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Any ideas on finding quiet place to record post audio?

Hi Guys,

I'm wondering if you have any good ideas. So I'm currently collecting & recording additional sound effects for my short film. New York tends to be very noisy, and I'm having a problem finding a quiet place to record sounds effects.

Any ideas on good, cheap locations? A friend of mine suggested an AV room in library, which might work. Do you think there might be some sort of rentable sound booth?
 
YUP it's a loud world. Signal to noise ratio is the main factor. get that mic close, get that signal as high as you can w/o clipping and work hard on mastering audio editing is my 2 cents anyhoo
 
And therein lies the problem. This is one of the many reasons - sound isolation in this case - that audio is so expensive; the studio must be sonically isolated from the outside world.
 
Signal to noise ratio is the main factor. get that mic close, get that signal as high as you can w/o clipping ....

There's 2 real potential dangers with this advice:

1. Getting the mic in close does improve SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) but also causes proximity effect (a serious alteration of the mic's frequency response) and additionally usually produces an unnatural perspective.

2. I've often seen the advice to record as hot as you can without clipping. It used to be good advice, back in the early '90's, when digital recording was limited to 16bit but for modern 24bit recorders, this is no longer good advice. Professional analogue recording equipment (mic-pres for example) are designed to operate optimally at line level (0VU). Depending on how your converter is calibrated, getting "that signal as high as you can w/o clipping" probably means you re running your mic-pre 12dB - 24dB higher than is optimal. By turning the mic-pre up to get a hotter signal, you are increasing both the signal level and the ambient noise level (therefore not improving SNR), plus you are almost certainly adding distortion from overloading the mic-pre. Bottom line: Always observe 0VU when recording!

G
 
A cheap way to do it.

Go to a graveyard and take a few gripstands and some winter blankets. Put up those blankets in a square to block the wind.

It sounds odd, but a graveyard is a good place for recording sound.
 
2. I've often seen the advice to record as hot as you can without clipping. It used to be good advice, back in the early '90's, when digital recording was limited to 16bit but for modern 24bit recorders, this is no longer good advice. Professional analogue recording equipment (mic-pres for example) are designed to operate optimally at line level (0VU). Depending on how your converter is calibrated, getting "that signal as high as you can w/o clipping" probably means you re running your mic-pre 12dB - 24dB higher than is optimal. By turning the mic-pre up to get a hotter signal, you are increasing both the signal level and the ambient noise level (therefore not improving SNR), plus you are almost certainly adding distortion from overloading the mic-pre. Bottom line: Always observe 0VU when recording!
G

That's interesting, I never would have suspected that.

We ended up finding a location that was acceptable. This episode really reminded me how much important it is to pay attention to noise level in location scouting. Many of the originally recorded stuff was nearly unusable because it sounded like there was a jet engine running in the background.

Do you guys usually monitor audio via a mixer during a shoot? I was just delegating it to a recordist, and not listening to the actual feed.



Graveyard... can't tell if you are pulling my leg hehe
 
There's 2 real potential dangers with this advice:

1. Getting the mic in close does improve SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) but also causes proximity effect (a serious alteration of the mic's frequency response) and additionally usually produces an unnatural perspective.

2. I've often seen the advice to record as hot as you can without clipping. It used to be good advice, back in the early '90's, when digital recording was limited to 16bit but for modern 24bit recorders, this is no longer good advice. Professional analogue recording equipment (mic-pres for example) are designed to operate optimally at line level (0VU). Depending on how your converter is calibrated, getting "that signal as high as you can w/o clipping" probably means you re running your mic-pre 12dB - 24dB higher than is optimal. By turning the mic-pre up to get a hotter signal, you are increasing both the signal level and the ambient noise level (therefore not improving SNR), plus you are almost certainly adding distortion from overloading the mic-pre. Bottom line: Always observe 0VU when recording!

G


OKdokie ..I see now said the blind man as he fell off the cliff
 
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