Hi there,
Maybe I’m being pedantic, but it feels like I can’t ever get a good audio recording despite using good equipment. I have a very loud voice and I get quite passionate when I record voice, and so, it feels like it gets way too loud and potentially clips? Here are two clips - one softly spoken, and one from a recording that I’m having difficulty with.
Could anyone please help me?
Here is the soft audio.
I can’t listen right now…
It MIGHT be clipped but it doesn’t LOOK badly clipped.
If you are recording in mono with a stereo interface, the signals are cut in half (-6dB) so they don’t go over 0dB when mixed-down to stereo. If you are only using only one channel, clipping happens at -6dB. But since Audacity is only looking at the levels it won’t “show red” for clipping.
If you can’t get above -6dB with the volume turned-up and shouting into the mic, that’s likely the situation.
If you record in stereo you can get the full signal and you can convert to mono after recording.
Your interface has clipping indicators and they should be “telling the truth”. If you’re getting clipping at -6dB, believe the interface. It’s the analog-to-digital converter in the interface that clips so it knows.
It’s best to leave plenty of headroom and Amplify or Normalize after recording. Just for reference, pros typically record around -12 to -18dB. Nothing bad happens when you get close to clipping so you don’t need to leave THAT much headroom. …Headroom is a funny thing. If you don’t use it you didn’t need it and if you do use it, it’s no longer headroom!
As a rule, that’s a GOOD THING as long as the character of your voice doesn’t sound like you’re shouting all of the time. A stronger voice makes a better signal-to-noise ratio! And turning down the recording level doesn’t hurt (with digital recording) because you are turning-down the signal and noise together. …In the analog days you wanted a hot signal to overcome tape hiss.
The cure for variations in volume is dynamic range compression : it attenuates volume which is above a threshold.
The other cure is not to create it in the first place by wearing snug, wired headphones during the performance. Nobody wearing headphones like that will ever get serious overload or theatrical punching because it hurts.
Koz
The other possibility is the microphones are doing their job and you have a strident voice. We are reminded of the recent forum poster whose natural voice sounded like a broken microphone.
We’re not all BBC presenters.
That’s not to say it’s hopeless. We can fall back on experienced recording techniques. We should probably run away from bright, crisp condenser microphones and instead snuggle up to something like an SM7b which tends to be much more graceful and forgiving. It’s a moving coil “dynamic” microphone.
Please note Joe Rogan (on the left) is swallowing his microphone. For a long time, he had serious huffing and popping in his voice. They eventually applied real time filters to it.
Do Not get that close to your microphone.
Koz
I’m a complete newbie at this stuff, so forgive me because I don’t really understand what you’re saying.
Isn’t minus decibels a volume reduction? And if so, why is the recording range -12 to -18? Wouldn’t that imply negative volume input?
What do you mean by headroom?
Audacity’s native compressor is single band, there are free multi-band compressor plugins.
Are you recording directly into Audacity, or using a field recorder?
If want to use a field recorder, try one that records in 32-bit float format. They don’t even have a gain control.
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