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Post Production Plug-In Tools


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Since my show is on it's scheduled hiatus, which of course is tied in to the possible SAG strike, I have some extra time on my hands.

I explored the Audiease site and two of it's plug-ins called "Altiverb 6" and "Speakerphone". What I am impressed with is the incredible range of choices for manipulating sounds wether it is for Film/TV Final sound mixing or music production. These plug-ins seamlessly integrate with Pro-Tools.

"Speakerphone" can process sounds into hundreds of possible speakers, rooms and  environments. Walter Murch used to do this in a practical way. He called it "worldization", simply put he would output a source through different speakers and re-record it in real time to get the necessary effect.

With this software you can do the same and sample thousands of combinations in real time without leaving your chair!

I remember about 10 years ago, Kevin O'Connell proudly showing me a small closet off the Cary Grant Theatre, set up with a bullhorn, and several other speakers and a microphone to create the same thing.

Take a look at the demo here:

http://www.audioease.com/Pages/Speakerphone/speakerphone_themovie.html

The other software is Altiverb 6. The designers have sampled thousands of environments, from the Sydney Opera House to a cockpit of a jumbo jet. You can input production dialogue and "place" it in any sonic environment you wish.

Here is that demo:

http://www.audioease.com/Pages/mp3%20Altiverb%20Tests/Altiverb6DemoEnglish.html

I just love the fact that we can now sit at our laptops and have access to powerful audio processing to create the most incredible sounds we have ever imagined.

Cheers,

RL

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Hey Richard, some time back, someone here posted something about 'Speakerphone', (probably Scott), and I was turned on to Audioease. What a company. They didn't have Altiverb6 at the time, but Wow. I found 'Snapper' one of their software apps, to be very impressive and possibly useful for our production sound lives. Speakerphone is great as well. Nice web site for a cool company. Thanks for the reminder of the place.

CrewC

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I've been using altiverb for a few years now.  like many of the new convolution reverbs, it sounds rather good in my opinion - and especially so for the price.  I keep meaning to spend some time creating my own reverbs and they give you all the tools to do so.  I really appreciate that they're always releasing new IR sets for free and that they also have a huge selection that caters to the post-production community with samples of real rooms and indoor spaces.

Speaking of cheap great plug-ins, the RX (restoration) bundle from iZotope is great and super useful.  The spectral repair plug in is worth more the price alone - maybe $300.  I've been able scrub out all sorts of unwanted clatter (read: footsteps, dishes, clicks, etc) and maintain the dialog.  It also features a de-clipper to get rid of distortion and a de-noiser which works pretty well too.  It works as a standalone and they just released a new version that works in pro tools and other apps.

-greg-

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I think all the stuff from Audioease is amazing. I knew a little about convolutional reverb and IR modeling and I had played around with Altiverb quite awhile ago. On "Mission Impossible III" the supervising sound editor, Mark Stoekenger (a really good guy and really into his craft) wanted us to do some IR (Impulse Response) recordings for the movie. We had the gear to do it but we never completely agreed on some aspects of what he wanted to accomplish. We all agreed on the amazing value of the huge library of sampled spaces available to shape the dialog and ambiences of a room to create the proper feeling. What we did not agree on was his request to "spark" certain sets we were working on and also some of our locations. The problem that I saw that ti seemed of little value to do an IR model/sample of a "room" built on stage (often just a 3 wall set) which was essentially neutral in character (one of the reasons for shooting on a sound stage). Mark kept insisting that such an IR could be useful in matching ADR to the production sound shot on even a neutral and featureless set. He was right, of course, but he suggested we do these IR's for scenes where there was to be little or no ADR anyway. Further, he requested that we do IR's in the real locations but often the locations were so noisy and the character of the rooms were not at all what anyone would want in the movie. My overall conclusion was that treating the dialog and room tone (or even creating the desired tone of the room) using existing IR's and convolutional reverb was a really good idea and the tools available to sound editorial at this time are truly amazing. In all fairness to Mark, I think he was just anxious to try some new things and I greatly appreciated how he involved us, the production sound crew, in the overall process of producing the soundtrack for the movie --- his collaborative approach to the movies we have worked on together is outstanding and quite rare in the industry these days.

I do look forward to the opportunity to do some of this IR modeling in the future when it could prove to be very useful in the creation of the soundtrack for the movie.

-  Jeff Wexler

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