Simulating sounds...

JohnDoe32

JohnDoe32

Member
Hello,

Ran a search for this, but couldn't find it.
I have a question in regards to editing sounds to simulate an effect. For instance, when people speak through a door (to a character that is on the otherside) or perhaps there is a lot of commotion (party, busy street, etc.) outside that plays as 'muffled' in the final product. Is this accomplished by recording THROUGH the obstacle (which I doubt for some reason), or is it accomplished by recording the crisp audio and then adding effects to it to simulate an obstacle in the sound wave?

Any help is much appreciated!
~32
 
Me, I'd get the "real" sound by recording through the door, if it is possible to get a good recording. (Depends on the available door.)

But for the crowd sounds, I'd do it separately, and mix in post.

So the answer is Yes. ;)

But you could do either, either way.
 
Yes and yes.


I always try to get the recording if possible. Sometimes that's not possible, so you have to deal with it in post, which sometimes might not work as well as you might want if you aren't really savvy with your plug-ins.


-Dave
 
Okay, so I'm hearing try and record through the door. I'll try both and see which one turns out better.

Thanks!!
~David
 
I have a related situation, I need to have some music playing in a room downstairs from the room my scene is in. If I wanted to simulate this in post from a clean audio file, what would you suggest? Just EQing the treble down to almost nothing (low frequencies travel around corners better)? Or are there other muffling dynamics that I can simulate?
 
Here's one of those situations where mixing lav's and a boom comes into play. Lav up each of your actors, record with the boom from behind the door and use the one that works best. Be sure to capture "party tone" in addition to room tone (i.e. have your actors, background, crew, etc. talk and make noises like they are at a party and capture it to mix in, if needed.

Phil
 
regarding the music, this is an effect that often sounds really fake to me when music is eq'ed to sound live.

yeah, it works, and you're and the right track with the treble, but what i often and it works great is a technique called "worldizing".

You take the track, a speaker and a mic into a similar situation - ie you play the music from the speaker downstairs, and place the mic upstairs.

And you get sound that really does originate in that environment, with that perspective.

The technique works for adr, voices behind doors, effects, music etc etc etc etc. It is a respected hollywood technique.
 
if you dont get round to it (but i suggest give it a try), the technique is usually eq and reverb - mids and treb cuts usually make it sound that way - exeperiment based on the location it needs to sound like its coming from.
 
There are two post processes that are used a lot for this kind of thing. The one you hear about most is "worldizing" and that is to play a recording in the space you want and rerecording it. Sort of a non digital convolution reverb. The second which is very close is called "futzing". Many mix stages have a room somewhere that can be fed from a send that is equipped with a variety of "cheap" speakers , small radios etc so you can send a clean signal to a crappy reproducer and then there is a microphone in the "futz room" that returns to the board.
The digital version of this is the new "convolution" reverbs. You can "shoot" a space and then process your clean sound and make it sound like it was in the space you shot. It works pretty well.
 
noiz - these new reverbs, what are the ones you've tried, i want to give them a bash.

sounds to me like a combo between one of these, and, say, firium by elemental audio (frequency spectrum matcher - for those who havent used it), could be a really powerful adr to production dialogue matcher...
 
Altiverb, TL Space and IR-1 are the pricey ones. On the PC there are a number of free or chep VST plugs, SIR, Pristine space... WizooVerb is a good fairly cheap ($200 street for stereo version) cross platform one. Altiverb is the only one I know of that comes with tools for creating your own IR's though it's not terribly difficult to do it with out the tools. More and more productions are "shooting" the locations so they will have IR's for ADR and Foley. I know of at least one bigger budget show that tried to do location Foley but found that though the space sounded right it was just too noisy, so they "shot" the space and used Altiverb on the Foley done on a nice quiet stage and it worked quite well.
They also make great design tools since you can use just about anything as a "IR" and non IR's used as IR's produce some very strange stuff.
I've played with all the Mac ones a bit but ended up buying WizooVerb, mostly on cost and flexibility. Altiverb is probably the most used one but it's over twice the price and fit less well what I wanted to do with it.
 
im on pc, nuendo - what vst based ones can you recommend? sorry, just was confused which of the ones you've mentioned is software, not hardware!

cheers... im keen to try this technique out.
 
I would rhighly recommend the WizooVerb 2. I'm using it all the time, not only for reverbs but for special FX as well. (You can do the FX by feeding the convolution reverb something else than IR files. Just try anything!)
 
I'm using Altiverb and I would recommend it, I think it has the best sound from all the Conv. Reverbs I have tried{Waves IR-1, TL Space, Space Desinger). It is a little pricey but it comes with a great library and they are always adding more. There is also many post production IR's that come with Altiverb.
 
timapter said:
im on pc, nuendo - what vst based ones can you recommend? sorry, just was confused which of the ones you've mentioned is software, not hardware!

cheers... im keen to try this technique out.
Click to expand...


SIR is PC only and I think free, or at least very cheap. WizooVerb may be PC also? None of the ones I mentioned are hardware, those start at a couple of grand (I think the Sony one is $7,000).
sk
 
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