Audival - Podcasting Tips & Tricks » Audio lingo

Audio lingo: types of noise

Stiff — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:00:52 +0000

To most people noise might just be noise, but in the audio world there’s more than one type of noise. The various types are named after colors, such as white and pink. According to Wikipedia, the color names for these different types of sounds are derived from a loose analogy between the spectrum of frequencies of sound wave present in the sound and the equivalent spectrum of light wave frequencies. That is, if the sound wave pattern of “blue noise” were translated into light waves, the resulting light would be blue, and so on.

The rest of this article (with a lot of technical explanations) can be found on this Wikipedia page.

The commonly accepted colors are white, pink, blue, brown, purple and grey. Sometimes the names differ, and some wants to add other colors to the list as well.

Audio lingo: Equalizer

Stiff — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:54:55 +0000

The Equalizer – or EQ for short – is basically a device that let’s you “sculpt” the sound by raising or lowering the volume at a specific frequency as opposed to lowering or raising the volume of the entire spectrum like a regular volume control does. When talking about EQs this is generally referred to as “boosting” or “cutting”. The number of “bands” decides on how many places the EQ can boost or cut. The width of the spectrum that the bands will affect is set with the “Q value”. There are a myriad of different EQs available that functions in different ways.

Audio lingo: Compressor

Stiff — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:06:43 +0000

The compressor is a device that basically compresses the sound , that is, reducing the dynamics. By doing so it is possible to better “glue” the sounds together and in the end also raise the volume.

Each compressor functions differently, but common controls are threshold which decides at what levels the compressor shall start working, ratio which decides how much compression will be applied, attack and release which are timing parameters for setting how fast the compressor will work, and finally gain (or makeup gain) which helps in setting the level of the compressed signal.

Distance – Keep It

Karli — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:13:05 +0000

One more of the fundamental tips is to keep your distance from the mic which most people forget for with proper distance (which by the way you get only with experience with your setup) from the mic for whatever cost you may have spent on a mic use it wrong and you get trash. Mic filters, wind screens and many other stuff will get you respectable audio yet if you are still in the learning curve, try this trick, make a distance cue, say a pencil with the tip coated with some fluorescent paint to make it stand out and focus on the proper distance using it as a guide till you get it to sink in.
The best distance depends greatly on your mic which can have varying specifications, set yours in the mid point of the effective pickup range recommended by the manufacturer. Be sure to take into account the other hardware you have in front of the mic such as the stocking filter which kills out some of the hiss in your voice. Your voice practicing would come into play here, where you can do the whole podcast with the same voice level and tone. but don’t be like a robot without emotions but don’t over-do it too for too much enthusiasm will turn away leaders in your podcast is trash. The whole spectrum counts and do everything right, think it out and in the end you get the best podcasts you can possibly make.

Audio lingo: Gate

Stiff — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 07:29:00 +0000

A gate is typically the same thing as an expander, but set to a such high ratio (I.E. high compression) that it doesn’t let anything past the set threshold. In other words, it is almost to the gate, what the limiter is to the compressor. Gates are perhaps most often used as a noise gate, that is, to remove unwanted noise from recordings.

Audio lingo: Expander

Stiff — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:25:22 +0000

An expander is in a way the opposite of a compressor. While a compressor uses the threshold setting to reduce the signal above the set value, an expander reduces the signal below the threshold value. This makes the signal more dynamic, and is thus expanded instead of compressed.

As with most audio tools, the parameters can vary between expanders. Typical controls found are ratio, threshold, knee, range and attack.

Solid 2

Stiff — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:27:49 +0000

Here’s a series of clips where I’m basically playing around with a couple of rhythm loops and a synth. They’re variations of the same theme.

solid2

Audio lingo: Notch filter

Stiff — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:44:52 +0000

Nothc filters, or “high Q notch filters” are basically EQ bands used to eliminate certain frequencies. Usually they have very high Q settings so that they only affect a very specific area of the frequency range. Notch filters are usually used to remove hum or other noise.

Audio lingo: Multiband compressor

Stiff — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:07:13 +0000

A multiband compressor is simply a compressor that can be set to operate differently on different frequencies. For instance, you could set it to a ratio of 4:1 on 500-1000 Hz and a ratio of 2:1 on 3 kHz. In the same way multiband limiters also exists.

Audio lingo: Mid-side recording

Stiff — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:19:36 +0000

Mid-side – or M/S – recording is a way of setting up two microphones to create a wide stereo image. The mid microphone is placed to face the sound you want to record. The side microphone must be a figure-8 microphone (such as a ribbon). It’s placed at about the same spot as the mid microphone but aimed differently, like 90º off-axis.