Hang on a sec… This is only applies to the way dialogue recording is done for film and video games. Music is an ENTIRELY different animal… those principals don’t apply to music. With music, do whatever you need to do get the results you’re after. In music you have both the context and the creative authority to do whatever the hell you need to make the production happen!
FYI - When shooting music tacks, I happily track with EQ and compression myself when I rent a studio that has good gear.
that’s what my reading lead to also, the optimum tracking is simply Mic + Preamp…
no eq, no compression.
even the articles compression is used , like quincy in one article was a lowly 2:1 which to me is invisble. they have the top notch gear too so as Brandon always said “as long as you aren’t making it worse” is more the home recordist problem…adding a bunch of cheap gear crap up front isn’t helping.
as for the U87 and history of the U47, U67…this is interesting quick history/evolution of our gear.
yeah your right, vocal in music is what Im thinking about, most articles in general, seems its pretty clean and you get a best clarity with a good choice mic and preamp…the compression isn’t needed today like WW2, as it was invented for…but sure as a distortion fx squash Pop rock Rap song anything goes,
as for the classic studios, vocals were done the same for radio jingles or music…EMI…U47, U67 into a tube console…huge room… compression or eq ? not much as I understand it.
transformers were in there too during the tube days, and they have that compression fx going from primary to secondary, highs with less energy are tones down… beautiful sounding recordings.
like the “cheap chineese mics” in that article, then you read old designers who knew…like Ted Fletcher of the early JoeMeek stuff, he knew the transformers would take some of the sizzling chineese mics hi’s down…it was intentional for the new LDC mis-matched capsules Joly speaks of…so all the earliest Meek stuff had the Xformers, and the stuff he made was for a voice channel using good parts, …then it all became a business issue “cheap outsourced crap for profit” and he got out , as I understand it. the new joemeek are like my interface preamps pretty blah, but are fine. Daking, Great River, transformers… they know.
it all makes sense to get a microphone that matches the preamp best, instead of using EQ to try to fix it later…on VO or Music…right?
and if Eq is defended, then which EQ a SSL, or what… another bag of worms to deal with. Pultec comes to mind because all the old stuff sounds so good… lol
VO… kind of Home Recording related.
Film & Movies would be something else, never read about that, weird environments hanging up above…thats another world in audio. Like classicals and opera recordings.
I go to about one a month in the theatres and being a sound dude, you can hear the mistakes of the audio when the voice of an actor is out of reach and muffled or dropped out.
good mic and good preamp… keep it simple makes more sense…especially with VO.
this is from a technical point of view, sure some people with a lot of skills like Frank Sinatra could make a cheap mic sound fantastic, and Beatles I Am The Walrus was done with a distorted cheapo mic…
what exactly are you doing with the VO and Films?
are you mixing or recording off site somewhere?
But isn’t there a “director” for VO, to get the performance that they want for the project? Like the first part of this video:
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“There’s a new mom and you’re making her lactate.” 
Yes! There is. Here’s real photo age of an actual session 
Film and video game VO… I’m setup to be able to do just about any of the dialogue related stuff. That was a very intentional decision when buying the building I’m in…I decided to only gear the tracking room toward VO and not to mess with recording drums or outfitting the space for musicians. That gets outsourced.
I can record here (even though I’m not supposed to use a tube mic, but shhhhhh don’t tell anyone) lol. I have a Neumann and Telefunken available if necessary now. I also keep an AKG C414 handy incase the Blue is just a no-go for some actors.
Its been highly beneficial to offer VO tracking as a service, but the RRM position is where you really want to be. I do have surround sound up and running now, and I have a big enough console to be able to handle the re-recording jobs which are pretty much the top of the food chain for a film audio mixer. There’s about 5 different type of mixing jobs for a movie (a field mixer, foley mixer, dialogue mixer, music mixer, and a dub mixer). The dub mixer is the same thing as a re-recording mixer.
What’s that all about? Is that in your contract specs? Are tube mics too ‘colored’ sounding for what they want?
Do you have a setup for multiple VO actors like they show in that video you posted? Just curious. The guy talked about how they like to have everyone in one room to feed off the energy of each other. I think that’s why most of these things get done in large markets like NY or LA.
Thats interesting the video of VO and the Star Wars thing…I dont get how the keep it all timed and synced?
but wow! what a bunch of U87ai! was that 10 of them…geeez bet that made a salesmans day.
that many probably just straight into a house console, house mics, house everything…
the Voice lady video was crazy, shes crazy…what a job…another Neumann it looked like.
they all have a similar positioning and tilt.
I’m sure there is a lot of post production on that, they capture the performances and then each voice clip is edited and placed in the timeline on its own character track. Which can be slid around to match the “lip flaps” of the animation. With tight editing, mic bleed in the room shouldn’t be a big deal (each clip is only from one mic) as long as the other people aren’t making noise when that one actor is speaking. There must be some etiquette for being in that room where you understand that you are quiet until needed. Even so, the music bed would likely cover up any subtle noise intrusions.
As far as timing and sync, that probably comes from the animation which you could see had already been done, using SMPTE timecode.
The VO is recorded first. Same with video games. Then the animation artists match it to the lip flaps.
Nope. No console just a pre lol.
I’m pretty sure those videos were added to the session after the fact. Most like, the actors weren’t seeing much of anything but their script when they recorded animation.
…I just got a text a second ago. I asked one of Warners RRM’s how they were doing it. He walked over to a VO booth looked… said the only EQ anywhere in that room was for frequency curve correction on their monitors. They’re using true Systems and Pueblo pre amps (at least in the rooms he around looked at). Some with a custom modded 35 hz hi pass filter. Thought you’d find that interesting.
Ah, interesting. I guess that makes sense rather than trying to make a VO actor conform to a predetermined slate. That might make it much harder to get vocal takes. Then again, if the show has a predetermined length, how do they make sure all the video cues can fit the time length? It seems like with audio to video, or vice versa, it could be done either way depending on the format and the specs?
To prevent ‘rumble’? I think it’s common to use 70/80 Hz high pass on voice, depending on the application. Maybe that’s done in post production?
I’m wondering that myself. I’m never involved with the storyboarding or scripting, and I think the length decisions are accounted for there. I can ask someone who does this stuff. I’m curious too.
I was like… 35 hz?? Seemed a little odd to me too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the animation was already done in storyboard form, they use that for video/audio cues to inform the scripting and directing (i.e. even show on screen), but then tweak the animation after the voice work is done. I mean, they have to have some kind of guideline to know what to reference. With CGI these days, it’s probably pretty easy (though certainly time consuming) to go in and edit the timeline for video animation to match lip flaps, even after most of the animation is set. It’s only number of frames per time, right? (copy, paste, edit) And not all would have to be edited, just where voice does not match up. A fair amount might match during voice recording, as somebody like the director surely has walked through it all in “table read” many times before bringing in a bunch of high dollar actors.
I thought you were asking about the length of run-time per scene.
Well, in a sense I am. But both the run-time per scene and the total run-time for the series episode. I mean, I don’t know much about what you posted, but the guy mentioned it being a “series”, so I assume there is an assigned length of episode they have to conform to. The audience expects that in a series, and there is likely commercial advertising slots they want to fill, and so it’s like TV where it’s supposed to be a 1/2 hour episode, but really only ~22 minutes due to commercial/advertising air time. Or a 1 hour episode, but really only ~46 minutes actual content, or whatever. Just giving examples. If it’s a subscription service, you may not have commercials, but still the time limit per episode. Whereas with a movie (film), they can make it as long as they want without commercial interruptions (except that crap before it starts).
I guess the point is - are there time constraints, or are there not time constraints? It’s an aspect of storytelling that has to be considered in many realms, especially commercial ventures. So when you break that down by scene it all has to fit together like clockwork, so to say.
In any group (music-based or otherwise) there is a certain type of person whose top priority is high price. The subconscious reasoning is: if it’s expensive, it must be good - or more accurately: if I spend a lot of money on this, I will eliminate the possibility of being scuppered by something that is sub-standard, because I am not actually skilled enough to know the difference. Either way the result is: I paid a lot of money for this and it feels good.
The above-described person is like a gift from the gods to marketers.
You certainly don’t have to use EQ while you’re tracking. But the idea that you shouldn’t, or that you don’t have enough context to properly apply EQ is utter nonsense.
That said, I wouldn’t spend any money on an analog EQ at this point. But then, I hire studios for my productions that have analog EQs. So there ya go. Sometimes there are business reasons for gear purchases.
Mixerman
Hey man, the context of the Park Road Studios conversation about EQ was strictly referring animation, ADR and video game voiceover work. I would completely agree if that statement was music related.
I understand his comment though, without having score, sound effects, foley, and room tones (and sometimes you don’t even have all the actors in the same room at the time of the dialogue), I don’t see how someone can have enough context to EQing.