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Professional Dialog Editing/Mixing

J

joelhinojosa

I'm a professional editor, and as of late I've been getting more and more into dialogue editing and dialogue mixing.

I've been trying to identify a specific characteristic I've observed in almost every professional dialogue track.

It seems as though it might be part of a signal chain, but I've yet to figure out what exactly it is.

In dialogue the two main areas where it's effects are most heard are the low end frequencies in voices, particularly gritty voices, or when someone uses a hard consonant at the beginning of a word.

I even hear it's effects in the case of some hard sounds: folders being flicked, doors closing, footsteps, etc.

I've scoured forums to attempt to identify what creates this characteristic but I haven't been able to. It doesn't seem in line with any EQs, Compressors, Expanders, Limiters, Noise Reduction, or De-essers that I've tried. I feel like it's possible that it may have to do with the combination of these, but again, I'm not sure.

I've posted a few professional examples that should illustrate what I'm getting at. And a clip from an independent project that does not poses this quality.

https://soundcloud.com/joelhinojosa/sets/dialog-editing

First does anyone understand what I'm getting at?
And second does anyone know how this particular quality is achieved?
 
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Certainly there are obvious differences between the independent dialogue and the other examples but there are many differences and I'm not entirely sure which specific difference you are referring to.

On the independent dialogue there are some noticeable weak areas in the frequency response, particularly in the low mid freqs, reminiscent of comb-filtering issues. This is most probably caused by the original production sound recording and usually avoided by an experienced professional production sound team using high quality equipment. It's often (but not always!) possible to cure or at least improve this problem in audio post but usually requires quite advanced use of EQ.

joelhinojosa said:
It doesn't seem in line with any EQs, Compressors, Expanders, Limiters, Noise Reduction, or De-essers that I've tried. I feel like it's possible that it may have to do with the combination of these, but again, I'm not sure.
Click to expand...

The processing chain is obviously playing a significant role in the differences and, unless you have access to extremely high quality processors, the processors you have tried would not be capable of the same quality as the processors used by commercial re-recording mixers. Of course, it's not just the tools of the trade, dialogue recording, editing and mixing are all individual specialist roles and very highly skilled specialist roles at that! All three roles each require years of learning/apprenticeship/experience/talent of using the best equipment before you get the opportunity to work on well budgeted commercial projects. So it's extremely unrealistic to believe that it's possible for a single relatively inexperienced and ill-equipped person to fulfill all these roles to a high or even decent commercial standard.

Not sure if I've answered your question but it's the best I can do with the information provided. I have presumed that when you said "low end frequencies" you meant mid/low mid frequencies as there isn't really any low frequency content in the examples of professional quality dialogue. Can you be more precise about what aspect of the sonic quality you are referring to?

G
 
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