Burning Hot Audio...and it's portable!
Audio is burning the ears of every professional and semi-professional NLE user this year, due in part to NLE manufacturers finally opening their eyes and ears to the fact that audio is 70% of the viewing experience. Adobe, Final Cut Pro, Pinnacle, Avid, and even less-expensive editing solutions have at long last added, at worst, marginal audio tools. Most of the NLEs out there have at least adequate audio tools, and Sony has long led the pack in great audio tools built into an NLE, but the chase is on with Adobe's recent release of Audition, Pinnacle's acquisition of Steinberg, and Apple's acquisition of Logic.Roland/Edirol has partnered tightly with Cakewalk and the SONAR product, and other audio/video marriages loom on the horizon. With all these great audio options available, there is no longer any excuse for bad audio in a video production. So, now that the NLE manufacturers have figured it out, how do YOU utilize these new and fairly powerful editing tools?[an error occurred while processing this directive]Got the In and Out Urge?
First and foremost, the key to great audio is getting the audio IN to the computer. This can happen in one of two ways; audio may be recorded to the camera and captured along with video images, or the audio can be recorded to a digital device such as a laptop, DAT machine, or other hardware device. Cameras offer good audio options for dialog, but for music or events with any kind of audio dynamic, most cameras will degrade audio to a less-than-ideal quality, particularly cameras with Automatic Gain Control (AGC) on them. Ideally, audio should be recorded separately on a digital device using a high quality DAC (Digital Audio Converter). However, many of these devices don't have preamps or control over the input levels, requiring a mixer or other device to act as a pre and a router.
There haven't been many options for portable audio devices with good DACs until recently. The problem with many devices is that they are USB-based, and so latency for any more than two inputs has been a significant barrier. With FireWire, this barrier has been knocked down. Up to 24 channels may be input to many audio tools at one time, using a FireWire interface. Granted, for a standard video shoot, 24 channels is overkill, but we all want great audio, don't we? Enter M-Audio's new FireWire 410 interface. Providing two channels of balanced input, two preamps, line switch, unbalanced input, two headphone monitors, phantom power, SPDIF in/out, MIDI In/Out, optical In/Out, AC3 passthru, (no decoder) 8 analog outputs, two Auxiliary buses, and software mixer/router/patch bay all in a small lightweight enclosure, this little beauty really rocks. Stacking multiple units for distributed outputs or multiple inputs is quite simple too. However, if you are requiring more than 4 inputs, multiple 410's is probably not the way to go. I'd recommend looking at other multi-channel devices.
I've always been a big proponent of doing most everything possible on a laptop, even showing up to sessions for the Olympic Games carrying Cardbus recording devices and my VAIO. Watching jaws drop has become the norm, and carrying the FireWire 410 to a recent training session was no different. During the session, we compared audio from the camera, fed from a mixer, to audio fed from the same mixer outputs to the FireWire 410 and a laptop. The difference in dynamic and sweetness was significant. Without mentioning brand names, the camera used was one of the top four cameras in the sub 5K price range that has XLR inputs available for it. And that's just on the input side.....
We're surrounded!
Of course, all the better NLE's now offer audio packages that have surround authoring capability. 5.1 audio is becoming more and more commonplace, even being found on wedding videos to simulate the ambience of the large chapel, or even recently seen, an industrial video to create the sound of being in a factory. With DVD distribution making any desktop editor as powerful as any Hollywood machine, there is no reason that sound should be any different. With the M-Audio FireWire 410 device, any laptop or desktop can now have 5.1 outputs for any audio system.
This card doesn't compete with cards like the Audigy or other tweaked out consumer cards, it eclipses them. No internal sound card can begin to compare with a breakout system, even though the pricing on the 410 is about the same as any PCI card. True discreet outputs, quiet and isolated, balanced and ready to interface with any professional audio system from a 50K Hothouse audio system to M-Audio's own affordable LX4/Expander kit, this card offers monitoring of 24 bit, 96KHz audio in 5.1. (In stereo out, the card is capable of 24 bit/192KHz audio.)The mixer this unit uses is pretty powerful on its own. Similar to other software mixers, this mixer provides both physical and virtual control of output, control of headphone levels for remote control, and auxiliary buses to send audio out to another device, SPDIF to a digital reverb or delay, DAT, whatever you might have, all software controlled.
With the FireWire 410 on a laptop or desktop equipped with a 6-pin FireWire connector, the unit is powered from the FireWire card. If the laptop (like my VAIO) has a 4 pin Firewire connector, you'll need to find AC somewhere, as a wall-wart is required.
For presentations, training sessions, on-site productions, this box is fabulous for mixing through. It could easily be used in a live venue as well, providing routing to various monitoring locations on a stage in addition to providing feeds to a house and headphone mix. But for video editors that want great audio, this box serves a wide variety of needs. The audio inputs are good, much better than one might expect from a low-cost device. With a low-gain microphone, the inputs were a little noisy, but then again, the shotgun mic we were using for this particular test is fairly noisy on its own.
Because the driverset for this device support ASIO™, the device is very low latency, allowing for monitoring of recorded audio with effects should your editing application support real-time monitoring. (Adobe Audition and Sony's Vegas both provide this feature)
We tested this box with Adobe's Audition, Mackie's Tracktion, and Sony's Vegas, performance in all three was flawless. Unlike a video capture application, unplugging the FireWire cable caused the host application to crash. According to M-Audio, this is due to the routing and relationship with the software mixing device. Don't disconnect the device while the host application is using the 410, and you'll never experience the crash. (All three applications crashed when the device was unplugged)
If your NLE doesn't have decent audio tools, M-Audio provides a bundle of their Maximum Audio Tools. For the price, these tools are quite good. They don't match up to a high-quality audio toolset like Audition, Tracktion, or Vegas, but they are very accessible and productive for a desktop video editor.
SPOT
Douglas Spotted Eagle,
Sundance Media Group/VASST instructor
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In summary, M-Audio has created a very cool tool for the music world. They are also the first in the music side of the world to recognize the power of the NLE world and have been aggressively pursuing video editors in a way that should entrench them in this marketplace. Their LX4 with expander monitor package is the best I've ever heard in the price category, far and away better than its close competitors that make their speakers out of plastic in a generic factory.
I'd recommend the FireWire 410 to any desktop musician doing his/her own recording work, to any video editor looking for an excellent input for voice-overs, 5.1 output, portability, or just overall great audio in/out features.
M-Audio FireWire 410 $499.00 (retail) $395.00 (street price)
www.m-audio.com
M-Audio does not sell direct, you'll need to find a dealer on their dealer locator.
4.5 Videogeeks Outstanding: 8 Outputs, extremely low latency, easy to use, feature-packed, strong documentation
Could be better: Preamp is a little noisy at high gain, wall-wart seems huge for what it does.
Learn more about authoring Surround on the VASST "SURROUNDED!!" live training tour, departing in March, 2004. Visit the VASST.com website for more information.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
