American Idol on Fox - Page 2  

I hear ya but at least we can record HD and not shell out 1k+

Sure the PQ is excellent, but then you're looking at a well-lit Karoke bar. Does the rear-projection screen at the back of the set look really cheesy or is it just me? It looks like a fifty square foot screensaver.

As for the performances, a lot of the women sound to me like they're singing pretty songs in the hope that will make people like them. It doesn't work with me. I like Vonzell and Nadia since they performed some funky upbeat songs last week. They don't have a chance.

Now the guys sang some great songs but they weren't aware of what they were singing, namely the two Marvin Gaye songs. How can you not sing "Let's Get It On" without sounding seductive? I guess Nikko found a way. And back in the day "What's Goin' On?" was a plea for sanity back when society seemed out of control, yet the guy who sang it last night sounded like he was saying hello to the audience with a song. If you're going to kill a song, by all means kill ones like that Foreigner tune that never meant anything in the first place!

I set the 6412's output to 720p and watched SportsCenter for a few minutes, then switched it back to 1080i and watched some more -- no difference that I could see. I might as well keep it set to 1080i, since most HD content is; certainly the stuff I watch.

There's no difference because your TV converts the HD signal to it's own native resolution.

Well this is new.

The local splicer generated bug is NOT being used for AI tonight and the white transparent FOX bug is up in the 16:9 safe title area, not the normal 4:3 safe area. Guess they are afraid of stations selling the clips.

I did not see it last week, since I was on travel. I heard there was not a whole lot of good on though. Last night, I thought Joseph Murena and Mario Vazquez were the best. We will see tonight about the women. My wife said Carrie did the best last week.

No offense but, Hallelujah! ;)

Best - Guys - Anwar Robinson - best overall voice
Best - Girls - Amanda Avila - just because she's hot..does she sing too?

Oh, and "Hard to Handle", sung by Constantine, is an Otis Redding tune...Black Crowes bogarted it.

I agree with that but she was shockingly disappointing tonight. :(

My rating for the girls performances tonight:

Aloha - D
Lindsey - B
Jessica - B
Mikalah - B
Celena - C
Nadia - D
Amanda - D
Janay - D
Carrie - D
Vonzell - D

Overall I'd wish for the last hour of my life back except that it was nice to see Mikalah prove should could do a serious performance and by doing so, annoy a lot less people. ;)

This bug was DEFINITELY in the 16:9 area. Just above and to the left of the local station bug.

Was it the mix or my system? It seemed like we were straining to hear the vocals tonight. The music completely drowned them out.

My wife noticed it too.

It's been that way both nights this week... the voice is just real low... and when they're done singing, the audience applause just booms. It's as if the audience and the singer's mic have somehow gotten reversed in the mix... really frustrating...

Does the Idol audience have the clap? Why do they clap to the beat on so many songs, even ballads. Its very annoying.

I liked Carrie tonight as she put a country spin on a Janice song but others did not see it that way I guess.

I've seen many professional vocalists pushing the mike back further from their lips when suddenly hitting especially loud high notes in order to avoid overpowering systems. Perhaps in these live performances with amateurs Fox doesn't want to contend with undesired suddenly loud sounds going out and has purposely throttled back the singers' mikes. But my wife too is complaining about this.

I'll have to check this out on the West feed. Last Wednesday and yesterday's show were the first "live" shows of the season, and it seemed to be that they were inserting the bug at the venue, and not at the TOC, as it was faded out BEFORE the end of each segment (usually it hangs over into black). If that's the case, not sure why they did it that way -- wouldn't it make more sense to insert it AFTER the crop/down-convert for the SD channel, and use the usual splicer bug for the HD? Just a rhetorical question -- I'm sure they have a reason for doing what they're doing -- sounds like it's different tonight though from what you described.

There are limiters that are commerically available to not allow voices or anything else micraphone derived from overpowering a system. When I used to run sound at our church, we were looking into them because of one particular lady who could overpower the mic without even trying. Maybe Fox needs to add these to the sound mix, or figure out how to use them? We normally don't watch AI in our home theater, but instead watch on our normal 35" TV, but the one time we did watch it in the theater, I did notice the bad sound mix.

Tape delayed showing is on now and the bug is definitely in the 16:9 area for the west coast. Last week, we had no bugs at all - no local splicer or burnt-in-the-network-feed FOX bug.

Edit:720p screencap from last week, note no bug.

You are correct that there was no bug last Monday or Tuesday, but on Wednesday (the "live" results show) it WAS there -- however it was the regular network bug (same as the one seen tonight), in the 4:3 safe area.

Believe me, there are a ton of limiters and compressors being used in the mix for this show -- nobody would dare produce anything for broadcast by running a mic directly into a console. That said, I agree that a lot of vocals are pretty far down in the mix -- why that is, well, you'd have to ask the crew doing the mixing (and as far as I know, they're not FOX employees -- all this stuff is handled by independent production companies).

Heh; no kidding. Tell that to whomever suggested I try it. :)

I'm telling you DVR is the only way to go with this show. I just watched the whole show more or less and it saved forty seven minutes of my life.

I guess I just wasted three minutes of it typing about it here. I'm still forty four minutes ahead though :)

Sorry, but Mikalah doesn't sing on pitch. Tonight or last week. The judges - shockingly - liked her performance tonight but maybe not when they listen to the tape. Last week Simon talked about how Travis Tucker was off pitch (My Cherie Amor) when he was right on key - and yesterday he apologized to Travis after listening later to the tape. Carrie, Jessica, and Nadia are the class of the girls. Carrie is the one that you know will have a career as a country artist, but the Janis Joplin song tonight wasn't for her.

what a weak batch of chicks.

Since AI ran into House with no local break, they did allow about the first 2 minutes of House for local station ID with Logo 2 and then brought up the splicer Logo 1 bug. My guess is they are trying to brand the video and if it is sent to the stations unbranded and then branded locally, some of that video could get out on the market and it would be hard to say that it was "stolen" off air. That is my guess.

An interesting observation. I was paying close attention to this.

The audio mix on Monday for the guys was good. The vocals were slightly out front of the mix (a little more would have been even better).

Tuesday night, however, was different. The girls' vocals were indeed almost buried in the mix. My wife noticed it too: "Just as well -- they're even weaker than the guys." I wonder if it was a different mixer, or they were fooling with their monitor mix, patch or Dolby mixdown.

Compressor/limiters are necessary in live sound to smooth out the wide variations in raw levels as the mike distance weaves in and out and the vocalist sometimes screams to hear him/herself in the monitors better (problems that are minimized with headsets). They're even more necessary for TV where the "target" system often is a console TV (yes, even in this HD 5.1 world) with a 4" speaker that can't handle dynamics. And they're even more necessary with amateur singers, as the pros know how to use a mike better.

On the downside, producers and engineers get so enamored of the degree of control that all of this processing allows them that they often end up, as was mentioned, processing every channel. Percussion and brass (remember it?) usually suffer the most when the life is squeezed out.

Sir Paul and Ashley had the right idea to simplify all of this: Just roll the tape.