Show 141 – Multi-mic time aligning and AES convention recap

This week Jon talks about adding delay to tracks to compensate for mic placement issues. Slau tells us about the recent AES convention in New York.
Joining us this week is Slau of Sessions With Slau

Download Show #141

LINKS
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In the show discussion we couldn’t think of the auto-time aligning plugin-Turns out there’s 2 out there. We have no idea if they work!
Sound Radix Auto-Align : http://www.soundradix.com/products/auto-align/
Melda Productions MAutoAlign : http://www.meldaproduction.com/mautoalign/
Lynx Hilo : http://www.lynxstudio.com/product_detail.asp?i=59#

5 thoughts on “Show 141 – Multi-mic time aligning and AES convention recap

  1. Re alignment…
    Don’t forget Synchroarts VocalAlign for aligning tracks.
    http://www.synchroarts.com/index.php?PAGEID=products&ID=vocalign

    From what I understand, you use a side chain as the master track which a 2nd track aligns to – be it vocals or instruments or whatever.
    The interesting or potentially nice thing is that the tracks can be very rubato in style (so not locked to a rigid beat or click) and it will try and align them correctly as well keeping the rubato (as best it can) in sync with the master track fed via the side chain.

    Obviously you have to align one track at a time but so long as you keep the master (side chain) track the same then you should be fairly good to go.

    I doubt it is perfect but sure would be a great start.

    Looks ingtersting

  2. Geez, I’ve got a lot to catch up on. Just listened to this show and the next one came down the pipes.

    Great to hear Slau’s voice again.

    I was in the midst of making dinner for the kids and didn’t catch every detail, so you may have touched on this. Lining up tracks so as to eliminate phase really only works with a single source – multiple mic situation. Once you get into a many source/many mic situation, moving a track to compensate for one reference will mess some other relationship up.

    If you’ve got two spaced guitars and two spaced mics and you use one guitar’s performance as the “reference” to line up the two mic signals, you’ve then just lengthened the delay between the mics for the other guitarists’ signal.

    That’s why trying to line up things in drums gets to be a nightmare – especially if you’re trying to mix close mics and distance mics – it’s more an exercise in compromises.

    Slau’s track alignment with an orchestra most likely got the 50/50 reaction because of the distance of the mics from the ensemble and sections – by the time the sound got to the mics, the instruments were already “mixed” as a single sound source.

    Perhaps I’m just spoutting off verbal diahrea here … back to the program.

  3. I know this show was nearly a year ago, but just wanted to say to the guy who was talking about jazz/big band recording – I recently did this, and getting a good stereo main mic was essential in getting a result. I did this across two sessions, and the second session sounded better because I modified the stereo pair slightly. Can heartily recommend ‘the new stereo soundbook’*, it’s expensive (£80 or so) but damn, it was money well spent…if you like that sort of thing.

    I’ve been listening to the show for two or three weeks now, and it’s great. It’s always nice to hear other people discussing things about audio. I’m currently studying for a masters degree in audio production in the UK and the science of sound has completely blown open new options and wonder for me. Keep up the good work!

    * http://www.stereosoundbook.com/

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