Archive for the ‘Columns’ Category

If you read yesterday’s post, you know that AASG has a new writer, Andrew Levine. He’ll be popping in from time to time with articles regarding recording and otherwise awesome audio stuff.

One of the questions we posed on the AASG Google Wave group was this: Would you, at any time in your production workflow, normalize your audio? The response to the question was good and definitely varied. Andrew decided to weigh in on the subject via this post, so read it and feel free to comment. If you comment with your email, I may just send you a Wave invite!

Regarding the question of when to normalize audio I’d like to put that in perspective with regards to my work-flow.

When I do the final down-mix of a project (mostly in the domain of classical music, jazz or avantgarde), with material at the final sample rate and a dither plug-in in the last slot of the master bus (to reduce to 16 bit for CD-A), I check the peak levels of the loudest passages to make sure they stay below -0.2 dBFS.

You need some headroom when you plan to possibly trans-code the audio, e.g. to an mp3, as peaks can crop up and you definitely don’t want to go above 0 dBFS.

If you plan on sending the file to someone for mastering, or if you are bouncing a file that is to be placed in a compilation of material from other projects, it is useful to preserve headroom in the range of 3 to 6 dB–without clipping the material! Bounce to 24 bit fixed or 32 bit float and don’t maximize levels before you know where this piece of music will fit in.

If I see that there are occasional (and few!) peaks that would either create overs or force me to lower the overall level there are two choices: manually and musically lower the level of the clipping passages (I’ll pick up the topic of “automated gain riding” in a followup) or insert a brick-wall limiter in the processing chain (before the dithering plug-in).

So, when do I personally normalize?

If I have a file that was rendered with some headroom and want to hand it on I normalize it (to -0.2 dBFS) before reducing the bit depth and transcoding it. If I want to send off a small group of similar files I’ll do the same, normalizing all audio to the same level, so that the recipient has an easier job. And that’s about it :-)

So 2009 is coming to a close. We’ve all had our Religion-specific holiday celebrations, some of us opened some gifts and hung out with our extended families, other people did other stuff Either way, we’re coming into 2010 full steam ahead.

Sanjay and I started this site in February and really didn’t know what we were aiming for. Over the past several months, however, the site has picked up some steam and hopefully a ton of readers. I thought I’d go through the posts (all 334 of them) and pick out my favorite posts, products, and more.

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Question: How do I get the other outputs on Ultrabeat to work when using the Multichannel version of the plugin?

So Ultrabeat is a monster of a plugin, but there are a few simple tricks to using that save a lot of time and make the plugin really flexible for something that comes bundled with a DAW.

Setting up a multichannel version of Ultrabeat allows you to group your samples and play them out of ultrabeat into different aux tracks.  I chose to have kicks come out of the main track, snares out of another aux, toms a second aux and cymbals out of a third. Basically I can put different compressors and EQ’s on the kicks than I do on the snares.  Then I can tweak the hi-end of the cymbals and gate the toms – all on separate channels.  Pretty cool, right?  Check out the video!

The European Commission is talking about limiting the default volume limit of mp3 players sold in the EU.

They’re suggesting 85 dB as a default maximum volume while still allowing users to override the max volume up to 100 dB.

Sounds good right?  Makes sense that we need to protect our ears.  Most audio engineers know that they listening to things too loud, too long will hurt your hearing.  It’s just a little sad that we can’t just manage our own volume. But sometimes it has to come down to laws to get people take care of their heads.

I suppose this isn’t entirely new news either.  iPods have had the ability to volume limit for a long while now, it’s just like smoking, eating incredibly fatty foods, or drinking a ton of alcohol.  We might know why its not good for us, but just keep doing it.

Any thoughts? Would you like to have governments telling you how loud is too loud?

Here’s a great idea for the Sound Guy or Guitarist in your life.  The Batt-O-Meter by Keith McMillen Instruments will tell you how much life you’ve got left on a battery without having to take it out of your guitar or effects pedal.  Basically you can check a 9 volt or 1.5 volt battery by plugging this guy into a quarter-inch jack of a guitar pedal or guitar.  It can tell you how many volts the battery is putting out, and how long it will last.  Pretty neat trick.

This would be great for Sound Guy toolboxes or Guitarist gig kits.  It’ll also save you some money being more efficient with your batteries.