Muffle voice recording

Can this recording be saved or at least improved? Being a audio Newbie, I don’t know.

It was recorded over a wireless mic. I don’t know the brand, but my friend who recorded it, doesn’t skimp on equipment and he has used it before without a problem. We did a voice check before and all was fine. My guess is the mic somehow got tangled in my shirt causing the muffling. After doing some internet searching and attempting some repairs using some different equalizations and some high pass filtering I achieved some minor improvement.

Final realization: I realize the this recording is likely beyond saving and definitely beyond anything close to perfection, the old garbage in-garbage out. I was hoping that someone who works with voice and uses Audacity on a regular basis, might be able to offer some suggestions.


Thanks.


(muffled.wav attached)

I can’t listen right this second, but I do have some notes. Mr. Moneybags may have opted for one of the very high-end directional lavalier microphones.

Terrific microphones, but they come with rules. The are required to mount right-side up. It’s not optional. If you mount them any other way, you can get badly muffled or no sound at all.

I bet that sounds like what you have, right? There is a reason to use these mics. The allow you to shoot video in some stunningly bad conditions.

There was a TV show called “Secrets Of NY.” They shot a presenter in Grand Central at rush and he was perfectly clear and natural. You can’t hear people standing next to you under those conditions. In a later show, they made a similar mistake to yours and all was revealed.

Koz

Here we are at home with the big kids. It’s not just muffled. It’s also very highly distorted after I got rid of most of the cotton wool.

So your feeling is right. It’s trash.

In my opinion it’s not just a microphone problem. I like to take difficult problems upside down. If somebody wrote me a big check, how would I do this? It wouldn’t be easy. I can’t think of one single event or condition that would cause that many different problems.

I didn’t say so, but there are very serious low pitch, rumble sounds that shouldn’t be there in addition to everything else.

That makes me want to meet the shooter.

Koz

Thanks for looking at this for me. I appreciate it. Sad, that it’s junk, but it is what it is.

I mounted the mic and don’t remember mounting it upside down. That would have been difficult since there was a wire coming out of the bottom of the mic going to the transmitter unit. That would have put a weird curl in the wire that I think I would have noticed.

don’t remember mounting it upside down.

Doesn’t have to be upside down. Sometimes a lavalier is mounted sideways to conform to the lay of the performer’s shirt, jacket or top. This totally doesn’t work with the directional units. You have to know.

That would have put a weird curl in the wire that I think I would have noticed.

There’s supposed to be a weird curl in the wire. If you have room and it’s not too obvious, you take the wire from the bottom of the microphone and loop it up and back down through the clip so the transmitter length is supported by the clip, not by the bottom of the microphone.

I used to have picture of that here somewhere…

If the performer’s top is black or dark and the cable is too, nobody can tell you did that.

You can barely see it here, but the mic cable doesn’t go straight down. It goes up behind the tie and then goes down through the clip behind the tie. This illustration is mucked up a little because the performer’s been shifting around, but that’s the idea.


But that doesn’t account for the distortion. Is this a radio ink? Has it ever worked?

Koz

Is this one of the microphones with internal battery? you can create a lot of problems with a weak battery.

If it’s a Phantom Power lavalier, you can get into trouble with a 48 volt microphone trying to run on 15 volts or lower. There is a current sound mixer for sale which claims in big letters “Phantom Power!!!” and it’s only when you get into the fine print weeds do you find out that it’s not 48 Volt. I have at least one microphone that requires 48 volt.

Koz

One more piece. Please note the Boom Lady is wearing headphones.

Somebody should be wearing headphones on a sound shoot.

This is a voice recording I shot for an animated movie (you may need to zoom your browser).

There’s a stupid video joke: Sound without the picture is a radio show. Picture without the sound is a rehearsal.

Koz

I still can’t find it. I’m going to have to shoot one. It wasn’t very good. It was a bad free-hand drawing, so it’s just as well.

Koz