G+ Mailbag: Sound Editing vs Sound Mixing?

I win a LOT of Oscar pools, mostly because I usually nail the technical awards. I just received this question from my pal Kathleen on Google Plus:

Hey, +Juan Carlos Bagnell ! Can you give me some schooling on the Academy Award's sound categories? Namely the giant differences between the two, and what one looks for when analyzing/judging sound mixing and editing? 

Sure! The difference between the two is actually pretty simple to explain.

Sound editing is the creation of individual elements for the film. Anything created, or recorded on location, is the purview of the Sound Editor, who is responsible for collecting all of the elements needed to complete the film. Often it's referred to as Sound Effects Editing or Sound Design.

Sound Mixing is the final mix down of all the audio elements to create the finished product for display. This is the older of the two categories, and in the past was simply referred to as "Best Sound".

Now judging good sound is often a little tricky. On the one hand sound effects shouldn't be distracting, but to win the award, work must be done that stands out to a degree. Looking at the list of Sound Editing winners, you'll see a number of films which pushed right to the knife's edge boundary line of "cool" versus "distracting".

Sound Mixing is judged on the cumulative effect of the audio on the film. Beyond just whether or not there are any distracting elements, the audio must have a unified vision which enhances the films it is supporting.

Obviously it's very common for one film to win both awards, though occasionally two films with amazing sound will split the awards, like in 2008 where Dark Knight took Editing and Slumdog Millionaire took Mixing.

Now, these categories are usually decided by the people that work in those respective fields. You can always turn to the awards they give themselves (like the MPSE Golden Reel) to see who's building momentum for the Academy Awards.

This year, the Reels were all over the place, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a split between Hugo, Super 8, or War Horse.

Good luck in your Oscar pool! If any of these tips help you out, you should buy me a cup of coffee with your winnings (donation links to the left)... ;-)

Is MP3 about to become obsolete?

In a word "no".

But if I didn't write BOLD headlines, would you even be reading this?

Wired's Listening Post has a really interesting post up about a new type of music reproduction/digital compression.
Unlike MP3 it doesn't work as a way of compressing and sampling actual sound, but as a way of reproducing the performance of the original. So really, in a way, I was being even MORE misleading with my post title, as this isn't so much competition for MP3 as it might be for MIDI.

So? We've been using MIDI for a while. What's the big the deal?

Well, checking out the samples on the post, the research team (using an actual recording of a clarinet) has been able to create a MIDI-like recreation of the clarinet, (which would normally be around 32KB
in MIDI), but with this new method takes up less than ONE kilobyte (1KB).

For those of you like me, who weren't math majors, that's less than ONE THIRTIETH the file size!

Check out the post, with samples to listen to, over at Wired!
someaudioguy some audio guy audio voice over technology voice acting demo agent compression

Some Audio Store!

In conjunction with Amazon.com, I'm proud to present to you,
Some Audio Store!
(The real store is down at the bottom)

I'll be trying to keep it updated with products that I've been using or reviewing, and I'll be adding some links to the right hand side, and the actual store front is now at the bottom of the blog (replacing that youtube vid crawler that never worked right). Pretty cool stuff guys!

Thanks again for all the support!

Science Geek Alert: What does the planet Jupiter sound like?

So, maybe you don't have to listen to all ten minutes, but it is kinda cool to see (hear) what the electromagnetic vibrations of a planet traveling through space sound like...



You can hear other planets (even Earth) here.

Rescuing Recorded Sound from Ravages of Time

This is just plain cool!
Scientists are using modern technology to archive the recordings off of older media. I wonder what our media's shelf life will be. I doubt CD's will really last beyond 30 years, and I wonder how long a harddrive can last inactive, let alone early wax cylinders which have lasted over 100 years.



Still it's fascinating work:

"These echoes of a bygone era were recorded on media such as wax
cylinders and shellac and lacquer discs. But many are now too fragile
to play in their original format; the pressure of a stylus or
phonograph needle could cause irreversible damage. Others are too
broken, worn or scratched to yield high-quality sound. The archivists
needed a means to preserve the recordings without injuring them further.

A physicist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Haber
was developing subatomic particle detectors to be used at CERN in
Geneva, Switzerland. This involved using digital cameras and robots to
place each delicate detector in precisely the right place. In a flash
of insight, Haber realized that an optical scanning system could solve
the Library's quandary."

Read the rest @ huliq

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Holy Crap! $10,000 tube amp!

I REALLY want one, and I don't even know why!
The specs are of course ridiculous, but $10K?!?!

It prolly makes my 128Kbps MP3's sound AWESOME!



Gizmodo has the scoop!



... Wow! ...

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Sound Forge vs Audition .... Ready FIGHT!

Following up on my call for help from yesterday, here is a WAY over detailed shoot out between the two programs.

Just to spoil the results, Adobe just edges out Sony, but I'm not sure I completely agree. They slam Sound Forge for not being multitrack, but that was the whole point of SF9, was to add multi.
Is it AS good as Adobe's, most certainly not, but you CAN do it.

I call rigged...

Sound Forge 9.0

Adobe Audition 3

I'm Tired of How Loud Commercials Are! And So is The ASA!

The Advertising Standards Authority in the UK has a great write up on the perceived volume of modern TV commercials.

It's so frustrating. There you are watching your favorite crime drama about hot young sexy NCIS/FBI/CIA/FDNY/LAPD/CSI/NSA/NSF/NYPD Agents investigating something. There's drama. There's intensity. There's always one old sage character that mumbles all his dialog (I'M LOOKING AT YOU CARUSO!!!) forcing you to continuously boost the volume on your TV. There's a "gasp" moment and then the picture fades.
Then a friggin soap commercial comes blaring in and almost ruptures the crappy speakers built into your crappy 27" CRT TV. The wife is getting all upset because it might bother the neighbors (who smoke so much pot I'm surprised they can hear anything), and the dog starts freaking out, and then I get all fed up and just turn the TV off and play Command and Conquer on my computer!

So why are these commercials SO FRAKKING LOUD?

In reality, they aren't, or, you could say, they don't peak louder than the show you were watching. They're compressed. Not like MP3's are compressed, in audio compressed means that the quietest parts of a piece of audio are boosted to almost match the loudest bits.

So, that show you're watching might use "quiet" for dramatic effect, but can get quite loud during say a shoot out or car chase, a commercial's quiet parts are going to be almost the same as the loud parts.

At their loudest the show and the commercial will be about the same, but at their quietest, the show will be FAR quieter than the commercial. As most shows cut to commercial at dramatic moments that means the commercial will be coming in FAR louder than the show left.

Fun right?


Well apparently this pisses more people off than just me, so the ASA is looking into how the standards for advertising volume are measured. For a more complete explanation of the problem, and their current plan for a solution, check out the article here.

If only we had something like this Stateside...

Productiontrax Turns TWO

Congratulations!
And they're celebrating their anniversary by adding their 18,000th sound.
If you haven't yet go check them out, you can find some great stuff!

"Productiontrax.com, a leader in online distribution and licensing of independent royalty free music and sound effects got even bigger this month, adding their 18,000th digital media file to their rapidly expanding music library. The milestone comes as Productiontrax.com enters its third full year of operations online."


Read the rest of the PR here.