Hey everyone, I am doing the audio on a TV spot and was recently provided some dialogue adr recordings to replace the noisy production audio. The actress is talking at the camera (not a narrative scene), so the dialogue needs to be very intelligible - But it’s just sounding too clean and too “studio” right now.
This is what I’ve done so far: Low pass + High pass, added outdoor ambiance fx, cars passing by fx, birds chirping, etc.
It’s sounding pretty decent, but still isn’t quiteee there. Still sounds a little bit too clean. Does anyone have any recommendations to make this sound more realistic and a bit more distant? I didn’t know if Nuendo had any special plugins/effects to help with this.
Tried outdoor impulse responses in REVerence (very low on the mix knob) and just can’t get that sounding right.
I don’t believe Nuendo has any stock plug-ins that might help with this. For ‘quick and dirty’ distance treatment, I sometimes use Air from Sound Particles, but that’s really more of a low-pass filter effect. You could possibly look at a 3D spatializing plug-in like Wave Arts’ Panorama 7. Not that you’re going for a binaural effect, per se, but it does have modules you can turn on for early reflections, etc. They have a trial period for that plug-in. Otherwise I just use traditional EQ, delay, and reverb sends to achieve whatever environments I’m simulating (Slapper from Cargo Cult being my favorite multi-channel delay, with several outdoor / exterior simulations with PhoenixVerb / Stratus algorithmic reverbs also having several exterior presets to try). Hope this helps!
One other option, specifically regarding reverb, might be the Chameleon reverb from Accentize. It’s designed to match production dialogue’s environment for better matching with ADR.
Try Boom It, it’s intended for these scenarios.
I use a combination of Air Music (sound particles and free) + Phoenixverb (while it lasts) to create exterior delays. I almost never use reverb unless it is really dense low forest scenes
I have used dearVR Pro quite effectively on a recent Documentary, you can try playing with Occlusion, Distance scale and Realtime Auralisation on your talent track.
Also create a reverb bus, and route everything to it to your taste so that everything shares the same texture and Grade.
also you can try the Anymix Pro with Stratus reverb which gives you a very fine grain control on distance
Your list has the usual. I would play with the LPF frequency and roll-off. And definitely a reverb. You got a few recommendations here, all good. But reverbs are one of those things where everyone has a favorite but there is no right/wrong answer. And some of them aren’t cheap. I think it’s more about placing it in the mix than the specific flavor. So don’t give up experimenting before buying some expensive plugins.
If you do want to consider buying something and playing with IR, Audioease has a very cool product call Indoor, which has IR measurements inside houses, where you can simulate an actor being upstairs, outside the door of a room, through the door, etc. You place the mic and source in different places in the house interactively. Super cool and works well: Audio Ease - Indoor - acoustics for POST
But in your case that may be too much, as the actor is addressing the screen.
Also if your actor moves, automate the LPF and reverb to match her movement. That adds a lot of realism.
I agree with klfnk2020 that delays are a good option for outdoor settings, especially a street. Reverbs sound weird to me in those scenarios (with a few exceptions).
With delay i meant specifically the early reflections that reverbs have. So the scatterint inchorent multidelays where you can tweak the attack and rekease and with some filtering the phoenixverb and many others have this. You can also use a normal delay but it takes quite some tweaking and not all delays are created equal.
Experiment is my best advice. Oh and don’t buy phoenxverb it is no longer supported (thanks izotope!).
Again I agree with klfnk2020. I’ve set up some basic slap delays with Steinberg’s multitap delay and have that in my template. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed. But yeah, leaning more on reflections/delays in reverbs rather than the ‘room’ is the ticket.
I think “Stratus” is a great reverb and it is the ‘evolution’ of “Phoenixverb”. I just looked and it’s $99 and I personally think it’s worth it. And it has a 3D version that scales up to Atmos.
Level, make sure that level isn’t super consistent, these changes can be quite abrupt, choose carefully so you don’t make it unintelligible but making a bit less perfect is probably a good thing.look at the picture and follow any guidance from the characters movement.
Eq, see level above.
Tape distortion or similar, if the difference to on set recordings is still big, it might need to get a bit dirty.
Yes delays, you can use the multi tap delay. It’s pretty good at adding some wonky reflection style sounds (not long slap delays, the really short ones that make it less perfect, like in the real world).
Mono verb, obviously.
Finally, adding the appropriate type noise if needed will also make it easier “to sell”. Not just any noise, on set noise with some movement that matches the picture.
