As a freelance recording engineer, what do you do when artists approach you directly and ask you to produce their recordings in your own right, after you've made their acquantance in someone else's studio and on someone else's dime?
This is a situation I've found myself in a few times over the years. On two occasions, clients told me that the studio we met in didn't sound good and wanted to go elsewhere—with me—to record in the future. In another case, a performer said that the producer was too hyper, "not laid back enough," and could we record somewhere else where the atmosphere was more relaxed. Similarly, in another instance, an artist complained of being stressed out in the presence of the studio owner, and consequently couldn't turn in a first-rate performance.
When this started happening, I thought it best to speak frankly with the producer or studio owner, one of whom told me that none of his other freelancers would ever dream of "poaching" his clients, whose business he had worked diligently to acquire over months and years.
I pointed out that I wasn't in the habit of poaching clients—the industry is far too small and such behaviour is ruinous to one's reputation. I suggested that those who were dissatisfied were eventually going to go elsewhere anyway, and rather than lose their business entirely, why not work out a finder's fee arrangement for him—call it a commission or kick-back if you will—so that his role in securing the business was recognized tangibly.
He rejected this suggestion out of hand, insisting they were HIS clients, and that I should endeavour to convince them to stay despite their expressed concerns.
Well, no one is automatically entitled to a client's business for life, and as the saying goes, whatever it took to get you here isn't enough to keep you here—you're only as good as your last gig. Clients are free to go where they will.
Knowing that some clients may approach competent staff members directly in an attempt to secure their services at more favourable rates, some employers insist that their employees sign a non-compete agreement.
But this doesn't wash with many freelancers, something studio owners should bear in mind when building a business based on out-sourcing the work. It's a two-edged sword—freelancers are not employees, and do not enjoy the same benefits and security that employees do, and turnabout is fair play.
Some savvy studio owners offer freelance engineers a piece of the action—participation in the business akin to stock options—in order to make it more attractive for freelancers to discourage the studio's clients from going elsewhere. I have suggested this on several occasions, with mixed results.
In the end, it's difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a good working relationship with a studio when its clients become dissatisfied and want you to take them elsewhere to record. But for a studio owner, recognizing that you're in a business relationship with freelance engineers, and not a social one, is a necessary first step in arriving at a business solution to what might otherwise become a thorny personal problem.
For a studio owner, it should serve as a wake-up call that all is not as it should be when clients express their dissatisfaction to a sympathetic ear behind the board. The solution may be as simple as staying away from the session, however tempting it may be for a studio owner to participate in the proceedings. From a "strictly-business" perspective, this is the most straightforward solution.
In the case of a home or project studio, this is not as easily accomplished, and sharing a business with a home may open up the studio operation to a level of personal micromanagement that may be detrimental to its success, exposing clients to everything from a simple request to remove their shoes, to disagreeable cooking odors emanating from the kitchen.
When home studio rates are well below prevailing commercial rates, such irritants may well be tolerable, but if home studio owners set their rates equivalent to—or higher than—commercial operations, they may need to adjust their expectations and behaviour accordingly.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
How much headroom do you need when recording? Part 1
Some years back, I recorded a Stravinsky symphonic work to analog tape running at 15 ips half-track, dbx type 1. When I transferred the recording to digital for archiving, the big orchestral bass drum gave me problems. Had I been recording to digital on location, it would have been a mess: I would have needed to set 0 VU at -25 dBFS to keep the digital meter out of the red. That's how much energy the bass drum was putting out.
Standards organizations specify how much headroom should be available above operating level (0 VU) in the digital domain. In my experience, the European EBU standard of 0 VU = -18 dBFS does not afford nearly enough headroom, and neither does the North American SMPTE standard of -20 dBFS. Granted, these were "reasonable" compromises in the days of 16-bit technology, when 93dB dynamic range was about all you could expect to get in the real world (as opposed to the theoretical 96 dB, calculated at 6 dB per bit).
Analog headroom of 24 dB—which many manufacturers of professional grade equipment achieve with maximum output levels of +28 dBu (ref 0 VU = +4 dBu)—should be considered the minimum standard during production. Even then, the Stravinsky would have been into overload by about 1 dB, so you might occasionally require even more headroom.
In our current 24-bit world, I would say that it's not unreasonable to demand 28 dB headroom when recording wide dynamic range program material, such as symphonic works. It still gives you a working signal-to-noise ratio of better than 100 dB, and 28 dB of headroom includes a small comfort margin so you can enjoy the program without stressing over the levels during recording, knowing that you will most likely never go into the red.
Incidentally, I see a lot of "analog channels" being marketed as quality front end processing for recording into ProTools and other DAWs. Many of these boxes include a compressor after the mic preamp, probably because few recordists stop to consider how much analog headroom is really needed in a given situation. Instead of backing the level off to allow for enough headroom without compression, they tend to run the ProTools meters high up into the yellow, recording with compression on individual tracks at 24-bit resolution. It's as if a little bit of green flickering at the low end of the meter must be avoided at all costs. This is foolishness.
24-bit technology allows you to record at a moderate level with 28 dB of headroom and still accumulate no perceptible noise in the recording. Save the compression for mixing and mastering, when it becomes a creative tool rather than a protective device. And then, whatever else you do, don't normalize! Oversampling digital-to-analog converters, which are pretty much the norm these days, routinely create signal peaks greater than 0 dBFS between samples that measure 0 dBFS on disc. But that's another subject for another time.
Standards organizations specify how much headroom should be available above operating level (0 VU) in the digital domain. In my experience, the European EBU standard of 0 VU = -18 dBFS does not afford nearly enough headroom, and neither does the North American SMPTE standard of -20 dBFS. Granted, these were "reasonable" compromises in the days of 16-bit technology, when 93dB dynamic range was about all you could expect to get in the real world (as opposed to the theoretical 96 dB, calculated at 6 dB per bit).
Analog headroom of 24 dB—which many manufacturers of professional grade equipment achieve with maximum output levels of +28 dBu (ref 0 VU = +4 dBu)—should be considered the minimum standard during production. Even then, the Stravinsky would have been into overload by about 1 dB, so you might occasionally require even more headroom.
In our current 24-bit world, I would say that it's not unreasonable to demand 28 dB headroom when recording wide dynamic range program material, such as symphonic works. It still gives you a working signal-to-noise ratio of better than 100 dB, and 28 dB of headroom includes a small comfort margin so you can enjoy the program without stressing over the levels during recording, knowing that you will most likely never go into the red.
Incidentally, I see a lot of "analog channels" being marketed as quality front end processing for recording into ProTools and other DAWs. Many of these boxes include a compressor after the mic preamp, probably because few recordists stop to consider how much analog headroom is really needed in a given situation. Instead of backing the level off to allow for enough headroom without compression, they tend to run the ProTools meters high up into the yellow, recording with compression on individual tracks at 24-bit resolution. It's as if a little bit of green flickering at the low end of the meter must be avoided at all costs. This is foolishness.
24-bit technology allows you to record at a moderate level with 28 dB of headroom and still accumulate no perceptible noise in the recording. Save the compression for mixing and mastering, when it becomes a creative tool rather than a protective device. And then, whatever else you do, don't normalize! Oversampling digital-to-analog converters, which are pretty much the norm these days, routinely create signal peaks greater than 0 dBFS between samples that measure 0 dBFS on disc. But that's another subject for another time.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Microphone cable wiring 101: connecting the ground lug—or not
Trying to repair a broken microphone cable the other day, I noticed that pin 1 of the XLR connector was connected to the ground lug with a small jumper wire, thereby bonding the cable shield to the connector shell. Here's what it looked like:
The cable was a cheapie from Active Surplus, the store on Queen St. West in Toronto with the stuffed gorilla by the door. From the quality of the components and the crummy soldering job, it's a good illustration of you-get-what-you-pay-for, so please consider this blog entry my penance for buying it. I was caught in a weak moment.
By way of contrast, here are quality connectors from Switchcraft (top) and Neutrik, with the ground lugs identified by arrows:
Should the ground lug be connected to pin 1, as in the top illustration, or not? I've read opinions pro and con over the years, so I decided to ask an acknowledged expert in the field, Neil Muncy.
Before I get to his answer, you should know that Neil, a Fellow and Life Member of the Audio Engineering Society, is the author of the ground-breaking 1994 AES paper, "Noise Susceptibility in Analog and Digital Signal Processing Systems," in which he explored the relationship between the physical construction of shielded twisted-pair cable and induced noise in a signal circuit due to cable shield current. This paper was published, along with others by authors including Philip Giddings of Toronto's Engineering Harmonics, in the June 1995 issue of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, which has become the most widely accessed issue of the Journal in history.
When he wrote his paper, most commercially available audio gear had pin-1 problems. It was, indeed, difficult to find equipment without it—even the most highly revered consoles had serious pin-1 problems. Since then, a number of leading manufacturers have redesigned their products to correct their mistake, but unfortunately, many have not yet done so.
Neil Muncy is also a member of the task group that developed the standard AES48-2005, "AES Standard on Interconnections—Grounding and EMC practices—Shields of Connectors in Audio Equipment Containing Active Circuitry," the published standard that deals with the pin-1 problem.
Based on all this, I figured Neil should know how to wire up a microphone cable. In close to 30 years, he hasn't failed me yet. Here's his answer to the question, Under what circumstances do you solder the ground lug (aka pin 4) to pin 1?
"The short, long, and infinitely long answers are NEVER, NEVER, & NEVER. To do so would introduce ground loops which could totally compromise an otherwise working Isolated Ground (I.G.) installation, and raise Hell with any front-end equipment that is plagued with Pin-1 Problems. Terminal #4 was introduced by Switchcraft back in the late '50's/'60's to address an application in very high impedance medical interfaces. It has no use whatsoever as far as portable A/V cables are concerned. They are simply extension cords."
There you have it. But if the lug shouldn't be used in general audio applications, why is it still there? Wouldn't it be advantageous for manufacturers such as Switchcraft and Neutrik to produce a line of connectors without the ground lug for normal stage and studio applications that have nothing to do with medical interfaces? I'd like to hear your comments.
The cable was a cheapie from Active Surplus, the store on Queen St. West in Toronto with the stuffed gorilla by the door. From the quality of the components and the crummy soldering job, it's a good illustration of you-get-what-you-pay-for, so please consider this blog entry my penance for buying it. I was caught in a weak moment.
By way of contrast, here are quality connectors from Switchcraft (top) and Neutrik, with the ground lugs identified by arrows:
Should the ground lug be connected to pin 1, as in the top illustration, or not? I've read opinions pro and con over the years, so I decided to ask an acknowledged expert in the field, Neil Muncy.
Before I get to his answer, you should know that Neil, a Fellow and Life Member of the Audio Engineering Society, is the author of the ground-breaking 1994 AES paper, "Noise Susceptibility in Analog and Digital Signal Processing Systems," in which he explored the relationship between the physical construction of shielded twisted-pair cable and induced noise in a signal circuit due to cable shield current. This paper was published, along with others by authors including Philip Giddings of Toronto's Engineering Harmonics, in the June 1995 issue of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, which has become the most widely accessed issue of the Journal in history.
When he wrote his paper, most commercially available audio gear had pin-1 problems. It was, indeed, difficult to find equipment without it—even the most highly revered consoles had serious pin-1 problems. Since then, a number of leading manufacturers have redesigned their products to correct their mistake, but unfortunately, many have not yet done so.
Neil Muncy is also a member of the task group that developed the standard AES48-2005, "AES Standard on Interconnections—Grounding and EMC practices—Shields of Connectors in Audio Equipment Containing Active Circuitry," the published standard that deals with the pin-1 problem.
Based on all this, I figured Neil should know how to wire up a microphone cable. In close to 30 years, he hasn't failed me yet. Here's his answer to the question, Under what circumstances do you solder the ground lug (aka pin 4) to pin 1?
"The short, long, and infinitely long answers are NEVER, NEVER, & NEVER. To do so would introduce ground loops which could totally compromise an otherwise working Isolated Ground (I.G.) installation, and raise Hell with any front-end equipment that is plagued with Pin-1 Problems. Terminal #4 was introduced by Switchcraft back in the late '50's/'60's to address an application in very high impedance medical interfaces. It has no use whatsoever as far as portable A/V cables are concerned. They are simply extension cords."
There you have it. But if the lug shouldn't be used in general audio applications, why is it still there? Wouldn't it be advantageous for manufacturers such as Switchcraft and Neutrik to produce a line of connectors without the ground lug for normal stage and studio applications that have nothing to do with medical interfaces? I'd like to hear your comments.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Plan ahead for split-track recording when making documentary videos
A wedding videographer came to me last week with an audio problem in a wedding video he was editing. Just before their first dance as husband and wife, the happy couple had taken to the dance floor with handheld mics to sing a torch ballad over a karaoke track. A huge crowd-pleaser, this would have been a "highlight" of the wedding video. Unfortunately, on tape the backing track was so loud that the lyrics were completely unintelligible—in fact, you couldn't hear the man's voice at all. Could I save the track? And his reputation?
In a nutshell, no, not this time. The voices were so faint in the two-track mono mix and the electric piano so loud that no amount of EQ could bring them forward. The client even sent me the original wav file of the karoake track, hoping that if I mixed it out of phase (reversed polarity) with the botched recording, it would cancel out some of the music track, leaving the voices more intelligible.
For the cancellation trick to work, the music in the end recording would have to be almost identical to the original karoake file. It wasn't: the karaoke was in stereo not mono, and it ran slightly faster than in the final recording.
Moreover, there was tons of ambience in the duet recording, because the karaoke playback was picked up not only directly from the audio mixer at line level, but also from the loudspeakers in the hall by the singers' microphones. So the final recording is muddied and colored by the reproduced sound from the loudspeakers and all sorts of reflection from the walls and floor, which, of course, is not present in the original track.
This also partially explains why the music was so much louder than the vocals: the music was being picked up twice, once as a direct feed, and secondly from the singers' microphones.
What should the operator have done? Since the goal was apparently not to make a stereo recording—no attempt was made to preserve the original left-right stereo of the instrumental track in making a two-track mono recording—the operator should have fed both sides of the original instrumental track to track 1 of the camera, and the microphones to track 2.
This simple split-track technique would have allowed for the voices to be properly balanced with the music in post production. It's done all the time in recording dialog for films and TV on 2 tracks, especially when there is a mic on a boom or fishpole, and the actors are wearing lavs. Boom goes to track 1, lavs to track 2.
When shouting and screaming are anticipated in a scene (perhaps not at a wedding), the same audio is printed on both tracks but at a reduced level—say, 10 dB lower than normal—on track 2. So if the scream is distorted on track 1, the sound editor can lay up the lower, undistorted scream from track 2, and match the levels during mixdown.
It's simple and it works. It just requires a little planning ahead, but when you only have one shot at it, split-track recording can save the day. And your reputation.
In a nutshell, no, not this time. The voices were so faint in the two-track mono mix and the electric piano so loud that no amount of EQ could bring them forward. The client even sent me the original wav file of the karoake track, hoping that if I mixed it out of phase (reversed polarity) with the botched recording, it would cancel out some of the music track, leaving the voices more intelligible.
For the cancellation trick to work, the music in the end recording would have to be almost identical to the original karoake file. It wasn't: the karaoke was in stereo not mono, and it ran slightly faster than in the final recording.
Moreover, there was tons of ambience in the duet recording, because the karaoke playback was picked up not only directly from the audio mixer at line level, but also from the loudspeakers in the hall by the singers' microphones. So the final recording is muddied and colored by the reproduced sound from the loudspeakers and all sorts of reflection from the walls and floor, which, of course, is not present in the original track.
This also partially explains why the music was so much louder than the vocals: the music was being picked up twice, once as a direct feed, and secondly from the singers' microphones.
What should the operator have done? Since the goal was apparently not to make a stereo recording—no attempt was made to preserve the original left-right stereo of the instrumental track in making a two-track mono recording—the operator should have fed both sides of the original instrumental track to track 1 of the camera, and the microphones to track 2.
This simple split-track technique would have allowed for the voices to be properly balanced with the music in post production. It's done all the time in recording dialog for films and TV on 2 tracks, especially when there is a mic on a boom or fishpole, and the actors are wearing lavs. Boom goes to track 1, lavs to track 2.
When shouting and screaming are anticipated in a scene (perhaps not at a wedding), the same audio is printed on both tracks but at a reduced level—say, 10 dB lower than normal—on track 2. So if the scream is distorted on track 1, the sound editor can lay up the lower, undistorted scream from track 2, and match the levels during mixdown.
It's simple and it works. It just requires a little planning ahead, but when you only have one shot at it, split-track recording can save the day. And your reputation.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Why use a pro studio?
This question came up on CD Baby today. Why use a pro studio when you can record at home and save a load of money?
Well, for one thing, a good pro studio will have an affiliation with an arranger or an orchestrator who will prepare your string or horn charts for a very reasonable rate, and contacts with local symphony or theatre-pit players who will play at the AFM Limited Pressing Session Rate (fewer than 10,000 CDs, or 3,000 in Canada) which is $100 per 2-hr session, plus benefits. This makes it very affordable to add professional string or horn arrangements to a song, a difference that is easily heard by anyone considering your material. If you use the two hour session to score two or three songs—even split the time with another songwriter—you’re looking at just $600 per song, perhaps even less.
If you surround yourself with the best people you can afford and stay the hell out of their way, your song will exceed whatever you can conceive for it working by yourself. Even Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney were better with sidemen than they were playing and overdubbing everything themselves.
This is one of the benefits of working with a fully pro studio. They are on your side.
You have to decide if you want to be in the music business or the studio business. Equipment manufacturers have done a good job over the past 30 years convincing musicians that they have to buy lots of gear to record themselves, when the truth is that if you spent half that money on professional arrangers, players and studios, you'd be far ahead of your competition who are still paying off their gear, reading manuals (maybe), and renting out their "studios" for $18 per hour and undermining the value of a real studio operation. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Write me at buzz@abcbuzz.com to continue this discussion.
Well, for one thing, a good pro studio will have an affiliation with an arranger or an orchestrator who will prepare your string or horn charts for a very reasonable rate, and contacts with local symphony or theatre-pit players who will play at the AFM Limited Pressing Session Rate (fewer than 10,000 CDs, or 3,000 in Canada) which is $100 per 2-hr session, plus benefits. This makes it very affordable to add professional string or horn arrangements to a song, a difference that is easily heard by anyone considering your material. If you use the two hour session to score two or three songs—even split the time with another songwriter—you’re looking at just $600 per song, perhaps even less.
If you surround yourself with the best people you can afford and stay the hell out of their way, your song will exceed whatever you can conceive for it working by yourself. Even Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney were better with sidemen than they were playing and overdubbing everything themselves.
This is one of the benefits of working with a fully pro studio. They are on your side.
You have to decide if you want to be in the music business or the studio business. Equipment manufacturers have done a good job over the past 30 years convincing musicians that they have to buy lots of gear to record themselves, when the truth is that if you spent half that money on professional arrangers, players and studios, you'd be far ahead of your competition who are still paying off their gear, reading manuals (maybe), and renting out their "studios" for $18 per hour and undermining the value of a real studio operation. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Write me at buzz@abcbuzz.com to continue this discussion.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Does using ProTools make you a pro?
There's quite a bit of controversy over a cracked version of ProTools HD and M-Powered for the Mac floating around the Internet (see www.airusersblog.com for some of the discussion). This cracked version allows ProTools software to be used on a Mac without the ProTools hardware that it has been tied to for decades. (Some even refer to the hardware as a rather heavy copy-protection dongle.)
Russ Hughes over at the Air Users Blog wrote a couple of days ago: "The only downside for every one of us, is there's now a thousand kids out there with a cracked version of Pro Tools, heaven knows the shit they're going to make with it!"
I have run into people over the years who tell me they have ProTools on their computer (or Reason, Logic, Cubase or any one of a number of audio applications) and that they are now a producer, sound designer, engineer or something of the sort. As an instructor in post-production at the Toronto Film School, I used to hear this sort of thing all the time.
It should be patently obvious, however, that having software like ProTools on your computer doesn't automatically confer audio credentials any more than having Microsoft Word on your computer makes you a speech writer.
Credentials come from clients. They are the ones who recognize ability when they see it and are willing to pay for something that has value to them. Clients are what separate hobbyists and enthusiasts from professionals, and until you have at least one, you're not in business.
In a similar way, the fact that a dealer stocks a particular product doesn't allow him to say truthfully that he sells it—you actually have to make sales and collect money in order to say truthfully that you sell it. As Griff McRee used to tell us at Synclavier, "The sale isn't complete until I've spent the money."
Russ Hughes over at the Air Users Blog wrote a couple of days ago: "The only downside for every one of us, is there's now a thousand kids out there with a cracked version of Pro Tools, heaven knows the shit they're going to make with it!"
I have run into people over the years who tell me they have ProTools on their computer (or Reason, Logic, Cubase or any one of a number of audio applications) and that they are now a producer, sound designer, engineer or something of the sort. As an instructor in post-production at the Toronto Film School, I used to hear this sort of thing all the time.
It should be patently obvious, however, that having software like ProTools on your computer doesn't automatically confer audio credentials any more than having Microsoft Word on your computer makes you a speech writer.
Credentials come from clients. They are the ones who recognize ability when they see it and are willing to pay for something that has value to them. Clients are what separate hobbyists and enthusiasts from professionals, and until you have at least one, you're not in business.
In a similar way, the fact that a dealer stocks a particular product doesn't allow him to say truthfully that he sells it—you actually have to make sales and collect money in order to say truthfully that you sell it. As Griff McRee used to tell us at Synclavier, "The sale isn't complete until I've spent the money."
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Studio Fatigue
Fatigue can creep up on you in unexpected ways. I had been in the edit room for over 24 hours, cutting sound for a TV show and a feature, both on a tight deadline. The scene I was working on was a 3-second establishing shot, and included streetcars passing each other. I was trying to sync the Doppler pitch shift of the sound effect (streetcar passing at 40 km/h) with the moving image on the screen, but couldn't get it right—when it's right, a kind of lock happens in the mind and the action comes together almost magically as a single event, and not as separate visual and aural cues. No matter how I tried, the sound was always out of sync with the picture, so I decided a break was in order, and took a walk up to Queen and John to get a chocolate bar and a coffee.
As I was standing on the corner waiting for the light to change, a streetcar passed by. And it was out of sync. I was shocked. The sound and image did not coalesce as one to me. I realized that the problem in the edit room was me, that no matter how long I tried to fit the sound to picture, I wouldn't be able to get it right that night. I was just too fatigued from too many long days hunched over a monitor. And I realized that if I did get it to look "right" that night, I'd probably have to redo it all in the morning anyway.
After a good night's sleep, I went in the next morning, put up the scene, and had it looking and sounding right in less than 5 minutes. Sometimes the most efficient way to get things done right is to stop trying, take a break, and come back at it later—especially when you've been at it longer than usual.
As I was standing on the corner waiting for the light to change, a streetcar passed by. And it was out of sync. I was shocked. The sound and image did not coalesce as one to me. I realized that the problem in the edit room was me, that no matter how long I tried to fit the sound to picture, I wouldn't be able to get it right that night. I was just too fatigued from too many long days hunched over a monitor. And I realized that if I did get it to look "right" that night, I'd probably have to redo it all in the morning anyway.
After a good night's sleep, I went in the next morning, put up the scene, and had it looking and sounding right in less than 5 minutes. Sometimes the most efficient way to get things done right is to stop trying, take a break, and come back at it later—especially when you've been at it longer than usual.
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