Recording Multiple Kinds Of Microphones In Reaper

2013-05-23T03:26:50Z

I've had a AT2020 USB mic for a while but I recently bought a Scarlett 2i2 and a MXL 990. Is it possible for me to record both microphones in Reaper? If so how? I know it'd be ideal to just get another xlr microphone and I will eventually, but for now I'd like to utilize what I have if at all possible.

BIG wave rise and crash sound

2013-05-22T05:18:02Z

I have a real close up on a wave crashing on a short I'm working on. I'm trying to make as precise as possible but I'm not satisfied yet.

I have good real big wave sounds as source that I tried to pitch down and mix with things like cannon roars... but it's hard to make something really powerfull and convincing at the same time. The fall is not so hard to make as the sound of the wave rising, I guess (the cannon roar has worked reasonably for the first). It's a mad man's job trying to "shape" water, really.

How to make iron man Sounds? :)

2013-05-22T18:48:52Z

Hi.. i need to record all the sounds of iron man 3 trailer, its homework,, i just need some ideas of how to record the sounds or design them :D.

Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke1Y3P9D0Bc

i would appreciate all ur anwswers.

Atte: Luis ;)

any tips on creating tech based sounds like this

2013-05-20T21:31:05Z

http://vimeo.com/37278827

Who's designing sound with an iPad?

2010-11-15T22:13:34Z

One of these magical gizmos has found its way into my life and now I'm wondering what else it can do besides check email and play Angry Birds. Have found a few interesting apps out there for creating semi-random soundscapes and textures (Curtis, Thicket) as well as some apps that provide a real function (Korg iElectribe, AC-7). But as always, I'm curious to know what my fellow sound folks are doing with this amazing piece of tech.

Tim Prebble has a similar post on his blog, which brought even more interesting ideas to light.

UPDATE: Recently read a post about Touchable, an iPad controller for Abelton Live. I've not used Live for sound design before…anyone out there endorse it?

Tascam DR-100 carry case: PortaBrace AR-100, Petrol PS615 or a camera case?

2013-05-21T17:56:30Z

Hi guys,

Just wondering what Tascam DR-100 / DR-100MkII users are using for a carry case? I'm looking at the PortaBrace AR-100 or the Petrol Bags PS615, or finding a suitable camera case as people have suggested in other threads on here.

The AR-100 is fairly expensive for what it is, but it does have the strap clips at the bottom, so when you have it on the strap it's "upside-down"; the right way up for the user. The PS615 looks a little nicer and is a little cheaper, but the clips are on the top, meaning it'd be upside-down for the user...

Anyone have any suggestion or experience with either? Are the controls easy to access through the plastic cover? The main problem I can see at the moment is trying to use the dial control on the front of the DR-100 through the plastic, but that's always going to be the case with such a design!

Thanks in advance!

Call for SFX ideas for 'The Guide To Sound Effects'

2013-05-21T12:49:18Z

Hey guys and gals

We recently gave The Guide To Sound Effects a major overhaul, with a new look, search and more - and now we're looking to add more sfx ideas to the list.

So if you've got any ideas to share on ways of making specific sfx, please submit them using the form on the site and we'll add them.

The Guide is at http://www.epicsound.com/sfx - hope you find it useful and we look forward to your ideas!

Cheers,

-Asbjoern and David

Headphones for Mastering ?

2013-05-19T22:26:06Z

Hey hello!!

I'm looking for a good pair of headphones under $200 for mastering field recordings.

I was told that the Ultrasone Pro 550 and Audio-Technica ATH-M50 are very good options.

What do you guys use or recommend?

(I already own a Xone XD-40 and a Sony MDR-7506)

Thanks a lot..

Sound coming from behind using stereo field

2011-06-07T20:26:40Z

Hey all,

I'm working on a sci-fi actiony flick right now, very low budget so mixing in surround is not an option. I have a scene where a robot with a jetpack is landing behind someone, off screen in the distance. I've been playing around with EQ and verb and cant get a realistic sound. Basically what I'm asking is; what is the best way to make things sound like they're coming from behind you using stereo?

Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 query

2013-05-20T22:49:30Z

Hey guys, So I was planning to buy an interface for myself & I had boiled down to the MOTU 4pre. But the dealer from whom I was planning to buy told me that I could get a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 8in/8out interface for less price compared to the 4pre. The thing I want to know is would you ever need so many channels in an interface when you are dealing with film sound? My work mostly consists of sound editing and occasional ADR. I was looking for something portable but the price factor put me on hold. I'd go for the Pro 40 only if those many channels are useful. What do you think? Thank You.

I'm working on a short where there are three actors, all wearing VANS shoes. Would you use a different pair of vans for each actor?

2013-05-12T22:36:03Z

The short is about a coach who's trying to teach his players how to play baseball. All of the players are wearing vans in the scenes and the surfaces range from the dirt on a baseball, concrete, and grass.

Would you guys use different pairs of vans for each actor even though they're the same on picture? I don't want the foot steps to walk over each other, no pun intended.

Thank you!

Good Videos on SD/Mixing.

2013-05-20T20:00:02Z

any good videos out there on sound design or mixing on a sound stage? i've seen most of the ones on you tube. are there any DVDs or anything like that?

Future-proof cross-comptability hard drive considerations

2013-05-20T02:56:44Z

I'm at crossroads and would love some insight across the Mac/PC spectrum on this:

Currently I work in a PC environment, however I am preparing to invest in a Macbook within the near future - to run PT and be portable for being at the stage and so forth. The PC remains my primary work station, the Macbook to be a secondary, mobile workstation, but still retaining all necessary capabilities such as plugins and FX library. The PC has MacDrive 9 Pro installed. A major reason for having this Macbook as a secondary system is that it gives my internal workflow ecosystem the full spectrum of Mac-PC interoperability.

So, I'm preparing to migrate my FX library to a new 3 TB external (to future-proof it as far as disk space, ruggedness, and USB 3.0 ability are concerned). I currently have a copy of it on a 2TB drive formatted as NTFS (this will become a backup, to incrementally updated).

The crossroads I'm at are, do I format this new 3TB as NTFS or HFS+ (Journaled)? And subsequently, if I go with NTFS, how reliable and robust is Paragon NTFS? As in, can you actually trust Paragon with your data or has there been situations which have left you permanently calling into question how secure/reliable it is at not taking your drive partition down or something. Or one step further, would it be even better that my main FX drive ben HFSJ, and the primary backup be NTFS, just so there's some level of redundancy? In the vain of how you never want to buy HDs of the same "batch" for a RAID since they're all likely to fail at the same time.

Unfrtunately, I have had the reliability of MacDrive called into question - a few months ago, a bug which was discovered to be leaving the partition header/catalog open to system access during read/write leaft the entire drive vulnerable and caused I/O instability. Thus, when it would become too unstable during a transfer, and the system would BSOD mid-transfer, the drive would be dead on re-boot (not physically dead, but the partition wiped out). Diskwarrior on a colleague's system couldn't even repair it it had been so corrupted. After a very intense discussion with Mediafour and many dump logs later, it appears the bug was isolated and resolved. In hindsight I had realized that the HFS drive which went down was not actually Journaled, since I had long-ago formatted it with MacDrive (versus on OSX) and never knew that MacDrive formatting never supported Juornaling. So to some degree, this drive was a sitting duck, and I am partially culpable for what had occurred.

However, even though this has been fixed and having since transferred TB's of data to and from HFS drives without a single reliability problem, this ONE situation has left me permanently on-edge and extremely apprehensive of setting this main FX drive as HFSJ. However I also want this drive to be easily usable (or native in an HFSJ-sense) on the Macbook in a future-proof sense, but alas I have no track record with Paragon NTFS for the demands of post production.

I'd love some thoughts on this, especially from those who have used Paragon NTFS. My head is spinning a little bit - probably over thinking it. You might call me obsessive about it, but as I'm sure many of you know first-hand, your FX library is your "job security". Unfortunately thanks to the MacDrive snafu it has become more than an easy, no-questions-asked decision for me (run it as HFSJ) of how to maintain and future-proof this FX library "job security".

Note: I have zero interest in FAT and exFAT. I'm strictly speaking between NTFS and HFSJ

UPDATE: Thanks everybody for the input and insight, invaluable points of view and situations to consider. I'll be getting Mediafour on the horn to see what they have to say about the bug fix (whether it truly was the antidote - the voicemail they left for me last week wasn't reassuring, hence the consideration) or whether it still remains too risky for my liking. Definitely liking the mirrored-copy-in-different-filesystems idea to implement over the next few months as a primer to investing in the Mac. I handn't directly thought about having two "live" FX drives synced but tied to each individual system instead of the hassle of trying to share one "live" the whole way around. It makes perfect sense actually. Keep it simple. If anyone has further insight, by all means please feel welcome to share it! Thanks so far everyone, I appreciate the ideas.

Some questions about car pass by techniques

2013-05-19T18:16:25Z

Hi there! I'm moving my first steps into sfx recording and I have some questions about car pass by recording techniques.

I saw in many videos people pointing their pistol grips at car arriving (let's say left) and then following it with the mic to the right, doing a fast movement with the arm.

Now, if they're using a stereo mic to capture that pass by, why they need to move the mic? I wouldn't sound better with the mic still pointing at the centre of the road (between left and right)?
If they're using a mono mic it would make sense moving it following the source of the sound, but why recording a car pass by in mono? Maybe to automatize the pan in post and make recording fit with various footage?
Last question: recording a car pass by using a stereo recorder with no XY position, but just with the two mics pointing one left and one right (like olympus LS-100), would cause some spatial listening isssue?

Thanks for answering ;)

DMS Senn Experience

2013-05-19T16:01:11Z

Is there anyone out there who has any familiarity with working with a Double Mid Side Sennheiser setup? Thanks!

Logic Pro - Remove Leftover Echo

2013-05-16T14:57:44Z

How do I cancel the leftover echos after I pause a track? I can mute the track but when I un-mute it's still there.

How to design lava/volcano sounds

2013-05-17T19:07:45Z

Just wondering if any of you have any tried and true techniques or suggestions for designing lava and/or volcano sounds (anything from volcanic eruption, flowing lava, molten volcanic rock movement, etc)

Waves S360 R360 Room Emulation

2013-05-19T02:12:33Z

I was looking for any posts on waves S360 and R360 used together for room emulation and couldn't find anything...

I'm using them on a feature right now and I'm really thrown off by some of the design in S360. The Room Size in the S360 has a minimum number of 1200. In the manual it states that this is a measurement of square meters, which would make that room roughly 3960 sq. ft. So even at a Distance setting of 1.5 meters, there seems to me to be large amounts of the early reflections mixed into the signal for say a bedroom where the source sound is 1.5 meters into the scene.

I like the R360, but the room size in that is just a number from 46 to 100. In the manual it doesn't state that it relates to any measurements.

Am I missing something? I'd like to model smaller rooms. Right now it's also working pretty well to balance echoey production with ADR the client could afford to do, but I feel like for that purpose it spreads the ADR to the left and right too much. Kind of wish there was a negative width setting, too.

I really liked the S360 when I first started using it, but I keep second guessing myself and turning down the distance more and more. It does sound pretty awesome even at a minimum setting though. It gives a sweet divergent spread that really makes the dialog pop

Do you use S360? and if so what do you feel works best? pointers?

Can you stop an elevator?

2013-01-30T04:01:14Z

Hey Sound Designers! It's been a while since I've been on the forums, but I'm back, and I have a question for you: How would you stop an elevator?

A 1930's era elevator is careening down it's shaft when something goes wrong (a crack! the snap of cable, or an explosion?) and the car comes to a stop. Is it slow an ominous (with the creak and screech of metal on metal) or is it violent? What do you hear? What elements are involved? Give me ideas. Stop this elevator.

I will be forever indebted to you! --Phil

Pre Dub mix question.

2013-05-18T08:33:22Z

Hello all!

i'm not new to sound, but new to this site and i must say this place is a dream come true! amazing things on here!

So my Q is a little long, but plz bare with me. also my spellings not the best in the world due to my dyslexia. but thank god for spell checker!

My Q is to do with Pre Dubbing. and what you commit to at this stage. IE stereo sounds. how do you know what will work or not work later down the line when you come to do the finale mix? is it a gut thing? or is it more planned out? (keeping some sounds out of the pre dub mix cos you know they will be a ''feature'' sound)

My fear is i will commit to something and ''bake'' the sound in. then later down the line in the mix i will be like ''ahhgg, that sound is too wide, but not alot i can do about it now''

hope you get me! lol.

thanks in advance for advice. jx

Exporting clips in Pro Tools and sound card conversion

2013-05-17T23:06:27Z

This may be a noob question but when exporting clips out of Pro Tools, say with fades and what not, does anyone know if the sound card is engaged at all? The reason I ask is I have some sounds I've recorded using some pretty high-end conversion via firewire and I don't want those sounds degraded if I do some editing to the files when not hooked up to the firewire sound card and just editing on my laptop, and then exporting the clips/regions out. Hope that makes sense and isn't too ridiculous a question to ask. thanks.

Zoom H2 with the IMR Vortex encoder?

2010-11-30T15:04:43Z

Looking at the specs of the well known Zoom H2 I stumbled upon the following: a relatively new and low cost piece of software by IM Research, which converts multi-channel files from the H2 and H4 to various 'surround' formats:

http://im-research.com/products/vze/

I've found metric tons of information about the H2 on here and elsewhere but very little to no user experiences with this specific software. (Excuse me if it has been discussed on here, I did a search.)

Who has actual experiences with this, I'm quite curious. Surely it will not compare to Soundfield, Holophone and the likes, I guess. But is it actually useable or just a gimmick? The concept in itself is quite nice, it could potentialy be a great alternative for the very low budget productions.

FEL Mic Preamplifier for Zoom H4n & Rode NTG2

2011-10-19T07:23:28Z

Hello Audio Professionals,

Im new here & kindly help me out with my queries.

I have a Zoom H4N & i recently bought a Rode NTG-2 with the Rode Blimp but the levels are really low when i record even @ REC Level 100%. So im thinking of buying a Preamp for my setup - Sound Devices & other high level mic pres are too expensive for me right now, So i thought of buying a "FEL Mini MicBooster Extended XLR" - here is the link - http://www.felmicamps.co.uk/products/felminimicbooste.html.

I've seen a little good reviews about this mic pre & its handy for field recording + cheap aswell.

I would like to get some professional opinion before i buy this stuff.

Kindly help.

Cheers,

Bala.

gift ideas for an aspiring sound designer

2013-05-16T08:25:26Z

hello!

my boyfriend is graduating in a few weeks and will soon apply to a sound design program. i want to get him a basic starter kit with different tools he can use as he works on his portfolio. i've been reading some posts here, and i ordered the vmeter usb midi controller and zoom h1 recorder. i'm thinking about ordering the korg monotron as well.

are there other fun and useful gadgets out there that you suggest? or any comments about the items i already mentioned? i'm a noob, and i want to get some great stuff for him, though my budget is $200.

he checks this site often, so i'm worried he'll see this...

anyway, any recommendation/suggestion would be appreciated! thank you so very much!

A Living Sound Effect Library

2011-02-23T20:02:05Z

I don't know if any of you have seen this but I just found it while looking up bird songs on youtube and I was pretty amazed..

[youtube]VjE0Kdfos4Y[/youtube]

South African Sound FX?

2012-06-05T13:20:28Z

Hey there. Anyone based in S Africa, or have good recordings from there they'd be willing to trade? Working on a show based there - could do with some more specific recordings - preferably crowd bgd street chatter, towns, kids or any rural ambiences specific to S Africa - jo'Berg/Capetown or anywhere really.

Please let me know, I have UK/London specific recordings i could trade. Thanks

Importing OMFs into Pro Tools; 2 mono tracks instead of one stereo...

2013-05-17T08:19:14Z

When I import an OMF into Pro Tools they enter as two mono tracks, panned left and right as opposed to one stereo track - any ideas as to why this is the case?

23.976fps vs 24fps nightmare

2013-05-11T03:57:43Z

So I just started work on a 23.976fps project that has some scenes that were accidentally shot in 24fps (of course, these scenes are sprinkled throughout every reel...). Sound was recorded at 23.976fps throughout -- at least that's what I was told. The editor also told me that they didn't convert any of the footage, so the Media Composer sequence has mixed frame rates.

Got the AAF today. Of course, all 24fps scenes are majorly out of sync. There are two workarounds I can think of, but if those don't work I'm out of options:

a) Perform a video mixdown in Avid prior to exporting, so at least all the video is in 23.976.

b) Export two AAFs: one from the regular sequence at 23.976fps, another from the same sequence reinterpreted as 24fps. Then combine both in Pro Tools.

Of course, neither workaround solves the drift issue, but I'm hoping that at least the In points for each clip will sync up. And most clips are short enough for the drift to not matter. For longer clips I guess I'll just manually slow audio down by 0.1%...

Do any of you have experience with this sort of problem? Any ideas? I heard that Titan can deal with these types of problems, but that's definitely not in the budget.

Tips for mixing dialogue

2011-02-19T07:22:16Z

Can this be a thread for tips on mixing dialogue?

Do you EQ the voice a certain way or ever use different sync for different characters? Reverb/delay?

Do you have a certain workflow for the dial mix?

Do you treat the mix differently for things like camera angles or whether the character's back is facing the camera?

Thanks!

Mix levels for Facebook game interface sounds

2013-04-18T11:38:39Z

I'm working on a suite of around 25 interface sounds for a Facebook game, and wondering what kind of level to bounce the sounds out. There is no musical or ambient bed to mix the sounds against, so I'm setting the standard myself.

I usually mix music, and if I'm mastering my tracks, I'll place a limiter on the master channel and push it to 0db digital. (Let's not get into a loudness war argument here!)

In the case of the game, let's say I take what I consider to be the most important sound - the one that needs to be loudest in relation to all the other sounds - what level should this sound come out as? Should I go for full scale digital to maximise loudness, mixing the others lower in relation to this high point, or should I choose lower levels for everything so I won't risk the sounds being alarmingly loud?