Subject:master professor's vocals

Posted by: nmitch1

Date:8/14/2002 12:16:56 PM

i am relatively new to sf and audio in general and am currently using version 5. i work for the duke university business school and am in charge of eding some professor lecture audio.

the source audio is surprisingly farily good - no clipping, good quality, good levels, etc. we used a portable marantz analog deck along with a wired sony lov xlr mic as well as a typeII cassette.

my only question is, after removing some of the background noise with NR, what should i do and how should i do it to "finalize" or master the vocals - EQ, Wave Hamer, etc?

i have checked the archives and didn't really find anything concrete or unique to this situation.

any specific suggestions and or tips would be greatly appreciated. on a side note, is it even necessary to "alter" audio if it sounds good in the first place?

regards
nmitch1

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: rraud

Date:8/14/2002 1:26:16 PM

A little EQ, compresssion and/or Wave hammering could even it out a little. There are no laws that dictate you have to process it. (despite what many think) For more sugestions we need to know what format the final product will be in and what it will be used for? ie: Webcast, cassette duplication, archival, ect.

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: nmitch1

Date:8/14/2002 2:35:48 PM

Since the source was recorded in mono, I have captured it into sf at 44khz 16 bit mono. The final format will be *.wav and will probably be put on cd. As far as EQ and Wave Hammer, are there some generic settings you would recommend?

The voice is primarily a deep and striking/stern/clear voice (male obviously) and there is no real clipping in the audio either. However, there are a couple of "hot" spots that are close to clipping. Would wave hammer fix this? I just wanted to see if there was a way for the recording I guess to sound a little "warmer." It was recorded in the professors office with the AC off.

I appreciate the help so far rraud.

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: rraud

Date:8/14/2002 6:20:42 PM

Without hearing it....??? A typical spoken voice EQ would be rolling off the lows with the SF-track EQ starting at around 100-150hz on the lows and rolling off the highs starting at around 8-10khz using a slope of 12db per octive. (use bands 1 &
4 which are the hi and low rolloff filters.
On the Wave Hammer/volume maximizer, set your output control to .01 - .05 and adj the theshold so you get about 3-4 db of gain reduction. If you apply too much it will start to distort. The Wave hammer should be your final process. In any case you must experment.
I use a combo of limiter/expander also using the Effects/Dynamics/Graphic which usually works real nice on seminar type voice. The expander gently reduces the background level in pauses without it being very audible, as an open/close noise gate would be. So my process chain would be EQ, Noise Reduction, compress/expand, Wave Hamer/Vol. Max.

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: RiRo

Date:8/14/2002 9:44:31 PM

rraud is on the money here. I use the same equipment (marantz recorder, condensor mic and type II tape) and the process he outlined will work quite well, especially if the record method on the Marantz was set to ARL (Automatic Record Level). One step you may add, but only if the levels are off, is to normalize to .01 for the PEAK of the file. This will make sure the maximizer in WaveHammer can do its work. If the levels are -12 or something, the maximizer won't get it done without some tinkering.

If the tape has lots of pauses, and many speeches do, you can automatically remove them by using the Auto Trim Crop tool. It has a preset or two for doing this. It can cut the play time of a piece in half in many cases without noticible changes to the listener... except that he gets the information a whole lot quicker.

RiRo

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: nmitch1

Date:8/15/2002 8:30:02 AM

Wow, these are the exact tips I was hoping to hear. You guys don't know how much this helps. Thanks for taking the time to have patience with a rookie ;)

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: rraud

Date:8/15/2002 12:55:54 PM

nmitch1, Here are a couple of my presets for spoken-word type files, for you or anyone that's interested. Naturally these will probably need to be tweaked some because of diffences in the recordings, ect. Download and tweak'em to your heart's content.
The Wave Hammer/VM and Track EQ presets are nothing out of the ordinary but the Dynamic/Graphics "Limit/Expand" presets I find usefull.
I think these will only work with SF-4.0, 4.5 and 5.0 because SF changed the preset file ext, and code in 6.0 .
Go to download page

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: nmitch1

Date:8/15/2002 2:12:00 PM

rraud-
thanks a lot for the presets. i can't seem to get them to work though. i get the same error message that others have had
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=71790&Page=0
any suggestions other than purchasing a new version of sound forge :) ?

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: rraud

Date:8/15/2002 3:52:02 PM

I didn't know they were incompatable with 5.0. I exported these from SF-4.5. When I get a few minutes, I'll have them available for 5.0 as well. Check back to the webpage in about 2 days.
I also made a another mistake. The preset file extention should be .SFZ - NOT .SFX . (for 4.5 anyway) I have since made the correction.
PS-- nmitch1, If you are editing large files (as I think you may be) you would really appreciate 6.0 . Rendering time is almost instantanious when deleting pauses, ect. In precious versions of Sound Forge, the closer you are to the head, the longer it would take to render the file re-build. Not so with 6.0. Try the demo.

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: nmitch1

Date:8/16/2002 11:15:20 AM

rraud-
that would be extremely helpful. i now have a demo of sf 6 and am already loving some of the things in it. thanks again for the suggestions and all of your efforts with this.

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: RiRo

Date:8/16/2002 2:09:29 PM

rraud

I also want to thank you for the presets, and the mini-tutioral on how to use them. Very helpful!

RiRo

Subject:RE: master professor's vocals

Reply by: rraud

Date:8/19/2002 12:08:36 PM

I have posted the presets for versions SF-4.5, 5, and 6.
Go to preset download page