Sound mixing TDK with Goldwave

[CHF01]

I watched the Rifftrax edition of TDK last night. Of all the mixes I have created, this one is all over the scale in terms of volumes levels. During talking sequences, the movie volume was quiet and the riffers commentary was much louder and kind of interferes with the movie watching experience (one alomost needs the subtitles enabled). During action sequences, things of course were much louder, and there were moments when the riffers are drowned out and sometimes not audible.

Does anyone have some advice on how to rememdy this, even if its a tedious process? Or perhaps another sound editing program you recommend that will level things out (bring the highs and lows together more equally)? I use Goldwave at the moment, and create 6 mono waves from AC3 using BeLight UI. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[Piobman]

I watched the Rifftrax edition of TDK last night. Of all the mixes I have created, this one is all over the scale in terms of volumes levels. During talking sequences, the movie volume was quiet and the riffers commentary was much louder and kind of interferes with the movie watching experience (one alomost needs the subtitles enabled). During action sequences, things of course were much louder, and there were moments when the riffers are drowned out and sometimes not audible.

Does anyone have some advice on how to rememdy this, even if its a tedious process? Or perhaps another sound editing program you recommend that will level things out (bring the highs and lows together more equally)? I use Goldwave at the moment, and create 6 mono waves from AC3 using BeLight UI. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

All you need to to is apply some kind of dynamics filter on the audio files. I author 5.1 myself and have found I never need to adjust the Surround or Subwoofer audio files. The biggest culprit are the Left and Right front speakers and to a lesser extent the middle speaker. Heck, you could even just lower the volume on the front speakers (not the center speaker)... and it might work well enough. The Center speaker is primarily used for the speaking parts on most movies (but not always).

Goldwave isn't very visual for compression techniques, but if you click on the "compressor/expander" filter you can try some of the presets. Your goal is to lower the peaks (loud parts) while leaving the quieter parts alone. Like I said, you can leave the other channels alone without any noticeable difference so all you should need to do is the Front speakers.

Another technique I have used in the past (but no longer do), is using a plugin for goldwave called "voice over". It works pretty good and the trial is fully functional. http://www.goldwave.com/plugins.php . There is another thread here that gives good advice on proper settings for this plugin. Oh... and if you use the voice over plugin, watch out... it will cause your audio file to be slightly out of sync unless you trim the file at the same time. Check out the info on this forum for more info on that.

[bratpop]

You can compress it OR you can get a program which gives you six mono WAV files from the 5.1 audio, and you can turn down or compress just the non-center channels, which have most of the sound effects.

[palehorse864]

I dynamically compressed it and used the new Audacity's autoduck.

If you want really hard to mix sound though, try any of the matrix films, particularly the second. Whisper quiet sound on the ships and then ultra loud techno and other such stuff when something happens.

[CHF01]

Thanks to all that replied. I'm well versed in Goldwave and voice over techniques. I've found that TDK's movieaudio (at least for me) is incredibly all overthe decibel scale. I've tried hybridgain in BeLight, and the compressor/expander option in GW. I think I will try Piobman's option of not mixing the riff in the center channel and see if that helps. Adjusting the volume levels of each individual speaker may have to suffice, something I've never had to do to date.

I downloaded and installed Audacity. It won't launch in Vista, for some reason. I followed their troubleshooting guide on their homesite and nothing helped. I'd like to try thier autoducking feature, but the program seems a bit buggy.

[bratpop]

I think the ducking is only in the beta release, which is supposed to be buggy. Also, you're using VISTA.

[Piobman]

Thanks to all that replied. I'm well versed in Goldwave and voice over techniques. I've found that TDK's movieaudio (at least for me) is incredibly all overthe decibel scale. I've tried hybridgain in BeLight, and the compressor/expander option in GW. I think I will try Piobman's option of not mixing the riff in the center channel and see if that helps. Adjusting the volume levels of each individual speaker may have to suffice, something I've never had to do to date.

I downloaded and installed Audacity. It won't launch in Vista, for some reason. I followed their troubleshooting guide on their homesite and nothing helped. I'd like to try thier autoducking feature, but the program seems a bit buggy.

Here's a technique I've had good luck with. I will autoduck the Center track and have the settings set up so that as soon as the riff begins and ends.. the original audio goes back to full volume immediately. Then on the Left/Right (front) speakers, I set it to autoduck also, but instead I have it do it more gradual. I pretty much set the autoduck so it slowly fades out and in respectively. This works well because during speaking parts, the riff and movie is almost seemless together. When the action happens your front speakers gradually fade and it becomes much less noticeable that you are muting the movie. I leave everything else as is, and I just watched Batman perfectly the other day using this method. (also I do set up a compression scheme on the Front L/R speakers to keep them from being insanely loud just prior to ducking the audio).

[MrTorso]

I don't use the 5.1 tracks I downmix them to stereo and then using Goldwave I maximize the volume of the movie audio. I then match the volume of the RiffTrax to the current average peak of the movie audio. Then using the voice over plugin I start with a setting of the movie audio droping 9dbs below the riff audio and listen for a few minutes. Sometimes I need to raise the riff audio by a couple of notches sometimes I need to drop the movie audio a couple of notches. It just depends on the film. Most times my default settings are spot on.