"The DNS 2™ took away a lot of my headaches as a FOH Sound Engineer"
Frederick Norén's Story

How the CEDAR DNS 2 helps Flash Feruccio to eleminate spill and ambient noise

Live streaming on YouTube for an international energy company at the Studio Black Box in Malmö.

Frederick Norén is a Senior Sound Supervisor/Engineer and YouTuber with more than thirty years experience. His technical prowess has seen him sound-supervise two American presidents, mic the Dalai Lama, and work at several conferences for the United Nations and the European Union.

Originally based in Sweden, his work has taken him around the globe to the US, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Africa and many European countries. For the past 15 years, he's been sound-supervising large corporate events for companies that include Volvo, Nobel Biocare, Ericsson, AstraZeneca, Samsung, Amazon, and Microsoft. So when we learned that he was using a CEDAR DNS 2, we couldn't wait to hear his story.

The Challenge

We began by asking about the challenges that led him to use the DNS 2 and, as you'd expect, achieving proper speech intelligibility was the major challenge.

At different venues, Frederick struggled with challenging speaker systems and speaker positioning, troublesome room acoustics, lectern microphones and inexperienced presenters. In his words, "No matter how much I tuned the PA and notched out feedback, I was still walking a tightrope as I strove to achieve a strong, natural and engaging speech sound for the audience. I just want it to be 'there' without sounding dull or too processed. The audience shouldn't think about it, just engage with what's being said on stage."

"If mixing live music is all about creating emotions, mixing corporate events is all about conveying the message. It's black or white, either the audience hears what the presenter says on stage, or they don't … or there's feedback."

"Naturally, I was using everything in my toolbox to try to achieve the best possible speech sound, using things such as auto-mixing, expansion on every channel, and layers of multiband compression. It worked well, but sometimes I had to deal with soft talkers on stage, or presenters walking into the audience, or challenging lectern microphones that were being pushed around. I had used older CEDAR hardware when doing sound editing, so I knew about the strength of the noise reduction process. So when I saw the release of the DNS 2 hardware I got really excited."

The Solution

When asked how he'd started using DNS 2, he reminisced, "I remember the first time I used it. I'd borrowed it from the Danish distributor, Finn at Interstage, and used it at a big conference with 3,000 attendees. I had a bunch of head mics and two lecterns in Hall A (3,500 square metres with a ceiling height of nine metres) at the Bella Center in Copenhagen - a huge international venue. It only took me half a day to realise that I had to start saving up to buy the DNS 2, because it took away a lot of my headaches as a FOH sound engineer."

"Eight years later, it's with me on basically every gig - no matter if the client pays for it or not - because it makes my work life so much easier. I'm still using it the same way with head mics (and sometimes, hand mics) mixed post fader and sent through channel one on the DNS 2, usually with 6dB noise reduction. Channel two is reserved for lectern microphones which require stronger processing, often 12dB noise reduction - on rare occasions reaching 20dB which is the maximum noise reduction and still sounds much better than without processing. Also, it's very simple to insert via the analogue or digital connections. (It would be great to have Dante connectivity too, but this can be achieved using the Audinate AVIO AES/EBU hardware.)"

"It took me only half a day to realise that I had to start saving up to buy the DNS 2, because it took away a lot of my headaches as a FOH sound engineer."

"What the noise reduction provides is a much easier work life. Because no matter if I'm dealing with a nervous, soft talker on stage, or a head mic that has been mis-positioned on the chin, the CEDAR noise reduction provides me 6-8dB of extra headroom before the sound starts to sound 'roomy' in the PA system."

"I can go on about the benefits including much less cable noise, much less clothing rustling and basically no headband noise from the head mics. To be honest, none of that has bothered me since I started using the CEDAR DNS 2."

Interesting experiences

We recognised Frederick's enthusiasm when talking about DNS 2, so we asked if there were any experiences he'd like to share. "Well, throughout the years that I've used the DNS 2, there have been many occasions where it saved my day. On one occasion, I had a presenter standing beside the lectern, leaning on it with his right hand, speaking straight to the audience with the podium microphone pointing 90 degrees to the side of him - and I was able to get the sound working with proper tuning of the PA, good-sounding speakers above him and the DNS 2 attenuating the background noise. The streaming guy next to me had his headphones on, just looked at me and asked 'How the heck are you able to get that sound?'. At first, I told him it was my 'magic fingers' … then I showed him the CEDAR magic box.'"

"I remember another conference where the hall was 12 meters high and we were using the ceiling speakers hanging ten meters up in the air, playing straight down onto the audience AND the stage. Due to reasons beyond my control, for one section of the conference I had to use four omni-directional head mics on stage, so I told my A2 that we ' have to go tight with the mic positions, otherwise we're screwed'. We were really walking a tight rope, but with tight forward mic positioning, a bit of luck with the presenters' output, and A LOT of CEDAR noise reduction - we were able to pull it off. Without noise reduction, it would have been impossible."

"Another time, I was hired to record voiceovers in a black box for a film production company. So I figured I could make good use of the DNS 2, and I turned out to be right. It was a pretty large room with stone walls covered with black theatre fabric. Stone-hard walls, ceiling and floor, with no acoustic treatment except for the fabric! So I set up a pop screen and a shotgun microphone, connected the mic to the DNS 2 and made use of the built-in phantom power and microphone amplification. I had to dial in 6 or 8dB of noise reduction before the low frequency standing waves were cleaned away - and the vocal sound was then tight, warm and vibrant. I didn't think more about it and started to record."

"The production team in the room was wearing headphones, and after a while, the director took off his headphones and told the producer, 'See, we CAN record voiceovers in this room!' and was very happy with the decision to use the black box as a voice studio. He was so happy that I didn't have the heart to tell him that they actually couldn't use it without applying CEDAR noise reduction."

"For the same reason, I use CEDAR when recording talking head videos in my YouTube studio. That way, I'm able to obtain a tight sound that needs no further processing - perfect for online video interviews and live streaming."

"All in all, there have been so many times when I've gotten compliments for 'the great sound' and part of it is due to using the DNS 2. Compared to sound colleagues not using CEDAR, I'm able to get a higher SPL and cleaner speech, and have at least 6-8dB more headroom available. What can I say? CEDAR is my cheat code."

LISTEN: Hear the DNS 2 on location

Final Words

"For me, there really is a before and an after when using the DNS 2, and I can't imagine doing any events without my trusted CEDAR unit, because it's such an integral part of my sound and my way of working. I really don't have to worry about the headroom when mixing speech in a PA system - that's how good the CEDAR noise reduction is."

"Also, its ease of use can't be overstated. All I need to do is to engage the noise reduction and choose how much processing I want to do - the rest is sorted internally in the hardware. I don't know how you guys do it, but it just works!"

We would very much like to thank Frederick for his time and his kind words regarding the DNS 2. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and YouTube.

About CEDAR's DNS noise suppressors

Background noise is one of the biggest issues that live sound engineers face, and that's why CEDAR Audio invented low-latency noise suppressors. The CEDAR DNS 2™ offers two channels of noise suppression with near-zero latency , while the CEDAR DNS 4™ and CEDAR DNS 8D™ offer four and eight channels respectively with additional features suitable for production sound and live broadcasting. They are the go-to choices for sound engineers who need to reduce background noise and control reverb in real-time.

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