making audio sound old

[lifeofbirds]

So, I have a question about degrading audio in convincing ways. I'm currently working on the soundtrack and foley for a short stylized film. It has all kinds of CG but is reminiscent of old B movies circa 1940. The director wants to give the audio an old sound. The whole soundtrack will be recorded with protools on my mac.
We thought of maybe buying a record cutter and putting it on vinyl and damaging it. This seems expensive. We also might have access to a wire recorder, and maybe some wax cylinders. There has been talk of putting the audio on to an old reel to reel, or maybe rerecording the finished soundtrack into an old microphone. Lots of half baked ideas. I know the people on this message board might have some interesting comments or ideas, and as I've never tried to make audio sound...well, bad, I thought I'd throw this out there to see if anyone has any comments, or ideas...

[stillafool]

I never used it, but I think opcode used to make a plug-in (vst I think) called vinyl or something like that that emulated the sound an old record makes; other than that just limit the bandwidth, depending on how old it is; if it's before 1950 just cut everything over 5 or 6 khz; the older you get, the less bandwidth (i think waves q 10 has a preset for this). Essentially, just cut the bandwidth, and add noise to make it sound like shit. You might want to try a microphone emulator program like antares microphone modeller, find a preset for an old microphone, like a ribbon or something like that.

[I'm Painting Again]

there is a computer plug in called the grungelizer or something..i had it a while ago for an old pc..sounded kind of good but also bad in a way. it was too predictable and not random enough from what i can renember.

buying a record cutter? your budget is that big?

i think it would be cheaper to get a few test pplates from a place.

wire recorders are cool but can be difficult to work with and the spools are kind of short and hard to come by. look into it see how much work it would be and how possible it is for you. i think the results can be really good with this idea though. it also may be too extreme for your taste.

i would go with making a few plates and damaging them to various extents and layering with the clean sound and mixing together and limiting bandwidth. it would cost several hundred dollars though.

[Randy]

Those old movies sound that way because the audio track is actually a clear bar that varies in thickness. The variation in brightness of the light that passes through makes the sound. It is a lot different than vinyl-much lower bandwidth. The pops and cracks are scratches in the emulsion.

If you want to get that effect, you could record, mix and finish the whole sound track normally and send it out to be transferred to film. When you get the film back, take some abrasives to the film stock and scruff it up some. (make sure you get two copies of the sound track in case you screw it up) This method would be a lot cheaper than getting a lathe, and would sound (well, actually be...) like the real thing.

[brian beattie]

I think the easiest way (without using one trick plug in) would be to transfer your finished mixes to an old tape machine, and then transfer back to whatever media you're delivering. Of course, the hard part may be finding the machine that "ages" it to your liking.
when you say "recording the finished soundtrack into an old microphone", do you mean using an old recording style to record the actual final music, or re-recording your finished product this way? I assume you know that the orchestration and musical style, as much or more than almost anything else, will give you a sense of the era being reffered to. If you are doing your composition with keyboards and such, but the actual soundtrack is to be rerecorded with "real" instruments, you really ought to try to record it minimally with a few microphones ( ribbons, or something even more exotic and stylistically "right", like those altec tube coke bottle mics) in a room that approximates a real soundstage. ( I don't know what your options/budget are/is...) then transfer that recording to an old tape machine (MONO!!!!!) for your real life "olderizer". I've got a badass berlant mono reel to reel, and if you disengage the tension on the tension arms (a neato berlant trick), the tape slides all over the head and the machine warbles and "wows" a bit, and it sounds like the olden days. You could even keep the new digital mix as a stereo or 5.1 contrast, so the big mono sound eases you into the olden days at the moment you edit it in. ( I know, a tried and true trick, but it's still quite groovy..)
also, you dont need to buy a record cutter, if you want to go that route. Get you mixes printed onto vinyl by a pro, (MONO!!!) damage the record some, make a digital copy, destroy it some more, make another copy. etc, etc. use the one that works the best.

sounds like fun!! You actually making some $$ from it?
brian

[psinglet]

Izotope has a free directx plugin called "vinyl." You can add scratches, clicks, hum, record warp, etc. Worth a look for the price.

[joeysimms]

You could try..

Sampling the beginning of an lp (pops, crackles, etc..) and loop it throughout.
Then play it back through a cheap tiny speaker and record it.

[NewYorkDave]

I don't think trying to make it sound like an old damaged vinyl record is what he's after. He said he wants it to sound like an old film. I would try limiting the bandwidth to 3 or 4kHz and adding some hiss and occasional random popping or clicking sounds. Watch an old ('30s or '40s) movie and you'll notice that constant hiss and a lack of upper treble are two distinguishing characteristics of the soundtracks of that era.

To be convincing, the hiss itself should also be bandwidth-limited to 8 or 10kHz maximum. If the hiss contains too many upper high frequencies, it gives the psychoacoustic effect of making everything sound brighter, thus ruining the intended effect.

[AGCurry]

One element of soundtracks from old "cheap" movies is the lack of close miking for dialogue. There is a lot of room sound and noise, plywood booming and creaking, etc.. So it seems that one part of your process might involve physically recreating that environment and rerecording there. You could even have someone carry the speaker around, following the original blocking of the filmed script. Good luck!

[dbc]

My Roland VS 840 has a scratchy record setting. Check out other VS machines...

[NewYorkDave]

Or, you could actually record the dialogue during the filming with a boom mic instead of rerecording later. (What a concept!). You could also shoot it on film and take the print and grunge up the optical soundtrack with scratches, contaminants, etc.

[luckybastard]

yeah...the 840's is pretty good...i haven't used it as of yet, thinking about using it on my current recordings. if im not mistaken, they have tape sound and old record sound and a few others. pretty controllable also.

[friendlybunny]

My only suggestion is to a/b your mix with an old soundtrack you think it should sound like. I think you could easily get an old sound on protools. All you need is eq, compression, some hiss, and make it mono. Don't be afraid to make the mix uneven too. If everything is well balanced, then it will sound fake.

I hate fake vinyl sounds, and fake film scratches on video (when it's done poorly).

[soundguy]

Thwere are some questions pertaining to the bigger picture that you might want to address before driving yourself nuts. What is the finishing medium for the short? who is the post house doing the transfer? Get on the phone and talk to the post house and find out what they can do for you. Your job as a "designer" (ahem) should be to get the thing sounding as good as possible and THEN deal with the shortcomings of the storage medium. Ive heard this idea beofre, Ive been hired to do the same job in the past and the sound you are after is nothing more than the sound of the medium. The guys that made films during the studio system heyday were this wierd thing called professionals working with the best gear they had which was handled with a superior standard to anything that you could imagine in film production today. The "old" sound you hear is a poorly cared for optical sound track being played back and monitored on a system that has resolution that simply didnt exist in the 40's or 50's. So, back in the day, the playback system was designed to more or less play back the bandwith available, our modern system plays back a much wider bandwith and is therefore amplifying stuff that 1940's dudes never heard.

Talk to your post house about transfering to a 16mm optical soundtrack and using an older optical reader to reload the sound into your computer, or whatever. If you can avoid the step of going to mag stock you should, its not going to really add much. I would worry about making it sound as good as possible on your end and then relying on the transfer house to give you an optical print and see where that takes you. There will be plenty of people inadvertently making your work sound terrible down the line, you shouldnt strive for that in the beginning...

Vinyl is not the sound you are after. If anything, it will make your stuff sound BETTER if properly cut. You want a MONO optical soundtrack on 16mm stock. If Yale Labs is still in business, I would bet that they could do it for you, but you migth also try calling fotokem in burbank and seeing if they have any ideas. If you are doing a digital online for video you should see if they can prepare your soundtrack optically and play that back at the online session. But the name of the game is bandwith limiting, most of that stuff was recorded by ardent professionals with a black tie and everything, its the storage medium that gives it the sound.

dave

[cactus]

First thing I'd do is go buy the Buffalo '66 Soundtrack. Vincent Gallo does flawlessy (or flawfully, maybe) what you're trying to achieve. Study it.

Then, I'm with NewYorkDave - limit your bandwith - I think BIAS was not even discovered until the post-Film Noir era.

3rd thing (and probably most helpful) would be to get one of the $99 Tascam Portastudio units and run all your tracks through there - they're so shitty, have no dynamic range, and have lots of WOW and Flutter. The audio is all crackly like the oxide is worn completely off the tape, and there's hiss galore. Your sounds will come out sounding like a LeadBelly record!! You'll be surprised by how antiqued your audio becomes.