19
1 - It seems that FFmpeg attempts to respect a common pan law (when routing a centered mono track to a stereo track, lower the mono signal by - 3 dB on each channel of the stereo track). The goal is that the perceived loudness remains coherent.
EDIT
As mentioned by @Mulvya, you can use the pan filter to keep input file level untouched :
ffmpeg -i test.wav ...
11
The difference is due to something known as "panning laws". Imagine you have recorded a mono track, and it is currently panned centrally. You decide you want it panned all the way to the left. Did you want it to also drop to half volume at the same time? Probably not. Yet that is what would happen if the DAW simply turned off the signal going to the right ...
11
Thermal Noise
It's highly likely that what you are experiencing is a natural phenomeon that is entirely due to the internal electronic circuits within your amplifier. I'm not saying that external EMI doesn't come along now and then and cause noise because it does, however, what you have descibed is "thermal noise" - a constant hiss.
Where does it occur? It ...
10
The simplest way to see these for yourself is to look at the metal connections on your jacks. You'll find a stereo one has one more metal ring than a mono one.
The mono jack has a tip and a ring, and where that ring is overlaps two of the stereo jack's rings, so plugging a stereo jack into a mono plug effectively shorts your right channel to ground at the ...
9
This is a debate that has been going on forever. And people totally over-think this and read too many posts about specs, and phase, and mono compatibility, etc. This topic seems to be as hotly debated as religion and politics. The answer to your question is actually pretty easy:
Use what sounds best to you and works best in your workflow.
I often use a ...
8
You can without any concerns plug a stereo cable into an unbalanced mono jack; as long as you only send mono signals (i.e. L and R channels equal) it will work just fine, except for the usually -3 dB pan law and possible short-cicuiting of the ring connector; the latter is however unlikely and not harmful for line connections. (It can be harmful for e.g. ...
7
I'm not that personally familiar with the recording quality of the H4N vs. the H2, but I would say this: while four channel ambience recordings can be useful, I know far more people who prefer to build their own surround (or the occassional quad for television) ambiences. You have more flexibility and control that way. Chances are good that if you record a ...
7
Hi This will only cause phase problems if it's routed to the same output as the stereo-pair.
Except this won't be a stereo pair. Recording vocals in stereo is pointless, small movements between mics are translated as large movements between speakers. (MS is or Binaural works though)
Usually one mic is either a) fail-safe b) different gain or both.
The third ...
7
First off, your understanding of the perception of directionality is a little flawed. Yes, "Interaural Time Difference" (ITD) affects our ability to localize, but so does "Interaural Level Difference" (ILD). Our brain makes use of both, because each lose effectiveness outside of certain frequency ranges. We need both mechanisms to localize across the ...
6
My personal take on it is that usually for stems the channel denomination should equal your other stems, or at least be LCR or 5.0. In the case of working in a stereo environment, I'd recommend going with stereo.
For one, dialogue does have to be panned sometimes - whether for creative purposes, or in rare cases to fix a story issue that's hard to see ...
5
Sennheiser MKH 40
Sennheiser MKH 30
Rycote suspension w/ pistol grip
Rycote Stereo Windshield size AE
Rycote Stereo Windjammer Rycote
Stereo Connbox Rycote MS stereo mic clips
Boom pole of your choice
The only alternative I'd consider is a Schoeps MS rig, but $4k will barely cover the capsules and power supplies. But equally sweet, for different reasons. ...
5
Is it for a film festival?
I've noticed that the sound spec checkboxes in film festival entry forms are pretty old fashioned. One festival had nothing even remotely related to what our mix was, so the producer had to write in "Digital Stereo" and tick it.
Dolby is a company. Some delivery formats include Dolby Stereo, Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital and ...
5
You can do a basic implementation manually in any daw:
Copy the track
Pan both tracks left and right respectively and symmetrically
The dry channel should be around 18dB louder than the Haas channel
Add a time delay of 13ms-~50ms to 'Haas' channel'
Be careful how much Haas you use, it affects the tonality of the track when summed to mono.
If you have ...
5
You can use the amerge and pan filters in ffmpeg to combine two mono streams into one stereo output:
ffmpeg -i input -filter_complex "[0:3] [0:4] amerge,pan=stereo:c0=c0:c1=c1" -c:v copy -c:a pcm_s16le output
or using -ac instead of pan:
ffmpeg -i input -filter_complex "[0:3] [0:4] amerge" -c:v copy -c:a pcm_s16le -ac 2 output
[0:3] and [0:4] refer to ...
5
With headphones you will get complete separation of left and right channels. You will only hear the left channel in the left ear and the right channel in the right ear, assuming you don't listen at insane volumes or put the headphones on backwards :)
With speakers, aside from the reverb and echos in the room mentioned by @Eugene, you will still hear at ...
4
I recommend reading this article before making your decision. A lot of useful info about AB mic placement etc..
I think you'd be fine with 40cm unless you want a wide AB image from a pair of omnis. I'd also consider the Grace Design Spacebar as well as the Rycote.
4
One thing I'm usually quite conscious of is the size and look - I find that the H2 is way more discrete than the h4n, so it's a lot easier to gather stuff without attracting too much attention. Sounds silly, but if you're travelling round "less safe" parts of SE Asia, this might be something to bear in mind!
4
You can probably fit both Zooms in your bag?
I agree with Shaun's comment that stereo recordings are more useful for constructing quad ambiences, in most cases. However, in my opinion the joy of recording is more than just being able to use your recordings for work. I personally love doing quad recordings, just for archival purposes and listening back at a ...
4
I guess is not done often because mono compatibility concerns. Delay introduces all sort of phase issues. Mono is important in broadcast.
4
While I agree with @Stavrosound, if you're talking tv it depends on what your deliverables sheet dictates. Different networks, even different departments in the same network, request different formats of stems as final deliverables.
If you're using a single master template for all your work, I'd bus my dialog in stereo (or lcr) for panning, verb, delay, ...
4
For the most part, with centered mixes, there is very little difference between speakers and headphones other than the impact of the acoustics of the room versus the sterile headphone environment.
When you get in to stereo panning, however, an interesting thing happens. In a room, both ears hear sound from both speakers, so a sound coming only from the ...
4
ReaSurround in Reaper is pretty good, after reading your question I did find this post in the Reaper forums that does pretty much exactly what you want.
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=133619
Check out the demo file he created, it definitely simulates that soundstage well.
I started playing around with it a bit, and it's not super intuitive, ...
4
I just came up with a rule of thumb. I don't know if it is is really any good or not, but maybe worth considering.
If you are taking things away (cleanup) better to do it in mono.
If you are adding things, (sweetening such as reverb) better to do it in stereo.
4
You have the wrong adapter. You have a signal splitter rather an a dual mono to stereo converter. 3.5mm and 6.5mm jacks have multiple possible configurations of the connector. The most common are TS (tip/sleeve), TRS (tip/ring/sleeve) and TRRS (tip/ring/ring/sleeve). Each of these serves a different purpose.
In all cases, one portion is the ground, ...
3
I've had an MKH40 for a few months now (and my MKH30 is finally arriving today). It's not the same as the 8040 that you're thinking of purchasing (doesn't have the extended frequency response), but I can say this: you will, and should, find uses for it other than just ambience recording. The MKH series is ridiculously quiet and has a great frequency response....
3
The only way I've been able to do this sort of thing is by fooling around with phase reversal and cancellation.
You know when something is out of phase in headphones and it sounds like it's coming from behind your head?
I tried to do the same thing you're doing on speakers and I spent a little time on it with no real success. But you might have brighter ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
