Recording Advice - What's the best way to record a.....

[ezahp]

........room tone?

Is it simple or are there any tricks?

[shockermatt]

could you be a little more specific? are you talking about just the sound of an empty room? or a room mic when recording?

[Enos]

It depends what you are recording the room tone for. Roomtone is something I mostly use as a very essential part of my dialogue editing work. Roomtone has often been called the glue that ties the rest of the production sound together and used extensively to cover unwanted noises, smoothen transitions, fill gaps,etc... As dialogue in film is always recorded, edited and mixed in mono room tone for dialogue editing should be mono as it will be part of your final dialogue track. Usually roomtone is recorded on set during production with whatever boom mic is being used to cover the production sound.

However if editing backgrounds/ambiences for a film as opposed to dialogue you would probably want a stereo roomtone (at least). So it depends what you want it for. If I was recording on set and was just using a mono boom mic to capture production dialogue I would capture all my roomtone with that same mono mic as there is hardly time on set to start pulling out a stereo rig of any kind. However, if I was recording roomtone afterwards or on its own I might capture it in stereo as then I know I can either use it in stereo for backgrounds or grab just one side of it for mono use in dialogue editing if needed.

Anyways, roomtone as simple as it seems has a lot one can talk about!

[Matti]

The trick for roomtone just after a scene is to politely have the crew quiet for some 30 seconds, be friends with the AD -as always. Have the same mic in the same position as during the takes.

Matti

[ezahp]

Sorry, to be more specific, I was wondering about stereo/5.0 recordings of rooms for film post - the fx side of things rather than the dialog edit.

I meant things like rooms with traffic, with rain, with ac buzz, lighting buzz, with birds/animals outside, windy rooms, drippy rooms etc etc etc

I've always used an old Scheops XY pair but it's sometimes a bit hissy in quiet places and it often just doesnt sound like a big solid wide room.

Was wondering about getting the DPA 5.0 microphone for this purpose.

[Enos]

For ambiances recording in 5.0 is cool but in my opinion overkill. I find that with a stereo recording you can create a nice 5.0 ambience. If you do MS recording you could add another mid mic pointing backwards which will give you quite a lot to work with. I have a sennheiser MS rig which I use for quiet stuff as their self noise is SO low! Anyhow I usually EQ things like roomtone ambiences to make them sound more like I need or want.

[charles maynes]

ambience recording- as in BG's are cool in 5.1- that being said, the overhead of 5.1 tracks on a dubstage is not trivial- it takes the same number of tracks as 3 stereo pairs.

the Schoeps are perfect for recording these, if the hiss is too great, swap out your preamps. the DPA's wont give that much better noise performance- you might try some of the low noise Sennheisers though.

as for roomtone in DIA- it will usually be mono- as the dialog usually comes from the center channel.

[PoxyMusic]

I've been getting into 5.0 ambience recordings lately, and it's pretty tricky for several reasons.
1. There aren't very many effects that I can think of that actually merit the time and effort. I would personally not include room tone, or most interior room BGs as likely candidates.
2. BGs need to be pretty unobtrusive to work properly, which is almost a contradiction to surround BGs! The trick will be finding something worthy of surround, while not drawing too much attention to itself in the final mix.
3. Good BGs must have elements that are nicely balanced in the stereo field; you can't have a suburban BG with a leaf blower prominently in the left channel for example; everything must jell into one whole organic sound. That's hard enough to achieve with stereo, it becomes exponentially more difficult with surround.

Lots of people who really know what they're doing have tried to discourage me from surround BGs and I understand why, but I keep thinking that there's something there. Maybe we just need to learn how to do it correctly! I've been using a technique called OCT which I really like. OCT Surround

The problem with OCT is that it relies quite a bit on the C channel, which is not appreciated by most re-recording engineers. They of course want to reserve it for dialog.

[Enos]

The way I see backgrounds/ambiences in film is that in editing and mixing them it is our job as sound designers and mixers to recreate the reality of the world the film lives in. Of course we live in a 5.1 world and therefore the soundscape we create for our backgrounds is going to be in surround. However I do not necessarily see the importance or benefits of using actual surround recordings for it. A typical backgrounds session will easily contain 60-80 tracks or more and through clever and creative layering you will inevitably be placing sounds and moving them in a fake yet real sounding 5.1 space. By placement and panning I believe the ambiences we create can be more interesting than real life without sounding like they lack realism. Actual surround recordings do not sound as interesting or "stretched out" as an edited/created surround sound and the extra use of resources definitely doesn't encourage the use of them either....I think...But what do I know!

[ezahp]

I don't know about you, but the way I've generally recorded room tones/ambiences/BGs - call them what you will - is that when I've been out recording specific fx at the end of the day I'll just hold the mic still for a couple of minutes, 'do a quick room tone' then pack up and go. No real thought to placement/mic type or anything.

I think maybe there ought to be more to it than that! (Or maybe there isn't.)

Particularly when you look at the amount of effort/thought people recording acoustic music/small classical ensembles put into mic choice and mic placement.

I'm not specifically talking about 5.0 recordings - obviously it's impractical and unnecessary to record everything in some form of surround - but I can't help thinking that composite BGs might sound "better" (more enveloping, more spacious) with more high quality stereo recordings in them.

Take a listen to this - it's double ORTF - and IMO it sounds incredible:

Plug-and-Play setup for Surround Ambience Recording ORTF*Surround*Indoor Set - Audio samples - SCHOEPS.de


Would that mic setup work for city ambs/forest leaves/seawashes/cavern drips etc? My instinct says it would (though my wallet says it wouldn't).

Just wondering how much experimenting people had done.

[minister]

I record all my ambiences ORTF and Double-ORTF now, and yes, I think it sounds incredible!

Room tone for Production always mono. Though in several cases I went back to places and recorded 5.0 with Double-ORTF and a Shotgun for the center.

Here are a couple of pics. The outdoor shot was my first attempt before I figured it out -- I used 2 stands. Nicht gut. The next pic was the attempt to get in onto 1 stand. I used a Rycote Hot Shoe. Not good, too flexible and bouncy. The last pic is with a Sabra Som stereo bar (top) -- the 4 channel one which is longer than the 2 -- compared to the Rycote (bottom). So now I use the Sabra Som on 1 Manfroto and can fit 4 CMC6 MK4 Schoeps on it with no problem. (Just don't have a pic of that setup in the field.) I returned the Rycote Hot Shoe deal. I have 2 McArthur Stereo Bars that fit onto the Sabra Som.