Finally, a commercial that audiophiles can get behind. In the new Nissan Altima commercial, DJs Ming+FS (www.mingandfs.com) portray an experimental production team who mike every conceivable sound the Altima makes (from squealing tires, an engine revving up, the whir of moving the car seat back and forth and plenty of car door/trunk slams) with an AKG 414 mic and a Tascam Porta-DAT. The car sounds were recorded by Mo-phonics (Venice Beach, Calif.) and transferred to Pro Tools.
“We kept the setup really simple by picking the car sounds that sounded best naturally,” the duo said. “For example, the car door and trunk slamming were used for the kick drum.”
At the duo’s studio, Madhattan Studios (Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, which is pictured at the end of the spot), each sound byte was loaded into an E-4XT Ultra sampler and sequenced via Mac G4 Dual Processor running Digital Performer 3; mixing took place through a Yamaha 02R. “Besides pitching the sounds using the sampler, we didn’t really effect or EQ the sounds much,” Ming+Fs said. “The delay on the melody line was added in DP3 using a multitap plug-in.”
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