Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Successful Sound Mixing Starts With The Right Recipe
A recipe is a list of ingredients and directions, usually thought of as applying to food. But there are also recipes that can be used to create a successful sound mix as well.
It takes the right blend of quality ingredients and salient directions to produce the best results from any recipe.
If a dessert recipe calls for cream, it’s not essential to use Alpine milk from hand-milked Bavarian cows, but using skim milk instead of cream may jeopardize the final results.
The same holds true for sound reinforcement. A microphone for a singing vocalist that’s substituted with a pulpit microphone designed for spoken word simply isn’t the right ingredient for the recipe. It won’t help attain the desired result.
The bottom line is that all sound system components should be of as high of quality as possible.
There also needs to be an understanding of the expectations of those who are going to taste the results. For example, a chef may like extra spicy food.
But when preparing food for others, the chef must take into consideration the guests for whom the food is being prepared, and may need to slightly vary the recipe.
Further, and absolutely vital: before using any recipe, the sound operator must communicate with everyone involved with a performance, both spoken word and musical.
They must understand that a given recipe may take several attempts before it produces the desired results. This process requires extra time, effort and patience on everybody’s part.
Just as you wouldn’t start a food recipe 10 minutes before it needs to be served, don’t wait for dress rehearsals or worship services to start building your sound mix.
Vital point: Always seek natural acoustical solutions before adding more sound reinforcement, i.e., system components and increasing volume levels. Too much can lead to a big mess!
Multiple Layers
Let’s start with the basics. It’s vital to understand the acoustical elements of the sound mix and their effect on each other.
Think of it as a multi-layer cake. This represents the concept that each layer builds on the other, while they all work together to create a desired outcome.
Think of it as a multi-layer cake…
It should be pointed out that all of these layers might not be used or needed. However, the principles remain the same.
The amount of ambient noise in the room establishes the base layer of sound.
In other words, the air system, conversations, people moving, etc., create noise the sound system must overcome. Ambient noise will also change overall levels.
For example, an empty room is much quieter than one filled with people.
The second layer consists of acoustical instruments. It’s important to first begin with main instrument(s) like acoustical piano and/or guitar(s), then add drums, and finally, any other acoustical instruments.
Begin with the pianist playing a selection. Then the guitarist should join after the first verse.
If the guitar can’t be heard clearly, it may be necessary to reposition the guitarist.
If the guitar is still not loud enough, then a microphone might need to be added.
If drums are part of the performance, again begin with the piano playing, then guitar. After a minute or two, start the drummer.
Listen first to determine if the piano and guitar can still be heard.
Hint: the higher octaves of the piano are usually easier to hear above other instruments.
If either lead instrument starts to get buried, try moving the drums further back on the platform and/or enclosing them with isolation panels.
As a last resort, gradually increase the microphone level on the piano and guitar. Then, add any other acoustical instruments, including backing guitars, woodwinds and brass.
The third layer consists of electronic instruments such as keyboards, electronic guitars, bass guitars, acoustic instruments with electronic pickups, electronic drums, and so on.
Using the same procedure as before, begin with piano, and then add electronic keyboards to the mix. (By the way, the drummer and other acoustical players can take a break - they aren’t necessary at this particular point.)
Continue by adding other electronic instruments. When it’s at a satisfactory point, take a break of your own. Leave the room and enjoy five minutes of silence, then come back and evaluate the entire instrumental mix.
Last, but certainly not least, come the vocals. Begin with the background vocals, adding them one at a time, just as was done with instruments.
The topping is the primary vocalist(s), who must be heard and understood above all other aspects of the performance.
Keep in Mind
- Always listen for what is too loud as well as what is too soft.
- If a musician or vocalist expresses need to hear more monitor level, first try turning down other monitors (and instrument amps).
- Make level changes to the monitor mix or channel gain/trim control when the musician or vocalist is not active.
- Any changes should be small and gradual.
- Occasionally turn down the master levels for the main system and listen to the monitor system to evaluate its loudness - the monitors may be negatively impacting the main system.
- Regularly walk through the first few rows of seats to evaluate monitor versus main levels.
- If your church primarily features a rhythm band, drums and bass form the layer above the ambient noise, followed by rhythm guitar(s) and keyboards, then lead guitar and other lead instruments, with vocals on top.
- Become familiar with every song – for example, understand that lead guitar may need to jump to the top layer during an instrumental break, and don’t let this come as a surprise!
Travis Ludwig is a faculty member of the Internet Sound Institute.
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WTVF Nashville NewsChannel 5 Expands Wireless Tooolkit With Lectrosonics
New equipment was chosen for its sound quality and rugged design.
WTVF NewsChannel 5, a CBS affiliate in Nashville, recently retired a portion of their wireless microphones that fell within the 700 MHz band and replaced it with Lectrosonics wireless equipment.
Mike Rose, Chief Video Photographer for WTVF TV supervises a 21-person camera crew for the station’s news operations.
“We are responsible for all general news coverage, including investigative reporting, sports, and local news,” said Rose.
“In this line of work, the equipment is in the field everyday and is used in a variety of shooting situations.”
“In May, Nashville received 17 inches of rain in 48 hours. Every crew was out in the rain, around the clock, filming high water rescues, flood damage, FEMA press conferences…you name it.”
“Equipment performance was critical so crews could focus on the story. We never had wireless issues. These were by far the most extreme, humid, conditions I have ever worked in.”
“Failure was not an option. Because of the robust nature of the wireless units, we were able to tell some incredible stories.”
Rose reports that in addition to the equipment that had to be replaced to address the FCC ruling, every camera operator also had a Lectrosonics CR185 compact receiver, an M185 beltpack transmitter, and an H185 plug-on transmitter in their kit.
“These systems have been in service for a long time,” said Rose, “so we already had a high level of confidence in Lectrosonics products.”
Ultimately, Rose purchased 19 Lectrosonics SRa5P dual channel slot mount ENG receivers, 19 HM plug-on transmitters, and 19 UM400a beltpack transmitters from Nashville’s Trew Audio
“By getting our new Lectrosonics SRa5P dual channel receivers, along with our HM plug-on and UM400a beltpack transmitters,” said Rose, “every operator now has two systems available—and all of it Lectrosonics.”
After roughly six months of field time with their new Lectrosonics equipment, Rose has nothing but praise for both the gear and Lectrosonics’ customer/technical support services.
“I’m particularly impressed with how easy it is to change frequencies,” he says. “This is great for those times when you want one microphone to feed multiple cameras. Over the years, I’ve been equally impressed with the company’s tech support.”
“On those occasions when I’ve need something adjusted or a firmware update, the company has been very responsive. A tech always calls to advise me what work has been performed and the equipment has been returned very quickly.”
“When I watch the news at home in the evenings,” he said, “the audio is clear, I’m able to hear all the sound bytes that I know should be there, and I don’t hear any RF interference.”
“Sound quality is first rate and that’s the bottom line. When I watch the news, I want to be able to close my eyes and visualize the story by way of the sound—and our Lectrosonics gear gets us there.”
Lectrosonics Website
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Aviom Personal Mixers Utilized By Italy’s 60th Sanremo Music Festival
Aviom mixers made it possible for the entire orchestra to have personalized monitor mixes.
Aviom helped with the performances at Italy’s 60th annual Sanremo Music Festival by supplying more than 25 A-16II Personal Mixers, via Sisme Spa, to the show’s entire orchestra.
Each year, the popular Italian song contest hosts musicians from all over Italy, who perform original Italian language pieces.
The program is televised, and the artists are ultimately judged by viewers watching at home.
Described best as a battle of the bands combined with any popular televised music contest, the Sanremo Music Festival is held annually at Teatro Ariston in the city of Sanremo, and has been broadcast live on RAI Uno since 1955. This year’s 60th anniversary festival was viewed by over 10 million people each night.
One of the major challenges producers face when broadcasting this show is the use of different conductors during each performance, while the orchestra remains the same.
To help maintain consistency between numbers during this year’s festival, every member of the orchestra utilized the Aviom A-16II Personal Mixer.
The 16 presets on each of the A-16II mixers proved ideal, allowing musicians and engineers alike to adjust their settings during sound check and save those settings for the live performances later each day.
“The remarkable audio quality and ease of use of the system gave the musicians an excellent monitoring signal,” said Andrea Guerranti, Sisme Spa technical manager.
“RAI technicians designed a simple and efficient audio network for the entire orchestra, which faces the daunting task of performing with several different musicians and conductors each night.”
The Aviom A-16II enabled individual performers to create custom monitor mixes tailored to their individual needs. Designed for use in live performances, as well as in the studio, the personal mixers provide each performer control over channel volume, grouping, pan, stereo spread, master volume and tone.
“The orchestra is aware that the audiences, as well as the special celebrity guest singers, expect nothing but the greatest performances each night,” says Guerranti.
“The Aviom gear allowed the orchestra to perform beyond the best of its ability – which is especially crucial when playing alongside these world-famous artists.”
This year’s Sanremo Music Festival winners were professional singer Valerio Scanu, who sang the original piece “Per tutte le volte che…” (For all the times that…) and newcomer Tony Maiello, with his song “Il linguaggio della resa” (The language of surrender). At the age of 19, Scanu was the youngest male winner in the history of the festival.
Aviom Website
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Tech Tip Of The Day: Setting Front-of-House Delay
How can I easily set front-of-house delay to match backline sound?
Q: I work with a lot of smaller bands in local clubs and have been doing so for quite a while now. I’d say my mix chops are really starting to
However, lately I’ve been in a few places where I really needed to dial in the delay between the mains and the backline, but I really didn’t know how.
Can you help?
A: As you’ve noticed, in many smaller club settings your main sound system can face competition from the signals generated by the backline - the drums and amplifiers onstage.
These project into the audience and can cause timing-related problems that are perceived as “smeared” audio.
There’s a relatively simple way to combat this and produce a cleaner, more pleasing FOH sound.
First, it’s worth noting that large sound companies use sophisticated room analysis software to calculate the correct alignment times necessary for their FOH systems to sound their best.
This function is built into many boxes, like the DriveRack and other popular models. However, for every average club engineer out there, here’s a much less scientific - and more approximate - method.
Since the idea is to counter the sound coming off the stage, start by selecting the loudest acoustic source onstage. This is usually the snare drum. Have your drummer play single strokes on the drum, about one per second. Make sure he or she plays at “gig” level!
Start with the approximate formula that 1 foot equals 1 millisecond (rounding the speed of sound down to 1000 feet per second). Measure the distance from the snare to the drivers of your sound system and set the delay that’s connected to your FOH system accordingly.
Be absolutely certain your sound system volume is as close to equal the acoustic snare’s volume as possible. This won’t be your gig level; it’s just for purposes of setting the delay.
Now use your ears and add or subtract delay amounts until you hear the closest possible attack consonance between the stage sound and the speaker sound. You’ll get better at this with practice, it will improve your ear training, and it won’t cost you a dime.
For more tech tips go to Sweetwater.com
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Midas Pro6 The Center Of Ukrainian Sound Engineer Seminar
The Pro6 provided FOH support for the duration of the seminar and was also used for training.
The Midas PRO6 live audio system proved to be the highlight of
Midas Klark Teknik’s Ukrainian distributor CORTMI Ltd provided a PRO6 for the third annual Ukrainian Sound Engineers Union Seminar which was held during May in Kiev’s resort district of Pushtcha Vodica.
As well as demonstrating the Midas sound to delegates for all the presentations, the set up was used for a vocal microphone test arranged by the Ukrainian Sound Engineers Union, as well as a sound engineers’ proficiency contest.
The seminar also included a presentation devoted to the PRO6 by CORTMI sound engineer Vladimir Prokof’yev.
Delegates participated in a workshop introducing them to the practical aspects of working with the console, and were given a presentation by sound engineer Vitaliy Siroshtan from rental company Jazz-Club Service, the first Ukrainian company to purchase a PRO6.
Siroshtan shared his personal experiences of working with the PRO6 at numerous events in a variety of venues during the Ukrainian tours of Russian superstars Grigoriy Leps and Philip Kirkorov.
“It was a fantastic opportunity for delegates to see and hear the PRO6 close-up, and in the breaks between presentations, engineers were able to touch the console and examine its functions for themselves,” said, CORTMI marketing manager Stanislav Serbin.
“Engineers were particularly impressed with the PRO6’s unique ability to produce authentic analogue sound via an intuitive workface combined with a richness of digital functions, features and usability. They get the best of all worlds.”
Midas Consoles Website
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iKey Announces Rackmount SD/USB Recorder
The RM3 is a solid state recorder intended for the installation market.
iKey Audio has announced the RM3, a rack-mount digital SD/USB recorder
The RM3 is a single-space (19” 1U) digital media player/recorder that is ideal for restaurants, houses of worship, schools, home studios, broadcasting, meeting & lecture halls, and any other permanent installs.
The RM3 features a large color LCD screen and a front panel Jog Wheel for easy file search. It includes many input/output options such as two front panel1/4” line inputs as well as back panel combo XLR/1/4” stereo jack and stereo RCA inputs
The unit also includes 2 balanced XLR outputs, and a stereo RCA output for pass-through ability.
The RM3 records directly onto SD cards up to 4GB, SDHC cards up to 32GB or any supported USB storage device of unlimited memory capacity.
Recordings can be made in MP3 formats up to 320kbps, or in WAV format with 44.1kHz/16-bit quality.
iKey Audio Website
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Sanken Microphones Chosen By Engineer Jim Anderson
Anderson chose Sanken microphones for their ability to accurately capture saxophone.
Professor and recording engineer Jim Anderson recently recorded the new live album from jazz legend Lee Konitz at NYC’s Village Vanguard with Sanken Microphones.
Anderson chose the Sanken CU-41 dual capsule condenser mic for Konitz’s alto sax and the stereo Sanken CUW-180 for the piano.
“Sanken CU-41’s are my go-to microphones for sax, drum overheads, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar amplifiers,” said engineer/producer Anderson, who is New York University professor at the Clive Davis Dept. of Recorded Music and Fellow and Past-president of the AES.
“It’s a microphone that is especially suited to Lee’s alto sax. On a previous recording with Lee (“Strings for Holiday” - Enja Records), the CU-41 did a remarkable job in the studio of capturing the subtle detail of Lee’s playing and I wanted to recreate that sound, live.”
Key to the CU-41’s performance is its double condenser capsule design. Unlike typical microphones, the CU-41 consists of two condenser capsules, one of small and one of large diameter. The small capsule picks up the upper range of audio frequencies and the large one picks up the lower range.
“The dual-capsule stereo CUW-180 was perfect for piano and worked out well for this album because we recorded live to a stereo 2-track mix,” remarked Anderson. In a live recording, where leakage can be an issue, using the CUW-180 gave me excellent focus on the piano, while the off-axis pick-up was what I like to call “good leakage.”
“Leakage that doesn’t detract from the final mix. I’ve been a longtime user of Sanken Microphones and I find that the off-axis quality of their products to be excellent.”
Sanken Microphones Website
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