Low Sound Levels with Tascam DR-60D

iamlance

iamlance

Well-known member
On a recent small set that I did, I recorded the audio using the Tascam DR-60D. This was shot inside of a house.
When the sound was added to the footage later, I frustratingly realized that the sound volume was quite low. The program and computer volume had to be raised considerably to get the volume to the desired level.
I therefore attempted to match the audio using the waveforms, but obviously, those were quite small and so unusable. I eventually was able to crank up the volume using a plug-in.
Anyone know why the sound level was so quiet?

Specifications:
Recorder:
  • Tascam DR-60D
  • Rec Mode: Dual Mono
  • Gain: Mid
  • Limiter: Mono
  • Low Cut: 80Hz
Microphone:
  • Oktava MK-012
  • -10db pad
  • hypercardioid capsule
  • BBG windshield

Thanks guys! - Lance Samples
 
Where were the record levels metering during production? Simply listing your settings tells us nothing, because proper gain staging is dependent on the strength of the sound source. The meters are there to tell you what you need to know about levels before and during recording, and your headphones are there to assure the quality of the sound.

Though, I do have to ask: is there a reason you have the -10dB pad in use on the mic?
 
The 012 has inherently low output levels as it is (10mv). So the pad is unnecessary for (most) dialog recording.
The only time I've ever used the pad modules were for overheads for a John Bonham style drummer.
 
I wasn't sure if some of the settings were the reason for the issue, thus I included them. The dial was set 3/4ths of the way. This was simply a baseline-basic set, and we were limited in people that day. As this was true, the cinematographer had to simply press record and leave sound alone. Normally there would be a person checking the gain constantly, but we couldn't this time. The mic was set on a stand/boom, around 4 feet from the source.

From what I gathered, the -10 db pad simply removed very low frequency sounds from the recording. There was a freezer in the other room that couldn't be turned off, so I left the pad on. Might not have made a difference, but it was all I knew to do. If that is not how you use them, please let me know!
 
4 feet is a LONG way away and much too far for dialog.
A low cut would remove low frequencies, the -10 pad just lowered your over all volume.

Also a hyper is fairly directional so unless it was pointed at the one actor who didn't move, having it stationary was also part of the problem.

You guys might consider either hiring an actual sound person or just getting one to do some quick and dirty basics since it doesn't seem like anybody there really knows anything about sound.

Not trying to be insulting but you guys kind of missed some sound 101 kinds of things.
 
I don't think I explained what this was for, and that was my mistake. This was a small production that a few friends and I were doing for a contest. We are all students and are still learning. Frankly, you are right. Not many of us know too much about sound. Actually, I'm the only one who knew anything about sound. 4 feet is quite a ways away, but due to the limited number of people working on this and the wide angle lens we were shooting with, we did the best we could. As for using the hypercardioid capsule, we positioned it directly facing the actors. While using a stand instead of a boompole, the actors did not move. There was a scene in which an actor did move, and a boom was used in that situation. The nature of this production was unique in that much was happening, but without any major movement of the actors.

I must have misunderstood what a -10db pad did. Thanks for explaining that to me! I'll make sure to keep it off next time.
 
Understood that you are learning. 1st rule I've learned, *always* test the recording levels ahead of the final recording. I have the Okitava's and wouldn't use them for dialogue (never have). I would likely favor a shotgun on that boom. I use my okt's for music recording, etc. Find that they need to be carefully monitored. Rick is right. Get your headphones on and always shoot with them on. I always wear them, even if I'm not paying attention!

I also have the Tascam TR-60d and it produces wonderful sound for the money. That's a keeper, just have lots of rechargeable batteries at hand or a power plug. Also, check on this board and a few competing ones, as there is a great thread I've seen lately about how to set your recorder for best use. Involves getting that 1k tone into your camera in advance, and adjusting the levels properly on both recorder and camera. Test before the crew arrives.

As you are a student, and I consider that I never stop being one, here's some advice. When I got back into video a few years back, I bought Jay Rose's books, Producing great sound for film and video and Audio Production for Film and Video. Both are on my bookshelf and I refer to them occassionally after having read them end to end to refresh my long dormant sound knowledge. Great examples inside and will clearly help you get better sound.
 
The Tascam DR-680 has two effective gain stages, low and high. I have never heard of putting it on medium (i believe you called it mid) that alone would explain why you have such low levels. Most folks use it on high (and trim it down to -12db) and really I believe it is the only one which is truly workeable.

Combine that with:
- Oktava which needs a lot of gain (great for bass response, but limited high's and dynamic range)
- 10db pad
- 4 ft away (should be no more than 1.5 ft for a regular mic - and for the Oktava 1 ft)
- Hypercardiod which is too directional for a whole group of actors
- no monitoring - visual or audible
- stationary mic

And all of this equals....low output. In fact I would say that you managed to hit all the no-no's in quite an impressive fashion!

Really though, the chief culprit is the low-high setting not being correct for your needs.
 
The Oktava has been used for a lot of production work. It was one of the first high quality affordable mics around. There are some issues to watch out for though. One is it's VERY sensitive to handling noise and wind. It also has a BIG low end so as a rule you are going to want to have the low cut on in the mixer. Don't use the pad (-10) it's just going to cause you problems. And it really needs 48V of phantom power, using the lower setting (15V I think) on the mixer can cause a problem with SD mixers. A good shock mount and some kind of wind protection is not really optional with the Oktava. Keeping those in mind it's a very good mic. There are now other options that are as good or better and in the same ball park price wise.

You just have to get closer than four feet. There are a number of ways to do that. You could use lav mics, cost some, or wireless lav mics, cost a LOT more. Think about how you are going to get decent sound when setting up shots, free. With a lock down camera shoot a "plate" and then shoot with the mic in the shot and composite the plate to make it go away, free if you can get someone to do it for free. Shoot your master and just record scratch track, then get in close for the close ups and use that sound even on the wide shot, free but takes some planning and some sound editing skills - though not a lot usually.

One thing you have that big budget films don't is time. Pre plan the heck out of your shoots and think about the whole flow to the end product.

It might seem like "no fun" to preplan but the planning can be fun because you are really actively creating if you do it right. Plus the plan will make the shoot so much more relaxed that everyone will have a better time.

There is a saying I picked up someplace that really rings true "Plan the work, work the plan". Things will always come up but if you have a plan and you have really thought trough the work flow it will be MUCH smoother.

I have done a lot of consulting, fixing over the years and a question that comes up is "where did you learn all this?". And my honest reply is that I made that mistake before. The trick is to remember the mistake, how you fixed it (if it was fixable) and remember to not do it in the future. Then go out and make lots of mistakes!

My personal rule is that if I blow it once learn from it and don't obsess. If I make the same mistake twice it's time for some wrist slapping. The third time it's time to go back for some reeducation.

There are plenty of mistakes to make so don't waste time repeating ones you already made.

Very few people I met doing sound on big budget features started off knowing anything about sound. They drifted for some reason into sound and liked it so they stayed. Most learned on the fly, on the job. It's not magic but I do think it helps to have some grasp of underlying principals, though surprisingly few big names actually do. But they have learned the practical aspects and do it very well.

My "basics" recommendation is a couple of books by Craig Anderton. "Electronic Projects for Musicians" and "Home Recording for Musicians". Both are easy to read and are mostly about building sound gear. But they also go into why and how on the various projects and will gave you basic electronics (analog not digital) and sound flow and process. Things like gain staging, what EQ actually does and what things like Q mean. and what a resister is/ does, how to solder, what to watch out for. It's all written to be understandable by guitarists with no prior electronics experience.

Both are probably out of print but should be cheap used.

Books on production sound are also good things to get ahold of. I would get a few and kind of see what works for you. The tricky part with sound is that there are not many rules that can't be broken, but people manage to come up with VERY strong opinions anyway.

So everyone here is telling you that four feet is just too far away. And really it is but that doesn't mean that you will always have crappy sound at four feet. In the right room with the right actors and the right placement and really quiet mics and preamps you might get some decent sound. The odds are long but it could happen. What you try to do is go with the things that are most likely to work well and slide back down to those with a lower chance of success if the better options options are not possible.
 
8string:
We began the shoot monitoring the levels, but for some reason I didn't notice the low levels until later. It might be due to the headphones I used.
Mine definitely work better than most in producing accurate sounds, but I really need to pick up a set of Sony 7506 or similar headphones.

The monitoring just became worse as the set progressed. Most people never really understand how important sound is, and so become frustrated when anything takes longer
than a second to set up. I had to simultaneously act, so couldn't monitor it myself. I'll make sure to bring along more volunteers next time.
My college expenses have prevented me from purchasing a dedicated shotgun mic, but it is definitely on my list of things that I'm saving up for.

I do love how the DR-60D has performed overall, but quickly noticed the battery problem and so have a power plug adapter and several Eneloop rechargables.
As for the 1k tone subject, I don't have a complete understanding of this, but will look it up later tonight.
I'm always looking for more books about film and sound to read, so thank you! I think my focus might not be in sound, but I want to have an indepth comprehension of it anyways.


yoclay: The recorder that I'm using is the Tascam DR-60D, not the DR-680. The 60D has a medium level which, from what I've read about and seen, works best for most situations.
Hmm, Oktavas should be as close as 1 ft away? I'd be lucky to get it that close too often, but will make more of an effort in the future.


Noiz2: Yeah, sensitivity is a big issue with the Oktava. I bought the Rycote Baby Ball Gag windshield and the Rycote INV-6 shock mount to help with that. I might invest in a
'dead cat' windscreen if I start using this mic outside before I can pick up a shotgun mic. I keep the phantom power on 48V, and will in the future stop using the -10db pad until I know more about it.

I had learned about the method of shooting a 'plate' to allow lights and booms to be in the shot, but forgot about it until now.
Thanks for reminding me! (I learned about it from this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDaXiszl358)


For most of the productions we've done, you are dead on about having plenty of time. This film in particular was different, in that we had 6 days
to do everything: preproduction to postproduction. We weren't even given a theme until the last minute!


I agree completely about the importance of planning, mostly because I've seen the effects of not doing much. I work with a large group of non-professionals,
and so it's not always my position to plan much, if I have the ability to at all. When I volunteer to do sound, I'm usually given very short notice, further complicating things.


More book suggestions! I'll look at all of the ones mentioned and grab a few to start on.


Again, thanks everyone for helping me out in this situation and giving your experienced advice!
 
Last edited:
Hey guys, a year has passed and this issue still pops up occasionally. Most of the first no-no's have never popped up again, largely because of the strange situation we were in during this post's original production.
While I thoroughly enjoy sound, I prefer cinematography and so have trained others as best as I could on how to properly use my equipment while I do lighting and camera work.
So, the same issue occasionally reappears. I give the sound files to other students, and they encounter the problem and let me know.

Recent example: boom was close to the talent, though not too close (the talent projects very well and has a loud voice. It helped that the actor was yelling in many of the scenes.), the -10db pad as gathered dust, proper monitoring was used, and the settings were correct in the recorder. The gain was raised until the levels were at the little arrow, which I believe is either -12 or -6 on the Tascam DR-60D. If the recorder is receiving sound at that level, why is it still quiet in the recordings? Whenever it comes up, it is easily fixed by raising the volume in post, but is difficult to match up tracks whenever the sound record is not on hand (you have to bring the files into premiere and bump them up before you can see what the file is). So, what now?
 
It's really hard to offer much help because you don't really know enough about what was going on.
One reason it's more than just important to monitor is that meters only tell you how loud the sound coming in is, not what that sound is.

You need to use both. The headphones tell you what you are recording and the meters tell you if the levels are OK. You can't do levels by ear because you don't know how much the headphone amp is changing the level you hear VS the level being recorded.

If this was you doing the recordings maybe someone on a list would be able to figure out where the mistake is happening but you have diferent people doing it so who knows what they are doing. After decades in theatre and film I can tell you that unless you know the person REALLY well and they trust you, you have to take their assertions that they did everything correctly with a few grains of salt.

Equipment does fail or have weird quirks that cause problems to the best of folks, but the overwhelming majority of people will shade the truth a bit and lay it on the machine even when they know that they did something wrong.

So the odds are about 99% that the random cases are user error. It's also quite likely they don't know what they did wrong.

To get back to the first point, you have to really look at the sound file and listen to it where these things happen because it's entirely possible, especially with the Oktava, that it's picking up some big low end from something and that is pushing up the meter readings. You are using different shotguns so settings will generally need to be different from one to the other.

But my guess is still operator error. They looked at levels and that seemed OK then on the take had the mic off axis or way too far away and had their headphones cranked up so it sounded fine to them, but they were listening to what was coming pumped up with the headphone amp and not what is actually going into the file. With an inexperienced operator and low files that is the case probably 80% of the time.

The mic is never close enough and they are listening to cranked headphone levels and not checking the meters.

The other problem with inexperienced operators is they listen like humans instead of like sound people. They will listen to the lines and folow along, that lets their brains start to fill in what is important and filter out what isn't. The problem is that that is NOT how a mic and recorder work. They don't filter and it take experience and practice to listen with minimal filtering.

You will see this with the takes that have a plane fly through them and nobody noticed on set. You sound person needs to be listening for what they don't want almost more than for what they do want. If you get the mic close enough and point it in the right place and have the levels OK then the track is going to be OK, provided that you have dutifully listened and worked around all the other sounds that you don't want. This is part of why it is better to have two sound people, one to boom and focus on the mic and one to just listen to the quality, levels and catch the stuff you don't want.

If it's only one person then they have to really set up headphone levels so what they hear will let them know if the levels are OK since they can't really see the levels and work the boom at the same time.
 
We use 2 separate people, one to boom and the other to monitor. There is only 1 set of headphones though, as I don't have a splitter or a real mixer yet.

Inexperience and listening incorrectly could very well be the problem. I'll make sure to discuss this with them and then check out the low end frequencies to see if that is messing with the levels. Thanks again for the help.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top