9
votes
Accepted
Recording room ambience
Record one long shot.
Split it from the half.
Put one half to the right channel and the other to left channel.
Export a stereo file.
This way you will get a very wide stereo image that is hard to get ...
- 724
7
votes
Accepted
When to apply noise reduction? Before or after other processing?
It really depends.
Sometimes you need a global volume boost because the audio is too low anyway to correctly listen to the noise reduction you're applying. Sometimes there's a 50 or 60Hz rumble or ...
- 96
5
votes
Accepted
Is there a name for the trailing "hiss" sound that people produce when pronoucing plurals?
This is called a sibilance, or sibilant articulation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilant
You can avoid it in the recording process using a pop filter, but in post production there are a handful ...
- 101
4
votes
Recording room ambience
Record 2 mono claps/pulses/shots, however you're generating it.
Move the mic from one side of the room to the other for each, keeping each at the same distance from the source.
Match up the initial ...
- 7,089
4
votes
Pro Tools stems export
Route the output of each track to another empty track. Record arm the destination tracks and then hit record. When the record pass is done all your effects and automation will be "printed" to the new ...
- 2,030
4
votes
Accepted
What are important considerations when mixing and mastering a track for vinyl distribution?
This is a very big topic, I will start by redirecting you to a very useful site/article: Mastering for Vinyl from Recording magazine.
Also I would like to state that I'm not a mastering engineer, I'...
- 1,470
4
votes
Music drowning out singing
If it was recorded with one microphone, there is no good way to rectify this problem.
Vocals and guitars share the same frequencies, so EQ is out of the picture.
Sorry.
- 674
4
votes
Accepted
How do I make whispering in ear sound convincing?
I don't know if any of the following will work or not, but maybe worth an experiment.
Try a delay of about 1/2 of a millisecond, if you have the capability, between the two channels, of the mono ...
- 316
4
votes
Match takes from different ADR sessions
I'm going to throw this in as the beginnings of an answer. We can work it up later.
Was the talent consistent? Is this 'just' a placement issue? There are EQ-matching plugins you could try [or Izotope ...
- 7,089
3
votes
When to apply noise reduction? Before or after other processing?
It does depend but most will apply it early in the chain especially if it's an offline process like Izotope Denoiser. It's much easier for the software to work if the noise floor isn't moving around ...
- 1,304
3
votes
Accepted
How do you make a carrier better for vocoding (with a plugin)?
Speech is anything but "well-rounded". Vowels start at the vocal cords with basically the most overtone-rich signal possible, a pulse train. If you look at the frequency content of such a pulse ...
- 46
3
votes
Fixing an over-distorted guitar track
(I'm not sure what you want to fix - it sounds sick and genrewise it is spot on!)
Needless to say: always record with a DI so you have the option to reamp later on if something turns out too hot etc. ...
- 3,702
3
votes
How to improve guitar tone for recording?
In addition to @frcake's excellent answer, I have a few points:
I have been gigging for over 30 years and I still have trouble getting some sounds I want. One solution that most guitarists go for is ...
- 5,846
3
votes
What do classical radio stations do to their tracks to normalize audio volume?
Yes, it is simply a compressor - typically you'd use one with a relatively low threshold and ratio.
And some may store metadata for the whole track once it has been compressed/normalised once. I know ...
- 5,846
3
votes
What do classical radio stations do to their tracks to normalize audio volume?
It's 'simply a compressor'... however it's a very specialised type of compressor.
There are probably others in this field, but the go-to name for radio compression is Optimod by Orban
Optimod is, to ...
- 7,089
3
votes
Getting consistent metadata onto a CD
You can't. There is no mechanism for storing metadata on a bog standard audio CD. The metadata you are seeing is actually stored within iTunes and WMP respectively. Each media player recognises the CD ...
- 8,454
3
votes
Click at the end of words ending in “n” — techniques to avoid or clean up?
I can't hear the metallic quality you mentioned but I can hear an amount of 'vocal fry'.
My feeling is that this is more about your performer than the recording technique.
Talk to them about their ...
- 674
3
votes
Click at the end of words ending in “n” — techniques to avoid or clean up?
Probably the simplest solution to this is to record the voice with the mic slightly further away. The clicks and pops you are hearing are vocal and throat artifacts which are only getting picked up ...
- 8,454
2
votes
sound design a scene where different radio programs playing at same time
Pan and EQ each differently. Then mix them all to provide a wash/bed. Then ride the levels so that they take turns "poking" out.
- 21
2
votes
When to apply noise reduction? Before or after other processing?
Do some tests using all permutations and trust your ears. The more you take this experimental approach to your work the better idea you will have about which techniques suit which circumstances. ...
- 146
2
votes
5 loudest and 5 softest points in an audio file
A long-shot, but this might work if you have a similar setup to mine.
It works equally well for DVD [I don't have a BluRay] TV, catchup, YouTube, Netflix, VLC, etc etc
I use my PC's built-in 7.1 ...
- 7,089
2
votes
Creating very heavy subwoofer sound effects
Full rattling is as Tetsujin said a matter of adding something to the mix, potentially a field recording or synthesis. However, you can get a lot closer to what your looking for by using a ...
- 758
2
votes
Audio Leveler Isn't Stable
There's Way too much to go into here, about leveling audio, and as I haven't heard the audio clip, I will keep it short.
The speech leveller is probably causing the problem and you may not be using ...
- 2,176
2
votes
What's the best I can do to mix a new vocal recording with a compressed instrumental track?
The processing really depends on the material / the track you have; since the track is an instrumental, we can assume that instruments take over the most of the frequencies palette (if not true - even ...
- 21
2
votes
How do I make whispering in ear sound convincing?
The main thing you will want to do is to enhance the bass part of the spectrum in order to enhance realism. Obviously increased level will be necessary (relevant to other elements in the mix) but the ...
- 8,454
2
votes
"Move" waveform "up"/"down"?
Yes, you can definitely fix the majority of the pop on that one by effectively removing the DC offset that is in there.
Most DAWs will let you do this - it can be a bit fiddly, but the aim is to zoom ...
- 5,846
2
votes
How to improve guitar tone for recording?
As a rule of thumb, closer to the center is trebly , closer to the ring is mellower - more bassy.
Electric guitar recording is a world of it's own, many people go to insane extends to hunt the tone ...
- 1,470
2
votes
Match takes from different ADR sessions
I'll give some ideas that might help other than re-doing or EQ matching as Tetsujin said. Another great piece of advice given by Tetsujin is to eliminate the room factor so you only have one factor to ...
- 1,470
1
vote
How do we mix down a feature film?
You would create stems Dialogue, Ambience, Foley, SFX for the entire length of the film
- 424
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible