Thoughts on buying gear

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Hello! Here are some ideas and tips that I think could help you make better decisions while buying audio equipment.

Think long term

I like to see any piece of gear as an investment so I try to choose products that are known for being robust and durable. There are always cheaper options out there but I don’t mind paying a higher price if I have a better guarantee that the equipment is going to last for longer and be more reliable.

In order to determine durability, a good hint could be that the manufacturer offers a longer guarantee period than legally required and/or a good reputation among veteran users (some detective work in audio forums is a must). It is also a good sign when a product is manufactured in Europe or the US, although this is not very frequent and doesn’t guarantee a higher quality necessarily.

Buying higher end gear is particularly relevant for audio since electronic components are quite important in determining quality and life expectancy. The use of cheap plastic instead of more durable components like metal is also commonplace and something to avoid, specially in field equipment.

Something else to think about is that durable gear is usually well known in the industry and may give clients some extra confidence to hire you before others.

On the flip side, you can’t always afford to buy higher quality equipment and sometimes you may need to opt for entry level gear. This can also happen when you need an specific thing for a gig and don’t have time or money to find the best possible option. In those cases, well, you probably need to bite the bullet but in general my advice would be to wait if you can. Flip more burgers and sweep more floors. Once you have enough to at least access the mid tier, go for it. In my experience, those investments will pay off. Ten fold. You need to spend money to earn money.

I bought a Tascam HD-P2 in late 2011. I chose this model because of its reputation and quality. To this day, I still use it as my main recorder for sound effects. It has also accompanied me through features films and documentaries, on snowy cold exterior days and crazy hot Seville summers. It has never failed or died during a take.

I am not saying the HD-P2 is perfect. It only offers two microphone inputs, the pre-amps are not ultra clean (but they quite good for their price range) and the powering options are limited. Nevertheless, it served me well throughout my first years working in audio, it gave me confidence and allowed me to get a huge return on my investment.

The mighty HDP2. Respect.

Save on the features you don’t need

I think this is key. Don’t get dazzled with fancy stuff that you are never going to use. It is important that you think about the features that you actually need and then look for the best option the market has to offer.

Hopefully, I will have the chance to record more frequently now.

Of course, in order to do that, you need to know what your needs really are, which is the tricky part. Do you prefer more channels or a higher resolution? Bigger memory or longer battery life? If you know what kind of specific work you are going to do, this is going to be easier to decide. Try to narrow your needs and priorities.

I recently bought a Sony PCM D100 because I wanted to have something portable to record on the go. This recorder is quite expensive (for a handheld device) and doesn’t have XLR inputs which for me is a big issue. But the thing is my goal is to have something really portable so I can record in situations when a big rig would be cumbersome.

So I am losing the XLR feature in exchange for great quality of audio, battery life, internal memory and construction. All of them features that are essential if I’m going to use this on the go.

Avoid audio elitism

Sound is something that can be objectively measured but, nevertheless, the way we experience it is quite subjective. People apply all sorts of descriptions to audio like “silky”, “airy” or “muddy”. I’m not saying these are not useful or that these don’t describe real properties but sometimes I think we get caught up in these terms too much.

This problem is twofold. On one hand, sometimes people are so ready to justify their purchase that they start to hear mystical properties in a piece of gear. On the other hand, sometimes we can actually really tell the difference (in terms of clarity or timbre profile) between two pieces of gear but it is so small that it’s only noticeable while soloing and/or A-B testing. If the final consumer is probably not going to tell the difference, is it really that important?

Don’t get me wrong, I still think that audio quality should be a priority but usually when investing in equipment the very expensive stuff gives you diminishing returns. You need to really expend a lot of cash to get from the professional to the “elite” level. Maybe you don’t need to.

So yeah, choose quality but don’t get crazy. Beware of mystical claims and 20K€ cables. I honestly think that if we forced people to take blind A-B tests comparing decent gear with very high end equivalents they would be amazed with how close they can be.

Your sound is as good as your chain’s weakest link

Before buying a new fancy microphone, maybe stop for a second and think about the small stuff. There is always something outdated or in a bad condition. Maybe it would sensible to improve on those weak areas first.

Sure, you don’t need fancy solid gold cables but get yourself some decent ones. Another good example of this could be battery management. If your gear uses batteries of any kind, invest in good chargers. I recommend you get familiarized with the stuff that video and photography folks use. Smart chargers are a great option since they have independent charging cells and programs to keep batteries healthier.

Audio cases (I like Portabrace) are also a great option to make sure your equipment is safe while traveling or on location. I bought my Tascam HDP2 with a Portabrace case and it’s really a worthy investment. The velcros work like the first day eight years later.

This powerex charger is a very nice option if you need an army of batteries for your recorder and/or wireless kits.

Balance Risk and Personality

Some people are more risk averse than others and this is something you need to take into account. In my case, I don’t feel confortable rushing things or spending large sums of money so I try to avoid doing those two things at once. If you are similar to me, remember that at some point you have to take the leap and is going to feel uncomfortable. But that’s good. That’s what they mean when they say “Is good to step out of your confort zone”.

When I bought the Rode Blimp v1, I could not afford anything better. It’s an OK starting point, but I would not recommend it for a long term investment. Not very durable.

If, on the other hand, you tend to rush things, well, take it easy. It may help to give yourself some time to make sure to make the right decision. Sharing your situation with friends or colleagues may help too, you’d be surprised by how much better you can see things when you articulate them out loud and get feedback.

Personally, I don’t like to buy second-hand stuff because I feel like I’m taking a big risk but if you are confortable with that, it’s definitely an option. It helps if you can check the condition in person and knowing the seller is ideal. If you are buying online, using sites with a reputation system is a must. Other than that, second-hand is a risk that may pay off or end up in disaster. So ask yourself: how much more money am I willing to pay to get peace of mind instead?

Reviews are spooky

Any piece of equipment that is reasonably popular is going to have some scary reviews. That’s the nature of the polarized online world: people only bother giving 1 or 5 stars, so there isn’t much nuance. Having said that, reviews are still a valuable resource when used with caution.

My approach is to focus on quality rather than quantity. Sure, you can found many reviews in Amazon nowadays but I would prefer to check audio forums or specialized stores first. You can also check reviews for a product on online stores that you are not planning to use. If you are in Europe, B&H and Sweetwater are great. If you are in the US, Thomann is a fantastic source.

Other than that, your best bet is to join and participate forums like Gearlutz. With time, you’ll get to know people there whose opinion would probably be more valuable than a random Amazon user.

Limit your tools

The Sennheiser MKH 416 was my first mic and almost the only one for some time, forcing me to use it in many different ways (on location, for foley, for SFX, for VO…)

Scarcity may sound like a bad thing but I think you can learn a lot from it. Limiting yourself to a small number of tools forces you to be creative, try new things and of course you will master them. Is hard to do that if you have too much stuff so my advice would be to really make the most of what you have before buying something new.

For me, a good example of this is audio libraries. If you already have a decent amount of sounds, there is probably a lot you can do with them. Doing sci-fi or fantasy sounds, for example, will force you to experiment with what you have around in terms of recording gear and plugins and you will learn far more than if you just buy yet another library.

Essential Bodyfalls: Sound Library Post-Mortem

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Essential Bodyfalls is the second library that I’ve published. This is a brief account of what I learned during the process of creating it along side fellow sound designers Grace Canavan and Pearse O' Caoimh.

Where to record

At first, we considered recording outdoors, somewhere desolated and quiet but the Irish weather quickly encouraged us to go another route. It would be very tough to find enough days when the three of us were free plus the weather was decent.. So we considered finding an indoors place. After some looking around, we found that Grace’s family had a house that was in construction and there was a room in there that we may able to use.

The place was empty and echoey but fairly quiet and mostly for ourselves on the weekends so we decided to turn it into our improvised foley studio. We couldn’t do anything permanent to the room, so we did some research to find possible solutions that would be easy to remove afterwards.

This is how the room looked at first…

We were able to get some help from the builders working on the house and we built a wooden frame and two foley pits for us. The idea was to apply a poor’s man room within a room concept. The frame, which spanned two thirds of the room, was then covered with old blankets and duvets creating both a dream-like blanket castle and hopefully a recording studio.

The result, despite the low tech approach was pretty decent acoustically. The room was now very dry although from a frequency balance perspective there were improvements to make. Firstly, the high frequency absorption was maybe too much so we removed some of the blankets to make the room a bit more bright.

The naked wooden frame.

A view from the outside.

This is how one of the corners looked with all the blankets on.

The biggest issue, as always with amateur acoustical work, were the low frequencies. We had some big resonance modes on several places. To solve this (or at least to try to), we built some DIY bass traps on the corners. We had an improvement but it wasn’t very dramatic. We decided to continue anyways knowing that we would maybe need to do some EQ work with the resulting sounds.

Props: Building dummies

Although the idea of using your own body to record is tempting, it may not be very practical from a medical point of view. We knew we had to build some kind of dummy that we could use as an action double. Something durable, heavy enough and of course realistic sounding.

We tried several things to try to create the correct weight and sound.

Mark 1 (Fat Tony): Our first approach was to use sandbags covered with clothes. A big one would be the torso plus two smaller cylindrical ones for limbs. The resulting dummy was heavy (maybe too heavy) and it sounded quite dull.

Mark 2 (Potato Man): A different approach was to stuff some old dungarees with a mix of potatoes and foam. The result was a brighter sound that maybe needed more weight.

Mark 3 (Punching Bag): This time we bought a punching bag and we stuffed with old clothes and foam. This one sounded kind of in the middle of the two previous ones, it had a good amount of weight to it but without being too dull.

We also used other smaller props, like toys and stuffed animals to give the sounds more variability and to interact with the different materials and surfaces we had. At the end, the best results were achieved by combining two or more props in a single action, we were usually using two of our dummies at a time.

Our collection of dummies during some initial testing.

Our collection of dummies during some initial testing.

Surfaces & Materials

Although we considered some others, the final library ended up having body falls on: dirt, gravel, sand, concrete, metal, grass and wood.

We were able to find some of the materials in construction sites where builders were kind enough to let us grab a bucket full of different types of dirt, sand and gravel.

For the concrete, we just use the bare floor of the room since it had no carpet or tiles. For metal, we used different pieces that we found around. We had a solid one and then a more hollow sounding one.

The grass was recorded using combinations of dry grass and VHS tapes to achieve both short and tall grass. Finally, the wood falls were recorded on an old door and a abandoned pallet.

We used a piece of cloth to contain the materials and easily swap them when needed. Something we quickly discovered was that to get more interesting results, it´s a good idea to combine different materials. The dirt, for example, had a bit of gravel mixed in to enhance the crunchiness.

Here you an see our buckets + the cloths we were using to contain each material + the old wooden door on the left.

Recording sessions

Something we learned while working on this project was that at first we were being too ambitious. We were planning to record several falls from each of the dummies with three different intensities on each variation of every surface. This would have taken forever.

At the end, we decided to streamline the process, focusing of getting nice sounds for each of the surfaces regardless of the prop used and mixing up intensities. The best results were probably achieved when combining the dummies and using two of them at the same time.

Since we were a team of three, two would be recording while the third is editing and checking takes on a Pro Tools rig that we set up on another room. This way, we had quick feedback on what was working the best.

After we have recorded enough falls on any given surface, we would record some isolated interactions with the material like drags, impacts, debris, etc… This proved to be essential on the editing phase.

The gear used was quite simple. A sennheisser MKH416 and a Shure SM57 into my faithful Tascam HD-P2.

Gear in action.

Editing, mixing & Mastering

This is probably one of the most gruelling steps of the process. We needed to process and combine hundreds of sounds to get to the final product. The approach we used was to have a master Pro Tools session with every single dummy and surface combination. We then did a selection of the best sounds from each of the takes.

Our glorious master session.

We then created a new session per final bodyfall type where we combined all the different layers of sounds to achieve a nice range of intensities and complexity. In some cases, we could even use a dull, neutral fall recorded on concrete and for example add a gravel impact and debris to create a gravel body fall.

Izotope RX was used to clean up takes and EQ + compression was applied all around. We were also mindful about audio levels and we applied the same mastering process to all the final sounds so they have a confortable level of loudness to work with.

Conclusions

In my opinion, the main lesson learned from this project, was that it´s important to set a realistic goal and focus on getting that done to the best of your abilities instead of planning to do something too ambitious that you probably will never finish.

Another lesson was that sometimes it´s easier to just pay for something instead of expending a lot of time trying to get it for free. Every problem can be solved with either time or money and knowing when to use each is key if you want to get things done.

If you work on any library creation project, something that you should always keep in mind is that the editing and mixing process is tough and very time consuming. Try dividing it into smaller chunks or assigning different sections to different people to make it easier.

With all this work now behind us, we are very happy with the results and with how the library is doing. We are definitely looking forward to tackle new projects and apply all the learned lessons but in the meantime, you can check out the library here:

Exploring Sound Design Tools: Pickup Coil Microphone

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This post belongs to a series where I´m using unconventional microphones to get interesting sounds.
Please have a look at the other posts from the series:

Contact Microphone.
Hydrophone.

To finish up this three part series about unconventional microphones, here are my results while recording with a coil pickup.

This device records the inductance of electromagnetic waves that are generated by any electronic device, allowing you to get all sorts of buzz, fuzz and hum type of sounds. This type of microphone is similar to the one used in electric guitars.

I have been recording everything in sight: computers, hard drives, screens, appliances and all sorts of audio equipment. I was very surprised about the vast array of different sounds that you can get. Sometimes just changing the mic placement a few centimenters gives you a completely different sound, which seems to be a recurring theme throughout this unconventional microphones series.

So, here are some of the sounds I´ve got. You can individually download every sound via freesound.org or download the whole package through this link.

Hum & Buzz

These are probably the most common sounds you are going to get since any electronic device has a transformer that produces these kind of sounds.

As you can hear, different devices produce different timbres:

Hum & Fuzz Effects

These two are interesting. The first one was produced recording a microwave oven and moving the microphone back and forth to create these dopplery whooshes.

The second one was recorded on a blinking electric hob, creating this pulsating alarm-like pattern.

Data & Glitching

Hard drives, printers, phones and computers produce very cool and interesting sounds. It´s worth recording them while idling but also as they boot up.

Conclusions

I´m happy with the results and I´ve definitely got some cool sounds that I will be using in the future. These could be great for sci-fi, user interface or magical sound design. Thanks for stopping by,

Exploring Sound Design Tools: Hydrophone

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This post belongs to a series where I´m using unconventional microphones to get interesting sounds.
Please have a look at the other posts from the series:

Contact Microphone.
Coil Pickup.

Continuing with the unconventional microphones theme, this time I've being fooling around with an hydrophone. As you may know, these are designed to better capture sound in water instead of in the air.

I tried recording water movements and props on all sorts of small containers, the kitchen sink and the bathtub. I quickly learned that is important to manage the cable properly since moving or touching it can be quite noisy, specially when trying to get quiet sounds. I was usually using one hand to keep the microphone and cable still and the other to perform the sound.

I also discovered that very small changes in mic placement usually produce vastly different results. On some occasions, just some centimetres were the difference between a close aggressive sound and a distant atmospheric one. I don't know if this is the case because water is denser than air and sound waves move 4.3 faster but it certainly something to keep in mind.

Finally, I have to say I was surprised by how clean the sounds were, although when processing very quiet stuff I did some RX cleaning here and there.

So, on with the recordings. You can individually download every sound via freesound.org or download the whole package through this link.

Bubbles

I first tried to get some bubble sounds. I used a plastic drinking straw to get the small ones and then tried sinking a bowl or a mug with some air inside to get bigger ones.

I tried some effervescent tablets too and got some nice fizzy sounds. 

Movements

Next, I tried some water movements. I quickly found out that submerging the microphone and trying to create water sounds with hand movements doesn't work really well since not a lot of sound energy reaches the mic.

So I tried to record them with the mic just on the surface of the water and got better results that you can hear in the first example below.

I also wanted to get some underwater movements and discovered that the easiest way was to move the microphone itself through a large mass of turbulent water. I did this in a filled bathtub (second recording below).

Steady Water Streams

For this sounds, I was trying to get long samples of water flowing that could be then used for underwater scenes.

To achieve this, you need some kind of water flow. In my case, since I didn't have access to a swimming pool or a jacuzzi, I just recorded the whole filling and emptying process of a kitchen sink and a bathtub.

While doing this, I experimented with different mic placements and amounts of water flowing in. You can get a vast array of result by just changing these two factors as you can hear in these examples:

Metal Kitchen Sink

Here are some other sounds I got in the kitchen sink.

Again, the draining sounds show how important mic placement is. Those changes in the sound intensity were produced by just getting closer or further away from the vortex.

Others

Here are some other random things I tried.

The first one is just me hitting a floating bowl with my finger. The resonance was captured with the mic underwater and close the bowl but not touching it. As the bowl filled more and more, the pitch changed in an interesting manner.

Lastly, the second recording below is how water directly impacting the hydrophone sounds. 

Conclusions

It was nice doing this recording session. I learned that mic placement is crucial when working with these microphones. Having an hydrophone is perhaps kind of a niche purchase, but it could be very useful if you need underwater sounds or want to record anything that involves too much water for conventional microphone to be safe.

Exploring Sound Design Tools: Contact Microphone

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This post belongs to a series where I´m using unconventional microphones to get interesting sounds.
Please have a look at the other posts from the series:

Hydrophone.
Coil Pickup.

I bought a JrF contact microphone a while ago to do some experimenting and see the potential these mics have for sound design. Here is what I've discovered.

As you may know, a contact microphone records sound from vibrating solid materials instead of the air. This gives these microphones some unique and interesting sonic qualities. Since we are not capturing the ambience around the recording, results usually feel isolated, without an acoustic context. This can be a blessing, no need to worry about reverb or background noise but also may result in dull boring sounds. I quickly discovered than experimenting and trying different props, microphone positions and methods of producing the sound is key to achieve interesting results.

On the technical side, contact microphones need to be connected to a high impedance input in order to have a good frequency response. If you want to get into more detail about this and contact microphone usage in general this is the place to go.

Now that you know the deal, here are some of my recordings. You can individually download every sound via freesound.org or download the whole package through this link.

Window Glass

I just attached the microphone to a large window and try different things.

The first three sounds were recorded with just damp hands, I was trying different movements and was surprised with some of the results, although most of it is just regular squeaks. 

As you can hear, something so simple creates a surprising amount of low end some times.

Next, I tried to try using a milk frother applied on the glass. These recordings exemplify very well the possibilities of these microphones. Usually, it would be impossible to avoid the sound of the machine itself but with a contact mic we are getting the sound of the glass reacting to the vibration without any of the motor. 

The first two examples show this. The other two are the result of applying the forther to the cable of the mic itself resulting in some weird and tonal sounds.

 

Metal Oven Tray

Next, I tried to record some impacts on a metal oven tray. No thing too remarkable on this one but I got nice clean metal resonances that are always good to have.

On the first recording, you will hear that the three small impacts sound kind of distorted. This happens when the microphone is loose so it vibrates against the surface of the object you are recording. This can be useful if you want to get a dirty sound.

Bicycle

I thought the the wheel spokes would be interesting to record and the sound was surprisingly heavy.

Despite having roughly the same length, different spokes produced very different metal overtones. 

I can see these being use with some dissonance in a horror soundscape.

Electric razor

This razor doesn't have different speeds but I discovered that I can use my finger to slow down the motor and create some interesting power on and power off.

There is a nice amount bass, this could be use as layers for sci-fi or fantasy, weird machines.

For the third sample below I tried to create some malfunctioning engine sounds.

Electric Toothbrush

This one is quite dull but could be used as a layer for a servo door or robot. Also, it has a weird chewbacca kind of tone.

Drying Rack

Nice metal impacts with a lot of resonance. Again, surprised with the amount of bass here.

As you can hear, some of the sound have that distorted quality coming from the microphone being a little loose.

The ratchet/castle door sound was done by just striking the different metal rods with a wooden spoon. Quite cool.

Printer

Lastly, I tried attaching the mic to my printer. The result is not very interesting but it could be nice as layers for a robot or some mechanical thing.

Conclusions

As you can see, metallic objects are probably the most interesting ones to record as they resonate more but I'm sure there are many other creative things to try with a contact microphone that I will explore in the future. Thanks for reading.