IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | Hi, I am Dave Schroeder, and this is
Digital Audio Principles and Production Basics.
| | 00:05 | In this training title, we will cover several basic
concepts and also explain a lot of terminology.
| | 00:11 | Now I should note that this title isn't
software specific, and we will be using
| | 00:15 | a few different applications to show
you some of the different concepts.
| | 00:18 | Our primary example software
will be Pro Tools 7.0 version LE.
| | 00:22 | However, most of the principles that
we will cover, you will be able to take
| | 00:26 | away and use in other audio software.
These will be principles and basics.
| | 00:29 | And because we are discussing digital
audio principles and software in general
| | 00:34 | terms, we are not going to include
any example files in this tutorial.
| | 00:37 | You'll most likely want to take what
you learn here and apply it to your own
| | 00:41 | work, rather than spend it
messing around with my audio files.
| | 00:44 | So let's go ahead and get started with
Digital Audio Principles and Production Basics.
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1. Sound and Digital AudioWhat is sound?| 00:00 | So what is sound? Sound is essentially vibrations
that travel through the air, it's the
| | 00:06 | molecules around us moving.
| | 00:08 | What happens is you have something that
creates a disturbance in air pressure.
| | 00:12 | And that disturbance creates these
different patterns of vibrations in the air
| | 00:16 | pressure, and these patterns of
vibrations of shifting molecules are what we
| | 00:20 | perceive as different sounds. And they
travel from the initial sound source or
| | 00:24 | where the disturbance first
occurs and travel out as sound waves.
| | 00:28 | You can think of sound as kind of
having three stages in life.
| | 00:32 | There is the production stage, where
it's actually created for the first time,
| | 00:36 | and that's where there are some
sort of impact, or action, that creates a
| | 00:39 | vibration, or movement.
| | 00:40 | You can think of this as hitting a snare drum
head, or a cowbell, or plucking a guitar string.
| | 00:46 | This creates a vibration, and it
starts to move the air pressure around it.
| | 00:50 | The second stage is the propagation,
or the point where, kind of, sound
| | 00:54 | actually travels to us. And so the
disturbance in the air pressure actually
| | 00:58 | travels via sound waves.
| | 00:59 | So these sound waves are
traveling out and they run into things.
| | 01:02 | Sometimes, they hit things like walls
and then bounce and are redirected, and
| | 01:06 | other times, they actually hit things
that are sensitive to the vibrations, like
| | 01:10 | our ears or microphones.
| | 01:11 | And this brings us to the third stage,
which is when the sound waves actually
| | 01:15 | reach something that's sensitive to
these changes in air pressure, better
| | 01:18 | known as a receiver.
| | 01:20 | And that receiver can take those
changes in air pressure and convert them
| | 01:23 | into something else.
| | 01:25 | As humans, we pick up these
changes in air pressure, and we actually
| | 01:28 | perceive them as sound.
| | 01:30 | A classic analogy for sound waves and
kind of thinking about how sound travels
| | 01:33 | is to think about throwing a rock into
a still pond, and thinking about how
| | 01:38 | the little ripples go out in all directions and
eventually hit the shore, hit different things.
| | 01:43 | You think about that rock being kind
of the production stage, and then the
| | 01:47 | propagation stage being those waves or
ripples as they go out from that center,
| | 01:51 | and this bring us to the
third stage, the perception stage.
| | 01:54 | The perception stage is
what those waves actually hit.
| | 01:57 | In the case of hearing, it would be
hitting our ears, or in the case of
| | 02:01 | recording, it would be hitting a microphone.
| | 02:04 | So each of these disturbances is
different and will generate kind of a unique
| | 02:07 | pattern of variations in the air
pressure, and this is what gives the sound its
| | 02:11 | character, this is kind of how we
know a snare drum from a human voice.
| | 02:15 | They have different patterns.
| | 02:17 | So there are two characteristics of
waveforms that affect how we hear a sound.
| | 02:20 | There is amplitude, or
the loudness, and frequency.
| | 02:25 | Let's take a look at amplitude.
| | 02:27 | This is the relative strength of a sound or
how much of a change in air pressure occurs.
| | 02:31 | So in our visual we can see some
waveforms with less amplitude and some
| | 02:35 | waveforms with more amplitude, and we
perceive these differences in amplitude as
| | 02:39 | essentially quieter and louder sounds.
| | 02:42 | Loudness is the term that we use to
describe how humans perceive amplitude.
| | 02:47 | Another important unit of measurement
we are talking about loudness is the
| | 02:50 | decibel, and it's got two different
applications, there is the decibel SPL or
| | 02:55 | Sound Pressure Level, which is what we
use to measure the strength of the sound.
| | 02:58 | We have got a little list here of some
of the different SPL levels, and you can
| | 03:03 | see kind of how they correspond with
different things, with zero dB representing
| | 03:06 | the threshold of human hearing, or how
loud something has to be in order for us
| | 03:10 | to be able to hear it at all.
| | 03:12 | 20 dB is whispering, 60 dB conversation,
et cetera. A 130 dB the threshold of pain.
| | 03:18 | If you are at a concert, and you have
to leave because it hurts too much, it's
| | 03:22 | probably around 130 dB. And then if
you get up to 194 dB, which is really,
| | 03:27 | really loud, we are talking about
shock waves, and I guess kind of above that
| | 03:31 | you are thinking about stuff like the
sonic boom and stuff that you don't want
| | 03:35 | to be too close to when you
hear, because it's pretty loud.
| | 03:38 | It's important to note that decibels
are logarithmic, and this means that the
| | 03:42 | volume changes represented by decibels
aren't weighted on a one-to-one basis.
| | 03:47 | To that point, every time a sound goes
up by three decibels, it effectively is
| | 03:51 | becoming twice as loud.
| | 03:53 | We have got a little list here of some
of the different SPL levels, and you can
| | 03:57 | see how they correspond to different things.
| | 03:59 | We also use the decibel to measure
the loudness of sound and in terms of
| | 04:02 | audio, it kind of refers to the signal
level or the volume, and you will that
| | 04:06 | when we are working with digital audio,
we will talk about turning a sound up
| | 04:10 | a few dB or down a few dB.
| | 04:12 | In the next movie, we will take a
look at hertz and frequency response.
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| Hertz and frequency response| 00:00 | Now one unit of measurement
we should talk about is Hertz.
| | 00:04 | It shows up all over the place
when we are dealing with audio.
| | 00:06 | So the sooner we take a look at it, the better.
| | 00:09 | The best way to think of hertz is
that it represents the number of times an
| | 00:13 | event is completed per second, or
the number of cycles per second.
| | 00:17 | It represents different things in
different situations, but it always refers to
| | 00:22 | a certain amount of events per second.
| | 00:24 | Now the two places you will find in
dealing with audio very commonly are with
| | 00:28 | frequency, or pitch, and also with sample rates.
| | 00:32 | Hertz is represented by a
large H and a little z, and then a few prefixes.
| | 00:36 | For instance, in our chart, we have 1
Hz or one cycle per second, 1 KHz or 1000
| | 00:41 | cycles per second, 1 MHz or 1,000,000
cycles per second, and 1 GHz, 1 thousand
| | 00:48 | million cycles per second.
| | 00:51 | Let's talk about how hertz
relate to frequency next.
| | 00:55 | When we talk about hertz in
relationship to the frequency of the sound, we are
| | 00:59 | talking about the number of times a
sound wave completes a cycle per second, the
| | 01:03 | higher the frequency, the higher the
pitch, so let's look at these graphics.
| | 01:08 | First we have a complete cycle of the Sine wave.
| | 01:10 | On the left, we have it in a linear display,
and on the right, I've slid the bottom
| | 01:15 | half around just to illustrate that a
cycle means a complete revolution, or once
| | 01:20 | around, so to speak.
| | 01:22 | Down below, we have several
different frequencies and their Sine waves.
| | 01:25 | On the left we have the frequency, and in
the middle we have one cycle of that frequency.
| | 01:30 | Then on the far right here we have all three
frequencies against the same amount of time.
| | 01:34 | Now you can see that the higher the
frequency, the shorter the cycle and
| | 01:39 | therefore, the more cycles
that take place per second.
| | 01:41 | Now we can see that there are quite a few
more cycles per second at 6 KHz, than at 1 KHz.
| | 01:48 | So again, frequency refers to the number
of times a sound wave completes a cycle.
| | 01:55 | Now let's look at what we
call the range of human hearing.
| | 01:58 | The human ear is capable of hearing
frequencies that range from the very low
| | 02:02 | pitched, 20 Hz to the very
high-pitched 20 KHz, or 20 to 20K.
| | 02:07 | Sounds that exists above this range are
referred to as ultrasonic and those that
| | 02:12 | are below are considered subsonic.
| | 02:14 | Now in audio production, we tend only
to concern ourselves with the human range
| | 02:19 | of hearing, this 20 to 20K range.
| | 02:21 | Now if you are making music for
dolphins or doing a podcast for bats, you would
| | 02:26 | want to include frequencies all the
way up to 200 KHz, because they can
| | 02:30 | actually hear that high.
| | 02:32 | But humans, perhaps like you,
and I, can't hear beyond 20 KHz.
| | 02:37 | So that's what we tend to worry about.
| | 02:38 | Now when we work with audio, we tend to
break this range down even a little bit
| | 02:43 | further to kind of simplify things into
three sub-categories, we call them the
| | 02:46 | lows, the mids, and the highs.
| | 02:48 | And as you would expect, the lows
refer to the lower frequencies, the mids to
| | 02:52 | the mid ranged frequencies, and
the highs to the higher frequencies.
| | 02:55 | A little side note on the range of
human hearing, most of us don't hear that
| | 03:00 | much above 16 KHz even though the range
goes up to 20K, and actually as we get
| | 03:04 | older, we hear even less than that,
which is why kids can set their cell phones
| | 03:08 | to ring with these really high
pitched ring tones, and when they go off in
| | 03:12 | class, the teachers can't hear it,
because their hearing is not as good as it
| | 03:16 | used to be--and everyone says kids are stupid.
| | 03:18 | And that provides a pretty nice segue
into talking about frequency response.
| | 03:23 | Frequency response generally refers to
how sensitive a person or a microphone or
| | 03:28 | a device is to different frequencies.
| | 03:31 | This is often represented in a graph,
and it's well-worth understanding because
| | 03:35 | you are going to come into contact
with this quite a bit when you look at
| | 03:38 | different specs for gear and equipment.
| | 03:40 | What the graph will show is the
frequencies along the X-axis and then the
| | 03:44 | response to those frequencies or
the sensitivity along the Y-axis.
| | 03:49 | So this top chart shows a
flat frequency response.
| | 03:52 | Now in other words, it represents
equal sensitivity to all frequencies.
| | 03:57 | And when it comes to audio recording
equipment like microphones and speakers, a
| | 04:01 | flat or accurate response is very
favorable, because it can help us achieve
| | 04:05 | accurate representations of the sound.
| | 04:07 | But in reality, humans and very often devices, don't
actually have flat accurate frequencies responses.
| | 04:12 | It's actually quite difficult to manufacture a
device with a flat frequency response.
| | 04:18 | So below, we have a chart
showing an uneven frequency response.
| | 04:22 | In other words, it shows different
sensitivities to different frequencies.
| | 04:25 | And this is much more like what our
frequency response probably looks like as humans.
| | 04:30 | We are a little more sensitive to some
of the frequencies here around the 8K
| | 04:34 | range, and then we have quite a drop-off
in sensitivity when it comes to the
| | 04:37 | extremes of the range of human hearing.
| | 04:40 | So that's basically it for hertz,
frequencies, the range of human hearing,
| | 04:44 | and frequency response.
| | 04:46 | To recap, hertz, which is signified by a
big H and a little z, refers to the
| | 04:51 | number of times a cycle or
something happens per second.
| | 04:55 | When we talk about hertz in
relationship to frequency, we are talking about the
| | 04:59 | number of times a sound wave
completes a cycle per second.
| | 05:03 | The range of human hearing is a
frequency range of 20 Hz at the low end, up to
| | 05:08 | 20 KHz at the high end.
| | 05:10 | And finally, frequency response refers
to the range of frequencies a person can
| | 05:15 | hear and how sensitive they are to
those frequencies, and we can use charts to
| | 05:20 | represents the frequency response
of different things such as speakers,
| | 05:25 | microphones, people, dolphins,
bats, wombats, you name it.
| | 05:31 | Next, we will talk about phase.
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| Phase| 00:01 | Another thing that comes up that is
good to be aware of when dealing with
| | 00:05 | frequencies, and waveforms, and
cycles per second is the concept of Phase.
| | 00:09 | Phase is the relative delay or offset
between two sound waves of the same frequency.
| | 00:14 | When there is no offset, the waves are
considered coincident and they're In Phase.
| | 00:19 | But when there is an offset,
they're considered Out Of Phase.
| | 00:22 | So let's take a look, we have a
coincident pair of two sine waves.
| | 00:27 | What you get when you combine those two
sine waves is you get more of the same,
| | 00:31 | it just increases the amplitude.
| | 00:34 | If they're in different phases of the
cycle when they're summed, the amplitude
| | 00:38 | of the resulting wave will
look something like this.
| | 00:41 | We'll get different increases and
decreases in the amplitude based on the offset.
| | 00:46 | If they're at complete opposite stages in the
phase, you get what we call Phase Cancellation.
| | 00:52 | Meaning that this side of the phase gets
canceled out by the energy of this side of the phase.
| | 00:57 | The result is cancellation, or nothing.
| | 01:00 | Needless to say, this phase
cancellation can become a problem when you're
| | 01:03 | working with digital audio.
| | 01:05 | You'll find that it'll creep up in a
few different situations, such as dealing
| | 01:08 | with microphone placement and making
sure you have properly wired cables.
| | 01:12 | We'll talk about this a
little bit in other sections.
| | 01:15 | But I just want you to be aware of the
concept of phase, and the idea that it's
| | 01:19 | the correlation between two sets of
sounds, or two sets of waves, and where they
| | 01:24 | are when we hear them.
| | 01:25 | At what stage of a cycle they're in,
when we hear both of them, or when they
| | 01:29 | both arrive at the same point, like when
two sounds get to a microphone, we want
| | 01:33 | to know what stage of the cycle they're in.
Hopefully, they're In Phase.
| | 01:37 | So we have two waves that are In
Phase, we get more of the same.
| | 01:41 | We get greater amplitude, but we get the
same frequency, and we get the same intensity.
| | 01:46 | When we have sounds that are slightly Out Of
Phase or offset, we get kind of a wavering factor.
| | 01:51 | It sounds like the sound will kind of be
bright for a moment, and then dull for a moment.
| | 01:55 | There's actually an effect called a
Phase, where we use this to our advantage
| | 01:59 | to kind of add some texture to sounds.
| | 02:01 | But if you're not looking for that
texture, like you're trying to record a
| | 02:05 | grand piano, and you don't want it to
have the Phaser effect on it, you need to
| | 02:09 | pay attention to this.
| | 02:10 | You'll usually be able to identify
phasing when you hear it, because it doesn't
| | 02:13 | sound quite right unless
you're intending for it to happen.
| | 02:17 | Finally, if we have two waves that
are completely out of phase, we end up
| | 02:21 | with Phase Cancellation.
| | 02:23 | You can see that if the waves are
exactly opposite points in the cycle, the
| | 02:27 | result is cancellation, because the
amplitudes cancel each other out, so we
| | 02:31 | don't hear anything at all.
| | 02:33 | This can be a problem, when you're
trying to record something, because you
| | 02:36 | want to hear it.
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| Capturing audio| 00:01 | Sound lives out in space,
and it's in the air around us.
| | 00:04 | But we want to grab it, and
record it, and mess around with it.
| | 00:08 | So how do we do this? What's the trick?
| | 00:10 | We need to figure out the way to
kind of capture it, to capture sound.
| | 00:14 | That requires converting changes in the air pressure,
these acoustic sounds into electrical voltages.
| | 00:19 | So in order to do this we need
something that's sensitive to these little
| | 00:23 | patterns of vibrations out in the air around us.
For humans, we use our ears.
| | 00:28 | But we need a device to get this into
a form that we can really work with it.
| | 00:32 | So we need a transducer.
We need a microphone.
| | 00:35 | A transducer can take one form of energy,
and convert it into a different form of energy.
| | 00:39 | A microphone is sensitive to the sound waves.
| | 00:42 | It's able to convert those
into electrical voltages.
| | 00:45 | Once the microphone has converted
those sound waves, the electrical voltages
| | 00:49 | that we get can be thought of as analog.
| | 00:51 | Let's take a look at the
three different states of sound.
| | 00:53 | There is the Acoustic,
the Analog, and the Digital.
| | 00:57 | Now acoustic are the sound waves,
that's the sound out around us.
| | 01:01 | Analog are electrical voltages.
| | 01:03 | These are what run through your
guitar cable or hookup your home stereo.
| | 01:07 | Then finally, there is the Digital
state, where information is represented by
| | 01:10 | numerical values or ones and zeros.
It's binary data or the language of computers.
| | 01:16 | So if these are the three states of
sound, what we want to do is be able to get
| | 01:20 | sounds from the first two, from
Acoustic and Analog into the Digital world so
| | 01:25 | that we can work with digital audio.
| | 01:27 | So there is taking sounds and getting
them to the land of digital and then there
| | 01:31 | is taking those digital sounds and
getting them back out into the air around us.
| | 01:35 | This whole process is referred to
A-to-D Conversion, or Analog-to-Digital
| | 01:39 | Conversion, and Digital-to-Analog Conversion.
| | 01:43 | Here we can see we want to take the sound
out around us, the sound of a snare drum.
| | 01:47 | Pick it up with a microphone, which
converts it into Electrical Voltages.
| | 01:51 | Then convert it via our Analog-to-Digital
converters into Numerical Values that
| | 01:55 | our computer can work with.
| | 01:57 | Once it's in that digital stage, we can do things
like edit it on our computer, add effects.
| | 02:03 | Everything you do when you're working
with audio on your computer, we have that
| | 02:07 | sound in that state in Digital.
| | 02:09 | Then when we're done making our piece of
music, or podcast, or whatever, we want
| | 02:13 | to get it back out so other people can hear it.
| | 02:16 | So we go the other way to get it
back to a speaker of some variety.
| | 02:20 | So we go from Digital to Analog, which runs
it through the speaker cables out to a speaker.
| | 02:25 | Then that speaker generates new
Acoustic sound, and sends our music or our
| | 02:29 | podcast out into the air around us.
| | 02:31 | We're actually making something that
goes out and changes the molecules in
| | 02:35 | the room around us.
It's pretty cool actually if you think about it.
| | 02:38 | If you think about these three stages,
and how we're kind of creating this cycle
| | 02:42 | of taking acoustic sound and physical
energy, converting it a few times, playing
| | 02:46 | with it, toying with it, changing it
around, or creating it from scratch in the
| | 02:49 | digital world, and then pushing it
back out into space, into the air around us.
| | 02:53 | It's pretty amazing.
| | 02:55 | Even right now while I'm speaking,
this process is taking place.
| | 02:58 | I'm talking into a microphone.
| | 03:00 | It's going to a computer, and then
being worked on, and then sent back out as a
| | 03:05 | final product, and something
that you can actually listen to.
| | 03:07 | So you're sitting
somewhere, and you can hear me.
| | 03:10 | We've gone through the stage of
Capture & Reproduce. Pretty cool!
| | 03:13 | You're at the end of the chain, don't
feel bad about that, because now you'll
| | 03:17 | know how to make it, and be
at the beginning of the chain.
| | 03:20 | So there are a lot of changes that go
on with capturing and reproducing sound.
| | 03:24 | The one I want to focus on next is the
one between the electrical voltage, and
| | 03:28 | going to the digital world or
those numerical values, which is
| | 03:31 | Analog-to-Digital Conversion.
| | 03:33 | So in the next movie we'll look at that,
and we'll look at some of the things
| | 03:36 | that go into making that possible.
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| Sample rate| 00:01 | The process of Converting Analog to
Digital is one of the most important
| | 00:05 | processes when it comes to
working with digital audio.
| | 00:09 | It's important to understand
what goes into it, because you'll be
| | 00:12 | making decisions about how analog is converted
to digital in a lot of different situations.
| | 00:17 | So I want to talk about how we
do that, and what it actually is.
| | 00:21 | To be able to take sound and use it in
the computer or in the digital domain, we
| | 00:26 | need to come up with numeric
representations of those analog signals, or those
| | 00:29 | electric signals that are
moving through our cables and wires.
| | 00:32 | So there are two sets of values that determine
how accurate these representations are.
| | 00:38 | Sample rate and bit depth.
Let's take a look at sample rate first.
| | 00:43 | Sample Rate is actually
just what it sounds like.
| | 00:46 | It's the rate of taking samples.
| | 00:47 | It's the amount of samples we take per
second, or there are a number of times
| | 00:52 | each second, we look at a sound
and take a measurement of that sound.
| | 00:56 | So the number of times we're analyzing,
or looking, and scrutinizing a sound to
| | 01:00 | see what's actually there.
| | 01:02 | Now a Sample is an
individual piece of information.
| | 01:04 | So each time we look, we say, hey,
what's there, how louder, what
| | 01:08 | frequencies are there.
| | 01:10 | Then we write it down in a little notebook,
which becomes a digital piece of information.
| | 01:14 | It's basically the process of coming up with
the numeric representations of what exists.
| | 01:20 | Sample rates comes into play, because
how many times you look has a big effect
| | 01:24 | on how accurately you
see what you're looking at.
| | 01:27 | Needless to say with audio, we
need to take a lot of samples to get a
| | 01:31 | pretty accurate picture.
| | 01:32 | There are a lot of things
going on there, a lot of changes.
| | 01:35 | So sample rates are expressed as
a frequency of samples per second.
| | 01:38 | So they're expressed in hertz.
We take a lot of them.
| | 01:41 | A sample rate of 44.1 kilohertz in one
single second, we're taking a look and
| | 01:47 | sampling that sound 44,100 times.
So that's a lot of looks.
| | 01:53 | So every time we take a look, we
record a sample, which is more or
| | 01:57 | less numerical data.
| | 01:58 | That is digital information that
our computers can read and understand.
| | 02:02 | The higher that sample rate is the
better the sound quality we'll have.
| | 02:06 | Let's take a look at a few examples.
So Higher sample rates = greater accuracy.
| | 02:12 | I've a couple of visuals here.
This is a analog signal coming in.
| | 02:17 | These little gray bars
represent taking a sample.
| | 02:21 | So this is our sample rate.
| | 02:22 | So these red dots kind of
represent what we're seeing.
| | 02:25 | When we take that look or take
a sample, this is what we find.
| | 02:28 | We know that this wave is
at this point, at this time.
| | 02:31 | This wave is at this point, at this time.
| | 02:33 | So you can see here we have a lower
sample rate, and so you get fewer samples.
| | 02:38 | It's pretty obvious.
Higher sample rate, more samples.
| | 02:43 | So we're taking more looks, and
getting more little bits of information, more
| | 02:46 | little measurements, and more little
numeric representations of what's happening here.
| | 02:51 | So in the next slide, we'll connect those dots.
| | 02:53 | You can see that if we connect the dots
at the lower rate, we miss out on a fair
| | 02:58 | amount of information involved in the slide.
| | 03:00 | In this one, we really
miss this whole big spike.
| | 03:04 | We missed some of the peaks for sure.
| | 03:06 | We get a lot of that kind of middle
information, but we missed out on some of
| | 03:08 | the real extreme things happening here.
| | 03:11 | With a Higher sample rate, we get a much more
accurate representation of that analog sound.
| | 03:16 | This is why higher sample rates are better.
| | 03:19 | So as you would expect, the higher
the sample rate, the more accurate the
| | 03:22 | reproduction of the sound, which
in a way of saying the better sound.
| | 03:26 | So the higher the sample rate is
the more accurate the analog to
| | 03:29 | digital conversion will be.
| | 03:31 | Here are a lot of the sample rates
you'll come into contact with digital audio.
| | 03:36 | From the lowest being 8 and
right now the highest being 192.
| | 03:40 | If you go and buy an audio CD at the store,
it's going to come in at 44.1 kilohertz.
| | 03:46 | Now 44.1 is really considered the
minimum sample rate required to achieve
| | 03:50 | high-quality digital audio.
| | 03:52 | We come to this rate as a result of the
Nyquist theorem, which concludes that a
| | 03:57 | sample rate should be at least twice
as high as the highest frequency you're
| | 04:00 | trying to record or sample.
| | 04:02 | Since humans can hear up to 20 kilohertz, a
sample rate of twice that or 40K is required.
| | 04:08 | Now the reason we got up a little bit
further to 44.1, gets a little bit technical.
| | 04:12 | I'm not going to go into it in this title.
| | 04:15 | But certainly if you want to find out more
about it, you can look up the Nyquist Theorem.
| | 04:19 | Any sample rate lower than 44.1, you
can usually detect degraded sound quality.
| | 04:24 | We'll listen to a few examples.
| | 04:26 | Rates higher than 44.1K such as 48, or 96, and
192 are used quite a bit now in digital audio.
| | 04:34 | They provide some really excellent results.
| | 04:36 | We'll talk a little bit more about
kind of some of the trade-offs of
| | 04:39 | using different rates.
| | 04:40 | It's not as simple as just saying,
well, let's use the best rate.
| | 04:43 | There are a few things you
need to take into account.
| | 04:46 | We'll talk about that in just a little bit.
| | 04:48 | So let's go ahead and check out a few
examples of things at different sample rates.
| | 04:52 | We'll start with something at 44.1.
(music playing)
| | 05:01 | So you can hear that's pretty
good quality. It's pretty even.
| | 05:04 | And this is the standard, if you buy a CD
in the store or something like that,
| | 05:08 | this is what you hear.
It's not the highest quality available.
| | 05:10 | It's generally accepted as
very, very suitable quality.
| | 05:14 | Now let's check out
something at a lower rate at 22.
| | 05:18 | (music playing)
| | 05:26 | So at 22, we're actually taking half as many samples.
So we're getting half as much information.
| | 05:30 | And obviously, we're not going to have as
accurate representation of the sound.
| | 05:34 | Finally, let's check out one at 8K.
(music playing)
| | 05:46 | So hopefully, it's easy to hear that there is
| | 05:48 | a big difference in the quality between
8K and 22, and even more of a difference
| | 05:52 | between 8K and 44.1 kilohertz.
| | 05:55 | So at 8K, we're taking more than five
times fewer the number of samples than we
| | 06:01 | are at 44.1 kilohertz.
The sound is noticeably not as good.
| | 06:05 | So that's a quick look at sample rate.
Next, we'll look at bit depth.
| | 06:09 | Then we'll think about how when it
combined with sample rate will affect the
| | 06:12 | overall quality of our digital audio.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Bit depth| 00:01 | The other thing we need to think about
when thinking about analog to digital
| | 00:04 | conversion is bit depth.
| | 00:05 | But before we go into that, I want to
go over a couple of definitions that'll
| | 00:09 | help us understand bit depth.
| | 00:10 | The first, there is Dynamic Range, or
the available range of volumes between the
| | 00:15 | loudest and softest audible sounds.
| | 00:17 | Now this isn't like your home stereo,
like you can turn it from zero up.
| | 00:21 | It's not how loud something
can be, or how loud it can go.
| | 00:25 | It has more to do with the difference
between the loudest sound and the quietest sound.
| | 00:29 | An example would be if you're
watching a movie, and someone sneezes,
| | 00:33 | and then there is a four car
pileup and a giant explosion.
| | 00:36 | Chances are that the volume difference
between those two sounds is pretty good.
| | 00:40 | The sneeze is a little quiet cache,
and the explosion is a big thing that
| | 00:44 | almost knocks you off your chair.
That's a good way to think of Dynamic Range.
| | 00:49 | It's the difference between those two
sounds and what difference is available.
| | 00:53 | The Dynamic Range is that range, it's
how much of a difference you can work
| | 00:56 | with, how much louder can the
explosion be than that sneeze.
| | 01:01 | Dynamic Range is important, because
the greater your Dynamic Range is the
| | 01:05 | greater the Signal-To-Noise Ratio is.
| | 01:08 | Now the Signal-To-Noise Ratio refers
to the difference in volume between what
| | 01:11 | you want to hear, the signal, and
what you don't want to hear, the noise.
| | 01:16 | The greater a Signal-To-Noise
Ratio is the better.
| | 01:18 | So when you turn the volume of
something up, you can hear quite a bit of the
| | 01:22 | sound or the music without also
having to hear some of the noise.
| | 01:25 | So by signal, we mean the things we want
to hear, like the music, or the voice-over.
| | 01:30 | Whatever we're working on,
and recording, and producing.
| | 01:32 | By the noise, we mean things
like room hiss or background air.
| | 01:37 | Actually, here I'll be quiet for a minute,
if you turn up the volume, count to three.
| | 01:41 | Turn up the volume a little bit.
| | 01:43 | See if you can hear just the general
background hiss or noise of this recording.
| | 01:47 | Ready, I'll be quiet for three seconds.
| | 01:49 | You can turn it up, and then turn
it back down, one, two, three quiet.
| | 01:58 | So if you actually did turn up your
speakers there at that point, you probably
| | 02:02 | would've heard some of the hiss or background
noise that's taking place even in this recording.
| | 02:06 | Finally, let's talk about
the Digital Dynamic Range.
| | 02:09 | This refers to the volume
range of a digital audio file.
| | 02:12 | It goes from negative infinity or silence
up to zero, or the loudest the file can be.
| | 02:18 | Now we're talking about a file, and
we're talking about the volume range
| | 02:22 | that's fixed in that file.
| | 02:24 | You can take a CD home from the store,
put it in your stereo, and turn it way
| | 02:28 | up, or turn it way down.
That's not what we're talking about.
| | 02:31 | But on that CD itself,
there are digital audio files.
| | 02:34 | But those audio files on
that CD have a Dynamic Range.
| | 02:38 | They can only go from
negative infinity up to zero.
| | 02:42 | In a digital audio file, any sound that
goes above zero is actually where we get
| | 02:46 | distortion or clipping.
So let's take a look at bit depth.
| | 02:51 | Bit depth itself dictates the number of
discrete volume levels that can create
| | 02:55 | the dynamic range available in digital audio.
| | 02:59 | In other words, it's how many different
volume levels a sample can choose from
| | 03:02 | when it takes a look or makes a note.
| | 03:04 | So we have our sampling
rate, and it's taking samples.
| | 03:07 | It takes a look at an audio
file, or takes that sample.
| | 03:10 | Part of the thing it wants to record, or
make a note of, is how loud that sound is.
| | 03:16 | The bit depth of a digital audio file
determines how many different volumes it
| | 03:20 | can pick from to say it's this loud.
| | 03:23 | A simplified version would be to say,
we have four different intervals like
| | 03:27 | on your volume knob it goes zero, one, two,
three, four different intervals of sound.
| | 03:32 | When we take a sample, it
says, okay, this one is two.
| | 03:36 | On the next sample it says, oh,
this one is as loud as three.
| | 03:39 | This one is as loud as zero.
So that would be one bit depth.
| | 03:43 | But now if we had maybe eight intervals,
so from zero to one, to two, to three,
| | 03:47 | to four, and so on, up to eight, then it can go
and say, well, this one is two. This one is four.
| | 03:53 | It's not necessarily that four is twice as loud.
| | 03:56 | It's that there is a greater degree
of discrete intervals there that it can
| | 04:00 | choose from, so I can create a better
representation of what the actual volume is.
| | 04:05 | So the greater the bit depth, the
greater the available dynamic range.
| | 04:09 | So let's take a look at a few
different common bit depths that you'll see in
| | 04:12 | digital audio, and the amount of
dynamic range that they'll provide.
| | 04:15 | There is this 8-bit, which only
provides 48dB, 16-bit, which provides 96, 24 at
| | 04:21 | 144, and 32 at 192, and so on.
| | 04:25 | A couple of real world examples here,
when you buy a CD a music CD from the
| | 04:30 | store, it's at 16-bit.
So you can get 96dB of range out of there.
| | 04:35 | But if you get a DVD, usually
that audio sound there at 24-bit.
| | 04:39 | So that in the movie you can have
sound effects and music that can have a
| | 04:42 | greater range of volumes.
| | 04:44 | It's important not to confuse bit depth
with bit rate, which you probably
| | 04:47 | know bit rate from MP3s.
It's one of the settings you can pick.
| | 04:51 | If you've used iTunes or compressed
some of your CDs into compressed formats,
| | 04:55 | you've probably selected
something called the bit rate.
| | 04:57 | This is entirely different from bit depth.
| | 05:00 | We'll talk about it later in another movie
when we talk about compressed file formats.
| | 05:04 | But for now we're talking
about sample rate and bit depth.
| | 05:06 | Sample rate and bit depth work together.
| | 05:10 | So it's a combination of sample rate
and bit-depth that determine the overall
| | 05:14 | quality of the sound.
| | 05:16 | An analogy I like to use for sample
rate and bit depth is that of camera.
| | 05:19 | If you think about how many pictures
your camera can take in a second like a
| | 05:23 | speed shot, that's the
equivalent of the sample rate.
| | 05:26 | It's the number of shots per second.
| | 05:28 | In terms of bit depth, it's kind of
like how many colors a camera can discern.
| | 05:32 | Your camera might take a black and white
photo, and see four different shades of
| | 05:36 | gray, or a nicer camera might be able
to see eight different shades of gray.
| | 05:41 | Well, obviously, the more shades of
gray you can see, or discern, when you take a
| | 05:46 | picture, and make that recording, the
more accurate your photograph is going to
| | 05:50 | be of what's actually happening.
| | 05:51 | So here we kind of have a rough
mockup of bit depth and the dynamic range.
| | 05:56 | The greater the number of bits, the
bigger the range between infinity and zero,
| | 06:00 | the more different volume
levels you can have access to.
| | 06:04 | So here is a visual that shows bit depth
as it pertains to digital audio.
| | 06:08 | The greater the bit depth, the greater
the number of volume intervals between
| | 06:12 | infinity and -0, which is the loudest.
| | 06:16 | So it's clear that a higher sample rate
and a higher bit depth make for better audio.
| | 06:22 | But it's not quite that simple.
| | 06:23 | There are a few things you
have to take into account.
| | 06:26 | The main concern is that the higher
the sample rate and the higher the
| | 06:29 | bit depth, the bigger
your files are going to be.
| | 06:31 | We all know that file size
is something to keep in mind.
| | 06:34 | When you're working with digital audio,
you'll be dealing with very large file sizes.
| | 06:38 | So here I kind of have a list of the
combination of sample rates and bit depths,
| | 06:42 | and these different file sizes they have.
| | 06:44 | So we're looking at for One minute of
mono digital audio (uncompressed) at 44.1
| | 06:49 | kHz and 16-bit depth.
| | 06:52 | A bit depth of 16, we'll be looking at 5.1
Megabytes for that single minute of mono audio.
| | 06:58 | You can see as we go up, it gets bigger.
| | 07:00 | 96 kilohertz set a bit
depth of 24, 16 Megabytes.
| | 07:05 | 192 kilohertz at 24-bit, 33, and the highest
available I think right now is 192 at 32-bit.
| | 07:15 | That's 44 Megabytes per minute of mono audio.
| | 07:19 | So as you can see, this can really add up, especially
if you're doing a lot of multitrack recording.
| | 07:24 | So the reason we're pointing this
out is that you have to make some
| | 07:27 | decisions based on the quality you
want in relationship to how big a file
| | 07:31 | you want to have, or how much disk space you
have, or how much you want to have to work with.
| | 07:36 | So working with sample rate and bit depth,
and making decisions about which
| | 07:39 | one is to be used is more than just
always go for the highest best quality,
| | 07:43 | because you have to kind of figure out what
kind of file sizes you'll have to dealing with.
| | 07:48 | Make just a few choices on
what's appropriate for the scenario.
| | 07:50 | Now I'm not going to tell you which
bit depths to use, but I will give you a
| | 07:54 | little bit of information here.
| | 07:55 | As I mentioned, store-bought CDs
come at 44.1 kilohertz, 16-bit.
| | 08:00 | You've been listening to
those for 15 or 20 years.
| | 08:03 | You can tell they sound pretty good.
So that's not a lousy quality by any means.
| | 08:07 | It's pretty good quality.
| | 08:08 | A lot of times we'll work in our
digital audio software at higher sample rates
| | 08:13 | and bit rates, but when we actually
export it, or put that on to a CD, or use it
| | 08:18 | to create an MP3, we have to go
back down to 44.1 and 16-bit anyway.
| | 08:23 | A lot of newer devices are capable of playback
at higher sample rates and higher bit depths.
| | 08:28 | So a lot of these higher sample
rates and bit-depths are very relevant.
| | 08:31 | I always say it's good to figure out
what you think your final delivery mediums
| | 08:35 | is going to be, or who you think is
going to be listening to it, and in what
| | 08:39 | capacity, and from there make some
decisions about what you're going to use.
| | 08:42 | I would say that using 24-bit to get a
greater dynamic range when you're doing
| | 08:46 | music and voice-over recording
at 44.1 is usually worth it.
| | 08:50 | It takes up a few more megabytes,
but usually there is a payoff there.
| | 08:53 | It's very common now if you're going
into a professional recording studio to
| | 08:57 | have your music recorded at 96K at 24-bit.
| | 09:00 | Today, I'll just go out and would
say that, if you go to a professional
| | 09:04 | recording facility, chances are they're
recording at a sample rate of 96K and a bit depth of 24.
| | 09:10 | So that does it for sample rate and bit depth.
| | 09:11 | As you can see, sample rate and bit depth
are the two main factors that go into
| | 09:16 | analog-to-digital conversion.
| | 09:18 | There are two things that you want to
keep in mind, you'll find yourself making
| | 09:22 | decisions about these settings when
you start new recording sessions, or when
| | 09:25 | you export or import files.
| | 09:27 | So it's good to have an
understanding of what these things are.
| | 09:29 | We'll see sample rate and bit depth
in a lot of different areas when you're
| | 09:33 | working with digital audio in terms of
importing things, or setting a session
| | 09:36 | bit rate or sample rate.
| | 09:38 | So it's good to be aware of what
sample rate and bit depth are, and how the
| | 09:41 | different settings you can choose will affect
the quality of what you're working on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The waveform| 00:01 | The waveform is how we
represent a digital audio file visually.
| | 00:05 | You'll see a lot of waveforms when
you start working with digital audio.
| | 00:08 | It's basically what we work with the most
in terms of editing, changing things around.
| | 00:13 | It shows a couple of cool things.
| | 00:14 | It shows amplitude along a Y axis,
and Time along the X axis.
| | 00:20 | The other thing to take note of is the
center line or the zero crossing, where
| | 00:24 | the amplitude is above and below.
I'll show you a few examples of why.
| | 00:28 | But all waveforms are usually displayed
with a center line running through the
| | 00:32 | center of them as a point of
reference to use for making edits.
| | 00:35 | We can look at, as things move away
from the center line, the greater the
| | 00:39 | amplitude in both directions,
but time is always moving forward.
| | 00:43 | Time is marching on, but amplitude
is above and below the center line or
| | 00:48 | point of reference.
| | 00:50 | When you work with digital audio,
you'll be working with lots of waveforms.
| | 00:53 | So let's go into Pro Tools real quick,
and just take a look and zoom around in
| | 00:57 | a few different waveforms just
talk about a few of the different
| | 01:00 | characteristics you might find.
| | 01:02 | So here we are, and we have a
couple of different waveforms.
| | 01:04 | We have a Mono track here that's a
voiceover, and then a Stereo track, which
| | 01:09 | is a piece of music.
| | 01:10 | So these two waveforms are the left
and right channels of a Stereo track.
| | 01:15 | We also have a waveform that you
can see is really smashed up here.
| | 01:19 | It's got really some great amplitude.
That's actually distorted.
| | 01:21 | When you see those flat lines, that
means that we have a piece of digital audio
| | 01:26 | that's gone beyond digital zero in
terms of amplitude, and it's smashed.
| | 01:30 | We'll take a little bit
closer look of that in a minute.
| | 01:33 | We also have a waveform that we can
tell is a very quiet waveform, because it
| | 01:35 | doesn't have a lot of amplitude in relation.
| | 01:37 | So I just wanted to show you a quick
visual of the difference between when you
| | 01:41 | look at something, the relative
amplitude on the Y axis, you can pretty quickly
| | 01:44 | identify if something is
going to be loud or quiet.
| | 01:47 | So let's zoom in and just take a look
at a few different things, and just see
| | 01:49 | what these look like up close.
I'll make them a little bit taller.
| | 02:00 | Let's get a little bit closer even still.
| | 02:04 | So here is looking at a
waveform zoomed in very close.
| | 02:08 | You can see here is our center
line running down the middle.
| | 02:11 | Here is what we call the zero
crossing, or the point where the waveform
| | 02:17 | crosses the center line.
| | 02:18 | We'll show you later in the editing
chapter why being aware of this is
| | 02:23 | important, but in a nutshell it's
going to help you make quiet edits.
| | 02:30 | Let's go to the beginning.
| | 02:31 | You can just see that waveforms
just have a lot of different shapes.
| | 02:34 | When you see these higher quicker peaks,
you know that might be a quicker sound,
| | 02:39 | when you see a longer thing like
this that could be a longer word.
| | 02:42 | If this is a voice-over track, that
might be someone saying, wait now, wait now.
| | 02:52 | Let's zoom in on the really loud one,
and the really quiet one, take a look at
| | 02:56 | it--it might look like it's just
zoomed way in, but you'll see that it was
| | 03:01 | actually really flat.
| | 03:02 | If I change that visual look, and
scale it up here by making the zoom
| | 03:06 | different, we can see that it's still
really flat there, and that we still have
| | 03:10 | a lot of flattening out. That is distortion.
That's a bad thing. We don't really want to see that.
| | 03:17 | For making recordings, we're getting a
lot of that square flattened off look,
| | 03:21 | we're recording things way too loud.
| | 03:24 | Now hopefully things like peak
indicators and the fact that it sounds pretty
| | 03:27 | terrible and hard to listen to
will give you that indication.
| | 03:30 | But who knows maybe sometimes someone
will send you a file to work with, you'll
| | 03:34 | get it, and it will look like that.
| | 03:36 | If you bring it in, and you noticed
it's the flat-top style, you're going to
| | 03:40 | want to try and get that file again
or get a different recording of that
| | 03:44 | information, because it's pretty hard to work
with things that are flattened out that much.
| | 03:50 | Now if on the other hand if you get
an audio file that's too quiet, you can
| | 03:54 | always go ahead and turn it up.
| | 03:55 | It's not ideal to work with
audio files that are very quiet.
| | 03:58 | We really want to take advantage of
the full dynamic range, and work with as
| | 04:02 | loud the sounds as we can without
getting to distortion, but we'll talk about
| | 04:07 | that in another movie as well.
| | 04:10 | So that's a quick tour of
waveforms, and what they look like.
| | 04:13 | I just wanted to give you a quick tour,
and a little birds eye view, you'll be
| | 04:17 | seeing tons of these throughout this title.
| | 04:19 | If you're starting to work with
digital audio, you'll be dreaming about them.
| | 04:22 | You'll see so many of them.
| | 04:23 | What's so great about the waveform
is that they give us such quick visual
| | 04:27 | information about the sound we're working with.
So that allows us to do things pretty quick.
| | 04:31 | The old days of rewind and fast-forward,
and let's listen back, they still exist
| | 04:35 | but not quite the way they used to.
| | 04:36 | You can be pretty efficient and pretty
fast in terms of looking at a waveform,
| | 04:40 | and going right into the area you want.
| | 04:42 | For instance, if I know I want to take
out some gaps or some silence, I know
| | 04:46 | that this is a quiet passage, I can
go in there and start to work out right
| | 04:51 | away, as soon as I open the file.
| | 04:53 | So waveforms are really helpful in
terms of the way you work with sound.
| | 04:56 | In the next movie, we'll take a look
at the different audio file formats that
| | 05:00 | you'll encounter when you
work with digital audio.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Audio file formats| 00:01 | Finally, let's take a look at some of
the different audio file formats that
| | 00:04 | you'll be dealing with when you
start to work with digital audio.
| | 00:07 | Now there are a lot of different
formats out there, but it's good to think of
| | 00:11 | them in two main categories.
| | 00:12 | There is the Uncompressed Formats,
and there is the Compressed Formats.
| | 00:16 | Compressed Formats use data
compression to make file sizes actually smaller.
| | 00:20 | We'll actually about file
compression in another chapter.
| | 00:24 | The Uncompressed Formats are the ones
you'll most likely be using when you're
| | 00:27 | working with digital audio, in terms of
having editing software, recording to a format.
| | 00:32 | You'll be working with the WAV file
format, the AIFF for Audio Interchange File
| | 00:37 | Format, and the Sound Designer 2 format.
| | 00:40 | Now compressed formats are those that
actually use data compression in order
| | 00:43 | to make smaller files.
| | 00:44 | These formats are usually used
more for delivery than for the actual
| | 00:49 | audio production process.
| | 00:51 | When you're doing your edits, you'll
be working with uncompressed formats.
| | 00:54 | When you're sending your sound file over
the Internet, or putting it on an iPod,
| | 00:59 | you'll be dealing with a compressed format.
| | 01:01 | So they're really something that comes
into play after the fact for the most part.
| | 01:05 | Down at the bottom here, I just have a
quick comparison for file sizes for a
| | 01:08 | three minute stereo song.
| | 01:10 | You can see a WAV file with a sample
rate of 44.1, and the bit depth of 16 Bit,
| | 01:16 | which is CD quality sound.
That song is approximately 30 Megabytes.
| | 01:20 | Now an MP3 version of that same song at
128 kilobits, which is considered good
| | 01:26 | quality, comes in a just under 3 Megabytes.
| | 01:29 | So there is a significant difference in
the file size between the uncompressed
| | 01:33 | and the compressed formats.
| | 01:34 | Now of course, you have lots of options
in terms of kind of changing the factors
| | 01:39 | that go into determining
how compressed the file is.
| | 01:41 | But the point is there is the ability
to have a significantly smaller file.
| | 01:46 | So hopefully, this will give you an
idea of some of the different files, you'll
| | 01:49 | be encountering when you're
working with digital audio.
| | 01:51 | In the next chapter, we'll look
at the digital audio workstation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Digital Audio WorkstationsWhat is a digital audio workstation?| 00:01 | In this section we're going to look
at the various hardware and software
| | 00:04 | components that make up a
Digital Audio Workstation.
| | 00:06 | Now a Digital Audio Workstation or a
DAW is just really kind of a general term
| | 00:11 | to describe a system that you
used to work with digital audio.
| | 00:14 | It can be as simple as a piece of
software just a single stand-alone piece of
| | 00:17 | software, or it can involve a lot of
different components, computer, external
| | 00:22 | A/D converters, really high-end equipments.
| | 00:25 | It can include a big control
desk or a large recording console.
| | 00:30 | It can also be a stand-alone unit
that doesn't use a computer at all.
| | 00:33 | It can be a desktop device.
In a nutshell, the DAW is what you make it.
| | 00:37 | In the next few chapters, we're going to
talk about all the different components
| | 00:41 | that come into play or can
come into play individually.
| | 00:44 | So in the next several chapters,
we're going to cover all the different
| | 00:47 | components that you'll find in DAWs.
| | 00:48 | In this section, I just want to give you a
quick overview of these different components.
| | 00:52 | How they fit into the system, and
kind of look at how they work together.
| | 00:56 | So you'll have Sound Sources, things like
sound in the air, voices, musical instruments.
| | 01:01 | You'll also have digital sources
like WAV files, sound effects files that
| | 01:04 | you're bringing in. You'll use
microphones to capture sound sources.
| | 01:10 | You'll also have line level sources.
Things like drum machines, or synthesizers.
| | 01:15 | You'll use a lot of cables and
connectors to connect these things.
| | 01:18 | There are quite a few different ones out there.
| | 01:20 | Plugging stuff isn't that hard, but
identifying the right cable and connector
| | 01:24 | the first time, and kind of making
sure you have the right cables and
| | 01:28 | connectors, it helps a lot.
| | 01:29 | There is also the Mixer, which we'll
look at, hardware and software versions
| | 01:32 | of, this is the way they'll kind of
help you route all your audio signals to
| | 01:37 | and from your computer.
Then you'll see Computer Audio Interfaces.
| | 01:41 | This is a piece of hardware that
lets us get analog sound to digital, and
| | 01:45 | vice-versa, in and out of the computer.
| | 01:47 | Typically, you'll have adjustable
inputs from microphones or other analog
| | 01:51 | sources, a way of transferring digital
data to and from a computer, probably be
| | 01:55 | a USB or FireWire, and also outputs
for connecting speakers and headphones.
| | 02:01 | Then once you get things into the
computer, we'll deal with actually putting the
| | 02:04 | data on a hard disk, and then software to work
with that data or a recording software application.
| | 02:11 | You can use this software to
record or capture digitized audio.
| | 02:15 | Once we get the digitized information into
your computer, we'll record it on to hard disk.
| | 02:20 | Then we'll use recording
software or digital audio application to
| | 02:24 | manipulate that sound.
| | 02:25 | It's what's able to kind of see that
information on your hard disk as actual sound.
| | 02:29 | We'll use this to record, edit,
playback, manipulate, and produce the audio.
| | 02:35 | Finally, we'll feed our Monitors, which
are not flat screen panels, but they're
| | 02:40 | actually speakers and audio, that's
always the case, monitors refer to
| | 02:44 | listening back, and devices
like headphones and speakers.
| | 02:47 | So your Computer Audio Interface or
Mixer will have outputs to your Monitors.
| | 02:53 | In the next movie, we'll look at the signal
flow in a typical Digital Audio Workstation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Typical DAW signal flow| 00:00 | So in this segment I want to show you
kind of the typical signal flow in a
| | 00:04 | Digital Audio Workstation.
| | 00:05 | It's good to understand the signal
flow of the workstation in terms of kind
| | 00:09 | of how things are set up, how they get
hooked together, and what devices do what things.
| | 00:14 | So let's start over here kind of
on the left, we have Sound Sources.
| | 00:17 | This reference is kind of an acoustic
sound like a voice and acoustic guitar
| | 00:21 | that we needed to pick up with a
microphone, which we then feed into our Digital
| | 00:25 | Audio Interface. Or you can have a Line
Level Device, like a drum machine or a
| | 00:29 | synthesizer, that you just plug on a
regular guitar chord or instrument line
| | 00:33 | level cord into, and connect
directly to your Audio Interface.
| | 00:36 | In the Audio Interface,
it does a couple of things.
| | 00:40 | Most of them you'll see will come with
microphone preamps which is why we can
| | 00:43 | hook the mike right in.
| | 00:45 | That's supposed to look
like a microphone input jack.
| | 00:48 | This is a helpful thing to have it.
| | 00:49 | It'll also have outputs that let
you feed monitors and headphones.
| | 00:53 | But most importantly, your Audio
Interface will convert your analog
| | 00:57 | signals, which is what we have
coming from our two sources into digital
| | 01:01 | information A-to-D conversion.
| | 01:03 | This is probably one of the most
important things that happen in digital audio.
| | 01:08 | Once we convert these analog signals into
digital, we can send them to our computer,
| | 01:13 | and our computer can deal with them.
| | 01:15 | We can record that digital information,
those ones and zeros to the hard drive.
| | 01:19 | Then via our DAW software, we can
record, edit, manipulate, create big pieces
| | 01:25 | of music, create podcasts, change the volume,
the scope, the scale of all the things in there.
| | 01:31 | We can really, it's nonlinear.
| | 01:32 | We can really do anything we want to
that sound once we have it in there, really
| | 01:36 | only limited by how crazy your
software is and what it's capable of.
| | 01:40 | So that's what we're going
to do, a lot of the work.
| | 01:43 | You can be staring at a screen most
of the time in terms of kind of working
| | 01:47 | with digital audio.
| | 01:48 | Once we have it in there, and it
is digital, we want to hear back it.
| | 01:52 | We send it back to the Audio Interface,
which, by the way, the interface is
| | 01:55 | usually connected these
days by USB 2 or by FireWire.
| | 02:00 | We'll get into that more in a different section.
| | 02:03 | So we feed the digital sound back to
our Audio Interface, which then feeds our
| | 02:07 | monitors, and allows us to hear our
new musical masterpiece in the room, and
| | 02:11 | play it for our mom.
| | 02:12 | So this is a good set up if you're just
working with yourself, or just doing a
| | 02:16 | few tracks at a time, because a lot of
times your Audio Interface will come with
| | 02:20 | usually just two microphone inputs.
| | 02:22 | There might be more line inputs than
that, and some do come with eight inputs.
| | 02:25 | But if you're doing a lot of work with
more tracks or full bands, you might want
| | 02:30 | to look into a mixer, which
we've got here in the next slide.
| | 02:33 | The advantage of the mixer is that
it will have more channels, and more
| | 02:36 | microphone preamps, and individual
control over each one of those inputs that
| | 02:40 | you can do a lot of the level setting
and game staging, and start to get your
| | 02:45 | sounds together before you get
them into the Audio Interface.
| | 02:48 | Sometimes you can run outputs to inputs.
| | 02:50 | There will be inputs on your Audio
Interface, and you can run right out.
| | 02:54 | Sometimes there will just be a couple,
and you want to bounce down a whole mix
| | 02:58 | like you might use eight tracks on a drum.
| | 03:00 | But only be able to bounce that
down to two tracks in your software.
| | 03:04 | So a Mixer can help you kind of do that.
It's good for routing.
| | 03:07 | Also, if you're working with a lot of
people, you can also use it to develop
| | 03:11 | headphone mixes on the way back out so
that everybody who is recording can have
| | 03:15 | different mixes, or you can have a
different mix of what people are hearing
| | 03:19 | while they're trying to play the music,
and record it live, as opposed to the
| | 03:22 | levels you've set going
into actually be recorded.
| | 03:24 | I know that sounds confusing.
| | 03:26 | We'll explain how you would
do that in a different section.
| | 03:29 | But anyway, the point is this, if
you're working with a lot of microphones or
| | 03:32 | a lot of inputs, mixers are a good way to
help you kind of manage all those inputs.
| | 03:36 | The reason I wanted to explain this to
you is that understanding the signal flow
| | 03:40 | of the Digital Audio Workstation will
help you both get the pieces of the puzzle
| | 03:44 | that you need, and pieces that work
well together that will also help you
| | 03:47 | troubleshoot things, and hook
things up when the time comes.
| | 03:50 | Sometimes, it's pretty
inevitable that things kind of breakdown.
| | 03:54 | I don't want to say breakdown, but
it'll be a cable that comes unplugged or
| | 03:58 | something like that.
| | 03:59 | The quickest way to solve those problems
when all of a sudden you hit the button
| | 04:03 | and nothing happens is to
start to trace the signal flow.
| | 04:06 | It's kind of like when you retrace your
steps where I was I last, that's kind of
| | 04:10 | what you're doing when you trace the
signal flow to troubleshoot things.
| | 04:13 | So it's worth knowing about.
| | 04:14 | We'll get into all these different
devices in-depth in different sections.
| | 04:18 | So don't worry too much about that for now.
| | 04:20 | But thinking about how things are flowing
through all the components is good to know.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. MicrophonesWhat microphones do| 00:01 | In this chapter we're going to talk
about microphones, which in my opinion, are
| | 00:04 | really nothing short of magic.
You think about it.
| | 00:08 | What they do is they take sound out
in the air, they take these changes and
| | 00:11 | pressure, ultimately stuff like wind
and turn it into electrical voltages.
| | 00:16 | This allows us to record it, to capture
it, to play it back, to manipulate it.
| | 00:21 | Everything we do with digital audio
and even analog audio, pretty much starts
| | 00:25 | with the microphones.
| | 00:27 | They're like the magic transducer that
take the sounds of the world around us,
| | 00:31 | and let us work with it, everything
from stuff like the human voice, to musical
| | 00:36 | instruments, to recordings,
sporting events things like that.
| | 00:39 | It's all microphones.
| | 00:40 | Every time you talk on the phone,
there is a microphone working for you.
| | 00:44 | So they're pretty amazing.
| | 00:45 | If you're going to work with digital
audio or audio, you really want to know
| | 00:49 | as much as you can about microphones,
because they'll definitely come into
| | 00:52 | play at some point.
| | 00:53 | If you're going to work with digital
audio, you definitely want to know about
| | 00:56 | microphones, because it's pretty
inevitable that you'll deal with them and
| | 00:59 | have to make decisions about them, which
ones to use, at what time, for what application.
| | 01:04 | So learning about some of the
different aspects of how microphones work, and
| | 01:07 | some of the characteristics
they have is really useful.
| | 01:11 | So in this chapter, I'm going to introduce
you to a lot of concepts related to microphones.
| | 01:15 | I know that if you're aware of these,
it'll help you in your end goal while
| | 01:19 | you're trying to produce audio lives.
| | 01:22 | We'll talk about the different kinds of
elements, or the three types of microphones.
| | 01:26 | We'll talk about different pickup patterns.
Things like frequency response.
| | 01:29 | We'll look at the various body styles
of microphones, some of the accessories.
| | 01:34 | We'll talk about picking the right
mike for the right job, and also kind of
| | 01:37 | learning about microphone placement.
| | 01:39 | It is actually when you start to work
with microphones, there is a lot to think
| | 01:43 | about, and a lot to consider.
| | 01:45 | So it's good to kind of get a basic
understanding of some things, and then learn
| | 01:49 | some of the jargon, and
concepts around them as well.
| | 01:51 | So in the next section we're going to
talk about the elements or ultimately kind
| | 01:55 | of the type of microphone.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Element types| 00:01 | So a microphone is a transducer, in
that it converts variations in sound
| | 00:05 | pressure into an electrical signal.
| | 00:07 | A transducer is anything that takes one
thing and changes it into another thing
| | 00:12 | and usually it actually changes
it back the other way as well.
| | 00:15 | In the case of a microphone, it changes air
pressure changes into electrical voltages.
| | 00:20 | So while a microphone is a
transducer there are three element types where,
| | 00:24 | more or less, this is kind of like the
brain of the transducer that exists, more
| | 00:28 | or less, in microphones.
| | 00:29 | There are a few other ones, but these
are the ones you're going to come in
| | 00:31 | contact with, the dynamic microphone, the
condenser microphone, and the ribbon microphone.
| | 00:36 | These were just referred to
generically as microphone types, or element types,
| | 00:41 | something to keep in mind.
| | 00:42 | Let's look at the dynamic microphone
and think about kind of quickly how it
| | 00:45 | works, but also what also
what you can use it for.
| | 00:48 | So the dynamic microphone works
on the electromagnetic principle.
| | 00:51 | The nutshell there is that sound
comes in, hits the little diaphragm here,
| | 00:55 | moves this thing back and forth in a magnetic
field, and that generates electrical signals.
| | 01:01 | So that's the transduction, that's
the change from sound to electrical.
| | 01:06 | Dynamic microphones are great for
things that are really loud that have high
| | 01:10 | pressure levels, like guitar amps and drums.
| | 01:14 | You'll see them a lot of times for
vocals in live settings because they are
| | 01:18 | good at just picking up what's in front
of them, the mouth is right there and
| | 01:22 | loud as opposed to picking up the
whole band behind them and generating
| | 01:25 | feedback and things like that.
| | 01:27 | It's great on instruments, it's great
on vocals, but not great on, let's say, on
| | 01:34 | vocals you are recording in the studio.
| | 01:36 | For that you'd want to look toward
something like a condenser, which ultimately
| | 01:39 | is a slightly more sensitive microphone,
even though it's not really legitimate
| | 01:42 | for me say that, that's the truth.
| | 01:44 | It's more sensitive it can pick up
things with sharper transients like the
| | 01:48 | voice, like acoustic guitars, like violins, because
it works on an electrostatic principle.
| | 01:55 | And in a nutshell that means the sound
wave's come, and this little super
| | 01:59 | thin diaphragm that's coated with
like gold or nickel on the back.
| | 02:02 | It just moves against the static
background, and that generates electric
| | 02:07 | signals, and this is charged, it's kind
of positive and negative, and you get a
| | 02:11 | result from the movement between those two.
| | 02:15 | So basically this technology is a lot
more sensitive to sound pressure, because
| | 02:19 | it's lighter and smaller, it can move
back and forth quicker, so softer sounds,
| | 02:24 | more subtle sounds, in sounds can be picked up.
| | 02:27 | So condenser microphones are
great for things like vocals, violins,
| | 02:33 | acoustic guitars, things like that
that have a lot of transients and a lot
| | 02:37 | of kind of higher dynamics.
| | 02:38 | And you can use them on almost
anything, it's hard to use them close to
| | 02:42 | things that are very loud.
| | 02:43 | You can put one in a room with a drum
set, if it's 10 feet away and get great
| | 02:47 | results, but you have a hard time
putting a condenser microphone on a snare drum
| | 02:51 | because it's just as it's too loud
it's too much for that element type.
| | 02:56 | The other thing about condenser
microphones that you want to know about, which
| | 02:58 | we'll talk about a little bit later
when we discuss preamps is phantom power.
| | 03:03 | Which ultimately is 48 volts that comes
either through the microphone cable or
| | 03:08 | sometimes can come from a battery
that you put in line in the microphone in
| | 03:12 | certain handheld designs.
| | 03:13 | And that is what provides
the charge on the element.
| | 03:17 | Mixing consoles, anything with a mic
preamp, will usually have a little 48
| | 03:21 | volt switch, which basically is phantom
power, and that sends a little bit of
| | 03:27 | juice back out in the microphone cable,
to the microphone, which in a nutshell
| | 03:31 | let's the element run.
It gives it the power to be sensitive.
| | 03:35 | The third kind of mic you look at and
maybe come into contact, these are coming
| | 03:39 | back in popularity are ribbon microphones.
| | 03:43 | This works like the dynamic microphone
does on the electromagnetic principle,
| | 03:47 | in that there is a little ribbon of
aluminum here, and when sound comes it
| | 03:52 | actually moves back and forth in a magnetic
zone, and you get electrical signals from it.
| | 03:57 | They used ribbon microphones, big old
announcer microphones with the big grill
| | 04:01 | on there, those are usually ribbon
microphones from the `40s and `50s and stuff
| | 04:05 | and they put that huge grill on there,
because this ribbon, this little piece of
| | 04:08 | aluminum is really, really sensitive
to big Sound Blast and easy to damage.
| | 04:13 | You can actually just bend the aluminum
if you send sounds to it that are too loud.
| | 04:18 | So ribbon microphones are coming
back and they're being used on things,
| | 04:21 | sometimes in the way you would use a
condenser, and sometimes in the way you'd
| | 04:25 | use a dynamic microphone.
| | 04:26 | And have different applications but the
thing is that pretty good, pretty juicy
| | 04:30 | ones cost quite a bit.
| | 04:31 | So chances are if you're going to
just get into digital audio, you won't be
| | 04:35 | starting out with a ribbon microphone,
but they are worth knowing about and
| | 04:39 | definitely worth reading about, because
it's pretty exciting than the newer ones
| | 04:42 | have some technology that makes
them less susceptible to damage.
| | 04:46 | It's an amazingly sensitive element,
which is the good part and the bad part
| | 04:50 | about it at the same time.
So that's it for the different element types.
| | 04:54 | In the next section we'll talk
about pickup patterns and axis.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Pickup patterns| 00:01 | Now, another important characteristic
of microphones is their pickup pattern.
| | 00:04 | And what this ultimately is, is where a
microphone is looking for sound and where
| | 00:09 | it's not paying attention to
the sound that's around it.
| | 00:12 | So in these charts I have a gray area
that represents the pickup pattern type
| | 00:16 | and then this would represent 360 degrees
around the microphone, the white circle.
| | 00:21 | So knowing what the pickup pattern is
of your microphone is really helpful,
| | 00:25 | because you can use different
patterns in different applications.
| | 00:29 | You can focus the microphone in on
something very narrow like a voice of one
| | 00:33 | person, or you can use it to record
a whole room, or you can set it up in
| | 00:37 | situations where you have sound sources
in certain areas that you want to get,
| | 00:40 | but other sounds in the same room
maybe that you don't want to get.
| | 00:44 | So picking the right pattern and
knowing what the pattern is of your microphone
| | 00:48 | has a lot to do with how you determine
which one to use and where to place it
| | 00:52 | based on it's pattern.
| | 00:54 | There are three kind of, I'll call them, three
big patterns that you'll get used to,
| | 00:58 | Cardioid, Omni-directional, and Bidirectional.
| | 01:02 | These are the most kind of
common families, so to speak.
| | 01:06 | And really Omni and Bi, they aren't
really families, they are just their thing,
| | 01:10 | but cardioid is kind of a family.
| | 01:12 | And cardioid actually refers to heart,
and you'll notice it's kind of heart-shaped.
| | 01:16 | So there's the Cardioid, Super
Cardioid, and Hyper Cardioid.
| | 01:20 | The difference between these three is
really how much they reject on the side
| | 01:25 | and how much they reject in the back.
| | 01:27 | You'll notice that sounds on the
cardioid if they're coming in from the side, it
| | 01:30 | will get picked up a little bit more
than they will on the super cardioid.
| | 01:34 | And the hyper cardioid just try
not to hear them very much at all.
| | 01:38 | And also the hyper cardioid is
focused more towards its front.
| | 01:41 | So sounds coming from around here, it's
not as sensitive to those, whereas the
| | 01:45 | cardioid, if you're over here, you're
still going to be heard pretty well.
| | 01:49 | And the trade-off on the super and
the hyper is that they have this little
| | 01:52 | mushroom stalk here that picks up the
stuff immediately behind it a little bit.
| | 01:58 | It's a trade-off, if you're trying to
focus a group of local singers, you've
| | 02:01 | three singers next to each other,
they're each other on microphone, you can
| | 02:04 | use a hyper cardioid.
| | 02:06 | That way one singer's voice
doesn't get into the other microphone.
| | 02:09 | You'll use this a lot on things like
guitar amps, drums, almost all the drums
| | 02:14 | you'll use some sort of
cardioid pattern on, even bass amps.
| | 02:18 | There are all kinds of
applications, acoustic guitars.
| | 02:22 | You can think of cardioid really as
directional or kind of pointed at something.
| | 02:27 | It's kind of like a gun where
you can aim it at something.
| | 02:30 | The opposite is the
omni-directional, which picks up evenly in all
| | 02:33 | directions around it.
| | 02:35 | So this is good if you have a group of
singers, and you want to spread them out
| | 02:39 | around one microphone.
| | 02:40 | It's also good if you want to record a
drum set in a room, and you've a bunch of
| | 02:45 | close mics on it, but then you want to
put one back and get kind of the ambiance
| | 02:50 | and the effects, an omni-directional
mic in the room can do pretty well.
| | 02:53 | And it's also good for actually
handheld interviews, when you're out moving
| | 02:56 | about on the street, like if you're
walking next to someone and trying to hold
| | 03:00 | the microphone in their face.
| | 03:01 | An omni-directional microphone is more
forgiving when they move in turn or when
| | 03:04 | you move the mic up and down,
actually you get a more even sound.
| | 03:08 | The catch-22 is you're going to
pickup the cars down the street a little bit
| | 03:12 | more, but when you listen back it's
that evenness of the pickup that actually
| | 03:15 | makes that a more listenable interview in a way.
| | 03:18 | And that you don't have big volume
changes where all of a sudden you can hear
| | 03:20 | the person talking, then you can't
hear them as well because they have moved
| | 03:23 | from the microphone.
| | 03:25 | So omni is actually really
useful in certain circumstances.
| | 03:28 | A lot of times though in live
circumstances where you're trying to avoid
| | 03:31 | feedback or leakage,
omni-directionals don't come into play that much.
| | 03:36 | The bidirectional, or figure-8 pattern,
picks up to the front and the back of
| | 03:40 | the microphone and rejects both sides.
| | 03:43 | So this is convenient if you want to
put two people around a microphone for an
| | 03:46 | interview session, also if you have
one microphone and need to record things
| | 03:50 | like Two Toms or something like that on
a drum set, and you just want to put one
| | 03:54 | in-between them, and this can work.
Although, it's usually not available on a
| | 03:57 | lot of dynamic microphones.
| | 03:59 | Many condenser microphones will give
you the option to switch between cardioid,
| | 04:03 | omni-directional, and bidirectional, and
I'll show you an example of those kinds
| | 04:07 | of microphones later.
| | 04:08 | The last one I want to talk about is
the Hemispherical pattern, which basically
| | 04:12 | is a pattern that's associated with a
pressure microphone or a PZM microphone or
| | 04:16 | a boundary microphone, which is
basically something that you put on a flat
| | 04:19 | surface, and that surface becomes the pickup.
| | 04:23 | So for instance, this represents a
little microphone that you've put on say like
| | 04:26 | a boardroom table and all of the sudden
everyone talking around, and that table
| | 04:30 | gets picked up in this
hemispherical pattern around that microphone.
| | 04:32 | They use them a lot in theater
situations where you want to hear people
| | 04:36 | walking on stage or sound effects,
but you don't want a bunch a microphones
| | 04:40 | pointing at the actors.
| | 04:42 | This picks up kind of the overall
ambiance of what's going on, on the stage.
| | 04:46 | Sometimes you'll see them used in
recording studios, they'll hang them on walls
| | 04:50 | to pick up drums, different walls,
like opposite of drum set, to get a room
| | 04:54 | sound or if you're doing symphony you
can put a few of them on the wall and just
| | 04:59 | get different hemispherical pickups
in the room where the symphony is.
| | 05:02 | You can also see them on the walls of
studios to pick up big drum rooms, or
| | 05:06 | rooms with ensembles, or even orchestras.
| | 05:09 | Knowing about patterns will payoff for
you in terms of focusing your microphone
| | 05:13 | on the sound you want to pickup, and
the ones you want to reject, the ones you
| | 05:18 | don't want to get into your recording.
| | 05:19 | It's good to kind of study these,
get to know them, you'll see icons on
| | 05:23 | microphones that represent these
patterns, they look here, they're a circle,
| | 05:26 | they're a cardioid heart, they're the
figure-8, but they're good to know and
| | 05:30 | good to think about when you're
picking microphones for your applications.
| | 05:33 | The next thing I want to talk about is
the Polar Pattern graph, which is used to
| | 05:38 | represent the sensitivity of
microphones to different frequencies in
| | 05:42 | relationship to their Polar
Pattern or their pickup pattern.
| | 05:45 | So in this slide we have what you'll
get if you buy a microphone, you'll
| | 05:49 | probably get this in the
specs, the polar pattern.
| | 05:53 | And what it shows, it's just the
different degree of sensitivity to different
| | 05:56 | frequencies at different
points around the pickup pattern.
| | 06:02 | So this is a cardioid pickup pattern,
and what it's saying is that this
| | 06:06 | thick line is the 1 kHz frequency, at
that frequency it's sensitive, and a
| | 06:11 | true cardioid pattern.
| | 06:13 | Now, if you look at this line, it
represents 8 kHz, a higher frequency.
| | 06:18 | It's actually more sensitive to that
back here where it's supposed to reject it.
| | 06:21 | So if you have higher frequencies,
you're actually going to hear those a little
| | 06:25 | bit more, and they'll seep through
and have more presence in what you're
| | 06:28 | recording, than like the 1K will.
It won't be rejected as much as that frequency.
| | 06:34 | So this is more or less the
sensitivity footprint of your microphone.
| | 06:38 | And just kind of let you know where
it's listening and what it's listening form
| | 06:41 | kind of the directionality of it.
| | 06:43 | In the next section we'll talk about
axis or where you're pointing your mic in
| | 06:47 | relationship to where the
sound source is coming from.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Axis| 00:01 | Another thing to understand about
microphones and their directionality is what
| | 00:05 | we call Axis, that refers to the
relationship between where the microphone is
| | 00:09 | pointed and where the source
of the sound is coming from.
| | 00:13 | An On-Axis sound is something that's
directly in front of the microphone.
| | 00:16 | Off-Axis is something where it's
coming from the side, and it's not pointing
| | 00:21 | right at the side of the pattern,
see I have got the patterns here.
| | 00:24 | So that's off-axis.
Here is another example on-axis, off-axis.
| | 00:27 | Axis is basically broken down into 360 degrees.
If something is dead on, 0 degrees, that's on axis.
| | 00:37 | Anything that's off by any
degree is referred to by a degree.
| | 00:40 | So this, for example, would be 45 degrees off-axis.
| | 00:44 | The reason axis is important is because
as you move your sound source around the
| | 00:48 | microphone or point the microphone in
a different direction, the frequency
| | 00:52 | response and sensitivity
of the microphone changes.
| | 00:56 | An axis is a way to kind of, it's a
way to make a note of how you recorded
| | 01:00 | something and how you plan to pick something up.
| | 01:02 | Let's look a slide that shows our Polar
Pattern graph again, but let's think of
| | 01:06 | it in terms of axis this time
and not necessarily just response.
| | 01:11 | So it's a 360 degree circle, here is our
polar pattern, a cardioid, the front of the
| | 01:17 | pattern, 0 degrees on-axis, to the sides, 45
degrees, 90 degrees, et cetera, 180 degrees off-axis.
| | 01:26 | So as we move with different patterns
we get different frequency response.
| | 01:31 | And the reason this is worth knowing
about is that sometimes it's a problem, but
| | 01:34 | sometimes it's a benefit.
| | 01:36 | So if you have a microphone setup, and
it gets turned accidentally while things
| | 01:40 | are recording, the voice can change.
| | 01:42 | For a instance, right now I'm going to
turn the way I'm facing this microphone
| | 01:46 | and go off-axis, and you can see if you
can see if you can hear any change in my
| | 01:50 | voice at all, now I'm off-axis.
Do I sound different?
| | 01:52 | Now, I'm back around to the front.
See that makes a difference.
| | 01:57 | The advantage of it existing because
you'll say, well, why don't we just make
| | 02:00 | every microphone omni-directional?
| | 02:03 | Is that sometimes there's things you
don't want to pickup on-axis, or sometimes
| | 02:07 | there are sounds that are too loud, or
sometimes someone's to nasally, so you
| | 02:10 | want them to be off-axis, like here I
moved over way to the side of the mic.
| | 02:14 | See how I sound kind of, I'm not quite there
the same way, I am not as present and bright.
| | 02:19 | Sometimes that's an advantage, now
I'm back in the front of the mic here
| | 02:21 | talking straight into it.
So that's the axis effect.
| | 02:24 | Once you kind of know how a mic deals
with that, if it does it all, then you can
| | 02:29 | figure out how to use that as a
tool and how to avoid certain things.
| | 02:34 | It's kind of all about matching your
sound source with your microphone and the
| | 02:37 | making decisions about how you
want to grab that sound source.
| | 02:40 | An axis is actually, it's a tool that
you can use if you understand it and
| | 02:44 | worth knowing about.
| | 02:45 | In the next movie we're going to
look at the frequency response of the
| | 02:49 | microphone and the proximity effect.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Frequency response and the proximity effect| 00:01 | Frequency response refers to how
sensitive a person or an animal or a microphone
| | 00:06 | is to different frequencies, how
sensitive it is at different levels.
| | 00:10 | When you purchase microphones like the
polar pattern graph and other spec sheet
| | 00:14 | you'll get is the frequency response
chart, which is what we're looking at here.
| | 00:18 | Now ideally, everyone kind of is
shooting for, in their microphone design
| | 00:22 | initially, to create a flat frequency
response or one that picks up all the
| | 00:27 | frequencies from 20 to 20k
evenly, in a flat sense equally.
| | 00:33 | It picks up the bass as much as it
picks up the high end stuff, and it doesn't
| | 00:38 | drop out the mids or whatever.
But that's always the goal of devices.
| | 00:41 | It's a really hard thing to accomplish.
| | 00:44 | There's definitely devices that do it, some
of them are expensive, some of them are cheap.
| | 00:49 | But generally speaking, microphone
manufacturers aim for that goal, but then
| | 00:53 | they also make certain adjustments to
the frequency response so that it works
| | 00:58 | differently in different applications.
| | 01:00 | So, this chart, it basically shows the
footprint of the different frequencies
| | 01:05 | and how peaks here appears
as little bump around 5K.
| | 01:08 | Different microphones are going to
have different bumps and dips, sort of,
| | 01:12 | based on one, the technical limitation
of the microphone, but also based on the
| | 01:17 | manufacturer's designs in terms of what
frequencies they think it's good for picking up.
| | 01:23 | So, if they're making a microphone for
vocals, specifically, or they want it to
| | 01:27 | function very well for vocals, there are
certain frequencies that they know that
| | 01:30 | the vocal range works in,
that they want to highlight.
| | 01:33 | They want to pick up a
little bit more or little less.
| | 01:36 | There are also certain frequencies
they know that might make your voice sound
| | 01:39 | like you're singing in a boxcar, so
they'll dip those little bit less.
| | 01:42 | So, based on the intent of the
microphone and the application that the
| | 01:45 | manufacturers want it to be used
for, you're going to see different
| | 01:49 | frequency response charts.
| | 01:50 | Another example is they make a lot of
microphones just for kick drums or for
| | 01:54 | bass drums in low end, which do a
really good job of faithfully reproducing the
| | 01:58 | low frequencies and don't
sweat it so much on the high stuff.
| | 02:02 | As a manufacturer, if you're trying to
build that perfect microphone, you
| | 02:06 | have to focus on a certain aspect of
it that's going to work really well and
| | 02:10 | function really well.
| | 02:11 | Then there are certain things where, A:
it doesn't benefit from being flat, or B:
| | 02:15 | we don't have the time and money to
make this thing flat, and make it as
| | 02:18 | durable as it needs to be.
| | 02:20 | That's the other limitation when you're
dealing with a different element like a
| | 02:23 | dynamic element or a condenser element.
| | 02:25 | There's different manufacturing
consideration in terms of the sensitivity and
| | 02:29 | the durability of the microphone.
| | 02:31 | So, it's good to get to know the
frequency response charts and just scope
| | 02:35 | them out when you buy microphones or when
you're even thinking about buying a microphone.
| | 02:39 | Go out and kind of, think about
if you want a mic a guitar amp.
| | 02:43 | Try and find some plots of frequencies
that happen on guitars, and which ones
| | 02:47 | they favor, which ones they don't.
| | 02:49 | Most manufacturers will come right
out and say in their paperwork, hey,
| | 02:52 | this microphone is designed to record
guitars or it works great on amps, or
| | 02:56 | works on this, works on that.
There is tons of specialty mics more or less.
| | 03:00 | The trick is as if somebody is just
trying to sell you a million dollar
| | 03:03 | microphone, and you look at the
frequency response chart, and it's not very
| | 03:06 | good, it's not very flat or close to flat,
then maybe you don't want to get that one.
| | 03:12 | But not too many people have perfectly
flat microphones or use them. That's okay.
| | 03:16 | The other thing I want to talk
about is the proximity effect.
| | 03:19 | What this is basically effect of
when a sound source moves closer to a
| | 03:23 | microphone, the microphone tends to
be more sensitive to low frequencies.
| | 03:27 | This only works on directional microphones.
| | 03:29 | But as you get closer, you
get boomier, you get bassier.
| | 03:33 | It's kind of the Barry White effect.
I'll try and give you an example of it.
| | 03:37 | So, right now, I'm talking at a
fairly normal voice, but I'm getting closer
| | 03:41 | to the microphone, and you can tell that I'm
getting louder, but I'm also getting bassier.
| | 03:45 | Here, here, here, Proximity Effect, cool!
Now if you want to do, the Barry White thing, that works great.
| | 03:55 | If you're trying to pick up certain
instruments where you want a pickup more of
| | 03:59 | the low-end, that works great.
| | 04:00 | In other circumstances, where you
don't want that to happen, especially if
| | 04:03 | you're dealing with like a vocalist,
working in a sound booth like me right
| | 04:08 | now, and you don't want that all over the
place where the bass is going up and around.
| | 04:13 | Then there's a thing called a bass
roll-off switch, which you'll find on a lot
| | 04:16 | of microphones, which I'll show you what
that looks like in one of the movies coming up.
| | 04:21 | So, sometimes you can use the
Proximity Effect to your advantage, and if you
| | 04:24 | want a pickup more at low-end,
you can play that.
| | 04:27 | You can put the microphone real
close to something and get it.
| | 04:30 | If you're a singer, and you're crooning,
you can get, kind of, that deeper tone.
| | 04:33 | But a lot of times, it's a problem if
you're trying to record a voice-over, or
| | 04:37 | if you're trying to record a vocal,
and you want it to be more even, then you
| | 04:39 | want to set it up so that someone can
still move around freely, but not have the
| | 04:43 | Proximity Effect take place.
| | 04:44 | So, to counter this problem, a lot of
microphones will have what's called the
| | 04:47 | bass roll-off switch, which enables
you to lower the sensitivity to lower
| | 04:51 | frequencies, or kind of
cut the sensitivity down.
| | 04:54 | Another workaround is you can
use an Omni-directional microphone.
| | 04:57 | I'll show you what a bass roll-off
switch looks like on an actual microphone
| | 05:00 | in this next movie.
| | 05:01 | After that we'll take a
look at placing microphones.
| | 05:04 | I'll try and show you how moving
around a microphone can generate the
| | 05:07 | different Proximity Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Phase issues| 00:01 | Another thing that can happen with
phase when you are recording with microphones
| | 00:04 | is that if you're using more than one,
you can have the sound from a sound
| | 00:08 | source arrive at those microphones at
different times or at different stages in the phase.
| | 00:13 | Here I show the wave coming in at a
different point, and then we see how
| | 00:17 | the waves come out, how that element
in there picks that up and takes it,
| | 00:22 | and basically end up with phase cancellation,
because it's hitting at different points.
| | 00:26 | So, then you ended up with a cancelled signal.
| | 00:28 | A way to avoid this with microphones
is to use what's called the 3:1 Rule.
| | 00:33 | The 3:1 Rule more or less says, if you
place any second microphone, place it
| | 00:38 | at least three times as far away as the
closest microphone to avoid phase cancellation.
| | 00:44 | So, if we have our sound source, and we
have a microphone, let's call it 1 foot
| | 00:48 | away, the next microphone should be at
least 3 or more feet away, to pick it up.
| | 00:55 | Now obviously, this is kind of tricky
when you're miking something like a drum
| | 00:59 | set or something like that.
| | 01:00 | So, that's why they put Phase buttons on
there, because it's not always possible
| | 01:04 | to be three times as far away.
| | 01:06 | But even on times if you have a close
microphone on a snare drum, try and make
| | 01:10 | that microphone that's on that tom,
more than three times away from the
| | 01:14 | microphone that's on the snare.
| | 01:16 | It pays off, because basically, once you
achieve the 3:1 gap, the possibility of
| | 01:22 | getting phase cancellation is very low.
So, try and apply the 3:1 Rule whenever you can.
| | 01:27 | If you're setting up a mic in a room,
you're doing a drum set or you're doing a
| | 01:32 | guitar amp and a second mic to kind of
capture the room just try and make sure
| | 01:36 | it's at least three times
away from the closest mic.
| | 01:39 | And that's the 3:1 Rule.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Microphone types| 00:00 | Okay, so in this segment, we're going
to take a look at a bunch of different
| | 00:03 | microphone body styles
and kind of, design styles.
| | 00:07 | There's no rule that just because a
microphone is shaped a certain way that it
| | 00:10 | may, or may not, be a certain type of
element, or have a certain pickup pattern.
| | 00:14 | But there's a few common body shapes
that you can usually make a generalization
| | 00:18 | that, okay, that's a condenser,
okay, that's a dynamic mic.
| | 00:20 | So, we'll look at a few
different shapes in this segment.
| | 00:23 | So, the first microphone we want to
look at is the Large Diaphragm Condenser,
| | 00:27 | which is this baby right here.
The condenser actually is right in about here.
| | 00:32 | It's a big diaphragm, so you want
to point it this way, but this is a
| | 00:36 | switchable-pattern microphone, which will do--
I'll show you these buttons in a minute.
| | 00:40 | This is a good microphone to use
for vocals and acoustic instruments.
| | 00:45 | It has high sensitivity to
vocals and high transients.
| | 00:48 | It's got some switchable switches on the
back with a pad, and a bass roll-off feature.
| | 00:55 | The microphone plug, plugs in down here.
| | 00:58 | This is a great mic to have if you're
just starting off. Looking into a large
| | 01:01 | diaphragm condenser
microphone is a good thing to do.
| | 01:03 | You can get fairly inexpensive ones or
really expensive ones, but a nice one
| | 01:08 | will go a long way in your studio.
| | 01:10 | The next microphone we'll look at
is the small diaphragm condenser.
| | 01:14 | The diaphragm actually is out here,
like this, so you can kind of point it this
| | 01:20 | way towards your sound source.
| | 01:21 | You can actually change the pickup
pattern on these by using different capsules.
| | 01:26 | By capsule, I mean, you can unscrew the end.
| | 01:29 | So, this capsule actually happens to be
an omni-directional capsule, but you can
| | 01:33 | get it in a cardioid pattern, maybe
a hypercardioid pattern, I believe.
| | 01:40 | Small diaphragm condensers are good
for using on acoustic instruments like
| | 01:44 | acoustic guitars, overhead, and drum cymbals.
| | 01:46 | They are also pretty good on
things like violins and cellos.
| | 01:50 | Both the small condenser and the
large condenser microphones require phantom
| | 01:55 | power, unless they come with a battery
supply, which usually you won't find in a
| | 02:02 | large diaphragm condenser.
| | 02:03 | Some smaller, kind of, pencil--
this is kind of we call it kind of a
| | 02:06 | pencil-shaped microphone.
| | 02:07 | There will be a section where you can put
like a AA battery in there in some of them.
| | 02:12 | But most of them will
require 48-volt phantom power.
| | 02:15 | So, the next microphone we'll look
at is the handheld, kind of, body
| | 02:19 | style, which is--this is the classic Shure
SM57, I'm going to bring in the SM58 as well.
| | 02:27 | These are dynamic
microphones, cardioid pickup pattern.
| | 02:32 | They actually sound the same.
They have the same element.
| | 02:34 | The only difference is you have a
different kind of a grill on these two.
| | 02:38 | That's actually on purpose.
| | 02:39 | This is designed kind of more for
singing and is kind of just more convenient
| | 02:43 | for vocalists to have that, whereas, this
is used more on instruments, which is nice.
| | 02:48 | Using this on drums, you don't want
this, kind of, big metal thing for the
| | 02:52 | drummer to hit, you want, kind of,
a smaller, more narrow profile.
| | 02:56 | So, this works out good for that.
| | 02:58 | Dynamic mics get used on all kinds
of things, in live music settings, and
| | 03:02 | all the time in studios as well.
| | 03:04 | They handle things at
really high pressure levels.
| | 03:07 | So you can use these on guitar amps, drums, toms,
snares, bass cabinets, lots of different uses.
| | 03:16 | So, the next one is a shotgun microphone.
This is typically a condenser microphone.
| | 03:21 | The pattern, the pickup pattern on
the shotgun microphone, as the name
| | 03:25 | implies is really direct.
| | 03:26 | It shoots out, and it's
aiming very specifically out.
| | 03:29 | So, what's in front of it?
| | 03:31 | These, kind of, ports on the side
generally are there to reject things that are
| | 03:35 | the sounds coming from the side.
| | 03:36 | These are really good to use if you're doing
recording for film, or acting, a video,
| | 03:41 | something like that. You can put it
on a boom and kind of hold it over the
| | 03:44 | actor's head and keep it out of the frame of
the film, and point it, kind of, at their head.
| | 03:49 | You'll also see these used at sporting
events, kind of, pointed on the field,
| | 03:53 | the athletes or the referees, to get
some impact sounds or some chatter.
| | 03:57 | But you won't really see a shotgun
microphone used that often in music production.
| | 04:02 | In the studio, there are other
microphones that serve the purpose, mainly
| | 04:05 | because you're going to always get pretty close
to your sound source in studio productions.
| | 04:08 | Okay, next we'll look at a lavalier microphone,
which can be a condenser or a dynamic element.
| | 04:17 | So, this is the microphone, this is a
wireless version, this is a battery pack.
| | 04:21 | You can clip this onto a tie or lapel or
the collar or whatever you're using it on.
| | 04:28 | These are great for interviews, for
onstage performances or lectures, not used
| | 04:33 | in music production very often, or in
the studio, again just because we can use
| | 04:38 | different mics and get them closer.
| | 04:40 | This is when you, kind of, want an
inconspicuous microphone, something where
| | 04:44 | you're more interested in, you want
to hear what the person is saying, but
| | 04:47 | you're really filming them.
| | 04:48 | For instance, right now, I'm wearing one,
and when you see the wide shots of me,
| | 04:52 | even though I'm distracting.
| | 04:54 | You won't notice that I have the
microphone on, but you can still hear me.
| | 04:57 | You might want to look for it.
Let's move on to the boundary microphone.
| | 05:02 | This is the microphone that has that
hemispherical pickup, where actually
| | 05:06 | when you put it down on a table, it starts to
pick up in a pattern like this, maybe like that.
| | 05:13 | This can be a condenser
microphone, some are dynamic.
| | 05:16 | This one has an inline
power supply with a AA battery.
| | 05:21 | These are good for picking up room sounds.
| | 05:24 | If you're doing a meeting, you can
actually put it down on the table, and it'll,
| | 05:27 | kind of, pick up every one
around that table very well.
| | 05:30 | If you're doing theater productions,
you can put this on the stage, and you'll
| | 05:33 | get to hear, kind of, the actors as
they move around, and kind of the ambient
| | 05:37 | sounds, the footsteps.
| | 05:38 | It'll pick up their voices a little bit,
not like a directional mic would, but
| | 05:42 | enough so that you can, kind of,
broadcast and pick up of the overall stage
| | 05:46 | out into the audience.
These will be used in music occasionally.
| | 05:49 | To pick up rooms, they'll be placed on
walls and drum rooms or if you have a
| | 05:53 | string on soundboards or even large
orchestras, you can use these hanging on
| | 05:57 | walls, kind of, like this,
to pick up the whole room.
| | 06:02 | They work pretty well like that.
| | 06:03 | So, that's the PZM, not a real common
microphone, definitely not one to start out with.
| | 06:08 | But if you want to, kind of, load up
your gear down the line, a PZM is a
| | 06:12 | nice microphone to have.
| | 06:15 | The other microphone worth pointing out
just because I'm going to talk about it
| | 06:19 | quite a bit in this whole title is
the dynamic omni-directional microphone.
| | 06:23 | Again, it's handheld.
| | 06:24 | This is the Electro-Voice 635A,
which is a great microphone for field
| | 06:29 | interviewing and recording.
| | 06:31 | It picks up in an omni-directional
pattern, so all the way around it.
| | 06:34 | It doesn't reject sound in any way.
Even though it looks like it would, it doesn't.
| | 06:39 | I just wanted to point this out.
| | 06:41 | This one is probably from the
late 1960s, and it still works great.
| | 06:46 | But you also buy brand-new versions of this.
| | 06:49 | So, that's what a kind of a
dynamic interview mic will look like.
| | 06:52 | So, a few other things I want to
talk about are a few accessories.
| | 06:58 | These are called Windscreens.
| | 07:00 | They are, kind of, a foam
that goes over a microphone.
| | 07:03 | You can use them if you're going
to be out in a windy area outside.
| | 07:06 | If you're in the studio, I
don't really recommend using them.
| | 07:08 | They actually reduce the frequency
response a little bit of the microphones.
| | 07:12 | A better solution, if you're in the
studio and doing voice is a device called
| | 07:16 | the pop filter, which more or less,
looks like a piece of fabric or nylon
| | 07:21 | stretched over a hoop, that's on a
gooseneck microphone mount that you can hook
| | 07:27 | up to a microphone and put
in front of your microphone.
| | 07:29 | If you're using a large diaphragm
condenser, on vocals, it's very common to use
| | 07:35 | a pop filter in front of it.
| | 07:36 | That pop filter stops things which are
called plosives, which are when you say a
| | 07:41 | P or a B, we kind of create a burst of
air that comes out of our mouth, a big
| | 07:45 | push, which I can probably
make this do, but I shouldn't.
| | 07:49 | So that pop filter will cut
down on the plosives, the impact.
| | 07:52 | So it, kind of, reduces those big
gusts of air that get to the microphone.
| | 07:57 | One more thing I want to talk
about is microphone storage.
| | 08:00 | It's good to keep your
microphones in a cool dry place.
| | 08:03 | So, in professional studios
they'll have a mic cabinet that's kind of
| | 08:07 | conditioned and dried.
| | 08:09 | In the home studio, usually it ends up
like a drawer or, kind of, a cabinet.
| | 08:14 | Maybe you put some foam
down there and put the mics in.
| | 08:15 | One thing I like to do is when you buy
a new audio gear you always get a little
| | 08:19 | silica packet in there,
that little white packet.
| | 08:22 | If you take that and just drop it in that
drawer, it'll kind of keep it dry in there.
| | 08:25 | So, instead of throwing those out when
you buy new stuff, new electronics that
| | 08:28 | come with those in there, keep them,
and throw them in your microphone cabinet
| | 08:32 | to keep it dry in there.
| | 08:34 | In the next movie, we'll
look at microphone placement.
| | 08:35 | We'll talk about putting mics on different instruments
and some places to start with placement.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Miking vocals| 00:01 | Okay, in this section we're going
to look at setting up microphones and
| | 00:04 | microphone placement for few
common sound sources, or instruments.
| | 00:07 | We'll mic up our vocal, we'll mic a guitar amp,
and then we'll put a few mics on a drum set.
| | 00:13 | And so just give you kind of a general
idea of where to start when you're trying
| | 00:16 | to mic these different sounds.
| | 00:18 | There are a few rules that I kind of
like to think of and tell people to go by
| | 00:21 | when they start to think about
microphone placement, and the first is that you
| | 00:24 | have to listen to your sound source.
| | 00:26 | So if you're using a guitar amp or
you have an acoustic guitar or there's a
| | 00:31 | singer, try and get around that sound
source in the room it's in, and listen
| | 00:35 | and move your head around in the
environment and see how the sound changes
| | 00:38 | based on where you are.
| | 00:40 | If you get to know that sound you'll
make better choices about where to put the
| | 00:43 | microphone and what microphone to use.
| | 00:45 | But the second rule is that there really
aren't any other rules, or magic tricks.
| | 00:50 | You know these placements I'm going to
show you, these are just starting points
| | 00:54 | of, put the microphone here to start,
try this kind of microphone to start.
| | 00:57 | But you have to experiment, and
different amplifiers, different drum sets,
| | 01:01 | different microphones all
have different characteristics.
| | 01:03 | So you don't just set it up and go.
| | 01:06 | You always kind of have to set it up,
listen and make some decisions, and that
| | 01:10 | leads us kind of like to the third
rule, and that's to trust your ears.
| | 01:13 | Ironic that it's a rule when there are no
rules, but let's call it more like advice.
| | 01:18 | But trust your ears and experiment.
| | 01:19 | Move microphones around, listen to how
things sound from different locations, and
| | 01:23 | also if you have more than
one microphone don't be afraid--
| | 01:26 | actually I encourage that you AB them,
which means set two microphones up on
| | 01:30 | the same sound source.
| | 01:31 | Plug them into your board, record them,
listen to them, play them back, and
| | 01:36 | see how the different types of microphones
pick up the same sound source differently.
| | 01:39 | This will make you familiar with how
your microphones work, and that will really
| | 01:43 | help in the long run.
| | 01:44 | It will make you make decisions
quicker and kind of more informed, in a more
| | 01:48 | informed way when you're
setting them up for other projects.
| | 01:51 | So first we are going to talk about vocals.
| | 01:53 | Okay, here I have a large diaphragm
condenser microphone, which I'm going to
| | 01:57 | use to record vocals.
The diaphragm is about here.
| | 02:00 | It picks up in a Cardioid pattern.
| | 02:03 | That's the way I have it set for me
right now, picking up around this way.
| | 02:07 | So initially when you first set this
up, you want that diaphragm to be at
| | 02:11 | about the height of your
mouth. Just for starters.
| | 02:14 | Then you want to place yourself, or the
singer, about 6-8 inches from the screen
| | 02:20 | of the microphone or where the diaphragm is.
So you start with that.
| | 02:26 | Get your level, set things, start to record.
| | 02:29 | If you're getting plosives like the P's
and the B's that pop, grab a windscreen
| | 02:34 | which is that, nylon around a hoop, and
you can place it about two inches, right
| | 02:39 | about here, like that, in front of the microphone.
You don't want to place it right up against it.
| | 02:46 | You want to give it a little bit of
room between there, at least one inch
| | 02:47 | between the microphone and the pop screen
--and sometimes they call them a popper stopper.
| | 02:55 | So that's the first thing you want to do.
Then set your levels again.
| | 02:58 | It might be a little bit quieter, but
hopefully it will just have taken care of
| | 03:02 | the plosives, the P's and the B's.
| | 03:03 | The next thing you want to do is
listen to the sound, or the singer.
| | 03:07 | If you want to get a little bit more
bass out of that voice, if you wanted to use
| | 03:10 | that, you can have them actually move closer.
| | 03:12 | Shorten the distance to take advantage
of the proximity effect, which essentially
| | 03:17 | means it will be picking
up more bass frequencies.
| | 03:20 | So they'll kind of get a smoother, bassier tone.
| | 03:23 | If you don't want that, if they're too
bassy, you can actually back them off and
| | 03:26 | have them stand farther
back from the microphone.
| | 03:29 | The other thing you can do, if
you don't like some of the tones.
| | 03:33 | Sometimes the things are too bright,
or you hear little bit too much like the
| | 03:37 | wetness, the lips are little bit too
much smacking, you can actually change the
| | 03:40 | axis, or the angle of the direction of the
microphone, to the sound source to my mouth.
| | 03:45 | So you could turn the microphone itself
off axis a little bit, so it's picking
| | 03:50 | up in this direction, and now
I'm addressing it from the side.
| | 03:53 | That will actually reduce
some of the bright stuff.
| | 03:55 | If you hear lot of that kind of wet
mouth lip smacking stuff, that will help.
| | 03:59 | You'll also lose a little bit of, you
know, some of the nicer frequencies too.
| | 04:03 | So it's a bit of a trade-off but that's
a way to kind of make something that's
| | 04:07 | kind of bright and nasty, a little bit smoother.
| | 04:09 | Also if the voice is really nasally, you
can move the microphone itself up, which
| | 04:13 | would be kind of like this, above kind
of the nose line, and that will reduce
| | 04:19 | some of the nasal sound of the voice.
And those are, more or less, the tricks you
| | 04:23 | can use when it comes to vocal microphones.
| | 04:26 | The other thing if you're going to use
vocals live, I have a microphone here that
| | 04:30 | I would use, which is the SM58, and if
you're doing live vocals or you can use
| | 04:38 | this to record as well.
It won't pick things up as well.
| | 04:41 | If you've got a punk rock singer, use
this microphone instead of the condenser,
| | 04:44 | who like, if they like to scream a lot,
or yell, and sometimes if you have rappers
| | 04:49 | doing a lot of kind of plosive, pop, pop,
pop stuff, a microphone like this will
| | 04:53 | work well too, because it takes, it
handles those louder sounds better, hence
| | 04:56 | those types of vocals are louder.
| | 04:58 | By though you want it, same situation,
pointed it more or less right at your mouth
| | 05:04 | and again, you can do those same things, kind
of, to change the tonality with the axis.
| | 05:09 | Aim it above for little but less nasal stuff.
| | 05:12 | The main thing is to get it, on in the
live situation, is to be close as you can,
| | 05:17 | sometimes you'll have people right on it.
Really an inch or two is ideal.
| | 05:21 | But in live people are moving and so that's
going to vary, but just try and get people close.
| | 05:26 | You don't, you just can't
usually sing from this far away.
| | 05:29 | If you have a guitar sometimes
you have to, but lean in if you can.
| | 05:33 | So that does it for vocals.
Now let's talk about miking up a guitar.
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| Miking amplifiers| 00:00 | So now we're going to look at
microphone placement on a guitar amplifier, and
| | 00:05 | this is this will come up a lot.
| | 00:07 | The way you start out is that we've got
a dynamic microphone, and we're aiming
| | 00:11 | it right at the center of
one of the two speakers.
| | 00:14 | Now in this amp you can see kind of
the wear marks where the speakers are.
| | 00:18 | This is a twin amp, there are two speakers.
| | 00:20 | Here I have a little thing I want to show
you to kind of point out how a speaker works.
| | 00:26 | Basically this is the
center of the speaker, right.
| | 00:28 | It's in the center, but
there's a little bump out there.
| | 00:31 | You want to point your microphone
right on that bump out to start with.
| | 00:34 | So that's what I've got.
| | 00:36 | I've got a Shure SM58 directional
cardioid microphone pointing pretty much dead
| | 00:41 | center and, more or less, on
axis at the center of the speaker.
| | 00:47 | Now this is going to provide you with
kind of the brightest, most direct sound
| | 00:52 | that you can get from the amp.
| | 00:54 | Also before you do this if there's, if
you have an amp with two speakers, put
| | 00:59 | your ear kind of close to each one and
see if one sounds better than the other,
| | 01:03 | if one is noisier than the other.
| | 01:05 | Sometimes one speaker will kind
of be buzzy and hissy, one won't.
| | 01:08 | Some guitar amplifiers are really
clean in terms of the amount of noise they
| | 01:11 | make, even when nothing is coming through them.
Others kind of have a hum, or a buzz.
| | 01:15 | If your microphone is placed on a
speaker, and you're getting a lot of that hum,
| | 01:20 | or buzz, from the speaker, a lot of zzzzz...
| | 01:22 | noise, you can change the placement of
the mic to move it off-center a little
| | 01:27 | bit and pick up kind of the edge of
the center of the speaker, and that'll
| | 01:30 | reduce some of the buzz, or the noise.
And you can keep playing with that.
| | 01:34 | You can play with the axis.
Point it up kind of towards the edges.
| | 01:39 | You can point it towards the center.
| | 01:41 | You can point it kind of anywhere you
want, but start with it here and assess
| | 01:46 | the quality of that sound and then
figure out how you might want to change it.
| | 01:50 | Of course, guitar amps can be really loud.
| | 01:52 | So, you know don't put your head
right next to it when someone's playing it
| | 01:56 | but kind of be in the room with it when
they are playing it and then have them
| | 02:00 | kind of maybe play at a lower level
or have them move the mike from one
| | 02:04 | speaker to the next.
| | 02:05 | Go in the studio, record it really, you
know just a test run and see how noisy
| | 02:10 | it is and then try the other speaker as well.
Now let's look at miking up some drums.
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| Miking drums| 00:00 | Okay, so now we are going to talking about miking
up a drum set, and we've got kind of a basic setup.
| | 00:05 | We are not using a lot of mics
just four mics on this setup.
| | 00:08 | If you have more, you can mic everything in
the whole piece, but if you only have four,
| | 00:11 | if you are only getting started, or you
just have a few inputs on your interface.
| | 00:14 | This is a good starting place,
| | 00:16 | this kind of mic selection and placement.
And again, it's a starting place, feel free to
| | 00:19 | move things around and kind of
get the sound you are looking for.
| | 00:23 | So we have got an overhead microphone, a kick
drum microphone, down here, and a snare drum
| | 00:29 | microphone, and then we will setup a room
microphone as well, to kind of get the overall sound.
| | 00:33 | So let's start by talking
about the overhead microphone.
| | 00:35 | We have got a small Diaphragm Condenser
microphone up above, and the reason we want that up there
| | 00:41 | is to try and pick up some of the high
frequencies and sibilance of the cymbals of the set.
| | 00:48 | So we have got up, and the first thing you
want to do is kind of, A: get it as high as
| | 00:52 | you can above the set.
If you can get up 4 feet, that's great.
| | 00:57 | About 4 feet, that's a
good thing to shoot for.
| | 00:59 | Usually you can't you are in a basement, you
have a low ceiling or something like that.
| | 01:02 | So when you are placing drums, and generally,
you are figuring out, hey what room are we
| | 01:05 | going to record drums in, try and
look for one with a higher ceiling.
| | 01:08 | It really helps because you can get the
overheads up above the set quite a bit.
| | 01:13 | So if you are using one overhead,
you can place it at any height.
| | 01:15 | Sometimes, you will do this with two
overhead microphones, and if you do that, you want
| | 01:19 | them both at the same height, the
same plane up above the drum set.
| | 01:23 | And then you want to aim this microphone
over a cymbal as opposed to having it directly
| | 01:28 | over like a snare drum, because if you put it over the
snare, you are going to pick up a lot more of that.
| | 01:32 | Your goal is to pick up more of the
cymbals and kind of the brightness of the set.
| | 01:36 | It also gives you kind of a general mix sense
from a distance of things going on there.
| | 01:41 | So I have got it set up, I am
kind of over the cymbals here.
| | 01:44 | If you know what, in different songs you are
going to use different cymbals more than others,
| | 01:48 | like if you are not using the ride, you are
just doing a lot of crashes, move it and favor
| | 01:52 | those cymbals based on what kind of things
you are going to be hitting during the song.
| | 01:57 | So that's the idea for the overhead mic.
| | 01:59 | Let's move down to the kick drum
and look over the mic down here.
| | 02:03 | So we have got a dynamic
directional microphone.
| | 02:07 | This kick drum has a front head on it, and
a sound hole, which is there so that we can
| | 02:12 | actually put a mic in there.
| | 02:14 | We want to use a microphone that's dynamic
because the kick drum is really loud, and
| | 02:18 | it gives you a lot of loud
impacts, boom, boom, boom, right?
| | 02:22 | The first placement you should go for just
to get started is kind of right about here
| | 02:26 | at the sound hole, and you want to aim this
so that if there was a laser on there, it
| | 02:33 | would be hitting where the beater on the
backside or the drum pedal, where that head hits the
| | 02:37 | head, usually about here,
but on the other head.
| | 02:40 | So you want to aim for that.
| | 02:43 | That's going to give you kind of the
brightest and most attacky sound you can get.
| | 02:49 | You are going to hear that whack, whack, whack,
and if you start there, you will get kind
| | 02:53 | of crisper kick drum sound.
| | 02:56 | From there you can start to move
the mic if you want different sounds.
| | 02:58 | If you want a real kind of boomy sound, you
can bring it to the center of the outside
| | 03:03 | head, you can actually drop it down to the
edges to pick up different kind of tones.
| | 03:07 | There is just kind of overtones on the rim sometimes
that can be interesting or it can be very frustrating.
| | 03:13 | And you can also point the microphone in
different directions inside the drum itself.
| | 03:19 | You can even move it inside and out too.
| | 03:20 | A lot of people will put the microphone in
a little bit and point as opposed to having
| | 03:25 | it right here at the front of the hole.
| | 03:27 | With kick drums, they make a lot of microphones
that are specially designed to work with kick
| | 03:31 | drums that pick up bass frequencies very well,
and you will know these because they are kind
| | 03:36 | of bigger, heavier, chunkier microphones.
| | 03:38 | If you have the budget or you can borrow one,
do it because they really help you pick up
| | 03:44 | kick drum sounds a lot, they are one of those.
| | 03:46 | The drum set has a lot of microphones that
are kind of tailored just for specific drums
| | 03:50 | and the kick drum microphone helps a
lot in getting good sounds. Okay.
| | 03:54 | Let's look at the snare.
Okay, now let's look at miking up a snare drum.
| | 03:59 | Again, we have got a dynamic cardioid
microphone which we are going to use, because we have
| | 04:04 | got such a loud sound source.
This handles that pretty well.
| | 04:07 | Also, before in the other section, where I
was talking about body types to pick this
| | 04:11 | one, because it's got kind of a narrow profile.
| | 04:12 | Miking a snare drum is, it's a battle,
because you want to put the microphone in the same
| | 04:18 | place where the drummer
wants to hit the drum, right?
| | 04:20 | You kind of want to pick up the sound that
comes from here, but that's where he has got
| | 04:25 | to hit it with the sticks.
| | 04:26 | So you have to kind of--because the drumming
is more important than the miking-- you have
| | 04:31 | to get out of his way, and you want to make
sure you put your mics somewhere where the
| | 04:34 | drummer, he or she is not going to hit your
microphone and destroy it, which is another
| | 04:38 | good reason to use kind of really durable
microphones, because inevitably they do get
| | 04:42 | hit once in a while.
| | 04:44 | So what I like to do is come in on an angle,
and I usually like to come from the front
| | 04:49 | of the drum like this so that I am pointing
this way so that whatever else is in the path
| | 04:53 | is actually the drummer's
body as oppose to pointing in.
| | 04:57 | If you come in with a microphone kind of
like this, then you can pick up some of the tom
| | 05:00 | sound, which you really don't want to do.
| | 05:02 | You want to kind of separate, you just want to
get as much snare as you can and not other things.
| | 05:06 | This also does a good job of kind of
rejecting some of the hi-hat sound.
| | 05:12 | So you want to come in at about a 45-degree
angle and start with it pointed towards the
| | 05:17 | center of the snare about like that, but you
are going to have to back it off a little
| | 05:23 | bit because the drummer is going to
want more than just the dead center.
| | 05:26 | He or she is going to be hitting kind of this
whole area, and if they are really wild, move
| | 05:30 | it away so that you protect your microphone.
You can also come in and kind of come down.
| | 05:35 | As you move away from the center, in the
center you will get quite a bit of attack and flack
| | 05:40 | as you move out to the edges, you will notice a
little bit more ring and a little bit more warmth.
| | 05:47 | But it's the snare, so it's not really--
warmth as it necessarily a quality you are going
| | 05:51 | to find that much in the whole drum.
| | 05:54 | The other thing you can do is you can actually
put a microphone on the bottom but that would
| | 05:58 | only be if you have a second microphone usually,
unless you are doing kind of a--you want some
| | 06:02 | special effect where you want that real kind
of ratchety snappy sound that the snare itself
| | 06:07 | makes, that sound, then you can put a
microphone underneath kind of at the same pointing of,
| | 06:14 | like a 45 degree pointing towards the center of
the drum, but that's really if you have two mics.
| | 06:19 | With just one mic, try and address it from
the top and pick up the center of the area.
| | 06:24 | And again, different drummers play at
different dynamics, try and get them to hit the drums
| | 06:29 | as hard as they are going to, do big fills,
fill everything up, and set levels against
| | 06:33 | that really loud moment and also
pay attention to where they hit.
| | 06:38 | Live drummers tend to be more animated, and so they will
move around more and hit the drum in a lot more places.
| | 06:44 | In the studio, if people are concentrating a
little bit more, trying to keep their tempo,
| | 06:48 | they might be better focused to
hitting kind of in the center of the drum.
| | 06:51 | And let them know that hitting in the center
of the drum actually which they should know,
| | 06:55 | produces a good sound, but they might be playing
off to the side to get different sounds on purpose.
| | 06:59 | So kind of talk to the drummer and find out
what they need, what kind of space they want.
| | 07:05 | You can also use more or less the same technique on
toms where you would kind of come up over an angle.
| | 07:11 | Again, you can't put it really where you
want to because it has to be hit there.
| | 07:14 | So about a 45-degree angle,
coming in on the edge.
| | 07:19 | The problem here is you tend to
be pointing right at the snare.
| | 07:23 | So try an angle at even a little bit
more and kind of little bit about here.
| | 07:27 | You can also come in an angles, but it would
be better to pick up some of the snare than
| | 07:31 | to pick up some of that cymbal I think.
| | 07:33 | Also, if there are other cymbals around you
or above it, you want to kind of place it
| | 07:38 | where it will reject those of the cardioid
pattern cymbals above, get rejected more than
| | 07:44 | if they are kind of off to the side like this.
| | 07:46 | Finally, let's look at microphones in
the room to pick up the whole drum sound.
| | 07:51 | Okay, now let's look at setting up a room
microphone to capture the overall sound of
| | 07:56 | the drums, and this is a nice situation where you
can use a large diaphragm condenser microphone.
| | 08:03 | What's nice about this is that microphone
can pick up all consonants transients, give
| | 08:07 | you can overall picture of the drum set, and
by placing it farther away from the drum set--
| | 08:13 | in this case, we are about 6 feet away--you
get to kind of let the drums mix themselves,
| | 08:17 | which is nice because sometimes if you just
close mic and set with just a few microphones,
| | 08:22 | your mix makes it feel like you are
kind of always too close to those drums.
| | 08:25 | And this is a way of getting a sense of kind
of how all the drums go out into a room, kind
| | 08:30 | of mix themselves and live together.
| | 08:32 | So a room mic is a nice thing if you have
it, and you have a nice vocal mic sitting
| | 08:36 | around, this is a great application to add
another track to kind of beef up your drum tracks.
| | 08:43 | So what I like to do is place it at about
the head of the drummer or the plane of the
| | 08:46 | cymbals, and that tends to get
you kind of the best overall sound.
| | 08:50 | If you place it too low, it gets a little
boomy, and if you place it up high in a room,
| | 08:53 | you will notice that it
gets a little bit brighter.
| | 08:57 | This is kind of like if you were standing
in the room as well where your head would
| | 08:59 | be when you are kind of
hear, that height about.
| | 09:03 | I like to use the cardioid pattern and put the
microphone in the middle of the room picking up the front.
| | 09:09 | You can also use an omni-directional
pattern, put it in the middle of the room.
| | 09:13 | It's also possible to kind of move it off to
one side but what you want to try and avoid
| | 09:17 | is putting it right against any walls.
| | 09:19 | You want it to be kind of at least 3 or 4 feet
away from any one wall, a back wall, or a side wall.
| | 09:26 | The other thing with the microphone
placement on this room mic is that you want to make
| | 09:30 | sure you have observed the 3:1 rule to avoid
phase cancellation, which in this case, you
| | 09:36 | pick the farthest microphone in this
case is going to be the overhead mic.
| | 09:41 | So we are going to want to make this mic at
least three times as far away from the sound
| | 09:45 | source as that overhead mic, and we
will talk about that in a different movie.
| | 09:48 | All right, so we have
looked at how to mic a drum set.
| | 09:51 | It's fairly well with just four mics.
| | 09:54 | If you have more microphones,
you can certainly add more.
| | 09:56 | You can mic things like all the toms, you can mic the
hi-hats, or certain cymbals if they are important.
| | 10:02 | You can also set up two room
mics and get a stereo room sound.
| | 10:06 | So there are lots more things
you can do with the miking drums.
| | 10:09 | But hopefully, this is a good place to start.
| | 10:10 | If you only have four inputs or four
microphones or even two inputs, and you need to kind of
| | 10:15 | bounce things down, this will work in terms of
getting things started and getting a good sound going.
| | 10:20 |
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|
|
4. Cables and ConnectorsCables and connectors overview| 00:01 | In this section, we are going to talk
about Cables & Connectors, which it's not
| | 00:05 | exactly rocket science, but
there's a lot to know about.
| | 00:07 | There are a lot of different ones that
you'll come across when you would set up
| | 00:11 | a DAW and work with digital audio
and microphones and things like that.
| | 00:15 | And while it's not that hard to figure out,
okay, this one goes in there in that stuff.
| | 00:19 | It's good to know about them and have a
kind of a sense of what cables are out there.
| | 00:24 | What cable you might need for a
certain device, you know, if you are reading
| | 00:26 | specs, and you see that it needs
light pipe, you want to know what that is.
| | 00:29 | So, that's kind of the
objective of this section.
| | 00:31 | So, you can think of cables as kind of
the veins of your audio system or of your
| | 00:35 | DAW, in that, all of your information
be it analog sound or digital, at some
| | 00:41 | point moves through these cables.
| | 00:43 | So the integrity of this system can really
be dependent upon the integrity of the cables.
| | 00:48 | They say, you know, there's always kind
of the only strong as the weakest link.
| | 00:52 | It's not uncommon for cables to kind
of become a weakest link in a system.
| | 00:56 | One, because they seem like they are
really overpriced, and two, because
| | 00:59 | sometimes they are just not hooked up
right or you use the wrong cable for
| | 01:03 | the wrong application.
| | 01:04 | There are lots to know about, and it's
good to know when you see different words
| | 01:08 | on different specifications
for products or things like that.
| | 01:11 | What it actually is you
know, what am I getting into?
| | 01:13 | Does this device require the $200 cable or not?
| | 01:16 | So, it's good to have an
understanding of those things.
| | 01:18 | There are a couple of things I want to talk
about, there are kind of two main categories.
| | 01:23 | If you think of cables in terms of
what they actually carry, there are really
| | 01:26 | two main categories.
There's Analog and Digital.
| | 01:29 | Analog is going to be moving your
electrical voltages and Digital is going to be
| | 01:34 | moving little packets of information.
| | 01:36 | These are more or less in-com
computer cables, FireWire is a digital audio
| | 01:41 | cable, USB is a digital audio cable,
it's moving your digital information.
| | 01:46 | So, it's good to keep those two things in mind.
| | 01:48 | Sometimes, the adapters' look-alike,
in certain devices it will function as a
| | 01:53 | digital cable and in other devices
it will function as an analog cable.
| | 01:57 | A good example is the RCA cable,
which also is the S/PDIF cable.
| | 02:01 | You can use it on your home stereo to
hookup a VCR or you can use it to transfer
| | 02:06 | two tracks of stereo digital
quality through one connector.
| | 02:10 | The other thing to think about with
cables, or just kind of be aware of, is that
| | 02:14 | they have the plug into something,
there has to be kind of be an A and a B
| | 02:17 | plug and a receptacle.
| | 02:19 | So, in the audio world we refer to
these cables as male and female, and if
| | 02:23 | you understand biology it's pretty
easy to discern which one is the male and
| | 02:27 | which one is the female. But if I say, oh,
| | 02:29 | here's the male into this
or the female into that.
| | 02:32 | Now, you have an idea of what I'm
talking about, and it's common to hear that
| | 02:35 | kind of language thrown around.
| | 02:36 | Another thing to keep in mind is to
whether a cable is balanced or unbalanced,
| | 02:39 | and that's what we'll
talk about in the next movie.
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| Balanced and unbalanced cables| 00:01 | Another thing to keep in mind with
cables, or to understand, is that between
| | 00:04 | Balanced and Unbalanced cables.
| | 00:06 | An Unbalanced cable uses two conductors,
or two wires basically, to send signals
| | 00:11 | back and forth, and a Balanced wire uses 3.
| | 00:13 | Now, there are advantages to
using three wires over two.
| | 00:17 | One, you can send more power over
those wires, and so you can send a
| | 00:21 | louder signal level.
| | 00:23 | By sending more power, you're also
able to create a situation where those
| | 00:26 | Balanced cables are less susceptible to
noise and interference, from things like
| | 00:29 | radio frequencies and AC
power and things like that.
| | 00:33 | So, there's a good advantage to balance,
they operate at a signal level of +4
| | 00:37 | dB which is referred to as the Pro Level, and
more or less, that means it's the loudness thing.
| | 00:43 | These cables are louder, they send more signal.
Unbalanced operate at -10 dB.
| | 00:48 | It's 14 dB difference if you're
looking at that -10 up to 0, and then plus
| | 00:52 | another four to +4, so 14
decibel difference.
| | 00:56 | Those Unbalanced cables are
referred to as Consumer Level.
| | 00:59 | Now, a lot of the things you're going
to be working with are going to operate
| | 01:03 | on a Consumer Level.
| | 01:04 | It's okay, these things can interface,
but you'll find that the Pro Level stuff,
| | 01:09 | if you're spending a lot of money,
it'll have +4 dB signal level involved in a
| | 01:14 | lot of things, or balanced inputs and outputs.
| | 01:17 | It's worth looking into, because
especially if you are somewhere where
| | 01:21 | there's lot of noise.
| | 01:22 | If you are in your bedroom, and
there is lot of radio towers around.
| | 01:25 | If you can go balanced, it might help
you avoid kind of that unwanted radio
| | 01:29 | interference and in the
middle of the night session.
| | 01:31 | So, let's look at a few
examples of the difference.
| | 01:34 | There's different kinds of cable ends
that basically let you know if something
| | 01:38 | is balanced or unbalanced.
| | 01:39 | So, unbalanced has two conductors and
on a plug like this you have seen them a
| | 01:46 | hundred times maybe, or maybe not.
| | 01:48 | There's a Tip and a Sleeve, and it's
separated by a little piece of black carbon.
| | 01:53 | More or less you have metal, there's one
conductor, this is a separator, this is
| | 01:56 | a second conductor, two conductors.
That's called the Tip/Sleeve cable or TS.
| | 02:02 | A balanced version of that has the
ring inserted, so you have the Tip, the
| | 02:06 | Ring, and the Sleeve.
| | 02:07 | Pretty obvious, referred to as a TRS,
so those are your three conductors.
| | 02:12 | The other well-known balanced cable is
the microphone cable, or XLR cable, which
| | 02:17 | has three pins used for three conductors,
worth knowing about, easy to identify
| | 02:22 | as soon as you look at.
| | 02:23 | The trick comes when you actually are
looking at devices or boxes that have
| | 02:26 | inputs, and you can't really tell from
looking at them, especially if it's a
| | 02:30 | plug input, if that's balanced or unbalanced.
| | 02:32 | Usually, if the manufacturer has been
nice they'll let you know that right there
| | 02:37 | and say it's balanced, if not, you
might have to open up a manual or something
| | 02:41 | like that to find out.
| | 02:42 | You can plug a balanced cable into
an unbalanced shack and vice-versa, it
| | 02:47 | defaults to unbalanced when
you pair balanced and unbalanced.
| | 02:50 | So, the XLR comes in the same
shape and size every time you see it.
| | 02:55 | The TRS and TS can come in a bunch of
different sizes, which I'll show you in
| | 03:00 | the next movie, but the thing to
remember is to look for the ring.
| | 03:03 | If there's a ring, it's a three
conductor plug, and if there isn't a ring, it's
| | 03:07 | a two conductor plug or unbalanced.
| | 03:10 | So keep that in mind when
you're looking at your plugs.
| | 03:12 | In the next movie, we'll look at a lot
of adapters and plugs, and we'll talk
| | 03:16 | about what they're commonly used for.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Common cable types| 00:01 | So, in this movie we'll take a look at
a lot of the common cable connections
| | 00:05 | that you'll come into contact with when
you're dealing with digital audio, and
| | 00:08 | we'll look at a few of the
different ends and plugs that you'll see.
| | 00:11 | So, let's check them up.
Okay, so let's take a look at some cables here.
| | 00:15 | Let's start with a few balanced cables, and
let's look at the XLR or microphone cable.
| | 00:21 | A balance cable as we mentioned has
three conductors, three pins, so this is the
| | 00:25 | male end, and this is the female end of
the XLR cable or the microphone cable.
| | 00:30 | Pretty common, if you use microphones,
this is what you are going to use most often.
| | 00:35 | Typically, this end goes into the
microphone, and this will go into your mixture
| | 00:39 | board or your digital audio interface.
| | 00:41 | You'll see this again when we talk
about the AES.BU Digital Standard, which
| | 00:46 | actually is the same device.
| | 00:47 | It uses the same cables, but it's
just a digital cable, this is an analog
| | 00:51 | cable for a microphone.
| | 00:57 | Again, this is another balanced cable,
and remember we talked about the three
| | 01:01 | conductors, the Tip, the Ring and the Sleeve.
| | 01:05 | So, here we have that ring, so
it's a three conductor cable.
| | 01:08 | This one actually ends in an XLR format,
so this can go into a microphone, and
| | 01:13 | this can go into a balanced
input on a digital audio interface.
| | 01:22 | I should mention that this size, when
you see this, that's referred to as a
| | 01:25 | quarter inch jack, that's actually refers
to the width of this barrel of the jack.
| | 01:32 | This is a mini-jack, these are also
balanced, or stereo--it's another way that
| | 01:38 | people refer to it--but it is three conductors,
Tip, Ring and Sleeve.
| | 01:41 | You can use that to connect your iPod
to things or a small microphone to AV
| | 01:46 | equipment, and things like that.
| | 01:48 | Let's see, now here is an unbalanced
quarter inch jack, just a Tip and a Sleeve.
| | 01:56 | This is what you'll use to hookup
devices like synthesizers, drum machines,
| | 02:01 | unbalanced line level equipment, also
guitar cables look similar to this, but
| | 02:06 | you should know that they
kind of have different ratings.
| | 02:09 | So, buy guitar cable for your
guitar and buy line level cables for your
| | 02:13 | line level instruments.
| | 02:18 | Moving on, we have the RCA, or phono
plug, this cable actually is a mess.
| | 02:27 | This cable is actually a stereo mini
that comes out to two RCA cables, but what
| | 02:33 | we thing about right now are these RCA cables.
| | 02:36 | This is a stereo pair, so if you have
the output of a CD or your home stereo,
| | 02:40 | VCR, you've seen these before.
| | 02:43 | They're also used in the digital world
for the S/PDIF Digital Convention, which
| | 02:48 | allows one of these to carry
actually a digital stereo signal.
| | 02:51 | So, on your digital audio interface you
might just have two RCA inputs, but one
| | 02:57 | is actually an input and one is
an output for digital in and out.
| | 03:03 | This cable is actually, it looks like a
balanced cable to two unbalanced, and it
| | 03:11 | splits, but it's known as an insert cable.
| | 03:13 | What's important about this is when you
use the inserts on your audio interface,
| | 03:17 | or on a mixing board, is that you'll
use this piece to come out of the mixing
| | 03:23 | board or out of this end, and use this
to go into the input, which one is the
| | 03:28 | tip and one is the ring.
| | 03:30 | One goes into the input of like an
external effects like if you have an
| | 03:33 | external reverb effects box.
| | 03:35 | This goes in and then that reverb box will have
an input and then an output on the other side.
| | 03:40 | This goes into the output of that
effects box, but through one cable it goes out
| | 03:45 | and back into the mixer or out and
back into your digital audio interface.
| | 03:49 | Now, let's look at a few more digital cables.
| | 03:54 | This is called the ADAT lightpipe cable,
it's actually a optical cable, when
| | 04:00 | this is hooked in you can actually see
red light coming out at the ends when
| | 04:04 | it's hooked into a device, and we'll show
you the jacks on audio interfaces and preamps.
| | 04:09 | Mostly, on audio interfaces that this goes into.
| | 04:12 | This is nice, because it can carry
eight channels of digital audio at once
| | 04:15 | just in one lightpipe.
| | 04:16 | That was developed by ADAT for their eight
track digital recorders, the ADAT by Alesis.
| | 04:26 | This is a fairly common computer cable right
now, the FireWire cable, both ends are the same.
| | 04:32 | You can use this to connect your audio
interface to your computer, it's a two
| | 04:36 | way cable, in and out.
| | 04:38 | Also, fairly common these days the USB
cable, different ends, but this also can
| | 04:43 | be used to connect the USB device or
your audio interface to your computer.
| | 04:50 | The other way you can connect things
to your computers via a PCI card just
| | 04:53 | something like this that a digital
audio interface will come with at you,
| | 04:57 | install this into your PC, into your
computer, and then you'll hook another
| | 05:00 | cable out to your audio interface.
So, that's the PCI card method of connecting.
| | 05:05 | Then there is MIDI, which we'll talk
about in-depth in another section, but
| | 05:11 | right now we'll just look at the cable.
| | 05:14 | It's surrounded with a five pin, both
ends are the same, and on the interface
| | 05:19 | section I'll show you what the
jacks that inputs of MIDI look like.
| | 05:22 | This is used to send only MIDI
information, you don't really send sound over
| | 05:27 | these cables, you send data.
| | 05:32 | Also, let's move on and talk
about a few different speaker cables.
| | 05:39 | This plug is called the banana plug,
and on some of the higher-end studio
| | 05:43 | monitors speakers you'll get.
| | 05:44 | You'll see two round posts on the back,
usually a red and a black that you can
| | 05:48 | screw bare wire to, like this, or you
can push this into those two posts, there
| | 05:53 | will be holes, and this banana
plug will go into those two ports.
| | 05:57 | It's a quick and easy way to
attach speakers and connect speakers.
| | 06:04 | Of course, there's just a pair of
speaker wire which--and this is for a
| | 06:07 | smaller grade speaker--but if you're
connecting studio monitors using this,
| | 06:11 | you'd trim off the ends and just with
your hands twist those ends so they are
| | 06:17 | spun a little bit, feed them through
and tighten down the screws like you do on
| | 06:21 | your home stereo speakers.
| | 06:25 | Finally, there's heavy-duty quarter inch
speaker cable, this is just a lot thicker.
| | 06:30 | This is actually for use with a bass
guitar amplifier, but you can find speaker
| | 06:35 | cable that's thicker, they're using
quarter inch balanced and unbalanced ends to
| | 06:38 | connect your studio
monitors to your audio interface.
| | 06:42 | That all depends on if you're
connecting amplified outputs to your monitors or
| | 06:45 | if your monitors
themselves are amplified, or active.
| | 06:49 | But we'll talk more about
that in the monitoring section.
| | 06:54 | So, that's basically it for most of the cables.
| | 06:56 | There's a lot more out there, there are
a lots of little adapters and plugs that
| | 07:00 | you can put on different cables.
| | 07:01 | All kinds of different configurations
are possible, and you'll basically come
| | 07:06 | across those as you need them.
So, that's more or less it for cables.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cable tips| 00:01 | Okay finally, I'd like to just give you
a few tips on things with cables, things
| | 00:04 | to keep in mind, and some best practices.
| | 00:08 | One, buy good cables, it's always a
benefit, hard to adjust with the cost
| | 00:12 | sometimes, but the payoff is good.
| | 00:13 | If you have a smaller studio, and you
don't need tons and tons of cable, it's
| | 00:17 | definitely worth it.
| | 00:18 | So, I encourage you to try and
get good cables anytime you can.
| | 00:21 | Also, mark your cables, you can put
things on the different ends, tape,
| | 00:25 | labels, numbers, and some people use
ponytail holders, or tie wraps, things like
| | 00:30 | that, color-code them.
| | 00:31 | Just do things so that when you have
kind of this snarl of cables behind your
| | 00:34 | computer and your interface and stuff,
and you have to go back and kind of
| | 00:39 | find the right one, it's easier to track
down both ends of that cable and troubleshoot.
| | 00:43 | It's also good with longer mike cables,
if you put little things like number
| | 00:47 | stickers around the end, or a piece of
colored electrical tape on both ends so
| | 00:50 | you know that the red
cables going into this mike.
| | 00:53 | Then when you trace it back into the
other room into your mixing board or
| | 00:57 | interface, you know that also here's
the red cable that's going into channel 1.
| | 01:01 | So, that's a good thing to do, it makes kind
of routing and setting up systems a lot easier.
| | 01:06 | Most cables have markings on them, if they
are click stereo pairs like speaker wire.
| | 01:11 | You'll notice speaker wire
sometimes it's just black, and you don't see
| | 01:14 | anything, but there will be little ridges
in the vinyl or in the plastic coatings.
| | 01:18 | So just actually touch it with your
hand, feel it with your finger, one side
| | 01:22 | will have ridges and will be smooth.
| | 01:24 | When you run those wires from your
amplifier to your speaker, just make sure
| | 01:27 | that the red goes to the red and stays on the
marked side, and the smooth side goes to the black.
| | 01:33 | It doesn't matter which side you use
just make sure that it's even, and use red
| | 01:37 | to red, black to black, positive to
negative et cetera. There might also be
| | 01:40 | printed markings, I'll see little
strips of white ink on one side so that you
| | 01:45 | know that that side,
| | 01:46 | when you get to the other end of the
other cable, wherever it is, you can know
| | 01:51 | which side you're looking at.
| | 01:52 | Use shorter cables whenever you can. As
the signal travels through a cable, it
| | 01:55 | degrades and the longer it
travels, the more it degrades.
| | 01:58 | So, it's good to make your cable runs
as short as possible so that the quality
| | 02:02 | of your signal stays as pure as possible.
| | 02:05 | It's always good to have an array of
short and long cables on hand for different
| | 02:09 | task that come up, but when you are
setting up your system, really try and use
| | 02:13 | the shortest cables you can.
| | 02:14 | It will help you maintain the purity or
quality of your sound, and it will also
| | 02:18 | make things a little bit
neater and easier to work with.
| | 02:21 | So if you can buy a couple of short
cables, and a couple of long cables, that's a
| | 02:25 | good idea. Especially when setting
up a desktop or small project studio.
| | 02:29 | You don't need 15 foot cables to run
out of the box and then right to the
| | 02:33 | input right next to it.
| | 02:35 | You've got a three or 4 foot
cable, and that will help you out.
| | 02:38 | It will keep things cleaner, and it
also improves your signal quality.
| | 02:41 | Finally, it's good to cross your audio and AC
cables at 90 degree angles to reduce interference.
| | 02:47 | Basically, you know when you're
setting up, and you have a bunch of studio
| | 02:50 | stuff, a bunch of bands, and a bunch
of microphones out, cables are going to
| | 02:54 | cross each other, it's going to happen.
| | 02:55 | If you find that point where they do
cross just kind of bunch up the microphone
| | 02:58 | cables, or the audio cables, and then
lay that extension cord or power cord to
| | 03:03 | an amplifier so that it crosses
those cables at a 90 degree angle.
| | 03:07 | This will greatly reduce the
possibility of interference.
| | 03:10 | It works, it's pretty simple, and
tidies up the cables in certain spots too.
| | 03:15 | So, those are my tips on cables,
hopefully they'll help you have a kind of a
| | 03:19 | tidier workspace, better signal flow,
stronger signals, and less interference.
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|
|
5. Audio Input/Output DevicesWhat is an I/O device?| 00:01 | Audio interfaces allow us to get
audio in and out of the computer.
| | 00:04 | They are usually an external device that
allows us to send in input signals like
| | 00:09 | microphones, or line signals.
| | 00:11 | It handles A/D conversion, and then
through a cable, sends that digital
| | 00:16 | information to our computer to record.
| | 00:18 | The main thing they do that we
love them for is they take care of the
| | 00:22 | analog-to-digital conversion and
they do it away from the computer.
| | 00:24 | So, usually that means there's
something in there that's dedicated to just
| | 00:28 | doing A/D conversion.
| | 00:29 | Now, while most computers come with stuff where
you can plug a mike in and things like that.
| | 00:34 | They don't as good a job at A/D
conversion as stand-alone audio interfaces do,
| | 00:40 | just because they have hardware in there
that's dedicated to that, and fine tune to it.
| | 00:44 | Really, the stuff that ships on
your computer generally isn't that high
| | 00:47 | ended, it gets the job done, but you wouldn't want
to use it to produce a record necessarily.
| | 00:52 | The other advantage is it gets away
from the computer, there's a lot of noise
| | 00:55 | inside an actual computer, and it's not the
best place, in a way, to be doing A/D conversion.
| | 01:00 | I know, that's sounds weird, because
it's all digital and electronic, but
| | 01:03 | actually there's a lot of noise
that's generated in electronic machinery in
| | 01:06 | terms of the different voltages and sounds.
| | 01:08 | So, it's not just that there's like a
fan going, but it's that there are other
| | 01:11 | kind of interruption and
interference inside the computer that audio
| | 01:15 | interfaces don't have.
| | 01:17 | So, typically connect to your
computer via USB or FireWire or via PCI card,
| | 01:22 | which goes into a slot in your computer
and then hooks up via special cable back
| | 01:26 | to the audio interface.
| | 01:28 | In this chapter, we are going to look at
kind of the inputs and then the outputs
| | 01:32 | and then some of the different
functionality of the audio interface.
| | 01:35 | But the first thing I want to talk
about is analog to digital conversion, which
| | 01:39 | we'll look at in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Analog to digital conversion| 00:01 | Analog-to-digital conversion is probably
the single most important reason to use
| | 00:04 | an external audio device.
| | 00:06 | In Chapter 1, we've talked about two
factors that figure into the quality of
| | 00:10 | your analog-to-digital conversion.
We talked about sample rate and bit depth.
| | 00:14 | If you haven't seen that movie I
suggest you go back and review it before you
| | 00:18 | continue on in this section.
| | 00:19 | Audio interfaces are not all created
equal, so the first thing you want to look
| | 00:23 | at is the sample rate and the bit depths
that your interface is capable of.
| | 00:27 | Because ultimately this can limit the
sample rates and bit depths you can use.
| | 00:30 | Now, I say among other things here,
because things like processor speed and your
| | 00:34 | computer's ability to push a lot of
tracks or heavier tracks is important,
| | 00:38 | because as sample rates and bit depths
go up, so does the size of the data.
| | 00:42 | So, having a computer that can handle
it and having software that gives you the
| | 00:46 | options to work with say 24-bit audio
or the option to work with audio that was
| | 00:50 | sampled at 96 kHz is important.
| | 00:53 | But if your A/D conversion can't do it, it
doesn't matter if your software can or not.
| | 00:58 | It's the main limiter in terms of what
kind of sample rates and bit depths you
| | 01:02 | can use and ultimately that means
what kind of quality you can get from
| | 01:05 | analog-to-digital conversion.
| | 01:07 | So, let's talk about different
qualities and different deliveries.
| | 01:11 | Ultimately, the sample rates and bit depths
that you need to be available to you
| | 01:15 | or you want to find in your interface,
it can kind of be based on what you're
| | 01:19 | going to do. What are you making?
Now, better is always better.
| | 01:22 | So, whether you're making the record of
your lives or a podcast today that just
| | 01:27 | goes out and gets really crunched down.
| | 01:29 | If you want to use the highest rates
available, go for it, I encourage it,
| | 01:33 | it's not a problem.
| | 01:35 | It's going to take up a lot of hard
drive space and the reality is that
| | 01:38 | you're probably not going to get
that much out of the difference from say
| | 01:42 | like 192 to 196 necessarily.
| | 01:45 | So, knowing where you're going
to go with stuff is important.
| | 01:49 | On an audio interface you want
something with a minimum of 4416-bit capability.
| | 01:54 | You'll be hard-pressed to find
something that doesn't have that actually, you'd
| | 01:57 | have to look kind of hard.
| | 01:59 | More and more 96 kHz and 24-bit is kind
of becoming the standard for kind of the
| | 02:04 | home project studio device.
| | 02:07 | It's a great standard, it offers a lot
more sonic clarity and the 24-bit gives
| | 02:11 | you a lot more dynamic range.
| | 02:13 | Again, if you didn't see the section on
sample rate and bit depth in Chapter 1.
| | 02:17 | I encourage you to go look at those so that you
get a sense of the importance of these numbers.
| | 02:22 | Typically, your ultimate objective, and
your wallet, will help you find the right
| | 02:26 | match in terms of the
sample rate and the bit depth.
| | 02:29 | If you're doing a lot of music,
I encourage to getting up to 96.
| | 02:32 | If you are doing simple stuff that's
getting crunched and going out on the web,
| | 02:36 | you can work at 40 for 116
bit and not feel ashamed.
| | 02:39 | It's okay, and it saves a lot of disk space.
| | 02:42 | And if you're tracking orchestras or
huge things or doing things for film, by
| | 02:47 | all means look into 192 with
32 bit or even 192 at 24-bit.
| | 02:53 | In general, I'd say trying to use 24-bit
for everything and then adjust from
| | 02:57 | there the other things as you need to.
| | 02:59 | Regardless, of what bit rate you use,
in the next movie will look at an
| | 03:03 | audio interface and talk about the different
kinds of inputs and options that they come with.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tour of an audio interface| 00:01 | Okay, let's take look at
a digital audio interface.
| | 00:04 | This is a 10-In/10-Out
24-bit/192 kHz capable interface.
| | 00:10 | So, we've got a preamp section here
with inputs, with these combo jacks that you
| | 00:14 | can use microphone XLR cables for,
or quarter-inch inputs, and then a
| | 00:19 | Sensitivity, or gain control.
| | 00:20 | So, once you have your microphone
plugged in there, you can turn up the signal
| | 00:24 | so that you get enough signals.
| | 00:26 | You can also on this one, switch it from
Hi to Lo-Z, so if you want to plug your
| | 00:30 | guitar right into here, you can switch
that so that it's at Hi-Z and plug your
| | 00:34 | guitar right in there.
| | 00:35 | For other things like keyboard, synthesizer
or drum machine, you can leave it at the Lo-Z.
| | 00:40 | On the front, we actually have some
digital Ins and Outs, and this is that
| | 00:44 | ADAT Lightpipe input, which if you
haven't seen, looks like this, and there's
| | 00:51 | some Ins and some Outs.
| | 00:55 | More or less, you hook this up here, and
whatever your source that has that is you
| | 01:01 | put this to the other end.
| | 01:02 | This is nice, because it can transfer
a lot of channels digitally at a high
| | 01:06 | sample rate at that 192 kHz
sample rate, which is exciting.
| | 01:10 | Then we can also select the actual sample
rate we are working with here on the dial.
| | 01:15 | There's also a monitor MIX if you want
to determine how much the volume going to
| | 01:20 | your monitor speakers in your studios
just so you can turn up and down where you
| | 01:24 | can quickly do kind of a pad which
would probably turn it down to 10 dB, or so,
| | 01:28 | just to make the room quiet for a minute.
| | 01:30 | You can switch it to MONO, if you have to
see if what you're mixing sounds good in MONO.
| | 01:33 | You can switch the outputs that
are normally are listening in stereo,
| | 01:37 | you can just quickly jump to MONO and
make sure everything in phase is okay.
| | 01:42 | Finally, there's a headphone output
and a volume control for that headphone.
| | 01:45 | So, let's go to the back, this is
where we will see some kind of really
| | 01:49 | interesting things, newer things.
| | 01:50 | Obviously, you'll have power supply,
which is going here, from, I guess,
| | 01:55 | the left to right for you.
| | 01:57 | We have the MIDI In and Out, and
this is what you'll use to hook up MIDI
| | 02:01 | equipment, which we don't have that
cable around right now, but if I did, I
| | 02:05 | could plug it in, it's that five thin cable
with the funny holes that goes in and out.
| | 02:09 | You can use this to go, send information
in from like a keyboard controller, and
| | 02:15 | back out to a keyboard
controller, like a sampler.
| | 02:17 | MIDI is cool, we'll talk about
that more in a different section.
| | 02:21 | Then we have the FireWire in and out,
which is how this interface connects to
| | 02:25 | your computer via a magical FireWire cable.
| | 02:29 | Then actually we'll go back and forth,
there is actually two here, which is nice.
| | 02:33 | I think you can probably run that in series.
| | 02:38 | So, that's how this interface
connects to your computer, and that's cool.
| | 02:42 | FireWire is nice and fast, the new 800
is faster than USB 2, it's very cool.
| | 02:49 | Then you have Main Outs, the right and
left, these would be what you would use
| | 02:55 | to feed your monitor speakers.
| | 02:57 | Again, those are controls on the front,
and this knob here, more or less, and
| | 03:01 | these kinds of options, are
affecting these Main Outs here.
| | 03:06 | Then you have a bunch of line Inputs
and line Outputs as well, so if you have
| | 03:11 | things like synthesizers, keyboards,
drum machines, or line level devices, you
| | 03:16 | can come into the Inputs, and you can
also go out of the Outputs, which is nice.
| | 03:21 | So, if you are using this in
conjunction with a mixing board, you can send
| | 03:24 | signals in, go through the FireWire
out to your computer, work, come back out
| | 03:28 | through the FireWire, and then back
out through these outputs into your
| | 03:32 | mixing board to mix in an analog way,
or to send signals out to a headphone
| | 03:37 | mixer, really cool.
| | 03:39 | So, that's the basic gist kind of
features and functionality of a digital audio
| | 03:45 | interface, this is a pretty cool.
| | 03:46 | We also have a really pretty simple
one, this is an M-Audio interface that
| | 03:51 | really on the front it has a few things.
| | 03:54 | Input adjustment, which will adjust
your microphone input, on the back there
| | 03:59 | is a line input for guitar or line, switchable.
These are your outputs, RCA's out to speakers.
| | 04:06 | This is probably intended for not
real super high level studio monitors,
| | 04:12 | because most studio monitors, once
you get in to kind of the more, midrange
| | 04:16 | won't use an RCA input.
| | 04:18 | So, if you have like a home computer
system or kind of some slightly better
| | 04:23 | computer speakers, this
will work great for that.
| | 04:26 | On the front again, a headphone input
and a master adjustment for that in a mix,
| | 04:32 | between what's coming in and what's
going out, and finally a Stereo and Mono
| | 04:36 | button to change your output selection.
| | 04:38 | So, you can get pretty simple devices
or you can get more complex devices.
| | 04:43 | There's lots of options out there, and it's
exciting to see what you can do with them.
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| Interface considerations| 00:01 | Finally, I'd like to look at a few
things to consider when you're thinking about
| | 00:04 | an interface and trying to find
out which one might be right for you.
| | 00:08 | The first thing to do is just think
about what you already have in your
| | 00:11 | computer, what's available in terms
of hooking it up to an audio interface.
| | 00:15 | Do you have USB, and
hopefully USB 2.0, which is faster?
| | 00:18 | The original USB is a little slow and
not that great for audio, USB 2.0 is great.
| | 00:23 | FireWire 400 and 800, which is the
earlier version and the later version
| | 00:27 | right now I think 800.
| | 00:29 | Those both work really well, but if
your computer doesn't have that, well, it's
| | 00:32 | not going to pan out for you.
| | 00:34 | Finally, the PCI card if you
have a laptop that's not an option.
| | 00:38 | If you have computer, and you're not
into opening it up and slapping a card in
| | 00:42 | there, then maybe you need to go
USB or FireWire, which are great.
| | 00:45 | They're all great ways to go actually.
They all function pretty well.
| | 00:48 | It's just the matter of finding the right fit.
| | 00:50 | If I had to have a preference, I
would shoot for FireWire 800 these days.
| | 00:55 | Also, how many tracks do
you need to record at once?
| | 00:58 | Different interfaces will give
you a different number of inputs.
| | 01:01 | If you only need to do one microphone,
but a couple of line inputs, what kind of
| | 01:05 | box can handle that?
| | 01:06 | If you need to do eight microphones,
then you need to look into something with
| | 01:09 | eight mic inputs and maybe eight mic preamps.
| | 01:12 | So just keep in mind how you think
you'll be using it, and also playback
| | 01:16 | different devices if you're going to
try and play back a lot of channels or 432
| | 01:20 | something like that, sometimes the
slower connections won't be so great.
| | 01:24 | So going back to the first point
FireWire and things like that, they can help.
| | 01:29 | It's also good to keep in your
mind where the end product is headed.
| | 01:32 | As I mentioned before you can use that
to kind of determine the sample rate and
| | 01:36 | bit depth that makes sense for your project.
| | 01:38 | Obviously, different qualities are
required for different types of production.
| | 01:41 | So keep that in mind.
| | 01:43 | Finally, portability, durability, and
affordability--and I also like to say if
| | 01:47 | it looks cool is important too.
| | 01:49 | If you're going to moving around with
the laptop or you're going to be taking
| | 01:52 | this over to your friends house to work,
try and find one that's not huge and
| | 01:56 | muggy, but also seems like it won't
break if you drop it or it won't scratch.
| | 02:00 | It just feels that you can
tell when you pick stuff up.
| | 02:03 | If it's kind of feels a little more durable.
Then affordability there is a really wide range.
| | 02:08 | You can go from a hundred bucks up to a
thousand bucks, easy, and find stuff fit
| | 02:12 | every interval in-between.
| | 02:13 | It's okay to start out with something
that's not super expensive and just get
| | 02:17 | used to working with stuff.
| | 02:18 | A lot of times that leads you into
learning about what you wish you had out of
| | 02:23 | the system as opposed to getting the
big system and not necessarily utilizing
| | 02:26 | all the features right away.
| | 02:27 | So these are just a few more things to
keep in mind when you're looking at audio
| | 02:31 | interfaces, and you're thinking about
incorporating one into your audio system.
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|
|
6. Input Levels and PreamplifiersWhat is a preamp?| 00:01 | A preamplifier is used in audio
production when a sound source isn't quite loud
| | 00:05 | enough to work with or there
is not enough signal level.
| | 00:08 | I choose to boost, or amplify, the signal
level to an optimal input level so that
| | 00:12 | there's enough there to work with.
| | 00:13 | It gives your digital audio interface
enough sound to digitize and sample and
| | 00:18 | take advantage of all the bit depth.
It makes audio easier to work with.
| | 00:22 | We want to get things up to a certain
level so that the volumes are all even,
| | 00:26 | and there's enough of it
there to look at and deal with.
| | 00:29 | Microphones and record players almost
always require a preamp to deliver enough
| | 00:32 | signal to be able to record,
especially in today's digital audio world.
| | 00:37 | Now you can use a preamplifier to
increase the gain of any single, but it's
| | 00:41 | not always a first choice, and things
like microphones that don't have volume
| | 00:44 | knobs and record players where there's
just an output, and you have to go with
| | 00:49 | it, it makes sense.
But sometimes a preamp can add some noise.
| | 00:52 | So if you're using like a drum machine,
or a synthesizer, it's better to try and
| | 00:56 | turn that device volume up first and
get as much signal out of that device
| | 01:00 | before you start to use a
preamp to get more signal.
| | 01:02 | A mistake is to have things come up
kind of quiet and then crank the preamp,
| | 01:06 | especially if you're using preamps on a
less expensive device where the preamps
| | 01:10 | they're actually adding to the some of
the sonic character of the signal and
| | 01:13 | they're changing a little
bit of the tonality of it.
| | 01:15 | So it's good to use as much of
the original signal as possible.
| | 01:19 | On a lot of digital audio interfaces
you'll find preamps, you might find one or
| | 01:22 | two, or you might find as many as eight.
| | 01:24 | You can also find them as stand-alone
units, and you can find nice little
| | 01:28 | hundred dollar tube preamps to two-channel
something like that, or you can spend
| | 01:32 | a couple of thousand
dollars on one single preamp.
| | 01:35 | That's because, generally speaking, to
the pros they're thought of as one of the
| | 01:39 | most important keys in the signal
flow in terms of getting good sound.
| | 01:44 | If you have a great microphone and
not a great preamp a lot of times you're
| | 01:48 | cheating the microphone from
achieving all that it's capable of.
| | 01:51 | Amps and preamplifiers fall under few different
categories, or classes, based on their design.
| | 01:56 | I just want to take a minute to
talk about and hip you to Class A
| | 02:00 | preamplifiers, because I know when
you're out shopping you're looking online
| | 02:03 | for different devices and gear, you'll
see this distinction, and I want you to
| | 02:08 | know what it means.
| | 02:09 | By design the Class A amplifier is always
moving current at its inputs and outputs.
| | 02:13 | So when the sound arrives at an input,
it immediately is on its way through the
| | 02:17 | circuitry and to the output.
| | 02:19 | Other amplifiers kind of have to
get it in gear before that happens.
| | 02:22 | Now this happens faster than we can
imagine, but the result of that Class A
| | 02:26 | structure where it immediately starts
to move is that you get a very clean
| | 02:30 | signal path with very little
distortion and very little coloration.
| | 02:34 | That's the advantage of a Class A
preamplifier is that it's a very clean and
| | 02:38 | generally accurate device.
| | 02:40 | Of course, the downside is that
they tend to cost quite a bit of money.
| | 02:43 | But it's worth looking into if you
have a really high-end microphone or if
| | 02:46 | you're just aspiring for a very high-end
setup, the Class A preamplifier can
| | 02:50 | really help you get a nice sound.
| | 02:52 | That's not to say that life won't go
on without a Class A preamplifier, but
| | 02:56 | there is something to be said for using
a very nice preamplifier matched with a
| | 03:00 | very nice microphone.
| | 03:02 | Generally speaking, Class A preamps
aren't a bad thing, but regardless of
| | 03:07 | the price most preamps are going to come
with a similar set of features and functions.
| | 03:11 | And we're going to explain those in
this chapter, but the first thing I want to
| | 03:15 | talk about is getting and
setting the proper signal levels.
| | 03:18 | So in the next movie that's what we'll look at.
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| Input levels| 00:01 | So when you're recording digital audio
we want to pay attention to setting the
| | 00:04 | appropriate input levels.
| | 00:05 | Ultimately, we want to try and send as
much signal as possible without exceeding
| | 00:10 | 0 dB or what's the maximum
of the digital dynamic range.
| | 00:13 | In chapter we talked about the digital
dynamic range, and mentioned that
| | 00:17 | it's something that goes from
negative infinity up to 0 dB.
| | 00:21 | For more information on that
see the movie in chapter one.
| | 00:23 | So our objective is to send as much
signal, or as loud a signal, to our recorder
| | 00:28 | as possible without sending too much.
| | 00:31 | We want to send a lot so that we can
sample as much as possible, take advantage
| | 00:35 | of the sample rate, get all the nuances
of the sound, and also take advantage of
| | 00:39 | the dynamic range, and take advantage
of all the bits in the resolution there.
| | 00:42 | If we send it a really quiet signal
we're not really going to a take full
| | 00:46 | advantage of the whole dynamic range available
to us through the bit depth that we're using.
| | 00:50 | So you want to send as much as you can,
but you don't want to get above zero.
| | 00:55 | In the analog world, you can clip, you
can go above zero, you can make it go into
| | 00:59 | the red, as they say, and it's
sounds kind of okay. It's palatable.
| | 01:03 | In the digital world it's
really not that palatable.
| | 01:06 | It goes right to kind of this nasty
glitchy sound that not too many people like.
| | 01:11 | You'll know when you hear
it, that's the other thing.
| | 01:13 | You don't need to have
your eyes right on the meters.
| | 01:16 | When it's too loud, you'll hear that
the crispiness of digital distortion.
| | 01:19 | Most input meters in software will show--
a lot of times they represent the input
| | 01:25 | with colors--and red almost always
as hot in the top of red is the clip.
| | 01:29 | If you see that little clip
dot, you know you've gone too far.
| | 01:32 | If you didn't hear it, at least the
software thinks mathematically it happened.
| | 01:37 | It was looking, and it noticed that it
was too loud, and we broke digital zero.
| | 01:41 | So let's switch over to Pro Tools real
quick and take a look at setting a few levels.
| | 01:47 | So here we are in Pro Tools, and if you
have--whatever software you're using the
| | 01:51 | input settings, the visuals, they're
going to be fairly similar to this.
| | 01:54 | So this will be applicable.
You'll know it when you see it.
| | 01:57 | The main thing is to look at what peaking is
and what the levels you want to try and attain are.
| | 02:02 | So I'm going to go ahead and send
some signal into these two channels that
| | 02:06 | I have armed to record, and we're just going
to look at the different volumes available.
| | 02:09 | (audio playing)
| | 02:13 | So right now we're coming in,
and that's really too low.
| | 02:16 | So on that preamp, I am going to
go ahead and turn up that signal.
| | 02:19 | I want to get it up.
| | 02:23 | See, now I've clipped. That's too much.
I'm going to too far so you hear what clipping is.
| | 02:28 | It's going to be--you're not going to like it,
but it's good for you. Did you here that?
| | 02:35 | Here how it sounds like we are at the beach now.
That's the digital clip.
| | 02:39 | So let's back it off.
| | 02:44 | I can clear those little peaks there,
so we can see over there. This is nice.
| | 02:50 | This lets me know what my matched peak was.
So I can keep adding a little bit more.
| | 02:55 | I want to get as close as I can.
| | 03:00 | That's a good level, but one of the
tricks or one of the prompts--this is a
| | 03:08 | little bit easier, because
this is prerecorded music.
| | 03:11 | It's got its dynamic range.
I kind of have a handle for it.
| | 03:13 | If this was a drummer for a instance,
and you're playing a song, you might find
| | 03:18 | that he starts out playing softly
and towards the end of the song starts
| | 03:20 | playing a lot heavier.
If it's a rock ballad, he is really smashing it.
| | 03:24 | Same with a lot of
instruments or people speaking.
| | 03:27 | If people at first are talking quietly
in an interview, you set the level to
| | 03:32 | that and the next thing you know
they're animated and they're fired up about
| | 03:35 | what they're talking about and all
of a sudden you getting these peaks.
| | 03:38 | So when you're setting levels one
thing you have to do is think about what
| | 03:42 | you're about to record and try and
either get the object, or subject, to kind of
| | 03:47 | produce the loudest
moment that they might produce.
| | 03:49 | If it's an interview, maybe try and
encourage someone to laugh, or something.
| | 03:54 | Try to have them interact with
someone else and get a little excited, or
| | 03:58 | something, I don't know, or you just
have him fake it say, hey, talk really
| | 04:02 | loud and they'll talk really loud.
| | 04:04 | With drummers, with musicians, they're
the same thing, but I can signal them out
| | 04:07 | too, because I like to play drums.
| | 04:09 | Get them to hit it as hard as they can,
make him put the headphones on and play
| | 04:13 | the drums along with the track,
because they'll always play it a little louder
| | 04:17 | once they put the headphones on.
| | 04:17 | So if they're just in the room you'll
set it, and then you'll do the track, and
| | 04:20 | it will peak somewhere in
the middle, then they have to go back.
| | 04:23 | It's usually, that headphone thing helps
| | 04:24 | a lot if you can do that ahead of time.
Because there is nothing worse than
| | 04:27 | setting these levels, recording a
performance, or an interviewer, a moment in
| | 04:31 | time really, and then finding, kind of, at the end
in the last minute or so you peak out,
| | 04:38 | and you end up with a recording that
you can't use, because you're input
| | 04:42 | levels are too high.
| | 04:43 | So these are some of the things you
want to keep in mind when you're setting
| | 04:45 | input levels, you want to get as much
there as you can, but you want to go too far.
| | 04:49 | If you have to gamble, I always say, you know,
bring it down a little bit and hope that it
| | 04:54 | doesn't come out too loud.
| | 04:56 | You can always turn it up
a little bit in the end.
| | 04:58 | You can never go back and take out that
digital distortion once it's in there.
| | 05:02 | So it's kind of error on the side of
lower levels if you have to, but at the
| | 05:07 | same time don't you just say I will
record it in and than just crank it up, and
| | 05:10 | it will normalize it or make it
a lot louder at some other point.
| | 05:14 | Try and get as much there as you can to take
advantage of all your A to D converters
| | 05:17 | in the dynamic range.
| | 05:19 | So that's pretty much it when
it comes to setting input levels.
| | 05:22 | In the next chapter we'll talk even
more about a preamplifier and some of the
| | 05:25 | features and functions that you'll find on it.
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| Padding| 00:01 | Padding is the way to reduce the
incoming signal level by a fixed amount.
| | 00:05 | It's usually a button that comes in
increments, and if you push it, it'll reduce
| | 00:09 | it by 10 dB, or by 20 dB, whatever
the manufacturer thought was the right
| | 00:13 | amount to put on that device.
| | 00:14 | It's usually just a simple push button,
push it in to turn it on, and push it
| | 00:19 | again, and it comes out it turns off,
or switch it slide it, on microphones you'll
| | 00:22 | find that it's kind of slider switch.
| | 00:24 | It's really useful if you find that
your sound source initially is really loud.
| | 00:29 | Certain things have different output levels,
certain things have different sensitivity.
| | 00:33 | Some microphones generate a lot of
signal, and it's pretty common to
| | 00:38 | find padding on microphones that do that
and on preamps that are used with microphones.
| | 00:44 | Generally, on an audio interface
device you'll find a couple buttons, and
| | 00:47 | usually the numbers will be below, and
it'll let you know how great a pad that
| | 00:51 | is how much it's going to take the dB down by.
| | 00:54 | So in this case we've a 10
dB button and a 20 dB button.
| | 00:57 | Chances are you probably won't find
both on it on an interface, they're just
| | 01:01 | here for as an example.
Usually, they will give you one to pick from.
| | 01:04 | But anyway it's something you to keep
in mind if you get things all hooked up
| | 01:08 | and your source is really, really loud
giving you too much signal to work with,
| | 01:12 | you can't, no matter how little gain
you use or how you turn things down, you
| | 01:16 | just kind of peaking out
and getting too much signal.
| | 01:19 | Hit the pad and then go ahead and go back and
use the preamp, or the gain, and turn it back up.
| | 01:24 | It's a useful device to work
with setting appropriate levels.
| | 01:27 | In case you're in a situation, and you
don't have a pad on your preamp, or on
| | 01:31 | your microphone, or whatever the other
devices it is, it is possible to buy just
| | 01:35 | in-line devices--that look kind of
like a plug--that you can plug it into the
| | 01:39 | cable or on the cable that actually do
the padding themselves, and you can also
| | 01:42 | buy those in different increments.
| | 01:44 | So if you don't have this feature, it's
not an incredible feature to look for in an
| | 01:48 | audio interface it isn't a preamp.
| | 01:49 | It's going to be on most preamps, but
if you're working, and you don't need go
| | 01:53 | out and buy a new one just to get a pad.
| | 01:56 | You can go on and get a in-line pad
that will work just fine for certain
| | 02:00 | microphones or certain devices.
| | 02:01 | In the next movie we're actually going
to look at an audio interface and do a
| | 02:05 | little kind of features tour,
| | 02:06 | and look at some of the
inputs and some of the different buttons.
| | 02:09 | We'll show you an actual padding
button and some other stuff so that when you
| | 02:12 | see these things in person you'll know
what they are, and we'll also show you
| | 02:15 | what kind of the effect they have on sound.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Phantom power| 00:01 | Okay, another thing you are going
to find in a lot of preamps and audio
| | 00:05 | interfaces or anything with kind of a
mic pre is probably a phantom power option.
| | 00:09 | And if you are going to be using a
condenser microphone that requires phantom
| | 00:13 | power--which, most of them do--make
sure that you find a mic pre or an audio
| | 00:17 | interface that has this option.
Now what is Phantom Power?
| | 00:20 | Well, they call it Phantom
because it's kind of funny.
| | 00:22 | It's not really in the microphone.
The microphone needs this power to operate.
| | 00:26 | Phantom refers to the fact that it
comes from your audio interface or from your
| | 00:30 | mixing board or whatever the source
is or stand-alone phantom power device.
| | 00:35 | What it is it's sending 48 volts of DC
current out through the microphone cable
| | 00:40 | to the microphone itself, and
this is what gives the charge to that
| | 00:44 | electrostatic diaphragm in
the magic condenser microphone.
| | 00:47 | It's like this extra power, this extra
juice, this is what allows condensers to
| | 00:51 | be so sensitive to high transients.
| | 00:54 | So it's really, it's an important thing
to be aware of, and if you are going to
| | 00:57 | use condensers like I said,
definitely something to make sure you have.
| | 01:00 | So if you are looking to see if you
have Phantom Power, it's usually near
| | 01:03 | preamps on a mixing board or the audio
interface or on the preamp itself, if
| | 01:08 | you have a stand-alone.
| | 01:09 | The button will usually have 48 volts
or +48 volts near it, and again, it's a
| | 01:14 | simple on/off switch.
You just turn it on, and it's on.
| | 01:17 | The difference between padding and
phantom power generally the way switches are
| | 01:21 | applied, it's common for one 48 volt
switch on digital audio interfaces to
| | 01:26 | supply phantom power to all the XLR
microphone inputs on that interface, whereas
| | 01:32 | padding is more of a channel. It's singular.
| | 01:35 | Each channel gets its own pad, or
each mic input gets its own pad.
| | 01:39 | So bear that in mind.
| | 01:41 | Sometimes on mixing boards, there
is only one phantom power device.
| | 01:44 | On very high-end preamplifiers or even
kind of more sophisticated preamplifiers,
| | 01:49 | you will find that you have a dedicated
phantom power supply for each channel of
| | 01:53 | preamplification you have there.
So it's a good thing to keep in mind.
| | 01:56 | One other thing, not all ribbon
microphones and phantom power get along.
| | 02:01 | It is possible to accidentally destroy a
certain ribbon microphones with phantom power.
| | 02:06 | All I can tell you is if you have an
older ribbon microphone, go ahead and look
| | 02:09 | into its specs and find out if you can do it.
| | 02:12 | A lot of the newer ones aren't
susceptible to this, but at the same time, you
| | 02:16 | should check into it just because the
sensitivity of the ribbon microphones
| | 02:19 | generally, they are just something
about getting the Frankenstein 48 volt shock
| | 02:23 | doesn't work for them the way
it does for condenser microphone.
| | 02:27 | So anyway, that's Phantom Power.
| | 02:28 | It will creep up again in this title,
and we will talk about it a little bit,
| | 02:32 | and I will show you where it is on a
mixing board and on a few other devices.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Phase reverse| 00:01 | Another option that you will find on
preamplifiers and preamplifiers that are
| | 00:04 | built into audio interfaces is what's
called the Phase Reversal button, and
| | 00:09 | what this does is it flips the signal that's
coming into that input 180 degrees out of phase.
| | 00:14 | Now you remember in chapter 1, we
talked about phase and out of phase and phase
| | 00:19 | issues and the cancellation that can happen.
| | 00:21 | Normally, that's a bad thing, but the
reason they give you the switch and the
| | 00:25 | reason we have this option is because
sometimes you are dealing with things that
| | 00:29 | are already out of phase, sometimes it
sounds just the way two microphones are
| | 00:33 | placed in relationship to the same
sound, other times it can be a cable.
| | 00:37 | You can have one cable that's wired
differently than another and so you can have
| | 00:40 | phase issues with that.
| | 00:41 | So they put this on preamps so that
if you hear what sounds like a phase
| | 00:46 | problem, you can hit it and flip
the phase of one of the inputs.
| | 00:50 | Phase is a big deal if you are going
to mono, and I know that it's now what
| | 00:54 | 2007 or so and mono is not that big
of a deal--although, as we get back into
| | 01:00 | kind of compressing music for the
web and stuff like that, somehow it's
| | 01:04 | resurfaced--but back in the day, mono
was a huge deal in AM radio, and you would
| | 01:08 | record, and if things were out of
phase, you put it on the radio, basically
| | 01:11 | like your lead vocal would all of a
sudden disappear because it was out of
| | 01:15 | phase on the radio, huge mistake.
| | 01:17 | So people who are really concerned about
things being in phase and not being out
| | 01:20 | of phase because of that cancellation.
| | 01:22 | So nowadays, if you do happen to
record something that is out of phase, and
| | 01:26 | you are lucky enough to record it to
its own channel, you can actually via
| | 01:30 | software go ahead and flip the phase
of that sound wave or that waveform again
| | 01:33 | and correct phase issues later in your software.
| | 01:36 | But if you hear it or if you know
it's going on, it's always better to take
| | 01:40 | care of it first, and definitely if
you are combining a lot of inputs like if
| | 01:44 | you are miking a whole drum setup, and
you think you've got some phase issues
| | 01:48 | between the snare drum and the Toms,
and you know that you are bouncing that
| | 01:52 | stuff into your computer down to like
two or three tracks, you want to take
| | 01:55 | care of that phase now because that
you can't fix later once it's married to
| | 01:59 | another track in your computer.
| | 02:00 | I will explain some of these things a
little bit later in terms of independent
| | 02:04 | tracks and bouncing things down, but
the point is phase is something to pay
| | 02:08 | attention to, and it's better if you
can deal with it when you first hear it.
| | 02:11 | Sometimes, you won't know you are
hearing it 'til later, 'til you are doing a
| | 02:15 | mix, and something sounds kind of out of whack.
| | 02:17 | So luckily, with digital audio we can
actually go back and then kind of make
| | 02:21 | some tweaks and get it back
into phase more often than not.
| | 02:25 | It's typically just a simple push
button on or off, and it's marked by a little
| | 02:29 | circle with a line through it,
which is the auto phase symbol.
| | 02:33 | Generally, you will have one button per
input because you don't want to switch
| | 02:36 | all the inputs out of phase at the same time.
| | 02:39 | So it's a channel-by-channel option.
| | 02:40 | So that's more or less the story of
phase and phase reverse and why that button
| | 02:44 | is there, and it's kind of like
fighting fire with fire. It's good to have.
| | 02:48 | We don't want to have to use it, but it's there.
| | 02:51 | It can take care of
things that are out of whack.
| | 02:52 | In the next section, we will actually
look at preamp and take a look at the
| | 02:55 | features and functions and a lot of
these buttons I have been talking about, and
| | 02:58 | we will do a few audio examples of
what the buttons actually do when you push
| | 03:01 | them in things like that.
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| Preamp demo| 00:01 | Okay, so let's take a tour of
a stand-alone pre-amplifier.
| | 00:04 | Here we have a two channel tube pre-amplifier.
| | 00:08 | It's got lots of options,
there're some knobs and adjustments.
| | 00:10 | Let's start with the back and
look at the inputs and the outputs.
| | 00:13 | So first, we have the inputs. These are
combo jacks that will accept either a
| | 00:19 | microphone cable, an XLR cable, or a
quarter inch jack into the center there.
| | 00:24 | These are cool designs that
save a lot of space and interfaces.
| | 00:27 | You'll find them on a lot of preamps now, and a
lot of audio interfaces that connect your computer.
| | 00:32 | So I'm actually going to connect my
iPod here into Input number 2, which
| | 00:35 | normally wouldn't be connecting to a
preamp, you'll be connecting a microphone
| | 00:40 | or something else that needs boosting.
| | 00:41 | Most often a microphone, but for
this lesson we're going to show that.
| | 00:47 | Now we've got the outputs, channel
outputs, these two will go for channel 2,
| | 00:51 | these go for channel 1.
| | 00:53 | Balanced output and an unbalanced output,
and we can select based on how we want
| | 00:57 | to work, which ones to use.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to take a balanced output of
channel 2 and feed this into our recorder.
| | 01:09 | So now let's look at what we have on the front.
I'll just go along the buttons.
| | 01:13 | Each channel is the same.
It's just the same thing two times.
| | 01:16 | I'm going to start over here.
| | 01:18 | We have the 48 volt phantom power
button, which as we mentioned is what
| | 01:23 | condenser microphones generally need.
| | 01:25 | By pushing this in, it feeds 48 volts out
through the microphone, input on the back,
| | 01:30 | to your condenser microphone.
| | 01:31 | If you're using a condenser, think it's all
working, but you're not getting you sound.
| | 01:35 | Try the 48V button with the phantom power.
| | 01:39 | Next we've the phase button, which is
designated by this little circle with
| | 01:43 | those slash through it.
| | 01:44 | By pushing that in, it will change
the signal coming through this channel
| | 01:48 | only 180 degrees out of phase.
| | 01:51 | This is helpful if you're having phasing issues
with the way your microphones are set up.
| | 01:56 | Also there's a pad.
On this I think it's about 10DB.
| | 01:59 | By pushing that button in and out, these are
cool, because they are light up, by the way.
| | 02:05 | By pushing that button in and out, you'll reduce
the signal completely by about 10DB no matter what.
| | 02:11 | By pushing that it cuts the
pickup of 80Hz frequencies.
| | 02:19 | Then we have a gain knob,
which is the preamp adjustment.
| | 02:22 | So as we're sending signal, we can
turn this up, which I'll send a little bit
| | 02:26 | right now which I'll start to hear here.
| | 02:32 | There we go, so now we have a
single, we can see in our meter.
| | 02:36 | We can use this gain knob basically to
increase the input level of our input so
| | 02:40 | that we can get a good signal to the recorder.
| | 02:46 | Now this is an analog meter, that's not
digital, so zero DB is where it kind of
| | 02:52 | goes from Black to Red.
| | 02:53 | With analog it's okay to go pass
that zero point and really you just want
| | 02:57 | to trust your ears.
Obviously, it's really spiking over there.
| | 03:00 | That's a little too much as it just
gets pegged against the wall like that.
| | 03:05 | Sorry if that's distorted.
| | 03:06 | Anyway, right around there you can go above and
below, and actually a little bit of Red is good.
| | 03:13 | With analog the trick is
to really trust your ears.
| | 03:15 | If it sounds good, it is good.
Also on this, because it's a 2 pre-amplifier,
| | 03:20 | we have an option of how
much of the two we want to use
| | 03:23 | when it's turned all the way off.
I'm not using any of the two, but I can
| | 03:27 | turn that up, and that basically
sends the signal through an audio tube,
| | 03:31 | which is this little fellow.
| | 03:32 | Which is a device that people claim
really warms up the sound of an audio signal.
| | 03:40 | So I can use as much of that as I want.
So we're done with the song.
| | 03:44 | But if I crank that all the way up,
I can actually get distortion on it.
| | 03:48 | We'll see if we can--if it
actually distorts, it might not.
| | 03:55 | So you can use it for a distortion
effect on vocals, but really you just use a
| | 04:00 | little bit to kind of warm things up.
| | 04:02 | And we'll talk a little bit about the
analog and tube and digital and all
| | 04:06 | that stuff in a different section, but
anyway that's the general principle and
| | 04:09 | the general set of features that we're going to
have when you are dealing with the stand-alone preamp.
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|
|
7. The MixerWhat is a mixer?| 00:01 | In this section we're going to talk
about the analog mixer or a mixing board.
| | 00:04 | And whether or not you're going to use this
in your setup or not, it's worth learning
| | 00:08 | about and seeing kind of what the different
sections are and functions, because eventually
| | 00:12 | you'll see that in software and in your DAW,
you'll find a mixing component in there that's
| | 00:17 | directly modeled after the
way a mixing board works.
| | 00:20 | So once you kind have an understanding of
some of the things on an analog mixing board,
| | 00:24 | you can apply those to
your digital mixing board.
| | 00:26 | We'll cover the digital
mixing board in depth later.
| | 00:28 | But right now we are going to look at our hardware
mixing board and kind of demystify it a little bit.
| | 00:32 | I know these can be intimidating
with all these knobs and stuff.
| | 00:35 | But really, once you kind of think about it in a
certain way and kind of break it down into sections,
| | 00:40 | it's digestible, and you'll
definitely be able to manage it.
| | 00:43 | So a mixer is used to route or
mix signals, inputs and outputs.
| | 00:47 | It's like traffic control.
| | 00:48 | You can send microphones in, lines out to your
recorder, lines out to your audio interface.
| | 00:54 | You can send effects loops in, if you have
hardware devices that like have reverb units
| | 00:59 | and things like that in it,
you can loop those through this.
| | 01:02 | You can use it to set levels, you can use the preamps
to get gain in levels for microphones or line inputs.
| | 01:09 | You can also use an equalization section or EQ
section to adjust your sounds before you send those in.
| | 01:14 | Mixers also provide
auxiliary inputs in bussing.
| | 01:18 | Which basically are just other ways of getting
signals in and moving them around, just another
| | 01:22 | set of options for how you move things
around in the mixing board in traffic control, as
| | 01:27 | I'd like to call it.
| | 01:29 | The best thing to do is think about a mixing
board in three sections, and once you have
| | 01:33 | that and kind of digest what each
section does, you'll be in a better spot.
| | 01:37 | Now the easiest way to think of a mixing board
is to kind of break it down into three different
| | 01:41 | sections and each of these sections
has kind of a different function.
| | 01:44 | So we'll do a quick overview
of what these sections are.
| | 01:47 | What to do there, what the knobs there are
likely to do, and kind of the way it's arranged.
| | 01:52 | Let's start with the input section.
| | 01:54 | This is fairly similar to what we've been
talking about in terms of kind of the preamps
| | 01:57 | and even your digital audio interface in terms
of having mic inputs, line inputs, and phantom
| | 02:02 | power, padding, things like that.
| | 02:04 | A lot of those things you'll
find in preamps, you'll find here.
| | 02:07 | You'll also find some other line inputs for
like tape machines, RCA inputs, things like
| | 02:12 | that, different auxiliary
sources, CD players, whatnot.
| | 02:16 | This is where we're getting things
into the board, into traffic control.
| | 02:21 | There'll also be some outs that are called
sends here that are a way of sending things
| | 02:25 | out but not out for good.
| | 02:27 | We kind of want to get them
out and get them back in.
| | 02:29 | They function as inputs,
it's an input loop kind of.
| | 02:32 | The next section to think about is the
Channel Strips, and I put the S there on purpose,
| | 02:38 | because really there's a channel strip, and
if it's a 16 channel mixer there's 16 of the
| | 02:45 | strips, if it's a 32 channel
mixer, there's 32 of these strips.
| | 02:49 | But if you know how one of these strips is
set up and what all the knobs do in that strip,
| | 02:54 | then you know what all
the rest of the strips do.
| | 02:56 | So more or less once you learn the channel
strip on a mixing console, or on a mixing board,
| | 03:00 | you usually know over 75% of all the knobs
on that board, you know how to use those,
| | 03:06 | because they are just repeated, it's a different instance
of the same set of controls, it's a different channel.
| | 03:12 | In those channels you have things like a fader,
a pan control, which will let you turn things
| | 03:16 | left and right and balance in different speakers, an EQ
section, where you can add highs, lows, or mid frequencies.
| | 03:24 | You'll also see a few functions probably
related to preamps in the channel strip as well, and
| | 03:28 | then finally there might be something called
bussing, which allows you to assign a channel
| | 03:32 | to a different channel, which we'll discuss,
which happens over here in the Master section.
| | 03:36 | In a nutshell what bussing is, is let's say I have four
tracks, and there are the drum set, and I like them, but I wish
| | 03:42 | they were all on one fader, and I didn't
have to move all for those faders every time.
| | 03:47 | What I can do is assign through bussing, which
we'll show on a board, if you're pushing some
| | 03:51 | buttons and turning some pan pots to make
selections towards numbers, we can route all
| | 03:56 | four of those signals into one fader
over here, which would be called the bus.
| | 04:00 | It's a little bit more invisible on
the digital world, but it works well.
| | 04:04 | And finally, we have the Master section, which is
probably the trickiest part actually of a mixing board.
| | 04:09 | Just because there're a lot of knobs and a
lot of kind of one time knobs there, so they
| | 04:13 | all get pushed together, and it gets a
little confusing, and this is where you determine
| | 04:18 | what signals will be sent to what outputs.
| | 04:19 | Now there are a lot of different volume
controls and a lot of different things like a main
| | 04:24 | mix output, which is what you would send a
kind of if you're mixing down to tape or to
| | 04:28 | DAT or something to that effect.
| | 04:31 | There's also usually a control room output or
control room volume, which if you're working
| | 04:35 | in your workstation, and you have a pair of
monitors, that will probably be set up to
| | 04:39 | control the control room volume.
| | 04:41 | There will be a lot of other options like
things like a tape out or different kinds
| | 04:45 | of outputs that you can
use in different scenarios.
| | 04:47 | Mixing boards are good in a lot of
applications, not just recording.
| | 04:50 | Sometimes you can use them for live
sound or just to route a lot of signals.
| | 04:54 | I've some friends here who have really hyped
up home stereos and they use a mixer to look
| | 04:58 | cool, but it does look cool.
| | 05:00 | There's a lot of options in the Master section,
and you'll find that, that's kind of where
| | 05:03 | grabbing the manual and seeing what your manufacturer,
what words they are using for certain things,
| | 05:08 | that makes a lot of sense.
| | 05:09 | But in the next few movies we're actually
going to look at this in person, and we'll
| | 05:13 | get a closer view of what's going on with
the mixer, and I'll be able to show you some
| | 05:16 | of the different routings and some of the different
knobs and things like that that you will counter.
| | 05:21 | Even if initially you're not going to need a
mixer you're may be just working by yourself,
| | 05:24 | it's good to be aware of what kind of things
and capabilities a mixer can add to your setup.
| | 05:29 | At some point if you want to record with more
instruments and more musicians or just record
| | 05:33 | other bands not your own, it's good to know
that you can get more inputs and more outputs
| | 05:37 | and set up things like better
headphone mixes and things like that.
| | 05:41 | So it's good to know what a mixer is capable of
and kind of what the features and functions are.
| | 05:45 | In the next movies we'll take kind of a
tour of each section and look at them a little
| | 05:48 | bit more in depth, and I'll actually get
to show you some of these inputs and outputs.
| | 05:53 |
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| Input section| 00:01 | Okay, let's take a look at a mixing board, and
we are going to start with the input section,
| | 00:06 | which is essentially just this section up here.
So let's take a look.
| | 00:09 | Now the first thing I wanted to point is that
there are six of the same identical sets here.
| | 00:14 | So let's pay attention, we are just going
to pick one, okay, imagine maybe this one.
| | 00:18 | This is one repeated
multiple times across here.
| | 00:21 | So don't be intimidated by all of this stuff.
You just have to learn one, two, three, four
| | 00:26 | different things, and we know
what's in an input channel.
| | 00:29 | So this is the input section and like a
preamp or digital audio interface, it's where you
| | 00:34 | hook up your microphones
and signal level sources.
| | 00:36 | So we have an XLR Input to hook a microphone
up to, we have a quarter-inch jack to plug
| | 00:42 | in a keyboard or synthesizer,
| | 00:44 | then we have a low cut frequency switch. If we
push this in it cuts off the low frequencies
| | 00:50 | from that source, and then finally a Trim knob, which
increases the gain or volume of the signal coming in.
| | 00:57 | So this is what we use to set
the Input volume and to get gain.
| | 01:00 | So that's basically it, once you know that,
you them all, and this board just has six,
| | 01:05 | some boards have 48, some boards have more
than that, but you don't need to be intimidated
| | 01:09 | once you know what's in
that one section of input.
| | 01:12 | Now let's look at the Channel Strips.
| | 01:17 |
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| Channel strips| 00:01 | Okay, let's take a look at the Channel Strips
section, and I call the channel strips section,
| | 00:06 | because like the inputs it's one set
of controls repeated for each track.
| | 00:10 | So once you know this one set of controls, you
know the whole board in terms of the channels.
| | 00:15 | So let's just take one and break it down.
| | 00:16 | We will start with what
we call Auxiliary sends.
| | 00:20 | On this board there are two and
they are color coated to be red.
| | 00:24 | You can use this to send the sound in this
channel to another destination, you want to
| | 00:29 | set up like a headphone mix of the incoming
signals, send them out to a separate output,
| | 00:34 | and you want to use kind of a different sets of
balances, you have your drums, your snares, your vocals.
| | 00:39 | You can use these to send that out to a small
headphone amplifier, then give all your musician's
| | 00:44 | headphones, and we can set up a different
mix than the levels we are using to record
| | 00:47 | with so that's convenient.
| | 00:49 | You can also use Auxiliary sends to send to
delay in it, some reverb in it, if you want
| | 00:54 | to add some effects to the overall
mix, so it's convenient that way.
| | 00:58 | But these send things to different outputs.
| | 01:00 | Next we have the EQ section, on this there are
three dials, the High, a Mid, and a Low Frequency.
| | 01:07 | Basically you can boost or cut, and it tells
you what frequency that boost are cuts at,
| | 01:14 | here on the High it's 12k, 2.5k on
the Mids, and 80 hertz on the Low.
| | 01:21 | Dead center on these knobs is what they
have a U, which is Unity, which means that you
| | 01:25 | are not adding or decreasing anything.
| | 01:28 | It's right there, the signal is just
passing through and being unaffected.
| | 01:30 | If you kind of get to the right, you are
boosting that frequency, if you kind of get to the
| | 01:34 | left, you are cutting that frequency.
| | 01:36 | And then it shows the maximum you can
boost, the cut here, it's -15db or +15db.
| | 01:41 | So you can use this to EQ your sounds as they
go through the board, it's very convenient,
| | 01:47 | use this before you record, use it when you are
playing back different tracks and things like that.
| | 01:52 | That's the EQ section.
| | 01:53 | Now we have the PAN and the MUTE section, PAN is
balance, it's the right channel and the left channel.
| | 02:00 | So if you want to set up a stereo mix, and
you want to set up a situation where you are
| | 02:05 | only hearing certain instruments and certain
sides of the stereo mix, you can use these
| | 02:09 | to PAN things, you can bring two tracks in,
like two guitar tracks and PAN them hard left
| | 02:13 | and right and they will sound great, you do an
electric on side and an acoustic on the other.
| | 02:18 | So that's what panning is.
| | 02:20 | Then there is a MUTE button, and that when
you push it in, silences the channel, no matter
| | 02:24 | where any of the other controls are, that
makes all the sound that's flowing through
| | 02:28 | this channel to stop, and it cuts it off.
| | 02:30 | SOLO is the opposite, push that in, and it
silences all of the other channels and makes
| | 02:36 | only this channel audible at that moment.
| | 02:38 | Finally, there is the Fader. Now the fader
is not exactly a volume control, it's more
| | 02:44 | or like a pass through device, and on this board
you will see again a U and kind of a center section.
| | 02:50 | When the fader is placed at that U or Unity
Gain, that means the level of the signal coming
| | 02:55 | through here isn't being
increased or decreased.
| | 02:59 | But this kind of affects how much gets through, and
using this is how you do your mixes and set your levels.
| | 03:08 | That's pretty much it for
the Channel Strip Section.
| | 03:10 | Now we will take a look at the Master Section.
| | 03:15 |
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| Master section| 00:01 | Okay, now finally, let's take a look at
the Master Section of the mixing board.
| | 00:06 | That's referred to as the master section,
because it kind of dictates what happens and
| | 00:09 | what gets sent to most of the outputs.
| | 00:11 | It's kind of the last stage of the
signal flowing through the board.
| | 00:15 | It comes through the inputs, we use the
channels to assign EQ and change volume inputs, and
| | 00:20 | then route at the output is
decided by the master section.
| | 00:24 | It lets us know what's
going to be at what output.
| | 00:27 | So we have a few outputs up here on the top of
the board. We also have a lot of outputs
| | 00:32 | on the back, which I will show you real quick.
| | 00:36 | So we have kind of the main outputs and
some control room outputs, and those are--this
| | 00:41 | would feed speakers. In the control room
you would use that to feed your speakers, and
| | 00:45 | main outs to main source.
So we have the main mix faders.
| | 00:53 | Let's start there.
| | 00:55 | This determines what is going to happen at both
the control room level and at the main output level.
| | 01:04 | Then we have another fader that we can
assign to the phones level or a headphone jack.
| | 01:10 | Next we have the Aux Master. If you are sending
things from the channel Auxiliary Sends, this
| | 01:15 | is kind of the main send, sending it out.
| | 01:18 | Now these Aux returns are when those signals
come back from your reverb effects, usually
| | 01:24 | they don't come back from your headphone mix,
but if you are using effects and you want
| | 01:27 | to bring them back in, this is where they come
back, and you set the level of the comeback in it.
| | 01:32 | Then you can assign things like what you are
listening to at the master outputs and assign
| | 01:38 | things here that end up in the main mix, so
these buttons basically assign to main mix.
| | 01:44 | Tape, up here we have some tape inputs, and
outputs, if you are using a CD player or tape
| | 01:49 | machine or something like that, you
can use these, it's a simple in and out.
| | 01:53 | Come in here, hit tape to main, then the sound,
if you want to send back out to like a cassette
| | 01:58 | player if you are still insane enough to use one of
those, you would use this, and then you can feed that.
| | 02:04 | But in a nutshell, the master section
sets the outputs for all the signals.
| | 02:10 | There are other things that we can talk about,
but I think to get a basic understanding of
| | 02:13 | what's going on, that's enough for now.
| | 02:15 | One other thing that you want to look into,
and you will get into are things called Inserts,
| | 02:19 | which we will see on digital audio interfaces and on mixing
boards, but we will discuss that in a different section.
| | 02:24 |
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|
|
8. MonitoringWhat is monitoring?| 00:01 | in this chapter we are going to look at
monitoring and talk about what it is and
| | 00:05 | how to set up systems that make
for better monitoring environments.
| | 00:09 | Now monitor being in audio
production and in digital audio production is
| | 00:12 | basically the phrase we use for
listening back. It's how we monitor or check out
| | 00:17 | what we have done, it's how we listen.
| | 00:20 | You would call it listening in your
home stereo setting, but we are monitoring,
| | 00:24 | because we are in a studio.
| | 00:26 | Basically it's listening
back to what you are working on.
| | 00:28 | To hear what you are going to record,
what you have recorded, to listen to
| | 00:33 | the edits you are making, or the sounds
effects you are applying, all that is monitoring.
| | 00:37 | And because that involves a lot of
decision making, like setting levels,
| | 00:40 | changing things that you are kind of
committing to a recording, or basically
| | 00:44 | committing to putting out into the
world for someone else to hear, it's
| | 00:48 | important that that's an accurate reproduction of
the sound that you are making your decisions from.
| | 00:53 | So you want your monitors and your monitoring
environment to be as accurate as possible.
| | 00:57 | That's pretty much the whole
premise of monitoring, trying to hear
| | 01:02 | what's really there, what's really in
the computer or what's really on the
| | 01:05 | analog tape, if you are
using that kind of system.
| | 01:07 | So you really want to set up a system where your
goal is accuracy in the reproduction of sound.
| | 01:15 | So we want to look for studio grade
equipment, and by that I guess I mean just
| | 01:19 | not the cheapest thing out there.
| | 01:20 | There are lots of affordable options
out there, but you want to spend a few
| | 01:26 | hundred bucks and get some pretty
decent speakers, one, because you probably
| | 01:30 | aren't going to be in a great room,
and you need all the help, you can get
| | 01:34 | with some nice speakers.
| | 01:35 | Also, good speakers are good for your
ears, but bad speakers that give you
| | 01:39 | more high range or more mid range, don't
have a great frequency response or reproduction,
| | 01:43 | they can really make you make mixes and
edit decisions that affect lots of other
| | 01:47 | people, not just you in the room while
you are listening, but when you mix that
| | 01:51 | piece of music or that podcast or
whatever, and send it out into the world,
| | 01:55 | someone else has to
listen to it on their system.
| | 01:58 | So you want to make sure that the
decisions you are making are based off of
| | 02:02 | pretty accurate reproduction of the sound.
| | 02:03 | So let's look at a few things that
make up an accurate monitoring environment
| | 02:07 | and kind of the pieces of the puzzle.
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| Speakers| 00:01 | So in monitoring, we're striving
for accurate reproduction of sound.
| | 00:05 | So our old friend, the frequency response
chart comes back into play, and here it is.
| | 00:09 | For each speaker you can get something
similar to this, which basically lets you
| | 00:14 | know how it represents the
frequencies at the same level.
| | 00:18 | You probably won't find too many
speakers that have an ultra-flat response, but
| | 00:23 | you'll find some like this that have a
pretty good response and then have bumps,
| | 00:26 | at certain frequencies.
Here's the 2K bump on the speaker.
| | 00:30 | As long as you know that exists, you've
looked at this chart and you're aware
| | 00:34 | it, you can factor that into when
you're working with the speaker.
| | 00:37 | And as you get to know the speakers the
more you work with them, the more you'll
| | 00:41 | kind of be familiar with what
frequencies it favors and which ones it kind of
| | 00:44 | doesn't represent fully.
And you'll start to adjust your mixers to that.
| | 00:48 | But you have to kind of learn your
speakers, and the first way to learn them
| | 00:52 | is to look at the frequency response chart,
to get a sense of what really happens there.
| | 00:56 | Now let's just talk in general
about monitors and what they are.
| | 00:59 | Most of these monitors are speakers
that we're using for audio and digital
| | 01:02 | audio, home studios, and even
professional studios now are near-field speakers.
| | 01:07 | That means that they're designed to be
4 to 5 feet away from the listener and
| | 01:10 | be really accurate and not have a
lot of interruption between the speakers
| | 01:14 | themselves and the listener.
| | 01:15 | This is great, because this means you
can listen at more appropriate levels
| | 01:19 | and not damage your hearing as much
but also hear stuff very accurately.
| | 01:22 | The key to getting success with these
kinds of speakers is placement, which
| | 01:26 | we'll talk about a little bit
down the road here in this chapter.
| | 01:29 | But in terms of these speakers kind of
hookup size and connections, most of them
| | 01:33 | will be about 18 inches to 12
inches tall, maybe 10 inches wide or so.
| | 01:38 | They are not huge. They are kind of
like a bookshelf speaker, about that size.
| | 01:42 | And even smaller, you can get smaller ones.
| | 01:44 | As far as connections go, you'll have
spare ports that you can connect, expose
| | 01:47 | wire to or use banana plugs with or
they'll also be quarter-inch inputs.
| | 01:53 | And some you might see RCA jacks or mini jacks.
| | 01:56 | These are probably okay, but they're
probably not as accurate and probably not
| | 02:00 | as nice as a few with nicer hardware
and input options on the back, that can
| | 02:06 | kind of be a telling thing sometimes.
| | 02:07 | The other thing to keep in mind is that
some speakers now are active and have
| | 02:11 | built-in amplification, while others
are passive or don't have amplification.
| | 02:15 | And we'll be talking more about the
pros and cons of that in the next slide.
| | 02:19 | But first, let's just look at the
different components of the speaker.
| | 02:22 | You have the Tweeter, which
reproduces the high frequencies.
| | 02:25 | The Woofer, which reproduces the mid
and low frequencies, and then generally a
| | 02:29 | Bass port, which is really just a hole
or sometimes it's a slot that lets the
| | 02:33 | bass frequencies out and a lot of
the air pressure out of that speaker.
| | 02:37 | So those are the three components of a speaker.
Now let's talk about Active and Passive.
| | 02:42 | Now active monitors have built-in
amplification, and this is nice because it
| | 02:47 | means that the amp is
matched to the speaker itself.
| | 02:49 | And you can usually get pretty good
frequency response out of a combination of
| | 02:53 | an amplifier designed to work
with a speaker specifically.
| | 02:57 | It's also nice because you get a lot
of Damage Prevention, or sometimes lot
| | 03:01 | of this clip defeat, and that the
speaker and the monitor are matched in
| | 03:04 | terms of the power handling.
| | 03:06 | The other thing that's
nice is it's more compact.
| | 03:08 | You don't have to have an external
amplifier and more cables to set up your speakers.
| | 03:13 | You just take your two speakers, plug
one into a wall, maybe both of them into a
| | 03:18 | wall, and then plug your inputs into
the speakers, they are ready to go.
| | 03:22 | It's actually a lot like the speaker
systems use to hook up to your computer
| | 03:26 | in general except we're talking about a
much higher level of quality and power here.
| | 03:30 | The disadvantage is that they cost more
and they weigh more, because they have
| | 03:33 | the amplifiers in the cabinets.
| | 03:35 | A lot of times you'll find a pair
where the amplifier is only in one, and so
| | 03:39 | you'll have one heavy one and one
light one, something to keep in mind.
| | 03:43 | Make your friend carry the heavy one.
| | 03:45 | Passive monitors, on the other hand,
don't have built-in amplification.
| | 03:48 | Now advantages are that they weigh less.
| | 03:51 | And they also cost less because they
don't have all that extra hardware in there.
| | 03:54 | But dealing with Passive monitors can
be a little bit dicey in that there's
| | 03:57 | a little bit more to consider.
| | 03:59 | You have to basically learn about
amplifiers and kind of figure out how to match
| | 04:03 | an amplifier to work with your speakers.
Amplifiers themselves are expensive.
| | 04:08 | And also that matching, making sure
you get something that drives a speaker
| | 04:12 | efficiently without overdriving it or
doesn't have so much power that it can
| | 04:16 | possibly damage the speaker.
| | 04:17 | There's a lot to learn there,
and sometimes it's not worth it.
| | 04:20 | It's actually worth it to just spend
the money on the Active monitors and not
| | 04:24 | have to think about that.
| | 04:25 | The other thing is you'll have a few
more cables and more things to set up.
| | 04:29 | And if you want to move stuff around, if
you want to work in the living room and
| | 04:33 | then move everything down to the
basement to do other stuff, it's one more thing
| | 04:37 | to kind of schlep around.
| | 04:38 | But again, you can have your
friend carry that, if you have to.
| | 04:41 | Anyway, these are the things you
want to kind of keep in mind when you're
| | 04:44 | looking at dealing with monitors and thinking
about, well, should I get Active or Passive?
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| Room considerations| 00:01 | Okay, assuming that you now have your speakers,
let's think about how we are going to set
| | 00:05 | them up in the rooms that we
are going to set them up in.
| | 00:08 | The first thing you want to do is find a
location where you can set your speakers up so that
| | 00:11 | they have the appropriate
relationship to you, the listener.
| | 00:14 | And in a nutshell, you want to find
yourself in the sweet spot. Now, what this means is
| | 00:19 | kind of these three items
over here that I have listed.
| | 00:22 | The main thing is equidistant between the three
of you, and symmetrical so that there's balance.
| | 00:29 | You want the left speaker be as far away as
the right speaker. You want them to be coming
| | 00:32 | at you from the same angle.
The distance is usually 3 to 5 feet apart.
| | 00:36 | I usually say if you can reach the
speaker with your arm, it's a little too close.
| | 00:41 | But if it seems like its really far, beyond
that, like you have to get up and really stretch
| | 00:45 | to turn it, then it's maybe too far,
so 3 to 5 feet, somewhere in there.
| | 00:49 | Usually 4 or 6 feet apart from each other on a console
or on speaker stands is where you want to start.
| | 00:55 | And then you can rotate those
in towards your head evenly,
| | 00:58 | turn each one a little bit and tell where you
want to be sitting, wherever that is, behind
| | 01:02 | a mixing board, behind a
keyboard and a computer monitor.
| | 01:06 | Make it so that they're pointed right at the sides of
your head, and that you're here in the sweet spot.
| | 01:12 | The other thing you want to do is keep
obstructions to a minimum, which means anything that you
| | 01:16 | kind of put in the middle, in between the
speakers, or kind of off to the immediate sides.
| | 01:21 | Because the speakers are going to generate
sounds in all directions, and things close
| | 01:26 | are going to reflect and deflect that
sound and affect the sound that gets to you.
| | 01:30 | So if you have to put a computer monitor
there, try and get a flat screen monitor.
| | 01:34 | But don't put a bunch of big stuff.
| | 01:35 | Don't put a PC there obviously, one, because it's
really truly noisy, but two, because it's a big box.
| | 01:41 | So try and keep that space clear between
the speakers. The other thing you want to do
| | 01:45 | is set up your speakers at the right height.
| | 01:48 | The general thinking is that you want to
put the speakers at about your height.
| | 01:53 | So you can have them set up either vertically or
horizontally, here is the vertical and the horizontal.
| | 01:58 | The main thing to keep in mind if you go
horizontal is to keep the Tweeters either on the outside
| | 02:04 | or the inside, but just
make sure it's the same.
| | 02:07 | Don't have one with the Tweeter on the
outside and one with Tweeter on the inside.
| | 02:11 | That will actually affect
the imaging that comes to you.
| | 02:13 | If they're set up horizontally, just put the
Tweeters on the top. Again, angle them in.
| | 02:18 | If this is you, and this is your green Mohawk,
this is a good place to have your speakers.
| | 02:23 | The other thing you want to do is put them
on foam or insulate them somehow so that you
| | 02:26 | reduce the vibrations. You don't want them sending
vibrations through your table or through your
| | 02:30 | desk, or rattling anything.
| | 02:32 | So I've heard that you can buy pre-made
foam things, you can also stack them up on
| | 02:37 | a bunch of mouse pads.
| | 02:39 | Anything to kind of put something between
your speaker and the surface so that they're
| | 02:43 | isolated from vibration.
| | 02:44 | Okay, so now that you know what
relationship you want to have with your speakers,
| | 02:49 | how do you want to set up that
relationship inside different rooms?
| | 02:52 | Well, basically there are a few kinds of rooms.
| | 02:55 | Most of us are going to end up in
either a square room or a rectangular room.
| | 02:59 | In older houses and unique spaces, you'll get
some different angles, and that gets crafty,
| | 03:02 | and then you have to really play around
and figure out what's the right location.
| | 03:07 | But here's the basic thinking
on stuff like square rooms.
| | 03:11 | First of all, you don't want to put yourself
in a corner. It'll do two things, it'll create
| | 03:15 | uneven room reflections, and it will also
cause an increase in the low frequencies that
| | 03:20 | you hear from the speakers in the corner.
| | 03:23 | So what you want to do is find yourself in the middle
of the room with a good distance from the back wall.
| | 03:30 | This will actually increase the sound and your
reflections, while you hear them, will all be the same.
| | 03:34 | You want the way that the sound bounces
through the room to be even, and you don't want to
| | 03:38 | put any speaker too close to a walk, because
sometimes it'll affect how you hear different frequencies.
| | 03:43 | It might boost certain frequencies,
and it might cut certain frequencies.
| | 03:46 | So you want to try and keep your
speakers away from walls, if you can.
| | 03:51 | Now in a rectangular room, you basically
have two other options, knowing that we want to
| | 03:55 | be kind of in the middle of the room.
| | 03:56 | So long story short is if it's a
rectangular room, don't set up along the long wall.
| | 04:02 | Set up along the short wall so that you have
maximum space behind you so that these direct
| | 04:07 | reflections take longer
to get back to your head.
| | 04:11 | In this setup those reflections come a lot
faster, and that's mostly it, plus, you'll
| | 04:16 | be able to put these speakers farther away
from the back wall without feeling cramped.
| | 04:20 | Finally, let's talk a little
bit about sound dampening.
| | 04:22 | And what we want to do here is place
absorbing materials on the walls to kind of limit the
| | 04:27 | direct or immediate reflections of the sounds.
| | 04:29 | If you look at this graphic, you can kind of see
I have shown where the immediate reflections go.
| | 04:34 | The speaker, of course, shoots
at your head and behind you.
| | 04:37 | It really kind of comes in
over here and bounces over there.
| | 04:40 | That's a direct reflection.
| | 04:41 | Also, these side walls, the sound
comes off and comes back to you like this.
| | 04:46 | What you want to do is try and put some foam
or something that absorbs sounds like blankets,
| | 04:51 | shag carpet, old Led Zeppelin tapestries,
whatever you've got, in those areas.
| | 04:56 | But try and do it evenly.
| | 04:57 | You want it to do it about head level, which is also
going to be about speaker level of your setup.
| | 05:01 | And you don't want to make it completely dead,
you just want those sounds when they come to that
| | 05:05 | back wall or on the side
walls to slow down quite a bit.
| | 05:08 | And you'll know if you've succeeded, because
when you start to do your mixes with these
| | 05:11 | dampeners in place, you'll notice
a lot more clarity in the room.
| | 05:15 | You'll be able to kind of hear the direct
signal more, and there won't be, kind of some
| | 05:18 | of the mud or murkiness that comes
with a lot of reflections in the room.
| | 05:21 | So these were a few things you can do to try and get
better sound when you set up your monitoring system.
| | 05:26 | It's really all about the environment.
| | 05:28 | Now you're going to be in different rooms,
and there will be different things going on,
| | 05:31 | so you'll have to adapt a little bit.
| | 05:33 | These are kind of starting scenarios, and
you always need to test and tweak, test and tweak.
| | 05:38 | But if you start it out this
way, you'll be doing pretty well.
| | 05:43 |
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| Headphone types| 00:01 | Headphones are the other device that you'll
use to monitor your audio, and they're really
| | 00:05 | helpful for a lot of tasks.
They are great for zooming in on sounds.
| | 00:08 | If you have little things you think you hear
a little pop or click, but you can't quite
| | 00:11 | see it, or can't quite hear it, you can put the headphones
on and try and listen back a little critically.
| | 00:16 | They really bring the sound right to you and
eliminate any surrounding sound, so they are
| | 00:20 | great for kind of putting certain little
moments of sound under the microscope.
| | 00:24 | They are also great if you are working with
microphones, because obviously you can't have
| | 00:27 | live speakers in the same room as the
microphone that you are working with, the exception
| | 00:32 | with stuff like guitar amps, but
obviously not your monitor speakers.
| | 00:35 | So if you are singing, doing vocals, and you want to
hear the playback track, headphones are where it's at.
| | 00:39 | You have to hear what the playback is and
hear yourself coming through the microphone.
| | 00:44 | They are also good for working late into
the night, whether you want to or not.
| | 00:48 | It's also good for not bugging your
neighbors and kind of keeping your work to yourself.
| | 00:52 | Like every other audio device they also have
frequency response or frequency reproduction
| | 00:58 | quality, and so you can look at a
chart and find out how they do.
| | 01:02 | You'll find that most headphones tend to
struggle with the bass, and this is because there is
| | 01:06 | a limitation of smaller speakers.
| | 01:08 | They've gotten a lot better, but you don't
want to use them to monitor full range music,
| | 01:12 | the way you do your near-field speakers.
| | 01:16 | But they are great for getting kind of a snapshot,
and you can definitely do mixes in them, but
| | 01:19 | it's easier to use speakers.
Your ears get kind of tired.
| | 01:22 | And it's good to hear sound around you when you are
mixing, kind of the air in the room and the reflections.
| | 01:28 | So there's three different types of
headphones that you need to know about, there is the
| | 01:32 | closed back, the open back,
and then semi-open back.
| | 01:36 | And what this refers to this closed or open
is whether or not sound is allowed to leak
| | 01:41 | in or leak out of the
headphone when you are wearing it.
| | 01:44 | Closed back means that the sound is
not supposed to get out into the room.
| | 01:48 | So if you're doing vocals, it
won't get out into the microphone.
| | 01:50 | It also means that sounds in the room around
you, their designs that you won't hear them.
| | 01:55 | They are like earmuffs.
| | 01:57 | If you go to the airport and those guys wearing
earphones, they are like super, super closed,
| | 02:01 | they don't want to let any sound in or out.
Open back head phones are the opposite.
| | 02:06 | They let lots of sound
out and lots of sound in.
| | 02:09 | If you are in a situation where it's
important to hear what's going on around you, maybe
| | 02:12 | hear the other players in the room, perhaps
in a string quartet or something like that,
| | 02:16 | open back headphones are very helpful.
| | 02:18 | Now semi-open, they live right in the middle, they
let a little bit less in and a little bit less out.
| | 02:24 | And this is really a great application for
people like singers where you don't really
| | 02:27 | want it to leak out into the microphone, but you
do want to able to hear some of your own voice.
| | 02:32 | Generally speaking, when you get started,
if you have to make a decision, I recommend
| | 02:36 | you just get a closed pair of headphones.
| | 02:38 | You'll find that you'll use those most of
the time in most of the recording applications
| | 02:42 | and for critical listening
and for working late nights.
| | 02:45 | Because that way, if you are sitting next
to someone and doing some work, they wont
| | 02:48 | hear most of what's
coming out of your headphones.
| | 02:51 | You've actually probably experienced the
difference between these kinds of headphones when you
| | 02:54 | sit on subway or a bus and the guy next to you, you
can hear what he's listening to from two seats away.
| | 03:00 | Or if someone's sitting there with their big
disco-muffs on, and you can't hear what they
| | 03:03 | are listening to at all.
| | 03:04 | And you're kind of curious
what they are listening to.
| | 03:06 | They've got the closed back style.
| | 03:08 | One other thing to know about is that a lot
of headphones have only one cable that runs
| | 03:13 | up to one ear-cup, and that's
always up to the left ear-cup.
| | 03:16 | Now most headphones will have markings on
them, somewhere at left, right, but as soon
| | 03:20 | as you see that you can pick it
up and know that that's left.
| | 03:23 | It's just the standard.
I don't know who invented it or why.
| | 03:26 | But that's always the case, and it's helpful.
| | 03:28 | The reason this is worth knowing about is
so that you don't put them on the wrong way.
| | 03:32 | So that's about it for the magic of headphones.
| | 03:33 | They are really cool, great
worth having a great pair.
| | 03:37 | If you get a nice comfy
pair, it's great for singers.
| | 03:39 | It can really help make people more
comfortable while they are performing, because a lot of
| | 03:42 | recording is wearing headphone
while you are behind the mic.
| | 03:46 | So it's worthwhile to have
some that you enjoy wearing.
| | 03:51 |
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| Monitoring levels| 00:01 | Finally, let's just take a minute to talk a
little bit about different listening levels.
| | 00:05 | What's so great about near-field monitors is
that you can listen to your work at a fairly
| | 00:10 | reasonable level without it being so loud
that it's damaging or so quiet that you have
| | 00:14 | to strain to hear it, and
that's what a reasonable level is.
| | 00:17 | I can't give you a magic volume to set everything to.
You have to find the one that feels comfortable
| | 00:22 | or you feel like you're
hearing everything you want to hear.
| | 00:25 | If you listen to stuff that's too loud for
too long, your ears actually get tired, and
| | 00:28 | then they aren't sensitive,
it's called hearing fatigue.
| | 00:30 | Your ears actually they get tired more or
less, and they don't hear as accurately.
| | 00:35 | Your speakers can go on forever, but your body actually
gets tired and starts to change the way it responds.
| | 00:40 | So, try to find what feels like a
reasonable level and a level that you can work at.
| | 00:45 | Now, good speakers actually
reduce listening fatigue quite a bit.
| | 00:49 | They make it easier to listen for longer, because
they're designed to actually help you listen longer.
| | 00:54 | A few things you can do in terms of
listening levels when you're mixing, just turn it up
| | 00:59 | or down to kind of get a sense of
some of the different frequencies.
| | 01:02 | Generally, if you're doing a mix with vocals,
if you want to turn them down so it's pretty
| | 01:06 | quiet, you want to make sure
that that vocal balance is there.
| | 01:09 | If you turn it down and the vocals are still
there, you can still hear them at a very low
| | 01:12 | level, that means that they
are at a pretty good level.
| | 01:15 | The opposite is true kind of for the bass.
| | 01:17 | At a low-level, a lot of that low ends
is going to go away, and that's okay.
| | 01:20 | You want to check the bass when you really
crank it up a little bit and see if you really
| | 01:24 | feel it booming and thumping.
| | 01:26 | Now, these are just kind of temporary tests
where you do a little check here, then go back
| | 01:30 | to your reasonable level and make some changes,
| | 01:33 | then go back and adjust these levels again
to see what the balance feels like, and see
| | 01:36 | if there's a difference in what you've done,
and see if the levels are more appropriate.
| | 01:40 | Ultimately, better speakers and good headphones
will really benefit your mixes and the overall
| | 01:45 | quality of the sound you're producing,
and they'll also be good to your ears.
| | 01:50 |
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|
|
9. Computers and AudioWhat role do computers play?| 00:01 | In this chapter we are going to talk about
a few things to keep in mind with respect
| | 00:04 | to your computer hardware
and digital audio production.
| | 00:07 | The first question is
what role do computers play?
| | 00:10 | The answer is pretty simple,
they play a huge role.
| | 00:13 | They have everything to do with kind of the
performance and the power and agility of your software.
| | 00:18 | They can have a huge effect on the number
of tracks you can play back, the number of
| | 00:22 | plug-ins you can use, the quality of the
effects processing you have access to.
| | 00:27 | So, they play a giant role.
| | 00:28 | So, we are going to take some time in this
chapter to look at a few of the different
| | 00:31 | aspects of computers and how they
relate to digital audio production.
| | 00:36 | One thing I'd like to mention is that while
we keep making faster computers and better
| | 00:40 | processors, and RAM and storage
space all become less expensive,
| | 00:44 | we also keep making software that becomes
more demanding. In the world of audio that's
| | 00:49 | definitely something that happens.
| | 00:51 | So, the most current release of a really cool
reverb plug-in is still going to be demanding,
| | 00:57 | more demanding than the one from two years ago,
because it knows you have more processing
| | 01:00 | power now if you have a newer computer.
| | 01:02 | So, even though it's nice to try and use
computers that are couple of years old or whatever,
| | 01:07 | you do really get a performance increase by
using the newest, fastest computer you possibly can.
| | 01:12 | Now, that's not saying if you don't have a really
brand-new fast computer you are out of the picture.
| | 01:17 | It's just saying don't expect to be able
to run 20 instances of the most impressive
| | 01:22 | plug-in on a computer that's a couple years old,
because if it just came out, it's probably
| | 01:26 | built to work with the processors
that are coming out right now as well.
| | 01:29 | So, that's just something to keep in mind.
| | 01:31 | In the next movie, we'll take a look
at some of the key performance issues.
| | 01:36 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Performance issues| 00:01 | So, let's take a look at a few other things
that come into play when we are talking about
| | 00:04 | computer performance and how it
affects working with digital audio.
| | 00:07 | The first few things I want to talk about are
Processor Speed and RAM, or Random Access Memory.
| | 00:13 | The processor speed essentially is how fast
your computer works, how much math it can
| | 00:18 | do in what amount of time.
| | 00:20 | The faster the processor, the
better, it's just more powerful.
| | 00:23 | A RAM, or memory, is how much data you can
have kind of floating at the ready to access at
| | 00:29 | any time, it's Random Access Memory.
| | 00:31 | So, these two things have a huge impact on every
kind of digital audio software you're working with.
| | 00:37 | As I mentioned, they'll have a big impact on
the number of tracks you can use, the rates
| | 00:41 | you can record at, and the intensity of
the some of the different processors.
| | 00:45 | Now, most digital audio software tends to
be Scalable, which means that the number of
| | 00:50 | tracks or plug-ins you can have isn't necessarily limited
by the software, but it's dependent upon the CPU power.
| | 00:56 | So, you might have a multi-track program that
let's you do up to, say, 32 tracks, but if you
| | 01:01 | have a processor that can only give you 16 tracks of data
at a time because it's slower, then that's the limitation.
| | 01:08 | But some software you can have an unlimited
number of tracks and an unlimited number of
| | 01:13 | plug-ins, and it's this scalability that
kind of reveals how important performance is.
| | 01:18 | The other thing to keep in mind is what you're
asking your computer to do with digital audio,
| | 01:22 | and that brings us to two different kinds
of systems, there's kind of a native digital
| | 01:26 | audio system, which is native or host, which
means that the computer is doing all the work.
| | 01:31 | If you have plug-ins with reverb effects and delays,
your computer processor is handling all that work.
| | 01:37 | The other option is to use a DSP or External
system, which means that you'll probably have
| | 01:41 | something along lines of the PCI card or some
external piece of hardware that has a little
| | 01:46 | bit of a processor or some memory on it,
that'll do some of the computation for you and do
| | 01:51 | some of the heavier lifting when it comes to
signal processing with things like reverb and delay.
| | 01:56 | Playback is pretty much always going to be
on the shoulders of your processor and how
| | 02:00 | fast and agile moving around the
environment and making edits and moving regions, that
| | 02:04 | will be determined by your
processor speed and RAM.
| | 02:07 | Finally, I want to talk about Latency, which is a delay
that can happen in playback due to data buffering.
| | 02:13 | The way your system works basically is it's
going out to find audio files on your hard drive.
| | 02:18 | As it finds them, when you ask for
them, it throws them into a buffer.
| | 02:21 | That buffer fills up and allows the data to come out
in an even stream so that playback is uninterrupted.
| | 02:27 | Sometimes, you need to use a bigger
buffer because you have a slower system.
| | 02:31 | But if that buffer is bigger, this can
create a delay in the amount of time between when
| | 02:35 | you hit the play button, and when playback
actually starts, and it can cause a delay
| | 02:40 | between what you're actually seeing on
screen and what you're actually hearing.
| | 02:43 | Now, when you are listening back and mixing
latency isn't that big a deal, because you
| | 02:47 | don't mind if it's a little off.
| | 02:48 | But if you're trying to record another track
on top of some existing tracks, this offset
| | 02:53 | or this latency can be a problem, because
you you're hearing yourself in real time when
| | 02:58 | strum the guitar, but you're hearing the
playback offset slightly by a little bit of latency.
| | 03:03 | So, having low latency is great if you're
recording multiple tracks and multiple overdubs.
| | 03:09 | If you're just recording in single files and
then doing edits, a little bit more latency
| | 03:13 | is okay, but it's something to keep in mind.
| | 03:15 | So, having low latency is really helpful if you're
working with multiple tracks and doing multiple overdubs.
| | 03:20 | Now, if you are just working with one track
at a time and recording one track at a time,
| | 03:25 | a little bit more latency is okay,
it's not great, but it won't kill you.
| | 03:30 | But in general it's always nice to try and set up
a system that has as little latency as possible.
| | 03:35 | The things that affect that are how your
audio device hooks up to your computer via USB,
| | 03:40 | FireWire, et cetera, and the overall performance
of your computer which is a result of the
| | 03:45 | combination of RAM and processing speed you
have and also the speed of the hard drives.
| | 03:50 | So in conclusion, when we are talking about digital audio
and computers, the faster your computer works, the better.
| | 03:56 | That performance is made up of a combination
of hard drive, speed, RAM, and processing power.
| | 04:02 | Ultimately, this greater performance will
enable you to work more efficiently with digital
| | 04:06 | audio, which will also make it a little
bit more of an enjoyable process as well.
| | 04:11 |
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| Hard drives| 00:01 | When you're working with digital audio, you
are asking your hard drive to find data and
| | 00:04 | play it back in real time or continuously.
| | 00:06 | That can be demanding enough if you're
asking for one or two tracks, but you might find
| | 00:10 | yourself in the situation where you are asking
for 24 or 32 tracks to be played at one time,
| | 00:16 | and hard drives will have a big impact on that.
| | 00:18 | The hard drive speed refers to how fast the disk spins,
and it's rated in RPM or Revolutions Per Minute.
| | 00:24 | Basically, the faster it spins, the
faster you can get data from that disk.
| | 00:28 | So, I've shown a few speeds here that you can get drives,
and typically there's 4200, 5400, 7200, and 10,000.
| | 00:35 | 4200 and 5400 end up being a little too
slow if you want to do lots of tracks.
| | 00:42 | They just don't spin that fast, you'll
find those in a lot of laptop computers.
| | 00:46 | Newer laptops will have
7200 drives in them now.
| | 00:50 | Most tower computers, PCs, G4 and stuff like
that will come with 7200 or faster drives.
| | 00:56 | A 7200 speed drive works great for audio
and 10,000 speed drive will work even better.
| | 01:02 | Shoot for 7200 RPM for your hard drives,
especially if you're dedicating one drive just to audio.
| | 01:08 | The other thing to keep
in mind is the Cache size.
| | 01:10 | A Cache is essentially a buffer that allows the
drive to read and write data smoothly and continuously.
| | 01:15 | Cache sizes can range from 2MB to 16MB.
Anything over 8MB is preferred, a really small cache
| | 01:22 | makes it a little bit slower.
| | 01:24 | The other thing to think about is the bus or
how your hard drive connects to the computer.
| | 01:27 | Now, there are a few different types,
there are external drives and internal drives.
| | 01:32 | Now with an external drive you might use
FireWire or USB, and again, it's good look for the
| | 01:36 | most recent versions of those standards.
| | 01:39 | FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 are both a lot faster
than the earlier versions of those standards.
| | 01:46 | If you have an internal drive, it probably
connects via the IDE system bus, or it could
| | 01:50 | be via a Serial ATA, or SATA Drive.
| | 01:53 | The IDE is plenty fast, and it uses that big
fat ribbon cable and connects right to your
| | 01:58 | motherboard, and you can connect a couple
different drives in sequence with that.
| | 02:01 | The Serial ATA uses a smaller connector, a
lot of newer computers come ready with Serial
| | 02:07 | ATA, drivers on board, but they don't
necessarily ship with Serial ATA drives, you generally
| | 02:12 | have to kind of look for those.
| | 02:13 | Serial ATA is a faster bus system than IDE,
and if you are doing lots of tracks, that
| | 02:18 | definitely might be worth looking into.
| | 02:20 | Another thing to consider is that certain
digital audio software requires that you have
| | 02:24 | two hard drives, one that drives the software
itself and one that you actually use for just
| | 02:29 | recording and playing back the audio data.
This can be good and bad.
| | 02:33 | It's good that you are allowing different
drives to do different tasks that need to
| | 02:36 | happen simultaneously, so each drive is
just looking for certain kinds of data.
| | 02:41 | The bad thing is if you want to be portable
with a laptop, and you have this kind of software,
| | 02:45 | you'll have to carry an extra drive with you.
| | 02:48 | Another thing to think about is if you are
going to use really high-capacity hard drives,
| | 02:51 | like up to 300 GB or so is that you could partition
them or divide it into a few different drive sections.
| | 02:58 | This can sometimes improve the efficiency of
the drive, it also can make your life easier
| | 03:02 | instead of having one gigantic 300 Gig Drive,
you've cut that up into three drives, and
| | 03:07 | you call it audio one,
audio two, and audio three,
| | 03:10 | then you can do stuff like say I am going
to put projects on audio three and on audio
| | 03:15 | one I'll do the work for my buddy, and on audio
two we'll store our samples or something like that.
| | 03:21 | So, in terms of kind of finding data in a
300 GB area, it's like the first step in kind
| | 03:26 | of a file system, and it can be really helpful.
| | 03:28 | But the main advantage is that it reduces
the amount of geography on the disk where
| | 03:33 | the data can be stored for a certain session.
| | 03:35 | So, the computer effectively can find it
faster, because it's searching a smaller area.
| | 03:40 | Finally, and this isn't really necessarily
a hard drive thing, it's kind of an overall
| | 03:43 | general computer thing, but there are a couple
of things you can always do to optimize the PC.
| | 03:48 | One thing is when you're working with your
digital audio turn off other applications
| | 03:52 | and maybe some background applications so
that you can dedicate all the resources of
| | 03:56 | the computer to working with digital audio.
| | 03:59 | Another thing to do is to turn the
screen saver and the sleep modes off.
| | 04:03 | Sometimes if you're recording a long session or a
4-minute song, then boom! Up pops the screensaver.
| | 04:09 | Sometimes, you can just come out of it, and
it will be fine, but other times it will throw
| | 04:12 | things off or screw up the recording process.
| | 04:15 | So, also if you're just sitting across the
room, kind of watching the monitor or you
| | 04:18 | are laying down a drum track, and you're
watching it go across and all of a sudden up pops
| | 04:23 | the screensaver, that can be a little disconcerting
and throw off your performance a little bit.
| | 04:27 | So, remember to turn those off when
you're working with digital audio.
| | 04:30 | In the next movie we'll talk about some of
the noises and sounds that PCs actually make,
| | 04:35 | and we'll talk about ways to address that.
| | 04:40 |
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| Mechanical noise| 00:01 | Another thing to think about is the amount of
mechanical noise that your computer actually makes.
| | 00:06 | The main problem is that computers need
to stay cool because they run really hot,
| | 00:10 | and they're doing all these
calculations and they generate a lot of heat.
| | 00:13 | So you'll find lots of fans on your PCs.
| | 00:16 | Certain fans that just move
air through the case itself.
| | 00:19 | One on the CPU or a heat sink on the
CPU, the processor, and then probably on
| | 00:24 | the power supply as well.
| | 00:26 | There can also be noise from hard
drives or system beeps, and if you're
| | 00:29 | recording in the same room as the
computer this can get into what you're doing
| | 00:33 | or if you're monitoring and mixing,
and you're doing some electronic music,
| | 00:36 | and you don't remember that electronic beep being
in there, it could be the drives on your computer.
| | 00:40 | So there are a couple solutions to
dealing with the noise that computers
| | 00:44 | generate and ways to make your
monitoring environment a little more quiet.
| | 00:47 | The first easy one is to just
try and get a quiet computer.
| | 00:50 | They actually manufacture computers that
are designed to work with digital audio
| | 00:54 | only and they will be quieter, they'll
come in different shapes and sizes but
| | 00:58 | silence is a big component of how they work.
| | 01:00 | But a more common solution is
to kind of isolate the computer.
| | 01:04 | You can put it in another room if you
want to run long cable runs or you can put
| | 01:08 | it in a cabinet or kind of encasement near you.
| | 01:11 | When you put it in a cabinet or an
encasement make sure that there is enough air
| | 01:15 | there so that it can keep cooling itself.
| | 01:17 | If you put in a really small tight-
fitting cabinet, it might not have enough air
| | 01:21 | to move through there, and it could
overheat which eventually causes damage.
| | 01:24 | It's like your car, you don't
want it to overheat, it's a bad sign.
| | 01:28 | Other things that you can do to
improve your computer are to install fan-less
| | 01:32 | power supplies or fan-less heat sinks
on the CPU, and there's also a lot of
| | 01:37 | custom computer cases out there
that are designed to be quiet.
| | 01:40 | If you're working with a laptop, they're pretty
quiet, but some are louder than others.
| | 01:44 | Almost none of them
are completely silent.
| | 01:46 | You can get a sense of how loud they
are by starting to work with one and
| | 01:50 | turning on a microphone and putting
headphones on. Chances are you're probably
| | 01:53 | be able to hear a little bit of fan
noise, even though a lot of times we don't
| | 01:58 | hear when we are working
with it, but it's still there.
| | 02:00 | So keep that in mind.
| | 02:01 | There is not a whole lot you can do if
that's the core of your system, other
| | 02:05 | than try to keep microphones and other
things away from it and be aware of it
| | 02:08 | when you're monitoring and mixing.
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| Authorization| 00:01 | Finally, it's worthwhile to take a
little bit of time to explain a few other
| | 00:04 | different ways that you might
have to authorize your software.
| | 00:07 | You might have to initially authorize
your main application and then if you're
| | 00:10 | working with plug-ins or additional
applications that work in conjunction with
| | 00:14 | your main software, you might
have to authorize those as well.
| | 00:18 | So let's talk about a few
different types of authorization.
| | 00:21 | Where more or less you'll get a book,
and inside it or somewhere on the product
| | 00:25 | there is a sticker with a number on it,
that you just enter in the first time
| | 00:29 | you launch the software, and you're good to go.
| | 00:31 | Then there is the System ID version,
where you actually create a profile for
| | 00:35 | your computer when you install the
software and via the Internet that
| | 00:38 | information goes out to the manufacturer.
| | 00:40 | They develop a custom code for that
hardware with that set of software and send
| | 00:45 | you back a code that then you can enter in.
| | 00:47 | Usually you need Internet access for
this, not necessarily on the computer
| | 00:51 | you're installing the software on, but
with some computer to send a profile to
| | 00:55 | the manufacturer and get
their confirmation number back.
| | 00:59 | Then there is the Dongle, which is a
hardware device that you actually attach to
| | 01:03 | your computer that stores your
passwords and authorizations.
| | 01:06 | Most common Dongle in use these days
is the iLok, and what's nice about it is
| | 01:10 | that you can store multiple authorizations
for different pieces of software
| | 01:13 | on the same device.
| | 01:14 | That used to be that for each piece of
software you would have to get another
| | 01:19 | Dongle, and then you have a big kind
of chain and a bunch of dongles, and it
| | 01:23 | was kind of unruly.
So the iLok is a great solution.
| | 01:26 | It also makes it possible to install
certain software on multiple computers but
| | 01:29 | then move the key over to them to
actually use them and have them be authorized.
| | 01:33 | Finally, there's the hardware
requirement form of authorization, which generally
| | 01:37 | requires attaching a piece of the
manufacturer's hardware when you're using
| | 01:41 | their software, such as an audio interface.
| | 01:44 | One thing to keep in mind is that
sometimes the number of authorizations you can
| | 01:47 | get can be limited, and if you're
thinking about buying a piece of software and
| | 01:51 | using it on a laptop and on a PC,
you might want to check into if the
| | 01:55 | manufacturer lets you do that and
with how much ease they let you do that.
| | 01:59 | Different pieces of software are a
lot more user-friendly in terms of their
| | 02:02 | authorization than others.
| | 02:03 | So when you are working with Digital
Audio, it's good to think about these
| | 02:07 | different forms of authorization.
| | 02:08 | If you're planning on doing a lot
of remote work or traveling with your
| | 02:11 | equipment, the hardware requirement
authorization can be a bit frustrating at
| | 02:14 | times, especially if you want to be
as agile and portable as possible.
| | 02:18 | If you're planning on setting up a
system with multiple computers, the Dongle or
| | 02:22 | iLok can work very well, and if you
don't have any Internet access, sometimes
| | 02:27 | stuff with the System ID authorization
can be actually quite a headache to kind
| | 02:30 | of jump through all the
hoops to make that happen.
| | 02:33 | So it's always good to think about how
you're going to be using your Digital
| | 02:36 | Audio and what the manufacturer is
going to require in terms of authorization.
| | 02:41 | These are all things that you should
consider and keep in mind when you're
| | 02:44 | thinking about purchasing software.
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|
|
10. Setting Up for RecordingPlanning for recording| 00:00 | So in this chapter I want to talk a little bit
about getting ready or setting up for recording.
| | 00:05 | Recording is a pretty interesting
process, and the more you do it, the more
| | 00:09 | you'll get excited about it.
| | 00:10 | It's a lot of fun if you're
working on music or doing voice-overs.
| | 00:13 | It's exciting to make things, but
at the same time it can be kind of
| | 00:17 | stressful, too, because once the tape's
rolling, once the microphone's on, we
| | 00:20 | are always trying to kind of get it right, to nail
our performance, to deliver our line correctly.
| | 00:25 | And there is nothing worse than when
you're trying to get it right and deliver
| | 00:28 | your performance and then the stuff
like equipment issues and detours or
| | 00:32 | things like that come up.
They can be really distracting.
| | 00:35 | It's inevitable that things will happen.
| | 00:37 | But there is a few steps you can take
before you start to record that at least
| | 00:41 | eliminate few of these road bumps
and a few things that might come up.
| | 00:44 | So a little bit of planning and preparation can
go a long way in terms of setting up for recording.
| | 00:49 | So in the next few movies, we'll talk
about just a few different things you can do.
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| Doing a system check| 00:01 | So the first thing you do is a System
Check, and basically this is just making
| | 00:04 | sure that kind of everything is in
order before people come over to record or
| | 00:08 | before you just start hitting the
record button, and this will help kind of--
| | 00:11 | because you want things to
interrupt in the middle of the session.
| | 00:15 | So the first thing you do is just
fire it up, make sure it still works.
| | 00:19 | Turn it on, get some signal in, feed it a
little signal, record some stuff, play it back.
| | 00:23 | Make sure things working, save it, and then once you
save it, also go ahead and check your disc space.
| | 00:29 | You don't want to have to stop a
session so that you can burn a couple of DVDs
| | 00:34 | to free up some disc space, it's a real drag.
| | 00:36 | So move files around if you have to, to
different destinations to clear up some
| | 00:40 | space so that you can just focus on
recording when that's what you're doing.
| | 00:43 | Also make sure that you have all the
cables and connectors that you'll need and
| | 00:47 | organize them or kind of
clean them up, wrap them up.
| | 00:50 | Put them somewhere they
are easy to grab and use.
| | 00:52 | You want to make sure that you have as
many microphone cables as you do microphones.
| | 00:56 | Probably have a few extras, in case you
need to extend them or make longer runs.
| | 01:00 | It's also great to have lots of
headphone cables, or just in general extra
| | 01:04 | cables, because cables do go bad.
| | 01:05 | Someone might come over with a device
that has a stranger, different output that
| | 01:09 | you're not used to using or they didn't
bring the adaptor to get it to the size
| | 01:13 | you needed to be to work with your equipment.
It's good to have an assortment of connectors.
| | 01:17 | It's always good to do a little system
check before you start a session so that
| | 01:21 | you don't interrupt it once you're going,
and it will also help you get in the
| | 01:24 | mind-set of getting ready to record.
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| Planning your inputs| 00:01 | Now, whenever I'm getting ready to do a session,
I always like to start by planning my inputs.
| | 00:05 | Before I even pick anything up, I just like to
start to think about how the overall session
| | 00:09 | is going to go and how we are going to use the
different things we have on different sound sources.
| | 00:13 | If you are just doing voice, it will
probably be a little bit more straightforward, but
| | 00:17 | if you are doing some sort of multi-track
session, multiple instruments, multiple people
| | 00:21 | speaking, it's good to kind
of think about what you have.
| | 00:24 | So I like to write down a little list of my
resources, make some notes about what they
| | 00:28 | are, where I might put them in the room or
different rooms, and then think about how
| | 00:31 | many inputs I have access to.
| | 00:33 | And then what the microphones I think
I'll use on these different sound sources.
| | 00:36 | It doesn't take a lot of time, but having it done
on a sheet of paper seems to help quite a bit.
| | 00:41 | Then go ahead and set things up, think
about microphones and what stands make sense.
| | 00:45 | If you only have a few boom stands you might
need to use those for different things like
| | 00:49 | drums or guitarists,
vocalists, things like that.
| | 00:52 | Just think about how many stands, you have and which
ones make sense on which instrument or sound source.
| | 00:57 | Then I select and connect the microphone cables,
and I just think in terms of long ones and
| | 01:01 | short ones and make sure that after I get
done and down to the last connection if I
| | 01:05 | need a long cable I still have one.
| | 01:07 | So the things are going to be closer, easier to
use, just plan to use the short cables for that.
| | 01:12 | It just saves you a little
bit of time in the setup.
| | 01:14 | Plug those into the mics and into the interface,
then go into your DAW and assign and label the tracks.
| | 01:19 | You could make notes about what microphones
you use somewhere in there, but you can also
| | 01:23 | label the track itself which will probably
be added to the sound of the audio file.
| | 01:27 | So name that something like Dave's
vocals, if that's what it is, or kick-drum.
| | 01:31 | So planning your inputs is another thing you
can do before a session gets underway, and
| | 01:36 | that way when you are recording you can just pay attention
to trying to get the best performance and the best sound.
| | 01:41 |
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| The recording environment| 00:01 | Finally, let's talk a little bit about
the environment where you'll be recording.
| | 00:04 | Now this could be in a room in your
house, it could be in an actual studio, or
| | 00:09 | even a makeshift location somewhere.
| | 00:10 | There's a few things you can do to try and make
it a little bit more efficient and comfortable.
| | 00:15 | Remember the objective here is to try
and get good sound but also to try and get
| | 00:19 | good performances and get whoever you're
recording or working with to be able to
| | 00:23 | focus on what they are doing.
| | 00:24 | So one of the technical things, and I
learned this early on because I was really
| | 00:28 | in to kind of like taping down and
securing everything so it was perfect and out
| | 00:32 | of the way, and that's great because it
looks good, but ultimately you'll have
| | 00:36 | to change things and move them around.
| | 00:37 | So avoid the temptation to tape things
down or wire cables behind columns or
| | 00:43 | under the bed or across the room
behind five desks, because eventually and
| | 00:48 | ultimately you'll probably want to
rearrange those microphones, or you might
| | 00:51 | have to make just quick slight
adjustments, and if everything is nailed down and
| | 00:55 | placed like that it takes way too
long to kind of make easy changes.
| | 00:59 | It is good to keep your cables kind of
orderly and out of the way of the performers.
| | 01:03 | You want to try and place cables and devices so
that they don't interfere with the way people play.
| | 01:08 | You don't want to try and
put people in cramped spaces.
| | 01:11 | You want to make sure they have
enough room to be comfortable.
| | 01:14 | Another thing is that if you're
recording, and you are kind of the person
| | 01:17 | manning the equipment, hitting Record,
if it's someone else is doing the
| | 01:20 | performing, sometimes it's good to get
out of their line of sight so that they
| | 01:24 | aren't distracted by you.
| | 01:25 | But other times they want to see, you
can give them signs that let them know,
| | 01:29 | yeah, if that sounds great or this sounds good.
| | 01:31 | So just based on who you're
working with feel that out.
| | 01:34 | Sometimes it's good to disappear a
little bit so that people can just focus
| | 01:37 | on what they're doing.
| | 01:38 | Whatever seems to work in order to
get the best performance but just pay
| | 01:42 | attention to those options.
| | 01:43 | Sometimes you'll sit there on and on
and on, and you don't even know you're
| | 01:47 | making a face that sends the message that,
oh, it doesn't sound so good, but you
| | 01:51 | don't know it, but the
performer is picking up on that.
| | 01:53 | Other times if they see you leaving or
kind of trying to get out of sight while
| | 01:58 | they're performing, they might think
you're not paying attention, you don't
| | 02:00 | care, and they might take that as
meaning you are not doing that well.
| | 02:04 | Finally, it's good before the session to
agree with your performers what kind of
| | 02:07 | terminology and sign language you are
going to use to kind of signify different
| | 02:11 | things like rolling, we're recording,
cut, end the take, things like that.
| | 02:14 | In the process I'll say rolling, please
wait two seconds, and then start recording.
| | 02:19 | Just set up some of those guidelines or
things like at the end of the song when
| | 02:23 | you hit the cymbals please be still for
another 10 seconds and don't start to
| | 02:27 | get out from your drum set because we
want that nice to stay on the cymbals.
| | 02:31 | Just kind of set those guidelines up and
they might have some ideas for you, you
| | 02:35 | might have some for them, but it's good
to agree on those before you get going.
| | 02:39 | It will make things run smoother.
| | 02:40 | So hopefully all the things I've talked
about here will help you be able to set
| | 02:44 | up in a recording session and make it
run smoother, and then you can focus more
| | 02:48 | on getting a great
performance and getting great sound.
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|
|
11. Digital Audio SoftwareTypes of digital audio software| 00:00 | In this chapter we will take a look at
some of the different kinds of software
| | 00:04 | that exist for working with Digital Audio.
| | 00:06 | You will find that software really becomes the
core component to any Digital Audio Workstation.
| | 00:10 | It will effectively determine what you can
do and how you can work with Digital Audio.
| | 00:14 | You will see that there is actually
quite a few different varieties out there
| | 00:18 | and then each one is designed for a
different objective or purpose, and each one
| | 00:21 | kind of works better for a different job.
| | 00:23 | Hopefully by becoming familiar with
some of these different varieties of
| | 00:26 | software, you will be able to pick the
one that kind of suits your needs the
| | 00:30 | best and will allow you to work
with audio in a way you want to.
| | 00:33 | So let's jump into it and start by taking
a look at some multi-track recording software.
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| Multi-track recorders/sequencers| 00:01 | As the name implies, multi-track
recorders are designed to let you work with
| | 00:04 | multiple tracks of audio and
also multiple tracks of MIDI.
| | 00:08 | When you're working with MIDI it's
usually referred to as sequencing.
| | 00:11 | Most multi-track programs are both
MIDI sequencers and audio recorders.
| | 00:15 | This is probably the most useful of
all of the applications in terms of the
| | 00:20 | range of uses it provides, it's kind
of the all-inclusive studio, and you can
| | 00:24 | use it to work with audio, work with
MIDI, do lots of editing, do lots of
| | 00:29 | mixing and also mastering.
| | 00:31 | If you're recording bands with lots of
tracks this is the kind of software you'd want.
| | 00:34 | Or if you are doing things
like Podcasts, and you're going to have
| | 00:38 | multiple voices and add sound
effects or background tracks of music, the
| | 00:41 | multi-track recorder is the way to go.
| | 00:44 | It's also good for doing MIDI
arrangements and composition if you are using a
| | 00:48 | lot of samplers or sound module and
playback devices, and it's also great for
| | 00:51 | doing sound design if you are doing
anything with video for film, it's a great
| | 00:55 | place to make sound effects or add
music and then layers of voice-over and do
| | 01:00 | some mixing in that respect as well.
| | 01:02 | It also has the option of using plug-
ins, which are other mini applications
| | 01:06 | that you can use in conjunction with the multi-
track recorder, which you can use to effect.
| | 01:10 | We will talk more about what plug-ins
are later, but multi-track recorders,
| | 01:14 | that's one of the great benefits is
they are expandable in terms of their
| | 01:17 | capabilities because you can use these other
mini-applications in conjunction with them.
| | 01:21 | Some of them are popular software
that you will find out there in the
| | 01:25 | multi-track world, are Pro Tools,
Digital Performer, and Logic.
| | 01:28 | There is also a huge selection of different
titles out there and at different price ranges.
| | 01:34 | For an example, let's open up Pro Tools and
just kind of look around and see what's there.
| | 01:39 | Okay, so here we are in Pro Tools, and
I've got a music session setup that we
| | 01:43 | are looking at, and as you can see
there is kind of different tracks, different
| | 01:47 | waveforms to represent each track and
multiple tracks, drums, bass, couple of
| | 01:51 | guitar tracks, some reverb
tracks with some effects on there.
| | 01:55 | Down here we have a MIDI track and a
Master Fader, and when you work in this
| | 01:59 | Timeline, you set it up and hit Play,
you get some music, get some playback,
| | 02:05 | it's non-linear, so you can jump around.
| | 02:09 | We can work with different tracks
independently, see, we can solo this one out.
| | 02:15 | We can solo the little drum track there.
| | 02:18 | So you can play this or you can mute
them, then you can work with them in
| | 02:26 | groups, you can copy and paste stuff.
| | 02:28 | Take all those pieces and say, hey, we
want them back over here for why I don't know.
| | 02:33 | So you can do things like that, and
you can work in a multi-track fashion.
| | 02:37 | You can also go ahead and record a new
track in. We'll add a new track, create a
| | 02:42 | mono track there, and bring it up here,
say newtrack, and then record.
| | 02:53 | Record another track in there, maybe some
cymbal crashes, maybe the sound of some
| | 02:56 | coyotes, something exciting.
| | 02:58 | We can also work with the Mix window, as
we are playing back all these tracks, I
| | 03:02 | will go ahead and hit play via the
console here, and then we can look at the Mix
| | 03:09 | window which shows our Mixing
Board, Digital Mixing Board.
| | 03:13 | We can go in and make Volume changes.
| | 03:20 | So the main thing here to keep in mind is
that we have independent control of the channels.
| | 03:29 | Also we've got some plug-ins
happening here, different kinds of things.
| | 03:32 | This is--let's take a look at what we have
here, this D-Verb, so we have added some reverb.
| | 03:37 | I will give you a little
taste of this, some action there.
| | 03:52 | Let's do the drums,
that's going to solo those out.
| | 04:01 | Now we are doing like the '80s Duran sound.
| | 04:03 | So you can play with different plug-ins
here to effect things, EQ and stuff like that.
| | 04:09 | So in general this is the overall
look and feel of a multi-track setup,
| | 04:18 | independent channels, multiple channels, and
independent control and great for music production.
| | 04:24 | Again, you can also use this to do
voice-over or podcast production, one track for
| | 04:28 | voice-overs, other tracks for music beds,
sound effects, things like that, or you
| | 04:33 | can also import movies, it will open a
little window up here in the corner that
| | 04:38 | will playback a QuickTime movie, and
so you can actually score to that movie
| | 04:42 | playthings in time with it, sync things to it.
So this is the multi-track environment.
| | 04:46 | We will go in-depth into kind of the
different pieces of the multi-track
| | 04:50 | software in another chapter, but I
wanted you to get an idea of what it looks
| | 04:54 | like and what it's capable of real quick.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Two-track recorders/waveform editors| 00:01 | 2 Track or Waveform editors are
designed for working with mono or stereo files,
| | 00:05 | so you don't get a lot of
independent channel control.
| | 00:08 | So they're not great for producing
lots of music, but if you're just
| | 00:11 | working with a simple file like a
single voice-over file or a single stereo
| | 00:15 | mix of a piece of music, it might be sufficient
for just opening it up making some modifications.
| | 00:20 | You can make edits, change the
arrangement of sounds within the file, you can
| | 00:24 | also zoom-in really close to make
different changes in the waveform or
| | 00:27 | eliminate little things like pops and clicks,
and it's a great way to kind of clean up a sound.
| | 00:33 | It's also great for optimizing files.
| | 00:34 | So if you have a three or four
different voice-over tracks, and you want to make
| | 00:38 | sure that they are all the same
volume, you can bring them into a 2 Track
| | 00:42 | Editor, change the volume
accordingly and make sure they all match.
| | 00:45 | It's also good for trimming the heads
and tails of audio files if you want to
| | 00:49 | get right up to where the sound
begins, and they're also really great
| | 00:52 | applications for converting your
final collections to digital actually.
| | 00:54 | And also if you're trying to convert
existing files into different formats like
| | 00:58 | digitizing your existing record
collection, a 2 Track Editor will do the trick.
| | 01:03 | Some fairly common 2 Track editors are Bias Peak,
Sound Forge, Audacity, and Sound Studio.
| | 01:09 | You can find more
information about these online.
| | 01:12 | So Audacity is a dual platform editor,
which means you can get versions work for
| | 01:16 | it, for the Mac and the PC,
and it happens to be free.
| | 01:19 | You can usually find it online to download.
| | 01:21 | I am sure if you Google Audacity, you
will come up with some links to find it.
| | 01:26 | Since we're talking about it, why don't
we take a quick look at Audacity and see
| | 01:30 | what you can do with the 2 Track Editor.
| | 01:32 | Okay, so here we are in Audacity, and
I've got one track of voice-over that we
| | 01:36 | recorded in, and there is a couple of
things I want to go ahead and change, and
| | 01:41 | you can see it looks similar to the
other multi-track program, it's the channels
| | 01:44 | represented there, the waveform goes
from left to right along the Timeline, and
| | 01:48 | we've got some controls similar to that.
| | 01:49 | But this is really great for going in
and just taking a single track and making
| | 01:51 | a few adjustments to it in terms of
kind of what's there and what's not and
| | 01:55 | changing some of the
linear relationships of things.
| | 01:58 | So let's take a listen and
see what we've got to work with.
| | 02:00 | (female speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training Podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006--
| | 02:07 | Oops! January 19th, 2007. This is--)
| | 02:12 | Okay, so she clammed it there.
She got the dates wrong.
| | 02:17 | (female speaker: January 19th--)
| | 02:19 | All right, so right about
there, it sounds good.
| | 02:22 | (female speaker: January 19th, 2006.)
| | 02:24 | So she kind of picked it up there, right?
| | 02:26 | So here's the clam, the mistake.
(female speaker: January 19th, 2006-- Oops!)
| | 02:34 | So I just want to get rid of that and
actually act like it never happened.
| | 02:38 | So I delete it, and you notice where we
had those points this whole thing slid over.
| | 02:44 | (female speaker: --for Friday, January 19th, 2007.)
And voila, sounds great! Smooth, clean.
| | 02:51 | (female speaker: --Podcast for Friday,
January 19th, 2007. This is episode 47.)
| | 02:58 | Another thing we can do is use the
Mute or Silence function and
| | 03:01 | here we've got a little breath in
between a couple of these words.
| | 03:04 | I can go ahead and highlight that, hit
the Mute command, and that will silence
| | 03:08 | that section between those two
words or whatever I had highlighted.
| | 03:11 | So let's listen to that.
(female speaker: --47. This week--)
| | 03:16 | It's nice and quiet.
So that's cool.
| | 03:18 | So this is really nice if you're
working with voice-over tracks or any tracks
| | 03:21 | where you have things kind of in
between the sounds that you want to get rid of
| | 03:25 | like breaths or pops or clicks.
| | 03:27 | You can also uses this to clean up
the heads and tails of your files and go
| | 03:31 | ahead so that you don't have a ton of
lead time. Right now what do we have?
| | 03:35 | We have a lot of silence in the beginning of this,
and a breath, and we don't really need that.
| | 03:40 | So we can also delete that, slide everything forward,
that's where we start right from the beginning.
| | 03:43 | (female speaker: Welcome to the
lynda.com video training Podcast--)
| | 03:46 | Very cool!
| | 03:47 | The other thing we can do is zoom way in.
That's one of the things that Waveform
| | 03:51 | editors are pretty well known for.
| | 03:54 | They are really good at zooming in to
waveforms right down to what we call the Sample Level.
| | 04:00 | So we can get right in
there and really check it out.
| | 04:03 | So these dots now represent a sample.
| | 04:05 | A lot of your multi-track software is
now building in the capability to get
| | 04:09 | down this close and do some of this
work, but Waveform editors are known for
| | 04:13 | that, so you can get really, really
tight into things and kind of scrutinize
| | 04:17 | them and take a look.
| | 04:18 | So if you want to do some really close
or high-level editing, check out things
| | 04:22 | for like pops and clicks.
| | 04:24 | This is a great future of Waveform
editors is how close you can zoom in.
| | 04:28 | Even if you have multi-track software,
a lot of times it's very convenient to
| | 04:31 | just have a 2 Track or a Waveform
Editor for doing kind of quick and simple
| | 04:36 | changes or if you're just working with
one file like this, and sometimes it's a
| | 04:39 | lot easier than opening up a big
session with lots of channels and all the
| | 04:43 | different things you have to go through.
| | 04:45 | This is kind of a quick and--I don't
want to say quick and dirty, but quick and
| | 04:49 | very efficient way to work with sound files.
| | 04:51 | Next, we will take a look
at some loop-based software.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Loop-based music production software| 00:00 | Now, one of the newer kinds of
software that exists that's really interesting
| | 00:04 | and fun to play with is Loop-based Music
Production software, and this basically
| | 00:09 | lets you bring in samples or loops and
arrange them in kind of a grid format and
| | 00:13 | create music from pre-existing sound
clips, or you can also create your own
| | 00:17 | loops or samples, and that's
where it really gets interesting.
| | 00:20 | Some of these are hybrids and involve
things like recording audio and sequencing
| | 00:24 | a little bit of MIDI.
| | 00:25 | But the thing that they do that makes
them different from multi-track recording
| | 00:28 | software is their ability to deal
with loops and kind of the interface that
| | 00:32 | create that gives you kind of a
grid system for laying these things out.
| | 00:35 | Loop-based software is great if you want
to make some quick tracks from existing
| | 00:38 | stuff, like if you're trying to come up
with a little bit of music for an intro
| | 00:42 | to a podcast or something short for a
video project, and you can also create
| | 00:46 | original samples and really
create original compositions.
| | 00:49 | There's kind of a myth that makes it
seem like you're just always going to make
| | 00:52 | a piece of music that
someone else's samples are.
| | 00:54 | You're just kind of like
putting a puzzle together.
| | 00:57 | But it's true that you can actually
create your own pieces of music, original
| | 01:00 | pieces of music by creating
original samples, and original loops.
| | 01:03 | Loop-based really has more to do with
how you arrange the sound files, and kind
| | 01:07 | of a streamlined functionality for
working with sounds in little chunks as
| | 01:11 | opposed to the 3-minute guitar take.
| | 01:13 | Some popular loop-based software titles
include ACID, Ableton Live, and GarageBand.
| | 01:19 | Let's take a look at GarageBand real
quick and kind of get a sense of what the
| | 01:22 | loop-based environment can look like.
| | 01:23 | GarageBand is a good example of
a loop-based piece of software.
| | 01:28 | It's developed by Apple, and if you
buy one of their brand-new computers, I
| | 01:31 | know it comes with that.
| | 01:32 | So you might have it, and it's a
pretty cool program, you can do a lot of
| | 01:36 | neat stuff with it.
| | 01:37 | You can do audio recording, and you
can do other things like other pieces of
| | 01:41 | audio software, but what sets it apart
or what kind of makes it interesting is
| | 01:45 | that it has this Loop-
based feature built into it.
| | 01:47 | You can see that it looks similar in
some ways to multi-track recording, it's
| | 01:50 | got a Timeline, and it displays the
data from left to right along the time and
| | 01:55 | gives you some controls to the left.
| | 01:56 | But what's different is that it's kind
of based on this grid, and you can pull
| | 02:00 | different sounds into this
grid from a pre-existing library.
| | 02:04 | I can pick a category, when I click on that,
it loads up different sounds in that category.
| | 02:09 | So right now I have process-picked, and now
you can just click on these and take a listen.
| | 02:13 | Wow!
(audio playing)
| | 02:23 | These are different
samples and loops that I can use.
| | 02:25 | They will be drumbeats, guitar sounds,
anything you can think of, but they
| | 02:28 | are built in a loop format, so it can play
and then play again, it can loop seamlessly.
| | 02:38 | So anyway, I've built a little track
here, I have picked some drums out
| | 02:42 | there that I thought were pretty entertaining
and a bass track, and so that sounds like this.
| | 02:46 | (audio playing)
| | 02:50 | Now, I am not an aficionado, but I
know that that's almost just
| | 02:53 | half a song, and we need a little bit more.
| | 02:56 | So I am picking out some
guitars, let's choose this one.
| | 02:59 | So I am going to drag this out and
create a new track, let's drag it in there
| | 03:04 | automatically without any magic
or some magic, creates a new track.
| | 03:08 | So now I have my electric guitar track
at that sample, our loop is out there,
| | 03:12 | and I can move it around on the
grid, and it snaps to the grid.
| | 03:16 | It snaps in different increments.
| | 03:20 | So it will always be in time when you
hear it just depends when it will stop,
| | 03:24 | and when it will start.
So you can drag it out, and now I can play it.
| | 03:29 | When we get there we will hear that guitar part.
(audio playing)
| | 03:40 | That's one loop. Then I can just
drag that and make it loop three times.
| | 03:44 | So now we get it three times.
(audio playing)
| | 03:53 | So this is pretty cool.
| | 03:54 | You can really customize little pieces
of music. If you are working on bumpers
| | 03:57 | for podcast or things like that,
you can make short intros or outros.
| | 04:00 | You can really customize
when and where you hear sounds.
| | 04:05 | Here we can end and go to the
guitar solos to be able to limit it.
| | 04:15 | Then we can drag all kinds of different
stuff in if you want to--well I better
| | 04:20 | see what that is before I pull it
up there, learn my lesson. Whoa!
| | 04:23 | It's like a whole piece of
music, here. Here's a good break.
| | 04:27 | So we can create another track, and if
we want everything to pick up again, we
| | 04:34 | can copy and paste those
loops, move them back like this.
| | 04:39 | So we come out of our super quiet
breakdown with some sensitive vocals or some
| | 04:44 | imagery of something sad and then all
of a sudden we're getting serious, and
| | 04:53 | then we're back to our main theme.
| | 04:54 | It's kind of a modular way of making
music, you can move things around in
| | 04:58 | different boxes and slide them all over
the place, and it's really interesting
| | 05:01 | how quickly you can make pretty
interesting stuff that's customized and not just
| | 05:05 | in terms of like when things happen but
also in terms of the kind of music, the
| | 05:09 | mood, the atmosphere you are able to create.
| | 05:11 | So if you don't want to hook up the
guitar out, play a 3-minute guitar
| | 05:15 | track, this is a great way to be able
to make music without having to do that.
| | 05:19 | But I should say that where I
think this loop-based stuff really gets
| | 05:22 | interesting is when you start to create
your own loops and your custom samples.
| | 05:26 | I think loop-based software offers a
lot of possibilities when you start to
| | 05:29 | create the loop content yourself.
| | 05:30 | So anyway, it's something to think about. If
nothing else, it's a lot of fun to work with.
| | 05:34 | You can definitely use loop-based
software to make really interesting things,
| | 05:37 | and it's a cool new addition to the kinds
of digital audio software that are out there.
| | 05:41 | In the next movie, we
will take a look at plug-ins.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Plug-ins| 00:01 | Plug-ins or signal processing
software are really essential tools for
| | 00:05 | fine tuning your audio production.
| | 00:07 | There is also a ton of fun that allow
you to kind of generate really interesting
| | 00:11 | sounds and psychedelic effects as well.
So they're worth checking out.
| | 00:14 | Generally, its one little
application kind of dedicated to one task.
| | 00:17 | So some might work for tonal
enhancing, like equalization or dynamic
| | 00:22 | compression, changing volumes, they can
apply effects like reverb, or delay, or
| | 00:27 | crazy chorus effects, they can also
act as virtual instruments where you
| | 00:31 | actually plug in something that you
can use to set sounds and use as a sound
| | 00:35 | module and control with
MIDI within your application.
| | 00:38 | We'll explain this more and actually
take a look at it later in this movie,
| | 00:42 | but virtual instruments are something to
be aware of, they're great for making music.
| | 00:45 | Other plug-ins can function as tools
in terms of changing the sound, the
| | 00:48 | volume, doing things like noise reduction, or
cleaning up audio files, kind of the dirty work.
| | 00:54 | Plug-ins come in really handy when
you're doing mixing and trying to get
| | 00:57 | different sounds to live together well
and making certain sounds sound better
| | 01:01 | and they're also great for mastering.
| | 01:03 | There are whole sets of plug-ins that
are designed just for mastering purposes.
| | 01:07 | We'll get to all this later in a few
other chapters, but it's good to know that
| | 01:11 | you can use plug-ins for a lot of applications.
| | 01:13 | Speaking of applications, if you're doing
music production or voice-over and sound
| | 01:17 | design, they're great things to have.
| | 01:19 | With music, you can change the EQ of the guitar,
the drums, put that reverb on the drum set.
| | 01:24 | For voice-over production, you can
compress the vocal track, or take out some of
| | 01:28 | the noise in the background.
| | 01:30 | They're also great for sound design if
you're working on game sounds or film sounds.
| | 01:35 | You can use plug-ins to create new
and interesting sounds via effects and
| | 01:39 | different kinds of
manipulation of the Digital Audio.
| | 01:42 | In general, they're great for all
around enhancements and manipulation of your
| | 01:46 | Digital Audio and well worth looking into.
| | 01:48 | Most Digital Audio software will come
with a fair number of plug-ins built in,
| | 01:53 | but you'll also find that there's a ton
of third-party plug-ins out there that
| | 01:56 | you can buy and use in your software.
| | 01:59 | One note there, there is a few
different formats for plug-ins, and so it's
| | 02:02 | important to make sure that the
software you're using will actually accept or
| | 02:06 | work with the plug-in format that you're using.
| | 02:08 | So it's important to make sure that your
software and the plug-in are compatible.
| | 02:13 | Some popular manufacturers of plug-in
software include Waves, McDSP, and Native
| | 02:18 | Instruments, but there is a whole wide
range out there, you can find freeware,
| | 02:22 | and you can also go spend a couple of thousand
dollars on a beautiful suite of compressors and EQs.
| | 02:28 | So let's go into Pro Tools and take a look
and listen at what you can do with plug-ins.
| | 02:32 | Okay, so now we're in Pro Tools, and
we've got a session set up, and we're going
| | 02:37 | to play it back, let's give it a listen.
(music playing)
| | 02:40 | And I am going to go ahead and
solo our drum track, highlight it,
| | 02:47 | and make sure it's set here to Loop and
just let the drum track go. Now, I am
| | 02:53 | going to hotkey into the Mix window.
Here's our drum track over here.
| | 03:03 | In this area I can initiate a plug-in.
| | 03:05 | Now, I am going to hit Pause, go in here, click
an Insert, and we will click a multi-channel plug-in.
| | 03:11 | Let's start with something simple
like an EQ, say maybe a 3-band EQ.
| | 03:18 | So with this I can change
the sound of the drum track.
| | 03:21 | Play it through in real-time, take
that, take some of this out, go in and
| | 03:29 | cut all the bass off.
| | 03:35 | Simple equalization,
pretty cool. So that's a plug-in.
| | 03:39 | I can also add effects like Reverb.
(audio playing)
| | 03:45 | Oh yeah! Change a bunch of these
parameters, get different sounds, from
| | 03:58 | non-linear action, very cool!
| | 04:01 | There's also other kind of cool effects
like Modulation and effects that you can apply.
| | 04:05 | This one is kind of nice.
| | 04:08 | (music playing)
| | 04:21 | So that's how you can use
plug-ins as signal processing
| | 04:26 | devices, and you can bypass them, get
in and out, we'll do a whole section on
| | 04:30 | all these different ones.
| | 04:32 | I just want you to get
sense of how they operate.
| | 04:34 | The other thing I want to show you
though is a plug-in as a virtual instrument.
| | 04:38 | So I have created an instrument track
here, and I am going to show you where
| | 04:42 | you go in, say Instrument, and you pick this
instrument called Xpand!, this opens it up.
| | 04:46 | In here I can go in and pick different sounds.
| | 04:49 | If you think about it, it's kind of
like GarageBand, and that there is these
| | 04:53 | different voices available, but they aren't
samples, they're just single notes usually.
| | 04:56 | So I can go, and I've kind of
decided I am going to use a B3.
| | 05:00 | So I set that up in a channel.
I can make manipulations and adjustments.
| | 05:04 | But the thing is to know that I've
loaded a voice into this virtual instrument.
| | 05:07 | I am going to hide that, go
back to my main Edit window.
| | 05:11 | Make this a little bit bigger, and I
will solo it, and then I can go in, and
| | 05:16 | this is a MIDI track and these are MIDI notes.
| | 05:18 | These not actually contain sound, but if
I click on them, they send information,
| | 05:22 | and they tell that virtual
instrument what note to play and for how long.
| | 05:26 | So check this out, if I
click on it, I get that organ.
| | 05:31 | I can change the note, I can
go in and change the duration of that note.
| | 05:35 | So if I want it to be a long note.
| | 05:38 | (audio playing)
So that's the virtual instrument.
| | 05:46 | You can send it some MIDI, and here I
will go back to our Mixer window and then
| | 05:51 | pick different sounds.
| | 05:52 | So if I wanted to use that
classic B3 sound, I have got it.
| | 05:56 | What if I want to go to like let's see,
maybe the Glockenspiel, we can go back
| | 06:02 | and change that, and now it
will play the Glockenspiel.
| | 06:04 | (audio playing)
And now here it is in my beat.
| | 06:20 | So that's what you can do with
the virtual instrument and then
| | 06:22 | what's possible is really
amazing with virtual instruments.
| | 06:25 | They are really cool, very exciting,
and definitely worth looking into if you
| | 06:29 | want to do composition or make
different pieces of music, very, very cool!
| | 06:32 | Great for sound effects too.
| | 06:34 | It doesn't necessarily have to be
musical, you can also load in different sound
| | 06:37 | effects or sound samples just different
kind of random noises and kind of play
| | 06:41 | those noises as instruments to
come up with special sound effects.
| | 06:45 | So those are plug-ins.
| | 06:47 | In the next movie, we'll take a look at
some of the other varieties of software
| | 06:51 | that are out there that don't
fall into the last few categories.
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| Other varieties| 00:01 | Finally, I just want to talk a little
bit about some of the other types of
| | 00:05 | software that are out there.
| | 00:06 | There are a lot of pieces of software that
are designed for music or audio-related tasks.
| | 00:10 | They don't fall into the categories
that we've been talking about, but they're
| | 00:14 | really useful and worth knowing about.
| | 00:15 | And based on what your objectives are,
a lot of these will make things a lot
| | 00:19 | simpler and more efficient.
| | 00:20 | Sometimes the bigger software might
have some of these capabilities built in,
| | 00:23 | but sometimes a stand-alone
device makes things more efficient.
| | 00:26 | There are also a lot of types of
software that you won't find built into the
| | 00:30 | different types that we've just looked at.
| | 00:32 | You'll find that there is are a lot
software out there dedicated to notation,
| | 00:35 | which is great if you want to do things
like print sheet music or create scores.
| | 00:39 | There are also file format converters,
which are really handy if you have, let's
| | 00:43 | say, a WAV file, and you want to
convert it to an AU file, or you have a WAV
| | 00:48 | file, and you want to convert it to an MP3 file.
| | 00:51 | They're stand-alone programs that
will just make that conversion possible.
| | 00:53 | Then there are batch processors, which
do format conversion, but they do it at
| | 00:57 | large quantities to the files at the same time.
| | 01:00 | So if you're generating tons of sound
effects, or tons of little samples, or you
| | 01:04 | want to generate a batch or voice-over
samples that are going into a multimedia
| | 01:08 | project, a batch processor is a great
way to do all that efficiently as opposed
| | 01:12 | to loading each file in and then exporting it.
| | 01:14 | With batch processors you
can do the whole batch at once.
| | 01:17 | Music calculators can also be very handy
when you're trying to figure out things
| | 01:21 | like delay in relationship, to
things like time, and tempo, and measures.
| | 01:25 | There are also software that's good to
use when you're preparing to burn a CD,
| | 01:29 | and it will let you bring in all of
your tracks, set them up, set up the
| | 01:33 | intervals between the different songs or tracks,
and then actually burn the CD to specific standards.
| | 01:38 | This is really useful if you're trying
to burn CDs that you think you might be
| | 01:41 | sending out for duplication that
need to adhere to a certain standard.
| | 01:45 | Finally, if you work with a lot of
samples or different sound modules, there's
| | 01:48 | software called Editor or Librarian software.
| | 01:51 | And this is a way of organizing your
samples and searching through them quickly.
| | 01:55 | It can be very helpful if you're working
with a lot of virtual instruments or samplers.
| | 01:59 | In addition to these types of software,
there are other very specialized pieces
| | 02:03 | out there, but sometimes you have to
wait for the need to arise and then go
| | 02:07 | looking for it to find it, but
there's probably something out there.
| | 02:10 | There are lots of people developing really cool
shareware and freeware for very specific one-time tasks.
| | 02:14 | There are also other software out there
that can be very handy, things that will
| | 02:17 | let you embed digital
watermarks or create ring tones.
| | 02:21 | There are really a myriad of
different things out there, but we can't touch
| | 02:24 | on all of them here.
| | 02:25 | As always, it's best to start
thinking about what you're trying to achieve
| | 02:29 | and then go out and find the software that
actually is the most accommodating to that goal.
| | 02:33 | So hopefully, this chapter has helped
familiarize you with all the different
| | 02:36 | kinds of software that are available.
| | 02:37 | And the best thing you do is then think about your
needs and then pick the ones that meet your needs.
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|
|
12. Common DAW ComponentsCommon components| 00:01 | Regardless of what type of application
you are working with, you're going to
| | 00:04 | find that audio software interfaces tend
to be made up of a few core components.
| | 00:08 | And many of the features and
functionalities of these different types of
| | 00:11 | software are similar.
There are a lot of similarities.
| | 00:14 | In this section we're going to look at
the different components or the different
| | 00:17 | sections that you can
find in most audio software.
| | 00:20 | So we'll cover the transport, and the toolbar,
the Edit/Arrange window, the mixer, and the file list.
| | 00:25 | What I'm hoping is that if you get
to know these different components or
| | 00:28 | sections of software, you can open up
any piece of software and not feel like
| | 00:32 | you're completely lost.
| | 00:33 | You'll be able to look at different
things and say, okay, this is the transport
| | 00:37 | area, and ah, here's the mixer.
| | 00:38 | So we just want to highlight what
these different sections are and then
| | 00:42 | talk about what they do.
So let's start by looking at the Transport.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The transport| 00:00 | Okay, so we're back in the Pro Tools,
and the first thing I want to talk about
| | 00:05 | is the Transport section.
| | 00:06 | This is more or less the playback
control center of your audio software.
| | 00:11 | That's where you hit play and record,
things like rewind or set things to loop.
| | 00:16 | You can also do things like set the
Tempo or adjust the units of measure that
| | 00:19 | you'll see, and that the
grid system that we work on.
| | 00:25 | We'll choose Samples.
| | 00:27 | So if we go in and go ahead rewind
to the beginning, hit play, you'll see
| | 00:31 | that these count off.
We can change those on the fly.
| | 00:37 | It's Bars and Beats, or Minutes and Seconds.
| | 00:41 | It's pretty simple, pretty straight ahead.
If you've had a tape player ever in
| | 00:47 | your life, you know that,
that's what this can do.
| | 00:50 | It's modeled after the old tape
machine transports with really just
| | 00:53 | replay, rewind, record.
| | 00:55 | These have of a little bit more
functionality, you can set things like pre-roll
| | 00:59 | and post-roll, set punch in and out
points for overdubbing, and set the tempo
| | 01:04 | for your whole session, things like
that, the meter, different things.
| | 01:07 | Another thing that's interesting is you
can use MIDI control surfaces which will
| | 01:11 | show in the MIDI section to
actually control these buttons.
| | 01:14 | So you can have a little object on your
desk with these same kinds of icons on it.
| | 01:18 | And you can actually push your button to Start Play,
or Stop the Play, Record, and Rewind, et cetera.
| | 01:23 | The other thing that is convenient
with the transport is there are a lot of
| | 01:27 | keyboard shortcuts for most of
the software that you'll really find
| | 01:31 | yourself using most often.
| | 01:32 | For instance, in Pro Tools the
spacebar can be play or stop, and in a lot of
| | 01:36 | software you can actually assign
different hot keys to do different things.
| | 01:39 | So you can hit a key combination to
start recording, where they go into the loop
| | 01:43 | record, or to go to a certain marker.
| | 01:46 | And that's another thing that you might
find in the transport section is along a
| | 01:50 | linear Timeline you can
drop a little marker points.
| | 01:52 | And in some transports there will be
little icons or little numbers like 1,
| | 01:56 | 2, 3, 4, up here. We have them in the top bar.
It will take you to different locations.
| | 02:01 | So that's the Transport.
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| The toolbar| 00:00 | The next thing I want to talk about is
the toolbar, which you'll find in a lot
| | 00:05 | of audio software, and really in a lot
of software, it's pretty common thing.
| | 00:09 | So I don't expect its existence to
necessarily be disturbing or new to you, but
| | 00:13 | there are a couple of tools in most
audio software toolbars that are worth
| | 00:16 | checking out and learning about.
| | 00:17 | So I'm just going to go through a few,
the more common ones that maybe you
| | 00:21 | haven't see in another toolbars, like
let's say in the Microsoft Word toolbar.
| | 00:25 | You haven't seen the
Scrubber, which you wish you had.
| | 00:32 | So this let's you click on the
Scrubber icon and drag it across the audio,
| | 00:37 | forward or backwards, and the speed
you drag it basically scrubs that audio.
| | 00:41 | I'm just dragging my mouse back and forth.
| | 00:47 | You can do this for hours, doesn't
really serve a purpose, but it's very cool.
| | 00:51 | Now, that's great if you have a little
clicks or points that you think you've
| | 00:55 | heard, but you can't quite find, and
you want it really zero in on something in
| | 00:59 | a sound file, the scrubber
comes in really handy.
| | 01:01 | The most common tool probably is
the selector or the pointer tool.
| | 01:06 | And this is what you use to highlight
sections of audio to cut and paste these
| | 01:11 | sections, things like that.
| | 01:13 | It's a fairly common tool, and you'll
see some sort of--they might call it an
| | 01:16 | I-Beam or the Selector in different
programs, but you'll use this quite a bit to
| | 01:20 | navigate around the different audio files.
| | 01:22 | Let's zoom back in to
kind of our main thing here.
| | 01:26 | Then there is the Trimmer, which works
kind of similar to the selector except
| | 01:29 | it's designed to work on the ends of files.
| | 01:32 | So you can come here, and then if you
move to another--the opposite end--you
| | 01:37 | can just trim that end, which is real nice.
You can get in and get close to extend things.
| | 01:41 | So that's the Trimmer tool.
| | 01:43 | You'll usually see something like
the Grabber tool, or the Hand tool, or
| | 01:47 | something that's designed to help
you grab stuff and move it around.
| | 01:54 | Let's get that line back up, it could
be in deep--no, because we can do this, a
| | 02:04 | musical interlude for you.
(music playing)
| | 02:10 | Okay, one other tool worth knowing about
is the Pencil tool, which I have up here,
| | 02:16 | and with that you can go in
really, really tight on a waveform.
| | 02:20 | Let's zoom way in and pick this tool
and actually redraw your waveforms.
| | 02:27 | This is cool if you need to fix
little things or change big clips.
| | 02:31 | Now, you can't really draw out
digital distortion if you have really loud
| | 02:36 | things, but you can use this
kind of smooth certain things out.
| | 02:39 | It's convenient if you want to try and
make clean edits or just change little parts.
| | 02:45 | So those are the main tools you're
kind of going to come into contact with.
| | 02:49 | It'll be different from other pieces of
software, but again, you'll find these
| | 02:52 | in a lot of pieces of audio software.
| | 02:54 | It might have different icons or
different names, but that kind of
| | 02:57 | functionality is fairly common.
| | 02:58 | It's always great to learn the hot key
commands to switch from tool to tool so
| | 03:02 | that you can edit really efficiently.
| | 03:03 | One other thing is that most the tools
in the toolbars will have hot keys that
| | 03:07 | you can click on the keyboard to
select or move between different tools.
| | 03:10 | Learning these hot key commands will
really help you work faster when you're
| | 03:14 | doing your audio production.
| | 03:15 | Next, we'll take a look
at the Edit/Arrange window.
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| The Edit/Arrange window| 00:00 | Now let's look at the Edit/Arrange window,
which we've really been looking at all along.
| | 00:05 | It's this main area where the
Timeline and the audio waveforms are.
| | 00:09 | And basically, it's where you're going to
do most of your work if you're doing editing.
| | 00:13 | And it's also the great place for
visual cues in terms of doing recording,
| | 00:16 | setting up tracks, and
playing back and overdubbing.
| | 00:19 | So it's good to know the different pieces of
the puzzle in the Edit/Arrange window.
| | 00:23 | So as I've mentioned before, this
displays your waveform along a linear
| | 00:27 | Timeline from left to right.
| | 00:29 | You can see up here in the very top
of the Edit/Arrange window we have a
| | 00:32 | couple of various different units of measure,
we have Bars and Beats, Minute Second, Samples.
| | 00:37 | You can show or hide those different
things and you can set the Grid--these blue
| | 00:41 | lines represent the grid--to
different degrees of those things.
| | 00:46 | So right now we're at Bars and Beats.
| | 00:49 | If I get in, we can change it from 1 bar down
to a grid based on a quarter-note interval.
| | 00:57 | So you can do different things, and
then you can make edits along those grids,
| | 01:01 | we can snap to that grid,
the highlight selection.
| | 01:03 | If I go back to the bar, I'll be able
to highlight from bar to bar, snap to go.
| | 01:09 | You can also work in this space, not
necessarily in a snap to grid mode--we
| | 01:13 | won't get into that--but there are
different modes of kind of how you're able to
| | 01:17 | move the files around in the edit window.
| | 01:19 | The other thing you can do is
set markers along this top bar.
| | 01:22 | So if we're playing, and I hit a magic
key over here, I can drop a marker and
| | 01:28 | say that will be guitar hit1.
And there, sure enough, it shows me that marker.
| | 01:37 | Now, this is convenient if you're
working on long pieces of music or you want
| | 01:41 | to kind of note the different sections
or transitions from verse to chorus, or
| | 01:45 | where different people start speaking if
you're doing interviews or something like that.
| | 01:49 | So you can do these on the fly, like I
just did without stopping and setting it.
| | 01:53 | You just keep moving, but if you're working
with longer files, markers can be very helpful.
| | 01:57 | And then a lot of times you can click
on that marker and it will take you back
| | 02:01 | to that marker, or you can
set up some hotkey commands.
| | 02:04 | A lot of times if you have a numeric
keypad to the right of your keyboard, you
| | 02:08 | can actually assign those numbers,
like 1 through 5, to take you to marker
| | 02:12 | number 1, marker number 2,
marker number 3, et cetera.
| | 02:15 | So markers are something to know about
as they make navigating the arrangement
| | 02:19 | very convenient and can make
getting around more efficient.
| | 02:22 | As you may have already seen, the Edit window
is where a lot of the editing takes place.
| | 02:27 | The slicing and dicing, the cutting,
copying, and pasting, all these things can
| | 02:31 | take place here, I'll restore that.
| | 02:35 | We can also Create New Tracks, see
those here in the session, and go ahead and
| | 02:41 | move our audio files from
different track to track.
| | 02:44 | So you'll do a lot of arrangement here.
They can be big or small.
| | 02:48 | Here I have made the workspace a little
bit bigger, and you can see I have kind
| | 02:52 | of made some different versions of
this piece of music in these tracks.
| | 02:55 | Now, one thing to keep in mind is that
the edit window itself actually shows
| | 02:59 | tracks, it doesn't show channels,
and that's what the mixer shows.
| | 03:02 | So you'll refer to the things
you're looking at here as tracks.
| | 03:05 | You'll notice that there are a lot of the same
control over tracks as there is over channels.
| | 03:09 | For instance, we have a Mute button, a
Solo button, and a Record Arm button, or
| | 03:16 | we can also change the way we look at things.
We can change the height of the tracks.
| | 03:21 | We can decide if we want to look at the--
instead of taking the computer power
| | 03:24 | to draw that graphic, because every
graphic takes a little bit of processing
| | 03:28 | power, we can just look at it as a big block,
or we can look at the waveform or the volume.
| | 03:34 | This is a nice thing.
You can go in and actually change the volume.
| | 03:40 | And this line dictates the
volume being turned up and down.
| | 03:45 | Let me unmute that for you.
| | 03:50 | We'll make it a real extreme one for our
demonstration purposes. Down and back up.
| | 04:04 | So that's cool, you can--actually,
that's called automating volume control--but
| | 04:08 | anyway, you can look at what's in the
track in different ways based on what
| | 04:12 | you're trying to do with the track at that time.
| | 04:15 | You can also obviously zoom way in and
out, instead of different views of the
| | 04:18 | waveforms or the relationship of the tracks.
| | 04:21 | Because you're going to be spending
most of your time here in the Edit/Arrange
| | 04:25 | window, it's good to get to know the
different buttons and features and kind of
| | 04:29 | the different show and hide features.
| | 04:30 | A lot of times you can customize the
spaces so that it looks the way you want it
| | 04:34 | to, so that you can just focus
in on what you want to work with.
| | 04:38 | This is your main workspace
window, the Edit/Arrange window.
| | 04:39 | Next we'll take a look at the Mixer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The mixer| 00:01 | Okay, in this section we're going to
take a look at the mixer, and if you seen
| | 00:04 | the other movie in this title about
the mixer where we showed the hardware
| | 00:07 | mixer, you'll notice that there's
going to be a lot of similarities here.
| | 00:10 | And I'll try and point out some of those
similarities and then a few other differences.
| | 00:14 | As we've mentioned, the mixer is
essentially traffic control for all the signals
| | 00:18 | moving through your DAW.
| | 00:20 | And it contains channels where the
signals flow through these channels.
| | 00:23 | Let me open this window up a little
bit more, make sure we have all the
| | 00:27 | channels in the view.
| | 00:29 | So again, remember that a mixture
is one channel repeated many times.
| | 00:34 | So even though it looks like a lot
of gobbledygook and a lot of different
| | 00:38 | buttons and things to pay attention to,
| | 00:40 | once you're thinking about what
makes up one channel or one strip,
| | 00:44 | you know what a mixer does.
| | 00:46 | So a digital mixer and digital
software works really pretty similar.
| | 00:49 | We'll send a few tracks here and
take a look at what's going on.
| | 00:54 | Let's un-mute that, okay.
(music playing)
| | 00:58 | So we've got the meters.
| | 00:59 | Again it's good to think of
the mixer in three sections:
| | 01:02 | the Input section, the Channel Strip
section and then the Master section.
| | 01:07 | So let's take a minute and look
at the Input section a little bit.
| | 01:11 | So in our digital mixer we can click
and decide what inputs from our A-to-D or
| | 01:17 | digital audio interface we want to
use for the sound input for recording.
| | 01:21 | We can also pick things like bus, which
is a send from another channel, and we
| | 01:27 | can pick things like digital inputs, if we
had here would be our SB diff digital in.
| | 01:33 | It's not hooked up right now,
but you can pick other inputs.
| | 01:36 | So that's the Input section.
| | 01:38 | Another thing to keep in mind is
that there aren't really pre-amps built
| | 01:41 | into the mixer here,
| | 01:43 | so we can't really adjust the input
gain or the volume of the signal here the
| | 01:47 | way we can on a pre-amp.
| | 01:49 | So it's important to get that volume
and that signal level with your external
| | 01:53 | devices; in the digital mixer, we're
actually just going to decide how much of
| | 01:57 | the signal we get to hear back, while
the volume of the signal actually is part
| | 02:01 | of the digital audio file
that's on the hard drive.
| | 02:04 | So it's been recorded.
| | 02:05 | This isn't really where we add volume,
| | 02:07 | this is just where we decide how much
of the signal we're going to let pass
| | 02:10 | through the different channels.
| | 02:12 | So that's the Input section.
| | 02:13 | Now, let's take a look at
the actual channel strips.
| | 02:16 | So you'll notice that the channel
strips here in our software mixer look a
| | 02:20 | little bit different than
they did on the external mixer.
| | 02:22 | But there's also some similarities.
| | 02:25 | There's the fader, Mute and Solo
buttons, and then a Panning control.
| | 02:30 | Where it's a little bit different is that
instead of an EQ section we have plug-ins.
| | 02:34 | So think of this as kind of the plug-in
section, and instead of there being EQ
| | 02:40 | there all the time, we can decide, okay, we want
an EQ here in the channel strip. So we insert it.
| | 02:45 | We plug it in.
| | 02:47 | Here's an ICQ, and then we can go
through and pick different EQs.
| | 02:53 | So where this is different is that
we're not necessarily dealing with fixed
| | 02:57 | equalization and a fixed set of kind of
effects or things that we can use to
| | 03:02 | change the tonal character; we can plug in
different things into the channel as we need them.
| | 03:07 | And the reason that it was set up this
way is because to use these devices takes
| | 03:11 | a lot of processing power.
| | 03:12 | So it's more efficient to just
initiate them when you actually need them, as
| | 03:16 | opposed to having them there all the time.
| | 03:19 | We can also use things like reverb
plug-ins, which I've shown in some other
| | 03:24 | movies, and other things like compressors.
| | 03:28 | So that's kind of where the
EQ section would have been.
| | 03:31 | But really in our software mixer it's
the insert section, or the plug-in section.
| | 03:36 | Now finally, the Master section also
exists here, but you'll notice it's not
| | 03:40 | quite as present or as intimidating as
it is on other boards, and that's because
| | 03:44 | of a lot of those settings
are found in other places.
| | 03:47 | But we can assign each track an output.
| | 03:50 | Here we have a master fader, which
controls overall output of the whole session.
| | 03:56 | So we can bring down all the channels at once.
| | 03:58 | Right now all the channels are
feeding into our master fader.
| | 04:01 | But we can go to each channel and pick
a different output and send the signal
| | 04:07 | from that channel somewhere else.
| | 04:11 | So that's more or less the mixer.
| | 04:12 | One other really convenient thing you
can find in the mixers: you can decide what
| | 04:17 | you want to look at and
what you don't want to look at.
| | 04:19 | There's always a nice little thing for comments.
| | 04:21 | So if I want to type in "SM57 on a snare drum",
| | 04:28 | I can have that as a note, which is nice.
| | 04:30 | I can open it and go back and see what
kind of microphone I used on that track.
| | 04:33 | You can also name the track.
| | 04:36 | We'll call this snare.
| | 04:38 | So what's nice about a software mixer
is that you can customize it quite a bit.
| | 04:42 | But still, the three main sections and
thinking of it in those terms pays off a lot.
| | 04:46 | It's just that those things don't
necessarily exist in the same physical layout
| | 04:49 | as they do on a mixer.
| | 04:51 | But still, thinking of it in terms of
the three basic sections is the way to go.
| | 04:55 | The trick is that they don't all
necessarily exist in the same physical way that
| | 04:59 | they do on a hardware
mixer or an external mixer.
| | 05:02 | In the next movie, we'll
take a look at the file list.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The file list| 00:01 | Okay, the last thing I want to
talk about is the file region.
| | 00:04 | This becomes important because it's
basically kind of a way to find and locate
| | 00:08 | all the audio files you're dealing with.
| | 00:10 | You'll find that as you start to work
with sessions and make cuts and edits and
| | 00:13 | trims, you'll have a lot of
different little pieces of files.
| | 00:17 | What's happening when we actually
record something for the first time, or are
| | 00:20 | working with a piece of digital audio,
is that somewhere in the hard drive that
| | 00:24 | actual piece exists is a file.
| | 00:26 | Then these waveforms out in the Edit and
Arrange window, they actually represent
| | 00:31 | what's on that file, or part of that file.
| | 00:34 | So, if I go in and highlight a part of
this file, that's basically me saying, Hey!
| | 00:39 | Whatever this is, go to the hard
drive, find it and play it back for me.
| | 00:43 | (music playing)
| | 00:47 | So, it's gone to find a little bit of the bass.
| | 00:49 | So, visually, that's just a
representation of the whole bass file.
| | 00:53 | What happens is that as you start to cut
things or add things, they start to end
| | 00:57 | up over here in the file list.
| | 01:00 | So, it's important to be aware of the
file list, and use it to work efficiently
| | 01:04 | in terms of finding things, naming things.
| | 01:07 | What you can also do is grab things
from here, drag them out onto the
| | 01:12 | Edit/Arrange window. Or if you delete
them, just because they are not out here
| | 01:16 | in the Edit/Arrange window, you
can find them by name over here.
| | 01:19 | To give you a little example of
what I'm talking about, I've created a
| | 01:23 | file called B_Taco.
| | 01:25 | There is not really any sound in here,
but I'm going to go through and make a few cuts.
| | 01:28 | We can see it exists over
here in the file or region list.
| | 01:33 | So if I go ahead and delete it, delete
a little section, all of a sudden it
| | 01:37 | said, okay, now this
represents part one and part two.
| | 01:41 | It hasn't really changed the audio
file on the hard disk, but it has changed
| | 01:45 | these visual representations of
parts of the audio file on the hard disk.
| | 01:49 | So, as you keep going, it will keep
creating different little regions, so that
| | 01:54 | if you want to go and grab this and
repeat it, you can drag it out and repeat
| | 01:58 | it. Or if you get rid of those
altogether, and they're gone, you can still go
| | 02:03 | back and grab B_Taco-04 and
pull it out and have access to it.
| | 02:07 | So, the file list can get a little bit
messy, and one of the things to making
| | 02:10 | files work well is to try and name your
files from the very beginning. When that
| | 02:14 | first file is recorded or imported,
| | 02:17 | name them as accurately as possible,
so that if you know you're looking for
| | 02:21 | Ray's guitar part, you can go to
the file list and go down, find it
| | 02:25 | alphabetically under R for Ray's guitar
part, and pull that back in if at some
| | 02:29 | point you accidentally
deleted from the Edit/Arrange window.
| | 02:32 | So, you can think of this basically
as where you manage your files, or kind
| | 02:35 | of the filing cabinet.
| | 02:37 | It's not that strange a concept,
but it's good to be aware of just because the
| | 02:40 | number of different files that can
be created when you start to work with
| | 02:43 | digital audio, especially if you
get into multi-track situations.
| | 02:47 | So, that does it for the overview of the
different components of digital audio software.
| | 02:52 | Hopefully, by having an
understanding of what these different components
| | 02:54 | are, you'll be able to crack open any
piece of software and start to get to
| | 02:58 | work a little bit.
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|
|
13. Recording and PlaybackSetting up a session| 00:01 | Now, in this section, I want to
talk a little bit about recording.
| | 00:04 | We'll take a look at a few different
modes of recording in digital audio
| | 00:06 | software and some different monitoring modes.
| | 00:08 | But I do want to take a minute
and just kind of talk about how cool
| | 00:11 | recording actually is.
| | 00:12 | It's this ability to capture a moment
in time and be able to listen to it back
| | 00:17 | again at anytime, and then manipulate it.
| | 00:19 | So, it's pretty amazing!
| | 00:21 | I always think about all the music
that I'm really into and all the bands I
| | 00:23 | like, and I've only seen
maybe 10% of those bands live.
| | 00:28 | Everything else has been based on a recording.
| | 00:29 | If I think about all the kind of
historical speeches, or a lot of the
| | 00:34 | information I get to absorb,
it comes from recorded information.
| | 00:38 | So, thinking about recording in terms
of like making something, of making this
| | 00:42 | record of something that has
happened is pretty cool thing.
| | 00:45 | It's also a really important way to get
sound into your digital audio workstation.
| | 00:50 | So, we're going to set up a new session
and set up some of the parameters that go with that.
| | 00:54 | So, I'm going to go ahead and launch Pro Tools.
| | 00:56 | All right, so let's just go
ahead and start a new session.
| | 01:03 | We're going to have a few options here.
| | 01:05 | I'm going to title this "new session."
| | 01:08 | Then we have a few choices.
| | 01:09 | We have the file type for the session.
| | 01:11 | This is the file type that all of the
files we record and import and use will
| | 01:16 | have to be in to be part of this session.
| | 01:18 | I have choices like WAV,
AIFF, Sound Designer II.
| | 01:22 | I'm going to go with the WAV.
| | 01:24 | That's kind of broadcast WAV format is that BWF.
| | 01:28 | Then we have the sample rate, which
detects kind of the quality of the capture.
| | 01:33 | For this, I'm going to stick with 44.1.
| | 01:35 | If I was doing something that
wasn't an example, I would probably use 48.
| | 01:39 | If I had it hooked up to an audio
interface that was capable of higher sample
| | 01:43 | rates, you would see things like
96K and 192K and things like that.
| | 01:49 | So, that kind of determines
the quality of the capture.
| | 01:53 | Again, if you haven't seen the movie on
sample rate and bit depth, I encourage
| | 01:56 | you to go check those out.
| | 01:58 | Then we have the Bit Depth option.
| | 02:00 | I'm going to go ahead and select 24 bit
depth to get the maximum dynamic range
| | 02:04 | available for this piece
of hardware and software.
| | 02:07 | So, we'll go ahead and save that and launch.
| | 02:09 | The I/O settings, that will vary from
kind of from software to software, and so
| | 02:14 | I don't want to get into that.
| | 02:15 | It's not really that important, in
terms of what we're going to be showing.
| | 02:19 | So, here is a new session, and what I
want to do in this session is I want to
| | 02:23 | record a drum track, and then I'm going
to cut some voiceover over it, because
| | 02:27 | I'm making a little bumper
for my cool show coming up.
| | 02:30 | So, let's start by making a couple of tracks.
| | 02:32 | I'm going to just go with two mono tracks,
because this is going to end up on the Internet.
| | 02:38 | I don't really need the music, the
drum beat to be in stereo, I'm going to
| | 02:42 | create kind of a mono project.
| | 02:44 | So, I'm going to create
two mono tracks. Very cool!
| | 02:49 | So, I have my new tracks: input 1 and input 2.
| | 02:52 | I've already hooked up some devices to my
interface, so I know I can go in and name these.
| | 02:58 | I know that going into Audio number 2,
well, I know I'm going to start with
| | 03:04 | my drum track up here,
| | 03:06 | so I'm going to call this the drum--
| | 03:08 | let's call it "drums," to the point. And the
next channel, Audio 2, I'm going to call "voice."
| | 03:15 | All right! So, that's it.
| | 03:19 | We've got our session set up. Now we're
ready, in the next movie, to take a
| | 03:23 | look at getting the signal in and
setting the levels and making sure everything
| | 03:26 | is assigned and routed the way we want it to be.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assigning inputs and getting signals| 00:01 | Okay, so here we are in the
session that we just created.
| | 00:03 | Now I want to go ahead and send some
signal and make sure that all my inputs are
| | 00:07 | assigned, and get some levels in.
| | 00:09 | I'm going to actually try
and record my drum track first.
| | 00:11 | I have hooked up my drum
machine to my audio interface.
| | 00:15 | So, I'm going to go ahead and get that
signal sent, see if I've got some level,
| | 00:19 | and try and record the drum track.
| | 00:21 | But first, let me go ahead and clean
up the window here a little bit for
| | 00:23 | demonstration purposes.
| | 00:27 | I'm going to also open our Mix window,
and I'll actually slide this over here so
| | 00:33 | I can see both of them at once.
| | 00:34 | Sometimes, it's nice when you're
setting levels to see the whole picture.
| | 00:37 | I have my drum machine
hooked up to input number 1.
| | 00:42 | So I have to go in and assign
that input to input number 1.
| | 00:48 | The next thing I need to do to get
signal is record-enable the track, or hit the
| | 00:52 | magic red R, or in most software,
it's going to some sort of red button.
| | 00:56 | But red usually goes with recording,
because it's kind of--they used to
| | 01:00 | use red because it means a little bit
of danger, because you don't want to
| | 01:02 | record over something.
| | 01:04 | It used to untape it and then erase it
at the same time as you were recording.
| | 01:08 | So, record is red is danger, which is
good, because you don't want to record
| | 01:13 | over your best guitar take of all time
by accidentally leaving the thing armed.
| | 01:17 | So, before I arm it though, I'd like
to fade down here so that if there is
| | 01:21 | signal at that input, when I
arm it, I'll immediately hear it.
| | 01:25 | If it's a really loud signal, I
don't want to get blown out by it.
| | 01:28 | So, I always fade down first,
hit the Record Enable button.
| | 01:32 | So, now I'm going to go ahead
and get the drum machine playing.
| | 01:35 | I'm going to go ahead and crank up
the gain on input number 1 to get a
| | 01:43 | little bit more signal.
| | 01:44 | (music playing)
There we go!
| | 01:45 | I would probably try and turn it up,
make it a little bit hotter than that.
| | 01:52 | I want to try and get to the peak here.
| | 01:55 | So, that's about all I can give it.
| | 01:57 | I need to just give it a little bit more.
| | 02:00 | (drums playing)
| | 02:07 | That's good! We've got a peak in there.
| | 02:08 | That happens if you click out of that
to see if you're still getting them.
| | 02:10 | (drums playing)
Yeah, that's pretty good!
| | 02:15 | So, I'm pretty happy with that input
and I'm going to go ahead and record this.
| | 02:18 | So, I'm going to bring my cursor back to
the beginning, and I'm going to hit the
| | 02:24 | magic Record button. Notice because I
have a track armed, I get a little red
| | 02:28 | notification up here.
| | 02:29 | Get ready to record, hit the Record
button, and then play to start the action.
| | 02:34 | Then I will hit Play on the old machine here.
| | 02:37 | (drums playing)
Yeah, that's old-school.
| | 02:41 | That's my way.
| | 02:52 | It's just a little pattern I put together.
| | 02:54 | That's pretty good!
| | 02:55 | That should be plenty.
| | 02:56 | All right, and we'll kill the source.
| | 03:01 | All right! So, we've recorded the drums.
| | 03:07 | So, we've got our track.
| | 03:08 | It looks pretty good, labeled in there.
| | 03:10 | So, that's it for basic
recording. That's the story.
| | 03:13 | Next, we're going to look at
overdubbing the voiceover track, and then doing
| | 03:16 | a little punch-in.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Input modes| 00:01 | So now I want to record my voiceover
track and overdub it, but first we need to
| | 00:05 | talk about the Record
Input Monitor mode, or modes.
| | 00:09 | Basically, there are two.
| | 00:10 | There is one called Input Only,
and then there is another called Auto Input.
| | 00:14 | Now Input Only means that when we're
in Record mode, we're going to only hear
| | 00:18 | what's at that input. And let me go
ahead; I'm going to arm the voice track.
| | 00:22 | I'm going to bring this fader down.
| | 00:24 | I've got the level set, so we did
that before we started the movie.
| | 00:28 | So, we're good to go.
There you can see, there I am.
| | 00:31 | I exist in the meter as I
speak to you. Fabulous!
| | 00:35 | So, I'm going to bring this up a little bit,
and you're going to be able to hear me.
| | 00:39 | It's going to be a little
weird, but that's kind of cool.
| | 00:43 | In Input mode, we can always
only hear what's at the input.
| | 00:47 | So, in this case, we're always going
to hear my voice coming through the
| | 00:51 | microphone, whether we're recording, playing
back, or sitting still like we are right now.
| | 00:56 | Let me show you.
| | 00:57 | Let me make sure we're in
Input Only Monitoring mode.
| | 01:04 | We hit Play, check, I'm still there,
and we'll also be able to hear our drum beat.
| | 01:10 | I'm still there. So that's good!
| | 01:12 | Then if we go in and record that track,
I'm still there; you can still hear me.
| | 01:20 | Fabulous!
| | 01:23 | So that's Input Only mode.
| | 01:26 | Now, the other mode is called Auto Input mode.
| | 01:29 | We'll go up here and select that.
| | 01:33 | What that means is when we're sitting
still, like we are now, we'll hear what's
| | 01:37 | at the input. And when we're recording,
or in Record mode, we'll also hear
| | 01:42 | what's at the input.
| | 01:44 | But as soon as we start to play back,
we'll actually hear what's in the track.
| | 01:48 | So, if there is another track here and a
different voice track, we'll hear that back.
| | 01:53 | I'll actually record a little
something here in Auto Input mode to show you.
| | 02:00 | (Dave: This is Auto Input mode. Very exciting!)
So, that was easy.
| | 02:07 | We recorded and you could hear me,
but now when we go to play back, you'll
| | 02:10 | notice that I disappear from the mic.
| | 02:12 | Now, I'm talking in to my track like an
input, but when I hit Play, now I'm gone.
| | 02:18 | See, we hear what's already there.
| | 02:19 | It is very exciting!
| | 02:21 | So did you catch that?
| | 02:22 | We were listening to the playback
instead of the input of that track.
| | 02:26 | So, those are the two modes:
Input mode and Auto Input mode.
| | 02:31 | Now the reason this exists is because
Auto Input mode is really convenient
| | 02:34 | when you're doing things like punching
in and out recording, which I'll show
| | 02:37 | you in the next session, and
| | 02:38 | it's also convenient when you're taking
a lot of takes and you want to listen
| | 02:41 | back to what you just took without
going in and out of Record Arm mode.
| | 02:45 | So, I can do that, take a few
different times, and every time I do it, I can
| | 02:49 | just zero in on it,
(Dave: This is Auto Input mode.)
| | 02:53 | and give it a listen back.
| | 02:55 | The reason Input Monitoring is cool
is that sometimes you have a couple of
| | 02:58 | tracks laid down, and you want to
rehearse along with it; you want to sing along
| | 03:01 | to the track or play that solo over
the basic tracks, and you can pipe it in,
| | 03:07 | sit here at your computer, play
along, and actually hear the input.
| | 03:11 | Without actually recording it, you just
make it play back and you get to hear yourself.
| | 03:14 | That's where Input Only mode is really cool.
| | 03:17 | It's good to know about the differences
between Input Only and Auto Input mode
| | 03:20 | when you're recording.
| | 03:21 | You'll find it's useful to switch
between the two modes based on what type of
| | 03:25 | recoding you're doing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Overdubbing and punching| 00:01 | Okay, so now I want to overdub my
voiceover track, and overdubbing is the act of
| | 00:06 | recording a new track without
getting rid of the old tracks.
| | 00:10 | Now in most digital audio, with the
exception of probably some two-track
| | 00:13 | recorders, you are going to see that
overdubbing is possible, in Luke Bayes
| | 00:17 | stuff, in multitrack;
| | 00:19 | that's kind of the
essence of multitrack recording.
| | 00:22 | In addition to having all these
different tracks, you have independent
| | 00:24 | control over these different tracks,
and that's true of recording these tracks as well.
| | 00:29 | So overdubbing is what makes it possible
for one person to become a full band, or
| | 00:34 | for a band to cut it basic track
but then go back and record the vocal
| | 00:38 | separately. It's just that ability to
keep adding on and recording different
| | 00:42 | tracks that are separate and don't have
any damaging effect, or you don't have
| | 00:46 | to record over anything that
exists if you don't want to.
| | 00:49 | So let's go ahead and overdub my
voiceover track to go along with these drums,
| | 00:53 | and we'll get that going.
| | 00:54 | We have set the microphone up
and we have an input over here.
| | 00:57 | We will arm the track. We are in Auto
Input mode, just for your information,
| | 01:02 | which when we record this first track,
it won't make a difference because once
| | 01:05 | we go into record, you are
going to have to hear me.
| | 01:08 | That's just the way it is.
| | 01:10 | So let's go ahead and get ready and go
into record, and I'll slide over here a
| | 01:15 | little bit onto the microphone
input just a little bit more.
| | 01:18 | Yeah, right about here. Okay. I am nervous.
| | 01:24 | (drums playing)
| | 01:30 | Welcome to my incredible computer getaway.
| | 01:33 | This week we'll talk about the plenium 7s,
and their amazing, shiny, golden surfaces.
| | 01:45 | Okay, so I pretty much nailed that one.
| | 01:47 | It's a little quiet.
| | 01:48 | For demonstration purposes it will work fine.
| | 01:51 | Although there was, I think--let's
just say I think I didn't hit one of those
| | 01:56 | words quite on the money. Let's listen back.
| | 02:00 | (Dave: Welcome to my incredible computer
getaway. This week will talk about the plenium
| | 02:05 | 7s and their amazing, shiny, golden surfaces.)
| | 02:12 | I'm really big into computers, by the way.
| | 02:15 | So here we have got a little
problem with the plenium 7.
| | 02:15 | (Dave: we will talk about the plenium 7s.)
| | 02:18 | So I am going to try and
just re-record that part.
| | 02:24 | I am happy with everything
else that I recorded there.
| | 02:27 | I think it sounds pretty good.
| | 02:28 | So I am going to do what we call punch-in
recording, and that's exactly what it is.
| | 02:34 | We are going to punch in to record when
we get to hear where I have highlighted
| | 02:37 | it, and we are going to punch out
of record when we get to the end.
| | 02:42 | Now if I just hit record right now, it
will just record right over what's there;
| | 02:47 | but because I need a little bit of time
and I want to hear what I am saying so
| | 02:50 | that I can kind of speak along with my
line and then deliver it, I am going to
| | 02:55 | need to set some pre-roll and post-roll.
| | 02:57 | And do that in Pro Tools, I need to
go to see the Transport and set up my
| | 03:04 | pre- and post-roll.
| | 03:05 | And we are going to change this,
everything, over to minutes and seconds, and I am
| | 03:11 | going to go ahead and give myself a few seconds.
| | 03:13 | Let's say, let's try five seconds, see
if that's enough for me, and then we will
| | 03:19 | add a little post-roll of 3 seconds.
| | 03:21 | Sorry, five seconds.
| | 03:25 | And I am just going to play that
to show you what this looks like.
| | 03:29 | So the playhead starts before the highlight.
| | 03:32 | That's the pre-roll, this is where I
will record, and this will be the post-roll.
| | 03:40 | So let's go ahead and do it, and I
think I might take this without the drum
| | 03:44 | track behind there.
| | 03:45 | I could hear if I wanted to. We will
do it with the drum track for the first
| | 03:49 | take and see if that helps;
maybe it will improve my rhythm.
| | 03:52 | Here we go. I am going to arm our
record and hit play to start recording.
| | 04:00 | Welcome to my incredible computer getaway,
this week we'll look at the Pentium 7s.
| | 04:09 | Okay, so we recorded. Oh, I might have
been a little ahead of the game there.
| | 04:13 | I am going to take pre- and post-
roll off and just give it a listen.
| | 04:17 | (Dave: This week we'll look at the Pentium 7s.)
| | 04:21 | So that worked. I got in there.
| | 04:22 | It's not a perfect cut, but we might
be able to use a bit of the old--
| | 04:29 | (Dave This week, we'll talk about Pentium 7s
and their amazing, shiny, golden surfaces.)
| | 04:35 | For my podcast that would be good enough.
| | 04:38 | The point is we got to insert something
there. If you are doing something like
| | 04:42 | doing music and you've got the drummer
and he misses a couple hits--hits the
| | 04:45 | microphone with the drumstick or hits
a rim shot instead of hitting the snare
| | 04:49 | the way he wants to--you can
go in and punch-record that.
| | 04:52 | But if the singer gets through the
whole song and they did a great job, but they
| | 04:56 | missed a few notes, or they are flat in
one section, you can go in and punch that
| | 05:00 | section in, as opposed to having to
go back and re-record the whole thing.
| | 05:04 | So overdubbing and punching are two
really cool things about recording in the
| | 05:08 | digital world, and definitely are
useful in a lot of different applications.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Bouncing down| 00:01 | Okay, finally I want to go ahead and
show you what bouncing down looks like, and
| | 00:04 | that's the act of taking all your tracks.
| | 00:06 | In this case, we just have two,
but you might have a multitrack session, 24
| | 00:10 | tracks of music, six tracks for your
podcast with sound effects and stuff.
| | 00:14 | It's the act of taking all those tracks
and bouncing them down into one single
| | 00:19 | track, or one single audio file, and this
is what you will do to kind of get your
| | 00:24 | mix, or your sound, out of the
multitrack environment and into a mono or stereo
| | 00:28 | format that turns into MP3s or CDs and the like.
| | 00:33 | So let's just go ahead and take a look that.
| | 00:34 | I am going go ahead and
quickly clean a few things up here.
| | 00:39 | Put a little fade on there.
| | 00:42 | We don't need all that extra room.
We will just fade out when we get to that.
| | 00:47 | Fade this. Obviously I am not going to
put a lot of time--we will keep that,
| | 00:53 | because I think it's funny.
| | 00:54 | We are going to go ahead and
highlight the section we want to record--
| | 01:01 | in this case, it's this amount.
| | 01:02 | I could also do that with the selector and
just say, all right, let's take all that.
| | 01:07 | Then I am going to go ahead and tell
Pro Tools to go ahead and bounce this down.
| | 01:11 | In other software, you might find
there is something like bounce to track
| | 01:15 | or export it as a file.
| | 01:17 | I am going to bounce it and bounce it
to disk. Go ahead and select that option.
| | 01:23 | Then I'm also going to, say, decide
that I want to bring it back into the
| | 01:26 | session, because I want see what
happens when I bounce those two down.
| | 01:29 | So I am going to bounce it to a mono track.
| | 01:32 | We will keep it at 24 because that's
the resolution of our session, and import
| | 01:37 | to session after bounce.
| | 01:38 | So we will go ahead and bounce it.
| | 01:40 | I will have to save it somewhere.
I'm going to call it "computer_getaway."
| | 01:50 | That spelling is not important.
| | 01:55 | So it plays it back, and it's good.
| | 02:01 | (Dave: --to my incredible computer getaway.
This week we'll talk about Pentium 7s)
| | 02:05 | (Dave: and their amazing, shiny, golden surfaces.)
| | 02:14 | Okay, so I am going to slide this over
here and open up our file list, and we
| | 02:19 | can go in and look at computer_getaway.
| | 02:21 | I will create a new track.
| | 02:24 | It's mono. And just so we can see what's
going on here, we will make that bigger,
| | 02:29 | and I drag out my bounced track.
| | 02:31 | I'll put it over here, just for visual purposes.
| | 02:35 | So this now has my voice
track and the drum track combined.
| | 02:41 | (music playing)
(Dave: Welcome to my incredible computer getaway.)
| | 02:46 | (Dave: This week, we'll talk about Pentium 7s)
| | 02:50 | So that's bouncing down, you can also
use this to bounce out your stereo mixes
| | 02:56 | of music. And what I do a lot of times
is I bounce them out to a separate folder
| | 03:00 | and then I create a new session and
bring all my bounced tracks in, and do some
| | 03:05 | final tweaks in there.
| | 03:06 | But we will talk about that more in a
few of the other sections, like the mixing
| | 03:08 | section and the mastering section.
| | 03:11 | That's what bouncing down is.
| | 03:12 | So that's what bouncing does.
| | 03:14 | It's a way of combining multiple
tracks into either one mono track or one
| | 03:18 | stereo track, and you can use this
within your multitrack sessions or you can
| | 03:22 | use it to export files that you might turn into
MP3s or burn onto CDs to get it into that format.
| | 03:29 | Next, we'll take a look at editing and
some of the things you will do when you
| | 03:33 | are still in the multitrack mode,
and then of course we will talk a little bit
| | 03:36 | more about mixing and mastering, which
is where you will really start to use
| | 03:39 | some of your final bounced out
track or bounced out mix downs.
| | 03:43 | But first let's take a look at some editing.
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|
|
14. EditingWhat is editing?| 00:00 | In this chapter, we are going to
take a look at editing digital audio.
| | 00:03 | We will take a look at what it looks like,
what it sounds like, and what's possible.
| | 00:08 | Now, digital audio is really
exciting, in terms of editing.
| | 00:10 | It's really the most flexible
way to work with audio, ever.
| | 00:14 | It's both nonlinear, which means we can
take things and move them all around in time--
| | 00:18 | we are not stuck on a piece of tape
that's moving across a playhead--and it's
| | 00:21 | also nondestructive, which means that
we can take our original recorded file
| | 00:26 | and then manipulate copies or parts of that
file without destroying the initial recording.
| | 00:31 | This might sound like not that big a
deal if you are used to working with
| | 00:33 | computers. But if you are used to
working with tape machines and some of
| | 00:36 | the other recording devices, it's really a big
difference in terms of what we're able to do.
| | 00:41 | Now editing is typically working
with the visual representation of a
| | 00:45 | digital audio file,
| | 00:46 | so it has become much more of a visual
process than it ever was before. This is great.
| | 00:50 | It really lets us zoom in on the sound,
look at it, manipulate it in different
| | 00:54 | ways and with accuracy that we might
have been capable of before. Or at least
| | 00:59 | maybe some pros we are capable of it,
| | 01:01 | but now we can just look and see
what's going on and make some pretty great
| | 01:04 | cuts pretty fast, and really change
sounds and change the arrangement of the
| | 01:09 | sounds we're working with.
| | 01:10 | We can also change the
character of these sounds.
| | 01:12 | So I want to start by looking at what makes
this all possible, and that's the waveform.
| | 01:17 | So in the next movie, we'll
take a look at a waveform.
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| Waveforms| 00:01 | So in addition to just being really
visually cool representations of digital
| | 00:05 | audio and sound, waveforms are
actually really helpful in terms of looking at
| | 00:09 | sound and determining what kind of
sound we might be looking at, and getting
| | 00:13 | a sense of when it stops and when
it starts; they're really what makes
| | 00:16 | digital editing possible.
| | 00:17 | It's that visual queue that lets us do
almost everything we do with digital editing.
| | 00:22 | So waveforms represent two things: they
represent amplitude along the y axis--or
| | 00:27 | how tall they are--and then they
basically display time along the x axis.
| | 00:31 | So they show us amplitude over time.
| | 00:35 | Let's zoom in. Take a look.
| | 00:37 | So we can see what we call
the peaks and the valleys.
| | 00:40 | The peaks are going to be your louder
spiky points, and the valleys are these
| | 00:45 | quiet spots in between them.
| | 00:46 | Here are some nice valleys. And peaks
and valleys are kind of the terminology we
| | 00:50 | use when we are looking at waveforms.
| | 00:52 | So the peaks and valleys are helpful because
they can queue us into how loud something is,
| | 00:57 | but the other good thing is time along
the x axis, which lets us know how long
| | 01:01 | a sound lasts. And this is helpful because we
can quickly identify different kinds of sounds.
| | 01:06 | Like a handclap or a high hat hit, will
be a short quick transit, kind of like
| | 01:11 | the sound we see here.
| | 01:13 | Something longer, like a bowed cello or a
big bass note, will look something like this.
| | 01:19 | So it's easy to quickly identify what
type of sound you are looking at, and
| | 01:23 | this makes it possible to
edit a lot more efficiently.
| | 01:25 | You don't necessarily have to listen
back the whole time, and sometimes you
| | 01:28 | can go and simply just look and find what
you're looking for without having to listen back.
| | 01:33 | In the old days if we are rolling tape,
we would have to sit here for three
| | 01:35 | minutes to figure out that here is
where that huge gap is where the bass player
| | 01:39 | thing came unplugged.
| | 01:41 | But now I can just say, ah, there's
that huge gap, let's go in there and
| | 01:45 | re-record the bass part here.
| | 01:47 | I don't think that really happened there,
actually, because I was playing bass, and
| | 01:49 | it's a pretty hot track.
| | 01:50 | So let's just take a quick look and do
a little bit of listening, some peaks
| | 01:54 | sounds, see what we can identify here.
| | 01:55 | So we are in the drum track. I think
we probably have some sort of hi-hat
| | 02:00 | there, hi-hat there.
This will sound like a snare probably.
| | 02:05 | Yeah, so you can tell that there are
different kinds of sounds represented by
| | 02:10 | the different trails and the dynamics.
| | 02:11 | Let's check out the bass track. That's fun.
| | 02:15 | It's kind of fat bass synths, I think. Yeah.
(bass playing)
| | 02:23 | So the thing to remember is that the
waveform really is our best friend when
| | 02:26 | it comes to editing.
| | 02:27 | It's what makes us fast, efficient, and
possible, and it allows us to visually
| | 02:31 | see what's going on.
| | 02:33 | Now critical listening is still part of
the program, and you have to always use
| | 02:36 | your ears and trust your ears. But in
terms of getting around, seeing how things
| | 02:40 | are lining up and matched up,
the waveform just can't be beat.
| | 02:43 | It's great to be able to
work with audio in a visual way.
| | 02:47 | So now let's talk about some of the
different ways we actually work with audio,
| | 02:50 | and look at making some cuts and trims.
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| Making silent cuts and trims| 00:01 | Okay. In this section, I want to talk
about making silent trims and cuts.
| | 00:05 | When we talk about trimming or cutting,
we're talking about where we are
| | 00:08 | in the waveform.
| | 00:09 | A cut happens in the middle of the
waveform, and a trim happens in the beginning
| | 00:14 | or the end of the waveform.
| | 00:14 | So, a cut happens somewhere in here,
and a trim is when we're taking the heads
| | 00:19 | or tails off a waveform.
| | 00:21 | The trick to making a silent cut is to make
your edit right at the zero crossing point.
| | 00:26 | I'm going to zoom in really tight here
on this waveform, and just show you the
| | 00:35 | waveform against the zero crossing.
| | 00:37 | So, we can see, here is where the
waveform crosses this zero line. Here is where
| | 00:42 | it crosses it again.
| | 00:43 | When we make our edits, we want to make them
at that point, anywhere the zero crossing is.
| | 00:50 | So, I could do it here, here,
and that will produce a silent cut.
| | 00:55 | If we make our edit like this where
there is amplitude, especially if they are
| | 00:58 | on different sides of the zero line,
we'll get a little pop or click, or a zzz.
| | 01:03 | It's kind of a little nasty glitch sound.
| | 01:04 | We will call it a pop.
| | 01:06 | So, let's zoom back out and take a
look at a voiceover file I have here, and
| | 01:12 | see if we can do a little bit
of editing to change things.
| | 01:14 | First, let's start by kind of
tidying up the heads and tails.
| | 01:18 | So, we've got a lot of extra sound
here that kind of looks like there must
| | 01:20 | be some noise there. Let's take a look.
| | 01:22 | We'll solo that.
| | 01:23 | Yeah, so there we go.
| | 01:27 | Right off the bat, I know I don't want
to start with that, so I'm going to trim
| | 01:30 | the front, and I'm going
to get as close as I can.
| | 01:32 | Now, you can always zoom way in.
| | 01:34 | Zooming is a big part of editing.
| | 01:35 | So, we can see there is a little bit of
sound there, maybe a little bit of room
| | 01:40 | tone at the beginning of a breath.
| | 01:42 | Let's back it off and see
if it's really silent. Nope.
| | 01:44 | So that's just kind of the room tone.
| | 01:47 | But we can't really hear it,
look at the difference there.
| | 01:49 | (audio playing.)
| | 01:52 | So, we want to get close,
but we don't want to cut it off.
| | 01:55 | We want to give it a little bit of
time to come in, maybe a couple of hundred
| | 01:58 | samples, which is about the
equivalent of a hundredth of a second.
| | 02:00 | (Dave: The rumors about me in the--)
A little bit more.
| | 02:05 | (Dave: The rumors about me--)
| | 02:07 | Now let's go and make sure we're kind
of-- Now this is really kind of nitpicky
| | 02:10 | because it's the very beginning.
| | 02:12 | But still, it's moving a little bit.
| | 02:15 | There is some of that room noise. So, we want to
try and find a point where we're right on the line.
| | 02:18 | That's good enough, right there on the line.
| | 02:20 | So, theoretically, this will start out
without a pop, and we'll hear the voiceover.
| | 02:26 | (Dave: The rumors about me in
the press are completely inaccurate)
| | 02:31 | Works good!
| | 02:32 | Now, at the end, we notice we've got a
similar story: a breath and a little lip smack.
| | 02:37 | Let's get rid of that.
| | 02:42 | So, we'll just trim it up.
| | 02:43 | In the next section, I'll show you how
to kind of put a fade on there, which is
| | 02:47 | also a nice way to make fast trims
without having to worry about kind of your
| | 02:50 | heads and tails and making sure
that they're at the zero point.
| | 02:53 | But that's the next movie.
| | 02:55 | So, here is our file trimmed.
| | 02:57 | (Dave: The rumors about me in
the press are completely inaccurate.)
| | 03:01 | Not bad!
| | 03:03 | So now, let's try and
make in a cut in the middle.
| | 03:05 | (Dave: The rumors about me in
the press are completely inaccurate.)
| | 03:05 | I think we can probably go in and change
a little bit of what's being said here.
| | 03:13 | So, let's zero in.
| | 03:14 | (Dave: Completely inacc-- Completely inacc--)
So, let's see.
| | 03:25 | Let's go ahead and just try and
make a cut and get rid of that.
| | 03:28 | Let's see, something like this. I want to
try and--I want to take that in out, and
| | 03:34 | I'm going to go in a Shuffle mode,
which is when I delete this, what's there
| | 03:37 | is going to slide up. So, watch! Boom!
| | 03:39 | So, it's lit up, and I'm trying to make
him say accurate instead of inaccurate.
| | 03:44 | (Dave: The rumors about me in
the press are completely accurate.)
| | 03:48 | Well, that's not a good edit
because it doesn't flow well,
| | 03:51 | so we better smooth it out a little bit more.
| | 03:52 | So, we'll trim the edges.
| | 03:55 | (Dave: Accurate. Accurate)
So, we've got that.
| | 04:05 | (Dave: Are completely accurate.)
| | 04:07 | There is a little pop there.
| | 04:08 | Now, if I were to make a really lousy edit,
just for demonstration purposes, and go in
| | 04:15 | here, it would look something like this.
| | 04:19 | We're not really at the zero.
| | 04:22 | Now this should produce a pop that you
don't really want to have in your edit.
| | 04:29 | (Dave: --in the press are completely accurate.)
| | 04:31 | Yeah, hear the snap, the pop there?
(Dave: --in the press are completely accurate.)
| | 04:34 | Now, in addition to the timing not
being so great, that little pop is a mess,
| | 04:39 | and we have created it; it wasn't there.
| | 04:40 | It's because we have made an edit
that's taking place where we're not at the
| | 04:43 | zero crossing. But we can still get
this one to work. Let's see what we've got.
| | 04:47 | (Dave: Completely accurate.)
| | 04:50 | That's pretty good!
| | 04:51 | Let's zoom in and take a
look at about where we're at.
| | 04:57 | Make the cut here on the zero.
Bring this to the zero. And actually, since if
| | 05:06 | one waveform is on the way down, I like the
other one to kind of pick up on the way down,
| | 05:10 | so we'll zoom in a little bit,
give this a little bit more here.
| | 05:16 | We'll go like maybe right here where it's
on the way down, and we'll check it out.
| | 05:22 | (Dave: are completely accurate.)
| | 05:27 | So, that's a good edit. No pop. Timing is pretty good.
(Dave: The rumors about me in the press are completely accurate.)
| | 05:33 | So, that's a good edit!
| | 05:35 | Let me give you one more quick example
of a noisy pop and an edit, and we'll do
| | 05:40 | that here with our nice
bass track. Three notes.
| | 05:46 | (bass playing.)
| | 05:47 | Let's say I just want to--
the keyboard player played this last note a little
| | 05:51 | too long, and I want to
take some of that out of there.
| | 05:53 | So, I'm going to go in and say,
oh, we got to lose some of this.
| | 05:56 | I just go in randomly and say, yeah
we need what, this, like the four seconds.
| | 06:02 | We've got to take that out. We delete it.
| | 06:04 | Obviously, visually, we can see, this is
probably not going to be a clean silent trim.
| | 06:09 | Let's listen back.
| | 06:10 | (bass playing.)
Oh yeah, quite a pop!
| | 06:15 | But we can still make this
work, and we get nice and close.
| | 06:20 | Zoom in, find this one on the way down,
hitting the zero crossing, and find this
| | 06:26 | one on the way up. Sorry,
continuing on the way down.
| | 06:32 | Zoom back, zoom out a little bit
there, and see if our short note works.
| | 06:36 | (bass playing.)
Nice!
| | 06:38 | A nice silent trim!
| | 06:39 | So, making your cuts across the zero
line is the secret to making a good
| | 06:44 | silent trim or cut.
| | 06:46 | Again, we're doing this inside of
Pro Tools, but this kind of editing and
| | 06:49 | editing for silent trims along the zero
line will work in any waveform editor.
| | 06:54 | That's a general principle.
| | 06:56 | So, you can apply this to any
software you're working with.
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| Fades and automation| 00:00 | So now it's time to talk a
little bit about fades and automation.
| | 00:04 | Fades are a great thing that we can
use to kind of clean up our files.
| | 00:08 | They come in really handy all the time,
but if you're doing a lot of editing,
| | 00:12 | they can kind of be a lifesaver if
| | 00:14 | some edits are hard to make without a
pop or a click, and they can also just be
| | 00:17 | a really efficient way to make quick edits.
| | 00:19 | So, I'm going to go in and show you a
couple of edits using fades, instead of
| | 00:23 | zeroing in on that zero crossing, but kind
of doing it quick and dirty and using fades.
| | 00:28 | You can add fades at the head or the tail
of a file, and you can do that via the file.
| | 00:33 | You can actually draw a fade to a
region, or you can draw it in the track.
| | 00:38 | We're going to start by drawing it to
the region, and then later when we're
| | 00:41 | talking about automation, I'll show you
drawing volume changes actually in the
| | 00:45 | track, or in the channel.
| | 00:46 | Again, we're in Pro Tools, but a lot of
the same functionality will be available
| | 00:50 | in a lot of different audio software.
| | 00:53 | So, I'm going to go in here and trim up
my bass track a little bit, and take a
| | 00:58 | listen so you know what we're working with.
| | 01:00 | (bass playing)
| | 01:00 | I'm just going to draw a fade.
| | 01:04 | I get this little tool that I
can draw there to fade that in.
| | 01:09 | We'll make it long, so it's obvious.
| | 01:11 | (bass playing)
| | 01:14 | Pretty straight ahead. You can move
these around, put different curves on them.
| | 01:18 | (bass playing)
| | 01:20 | So, that's just a kind of a
straight fade at the head of a sound.
| | 01:24 | We can also go in here and put one
at the end, so it fades in and out,
| | 01:28 | and adjust those fades.
| | 01:29 | (bass playing)
| | 01:33 | Pretty simple, pretty cool!
| | 01:35 | It works great when you're ending long
files, and you just instead of going in
| | 01:39 | there and finding the zero, you just
give yourself a little bit of breath.
| | 01:42 | If you know another file is going to
pick up, like a voice file or like this
| | 01:45 | file, I can go in there and do this and do this.
| | 01:48 | That way you know you have silence
here, but you know that your in and out
| | 01:53 | points of the edit will be silent,
because this fade is turning the volume up
| | 01:57 | from zero. And this, of course, represents
kind of bringing up the volume to the full level.
| | 02:03 | But the other kind of fade that you
can do which is really interesting is the
| | 02:06 | crossfade, which actually
fades one region into another.
| | 02:11 | So I am going to go ahead and take
these fades back, just make them real tight.
| | 02:15 | Now, let's say I wanted to go in
and just shorten this bass note.
| | 02:22 | Now, I could go in and find where
the waveform crosses the 0 axis.
| | 02:27 | But what I'm going to do is just drop
that out, because I know I want it to
| | 02:30 | be at certain length,
| | 02:31 | bring them pretty close together,
and then use the Fade tool. In Pro Tools I
| | 02:37 | can drag like this.
| | 02:38 | See how I now have two fades.
| | 02:40 | What that's going to do is trim that
outgoing region down, and the incoming
| | 02:45 | region up at the same time.
| | 02:47 | So, we kind of have a blend or a crossfade.
| | 02:49 | So, you notice there is no pop or click,
we have a little bit of a dip there in
| | 02:52 | (bass playing)
| | 02:59 | terms of the volume.
| | 03:00 | So, it's not the best edit.
| | 03:02 | This is a bigger one, so that
you can see what's going on.
| | 03:03 | Let's get rid of the fade. Do another one.
| | 03:06 | You can make a really, really short one,
and we'll zoom in actually, so you can see that.
| | 03:11 | Notice this is actually a pretty bad cut,
and that still was pop-less, so that's cool.
| | 03:16 | So, here is this really short
crossfade. We'll zoom back there, and take a listen of that.
| | 03:24 | (bass playing)
| | 03:26 | So, now we've got a little bump.
| | 03:27 | It's actually there.
| | 03:28 | (bass playing)
| | 03:32 | But the other thing you can do with a
crossfade, and this is important and
| | 03:36 | definitely worth knowing about, is
that this kind of crossfade is a linear
| | 03:40 | crossfade, in that the volumes are
coming and going at the same time.
| | 03:44 | So, actually when you get to here, you're at a
low point volume, and you can kind of hear that.
| | 03:47 | When we play it back, you can
hear that the volume level dips.
| | 03:50 | (bass playing)
| | 03:50 | But I can go in and adjust
the curves of that crossfade.
| | 03:56 | Something called Equal Power
basically means that the rate it goes out and
| | 04:00 | the rate it comes in kind of becomes a wash,
so that you maintain a consistent volume.
| | 04:06 | This is great for making quick edits on the fly.
| | 04:08 | (bass playing)
| | 04:10 | There's till a little waver in there but--
| | 04:12 | (bass playing)
| | 04:14 | --it's a lot better than the linear fade.
| | 04:16 | So, those are things you can do.
| | 04:17 | If you're working with a lot of
voiceover files and trying to push things
| | 04:20 | closer together, or replace things,
crossfades can be a quick way to make a lot
| | 04:25 | of seamless or seemingly seamless edits.
| | 04:28 | They can also be great if you're
doing sound design or trying to make sound
| | 04:31 | effects. You can use a fade to
make a sound appear quickly or slowly.
| | 04:36 | You can take something, like if you have
an explosion, if you fade that in slowly
| | 04:40 | instead of having that big impact at
the beginning, you can actually make it
| | 04:43 | sound kind of like a
bonfire or something like that.
| | 04:46 | So, same deal with taking a sound and
making it fade out quickly or slowly; you
| | 04:51 | can really have an effect
on the character of a sound.
| | 04:54 | This is also great with music at the end,
when you get to the end of a song or
| | 04:57 | end of a track, and you want things
to kind of fade out or end: applying
| | 05:01 | different separate fades to different
tracks can be really convenient, as opposed
| | 05:04 | to having to just fade down the whole mix.
| | 05:07 | So, it's something to keep in mind
no matter what you're working on.
| | 05:10 | That's talking about drawing fades
actually on the file, but let's talk a
| | 05:13 | little bit about automation.
| | 05:15 | We'll start by doing some
volume fades, but with automation.
| | 05:18 | To do this, we'll keep using our bass
track, but I'm going to change what we're
| | 05:22 | looking at to show volume.
| | 05:24 | This line represents volume.
| | 05:25 | I'm also going to open up the Mix window.
| | 05:27 | Here I'm going to hot-key into our Mix
window, and we'll kind of reshape this
| | 05:33 | so that you can see it.
| | 05:34 | I put it over here and move this over here.
| | 05:38 | Now I want you to see
what's going to happen over here.
| | 05:42 | So, I can go in, and this line
basically corresponds to where this fader is.
| | 05:46 | We don't have any automation there yet,
so when I move it, nothing happens.
| | 05:50 | But if I go in and draw some
automation here, which is really just
| | 05:54 | clicking and dragging.
| | 05:55 | Here is no volume, here is up, you can
see when I click on there, I get a little
| | 05:59 | number that shows me where I am volume-wise.
| | 06:00 | So, I can go in and draw a fade-in.
| | 06:04 | Here we'll make this face
in all the way from zero.
| | 06:08 | And it will do, it will fade in.
| | 06:10 | Now what's cool is if you look over
here while we're doing that, you can see
| | 06:14 | that the fader actually follows that animation.
| | 06:16 | Here, I will pull that down so when
we're here--it's all the way down, and
| | 06:21 | then if you watch that, as we play, it comes up.
| | 06:26 | So that's kind of how automation corresponds
from the Edit window into the Mixing window.
| | 06:31 | You can automate other things, like pan.
I want to get rid of that so we can just
| | 06:35 | focus on the next one.
| | 06:37 | We can go into pan, which is left/right,
which sonically you might not be able
| | 06:42 | to hear this because you might not be
set up to enjoy the thrill of stereo.
| | 06:47 | But in a nutshell, I'm going to use this
automation to pan the audio to the left
| | 06:51 | side, and then to the right side.
| | 06:53 | You'll be able to watch the pan
control over here in Pro Tools move.
| | 06:58 | (bass playing)
| | 07:03 | So, that's pan automation. Pretty cool!
| | 07:06 | When you're doing mixes, things like
automation are a great help, because you
| | 07:09 | can set these things up and know that
they're going to be the way that you set them.
| | 07:13 | So, if you want to mute a certain
section, you don't have to always remember
| | 07:16 | as you're playing back to hit the
Mute button;, you can automate it, and it
| | 07:19 | will happen every time.
| | 07:21 | Then if you don't like the way it
works, you can go back and just make
| | 07:24 | slight adjustments.
| | 07:25 | So, let's look at the last thing you
can automate here, which is the Mute
| | 07:29 | button, and we'll do some fast mutes here.
| | 07:34 | Let's do another one, so
we get kind of cool effect.
| | 07:40 | Well, might not be that cool,
but we're going to do it.
| | 07:47 | Again, you can watch the Mute button here.
| | 07:50 | It will probably light up here and
over here when it goes into mute.
| | 07:53 | (bass playing)
| | 07:58 | So, we've just automated mute, which
is also another really cool thing you
| | 08:01 | can use in terms of kind of mixing, and in
editing. If you're working with voiceover,
| | 08:06 | I would probably go in and take out all
the sounds. But if you want, you could
| | 08:09 | go in and just draw mutes or
volume fades for different purposes.
| | 08:13 | If you're putting a music bed behind
a voiceover track, you can automate
| | 08:18 | that it fades in and then maybe automate it
muting out at the right time, or fading out.
| | 08:24 | So, that's it for fades and automation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
15. Plug-insWhat are plug-ins?| 00:01 | So, in this chapter, the Plug-ins
chapter, we're going to look at a lot of
| | 00:04 | these different plug-ins, what they do,
all the different kind of cool effects
| | 00:08 | you can use, and the kind of tools
they can provide to help you improve and
| | 00:11 | change your sounds.
| | 00:12 | But first let's just
kind of recap what they are.
| | 00:14 | They're mini-applications that
extend the capabilities of your software.
| | 00:18 | They can come bundled with the
software that you have, or you can buy
| | 00:22 | third-party or additional plug-in software.
| | 00:25 | What they do is they handle a wide
variety of DSP, or digital signal processing,
| | 00:29 | tasks, things like reverb, delay, or things
like changing the volume of digital files.
| | 00:35 | There is a pretty wide range of
different plug-ins out there, and some of them
| | 00:39 | have pretty straightforward names, and some of
them have pretty interesting and comical names.
| | 00:44 | A lot of them are also modeled after
hardware units that actually exist and may
| | 00:48 | have existed for 20 or 30 years.
| | 00:50 | A lot of the really cool compressors
from the 1960s and 1970s now, you can get
| | 00:55 | basically software models of those as plug-ins.
| | 00:58 | So, I always think it's helpful to kind
of categorize your plug-ins, or think of
| | 01:02 | them in terms of
categories, based on what they do.
| | 01:05 | A few kind of common categories are EQ,
or equalization, which deals with kind of
| | 01:11 | adjusting frequency or tonal information.
| | 01:13 | Dynamics, which deals with the dynamic
range or the volume of different sounds,
| | 01:18 | There will be things like compressors.
| | 01:20 | We'll get into all of these one
at a time in the next few movies.
| | 01:23 | Also, pitch shifting, which you can
use to change the pitch of things,
| | 01:27 | obviously, and also to correct
things and auto-tune things if you have
| | 01:30 | instruments that are out of tune.
| | 01:32 | Reverb & delay add reflections and
echoes and kind of simulate things that
| | 01:36 | happen in the real world to kind of
make sounds smoother, but they can also be
| | 01:39 | used for great special effects.
| | 01:42 | Modulation effects, things like phaser
and flanger and chorus, that can be used
| | 01:46 | to add a little bit of texture or
variation to a sound that might be static, or to
| | 01:50 | kind of give it a little bit more body.
| | 01:52 | Then finally, there are sound tools,
which will help you do things like
| | 01:55 | change the volume of a sound file or reduce
some of the noise involved in that sound file.
| | 02:00 | These are really almost kind of like utilities.
| | 02:02 | They can offer a lot of assistance in
terms of kind of getting the best sound
| | 02:05 | possible, and enhancing your sound files.
| | 02:08 | So, in the coming movies, we'll go
through all of these kind of one at a time,
| | 02:11 | but before we do that, I should point
out that there's really two different ways,
| | 02:14 | or kind of two different places where
plug-ins will appear in digital audio
| | 02:18 | software, and two ways to
apply them to your sound files.
| | 02:22 | The first is in real time, which is
when you use them as an insert in your
| | 02:26 | mixing board, and you hit Play and
the sound file is actually routed
| | 02:29 | through that plug-in.
| | 02:31 | The other is at the file level, where
you're not in playback mode, but you're
| | 02:34 | just simply highlighting or selecting
a file and then applying the plug-in,
| | 02:38 | kind of like a filter.
| | 02:40 | This tends to render it, as opposed to
the real-time, which affects what you hear
| | 02:44 | but not how you actually
change the digital file.
| | 02:47 | When you work at the file level,
you're actually making a new copy with the
| | 02:50 | effect built in to that new file.
| | 02:53 | In the next movie, we'll take a look
at using plug-ins in real time, or as
| | 02:56 | inserts, and also
applying them at the file level.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using plug-ins| 00:01 | Okay, so here we are in our plug-ins
session, and we're going to talk about
| | 00:04 | the two different ways you can apply plug-ins,
or the places that they exist in the DAW.
| | 00:09 | First, we'll look at how you insert
one into a track in the mixer, and then
| | 00:12 | we'll look at using them at the
file level as a rendered effect.
| | 00:16 | So, it's pretty simple!
| | 00:17 | You go into your mixer, in the
Insert section, and insert a plug-in.
| | 00:22 | We'll go ahead and insert
some reverb here on this channel.
| | 00:27 | That will bring up an interface for setting
the parameters and settings of the effect.
| | 00:31 | Now, you don't hear anything when you
just open it up; you have to actually play
| | 00:35 | something, so we'll go ahead and
listen to a drumbeat through some reverb.
| | 00:41 | (drums playing)
| | 00:50 | So, that's a plug-in in real time.
| | 00:52 | We're playing that file through the effect.
| | 00:55 | I can set up, in this situation, up
to five of these plug-ins in a row.
| | 00:58 | We'll use an EQ here, and then I will
change the tonality of what's going on there.
| | 01:05 | (drums playing)
| | 01:08 | Cut out some of that snare drum.
| | 01:09 | (drums playing)
| | 01:12 | So, that's using a plug-in
in real time as an insert.
| | 01:16 | When you're mixing, this is really nice
because you can go in and you can set it
| | 01:20 | up, make some adjustments, and then
go back and change those adjustments as
| | 01:24 | you're kind of making decisions
about how different sounds sound together.
| | 01:28 | Sometimes, you initially put a little
bit too much or too little effect on, or
| | 01:31 | it's not EQed quite right.
| | 01:33 | You can load it in and then go ahead
and go back and change it as you want to.
| | 01:37 | But the trick with real-time plug-ins
is that they're processor-intensive.
| | 01:40 | They are little applications that are
actually running while everything else is running.
| | 01:45 | They have to do a lot of math to
figure out how to make reverb sound good.
| | 01:50 | So, they can put quite a strain on your
processor, and you'll find that as you
| | 01:54 | start to include plug-ins, when you
get to a point where you have a lot of
| | 01:57 | them, you might notice some performance
issues. Or at some point, you might not
| | 02:00 | be able to insert or initiate any more plug-
ins, because your processor can't handle it.
| | 02:06 | So when this happens, it's good to
look at applying effects at the file level,
| | 02:09 | or to kind of render the
effect to your sound file.
| | 02:12 | Now, this can be done in a destructive
or non-destructive way, meaning that you
| | 02:15 | can actually alter the original sound
file itself on the hard drive. Or if you
| | 02:20 | do it in a non-destructive way, you
apply the filter or the effect, and it
| | 02:25 | actually creates a new copy of that sound.
| | 02:27 | I encourage you to work
nondestructively as much as possible, so that way you
| | 02:31 | always have your
original recording still intact.
| | 02:34 | So, let's go ahead and apply some effects.
| | 02:36 | We'll select a file.
| | 02:37 | Let's just select a drumbeat again.
| | 02:40 | In Pro Tools, they have what they call
the AudioSuite, which is where we have
| | 02:43 | similar dropdown menu like
we did in the Insert channel
| | 02:47 | over here that shows you the
different plug-ins by category.
| | 02:53 | Here we can grab something.
| | 02:54 | We'll grab a D-Verb again.
| | 02:57 | It's the same effect,
but when I play back the sound --
| | 02:59 | Well, we have it here.
| | 03:04 | When I play back the sound, there is no reverb.
| | 03:06 | (drums playing)
| | 03:07 | We're just going through.
| | 03:09 | In order to apply it here, I select
the sound file and then I--in Pro Tools
| | 03:14 | it's called Preview, but now we are
just playing that sound file on its own
| | 03:21 | through this effect.
| | 03:22 | We are listening back to that alone.
| | 03:23 | Notice the playhead is not moving.
| | 03:25 | We're just checking out that sound file.
| | 03:27 | So, we can make some settings, set up
some reverb, put maybe some play down there.
| | 03:34 | (drums playing)
| | 03:38 | We can put a bypass here to
see what the difference is.
| | 03:41 | That's the original unaffected sound.
| | 03:44 | Here is our affected sound.
| | 03:47 | So, I think that sounds pretty good!
| | 03:48 | So, I can hit Process now, and this
sound file, the drumbeat, just had
| | 03:55 | that Reverb added to it.
| | 03:56 | You can see, actually, it kind of
throws in a little tighter there, D-Verb to
| | 04:00 | let you know that we did that.
| | 04:01 | So, we can listen back, and now I'm
going to take these out just so it's really
| | 04:04 | clear that we're not using the D-Verb
as an insert, but that that reverb now is
| | 04:10 | built into this file.
| | 04:11 | (drums playing)
| | 04:18 | So, that's applying an effect and,
of course, we can undo it. Apple+Z --
| | 04:21 | (drums playing)
And go back.
| | 04:27 | So, applying effects at the file level
can be very useful because, one, it will
| | 04:31 | free up some of your processor to do
other things, and also, if you know that
| | 04:35 | there is a setting that you want to
have on a certain sound, you can actually
| | 04:38 | really commit that setting
or that effect to that sound.
| | 04:42 | You'll see that actually there is
quite a few things that fall in the sound
| | 04:44 | tools category that really only exist
as a file-level plug-in, and you can't
| | 04:48 | plug them in as a real-time insert.
| | 04:51 | The other thing I want to talk about
quickly in this section that you'll see in
| | 04:54 | a lot of plug-ins are a
few words: wet, dry, and mix.
| | 04:59 | These refer to the amount of effect
being applied to a signal, or to a sound.
| | 05:04 | Dry implies that there is not
much effect or no effect applied.
| | 05:08 | Wet implies that there is a lot of
effect, but it's a sliding scale.
| | 05:13 | Mix generally refers to the
balance between wet and dry.
| | 05:17 | So here we'll preview again.
| | 05:18 | (drums playing)
| | 05:21 | And we'll go to zero mix, or
completely dry with no effect on it.
| | 05:27 | Then we can go to completely wet.
| | 05:32 | That means we're getting all affected signal.
| | 05:36 | In the middle, we're hearing half of
the signal or so without any effect on it,
| | 05:44 | mixed with half of the signal with effect on it.
| | 05:50 | So, this is good to know. You'll see the Mix option
in pretty much every plug-in you work with, especially
| | 05:56 | if it has an effect like a reverb or delay.
| | 05:59 | So, it's good to know about wet, dry and mix.
| | 06:02 | Now, let's go take a look at
some of these different categories of
| | 06:09 | plug-ins individually.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| EQs| 00:01 | All right, so let's start by
taking a look at the EQ plug-in family.
| | 00:04 | And this allows you to affect
equalization, or cut and boost different
| | 00:08 | frequencies of a sound.
| | 00:10 | Now there's basically
two kinds of EQs out there.
| | 00:12 | There's a graphic EQ and a parametric EQ.
| | 00:16 | I want to start by looking at a
graphic EQ. And to do this we'll actually use
| | 00:19 | iTunes, which comes with a nice
big visual graphic EQ attached with.
| | 00:24 | As you can see, it gives you different
frequencies along a frequency range, and
| | 00:28 | we can drag these faders up and
down to add or cut that frequency.
| | 00:34 | And in the center we're having no effect;
| | 00:35 | the sound is just flowing through.
| | 00:38 | This comes with some nice
fixed curves built into it.
| | 00:41 | There's flat, and then based on what you
want to use, you can change all these to
| | 00:45 | get different sounds.
| | 00:46 | So let's go ahead and feed this a
little bit of music and just take a listen to
| | 00:50 | what happens when we play with equalization.
| | 00:52 | I'm going to fade this down and then bring
it up, so that we are okay in the volume.
| | 01:00 | (drums playing)
| | 01:04 | So we have got our EQ on, and I can go
through and drag and swap different EQs
| | 01:12 | to get a different sound.
| | 01:15 | Down here we have the low-end EQs
on the left, the lower frequencies.
| | 01:20 | So I can take the bass way
out and crank up the Treble.
| | 01:26 | (drums playing)
| | 01:27 | That's kind of nasty right there. Yeah.
| | 01:31 | So this is equalization.
| | 01:33 | I'll go back and set that to
flat, and here are some nice curves.
| | 01:36 | You can see you can get quite a bit
of different tonality out of this.
| | 01:43 | (drums playing)
| | 01:48 | So now it sounds like classical. Not bad.
| | 01:49 | I always like to do a smiley face.
| | 01:52 | So now we'll go back to flat
setting here and we will pause the music.
| | 01:55 | Now the thing to notice about the
graphic EQ, and kind of what we'll notice
| | 02:00 | makes it different from the parametric EQ, is
that you're working with fixed frequencies here.
| | 02:05 | I can slide the 32Hz
frequency down 12 DB or up 12 DB.
| | 02:12 | And that's about it.
| | 02:13 | I can't move 40Hz if I want to.
| | 02:16 | I have to go to 64 or 32.
| | 02:19 | So these fixed intervals, or the
different frequencies that you can work with, is
| | 02:22 | really the primary
characteristic of a graphic EQ.
| | 02:26 | Next, we'll open up a parametric EQ, and
we'll see that we can actually pick any
| | 02:30 | frequency we want to work with.
| | 02:32 | Let's check one out, and for
that we'll go in to Pro Tools.
| | 02:35 | Okay, so here we are in our Pro Tools session.
| | 02:42 | We have got some tracks loaded.
| | 02:43 | I want to go ahead and load up an EQ
on one of these tracks, and I think I'm
| | 02:47 | going to go and work with
the snare track for this.
| | 02:51 | This is from a session we did a while ago.
| | 02:53 | Let's pick a three-band parametric EQ.
| | 02:59 | So first let's just take a look at this
and see how it differs from the graphic EQ.
| | 03:07 | We have frequency across the bottom and the
amount we can boost or cut to left, the DB.
| | 03:12 | Well then we have kind of these three
different notches or points that we can grab.
| | 03:17 | Right now, they're all in a flat situation.
| | 03:19 | You can see when I click on them, they come on.
| | 03:21 | I can drag these up and down on
these frequencies, but I can drag them
| | 03:25 | anywhere in the frequency.
| | 03:27 | See, the frequency here changes
for this one point, and that's nice,
| | 03:32 | that continuous frequency selection,
that ability to pick any frequency and not
| | 03:38 | be restricted by the frequencies
that the graphic EQ works with.
| | 03:42 | The other thing that's different, as
you'll notice, it's not just up or down, but
| | 03:45 | there is actually kind of this arc
that represents how we're affecting the
| | 03:48 | frequencies around the center point.
| | 03:51 | That's referred to as the bandwidth or the queue.
| | 03:53 | So if I had to adjust the queue and
make it bigger, the bigger the number, the
| | 03:58 | narrower the bandwidth.
| | 03:59 | That's the trick with queue.
| | 04:01 | So if I just want to hear at 88Hz.
| | 04:04 | If I just want to really boost 88Hz, I
can go in and make that queue really tight.
| | 04:08 | If I want to boost lots of frequencies
around 88hZ, so I bring them all up
| | 04:13 | together to get kind of a more
rounded bass, I can make the queue smaller.
| | 04:19 | This queue will go down to 0, I
guess, or 1. Pretty small here. It's .5.
| | 04:26 | So that's the big
difference between the parametric EQ.
| | 04:28 | Let's feed a little signal and just
play with this a little bit to get an idea
| | 04:31 | of what we can do with it.
| | 04:32 | I'm going to turn that off. I want to
turn them all off so that we don't get
| | 04:36 | blown out by those when we play our track.
| | 04:39 | All right, so we're going to
listen to the snare beat here.
| | 04:44 | I'll queue it up a little bit.
| | 04:49 | Just the snare track, nothing too exciting.
| | 04:54 | But I can use a parametric EQ to go in
and really pinpoint certain frequencies.
| | 05:02 | And it's great when working with EQ
| | 05:05 | to kind of, I call this search and
destroy method, where you find the sounds
| | 05:09 | that you don't like, or the tonal character
of a certain sound, then you actually cut it.
| | 05:13 | So I didn't--you notice right here
(drums playing)
| | 05:21 | it takes on kind of a boxy
sound there. Pretty thunky.
| | 05:24 | So I'm actually going to cut that a little bit.
| | 05:26 | I'm going to come over here on the
high end and increase the brightness a
| | 05:30 | little bit. Let's see.
(drums playing)
| | 05:31 | Then if I want a little bit of thump,
I can throw that in there, but really
| | 05:38 | --you want snares to have some bottom,
but they don't really occupy that much low end.
| | 05:42 | So you don't want to crank it way up.
| | 05:43 | So the other thing I can do is pick
different filter shapes for these.
| | 05:50 | Now you'll have to learn kind of the
difference between low shelf and high
| | 05:53 | shelf and low pass.
| | 05:54 | They are pretty simple.
| | 05:55 | I encourage you to just take some time
with it, and you'll see. But luckily we
| | 05:58 | can go ahead and adjust these
and visually see what they do.
| | 06:04 | That's a shelf.
| | 06:07 | A shelf means that from the point
beyond the point, if it's a low shelf,
| | 06:11 | everything to the left is affected equally.
| | 06:16 | So we're turning everything down by 12.
| | 06:19 | Now if you want to switch to a high pass,
aka a low cut, we're actually cutting
| | 06:25 | off frequencies here. I'm going to move that over.
See, I can slide this up, and we're just killing
| | 06:30 | all that low end we're seeing.
| | 06:32 | Goodnight Irene, we don't want to hear you.
| | 06:39 | So that's the advantage of a
parametric EQ over a graphic EQ.
| | 06:43 | You can pinpoint frequencies a lot more,
| | 06:46 | work with them a little bit more specifically.
| | 06:48 | EQ is a really
indispensable plug-in and DSP tool.
| | 06:52 | So I really encourage that you to get
to know all the different features and
| | 06:55 | options that your EQ plug-in has.
| | 06:58 | Being able to work with EQ effectively
can have a huge effect on the sound and
| | 07:01 | quality of your projects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Dynamics pt. 1: Compressors, limiters, expanders, and gates| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at plug-
ins that deal with dynamics;
| | 00:03 | that means plug-ins that
affect the dynamic range of a sound.
| | 00:07 | Now, these effects work kind of based on
the relationship of a sound to a threshold.
| | 00:12 | A threshold is a certain level of
volume that you set that once the sound
| | 00:17 | interacts with it, the Dynamics plug-in
is going to do something to that sound.
| | 00:21 | There are basically two kinds of
effects in the dynamics processing world.
| | 00:24 | There are those that care about any
sound that goes above the threshold, and
| | 00:28 | then there are those that care about
what sounds don't make it up to the
| | 00:31 | threshold, or live below the threshold.
| | 00:33 | So, let's start by taking a look at
those that care about the sounds that go
| | 00:37 | above the threshold.
| | 00:39 | These are known as compressors or limiters.
| | 00:42 | So, a compressor and a
limiter are kind of the same animal;
| | 00:44 | they are just different degrees of effect.
| | 00:47 | We'll start by kind of talking about
the compressor, and then show you that the
| | 00:50 | limiter is really the same thing,
just with one setting slightly different.
| | 00:54 | So, in this graph, I'm representing
sounds, volume levels, like in your meters,
| | 01:00 | and I've set a threshold here,
and I've decided that this is the threshold.
| | 01:05 | So, when a sound stays below that
threshold, we're not going to have any effect.
| | 01:10 | In all these little two-bar graphs, I
have the initial sound, and then this
| | 01:13 | represents what's actually happening,
what they compressor does to that sound.
| | 01:17 | So, if a sound doesn't hit the threshold,
if it's not loud enough, it gets left
| | 01:21 | alone, and it sounds the way it sounds.
| | 01:24 | If a sound goes beyond the threshold,
then what the compressor does is it
| | 01:28 | actually compresses that sound,
the volume of that sound, back down.
| | 01:32 | It does it according to a
ratio, which I've got up here.
| | 01:36 | In this situation, we have a 1:1 ratio.
| | 01:39 | So, for every one DB--let's say these
lines are different one DB, two DB, three DB--for
| | 01:44 | every one DB we go above the threshold,
the compressor is going to turn that
| | 01:48 | sound down by one DB.
| | 01:51 | So we have a 1:1 ratio.
| | 01:54 | In this instance, we have a 2:1,
and our sound has gone above at 4 DB.
| | 01:59 | As a result, we're going to push that
down two, which means for every two DB it
| | 02:04 | goes above the threshold, push it down by one.
| | 02:07 | That's your 2:1 ratio.
| | 02:10 | Now, this is really helpful for keeping
sounds obviously at a kind of consistent volume.
| | 02:15 | Anything that goes above that threshold,
we want to bring it kind of back closer
| | 02:19 | to our threshold, because that's
the volume we want to keep things at.
| | 02:22 | This is really useful if you're
working on something like a voiceover where
| | 02:24 | there is lots of loud transients.
| | 02:27 | You kind of want to make everything
about the same volume, so that when other
| | 02:29 | people listen back to it, they don't
have to strain to hear quiet parts, and
| | 02:32 | then there are loud parts.
| | 02:34 | There's a way of kind of leveling things off.
| | 02:36 | Now the limiter is basically
the extreme version of that.
| | 02:39 | It does what it's called.
| | 02:40 | It limits the sound.
| | 02:42 | So, when you set the threshold with a
limiter, it doesn't matter how much louder
| | 02:46 | that sound is than the threshold,
you're always going to get that sound.
| | 02:49 | Now this seems like, well,
why wouldn't we always use that?
| | 02:52 | But the problem is that the way dynamics work
is that you're really turning down the volume.
| | 02:55 | It's like if you can imagine sitting
there and turning a volume knob really fast.
| | 03:00 | You know what that sounds like, that
there's an unevenness, their volume changes,
| | 03:03 | and to the human ear we can hear that.
| | 03:05 | So, a limiter actually, a lot of times
when it's used, sounds kind of unnatural,
| | 03:09 | because we know that there is some
forceful dynamic changes going on there.
| | 03:13 | We use a compressor because it's a
little bit more of a natural-sounding
| | 03:16 | effect, but you'll use both
of them in audio quite a bit.
| | 03:19 | We'll show you a few examples,
and I'll show a couple examples in this movie.
| | 03:23 | Next let's look at an
image for the expander, or gate.
| | 03:27 | These are the Dynamics plug-ins that are
concerned about the sounds below the threshold.
| | 03:32 | Again, we've got the same sort of setup:
a threshold, volume, and sounds coming up.
| | 03:37 | But this time, we're interested
in sounds below the threshold.
| | 03:41 | Any sound that doesn't make it up to
the threshold basically doesn't qualify.
| | 03:45 | If you can't make it to the
threshold, we don't care about you, and we
| | 03:49 | don't want to hear you.
| | 03:50 | So, we assign a ratio to turn things
down that are below that threshold.
| | 03:55 | So, in this case, we've got a sound
that's not quite loud enough. We've pushed
| | 03:58 | that sound back down.
| | 04:00 | Now, this is useful if you have a
track where someone is speaking, but in
| | 04:04 | between when they're speaking, there is
a little bit of background noise that's
| | 04:07 | kind of quite, but you
wish it was a lot quieter.
| | 04:09 | This can be useful in terms of when
the person starts to speak, if we set the
| | 04:13 | threshold so that their voice just breaks
the threshold, we'll always hear them speak.
| | 04:18 | But then when they're done, we'll have
the volume of the rest of the background
| | 04:21 | noise pushed back down.
| | 04:23 | So, it allows us to separate the volume
difference between what we want to hear
| | 04:28 | and what we don't want to hear.
| | 04:30 | A gate, kind of like the way the
limiter is the extreme version of the
| | 04:33 | compressor, the gate is kind of
the extreme version of the expander.
| | 04:38 | It's basically an open-and-shut deal.
| | 04:40 | It's like a garage door:
either you can pull in or you can't.
| | 04:44 | There's no, well, if you make it,
we'll give you a little bit.
| | 04:46 | We've set the threshold, and any sound
that doesn't make it over that threshold
| | 04:52 | is squashed, and we don't hear it at all.
| | 04:55 | So, anything that doesn't make it
up to our threshold, we never hear.
| | 04:58 | We'll show you an example of this.
| | 04:59 | It's great for using this on things
like drums, or things where you want kind of
| | 05:03 | a real fast open-and-close situation.
| | 05:05 | I should also mention that we're
looking at expanders as downward expanders.
| | 05:12 | But there is also a way commonly to
set an expander to work as an upward
| | 05:15 | expander in which sounds above the
threshold are actually turned up.
| | 05:18 | As opposed to turning down the quiet
sounds and moving the noise down, we're
| | 05:22 | taking what we want here, like the
voiceover, and making it even louder.
| | 05:26 | But generally, assuming that you've set
your recording levels well and gotten a
| | 05:29 | full signal, you'll probably be using
a downward expander most of the time.
| | 05:33 | Now, let's go back into Pro Tools and
open a few of these up, and take a look at
| | 05:37 | how they actually work with sound files.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Dynamics pt 2: Applying dynamic effects| 00:01 | Now in the last movie, we looked at the
different kinds of dynamics processors
| | 00:04 | that are available as plug-ins, and
how they affect sound and show you a few
| | 00:08 | practical applications.
| | 00:10 | We will add a compressor to a voiceover, and
then we will also play a gate to a kick-drum track.
| | 00:15 | So let's go ahead and start by selecting
our voiceover track and kind of zooming
| | 00:19 | in and giving it a good listen.
| | 00:20 | I am going to go ahead and let that be
a little bit bigger, so we can see it.
| | 00:26 | And now we are going to apply a
compressor at the file level, so we will bring
| | 00:31 | it in from the AudioSuite, as opposed
to using as a real-time, and we are going
| | 00:36 | to go with the Renaissance
compressor from the Waves family.
| | 00:39 | We can see we've got an input
over here and the output over here.
| | 00:43 | I've got that voiceover
selected, I'll let it play.
| | 00:50 | (Female speaker: Welcome to lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday January 19th, 2006.)
| | 00:57 | So we can see where the sound's coming
over here, and this is the output and this
| | 01:01 | is the magic threshold.
| | 01:02 | So I am going to play that again and
adjust my threshold based on the level of
| | 01:06 | the incoming signal.
| | 01:07 | (Female speaker: Welcome to lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday January 19th, 2006.)
| | 01:13 | So now we have a good visual of the
volumes above the threshold and below
| | 01:13 | the threshold.
| | 01:18 | Now, I am going to use this to kind of
squash the top end. If we look at the
| | 01:23 | waveform, we can see we have
some peaks and then some quiet parts.
| | 01:28 | And I kind of basically I want to take
these louder parts and make them a little
| | 01:31 | bit quieter so that I can turn the whole
volume of this track up and get as much
| | 01:35 | signal out to the listener as possible.
| | 01:37 | So, let's go back and preview.
| | 01:39 | Now, I'll set the ratio.
| | 01:39 | (Female speaker: Welcome to lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday January 19th, 2006.)
| | 01:47 | I will set my attack so that--your
attack refers to how fast the effect takes
| | 01:53 | place, and the release is how fast it
stops taking place, or when it stops
| | 01:58 | applying the effect. If you have a
longer release, it's kind of a slower gradual
| | 02:01 | off, if it's a fast release,
it's kind of an on/off, on/off.
| | 02:05 | And a lot of times you need to have a
kind of slow attack and kind of a slow
| | 02:09 | release, so that you don't get a weird
sound effect. You want to try to avoid
| | 02:13 | that sound effect being turned
up and turned down really quick.
| | 02:15 | I am also going to go ahead over here
and turn up our output gain, so that we
| | 02:24 | get a good visual of what's happening.
| | 02:26 | So let's take a look at those, and now
I will go ahead, and actually I am going
| | 02:30 | to increase my ratio a little bit here.
I want to kind of really squash this.
| | 02:32 | (Female speaker: Welcome to lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday January 19th, 2006. Oops)
| | 02:41 | All right, so we will process it,
and see what happens to our waveform.
| | 02:46 | So, see, now we have got a little bit
more body on everything, and that's because
| | 02:50 | we increase the gain after we compress things.
| | 02:54 | (Female Speaker: for Friday January 19th, 2006.)
| | 02:58 | Here I will undo it, so we can take
a look at the difference. See how
| | 03:01 | our low point's here.
| | 03:02 | We increased the gain of the whole track.
| | 03:04 | Now, if I apply this effect without any
gain, we will just see the higher piece
| | 03:10 | go down, so we will add it again.
| | 03:12 | So it made our whole track a lot quieter,
but you can see there is not as much of
| | 03:17 | a difference between the
peaks and the quiet parts.
| | 03:19 | Female Speaker: .com video training
podcast for Friday January 19th, 2006.)
| | 03:26 | So now I can go in and select this and
turn the volume of the whole channel up,
| | 03:31 | which I won't do, but that's what you
would do. You can either set the gain
| | 03:34 | here, or you can just set the
compression and then apply another plug-in to
| | 03:38 | increase the gain back up to the maximum level.
| | 03:40 | So you get a lot more of the
voice signal and fewer of these peaks.
| | 03:43 | Now, let's take a look
applying a gate to a kick-drum track.
| | 03:47 | I will switch around here and
change my view a little bit for you.
| | 03:52 | So here is our kick-drum track, we will
zoom back out and zoom in. I am going to
| | 03:58 | highlight a little section here.
| | 04:06 | And we will go ahead and give this a listen.
| | 04:07 | I don't know if you can hear that,
but I can hear the rim shot right now of the
| | 04:19 | snare in between there, and there
we can hear the snare being hit.
| | 04:26 | So that's all picked up from a drum
microphone that was on the bass drum.
| | 04:30 | What I want to do is use a gate to
try and get rid of the sounds in between
| | 04:34 | the bass drum hits.
| | 04:36 | So over in my insert--and
we will do this in real time--
| | 04:38 | I am going to load up a gate, and we will
send the signal through and take a look
| | 04:42 | and do some settings.
| | 04:44 | I am actually going to go back to our
factory defaults, so everything is zero,
| | 04:49 | bypass it, and send it.
| | 04:53 | (drum playing)
| | 05:00 | So here we have the full
signal without any gating effect on.
| | 05:05 | And we see that on the top all that we
can see is the reduction, or how much
| | 05:10 | quieter we are going to make things
that don't make it to the threshold.
| | 05:16 | So let's go ahead and drag the
threshold up, which now is very low, so
| | 05:19 | everything is getting through.
| | 05:21 | There we go. So right around 38, we are
starting to see that things are making
| | 05:25 | it to the threshold, and
we are turning things down.
| | 05:27 | But we can still hear that drum a
little bit, the snare drum that is.
| | 05:34 | (drums playing)
So, now we just hear the kick-drum more or less.
| | 05:41 | Every time it comes up, because it's
the loudest thing in the track, everything
| | 05:45 | it hits that threshold, we are saying,
hey, let's hear you, we are opening the
| | 05:49 | gate, and we want to hear you.
| | 05:50 | But everything else that doesn't make
it, we are just saying, no, the gate is
| | 05:54 | closed, there is no volume on this
track unless you are at least this loud.
| | 05:58 | So, here is our threshold.
| | 06:00 | Let me stop that for a second.
| | 06:05 | So this is a great tool to be able
to use if you are doing things,
| | 06:07 | especially with drum sets where you
have a room mic and then individual mics
| | 06:10 | and you want to really isolate that
sound and then go in and apply some EQ.
| | 06:14 | If you want to apply something to kind
of make that kick-drum boomy or brighter
| | 06:17 | or some EQ, you don't necessarily want
that EQ to also get onto the snare drum
| | 06:21 | that's bled into, or is also part of,
that track that the microphone picked up.
| | 06:26 | So a gate is a great way to isolate a
specific sound and then apply effects to it.
| | 06:31 | You could also use this with voices if
you have extended periods of time where
| | 06:34 | there isn't speaking.
| | 06:35 | A gate should be applied to voices
with a fair amount of caution, and you can
| | 06:39 | come with effects that are a
little bit unnatural or jarring.
| | 06:42 | So, try it, play with it, but in the
end, trust your ears. If it's sounds a
| | 06:46 | little awkward, you might want to use
fades and actually go in and do a lot of
| | 06:49 | editing and take out those periods of noise.
| | 06:53 | So that's a nice look at a few different
ways to use dynamics processing as plug-ins.
| | 06:57 | Next, we will take a look at
what you can do with pitch shifting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Pitch shifting| 00:00 | In this movie, we're going to take a
look at pitch shifting, which, as the name
| | 00:04 | implies, is a plug-in or effect that
lets you change the pitch of the sound.
| | 00:08 | Now these can be great for creating
cool special effects and scary monster
| | 00:11 | voices, or they can also be really
useful for kind of correcting the pitch of
| | 00:15 | instruments or voices that
are slightly out of tune.
| | 00:18 | They can come in really handy for
a lot of different applications.
| | 00:21 | So let's go ahead and take a look at
applying a pitch shift to--we'll set in
| | 00:24 | on our voiceover track here again.
| | 00:26 | That's a nice place to get
an example of pitch shifting.
| | 00:31 | Again, we'll work with
this one on the file level.
| | 00:35 | We'll grab it from the
AudioSuite: good old Pitch Shift.
| | 00:39 | So if I play my track back--
| | 00:43 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006)
| | 00:50 | It sounds the way it always sounds.
Good old pitch.
| | 00:52 | But now I can go up and
adjust the pitch of it.
| | 00:58 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com
video training podcast for Friday, January)
| | 01:01 | That's right, Alvin. Or I can lower it.
| | 01:05 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January)
| | 01:09 | Oh yeah, I'm tuning in to that one.
| | 01:14 | So anyway, pitch shift is pretty cool.
| | 01:16 | It's pretty simple.
| | 01:17 | You have a big control kind of,
they call it Coarse, but it's basically
| | 01:21 | half steps on a scale.
| | 01:22 | So if I want to go up a whole step, I
can go up to my note.
| | 01:28 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th)
| | 01:34 | So you can use this to manipulate
sounds and effects, make scary things happen.
| | 01:37 | You can also use it, like I said, to correct
instruments that are slightly out of pitch.
| | 01:42 | Now one thing that's possible in the
digital world that's not out in the analog
| | 01:45 | world is the ability to adjust
pitch without affecting the time.
| | 01:49 | It used to be that we've had to speed up
the tape or slow it down to get these effects.
| | 01:53 | Inside this plug-in, as I play this back,
you're actually hearing that things are
| | 01:56 | speeding up and slowing down.
| | 01:58 | That's because we're in preview mode.
| | 02:00 | But if I actually want to go
ahead and render this, let's see.
| | 02:03 | You'll find that actually if I decide to use
time correction, it'll maintain the same time.
| | 02:09 | So let's do a quick listen back here.
| | 02:10 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the
lynda.com video training podcast)
| | 02:14 | That's a little hot.
| | 02:15 | Let's just go up a few.
| | 02:16 | So here is the original sound.
| | 02:18 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006)
| | 02:24 | Here it is with the pitch.
| | 02:26 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video training)
| | 02:27 | It's a little bit faster.
| | 02:29 | So let's process it. Give it a listen.
| | 02:34 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th)
| | 02:39 | So you can see that it actually
changes the pitch, but it maintains that
| | 02:43 | original timing of the sound file.
| | 02:45 | This is pretty incredible.
| | 02:47 | Now it's hard to apply
pitch to huge, long tracks.
| | 02:49 | It's a lot easier to apply it to
smaller increments to get better results.
| | 02:53 | So a lot of times you can get
kind of artifacts or some things.
| | 02:56 | It's easy to apply pitch and get
some artifacts that you might not want.
| | 02:59 | So it's helpful to use it sparingly or
to focus in on specific things, and work
| | 03:04 | piece by piece as needed.
| | 03:06 | But ultimately, this is really cool.
| | 03:09 | Let's do one more example, just because
it's fun, and actually pitch shift her down.
| | 03:13 | I'm going to change this.
| | 03:14 | Here we can choose, if the processor
wants to think more about the rhythm of the
| | 03:18 | sound it's changing the pitch of,
or the sound quality of the sound.
| | 03:22 | Since this isn't a drum track, I'm going to
say let's pay attention to the sound of it.
| | 03:27 | If the rhythm gets a little off,
that's okay. So let's see.
| | 03:30 | Here is the original. That's the original.
(Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video training)
| | 03:33 | (Female Speaker: podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006.)
| | 03:38 | Okay, and now here is the effect we're going to add.
| | 03:40 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video tr--)
Now let's do it.
| | 03:46 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006)
| | 03:54 | Pretty cool! Pretty crazy!
| | 03:57 | Let me show you one more
things since we're in here,
| | 04:00 | just because it's fun to see what
is possible. I'm going to undo that.
| | 04:05 | We're going to go ahead on this track,
and actually use a real-time plug-in for
| | 04:09 | pitch shift that I think you will enjoy.
I won't lie to you.
| | 04:12 | I am not a master of pitch
shifting, but I do tend to play with it.
| | 04:18 | So this allows me to kind of
pitch-shift the voice to three different voices.
| | 04:23 | We'll just send some signal through
and see what happens.
| | 04:26 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video training
podcast for Friday, January 19th. Oops. January 19th, 2007)
| | 04:37 | Freaky! All right, and we can change
these different assortments.
| | 04:43 | So I'm going to go in.
| | 04:45 | We'll make it Free. I can change this.
| | 04:47 | So I use different--up a 6th or a 5th, and you see
we are kind of moving the stuff. Actually, I'll drag that.
| | 04:53 | We'll just make something really, really
good-sounding, I think.
| | 04:56 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th.)
| | 05:02 | I will do whatever you say. Amazing!
| | 05:07 | If you're thinking about trying to do
some brainwashing, I suggest looking into
| | 05:11 | a good pitch shifter.
| | 05:12 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006)
| | 05:21 | Okay, so I think that about does
it for talking about pitch shifting.
| | 05:24 | The point is that you can use it to
make corrections to things that aren't
| | 05:28 | perfectly pitched, little passages
where the singer gets a little off or a
| | 05:32 | little flat, or you can use
it to make scary, scary stuff.
| | 05:36 | But the point is you can use it as a plug-
in in real time or as a file-level plug-in.
| | 05:41 | Again, we're working in Pro Tools,
but whatever program you're working in,
| | 05:45 | you'll probably have a Pitch Shift
option or be able to buy a third-party
| | 05:48 | plug-in that will work there for you.
| | 05:50 | There is actually plug-ins that are
designed specifically just to do auto-tuning.
| | 05:53 | They don't necessarily call
themselves a pitch shifter.
| | 05:55 | They refer themselves as more
of a tune correction plug-in.
| | 05:59 | They'll be mad if I say
they're ultimately pitch shifters,
| | 06:02 | but if you think of them in
this category, you're okay.
| | 06:05 | A lot of same features and
functionality we found in most pitch-shifting
| | 06:09 | plug-ins and applications.
| | 06:10 | Next, we'll scope out reverb.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reverb| 00:02 | Reverb is probably a one of the more
important effects you can use in your audio
| | 00:05 | production and music creation and mixing.
| | 00:08 | Reverb is actually a natural effect that
happens in the world all around us all the time.
| | 00:13 | Basically, it's the reflections that
are produced by a sound event and make it
| | 00:18 | seem like that sound is going on.
| | 00:19 | They kind of add a tail or
decay to a sound you hear.
| | 00:23 | If you've ever clapped your hands in a
big church or a cement parking garage,
| | 00:27 | you've heard a very long reverb.
| | 00:29 | If you've ever sung in a bathroom
with a lot of tile, you've also taken
| | 00:32 | advantage of these reflections.
| | 00:34 | You sound a little better singing in
the shower because that reflection
| | 00:37 | actually makes your voice seem like
it's bigger and goes on farther, and a little
| | 00:41 | bit smoother, because of all
these different reflections.
| | 00:45 | So a reverb plug-in is trying to
recreate the effect of the reverb that
| | 00:49 | happens in the real world.
| | 00:51 | We want to recreate that because it
tends to make things more listenable.
| | 00:54 | When we hear things without any reverb,
they can sound a little unnatural.
| | 00:58 | Reverbs are also important because it
allows us to locate what kind of room a
| | 01:02 | sound is in and where it might be in that room.
| | 01:05 | We can tell if those footsteps walking
across the floor are in a big gymnasium,
| | 01:10 | or if they're in a small room.
| | 01:11 | It also makes a lot of music more listenable.
| | 01:14 | That's one of the big things
when you go to big concert halls and
| | 01:17 | symphonic concert halls,
| | 01:19 | a lot of time and money goes into
figuring out how to make those orchestra halls
| | 01:22 | have the great reverb quality to them.
| | 01:25 | So reverb's very important in
terms of making music palatable, kind of
| | 01:29 | listenable, smoothing things out,
and making it sound a little bit bigger
| | 01:31 | and better than it is.
| | 01:33 | But also it makes things
seem natural to us as well.
| | 01:36 | So let's take a look at
using reverb for those purposes.
| | 01:40 | But also, now the reverb is a
processing option, we can use it for lots of
| | 01:44 | effects that really you wouldn't find
out there in the world but are really
| | 01:48 | cool and great for adding to what we're doing.
| | 01:50 | So we're going to go ahead and start
by putting some reverb on a nice drum
| | 01:53 | track, just messing around with
it a little bit to see what kind of
| | 01:56 | different effects we can get.
| | 01:57 | So I'm going to go ahead,
and we'll use the old drumbeat here.
| | 02:03 | We'll solo that, insert our friend D-Verb.
| | 02:11 | Most software that you work with will
probably come with some sort of reverb
| | 02:15 | option right off the bat.
| | 02:17 | Sometimes, it'll just be file-level.
| | 02:19 | It might not be a plug-in.
| | 02:20 | But there is a ton of really nice ones
out there that you can buy as kind of
| | 02:25 | third-party plug-ins.
| | 02:26 | Having a quality reverb plug-in goes
a long, long way in terms of making
| | 02:31 | your mixes sound better.
| | 02:32 | They're very processor intensive,
because it has to calculate and simulate tons
| | 02:36 | of little reflections
and reproduce them pretty accurately.
| | 02:39 | So there is a lot of thinking
that goes into reproducing reverb.
| | 02:44 | So we have the reverb plug-in open.
| | 02:47 | You can see that we kind of have some
different choices; they call it the algorithm,
| | 02:50 | but they're represented by a room.
| | 02:52 | This algorithm is the math that figures
out what kind of reflections happens in
| | 02:56 | what kind of spaces.
| | 02:57 | So we can simulate a church, or
different sizes of rooms, or a plate, which is
| | 03:03 | actually a man-made device that they
built a long time ago to also try and
| | 03:07 | simulate reverb for recordings that we
actually have gotten so used to because
| | 03:11 | we've heard it in so many
recordings that we want to keep using it.
| | 03:13 | We want to be able to have
access to that type of reverb as well.
| | 03:17 | So let's go ahead and feed the drums in
here, and see what kind of sound we have.
| | 03:21 | I'll set the Input to 0.
| | 03:22 | I'll start with a mix that's
completely dry. (Music Playing:
| | 03:27 | Now let's add a little bit
of reverb to the mix.
| | 03:30 | (drums playing)
| | 03:43 | (drums playing)
| | 03:53 | So there we are in the church.
| | 03:54 | We can switch it around to room, and we'll
start with a large room.
| | 03:59 | (drums playing)
| | 04:04 | We'll switch to a small room.
| | 04:05 | (drums playing)
| | 04:08 | Let's make that pretty wet.
| | 04:10 | (drums playing)
| | 04:17 | So we can go back and forth
and pick these kinds of different rooms or
| | 04:20 | environments, and get a lot of
different interesting effects.
| | 04:24 | We can try and go for nice,
realistic, accurate effects,
| | 04:26 | and try and act like we've placed
this drum set in let's say a small club
| | 04:30 | venue, which let's go ahead
and just give that a shot.
| | 04:32 | (drums playing)
| | 04:35 | Let's call it a hall, maybe a small hall.
| | 04:38 | (drums playing)
| | 04:46 | So that's cool. You kind of can imagine maybe a small
500-person club, something like that, or we
| | 04:54 | can make it the arena.
| | 04:55 | (drums playing)
| | 05:01 | For those about to rock, we
salute you. So that's reverb.
| | 05:07 | You can do some pretty amazing things with it.
| | 05:08 | Now let's go ahead and play with
this on a voice, and see what kind of
| | 05:11 | effects we can get.
| | 05:14 | We'll take that plug-in out.
| | 05:17 | We'll go and take a
listen again to our voiceover.
| | 05:26 | Now normally, you won't find
yourself applying a lot of reverb to like a
| | 05:31 | voiceover production, like a podcast or
a broadcast or an industrial training
| | 05:37 | film or something like that
where you're doing voiceover,
| | 05:39 | just because we want to keep that
voice kind of as clear and easy to
| | 05:43 | understand as possible.
| | 05:44 | Sometimes, adding a lot of reverb makes
things a little bit harder to understand
| | 05:48 | when it comes to the voice.
| | 05:50 | But I'm going to show
you the effect we can have.
| | 05:51 | You can use it on vocals in
music and get great effects.
| | 05:55 | It does a real nice job of
kind of smoothing out the voice.
| | 05:58 | Sometimes, it can make it
stand out more in a mix.
| | 06:01 | You can use kind of a special reverb
effects to give it kind of a cool feel.
| | 06:05 | We'll take a look at just
a couple of these things.
| | 06:07 | So let's play our voice track back.
| | 06:09 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006.)
| | 06:17 | (Female Speaker: Oops. 2000. January 19th, 2007. This is episode 47.
This week learn to sync poser models to an audio file with a movie from--)
| | 06:29 | So there we have it kind of in a smaller room.
| | 06:31 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006.)
| | 06:42 | (Female Speaker: Oops. 2000. January 19th, 2007. This is episode 47.
This week learn to sync poser models to an audio file with a movie from)
| | 06:42 | (Female Speaker: Poser 7 Essential Training with Larry Mitchell.)
| | 06:56 | Now if you want to go back to the 80s,
and try and get a cool kind of vocal
| | 07:01 | effect from the 80s.
| | 07:02 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006.)
| | 07:10 | (Female Speaker: Oops. 2000. January 19th, 2007. This is episode 47.
This week learn to sync poser models to an audio file with a movie from)
| | 07:21 | (Female Speaker: Poser 7 Essential Training with Larry Mitchell.)
| | 07:26 | So there is a lot of
different kind of effects you can get.
| | 07:28 | You can use it on the voice on
vocals on different instruments.
| | 07:32 | If you're doing post-production on a
film of recorded dialogue in different
| | 07:35 | places and want to try and make it
sound like those people are in the room that
| | 07:39 | they're actually shot in or filmed in,
| | 07:41 | you can go and add some reverb
slightly to kind of put them in a place.
| | 07:45 | A lot of times it's hard to record
someone who is at the other end of the
| | 07:49 | parking garage that you're filming.
| | 07:51 | But then you can have them come into
the studio, record a voiceover track, and
| | 07:54 | then add some reverb.
| | 07:55 | So when you actually see that voice track
synced up to the footage you believe that
| | 08:00 | actually that person is
speaking in that big open space.
| | 08:03 | It has that reverb.
| | 08:04 | You'll know if you watch a lot of movies,
sometimes they'll do an overdub, and
| | 08:08 | they'll have like one line in there
where they're taking the swearing out or
| | 08:10 | something like that.
| | 08:11 | They work pretty hard to try and match
the ambience, or the reverb effect of
| | 08:16 | the room that that person is in,
| | 08:18 | but a lot of times they botch it.
| | 08:19 | I don't know if they don't care,
or they're just doing a rush job.
| | 08:22 | But you'll kind of hear the words
where they edit out the swear words.
| | 08:25 | You can tell it's a completely different track.
| | 08:28 | But if you play around with it enough,
you can probably make that sound like it
| | 08:30 | took place in the same location by
adding some reverb and adjusting some EQ.
| | 08:36 | Reverb's also really useful for
sound design in terms of sound effects,
| | 08:40 | making things sound bigger than they are,
making things sound farther away than they are.
| | 08:45 | You really have to start to play with it.
| | 08:47 | You'll get a sense of what's
possible as you add effects.
| | 08:50 | It's a really interesting thing.
| | 08:52 | Reverb's also really useful in
sound design, in terms of doing special
| | 08:55 | effects, because you can make things
seem like they're farther away than
| | 08:58 | they really are, or make them sound bigger or
girthier, more dramatic than they really are.
| | 09:03 | Also, the type of reverb you choose can
kind of dictate what people perceive the
| | 09:07 | physical quality of that object is.
| | 09:09 | If it's a robot, and you put it a
certain kind of reverb on its big footsteps,
| | 09:13 | you can make it seem like it's this
big hulking metal thing, even though it
| | 09:17 | might be an animation.
| | 09:18 | There is no metal at all.
| | 09:19 | It's just a bunch of drawings.
| | 09:20 | So reverb can be really
useful in a lot of different ways.
| | 09:24 | It can do a lot to enhance your recordings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Echo and delay| 00:01 | In this section, we'll take
a look at echo and delay.
| | 00:04 | Now, you might be thinking, well,
isn't echo and delay really reverb just
| | 00:08 | longer and more of it?
| | 00:09 | It's actually not. There is kind
of a distinction that we use in
| | 00:12 | that echo and delay involve a
distinctive repeat of the original sound, whereas
| | 00:17 | reverb is kind of the reflections of
that original sound decaying slowly over time.
| | 00:22 | So if you out to the Grand Canyon and
you yell your name out there, 'Hello Dave!'
| | 00:27 | you get 'Hello Dave!' that comes back.
| | 00:30 | As opposed to if you go down to a cement
parking garage and yell hello Dave, you
| | 00:35 | won't hear that come right
back at you as a distinct repeat.
| | 00:38 | You'll just kind of hear all the
reflections, and it will feel like that sound
| | 00:42 | goes on longer, but it's not
the same as it being repeated.
| | 00:45 | So let's look at applying some delay to a few
different things. We'll start with a drumbeat.
| | 00:49 | We'll go in here and grab this version of
drums, and we'll insert a delay plug-in.
| | 01:03 | So we can set a few things in here,
but I'm just going to play a little bit and
| | 01:07 | let you hear what delay is.
| | 01:09 | (drums playing)
| | 01:18 | I'll bypass it.
| | 01:21 | (drums playing)
| | 01:30 | So that's delay, distinct repeats of the sound.
| | 01:34 | Generally in delay, you'll get the mix
control again, and then you'll get the
| | 01:38 | actual delay length.
| | 01:39 | In this case, we're here and
working with milliseconds.
| | 01:42 | This lets me to select how long the time
between the initial sound and the next sound is.
| | 01:48 | So, that's your main control
to pay attention to in delay.
| | 01:51 | The other important one to think
about is feedback, and that's the number of
| | 01:55 | regenerations of the sound.
| | 01:57 | If I have my Feedback set very low
like it 1 and I play it, we'll hear that
| | 02:03 | there is kind of one distinct echo.
| | 02:04 | I'm going to go ahead and zoom in on
a little sound here, so we can have one
| | 02:08 | distinct hit for demonstration purposes.
| | 02:13 | We'll just grab these last few beats.
| | 02:17 | Then we'll go for a pretty long delay.
| | 02:23 | Then we'll add more feedback.
| | 02:29 | So let's go back down and no feedback.
| | 02:34 | We'll turn the mix up so we can hear the
delayed signal a little bit more, about 50-50.
| | 02:38 | Let's make that really long.
| | 02:43 | Now, I'm going to launch a longer delay,
because we can go a lot farther than
| | 02:48 | that; we can really put this in the canyon.
| | 02:50 | We'll keep the mix, but now we can say
I've got a lot--we can go much farther
| | 02:57 | up to them, probably even this.
| | 02:57 | Again, let's try that.
(drums playing)
| | 03:01 | Cool, much longer.
| | 03:10 | Then we can add the feedback to add lots of repeats.
(drums playing)
| | 03:21 | So that's cool.
| | 03:22 | So let's just queue up this track and
just kind of play with it, and see what
| | 03:25 | kind of different textures we can get.
| | 03:27 | You can use it to add a little bit of depth.
We can use it really subtly and we'll use a--
| | 03:31 | (drums playing)
| | 04:04 | Delay is very cool on drums.
| | 04:06 | You can do a lot of cool stuff.
| | 04:07 | You can see that just by adjusting
the length of delay, we can get a lot
| | 04:11 | of different effects.
| | 04:12 | This can be applied to all
kinds of different instruments.
| | 04:15 | It's just good to kind of demonstrate it
on drums, and also I think a lot of fun.
| | 04:20 | Let's go ahead and apply it a little bit
of voice just to get a sense of how you
| | 04:23 | might use it on a vocal.
| | 04:25 | Again, we'll use the podcast
voice and insert a medium delay.
| | 04:33 | On a voice you can use it to create
what's known as the slapback echo, which has
| | 04:38 | a very, very short delay time.
| | 04:41 | Sometimes it'll be referred to as a
bit of a doubler, and it can have a cool
| | 04:44 | effect, especially on vocals.
| | 04:45 | It can really make them pop out of the mix.
| | 04:48 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006.)
| | 04:55 | (Female Speaker: Oops. 2000.
January 19th, 2007. This is episode 47.)
| | 05:02 | Another thing I have is I have a Low
Pass Frequency option here where I can
| | 05:06 | actually reduce the frequencies of the
delayed sound so that the first sound,
| | 05:11 | the wet mix, has the same frequency as
the original sound file, but the delayed
| | 05:17 | repeats don't have the same frequency response.
| | 05:20 | So I can cut off the high frequencies a
little bit here, and that will actually
| | 05:23 | makes the sound a little less metallic.
| | 05:25 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video
training podcast for Friday, January 19th, 2006.)
| | 05:26 | If you like old Beatles
music and old John Lennon stuff,
| | 05:33 | (Female Speaker: Oops. 2000.
January 19th, 2007. This is episode 47. This--)
| | 05:40 | they use a lot of this kind of doubling
slapback effect on the vocal tracks, and
| | 05:48 | if you go back and check those out
listen to the effects that they use on the
| | 05:51 | different vocals, they make the
vocals really stand out from the mix.
| | 05:54 | So that's a few ways to use delay.
| | 05:56 | Of course, you can bring it in and use
it for a sound design and making special
| | 05:59 | effects, for adding a little bit of
depth or kind of warmth to different
| | 06:03 | instruments, and just generally
putting things in a different space.
| | 06:07 | By using delay you can send sounds to
the back of the mix or bring them to
| | 06:10 | the front. Or you can just make
them seem a little bit bigger than they
| | 06:13 | really are and fill them out. So that's delay.
| | 06:15 | Next, we'll talk about modulation tools
and how you can use those to kind of add
| | 06:19 | a little bit more character to some
of the sounds you're working with.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modulation effects: Phaser, flanger, and chorus| 00:03 | Modulation effects can be used kind
of change the character slightly of
| | 00:06 | the sound, or add a little bit more body, or
just make it a little bit more interesting.
| | 00:10 | All modulation effects basically work
on the same principle, and they involve
| | 00:14 | messing around with the phase of sounds.
| | 00:16 | They involved taking a sound and
taking a copy of it and then shifting it and
| | 00:21 | playing them back at the same time,
so that you actually generate different
| | 00:24 | increases and decreases in volume based
on their little offset in the phase
| | 00:28 | between the two signals.
| | 00:30 | I know we've talked about phase a few
times in this title, and usually when it
| | 00:34 | comes up it's something to be worried
about. But it's also true that we can use
| | 00:38 | it to our advantage to come over
with some kind of interesting effects.
| | 00:41 | The three types of modulation
effects I'd like to talk about and show you
| | 00:44 | some quick examples of are the Phaser--
pretty aptly named--the Flanger, and
| | 00:49 | then the Chorus effect.
| | 00:51 | In terms of how these apply effects and
how they work, let's start by putting a
| | 00:55 | little bit of Phaser on a guitar track.
| | 00:57 | So I've imported a cool
guitar track that a pal of mine played.
| | 01:04 | (guitar playing)
| | 01:09 | We'll go ahead and pull out the
plug-in here in the modulation.
| | 01:13 | I know it's called MetaFlanger,
but we can actually use it to load a
| | 01:19 | setting that's a Phaser.
| | 01:20 | I'm going to go ahead and
bypass it when we first listen to it.
| | 01:23 | I've got a little selection in
here and go ahead and roll it.
| | 01:28 | (guitar playing)
| | 01:33 | So there is the clean signal.
Now I'm going to turn the Phaser on.
| | 01:38 | (guitar playing)
| | 01:45 | Can you hear that kind of
wavering back and forth?
| | 01:48 | (guitar playing)
| | 01:53 | I'll turn it off again.
| | 01:55 | (guitar playing)
| | 02:02 | There is again.
| | 02:03 | (guitar playing)
| | 02:34 | So there is the phaser.
| | 02:35 | It adds a nice, subtle,
flowing change in the dynamics.
| | 02:40 | And you can hear the pitch has changed a
little bit. Because of that little phase
| | 02:43 | offset, different frequencies are
getting a little bit more boost than they
| | 02:46 | usually do. But it's a variation in boost,
| | 02:48 | so it kind of gives that
ebbing and flowing sound.
| | 02:50 | Now, let's throw a flanger on a bass guitar.
| | 03:00 | We'll go ahead and use that same
MetaFlanger plug-in, because it's cool.
| | 03:03 | We'll load up our bass track.
| | 03:07 | So here's the clean signal. No effect.
(bass playing)
| | 03:14 | I'm going to Load up.
| | 03:17 | (bass playing)
| | 03:28 | So now we'll turn on the Flanger.
| | 03:30 | (bass playing)
| | 03:58 | So you can apply the
Flanger to get a creeping effect.
| | 04:01 | A lot of times they'll use it in sort
of more psychedelic rock on the drums,
| | 04:05 | and you'll get this long creeping-up and
then creeping-down sound, which I might
| | 04:09 | take a second to show you. Let's go for that.
| | 04:12 | (drums playing)
| | 04:27 | Here this shows more the
effect I wanted to show.
| | 04:30 | (drums playing)
| | 04:40 | Hear that creeping down?
| | 04:41 | We can speed up how fast
that goes back and forth.
| | 04:52 | And we can change the shape of that.
| | 04:59 | So that's a flanger applied to drums.
| | 05:02 | You can use the flange on a lot of
different things. You'll find it fairly
| | 05:05 | often on things like bass, guitar, occasionally
on vocals, sometimes on backing vocals actually.
| | 05:11 | It all depends on what kind of mix
you're going for and what kind of effects
| | 05:14 | you're working with.
| | 05:15 | Finally, let's take a look at chorus.
| | 05:18 | A chorus is nice because it can really
round out of sound, and you'll here it
| | 05:21 | applied to vocal tracks quite a bit
and guitar tracks quite a bit because it
| | 05:25 | takes the signal and just makes a
sound a little bit bigger and makes it a
| | 05:27 | little bit interesting.
| | 05:28 | It offsets it and makes a little
modulations in the pitch, and it'll take what
| | 05:33 | sounds like a very steady tone and give it a
little bit more body, a little bit more depth.
| | 05:37 | We'll starts just applying it to a
voiceover to just get a sense of how we can
| | 05:42 | add some depth to a voice with chorus.
| | 05:46 | (Female speaker: Welcome to the lynda.--)
| | 05:50 | So some medium chorus.
| | 05:52 | I'm going to turn the mix down a little
bit and we'll take a quick listen here.
| | 05:57 | (Female speaker: Welcome to the lynda.com video training podcast
for Friday, January 19th, 2006. Oops. 2000. January 19th, 2007)
| | 06:10 | (Female speaker: This is episode 47. This week,
learn to sync poser models to an audio file.)
| | 06:16 | So you can add it to voices probably
not in a voiceover, but in vocals, in
| | 06:22 | recordings it's just great.
| | 06:23 | It can really be round it out
make it a little bit girthier.
| | 06:25 | Let's drop it on the guitar track again.
That's also a pretty popular
| | 06:29 | application of chorus.
| | 06:31 | We'll do another instance of our
MetaFlanger and go ahead and load up--let's call it
| | 06:44 | the--let's go with the light chorus.
| | 06:49 | Jump ahead here.
| | 06:50 | (guitar playing)
| | 06:57 | You can see it adds a little
bit more than the Phaser does.
| | 07:04 | There is a little bit more modulation.
(guitar playing)
| | 07:16 | I'll bypass the sound, so
there it is, clean or dry.
| | 07:25 | We'll go back and add the effect back.
(guitar playing)
| | 07:39 | So that's the way you can add Chorus
to guitar, and as you can see, it adds
| | 07:42 | a pretty nice effect.
| | 07:43 | It can really add a lot of texture to that.
| | 07:45 | So these are kind of the basic
modulation effects: Phaser, Flanger, and the
| | 07:50 | Chorus effect. But things can get pretty crazy.
| | 07:52 | You can do a lot of interesting things
and far-out things with the modulation.
| | 07:56 | I'm just going to play around a little
bit and show you a few different effects
| | 08:00 | that you can get with modulation.
| | 08:02 | I'm going to go ahead and
load in a different plug-in here.
| | 08:04 | We'll load up the Enigma, which I'm a fan of.
| | 08:10 | We'll go ahead and use a
couple of their presets.
| | 08:12 | I think this one kind of cool.
| | 08:14 | We will use the voiceover track again.
| | 08:17 | Get a load of this.
| | 08:18 | (music playing)
(Female speaker: Essential Training with Larry Mitchell)
| | 08:36 | Those are pretty cool.
| | 08:39 | (Female Speaker: For Friday,
January 19th, 2006. Oops. January 19th, 2007.)
| | 08:48 | So as you can see, you can get some
pretty extreme effects with modulation.
| | 08:55 | You can use it in subtle ways to kind of
just enhance things a little bit, or you
| | 08:59 | can really blow things wide open
and do some pretty crazy stuff.
| | 09:02 | And it all depends on what kind of sound
you're going for, or what you're playing with it.
| | 09:05 | If you're doing sound design, modulation
can be really great tool to use to
| | 09:09 | make alien voices and things like that.
| | 09:12 | If you're doing music mixing, you can
use it to just kind of give different
| | 09:15 | instruments a little bit different
quality. Or if you have a like a special
| | 09:18 | interlude section that you want to be
the spacey section, you can add it on just
| | 09:22 | a few instruments and make things happen.
| | 09:24 | So anyway, they're good effects to know
about, and really a lot of fun in terms of
| | 09:28 | creating kind of different sounds and
getting some unique sounds out there.
| | 09:32 | Now, let's take a look at some plug-ins that
aren't quite so crazy, but are very practical.
| | 09:36 | We'll check out some sound tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sound tools pt. 1: About, gain, normalize| 00:02 | Sound tools are another category of plug-
ins that can help you work with sound files.
| | 00:06 | They tend to function more as utilities
than as tonal enhancers or special effects.
| | 00:11 | Now many of these will work at the
file level and won't be available as
| | 00:14 | real-time plug-ins or inserts.
| | 00:17 | In this movie, we will look at two that deal
with how you change the volume of a sound file.
| | 00:21 | We will look at gain and normalize.
| | 00:24 | So I am going to go ahead and
zoom in on a sound file first.
| | 00:27 | Let's set it up, so we can
see it a little bit better.
| | 00:33 | Make it nice and large. And we are going
to deal with this glitch beat, and we are
| | 00:38 | going to go ahead and change the volume of it.
| | 00:40 | So through AudioSuite, I have the
option of Gain, which I will grab, and what
| | 00:46 | Gain allows you to do is basically increase the
volume of the sound file you are working with.
| | 00:51 | It renders it at a new volume,
and it increases the amplitude.
| | 00:55 | So this is helpful if you have files
that are too quiet to kind of deal with if
| | 00:58 | you are dealing in a multi-track
setting and you have quite a few tracks and
| | 01:01 | they are quite loud and this one you
can't quite, no matter how much you turn
| | 01:04 | the fader up, you can't quite hear it enough.
| | 01:07 | Gain is a helpful way to
bring it up into the mix.
| | 01:09 | It's also always good to remember
to have your sound files as loud as
| | 01:12 | possible, then use the mixer to be in
the position of turning them down more
| | 01:15 | than turning them up.
| | 01:16 | It's always better to reduce or
cut volumes than to boost them.
| | 01:20 | But we are going to go ahead and take a
sound file that's not quite loud enough
| | 01:24 | and make it a little bit louder with Gain.
| | 01:26 | So first, let's just give it a listen.
| | 01:29 | Those glitches are on purpose, by the way.
| | 01:31 | That's an aesthetic decision that I went for.
| | 01:33 | There is a cool thing in Gain where you
can see some information about the file.
| | 01:41 | If I selected it, it picks
this information, preview it.
| | 01:47 | That's with no change.
| | 01:48 | I can fade this up and say let's add 9 dB or so.
| | 01:51 | So I go for it, and it makes it huge.
| | 01:57 | See how much louder it is?
| | 01:58 | Let's take a listen.
| | 01:58 | (drums playing)
| | 02:05 | So that's great.
Now I have more to work with in my mix.
| | 02:08 | I can turn that up or down, I can apply
effects, and I have got more signal going on there.
| | 02:13 | So this is really cool. I am going to undo that
and let's switch over to a voiceover track and show you
| | 02:18 | how you can use it for
just little bits and pieces.
| | 02:22 | Here is this infamous voiceover track that
we have used quite a few times. Let's listen.
| | 02:27 | Here this is--in the context of
things that, oops is fairly quiet.
| | 02:32 | (Female Speaker: 2006. Oops.)
| | 02:35 | And let's say that that 'oops' is actually on
purpose, and we want to turn that up a little bit.
| | 02:41 | I am just going ahead, and we will just pick a
setting and gamble and see. Let's go up 6 dB.
| | 02:44 | You can always undo it if you are not quite right.
| | 02:46 | I can't quite--I'm going to have to zoom in to
see what kind of damage we did there.
| | 02:51 | Well, that could be in the ballpark.
| | 02:53 | So we will give it a listen.
| | 02:54 | (Female Speaker: For Friday, January 19th, 2006. Oops. 2000)
| | 03:00 | Let's make it really loud though.
Big mistake.
| | 03:04 | (Female Speaker: January 19th, 2006. Oops. 2000)
| | 03:10 | One of the things with gain that you
have to be careful of is you get to decide
| | 03:13 | how much you are going to add, and you
can conceivably actually add so much that
| | 03:17 | the volume of the file exceeds our
digital zero level and goes into distortion.
| | 03:22 | So let's go ahead and do that for the fun of it.
| | 03:25 | Say we have no concept of
how quiet or loud our sound is, and
| | 03:28 | we're just going to add 26
dB just to see what that does.
| | 03:32 | Well, already you can kind of
see that it looks pretty extreme.
| | 03:35 | Let's see what it sounds like.
| | 03:36 | (Female Speaker: 2006. Oops. 2000)
| | 03:39 | There is some digital distortion.
| | 03:40 | You hear that kind of nasty static-y sound?
(Female Speaker: Oops.)
| | 03:45 | So that's the thing with gain.
| | 03:46 | You can use it to turn things up.
| | 03:47 | We can also use this to turn it way
down if we just don't want to hear that.
| | 03:50 | You could turn it all the way
down, get rid of it completely.
| | 03:53 | (Female Speaker: 2006. 2000. January 9)
| | 04:01 | Just make silence there.
| | 04:03 | (Female Speaker: January 19th, 2006. 2000. January)
| | 04:10 | So Gain is great and that we have so
much control over adding or subtracting
| | 04:13 | the amount of volume.
| | 04:14 | But it can be a little tricky in that
sometimes you don't know how much you
| | 04:17 | will be adding, and you can
actually add too much for certain things.
| | 04:21 | So it takes a little bit of trial
and error to find the right amount.
| | 04:24 | Now some plug-ins will actually give
you some more detailed information on how
| | 04:27 | loud your sound file already is, and so
you can quickly make decisions about oh,
| | 04:31 | well we need to add this much, or we
need to add that much, but it kind of
| | 04:34 | depends on the features and
functionalities of the sound tool.
| | 04:37 | So adding gain is good thing to be able
to do, and it's really handy for evening
| | 04:41 | out volumes and tracks.
| | 04:43 | Another way to adjust volume is via
Normalize and the way Normalize works--let
| | 04:47 | me go ahead and open up the
Normalize file-level plug-in--
| | 04:55 | what Normalize does is it also
increases the volume of a sound file, but instead
| | 05:00 | of telling it how much louder to make
it like, make it 5 dB louder or 6 dB
| | 05:05 | quieter, you are able to set the maximum peak.
| | 05:09 | So I can say if I have a sound file, I
want the loudest moment in that sound
| | 05:13 | file to be -1 dB. Or I can set it to be
zero dB, which is the digital maximum.
| | 05:20 | So this is really convenient if you
have a file and you just want to make it as
| | 05:23 | loud as digitally possible--or in
relationship to as loud as digitally possible.
| | 05:29 | Maybe I want it to go up to
2 dB, and that will be enough.
| | 05:34 | A lot of times, you will use it, and I
like to use it and go up to about 1 dB
| | 05:38 | and add some effects.
| | 05:40 | Let's take a look at what happens.
| | 05:42 | I will zoom back in here.
| | 05:47 | Let's go back to our glitch beat,
grab this, and we will just normalize
| | 05:54 | that section to -1 dB.
| | 05:58 | So as you can see, big change. I will play this.
hopefully it won't blow us out.
| | 06:02 | (drums playing)
| | 06:12 | So you can see on the meter here how
much difference we have, not just visually
| | 06:15 | but our magic meter.
| | 06:17 | So Normalize is really handy if you
want to just bring the overall level.
| | 06:20 | If you have a big file, like here I
have a whole like five-minute long guitar
| | 06:25 | track, if I just want to say, hey I
don't want to change the volume and gamble
| | 06:30 | with how many dB I should add,
just make it as loud as it can be,
| | 06:33 | so while I am mixing I have
lots of signal to work with.
| | 06:35 | I can set that to a certain
level and then work with it.
| | 06:39 | You will also find that using
normalize when you export your final, like
| | 06:43 | bounced-down mix masters, if you
remember in mixing, we showed how you can
| | 06:46 | kind of bounce a file down.
| | 06:48 | Then we go to finally export that to
use it to maybe burn for a CD or to
| | 06:52 | create an MP3, you can take that final
mixdown which is one file that has all
| | 06:57 | your different files in it and normalize it
so that it's as loud as it can digitally be.
| | 07:02 | This is really helpful in terms of
making sure that when people get whatever you
| | 07:05 | are making and put it into their CD
player or listen to your MP3 on MySpace or
| | 07:10 | in your iPod, that it's just loud as
all the other ones, or at least as loud as
| | 07:14 | it can be, so they don't have to go
and really crank up their system and then
| | 07:17 | when the next guy's song
comes on, it blows it apart.
| | 07:21 | So normalize is a really good thing to
be aware of, and it's great to use in the
| | 07:24 | end of the process, but it's also
helpful when you are just dealing with
| | 07:28 | initial tracks and kind of bringing
sound files up to a volume that makes
| | 07:31 | working with them easier.
| | 07:33 | Next, we will look at a few tools that
let you change things in relationship
| | 07:36 | to time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sound tools pt. 2: Reverse and time compression/expansion| 00:01 | Let's look at a few other
sound tools that are pretty cool.
| | 00:03 | We will look at reverse and we will
look at time expansion, or compression.
| | 00:07 | So first, let's start with reverse.
| | 00:08 | I will open that up from the AudioSuite,
and as the name implies, it reverses stuff.
| | 00:13 | I don't even need to preview it actually.
| | 00:15 | We will just go ahead and go for it.
| | 00:17 | I will make a copy over here, and we
will process it. So what have we got?
| | 00:24 | (drum sounds playing in reverse)
| | 00:30 | Backwards. Very cool.
| | 00:33 | How about on a voice? I can kind
of get some possessed sounds going.
| | 00:37 | (garbled speech)
| | 00:47 | So that's for the possessed podcast,
for those of you who want to tune in.
| | 00:51 | So reverse, it's pretty basic, pretty simple.
| | 00:54 | You can use it for some pretty cool things.
| | 00:56 | In music mixes, you can use a reverse
cymbal hit as a nice transition into kind
| | 01:00 | of different sections.
| | 01:02 | Obviously, if you are doing sound
design, you can use it to make some pretty
| | 01:04 | interesting effects, different kind of
shoops out into space and impacts and
| | 01:09 | hits and things like that.
| | 01:10 | And also, maybe if you are doing a
podcast and you wanted to kind of have
| | 01:13 | something kind of lighthearted in
there, and say, hey let's rewind that a
| | 01:16 | minute, I don't believe you, you
could hit that and kind of hear that backing
| | 01:19 | up and say, okay.
| | 01:19 | (garbled speech)
Well, without the drums.
| | 01:23 | (garbled speech)
| | 01:26 | And then roll it again and
say, let's hear that!
| | 01:27 | (Female Speaker: This is episode 47)
| | 01:30 | So there is ways you can kind of use it for fun.
| | 01:32 | You can do kind of interesting things with it.
| | 01:33 | The other thing I want to show you
is time compression and expansion.
| | 01:38 | This is another thing that is pretty
much possible thanks to the digital world.
| | 01:44 | It wasn't really happening too much and
very effectively before we had digital
| | 01:49 | computers and we got to digitize audio.
| | 01:52 | So it's really worth checking out.
| | 01:56 | Again this is a file-level process.
| | 01:58 | You can't use reverse or time expansion/
compression as an insert or a real-time plug-in.
| | 02:04 | Remember earlier where we talked about
pitch and we are kind of changing the
| | 02:07 | pitch up and down, and there is a
feature in there that allowed you to keep the
| | 02:12 | rate of the performance the same so
the time didn't change, just the pitch.
| | 02:16 | Well this is kind of the opposite.
| | 02:18 | We can change the time without
affecting the pitch, and it's very cool.
| | 02:22 | I will go ahead and just show you
a few examples of what's possible.
| | 02:25 | Let me go ahead and delete our
backwards track there, solo that out, and zoom in
| | 02:31 | on it. And we can move this over here.
| | 02:36 | Let's pick a couple words,
just a short phrase, maybe this.
| | 02:44 | (Female Speaker: This is episode 47)
| | 02:47 | We will make it a little bit longer.
| | 02:51 | (Female Speaker: 2007. This is episode 47.)
| | 02:54 | Let's say I want to make that
take place a little bit faster.
| | 02:57 | Well, I highlight it, and in my Plug-
in window, I see the Source here on the
| | 03:03 | left, which is the length of what
we have got highlighted, and then the
| | 03:05 | Destination, and right now there is no change.
| | 03:08 | So its 4.6 seconds long, and the destination,
the output of process, would be 4.6 seconds.
| | 03:15 | I can drag a ratio here and
change that and make it longer.
| | 03:19 | So let's give that a shot.
| | 03:20 | We will make it 7 seconds long.
| | 03:22 | (Female Speaker: 2007. This is episode 47.)
| | 03:31 | So we have made a little bit slower.
| | 03:32 | Now you can hear there is a little bit
of artifact there, and that's one thing to
| | 03:35 | keep in mind with most time
compression/expansion stuff.
| | 03:39 | You can use it, but only within reason.
The greater the effect you ask
| | 03:43 | for, the more chance you are going to get
little artifacts, or little digital imperfections.
| | 03:47 | I mean we are kind of asking it
to do something pretty amazing.
| | 03:50 | So I am going to undo that, and we will
see. I bet we can probably get away with
| | 03:53 | making it, maybe it's 4.5.
| | 03:57 | We could add another second to that, and it
probably would still sound pretty good.
| | 04:00 | (Female Speaker: 2007. This is episode 47.)
| | 04:06 | And one of other thing you can do
is go in and highlight each one of these
| | 04:10 | little fellows and process them separately.
| | 04:17 | We can also take this and make
it shorter, so it happens faster.
| | 04:23 | Take a second off that.
| | 04:27 | (Female Speaker: January 19th, 2007. This is episode 47.)
| | 04:30 | (Female Speaker: January 19th, 2007. This is episode 47.)
Pretty cool.
| | 04:35 | So we can use this on the voice.
| | 04:37 | We can also use it on
instruments or on performances.
| | 04:40 | If you have a little passages in a
piece of music--the drummer maybe slowed
| | 04:44 | down for a couple beats--
| | 04:45 | you can go in and try and apply this
and speed them back up a little bit and
| | 04:48 | shift things with it. Or you can use it
if there is a couple of notes here and
| | 04:52 | there that kind of get held too long.
| | 04:54 | You can also go in and just individually
grab those notes and slide them around.
| | 04:57 | But it's kind of fun to play with
the time expansion/compression plug-in.
| | 05:01 | If you are doing production for things
like podcasts or TV commercials, and you
| | 05:05 | know you want to get something to
match up and you know that you have to make
| | 05:08 | your production 30 seconds long and
that's it, going in and kind of speeding up
| | 05:12 | a few things a little bit here and
there to kind of make sure you hit that
| | 05:15 | deadline can help out a little bit.
| | 05:17 | But again, you have to use it
judiciously, because if you go too far--all people
| | 05:22 | are pretty good listeners--and if we
speed things up too much, people will know.
| | 05:25 | And when people will hear something
that seems kind of unnatural, unless it's
| | 05:29 | there for kind of a comical effect,
it throws us off a little bit, and it
| | 05:32 | distracts us a little bit.
| | 05:33 | So if you are trying to create a
podcast or something where you want people to
| | 05:35 | be listening to the content of what
you are saying, it's better to make sure
| | 05:39 | that you deliver it in a way where
the audio and production itself doesn't
| | 05:42 | distract them, where they
are sitting there saying, oh!
| | 05:43 | That voice is sped up, as oppose to, wow!
| | 05:46 | That's an amazing Pentium 7
computer Dave is talking about.
| | 05:50 | Also, if you are working on like
voiceovers that go with film where you kind of
| | 05:53 | record the things out of sync or away
from a film, you can use this to speed up
| | 05:57 | or slow down little clips of the
voice to try and make them match the mouth
| | 06:00 | movements. Or if you are working against
an animation, you can use this to change
| | 06:04 | the speed the people are talking to kind
of match sounds to images a lot better.
| | 06:09 | So time compression and expansion comes
in really handy when you are trying to
| | 06:12 | marry sound to picture.
| | 06:15 | At any rate, regardless of what you are
using these tools for, you will find that
| | 06:18 | reverse and time expansion and
compression are both really pretty cool tools and
| | 06:23 | can be very helpful when
you are working with audio.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sound tools pt. 3: Noise reducers, dither| 00:01 | In this section, we're going to talk
about two more sound tools that can be
| | 00:03 | really helpful, in terms of dealing
with noise and artifacts in your sounds.
| | 00:08 | We'll look a little bit at noise
reducers, and I'll show you a little example of
| | 00:11 | that, and then we'll talk about dither.
| | 00:13 | So noise reduction soundware, or sound
tools, can help you eliminate things like
| | 00:18 | pops and clicks that you might have on
old vinyl records if you record them in,
| | 00:22 | or different little static noises.
| | 00:24 | You can use them to reduce things
like background hum or other sounds.
| | 00:27 | I'm going to actually go ahead and use
one on a voiceover track that I recorded.
| | 00:31 | We did a little interview in a kitchen,
and needless to say, a kitchen is not the
| | 00:36 | quietest place in the world to do an interview.
| | 00:39 | There's quite a bit of noise and just
kind of general machinery running around.
| | 00:42 | I'm going to show you how we can apply a
plug-in and actually reduce some of the
| | 00:46 | noise a little bit.
| | 00:47 | So let me get us a nice view of this,
so that we can kind of listen to more of
| | 00:51 | the voice and less of the noise.
| | 00:53 | Let's just take a listen.
| | 00:54 | (inaudible speech)
| | 00:57 | So you hear that kind of that airy
sound that there's a lot of noise there.
| | 01:07 | There may have even been, believe it
or not, something like a refrigerator or
| | 01:12 | air conditioner running in there. Lots of noise.
| | 01:15 | So anyway, I want to try and get rid of that.
| | 01:17 | I want to keep that voice.
| | 01:18 | I want to keep hearing it.
| | 01:19 | But I want to get rid of some of
that noise as much as possible.
| | 01:23 | So I'm going to go into the AudioSuite,
then open up, from the Noise Reduction
| | 01:27 | world, the X-Noise Mono plug-in,
which is a waves plug-in.
| | 01:32 | Again this is in Pro Tools,
but you'll actually find stand-alone noise
| | 01:36 | reduction software that if you have a sound file
and you just want to bring it in and try and
| | 01:39 | reduce the noise, you can do it as a
stand-alone thing. Or you can find lots of
| | 01:43 | plug-ins that will work with
your digital audio software.
| | 01:47 | So the first thing I'm going to do is
teach my noise-reduction software to go
| | 01:54 | ahead and learn what this noise sounds
like, to kind of memorize what the noise is.
| | 01:58 | So I'm going to highlight something
that's just noise, and I'm going to go ahead
| | 02:04 | --and here, we call it learning that.
| | 02:10 | Let that run through a few times. Okay.
| | 02:14 | So now we've got what it thinks is the noise.
| | 02:17 | So now I'm going to go ahead and
highlight a little bit more of this section and
| | 02:23 | preview it through our plug-in.
| | 02:26 | And then I'm going to bring
up the threshold for this.
| | 02:29 | (inaudible speech)
| | 02:35 | So can you hear the difference there?
| | 02:44 | We've reduced the amount of noise pretty well.
| | 02:46 | It's not completely gone, but we can
hear more of the voice. We'll A/B it and compare it.
| | 02:50 | I'll play it, and then I'll bypass
it, so we can hear how much noise
| | 02:53 | was originally there.
| | 02:54 | (inaudible speech)
| | 03:02 | So that's a lot more palatable now.
| | 03:05 | Of course, we can go farther,
and I will; I'll show you.
| | 03:08 | One thing I should mention that
with a lot of noise-reduction software
| | 03:10 | is ultimately the way it works is it's
actually taking away some of the frequencies.
| | 03:14 | It's turning down specific frequencies
and certain volumes, and at some point
| | 03:18 | when you start to do that, you also
start to take away some of the frequencies,
| | 03:22 | or sound information, or material
| | 03:24 | that's the material you want to hear.
| | 03:26 | In this case, the interviewee's voice.
| | 03:28 | (inaudible speech)
| | 03:47 | So you can see that we can
actually do quite a bit to reduce the
| | 03:50 | difference between noises.
| | 03:51 | Let's A/B it one more time,
and see what a difference we have made.
| | 03:54 | (inaudible speech)
| | 04:12 | So you can hear that the quality of the
voice does change a little bit and fine-
| | 04:16 | tuning your noise-reduction software,
it takes a lot of time and a lot of love.
| | 04:19 | You've got to get pretty close to it
and spend some time with it, because
| | 04:22 | there's always just the perfect balance
between getting rid of as much noise as
| | 04:26 | you can and starting to affect the sonic
quality of what you want to hear, or her voice.
| | 04:31 | So it takes a little bit of playing, but in
certain circumstances it works like a charm.
| | 04:36 | It kind of all depends
on what the noise is like.
| | 04:38 | If it's a constant and kind of
consistent flowing noise like that, it's a lot
| | 04:42 | easier to zero in on it, kind of
learn it and give it a profile, and then
| | 04:46 | reduce it a little bit.
| | 04:47 | If it's kind of erratic and coming
and going, you won't have as much
| | 04:50 | luck reducing the noise.
| | 04:51 | But I think a little bit less noise
is still better than all that noise.
| | 04:55 | So it's something to look into it.
| | 04:56 | Now let's take a look at dither, or dithering.
| | 05:08 | Now this could be one of the least
interesting plug-ins to look at, and I should
| | 05:12 | explain what dither is.
| | 05:14 | When we work in a session like this,
I'm in a session with a bit resolution of
| | 05:18 | 24 bits or 24 bit depth,
| | 05:20 | when I want to change that bit resolution to
any lower resolution, like 20-bit or 16-bit,
| | 05:26 | we effectively have to re-sample the
sounds. And the reason you want to go to a
| | 05:31 | different bit depth is that if I want
to put this on an audio CD or even use it
| | 05:35 | as a source file to generate an MP3 from,
I need to dither it down to 16 bits.
| | 05:41 | So we're working at 24 bits, and I
want to go to a 16 to put this on a disc.
| | 05:45 | In other situations, you might find
yourself working at 32 bits and needing to
| | 05:49 | downsample down to 16 bits.
| | 05:52 | Well, what happens is we have to re-
sample that sound, and with digital
| | 05:56 | re-sampling and downsampling, a lot of
times you run into trouble with some of
| | 06:00 | the quieter passages in your sound file.
| | 06:02 | The sampling can have a tendency--it
doesn't always happen--but it can have a
| | 06:05 | tendency to introduce a little bit
of distortion there, because basically
| | 06:08 | it's not seeing enough.
| | 06:09 | It can't quite find enough information to
sample, and so it gets a little confused.
| | 06:13 | It wants to find something,
but it doesn't quite find it.
| | 06:16 | So what dithering is,
| | 06:17 | it's the act of actually adding in very,
very quiet noise, so that there's some
| | 06:22 | program material there.
| | 06:23 | There's some data that the sampler
can look at and pay attention to, and it
| | 06:27 | reduces the possibility of there
being little artifacts, or little moments
| | 06:31 | of slight distortion.
| | 06:33 | Now in a lot of scenarios, dithering is
not absolutely necessary, and you might
| | 06:36 | not even notice that you didn't dither.
The effect might not be noticeable.
| | 06:40 | But sometimes it will happen, and you'll
hear little artifacts in your new 16-bit
| | 06:44 | sample, and you'll wonder where they came from.
| | 06:46 | Well, dither is what you want to
apply to the file before you export it.
| | 06:50 | So let's assume we have a master nix.
| | 06:53 | It's pretty simple. You open up the tool and
you decide what bit rate you're headed for.
| | 06:59 | So were headed to 16 bits, see? Here I
have the options of 20 bit and 16 bit.
| | 07:03 | That's because I'm at 24 bit.
| | 07:05 | I have to be going down in some
direction, so we're going to go down to 16 bit.
| | 07:10 | And all you do is select your sound
file. If it's your final mix that you
| | 07:13 | bounced everything to,
| | 07:15 | select it, hit Process.
| | 07:17 | It won't look that different.
| | 07:18 | It won't sound that different to you,
but something good is taking place.
| | 07:23 | So we'll go ahead and just
apply it, so we can see it.
| | 07:33 | Really not even that big of a
difference when you go to play it back here in
| | 07:36 | this situation, slightly,
but nothing to go crazy about.
| | 07:39 | But the point is, if you have it and
have access to it, it's wise to do it in
| | 07:43 | order to avoid the possibility of
getting some distortion and some artifacts.
| | 07:47 | We'll talk a little bit more about
this in the chapter on mastering.
| | 07:50 | So that does it for sound
tools and for plug-ins in general.
| | 07:53 | Hopefully, I've shown you enough
of what's possible and kind of what
| | 07:57 | different plug-in families do and the
different kinds of effects they have,
| | 08:00 | so that you can go and start to play
with different plug-ins and look into
| | 08:03 | the different kinds of digital signal
processing that you want to use for the
| | 08:06 | work you're doing.
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|
|
16. MIDIWhat is MIDI?| 00:01 | As you get involved with digital audio,
you'll no doubt come across a technology
| | 00:04 | known as MIDI, which stands for
Musical Instrument Digital Interface.
| | 00:09 | Now, it's a very useful technology
to understand when you're working
| | 00:12 | with digital audio.
| | 00:14 | Most audio recording software comes
with some MIDI recording capabilities,
| | 00:17 | and most MIDI recorders--which are
also called sequencers--come with some
| | 00:21 | digital audio capabilities.
| | 00:23 | It comes into play if you're using
keyboards or samplers and sound modules, and
| | 00:27 | it's also useful for adding control
surfaces that can allow you to interact
| | 00:31 | with your audio software and control
certain functionality through hardware interfaces.
| | 00:35 | So, there is actually quite a bit
to MIDI, and we can spend a lot of time
| | 00:39 | talking about it, but the basic
premise is actually pretty simple.
| | 00:43 | What I like to do in this movie and the
next of couple movies is just introduce
| | 00:46 | you to a few of the applications and
show you how you might set it up, or might
| | 00:49 | interact with it, with your
digital audio workstation.
| | 00:53 | So, let's get to it: what is MIDI?
| | 00:55 | So, MIDI is essentially a protocol that
allows different devices to communicate,
| | 01:00 | and they are allowed to send
information back and forth to each other.
| | 01:02 | Now, it's important to understand that
it sends command data, and it doesn't send
| | 01:06 | analog or digital audio information.
| | 01:09 | It's more a matter of sending
communication information about sound than it is
| | 01:13 | about sending sound itself.
| | 01:15 | MIDI communicates via what we call
'MIDI messages,' which are more or less 'to do'
| | 01:19 | commands, and it sends things like play this
note on a keyboard for this long at this time.
| | 01:25 | So, it can send information in terms of
musical notes and times and durations.
| | 01:29 | It can also be used to send
information like, tell the transport to go into
| | 01:33 | Play mode, or tell the transport to stop,
or record. Or you can use it to control
| | 01:38 | a fader, or you can also use it to control
different functions within your software.
| | 01:42 | It's actually good to think about MIDI
actually kind of as your computer keyboard.
| | 01:46 | You know, when you hit that button and
you get K, there is not necessarily a K in
| | 01:50 | the computer keyboard;
| | 01:51 | you are just sending out some
information to your computer and saying find the K
| | 01:56 | and let me see the K. But you are not
sending K through the cable from your
| | 02:00 | keyboard to the computer, and
MIDI is kind of like that as well.
| | 02:03 | you can send information
that calls up other information.
| | 02:07 | The other thing to keep in mind is
that MIDI messages can actually be
| | 02:11 | created and transmitted in real time,
and they can also be recorded, stored,
| | 02:16 | and played back later.
| | 02:18 | This is where it starts to get really cool.
| | 02:20 | It's one thing to hook them up and
use it to play a couple of sounds.
| | 02:22 | It's another thing to be able to
record that sound information, manipulate it,
| | 02:26 | and make it play back another device at a
later time, and we'll look at this in this chapter.
| | 02:31 | Now, you might think you're new to
MIDI, but the chances are you've actually
| | 02:34 | probably had a few devices that use it.
| | 02:36 | If you had an old cell phone that had
a pretty cheesy ring, or you downloaded
| | 02:40 | some kind of cheesy musical rings, you
are probably dealing with MIDI, which more
| | 02:44 | or less wasn't the sound itself, but it
was a set of commands or some information
| | 02:48 | that told your device what
sounds to play, and in what order.
| | 02:51 | Now, with the cooler phones you get an
MP3 ring tone, but with the older cheesier
| | 02:55 | ones, it was MIDI all the way.
| | 02:57 | In the next movie, we'll take a look at
some real-time applications, and how you
| | 03:01 | go about setting up MIDI, and just
what it looks like when you work with it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Keyboard controllers| 00:01 | All right, now let's take a look at how
we might hook up MIDI, and how we can use
| | 00:04 | it to make two devices communicate.
| | 00:07 | I've got a MIDI controller,
which is just a controller.
| | 00:10 | It doesn't have any voices
in it or any sounds in it.
| | 00:13 | it just sends information:
| | 00:14 | do this at this time and do this at that time.
| | 00:16 | Then I have a sound module, which is
similar to what you might find if you had a
| | 00:21 | big full synthesizer and you could go
through much a bunch of banks. This just
| | 00:24 | has a bunch of sounds in it.
| | 00:26 | We are going to use MIDI to send
information from here over to here.
| | 00:30 | So, I am going to go ahead and just
make one connection, as I want you to see
| | 00:35 | what the MIDI inputs look like, and then
this is the cable that's coming from our
| | 00:39 | controller that we're
plugging into the sound module.
| | 00:44 | So, I am going to use this on the input,
and then these are our outputs running
| | 00:48 | out to our amplifier.
| | 00:54 | So, that's really that all that goes into this.
| | 00:56 | We are sending information out it's
going into this box, and this box has the
| | 01:00 | voices, or the samples, so to speak, and it's
going to send the audio out to the amplifier.
| | 01:06 | So, that's basically it.
(piano playing)
| | 01:12 | And that's all there is to MIDI.
| | 01:14 | It's one cable that sends the
data from a controller or a device to
| | 01:18 | another device.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Computer-based virtual instruments| 00:01 | All right, now let's take a look at a
different setup, where instead of using a
| | 00:04 | sound module we are actually going to
hook the controller via USB right to a
| | 00:09 | computer and use that to get MIDI
into the computer and then use a virtual
| | 00:12 | instrument to get some sounds from
the computer. Let's take a look.
| | 00:16 | So, all we have is the same controller
again, and this time instead of a sound
| | 00:21 | module, we are just running a USB cable
out of the controller and coming into our
| | 00:25 | laptop. We've got GarageBand fired
up here, and so we've got some sounds.
| | 00:30 | I play here, the MIDI information
goes through the cable, comes in, and lets
| | 00:34 | GarageBand know what notes to play
and for how long, et cetera, et cetera.
| | 00:39 | (keyboard playing)
| | 00:43 | So, this is really cool if you want to
travel light, or have a portable setup, or
| | 00:46 | just use MIDI but not have to get
involved with some other different interfaces.
| | 00:50 | The fact that you could use a USB to send
control information right into a computer
| | 00:54 | is really great. And now if we wanted
to monitor this back, we could just set
| | 00:58 | the headphones up or take the line
out of the computer. And really, with two
| | 01:01 | devices, we've got a studio.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Control surfaces| 00:01 | Okay. One more thing you can do with MIDI
that's very cool is use it with control
| | 00:04 | surfaces, and these are little
hardware devices you can use to actually
| | 00:08 | control your software.
| | 00:09 | Let's take a look at one.
| | 00:11 | So, here we have a little Faderport that
we've got hooked up via USB going again
| | 00:17 | into the laptop, and I can use this
to control my digital audio software.
| | 00:21 | I can actually assign this fader to
any fader in the mixer and use it in
| | 00:25 | real time if I want to turn those
channels up and down. Or I can assign the knob
| | 00:29 | to various uses.
Generally, you could use this for panning.
| | 00:33 | On another devices, other control
surfaces, you can get actual strips of knobs,
| | 00:36 | and you can use those for EQ
tuning or different effects.
| | 00:40 | It's really nice to have kind of that
real-time tactile control over some of
| | 00:44 | the interface things.
| | 00:45 | It will let you get your hand off the mouse,
which is really quite a nice thing once in a while.
| | 00:49 | You can also use this to control the
transport and go into Play mode or stop,
| | 00:53 | rewind, fast-forward, and Record mode.
| | 00:57 | So, control surfaces are a really nice
way to interface with your digital audio
| | 01:01 | software, and they allow you to
take your hand off the mouse.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Recording and editing MIDI| 00:01 | So we're back in Pro Tools, and we're
looking at a couple of MIDI tracks.
| | 00:04 | So let's just zoom in, and you'll
notice right away we're not looking at
| | 00:07 | waveforms now; we are looking at more
or less little points on a graph.
| | 00:11 | And you can see that we have the notes of
the scale represented on the left, and
| | 00:17 | then again, it's time. It's our timeline.
| | 00:19 | So let's go ahead and zoom in and just
take a look at what these look like up close.
| | 00:23 | I will zoom them up a little bit, and
you can see that there are little dots on
| | 00:31 | the grid; they correspond to
different notes on the grid.
| | 00:35 | Let's zoom back out. And I have the
drum track in here that I have gone
| | 00:39 | ahead and drawn in.
| | 00:40 | So I am going to go ahead and play it
back and just let you see what's happening.
| | 00:44 | (drums playing)
| | 00:51 | So that's a MIDI drum track, and what it's
doing is it's actually--there is no sound here.
| | 00:56 | It's playing back.
It's sending information.
| | 00:59 | What we're looking at represents information.
| | 01:02 | It's saying, play this note and play it
for this long at this point in time, and
| | 01:07 | where that information is going right
now is to another device, in this case a
| | 01:10 | virtual instrument which has a bunch
of sound samples in it, and it receives
| | 01:14 | that information and plays back what we
are asking it to, based on what we load.
| | 01:18 | In the next movie, we will talk about
virtual instruments a little bit more, so
| | 01:21 | I don't want to get into
them too much right now.
| | 01:23 | Let's focus on what you can do with MIDI
once you have it in the software world.
| | 01:28 | One of the things about recorded MIDI
data, or tracks of MIDI, is that it's very
| | 01:32 | easy to manipulate in a lot of different ways.
| | 01:35 | So let's move in and just drag
and move a couple things around.
| | 01:38 | I will show you what I mean.
| | 01:39 | So in this drum track I have a kick
drum that's assigned to this note and a
| | 01:44 | snare drum and then some
shakers up here, some tambourine.
| | 01:47 | So I can click on that, and
you can hear it when I click.
| | 01:50 | It will preview, and I can drag
it to a different tambourine sound.
| | 01:55 | (drums playing)
There are some snares.
| | 01:59 | (drums playing)
| | 02:06 | So I can pick what sounds I want.
| | 02:07 | So those are all sounds in my
sampler in my virtual instrument.
| | 02:10 | As I change what note they are
assigned to, we get a different sound; same
| | 02:15 | goes for the snare.
| | 02:17 | (drums playing)
| | 02:27 | So, that's what you can do in terms of
moving it up and down the scale and which
| | 02:32 | note it's assigned to.
| | 02:33 | We can also adjust the length of these notes.
| | 02:37 | So if I don't want it to be as long--
| | 02:39 | Now in this case, where we have drums,
the length isn't going to be a big deal.
| | 02:42 | Although I think maybe with our kick
drum we might be able to get a sense of it.
| | 02:45 | (drum playing)
Yeah, that's kind of a nice long beat.
| | 02:48 | So if we go in and shorten up that file,
now I am telling it, hey, play this
| | 02:56 | sample but only for this long.
| | 02:58 | Let's see if that's long enough,
(drums playing)
| | 03:05 | Let's shorten it more, so it's just a real snap.
(drums playing)
| | 03:16 | So as you can see, we can extend
the duration of the different notes
| | 03:20 | really pretty easily.
| | 03:23 | We can also delete or add
notes really pretty easily as well.
| | 03:26 | We can highlight a note and hit the old
Delete button, and it's a goner. Or I can
| | 03:31 | bring that back via Undo. Or I
can go ahead and draw in new notes.
| | 03:35 | I think on this drum track I am going
to listen back. I want to add in a little
| | 03:39 | something new and kind of cool.
| | 03:40 | I am going to change. I am going to
pick my grid there. Okay, 16th notes.
| | 03:45 | (drums playing)
| | 03:48 | Yeah, I am going to put a
couple of things in here.
| | 03:51 | Yeah, that's what I want to
use. Let's check this out.
| | 03:56 | (drums playing)
Yeah, this is contemporary stuff.
| | 04:01 | Don't be surprised if you hear this on the
radio next time you are out in California.
| | 04:05 | (drums playing)
| | 04:11 | So we can draw MIDI notes in. Really cool.
And then if I don't like those, we can
| | 04:15 | maybe change that sound again.
| | 04:18 | (drums playing)
| | 04:29 | Cool! The other thing we can do is change
the velocity of notes, and to do that I
| | 04:33 | have to pick a different view here,
say, let me show me the velocity
| | 04:37 | information. But I can go in, and right
now, this represents the velocity of the
| | 04:41 | all the notes on this MIDI track.
| | 04:43 | I can actually pick a note
and then change the velocity.
| | 04:47 | I can drag it down or add more velocity.
| | 04:50 | Now velocity is the attack, or how hard
or how loud the sound is, to simplify it.
| | 04:56 | That allows us to change the dynamics
of the track we're working. And so if we
| | 05:00 | don't want all of the snare hits to be
of the same volume, I can go ahead and
| | 05:04 | make some a little quieter
and some a little louder.
| | 05:06 | Usually I like to make that first accent
snare a little softer and make that hit
| | 05:10 | that's on the beat a little heavier.
| | 05:12 | So let's go ahead and
make that kind of adjustment.
| | 05:14 | I'll make this one really
quiet for demonstration purposes.
| | 05:22 | So I am changing the velocity.
(drums playing)
| | 05:28 | So you get that ta-dum.
| | 05:30 | So that's playing with the velocity.
| | 05:31 | This is really cool, and this is a
really cool feature. And you'll see that when
| | 05:35 | we record in a few tracks that it's
nice to be able to record in some MIDI,
| | 05:38 | but then the fact that you can manipulate
it in so many different ways allows you
| | 05:42 | to perform it but then
fine-tune your performance.
| | 05:47 | But sometimes you don't need to perform at all;
| | 05:49 | you can just build the track
from the scratch and draw it in.
| | 05:51 | I just used the Pencil tool to lay out
this drumbeat, and that's why it's such an
| | 05:55 | excellent drumbeat,
because I made it with a pencil.
| | 05:59 | But there's a lot of potential, and
you can have a lot of fun with MIDI.
| | 06:02 | The other thing you can do with
MIDI is a thing called quantize, and
| | 06:05 | basically that's the idea of shifting
notes so that they make sense in a grid,
| | 06:10 | or in a certain pattern.
| | 06:13 | So let's take a listen. I have got
some notes that I know I didn't put in so
| | 06:16 | well, and we are going to quantize
those and try and fix them, or get them where
| | 06:19 | I want them in relationship to
kind of the tempo and the beat.
| | 06:23 | (drums playing)
| | 06:27 | Yeah, I kind of choked there.
Let's take it back a little further, so you can
| | 06:31 | hear it, and I will zoom in too.
| | 06:32 | Yeah, we can see them.
(drums playing)
| | 06:42 | So let's go in and try to fix that.
Let's take a good look, and we simply look at
| | 06:46 | two of these at once.
| | 06:48 | So I am going to go in and highlight all
those notes. It looks like I have got some
| | 06:52 | real issues here with my 16th notes
up here and where my kicks are landing.
| | 06:56 | So I am going to go ahead and work
with the MIDI, and do something called
| | 07:02 | quantize. Here it is: Grid/Groove
Quantize. And in here I can pick the increments
| | 07:08 | I want to quantize to, or more or less the
grid I want my notes to pay attention
| | 07:13 | to and to shift to.
| | 07:15 | So if we just pay attention to these
notes and look at that mess, and I am going
| | 07:17 | to hit the Apply button, and it will
quantize them, and you'll see what happens.
| | 07:23 | Suddenly it looks like
they're a little bit more in line.
| | 07:26 | So let's take a listen.
| | 07:27 | (drums playing)
Yes, definitely better.
| | 07:33 | Now quantize isn't the sure thing; you have
to really pay attention to how you apply it.
| | 07:38 | Sometimes it has to make a decision
about this note that's off. Sometimes it
| | 07:44 | might shift it over here when you
apply it, but another time it might decide
| | 07:47 | it's this one based on how close it is,
or where it thinks you meant to put it.
| | 07:51 | So you can't just hit the magic
button and then assume you have gold.
| | 07:55 | It's always important to listen back
and make sure that when you quantized it, it
| | 07:58 | got the effect you wanted.
| | 08:00 | Now that sort of quantizing sets
everything right to the Grid perfectly.
| | 08:03 | There's another thing called
Groove Quantizing, which deals with
| | 08:06 | offsetting notes slightly
| | 08:08 | so they are not in such a perfect
mechanical order, which is one of the things
| | 08:12 | you will hear when people talk about MIDI.
| | 08:14 | It's easy to make things very
perfect and lay things out perfectly on the
| | 08:17 | timeline against the grid, but a
lot of times we know that music has
| | 08:21 | imperfections, or musicians have
different emphasis on different notes, and it's
| | 08:26 | not all about the perfect 'right-
on-the-money' music all the time.
| | 08:29 | So a lot of times you'll find people
criticize MIDI or people who use MIDI
| | 08:33 | because they make things a little too
perfect and there's not as much feeling
| | 08:37 | in there or whatever.
| | 08:38 | So they've come up with something
called Groove Quantize, and this is available
| | 08:42 | in lots of different programs.
And basically it's the idea of trying to humanize,
| | 08:46 | or add some feel, to the quantizing process
| | 08:49 | so it's not so perfect. And it will
allow you to choose from different feels
| | 08:53 | like ahead of the beat, behind the
beat, swinging it a little bit, et cetera.
| | 08:57 | So that's out there. And if you get
a work with quantizing, I definitely
| | 09:00 | encourage you to check that out,
because adding the human feel to your MIDI is
| | 09:04 | definitely something worth pursuing.
| | 09:06 | In the meantime, I am going to go
ahead and actually fix this, because I can.
| | 09:18 | (drums playing)
| | 09:22 | All right, so quantize is one
more thing we can do with MIDI.
| | 09:28 | Now, it's important to know that
we're working here with a drum track, but
| | 09:31 | actually we can use this. This is
just information, and we can use it to
| | 09:35 | trigger any sounds we want.
| | 09:37 | So actually I have an organ track
down here that hopefully you won't find
| | 09:42 | too offensive but I think is kind
groovy, just to show that we can assign
| | 09:47 | different voices to this MIDI information
and play back all sorts of different voices.
| | 09:52 | Check it out!
| | 09:53 | (music playing)
| | 10:03 | That's some good stuff,
and I know it's going to be big.
| | 10:06 | But it's not quite done yet, because I
got to put some more tracks on here.
| | 10:09 | I need some handclaps in there if this
is going to be a true educational video
| | 10:14 | piece of music, which I
have a special affinity for.
| | 10:18 | So we are going to add a little big of
handclap here, and we are actually going
| | 10:20 | to take a look at recording
MIDI, which will be exciting.
| | 10:24 | So in this session I have already added my
claps track, because I knew I had to have them.
| | 10:28 | Now I am going to go ahead
and arm the track for recording.
| | 10:31 | We will zoom out a little bit, so we
get a better view, and I am going to go
| | 10:34 | ahead and see if I've got my claps sound.
| | 10:36 | Remember, when we were showing you
the setups, right now I am going to be
| | 10:38 | pushing some keys on the keyboard
controller to trigger the clap sound.
| | 10:42 | (clap sounds)
Oh yeah, I have got them.
| | 10:45 | So I am going to try and record
some new claps for this hot track.
| | 10:50 | Here we go. Just like recording audio,
record arm, hit the button, hit Play, and
| | 10:58 | we will see a little bit
of recording in process.
| | 11:01 | (music playing)
| | 11:17 | That was pretty awful,
but look, there are my claps.
| | 11:24 | (music playing)
| | 11:30 | Oh yeah, that one is good.
| | 11:32 | Well, I like these two, so I am just
going to ahead and copy those two and
| | 11:37 | duplicate them, and that's
why I play it more than once.
| | 11:41 | (music playing)
| | 11:50 | You can see that my
quantizing effort has actually failed.
| | 11:52 | I must have highlighted the
wrong thing there. So that's it.
| | 11:55 | That's recording MIDI, and that's
working with MIDI in the software.
| | 11:59 | So there is a quick look at recording MIDI.
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| Virtual instruments| 00:01 | Okay, so finally let's take a
look at virtual instruments.
| | 00:04 | Now in this chapter we've already
looked at hooking up an external controller
| | 00:07 | and using it to play virtual
instruments in your laptop or in your computer.
| | 00:11 | And in other chapters we've actually
look to the virtual instrument as a
| | 00:14 | plug-in and initiating it.
| | 00:16 | In this section, we're just going to
take a quick look at the virtual instrument
| | 00:19 | and how it relates to MIDI, and show
how we can use the tracks from our last
| | 00:23 | movie and change some of the voices
around some of the qualities of the sound
| | 00:27 | that we are working with.
| | 00:28 | This is what's so great about MIDI is
that you get the information as MIDI, but
| | 00:32 | you can also change how it plays back,
or what voices it plays, back via virtual
| | 00:37 | instruments or sound modules.
| | 00:38 | So let's play around a little
bit with a virtual instrument.
| | 00:41 | First I will give you the exciting
satisfaction of hearing our hot track
| | 00:45 | back one more time.
| | 00:47 | (music playing)
Listen for the claps. Oh yeah!
| | 00:55 | All right, so it's a hot one.
| | 00:57 | I am going to go ahead and open up the
virtual instrument that we are using for
| | 01:02 | the organ sound there.
| | 01:04 | I am going to solo it out, and we
will do a little bit of listening back.
| | 01:07 | So right now, we're basically sending
that MIDI to this plug-in, and we've got a
| | 01:20 | patch loaded, this reggae organ.
And it's generating the sound that we're
| | 01:25 | hearing right now when I hit Play.
| | 01:27 | We can go in here and change what
sounds we're using, use the same note
| | 01:32 | information, the same MIDI information,
and listen back to a different sound.
| | 01:37 | (bells ringing)
| | 01:46 | Then we can also go ahead and
make adjustments to those sounds.
| | 01:49 | Now virtual instruments will vary, and
some have very specific tasks, others are
| | 01:53 | kind of like big, general sound
banks, like this virtual instrument.
| | 01:57 | But most of them, in addition to
letting you load sounds, will give you quite a
| | 01:59 | few options to change or
manipulate those sounds.
| | 02:02 | So I am going to play that back and
play with a few of the features they have
| | 02:05 | here, just to show you how you can
alter these sounds once you have got them
| | 02:08 | loaded up. And once you have got the
MIDI, to show the performance you want, or
| | 02:11 | it's hitting the notes at the right time,
then you can actually use the virtual
| | 02:14 | instrument to kind of tune in the sound.
| | 02:20 | (bells ringing)
| | 02:26 | Okay, let's go ahead and load up
another sound and play around a little bit
| | 02:29 | more, something ethnic, melodic kalimba.
| | 02:33 | That's good. I am going turn this baby off,
and go back to the old mix window here.
| | 02:38 | (kalimba playing)
| | 03:14 | And maybe one more choice here. Let's see
what we have for some strings here.
| | 03:21 | (strings playing)
| | 03:25 | That's pretty 80s.
| | 03:26 | (strings playing)
| | 03:39 | (electric keyboard playing)
| | 04:04 | So hopefully this gives you an idea of
some of the different things you can do
| | 04:06 | with virtual instruments: you can
load in patches and play with different
| | 04:10 | settings for each patch, change
that sound but have that original MIDI
| | 04:13 | information playing back.
| | 04:16 | So for all those examples, we were
listening to the same set of MIDI
| | 04:20 | information, just changing the
characteristics of the samples being played back
| | 04:25 | via the virtual instrument.
| | 04:26 | Now this just really is scratching the
surface of what's possible with virtual
| | 04:29 | instruments, and the goal here is to show
you that they exist and what's possible
| | 04:33 | once you start playing around with them.
| | 04:35 | So if you are going to be doing any
music production or sound design, I really
| | 04:39 | encourage that you start to explore
virtual instruments. They can give you a
| | 04:43 | whole new level of power and
flexibility in terms of working with sound.
| | 04:46 | In order to take advantage of virtual
instruments, you have to also work with MIDI.
| | 04:51 | So hopefully this will be enough to
kind of get you excited to go out and learn
| | 04:54 | more about MIDI and virtual instruments.
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|
|
17. MixingWhat is mixing?| 00:01 | So after you have all of your sounds
recorded in, and you have done edits to line
| | 00:05 | them up and get them cleaned up the
way you want, it's time to start mixing.
| | 00:09 | This is a crucial stage in
the audio production process.
| | 00:13 | So it merits talking about it, and
in this chapter that's what we'll look at.
| | 00:17 | So what is mixing?
| | 00:18 | Well, it's determining the
relationship between multiple sounds.
| | 00:21 | It's that point where you kind of take
all the different things you have there
| | 00:25 | and figure out what their
relationship is going to be to each other.
| | 00:28 | You take all of the sounds that you have
and everything that you are working with
| | 00:31 | and you go in and you try and make
each one sound as good as it can, but you
| | 00:34 | also are thinking about what's the
relationship of all these sounds together?
| | 00:39 | You are working on setting up kind of
the balance between all these sounds and
| | 00:42 | creating kind of the sonic space
that they are going to live in.
| | 00:46 | This is ultimately what kind of determines
the final character of your audio production.
| | 00:50 | You will go in and make the bass
guitar sound a little bit bassier, you will
| | 00:54 | turn the pan flute a little bit,
make some EQ changes to things like the
| | 00:58 | tambourine, maybe change the tonal
character of the voice in the voiceover,
| | 01:03 | make sure that the EQ and the music that
you're writing up under your podcast is
| | 01:07 | good and it's not too thumpy and it's
even. You'll make a lot of tweaks, you will
| | 01:11 | add some compression, use a lot of plug-
ins to change or manipulate your sounds
| | 01:16 | so that they blend well together.
| | 01:18 | So finally once we got this mix set up
and we have kind of established all the
| | 01:21 | levels and the relationship between
everything, we are going to take all those
| | 01:24 | tracks and bounce them down to a final mix down.
| | 01:27 | We are going to generate either a mono
or stereo file that is the product, or the
| | 01:33 | sum of all the different tracks combined.
| | 01:35 | So the mixing is the process of
determining what that final file is going to
| | 01:39 | sound like, and that's the file that
will end up on the CD, or we'll take and put
| | 01:43 | in your MP3 player, or go
listen to in your living room.
| | 01:46 | So the mix down is a crucial stage.
| | 01:48 | So let's start by taking a look at
some of the objectives you want to keep in
| | 01:51 | mind when you're mixing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Some common objectives| 00:01 | Overall, I like to think about
mixing as kind of having two different
| | 00:04 | objectives: one is to be artful
and the other is to be technical.
| | 00:08 | Now, the artful part means it's on you,
make it sound the way you want it to
| | 00:12 | sound, be expressive and kind of
interject your personality into what you are
| | 00:16 | doing, make it sound cool to you,
use effects, do stuff, blow my mind.
| | 00:21 | I can't even tell you what to do;
| | 00:22 | start to play around with things and
experiment. But it's about being artful and
| | 00:26 | injecting yourself into what you're doing.
| | 00:29 | This might be more so if you're doing
music than if you're doing a podcast.
| | 00:32 | But even so, with things like podcasts,
stuff like that, you can actually make
| | 00:37 | aesthetic decisions that will make
it stand out or make it seem different
| | 00:40 | than other podcasts.
| | 00:41 | That something that can't really be
taught. That's about what you're going to
| | 00:44 | bring and what you think is
cool, and that's a great part of it.
| | 00:47 | So, the other side of mixing is the
more technical objective, or the technical
| | 00:52 | side, and that means working, or
engineering, your mix so that you come up with a
| | 00:56 | certain degree of technical quality.
| | 00:59 | You want your mix to have a certain
degree of balance and clarity, and also
| | 01:02 | try and fit it into what I
like to call the sonic strike zone.
| | 01:06 | By balance, I mean taking sounds and
putting them in specific places in the mix
| | 01:11 | so that you can kind of hear the
different sounds and that not all the sounds
| | 01:15 | are fighting for the same sonic space.
| | 01:17 | If you have a good balance, you'll
also have pretty good clarity, but the
| | 01:20 | objective of clarity is to make sure, if
you're working on something and there's
| | 01:23 | some crucial information, that it's clear.
| | 01:26 | So, if you're working on a voiceover
for a podcast with a few other things, you
| | 01:30 | want to make sure that that one thing
is audible and is clear as possible.
| | 01:35 | Now, by the sonic strike zone I mean
getting your mix so that it's in a state where
| | 01:39 | someone can take it and listen to it on
any device and it'll still sound good.
| | 01:44 | You can create the perfect mix in your
portable studio, your home studio, and it
| | 01:49 | sounds great, like a million bucks,
| | 01:51 | but the reality is that most people are
going to take that and listen to it in
| | 01:55 | completely different circumstance:
| | 01:57 | maybe on headphones, maybe in
their living room, or in their car.
| | 02:01 | But if you can make a mix that lives in
the sonic strike zone, which means it's
| | 02:05 | good enough to hit a strike
from - you know, like baseball -
| | 02:08 | that means that no matter where they
take it and listen to it they will be able
| | 02:12 | to make it sound good enough.
| | 02:15 | That means if you take it and listen to
it on your iPod with headphones, all of a
| | 02:18 | sudden there's no base whatsoever.
There's still going to be some base there.
| | 02:22 | Or if you take it and listen
to it in your car, you lose a couple of
| | 02:25 | different instruments.
| | 02:27 | As long as you can take a mix and put
it on any playback device and tweak it
| | 02:32 | a little bit with the tone knob and the
base, or in your car you have an old graphic EQ,
| | 02:37 | you can use that to adjust a mix so
that you can listen to it and be happy with
| | 02:41 | it, then that's in the sonic strike zone,
because you want to try and attain the
| | 02:45 | best mix possible that's
the most satisfying to you,
| | 02:48 | but you also want to make it so that
it's usable. You want to make this piece of
| | 02:51 | music or this recorded piece of audio
usable for everyone else who's out there.
| | 02:56 | So, you want to try and create a mix
that lands in the sonic strike zone so that
| | 02:59 | it's easy for other people to enjoy.
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| Some useful techniques| 00:01 | So, let's talk a little bit about a
few techniques you can use when you're
| | 00:04 | mixing, to try and get better results.
| | 00:06 | Chances are that as you've been working
and recording and editing, you've already
| | 00:10 | been adjusting the levels a little bit
here and there and maybe even applying
| | 00:13 | some different plug-ins or EQs and
things like that, and that's fine.
| | 00:17 | It's good to start with kind of simple
rough mix, put things up fairly evenly,
| | 00:22 | and just start to listen to everything
that you have there, think of it in terms
| | 00:26 | of the big picture and see how
all the sounds relate to each other.
| | 00:30 | Think about what competes, what sounds
are kind of dominant, what sounds are
| | 00:34 | important, what sounds are less important.
| | 00:36 | The idea is to take a step back and kind of
breathe it all in and get the big picture.
| | 00:41 | Listen to everything they have to deal
with and start to get a sense of their
| | 00:44 | relationship to each other before
you've applied too much processing and tonal
| | 00:48 | changes and played with the volumes too much.
| | 00:51 | Just think about everything that's
there and put together an overall game plan
| | 00:55 | and analyze what's going on there
with all the sounds that you have.
| | 00:59 | So, then you want to start to dial in
the sounds independently. You want to focus
| | 01:02 | on a track or specific instrument,
| | 01:04 | take some time to EQ them, make them sound a
little bit better and maybe add some effects.
| | 01:09 | But I always like to say just take
them about 70% of the way home, or get them
| | 01:13 | close to where you want them, but don't
spend three or four hours turning one
| | 01:17 | knob at a time to try and get the bass
right, right, right to where you want it.
| | 01:22 | Because you'll find that as you
start to dial in each of the sounds
| | 01:25 | independently, you'll actually start
making changes to other sounds because their
| | 01:28 | relationship starts to change.
| | 01:30 | So, I like to get all the sounds
close to home and then I step back again,
| | 01:35 | take it all in and assess the
relationship between these different sounds again.
| | 01:40 | Then I go back into kind of
finish the other 30% or so.
| | 01:44 | So, in these final stages of kind of
dialing in the sounds independently and
| | 01:48 | then thinking about their relationship
to the other sounds, you need to start to
| | 01:51 | create the sonic landscape, and that
means putting sounds in different frequency
| | 01:55 | ranges, putting sounds different
dynamic ranges, and put things in different
| | 01:59 | locations out in space, or the stereo field.
| | 02:02 | By putting things in different frequency
ranges or letting different instruments
| | 02:06 | occupy different frequency ranges,
you'll free them up and let them feel a
| | 02:10 | little bit more
separated from other instruments.
| | 02:12 | A good example is if you have two
guitars and maybe they're both rhythm guitars
| | 02:16 | doubling the same part.
| | 02:17 | If you EQ one a little bit
differently than the other one so that you boost
| | 02:21 | certain frequencies in one and cut
those same frequencies in the other,
| | 02:25 | you'll find that all of a sudden you'll
able to hear each of them a lot more, as
| | 02:28 | opposed to them blending together into one.
| | 02:30 | That kind of separation, that kind of clarity where you
can focus in on either sound if you want
| | 02:34 | to is one of the things
you're trying to achieve.
| | 02:37 | The other thing, and this is a pretty
classic mix thing, is usually if
| | 02:41 | you are working with the band, you
have a lot of people. I'm the bass player,
| | 02:44 | and I'm the guitar player.
| | 02:45 | I just want the guitar to be the loudest,
or I am bass player, it's got to sound great.
| | 02:49 | This can be problematic when you're
mixing. You are not trying to make one
| | 02:52 | instrument alone sound incredible;
| | 02:54 | you are trying to make a whole
combination of sounds sound like a great song.
| | 02:59 | You'll find that a lot of times even
though you perceive something like a guitar
| | 03:02 | to be this big full range instrument,
| | 03:05 | actually, if you listen to a lot of
mixes, you'll find that it's actually not
| | 03:08 | that big and boomier.
| | 03:09 | It doesn't have all that power behind
it that you might think it does.
| | 03:12 | It's actually mixed as a narrow thing.
| | 03:15 | That's because it needs to kind of
get out of the frequency range that
| | 03:18 | other instruments need to live in, and
by being in a certain frequency range,
| | 03:23 | it's easier to focus on.
| | 03:24 | It still has the perceived power of
being you know a huge, giant marshall stack
| | 03:29 | that rattles the stage.
| | 03:30 | But actually, if you just close your
eyes and listen to it, you'll realize
| | 03:33 | that there's not as much kind of low-end and
girth to it in the mix as you might expect.
| | 03:38 | Another thing you can do is put
things in different dynamic ranges by using
| | 03:41 | things like compressors and limiters or gates.
| | 03:44 | Just by playing with volume, you can
make certain things pop in and out of mixes,
| | 03:48 | or be more apparent.
| | 03:50 | Working with drums in the dynamic
ranges is really important because generally
| | 03:53 | we want them to kind of maintain a
consistent dynamic range throughout the
| | 03:56 | song, but at the same time we want
certain things like snare drums and kick
| | 04:00 | drums to kind of pop out.
| | 04:01 | So, playing with things like gates
and compressors can give us more room to
| | 04:05 | move them up and down so that it's always right
at about the same level that we want it to be at.
| | 04:10 | Finally, putting sounds in different
locations in space means using panning and
| | 04:13 | reverb and delays and even changing
the tonal character with EQ to put things
| | 04:18 | out into the sound field.
| | 04:20 | Traditionally, if you think about
watching a live band, you've got the drummer in
| | 04:24 | the back in the middle, maybe a
guitarist over to the right, a piano player to the
| | 04:28 | left, a vocalist in the middle.
| | 04:30 | So, when you are mixing you want to
take advantage of the stereo image and put
| | 04:33 | different instruments or different
voices in different parts of the stereo image -
| | 04:37 | to the left, to the right, closer to
the listener or farther from the listener.
| | 04:41 | And these three things will
make up the sonic landscape.
| | 04:44 | Finally, a few things you can do to
kind of hone your skills, or zero in on your
| | 04:48 | own mix is to work with your eyes.
| | 04:51 | Digital audio is great because we can
do a lot of things visually but at the same
| | 04:54 | time it becomes possible to kind of be
distracted or sucked in by the visual
| | 04:58 | and not actually spend as much time
doing critical listening or focused
| | 05:01 | listening as we need to.
| | 05:03 | So, always be ready to work with your
eyes shut and kind of pay attention to the
| | 05:06 | stereo image and think about what's
where and then go back to work with your
| | 05:10 | eyes open and make some adjustments.
| | 05:12 | It always pays off.
| | 05:13 | Another thing you can do to hone your
skills or just get better at mixing is pay
| | 05:17 | attention to mixes that other people have done.
| | 05:19 | Grab your five favorite records and put
them on in your home studio, or wherever
| | 05:23 | you are doing your mixing, and just sit
there and listen to with your eyes closed
| | 05:27 | and try to think about the different
sounds or the different components and how
| | 05:30 | those things come together.
| | 05:31 | Pay attention to that guitar part or
what kind of reverb they might've used on
| | 05:35 | the vocal, things like that.
| | 05:37 | You'll notice that once you
start to do it, it's pretty fun.
| | 05:39 | It's kind of like a
puzzle that you start to solve.
| | 05:41 | You'll also notice that there are lots
of things we listen to all the time and
| | 05:44 | just take for granted, but when we
actually stop and really focus on these things,
| | 05:48 | we can start to come to pick
apart how they're put together.
| | 05:51 | In the next movie, we'll go back
into Pro Tools and just open up a few
| | 05:54 | things and move some faders around and
talk about a few things you can do to
| | 05:57 | kind of build a mix.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| A quick mixing demo| 00:01 | Okay, so we're back in Pro Tools.
| | 00:02 | We're going to take a look at
setting up kind of a basic mix.
| | 00:05 | We have a pretty simple, what, about a
nine-track session here with some drums,
| | 00:09 | some bass guitar, and a little Rhodes track.
| | 00:11 | We're just going to look at kind of
getting started and dialing this in a little bit.
| | 00:15 | So, let's first shift over to the
Mix window, and just take a look at
| | 00:18 | everything we have.
| | 00:19 | I'm going to roll the tape.
| | 00:21 | We'll just go through.
| | 00:22 | I like to have everything -
all the faders set to zero.
| | 00:25 | So we're not really changing any volumes here.
| | 00:27 | We don't have everything plugged in yet.
| | 00:28 | We're not using any effects.
| | 00:30 | Everything we're hearing is
what you'd call the raw track.
| | 00:33 | So, I'll go ahead and set
the pans to zero as well.
| | 00:37 | So, we can start with everything
kind of zeroed out, so to speak.
| | 00:47 | So, this is a nice place to start.
| | 00:48 | We have made some changes while we're
doing some recording, and making some
| | 00:51 | things easier when we are doing
overdubs and things like that.
| | 00:54 | But now I want to go back to kind of zero.
| | 00:56 | So we're going to play the track back.
| | 00:58 | I'll go through, and kind of solo each
channel, and just take a listen to what I have.
| | 01:02 | We'll start with kind of the big picture.
| | 01:05 | Then we'll go through and
see what the pieces are.
| | 01:07 | Then we'll decide where to start working.
| | 01:09 | (Music playing.)
| | 01:25 | Okay, so let's go through
and solo each track now.
| | 01:29 | (Drum playing.)
| | 01:31 | There is the glorious kick drum.
| | 01:32 | (Music playing.)
(Snare drum playing.)
| | 01:36 | Snare that we actually - looks
like we mic'ed from the bottom.
| | 01:39 | (Snare drum playing.)
(Music playing.)
| | 01:42 | There is the overhead mic.
| | 01:43 | (Drums playing.)
(Music playing)
| | 01:52 | There is a room mic.
| | 01:53 | You can hear it's picking up the drums.
| | 01:55 | We use that mostly to pick up the drums.
| | 01:56 | But you can hear there is a little
bit of bleed. You can hear some of the
| | 01:59 | guitar track in there.
| | 02:01 | (Music playing.)
| | 02:06 | So, here is one guitar.
| | 02:07 | (Music playing.)
| | 02:14 | There is the bass amp.
| | 02:15 | (Bass playing.)
| | 02:18 | There is the bass direct.
| | 02:20 | Those are already, you can tell,
they sound pretty close. Here is the Rhodes.
| | 02:24 | (Music playing.)
| | 02:31 | That's nice and kind of dirty. I like that.
| | 02:34 | Then another guitar.
| | 02:36 | (Guitar playing)
| | 02:43 | Okay, so those are our pieces of the puzzle.
| | 02:46 | The first thing I'm going to do is I'd
actually like to go ahead and kind of
| | 02:49 | rearrange things, so that they're
physically where I like them to be.
| | 02:52 | I generally work from left to right,
and try and build the drums out first.
| | 02:57 | Then I put the bass guitar next to
the drums, and then the rest of the
| | 03:01 | instruments, and usually end up
with vocals somewhere on the far right.
| | 03:05 | And I'm going to go ahead, because both the bass tracks,
to me, sound pretty similar, I'm going to go ahead
| | 03:12 | and just mute one of them, and not -
and decide to just work with one today.
| | 03:17 | (Music playing.)
| | 03:24 | Yeah, I'm going to use the direct, because
you can hear a little speaker noise in there.
| | 03:29 | I think that speaker
might not have been so great.
| | 03:36 | So, I'm going to take this and just
relegate it over here to the wasteland.
| | 03:39 | All right, we'll take the bass di and
bring it over here next to our drums, and
| | 03:47 | that we won't mess with.
| | 03:48 | So then we have our two guitars in the Rhodes.
| | 03:51 | So, let's go back and kind of take a
listen to the overall mix of everything
| | 03:55 | going on, just make some general
assumptions about what's happening.
| | 03:58 | (Music playing.)
| | 04:11 | So, I'm feeling like just
thinking about the drums.
| | 04:13 | We want to get a little bit
more kick and snare in there.
| | 04:15 | Take some of the cymbals out.
| | 04:17 | They seem to be kind of dominating right now.
| | 04:19 | The two guitars seem to be
kind of fighting with each other.
| | 04:22 | I'd like to get a little bit more thump,
or low-end out of that bass guitar.
| | 04:26 | So let's start by just working
with the drums. We'll go ahead, and
| | 04:30 | let's just isolate the bass drum
track, and work on that a little bit.
| | 04:34 | (Bass drum playing.)
| | 04:37 | I'm going to start by using a plug-in.
| | 04:41 | We'll just go ahead and
tweak the EQ there a little bit.
| | 04:43 | I want to take some of that kind
of cardboard box sound out of there.
| | 04:49 | We'll use the old search and destroy.
| | 04:51 | (Bass drum playing.)
| | 04:58 | Probably about there!
| | 04:59 | So I'm going to go ahead and get
myself three of these to work with.
| | 05:04 | There we go, because I know that I want to
kind of boost the attack there a little bit.
| | 05:08 | (Bass drum playing.)
| | 05:27 | It's a little more present,
but still kind of boxy.
| | 05:30 | (Bass drum playing.)
| | 06:03 | Okay, so I think that's a
little bit more focused than it was.
| | 06:05 | It's not perfect.
| | 06:07 | Of course, we're listening in mono,
so we're not going to be able to hear
| | 06:10 | exactly all the different
things that are going on.
| | 06:11 | (Bass drum playing.)
| | 06:17 | Now let's take a look at the snare
drum and just see if we can
| | 06:19 | affect that a little bit.
| | 06:21 | I know I want to work with
a little bit of EQ on that.
| | 06:22 | So I'm going to go ahead and
launch one. We'll focus that.
| | 06:26 | (Snare drum playing.)
| | 06:29 | It's nice and bright.
| | 06:30 | (Snare drum playing.)
| | 06:32 | I'd like it to have a little bit more thwack.
| | 06:36 | So, let's see what that thwack frequency is.
| | 06:39 | (Snare drum playing.)
It's not that.
| | 06:41 | (Snare drum playing.)
That's nice!
| | 06:47 | Actually, let's go and cut,
because we're on bottom,
| | 06:49 | we're hearing a lot of that,
| | 06:51 | now I want to take some
of the sizzle out of there.
| | 06:53 | (Snare drum playing.)
| | 07:08 | So, that's a little bit more focused.
| | 07:09 | And also, whenever you add a little bit of EQ,
sometimes your output will be higher
| | 07:13 | than it initially was. So that's why they give you
can output volume. So we'll reduce that a little bit.
| | 07:17 | So, there is our kick and snare.
| | 07:20 | (Snare drum playing.)
| | 07:24 | All right, now the overhead.
| | 07:28 | Things get a little bit
tricky with the overhead.
| | 07:29 | Remember, if you watched the section on
mic'ing up the drums that we put that over.
| | 07:33 | The objective is to pick up the cymbals,
and not necessarily the rest of the drum set.
| | 07:38 | So let's take a listen.
| | 07:39 | Inevitably, you pick up other parts of
the drum set, but what we want to try and
| | 07:43 | use this track for is the cymbals.
| | 07:45 | (Drums playing.)
| | 07:52 | We can hear quite a bit of
the rest of the set in there.
| | 07:56 | Now I'm just going to go ahead and
take a one-band parametric EQ, and
| | 08:00 | actually cut off the bottom frequencies,
because cymbals don't make a lot of low-end noise.
| | 08:06 | They don't thump; they shine.
| | 08:09 | (Drums playing.)
| | 08:23 | Now let's listen to that with our other tracks.
| | 08:25 | (Drums playing.)
| | 08:30 | I know I'm going to bring that down a
little bit too, because it's kind of dominant.
| | 08:35 | So, I think that's better.
Let's A/B that real quick.
| | 08:38 | (Drums playing.)
| | 08:48 | So, that's a little bit more focused, sound-wise.
| | 08:50 | So we've kind of got the drums going.
| | 08:53 | Let's just check out the room mic once more.
| | 08:55 | What I like to do with the room sound
is kind of bring it in to the mix I have
| | 09:00 | going in, to kind of round things out.
| | 09:02 | (Drums playing.)
| | 09:13 | So, that's pretty good!
| | 09:15 | There is a little bit of bleed in
there in the guitar, but I'm going to live
| | 09:18 | with that, because I kind of like
the room effect that this mic adds.
| | 09:23 | Okay, so we've got the
drums set up. They're close.
| | 09:26 | We're not releasing this
tomorrow. We're getting close.
| | 09:29 | Now, we'll deal with the bass.
| | 09:30 | (Bass playing.)
| | 09:33 | I'm just going to go ahead and add a compressor.
| | 09:36 | (Bass playing.)
| | 09:41 | But that's not the one I'm going to use.
| | 09:43 | I'm going to go ahead and use this compressor.
| | 09:48 | So, we'll go ahead and - sorry, wrong knob there.
| | 09:51 | (Bass playing.)
| | 09:54 | Move our threshold up so that we're
not having any effect, then we'll just
| | 09:58 | slide it down there.
| | 09:59 | (Bass playing.)
| | 10:09 | So, you can see this is the amount
being reduced on the top of that.
| | 10:12 | Now that's pretty extreme.
| | 10:13 | I'm going to take a little bit less off there.
| | 10:15 | (Bass playing.)
That's nice!
| | 10:18 | That puts it up in front.
| | 10:19 | We don't need that much output gain.
| | 10:21 | It's a pretty loud track.
| | 10:23 | So, I'm going to keep that,
| | 10:24 | but now I'm going to go ahead and EQ it too.
| | 10:28 | Again, we'll go ahead and use
another parametric, maybe a 3-bander.
| | 10:32 | (Bass playing.)
| | 10:38 | I'm not so fond of some of that buzzy stuff there.
| | 10:41 | It gets a little masked out in the mix,
| | 10:43 | so I'm not going to go
crazy trying to get rid of it,
| | 10:45 | but I'm going to try and find
a little bit of balance here.
| | 10:47 | I want this bass, I want it
to kind of push the track.
| | 10:51 | (Bass playing.)
| | 11:22 | I think we can live with that for now.
| | 11:23 | We'll just see how that
fits into the rest of the mix.
| | 11:26 | (Music playing.)
| | 11:30 | Now let's check out these guitars.
| | 11:32 | (Guitars playing.)
| | 11:36 | So, I like these, but I can't
quite distinguish what's going on.
| | 11:39 | So I'm going to pan them hard left and right.
| | 11:41 | Now you won't be able to hear this,
because the recording is mono,
| | 11:44 | but I'm going to go ahead and do
this anyway, to give some separation.
| | 11:47 | Then we'll work a little bit with the volumes.
| | 11:49 | (Music playing.)
| | 12:03 | That's a pretty nice balance there.
| | 12:04 | Obviously, we've got kind of a rhythm,
and then this is kind of a - it's not
| | 12:08 | exactly a lead, but it's
kind of an add-on line there.
| | 12:11 | (Music playing.)
| | 12:20 | Let's put a little bit of reverb on the
Rhodes right away, just to kind of send
| | 12:25 | it towards the back of the mix.
| | 12:26 | It's kind of there to
fill up the space and stuff.
| | 12:29 | It's not really the lead line, by any means.
| | 12:31 | So, we'll put it kind of in a Medium
room, and see what we've got there.
| | 12:35 | (Music playing.)
| | 13:05 | So, that sounds pretty good!
| | 13:06 | So we've kind of dialed that in, and
gotten it into a place where we can
| | 13:08 | start to work with it.
| | 13:10 | Now we can listen to it, see what
exactly we have going on, and take a step
| | 13:14 | back, take it all in,
| | 13:15 | then go back in and start to tweak it
again, and think about the relationship
| | 13:19 | between the different instruments.
| | 13:20 | So, one other thing we can do is add a
new track, or a Master Fader, which will
| | 13:27 | feed all of our sounds into
one final track, or one channel.
| | 13:32 | We'll go ahead and create that. It's nice.
| | 13:36 | It pops up it over here.
| | 13:37 | Sometimes it pops it up in the
middle, based on where you are.
| | 13:39 | I always like to keep the Master Fader
over to the right, much like the way it
| | 13:43 | appears on a hardware mixing board.
It's just kind of the way things are set up, and
| | 13:48 | the way my brain likes to work with mixers.
| | 13:50 | So, now I can send all the signal
and control it with the Master Fader.
| | 13:58 | (Music playing.)
| | 14:09 | Level-wise, a pretty good mix,
pretty hot, which is nice.
| | 14:13 | Now, the other thing I can do is go
ahead and put a few plug-ins into this
| | 14:17 | Master Fader to kind of affect
the overall output of the whole mix.
| | 14:22 | If you wanted to do something like
throw a reverb on the whole channel, or do
| | 14:25 | some things to kind of master it a
little bit, you could do that, but we'll
| | 14:28 | actually look at that in the next chapter.
| | 14:30 | So, for right now, I'm
going to leave it the way it is.
| | 14:32 | At this point, I would probably go ahead
and bounce out of version to a single mix,
| | 14:37 | then take it around and listen to it in a few
different places, and just see what I notice,
| | 14:42 | then come back, and do some more tweaks.
| | 14:44 | You can also go ahead and do things
like add reverb to the whole drum set, or
| | 14:48 | parts of the drum set.
| | 14:49 | There is really no shortage to the
number of things you can do to start
| | 14:52 | working on creating kind of a sonic
landscape and working on the balance of
| | 14:56 | the different things.
| | 14:58 | I can sit here when I'm working and
mixing and I can play stuff and -
| | 15:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 15:02 | I'll just make little slides all day long.
| | 15:05 | (Music playing.)
| | 15:07 | You don't notice I'm here kind of in
this mono setting, but it's easy to sit and
| | 15:11 | tweak on this stuff a lot.
| | 15:12 | I find it's productive to kind of make
some big, broad strokes, move it over,
| | 15:16 | take it, listen to it somewhere else,
or not listen to it for a little while,
| | 15:20 | and come back to it, readdress things.
| | 15:23 | If you just kind of keep listening to
it nonstop, and on end, a lot of times
| | 15:27 | you'll kind of start to tune out things.
| | 15:29 | You'll become less sensitive to things.
| | 15:30 | So it's good to get a little breath
between mixes there, between kind of
| | 15:34 | getting into mixing, because it's
nice to approach it with fresh ears.
| | 15:38 | You might find that you spend a bunch of
time EQing one sound or one instrument,
| | 15:42 | then when you come back a day later,
that it actually is not that great an EQ,
| | 15:45 | or that it sounds terrible in a
car stereo, something like that.
| | 15:49 | Anyway, hopefully, this was helpful
and it just gives you an idea of kind of
| | 15:53 | getting started in the world of mixing,
and how you want to address all the
| | 15:56 | sounds as one group, but then also pay
attention to them individually, and then
| | 16:00 | work on their relationship with one another.
| | 16:02 | So hopefully, this demo will give you
an idea of kind of what mixing is, and
| | 16:05 | how to get started, how to get things
going, set up a few tracks, make some
| | 16:09 | individual adjustments, and work with the
different balances between the instruments.
| | 16:13 | You'll find that mixing is very
challenging, but also addictive, because
| | 16:17 | it's tons of fun to see what's
possible to bring in different sounds, and
| | 16:20 | kind of adjust them.
| | 16:21 | There is no one right,
perfect combination necessarily.
| | 16:25 | There are a lot of different
combinations that might all work.
| | 16:28 | That's kind of where the
individual preferences come into play.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
18. MasteringWhat is mastering?| 00:01 | So after you've done all your mixing
and you've gotten your music into a
| | 00:05 | mixdown, the next step
is to look into mastering.
| | 00:08 | So what is mastering?
| | 00:09 | It's the process of taking your final
mixes and making the last round of tweaks
| | 00:14 | and enhancements to make sure that
your sounds sound as good as possible.
| | 00:18 | We want to make sure that when they go
out there into the world and they sit
| | 00:21 | next to other recordings, they seem
as loud, and as full range as those
| | 00:25 | recordings, and we want to make sure
that if they're in a digital file format
| | 00:29 | going out to be burnt to a CD, they are in
the right format and they are trimmed and tidy.
| | 00:33 | It's also the process of trying to get
those files out of our dock and onto a
| | 00:37 | drive, or into some other world.
| | 00:39 | So after you've completed your mix, the
next thing you want to do is take your
| | 00:43 | final mixdown files and master them.
| | 00:46 | So what is mastering?
| | 00:48 | Essentially, it's the last step.
| | 00:50 | It's taking your mixdowns to the next level.
| | 00:52 | You are not thinking about
individual instruments at this point.
| | 00:55 | You want to prepare it for the world.
| | 00:56 | You want to make sure it's as loud
as it can be in the digital world.
| | 01:00 | You want to make sure that, as a
file, it works in different systems.
| | 01:03 | It's ready to be burnt onto a CD or
sent out to a CD production place.
| | 01:08 | And that involves preparing the audio
files and exporting high quality masters.
| | 01:13 | So, in this chapter, we'll look at a
few of the things that go into mastering.
| | 01:17 | I should also mention that mastering
is also an art as well as a science, and
| | 01:21 | that it has a huge impact on your
final production, or it can, at least.
| | 01:24 | If you pick up any record cover and
thumb through it, you'll notice someone in
| | 01:29 | there has a credit just for doing the mastering.
| | 01:31 | That's because it's that important.
| | 01:33 | In the big record labels, and even now the
small labels, everyone's getting to know this.
| | 01:37 | So, a lot of times you'll find things
aren't mastered by the people who do the
| | 01:40 | actual recording and engineering.
| | 01:42 | It's handed off to someone else who's
a specialist, or just does mastering.
| | 01:47 | So sometimes it makes sense to take
stabs at mastering yourself and spend time
| | 01:51 | to try and learn it and do it.
| | 01:52 | But it also a lot of times, having
someone else who's really skilled at it and
| | 01:56 | trained at it can pay off big, too.
| | 01:58 | It all depends on what the application is.
| | 02:01 | If you are just working on podcasts or
making a few things for yourself, it's
| | 02:04 | not that big a deal.
| | 02:05 | But if you're trying to make a record
that you want to get out to the world,
| | 02:08 | having it mastered by a professional
can really make the difference between it
| | 02:11 | kind of sounding homemade and
being on the professional level.
| | 02:15 | It can really take it up another
notch to that pro-level, so to speak.
| | 02:19 | So it's worth looking into, and
maybe shelling out the coin for.
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| Sonic maximization| 00:01 | Okay, in this section, we're
going to take a look at mastering and
| | 00:03 | addressing sonic maximization, or
trying to make sure that we have the best
| | 00:07 | sonic profile for a mix possible.
| | 00:09 | That means we want to look at a few things.
| | 00:11 | We want to check out,
ultimately, the final output volume.
| | 00:15 | We want to look at the dynamic range,
or how loud the loudest parts are in
| | 00:19 | relationship to the quietest parts, and
see if there's a way we can compress that
| | 00:22 | a little bit to get a little
more volume out of the overall mix.
| | 00:25 | And also we want to look at the
frequency distribution, or make sure that it's
| | 00:29 | not too base-heavy a mix, or may be
missing out on some treble, or there's some
| | 00:33 | strange spike where somehow we mixed
one of the guitars and it's really pushing
| | 00:36 | one frequency a lot more than
the rest of the frequencies.
| | 00:39 | We want to try and make sure that all
the frequencies are kind of heard evenly,
| | 00:44 | not per instrument, but the overall mix.
| | 00:47 | So let's start by just taking a
look at what we've got frequency-wise.
| | 00:51 | The first thing I like to do actually
when I do mastering is take a look at the
| | 00:54 | volume of the initial file.
| | 00:56 | This is my mixdown file from the session,
and I usually label those with a little
| | 01:00 | PM at the end of the title.
| | 01:03 | The way I like to use that is that it
stands for Pre Master, so I know kind of
| | 01:07 | what state this file is in.
| | 01:08 | It hasn't been mastered yet, but it's a
mixdown before it's been mastered. Simple enough.
| | 01:13 | You can come up with any
little notes you want for that.
| | 01:16 | That's not some sort of industry
standard. That's just something I do, and it
| | 01:19 | helps me keep my files organized.
| | 01:22 | Let's go ahead and play this track
back a little bit and just see what the
| | 01:24 | maximum volume peaks we're getting.
| | 01:26 | (Audio playing.)
| | 01:31 | So that looks about the loudest part in
the song based on the waveform, and you
| | 01:35 | can see it's not that loud.
| | 01:36 | We've got some dB to go there.
| | 01:37 | So I'm going to go ahead and to get things
started, just go ahead and normalize this.
| | 01:43 | The Normalize option, and I'm going to
normalize it up to just -1 dB, and let that go ahead.
| | 01:58 | I'm going to undo that for one second.
| | 02:00 | I should mention that I always like to
make a new copy of the piece I'm working
| | 02:06 | on for each stage or each
step that I add to the file.
| | 02:09 | So here's my original file.
| | 02:11 | Now, I am going to make this my normalized file.
| | 02:15 | That way you can kind of track the
progress, visually, of what's going on and then
| | 02:18 | easily click in A-B from one file to the next.
| | 02:22 | It's nice to be able to note your progress.
| | 02:24 | So, I've normalized this, and now our
loudest peak should be a lot closer to digital 0.
| | 02:30 | (Music playing.)
| | 02:35 | Looks good. So now I'm going to take a look
at the frequency distribution of this song.
| | 02:42 | So I've loaded up a plug-in that will
show the frequency of the whole track, so
| | 02:47 | let's just take a look at how
the frequency lines up here.
| | 02:50 | We'll start somewhere in the middle
because I know that at the beginning,
| | 02:53 | there's a bit of an intro.
| | 02:55 | I'm mostly concerned with the body of the song.
| | 02:58 | (Music playing.)
| | 03:01 | Like EQs, we're looking from left to right,
the different frequency range, and the volume.
| | 03:06 | (Music playing.)
| | 03:13 | So it's pretty easy to see the trend here.
| | 03:15 | We've got quite a bit of low-
end and then not so much high-end.
| | 03:18 | So I want to go in and try and even that out.
| | 03:20 | I kind of want to have as much high-
end representative as I do low-end.
| | 03:24 | So we'll go ahead and open up a multi-
band compressor, and I'll also use this in
| | 03:30 | the AudioSuite, or at file level.
| | 03:32 | This is a Dynamics device.
| | 03:35 | We use it in Stereo mode, and a multi-
band compressor's very cool because as the
| | 03:41 | name implies, it's a compressor and
so when things go beyond a certain
| | 03:44 | threshold, it turns them down based on
a ratio. It works with their dynamics.
| | 03:49 | It also let you set different ranges, or
different bands that the compression is
| | 03:53 | sensitive to in relationship to frequency.
| | 03:56 | So, you'll notice we have the frequencies
here, like we would an equalizer, and then
| | 04:00 | the amount of boost or gain.
| | 04:01 | So, with our track, well
let's just send her through,
| | 04:04 | take a listen, and we'll
see where it starts to boost.
| | 04:08 | So this is a flat scenario.
| | 04:12 | As you would expect, there's a
lot more low-end in this track.
| | 04:15 | So we're seeing a lot more reduction of
the low-end frequencies and not so much
| | 04:21 | in the high-end frequencies.
| | 04:24 | (Music playing.)
| | 04:27 | So I want to use this and try and
go ahead and even out some of the
| | 04:31 | frequencies in this song.
| | 04:32 | So I'm going to go ahead and actually
load up a preset that we used, which looks
| | 04:37 | pretty extreme, and I'm going to say
that this is sort of extreme for example
| | 04:41 | purposes. And when you start to work with
these things, you'll find that you work
| | 04:45 | in terms of increments, and this is
sort of an extreme amount of effect to be
| | 04:49 | putting on at this point.
| | 04:50 | But for demonstration purposes,
it'll reveal what happens.
| | 04:53 | So we're going to go ahead and highlight
this, and we'll make another copy, so we
| | 04:56 | can visually scope out the difference.
| | 04:59 | Then we'll go ahead and processes this,
and bring down the Output volume a little
| | 05:04 | bit, since we're doing so much to crank it.
| | 05:07 | We're going to render this multi-band
compression at the file level to this file.
| | 05:13 | All right, we are going to
go ahead and try that again.
| | 05:16 | So we've got to make a few adjustments.
| | 05:18 | Obviously, we are a little too hot on that.
| | 05:24 | So we're going to try not - we
can't boost those high as that much.
| | 05:29 | We've got to spend a little bit more
energy on cutting some of these lows.
| | 05:32 | As you can see, we clip by
pushing those up too much.
| | 05:36 | So let's go for it again.
| | 05:38 | Hopefully, there'll be success for us.
| | 05:41 | So, let's take a look at this new output in
the frequency meter and see what we have got.
| | 05:46 | I'll just grab that center section.
| | 05:49 | (Music playing.)
| | 05:53 | So we can see it's a little more even.
| | 05:54 | We're definitely getting more of the
midrange and we brought the base down a little bit.
| | 06:00 | Different mixes kind of require
different degrees of compression.
| | 06:03 | With this one, I know that the intent
was to have kind of that low-end thump
| | 06:06 | thing, and we just want to make sure that
there's enough high-end and midrange so
| | 06:10 | that it's all audible.
| | 06:11 | So I think by listening back, we
can tell that it's close enough.
| | 06:14 | (Music playing.)
| | 06:20 | And again, with all these plug-ins, it's easy
to kind of watch and look and see if it's okay.
| | 06:24 | But a lot of times, you also want to
just listen and double check with your ears.
| | 06:28 | In fact, that's one thing you should
probably be listening as much as you're
| | 06:31 | looking when you doing things like mastering.
| | 06:38 | I'm going to go ahead and
normalize this again and bring it back up.
| | 06:41 | We'll grab the old AudioSuite >
Normalizer, quickly make it loud again.
| | 06:50 | That's good enough.
| | 06:54 | Now we're going to try and limit this a
little bit in an attempt to squash some
| | 06:59 | of those peaks so that we
can turn it up yet again.
| | 07:06 | So let's just compare.
| | 07:07 | (Music playing.)
Here's our initial, and here's where we are now.
| | 07:11 | (Music playing.)
You can hear it's brighter and a bit more full.
| | 07:18 | So what I want to do is I'm going to
open up another plug-in for dynamics and
| | 07:23 | we're going to do a little bit of limiting.
| | 07:28 | Limiting, if you recall, is like compression,
| | 07:30 | only it's a hard ceiling, meaning that once
you hit the threshold, you're turned back down.
| | 07:35 | So I'm going to say by setting this,
everything that goes above -4 dB, we're
| | 07:48 | going to mush, and then we're going to
move the whole file up to a -1 output.
| | 07:56 | So here we go, and we'll notice this will
turn - this will flatten out a little bit.
| | 08:00 | So we've expanded the file,
| | 08:02 | we've mushed it, and then we
made the whole thing louder.
| | 08:04 | So let's go ahead and take a
look at this, or listen, rather.
| | 08:07 | Here's what we had.
| | 08:09 | (Music playing.)
| | 08:13 | Here's what we have now.
| | 08:15 | (Music playing.)
| | 08:20 | So you can see the difference in the
amount of volume we have and the amount
| | 08:24 | of constant volume.
| | 08:27 | So here's my initial mix.
| | 08:29 | (Music playing.)
| | 08:31 | I like to call this kind of soft mastering.
| | 08:33 | If you take this stuff to a pro,
what they'll do goes way beyond what
| | 08:37 | we're doing here, but this is
something you can do with what's available
| | 08:40 | in the plug-in world. So here's the A-B.
| | 08:43 | Sorry, I interrupted myself.
| | 08:45 | (Music playing.)
| | 08:55 | Now that might not sound like a whole
lot on the movie you're watching, but if we
| | 09:00 | were to be sitting in the studio, I'd
feel like, wow it's four times louder, and
| | 09:04 | it's way more in-my-face
and that sounds pretty good.
| | 09:07 | So, mastering can kind of do that for you.
| | 09:08 | You can kind of push things way up to
the front and give you maximum volume.
| | 09:12 | At the same time, it's possible to kind of
master or compress the life out of a piece of music.
| | 09:17 | So you don't want to just apply this
stuff and mush it and smash it so it just
| | 09:20 | looks like a big block of a waveform.
| | 09:23 | You want to make sure that what you're
doing works with the music you're working with.
| | 09:26 | So you want to make it louder, you want
to make it closer and a little bit more
| | 09:29 | compressed, but you don't want to
sacrifice the integrity of what you're making,
| | 09:32 | or the character of the
recording that you think is appropriate.
| | 09:36 | In the next movie, we'll take this
mastered file and trim the edges a little bit
| | 09:40 | and get it ready for the world.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Final preparations and exporting| 00:01 | The last thing we want to talk about
in terms of mastering is preparing your
| | 00:04 | file for the world and then exporting it out.
| | 00:07 | It's good to trim the heads and
tails after you do the sonic maximization
| | 00:10 | because a lot of times when you go
through that process of turning it up and
| | 00:13 | then compressing it and doing some of
the things we did in the last movie, what
| | 00:17 | seems like a silent head or tail you
will find actually has some noise there.
| | 00:21 | So it's good to do it after you
make your final volume adjustments.
| | 00:24 | So let's zoom in and take a
look at our final mix here.
| | 00:27 | We will go ahead and just
crank it way up and take a look.
| | 00:35 | I will actually make this is a little bit
bigger for all of us, and we will give a listen.
| | 00:40 | This is probably fairly silent.
| | 00:40 | (Audio Playing)
Great!
| | 00:45 | So we can get real close.
| | 00:54 | So we want to trim that
just before the sound starts.
| | 01:00 | Now sometimes it's nice to leave a
little bit of breath at the beginning, but
| | 01:04 | most often you kind of want to let
your CD burning software, or whatever it is
| | 01:08 | that you are going to be used to kind
of create your final master CD image and
| | 01:12 | use that to kind of set
the timings between tracks.
| | 01:15 | But if you are making something that
might go right to MP3 or right to the web,
| | 01:18 | it's nice to give it a little breath
there. And if you are making something
| | 01:21 | that's streaming, it's not bad to leave
even a little bit more of a head there
| | 01:24 | than usual so that it can buffer a
little bit more of the sound, and it starts to
| | 01:28 | stream a little bit smoother.
| | 01:30 | I am not talking about adding ten
seconds of silence, but maybe one second, two
| | 01:34 | seconds of silence before it starts to stream.
| | 01:37 | That may actually improve the way it streams.
| | 01:42 | (Music playing.)
| | 01:49 | So that's trimming the head.
| | 01:50 | We are going to go ahead and draw a
little fade there for extra special security
| | 01:54 | so that we know we are
starting this file from zero.
| | 01:54 | Great!
| | 01:59 | Now let's go and check out the tail.
| | 02:07 | See how this ends.
| | 02:09 | (Music playing.)
| | 02:23 | So you can actually hear,
| | 02:25 | there is actually a little bit of
sound there beyond what we can see.
| | 02:27 | Let's zoom up and see if we see any of it.
| | 02:29 | No, not a whole lot. It's hard to see, so -
[00:02:34.1]
(Music playing.)
| | 02:39 | So there is a little bit of ring
out seems like to about there or so.
| | 02:43 | So I am going to go ahead and trim
her up. And if I go ahead and cut it too
| | 02:48 | close, we will probably be able to
hear that difference a little better.
| | 02:51 | (Ring.)
Yeah, you can hear that little, that ring.
| | 02:56 | So we want to get it out.
| | 03:02 | We want that ring to go away on its own.
| | 03:04 | We don't want to be the ones doing that, and
we will leave a little extra tail here too.
| | 03:09 | But again, we want it
close to where the sound ends.
| | 03:16 | That works.
| | 03:17 | Then we will draw a little fade there to
make sure that we get out on zero as well.
| | 03:21 | (Music Playing)
Great!
| | 03:31 | So now we have trimmed it, and we have
got our file, and the next step to do is
| | 03:37 | either bounce it out or export it.
| | 03:39 | But before we export it, we want to
apply a little bit of dither because we are
| | 03:42 | working in a 24-bit session and I
want to export it out to a 16-bit format.
| | 03:47 | So we have trimmed the heads and
tails, so now the CD is ready to go.
| | 03:50 | We are starting and stopping nice and
clean, no extra noise, and a natural decay there,
| | 03:58 | a nice, natural ending to the sound.
| | 04:02 | So at this point, we can bounce it out
or export it out, but one of the things
| | 04:06 | we want to do first is apply dithering,
and the reason we want to do that is
| | 04:10 | because we are in a 24-bit session and we want
to get this down to a 16-bit depth resolution.
| | 04:17 | So that means we are going to dither,
or add a little bit of noise, so that
| | 04:20 | when it re-samples or down-samples to
16-bit, there is some information for
| | 04:25 | it to have there, which will reduce
the potential for little artifacts or
| | 04:29 | little bits of distortion.
| | 04:31 | So we are going to go ahead and
we will select the whole monster.
| | 04:35 | From our AudioSuite, we will go to the
Dither menu, pick our Dither option, and
| | 04:41 | now we will go ahead and pick our dither
rate, and we will go down to 16 Bit, hit
| | 04:49 | process, and away she goes, and
we have got our dithered file.
| | 04:57 | So now, here in Pro Tools, we have two choices.
| | 04:59 | We can bounce this out, which means we
go ahead and say Bounce to > Disk, which
| | 05:03 | will send it out and play it in real-
time and bounce it down to a format.
| | 05:07 | We have a few choices we can make.
| | 05:09 | We can pick what file type we want to bounce to.
| | 05:12 | AIFF, WAV, SD II, MP3.
| | 05:14 | I am going to stick with WAV
because I want to put this on a CD-R.
| | 05:20 | We can go to multiple mono
which would be two tracks.
| | 05:23 | We can go to summed mono which would
take the stereo mix and make it one mono
| | 05:27 | mix, or we can do stereo interleaved.
| | 05:30 | And that's what you want to
use if you want a stereo file.
| | 05:34 | Also, we have got resolution of 16
bits and that's our target and a sample
| | 05:39 | rate of 44.1, which is the sample rate
of the session but also the sample rate
| | 05:43 | that I want to use because I want to
burn this on to a CD and not as an MP3, as
| | 05:47 | a full-fledged uncompressed audio file.
| | 05:50 | So we can go ahead and bounce this
out and set a destination and send it.
| | 05:55 | The other option is we can just export
it because it's already a digital file.
| | 05:58 | So we can go over here, Export Region as File,
and we will get a lot of the same options,
| | 06:03 | it's really the same menu, and just
choose the destination and the same settings.
| | 06:08 | So, those are two ways we can get it
out and send it out into the world.
| | 06:11 | So I will go ahead and send this baby
out into the world, and now that's it.
| | 06:17 | We are done mastering, we have got an
audio file somewhere on our hard drive -
| | 06:21 | wherever I just sent that - that we
can drag into a CD-burning program.
| | 06:24 | We can drag it into something like
iTunes and convert it to an MP3, send it to
| | 06:29 | our mom or our friends.
| | 06:30 | We have got a nice file that's mastered,
that's going to be plenty loud, and it's
| | 06:34 | going to start and stop nice and
clean because we trimmed the edges.
| | 06:37 | So that's mastering.
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19. Audio File CompressionWhat is audio compression?| 00:01 | Audio file compression is not to be
confused with audio dynamics compression.
| | 00:06 | Now as I mentioned earlier, dynamics
compression is an effect that we use to
| | 00:09 | change the dynamic range.
| | 00:11 | But that's not what we are doing when
we talk about audio file compression.
| | 00:15 | With audio file compression what we
are trying to do, we are trying to
| | 00:18 | actually reduce the size of our
digital audio files, and there are a couple of
| | 00:23 | reasons we want to do this.
| | 00:24 | Primarily, it's because smaller file
sizes are just easier to store and share.
| | 00:29 | They are just easier to deal with.
We can move them around, we can put a ton of
| | 00:32 | them on a portable MP3 player, or
use them as a ringtone on a cell phone.
| | 00:36 | There is all kinds of applications.
| | 00:39 | And without audio file compression, a
lot of the things we enjoy today, in terms
| | 00:43 | of rich media and cool experiences,
probably wouldn't be able to take place.
| | 00:47 | A lot of our favorite web sites, MySpace
and YouTube, things like that all exists
| | 00:52 | because you can actually compress audio files.
| | 00:54 | Of course, you probably
know there is a trade off.
| | 00:58 | When we compress an audio file, or make
it smaller, we have to take some of the
| | 01:02 | data out of there, and that's the
sound quality of the file itself.
| | 01:05 | Whenever we compress the file, we have
to figure out a way to make it smaller,
| | 01:09 | and a lot of times, the quality of
the sound is reduced via compression.
| | 01:13 | Now when you are working, and you have
gone through all these different tasks
| | 01:15 | that we have shown in these other
movies to get a good sound and get a great
| | 01:19 | sound and work with your audio at
really high audio quality levels,
| | 01:23 | it can be a little hard to stomach the
idea of losing some of that sound quality
| | 01:27 | just to create a smaller
file, and I know how that feels.
| | 01:30 | But the other reality is that, in all
likelihood, whatever you are making, it's
| | 01:34 | probably going to be heard in a
compressed format at this point.
| | 01:37 | If you think about distribution and
getting things out there, it's a lot more
| | 01:42 | likely that whatever you are making is
going to be heard in a compressed format.
| | 01:45 | So it makes sense to kind of take
charge of the situation, get to know what
| | 01:49 | audio file compression is and apply
it in a way that at least you can be
| | 01:52 | happy with the results.
| | 01:54 | While people still buy audio CDs, and
there are other uncompressed delivery
| | 01:58 | formats, the amount of things you can
listen to or preview and access online in
| | 02:03 | a compressed format is really amazing.
| | 02:05 | And if you are making something, it's
also a way to get it out there for free.
| | 02:08 | So there is a really good chance that
compressing your files down to get them
| | 02:12 | out there is going to take place.
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| Popular formats| 00:01 | Now way back, I think in, it was in
chapter one, I introduced you to some of the
| | 00:05 | popular uncompressed and compressed formats.
| | 00:08 | So let's again take a look at some
of the popular compressed formats.
| | 00:12 | We have MP3, AAC, and the
Windows Media Audio format.
| | 00:16 | Now these three formats are what's referred
to as lossy compression, which means that
| | 00:21 | they actually discard data from the
sound files in order to make it smaller.
| | 00:26 | So when they are going through that
compression stage, they are looking
| | 00:28 | at things that they think maybe are
unimportant, pulling them out, and then compressing.
| | 00:33 | So they are discarding that data.
| | 00:34 | But when these files are decompressed,
or played back, they make very educated
| | 00:39 | guesses about what data was discarded.
| | 00:41 | I know it seems kind of hard to believe,
but it's true that it works pretty well.
| | 00:45 | I mean think about all
the MP3s we have out there.
|
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