Archives for February 2012

Sound Fail at Academy Awards

February 27, 2012 by Ken Leave a Comment

Sound fail at Academy Awards (2012) – I don’t know if I am just over sensitive to it but I could barely stand to watch the Oscars last night due to the terrible audio. The ringing feedback from the PA system was constant. Plus, from the very start the mix was poor between vocal and orchestra. I could barely hear Billy Crystal’s lyrics over the music, and the announcements about a winner as they walked up to the music were also barely audible.

I think the two problems were related. Perhaps they realized that the system amplifying the vocals was not doing the job so they bumped the gain there (you HAVE to be able to hear the people speaking at the Oscars), only to cause things to become unbalanced (in a mixing sense, not an electronic signal sense), causing feedback.

I used to play in a small band in the same room that seemed to want to feedback at certain specific frequencies. Rather than turn the entire PA down at the master volume control ( a mistake MANY people make) until the screeching goes away, we attached an EQ unit and only turned down the offending frequencies. That helped a lot, allowing us to continue at the same overall volume without ripping your ears out. However, doing it that way did result in a sort of “ghost feedback” that sounded like a sort of ringing at the edges of the sound. That is exactly what that sounded like last night in the Oscars’ audio system. I have not proof that it was that, but that’s my guess.

What did y’all think? What do you think caused the problem? Please leave a comment below.

Google Logo Today Celebrates The Birthday of Hertz

February 22, 2012 by Ken Leave a Comment

Today, Google has as its logo a very audio-related thing. Did you recognize the moving waves? That’s what audio “looks” like. The logo is in honor of the birthday of Heinrich Hertz, who proved the existence of electromagnetic waves. His work was mainly about light waves, but audio waves are very similar.
You’ve probably heard the term “hertz” before, and maybe not even when speaking about rental cars. In the audio world the term is so common that we don’t even bother spelling it out anymore. It’s just “Hz.” You’ve probably been prompted for it at some point by a computer asking if you’d like your audio file to be saved as a 44.1 KHz. Or you’ve seen articles here about EQ where I say things like “you can reduce sibilance by lowering settings around 6 KHz.”
Maybe you can remember a math or physics class talking about wave mechanics. Pretty much any field where we use the concept of cycles-per-second, which is what “hertz” has come to mean, good old Mr. H is right there in the thick of it.
In music we describe pitch in terms of cycles-per-second. Ever wonder what “A440” (the standard reference for tuning an instrument) means? The 440 stands for the number of cycles per second of a sound wave to make it sound like an “A” note to our modern ears. It’s used in cell phones to describe the carrier frequency, radio, video, audio, magnetics, you name it, Heinrich is there.
So if you were wondering how today’s Google logo related to you, now you know!

Pro Audio For Your Video – Review of the BeachTek DXA Camcorder Adapter

February 20, 2012 by Ken 4 Comments

The BeachTek DXA camcorder adapter solves a slew of problems for camcorder owners wanting to get decent audio on their videos. It makes it easy to attach professional microphones and other audio sources to your camcorder.
Getting good sounding audio on a video camera, especially a camcorder, is very difficult. First, you either need to get a camcorder that has an external microphone input. That in itself is surprisingly difficult. But even if your camera does have an external mic input, it is almost certain to be a teensy weensy little 1/8th inch stereo “mini” plug. And if you have a standard microphone you want to hook to your camera, it will have a fairly large 3-pin cable, called an XLR cable.
In order to hook an XLR mic to a camcorder (remember XLR is the standard microphone connector), you need some kind of adapter. In most cases you’ll need two adapters, one to turn the XLR into a 1/4-inch plug, and a second one to turn the 1/4-inch plug into a 1/8-inch plug. At that point you can plug the mic into your camcorder, but it is very dicey because you have a heavy cable plug made even heavier with two adapters, hanging off of a small and fragile 1/8-inch pin.
To make matters even more difficult, your camcorder’s stereo mic plug will record all your audio onto only the left channel, so when it plays back it will sound lopsided, like it is coming only from the left side (unless you record with a stereo microphone, which few folks not in the “biz” will be doing). This requires you to edit the audio on your computer to make sure it gets distributed to both left and right channels. What a huge pain!

The BeachTek DXA-2T mounted under a camcorder

But with this cool product, you mount your camcorder on top of the BeachTek DXA-2T adapter via the tripod connector mounting screw. You’ll need a coin (or a guitar pic, which is what I used) to tighten it from the bottom of the DXA, where there is also the female tripod connector allowing you to mount the whole thing to a tripod.

How It Works

Let’s say you’re doing a talking-head type of video. Without an external mic connector on your camera, your sorta forced to use the built-in camera mic, which is small and of pretty poor quality. But the biggest problem is that the mic will be too far from the mouth of the person talking. This will cause the audio to be echo-y and noisy. If you do have an external mic hook-up, you can now set up a decent microphone (a dynamic mic like the Shure SM58 or Electro-Voice RE16; or a large diaphragm condenser mic like the Audio-Technica AT 2035 or the Rode NT2-A) in front of the person’s mouth to get good quality audio. Just attach the BeachTek to your camera and you’re ready to plug the microphone straight in with no adapters, and record awesome audio along with your video.
The BeachTek has two XLR inputs, each with a switch to select Mic or Line input. You’d use the line input for an instrument or a mixer feed, for example. In addition to the two XLR inputs there is Aux (auxiliary) mini-plug input that is ideal for wireless receivers. Each XLR input also has Trim control knobs which allow you to control the input levels, essentially turning the DXA into a little mixer if you’re using two mics. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that having the two XLR inputs allows you to use two mics simultaneously. You can either mic two different people or use 2 mics for stereo recording. There’s a switch on the DXA that allows you to choose mono or stereo.
How is It Powered?

Rolls-pb-224 Phantom Power Supply — Rolls PB224 Phantom Power Supply

Another of the features of this little box is that it requires no batteries or other power of any kind. This simplifies things and helps keep the unit light-weight. It does bring up a bit of an issue, though, for using condenser microphones, which I always recommend doing if you are recording inside. But condenser microphones (see our article: What Are The Different Types of Microphones? for a review of this) require power in order to work. So how do you use a condenser mic with the BeachTek? If you are using a shotgun mic, these frequently can operate on batteries. One good example is the Audio-Technica AT8015. Several other condenser microphones use batteries as well. I used a Shure Beta Green 5 (unfortunately discontinued) for one of the video demos below. Another AA-battery powered handheld mic is the Nady SPC-25. If none of yours can work with batteries, you can either run it through a portable phantom power box like a Rolls PB224, which operates from 9v batteries, or you can simply take the output of your recording interface or mixer and run that into the DXA.

Results

Here are 4 videos. The first one used no external microphone at all.

The second video used a battery-powered handheld condenser mic plugged into the BeachTek DXA.

The third video used a Shure SM58 dynamic mic (no power required).

The forth video used a large diaphragm condenser, the Rode NT2-A.

Rode NT2-A Large Diaphragm Condenser Mic — Rode NT2-A

Setting everything up was easy and fast. It took me exactly 2 minutes to attach the device to my camera and then the whole enchilada to the tripod. I had read the instructions (taking a major hit on my man-card to do so:)), which are short but important. Then I recorded four short videos. The fact that I can hook my primary studio mic, the Rode, to my camera is just awesome!
To sum up, I’d say the BeachTek DXA-2T is a must-have device for folks with camcorders who have been wanting to hook up their “good” mics to their camera. It is also excellent if you want to connect two mics or take the output of a mixer if you’re recording a live performance or concert. If you already have a decent wireless lavalier or a shotgun mic, which have mini-plug connectors, the DXA may not be as immediately useful, though it still gives you more options if you ever need them. The DXA goes for $179.00.

Compression For Punch and Presence

February 15, 2012 by Ken Leave a Comment

In our recent article about compression in audio recording, you learned what compression actually means. There’s even a video (but don’t pay attention to the messy book case, which has been cleaned up since then)! Basically it is a way to even out the loudness levels in your audio. This is sort of like using a trash compactor on your audio waveform, which then allows you to turn it up louder before the loudest bit of audio hits the limit for maximum volume.
But why would you want to do this? Is having louder audio always a good thing? Well, that depends on who you ask. And you definitely don’t want to over-use compression because too much tends to give you odd audio weirdness like pumping or extra sibilance. But here is an article that will show you some ways to use a compressor for extra punch and presence in your audio. The article focuses a bit more on music than voice over recording, but the concepts are the same.
Read the article here: http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/guerrilla_recording_compression/

Auto-Tune – Any Tool Can Be Abused

February 10, 2012 by Ken Leave a Comment

Has anyone else gotten a little tired of singers on the radio sounding so pitch-perfect that it sounds more like a machine than a human? Me too. It has to do with the over-use and abuse (in my mind) of pith corrections tools, such as Melodyne and Auto-Tune.
Now let me go on record right now as a fan of Auto-Tune. It’s a tool. When a singer puts out a recording, I believe they have a responsibility to ensure the performance is good.
For a singer, that means in tune, on-key, on pitch, however you want to describe it. When you sing live, if you’re good enough to be a pro, you should be good, yes. But humans will inevitably be imperfect and may even hit one or two downright off-key notes here and there. But when it’s live, it’s fleeting.
As an audience member you may or may not even notice. If you do, you’ll probably forget it 5 seconds later. Not true for recordings! When fans are listening to the same performance over and over again, those one or two wonky notes will grate on them.
Before there was Auto-Tune, it was common practice to have a singer sing a track 3 or more times so the engineer could “comp” (short for composite) one vocal track made up of the best pieces from all three tracks. Is this any more genuine than fixing it after the fact with tuning software? My answer is that if the singer can bring it live, then no, it is no more genuine to use Auto-Tune than it is to comp a track.
In fact, I have found that if a singer knows things can be tightened up after the fact, they are more likely to sing without worry or stress. Studio singing often makes singers too careful and they don’t give their best performance. So the very idea of Auto-Tune can actually help the singer sing better before a single note has been “fixed!”
However, what seems to be happening is that engineers and producers are over-doing the Auto-Tune thing. They wash every note through a program that snaps all the notes to a pitch grid. It results in an unnatural sounding vocal. I think that is wrong. It may take longer, but I firmly believe that tuning should only be applied to specific (and infrequent if the singer is decent) notes that missed the mark. That way it sounds like an actual human sang the note, not a machine.

It may take longer, but I firmly believe that tuning should only be applied to specific (and infrequent if the singer is decent) notes that missed the mark. That way it sounds like an actual human sang the note, not a machine.

The other use of Auto-Tune lately is as an effect, a la T-Pain or the Songify-type applications made popular by things like Auto-Tune The News. This is a totally different thing. It isn’t trying to make you think someone can sing better than they can. It’s just trying to create a funky sound to add creativity or something different, although as common as it has become, I don’t think “different” is the right word. I say go for it when it comes to that. It allows people to get funky and be creative.
So there you have it. Auto-Tune is a tool like any other. I love what it can do for singers. But as with any other tool, in the wrong hands it can be ugly.