Unit 4 - Task 1 - Technical requirements for digital audio production - Aim B

In order to write your pre-production report, you must analyse the characteristics of studio, interior and exterior environments. To do this, you must demonstrate your understanding of:

• basic principles of sound and acoustics
• interior acoustics: surface properties, reverberation, acoustic treatment of spaces and surfaces, acoustic screening, interior location recording, domestic premises, offices, school and college classrooms and associated ambient/background noise
• studio acoustics: controlled environment (sound booth)
• exterior acoustics: atmosphere, wind noise, rural or urban exteriors and associated ambient/background noise
• simulated acoustics: effects
• purposes: interviews, atmosphere, live performances and conferences, presentations, dialogue, group debate, audience interaction.

You should use examples to illustrate your analysis.

You will prepare an initial section of a pre-production report using an appropriate report format.
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Basic Principles of Sound & Acoustics

Sound: Sound is caused by vibrations which travel through the particles in the air between mediums such as liquids, solids or gas. The vibrations transmitted travel to an animals or persons ear and the sound waves create audible audio in the ear cannel, sending it's waves to the brain which is known as reception & perception, caused by the brain.





Acoustics:
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Acoustics is different for all rooms, based off size, height and air density (furniture in the room); the properties or qualities of a room or building. These features determiner how sound is transmitted in it, so as it links back to sound it determines the sound reflected of how hard objects in the room are; the harder, more it will reflect and the  same the other way around. For music studios, they put soft panels on the walls made out of foam, so the sound waves absorb and break up the sound, rather than bouncing it around the room.
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Interior Acoustics
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Reverberation is the time it takes for sound to die out. For example when sound you should in a long hall way or tunnel, the sound echoed will continue for while, until that echo finishes bouncing from wall to wall out into open air. But, if it was in a smaller room, or hallway the sound will die out much quicker, and not become as an 'echo' since there's less room for sound to bounce around.
Offices/schools.


So with recording in places such as schools/colleges, and having acoustic screening the acoustic would be must louder, because the area is of classes are much bigger and have less furniture- they do not use foam panels because it's a class room. Places like this are much bigger, and these places are less full of furniture because they focus more on work, and the roofs are much bigger.
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Acoustic treatment of spaces and surfaces is where the acoustics are dependent of the size of room, and the furniture in the room. As spoken before, it's basically whether if a room is small or big, so sound will bounce off more on bigger rooms creating higher echo and acoustics, but with small rooms there less space to bounce around so the space of acoustic will be less loud. Also, if there's more furniture in a room either if it's big or small, the sound wave bounces into the furniture too more quickly and break down, causing there to be less acoustic. This Is why people use foam panels instead so when it bounces on walls, it absorbs and breaks it down, getting perfect audio for recording. This falls down studio acoustics, because they use their space and surface effectively, to control the environment while recording in the sound booth. They use small rooms, full with foam panels, microphones with pop filters and tight closed doors, so the sound produce is very high quality, and there's no echo or acoustic.



Exterior Acoustics
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Atmosphere:
Atmosphere in acoustics is when/where recording will take place, and it is important to know the specific location for your recording. For example if you wished to record on the highway with loads of cars driving, audio and atmosphere will pick up that and they will know straight it's either a highway or motorway, but if you rather decided to record it in a forest the atmosphere of sound and recording will be completely different to your intended recording. This could be defined as rural or urban acoustics, being used to record sound.
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Windshield:

It is very important to use a windshield while recording outside to prevent the audio being corrupted or destroyed because of the wind noise. Wind shield help avoid wind noise by same with the foam panels, but in a smaller form and more fluffy; the wind waves break down, and allow the correct audio to be recorded determined by the decibels of sound.
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Ambience background sound:

Ambience background sounds, is sounds unwanted for the choice of recordings. This unwanted sound can be picked up from busy environments such as people speaking and cars driving by.

Simulated Acoustics are effects which people put on sound through editing, and simulation. For example in music tracks you can hear other audio rather than live concerts, this is because in music studios, recorders & editors purposely put the panels on the walls to absorb sound, or modify it through controlled recording booths, using things such as; high quality microphones with pop filters, small room for audio recording, more foam panels, but with thing's like in churches, choirs use wide rooms and keep the sound normal with no modification to the acoustics, this is because they like the sound produced a group which echo through the big room, creating a higher meaning of music to their singing.
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Purpose:
 Normally with everything, the purpose for acoustics is so the sound produce is very high quality, and the sound created is clear and strong for things such as after effect editing, live TV shows, podcasts - radio stations, interviews etc. These all use correct acoustics, so things such as mufflers, foam panels, so they create best audio which viewers at home can listen to without no problem, and therefore, help sell their video or music video better since it's got good audio which people would enjoy listening to.