Mixing Audio Levels

PAW wrote on 4/13/2004, 7:24 AM
Hello All,

i keep experimenting with the levels of different audio tracks in a wedding event.

What does everyone else use as a guide just pumping everything up to -0.1db does not sound right

What would you typically aim for for voice, speeches etc and other elements of audio such as background music?

I picked up on other threads that the dynamic range to aim for is 20db, do you agree?

The target format will be DVD

Regards, Paul

Comments

Grazie wrote on 4/13/2004, 8:45 AM
Paul, I'm listening for a response. Perhaps I'm wrong but I "listen" to what I've got .. then adjust . .most likely NOT the correct thing to do .. but it gets me through the night!

Grazie
riredale wrote on 4/13/2004, 9:24 AM
There were some interesting threads about audio compression levels on this board in the past month. Do a search and you'll have lots of fun reading...

For my choir stuff, I just make sure that the singing hits 0db, and plan to have commentary and applause about 10db below that. When I listen to the finished project, it sounds about right.

When you burn to DVD, you also need to set the "dialog normalization." I generally use -30. One thing I HATE is to listen to a Hollywood DVD and have to crank up the volume way beyond typical levels in order to hear what's going on. The -30 setting ensures that the DVD volume is just a bit less than the Vegas output.
tazio wrote on 4/13/2004, 8:24 PM
Hmmm,

need to know some other info (by the way I'm an audio post producer/engineer). Was the audio from a camera mike and is there a lot of background noise? Were the speeches amplified and were you able to get a feed from a desk?

Assuming that you were using the camera mike and are getting lot of noise - try:

Not normalizing (because of the nature of peak normalization you will end up with vastly different levels over the clips).

Applying eq across the audio track - try the Sonic Foundry Track EQ/Low shelf - leave the Frequency at 100 and take the gain down to Inf.

If you have lots of noise then DON'T compress - it will only make the noise louder.

Otherwise just use the volume envelope to match what you're hearing with what has previously passed on the timeline.

In general with wedding videos - I find the best thing to do is to try and get high quality audio from the sound reinforcement for speeches etc. then use music for the rest - there's never enough Celine Dion!

Hope this helps

regards,


Phil