At 9:09 AM +0000 2/8/09, Greg Simmons wrote:
>--- In
><naturerecordists%40yahoogroups.com>=
m,
>Rob Danielson <> wrote:
>
>> For me, "correct" tonal balance is kind of like "correct" color
>> temperature for lighting-- there are different color pallets to chose
>> from.
>
>Agreed... there are numerous 'tonal temperatures' that will work,
>depending on what
>you're trying to communicate.
Sorry,.. like a painter's "palette," not a shipping method!
>
>> I usually EQ critical material from scratch at least three
>> times at different sittings and then compare all three before
>> refining the one I like best. Sure is powerful to be able to save all
> > of the adjustments compared to on-the-fly mix settings of yore.
>
>I guess I'm more of a 'purist', FWIW. My preference is not to use EQ
>at all! But there are
>many situations where tonal adjustment is required and/or
>worthwhile. I tend to find the
>right frequencies quite quickly, but spend ages going back and forth
>between different
>amounts of cutting/boosting and bandwidth. Sometimes it will be a
>few days later that I
>decide to take another listen, say to myself "what was I thinking?"
>and wind it back a bit.
>
>In addition to critical and analytical listening, I also like to
>have the finished recording
>playing in the background while I do other things (like typing
>emails). I find there are often
>things that will jump out under those 'non listening' circumstances,
>which I don't seem to
>notice when I'm concentrating on the sound itself, and those things
>are usually worth
>fixing or enhancing.
>
>The other silly thing is that I'll spend ages fiddling with less
>than a dB's worth of boost or
>cut, seeing how it affects the sounds 'around' the one I'm trying to
>focus on. I doubt
>anyone would ever know the difference, but it makes me happy. :-)
I never assume EQ will be necessary. I'm also a "purist" in that I
assume that the simplest solution will always be better. Within this
mind-set, however, I do accept that there's a huge gap between what
the gear is capable of and the listening experience I had in the
field.
Playing files as accompaniment is a great way to "notice what you
notice." I think I learned this from Tony Schwartz's writings who
designed some famous with tv and radio advertisements. In a similar
way, the sound experience I had in the field is also "playing in the
back of my aural mind" as I try to tame the exaggerations in the
spectrum that seem to demand unnatural attention.
A trick I find very, very helpful in mixing/equalizing/adjusting
dynamics is to play the material at low, acceptable playback levels.
When I fade-in the "space" with the volume slider, the unnatural
bandwidths stand-out more perceptibly. As I address an offending
bandwidth, other bandwidths "behind" or masked by the first may
become more audible.
At the bottom part of the spectrum where spatial cues are so
critical, there are often sections where some bandwidths play with a
fuzzy or "hazy" quality. Often, they spread across a disappointingly
wide portion. Some sound grungy or have a drone-machine-like
quality. I used to apply one band of fairly wide parametric EQ to
address these. Often, I find that there are several over-resonant
"notes" embedded this "haze." When the note "cores" are addressed
one-by-one with mild attenuation, the masking effect of the haze can
be lessened a bit without as much loss of the total spectrum.
[[One, serious caution though: Its important to use and compare
results with several types of monitoring. The monitoring environment
should have very flat response. If not, the EQ adjustments will
address unique room/speaker acoustics that usually do not translate
well. If you don't have a space you can "treat" with deadening
materials and/or your monitor speakers are marginal, going between
2-3 pairs of reference quality headphones is better than nothing. I
was stuck without a studio for a year and the mixes I had to do this
way aren't _too_ bad. Mixing with phones has some serious drawbacks.
I feel it still helps to keep the volume low but the dynamics one can
hear in phones are often too subtle to be appreciated with speaker
playback.]]
>
>> I had some discussion with a couple of capable programmers about what
>> I'd like to see in equalization plugs. Most of what I need revolves
>> around detecting sinusoidal waves which should make the task simpler,
>> I thought. They pointed out that there are a half dozen noise
>> reduction apps which, in part, analyze and attempt to dynamically
>> attenuate sinusoidal waves. I didn't learn what makes the task is so
>> challenging, but if the effectiveness of these apps on broadband
>> material is an indication-- we might need to provide some kind of
>> assistance if we hope to get help any time soon. Rob D.
>
>It would be cool if one of the programmers was actually a nature
>recordist. LIkewise for
>the people who design portable recorders...
>
>Samplitude/Sequoia offers some impressive FFT EQ, where you can
>notch out a single
>frequency (or frequency bucket?) without affecting frequencies on
>either side - unlike a
>notch filter. I have used it to remove feedback from live concert
>recordings; impressive
>stuff.
Eqium has very narrow, fairly "transparent" notches. I'm not sure any
of these processes are without artifacts. I read good things about
Samplitude/Sequoia. I'm limited to mac options at this point.
I've been playing with Izotope quite a bit following a tip on the
Microsound list. It seems to work well with robust sounds that I can
move back in a mix. For addressing non-layered, field recordings, it
is a tad less "watery" than Soundsoap on some material. Yesterday I
tried adjusting EQ prior to "noise removal" to see if this would
better accommodate the peculiarities. It helped a little. So far, I
have not been able to get better results with these plugs than I can
with careful EQ-- except, as I said, when the project allows me to
push the element into another background "bed." Why do I keep hoping
an anonymous app will perform the needed, "magic," someday?
I see this "posting" need as lessening narrow bandwidths of
"resonance"-- reducing some of the pitch-based "music" in the
broadband reproduction. Often, these seem to stem from standing waves
in the environment they are recorded in. It could be that the
analysis processes used and/or the tonal and dynamic resolutions used
in the current plugs are way too coarse. These apps are CPU
intensive, as-is, so it might demand a different approach. "Spear" is
an interesting, visual-only tool that seems to be on an interesting
path: http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/ Its cross-platform.
It would help if more "far field" recordists were involved with
software development. The interest and market for this type of
"record" could be growing,.. but I'm biased.
Improvements we can make in our micing, mics could be on the same
order, though. Rob D.
>
>- Greg Simmons
>
>
>
--
|