Getting accurate sound levels in spectrum analysis
- From: Richard.Webb.my.foot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Richard Webb)
- Date: 10 Feb 2012 20:08:29 GMT
On Fri 2012-Feb-10 07:15, Mike Rivers writes:
I do notice that some professionals who lack confidence in their own
abilities feel threatened any time someone they consider external to the
profession starts to ask questions or make any assertions at all. Those who
are not insecure remain undisturbed.
Sometimes asking the right questions will help the neophyte
learn however. As an old instructor once taught me, asking
questions is good, asking the right question can mvoe you
toward understanding <g>.
And some are just naive. But you're right - there are a lot of
people who are insecure about their work, and live in
fear that someone will hear something that they missed. This goes
away with experience, and if it doesn't, then you're
REALLY in the wrong business. This mostly tends to be a
"gear" thing rather than a "stray noises" thing, though.
INdeed, and one thing that may help mxmanic with the type of thing he does is to consider how he intends to use the
captured sound, then decide how much massaging to do with
it.
As a simple example, he can think of that dense arrangement
he hears where the acoustic guitar is more apparent from
just the sound of strumming. The track in isolation
probably doesn't sound that great, or that much like an
acoustic guitar, but when blended with the otehr parts of
the arrangement in the mix does just what one wants the
acoustic guitar to do.
That's where the monitoring environment ears and knowledge
can all come together. Often the trick is knowing what
should be worried about and what can be safely ignored
because in the final production it's going to be a nonissue. A good example of that was the discussion of crt scan noise. As Frank noted, in most musical arrangements it's a
nonissue, but if the piece is a single instrument or spoken
word only it becomes one.
What it often boils down to is the old adage "don't sweat
the small stuff."
HEre's an example for him from a project I did about a
decade ago.
Gospel group, the keyboard player had a little bit of a
ground loop problem with one of his keyboards he used on the session. For most of their album project it was a nonissue, that hummmmmm buried in the mix. But, there was one
selection where that keyboard was all alone naked for the
first eight bars. When we went to mixing I bugged him more
than once about bringing in that keyboard sans the rest of
his rig and retracking the intro, and even though we weren't doing the customary billing by the hour he refused. hE was
quite happy with it, but those eight bars drove me crazy
every time I listened to the intro.
I knew i was going to be present during the mastering
however, so I let it ride, mixed the album, and went to the
mastering session. When we came to that track we did the
transfer, then applied a filter to the intro which wasn't
applied once the rest of the ensemble started to play. I
captured enough of the noise in isolation even as I did the
mix so that we could tailor the filter to the hum's exact
characteristics. My only concern then was whether the
filter would negatively impact the tone of the keyboard.
Yeah I know, only eight bars, and he was happy as a clam
with the whole project, but I never would have been happy
with that one going out the door with my name on it and that hum present ,g>.
Regards,
Richard
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