[Music] foreign [Music] we're going to talk about some of the basic simple things you can do to improve the quality of your audio this is meant for all creators video creators that are trying to make a better experience for your audience and giving your audience quality audio it doesn't have to be perfect but there are a few things that you should aim for number one it should be understandable the spoken word audio the dialogue should completely be understandable if it's not understandable that's on you and these are some things you can do to make sure that happens number one it should be pleasant to listen to there shouldn't be any major distractions in the audio you shouldn't have the input level set too high sometimes it's called gain sometimes it's put called input if you set it too high the audio is going to start to distort because digital audio can only be boosted so much before it starts to distort so that's one thing to look out for if there's a lot of noise in the space wherever you're recording obviously with Vlogs you can't necessarily control that and that's part of that format but if you're doing a talking head type thing like this there shouldn't be a lot of distracting noise your sound shouldn't be over compressed if you do it'll sound something like this which is not fun to listen to for a long period of time if you over compress it you could end up with breaths that are really loud too like this and that doesn't sound great either or your recording might sound really harsh there's some basic things you can do in terms of eq'ing your audio so it doesn't sound so harsh we're going to put a whole bunch of links down below to help address all these problems I just want to give you the basics here if you want to jump into the details you can find those down in the description below also one thing I see a lot is people bury their spoken word their dialogue in music other play they're playing music was supposed to be playing in the background but it's loud enough that it's difficult for the people to understand what's being said don't do that here's a video where we show you a very simple way to add an EQ Equalization that makes it so you can still hear the music but the dialogue is very understandable keep the microphone close to the person speaking relatively speaking here in this case I have the microphone that's boom just above the frame here and it is probably I would say 40 30 to 40 centimeters from my mouth get your microphone off your camera if you can now I realize when you're doing documentaries or vlogging we can't necessarily do that but those at least in vlogging you're up close to the camera anywhere so that's good so you're closer to the mic but the farther you get away from the mic the more Ambient sound you're gonna pick up and the thinner the voice of the person is it's talking is going to sound and that just doesn't sound great so if you're going to be operating especially if you're doing like a talking head like this get that microphone closer here is a video down below that shows you exactly how to do that it doesn't cost a lot of money just a simple microphone stand and maybe an adapter you can make that happen manage the noise in your recording space if you've got fans here for example I've got a freezer over there I'm in my basement there's a freezer over there every time I record I unplug it and I leave a little poster board over here by the camera so that when I'm done recording I remember to plug it back in because I don't think Danny would be very happy if I left that unplugged all night plug it back in that card remember reminds me to do that but if you've got noise in your room from some device it's either making a hum it has a fan in it maybe even if it's the air conditioning or heater if you can turn that off just while you're recording that can help so so much normally our brains are very good at filtering that stuff out in everyday life the microphone doesn't lie it's going to pick all that up so if you can turn those things off just while you're recording that can make a huge difference another thing that can sound really harsh and be very distracting is reverberation some people call it Echo technically it's reverberation if you go into a room and you clap your hands if you hear that sound come back at you not a full second later but but some period of time later that's reverberation that's the sound literally leaving your hands going to the walls and Floors maybe in the ceilings and bouncing back at you it's reflected sound is basically what it is and that can be super distracting if there's a lot of it and you typically will be a lot of it in rooms where there are a lot of flat hard surfaces so to manage that we have a piece down here on using sound blankets you don't have to buy expensive sound blankets necessarily any old blanket will do if you have an old duvet or bed spread or something like that and you can put it somewhere to just temporarily while you're filming that can make a huge huge difference as well here for example I've got a sound blanket over there one here got one on the table can you see it yeah so it's actually on the table in front of me here to make it so that that sound isn't bouncing back and making a distracting reverberation another thing to watch is your input level or your gain level that's how much amplification you're applying to the microphone the sound is it comes to the microphone needs to be Amplified and the input level should be dialed in there's no magic setting that I can just tell you to set it to this turn it up as the person's talking until the meters hit about -12 DB that's all you need to know now if you don't have markings on your meters then if you do happen to have a meter that turns you know as green the bars are green and then they turn yellow when it gets louder and turn red when it's even louder than that you generally want to be somewhere in the top of the green into the yellow a little bit you don't want it to be into the red just set it there and that should work nicely but then you might say my sound isn't loud enough when I get it into my video editing app just I post it on YouTube and it's not loud enough what do I do we have a video talking about loudness normalization down below as well you'll notice I haven't talked really about microphones yet I actually think that all of these techniques are more important than which microphone you use yes if you've got money to spend on a microphone I would recommend getting a quality microphone in this case I'm using a Sennheiser mkh 8050 it's about it's a little over a thousand dollars it's a pretty nice microphone but you can make good sound if you use all these techniques that we've talked about even if you just get the microphone at a reasonable distance again 30 to 40 centimeters if you're using a boom microphone that can sound really really good and that's why I haven't talked about microphones so if you want to learn about microphones I have a ton of videos about different types of microphones again we'll put all the links down below if you are in a noisy space I would recommend you probably want to use like a podcast style microphone and use it up pretty close to you you don't have to block your face some people are very concerned about that they want something that looks more like a movie where the where the microphone isn't visible well if you're in a louder space I think it makes sense instead to have the microphone seen on screen but not blocking your face because you do need to work closer to the microphone the closer you are the more of your voice the microphone is going to pick up and the less of the

Ambient sound it's going to pick up so that's called optimizing your signal to noise ratio really really important concept if you don't want to use a podcast style mic and a boom microphone is picking up too much room Ambience you might try a lavalier microphone that can help as well because it's right on the body of the person speaking so that's going to optimize your signal to noise ratio just by virtue of the fact that it's right there on the person speaking so get out there tell your stories

Inspire the world but also respect your audience and give them the quality audio that they deserve to hear if you don't give them quality audio it's going to be very hard to keep their attention you may have already found that if you haven't you will find that just make a video with really bad audio and see how many people it actually retains the what you're saying better be super compelling because people are going to have to tough it out through some really bad audio and and people notice that kind of thing if there is bad audio they automatically think less credibility this isn't a very high quality video those are the kind of things that happen and I would get those things out of the way up your audio game just a little bit and it makes the experience for your audience so much better get out there make some great sound I love you talk to you soon [Music]