EQ Settings for different athmospheres

[kazuya]

Hi everyone,
i‘m mixing "hörspiele". I still forget how it‘s called in english. Film with no picture...
The dialogs are always recorded in the studio with the same sound. I have to make them sound like they are outside, in a small room, far away etc...
Are there some EQ Tipps like in music for snare or bass...???
Altiverb helps but sometimes i think it‘s too much reallity. Without any picture i think you have to "overdo" everything.

THANX in ADVANCE

[chrispick]

Hi everyone,
i‘m mixing "hörspiele". I still forget how it‘s called in english. Film with no picture...
The dialogs are always recorded in the studio with the same sound. I have to make them sound like they are outside, in a small room, far away etc...
Are there some EQ Tipps like in music for snare or bass...???
Altiverb helps but sometimes i think it‘s too much reallity. Without any picture i think you have to "overdo" everything.

THANX in ADVANCE

Well, you have Altiverb already which will help greatly in emulating room sizes. Aside from that, use the lowpass filter in MWEQ to roll off high ends for voices behind walls, things like that. Do the opposite for voices far away.

[Spikey Horse]

Altiverb has a new set of room next door, room upstairs etc IR's

[martian]

well if we think about basic acoustics - then small spaces will have resonances at lower frequencies..

this is why we like big studios!!

If you add EQ to the reverb and put in a notch around 300 - 500 Hz you will muddy the sound up a bit like a small room...

Also imagine the space and it's surfaces A bathroom is generally tiled - so would have brighter reflections... tune the reverb differently then....

Conversly outside there would be no resonance at all as there are not enough surfaces to reflect.... maybe try cutting more low fequency from the reverb?

[rockitcity]

I do a lot of foreign language mixes for DVD's, where I get raw ADR and I have to put those voices "in the movie". The previous comments are definitely pointing you in the right direction. Set up your Altiverb on a send/return from a master Dialog Bus and you will be able to route all your voices through it for the same effect. Exterior tracks tend to sound thinner and dry, while interiors are warmer with some ambience. Be careful not to over-do the reverb treatments. Stay with the small rooms and early reflections. Also, generally resist the urge to spread out the reverb in the stereo field unless your characters are in a really large room. Most production dialog is mixed mono, so your reverb return should be mono as well for most of the dialog. You will tend to want to play the dialog louder than it really needs to be, so make sure it fits into the scene. It's harder than it would seem. If you do your job well, no one will notice!

[martian]

yeah me too! done loads of mandarin mixes of cantonese films - some of the dialog is very raw sounding!

I also spend time on foley and ambient fills too.

Luckily mandarin and cantonese almost always have syllable to syllable translation so with good foley and vocal treatment it really can make a realistic as opposed to dubbed version..

That comment about the mono returns is bang on too! I was doing that because of channel restrictions initially but it worked so well haven't really developed it!