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I know that the discussion of audio recording had been covered in a myriad of ways, but I thought that it might be cool to have a topic which covers our own individual "touches" that we have come up with to enhance the audio experience. OK, my personal "touch" is, enhance or sharpen the overall audio when recording. That is, basically, adding more "treble" to the overall signal being recorded. Reason being, as we all know, the mag stripe inherently, tends to have an elevated "hiss" to the overall base audio. To compensate for that, make the track sharper, so that, during playback you can turn down the treble, without loosing the good, natural sound you actually desire, giving it a manufactured noise reduction. I have noted that, unfortunately, with older stereo soundtracks especially, the stereo audio is very noisy, way too much hiss. Doing this fairly simple step will make the audio recorded, much more enjoyable. Cheers!
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Many years ago I did record tracks on cassette with Dolby on and transfer to film with it switched off to do something similar. -
Osi, your idea makes a lot of sense actually as far as rerecording goes. Yes, boosting the treble during recording would certainly help in that regard.
But on many projectors there is no tone control to equalize out the higher treble and would then make the film's sound too bright on those machines. I feel the best way to keep hiss at bay is to record the sound as loud as possible without over saturating the magnetic stripe. But the louder you record on Super 8 stripe the more likely you will experience film chatter on machines that do not use a pinch roller in front of the sound heads. On the other hand, with standard 8mm sound film you could really drive the recording levels high without introducing film chatter in the sound on loud passages.
Just my thoughts on Super 8 sound recording.Comment
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I hadn't thought of that, Joseph. In other words, "know your projector". One thing that I have heard from Lance Alspaugh, (recording engineer professional), is, if possible, find out the specific eq of the magnetic track itself and then, adjust your assorted levels when recording to optimize your soundtrack to the fullest!Comment
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Boosting the treble on recording, and lowering it on playback is essentially a no-cost Dolby Noise Reduction methodology. Dolby NR is of course far more complex. It was introduced to reduce magnetic tape hiss, much like RIAA phonograph equalization was introduced to improve the sound from phonograph recordings. Back in the magnetic tape days you could buy an external Dolby NR box to record and playback Dolby NR recordings.Comment
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Osi, that is possible on some cassette recorders that do bias test recordings for optimization by testing the tape and adjusting for optimal bias automatically. But I don't know of any projectors that had that ability, although it would have been a nice featureComment
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That's not a bad idea. So, your saying that, for instance, having prepared an audio track, record it onto a cassette Deck with Dolby noise reduction record capabilities, ( I have one that has both Dolby B and C noise reduction capabilities!), and then, record that Dolby "enriched" recording onto the films mag striped? Or, is that Dolby only recorded to the actual cassette tape? It is an intriguing thought, as I do have the capability of sending the signal through my Archer surround sound amplifier, which had Dolby as one of it's audio options.Comment
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... but then, even if you have a Dolby modified soundtrack, it would be being recorded onto a fairly loud, noisy mag stripe. One of the earlier points made is also, actually, quite good ... Record as loud as possible, thereby allowing you to turn down the volume, thereby turning down the hiss and yet, still have some blooming good sound.Comment
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As reported in British YAY film making magazine in the 70s I was dubbing S8 with a cassette recorder and using my teeny index finger to slow down the tape to fit the movie. Crude but it did work and still watch the films to this day
Amazing when I look back.Comment
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What a neat post, Lee! THAT is dedication! What is that thing that can be done with the ELMO where you can synchronize recording from DVD to ELMO? Does it have to be merely from a DVD source? I am doing a complete stereo re-record of XANADU from various sources, one of which will be the Blu-ray audio, but also replacing the original ELO tunes over the original soundtrack audio for much better fidelity. Any possible help?Comment
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Osi that will be glorious when complete.
A labour of love indeed and the fact you are doing manually is even more case for a round of applauseComment
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Well, this came about because I noticed, even from Blu-ray, when transition from the nice effects leading up to the song, to the song, the audio for the song didn't have the same fidelity as the rest of the film, same for All Over the World. Besides, I didn't like those audio special effects over the top of the song, way too loud and over intrusive. So, I recorded the audio from the super 8, as a template, then use the Blu-ray track to be sure that everything matches up perfectly to the super 8 track. Get rid of the super 8 soundtrack. After this, I have an additional video editing program which allows me to, if necessary, slow down the whole to make sure it can sync up with the projectors recording speed. Yeah, not as easy as it sounds, but great, if it works. By the way, the original.mono track from the U8 release had surprisingly good, fairly sharp audio ... but not good enough for ELO.Comment
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If you have two soundtracks Powerdirector will automatically sync the two:
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Audio amps for the home with Dolby on them are only designed for surround processing, not noise reduction. Professional (cinema) ones process surround info and have noise reduction A/SR.Comment
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Have you guys used Dolby Prologic audio for super 8mm?
That question was discussed on the old 8mm forum:
https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-b...09614;go=newer
Source: https://professional.dolby.com/tv/dolby-pro-logic-ii/Sound all around you
Your movie collection features a host of two-channel (stereo) classics. Most of your music is in stereo, too, and the same holds true for your video games. They sound perfectly acceptable, but they would definitely sound better in surround.
Dolby Pro Logic II makes this possible, converting high-quality stereo content into compelling 5.1-channel surround sound.
With Dolby Pro Logic II technology in your home theater, you're no longer limited to the binary left-right world of stereo. Dolby Pro Logic II takes the audio for almost any TV show, movie, game, or music album and wraps it around you. The audio comes to life.
Since the mag tracks on Super 8 are smaller than a magnetic cassette tape, I would expect the old Scottish proverb will come into play:
The proverb you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear means you can’t create a fine product from inferior materials.
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