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My Friend, Audio

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I read an article somewhere that stated with scientific proof that people could stand to watch a crappy video with decent audio longer than the other way around. And I believe it. I’m sitting here watching the Winter Olympics with no audio at all, except for the low hum of the fridge, and it’s quite nice. That’s probably more due to my lack of interest in commentary than the outstanding job that the broadcast people are doing delivering it (my good friend in the 1A booth in Korea is going to kill me for this)… Oh, every run or two, I’ll break and unmute so I can hear the good stuff, like the sound of skate carving from 100 feet away or the crazy whoosh of the Skeleton sleds, but for the most part — silence. Same thing in a bar. A million TV’s on a million different channels, and all you get to hear is a thumping soundtrack.

I have this weird friend named Audio. We’ve worked very closely together for a while now. When we’re dialed in, life is great. Everything just sort of clicks, you know? Usually everyone is really cool when we get along. If I just disappear, most people can still say that they weren’t totally dissatisfied. At least they can say they heard something. But if Audio goes away while I’m on, people flip out. They flip out more when we are both there, but out of sync. We’re still friends, and that’s all that matters, really.

‡‡         It’s Complicated

Like most people in this business, my relationship with audio is complicated. Many of you don’t even know you have a relationship with audio, but trust me — you do. I was always surprised at the amount of lighting and video folks who got into the business because they “were in a band” or helped a friend haul their gear to and from gigs or, more often than not, were the people that knew how to plug stuff in. I was introduced to my friend Audio at a very young age, and like good friends, we play off each other’s strengths. I, too, started out as a musician but soon found my true calling (luckily) working as a squint, but I abandoned that when the video bug bit. Audio was always there, though, lurking around like my weird, awkward, and exacting imaginary friend.

I am not an audiophile by any means. I do know plenty of them, though, and they are a strange crowd indeed. And rightfully so. Always touching the gear over and over, fawning over the vast array of knobs that really do things (really, they do!), always able to provide a simple, easy-to-understand reason why the low-mid is crunchier if you dial in the 210Hz line with…Agghh — you get the idea. Someone’s got to guard the flame of quality, and if not the somewhat odd, always-personable audio people, then who? As a video guy, I know enough to be dangerous, and I know what I like. I absolutely know what I don’t like, and I guess that’s a pretty good start.

‡‡         Audio, Then…

My fledgling snobbery started when I was a kid. I sat and listened to Jeff Beck and David Bowie on my older sister’s vinyl. I listened to Beethoven on 8-tracks in the old school Kingswood station wagon. The owner of the arcade where I dumped all my paper route money was a serious audiophile. So when I won the grand prize for playing a marathon video game, it was no surprise that it was a high-end component stereo system. From this point on, anything that sounded less-than-stellar was crap. I was the first of my crew to own a CD player. It was a first generation Discman that slid into a holder for eight C-batteries!

When the iPod revolution was in full swing, oddly enough, I never latched on. I worked with an AV guy who had the 160GB (still the best IMHO) version. He also had a serious CD addiction problem. He owned something like 4000 discs at the high point of every kind of music. He was one of those people that you really wanted on your team if you were hunkered down in a fox hole getting shot at. So, we’re at some hellish corporate gig getting shot at and since he was one of the first true professionals I knew who used an iPod, the discussion as to what he had on there naturally came up. “Oh, only eight or so songs.” On a 160GB iPod. And it was full. No earbuds, puh-leeze. High-quality cans only. I thought I was a connoisseur until I met him. He never used any compression for his playback rig, and it always sounded pristine.

‡‡         …And Now

So just a slight fast-forward, and now we’re in the renaissance of video recording and playback. Feature films are being shot on iPhones. Dailies get sent out on MicroSD cards in 4k. iPods are dead, because everyone’s phone/Bluetooth/Ear Pods sound better than anything, and I can access the entire libraries of all the greats with a few gestures. To be fair, this is usually the result of the more educated of our industry colleagues. What has proliferated with all this wonderful Audio/Video capability is amateurs that can absolutely murder a product and still get paid.

All things being equal, video is probably the only thing that is the most forgiving. Put an iPhone or a GoPro in an amateur’s hands and it’ll (probably) look okay. Maybe. Then they graduate and start sticking microphones into their newly minted DLSR’s, and that’s when the problems start. Nothing can make pristine CMOS footage turn to crap faster than a bad mic, or one set to Line. It makes me insane when I have video “professionals” come into my place and don’t know the difference between “mic” and “line.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to intervene when they “just want a program feed,” only to find out later that it was so hot, the meters didn’t even work, or worse, there was no signal at all, and I have to somehow provide a backup optical recording so they could “sync it up in post.” Because they didn’t read the part of the manual that describes the little mic/line switch and just how important it is. “You did make a backup, right?” is usually the first thing said…

My wife has to get a certain amount of Continuing Education Units to maintain a licensure, and this usually involves paying some exorbitant amount of money in order to sit through a “webinar.” These are some of the lowest of the low in terms of quality. And 99 percent of the time, it’s because of crappy audio that was either from some long-retired lavalier or the old reliable on-board condenser. My other personal favorite is the “live-shot-from-the-floor-of-the-convention” videos that always spring up after the big trade shows. People — if you’re going to use audio and video together — please learn how, first, or just shoot the product and do the audio in your quiet hotel room after a few beers with your audio friends. It’ll be better, believe me.

Audio and video are going to be joined at the hip forever like awkward Siamese twins, and there’s not a lot we can do about it. People will still get angry if either one or the other doesn’t show up to the party, but we’ll still be friends, and that’s all that matters.