9
But inevitably I end up with a voice track that is clean but now has lost the natural resonance
This is what dialogue mixers spend years, decades, perfecting - as well as dialogue editors, for their properly-prepared tracks make or break a dialogue mix.
In short, I recommend being more open and accepting of noise. Used decisively an treated with respect, ...
9
As the mic is mounted on a stand a pop-filter would be a very easy solution.
If this is visually not acceptable (as it's a video project) you could think of adding a physical barrier between the person and the stand. For example a (DIY version of) this barrier.
7
Here's what I'd do, as a dialogue editor at heart myself:
cut the scene across a set of DX A-F tracks or more, if needed, but I shoot for using only A-F
split the 'angles' out according to the noise/hum characteristic this may be something Purcell's book didn't address, and is also why I consider his book to be a great introduction to dialogue editorial, ...
7
As heard within amplifiers, the frequency can be 100/120Hz (2nd harmonic of 50 or 60Hz) because of the rectification process when converting AC to DC to power said amplifiers. There can also be a component that is the third harmonic of 50/60Hz as well and this is magnetically "coupled" from the AC transformer inside an amplifier.
There are all sorts of ...
7
I'd be inclined to think it would be from scratches/dust in the optical medium that sound was carried on in cinema film, up until 1976.
See this image from Wikipedia…
Edge of a 35mm film print showing the soundtracks. The stereo optical sound strip is located on the right, with waveforms for left and right channels.
To the far left is the SDDS digital ...
6
I'm probably one of the best people to answer this since I did the editorial prep for the trailer, and worked on the feature. (Zack has had us, the feature crew, involved in his trailers since 300. As was mentioned, more typically, feature crews aren't involved in trailers.)
Zod's dialog was taken directly from the feature dialog stem. In the film, Zod is ...
6
That is the result of bad isolation of either the DAC or the ADC. If the internal circuitry of the interface and the actual capture or playback circuitry share a common power supply, the operation of the electronics itself cause a distortion to the power being supplied to the capture or playback circuits.
Capture and output both rely on a fixed reference ...
6
Is AC current fundamentally better as a working current when it comes to amplifying audio signal?
No. If anything, using an AC power supply makes it more difficult to have low noise.
The circuits that handle audio are all powered by DC. So any amplifier that has an AC power input has to convert this to DC internally. The AC cabling inside the amplifier ...
5
I purchased the M10. But when I was comparing the differences between the M10 and the D50, I was looking at them as solid-state 2-track recorders, not as microphones. In my mind the M10 was the winner. I saved $200 that went towards more gear in my rig that was better designed and more practical for the situations I was hoping to capture.
The M10's a good ...
5
Put it in a different room!
Professional studios do this by having a control room with all of the more noisy equipment, so in a home studio you're going to have to try to approximate that environment as best you can.
On a MacBook, you may be able to limit CPU usage in the Energy Saver preference pane. I can't tell you specifically since I'm on an iMac, but ...
5
They missed out one vital piece of information - at what frequencies?
They'd need to be made of lead to stop anything below 100Hz…
I wonder whether their mosquito-repellant curtains work when they're open too ;-)
5
Short, honest answer: nope, forget it.
In principle it's possible nowadays to separate any part of a signal, using software like iZotope RX or the (rather dated, by now) Algorithmix Renovator. These are expensive heavyweight products; unfortunately I'm not aware of any more affordable or even open-source alternatives that get close to their performance.And ...
5
How much money have you got to spend & would you consider replacing the floor entirely with a new one made of solid concrete, not connected to the current walls or floor?
That is not as frivolous a question as it may seem.
Audio separation, especially at low frequencies, can only be achieved by mass & air-gapping.
You could generate a bit of an ...
5
The type of current is actually completely irrelevant as all transmitted power is AC. Unless you are driving your amplifier from batteries, everything has to be converted at some point to DC.
The end result all boils down to the amount of power you need to draw from the supply in order to amplify the audio to the level you require.
The main reason why AC ...
4
This is a documentary. You can get away with noise in the production audio, and people will accept it. They key point is whether or not the audio is intelligible. Listening to that example you linked to, I would suggest you leave it alone. The noise floor, while present, is not interfering with my ability to pick out the phonemes. Give it some EQ to ...
4
I would suggest you start by reading this article, which apart from giving you ideas, is also handy for education. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov04/articles/computerproblems.htm
The signal noise on your soundcloud sounds like computer component noise. Are you setting your equipment levels correctly? Check this article on gain staging: http://www.basic-...
4
Sometimes a pop filter is not enough.
If you have an audio engineer on site monitoring the signal while the singers are recording this live or in a studio have the engineer work out a hand signal that can be interpreted as "back off from the mic".
Perhaps a reverse high five or a simple hand retracting would work. The key here is to have both the audio ...
4
Yes, they do wear out eventually. As pointed out already, the life time depends greatly on use and quality. Even with a cable that seemingly works sound quality may get drastically reduced. See below.
The type of defects you will start to see over time, can be categorized into three main areas:
mechanical damage
corrosion
dry out/cracking
Mechanical ...
4
I used to have a tone sweep from one of the convolution plug ins as my ring tone. It worked really well because it was a chirp, followed by a few seconds of silence, and then a tone sweep low to high. The chirp and pause gave me time to answer it if i was in a room, and the tone sweep cut through when i was in noisy locations. The only caveat is that the ...
4
Balancing! All your lines should be balanced. What this does it splits the signal in two and flips one half of it. Then the side that is flipped is flipped back at the end, and added to the first one, therefore cancelling the noise induced in the cable out. You need a DI box, especially since your cables are long and then something to unbalance the signal at ...
4
Izotope rx is the industry standard. But any fingerprint style noise reduction should be able to improve it.
3
typically the reason that noise reduction is left until mixing is because once you have context of everything else that's happening you can gauge exactly how little noise reduction you can get away with.
The reason you want to do as little noise reduction as possible is because all noise reduction removes some part of the tone and timbre of the voices ...
3
Take a look at Speakerphone!
Other things:
reamp through an old speaker
reamp and record through a ribbon mic
reamp through a copperphone
convolution with samples of old devices
overdo a tape emulator plugin
overdo a console emulator plugin
3
From my experience with dialogue editorial, you're usually SOL when it comes to this - the problem being that handling noise tend to fill all frequencies. Depending on how the frequency content is from what you're hearing, a hi pass may help you, automated of course, but even then usually such noise sits too high into the mid-lows and mids (like a plosive) ...
3
Hmmm....there's potential. I don't know about in a daisy-chain configuration, but maybe it would work in a [source > distributed network > summed signal] configuration. I will confess to having no direct experience with what I'm about to descrie; it's only something I've read about.
Because of the random quality of Brownian Noise, a signal that gets split, ...
3
A balanced mic would certainly help. Another option is to use a direct box to go from an unbalanced mic input to a balanced line (XLR). The best bet would really be to get an actual mic with balanced output. Also, in a pinch, a 25 foot run is totally doable with an unbalanced cable if it is well shielded. It isn't ideal, but it should be workable as long ...
3
Yup, that's definitely switching–power-supply bursts. (Has nothing whatsoever to do with hard drives, though it may sound somewhat similar.)
How exactly this gets in the signal path I don't know, but you might be able to eliminate it by changing your grounding configuration. One thing to try is to directly connect the interface to ground, for instance by ...
3
Is the audio level clipping or is it actually a pop from breath or spit or something? If the audio level is simply clipping, then a gain adjustment may be all that is needed. If it is actually a problem with breathing on the mic or spit hitting the diaphragm, then you either have to tell them or use some kind of barrier. I don't know any other options.
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