Hello,
I make Youtube gaming let’s plays, and this is not the first time I have asked for help on the Audacity boards, about specific things, but this is my first time on the podcasting subforum, as gaming LPs are essentially podcasts and have from an audio perspective the same elements.
First off, I am not asking for a miracle or how to have “radio announcer” voice. I am simply looking for the best way to present my own voice in a natural way.
My current post-processing set up is: 1) Noise removal highlighting an area without voice. As far as I can tell the settings I use here does not harm my audio. 2) Next, I use the exemplary de-clicker tool by Paul L which I love. Spent a lot of time tweaking it to suit my needs. I’m sure it distorts the sound in some way but it still sounds great to me in Audacity up to this point. Both of these things are necessary for me. I unfortunately have computer fan noise and mouth clicks that I cannot otherwise remove.
At this point I’m not sure of what I should be doing. My main goal that I am trying to achieve is loudness, evenness, and clarity. Speaking for 20-25 minutes at a time there is no way to prevent myself from going soft in some parts and loud in others, so a 3) compressor is as far as I know necessary. I also 4) normalize, and 5) do a very minor EQ where I raise the bass by about 3db and lower the high treble by about the same.
My mic gain is set pretty low so my initial waveform is pretty tiny. On the scale from 1 to -1 it honestly looks to go from about 0.1 to -0.1. Youtube tutorials would have me normalize, compress, equalize, and then normalize again. This is successful in that my volume is even and loud and clear. The problem is that it also sounds a bit mechanical and there is a bit of a metallic hum occasionally at the beginning of my words, almost a high buzz.
A good example of audio processed in that way is here: https://youtu.be/NwNfy5HvFRw . A bit tinny to my ears.
So then I tried compressing first, then EQ, and finally normalizing only once. This audio sounds better to my ears, but 70% of it is too soft, due to a few high peaks. I rectify this by raising the loudness of the whole thing by about 3-5 db and then lowering the loudness in small envelopes around the peaks. Still, it never is as loud and clear as the twice normalized version, plus it takes me twice as long to edit, but there is never the metallic sounding him in some words like the twice normalized audio.
A good example of this set up is here: https://youtu.be/zP4N7MSKdO0 . The vocals are obviously quieter and have less punch.
My overall questions boil down to:
- Does the effect of a compressor change whether it’s done before or after normalization? I would presume yes, as louder audio would be more compressed, or to be more clear, assuming the same threshold, more sound will lie above it in the normalized version. Adjusting the threshold specifically for each video though would be tedious.
- I have tried compressor settings from 1:3.5 to 1:5. From a results standpoint where you want to limit loud noises and create more even volume it would make sense that the higher, the better, but is that true?
- Would a hard limiter perhaps be a better choice?
- Would a leveler be superior to a normalizer for my purposes?
- I have heard it said that boosting treble adds more warmth and clarity to voice, but wouldn’t it also add to harsh ss’s (sibilance) and the sharpness of my voice, which isn’t very melodic to begin with.
- Is it better to turn up gain on mic so it has to be normalized less? Most advice I have seen is to keep gain on mic way down to avoid picking up ambient noise, which I don’t have a large problem with my current low gain settings. But I feel like normalizing just magnifies the soft sounds (like my breath) just as much as the loud sounds (my voice).
And because I’m not an audio professional, if you do check out the above links, I’ll take any other thoughts or advice that you have as well.
Thank you!
-Marcus