Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1262492
64 C I N E M O N T A G E "Home Work" CONTINUED FROM PAGE 60 studio. But the reduction of processing power requires an increase of patience. He said, "I see a 'beach ball' more often at home than I do in the editing room. I'm al- ways hoping that it's not going to crash!" Brooks is editing the music on the upcoming f ilm "Unhinged," and he's working with composer David Buckley, who is in Andorra, a small country in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. "David has been working remotely the whole time, and my support with him was going to be on the internet no matter what," said Brooks. Currently, they're only working with demo tracks in stereo, so it's not as taxing on his system as the full 5.1 stems (a set of 45 split-out instrument tracks) would be. "At this point, it's more like work-in- progress stuff for the director to review," B ro o k s s a i d . " I ' m m o s t ly m i x i n g o n headphones right now, which is kind of odd. Usually, mixing on headphones isn't good for playing back on speakers be- cause your point of reference is so much different when you're listening through headphones. But these demos I'm doing now are being reviewed on computers with headphones, anyway, so it works." When it comes to mixing on head- p h o n e s , r e - r e c o r d i n g m i x e r B r u c e B u e h l m a n f r o m 2 0 t h C e n t u r y Fo x / Disney Studios has a tried-and-true setup he's been using for remote mixing since 2014. It's the Smy th Research Realiser A8 surround processor paired w i t h t h e Smy t h - re co m m e n d e d Sta x SRS-2170 headphone/amplifier set or Sta x 3 170 h e a d p h o n e /a m p l i f i e r s e t . "Stax headphones (made in Japan) are electrostatic, open headphones. They're extremely neutral so they don't color the sound that is being produced by the Realiser," Buehlman said. The Realiser A8 is able to replicate a mix environment by applying process- ing to the output signal that feeds the headphones. The processing is based on calibrations that were captured by the user for a particular space. The process- ing also incorporates head-tracking, so the sound can change when you turn your head just as it would if you were in the real space listening through speakers. Buehlman explained, "The unit comes with its own microphones for calibration and built-in capturing software that you bring to a dub stage or near field mixing room that you want to capture. You put the microphones in your ears, like earbuds, and face straight toward the front speakers. It plays frequency sweeps through the stage's speakers, and it has you look at different speakers in the front so it can track your head movement. Then, you put the headphones on over the microphone earbuds and it does the same exact test." The best way to test the accuracy of the processing — to see how faithfully it reproduces that mix environment — is to do an A /B comparison. According to Buehlman, when you're capturing a room, you have the ability to instantly sw i tc h b e twe e n t h e s p e a ke rs i n t h e room and the headphones. When the head-tracking reference unit (centered in front of the listener) sees the head-track- er on the headphones, the sound is played through the headphones. When you take the headphones off, and it doesn't see the tracker anymore, then it will automati- cally switch to the speakers. You can use any sound — pink noise, music, dialogue, etc. — and solo a specific speaker, like the left rear surround, if you'd like. "I'll take the headphones on and off without mov- ing my head and it's the same frequency response, it's the same level, it's the same reverb time, and it's in the same position relative to my ears. It's extremely faith- ful," he said. To get the best results from the Real- iser A8, Buehlman strongly recommends capturing profiles of your favorite mixing environments. "If you're used to mixing on a particular stage, you want to capture that space. The generic profiles aren't the way to go. Capturing the real rooms was the only option for me and it has served me really well." Another bonus is that one A8 system will independently head-track sound for two mixers, and with inputs for eight channels of discrete audio, you can mix in 7.1 and below. Need to mix in Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, or Auro 3D? Smyth's Re- aliser A16 can virtualize and head-track 24 virtual sound source positions for one mixer, and 16 virtual sound source positions for two mixers independently. "The nice thing about the Realiser is I can capture the rooms I want. And because I did it, I know that it is faithful to the room. I think this is an extremely viable solution for remote mixing and pre-dubbing, especially for lower-budget projects that might be unsupervised, or minimally supervised," said Buehlman. For those with the extra space and construction know-how, another option to mixing remotely is to build a home mixing studio, which is what Formosa Andy Koyama.