How much is not enoch?

J

Jon Oskar

Well-known member
After some grate information and help on this forum, i am now the proud owner of what is said to be a fairly decent sound kit. I bought the book, "Grate sound... Video" and listen to Ty's "Mic Tutorial VIdeo.mp4" which was allot of help. Also I read just about every thread on sound i could find. I have now started the practical face, trying out the gear and testing it. It's rather exiting.

After all this reading one thing is still a dilemma to me. How much is not enoch?
Or what does acceptable raw sound, sound like? When does it stop being acceptable?

Is the sound in Ty's "Mic Tutorial VIdeo.mp4" as good as it get? Is this what i should be hearing in my headphones? Is that raw sound as one could expect to get most of the time on location? How bad can it be before it becomes noticeably compromised in the final mix?

Can i expect to attain Ty's quality with a kit that contains (Senn416, Octava102, B6, Shure FP24, M-Audio)

thank you

Jon
 
If it was as easy as buying gear there wouldn't be any sound guys getting paid out there. Producers would just tell the guy behind the craft table to leave the donuts and pick up a pole.

The best final result starts with a good location, good acoustics, control of unwanted sound from anything, good technique, good gear... and probably some tweaking back at home.

Just because you get good gear doesn't mean you don't have to pay attention to all that other stuff. Also don't forget that you're not necessarily trying to get sterile sound at each shoot. You will want some room signature depending on the shot. Sometimes you want it to sound like the actor's lips are 2" from your ear... sometimes you want to hear the room reverb. It's all choices man... and the ability to get the desired sound is more about you then about the gear.

All you did is get some stuff to take with you down the rabbit hole... now you get to find out how deep it goes.

EDIT: And to answer your question you should be able to get the technical quality of Ty's recordings... but you still need a good acoustic space and I don't know how you're going to get his voice.
 
Hi Matt

I hear you all the way and am not looking for a short cut. I take grate pleasure in learning about new things, and making my own proper mistakes. But some pointer would be helpful and greatly appreciated. Talking about a sound-example everyone has heard is more helpful as it is more to the point.

So basically what im trying to find out is:
If it sounds good in the headphones its "good"? I mean not just in terms of the quality of the sound but also the "perspective"? Say i want more room sound, should i do this while booming and not in post?

Where does this leave the, "get as clean sound as you can and than ad room tone in post" statement???

Just as to get a direction what im aiming at, I used the real life example of Ty's tutorial, the sound seems very clear and low noise, but it seems to me that in real life scenario i might have to crank up the levels more than he did, this means probably more noise? Also i feel Ty's tutorial sounded almost too present to be realistic for a theatric film, like the voice of a news anchor (hope this doesn't sound insulting) the reason probably being that it was mic'd from very close? Is that what i want to be getting? Of course its subjective, but there is a thing like a "correctly" exposed image, even if in the end we do what we personally prefer. The advantage a sound apprentice would have is he would hear what acceptable sound sounds like, to me it definitely is a mystery.

Thanx


Jon
 
This is not a trick question, but it would be nice if someone would step in and give his opinion/advice??? Many thanx?
 
If it sounds good in the headphones its "good"? I mean not just in terms of the quality of the sound but also the "perspective"? Say i want more room sound, should i do this while booming and not in post?
Click to expand...

OK, here's my take, as a regular guy that considers himself so-so in the audio video world.

Headphones are necessary because they let you hear what is going to camera/tape/disk. They aren't necessarily the best to judge the "perspective" of what you're getting. That's why most people use a set of monitors to mix with in post, not headphones.

All boomed mics will gather a certain amount of perspective. The amount they gather is generally enough to "place" the audio in the room. I never try to "add more perspective" by moving the mic farther away. I would just add some room tone/reverb in post if I thought it necessary. Lavs almost always have to have room tone added underneath them.

I like to think of the final audio mix like a stew. And it's always nice to be able to take time to mix all the ingredients in that stew, rather than trying to get them all at the initial recording. That is what I've gotten from the "get it clean and add room tone in post". If you have all your elements clean, then you can mix/match/re-mix in post to your hearts content. If you captured "too much room tone" with your dialogue, it's difficult/impossible to remove it.
 
Thank you Joe,

This makes sense, but what im more thinking about is location sound as you hear it on location, and what that should sound like in the headphones. I don't know if you have listened to Ty's tutorial, if not you should, as it is a grate source to hear how different mic's sound and react all in one take and on the same location. It would be interesting to hear what you think about it in relationship to the above questions as it would give us a frame of reference?

I hope Ty doesn't mind me using his tutorial as basis of this thread but i do so only as it is the only comprehensive demonstration i could find and it is well suited for this discussion.
 
I guess my point was that you should be able to match Ty's sound quality if you do everything the same way.

My other point was that if you wanted dialog to be ultra-sterile like that you could use a low sensitivity lav to get it... even on location, but by choosing to boom it you'll get a more natural sound by letting in some room acoustics whether you want to or not. When you hear a VO with a 416 that's not like booming a 416... the mic was probably about as far away as Groucho Marx's cigar when he tells a joke.

Normal booming to the best of your ability should give a good result and sound natural. I didn't mean to imply that you'd want to pull a boom too high in order to get room sound. I meant that even if you use a Schoeps in a reverberrant space you're getting room tone whether you want it or not.
 
Matt, that makes sense. But can i just go by the head phones given that the levels have bin set so that dialog is peaking around 0db? How loud should they be set to? In your opinion is Ty's tutorial untreated location sound at its best? I say this as i i feel i have more hiss/noice than him, than again it might be my flat or maybe the headphones are turned up to much. Does dialog have to be recorded as clean as in his tutorial to be considered acceptable?
 
No I don't think it has to be that clean. Since you have the FP24 you should be taking advantage of the return... the little 1/8" input on the right side of it that you can run a line back to... then on the face of the mixer you can temporarily check the return by moving the switch to the right or just monitor the return continuously by switching it left... OR you can leave it in the middle position so that you're hearing the audio from the mixer and NOT from anything else. If you're listening to the audio directly from the mixer and you hear hiss then something's wrong. Either you have room noise from AC, wind, or something else causing trouble... because there wouldn't be ANY hiss coming out of the FP24. It's -126db SN.

So far I've not been in a situation yet where I have the FP24 pots more then 1/4 of a turn around... maybe SLIGHTLY more, but 9 o'clock has been about it. That gives me peaks in normal dialog that just occasionally kiss the 0db on the mixer. Then I run the 671 at 4-5 depending on loud or quiet situations.

If you're running the FP24 into a MicroTrack you should have DEAD SILENT sound unless something else is wrong. You have everything you need so try recording the quietest room you have... talk just a little bit to set a normal level and then record the room w/o changing anything, but be silent. Do you still hear hiss?

EDIT: Here's a bite of more then an hour worth of MP3 recording from just 5 hours ago (yeah I'm tired)... anyway, this is ran through SoundForge just to edit it, so that means it's been opened and recompressed. The original is 128mp3 and recompressed to that. Tell me this isn't pretty clean? All same gear you've got exept it's a cheap-ass Oktava. CLICK HERE

Oh and we're out on a deck so you hear crickets in the background.:cheesy:
 
Jon, a couple of things. I'm assuming you are running from the FP24 line out into the DVX Line in? If so, are you hearing the hiss from the FP24? Or is it only on return from DVX? If you are monitoring from the camera itself, are you using the headphone output on the camera? I have found that the level on that output is way too low, and needs to be amplified. When you use a cheap headphone amplifier you get lots of noise, hiss.

As for audio quality as compared to what Ty was getting. Remember, he was close miked and he mentioned that the acoustics in the room were a little better than some interiors because of his cathedral ceilings, etc. I don't remember if he said what he was using for a mixer, but I'll assume it might have been his Sound Devices 442, pretty decent mixer/preamps. But, one thing about comparing the sound you are getting to what you would expect to hear in a feature film is that the feature film sound will go through some processing including the following.

Equalization
Compression/Limiting
Noise Reduction (high quality noise reduction)
Reverberation
Pitch Correction

All those things will add to the character of the final dialogue. Once you have got your recording chain nice and clean and are happy with the sound you are recording on location, I highly recommend bringing that audio into a decent audio workstation and playing with it so you can hear the transformation of the production track to a more final track. Play it against some music too, see how it sits in the mix and what you have to do to it. Sometimes the things you do to it will be subtle if it was recorded in a way that works well already before any processing. Other times you will have to do quite a bit to make it work. It truly is an art, one that I'm still trying to learn more about myself.

Steve
 
Heres a tip I learnt from ExileOnTheMainStreet: never use the headphone out feed when you are confidence monitoring (ie listening to a return feed from cam to mixer) - always take the RCA line outs to you mixer instead: much hotter signal, so less noise...

In my experience, there is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS some extra hiss on the return channel. This is even true of SD mixers as the return hiss isnt the mixers' fault!

Good luck...
 
Jon, I assume you're set up like I am now. Using the fp24 and Microtrack. If that's the case you should have mic>fp24>microtrack>microtrack line-out>return feed on fp24 and headphones plugged into the fp24.

I guess I was too long winded in my previous post, but everybody else is saying the same thing.

Your audio should be jaw-dropping with what you have in your sound kit.
 
Man, the more I work at sound the more I think that good talent in front of the mic, and a nice location makes good audio regardless of what you do... (well, almost)
 
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