Audio issue

[Pete Cofrancesco]

After recording a dance performance I discovered the board feed was bad but I have no idea what happened. Someone suggested my camera limiter to be the cause but the levels were low enough and it even takes place during quiet parts.

I attached a sample. Sounds like it was recorded under water.

[Rick Reineke]

Sounds like a camera or a room mic. The house feed could have been plugged in, but the cam or recorder could have been set to an internal mic. Other than that, maybe you were getting a direct output from an announce mic or even a feed from FX return bus is possible. I don't hear any limiter or gain stage issues.

[Andrew Smith]

Was the audio sounding good when you were monitoring it during the recording?

Andrew

[Pete Cofrancesco]

I listen to it and it seemed ok at the time but in a loud venue and the board feed and mic in separate channels its easy to miss.

I have to make a note of it so next year I'll know the board feed is a problem that will need attention.

[Gary Nattrass]

Were the performers on radio mics as it sounds like companding from the compression codecs.

That may not show up until all the elements of the full show are playing.

We just had a full day seminar with Sennheiser for our new digital 6000 and 9000 mics and had some really good demonstrations of this.

If you have any analogue radio mic try recording a tambourine and you will hear what the compression codec can do to audio.

That may not be a problem to a voice on it's own but add in all the background elements and noises of a show such as this and you start to get under the sea type artifacts.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

They were dancing to the Aladdin movie and lip syncing to the spoken parts, no one was miced.

[Dan Gunn]

If this was a paid gig, maybe the sound guys will give you a copy of what they were working with.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

It was a paid gig filmed for someone else who edited it and for simplicity sake he already produced it using only the ambient audio from my shotgun mic. I can't blame him for not wanting to get all the original music and re syncing it. I was trying to get to the bottom of what went wrong so it doesn't happen again.

[Steven Digges]

I have a ton of experience working with AV audio technicians. Unfortunately some of those are not good. In the audio visual world the FOH mixer may be anything from a talented A1 to "some guy they put behind a mixer". One of the common mistakes I see occurs when the inexperienced guy has a 15 or 30 band EQ at his disposal. For that matter I have seen any one of the standard three band mixer EQs (low, mid, high) with an entire range spun OFF if they did not have a real EQ. An inexperienced operator is always going to "mix" for his ear based on the available sound system. The system at events like recitals may be anything from good PA down to house speakers in the ceiling. Those guys have two main priority's, don't feed back and don't rumble the bass. Since the PA is rarely full range I see insane things done on EQs. If there is a bad speaker someplace in the system ALL bass frequencies are dropped out. If they think a mic is going to feedback Mids and Highs are radically dropped out. An EQ in the hands of an inexperienced operator is a dangerous tool. At events like dance recitals your feed is almost always going to be downstream from what the guy did to the source. His processing "may" have even helped it sound better in the room on the POS system but you record a crap mix with wildly changed frequencies or crazy processing.

When recording live events there is one rule set in stone I never break. I always record at least two sources completely independent of each other. I love a board feed but it is always 100% backed up by another system, usually more than once. I am not an A1, but I do know my way around mixers and audio racks enough to know what I need and where it should be coming from.

From your short sample I can't be sure but I think I hear the work of the guy on the board. There are several things he could have done to mess that up. Disney does not mix like that....

Over the years there has been many good discussions on this board about recording live audio. Some of them might still be here.

Kind Regards,

Steve

[Seth Bloombaum]

Steve mentioned AV event techs mixing by ear.

More, many self-educated or under-educated sound techs in all sorts of live venues have *never* gone any deeper than the most basic of gain structures through their mixers.

Meters and targeting line level, minimizing noise, avoiding overmodulation... the only one at least some of the better techs will do is to avoid overmodulation at the mixer.

In practice this is another reason that getting a decent and consistent board feed is always a crap shoot. Your signal may be too low, or overmodulated, or multiple sources poorly mixed, not to mention the crazy EQ Steve mentioned.

They've. Never. Done. Recording. You shouldn't expect them to have recording skills!

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Seth Bloombaum

They've. Never. Done. Recording. You shouldn't expect them to have recording skills!

Exactly. And... they don't work for you. They work for the venue. If they are going to do anything, it's try to make the house mix sound good. Getting a feed of that mix, with it's EQ, compression, effects and processing rarely makes an excellent camera feed. About the best you can hope for is acceptable.

[Gary Nattrass]

Originally Posted by Pete Cofrancesco

They were dancing to the Aladdin movie and lip syncing to the spoken parts, no one was miced.

In that case it still sounds like companding and is probably coming from dolby surround artifacts, they may have selected the 5.1 mix rather than the stereo one if it is from a DVD etc.

You have to be pretty poor to not be able to feed a playback but as stated above when multiple choices are available things can go wrong and it may well sound acceptable on PA on a feed it can go wrong.

One other thought is that even if it is the stereo mix it may well be that you are being fed from a mono auxilary feed and that is causing phase problems when the stereo track is summed.

[Don Palomaki]

The recording you posted is 2-channel monophonic (both channels identical). Is that what was intended?
How was the audio recorded? Separate sources/paths for music and voice?

You said it was lip synched, and no mics involved, so it sounds a bit as if someone mixed it down to the camcorder by connecting an unbalanced stereo signal to a balanced mono input. That adds the left and right out of phase. Centered voices could be pretty much cancelled but stereo music instrument left-right difference signal less so.

If this was all lip synch to a recording, a remix with the original source may be the best solution

[Pete Cofrancesco]

I posted only the channel with the problem otherwise it be difficult to hear.

[Don Palomaki]

So how was each actual channel sourced/recorded/connected?
How did the other channel; sound?