UK Mastering guru Ian Shepherd from Production Advice presented a talk at a recent AES event focussed on “Mastering in the Streaming Era”. It starts with a general overview of what mastering is, but then goes into some more detail around considerations of mastering in the current era including loudness, normalisation and perceptual coding. You … Read more Ian Shepherd AES Mastering Talk
New Zealand Sound Designer Tim Prebble from HISSandaROAR has written up a blog post discussing the importance of audio sync for sound for screen, including a brief discussion on some of the key considerations and materials for post to help ensure sync. It might serve as a useful reference for those that are new to … Read more Sync for Audio Post
Paul Lamere has blogged a couple of times now about mapping the tempo of commercial songs to help analyse whether the song has been done to a click track or not, and it provides an interesting reference point for a discussion about the place of click tracks in music production. You can check out the … Read more Click Track Maps
A big topic of discussion about films and TV recently has been intelligibility of dialogue. I’ve linked to other discussions of it before (https://versed.com.au/intelligibility-in-films) and it is a real issue with many variables coming in to play. Vox have put together a neat video explainer that discusses the main issues at play at: https://www.vox.com/videos/23564218/subtitles-sound-downmixing-dialogue-movies-tv Personally … Read more Why we all need subtitles now
Production sound on film shoots can be a real challenge, but something that can save the day in some situations is a good prop master who is conscious of sound and noisy props. This interesting short video discusses some of the issues with some examples of what can be done in certain situations…
I just watched an interesting short documentary by an Irish music producer/engineer that discusses their thoughts around the senses, benefits of an analogue approach with some limitations and creativity generally. It’s a touching and thoughtful short film and well worth a watch for anyone interested in or involved in the sound arts. Check it out … Read more The Psychology of Analogue
Sound Particles have put together a great short video series that covers the basics of 3D or spatial audio, which serves as a great primer for people interested in learning more about this area. They also have a free eBook that covers similar content. Thanks Sound Particles for creating such neat and easy to understand … Read more All You Need to Know About 3D Audio
Vandelay Sound Exports have a neat database of timecode and audio connections on cameras on their website which can be a useful quick reference: http://timecode.vandelaysoundexports.com/home/index.php
It is sometimes useful to refer to a chart that shows some common decibel levels of sounds as a reference, and a simple chart with some examples every 10dB or so usually suffices, but today I came across a really details chart put together by Paul Virostek on his Creative Field Recording blog/site that details … Read more Decibel Sound Level Chart
Something that has been bothering me lately is the variable playback loudness in cinemas, with most cinemas playing back well below the Dolby Reference standard level of 7 (or calibrated to 85dB SPL), but seemingly there pretty much being no standard anymore. Unfortunately films being mixed at lower levels, to make for louder mixes, which … Read more Sound Levels in Cinemas