Audio

From the “Why the Hell Didn’t I Think Of That” Department…

Charlie Tomaras, mixer and Macguyver's heir-apparent, makes and sells an adapter cable for the Sound Devices 552 that reroutes the SD card slot.

By Christian Dolan | February 05, 2011

From Charlie:"It's about an 11" cable that fits from the card slot in the bottom to a little black card enclosure receptacle at the other end. You can insert it and gaff tape the ribbon cable to the top side of the mixer and the card slot will be right at the edge of the mixer. The receptacle is only about ¼" thick and works perfectly." Read More

0 Comments

Boom, G…[awkward hand sign]

Rycote bows new G3 and G5 carbon fiber boom poles.

By Christian Dolan | February 02, 2011

I'm a bit late for dinner on this one, but you try maintaining a top-flight blog while fighting crime on nights and weekends. NOT EASY. Read More

0 Comments

Skipper! Little Buddy!

The Lockit Buddy DSLR Sync Box

By Christian Dolan | January 31, 2011

Yet another salvo in the ongoing struggle to "practicalize" the 5D for double-system use in modern (automated) workflows. Of course you can treat it like it's 16mm and sync manually, but this is tedious and time-consuming, which obviates any cost-saving advantages of using digital tech like the 5D in the first place. Read More

2 Comments

Epic Drums

"Big, bad, cinematic percussion" for your soundtracks and underscores.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | January 30, 2011

Bombastic. Action. Chase scenes. Energy. A touch of exotica, with occasional ethnic percussion elements, odd metals, and other special effects such as angrily strummed piano strings. Not subtle. No love scenes. Those are the terms that come to mind upon auditioning this loop library of 40 percussive construction kits from prolific producer Steve Sechi of Funk/Soul Productions. Read More

0 Comments

High Five

The Sound Devices 552 Mixer/Recoder

By Christian Dolan | January 18, 2011

A bit late to the game with this one, but my reviews are like fine wines: in addition to their getting better with age, they are also spendy and I wouldn't know one if it were thrown in my face by a lady offended by yet another inappropriate comment by myself in a public establishment. Read More

0 Comments

Vibration and Hum

Not all sources of low-frequency noise are electrical...

By Chris and Trish Meyer | January 16, 2011

I've already written about eliminating buzz and hum from audio connections. However, truth be told, I've been fighting an insidious low-frequency rumble in my latest studio for over a year now. Everything seems clean electrically, but when I listened to the playback of my voice recording sessions, I heard an extra low-frequency component whenever the downward expander (noise gate) on my Focusrite VoiceMaster Pro opened up. But I think I finally have it licked. Read More

0 Comments

Rooms, Racks, and Dumb-Asses

A Tour of Weird Features of an Effective Studio (from the out-of-print book The Fat Man on Game Audio: Tasty Morsels of Sonic Goodness)

By George Sanger, The Fat Man | January 09, 2011

Very few game audio houses have a room big enough to comfortably house a mid-sized musical ensemble and the equipment necessary to record them. To play well, people must be happy. A room is big enough for a band and its equipment if, and only if, you can throw a good beer party in it. If you are fortunate enough to be able to use such a room for your audio production, Team Fat recommends constantly monitoring any deviations in the room size by periodically calibrating it with such a party. Read More

0 Comments

Skip To the End

By Christian Dolan | January 06, 2011

Workflow, yo. Read More

0 Comments

Okay:  Equipment

An Overview of My Reluctance to Discuss Equipment
(from the out-of-print book The Fat Man on Game Audio: Tasty Morsels of Sonic Goodness)

By George Sanger, The Fat Man | January 04, 2011

George and his entire "Reel Mobile" studio in 1980 Los Angeles.OK, boys and girls, we're going to talk about equipment now. Are you excited? Sure you are! Talking about equipment can be fun-but it can also be very, very dangerous, can't it? We can lose track of our… our… anybody?That's right, Timmy, our Art.Anything else?That's right, Omar, schedule.Anything else?Oh yeah, our fundamental humanity, that's good, Suzie. But kids, if you know how to do it the Fat Man Way, talking about equipment can be perfectly safe-and really fun! Read More

0 Comments

Gifts For the HDSLR Shooter in Your Life

That Won't Break Your Budget!

By Clint Milby | November 25, 2010

For those of us in the industry who spend most of our life engaged in activities that many of our friends and family don't really understand, shopping for us can be a daunting task. Although warned to just get gift cards, sometimes our loved ones insist on getting something more personal. The result can be a gift that never sees the light of day, is re-gifted or we have to make that awkward request for a receipt which never sets well... Read More

9 Comments

TecnoTur 6 (Castilian): interviews with Escuchalibros, RAMM Animation, and actress Carla Sánchez

2D animation in Latin America, audiobook production in Spain, and Venezuelan actress/model Carla Sánchez

By Allan Tépper | November 24, 2010

TecnoTur episode 6 in Castilian (aka "Spanish") is now available. In episode 6, we learn about Venezuelan actress/model Carla Sánchez's latest projects, and we briefly discuss Allan T©pper's book Unleash GoogleVoice's hidden power for 3G, WiFi, and free international roaming. Then we present the 2nd part of our interview with Rafael Andreu of RAMM Animation, whose projects have included the Castilian version of Sesame Street (Plazo S©samo in Latin America or Barrio S©samo in Spain). Finally, we discuss audiobook production with Victoria Mesas García of Escuchalibros of Spain. Here are details about how to hear TecnoTur free, or become a subscriber. Read More

1 Comments

When is a NAS not just a NAS

Network Attached storage as sexy as I could make it

By Steve Hullfish | November 20, 2010

Why do other guys on PVC do all the sexy reviews about stuff like new cameras and I always choose to write about unsexy stuff like waveform monitors and network attached storage?Probably because when I write about something it's because I just need something that is going to do a job for me in the background while I get the work done with my clients and creative partners. Hence, another unsexy, but critical review of something to make your life a little better while you get out and get stuff done. May I present the QNAP TS-659 Pro? QNAP has a bunch of other NAS and server products, but this one seems pretty well suited for my small business. Read More

0 Comments

Hey, how about a MacPro clone to give us the system we need

It'll never happen but a Mac clone might be just what the doctor ordered

By Scott Simmons | November 17, 2010

For professional editors and post-production artists the choice of Macintosh is usually almost a religious decision. We want to nothing to do with the PC, not in the edit suite or with our machines at home.Macs have always had a prominent place in creative disciplines like graphic design, photography so Macintosh dominated post-production is no surprise. The Mac OS has always felt like it was created as a simpler, more elegant way to work with your computer so that has appealed to the right-brain thinkers since day one. Read More

15 Comments

Sonicfire Pro 5 with Premiere Pro CS5 Workflow Video Tutorials

Learn how to use Sonicfire Pro 5 to create and edit music scoring for your video projects in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.

By Jeff Foster | September 15, 2010

Watch as I use real-world examples of how I work using SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 5 with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 in a broadcast bumper. The first video is an "over-the-shoulder" view of the production process with little explanation of why I'm choosing specific tools, but rather a fast-paced overview of just how simple it is to select and edit the music soundtrack to work with the various parts of the video; including voice over and interview clips. The second video takes a more in-depth approach to the round-trip workflow between Premiere Pro CS5 and Sonicfire Pro 5, and why I choose specific tools for the quickest editing possible. Read More

0 Comments

Drums & Drummers: Two Drum Loop Libraries

A drummer, a drum kit, a room, a set of mics: This is the art of loops at its most basic.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | July 31, 2010

This time around, we're going to step outside our normal realm of song construction kits and review a pair of drum loop libraries to be used in combination with other melodic instrument parts that may have came with your music creation software or other construction kit packs. But even though the subject matter may be the same, the approaches these two collections take are very different.{C} Read More

0 Comments

Sonicfire Pro 5 with After Effects CS5 Workflow Video Tutorials

Learn how to use Sonicfire Pro 5 to create and edit music scoring for your motion graphics projects in After Effects CS5

By Jeff Foster | July 21, 2010

I've broken these tutorials down into three videos, using some real-world examples of how I work using SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 5 with Adobe After Effects CS5 projects, creating short production videos and motion graphics for broadcast. Whether I'm creating/editing a short video with layers of motion graphics or building a motion graphics animated opener/bumper, I can use the soundtrack creation and editing capabilities in Sonicfire Pro 5 to produce a quick, interactive workflow with After Effects CS5. Read More

0 Comments

Big Fish Audio: Hadeeth 2 Arabic Rhythms

Add an exotic hand percussion sound to your underscores.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | July 10, 2010

Unlike the original Hadeeth collection that combined a drum kit with Arabic percussion, this collection (also produced by Ara Antranik) is a pure hand percussion affair. You get 66 construction kits, each containing a full mix plus three to eight individual instrument loops including the duff, mazhar, rak, tabla, sakat, tar, and duhollah (all percussive instruments) played by Haythm Blat. About two dozen different regional and traditional styles are represented, sometimes played at different tempi (ranging from 80 to 180 bpm) or with variations on the same theme. Read More

0 Comments

Big Fish Audio: Primal Drums

A film scoring toolkit masquerading as an ethnic music library.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | June 19, 2010

Ah, yes: Books and their covers. Given the title and the evocative woodcut-style cover art by Nancy Nimoy, here I was expecting an African-influenced percussion collection. Instead, this library contains 50 construction kits well suited for a film composer or adventurous ethnic-hybrid producer, providing alternately lush cinemaesque landscapes and urgent chase sequences. Although heavily percussion-driven and indeed tribal in flavor, there are also several melodic parts both percussive and instrumental, plus massive "pads" (sustained chords and other musical textures) to fill out the compositions. Read More

0 Comments

Simple Soundproofing

A couple of attempts to reduce the slap echo in my voiceover room.

By Chris and Trish Meyer | June 06, 2010

We work at home. Our house has two levels; downstairs is half-jokingly referred to as "the studio complex." We've set up one of the spare bedrooms down there as an audio room. Most bedrooms are boxes with parallel walls, which in turn often cause problems with resonances and echoes in a room. Fortunately, the spare bedrooms in this house have some non-parallel walls, which help break up and diffuse the pattern of echoes, which makes them less annoying. Adding more hard surfaces such as computer desks and monitors can increase the amount of diffusion, but sound is still bouncing around. The result is akin to the reverberation present in what one would call a "live small room." As we use a microphone placed about a foot away from our head instead of a headset mic (to cut down on the distraction, and also pick up sounds such as the keystrokes and mouseclicks), it picks up some of this room sound as well.Although I personally like a little natural reverberation when I listen to a voice - completely dead rooms sound unnatural to me - a few have "commented on" the liveliness of the room sound in the voiceovers to our training videos, so I decided to see if I could tame the bouncing soundwaves a bit. I tried a cheap, low-tech approach first, then threw a little more money and work at it. I thought it would be fun to share my results: Read More

0 Comments

Find Your Voice

Recording & Editing Multi-take Voice Overs in Soundtrack Pro

By steve martin | July 30, 2008

In this excerpt from Ripple Training's "Sound Editing & Mastering in Soundtrack Pro" Steve will show you how fast, fluid and fun it is to edit voice overs in Soundtrack Pro using the Multitake Editor.Click here to watch tutorial Read More

0 Comments