Common problems and professional requirements

This is a simple assignment but, as always, requires great attention to detail from beginning to end. There are a number of common problems that you should plan to avoid, right from the start...

• Low level.
• Not clean, clear and crisp.
• Audio doesn't start immediately.
• Fade at end isn't neat.
• There is excessive background noise and/or ambiance.

It may seem a little negative to mention the potential problems first, but these are real and common problems, and must be avoided.

• In your finished work the level must at some point reach at least -2 dBFS. In other words, it must come within two decibels of full scale.
• There must be no electrical noise, clicks, hum or interference.
• There must be no clipping.
• Editing and fading must be precise and neat.
• You must take every step you can to reduce background noise and excessive ambience.

Moving onto to the project itself, here we have audio examples of work done for this project. The recordings are of a cymbal, snare drum, tom and kick drum and are made with the AKG C451 small-diaphragm capacitor microphone and the AKG D112 dynamic.

In theory, these microphones should be so different that they are like chalk and cheese. But in practice sometimes the differences are blindingly obvious; sometimes they are tiny. As the project brief suggests, the microphones were placed as close as possible to each other, without actually touching...

Cymbal AKG C451:

Cymbal AKG D112

Snare AKG C451

Snare AKG D112

Tom close AKG C451

Tom close AKG D112

Tom distant AKG C451

Tom distant AKG D112

Kick AKG C451

Kick AKG D112

You should listen carefully to these examples and compare and contrast them. Where you can't hear much of a difference, go to an example where the difference is obvious and ask yourself exactly what are you hearing. Then go back to the example where the difference is not so obvious – you should be able to hear it now, even if it is very subtle.

You will notice in the cymbal examples that the tails of the hits have been faded. Clearly this has been done for the sake of brevity. Extending the hits for their full duration would give us little additional useful information. However, although the fades are neat, they are a little on the abrupt side. This is just a point to consider, not a major issue.

If you only have one microphone and you have to carry out the alternative project, then you should still listen carefully to these examples. Listening very closely to a small number of examples will allow you to focus very closely on the sometimes large, sometimes small, but always significant differences between microphones.

Download the audio files for this tutorial...