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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => The Basement => Topic started by: Jason Glass on December 05, 2013, 10:15:32 PM
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Broadcast Mix Engineer, Network Distribution Audio Engineer, or Nashville affiliate Station Engineer:
Please, for the the love of all that is holy, BACK OFF THE MIX BUS LIMITER INPUT! The noise floor is as high as the dialogue, is audible during CHORAL performance, sounds like pink noise crosstalk, and is ruining what is otherwise an absolutely spectacular performance.
Every scene, no matter which characters are performing. It's not a wireless problem and it's not a faulty input.
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Broadcast Mix Engineer, Network Distribution Audio Engineer, or Nashville affiliate Station Engineer:
Please, for the the love of all that is holy, BACK OFF THE MIX BUS LIMITER INPUT! The noise floor is as high as the dialogue, is audible during CHORAL performance, sounds like pink noise crosstalk, and is ruining what is otherwise an absolutely spectacular performance.
Every scene, no matter which characters are performing. It's not a wireless problem and it's not a faulty input.
Sounds fine here. Broadcast TV, no cable, no satellite.
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Sounds fine here. Broadcast TV, no cable, no satellite.
Hmmm, I'm on DirecTV and listening to Dolby Digital. It's really, really bad. We can hear it breathing with the limiting for the last two and a half hours. At every commercial break I've hoped they would fix it.
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Jason I hear it too. Comcast HD feed to a pair of MM4s. But I guess that's what area mics in a warehouse in Long Island sound like.
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Jason I hear it too. Comcast HD feed to a pair of MM4s. But I guess that's what area mics in a warehouse in Long Island sound like.
Haha! Point taken. But, did you notice that they had seven RF techs listed in the credits? When you consider that every performer was surely mic'd, they did an awesome job of hiding the capsules.
BTW, was that your guys doing the gig?
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Haha! Point taken. But, did you notice that they had seven RF techs listed in the credits? When you consider that every performer was probably mic'd, they did an awesome job of hiding the capsules.
They did an amazing job, no question. I saw the occasional wire and didn't see a capsule until Audra turned upstage and it poked out by her ear. Gain before feedback wasn't an issue so they could pull those capsules back farther than they could for a stage production. I'm friends and acquaintances with a few of them but they've been under media black-out so I hope to hear and see what they did soon. There certainly hasn't been anything like this in my lifetime, but I'm a greenhorn.
EDIT: Wasn't us, Jason. I would have loved in be part of the team that got to sink its teeth into that production. Lots of Broadway and NY industrial people on that crew.
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I'm friends and acquaintances with a few of them but they've been under media black-out so I hope to hear and see what they did soon. There certainly hasn't been anything like this in my lifetime, but I'm a greenhorn.
I'm working with Matt Krause on Monday, I intend to grill him about the production.
Mac
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Doing this show live is incredibly ballsy. And yet few watching will understand why. It's not the performances. The talent can do this this all day and night. But the challenges of making the tech work is the real story that few will know or appreciate
Amazing, professional job. I'm truly impressed.
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I'm working with Matt Krause on Monday, I intend to grill him about the production.
Mac
Could you convince him to post on the forums? I'm probably going to see Charles and Els by the end of the year but that's not soon enough!
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So I guess I missed the boat on this.... I should have not turned off the near-continuous Mandela coverage.
Bah, humbug. Will there be a re-broadcast?
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So I guess I missed the boat on this.... I should have not turned off the near-continuous Mandela coverage.
Bah, humbug. Will there be a re-broadcast?
Not live! ::)
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Everything was decidedly mediocre.
That "Warehouse on Long Island" is a pretty $ca-ching$ soundstage in an NYC suburb. It is a converted plant where my Silver Star Medalist/ D-Day-Sherman-Tank (rubberized canvas pontoons in the English Channel mind you) driving father helped assemble the Lunar Module for Grumman, and all of us.
Facility/location/ghosts had no influence on the performance.
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I didn't care for it at all. Shoulda never done it live/ at all. Carrie underwood = great singer and a bad actress. It just wreaked of a bad soap opera to me.
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Please, for the the love of all that is holy,
Especially when there are nuns involved!
I hear the noise as well. It's probably the highest noise level I have heard on television--at least for shows produced after 1965. I am guessing a S/N ratio of about 45 db. I have Verizon FIOS, and I am watching my TiVo's recording. The commercials have no audible noise at all.
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Especially when there are nuns involved!
I hear the noise as well. It's probably the highest noise level I have heard on television--at least for shows produced after 1965. I am guessing a S/N ratio of about 45 db. I have Verizon FIOS, and I am watching my TiVo's recording. The commercials have no audible noise at all.
The noise was pretty terrible here, way worse than local news programs (which can be pretty bad in New Mexico, especially during holidays when the "B" squad takes over) while the commercials were dead clean, and as usual, louder average level.
45 dB S/N might be optimistic, looking at an RTA inserted on my home theater system during some of the dialog looked almost like compressed pink noise, the fundamental voice frequencies only popping 6 dB or so above a "wall" of noise. Could not see "esses" above the noise on some of the dialog.
Although I have heard bad noise levels on many other broadcasts, this was the first I recall actually clearly seeing it on the Alesis GEQ830 RTA, which only has a 24 dB "window".
Art
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Broadcast Mix Engineer, Network Distribution Audio Engineer, or Nashville affiliate Station Engineer:
Please, for the the love of all that is holy, BACK OFF THE MIX BUS LIMITER INPUT! The noise floor is as high as the dialogue, is audible during CHORAL performance, sounds like pink noise crosstalk, and is ruining what is otherwise an absolutely spectacular performance.
Every scene, no matter which characters are performing. It's not a wireless problem and it's not a faulty input.
This must have been a distribution issue, because it was not there on my TV watching Cablevision in the NY suburbs. I could hear the crew moving and talking in the background however. All the mixing was done by the broadcast mixer, and not by a theater sound mixer. Mics were often open even when the actor was not in a scene. On Broadway mics are only turned on while an actor is speaking, even to the point of alternating mics in a conversation.
I don't know, but I assume the music was all tracks, so it seems it should not have been hard to keep the vocals more on top.
A lot of criticism I have read in other media complains about how it didn't meet the standard of the "original", the Julie Andrews film. I guess those folks have forgotten that the film was a remake of the original stage production.
Mac
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A lot of criticism I have read in other media complains about how it didn't meet the standard of the "original", the Julie Andrews film. I guess those folks have forgotten that the film was a remake of the original stage production.
Mac
I can't disagree with all the negative reviews of the acting, but I thought the singing was spot-on, and I enjoyed it very much. I can forgive a bit of stiff dialogue for those wonderful songs.
I think this sort of backlash is inevitable when the play and film are such iconic and widely hailed productions.
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Not live! ::)
I did not see this-so have no direct opinion.
HOWEVER I was talking to a friend who watched it and he was commenting about how the sound of the mic changed (due to combfiltering) when actors would walk up next to walls.
And then as they pulled away-it got clearer.
I HIGHLY doubt most people would think of making the sound worse-just to make it appear real.
Why do YOU say it wasn't live? Any proof or reasons?
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I did not see this-so have no direct opinion.
HOWEVER I was talking to a friend who watched it and he was commenting about how the sound of the mic changed (due to combfiltering) when actors would walk up next to walls.
And then as they pulled away-it got clearer.
I HIGHLY doubt most people would think of making the sound worse-just to make it appear real.
Why do YOU say it wasn't live? Any proof or reasons?
Ivan, the "not live" comment was in response to Tim's question about whether it would be rebroadcast. By definition a rebroadcast is not live.
Mac
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I did not see this-so have no direct opinion.
HOWEVER I was talking to a friend who watched it and he was commenting about how the sound of the mic changed (due to combfiltering) when actors would walk up next to walls.
And then as they pulled away-it got clearer.
I HIGHLY doubt most people would think of making the sound worse-just to make it appear real.
Why do YOU say it wasn't live? Any proof or reasons?
I was responding to Tim McC's question, "Will there be a rebroadcast?"
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I can't disagree with all the negative reviews of the acting, but I thought the singing was spot-on, and I enjoyed it very much. I can forgive a bit of stiff dialogue for those wonderful songs.
I think this sort of backlash is inevitable when the play and film are such iconic and widely hailed productions.
Perhaps the TV production should have just been called "The Appearance of Music".
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Sounds fine here. Broadcast TV, no cable, no satellite.
Perhaps the TV production should have just been called "The Appearance of Music".
Hmmm…
Mac
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Hmmm…
Mac
The second quote was just in response to those who found the audio lacking.
I listened as my wife watched. As I said, plain old (digital) broadcast TV. Our receiver is a $200 21" flat screen from Best Buy that we got when analog bit the dust. Free signal, cheap TV. Couldn't really hear any of the stuff that folks find unsatisfying.
Lo-fi smoothing things over???
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I listened as my wife watched. As I said, plain old (digital) broadcast TV. Our receiver is a $200 21" flat screen from Best Buy that we got when analog bit the dust. Free signal, cheap TV. Couldn't really hear any of the stuff that folks find unsatisfying.
Lo-fi smoothing things over???
I watched on an aging, but still good sounding HT system. I didn't hear the over compression or the hiss. As I said earlier, I did hear the chatter backstage as the crew moved sets and cameras and got the cast into position. I think it would have to be a pretty low noise floor to hear the crew.
I think it was a technical achievement, but I wonder what the point of a live broadcast is if there is no audience. I think NBC is going to try the concept again.
I understand that they need a certain amount of "star power" to draw the audience, and I could get around Carrie Underwood's acting, but I couldn't look at Steven Moyer without seeing covered in blood as Bill in True Blood.
Mac
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I watched some and listened the most. Over the air broadcast on a backwater Montana station. The sound was great. I noticed a few late unmute cues, especially with one particular actress. Everything else was pretty smooth though.
I will say that since I dumped cable, I have notice the over the air broadcasts are much better than I had with cable or satellite. When my friend are over to watch, they are pretty amazed.
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OTA streams at about double the rate of cable or satellite. No surprise you're seeing the difference.
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I watched on an aging, but still good sounding HT system. I didn't hear the over compression or the hiss. As I said earlier, I did hear the chatter backstage as the crew moved sets and cameras and got the cast into position. I think it would have to be a pretty low noise floor to hear the crew.
I think it was a technical achievement, but I wonder what the point of a live broadcast is if there is no audience.
Mac,
Sounds like local distribution is responsible for the gross noise I and some others heard, I was never able to hear any background chatter over the noise floor which was sometimes only 6-12 dB below the signal.
I also can't see the point of a live broadcast with no audience- there were a lot of scenes that could have used another take, or another acting lesson..
Art
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OK, Mac... After much poking and prodding, I'm here.
I worked as an A2 on the Sound of Music LIVE. Our team totaled 8 Bway sound techs who handled mic and pack placement specifically. There were 50 RF mics total including doubles on Maria, Captain, Max, Elsa, and Mother Abbess. All were hidden to the best of our abilities.. Most on foreheads and hair. You are correct about Mother Abbess. Some wimple/ habit difficulty forced us to disguise the mic on the outside of the costume instead of mic more incognito as with the rest.
Matt Kraus
I'm working with Matt Krause on Monday, I intend to grill him about the production.
Mac
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Matt, thanks for joining us. (Thanks Mac!)
You guys did a fantastic job hiding all the elements. I saw two(one of them Mother Abbess) and I was actively looking for them. What was foldback like in the studio? Were you able to pull the capsule farther back from the hairline than you normally could on stage because there was no PA to deal with in the studio? Did the cast hear the orchestra(only paino?) through ear wigs?
Were the double rigs identical elements or did you have a 4066/MKE1 type set-up? Were the transmitters 5212s?
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I watched the rebroadcast last Saturday. I did hear the noise that people have complained about. What it sounded like to me was the music playback channels being unmuted prior to the Stage Manager's go command. I also would remind people that we need to compare this to the stage version, not the movie. That being said, a few zone mics would have been nice to have in the mix for a little ambient sound sweetening. NBC should do Amahl and the Night Visitors next year.
They commissioned it, and it will break into scenes much better than the Sound of Music