VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

[lisaloo]

So . . . I'm spending WAYYYYYYYY too much money these days, but I'd love to hear folks bat about the following:

On a scale of 1 - 5, with five meaning "huge difference" and 1 meaning "no appreciable difference" . . .

how much difference do you think having a mic processor (like a Symetrix 528, etc.) makes in terms of room noise or general "bounciness" in your recording?

Understand that I went from a fairly quiet room in Chicago to a not-as-easy-to-soundproof apartment on a busy street in Manhattan.

I don't expect anything short of a whisper booth to drown out a jackhammer, of course, but as I am not able to put up as much acoustical stuff in a rental, I'm wondering how much bang (or lack of bang) I would get out of a mic processor . . .

Is it enough to justify another few hundred bucks?

Thanks. Again.

Lisa Loo

[ballenberg]

Symetrix 528---big difference. Definitely worth the money in my book--

[Deirdre]

You already know what I think.
heh heh heh.
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[Philip Banks]

Processor is a good idea but if a producer wants his audio "clean" what should you do?

Priorities should be. Voice > Room > Mic. Voice and mic are fabby so treat the room. I live near RAF Lossiemouth and when a Tornado goes over my house at 500 feet we pause, there are something it's nearly impossible to keep out.

Accoustically, the room in which your mic is placed should be dead and it should be free from as much ambient/background noise as possible. Processing is an audio design tool not a room design tool.

A friend of mine built a voice booth in his home, including accoutic panels for around $600, it took him a weekend to do it. How much is a good processor?

[Frank F]

Banksey is right on target... the processor will NOT keep out room noise.

So start with the room and it's acoustics. Simple treaments such as a decorative pillow or two on a simple day bed or a piece of acoustic foam covered with muslin (not muslims...) with a nice print on it will make for a nice picture or wall hanging.

What is your ceiling like? Too reflective, what's your floor - hardwood? What is on the wall or desk - in the direct line of your voice? A monitor? A hardwood desk? A window? A nice piece of acoustic foam? What is directly in back of your microphone? An open door, a closet, a straight wall with 90 degree angles. a nice piece of acoustic foam?

Also, take a good look at your mic, it's pattern (cardiod, omni, directional, etc....), what is in a direct line or reflected line of the mic. Is your computer or recording device inherently noisy?

Record two or three minutes of room noise pointing your mic in different directions and different room locations every 20 seconds or so. Then another 20 seconds or so without the mic being "on".

Take a good look at how much noise the computer card or electrical properties of your computer add to the file. Where is the quietest location in the room? What can you do about the noisy things in the room and surrounding areas? Can you shut off the A/C or heating devices? Can you add a bass trap here or there? Can you change microphones or sound cards or....

Lisa, you have a lot of decisions to make, but buying a microphone processor should NOT be one of them - UNTIL you look at the simple options of treating your room or finding a directional microphone or moving the mic or...

You can build or have built a simple version of a "whisper room" for less than $200.00 - and it would be portable, just fold up the hinged decorated pieces which lean against the wall and you're on your way... No mess for the Landlord to see or complain about. If you do it right, you could have it fold up against the wall when not needed and simply pull it into postion when needed in a large accordian fashion. It's not perfect , but for under $200.00, what can you expect?

Good luck my friend, you have a lot of work to do. Thank goodness it will not cost you much to do it. It will cost much less than the cost of a good processor, and THAT is money in the bank.

Frank F

[mcm]

Even a small, 3-part hinged screen with acoustic foam on the inside, to put around your mic, would be very helpful to quiet your recording. It won't help with the jackhammers, but it will reduce the bounce of sound waves.

[dmgood]

A Downward Expander works much like a compressor in reverse. You set a threshold. Any noise below the threshold is shut out electronically. When the signal (your voice) is loud enough to exceed the threshold, it opens up and lets the signal through. It is smoother than a gate which just turns on and off at the threshold resulting in a noticable swoosh (think Phil Collins' drums in early eighties). It will reduce the amount of ambient room noise in the spaces between the words, however; if not set properly, it can cut off the beginning or ends of wor(ds). Although it should not be used as a replacement for proper soundproofing, there are some benefits (you may not need to run the wav file through the 'noise reduction' feature of the software, or edit out a noise between the words). There is still some noticable fluctuations on a dry voice since it's silent between the words, but when you speak there is low level noise included within your voice track (which may prove more noticable than if the low level noise was throughout the track). Mixed with music, it's less noticable. The 528E does include a downward expander. It is effective, but I do agree that it is not a substitute for a properly treated room.

[lisaloo]

Thanks for all the tips.

So you know, I do have a mini-booth already. It's the old doors-hinged-together-and-padded-with-professional-grade-acoustical-foam deal.

I've got it as sealed off as possible -- so much so that I resemble Nadia Comeneci or a pretzel - take your pick - when crawling in to record. I think I can add an adjustable "roof" of the foam, too (not pretty, but who cares) and that will help.

There is still the issue of an overall "hiss" (not hum) in the background, though. And it's not the mic cord being near any AC or the like. Just an general white noise thing that's driving me c-c-c-crazy.

LL

PS: Bill B. is going to send me some samples with and without the processor so I can compare that. Muchos gracias, Bill.

[kgenus]

Just something to check, is it possible that the hiss is only in your monitoring. My monitors (audio) are plugged into an old Mackie HUI, my headphone #1 is plugged directly to the 002r (headphone #2 in the booth is connected to the HUI). There's a slight hiss in the monitors and headphone #2, however, there's nothing in headphone #1. I've isolated the problem to the Mackie HUI. Is it possible you're having a similar issue?

Kevin
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Genus

[brianforrester]

This example may sound silly and your problme may not be the same sound, but I had a similar problem regarding a hiss...

I was living in an apartment, had a treated vocal booth, thought everthing sounded great..... until I hit record. There was this not loud, but quite obvious high pitched hiss in the background... always the same sound, never changed.

My immediate thoughts were 'technical problem... damn, this is going to be expensive!' I played with levels, tried a different sound card that I had laying around (a crappy one none the less), listened through both monitors and headphones, so on and so forth, but nothing I did eliminated the noise.

The next thing I did was relatively low tech... I started tuning off appliances etc in the apartment and then recorded the 'silent' audio. When I made my way around to the fridge, I immediately noticed the high pitched hiss (that I couldn't hear normally in the apartment) was coming from a continual flow of water through a pipe in the wall.... DIRECTLY BESIDE MY BOOTH!!! It was just one of those things that I had become so used to, having lived in the apartment for quite some time, and of course Murphy's law means that it had to be right by my booth.

I couldn't move the pipe, so I moved the booth into another room... et vioala... no more annoying hiss! ('now that my booth is in my bedroom, where do I put my bed' lol)

I guess my point here is similar to what Frank is saying... we always seem to look for the problem that is associated with our gear or that can be solved through buying more gear... look at the stuff that won't cost you an arm and a leg first, especially in an apartment where there are all sorts of ambient noises that we become so used to we don't hear until we're really trying to find them or eliminate them in our mix.

Take a listen for annoying pipes!
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Brian Forrester Voice Overs
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brian@brianforrester.com
778.668.5715

[Andy]

I have three moving pads hung in my studio at odd angles to each other. One covers a window. The other across the corner in which I have my mic, and another large one hangs behind where I work. Plus, I build a silence case for my CPU. Total cost around $100. No room noise.

[Frank F]

Lisa,

Let us know if you have a new sound card or PC... any "new" items in the chain?

My guess - when you "hiss" is that you have either a PC (or MAC) problem, a sound card problem, or even a mic cord problem... a sample of what you are hearing would be nice... just "dead silence" with the mic on and more with the mic "off".

Frank F

[Philip Banks]

[Andy]

Good points. I discovered that if I plug my computer monitor into the same powerstrip as my preamp I get one heck of a baseline hum in my recordings. Drove myself insane one afternoon trying to track it down. Then I remembered something Kevin wrote in a thread a time back about power lines, mic cables, etc overlapping, etc. That's when I started pulling plugs and organizing my spaghetti junction.

[Bruce]

Coming from Arizona, if I heard a hiss, first thing I'd look for would be a snake!

If you can't get rid of it environmentally, as in a hiss from a speaker that's tuned to something else, or your computer (if it's in the room with you), I'm a fan of limited processing, and the "gate" feature can get rid of all noise below a certain volume. It cuts out my computer fan and hard drive noise very well, most of the time. You have to use as little gating as possible though. Too much will cut out the softest parts of your speech and make it sound choppy.

Somthing else to look for...for some reason my computer fan(s) were making an unusual noise that I could even hear in my reads yesterday, and the client had approved the reads in a phone session. (I have a new Power Mac G5. They come with 8 little fans, or some such rot, and they sometimes come on in various quantities and speeds the elude my understanding.) I went into my Audio Desk software's EQ and found the sound at the low end, at about 118 hz, and used the parabolic feature to reduce the volume just at that range and it did the trick. But that kind of manipulation should be a rare occurance, not a regular practice.

Have fun,

Bruce