Sound Advice: Kissing Tape Goodbye (page 2)

Over the past few months, two major Windows-based audio programs have changed ownership - Adobe bought Syntrillium's Cool Edit Pro and Sony Pictures Digital bought Sound Forge. The bean counters would call this consolidation. For you and me, it just means we have to learn some new names and carefully consider upgrades in the near future. Whether you choose the new Adobe Audition or Sony Pictures Digital's Sound Forge, or some other product, there are some audio recording tricks you should know.

First, recording levels. With a separate mixer it's simple to adjust microphone volume levels with the twist of a knob, but when you're recording directly to a computer, you have to use the virtual mixer included with the operating system. In Windows (see Figure 1), look in the lower right-hand corner for a small speaker icon. Double-click it and you will see a mixer window with playback volume sliders for all your audio sources. Now click Options-Properties and you'll see the additional choice of adjusting the recording levels for these sources. Depending on the sound card in your computer, you may also see level setting meters to guide your adjustments. If there are no meters, you can use the meters in your recording application. In Audition, right-click on the meters at the bottom of the screen and choose Monitor Record Levels. In Sound Forge, click the Record button and you'll see a dialog box with level meters. Set your levels so the loudest sound just barely hits the peak and you're ready to record. With digital audio, the levels should never hit the top: digital clipping is always bad.

Another audio recording anomaly is the setting of bit rate and sampling frequency. DV (and DVD) projects use 16-bit audio - either mono or stereo - at a sampling rate of 48,000Hz. By contrast, CD audio uses the same bit rate, but the sampling rate is 44,100Hz. While your video editing software may be able to compensate (up-sample or down-sample), you can eliminate any potential problems within your audio software. When starting a new project, set the bit and sampling rates to work on DV (and DVD) projects. While we're on the topic of quality, for heaven's sake, don't use MP3 (or any kind of compressed audio) in your video productions. By the time you've output a project to DVD, the audio has been through three conversion processes, two of which were lossy compression. Save yourself the grief and use only the highest quality original materials.

Recording directly into a computer sounds like extra trouble, and it is sometimes. But the extra level of control and the higher quality of sound will go a long way toward creating a soundtrack you'll be proud to play.

You can record professional audio on your computer with a professional sound card. What do we mean by professional? First, and this should sound familiar, balanced XLR inputs and outputs would be nice. Multiple inputs are an indication you are looking at a pro card. You can look for 192kHz, 24-bit support and a huge signal to noise ratio is also important, something like 100dB, although all sound cards have numbers like this nowadays.

Advanced editing applications are getting better at audio, led by Sony's Vegas. Vegas allows you to record directly into an audio track as you watch your project preview. You can even set it up so that there is a pre-roll before the narration begins and then have the section loop back to automatically record a bunch of takes until your talent gets it right.

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