Jean-christophe Boulay
Forum Replies Created
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At least it made for some funny stuff on Twitter: https://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/02/oscars-audio-guy/
https://twitter.com/#!/OscarsAudioGuy
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
As always, Mr. Gissing is spot-on. But we all know standard procedure is there to be broken by weird client demands. If the stems are not what they want and you get some French rants and requirements in response, you can post them up here and I can translate them for you, if that helps. Or email me at jc_at_audioz.com
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Martin,
An equalizer with a high-shelf filter cutting higher frequencies will get you partway there. A touch of distortion or saturation on top of that should get you in the ballpark. You can play with the EQ frequency and gain cut to get the tone you like best and only use a bit of soft distortion, don’t go overboard. This should be inserted after whatever normal mixing treatment needs to be applied to the voice over, such as normal EQ and compression.
I don’t have any experience with STP and positively hate working with audio in FCP, so can’t advise much on specific plugins to use. The default system AU plugins “AUHighShelfFilter” and “AUDistortion” should be able to get you there if that’s all you have available. There are also more focused and professional (and expensive) tools, such as Audio Ease’s Speakerphone, which is probably a bit much for your current needs.IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
As the others suggested, that sound is very likely produced by a synth. Pretty much any subtractive synthesis instrument can produce something similar pretty quickly. It probably started with an oscillator generating noise that was then low-pass filtered to keep only the deepest bass without producing a distinct note. Play around with amp and filter enveloppes to give the sound the “shape” you want. Compress like crazy. EQ a bit more if needed and you’ll have a cone-rattling low frequency tone.
This kind of sound should be used sparingly as it occupies a whole lot of audio energy and will only be felt on systems with proper bass representation and because it loses impact when repeated.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Dale,
I see from the website that HighPoint seem to produce separate cards for PC (RocketU 1022A and 1144A) and Mac (RocketU Dual for Mac and RocketU Quad for Mac). You have the Mac-specific model, right? If so, there are drivers on the website, which should’ve come on a CD with the card but you never can tell these days. Are those installed and/or updated? I see the current driver revision is 1.0.1. Support is listed for OS 10.6 or 10.7 only. The drivers are available inside the “Download Center” tab of each product page on “https://www.hptmac.com/US/categories.php?compatibility=18”.
If all that’s OK, I don’t quite know what else to suggest, having no experience with these exact cards. With the PCIe slots available inside your computer, you can’t really have gone wrong but it’s worth trying the other x4 slot if you can.
If all else fails and support stays as awfully unhelpful, there are alternatives. The one I’ve installed and verified as working is the LaCie USB3.0 card. It requires Leopard or later and a driver install but seems to work just fine. And LaCie have more people you can call to complain to if need be.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Kesten,
What was probably happening there is that the recorder was set up for Microphone level and the board was feeding it Line level. I’ll skip all the technical stuff to get to the nitty-gritty; line level is much hotter than mic level.
In this situation, it was up to you to adjust. There really isn’t anything the FOH guy could do about it. Being a cozy studio dweller, I don’t have any field experience with the Zoom H4N but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a menu option or switch to set the input level to Line. Regardless of equipment, this is surely what the TV crew did. If you’re set on the wrong input level, no amount of input trimming will get you out, as you’ve discovered, as the difference in level is much greater than the adjustment range most input trims give you.
Basically, before you plug into a sound source, you must know what level standard (mic or line) is going to come out of it and adjust the input sensitivity on the recorder/mixer/amp accordingly.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
If you mixed directly in STP using its meters, you mixed to full scale. Relating this to an analog reference level gets pretty close to -12dBFS=0VU. Not exactly, but it’s the closest standard and that combination used to be a standard for radio spot production so I trust it.
In the audio meter in FCP, which reads peak levels in dBFS, a -20dbFS=0VU mix normally peaks around -10dBFS to -8dBFS. A -12dBFS=0VU mix peaks at the top of the meter, around 0dBFS. You could use this as a rough target if you have to change levels to match specs. Festival specs are a little loose so you should be fine, but on a broadcast project this could be a real problem.
dBFS and V.U. can be quite confusing. More and more, specs only refer to the peak digital level in dBFS but any spec mentioning V.U. must have a reference level associated to it (ie. x dBFS = 0VU) and you need a V.U. meter to really measure your level. In your situation, you should be fine just adjusting the overall level of the mix if needed and refering to digital peak measurements, as read in FCP.
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Erik,
The -12 or -20dB mentioned is the level of the tone in dBFS. It is the level to which VU meters’ Zero level will be aligned to. It is the audio level of the tone in FCP as set in the viewer.
Basically, this should match the delivery specs you’ve been given and the reference level of your audio mix. If your mix was done at a reference level of -20dbFS=0 VU and you put a -12dBFS tone to which the playback system is calibrated, your mix will come out very low. If you go the other way round, you’ll probably distort on the output and make a sound guy very angry. Everything should match.
If you realise your audio mix was done at the wrong level, that should be a quick fix for whoever did the mix. The overwhelming majority of audio specs for video delivery I’ve dealt with called for a -20dBFS=0VU reference level and most audio post studios are calibrated to that level.
IHTH,
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Hi Adam,
As far as “it’s just around the corner” goes, that corner may be a few months away. With Intel presently rolling out its LGA2011-based upmarket CPUs, the new Xeon E5’s are reported to be two to three months from launch still. It makes sense for Apple to wait for the new platform, considering the quite major architecture upgrade. If Apple design the MacPro to the full potential of the platform, it could be quite a big step up from the current models but with the quad-channel memory setup, steady high-density memory prices and Apple’s insistence on cramming two super-expensive CPUs inside every box, the prices will probably be going up as well. Early benchmarks of the platform suggest the most worthwhile gains in heavily threaded workstation applications, which is not really FCP7’s case. Not that much sense waiting around, then. I personally don’t think Thunderbolt is any reason to wait as it’s useless without devices to plug into, which consist of a few RAID enclosures right now and most editors are covered on that front already.
If you go for the current machine, you’ll get a super capable system now for what will probably end up being a wad of cash less than an eventual revision. David’s advice on going for an Adobe-approved nVidia GPU to unlock CUDA potential is excellent.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
All pretty basic shortcuts, so here goes:
Focus on Viewer: cmd-1
Focus on Browser: cmd-4
Navigation in Browser: arrow keys, first letter jump
Send to selected clip in Browser to Viewer: EnterCue the invitations the RTFM…
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com