Would you patch the Mac's headphone jack into a mixer and route it
that way or is internal speaker offered as a input option when making a
buss in PT?
HF
On 9/11/2010 10:48 AM, Bryan Smart wrote:
Here is a thought for monitoring speech. Like Kevin says, use a mixer with
several buses as your monitoring mixer. Computer speech needs to be on a strip
that you can route to a bus. Connect a pair of open-air headphones to the bus.
This is important. Don't use nice closed-back headphones, as you can't hear the
room or monitors through them. Don't use ear buds, as they partially block your
ear, and attenuate the sound a lot. Big fluffy foam pad open headphones are the
thing. You can hear through them, and, since they cover both ears, at least the
tiny bit that they do attenuate the sound will be even on both ears. If your
mixer supports it, pan the bus hard over, so that the computer is just speaking
in one ear. I find that one-ear speech is easy to separate out from
conversations in the room. If you need to switch off the monitors and listen
through headphones, then there isn't any problem with using good quality open
headphones. Sure, they let the room sound in, but they don't over-hipe the bass
like closed headphones do. They leak sound, but you don't need to worry about
that unless you're tracking in the same room.
You can get some great ones for $30 at Best Buy. lol. Good cheap solution.
Bryan
-----Original Message-----
From: ptaccess@googlegroups.com [mailto:ptacc...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
Scott Chesworth
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 2:09 PM
To: ptaccess@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: VoiceOver with Pro Tools
Hey Herman,
I tend to think of the screen reader as being one more thing on the list of
noises to keep under control to avoid the volume levels of the session ramping
up and up. Depending on your role during the configuration stages, screen
reader output can be even more important than the audio itself, so I'd
definitely third what Slau and Chuck said about always having the option of
going straight into your ear available for those situations. For me, the
decision about when to beam Mr screen reader directly into Mr brain is a 50-50
balance between what's practical and what's eligant, practical being you
needing to hear fine detail in a noisy control room, eligant being that
although your clients are relaxed about the way the blind dude works, they'll
be less blown away by having to shout over that robot who talks way too damn
much all of a sudden.
On a side note which is probably more to do with VO being too chatty rather
than session conduct though, I had a revelation that I'm not sure if you
already know about. With VO, you can shut the speech up by hitting the Ctrl
key. Standard stuff for pretty much every screen reader I hear you say, and
you'd be right. But, the differences with VO are two-fold:
1. VO actually shuts up on key release, not key down. Important to know if you
want it to be silenced ASAP.
2. Hitting control again will pause the stream of speech from where it left
off. It resumes on key release too BTW.
I figured this out a couple of months ago when I found myself getting really
frustrated with VO seemingly not doing as it's told, I'd be thrashing away at
the control button or just hitting it once and holding it down for the next
keystroke etc, and it'd still be jabbering away over whatever I was trying to
do.
Figured I'd mention it here because once you understand how the behaviour
works, it's a neat way of having just that little bit more control.
It's not documented anywhere I've been able to find either, silly silly Apple!
Hth
Scott
On 9/8/10, Chuck Reichel<soundpicturerecord...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Herman,
I use to go to great lengths keeping The screen reader in my headsets
but most people don't seem to mind the strange voice chattering! LOL I
always have it available to flip a switch and "Outspoken" or
"VoiceOver" runs silent to the client.
This is sometimes a session saver especially when you have a over
"caffeinated" musician in the control room LOL Always have that option
to run it into the headsets along with the PT session audio
Talk soon
Chuck Reichel
954-742-0019
www.SoundPictureRecording.com
In GOD I trust!
All others pay cash!
On Sep 8, 2010, at 11:01 AM, Slau Halatyn wrote:
Hey Herman,
Most often, my clients are fascinated by the screen reader. It's
never been a problem. If anything, the control room sometimes gets a
bit noisy for me when clients are discussing parts, arrangements,
etc. In those cases, I sometimes find it a bit hard to hear the
screen reader. I have a pair of earbuds right next to me at all times
which I can easily plug right into the video monitor which is hosting
the Mac's system output.
when folks are tuning up or warming up and I'm taking levels, I use
the dim switch on the control|24 to attenuate Pro Tools by 20 dB
which is often enough to read levels clearly. Otherwise, just
lowering the volume knob substantially should do the trick as well.
Of course, if you're recording someone in the same room, there's
probably no work-around other than using some kind of earbud.
HTH,
Slau
