Need Suggestions on Mixing for Television

[Stratman]

I have just completed writing a theme for a TV show. I was wondering if anyone out there could give me some advice on the best way to approach mixing it. Should I use more compression and make the mix brighter, etc. What is the comp ratio commonly used on television?

Records are one thing but TV is something else (I think).

Thanks for any input.

[Mike Tholen]

I do alot of stuf for TV and I must say that I really just try to make it sound great with out compression or any weird treatment from me.
I try to make it "pop" like a "record" would aswell.
ever hear a tune that sounded great on cd being played through your TV? well did it sound unexpectantly weird/strange? considering what the signal has to go through, the answer is, no.
just make it sound flippin' bloody great!
and that will transfer through to the TV speaker.
and just to state the bloddy obvious.
check mono compatibility.
I do this whether I'm mixing for TV or not.
I maintain a common practice of shutting off my right speaker and mixing in mono out the left. images/icons/shocked.gif

[joy4u]

I made hundreds of TV advertising musics.
At the beginning i tried to make a "TV sound" and the result was not so nice.
Then i just did like Mike, just the best sounding music.

The only tip is that today's TV music (and speech) has an incredibly strong high energy!
At the end of a satisfying mix i boost the 10-20k by several dB, depending on the music.

[DigiDawg]

Stratman,

I'm wondering if your final mix is the one that is going to air, or is the music being sent to a Post House to be mixed with other elements?

I do a fair chunk of mixing of TV commercials and all our elements come in "clean" so that we can effect them as we need to for the final mix. For final mix we, literally, reference through a ****** mono TV speaker since , in essence, that is still a real world normative.

The signal gets compressed heavily and there's an L1 across the Master fader that refuses to go past -6 It's bloody loud.

So, if you were to send the tracks to me, I'd ask that it be mixed like any CD would, and I'd probably ask for stems as well - just in case.

Hope that is of some assistance....

DigiDawg

[donimon]

I do composing for TV as well. If it's pop/rock, I agree with all - make it sound great - and compress it pretty hard - you want the theme song to jump out pretty loud. If it's underscore stuff, watch the drums. I recently scored a show with a tribal/ethnic score and had these big booming film score drum hits, and even though they sounded great loud, it was tough getting the rest of the music up to a good level because the drums were peaking everything.

[Stratman]

I love the DUC. Thank you all for the valuable input. I was hoping that I could treat it as a typical mix but I just wanted to make sure because I am in unknown territory in TV land.

I will apply all of the above and of course use my best judgement accordingly. It's great to be able to access the experience of pro's in such an immediate format as the DUC.

-"DigiDawg
I'm wondering if your final mix is the one that is going to air, or is the music being sent to a Post House to be mixed with other elements?"-

It is the theme song so right now they are having me add the additional FX that will tie into the visuals so I am not sending stem mixes as far as I know, but I will keep this advice in mind.


-"donimon, I do composing for TV as well. If it's pop/rock, I agree with all - make it sound great - and compress it pretty hard - you want the theme song to jump out pretty loud. If it's underscore stuff, watch the drums."-

Right now the unscore section of the piece is in the first 8 seconds and I composed it without drums in that section so it won't compete with the voiceover.

-"Mike Tholen
I do alot of stuf for TV and I must say that I really just try to make it sound great with out compression or any weird treatment from me. I try to make it "pop" like a "record" would aswell. ever hear a tune that sounded great on cd being played through your TV? well did it sound unexpectantly weird/strange?"-

Actually Mike, I do have one instance of TV unexpectanted weird/strangeness. Meat Loaf's song, "Anything For Love" (1993). The track was very dynamic and whatever MTV was doing with gating at that point made the audio have dropouts from the gating in the quite sections of the song. The theme I wrote does not have extreme dynamics like that so I guess I don't have anything to worry about in that regard, but it was one of the reasons I posted my question in the first place. Unexpectanted weird/strangeness can happen with TV audio (or at least did in 1993). I will take your advice Mike and do my best to make the track rock like any other mix I would do.


Thanks again one and all for taking the time to respond.

[dBHEAD]

You want to put a low cut filter on the master fader -- cut everything below 100 Hz (there are some who would say everything under 150 Hz because less than 1 percent homes actually have a surround system set up and the even TVs with stereo speakers rarely can reproduce lows under 150 Hz). You might also try boosting about 2 dB between 500 Hz and 2 kHz.

As far as compression, it actually doesn't matter that much because most TV audio is heavily compressed at the trasnmitter (or just before the transmitter). The FCC has specific maximum audio levels, and nearly every station on the air likes to keep their audio near that maximum. Viewers find substantial changes in volume levels to be annoying.

By the way, one thing about that suggestion of boosting between 500 Hz and 2 kHz. It's possible that might might not be a good idea for music. It's a common curve for TV commercials and other TV audio, but that's because that's the range TV speakers can usually reproduce with the highest detail, and also the range for human voices. If there will be a voice-over, they'll probably boost that range when they have the whole thing mixed together anyway.

[jimlongo]

Gottta disagree with some of the reccomendations to compress/limit your mixes heavily.
Most TV stations have lots of signal processing that will if fed a heavily squashed signal further limit it before sending it out to their transmitter. This can result in levels well below the surrounding program level.
Sometimes less is more.

[Brent Hahn]

As to the suggestion that you whack all the lows under 150, I don't think you really need to. But make sure you don't have lots of ultra-lows going on, a la hip hop. Check out MTV and BET for a sad lesson in how a broadcast limiter will react to that stuff.

And if you want to roughly simulate the effects of a typical cable TV signal path, set your pans to 10 and 2, lo-pass everything above 4k or so, set your limiter's threshold to always and its release to never.

[CO2]

Hey strat:

Mixing for TV is a different beast than mixing music due to the limitations of the broadcast medium.

But I agree with DigiDawg. If you are supplying a track as a source element to a post mixer, just do your usual mix. Let the post guys do their job.

As Jim Longo pointed out, peaks can induce SEVERE limiting in most broadcast compression schemes.

A touch of peak compression is fine. Probably no more than 2 or 3 to 1 in the digital world.

If you reduce only the peaks, and make sure you watch your levels, you should be pleased with the results of your mix when it is broadcast.

Best Regards

In reverant quest of the final db

[Mike Tholen]

Here's a few samples of some stuff I've done for TV.
none, I repeat none of it was filtered/heavily compressed/limited, and no weird eq treatment.
just plain old good sounding tracks.
what happens after I'm done with it? who knows, but at least my job was done correctly. http://genuinemusicinc.com/
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[PT2GO]

Run your mixes through your MAC speaker to test your mixes.
This is a regular test for me even if I'm not mixing for TV.

I run headphone out of my Apogee (you could use your board or whatever) into a boom box that has a line in. Then I have an 1/8" cable run to the input on the MAC.

When mixing, there's always a signal going to the boom box. I just plug in the 1/8" into the boom box headphone out when I want to listen to the MAC and use the box volume. It's sort of the old Studer-speaker trick.

Instant TV reference.

Oh btw, all TV shows that I've worked with insist on no more than 10dB dynamic range. This is mainly live music shows that have talking in between music. That may be different for what you're doing...

[Stratman]

Thanks guys...keep it coming. This is been very educational and helpful. Is there any way to simulate TV compression to get an idea of how the mix will sound from the boob tube?

[mike connelly]

I'd agree with the notion of just mixing normally - when you send it to the post house, they'll do whatever tweaking it needs to be optimized for TV.

Mike