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Post by benedict on May 9, 2018 11:31:55 GMT -8
I realize I never did get back with you to let you know how it went.
It went sideways (in a good way!)
The place I was visiting had some really good opportunities for field recording, so I wound up bringing my full field kit (DR-70D, SASS, omni lav pair, cardioid lav pair, headphones, etc.) And since I wanted to try your EQ matching technique, I brought my voice mic, a Behringer C-2, and a couple of other mics. (Hey, who needs room for clothes?!) I set up my hotel room exactly the way you said, and went nuts.
I was able to get reasonably close, EQing between any two mics of a given pickup pattern. Even with all the pillows and blankets, the omnis picked up room noise different enough from the cardioids they were very hard to match. The Behringer and my cardioid lavs are reasonably close in frequency response, and came together pretty quickly. (The Behringer's noise floor is another matter, though.) I couldn't get either of them to match all that well to my vocal mic because neither of them have the low-end response to pull it off.
I recorded everything as an A/B (actually A/B/C/D since I had four inputs to play with), so I had a lot of side-by-side files to play with at the end of it all. After I got back from my trip Eventide was running a free offer on their EQuivocate plug-in. I snatched it up and gave it a whirl. Among other things, it will do an EQ match between two sources. It did a good job with each of the mic pairs I tried it on, including matching the Behringer to my voice mic. Listening to the EQed file I can still tell the difference, but an outside observer might not spot it. The EQ matching trick works really well.
So did the acoustic treatment of the room! Excellent advice, and well worth keeping in mind the next time I travel.
Cheers!
Tom
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Post by benedict on May 9, 2018 11:18:13 GMT -8
Pretty sure you are. That's a nice trick!
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Post by benedict on May 8, 2018 8:43:59 GMT -8
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Post by benedict on Apr 13, 2018 18:36:01 GMT -8
Probably the best place to start is the Tutorials section at the top of this forum. Lots and lots and lots of good advice for voice training, setup, editing, etc.
As far as demo reels go, the advice I saw over and over when I first joined was "Wait". The more I get into voice acting, the more I agree with it. (I still haven't made one, and to be honest I'm still not ready.) That doesn't mean you can't do voice acting in the meanwhile. It's the only way to GET ready. But it's not something that needs to be rushed.
Have fun reading the tutorials!
Tom
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Post by benedict on Apr 2, 2018 0:04:53 GMT -8
Yeah, just tried it and I couldn't get more than two channels in Audacity. That's a real pity. Even with Reaper on my computer, I like Audacity for a number of things. I'm still trying to learn how to use spectral editing in Reaper. In Audacity it's dead nuts simple.
This probably isn't helping you much with your decision, but Mike Delgaudio's videos on Youtube (the ones I linked to above) got me past the worst of my learning curve in pretty short order.
Cheers!
Tom
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Post by benedict on Apr 1, 2018 18:53:19 GMT -8
Sorry to hop in ahead of Duffy here.
I haven't tried this in Audacity, and now that I've read what your experiences are with it, I GOTTA try this in Audacity. That would be frustrating if you could only use the first two channels of an interface for inputs. (I've only had an eight channel interface for a couple of months, and I've only used Reaper with it so far.)
In Reaper it's pretty straightforward. You can route each of your device's inputs into a separate track (or, rather, you tell each track which input it should listen to), and away you go. Reaper's quite flexible with routing. I don't think you'd have a problem doing the loopback trick you described to feed your Skype line into its own track.
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Post by benedict on Mar 28, 2018 8:40:01 GMT -8
The word "breathed", like in the line "she barely breathed the words as she staggered in". I hate the way I say that word. It never sounds right, no matter how many times I retry the line. Holy cow, that IS hard. It doesn't help that "the" comes right after. That's awkward no matter how I try to do it. Good one to add to the tongue-twister lister!
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Post by benedict on Mar 15, 2018 9:26:54 GMT -8
I hope you can find the sample. Looking forward to poking at it and problem solving.
Cheers!
Tom
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Post by benedict on Mar 7, 2018 15:19:08 GMT -8
I have to say, this isn't so much for people in the acting field as for PEOPLE. This is all just solid advice for how to live a positive, productive life.
Harry, I can't tell you how much I've appreciated the discussions about hit rates on auditions. Before seeing those numbers I thought I was bombing! Knowing that even the best of the best have a 5-10% hit rate makes me feel like maybe I'm not so bad after all. Ok, it's still a steep learning curve, but now it looks a lot more tractable.
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Post by benedict on Mar 7, 2018 15:14:00 GMT -8
That should be plenty to get you going. Past that look into room treatment to control reverberation and have a blast!
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Post by benedict on Mar 6, 2018 13:31:06 GMT -8
Aaaah. It's worth asking Sweetwater if they'll ship to Australia, but the cost of shipping may raise the price too much to matter.
The Focusrite kit comes with an XLR microphone, headphones, and a USB interface. The job of the interface is to proved 48V power to the microphone, to amplify the microphone's output signal to something closer to line levels, to digitize the amplified signal, and send the data through the USB bus to the computer. You can find discrete components that'll do several of these tasks (P48 power supplies, discrete preamps, etc.) but most interfaces provide all of that functionality in one bundle.
If you opted for the AT2020, you'd still need headphones and an interface. If you already have headphones that's a fair bit of savings right there. You can get interfaces from a number of manufacturers for around $100USD. The Scarlett series are solid performers, but there are other ones out there as well. People's choices for interface show up in a couple of threads here, so it's worth looking around. (Searching on the name of any given interface will typically point you toward a thread where other interfaces are discussed as well.)
No apologies for being green. I've got zero time in a studio, so we're even on that score. Everybody's got to start somewhere.
Cheers!
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Post by benedict on Mar 4, 2018 21:42:40 GMT -8
Just a general observation, if you have an interface you're happy with, buying components piecemeal will let you build the setup you're after. If you don't already have an interface, the kit doesn't look like a bad deal. But more on that in a sec. Take the rest of this with a grain of salt. I haven't used the AT2020 or the CM25. I found one review that said they upgraded from a CM25 to a Rode NT1 and liked the Rode better. I haven't found any reviews comparing it directly with an AT2020. Looking at the photos of the internals on Recordinghacks.com (http://recordinghacks.com/microphones/Focusrite/CM25) it looks like a Transound capsule and a fairly complete implementation of the Schoeps internal amps. Based on that my guess is it'll have decent self noise and a bright(ish) presence peak. But this is at best a guess based on some pictures on a web page. Again, I haven't tried the mic. For what it's worth, I found the same bundle on Sweetwater for $199: www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ScarlettSoloSG2Sweetwater has the AT2020 for $99: www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/AT2020So for the price that StoreDJ has for the Scarlett Solo kit, you could get both mics and find out first-hand.
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Post by benedict on Feb 23, 2018 17:44:18 GMT -8
I haven't used either interface, so I can't say how I like one versus the other. That being said, a reasonable sanity check you can do is to hit the support forum for the DAW you use to see if there are any issues with either of the interfaces on your list. It won't tell you which one sounds better, but it'll keep you from stumbling into too many problems like driver issues.
Also, I think there are a couple of threads on the forums here where people went through their studio setups. I can't remember how many people mentioned the interfaces they were using, but you might take a look through the forum threads to see if there's anyone's brain you could pick.
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Post by benedict on Feb 22, 2018 11:05:25 GMT -8
Pretty minor one in the grand scheme of things, but this just happened last night so it's fresh in my mind:
I just got a new recorder/interface earlier this week. Work has been hell, so the first time I got to really sit down with it was last night... at 11:30pm. After everyone else had gone to bed. I loaded the drivers, plugged everything in, quietly recorded straight into my DAW for the first time ever (yay!) and then started working on monitoring. After plugging my headphones into my computer (no good), the interface (no good), I finally figured out the DAW wasn't outputting a monitoring signal. Aha! >click<
OHMIGAWD! At that point I had my headphones plugged into the interface, so when the DAW spit the full signal out my computer's sound card (the default output, of course) it went straight out the speakers. The feedback was staggering!
Everyone, even my cats, gave me a hard time for that one. I'm not allowed to play after bed time for a while.
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Post by benedict on Feb 20, 2018 0:25:20 GMT -8
4. Unpaid projects that demand professional quality *anything* (microphones, acting skills, whatever). Sure, you might GET that, but simultaneously demanding crème a la crème and not giving anything in return is silly.
That's a biggie for me. I know I'm not working at that level yet, so auditioning for what looks like a guaranteed rejection seems fruitless. Kira mentioned the other big one for me in her guide: massive time commitments or open-ended time commitments. I'm on-call 24/7 for my day job. I can usually guarantee small blocks of time throughout the week, but I'm not in a position to dedicate large blocks of time to a project right now. Small roles are good roles for me!
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