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October 19, 2023
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Recently my previous guest Max Flight from Airplane Geeks asked me about the best way to present a recording which has HUGE dynamic range. In fact, it’s audio from an airshow, so when the airplanes fly directly overhead the sound is extremely loud. He wanted to retain the dynamic range because the extreme contrast of loudness makes the airplanes sound even more impressive. So should he warn the listeners that the audio will get really loud at times? Or how should he handle this situation?
This was my reply:
In my experience, and in my opinion, when presenting audio/radio listeners with audio from a real life event, or even music, it’s not effective to try to reproduce the extreme dynamic range of a real life event. I know everyone loves the dynamic range and I’ve heard so many amateurs say, “Oh, I like my voice better with no compression,” but in order to present audio to a listener it works much better if you control the dynamics. *And keep in mind, you can control the dynamics AND give the lister the perceived experience of some things being louder than others, it just won’t be as extremely dynamic as the raw audio is. Make sense? So regarding your question, I would produce the audio so that the loud jet sounds are somewhat-to-significantly louder than the announcer guys and other audio elements. And if you really want to maintain a huge dynamic range and warn people of this so they don’t hurt themselves, I suggest starting the episode with audio that is “about” as loud as the loudest parts of the episode, and then just tell people in the intro that sometimes the jet audio will be very quiet at times and then it’ll get loud. And of course you can suggest that they listen in a very low-noise environment, etc.
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3 Responses
Correlating perspective:
Highly impactful theatrical (movie) mixes rarely translate well in normal listening environments. Most people come to terms with this when viewing movies with wide dynamics in a typical home environment. Basically dialog is often unintelligible at normal playback levels. The cause is obvious: viewers instinctually set their payback volume lower than optimal in order to tame potential/sudden (or consistent) impactful passages included in the mix.
Studios are aware of this consumption dilemma. In order to circumvent – movies (e.g. blu-rays) often include a remixed (“Home Theater”) version of the original soundtrack with reduced dynamics.
It is possible a person with fined tuned ears may sense the trade-offs of a remixed version, and even dislike it. In my view such remixes will satisfy most home viewers. In essence the tamed impact (the reduction of the original dynamics) is for the most part unavoidable.
I think it’s safe to say the vast majority of Podcast listeners are consuming their content on portable devices via earbuds or via decent quality headphones – and in most cases in less than ideal listening environments. My point here is producers in general must be aware of how and where distributed media will be consumed, and then mix accordingly.
You will often hear professional post engineers describe how they (when mixing) establish dialog intelligibility and subsequently mix everything else around the dialog. In my view this is what Max Flight needs to do with his noted example. The dialog should in a sense act as the anchor, and the fly•by levels should be mixed relative to the dialog. I doubt this perspective will adversely effect the intended impact.
Note: there are suggested guidelines for Podcast production with regards to optimal “Loudness Range.” LRA indicates a statistical representation of the loudness measurement over time. This descriptor does not necessarily indicate overall dynamic range. However it can certainly reflect “dynamic attributes” of a mix thus indicating if applied dynamic range compression is optimal, or not. Note in my experience the LRA for well produced spoken word typically sits between 3 and 5 LU.
For a typical Podcast I would suggest an LRA no higher than 7 LU, even if the mix contains various audio elements, such and speech, ambiance, and SFX. (If you are “mixing” Podcasts, you need to learn how to use a Loudness Meter).
Wide dynamics certainly translate well in theaters and controlled/calibrated listening environments. Not the case for typical Podcasts, especially when considering the noted consumption variables.
-paul.
@produceNewMedia
Well said, thanks Paul 😉
I would agree with this. You need to produce audio that is capable of being reproduced by domestic equipment in a domestic setting (unless it is specialised audio created for a special purpose).
Creating the perceived loudness is part of the audio engineers tricks.
It’s one of those occasions when you deliver what the customer wants, not what they ask for.