Zoom H1 Special Pricing
If you don't have a Zoom H1 in your kit, I'd say its a pretty nice little problem solver. I use mine as a stand-in when I'm having trouble getting wireless to work well because of interference issues. Just plug your talent's lavalier into the H1, start the recording, drop it in their pocket, then sync in post.
Audio quality is surprisingly good and clean on its 3.5mm microphone input.
B&H has special pricing during the Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention at only $75 for the silver version.
Good Budget Wireless Lavalier: Azden PRO-XD
One of the most common questions I've received from YouTubers: "I'm going to start a prank channel at YouTube. What wireless microphone should I get?"
I've never done a single prank video so I don't pretend to be a master at understanding all the nuances of quality prank videos, but Azden was kind enough to send me a copy of their PRO-XD Digital Wireless Lavalier system to review.
After working with it for about three weeks, here’s the review. Overall, this is a great budget digital wireless lavalier system priced at $200 USD. While it isn’t as robust as more expensive wireless systems, this system does have a lot going for it and is very good value for money.
The upside? Great performance in terms of keeping a signal, battery life, and producing solid, quality audio. Oh, and the price: $199 USD. This is the best sub $200 wireless lavalier system I've used.
The downside? The included lavalier microphone isn't amazing, but you can clean up the audio in post or replace it with another 3.5mm TRRS lavalier microphone.
Would I opt for this over the RODELink wireless lavalier kit? No, not if I had the budget for the RODELink (see our review here) which is twice the price. But if you're operating on a tight budget, the PRO-XD is definitely worth a look.
Izotope RX5 Advanced Audio Editor: Why I Upgraded
As you probably already know, I'm on a mission to learn the fine art of dialogue audio post processing. And on that mission, I've found myself using Izotope RX4 Advanced and Ozone 6 more and more often. I still use Audition as my digital audio workstation app, the hub if you will, but much of the heavy lifting is done by RX and Ozone. By heavy lifting, I mean noise reduction, compression, and loudness normalizing. But why, you may ask?
RX4 has some things that Audition doesn't have that I find important, maybe even critical to my workflow.
The first thing I'll typically do, if the particular clip needs it, is noise reduction. I like to keep it pretty light so that the audio doesn't start sounding robotic or evil which is often what happens when applied too aggressively. The dialogue denoiser is usually my go-to tool for this - only two settings to bother with and I often leave the threshold at its default and decrease the Reduction setting to about 5. If the clip is particularly noisy, I may do a second pass.
Yes, Audition has a good de-noise plugin as well but it isn't as quick and easy.
Asymmetric waveforms are the next problem I address and this is one that Audition doesn't have a solution for, at least not in its included effects.
Asymmetric waveforms have more amplitude (are bigger) above the - infinity center line than below. By itself, this is not really a problem and it sounds just fine. And it generally only occurs with male voice.
Asymmetric waveforms are really only a problem because they rob you of headroom. The peaks on one side are closer to 0dB than on the other. And this is problematic when you want to loudness normalize because you can only increase the amplitude so much before that one side is close to the 0dB limit. So you can't get all the loudness you may want. RX4s Channel Ops module has a phase rotation option that fixes this quickly and easily without messing with the quality of the audio.
Once I've run the clip through the phase rotator, I'm all set to use a compressor to manage the transient peaks - the peaks that stick out well above the body of the waveform.
I could just use one of the compressors included with Audition and sometimes I do. But if I'm already in RX, I pull up the Ozone Dynamics plugin which is a very nice compressor. It has three different threshold modes (peak, envelope, and RMS) as well as a soft knee and adaptive release options. These make dialing in a fairly transparent compression easier because I don't want the dialogue to sound compressed, just more consistent.
And then I finish that off with the loudness plugin that will put that clip at the exact standard loudness level I need (usually -19LUFS for mono dialogue, -16LUFS for stereo) and also ensures that any peaks stay below -1.5dB True Peak.
Audition has a loudness normalization feature they call "Match Volume" which works nicely but it is missing the critical True Peak Limiter that is critical to prevent clipping distortion after you export your final video. That will be coming, according to Adobe, in the 2015.1 release in the next few weeks.
So why did I upgrade for a hefty $299 USD?
The loudness plugin is now much, much faster than the older one. Also, Audition still does not have a way to manage asymmetric waveforms.
Is all that really worth $299? That completely depends on you and what you need to deliver to your clients. In my case, I don't want ANY clipping distortion and I want the dialogue to sound great because I truly believe that audio is incredibly important to telling stories effectively. Possibly, audio is a little more important than visuals.
Oh, and by the way, I paid for the upgrade and Izotope has never paid me anything.
Louder Dialogue Audio with Audacity
https://youtu.be/L1FLali0xLk We’ve done a lot of tutorials on processing audio and sound with Adobe Audition but many have asked how to do the same things in Audacity, which is, of course, free. The trick with Audacity is that it lacks certain features that can be critical for getting consistent results, namely, loudness processing and metering tools. But when you’re first starting, you may not yet have the budget for an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. So if I were in that situation, here is how I would use Audacity to sort of accomplish the same thing (though not as consistently). Make your dialogue audio louder (without being too loud).
You can download and use Audacity for free - no strings attached, its open-source.
Sennheiser AVX Digital Wireless Microphone System Review
So here it is, finally after 4 weeks of working with it; my review of the Sennheiser AVX wireless microphone system.
Sennheiser recently introduced their new digital wireless system called AVX. There are various kits available and in this episode I used the kit with the body pack transmitter, receiver, and MKE2 lavalier microphone (their higher-end pro lavalier microphone). We looked at various aspects of the AVX system including how well it does in terms of outdoor distance, dynamic range which Sennheiser touts as preventing clipping distortion when your talent suddenly gets very loud, sound quality of the MKE2 lavalier microphone, latency, rejection of RF and WiFi interference, battery life, and others. Let’s see how it does!
Sennheiser AVX Dynamic Range and Outdoor Distance Tests
https://youtu.be/uUSd_ulXdno Sennheiser recently introduced their new digital wireless system called the Sennheiser AVX. There are various kits available and in this episode I used the kit with the transmitter, receiver, and MKE2 lavalier microphone (their higher-end pro lavalier microphone).
We did a few tests to see how well the AVX does in terms of outdoor distance (keeping its signal without dropping out), and the dynamic range feature Sennheiser touts as preventing clipping and distortion when the sound gets much louder.
The outdoor distance test was as expected: Solid up to 50 meters, and my first dropout occurred at around 75 meters. You need to pretty much be in line-of-sight to get a solid signal at 50 meters. I never shoot this way, but it is good to know the limits of one's tools.
The dynamic range feature was way more impressive than I expected. It really works and sounds good! I feared it might be like Automatic Gain Control like they include in many of the DSLRs and that AGC feature is awful in those cameras. It stupidly pushes the gain up through the roof during silent sequences and that just makes an unbearably noisy mess of the audio. But on the AVX, it sounds very transparent and clean. I really like it!
Final review should be here later this week. Let me know if there are other things you'd like me to test before I have to send it back to my friends at B&H Photo.
RODELink News Shooter Kit Pricing
RODE's new RODELink News Shooter kit has gone on pre-order over at B&H Photo and it looks like pricing will be $499 per kit. That strikes me as a fair price for the quality and value we're accustomed to seeing from RODE.
Looking forward to getting a copy for review some time in November.
Sennheiser AVX Wireless Microphone System: Battery, Distance, Interference Tests
Sennheiser recently introduced their new digital wireless system which they call AVX. There are various kits available and in this episode I used the kit with the transmitter, receiver, and MKE2 lavalier microphone (their higher-end pro lavalier microphone). Here we did a few tests to see how well the AVX does in terms of distance (keeping its signal without dropping out), managing WiFi and RF interference from phones, and how long the included Li-ion batteries last for the receiver and transmitter.
Sennheiser is clear to note that the AVX does not replace their G3 analogue wireless system (because it has more flexibility for professionals) but that AVX is aimed at videographers that are running solo and want to feed the audio directly into their camera. It is aimed primarily at those using pro-level camcorders with XLR inputs but also comes with an XLR to 3.5mm adapter for those shooting with DSLR or mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras.
In this video, we compared it to the RODELink in the distance and interference test and found that the AVX was able to hold on to a signal a little bit longer than RODELINK. Though admittedly, I never shoot with my talent out of sight of the camera or audio recorder so they're both fine.
Full disclosure: I own two RODELink kits and have the AVX on loan from the good people at B&H Photo.
Interview with Location Sound Recordist Scott Vanderbilt
If you've ever wondered what its like to be a location sound recordist/mixer for film, here's an opportunity to get the perspective of Scott Vanderbilt. He records sound for feature and short films, commercials, and corporate pieces. He's based in Los Angeles and has some good insights for those trying to improve their sound recordings for film.
Zoom F8 Safety Tracks (vs. Limiters)
So as we discussed in the last episode, the limiters on the Zoom F8 are not as effective as you'd get on a Sound Devices recorder or mixer. This is because they're in the digital stage which can be too late if distortion results in the analogue stage. But there is another option on the F8 if you're recording 4 tracks or fewer: Safety Tracks.
The way this works is you set the gain on say input/track #1. Then a safety track of the same thing coming in on input #1 is recorded to track #5 but at a lower gain level.
I was afraid that this safety track might suffer from the same issue as the limiter but I am happy to report that the safety track feature works brilliantly with absolutely no clipping on the safety track!
And it works because it appears that the F8 routes the signal to two different preamps, with different gain levels. So there's an alternative to the limiters if you have a critical shoot that you can't afford to mess up due to unexpected volume from the sound source. It isn't as simple as a limiter, but its much, much better than nothing!
