Bad voice-over on tv set

[James Sidney]

Hello all:

I've laid down a voice-over and some music on a DVD project. The voice-over has been equalized and compressed and hard-limited to -3 Db. It sounds great on my M-audio monitors on my editing machine, sounds great on the small speakers of my Mac G4 (when played from the DVD), and sounds good and clear on my laptop speakers as well. But when I play the DVD on my telelvision, the voice-over sounds muffled, like it was done into a can.

The DVD is connected by composite, and the speakers are just the small in-cabinet types, but I would have thought it would have sounded as least as good as on the laptop. Any ideas what's killing my voice-over audio? (I've tried exporting the audio as PCM and MPEG, same deal.) It's almost like it can't handle the sound, like it's blowing out, but the sibilance is good.

James

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

The connection type doesn't matter in this case. (composite, Y/C, or component)

What does matter is the method in which you're monitoring. Look to your meters, and see if they're pegging during playback. If you're hard limited, it's quite likely that you've squished all the dynamics out. This could account for the muffled sound. It also could be that you've got a system that can't handle hot levels, although -3dB isn't that hot. Our house standard is -.03dB, and we'd go slightly hotter if it wasn't for oversampling systems.

Another issue is that you might have a phase issue. Is your TV mono? If so, it's possible that you've got an out of phase audio signal that isn't allowing everything to playback.
render your mix to mono, and see if that plays back.

[James Sidney]

Thanks DSE, you're a great help (as usual).

The meters are fine. No peaking. My TV has a left and right balance, so I assume it's stereo, but I burned another disk and mixed down the audio to one mono track. It definitely sounds better that way. Any chance you could elaborate on the out of phase issue?

It's still not terrific however, and I think really it has to do with the script I run on the voice-over file. I must be squishing out the dynamics, as you suggested.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to make heads or tails of the script posted below. It's for Cool Edit Pro. Anything jumping out? Anyone?

-------------
Collection: New Collection
Title: James
Description:
Mode: 2

Selected: none at 0 scaled 648527 SR 44100
cmd: Channel Both

Selected: 0 to 648526 scaled 648527 SR 44100
cmd: Filters\Graphic Equalizer
1: 1600
2: 0
3: 3
4: 44100
5: 1
6: 800
7: 0
8: 0
9: 0
10: 0
11: 0
12: 0
13: 0
14: 0
15: 6.5
16: 0
17: 0
18: 0
19: 0
20: 0
21: 0
22: 0
23: 0
24: 0
25: 0
26: 0
27: 0
28: 0
29: 0
30: 0
31: 0
32: 0
33: 0
34: 0
35: 0
36: 0
37: 0
38: 0
39: 0
40: 10
41: 36

cmd: Amplitude\Dynamics Processing
1: 4
2: 0
3: 0
4: 1
5: 0
6: 813
7: 893
8: 1000
9: 893
10: 5
11: 50
12: 1
13: 0
14: 0
15: 1
16: 1024
17: 5
18: 50
19: 3
20: 0
21: 0
22: 0
23: 0
24: 24000
25: 0
26: 1
27: 0

cmd: Amplitude\Hard Limiting
1: -3
2: 5
3: 7
4: 100
5: 1

cmd: Amplitude\Dynamics Processing
1: 4
2: 0
3: 0
4: 1
5: 0
6: 813
7: 893
8: 1000
9: 893
10: 5
11: 50
12: 1
13: 0
14: 0
15: 1
16: 1024
17: 5
18: 50
19: 3
20: 0
21: 0
22: 0
23: 0
24: 24000
25: 0
26: 1
27: 0

End:
-----------

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by James Sidney

Any chance you could elaborate on the out of phase issue?

I think he means the same sort of issue that would arise from wiring up one speaker different from the other (which might also be a problem on your TV audio setup I suppose). One channel would tend to cancel out the other due to the opposite polarity.

[James Sidney]

Thanks Boyd,

I follow that. But the speakers are integrated into the tv cabinet, and the audio setup is very basic. I didn't expect the same fidelity from my tv that I get with my editing monitors, but I also wouldn't have expected it to be such a degraded quality. Somethings not right. (Especially when the DVD plays well on a computer with very basic miniature speakers.)

Thanks again,

James

[Bryon Akerman]

You could always try it on a couple of other TV's. See what it sounds like there. You also might want to look at any audio adjustments that your TV has on it, i.e. bass boost, etc.

Bryon <><

[James Sidney]

Hi Bryon,

Yeah, I plan to do that later today. But I'm right in assuming if things sound good on my monitors, and I'm not peaking the levels, I shouldn't be getting a muffled voice-over on my television. I mean, there's no fundamental difference in how it processes sound compared to my laptop. Right?

James