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Jay Rose

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Everything posted by Jay Rose

  1. West Palm Beach, FL, has figured out how to use sound for social control (NYT) without relying on HF loss: Baby Sharks. They play the repetitive (^3) children’s song in a loop all night to to keep homeless from sleeping on the grounds of a city-owned pavilion. No comments from people who live near the pavilion. Perhaps their kids are happy. —- I lived in WPB for a few years. I don’t recall us even having sharks in the water while I was there.
  2. Article in today's NYTimes about FBI trying to get info on some Indonesian "producers" who solicit US film people - above and below the line - to work on a gig there. Apparently they're faking everything very wel and research their victims, eventually getting the victim to front money for the trip and then shell out fees and inflated exchanges to locals who are in on the deal. Underlying FBI press release here, dated 7/15. They want to hear from anyone who's been contacted by the scammers. I suspect experienced soundies who have work here won't be tempted. But I also know that's not everybody on JWSound.
  3. Sorry. I checked the specs for 2015 MacBook. As Allen says, analog only. I guess mine mine is from a year or two earlier. My Mini, however, is recent. And I’m using the 1/8” optical every day. Not that this would help your situation.
  4. NPR has a story about Mosquito, a high frequency outdoor generator being used by some 30 cities to discourage teenagers from staying in parks at night. According to the manufacturer's website, Mosquito generates an 18 kHz signal -- at that frequency, presumably a sine (because where would the harmonics live?) -- with an AGC to keep it 5 dB above ambient. No indication whether their AGC looks at broadband or just 18 kHz... but if it's broadband, then the noise is going to be a lot more obvious up there than +5 dB would suggest. According to NPR, "anyone over age 25 is supposed to be immune because, basically, their ear cells have started to die off." Later in the article: "In 2008, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child implored the United Kingdom 'reconsider ... the Mosquito devices insofar as they may violate the rights of children.' No mention of whether it discriminates against golden-eared audiophiles. ---- About fifteen years ago, NPR had a story about a similar device being used in shopping malls to move the kids along... with an on-air sample. AFAIK NPR back then was distributing its news on a 32kHz s/r channel. They also had a downloadable sample so you could listen on better speakers. I remember checking it out: it was low bit mp3 encoded with a 22 kHz s/r.
  5. Check the Sound control panel. If the machine has Toslink capability, it should show you a digital output choice. Then, when you feed it a valid digital signal, you'll see the input choice appear.
  6. Have you checked whether the Macbook has a digital input? A lot of Macs use a dual 1/8" TRS/Optical jack for audio in and out. If the jack's been used a lot for TRS, sometimes dirt gets jammed into the optical sensor... but it's worth trying. I use the optical mini i/o on my 2016 Mini all the time, with a simple Toslink<>1/8" optical cable. ( I put a label on the jacks, "never use with TRS".) Just curious, though: have you been following the news and thread about Zoom?
  7. And on a much smaller scale, from our line of work: (From my Audio Post book...)
  8. Amazon actually sells a MIC, fruit and vegetable* *punctuation added
  9. I suspect plants do not like being bugged. So unless you have root access, they might complain of being stalked.
  10. The New York Times reports today that remnants of bagels were found in a 3000 year old archeological site. Clearly an early example of craft services. The bagels are very small - less than two inches diameter - which also proves that production budgets existed back then.
  11. FWIW, you might want to take some moments from my SMPTE/AES presentation on how film sound differs from music recording. http://www.jayrose.com/aes/filmsound.html A lot of the underlying material is copyright, so contact me for permission if you're planning to lift anything. [I was a Berklee onsite prof, many years ago.]
  12. Socialism was in the Nazi name, but capitalism was Germany’s economic system before, during, and after the war. Also Italy’s and Japan’s. During the war, of course, the economies were subject to strict government control. As was the US’s.
  13. Gee. According to Brittanica, NZ had a lot of almost-socialism until just recently, and plenty still remains. I hadn't heard about all your local murders, but you certainly have my sympathy. They've also got almost-socialism in a lot of other countries, and most citizens survive. I will concede that every time almost-socialism has been coupled with dictatorship, millions died. Ditto almost-capitalism (remember Nazi Germany?)...
  14. Hi Chuckebeans The current edition is light years ahead of what I wrote almost 20 years ago. That was a guide for videographers starting out with their XL1 and VX2k, editing in the first version of Premier. Since then, the worlds of film and video have merged... and I’ve learned a lot more, both in terms of what works with these new workflows and aesthetics, and — thanks to reader and colleague feedback — how to explain it. It’s also a lot bigger, even though I keep shortening the obsolete stuff or moving it to the web...
  15. Back in 1999, I had at least four corporate clients who needed me to certify, in writing, that my past delivered CDRs and DATs would not self-destruct at Y2K!
  16. It's not only legal, it's considered "business". The only legal defense is if you can show a contract or other written understanding that they'll pay in 30, and then they spring this on you. Even then it can be hard to collect, or to charge them a late fee, or to get them to pay your lawyer unless that kind of stuff was in the original contract. What would be illegal is if they assert "work for hire". That has a specific meaning -- you can find a definition at irs.gov, among other places -- and by not accepting "work for hire", you may have more rights to than a usual employee has. I throw small-type boilerplate into my production agreements and deal memos covering this stuff as well as rights to the recording, to master tapes, talent (which sometimes they have me hire for off-camera recordings), and so on. Having that there means I can usually bluff a recalcitrant accounts-payable department to pay promptly... with the threat that "I'll don't want to have to go to your client or funder and point out that I still own the soundtrack". BUT: IANAL. There are laws governing contracts, and laws governing 'interfering with the contractural performance of others'. Make sure of your own position. The worst thing you can do is accept the gig and grumble (if you agree to 90 days, you still owe them your best work). The best thing is to have the experience and relationships so producers think of you as more than a commodity that can be replaced by the next newbie off the bus... and to realize that you're allowed to play "business" back at them.
  17. The big differences are acoustics and setup time. Acoustics: Field dialog recording has to deal with room reflections and noise. Reflections can cause obvious reverb or hollowness, of course, but remember that a mono mic will hear reverb worse than our ears do since it can't rely on reflection cues that our brains use to sort direct from reflected. (No, binaural recording is not an option.) Beginners' tracks almost always sound echoey. A hidden danger is the interaction between reflections and mic patterns. In a practical room, sound hitting the sides of a directional mic can be loud as well as delayed. Since the side response of a mic is almost always much worse than the head-on response, they'll color the sound in unpredictable ways. And if the mic or subject are moving relative to walls and ceilings, the coloration can change. Side colorations get worse the more directional a mic is (assuming all good quality mics): a hyper is less sensitive to this than a gun. An omni doesn't have side issues at all... but thn the apparent reverb will be much louder. The ONLY viable solution is the Inverse Square Law. The mic has to be a lot closer to the subject than you'd expect for a studio recording (except it might be that close for a studio VO or soft instrument). This gets even worse in a docy, where you're interviewing people who aren't voice-trained actors. In a small, noisy room the best location can be a few inches form the subject's mouth. Unfortunately, the director or DP might object... A compromise can be a lav, properly mounted somewhere near the mouth, or in very bad locations even a head mic from the off-camera side. But remember, a lav is not magic. It's an omni that relies on Inverse Square. And unless you've got a very good wireless, a wired lav will always sound better and be less subject to problems. Noise is always an issue. Again, Inverse Square is your friend. The closer to the mouth you get, the higher the s/n. Some parts of the room are quieter than others (like, a corner away from a window that faces traffic) so if you can move the whole setup, that'll also improve s/n. Don't count on us doing miracles in post. The latest NR software uses AI to sort out the usable signal... but that kind of processing is still in its infancy. It takes a combination of strategies, by a knowledgeable postie with a heavy arsenal of processors, to do a decent job of cleaning with minimum artifacts... Setup time: Compared to studio recording, you usually don't have any. You can't ask for a rehearsal, listen to playback, and move the mic to a better position. Things are rushed in a sit-down, lit situation but at least you can look at the room and figure out a good mic position. A fixed boom with a hyper, just out of frame in a tight shot, can often work there. But some interviews or actualities start rolling almost as soon as you get there. Solutions range from a hand-held short shot to a gun on the camera (ugh)... The only shortcuts to setup time are experience, pre-pro, and a trusting relationship between director and dp (if it's not also the director) and soundie. You can't take an instant pill for the experience, but you can help the other two by talking honestly with the director before you shoot. Make sure they know the limitations of docy sound, and that they don't think you're promising miracles. This is in a lot more depth in some books, including the one I wrote (details at www.greatsound.info).
  18. Query: how was UofT GSU so sure of who the offender was, and how to find them online? Were there only two people on the train? Or did he* wiggle around and say "smell what I did"? (*Unfair assumption. Women can be rapists as well. I believe they also fart when circumstances are, uh, ripe.)
  19. If the actors are well trained, they can hear themselves without hurting the performance. But yes, it'll be more natural if they can hear only the opposite voice. (And even more natural if they're hearing it coming from the door/window with small speakers, rather than sourceless and in one ear.) But hey, it's all make-believe...
  20. Every post suite I've ever worked in has had aggressive air conditioning. (Dub stages? Not as much. I'm talking about video-style pix or audio rooms.) Clients have often complained about about the temperature, and would ask me to make the room warmer. But mostly the female clients. (After the session I'd have to turn the 'stat back down to make the facility's CE happy.) Some theorists maintain it's because corporate men usually have to wear suits - or at least buttoned collars and ties - while corporate women (even highly professional ones) expose more skin. But in a post environment, most of us - male and female - wear slacks or jeans and an open-collar shirt of some kind. The other likely cause is that men and women tend to have different metabolic rates, so different temperatures are more comfortable. But now there's a study showing it's more than comfort: I've always wondered why there were so few female audio post engineers, when we know women usually have much better hearing than men. Could our facility practices be part of the reason? (Yes, plenty of other reasons in play, probably dating from a kid's earliest playtime exposures to STEM and reinforced by cultural norms throughout their education. This appears to be yet one more.)
  21. Today's NYT has an article about the neuro damage suffered by US diplomats in Cuba and their families, and subsequently reported by some Canadian diplomats. Their reporter -- who doesn't seem to know much about acoustics or hearing -- is basically selling a story of mass hysteria. Evidence includes a history of isolated cases of individuals with psychosomatic ailments, quoting researchers who say "well, we didn't see changes in brain structure", and psychiatrists who say "the brain has powerful effects on the body, and brains can be triggered by non-physical events". And of course it quotes Cuban officials who say "it wasn't us". Conclusion: the damage couldn't be man-made, because in the past few years we haven't found someone to blame, and this psych explanation is convenient. The acoustic science is limited to examples like shopping malls playing high frequency noises to discourage kids. Even simple physical possibilities, like crossed ultrasonic beams intermodulating in the victims' ears, are ignored. And the possibility of natural physical causes isn't mentioned at all. Obviously I'm not convinced. I don't believe this is a conspiracy or government cover-up; more a case of "we don't know, it's not in our department, so it must be one of the other things we already know about." Thoughts?
  22. If prehistoric man had the same social and economic setup we've got now, we'd either be barely able to afford the rent on those caves or be underwater on their mortgages, and fire would belong to a big company that sold it to us by the BTU. With no public health or FDA, most of our kids would already be dead and the raw meat we had would be tainted. Capitalism and Communism are both great systems... on paper. Both fall apart when faced with human greed and gaming the system.
  23. FWIW, my downtown studio was one block from a skyscraper with massive TV and FM installation on top. Never had an RF problem with the AKGs... or the Neumann, or my EV dynamics...
  24. The 451/CK series dates from the very early 1970s AFAIK. The 451 was replaced by the compatible 460 preamp in the mid-80s. They were brilliantly designed mics, clean and with a reliable pattern. The /CK1 combo became my go-to for booth work: you could have an actor concentrate on the script, with the mic angled in from slightly above cheekbone level where it wouldn't interfere with their vision. Or you could have two actors facing each other with total eye contact, and still get good separation from their individual mics. They didn't have the big deep end of a larger condenser (but you could always eq in post; OTOH they sounded more natural to me than the U87 I used to use at the same time. I loved the CK8 for hand held or boom interviews, particularly exteriors or rooms with good acoustics: it sounded tight but never got in the way. It was also great for working with children: I could park a Steiff tiger on top of it (without blocking the interference holes), tell the kid to 'talk to the tiger', and know they'd stay aimed in the right direction and with a constant projection. Despite running on as low as P9, they generated high voltage for a properly polarized, quiet capsule... AKG sold a phantom supply with a single 9v rectangular, and I'd modded my 12V (8-D cell) Arrivox to feed them as well. My only issues with them were that you had to be careful not to cross-thread the joint (it wasn't a bayonet), and they could be sensitive to high humidity (because of the small, high voltage capsule). Keep an eye on that, and clean the contacts with a Q tip every now and then, and they seem to work forever.
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