I'm a composer/engineer and am designing an audio room for
post-production, mostly recording/mixing to video decks- Digibeta and
D3.

I graduated from conservatory, not engineering school, so my technical
understanding is riddled with holes.

What I'm trying to wrap my head around is this: In my past work at
various post houses, audio has always been transfered via the analog
I/Os on the machines, never digital.

Is there a reason why I've never seen audio transfered via AES, ADAT
Lightpipe- anything? My guess is that it avoids compatability issues
between all the different devices(ie: bit depth, sampling rate). But
if I am starting fresh, why wouldn't I want to keep all audio digital,
always?

If this topic has been covered, I apologise, and please redirect me.
This is my first post after much lurking.

-VR

Victor Rice wrote:
I'm a composer/engineer and am designing an audio room for
post-production, mostly recording/mixing to video decks- Digibeta and
D3.

I graduated from conservatory, not engineering school, so my technical
understanding is riddled with holes.

What I'm trying to wrap my head around is this: In my past work at
various post houses, audio has always been transfered via the analog
I/Os on the machines, never digital.

That's because video guys don't give a damn about audio.

Is there a reason why I've never seen audio transfered via AES, ADAT
Lightpipe- anything? My guess is that it avoids compatability issues
between all the different devices(ie: bit depth, sampling rate). But
if I am starting fresh, why wouldn't I want to keep all audio digital,
always?

It would be a much better idea, and it would eliminate all the constant
layers of AVC that the video guys seem to delight in, so they don't have
to align all the levels properly.

But frankly, most video guys don't even notice when the stereo signal drops
to mono.

If this topic has been covered, I apologise, and please redirect me.
This is my first post after much lurking.

You can try rec.arts.movies.production.sound, where you will have a great
deal of sympathy from people who have been trying to convince the video
guys to care about sound.

And if you're designing a post room, PLEASE add some monitors with decent
low end so people can hear what is going on with the bottom end, in
addition to the Horrortones.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article ,
Scott Dorsey wrote:

You can try rec.arts.movies.production.sound, where you will have a great
deal of sympathy from people who have been trying to convince the video
guys to care about sound.

Here's how you do it. Become successful enough that in your shop,
things are done the way you want them done, end of story. "You work
here, you follow our standards. You have a problem with that, you work
somewhere else."

It's easy to "convince" people when you are the one choosing to sign
the paycheck, renew the contract, etc. *Especially* when there are a
million people that would love to get the gig.

This phenomenon is by no means limited to A/V production shops.

Victor Rice wrote:
I'm a composer/engineer and am designing an audio room for
post-production, mostly recording/mixing to video decks- Digibeta and
D3.
I graduated from conservatory, not engineering school, so my technical
understanding is riddled with holes.

Serves you right. What else can I say.
Now I will add to your knowledge.

I am highly disappointed at the stupid things mixer-guys do to movie
and even TV hour-long entertainment audio. They both turn up the level
for commercials and allow runs of muttering audio to purvey to the
listener at a faint level, requiring frequent audio twiddling at their
couch.

Another complaint I have is the infernal "slicing that mixer-guys do to
the audio of second-run movies and other recycles entertainmetn media.
That is, old media often has modeate to low-level noise (hum, hiss,
nonsense bumbling, etc) lingering in the sound track, and they wish to
remove it by prposefully attnuating the audio at that level. This used
to be called "slicing", where audio below a crtain ac threshold was not
purveyed at all. This works only for very limited circumstances. But it
can easily destroy a lot of intelligence that occurs at those lower
levels, during quiet pasaes where the intelligence is but a whisper or
murmer. I sometimes think the mixer-guy has set a certain level, then
whent out for a coffee or coke while the media spun onward... noit
apying attention to thsi turn of events.. Anyway, whoever can, that is
reading here, should lower the slicing level to be just at cutting 1/2
(no more!) of the true noise and let the minor background intelligence
through. Thank you.

Finally, often, mixer-guys EQ'ing, to use a modern descriptor, sux. You
all have NOT been taught (yet) that most of the speech intelligibility
in speech sound lies above 1 kHz. Below 1kHz is the energy of the
vowels, and above 1 kHz is that of the consonants. We have only 5 vowels
to sort but 21 consonants to sort out if we are to understand what is
being said all the time.
As a productive counermeasure, I now recommend to all architects and
engineers that the PA system speech circuit EQ SHALL provide +3dB
premphasis at 10 kHz, Plus 9 dB at 2 kHz, Minus 9dB at 250 Hz and Minus
12 dB at 63 Hz after all house settings in order to have speech purvey
through A/V hardware clearly to the listening public (try it, you'll
like it when listening in an audience). This makes up for the
over-efficiency of today's audio hardware in the low frequency end (for
music) and its on-site lack of high frequency response, including the
mild hearing loss a lot of Americans now suffer because of social and
working habits, and the general roll-off of all commercial domestic A/V
purveyors and hardware these days.

Radical, I admit.

True, I guarantee.

Sincerely,

Angelo Campanella

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 8:34:26 -0800, Victor Rice wrote
(in message ) :

Is there a reason why I've never seen audio transfered via AES, ADAT
Lightpipe- anything?
--------------------------------snip----------------------------------

Maybe you haven't worked for any good companies yet.

I say that, not as an insult, but just based on the fact that, of the four or
five post houses I've worked at over the past 10 years in LA, every one of
them has done 99.9% of all their audio routing via AES/EBU. In fact, analog
is actually much harder to route, particularly in an all-digital plant.

I know for example over at Complete Post in LA, when we routed analog audio
to 3/4" or 1/2" VCRs, what was actually happening is that digital audio was
being routed near the machine, then a D/A in the rack above the machine was
used to covert the audio to analog, then feed the analog to the recorder. So
it only went to analog at the very last step.

Any "real" recording, to D-5, D-1, Digibeta, or practiaclly any other pro
video format, was always handled in digital form. The only possible
exception would be production sound in the field that had to be varispeeded
by .1% to stay in sync with film, but even then, the Yamaha consoles we used
in the room had the tolerances to keep the signal in the digital domain
without introducing digital errors.

And a side message to Scott: some video guys do care about audio. Not
enough, but some do.

--MFW

Marc Wielage wrote:

And a side message to Scott: some video guys do care about audio. Not
enough, but some do.

I know. They're in the minority. And I don't see how they can keep from
killing themselves when they hear what happens to their work after it leaves
their hands.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

As a productive counermeasure, I now recommend to all architects and
engineers that the PA system speech circuit EQ SHALL provide +3dB
premphasis at 10 kHz, Plus 9 dB at 2 kHz, Minus 9dB at 250 Hz and Minus
12 dB at 63 Hz after all house settings in order to have speech purvey
through A/V hardware clearly to the listening public (try it, you'll
like it when listening in an audience).

A more productive countermeasure might be asking them to do what's appropiate.
Would it be reasonable to suggest as a productive countermeasure that all
restaurant ovens be set to 425 degrees farenheit and all things cooked for no
more than 15 minutes? Maybe your ears are out of whack in the same frequencies
and the same amounts as you suggest manipulating. I've yet to be in two rooms
with two different sound systems that required the identical treatment.

SNIP

Radical, I admit. True, I guarantee.

Hard of hearing? I think so.



Joe Egan
EMP
Colchester, VT
www.eganmedia.com