VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Ed Gambill

I’m finalizing the set up of a Production Room and want input from the folks who do post work. What essentials are missing?

The room is 12, 14, 8 ft. 703 panels will be applied to the walls. The room may need some quadratic or skyline diffusers. After reflection and absorption is taken care of the monitors will be EQed to the X curve.

The equipment chain and software is now:
Single CPU mother board with AMD 64 2 gig (not dual core) with XP Pro 64 OS.
4 gig of memory, Operating System and PGMS on C: drive, Data on RAID Striped O and one 10K-RPM SCSI drives
Dual Matrox 450 card driving two View Sonic displays
UPS backup for Computer
ISDN and Source Connect set up and working

Presonus FP10 I/O. For Now
Mackie 8” Monitors THX certified. Will be adding additional monitors for 5.1 AC3 and SRS surround encoding.
Mackie Control Surface,
UAD-1 Power Plug-in with Fairchild Comp and others. Cubase 4.5 and Sound Forge 9.0e . May add Nuendo later, along with Blu Ray burner.
Not sure about VEGAS 8.1 on this machine. Will most likely keep it on another machine.

Goal production of audio for commercials and some audio work for medium to long form Video.
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Monk · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:32 pm Post subject:

I never eq my monitors in a control room. I always eq monitors in a live sound environment.

I don't want the eq to "fix" problems in the room. I want to fix the room first. Else I may end up mixing and making a mess because the monitors are lyin' to me.

my .02
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Monk · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:51 pm Post subject:

according to some of my calculations, the room should be 14 feet long and 12 feet wide, so the monitors should be looking down the long side, not the short side.

When I was doing surround sound for ridefilms, I would eq the final mix to the x curve prior to bouncing the sound out for ac3 delivery. But once again, my nearfield monitors run clean and honest. Tune the room, not the monitors.
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Ed Gambill · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:58 pm Post subject:

Look at this link

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/post-production-forum/160253-should-i-apply-x-curve.html

I will not use the Mackie in near field placement. No space can be total tricked out for optimum sound presentation.

Pink noise and a good RTA provide the information to set the EQ needed.

The dub stage and any other critical listing environments need to be fateful to the exhibition space. I did a search for " Proper equalization for dub stage" this link came up http://books.google.com/books?id=0Z-EDIEdWg4C&pg=PA245&lpg=PA245&dq=proper+equalization+for+dub+stage&source=bl&ots=nP0o3slQit&sig=ojy9HkIzjYjm35KJcrb-tiR21fE&hl=en&ei=UnygSaG0D4G4twep2O37DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

David Lewis Yewdall is the author and is head of film sound at the North Carolina School of Arts School of Film Making.

I first meet David when I taught production sound for film at the School. He is still a voting member of the Academy.

I will EQ my space so I can hear how it should sound on exhibition.
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Frank F · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:13 pm Post subject:

Are you using corner Traps in front corners (wall-to-wall) and ceiling-to-wall traps on side walls and front wall?

Have you decoupled the room?

Do you have a "cloud" design?

Regarding the Owens Corning 703 Panels, NO absorber/trap, including foam, should be directly attached to the wall. Leave a minimum of 2" from the wall to the back of absorber for low frequency absorption efficiency.

Consider using several Tube Traps in the room for ease of use, According to your room specifications you would need a minimum of 15, 8" diameter x 4' tall ( 6' high on stands) tube traps to do the job properly.

Be very wary of computer noise - fans and such. If you are so inclined, make an outside air cooled computer isolation box for your PC or use liquid cooling instead of fans.

Do not mix to the "X Curve". This "concept" is applied to speakers not to the mix.

Monk · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:26 pm Post subject:

Ok, I see what you're up too.

There is a difference between a control room and a dub room. Also there's a difference between a nearfield monitor and mains. The mains can be gently eq'd but the nearfields are not.

A control room does not sound like a movie theater, it should be as flat as possible.

Whenever possible, we got to mix in an actual simulator ride to really tweak the sound to the environment. So that's basically what I think you're trying to acheive right? Create a room that sounds like a theater and mix to it?
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Ed Gambill · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:33 pm Post subject:

Frank Thanks

I have bass traps in consideration.

I have the ISO box design, complete with vibration iso mounts for the rail. Using MDF with Dursrock glued to the inside. Using an electrostatic filter.

Stand off Corning 703 with some home made Abflectors.

I have not desire to mix to the curve, just to EQ the room to the curve so what I hear will be properly represented in the final track.

Not sure about the overhead yet.

Tune the room, no Eq with a good RTA
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Ed Gambill · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:38 pm Post subject:

Monk

You and Frank will like this.

When I get to move to a larger space, I will build Voice of the Theater cabinets and use some vintage Altec components I have saved for many years.

I use to build speaker cabinets for stage and have the Altec and JBL blueprints. The dealers I worked for would buy raw Altec component and install them. I was able to get some good deals.
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Monk · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:57 pm Post subject:

hmmmm Then I will rent "Tora Tora Tora" and see if it still sounds as good as I remember.

My home theater has a set of JBL Control 5's for L, R, and rears, I got them cheap and put new foams on the cones... (haven't had a need for sub and the in-law apartment downstairs might object..)

An Altec for the center channel would be great. I used to have to move the one at the Mahawie theater in and out as it would switch from Movie night to a stage production.

Now if you had a good deal on a 1080p projector....

we were following the pm3 certification before the bottom fell out on the whole amusement park business after 9/11.. I really wanted our studio to be THX certified, but then the projects stopped and the money wasn't there for it to be finished.
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Ed Gambill · Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 4:17 pm Post subject:

Monk

You Have PM
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Mike · Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2009 12:12 am Post subject:

Michael finally gave up on his futile attempt to crack the inner meaning of the esoteric discussion he had stumbled upon. Disillusioned, he slouched back to his room to seek comfort in the familiar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMRlyFiGtZ0&feature=related

This post has been officially recognised as a true British post.
Accept no substitutes.
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Ed Gambill · Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2009 3:43 am Post subject:

Thanks for the chart. A better way to set color.

When I first worked as a studio engineer in broadcasts TV we did not have our use a vector scope to set color. We had very pricy monitors and each of us set it by "The Right of The Eye"
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Monk · Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2009 7:45 am Post subject:

Darn, all these years I've been using this one...

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Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me...

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georgethetech

Monk · Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:52 am Post subject:

I found that my ProTools HD rig didn't like the RAID drive so much, it preferred a firewire single drive, and then at the end of each session, I would back it up to the mirrored RAID.

It was a Maxtor Terabite external Firewire RAID...

YRMV.
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Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me...

www.monksvoice.com