Recording Dialogue

It is a fabulous machine, a real workhorse, I used to be using it every day for long periods, but it doesn't get as much use, relatively speaking, these days which is good, because it does need servicing.

The mic preamp (Alice Soundtech)has the advantage of going straight onto DAT and that's it, it's digital from then on. 

The disadvantages of the mic preamp is that I have to make sure it doesn't peak and clip, depending what's happening at the point it clips, it can sound horrible. Digital distortion is just nasty, Analogue distortion you can get away with it up to a certain point. 

The microphones are AKG C1000's , quite cheap, and they do the job, they're not the best, but they're pretty good for just recording dialog. 

All the compression is done while I'm editing, I don't compress the dialog as it's being recorded. However, since using the new studios at Stockwell, I now compress slightly as the sound is recorded to tape. The studio very kindly bought for us three Focusrite Pre Amp compressors. They're lovely!

When we went to Bristol we were spoilt by having a fabulous studio, used by the BBC, rather than the cupboard in Fulham we had been using up until that point. I was able to add compression to the dialog as it was being recorded, so I was able to get a better level on to tape to start off with, fewer clips, so the audio would be easier to work with while I'm editing. 

I hope we don't go back to just me, my DAT machine and two mics, it works, it works very well, but it is much more stressful having to ride the levels when I think someone is about to shout.

What I started doing to get round the problem of unpredictable acting was to hire a broadcast mixer (SQN4). It is normally used for location recording, when you're recording film or video. That's when you see the people with
their boom mics and a woolly dog on the end of the pole. 

The advantage of that is it has a built in limiter, specifically because when you're out on location you can't be riding the faders when you're recording dialogue. It has a compression ratio of 40 to 1, and once the signal goes beyond a certain threshold the limiter slams in and keeps it from going beyond PPM 6 (broadcast maximum). It's fairly transparent unless you're driving it too hard, when you look at the waveform, it almost looks clipped, but it does mean the dialogue is kept to a broadcast spec. as it were.