Sound Level Help!

[wheatgrinder]

Alcove, APE, et all...

I need to tweak the mix for my short, and one thing that freaks me out is the very low end. Im not doing anything with LFE channel, just low end in my 3.0 mix.

The problem is that on some home surround systems (all I have access to) portions of the low end material is causing sympathetic vibrations etc, in general sounding "floppy" and crappy. On other systems, including my monitoring setup it sounds fine.

I'm sure my problem is caused by my monitoring environment, I don't have a sub, etc.., but I still need to "fix" it for exhibition.

My gut says roll off any low end frequencies I "cant" here in my monitoring environment, but my gut is not frequently correct. (I site the chicken enchilada I had for lunch!..)

Luckily its only a problem in a couple areas, so if I overly cut it, its not the endotheworld.

Thoughts.. ??

Thanks.

 

[Alcove Audio]

In your EQ use a very narrow Q and isolate the flappy/crappy frequency. This way you don't reduce the entire low end, just the frequency that is causing the problem.

Tip of the day -
Loop the section(s) that have the offending low end sound.
Start playback.
Use the high pass filter (HPF).
Slowly raise the frequency of the high pass filter until the offending low end sound stops being offensive.
Make note of the frequency.
Disengage the HPF.
Engage the Low Frequency (LF) or Low-Mid Frequency (LMF) section of the EQ.
Make the dip/notch about an octave wide, centered on the frequency you noted when using the HPF.
Narrow the frequency band width (Q) until you hear the offensive frequency again.
Slide the center of the dip/notch back and forth to be sure you have found the center of the offending frequencies.

You'll have to play with it from there to isolate the frequency(ies) and decide on the band width of the Q and the amount of reduction you should apply.

It may look something like the LMF in the example below:

Are you sure that there's nothing wrong with your speakers?

 

[IndiePaul]

Just jumping in to thank Alcove Audio. Super post.

I'm book marking this for future use.

 

[wheatgrinder]

good advice.
I don't experience the floppiness on my monitoring setup, so I cant seem to dial in the offending frequencies as your suggested..

Other movies sound fine on the system in question..

 

[Alcove Audio]

Just a WAG (Wild-Assed-Guess) that you have some low-end freqs somewhere in the mix that don't quite make the artificial crossover (that would send it to the sub) of home media systems, so you're farting out the other speakers.


This is why APE and I make such a big deal over really nice speakers and a properly treated room; your mix isn't translating across to systems other than your own.


Suggestion...

Make short clips of those sections of the film with the flappy/crappy frequency; reason - you won't have to render the entire project for this experiment. Make a dozen copies of each bad clip. Dip/notch at 120, 240, 480, 960, 1,920, 3,840, etc. and run the mix. Burn to DVD. Go to all of those places you heard the flappy/crappy sound and see which freq is the most blatant offender.

Suggestion 2...

Take it to a proper rerecording facility.



Oh, are you sure that the systems that play the flappy/crappy frequency aren't broken?