Every time I read an article about an affordable recorder the review always mentions that it has somewhat noisy preamps and that the only way to combat this is to upgrade to a much more expensive recorder or pass it through a expensive mixer with cleaner preamps. But are those cheap somewhat noisy recorders still better or equal to what was used professionally 10, 20 years ago? I understand the need to get the cleanest sound recordings as you record it but has the bar been raised so high with todays clean preamps in expensive equipment that we have forgotten that the noisy ones of today are still better than what was used professionally years ago?
Are noisy preamps in todays affordable recorders still better than the pasts pro ones
- Thread starter mico
- Start date
Richard Crowley
Veteran
There are vendors who sell the popular recorders, but with modified/upgraded mic preamps.
For example: http://www.oade.com/
For example: http://www.oade.com/
Greg Smith
Veteran
High-quality, low-noise tube preamps were available for professional recording consoles at least as far back as the 1950s. They were, of course, big, expensive, and power hungry, but their audio performance could be quite impressive. By the end of the '60s, discrete transistor preamps were beginning to reach a similar level of performance. In some respects, those old classics actually performed better than contemporary designs, because they were designed to work with the relatively low-output dynamic and ribbon microphones of the time. They did more often sacrifice ruler-flat frequency response, headroom and transient response in favor of higher gain and low noise, however. The introduction of high-gain integrated circuit op-amps usable at microphone levels was in many ways a step backwards in audio performance, although a win for cost, compactness, manufacturability and reliability. As a general rule, modern high quality mixers (SD, et. al.) still use discrete transistor designs, while most compact recorders and camcorders have IC op-amps in their first stage. But overall, I wouldn't reject any high-quality preamp designed in the last half century or so simply on the basis of its age. The technology has advanced some since then, but much more slowly than in other areas.
- Greg
- Greg
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
OK I'm going to be a bit contrarian here. This list is about film sound, and mostly (in reference to mic pres) about production sound. So lets stop talking about tube preamps and other music studio stuff and actually talk apples to apples. The standard field mic pre was the sure one, can't remember the number. That baby is noisey. For bigger productions there would be actual mixers like Sonosax, and they should be quieter, but I haven't actually listened to one. And a lot of folks were probably going straight into the RtR Nagra which has pretty nice preamps.
So to the question.
At the top end there were some nice quiet mic pres. In the middle and low end there were quite noisy (by todays standards) mic pres.
But they were all going to analog tape that had quite a nit of hiss built in so a lot was probably masked by that.
Basically if you were/ are not spending over $2,000 you are getting MUCH better mic pres today than you could get 20-30 years ago.
In the nose bleed range and in pricey studio gear the difference is much smaller.
Most budget recorders, if you pay attention to gain staging and getting the mic close enough can produce much better sound than anything you (low budget filmmaker) could expect to lay your hands on then.
So to the question.
At the top end there were some nice quiet mic pres. In the middle and low end there were quite noisy (by todays standards) mic pres.
But they were all going to analog tape that had quite a nit of hiss built in so a lot was probably masked by that.
Basically if you were/ are not spending over $2,000 you are getting MUCH better mic pres today than you could get 20-30 years ago.
In the nose bleed range and in pricey studio gear the difference is much smaller.
Most budget recorders, if you pay attention to gain staging and getting the mic close enough can produce much better sound than anything you (low budget filmmaker) could expect to lay your hands on then.
paulears
Veteran
I'm quite convinced that the noise issue is nothing new at all. I started using very budget gear, and I really don't remember hiss as a problem - I can't remember the exact equipment, but it would have had to be cheap and available to a teenager, but I experimented with hiding microphones in trees at the end of my garden, and listening to the sounds on headphones, cranked up. There must have been noise, but the only piece of kit I remember that stuck in my head after this time for hissing was an Eagle mixer with a few unbalanced mic inputs on jacks.
I have no proof that I can rely on, but I get the feeling that much of the low noise kit I have with microphone inputs just doesn't have the same gain as the older stuff. My live sound equipment I still have that's now maybe 10 years old has more gain available - if I turn a mic on front of house, sitting on the desk (announcements, you know the thing) I have enough gain to make it feedback, and can hear the noise creeping in just before it does it. The same mic plugged into my latest desk struggles to even get loud enough to feedback, but does it noiselessly?
I've still got two HHB portable MD recorders, and they have plenty of gain and are pretty noise free.
Are we now using such good amps that our monitoring dynamic range is so huge that we turn the gain up and hear a little noise that we think dreadful, yet a tone at 0dB would blow the roof off? Maybe we have always had noise from the 'average' equipment that we just didn't detect. Anyone who records electric guitars really doesn't need to worry about preamp noise, as the amps hiss dreadfully, and always have.
I suspect we're just not comparing noise with noise, and our expectation of silence is no longer possible with budget equipment (that would, ten years ago, have been considered amazing by the average punter)
I have no proof that I can rely on, but I get the feeling that much of the low noise kit I have with microphone inputs just doesn't have the same gain as the older stuff. My live sound equipment I still have that's now maybe 10 years old has more gain available - if I turn a mic on front of house, sitting on the desk (announcements, you know the thing) I have enough gain to make it feedback, and can hear the noise creeping in just before it does it. The same mic plugged into my latest desk struggles to even get loud enough to feedback, but does it noiselessly?
I've still got two HHB portable MD recorders, and they have plenty of gain and are pretty noise free.
Are we now using such good amps that our monitoring dynamic range is so huge that we turn the gain up and hear a little noise that we think dreadful, yet a tone at 0dB would blow the roof off? Maybe we have always had noise from the 'average' equipment that we just didn't detect. Anyone who records electric guitars really doesn't need to worry about preamp noise, as the amps hiss dreadfully, and always have.
I suspect we're just not comparing noise with noise, and our expectation of silence is no longer possible with budget equipment (that would, ten years ago, have been considered amazing by the average punter)
Richard Crowley
Veteran
Remember that, perhaps more often than not, users are "pushing the envelope" of reasonable expectations. They are using budget microphones with modest sensitivity and significant self-noise. And at probably longer working distances than would be considered "reasonable", and they are working in noisier ambients, and with amateur or semi-experienced boom operators. Not to mention amateur or semi-pro directors and actors. These all add up to signal levels that would make many professionals cringe and test the limits of the mic preamps.
The advent of inexpensive gear like this brings the availability and widespread deployment of gear with modest specs to the "masses", many of whom simply don't have the knowledge or experience to understand the limits of the budget gear or the working procedures and methods of getting the best performance out of them.
And equipment manufacturers are happy to make gear with preamps that would be OK for more traditional music recording, but are not really suitable for the much more critical area of production sound recording. These all conspire together to reveal the deficiencies of "average" mic preamp performance in an area that really needs better performance than that.
The advent of inexpensive gear like this brings the availability and widespread deployment of gear with modest specs to the "masses", many of whom simply don't have the knowledge or experience to understand the limits of the budget gear or the working procedures and methods of getting the best performance out of them.
And equipment manufacturers are happy to make gear with preamps that would be OK for more traditional music recording, but are not really suitable for the much more critical area of production sound recording. These all conspire together to reveal the deficiencies of "average" mic preamp performance in an area that really needs better performance than that.
My guess is that we are probably talking about the invisible elephant in the room. Zoom has just come out with it's first field mixing device - 8 track. Should be interesting to see the price and the quality compromises - or not. We will know soon enough.
http://news.doddleme.com/equipment/nab-2015-a-look-at-zooms-8-track-field-recorder/
http://news.doddleme.com/equipment/nab-2015-a-look-at-zooms-8-track-field-recorder/
Thanks to all for the replies. I guess these questions came to me because I was watching a documentary about the making of Nic Refn's film Only God Forgives on Netflix. It was made by his wife with a hand held camera and mic . It didn't seem there was any lav ( a lot of shirtless scenes) work or other sound person in mostly private scenes and I had no issues with the sound quality, i.e. I had no issues understanding what was being said and I never felt any bad sound took me out of the film. There may have been thousands of dollars of audio cleanup in post but it did its job.
Now I know that its a doc and that a scene with bad sound can just be cut out unlike a fiction film so we'll never hear the bad sound scenes but there are countless fiction films that have been shot the same way and I'm not advocating on camera mics as a way to record dialogue but it seems that if the mic is decent and the recording level is adequate you can get to an acceptable level of quality sound or I am wrong. Can someone offer examples of Released films they are sure of having used cheap equipment.
Now I know that its a doc and that a scene with bad sound can just be cut out unlike a fiction film so we'll never hear the bad sound scenes but there are countless fiction films that have been shot the same way and I'm not advocating on camera mics as a way to record dialogue but it seems that if the mic is decent and the recording level is adequate you can get to an acceptable level of quality sound or I am wrong. Can someone offer examples of Released films they are sure of having used cheap equipment.
Richard Crowley
Veteran
It is rumored that they spent more re-mixing the sound for "Blair Witch Project" than was spent on the entire original production.
Some rumors have it that the original sound track was scrapped and they re-created the entire sound track with Foley and ADR.
Some rumors have it that the original sound track was scrapped and they re-created the entire sound track with Foley and ADR.
Mic placement is key, so it's possible to get decent sound from a low cost recorder if your mics are placed properly.
I shot a corporate interview a month ago in an office with a broken AC vent in the ceiling ( there was no alternative place to shoot, so I had to make this situation work ), and through my headphones it sounded like a windstorm was blasting in the background. So my solution was to shoot the interview with my mic about 6 inches from the speaker's face so I could turn my recording level way down. My mic was front and center in the frame, but I shot with my cameras locked off, so at the end of the interview I kept my cameras rolling and pulled my mic out of the frame, and then I used the mic-less footage to mask-out the mic in the final footage. The end result was good fairly quiet audio with no trace of my mic in the frame. ( I remember thinking that my shoot was f*cked until I thought about masking out the mic from the image )
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Well there are two separate issues above. Inexpensive gear and poor mic placement.
You can do great things with inexpensive gear, and you can do horrible things with great gear and bad placement.
Documentaries are a different world from narrative films and the bar is very low for sound. You didn't name the doc so I don't know what it sounds like. With out know ing your tastes etc. I cant say wether I put any stock in your not noticing any bad sound. That is not a slight, you shouldn't put a lot of stock in my opinion either if you don't know what my tastes/ standards are. There are some very expensive film mixed by seasoned professionals that sound worse than some no-budget one man band films I have seen. Money is not a golden key to greatness.
People will argue but I think that in a number of situations for a documentary you can get by with a camera mounted mic. Not always but I have seen it done where it was not a problem. I would be very shocked to find a narrative film that was shot with a camera mounted mic that I thought sounded good.
Post can help a lot of things but production recorded too far away is not one of them.
It is also always important to remember that films are magic. What you think you see and hear are rarely anything close to the reality. There is a show someone mentioned before that shoots a traveling mat to cut out the boom mic so they can get in close and then be removed in post. A decent production recordist can hid a lav so that nobody will see it. And BTS "documentaries" are often as much puff piece as actual journalism. A LOT of the "inside stories" are, well... elaborated versions if not out right creations after the fact. So you have to take with a bit of salt the "facts" that pop up in articles and BTS docs.
BTW docs are more likely than a narrative of leaving a take with "bad sound" in the film. There are no "retakes" in a real doc so you don't really have a choice sometimes. A BTS "doc" is often shot more like a narrative film so you often can get a second take if something goes wrong.
Depends on what you mean by released. Most low budget films that might have used "cheap" gear will get a remix if they are released. And and serious low budget filmmaker is probably using pretty decent gear.
But...
The beach sounds (water) in Black Stalion were recorded with a portable Sony cassette recorder. A bunch of the SFX for Fly Away Home were recorded with either a Denon mini DAT recorder or a Sony DAT Walkman, those were pretty cheap at the time. One line of ADR for Fly Away Home was recorded on a Radio Shack cassette deck.
The entire sound tracks for Legend of Drunken Master and Twin Dragons was replaced when they were rereleased because of the poor quality of the original sound tracks. Of course none of the original would have been production sound either.
The name of the doc is "My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn".
So if mic placement/levels are perfect throughout a film how will using a cheap recorder (higher noise floor preamp ones rather than expensive low noise preamp recorders) affect a film project in your opinion?
ugafan
Looking for a woman
the cheap recorder would have more noise than the expensive recorder. it's hard to quantify how much more without doing a direct comparison under the same settings. it's also subjective as far as what level of quality you think is good enough. i think a cheap recorder is fine for most situations. for a feature film that i'm looking to get a distribution deal out of, i would use a better recorder.
i watched a trailer for the doc you mentioned. that level of sound quality is fine for a documentary, but what if you had that same level for the newest avengers movie? it would be incredibly distracting.
Your audience won't notice any difference, but you might. The main difference I notice ( apart from better tonal quality ) is that the better gear gives you some leeway to make small mistakes and to correct these in post, where the cheaper gear leaves next to no room for error.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Depends on the project. A low budget film with close to zero sound post will sound worse than the same production tracks handed off to a full sound post. It's no so much the better cleanup tools but that a full sound post will eat up a lot of low level noise on tracks where a bare no-budget sound track leaves everything out there to hear.
But placement will be a bigger factor than the noise in the preamp unless the preamp is REALLY BAD.