Zoom H4 for Foley & Sound Design

I am currently undertaking a sound design project which requires me to build up all the audio content for a 2:30 video clip from the ground up. I am using sound libraries for the majority of it, but I am recording some content myself.

I've acquired a Zoom H4 hand-held stereo recorder for capturing foley and other audio outside the studio.
Overall, I really like this recorder. It's simple to use, has a long battery life, and the inbuilt microphones are pretty good. The other really nice feature is the Jack/XLR sockets for using two external mics if you wish. It even has phantom power!
The gain control is a bit basic. With 3 options on a switch, you are limited to either capturing a really hot signal, or having to gain up a quiet signal.

This recorder is several years old, and not on sale anymore. A new version is out, the Zoom H4n (pictured below).

At a glance it looks pretty identical to the old one, par a new design. However at £260, it is rather pricy.

A nice gadget, but if you have a laptop & portable interface already, it's not really worth paying all that money!

An evening with Abbey Road Live & The Specials

Last night I was fortunate enough to spend the evening volunteering for Abbey Road Live as they recorded The Specials in concert at the Bournemouth International Centre (BIC). A double album of the evenings show is created and sold after the performance ends.


The live audio is routed from the FOH to a converted Royal Mail van kitted out with a mobile studio.

An engineer mixes the audio live and burns it to a CD once the concert ends. This master CD is then duplicated on mass using multiple CD burners. The CD's are immediately packaged and sold to the public as they exit the venue.

The evening was extremely interesting. I learnt a great deal about the logistics of the job and how Abbey Road Live operate. The team are great and it was a pleasure to help them.

Sonnox Oxford Dynamics Plugin, Wow!

In April this year I got the opportunity to use the facilities of a post-production house in Soho to complete a university assignment. The brief was simple: To create a multitrack soundscape/musical piece between 3-5 minutes in length. I decided to do a cover of the Kings of Leon song 'Holy Roller Novocaine' (http://soundcloud.com/sambaker/sam-baker-holy-roller).

The facility I had the chance to use was Scramble Soho (http://www.scramble.co.uk). The recording took place in Studio 5 and the sound booth. Mixing was completed on a separate day in the larger Studio 2.

Mixing in Studio 2 at Scramble Soho

The plugins available were those from the Sonnox Oxford range (http://www.sonnoxplugins.com/pub/plugins/home.htm) and a series of Waves plugins (http://www.waves.com/Default.aspx?l=4). Having not experienced the Sonnox Oxford plugins before, I decided to predominantly work with them to see what they were made of. I was immediately impressed, particularly with the Dynamics plugin. In the past I have sometimes struggled to get a compressor plugin working perfectly. I used to end up settling for a 'that'll do' setup, wondering what was going wrong. However as soon as I laid my hands on the Oxford compressor, everything made sense. It's not realy fair to make a comparison between using a bog standard compressor such as the Compressor/Limiter dyn3 supplied with Pro Tools and those such as Oxford's. If you go heavy on the threshold with a fast attack in dyn 3, the results are unusable. Transients start crackling up and it's really obvious. However with the Oxford Dynamics compressor you can put -30dB threshold with the fastest attack on and it'll still sound great, even when it's being squashed hard! Everything else is fantastic as well. The Gate and Expander are a breeze to use, and the Warmth control allows you to add some authentic tube emulation.

After using it I couldn't not have it in my DAW. As you can purchase the plugins for Native as well as HD, I am able to run it on Pro Tools 8 LE using an Mbox. The other great thing is that Sonnox offer an educational discount of 50%, so the Dynamics plugin only cost me £100.

I believe that you get what you pay for with the majority of plugins. For £100, I have got all the dynamic processing tools that I need for now, and I urge others to do the same!

Avid Pro Tools 9 & Mbox Mini. Worth the money?

Pro Tools is my main DAW for most jobs, as it's the software I've used the most. I feel comfortable undertaking a wide variety jobs on it, however I will concede that it can be difficult to use on occasions. It's excellent for accidentally setting yourself up with schoolboy errors, like hitting 'N' and enabling/disabling the 'Timeline Insertion Follows Playback' option. Other times an inexplainable issue can be fixed by restarting the system.


In November 2010 I purchased an MBox 2 Mini which came with Pro Tools 8 LE for £195. Several weeks later Pro Tools 9 was released along with the new series of MBox's. I was pretty happy with my purchase, especially when I saw the inflated prices for the new Pro Tools bundles. Almost a year on and not much has changed. Pro Tools 9 and an Mbox Mini RRP for around £442 (DV247.com), and can as much as £525 (Absolutemusic.co.uk).


The main new feature of Pro Tools 9 is the compatibility with 3rd party hardware, which I believe was an integral move for Avid to make to ensure the survival of Pro Tools within the home enthusiast market. However they have not made it more appealing or accessible to home users with the price, compared to competitors such as Logic or Cubase.


This therefore begs the question: If you're looking to buy a Pro Tools setup, which one do you go for?? Why would you spend £500 for 1 XLR preamp and software that's compatible with 3rd party hardware, only to then replace the Mbox with 3rd party hardware that has more Preamps. The software alone is around £389, and an Mbox with 2 XLRs is about £575 (DV247.com). There just doesn't seem to be an affordable solution to Pro Tools 9.

Practise makes perfect!

May 2011 was exam time for me, cramming for final year assessments in Midi & Sequencing and Signal Processing. After completing these I made a promise to myself that I'd get the most out of what was probably going to be the last enjoyable summer, before having to bite the bullet and face the real world (that or do another degree to prolong the belief that I will be young forever!).

As usual, my extensive list of outlandish plans never came to fruition. However I did stay true to a few important ones. I promised myself that I would make use of my new drum kit and incorporate it into some recording projects. I recorded the first verse and chorus of Pearl Jam's 'Even Flow' in my parents living room. Not expecting much from the venture, I didn't spend too much time on it. As I got underway with things, I realised that it wasn't going to be as much of a car crash as I'd first anticipated. Using a Motu 8pre  and my Macbook Pro as the interface, I was able to produce a fairly good recording considering the imperfect environment. It's available on my Soundcloud:   http://soundcloud.com/sambaker

From this little fun project came interest from a local band in Medway called Par Uno. At the time, Par Uno was formed of two guitarists who had written a collection of songs and were looking for an affordable method of recording their material. I was rather elated when they asked if I would be up for recording them, and jumped at the chance! As they hadn't got a drummer or bassist, I learnt the songs with them and performed the parts. In 2 days we managed to track 3 songs. The tracks are available on their band Facebook page:   https://www.facebook.com/pages/Par-Uno/232049063499821?sk=app_178091127385

I spent about a week casually mixing the songs with their creative input. Several weeks later they inquired again, asking if I was available to record another song of theirs. I was more than happy to! Only after the sessions when I was mixing the track one day did I stop and realise that in the short space of time I had learnt so much. When listening to previous work, the progression in quality became audibly noticeable. I can't exactly explain what I've learnt through these projects, but I am definitely more confident with the entire process. I suppose it's been more of a confidence boost, proving that it is possible to get good results without spending thousands of pounds on equipment. The one thing I've learnt is that practise makes perfect. The more you use a piece of software and experiment with recording & mixing processes, the better the results become!


It's too easy to put off projects such as these, but I would urge anyone who has even the slightest of doubts to just set them aside and enjoy the learning process through good old fashioned trial and error!