The Essential Primer To Car Sound Effect Recording

On the A Sound Effect blog this week is a great article about how to record car sound effects from Max Lachmann. Max and the team at Pole Position Production have spent a decade recording vehicles, and he shares his favorite tips, tricks, gear and techniques for capturing spectacular car sound effects. Here are some nuggets from the article...

It Started With Trial And Error

The first rig we used was two small MicroTracks and a couple of DPA4062s. To this date we have recorded hundreds of vehicles, old World War II and modern tanks, warbirds, bomb planes, attack boats, jet fighters, motorcycles, trucks, helicopters and a huge amount of… cars! Extreme GT race cars, Formula cars, old vintage cars, muscle cars, ordinary cars, boring cars, exotic cars. You name it and we have most likely recorded it. And the gear used has changed quite a bit along the road as well.

Find The Right Car

Try to get a chance to audition the car, like asking the owner to send a short video clip from an exhaust perspective with the car being revved aggressively in neutral or something similar. For games, in order to get a good result, you’ll need a car with a strong tone from the exhaust system. Just white noise is unusable.

Prepare!

By studying pictures of the vehicle you can recognize problems and prepare for solutions, like if the truck you are recording has pipes that goes straight up in the air with no obvious place to attach a microphone. How do you get the mics up there, and still keep them out of wind?

Microphones

Our basic rig is two microphones per exhaust pipe, usually a DPA4062 in a boundary layer and something bigger. RE-50, D-112, MKH8020 or even a Neumann RSM191 can work. On loud cars it can also be nice to add another microphone a bit further back from the exhausts, like on the rear window, to get some of the exhaust pipes howling. A DPA4062 works great for this.

Max also covers driving styles and finishes with a section full of advice. If you need to record the sound of cars then check out this great article on the A Sound Effect blog.

Chuck Russom FX Sale

Chuck is offering and extra 25% off his Everything Bundle until the end of the month if you use the code EVERYTHING25 when checking out on his store.

If purchased individually, all Chuck Russom FX sound libraries would cost $1,175. The normal price of the Everything Bundle is $925.00, which saves you 20%. But until June 1st  you can save an additional 25% and get all of Chuck's sound libraries for $700.00. What's more, if you already own one or more Chuck Russom FX libraries, you can upgrade to Everything for a special price, just use the Contact page on his web site for a price.

To make the deal even sweeter, everyone who purchases or upgrades to the Everything Bundle before June 1st will also receive free upgrades for the rest of 2015. That means any new sound libraries released in 2015 will be yours for free and chuck tells us that there are at least two more libraries planned for this year.

SoundBits Sale At A Sound Effect

A Sound Effect are offering discounts of between 30 and 42% on SoundBits sound effects collections for a limited period so check it out and you might be able to pick up a bargain.