Class Schedule
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Course Overview
Syllabus Review
Course Site
Contact Sheets
Lecture
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Careers in Audio
Principles of sound
Discussing Soundtracks
What is Sound Design?
Acoustics and Psychoacoustics
Discussing Soundtracks
Equipment Policies
Questions
What would you like to get out of this
class?
 What are you most interested in learning
about?
 Why are you taking this class?
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Course Outline
Weeks 1-2 Principles of Audio
 Weeks 3-4 Production Audio
 Week 5 Midterm
 Weeks 6-10 Post Production Audio
 Week 11 Final
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Requirements for Success
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TEXTBOOK
 Sound in Media 9th Edition
NOTES
 COURSE WIKI
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 Vid102.wikispaces.com
 bbrownsound.com.moodle – coming soon

ASK QUESTIONS!!!!!
Questions
What does the term soundtrack mean?
 If a tree falls in a forest does it make a
sound?
 What is sound design?
 What are stems?
 Why is sound important to film?
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Careers in Film Audio
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Production Mixer
Boom Operator
Utility
Sound Supervisor
Librarian
Field Recordist
SFX, Foley, DX, ADR, MX – Recordist, Editor,
Mixer
Foley Artist
Rerecording Mixer
Engineer
Transfer
Audio Related Fields
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Aerospace, industrial, and military development and
applications
Audio equipment design, manufacturing, and distribution
Audio in medicine, security, and law-enforcement applications
Audio/visual media for industry, government, and education
Broadcast station and network operations
Communications systems, such as telephone, satellite, and
cable TV
Consumer audio equipment, sales, and services
Motion picture distribution and exhibition
Professional audio equipment, sales, and services
Record preparation and distribution
Sound equipment rentals and installations
Names to Know…
Walter Murch
 Ben Burtt
 Randy Thom
 David Stone
 Steve Flick
 Gary Rydstrom
 Greg Hedgepath
 Ren Klyce
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Films to Know…
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Star Wars
The Godfather
Wall – e
The Conversation
Apocalypse Now
Dracula
Eraserhead
Terminator 2
Inception
The list goes on….
Emotion (51%)
2. Story (23%)
3. Rhythm (10%)
4. Eye-trace (7%)
5. Two-dimensional plane of Screen (5%)
6. Three-dimensional space of action (4%)
1.
The Soundtrack
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A films soundtrack is defined as….
 The combining of all the stems into a
finished mix
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The following chart will outline the stems
of a film soundtrack
 Stems are the component parts of a film
soundtrack
Stems
Film Sound
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Dialogue
 Production
 ADR
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Music
 Source
 Under Score
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Effects
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Foley
Hard
Design
BGs
Understanding Sound
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Propagation
 The way in which a sound radiates from a
source and interacts with its environment
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Capture
 Recording the sound to a medium
Editing
 Mixing
 Analog vs. Digital
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Question
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Before we can begin discussion creative
ways to use sound in film, we must first
understand
 How sound is created
 How we can capture sound
 Understand the way sound guides our
emotions
Hearing
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The range of human hearing is roughly 20Hz –
20kHz
Hearing and Listening are two separate tasks
Pitch is our perception of Frequency which is
measured in Hz
Frequency is the number of cycles per second
The length of waves
 Lower frequencies are longer than higher
frequencies
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Equal Loudness Curve
 At louder levels we perceive frequencies equally, at
lower volumes the mids are accentuated and highs
and lows are rolled off
Hearing Continued
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Binaural
 Hearing with two functioning ears ILD and
ITD
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Hearing vs. listening
 We are always hearing but not always
listening
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Cocktail effect
 Ability to focus on a single source of audio
and filter out others
Frequency
Lower frequency sounds are less
directional and therefore more likely to
scare us
 Higher frequency sounds are more
directional
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Loudness
Volume/Loudness is our perception of
Amplitude
 Level is a measurement of the loudness
of a sound in dB typically called dB SPL
 SPL = Sound Pressure Level
 Threshold of Hearing is 0 dB
 Threshold of Pain is 130 dB
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Basic Wave Forms
Sine
 Square
 Triangle
 Sawtooth
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Wave Forms
Sound Radiation
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Sound comes from a source (direct) and
interacts with the space
Inverse Square Law
 For each doubling of distance from the source, the
level of a sound is cut by a quarter
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Compression
Rarefaction the opposite of compression
Reflection
Absorption
Resonance
ADSR –Attack Decay Sustain Release
Phase
2 Sounds in phase will add
 2 sounds 180 degrees out of phase will
cancel each other
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Dynamic Range
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Dynamic Range
 Measurement from the quietest point to the
loudest point of program material
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Peak vs. RMS Metering
 Measure highest point vs. averaging of
peaks
Noise
and White Noise – for testing
 Noise is unwanted sound
 Noise Floor
 Pink
 The inherent noise of the space and
the equipment that will be present
 S:N
Sound Characteristics
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Compressions and Rarefactions
 molecular disturbances
27
Basic Acoustic Comparisons
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Pitch
Frequency
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Loudness
Amplitude
28
Waveforms
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Transverse
Longitudinal
Periodic
Complex Periodic
Random or
Aperiodic
29
Waveform Characteristics
Frequency
 Amplitude
 Wavelength
 Velocity
 Envelope
 Harmonics
 Surface Effects and Propagation
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Frequency Defined
Cycles
 Hertz
 Range of Human Hearing
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 20 Hz–20,000 Hz or 20 kHz
31
Amplitude Defined
Atmospheric Pressure
 Volume is our perception of Amplitude
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32
Root Mean Squared (RMS)
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RMS = 0.707 * Peak Values of a sine
wave
33
Decibels and Intensity
Bel
 Watts per meter squared
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34
SPL and SIL
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The decibel scale
35
The Law of Conservation
of Energy – Inverse Square Law
36
Speed of Sound
Standard 344 m/s
 V = 0.6 m/s * Y
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37
Envelope
38
Harmonics
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Fundamental Frequency
39
Surface Effects
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Reflection
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Diffusion/Scattering
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Absorption
40
Surface Effects
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Diffraction
41
Surface Effects
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Refraction
Check Out Procedures
All cage reservations must be made in
advance of assignments
 Audio Professor Signature REQUIRED
for use of the recording booth
 All equipment must be returned and any
problems immediately reported
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For Next Class
Journal #1
 Reading from Alten
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Class Schedule
Turn in Journals
 Discussing Soundtracks
 What is Sound Design?
 Acoustics and Psychoacoustics
 Discussing Soundtracks
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Models for discussion
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Chions Mode of Listening
 3 types…
 Causal
 Semantic
 Reduced
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Stem Analysis
Sound Categorization
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Chion
 Acousmatic (off-screen) sound
○ sound one hears without seeing their originating cause - a
invisible sound source. i.e. Radio, phonograph and
telephone
○ Either we hear and then we see or we see and then we
hear
 The first cause associates a sound with a precise image from the
outset. This Image can then reappear in the audience mind each
time the sound is heard off screen
 The second case, common to moody mystery films, keeps the
sound´s cause a secret before revealing all. (De-acousmatization)
 Visualized (on-screen) sound
○ sound accompanied by the sight of its source or cause. In
film a onscreen sound whose source appears in the
image, and belongs to the reality represented therein
Sound Categorization
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Chion
Anempathetic sound
 seems to exhibit conspicuous indifference to what is going on in
the film's plot, creating a strong sense of the tragic.
○ a radio continues to play a happy tune even as the character who
first turned it on has died
○ in a very violent scene after the death of a character some sonic
process continues like the noise of a machine, the hum of a fan,
a shower running as if nothing had happened. (In Antonioni´s The
passenger - the electric fan, in Hitchcock's Psycho - the running
shower)
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Empathetic sound
 music or sound effects whose mood matches the mood of the
action
○ In Jonathan Demme´s Silence of the lambs when Jodie Foster
visits Lecter in the dungeon the ambience are made of animal
screams and noises. The room tone is a lunatic kind of
screaming processed, slowed down and played in reverse.
Sonic Logic
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Internal logic
 continuous and progressive modifications in the sonic flow, and
makes use of sudden breaks only when the narrative so
requires.
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External logic
 editing that disrupts the continuity of an image or a sound
○ Sudden changes of tempo
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Synchresis
 is the forging between something one sees and something one
hears - it is the mental fusion between a sound and a visual
when these occur at exactly the same time. Synchresis is an
acronym formed by telescoping together the two words
synchronism and synthesis
 The possibility of reassociation of image and
○ The sound of an ax chopping wood, played exactly in sync with a
bat hitting a baseball, will "read" as a particularly forceful hit
rather than a mistake by the filmmakers
Chions 3 Modes of Listening
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Helpful in understanding relationships
between recognizable sound sources
and their visibility.
 Causal
 Semantic
 Reduced
3 Listening Modes for Laymen
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Causal
 See a Cow Hear a Cow
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Semantic
 Interpreting meaning from a sound, i.e.
morse code or dialogue
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Reduced
 Putting a sound onto an object not
associated with that sound thereby creating
a new meaning
What it all means
What should we focus on in the
soundtrack in a given scene?
 What stem does it belong to?
 Does it match the edit? The visual?
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Audio Principles
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Audio vs. Sound
 Audio is the representation of sound
 Sound is the motion of particles in a medium
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Transduction
 Turn sound energy into electrical energy
(microphone)
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Recording vs. Mixing
 Recording is the capture of sound
 Mixing is the balancing and combining of sound
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Track vs. Channel
 Track is space on a medium that contains audio
 Channel is a specific path through which audio
travels
Principles Cont
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Signal Flow
 The path which sound travels through a
device
 Examples...
MAX/MSP
Mackie Mixer
Digital Audio Basics
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ADC and DAC
 Analog to Digital Converter
 Digital to Analog Converter
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Bit Depth
 6.02 dB per bit
 16 bit vs. 24 bit and Dynamic Range
○ 96dB vs. 144dB
 Dynamic Range
○ Number of steps between the quietest and the loudest portion or recorded
material.
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Sampling Rate
 Need to take a snapshot roughly twice the max frequency of what is
being captured
 Human hearing ranges from 20Hz – 20kHz, therefore, we need to
sample at least 44.1kHZ in order to capture and accurately reproduce
the source
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Nyquist Theorem
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Must sample roughly 2x the max frequency of the source
Digital Audio Basics Cont
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Distortion – Analog vs. Digital
 0dBFS – if you go above this, you will experience digital
distortion
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Noise
Linear vs. Non-Linear Editing
Dynamic Range
PCM
 Pulse Code Modulation
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BWAV
 Uncompressed Broadcast Wav File
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Dither
 Low level noise to help with quantization errors
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Perceptual Coding
Artifacts
Methods of Transduction
Electromagnetic
 Electrostatic/capacitance
 Ribbon
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Signal Level Types
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Microphone
 Weaker signal, requires a pre-amp
 Mic level
 2 mV to 1.2V
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Professional Line
 +4dBu 1.23 V
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Consumer Line
 -10dBu .316V
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Speaker
 4V
Connectors and Cables
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XLR
 Balanced
 3 conductor
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¼ Inch
 2 or 3 conductor
 Balanced or unbalanced
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Balanced
 Minimizes noise and rf interference, uses phase
inversion, helps with longer cable runs
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Unbalanced
 No shielding
Headroom
The amount of give between your
average level and the point of distortion
 Clipping is the point at which you
exceed your headroom and the
limitation of the medium, resulting in
distortion
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Signal to Noise Ratio
You want to have more signal then noise
 Noise is inherent in the environment and
in the equipment
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Polar Patterns
Way in which a microphone will pick up
the sound
 This is influenced by the type of
transduction
 Choosing the right polar pattern for the
right situation
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Sound Theory
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Types of Transduction (Microphones)
 Describes the way in which the microphone
converts a sound source into an electrical
signal.
 Speakers do the reverse, an electrical signal
is turned into an acoustic amplified sound
○ Electromagnetic
○ Electrostatic/Capacitance
○ Ribbon
Sound Theory
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Types of Transduction (Microphones)
○ Electromagnetic
 Dynamic microphone uses electromagnetic induction
 A small movable induction coil, positioned in the
magnetic field of a permanent magnet, is attached to
the diaphragm. When sound enters through the
windscreen of the microphone, the sound wave
moves the diaphragm. When the diaphragm vibrates,
the coil moves in the magnetic field, producing a
varying current in the coil through electromagnetic
induction.
 Commonly used to capture loud percussive sounds
with very strong transients.
 Does not require an external power source
Sound Theory
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Types of Transduction (Microphones)
○ Electrostatic/Capacitance
 Require 48v Phantom Power
 The diaphragm acts as one plate of a capacitor, and the
vibrations produce changes in the distance between the
plates.
 variety of polar patterns
 Good at capturing full frequency sounds, captures subtle
dynamics of a performance
 Frequency Response is better
○ Ribbon
 use a thin, usually corrugated metal ribbon suspended in a
magnetic field. The ribbon is electrically connected to the
microphone's output, and its vibration within the magnetic field
generates the electrical signal. Ribbon microphones are
similar to moving coil microphones in the sense that both
produce sound by means of magnetic induction.