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F A L L Q 4 I S S U E
T E C H N O L O G Y
Brad Engleking: "Phase/time aligning multiple mics is now a one-click process."
You Talkin' to Me?
W
hen it comes to cleaning up
tracks, iZotope RX 7 is hands-
down the crowd favorite. But
making a dialogue track shine requires
more than just cleaning. There's sound
quality, character, clarity, and sync to
consider, as well. Here we look at two
different tools that can help improve the
dialogue and save you some time.
AUTO-ALIGN POST
BY SOUND RADIX
G re a t d i a l o g u e s ta r ts w i t h g re a t
production sound. But conditions on-set
are often challenging for the sound team.
There isn't always room to get a boom in
close, and if an actor has an amazingly
low and gravelly voice, a boom that's too
far away might not capture that charac-
ter. The lav mic will, but it might sound
too chesty or too close, and not have
enough room on it for a medium shot.
Each mic track is imperfect on its own, so
why not mix the two together for the best
of both worlds?
" B u t w h a t a b o u t p h a s i n g ? ," y o u
might ask.
S o u n d R a d i x 's A u t o - A l i g n P o s t
(https://www.soundradix.com/products/
auto-align-post/) plug-in phase/time
aligns two different mic tracks of the
same take so you can play the lav and
boom tracks together without creating
that unpleasant phasing sound.
"Before Auto-Align Post, a dialogue
editor might try to phase-lock different
tracks of the same take by micro-edit-
ing them until it sounded great. That's
a very long and trying process. And
it's nearly impossible if the actors are
moving around because then the phase
By Jennifer Walden
relationship changes over the course of
the scene (because of the delay time).
Auto-Align Post detects that, as well, and
fixes it," explains re-recording mixer/
sound supervisor and Guild member
Brad Engleking at TBD Post (https://
tbdpost.com/) in Austin, TX. "Phase/
time aligning multiple mics is now a
one-click process."
Auto-Align Post is an AAX AudioSuite
plug-in that works in Pro Tools on Mac
and PC. (Sorry Reaper fans, this one
won't work for you.) The interface is easy
to understand and overall the process
is simple. First, determine which track
you want to use as the reference and
which one you want to process. In Pro
Tools, select the dialogue you want to
process. Next, open the Auto-Align Post
plug-in via the AudioSuite menu. In the
plug-in window, click on the Reference
T ra c k d ro p - d ow n m e n u a n d c h o o s e
the track in your session that you want
Auto-Align Post to use as the reference.
The dialogue you are processing will be
aligned to this reference track. Then hit
"Preview" (to see how the dialogue will
be affected) or hit "Render," which will
replace the dialogue you selected with a
new audio file that has been phase/time
aligned to the reference track.
If you'd like to see this in action,
Mike Thornton at Pro Tools Expert has
an excellent and informative demo:
h tt p s : //w w w.p ro - to o l s - ex p e r t .co m /
home-page/2018/8/22/how-to-use-auto-
align-post-from-sound-radix-to-get-
multiple-mics-on-moving-sources-in-
time-and-phase-expert-tutorial.
Ready to try it out? Sound Radix of-
TWO TOOLS CAN HELP SAVE TIME WHEN EDITING DIALOGUE