When working with dialogue from multiple microphones, one of the challenges is often getting a consistent sounding tonal balance between them. This is especially true of things like podcasts where the various speakers may be using different makes and models of microphone. Manually applying EQ is the usual solution but it can be time consuming to achieve and sometimes time is of the essence when you need to hit a deadline. Accentize provide a good solution to this in the form of Spectral Balance.
Spectral Balance is an intelligent equaliser plugin for dialogue recordings. By continuously analysing the audio signal it automatically adapts its EQ-curve to correct spectral imbalances in order to achieve clear, neutral sounding speech. It can be added to individual channels in a DAW to correct each mic channel independently, or a single instance can be used on bussed dialogue and Spectral Balance will adapt its EQ curve over time throughout the duration of the recording. As a default, SpectralBalance in Dynamic mode will always try to achieve a natural flat spectral characteristic. It’s also possible to create custom target curves if required. It does an excellent job on the default setting but the amount of processing can be controlled with a percentage dial and the maximum amount of adjustment in dB can be set with the Limit control.
To be clear on the usefulness of Spectral Balance, think of it this way: this is a plug-in which can automatically equalise dialogue, adaptively, on the fly and with no user intervention other than instantiating the plug-in and maybe adjusting a couple of settings initially. You can set it and leave it and Spectral Balance will keep all of your dialogue nicely EQ’d, even if the source audio varies and changes over time. This is huge, and on long duration content with multiple microphones, it’s by far a more efficient way to achieve a great sounding result than manually going through everything and trying to do it with conventional EQ.
In cases where it’s preferable to apply a fixed EQ curve which doesn’t adapt and change over time, the Static processing mode works well. This can either inherit its curve from what’s automatically detected in Dynamic mode or it can detect its own curve by analysing a few seconds of audio. Of course, this mode works best in cases where the plug-in is used on a channel by channel basis. The curve can be adjusted by clicking on the Modify icon and manually drawing in an adjustment curve.
Spectral Balance can be a big time saver, not only for podcasts but also for roundtable discussions or recordings of conference events where multiple people speak. In such cases, the adaptability of the EQ curve in Spectral Balance can be a life saver and in situations where frequency content shifts during a recording, as can happen when people move around relative to the microphone, it’s often the most practical solution.
To see and hear Accentize Spectral Balance in action, take a look at the video below:
For more information on Spectral Balance, and the range of intelligent audio tools from Accentize, including free trials, click the button below.