sound Music Requirements

[AudioPostExpert]

Due to cheap technology, there are a lot more people these days creating music but as the music business is in decline and making any money is so difficult, many turn to the film/tv scene. There are two types of composers working or trying to work in this field, people who compose films scores and people who compose library music. While there are many similarities between the two, there are also significant differences and different skill sets required. Ultimately though both are creating music for use in film/tv and there are technical and usage requirements which need to be fulfilled which are different from the almost complete lack of requirements in the music business. I'm creating this post to help to avoid the issues which seem to be increasing due to lower budgets causing producers and directors to hire less experienced composers and due to the internet allowing anyone to offer their music for use in film/tv.

Delivery: The audio format should be: 24bit 48kFs/S wav or aiff, with a maximum peak level of -6dBFS. If you're working with a 32bit (or higher) mix engine you do not need to dither to 24bit. If for some obscure reason you do need to dither, use a standard TDPF dither, never a noise shaped dither. If you're thinking of creating 5.1 music, don't! By all means work with surround (it's a growing market) but the .1 is for low frequency effects, not for music. So 5.0 is OK and 4.0 might be even better as it leaves the centre channel free for dialogue and Foley. If you are hired as a composer for a surround film/tv program, you will need to discuss with the director and the supervising sound editor or the re-recording mixer which channel format to use for the music.

Usage Considerations: With the exception of the end credits, the vast majority of the time your music will not be the most important audio element, the dialogue will and frequently some of the SFX or Foley will take precedence as well. If your music gets in the way of the dialogue I (the re-recording mixer) will get rid of it! I'll lower the level of your music, I'll EQ it to reduce the frequencies interfering with the dialogue or I might even add reverb to it, commonly I'll use a combination of these. In extreme situations I may have to edit the music out in part or entirely! If you're a hired composer you have the benefit of being able to orchestrate around the dialogue but even as a library music composer there are certain things you can do to help keep your music sounding as you intended and make the Director's and Re-recording mixer's job easier. For example, make your music mixes wetter than you otherwise would and use compression sparingly and only for musical reasons, not just to make your music louder (as you would in the music business).

Check Your Mix:

• Check for reasonably good mono compatibility and very good stereo compatibility if you're working in surround.
• Check your mix still works well at low levels. If the re-recording mixer has to lower the level of your music significantly to accommodate other audio elements, the perception of your mix will change. The most obvious change will be that the bass frequencies in your mix will seem quieter or will disappear entirely.
• Check your mix still works well at high levels. Dubbing theatre systems are incredibly revealing, you need to make sure there is nothing in your mix which will make you look incompetent. Editing clicks and spurious noises completely invisible in an average music studio may suddenly become incredibly obvious in the dubbing theatre (and of course in the cinema or on a good home cinema system).
• Check the bass! Cinemas often have subs which go down as low as 12Hz, even home cinema systems commonly go as low as 18-20Hz. Near field monitors and most other home and studio speakers usually can't reproduce much below 40Hz, so you really you need to use full range speakers. If budget doesn't allow for full range speakers, your only workaround is to check your mix on a good set of headphones (with a wide frequency response) and check to see if you can find anything untoward in a spectrum analyser.

If there is much interest in the information in this post, I might add to it as useful points to remember spring to mind.

G

 

[wheatgrinder]

I have no illusions of grandeur. I am not looking to enter a Formula one race, nor is any sane person who works at the micro budget level.

Maybe a better way to approach this like this: consider if your grandma was trying to improve the sound of her online knitting videos, is there ANY advice you would offer?

I DO believe that any creative endeavor can be improved by the application of simple changes and tricks of the trade and that all creatives should peruse excellence where they are now, not at some future "big budget" project. We amateurs look to experts to provide guidance to help us along the way.

EDIT: Removed all the whinny little girl comments.. geeze, I'm being a putz!

 

[AudioPostExpert]

I have no illusions of grandeur. I am not looking to enter a Formula one race, nor is any sane person who works at the micro budget level.

If you're ever going to make a short for a festival where your work will get screened in a cinema then you're in the formula 1 race. If you ever aspire to any professional work for TV either, you may not be in a formula 1 race but you are definitely in a car race.

We amateurs look to experts to provide guidance to help us along the way, it is clear you are not interested in helping the little people with their little problems, and thats OK. I'll come back and talk to you when Im all growed up.

I've given you the best guidance there is, spend whatever budget you've got on improving your room's acoustics. If you don't like that expert guidance that's your problem, it's not me being uninterested. The simple fact is that none of the advice or tricks of the profession I could give you will make any difference if you can't hear what you are doing!

G

 

[MetalRenard]

Good post, thanks.

 

[wheatgrinder]

my work is in festivals (1), and I have a commercial on "national TV"(1)..
Best up my audio game

I think I missed the good advice (I see it now) buried in detail rich stuff.. Note my admittance of being whinny and putz like.. I do appreciate your help.

Im running with
Monitors: EV Sentry EL100's
AUDIO IO: PreSonus Firebox
DAW=Cubase 6

I have too small of a work surfface and am not far enough off the walls

 

[rocksure]

my work is in festivals (1), and I have a commercial on "national TV"(1)..
Best up my audio game

.

If you have very little money to spend on improving your audio, start by spending what you do have on a bit of sound treatment for your room. If done right it will make a BIG difference to what you hear from your speakers. Study up a bit on where the most important places to put your sound treatment at a bare minimum are ie: mirror positions, above your head, corners etc. Then having good monitor speakers for reference is the next most important place to spend your money. If at all possible keep your speakers away from walls ( unless soffit mounted in the walls). This is bare minimum stuff really........the sky is the limit beyond that.

 

[Alcove Audio]

Monitors: EV Sentry EL100's

Wow, those are really old school. They most definitely need to be at least 12" from the wall.

Is the speaker foam okay? Depending upon where you live it can degrade very quickly (humidity, pollution) or last a long time (cool, dry).

I agree with rocksure, you should work on your listening environment. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts (#36) a little symmetry goes a long way. See what you can do to deaden the room.

After that some real sound treatment (Auralex, etc.) behind the speakers, behind you and to the sides - and perhaps above you - would be your next moves. You can get 24 square feet of Auralex for about $110.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Wedgies

 

[AudioPostExpert]

my work is in festivals (1), and I have a commercial on "national TV"(1)..
Best up my audio game

I have too small of a work surfface and am not far enough off the walls

First off, I appreciate you removing the "whinny" stuff.

My analogy obviously didn't work because I maybe didn't make it clear that: Forumla 1 Race = Cinema Sound and as cinemas represent the highest quality sound systems/acoustic environments most people will ever experience, like it or not and regardless of your budget, you're in the Formula 1 Race! Maybe the second half of my post #39 will make more sense if you read it again with this in mind.

It should also be noted that TV is quite a different race because unlike in cinemas where the quality of the sound systems/acoustics is, in theory, standardised (as defined by Dolby and THX) there are no standards for the sound systems/acoustics of people's TVs/TV rooms. Re-recording mixers for TV therefore have to account for an extremely wide range of playback systems, which inevitably compromises the quality of what can be achieved. For this reason, the quality and standards of TV dubbing theatres tend to be much more variable than those for film but at the high-end of the TV market there are again very expensive THX specifications. So, we may not be in a Formula 1 race but we are definitely in a high-end car race, maybe a Stock Car Race would be a good analogy or maybe the World Rally Championships?

The fact that you have a commercial on TV means that you are in this stock car race, you just didn't know it. In fact, to continue the analogy, someone has hired a car (dubbing theatre) and race driver (re-recording mixer) on your behalf and deducted the cost of this from your budget!! How can I be sure of this? All broadcasters in the US must comply with the ATSC A/85 audio specifications enacted in law last year in the CALM ACT. So these A85 specs now form the basis of all US TV broadcasters' audio specifications and anything delivered to them for broadcast which doesn't meet these specifications is simply rejected. These specifications are very precise and the chances of you meeting them without the correct equipment/environment are practically zero. So an audio post professional must have manipulated the audio you delivered to make it compliant with the broadcaster's delivery specs. Most producers (and directors) would not be happy with this scenario because it means they are effectively paying for the audio twice and have limited control of the soundtrack.

Now back to my guidance: Consider that when creating a high quality commercial dubbing theatre they spend roughly 3-10 times more on room acoustics than they do on the combined cost of all the audio equipment in the dubbing theatre! Obviously you're not trying to create (or have the budget for) a high quality commercial dubbing theatre, I'm just telling you some basic professional principles, which may help you to maximise the effectiveness of whatever budget you do have. The simple fact is that most professional video edit suites and low budget filmmakers spend virtually all their budget on equipment and little or none of it on acoustics, which is fine if you're handing off all the audio to an audio post facility but completely contrary to professional practice if you're doing the audio yourself.

Unfortunately, acoustic room design is a huge specialist area in it's own right. Again, using the high-end as a benchmark, acoustic consultants like Munro Associates (have a look at the Project Galleries in the "Music and Project Studios" and "Broadcast and Post" sections) can cost as much just for acoustic consultancy as I had for my entire budget! In my case, I only had a total budget of $¼m, so I had to do the acoustic design myself but I've a fair bit of experience in this area and I'm lucky that one of my closest friends is one of the UK's top acousticians, who gave me a lot of help/advice.

In your case, you are going to have to do it yourself but if you've got the time to do some research, are willing to get your hands dirty and have a few tools handy, it's amazing how much you can improve the acoustics of your room, even with a budget of only a few hundred dollars. With a budget of $1,000, borrowing some frequency analysis equipment, a lot of research and a few weekends work, it's entirely possible you could end up with something usable. You'll still be nothing more than a tiny spec in the rear-view mirror of a Ferrari but at least you stand a chance of having a car in the race rather than a bicycle!

A good place for your research is the AVForums. Try both the Room Acoustics, Audio and Video Calibration forum and the Home Cinema Building DIY forum.

G

 

[AudioPostExpert]

Although much of the information in this thread should be of interest to composers of film music, we have drifted off topic a little. I've decided to resurrect this thread with another piece of advice specifically for the music composer:

When mixing your music, you have to consider the final distribution, from the point of view of pan positions (as well as frequency response, etc). If final distribution is for TV (or DVD/BluRay) or for the internet, the audience's speakers are usually either side of the TV or computer screen. This means that usually the audience has a relatively narrow stereo field. The re-recording mixer, when mixing for these distribution methods, therefore usually tries to emphasise the width of the mix to compensate for this narrow stereo field. If on the other hand you are mixing for the cinema, say for a festival screening or for theatrical distribution, you have the opposite problem. The left and right front speakers will likely be at least 30ft apart and could be 60 or more feet apart. So let's say you've composed an orchestral style mix and panned the violins hard left and the basses hard right (as per an orchestra). Anyone sitting at or near the side of the cinema (rather than in the absolute centre) could be sitting 30 or more feet closer to the left speaker than the right speaker (or vice versa) and therefore the balance between the violins and basses would appear to be completely wrong! Obviously this doesn't just apply to orchestral style music but to the stereo panning of any type of music.

The obvious solution would be to avoid hard panning any instrument or element within the music mix. A better solution is to provide splits and let the re-recording mixer sort out the panning. If there is an experienced dedicated audio post guy on the project have a chat with them about this issue before you start and then mix your music according to what they have asked for. Another useful piece of advice, if creating music for screening in a cinema, is to re-position your speakers as widely apart as your room will allow. This still won't emulate the 60 or so feet apart that you could encounter in a cinema but at least it will give you a better idea than having your speakers sitting a few feet apart on your desk.

G