Change clothes

Here I discuss the mentality of sound processing.
Sound processing your samples starts with one fundamental Ideal. Make it sound better! There are many ways to achieve the same sound, many ways to achieve slightly different sounds and many ways to ruin sound or just plain exaggerate it. So let’s define good sound vs. bad sound. First up is in the method to avoid bad sound is to make sure your level is proper. You don’t want your sound to appear as a brick. This means if your sound is up to loud and your using a digital interface to work with sound anything above 0db will be truncated and the wave will just be shelved resulting in a waveform that looks like brick. The sound will be harsh and unpleasant so be sure your levels allow enough head room before your peaks touch 0db. Continue reading →

Quiet on the set!

Often times it can be difficult to cut out back-round noise especially if you live in the city or in a house with many other tenants.  Here I’m going to talk about ways to minimize the annoying back-round noise from your recordings. The first issue to overcome with using condenser mics outside is the wind. Sure there is the old method of using a simple Sock from your dresser over the mic but that often doesn’t do the job very well and can sometimes muffle the sound. Instead why not build your own “Dead cat”. A Dead Cat is a mic cover that is made of fur (synthetic in this case) with long hair. The Long hair prevents wind pressure from disturbing the mic while allowing frequencies through undeterred.  The materials are really very basic and can be bought at any local craft store. All you need is a strip of synthetic long hair fur. (Comes in many colors) some elastic banding and some thin cotton sheeting. The cotton sheeting gets sown to the back of the fur, and then wrap the fur around the mic to measure it and sow it accordingly. Next just sow in an elastic band so that it will fit firmly over the mic and not move.  Now you have a very cheap dead cat that should work just fine. (I will post pictures up as well)

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