sound question (kinda long)

mcgeedo wrote on 2/21/2003, 9:27 AM
To the experts:
I have a sound question that's both artistic and technical. The project is a DVD from a musical variety show. There were three camera setups. I have the sound tracks from each camera, but I'm only using them to help sync the video cuts (they're not very good quality). The sound track that I have to work with is a stereo, 44.1 16-bit wave file. The left track is the mono mix from the PA system; very good quality but a "sterile" sound (no room ambience). The right track is from a good microphone I hung in the theater out the control booth window. This track was just to get some room ambience to mix in.

What I have planned is to bus the PA track to both channels of the main soundtrack and set this about 0 dB. Then bus the ambience track to both channels of another soundtrack and set it about 8 or 10 dB down. Testing this gives me a pretty "roomy" sound, but it is very plainly mono. Do any of you artists have a suggestion on how I could improve this? I have tinkered with fake stereo, using chorus effects and different eq's on right/left, but none of that sounds very good. Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance, -Don

Comments

mikkie wrote on 2/21/2003, 9:41 AM
More of a guess on something to try then anything else...

You have three camera audio tracks, and these should have some panning or spatial data, just not in a quality you'd want to use. However, what if you cleaned them up a bit, then subtracted them from the mono PA track?

In theory anyway, take mid and right camera tracks out of the main track, and you should have something with left spatial info that might be mixed to the left channel. Might even work better, with less work when/if it comes time to check for mono compatibility playback?

luck
mike
mcgeedo wrote on 2/21/2003, 9:59 AM
That's a pretty cool thought, Mike. I hadn't considered subtraction. The three setups were closeup (center, in the orchestra pit), medium (from a platform against the left wall) and long (from the booth). I may be able to do something with the left setup like add it to the left channel and subtract it from the right.

Thanks for the idea.
mikkie wrote on 2/21/2003, 11:17 AM
It might be useful to read the mic info pdf file available off the m-audio.net site. While it is an ad, they have some useful info on mic placement, how it works, how they get separate channels off it etc...

mike
TorS wrote on 2/21/2003, 1:53 PM
I think Mikkie's suggestion is a sound one (ha ha). Maybe you could build a good mono signal first (from the good mic and the mix tap) and then add the left and right camera sound to create the sense of room. You could also experiment with fake stereo on top of all this (but only on the mono track).

Tor