SKF Throughput Snapshot

Signal Kernel Frameworks LLC  ยท  Throughput Calculator

Start with an honest snapshot

Throughput is hard to argue about in the abstract. It gets a lot easier once the current picture has a number on it. Start with just sound. Move a few sliders and get the yearly cost of the sound work your team still does by hand: unpacking, staging, leveling, syncing, mixing, and checking it twice before it goes out.

Nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere. The math runs in your browser, and the assumptions are printed under the result so you can argue with them.

01 Your current picture

A few numbers in, one number out

Use rough figures. A close estimate is enough to see the shape of the problem.

How many employees

People who touch sound as part of the job, not the whole staff.

1250
Average hourly rate

Fully loaded is more accurate, but base rate works for a first pass.

$15$150
$
Daily time spent on sound

Hours per person, per day, spent moving sound through the pipe. Past eight and you are not a facility with a sound problem, you are a sound house.

30 min / day8 hrs / day
hrs
Throw in the mix too

Optional. If mixes go out of house, or get billed internally as their own line, add what one runs and how many you delivered last year.

Cost of an average mix

What one show or episode costs to mix, start to finish.

$2,500$15,000
$
Shows or episodes mixed last year

Leave it at zero if mixing is not part of the picture.

0500

An estimated $348,400 is spent yearly on processing sound.

5,200 Staff hours per year on sound
$6,700 Labor cost per week
2.5 Full-time equivalents
$0 Spent on mixes in a year
How this is figured

Employees × hourly rate × daily hours on sound × 5 days × 52 weeks, plus the cost of a mix × the number you delivered. It counts paid time only. It does not count the delivery that missed its window, the second pass after a rejection, or the work that never got scheduled because the people who would have done it were busy babysitting a render.

02 What to do with it

That number is your current bill

Most of the hours above go into steps that never change: the same chain, the same spec, the same checks, all by hand, every time. The SKIF runs those steps on the Macs you already own, on a schedule, unattended. Set it and forget it. Go pet the dog. Make that soccer game. The deadline will be met.