Sound makes me want to die OR "Learning the hard way"

M

MeAgain

Carbonite Member
So the other thread about my headphones and mixing made me want to start this thread, documenting how I completely understood how difficult sound is but still tried to wing it without experience. This is essentially a diary of someone who wants to do everything right and learn by apparently doing everything as wrong as possible.


First of all, I'm currently sound EDITING my student film (STILL) at home on my PC. In my room. With Reaper. And standard PC speakers. I know there's no possible way for me to get a professional level mix, but since this is all I got, I'm just looking to make a competent sounding DVD mix.

I'm not really "mixing" at this point, but I am doing that thing where I sort of pre-mix (using both speakers and headphones). I'm very anal. I recorded every single sound effect for the movie because I felt it'd be cheating to do otherwise.

I'm also really unorganized. I've read parts of Jay Rose's book and took advice from what I've read on here. I TRIED editing dialogue track by track, but since I had to checkerboard a lot of very tiny sounds (clothes rustles, pants rustles, footsteps, leather jacket creaks, chair creaks), and I initially had a project deadline, I just sort of went crazy. So I started changing sound clips INDIVIDUALLY instead of messing with the track. I didn't realize this would come back to haunt me until this happened:


terriblew.png



Yup.

Now, as I listen to this mix on my speakers and headphones at various volumes, I like how it sounds....mostly. I want to make some sounds louder, fuller, etc, and I'm just learning now how to do that.

At the same, this movie is a little hard to describe because the whole basis of the sound design is that it's a pretty quiet film. A lot of sound effects are supposed to sort of creep in or be nearly subliminal, and this is suddenly interrupted with a loud sound, such as a door slamming, someone's voice, an object falling, etc.

I also realized that while I like the pre-mix, it's probably much much too quiet.

Here is a chunk of what I have....:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6428385/test1.wav

It doesn't seem to want to play directly but it works as a download.


Now, here it is again matching picture. I'm missing some room tone in some parts and I took the dialog out, but every single effect here was re-recorded and EQ'd/edited. Please keep in mind I've never done this before (not sure if video will work correctly, but here you go):


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6428385/test1.avi



Anyone have any general tips besides "let a pro handle it"?

Also, I'm trying to understand mastering and compressors. If a mix is the way I like it, but overall too quiet, is it dangerous to boost the entire master to my liking?

And I can't understand compressors. I've read explanations, looked at diagrams. I understand what they do....but I don't understand why they seem to be used so much or how to use them. What's the benefit of using a compressor on dialog, for instance?
 
I'll offer my two octaves :) I did everything the hard way and still do every once in awhile as I am coming up with quicker/faster ways of doing things. I mixed an ENTIRE movie in Sountrack Pro only to realize the bugs in soundtrack pro were so bad, I started it again in Logic Pro, which couldn't handle that large a project at the time and ended up in Digital Performer which worked well. I also have Pro Tools which I also use depending on the situation. What I learned about all this is that the biggest part of how you work is what your software lets you do. Each of these programs has different ways of handling things that are superior or horrible compared to others.

Even though I mix my audio mostly in Digital Performer, I used this book to learn A LOT:

http://www.amazon.com/Tools-Video-Film-Multimedia-Book/dp/159200069X

The biggest thing was getting my listening environment right. I have a VERY nice pair of nearfield monitors (Adam A7s and a Sub8) and I calibrated dialog basically to what it says in the book. While I am not doing 5.1 mixes yet, I've got all the hardware to make it happen minus 3 speakers. The book covers mixing at that level as well.

Given I do not have a full qualified listening environment, I know that my material goes out to at least one more mix after me. So, when I work on my material, it gets broken down into tracks like this:

DLG CHAR 1
DLG CHAR 2
SFX 1
SFX 2
FOLEY 1
FOLEY 2
BKG 1
BKG 2
MUSIC 1
MUSIC 2

Then, when I mix out the final I usually generate stems for each group, or final stereo files of:

DIALOG
SFX
FOLEY
BKG
MUSIC

Now, depending on who you work with, they can tell you what they need, but every project I have done so far, this has worked out perfect. For the rules on each track, I do this:

For dialog, I try to have each character on their own line. This is so if I want to make a global tweak to an actors voice, it is easier.

For the rest, I pack them in. Given I use Digital Performer, just like Final Cut Pro, I can adjust the level of EACH piece of audio independently. This way, it is easy to tune the sounds to a scene. Not all apps allow this. Given I work on lots of kung fu stuff, there is NO WAY I can seperate out each different sound to a different track.

In addition to this, I feed ALL my tracks to a bus, and then that bus is fed to as many aux tracks as reverb situations I need to create since some of the dialog is ADR. I keep the ADR and non-ADR in separate tracks since only one of them needs verb matching (and I use mostly altiverb for that).

And that is pretty much it. I tend to listen to a movie that has similar sound before I start mixing, to get my head in the right place, and then for the rest, just watch the film. I also write scores, and do it in the same way. Like everything, practice makes perfect. But, I cannot stress enough HOW important it is for you to get flat response speakers AND calibrate how you are listening. It will make a WORLD of difference.

I listened to your audio and it did not sound bad. I thought a couple of the foley sounds might have clipped for a bit here and there, but not horribly (and given I could not watch the video as I do not have the codec installed, I couldn't see what they were about). The parts without the room tone sounded wrong, but you mentioned that wasn't all in there. Once you get the room tone, some ambience, it will sound much fuller.

But, again, that book is GREAT!! :) Good luck and I feel your pain!
 
Yeah, believe me- if I could get everything right I would. I'm out of money, and if I really had the cash- I'd just hire a pro for the final mix because I know I don't have the environment or experience for it.

But I Wild Foleyed EVERY SINGLE SOUND in my movie, all in the original locations. I borrowed some high end sound equipment from my friend's school and worked with some very patient people to try and capture sounds as raw as possible. I wound up getting over 120 sounds this way, all in about 5 days or so, including geese flying over head and a tree creaking on a windy day (seriously, I have a tree creak at about -8 db, which makes me proud).

So if my sound is crappy, it's lack of experience, not trying. I've tried, fiddled, tweaked, untweaked, read everything I can, having heart attacks trying to get everything right. I'm realistic in that my final mix will always be inferior to a pro's work, but I don't take that as an excuse to do a bad job...I want to make it the best I can with what I got. And by best, I mean by my own standards...I'd like my sound to be good, but more important, unique. I don't simply want a "Standard" pro mix...I want to use sound how it pertains to the film's mood, and not so much "Realism".

I can't get the video encoder to work. Might try again tomorrow. My main issue is that I have no calibrated standard to even know how to adjust the volume. A lot of films are very noisy, but mine isn't. It's filled with a lot of subtle sounds, many of them unrealistic (like hearing the ocean indoors as a person falls asleep and slips into a dream) and it's hard to know when something is too loud or too low in the mix- especially on ghetto speakers.
 
In the audio file, there are a couple times that you're getting handling noise or something similar. The level does seem like it might be a little low, but without the dialog and other components of the mix, it's hard to say for sure, you don't really want the Foley and FX calling attention to themselves. Keep plugging away at it, and take notes so you'll remember what you did wrong and what worked out.

Reaper is a surprisingly capable app, hopefully they keep pushing forward on the post-production features.
 
Side note on formats. Your video is in a codec called FFV1, and as far as I can tell there is no Quick Time component that will let that play on a Mac. I know your on a PC but in the future you might want to pick a format that has wider playability.

And small FYI, "Wild Foley" or WIFO, is a term used for things that would normally be done on a Foley Stage but for some reason were done in the wild (and usually not to picture) but are intended to be used as Foley. Most of what you were recording was FX.

Track layout is important when it gets complicated. I was just looking at Reaper the other day. For what I do it's still woefully lacking in post features but as a DAW it's a huge bargain. It keeps getting better so?

I'm going to assume that some of the overlays on the regions can be toggled off and you might want to do that. A lot of editing gets easier if you have a good view of the waveform. Unless your zoomed out the waveforms look a little low, but there is no way to tell for sure. Generally you want to record FX as hot as you can get away with. Much better to lower the level when you use them than to have to boost them.

People who know a lot got there by making more mistakes than the folks who know less. As long as your not making the same mistake over and over again your learning.

Human speech can be very dynamic and in real life we have a bunch of other clues as to what is being said. In a film you don't have all the normal helpers so it's often more work to understand what is being said. Compression is one way of reducing the dynamic range so you can get the dialog louder and clearer. The down side is you are also boosting any noise so it can be tricky to use if you don't have really clean dialog tracks.

Mixing on headphones you can get really subtle, unfortunately all of that subtle stuff will be lost over speakers. Bouncing between computer speakers and headphones is probably frustrating because your sort of at both extremes. Patching in to your stereo would probably be better. But if your in an apartment that may not be an option either since sound editing can drive people nuts if they have to listen to someone else do it.

With out decent speakers and an SPL meter you can't really calibrate. You can sort of fake it into the ball park though. Get some PINK NOISE at -20 dB. Reaper may have a signal generator that can do that or you can get some DOLBY Pink. If you can't find any let me know and I will post some.
Anyway -20 Pink played back on a calibrated system is Loud, but not painful. You can stand to be in the room but you have to shout to people. So if you play -20 Pink over your headphones and adjust the level so it's in that range you are in the ballpark of calibrated. Since your probably aiming at the small screen you could cheat on the low side. The biggest thing is to mark the setting so you can go back to your "calibrated" level. If you don't do that your levels will be all over the map and you will have a hell of a time when you try to play it all back.

When your doing this "calibration" the region (or clip or whatever Reaper calls them) should be playing at its normal level, no gain. And everything should be at 0 level wise. Your going to adjust the headphone level with the volume control for the headphones. On the computer that is probably the system headphone volume, not any level setting inside the DAW (Reaper in your case). Hope that makes sense.
 
That's some sound (pun intended) advice. Even some sort of calibration is going to get you in the right ballpark. It's important because when I mix, the environment is the same EVERY time. The gain of the system is idential, speaker volumes untouched so I am not hitting a moving target. You can get a cheap SPL meter from Radio Shack that will be fine (and more accurate than the ones on mobile phones I have tried).

I actually mark my gain knobs on my monitor controller because I want the sound to be EXACT. That way, as you hear your stuff on other gear, and you know what works and what doesn't, the frame of reference is identical and your learning will carry from one project to the next.

Again, something is better than nothing on this front, it's not at all or nothing.

I also use software called fuzzmeasure and a unity gain mic to examine my room tone. This has helped me understand what i am hearing more of or less of in the room that might not be real and due to room modes.
 
OK, so the pink noise is used to actually adjust my speaker level as a "standard" then? Because I was simply using the dialog track to judge that...since it's, for the most part, the loudest thing...I have it peaking at around -8 or -7 db.

My main concern is how to make it sound good on both speakers AND headphones...I actually watch a ton of movies on my headphones because I live with other people and don't want to keep them up at night (which is when I watch them).

So I have the pink noise....what do I do? Adjust my speaker levels until it sounds "OK"? Or do I actually mess with the levels of my project until I can hear it over the pink noise? Kind of confused.....

And compressors...when I get to that stage, is it something that has a steep learning curve? Because, like I said, I understand what they do, but I don't really know how to work them.
 
JordanBlock said:
In the audio file, there are a couple times that you're getting handling noise or something similar. The level does seem like it might be a little low, but without the dialog and other components of the mix, it's hard to say for sure, you don't really want the Foley and FX calling attention to themselves. Keep plugging away at it, and take notes so you'll remember what you did wrong and what worked out.

Reaper is a surprisingly capable app, hopefully they keep pushing forward on the post-production features.
Click to expand...


The handling noise might be confusing.....it's actually the sound of a flame flickering as someone pulls their hand away. There are also some lower sounds as someone threw a pile of clothes on a TV set- I wanted to keep the body of it, even if it sounds "wrong" or weird.

And yes, Reaper is really good. It's only 40 bucks and they're working really hard to make it something really special. Since my audio editing needs are very basic, it's more than enough.
 
I use the pink noise with an spl monitor, like the cheap radio shack ones, to set the listening level of the system where my ears are. Once you do that, which in that book it gives you what you should get from each speaker, then, I mix dialog at that level to sound like how it would sound in real life. I also compared this to a movie playing out the same system as a reference (well a few movies to just get a general concensus).

Honestly, if it sounds good in speakers, it is going to sound good in headphones. I have NEVER had a mix that sounded great in the speakers and horrible in the headphones. But, the caveat is I had my speakers set up right for the BEST listening experience.

As for compressors, I don't use them one dialog myself because of the automatic nature of how they work. In most instances, if I have a word that needs to come up, or a part of a speech in a single clip, depending on the software I can split the clip and change the levels independently, or I can use a volume curve over the dialog to fine tune the levels. I like to keep a lot of dynamics in sound and if I use anything, it is a limiter on sounds that I need to push up some part, but tame the high part. Again, a case by case basis for me and not something I would put on a whole track since so many things are independent, a global setting doesn't really help.
 
MeAgain, reread my post. You do NOT want to change the levels in Reaper for the Pink noise. If your on headphones or can't get an SPL meter you can get close by turning up the headphones till -20dB pink noise is so loud you would have to shout over it. This is a very loose "calibration" but it's in the ballpark.

Films are mixed in calibrated rooms by ear. So it's important that you have some kind of calibration for your system. That calibration needs to be a steady broad spectrum sound such as Pink noise. Dialog is useless. It changes all the time and it's not constant. If they talk quieter in one scene your whole mix will be off.


As to compressors. They are not used on mix stages to avoid mixing they are used after editing and mixing has made the best track they can do increase the average level of the dialog and help it cut through everything else. You can in theory do it all with mixing, but most mixers don't. It gets a bad rep in low budget circles because it gets used as an "automatic" mixer and then it sounds bad.
 
Ah, OK. So it's an entirely "by ear" thing, which is obviously best for me right now anyway since my gear is crap. I get it. I'll probably be mixing on my crappy computer speakers but cross-checking on my earphones.
 
MeAgain said:
Ah, OK. So it's an entirely "by ear" thing, which is obviously best for me right now anyway since my gear is crap. I get it. I'll probably be mixing on my crappy computer speakers but cross-checking on my earphones.
Click to expand...

You can get an SPL meter from Radio Shack for about $50. You can also get an iPhone app that will give you a audio band readout from 10 Hz to 20KHz... I've not worried about the NIST traceable calibration, but the Radio Shack meter does give perhaps a better ball park than pumping up the volume to just below shouting level... the Wife is hard of hearing so my voice can 'carry' for several blocks worth of shouting... oddly the neighbors have never called the cops... yet...
 
Yeah, but I don't have any more money right now. I'm pretty broke. And 50 bucks for something I'm going to probably only use once with me getting skewed results anyway seems like a big waste. If I had a surplus of money right now, I probably would just throw down the 50 bucks but I don't, so...

But, technically I'm not even mixing yet. We'll see.
 
MeAgain said:
Yeah, but I don't have any more money right now. I'm pretty broke. And 50 bucks for something I'm going to probably only use once with me getting skewed results anyway seems like a big waste. If I had a surplus of money right now, I probably would just throw down the 50 bucks but I don't, so...

But, technically I'm not even mixing yet. We'll see.
Click to expand...

Well all I can say is before I got at least somewhat of a calibrated room, even when I mixed music, it was all over the place. I know it sucks to be broke :( I just want to re-iterate that a lot of the pain you are going to feel is going to be something that you are fighting with yourself. For instance, listening to your computer speakers, going into the headphones, back and forth.

I can say this too, my editor knows sound, but, he doesn't have good speakers in his editing suite yet. He put together a bunch of sounds in his setup and when he heard them on my setup, which is good but not amazing, he couldn't believe all the things that were showing up that he never heard. It was that much honestly. You are going to spend a lot of time listening to those computer speakers and those headphones and neither of them are really going to get you close to what is really going on. Which, when you take it and play it on a television, be prepared to be really upset how bad it might sound (and I speak from experience because this was the first audio project I mixed).

I actually have a crappy speaker system in my studio as a last run through test to make sure my bass is under control :) I use Triple-P speakers which are actually designed to emulate plastic cabinet television speakers :)

All that said, you gotta do what you gotta do. Just realize a lot of your frustration is because of the environment. Granted, mixing still takes practice and learning, but like I said, you have a moving target and it will frustrate you.
 
I know. That's why I realized it's pointless to really try to do anything than finish the project as best as I can. I've already burned a test DVD and listened to it on an old Panasonic tube- and yup, about 50% of the sound just vanished. That's what made me realize I needed to boost my levels up considerably- but then I don't want certain subtle, quiet sounds to be too obvious. I imagine there is where compression for DVD take place...

Does Compressor (the program) actually compress audio in a similar way? I'm not on Macs too much, so I haven't used it a bunch. Should I complete a temp mix, then do something to compress the audio for a DVD?
 
Different types of compression. Compressor for the mac is just compressing audio/video into a set of codecs which reduce size, but do not actually 'compress' the aural content of the audio. You DO NOT want to run the whole thing through an audio compressor as this flattens everything out and eliminates all your dynamics (like pop music).

The problem too is that if you mixed to what that tube television plays, it probably has horrible bass response and over gained mids. You'll mix to that, then go to a home theatre system and probably knock a wall down with the bass you have.

Again, compression for the DVD is easy to think, like a zip file. The contents are made smaller, but when they are used, the are the same as they go in (of course, there are lossy compressions, like mp3, so this isn't the best example).

Personally, for this project, I'd just forget audio compressors altogether. I think they are going to give you more hassle than they are worth.

At a minimum if you can play your audio through the tube television, then a home theatre system, at least you can hit two different system types.

I can say this too, when my stuff was played in a theatre, it was VERY different then all the other scenarios. Haha, you just cannot win.
 
From what I hear, most film festivals mess up your project any way. Not even sure why I made a movie with sound to begin with?
 
Heh, there is some truth to that. The problem with film festivals is they are like scripts in LA :) It seems like EVERY town has 10 of them. To the ones I have been through, the quality of the projector and audio has typically been ATROCIOUS. Many of them using too small a projector with a VERY LOW contrast ratio. My $900 projector is leaps and bounds better than the last one a film of ours played on. But, it is what it is.

That's why when people say content is the most important part of what you are working on, I absolutely understand where they are coming from. If you follow a few simple guidelines, almost anything can be good. For instance, dialog you can actually hear is important. If it's muffled, or too low, the audience just gets frustrated. Like with shooting, you don't want a bunch of crap to confuse your audience, so you follow the 180 rule and stuff like that. Basically, you know, the watcher shouldn't notice your audio, or your shooting, as if they are properly engaged, then it's one big experience to them. People typically only notice things when something is wrong.

So, in that light, when you are mixing, just put yourself in the shoes of who will be watching and on what crappy system :) Make sure what is important for them to hear will be heard so they aren't struggling to enjoy it. My next film, which I am starting beginning of next year, is going to be TOTALLY done differently than the last film I did, because I have learned so much :)
 
Well, to me, the sound IS part of the content. And my aim is to actually NOT follow guidelines as far as content goes...I say to hell with the 180 rule. But at the same time, obviously, you want the mix and the visuals to have the right balance, the right ingredients to best represent your vision. Obviously, that's why there are theater mixes, dvd mixes, internet mixes, television mixes, what have you.

I think if I make anything else low budget any time soon I'll have to shape it around this fact- that I don't have a professional studio and can't achieve that exact balance. I'm very interested in getting a specific sound's perspective AS I capture it, rather than doing it in post. Obviously this would take more time to do while shooting, but necessity is the mother of creativity, no?
 
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