ACF Guy Guest
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:20 pm Post subject: It's the stupid mistakes that get you. |
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Hi, everyone. Just a cautionary tale for you.
I record long-form narration for a legal books-on-tape company. We recently moved our office across the country, and ever since getting set up in our new recording space, I noticed that my voice didn't look the same on the waveform readout as it had before -- it was much smaller, and in playback it was much quieter.
I wrote it off to me possibly not remembering properly what the waveform was supposed to look like (it had been a few months since I last recorded, after all), and confidently reassured myself with a phrase that should have sent up a huge red flag: "They'll fix it in editing."
We send our sound files out to our editors in 50-file bursts. When I'd finally accumulated that amount and shipped it out, the editors called me up and told me in no uncertain terms that the files, even after editing, were absolutely unpublishable due to poor quality.
I frantically tore my whole setup apart, convinced that the mic had been damaged in transit, or the new studio space was set up improperly, or the USB port on my computer was bad, or my interface was shot ... I was all set to throw thousands of dollars at this problem.
That is until someone suggested I check my recording software's input settings.
Sure enough, for the three weeks I'd been talking into my Sennheiser, I'd actually been being recorded by my iBook's 3mm-wide monitor mic.
The fix: one click of a mouse. The cost: free. The price of my "they'll fix it in editing" carelessness: 3 weeks of lost work.
Hopefully someone here can learn from my experience! |
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