Avoiding hot sound effects in the era of “WFH”.
I’m no audio genius (despite my hopes and dreams), but I enjoy sound design quite a bit. Despite my hours in Media Composer, I’ve only just recently been enlightened to the Audio Tool. Embarrassingly, it’s something I’ve overlooked for years until now. I think the only time I even thought about it was when I was reading ‘Media Composer Editing Essentials’ while first learning the software. Guess I should have paid attention when I was reading the book; nevertheless, the Audio Tool has at last become an editing essential I can’t do without.
My home computer speakers are pretty much trash compared to the monitors I’m accustomed to, so I work in headphones exclusively. Pre-pandemic, you tailored the sound to the room which directors and producers viewed the cut. Now working remotely, everyone is mostly using headphones, which are all different brands and models as well. One common issue arises when editors and assistant editors send audio work back and forth: SFX might sound good in one pair of headphones or speakers and too loud in another.
Enter the Audio Tool.
For the project I’m on currently, this is what we’ve used to keep the sound design uniform. Measuring with the Audio Tool, we keep the summation of SFX tracks around -14 dB, peaking no higher than -8 dB. This ensures that dialog isn’t getting buried either, which may hover around -8 dB and peak at -4 dB maximum. This process prevents sounds from getting too unruly, especially if doing sound design on busier scenes is causing ear fatigue. The Audio Tool is kind of like a compass, making it easier to maintain a frame of reference in headphones. I like to keep it open next to the record monitor so my eyes don’t travel across the screen since I’m checking it frequently.
Lastly, because you’re limiting headroom, it forces you to feature only the best parts of your sounds. Your audio, and therefore the edit overall will benefit.
I use beyerdynamic’s DT 770 PRO (80 Ohm) headphones, which have a neutral sound and good separation between lows, mids, and highs. I suspect these cause less ear fatigue than other headphones because I can easily edit with them all day.