Please help evaluate the sound of this clip

R

raphb

Active member
Not an expert here, but except playing with the EQs to balance the sound, I'd say it's pretty good. Was it boomed or recorded with a Lavalier? Please post more details about your setup.
 
It's a bit midrangey, at least on headphone on the laptop (so not too definitive). There is also some bounce in the room that hurts clarity.

Not a lot you can do about the bounce but it's not a big one so something like "deverb" might help, maybe.

I would sweep the mids and see if thee are any resonances, I'm pretty sure you will find some, and notch them out a bit. That should clear up the mid range which to me seems a bit muddy (and that makes it harder to understand what the folks are saying).

Not bad at all though.
 
Thanks! How does one balance it though?

MKE 600 on a tripod to the side of the interviewees, at arms length from their mouth. Using the internal battery, fed directly into the GH3 using a XLR to 3.5mm jack cable.
 
To help answer your question I posted a link
Here

In there is your video with some changes. On speakers actually the bounce wasn't an issue and the midrangeines wasn't that big either but there are a number of resonances.
So along with the video are a number of screen shots.

The one that is names sweep is how you find the problems. Make a very tight filter with a bunch of gain and "sweep" it up and down the spectrum slowly while the clip plays and when you hit a resonance it will start to sound very feedback like. Once you find one you leave the position alone and change it from boosting to cutting.
The shots labeled his EQ and her EQ are just that. they are what I ended up with.

The last shot is of a de-Esser I put on her because she is kind of syblant.

This is kind of repair work, you might well add another EQ to make their voices sound more the way you want. But you have to deal with the problems first. I also would generally put in a high cut at 15kHz or so and a low cut at around 80Hz. Very few voices have any content out of that range and the filters get rid of low gunk, DC offsets, and high noise.

I didn't Make a big difference and it's certainly not a big issue if you didn't do it but I think it clears up the dialog a bit.

And that is also generally what is meant by "balance", evening out the spectrum so you don't have distracting resonances and it's not too trebly or bassy.
 
Straight away I could tell that it was an electret shotgun as it has the classic fizzy artificial sound that they tend to have. It is also similar to a low end lav mic such as the sennheiser ME2. I got rid of my rode NTG1 as I did not like this tonal sound bu find that the budget mic I now use the AT875r does not have this so it must be the type of phase cancellation tube that causes it.

Having said that I agree with others that it is quite mid-rangey so I applied the std type of compression and EQ I would for a TV doco and it works out fine with a slight lift of the low end at around 150hz and some high end sparkle at around 3-4K. Bear in mind this was done in pro tools so it is plug in dependent but it sounded punchier with a little compression and EQ applied.

It is fine and the room ambience is acceptable for the type of shot but if you were going to use it as voice over on it's own it may be a little distracting.
 
GaryNattrass said:
Straight away I could tell that it was an electret shotgun as it has the classic fizzy artificial sound that they tend to have.
Click to expand...

I'm about to buy a microphone and actually liked the MKE 600, do you have a sample where that "fizzy artificial sound" is highlighted? Or can you describe what you mean some more?

I've rented the MKE 600 and the ME66, but I might soon get a preamp (Juicedlink) and then I'd be interested in the AT875r or the NTG-3. I can't listen to thouse though, because they're not available for testing where I live.
 
Listen to the clip above and it has the fizzy artificial sound I refer to, the rode NTG 1+2 also have this sound and it is hard to describe but the high frequency content just does not sound real to me.
 
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