AUDIO: Dialogue garbled ONLY on mobile device

[Shane Ross]

What were your peak dB levels on the timeline? They should be nowhere near 0. They should be between -12dB and -6dB

Shane
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[Jesse Selwyn]

They were up near about -2.
But I just thought about that – dropped everything by -6db and trying a new export.

If the levels were too hot, could it effect the dialogue only?

[Shane Ross]

It affects the audio that is peaking. If the music bed is lower, it won’t distort.

Shane
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Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Michael Gissing]

Put the entire mix through a decent compressor limiter (if you haven’t already) and set peaks around -10 dbfs. The tiny toy speakers in mobile devices cannot handle volume or dynamic material. Dialog can be very dynamic and as Shane points out, it is likely the loudest material in the mix.

Also some devices have volume limiters which will act like a poor compressor. The sum total of all this is to control your mix dynamics and not use full range of the digital signal. Full range digital signals can also further distort when data compressed as aac or mp3, particularly at low data rates.

[Jesse Selwyn]

Thanks for the help – it turns out the dialogue levels weren’t the culprit.

It was a strange issue of panning… FCP defaults audio pans to -1.
After trying a million other things, I randomly center panned all the dialogue and ran a quick export and upload test. Watched it on mobile and – CLEAR dialogue.

Center panning it lowered the overall volume quite a bit, so I had to boost everything to get it back up to par. It must have to do with the way it was recorded, which was out of my control.

I didn’t know panning could have such a muffling effect like that – and on mobile only.
Very strange issue, but…

SOLVED!

[Bret Williams]

Muffled? Sounds like a out of phase type issue, which would leave alone music and sound effects for the most part.

If the voice was dual mono and out of phase and then you panned the tracks together, the voice would pretty much disappear. But if it were say a lab and a boom and it were out of phase and panned together you’d get a garbled muffled sort of problem. And since iPhones and iPads are center panning stereo material, that’s when you’d hear it.

As far as levels, everything you download and buy commercially is going to be peaking as close to zero as possible. And things like films have some pretty dramatic changes. Devices don’t distort that. I originally read your post as distortion/over modulation issue. But muffled? And having to bring up the levels when you center pan sounds like a phase thing. Delete a channel, and pan the remaining channel and see what you get.

[Erick Puentes]

I think I am having a similar issue as far as “phasing”. This is my first encounter with this so if anybody can walk me though it I’d appreciate it. I apologize is this is a simple fix. I’ll give a little detail.

I shoot product demos with my Canon HF S200. When I import the video into FCP7, the audio tracks look like stereo but they are two mono tracks. I tried to unlink stereo pair and then proceeded to delete one of the tracks (right track deleted). Now the left track remains but only plays out of the left side. I played with the panning and it has no effect of the track.

I’m obviously doing something wrong but can’t figure it out. Any help is appreciated! Thanks!

[Dave Donaldson]

I have this same problem recently. Here is a link to the project I just did. Coming out of the desktop or laptop, no problem. Coming out of my ipad, no problem. Coming out through my iPhone 4S it only plays the sound fx and music. But if I put in earbuds I can hear everything. The volume is pretty low and I understand that. But I’d like to troubleshoot this I case it happens again to me or anybody. Here’s the link. Watch from the desktop first, then watch from a phone.

https://youtu.be/YJdVB8gj9d0

[Dave Donaldson]

I have this same problem recently. Here is a link to the project I just did. Coming out of the desktop or laptop, no problem. Coming out of my ipad, no problem. Coming out through my iPhone 4S it only plays the sound fx and music. But if I put in earbuds I can hear everything. The volume is pretty low and I understand that. But I’d like to troubleshoot this I case it happens again to me or anybody. Here’s the link. Watch from the desktop first, then watch from a phone.

https://youtu.be/YJdVB8gj9d0

Adobe Premier CS6

[Jesse Selwyn]

Did you try changing the panning?
Center panning all tracks fixed this issue for me.