10

Reviewing material

10.1 Check there are no missed edits

In news and current affairs broadcasting, many compromises have to be made. Elsewhere, there is less excuse. Traditionally, with quarter inch tape, you would spool back from the end, with the tape against the heads, controlling the speed so that you could hear the speech rhythms. A missed edit, a gap or talkback, would show as a break in the rhythm. Any missed edits that were found could be razor bladed in seconds.

With material prepared on an audio editor, life is not so simple. If the final item is transferred to CDR or DVD there is no way of listening to the recording while this is done. Transferring to DAT involves a real-time copy which can be a good opportunity to review the item.

The snag is that if a missed edit is found then the copy has to be restarted from the beginning. Ironically, this can lead to a programme being prepared entirely using digital technology only to be transferred to analog quarter inch tape so that any missed edits can be edited the old fashion way, with a razor blade, rather than having to start the transfer from the beginning.

10.2 Assessing levels

Very rapidly, the eye becomes used to assessing levels from the appearance of the waveform display. However, there is no substitute for listening to the item in one go, on good equipment.

You should also make a habit of listening to your material in the environment that it will be used. If you are making a promotional cassette to be heard in a car, then listen to your tape in a car, preferably a noisy one so that you can check that levels don't drop to inaudibility.

If the item is to be used on the telephone, as an information line recording, then this presents a virtually unique balancing challenge. This is genuine monaural sound: one eared. Check your balance with headphones worn so that only one ear is used. If you have facilities to feed the audio down a phone line, then do so. Remember, even if you have been asked to provide the material as analog audio, it will almost certainly be reduced to, at best, 8-bit digital audio on the play-out device. Lower bit rates are often used, with the resulting quality being much below what the telephone system (which is an 8-bit system) is capable of.

10.3 Listening on full quality speakers

This will reveal every deficiency in your recording. It becomes a production decision as to what the listener will hear the recording on. It is as important to listen on poor speakers. Music studios always have a set of small speakers to check balances on low bandwidth speakers. A good balance travels well. If your item sounds fine on good speakers, and on a portable cassette player, then it is likely to be successful.

The ‘grot’ speaker also reveals whether effects that sound impressive on big speakers, or headphones, also work on average equipment. A classic mistake is to use a deep bass synthesized sound for a dramatic heartbeat. While sounding effective on big speakers with extended bass response, the same sound may sound like low level clicks on a transistor radio.

There is a definite difference between ‘Hi-Fi’ loudspeakers and ‘monitoring’ speakers (the speakers that come with PCs are neither). Hi-Fi speakers are designed to make everything sound good and well balanced. Monitoring speakers are designed to be analytical. They are your equivalent of the doctor's stethoscope. You want to be able to hear things, and correct them, before your listeners hear them. This is why sound balancers monitor at higher levels than ordinary mortals. They wish to hear inside the balance. They will also ‘dim’ the speakers (reduce the level by 12–15dB) from time to time to check realistic levels on both their monitoring speakers and the ‘grot’ speakers.