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I mixing audio for a party scene inside of a house but having some trouble making the atmosphere seem believable. I have party-goer noise, dialogue, feet, but im unsure how to balance the music? Which frequencies should I remove/enhance for the music/dialogue?

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Normally you want to make some space for the dialogue - voices tend to fall most in the 300hz to 2khz range so you'd probably want to pull some of the music frequencies down in that range.

 

Other things with parties is thinking about where the speakers are and adjust scene to scene. So if your in the next room - the walls will attenuate the high frequency and only the bass will get through. Attenuating more HF as you get further away from the source of music (e.g up stairs) will make it more belivable. Different audio e.q's for different rooms. If the sound perspective changes as actors move around the space - it helps sell the gag.

 

You do have to be quite aggressive with the e.q to get the rumble through the walls sound - try cutting everything above 300hz by 12db's and start from their for your distant shots and bring the treble back for shots close to the speakers.

 

Also put a subtle bit of room reverb on the music/hubbub to diffuse it. Again the size of the reverb room effect should match the physical space (lets is more).

 

You might want to include a bit of audio distortion on the music - to warm it up and give a sense that its being played on speakers. A bit of distortion can make it sound like its being played on a overloaded sound system - rather then pristine audio thats too clean. Lots of plugins for this.

 

Or you could put a hi-fi system in an actual room of correct size - turn it up, play the track, then record with a microphone in the space - that way you will get natural room acoustics and distortion burned into your music track - then overlay your recorded version of the music, rather then the pristine version from a CD

 

Things that really help sell loud music dubbed onto party scenes is the actors performance - they should be shouting slightly and pitching up their voices to fight with the loud background noise to be heard. If they are talking normally and you overlay loud music, it sounds fake because their performances don't respond to the music. It is something you have to remind actors to do when doing dialogue scenes. Sometimes I play loud music on set during rehersals so the actors can practise pitching their voices at the correct level.

 

So with the right shouty performance and lots of bass notes booming below 200hz - your going to get something realistic enough

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Thanks I'll keep all this in mind! Any tips/suggestions for the crowd noise?

 

 

Normally you want to make some space for the dialogue - voices tend to fall most in the 300hz to 2khz range so you'd probably want to pull some of the music frequencies down in that range.

 

Other things with parties is thinking about where the speakers are and adjust scene to scene. So if your in the next room - the walls will attenuate the high frequency and only the bass will get through. Attenuating more HF as you get further away from the source of music (e.g up stairs) will make it more belivable. Different audio e.q's for different rooms. If the sound perspective changes as actors move around the space - it helps sell the gag.

 

You do have to be quite aggressive with the e.q to get the rumble through the walls sound - try cutting everything above 300hz by 12db's and start from their for your distant shots and bring the treble back for shots close to the speakers.

 

Also put a subtle bit of room reverb on the music/hubbub to diffuse it. Again the size of the reverb room effect should match the physical space (lets is more).

 

You might want to include a bit of audio distortion on the music - to warm it up and give a sense that its being played on speakers. A bit of distortion can make it sound like its being played on a overloaded sound system - rather then pristine audio thats too clean. Lots of plugins for this.

 

Or you could put a hi-fi system in an actual room of correct size - turn it up, play the track, then record with a microphone in the space - that way you will get natural room acoustics and distortion burned into your music track - then overlay your recorded version of the music, rather then the pristine version from a CD

 

Things that really help sell loud music dubbed onto party scenes is the actors performance - they should be shouting slightly and pitching up their voices to fight with the loud background noise to be heard. If they are talking normally and you overlay loud music, it sounds fake because their performances don't respond to the music. It is something you have to remind actors to do when doing dialogue scenes. Sometimes I play loud music on set during rehersals so the actors can practise pitching their voices at the correct level.

 

So with the right shouty performance and lots of bass notes booming below 200hz - your going to get something realistic enough

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Thanks I'll keep all this in mind! Any tips/suggestions for the crowd noise?

 

 

Depends what your trying to achive - you want to make sure it doesn't bury the main dialogue since it will be in the same frequency range. So less is more - I'd keep it lower in the mix and roll of the highs above 1khz to make it sound a bit off mic. A small amount of room ambiance/reverb might be needed if you mic'd it a bit close - but you don't want so much it sound's echoey

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