[Ty Ford]

BTW, here’s the one I use.

https://www.zzounds.com/productreview–EBTHE2PKG

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Philip and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

The system audio circuitry in a Mac is unbalanced. While not impossible to deal with, there are cautions. I use a hum cutter that takes the Mac audio and outputs it as a balanced signal via TRS jacks. You could simply try that first. You amy or may not need a TRS to XLR cable for each monitor. Some monitors have both inputs.

How are you creating your podcasts? Software, hardware, etc.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Todd and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

Your question has a complex answer. It begs more questions.
1. How good do you want the audio to sound?
2. How big is the stage?
3. How many people with lines onstage at the same time?
4. Is this a musical?
5. Is there live or prerecorded music?
6. What do you intend to do with the footage?

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hey Mary Beth,

AFTRASAG rates depend on how the piece is used. If you want to call me, I’m on the east coast. 410.296.2868

If it’s LD for you. Call and give me your number and I’ll call you back.

If I’m not the person for the gig, I have a pretty wide network of other talent.

Thanks,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Jordan and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

[Jordan Wolf] “I have tried a number of methods to lessen the whine and have not been pleased with the results as it takes away too much from the voice.

Two questions:
1. What has caused this whine/noise?

>>I’m going to guess, the hard drive motor brushes.

I’m sure one of the last things the video camera manufacturer thought about was audio, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the answer comes back as “it’s a video camera, not an audio recorder”.

We’re working on getting a standalone portable audio recorder (Sound Designs), but if the whine occurs with our camera’s HDD-based system, why would it not be the same with the HDD system in the audio recorder?

>>I think you may mean Sound Devices, not Sound Designs. It is very likely that the noise is both internal and external. Internal means any mic or mixer attached to the camera will be problematic. External means physical noise generated by the camera that you can hear while standing near the camera. This is not all that unusual and is seldom a problem. If you put the camera into record in a quiet room, can you hear it while standing next to it? Sony Digital betacam cameras are pretty noisy, but they have been used for years.

The Sound devices 744T and 788T are remarkably quiet with exceptionally good preamps. When I reviewed the 744T, I purposely under-recorded the audio with peaks at -30 dB. I transferred the audio to Pro Tools and normalized the file to have peaks at -.5 dB. While there was some noise, it was still usable. Very impressive.

Just some thoughts…onto the next question.

2. What have you found (other than ADR, etc.) is the best method to remove this whine/noise?

>>There are a number of noise reduction programs and the good news is that your noise is probably continuous, therefore, easier to reduce. Mac’s Soundtrack Pro is good and comes with FCP. Izotope’s Rx is good.

Brief Equipment List –

Camera Used: JVC GY-HD250U
Recording Medium: ProHD 100GB HDD
Microphones: Sennheiser MKH60 & Sennheiser ew100ENG G2
Mixer/Preamp: Shure FP24

All connections are balanced and levels between the mixer and camera are calibrated to 0dBu @1kHz. The batteries were fresh and wireless frequencies had been carefully allocated for the area. Any other questions, feel free to ask.

Thanks in advance for any insight.”

>>What you’re telling us leads me to believe you were operating the system correctly. I can’t say for sure because I wasn’t there. It would be interesting to know if anyone else has had noise problems with this external hard drive. There is the possibility that the individual hard drive is defective. If there is another way to record with the camera and the noise is not present, then you know it’s the hard drive or, at the very least, the interface.

The drive you mention looks a lot like a Focus Enhancements Firestore. I don’t know if they OEM’d it for JVC or if JVC made it themselves. I have a FS-4Pro for standard DV. The first year was not a pleasant experience. Not for noise problems. I hear others are quite happy with theirs. Maybe I just got a lemon. The replacement they sent last time seems to be working, but I’ve only used it 3 times because of the bad first experiences. Some minor noise, but OK for shooting even in the relative quiet of my recording studio with external mics and a Sound Devices 442 mixer.

Here’s a clip:https://idisk.mac.com/tyreeford-Public/GuitarsOfPikesville/JoshGifts.mov

Give it a bit of time to load up. Sounds pretty good, right? I have very good mics and the Sound Devices 442 preamps are very good.

Having said all of this, Sound Devices 744T and 788T are stone quiet and sound a lot better.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

John,

No need to be humble. You have great opinions.

Soundtrack pro does have a formant shifting voice changer. I used it to do a duet with myself on a read of Malvina Reynold’s “Little Boxes.”

Hear it here: https://idisk.mac.com/tyreeford-Public/LittleBoxes.mp3

John’s right, though, getting a good character requires talent. I happen to be an AFTRA/SAG voice talent. Even with effects, it helps to have talent make the basic voice happen. If you get down to needing to pay someone, let me know. If done all sorts of character voices.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Reid,

I don’t know that JVC camera. I set the master to 0 dB (the center detended position), make sure I’m line out to line in or mic out to mic in and send tone to teh camera. I set tone at -20. I run th e442 meters in VU/Peak mode and I don’t have any problems.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

[Reid Fiester] “Hi Ty, a couple questions….

Is the master gain control a attenuator or a more complex control?
Do you use it?
Are you close to max on the 442 gain/faders to run that hot out?”

Frederick! Excellent!

More complex than what? It’s a knob. I don’t use it much, mostly to bring down all pots evenly.

Don’t understand the last question.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hi Laura,

Guess the book hasn’t got there yet. 🙂

-20 on the DVX100. I don’t know where -12 came from, maybe back in the analog days when shure mixers and analog cameras were used.

On all of the Sound Devices mixers, you send tone which shows up reading 0 VU on the mixer. Choose the correct mixer output to camera input, e.g. mic out to mic in, line out to line in.

Set you camera meters to -20. Set your mixer to read VU AND Peak, or PEAK only if it doesn’t do both. You now have from 0 to +20 on the mixer to have safe audio. With my Sound Devices 442 mixer, I set the internal limiter threshold to +16. I also try to keep my levels peaking at about +16, which is where the first red LED of the display lights. That gives me 4 dB of Ooop! room. With the limiter in, that’s usually enough.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Hello Cal and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

Blackberry interference even gets into hardwired mics. You have to tell them to “blackface” the units. That means turn them all the way off, not just on standby.

When I’m doing location audio and hear it, I call out “PHONE INTERFERENCE. That’s a busted take. Please turn your communicators all they way off and leave them off during the shoot, or we’ll be here a long time.”

On a recent shoot for Apple, in Virginia, I had to call phone interference three times. I didn’t get angry. I just called “phone interference, busted sound.” There was a flurry as people checked to see or in fact, turned ’em off. Not like I didn’t tell em before.

They think it’s only when they are talking. They seem not to get that when the device gets pinged periodically, it’s answerback radiates from their phone into the audio.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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