Izen Ears

Ah ha! That's incredible. I believe I was 13 when I saw Bon Jovi at the Blaisdell Arena, no earplugs, ears rang for days. Yes it was not worth it. Oh dude that is an amazing story! Thanks for sharing it. I bet you have pretty good pitch too? What a great dad! My dad played bluegrass banjo so being quiet was never in the cards at my house. He also played slack key so I guess that was much quieter. Brian House did this and made some cool sounds! That's how the podcast began. Here's his site. The sounds are wild! https://brianhouse.net/works/urban_intonation/ When I lived in Jersey I worked on a short called Underground, and it was a narrative about the "moles" that lived in the subways. So we spent a lot of time down there and I saw some MONSTER rats, easily bigger than little dogs. I was into it! I'm also a water rat (May 1972) so I guess I have rats on the soul. The same night I saw that huge rat, we were suddenly surrounded by a squad of vice cops! They just wanted to know what we were doing, but they came out of nowhere. One of the other crew people was this woman whose father had worked for the NYC transit, and he used to just take her in the tunnels between stations as a regular means of travel! How zany is that?!! I love that we both went way off topic!

I could read stuff like this all day! Thanks for posting, fascinating stuff to me!

HOLY SHIT dude! 23k?!!! Insane. How old were you? And I guess you never listened to loud music?!! DAMN. I was just listening to a podcast that mentioned how rats auditory systems just can't hear the human voice! And we can only hear their distress cries, and none of the other cool sounds they make like playing and parenting. Thanks for the awesome discussion! What great info about audiologists, and it makes total sense. They are there as a medical resource to help modern humans survive, which means being able to hear voices. Which is a real shame because they SHOULD be focused on restoring all freqs. My heart and soul goes out to deaf people, in my opinion they got screwed by life so hard, much harder than blind folks. It's never once been a question - I would 100% rather be blind than deaf.

The human voice has harmonics! Duh! That doctor didn't know what he was talking about! I don't get this comment about psychoacoustics though, would you care to elaborate? My understanding is pretty small, and only relates to that Fletcher-Munson curve stuff. I LOVE learning about that stuff though. I'd love to go back to school for audiology or acoustician pursuits.

I went to an audiologist for a hearing test and we started talking. He said the highest frequency that can come from a human vocal structure is 6.5k, which is a young female child hissing through their front teeth. I was stunned. What about all those other freqs?!!! Given this information, why would our lav mics ever want to go above 6.5k? Then I had a conversation with a pal who does lots of music recording. He said the kick drum always gets a 2k, 4k, and between 10k - 12k boosts. But the kick drum can't possibly be putting out 12k? He said when he boosts the 10k - 12k it opens up the drum. Could the same be said for dialog? And what exactly is being boosted at those freqs? All we could come up with is, air. The air "sound" opens everything up. But how? By adding ambience or something? Harmonics from room reflections? I was more confused at the end of the conversation than before haha! And now I'm really curious. It all began when I started to think about what causes a mic to sound buried. Thick clothing kills the high freqs but allows the bass freqs to pass through. Do reflections act the same way? If a loud noise that has a full freq range slaps off a wall, is it only the upper freqs that are reflected because the bass freqs went right through? Can post later just dig up those missing high freqs and "unbury" dialog? I guess if the high freqs are not passing through the clothing, they won't reach the mic and can't be recorded. This led to thoughts about what makes dialog sound open, and how that could be achieved by allowing freqs far above what a voice can produce?!! Any thoughts will be appreciated. Dan Izen

I use the same gear, and the red band B6s are prone to overloading / distorting / clipping at the mic. It's maddening because the blue bands don't clip but are super noisy at regular talking levels. Conversely, red band Sankens don't seem to have that pronounced noise floor, they just don't clip. I had a scene with Tim Heidecker on a recent gig, and he was presenting to a big group of people from a stage. We were allowed to place the mic exposed, yay! But the damn red band clipped on the loudest shouts. We had to rewire after the first take, used a COS-11, and had no further problems. These days I only use the red band B6s when it's the only thing that'll work. I did use a blue band B6 today for a 70s gas guzzler tailpipe and that sounded awesome. DPAs also don't clip like red band B6s do. Last thing - gain level of 5 on a red band for shouting is right about where I put em, often going down to 0. I have no idea how folks are using a gain of 25 or 30 for shouting! 6060s are hotter than B6s or COSs so often regular dialog is set at 14 or so, which puts the prefade peaks right between -8 and 0. Dan Izen

Dammit. And, derrr. No wonder I just got a new fitting and set haha!

I am terrible at gifts, especially when it's just for people just doing their jobs. I feel like it's a brazen bribe and it makes me uncomfortable. I mean, I only get gifts for good friends so this is obviously just to curry favor. Kind of makes me sick. I mostly just thank the drivers, very sincerely. Do you all give gifts? At the start of a show or later? And what kind of gifts? Beer? Liquor? Gift cards? One of our captains is an ace, totally takes care of us, parks us close and always stings the trailer (no on-board genny!). Sometimes the good captain is busy and the other one just doesn't do anything for us, no power, terrible parking. I feel if he got a gift from me, it would be better. But he doesn't drink! Dan Izen

Oh man I love this! I'm curious how you were able to determine the value of those resistors? Is the 100 ohm for AAs? I use mostly rechargeables so I don't care about metering them, but sometimes we use lithiums or alkalines and it would be great to meter them under a load!

I was hired for a 6 month job, the first season of a show. I was invited to the tech scouts for the pilot, my name was even on the tech scout memo. Then a few days later we start the show. A few days into it, the UPM visited set. He came to me and just started yelling. Stuff about how he's never paid a sound person to go on a scout, and mainly that he's not paying me for tech scouts. I am proud of how calm I was and simply repeated that if he didn't want me there, he should not have invited me. After the scene was made, he left and I called my rep. By the end of the day I was told I was getting paid for those two days, the studio took one look at the tech scout memo and instructed the UPM to sign the check. That was in 2015, and I wonder what happened to him. And all the sound mixers who didn't get paid to his scouts. Strangely my job with him ended up being a very nice sounding show! Maybe he just believed that everything sound can be fixed in post, and the sound dept. is a relic department. I have a good memory of being on a tech scout in 2007. The scene was a walk and talk, and they were liking this walkway that went direct past a super loud machine room. There was a metal door and next to it was a vent that was just screaming. A typical loud machine room noise. As the DP and director were talking about seeing this or that, I mentioned to the UPM that if they chose this walkway, the scene would need to be looped. BOOM! He walked up and told everyone we were moving on - it was great! I did approach the location manager about it and he said something about the DP liking it. I wasn't able to find and confront the person who thought that would be a good walkway. One time on another job we scouted a hospital cafe that was sooooo loud! It was a 5- page freakin love scene, where one character says how much he's always loved the other one blah blah. I told the everyone it would only work if the cafe was closed and all its machines turned off. They laughed and said we'll be shooting at night after the cafe was closed - problem solved! Then on the day the call sheet order was changed around and lo and behold - that scene was not to be shot during business hours!!!!! I immediately want to several producers (yes, it was one of those) and told them this was not going to work, but they just smiled and nodded. The director acted like he was strapped to a chair, totally powerless. So, as a last resort I told the main actor. He freaked out and refused to do the scene. So they had to close the cafe early, and the hospital made the locations dept. do the dishes!! We shot the cheesy ass scene and then we stayed late and washed dishes with locations. The moral is, even if you are on the tech scout, forces will possibly work to undo any good work you may do.

Just finished season 4 - WOWZA! This is truly one of the greatest shows ever made!

Mini-speakers can only reproduce miniature sonic exopriapisticorgastic-loads, which our human ears find "tinny" or "anemic." Protopriapristicorgastic-loads are best heard on maxi-speakers like those our competitors sell. It's just science.

Those Pro Sound mounts were a blank vampire "plate" with a piece of tubing super glued on. If you can't find the blank vampire plates, maybe "re-purpose" some from other vampire mounts, and then glue on the tubing. Might be a bit of a search but not impossible to recreate!

There's no better reason for bad sound than "they didn't let me on the tech scout." You've just been given a free pass. Frustrating as all heck, knowing a few simple and quick steps could vastly improve your product, but at least it's not your fault.

Haha! A heated argument! That's rich. Those folks should not be allowed in public, they are dangerous. I would probably want to commit suicide it I accidentally killed a pedestrian. I can't even stand thinking about the bugs I used to kill as a small child.

YESSSSSS!! This podcast is just great. I'm working up from ep 1, I'm on ep 131. It's just glorious to hear other folks who are crazy about sound.

Hahaahaa! Hilarious!

Also - many actors mumble and are nearly incoherent even when heard clearly!

Damn right!

This is excellent reasoning, and when you spell it all out there like that it makes total sense. Thanks!

Ah! I thank you for the elaboration and details. I think that answers my question. I guess the only safeguard would be... pounding some tall lightning rods next to the gennies! I mean, lightning delays cost so much and are so damn inconvenient. I'm super bummed we have to go back there and finish those scene. Lightning.

Oh yes I agree that's the stated purpose - to avoid frying gear and people - but my question is how often does that happen? I did ask the genny op and he had never heard of a genny being struck. Neither had the few other juicers. It was a camera op who had the FL story. We just lost four hours and wrapped early because of this haha! I just want to understand. I appreciate your postings! Dan

I thought the regular dirt earth is basically neutral? And further, how would a genny be unbalanced? It's a wheel spinning spools of wire around magnets, so wouldn't positive and negative be equally generated? I am a total dummy and I'm trying to learn this kind of stuff as the questions come up, not the best way... Where's Blankenship when you need him?!!

I am just curious about this and I don't care if I sound dumb - what is the danger? Have gennies actually been hit and exploded, killing people? Why would a generator "draw" lightning at all? Doesn't the lightning seek to release its voltage differential to the closest neutral AKA the earth? Or is a genny neutral? I did hear a verified account of a genny that was hit during a storm in FL. They didn't stop shooting for the storm and then the lights went out. No one died but I'd guess the genny was a goner. But in that case, lightning was striking all over the area, including many hits NOT on the genny. I'm confused.

Thank you so much! I think we’re gonna print a few. I appreciate your work, thank you for sharing.