound Bullet?

As a teenage guitar player I used to go around with a chunky 1/4" jack attached to my keyring. I always thought it would be super cool if that little jack had a built-in tone generator, so that I could quickly buzz it into amps and verify that I had cabled everything right without having to pull out my guitar. Fast-forward 10 years... I’m mixing monitors at a jazz gig in a theatre and I had gotten myself into a very embarrassing and frustrating situation. We had just done a support to main changeover, I gave the go-ahead and the curtains went up. The band was just about to hit their first note when I noticed that something was wrong with one of the DIs! I then endured the longest 7 minutes of my life, troubleshooting in front of a silent and impatient audience… and all the while not even managing to fix the problem! It was only then that life gave me a kick in the butt and said “Damn, you really need something to get yourself out of jail in those situations!” Then I got excited!

How long did it take for you to get The Sound Bullet into production?

Right after that gig I started working on a little DIY prototype, which took me 4 or 5 months to make by the time I found all the parts, 3D printed certain segments and put them all together. I started using it at gigs right away and immediately realized the immense value that it brought to my work. Very quickly my colleagues would see me using it and wanted me to build them one, and I was like “hmm... it took me a week to assemble one and cost me a day rate of materials. Let me see if I can find a company that could manufacture a few.” So, I pitched the idea to the R&D engineers at my father's electronics firm in Italy. Getting my idea to a manufacturable product took roughly 2 years.

What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced when creating The Sound Bullet?

Ha! It might be easier to describe the easiest aspect: finding the short Jack-Jack adaptor! Every aspect of creating the Sound Bullet presented significant challenges, such as the alloy chassis, the blue coating, the internal speaker and the custom-designed protective holster. Perhaps the biggest challenge was cramming so much stuff into such a small enclosure. Things like the potentiometer, the 1/4” female Jack connector, the speaker and the battery occupy more than half of the available space within the device. Then around those we had to create multilayer PCBs with more than 300 components. Quite frankly, I love a good challenge! I suppose that’s why I chose to become a sound engineer..

What has it been like in Scotland during the pandemic?

Oh, I was lucky to have some great housemates and this new reality to work on, Sonnect. The pandemic sucks... It really does, big time! However, not working at gigs meant that I had so much more time to focus on and perfect some of the Sound Bullet related aspects, like designing some great looking new packaging.

Has the pandemic affected production of The Sound Bullets?

Due to safety reasons, the manufacturing company in Italy had to shut down for a whole month, around April, 2020. This was scary, but fortunately most of us were able to work from our homes. When production reconvened we had a generous amount of Sound Bullets to ship around the world, which was a pleasant surprise for the workers!

What future goals do you have moving forward?

It was when the pandemic hit and we all stood still that I was able to take a moment to realize that people really understood why I had to make the Sound Bullet available to them. I got so busy in the making of one product that it was hard to appreciate how Sonnect became a real center for innovative ideas. I get really excited knowing that Sonnect has the capacity to turn groundbreaking ideas into real things that aim to enhance our day-to-day working lives. Achieving this is my biggest goal.

Are you working on any other future products?

Oh yeah! I’m SO grateful for the Sound Bullet owners that went out of their way to write things like “hey, loving this tool, but it would be really cool if it also did this in a future version.” I accurately take note of all feedback which, along with some of our own ideas, I’m already putting into work for a “pro” version of the Sound Bullet. Heck, it gives me itchy feet just thinking about it!

What is the best sound tip you have ever received or would give to another Sound Human?

I’ve received many good tips and, funnily enough, some of the best came from sound humans that didn’t quite act humanly towards me :-). This greatly demonstrates that there’s usually something extremely useful to be found in the ‘bad’ things that are thrown at us in life. One of the best ones that I use on a day-to-day basis is, “doing something well doesn’t necessarily help that one task you are doing in that one moment in time. Instead, it is practice, so that by the time you MUST do something well, you are already used to doing it that way."