- I'm gonna show you how to make your voice sound better
on YouTube, and we're starting right now.
♪ This is how it is, ain't waiting on me ♪
What is going on?
My name is Nick, welcome to another video.
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and you wanna learn how to grow your channel,
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Boy, do I have humongous surprise for you today.
I brought in an audio expert
because audio is not my area of expertise.
This guy, it is his area of expertise.
With his audio expertise, he has worked with the BBC,
he has worked with Adobe, and all types
of other big brands that you are familiar with.
So, without further ado, the guy that is gonna show you
how to make your voice sound better for YouTube,
is Mike Russell, take it away, Mike.
- Hey Nick, thank you so much, so in this video
I'm gonna give you three tips on how to make your voice
sound better on YouTube, starting with tip one, EQ.
So, if you want to get to the EQ, or for that matter,
any audio effect inside Premiere Pro,
you'd simply change your workspace up at the top here
from editing, or whatever you happen to be on, to audio.
This makes it super simple to focus in on your audio.
By the way, all the effects I'm about to show you
are also in Adobe Audition, that's the editor I use 95%
of the time, but as we're editing video
I though I would show you inside Premiere Pro.
So you got these audio faders here, audio one two and three,
corresponding to the tracks here in your sequence
audio one two and three, and on audio one, I have my audio.
Let's have a listen, hello, I'm Mike Russell.
Okay, fantastic, not too bad.
Good microphone.
Could do with a little bit of EQ to brighten up the voice.
So, just pop down this triangle up here,
and then you can start adding in effects.
And this menu looks exactly the same
as the effects menu inside Adobe Audition.
So, we'll go down to filter and EQ,
where you find all your EQs.
These are very similar in other video editing software
as well, but usually if it's available,
I would go for a parametric equalizer.
And let's wait for it to load, there it is,
and we can double click it.
There's the effect that we can start playing with.
Reason I like parametric EQ, is I can play the audio back,
and I can sweep through the frequencies
to find the frequencies I like the best,
so let me demo that to you.
Hello, I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
I'm a pro audio.
Can you hear how that's changing and affecting the voice?
So setting that up correctly is really a matter
of using good headphones, and your ear.
I like to use the DT 770s, by the way, if you really want
some good quality audio while you're editing.
So, let's have a sweep now.
Hello, I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
I'm a pro audio producer, voice over artist, and.
Hear how that's brightening the voice up.
So, we went from, let's play it back from the start,
and enable and disable.
Hello, I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
You hear how he goes from flat to nice and crisp.
Again, we can add something in the mid-range,
maybe around the 1.5 kilohertz zone.
I'm a pro audio producer, voice over artist,
and podcaster.
And if we want, as well, because the human voice
doesn't have anything below 100 hertz,
we can use this roll-off feature here.
Just click to enable it, and you can actually just roll
off any frequencies below around 100.
Don't go too high, otherwise you'll sound like you're
on the telephone, but around there should be okay.
Let's have a listen, hello,
I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
I'm a pro audio producer, voice over.
Just taking that down a bit to
make sure we get the full broad spectrum of EQ frequencies.
That sounding good, playing back again
with the effect on and off.
Hello, I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
I'm a pro audio producer, voice over artist, and podcaster.
I've been using Collated Pro, or Adobe Audition,
as it's known now, so, there we go.
Good EQ practice.
Tip number two, compression.
It's easy to demo compression.
Again, we'll go underneath parametric EQ.
So, our EQ is the first thing,
but next we go to amplitude and compression.
Now, usually I go for something like dynamics processing.
This will allow you to play around
and create a kind of hard or soft-knee compressor.
If you fancy doing it the manual way,
but there's a much easier way.
If you don't know much about compressors,
this is a great way to start.
What compression will do is it will
make the quiet bits of your speaking louder,
and the loud bits quieter, so you have a kind
of static wave form, that doesn't vary in volume too much.
It's brilliant, for ease of listening for your viewer,
so that you're not deafening them or they're having
to turn there volume up too loud.
So, go for single band compressor here,
and I'll double click there.
And then we need to set a threshold ratio
attack and release, and maybe boost the output gain as well.
So, first I'm gonna set threshold.
Usually, if you've got some audio that's quite loud, and,
hello, I'm Mike Russell from music,
as you can see, it's peaking,
radiocreative.com, I'm a pro audio,
quite nicely there, producer, voice over.
At around minus one, minus two DB so,
we'll put the threshold down at around,
let's start at minus 20.
That is the point at which it will kick in
and start compressing, pushing down,
or pulling up your audio, and usually, for a video,
or audio podcast, I'd go to about two to one.
Artist, and podcaster, I've been using,
let's actually put on that threshold as we play back.
I'm just gonna put the ratio up to three to one,
which will compress further, and you can have a listen
to the difference as I move the threshold down.
Hello, I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
I'm a pro audio producer, voice over artist.
So as you can hear, it makes the voice punchy.
Really easy to, particularly if you've go background music,
cut across anything that's in the background.
So, I'm settling on minus 18.8 DB threshold,
ratio of three to one, attack,
usually bring that right down to zero,
or one millisecond, that's how quickly
your compressor kicks in, you want it
to kick in really quickly, and pull down your voice.
And, then the release you can set at around 50 milliseconds
to give it some time before it releases the compressor,
and starts the process all over again.
Let's have a listen, again, hello,
I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
And what you'll notice there is I've lost a couple
of DB there in volume because of the effect
of the compressor, so I'll just push that up,
maybe by about three DB, so we get, hello,
I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
Nice audio there, and just to show you the difference,
I'm gonna switch the compressor on and off.
Hello, I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
I'm a pro audio producer, voice over artist, and podcaster.
I've been using Collated Pro, or Adobe Audition,
as it's known now, since around 1997,
when I was a radio producer, so, there you go.
Compression, EQ, already having an effect.
The next thing in the sequence is going to be
the fantastic noise reduction process.
Noise elimination and reduction.
That's tip three.
Okay, many ways you can go about doing this
but I'm going to show you a couple
that I really like, particularly if you already got
fairly good audio all you'll need to do is add
in a noise gate or a Downward Expander,
and you can do that by going into
amplitude and compression dynamics here.
This will bring up a brand new dialogue box
which gives you an AutoGate, and what that will do,
default settings are usually pretty good,
if I switch that on, every time I stop speaking,
the light will go from green to red, indicating
the gate is closed and no audio is getting through.
And when I'm talking, hopefully that will be green
and you'll hear what I'm saying.
Hello, I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
As you can see it's kicking in a little bit too much,
so I might move the threshold down a bit to minus 26.
Hello, I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
I'm a pro audio producer, voice,
and it's particularly important
when you get to the silent bits like this,
video producer, my favorite, so
as you can hear, it's working a little bit too hard.
I might again move the threshold down.
Let's have a listen now, producer.
My favorite memory, and if you set it high enough
it can actually cut our your breaths too.
Producer, my favorite, or at least reduce them in volume,
so you might want to play with auto gating,
but a little bit less harsh than an AutoGate is
the expander, the Downward Expander, and the best way
to describe this, is it's like an audio producer,
or a very fast computerized audio producer riding down
a fader on a mixing desk every time you stop speaking.
So again, threshold I'm gonna leave at minus 20,
and I'm gonna move the ratio up to about 2 or 3 to 1.
Similar to compression basically, Downward Expander,
apart from you going the other way.
Rather than increasing volume, you're taking volume down
when there's no audio to get through that Downward Expander.
Let's play, hello,.
I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
I'm a pro audio, and as you can see,
it's pulling the audio down, producer,
voice over artist, and podcaster.
I've been using Collated Pro, or Adobe Audition
as it's known now, since around 1997,
when I was a radio producer, my favorite.
And as you can see there the Downward Expander working
when I pause, so therefore cutting out any noise
you might have in the background like fans, or any kind
of terrible noise that you wouldn't want
to be in your finally produced video.
So, let's go through and play those back,
switching on and off the three separate effects
that I've demonstrated.
Hello, I'm Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
I'm a pro audio producer, voice over artist, and podcaster.
I've been using Collated Pro, or Adobe Audition,
as it's known now, since around 1997.
So, as you can hear, crisper, it's louder,
and you're eliminating any background noise
with those three effects.
Now the good news is the effects
that I've just demonstrated inside Premiere Pro,
you're able to do in many other NLEs
such as Final Cut Pro, you can do them
in Sony Vegas, Adobe Audition,
even Audacity, and OBS Studio can handle some
of the effects that I've just demonstrated.
Once you know the basics, it's pretty easy
to implement them whatever you're working with.
And finally, just before I hand back to you, Nick,
one bonus tip for you about loudness.
Yes, there is one last thing, and I will demonstrate
this to you inside Adobe Audition, as it's something
you can only really do in Adobe Audition.
Selecting the audio track here, if you're go
into edit, and edit in Adobe Audition the clip,
you will see immediately it renders it out
to Adobe Audition here which is fantastic.
There's my audio, and you simply want
to match the loudness of this to make it
the same perceived loudness as other videos on YouTube.
Now generally for online audio, whether it be
for a recorded video, a podcast, minus 16 LUFS is
a good loudness, a target loudness to aim for.
The rest of the settings you can leave here
absolutely the same, and the match, too,
I would leave as the very first setting.
That's the ITU-RBS.1770-3 loudness standard.
And as you can see at the moment I'm hitting
minus 20 LUFS, so my voice is actually quieter
than other videos on YouTube so in order
to make that better, you just run match loudness
over the audio, it will increase your volume
a little bit, and then you do command S,
control S if you're on PC to save, and then just tab back
into Premier, and boom, it updates automatically.
Dynamic-link makes it so easy to work
between Adobe products so you've got
all your effects and everything
coming straight back into Premiere,
if you decide to go over
and add the effects that I've shown you
and demonstrated in this video, over in Adobe Audition.
So, there you go.
That's what I've got for you, Nick, back to you.
- Mike, as with all of your content,
that was absolutely amazing.
Thank you so much for that.
I'm gonna put a link to Mike's channel right up here,
so make sure that you head over to Mike's channel
right now, and you subscribe because he's gonna
show you everything you need to know
about making your audio sound amazing here on YouTube.
And it's not just YouTube, even if you're interested
in putting a podcast together soon
or something like that, you definitely need
to go over there and check Mike out.
And if you want to learn more about growing your channel,
making videos, and all types of other
YouTube related stuff, start now by hitting
the round subscribe icon so you don't miss anything.
Thank you so much for watching, I'll see you next time.