Product reviews, tips and more for photographers and Youtube producers
IK Multimedia announced that it has expanded its campus in Modena, Italy with the unveiling of a modern manufacturing and recording facility. The new complex greatly expands the company’s in-house R&D, manufacturing and logistics capabilities. It also adds a state-of-the-art audio recording studio for in-house sound design and sampling.
Youtubers, wedding video shooters, broadcast sound men/women and filmmakers: they all want to record sound with the best possible results. But practicalities such as pricing often stand in the way of reaching this lofty goal. Yet, equipment that exceeds the basic technical requirements – essential to even think about reaching it – is what you’ll need. A microphone is the first and one of the most important links in the chain from the sound you capture to the audio the viewer/listener gets out of their speakers. The results depend on the whole chain, but if you start with a tin can sound because of a low-end mic, you’ll never get to the full and rich sound you’re after.
Magix Audio has a plug-in to Sound Forge Pro for the Mac and iZotope’s RX 6 and 7 Advanced audio editors include a module called “Leveler”. Both allow you to correct audio levels, and now Accusonus has such a module too.
LANDR, a new, cloud-based service is to provide video editors and vloggers who work with Adobe Premiere Pro CC and care about how their content sounds with the means to master audio using an AI-based mastering system.
iZotope’s VocalSynth is a plug-in that helps you improve vocal productions, but you can just as well use it to get Dr. Who’s Daleks sound a bit more human. Of course, you can also use it to create a signature sound like Cher’s and in tandem with the Neutron plug-in’s Visual Mixer, you can create sounds that are truly unique.
In the past, we have tested and reviewed an sE Electronics V7 dynamic vocal microphone, an sE2200a large-diaphragm condenser and a RØDE NT1 condenser mic. We found the clarity and flat tone response of the V7 and the NT1 great, but they lack the warmth of the sE2200a. So, after reviewing the Universal Audio DSP-capable Arrow interface, which allows you to use a near-zero-latency Unison plug-in as a preamp that can dramatically change the sound characteristics of the mic you’re using, we wondered if it would be possible to change the sound recorded with the V7 and NT1 in such ways that they would sound more like the sE2200a without losing their own unique qualities. In other words, we wanted to know if you can make your audio sound as if it were recorded with a Universal Audio Unison tube preamp UA 610-B.
Arrow, the newest audio interface by Universal Audio has ultra-low latency input monitoring and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) on board. The Arrow is a solo processing interface, meaning it will accept all the Unison and common plug-ins from Universal Audio, but won’t be able to process as many of them as the more expensive models. The Arrow can be had for around €499.
Acoustic room correction is a process that only million-dollar studios can afford, at least that’s what many of us think. And yet, with a growing number of movies and videos playing on devices that have wildly differing sound characteristics, sound accuracy at the source is increasingly important. So, is there a system that costs less but is up to the job, nevertheless?
