Vintage Sound Emulation

[yadj]

Hi Guys,

I'm working on an indy film project and I was hoping I could get some feedback to see where I could nip and tuck what I am doing better.

The film is a spoof 50-60's sci-fi caper and most of the audio was recorded in the writer's bedroom & lounge. Not the best source material to work with I know BUT, I've noise gated and region trimmed/ faded the best I can to sort that out.

The reference bench mark sound that we're going for is this, Harry Enfield's 'Women know your limits'. Classic! YouTube - Women: Know Your Limits! Harry Enfield - BBC comedy

I know it would have been recorded 'recently' hence why I like it for a reference too. The questions I have though are this:

1. The dynamics are really well controlled. Broadcast compression I guess but whenever I try and get similar control, all kinds of things jump out at me. I'm heavily dessing and EQing to get it to be bearable (both headphone referenced and in my room)... does anyone have any good signal chain recommendations for the dynamics side of things? Series compressors, limiters, EQ etc? I know not to get it all done with one setting and one plug in BUT... any tips from the pros would be much appreciated!

2. The aging of the sound is really well done and I'm struggling to get something to sound similar. I have approached the sound by breaking down the process of recording back in the day. Bandlimited mics, room sound capture as opposed to close mic'd ADR, hitting to tape and then giving it an even further band limited speaker simulation as if it were playing back on TV (Speakerphone rocks!) but the sound still sounds too clean. I have mixed white noise, crackles, vinyl noise in to the sound and even tried side chaining volume to the crackles to integrate the distortion to the output sound, but still can't get it like what they've done. Again, any suggestions for signal flow here would be a god send.

I will post some samples of where I'm at when I get back home but if anyone is on here and has some ideas, I will send you a virtual beer

Cheers,

John

[thermisonic]

from your description it sounds like you are starting from audio which is not very well recorded. then you are cleaning it up, to make up for its deficiencies. then you are trying to use various processes to make it dirty again, albeit in a different way.

The Harry Enfield clip is well recorded, then put through a signal chain to make it aged with additional crackle etc.

how does it sound if you don't gate or region trim and then apply the effects chain to the raw tracks? I think this may be where you are making the sound too clean. more room tone required?

rob

[yadj]

Hi Rob,

thanks for chipping in! You're spot on with the cleaning up to dirty it again process.

Knowing the beeb, they probably recorded it with authentic gear of the time anyway to help out in the long run, so I am trying to be realistic with how far I can get bearing in mind what I'm dealing with.

The whole process has brought about some interesting challenges for me though so for that reason alone, I love it!

I have tried leaving the tracks as is and not gating things but to be honest, the conditions they recorded in vary so much that in some clips there sounds like a ground loop or power hum in there, some it's echoey as hell and some are surprisingly good! I actually stuck the gates on and region trimmed just to get some kind of base consistency.

It's a straight to DVD first time effort for all of us really and the guys who wrote it are under no illusions with respect to what the outcome can be... but saying that, I like a challenge and want to have the best crack at it I can.

To give you an idea, of where I'm at, I've put a before and where I'm at right now with it sample down below. Listening to the snippets attached, this orig clip is actually really clean compared to some parts of it... but you get the idea.

Any feedback more than welcome and if you'd like/ interested in a list of what I've done so far, I can do that too

Cheers,

john

[Farm sounds]

I've tried running the audio through some monitors and then micing the monitor with a dynamic mic, or condensor if you want some room. Compress it pretty hard too. You could maybe apply a eq too to cut or boost what you want....and then...

Take the reamped track and run it onto a cassette tape. Then play the cassette tape on a boombox, and mic the speaker.

Probably too much. but it will sound vintage.

I thought your after example sounded good already by the way. I love that sound!

[thermisonic]

Hi John,

From your example I thought it needed more optical film audio pops and clicks. They are quite different to tape hiss or vinyl crackle and are used on the Harry Enfield track. You might want to add the odd sharper click on a visual edit here and there if you are trying to copy it precisely.

However, for a feature length film I'm not sure you would want to listen to the same level of audio noise consistently, unless you are determined to make it 'period'. I would be aware that the technology of the Harry Enfield clip is more like 1930-1940s pre 1950's - 1960's when your thing is set.

Hope this helps, I thought your 'after' clip sounded pretty good too.

Rob

[Fajita]

AudioEase SPEAKERPHONE

Digidesign LoFi


use them, love them.

[yadj]

Thanks everyone.

Reamping and recording to tape is certainly a thought and I would be tempted to give it a go in one sense, but I guess I'm coming at it from a 'theoretical' digital point of view. Them stubborn in the box people! Good suggestion though as miking a speaker would certainly make it authentic!

Rob, good points again. I also raised the concern of enduring a whole film's worth of dated sound as a 2 minute skit is one thing, but watching an hour and a half ragtime special is another deal. Last night I looked for some other reference material to help.... the original 50's series of the Fugitive (much more bass and pleasant resonant distortion in the voices), and even older actually, some some choice laurel and hardy which had surprisingly good sound. I think a bit of a hybrid is in order.

Interesting you mentioned about the optical pops and clicks though... I knew my distortion wasn't right, but I didn't know what it was. I'll have a hunt round and see what I can come up with.

Here's another question for people if you're keen. On a record player, music would often have a warble to it from a bump in the record. When you listen to old film music, they also had a warble but it didn't seem as regular as would be generated by a record spinning at a set speed. Again, Speakerphone comes to the rescue as it has a 'wow' section and you can even LFO the aspects of it to break it's repetitiveness, but just wondering what people knew about old film music and how it would have been played back??

Thanks again in advance.

[Fajita]

old film music came from the optical print is my guess.

[yadj]

Hi Guys,

I've been researching the optical disc/ print audio reproduction and it's answered a few questions regarding how they reproduce it and how people can abuse it by scratching up the film etc... however, it's actually quite hard to find samples for optical pops and clicks. I used to be able to lower my buffer size and get my computer to do what from memory sounded like a similar distortion....but on a mac pro, that's easier said than done these days! Anyone got any suggestions for where to get it/ do it? Speakerphone doesn't have pops and clicks that sound authentic outside of record player stuff and and Izotope's vinyl is a similar deal?

Any help as always is... muchos muchos gracias.

Cheers,

john

[ggegan]

I would say that you should stay mono and mix through an Academy Curve EQ inserted across the the buss. There is a very specific sound that comes from the rather extreme equalization that mixers used to use to compensate for the Academy Curve. It is sort of an EQ plus a counter EQ thing. Add the noise from a cheap and very dirty mono optical track and you've got it. If you really wanted to go all the way, you could even make a preliminary print master, shoot a 16mm mono optical from it and then transfer it back to digital for the actual Dolby print master. Don't forget the Theramin.

[yadj]

Hi Gary,

that Academy curve sounds like an interesting option!

I'll give it a try, thank you very much. Time and budget won't extend to the print master optical transfer idea, but again.... really good to know!

Just got to google the academy curve specs and I'm away

Cheers,

John

[yadj]

For anyone who is interested, or is inclined to verify the specs I found, the Academy curve is as follows.

Flat response from 100hz - 1.6kHz

down -7dB @ 40 Hz
down -10dB @ 5kHz
down -18dB @ 8kHz

ref information came from - Pro Audio Reference A

Cheers,

John

[Farm sounds]

Hi John, Glad to read you might have found a solution that will work. If at all possible, please post another snippet when you you find "the sound" so to speak. Thanks!

[mobius.media]

Bounce it to tape or if you can't, the Nebula tape impulses seem to get good grades around here for emulation.

[yadj]

Hi Mobius,

I have two emulations. PSP vintage warmer which I get mixed results with and UAD Fatso... which I like I lot! You get really nice saturated harmonics with that one

Will def put some snippets up when I'm done.

Cheers,

John

[thermisonic]

Internet Archive: Free Download: Sound Recording and Reproduction (Sound on Film)

Apart from being a great little film about early sound technology, this is public domain and has a good few sections where the optical track crackles along nicely without any of that annoying speech, music or sound effects stuff we all insist on putting on films these days. With some judicious editing you could get a useable amount from it.

I think (and you should check) you could take the optical crackle off this without fear of copyright problems. I just watched the live stream which is a bit 'digital compression for the net' sounding but there are download options which might give you a more appropriately analoguey sound. Hi-fi lo-fi!

Rob