Hi! High quality audio is very important in a video. On the other hand it's worth a booger if your content is sh**.
Take a note of that. I mean, look at me:
I have around 1.2 million subscribers
despite the low quality video and audio and accent.
If it wasn't for my looks and the majestic unibrow,
I don't know where I would be. Still, audio is important. Why do you think I speak so loudly?
I wasn't always like this and it's not because I'm angry. My doctor says I'm doing just fine so I stopped taking pills.
Just take a look at my first video ever.
"Hi!"
"Electrostatic discharge or ESD is an electric....." and here is my most viewed video:
"Hi! today I'm going to talk about building a gun.
Oh, I know what you're thinking about, stop making stereotype comments..."
Over time I became louder and louder.
And it was partially due to me overcoming the phobia of other people hearing me talk to a camera.
But there was another reason: just spend your ears on the background noise.
(White noise in background) "So engineers do a lot of testing on these devices to make sure they won't fail."
And so here I am yelling at the camera. Why? because I want to keep the signal-to-noise ratio as high as possible.
At first I thought the camera microphone is garbage and went and bought a cheap $40.00 shotgun microphone,
which is quite directional and picks up sound in front of it and used it in my "changing brake pads" video, here it is:
(City noises in background) "Today I'll show you how to change your brake pads on your car."
Well that didn't work, there is this high frequency hissing sound on top of the city noise.
I thought I bought a piece of junk until I realized something:
I took an audio cable and shorted all its inputs to ground and plugged it into the camera audio input.
I assumed the noise would be zero, listen to this:
(quiet static noise)
Even at zero input the camera has high noise so it's circuit is noisy. I'm doomed!
But then I realized something else. Let me speak softer.
When I speak soft, I actually look more relaxed, but you also hear a higher
level noise, but when I yell the noise level actually goes down and when I stop it comes back up. Pay close attention.
There is an automatic gain control in there! The default setting of the camera is
Automatic audio gain, which is a high gain even when I don't speak we still have significant noise. See?
And if I get too loud, it reduces the gain to limit the maximum audio to prevent sound clipping. See?
Yaaaaaaaaaa!
You saw that?
That's why, when I yell it helps. When I'm loud and hit the
threshold, the camera, drops the gain to lower the sound and keep my voice within the range, which in return lowers the noise.
But as soon as I stop talking or talk softer, the noise goes back up as the gain returns to normal.
As another option I thought to get a good low cost USB microphone and record my sound separately.
See, the noise level with this one is much lower.
But can you imagine having to record two separate things - and then trying to find the correct audio file to match your video and then,
aligning in the audio and video in post process is a pain. So I thought: fine,
I'll talk louder, but then I moved from our bedroom to this room. In my bedroom,
that is less city noise, and also because of all the fluff,
there is much less echo. At some point I even
thought of moving into the closet because there is much less noise and echo. But that's counterintuitive:
One shall always strive to get out of the closet! Take a note of that!
I needed a space so I moved to "echo central", here
I have glass and concrete walls.
So I bought some cheap foams and clamped them on some IKEA clothes racks and place them around the camera to make it more echo-friendly.
I live in a rental apartment and can't make anything permanent and glue sh** on the walls.
So I'm stuck with hanging foams and yelling. But another factor is how close I am to the camera microphone.
When I'm far, my voice is softer at the camera,
so you hear more noise and echo. But close to the camera and it's microphone,
I don't have to yell as loud. My voice is high and dominant over echo and noise.
If I'm always this close to the camera and it's microphone at a fixed distance,
I can also turn off its automatic gain control and set it to a lower gain, like this.
I only set the gain to a level
(at) that my sound doesn't clip. "hello hello one two three hello hello one two three", and the noise would be very low, see?
See, the noise is much lower now, I can't even use my shotgun microphone.
Let's try it. First the camera microphone: "hello 1 2 3"
And here is the shotgun microphone: "hello 1 2 3" (much softer audio).
The good thing about a shotgun microphone
is that you can use it as a boom microphone and hang it as close as possible to yourself, while the camera can stand back.
But I keep moving around, so this is not quite practical for me.
Also the problem with the fixed gain is that I could accidentally get close to the microphone or speak louder (microphone clips), or move back,
move my head, and there is no control over the audio level.
I have to sit at a set distance and speak at a set audio level.
I at least need the automatic gain control to make sure that audio signal is not clipped.
Unfortunately my camera has only 2 options of automatic gain and manual gain, which is just a fixed gain.
And then it has a wind filter/attenuator, which I don't care about, it's about wind.
Although here the wind filter is separate from the attenuator.
Enable that...
Look at that, I'm still in auto mode, but I am attenuated so the noise is almost zero.
But because I'm in auto mode the maximum audio is still limited, see?
Wow it's like a dream come true.
OK. Here I am with the default audio levels: "hello 1 2 3 4".
And here I have the attenuator on: "hello 1 2 3 4".
In both cases I'm sitting close to the microphone so the maximum audio is limited to the same level. Sh**, if I knew this setting was there ages ago!
The attenuator still forces me to sit close to the microphone because the volume drops, but at least now
there is a better solution and the audio signal wouldn't clip. I noticed some youtubers use these microphones that are clipped to your collar.
It's called "lapel". ""Lapel". I think that's how it's pronounced.
I like it how in English, knowing the arrangement of the letters, you can understand how it's pronounced.
(Plays recording of someone pronouncing Lapel) [luh-pel], [luh-pel]
F***!
Okay, let's search for some "luh-pels".
What's a lavalier?
Lavalier microphone is also known as a lav, lapel mic, clip mic, body mic, collar mic, neck mic or personal mic.
It's the same sh**. It seems lapel microphones can be anywhere between
$30 to over a $100. Why pay so much when I can use this $10 fancy computer microphone? Let's give it a try.
(Loud buzzing) Here, how does it sound ,do you hear any background noise?
Well, obviously you can't hear any background noise - because the fu**ing microphone has the highest noise. Obviously it doesn't work with my camera, but for
experiments, let's put the camera in a manual audio gain.
Look at microphones stupid tone like noise level.
I have to reduce the gain, all the way to zero almost,
to make sure that tone is as low as possible.
But then I have to bring the microphone very close to my mouth to make sure it picks up my sound.
See, now there is no noise or echo except maybe a little bit of that stupid tone.
Now we have the proof of concept: even this
garbage with high tone can have a decent sound if you bring it close to your mouth and reduce the gain.
A proper lapel lavalier would work much better.
This shows us a very important thing for any signal you want to sense: this is your sensor or microphone,
and that's where you record the data.
And you might have multiple gain stages in between. This could be the gain stage in the shotgun microphone,
and that could be the gain in the camera. And this anything in between.
Imagine you need an overall gain of 10 and each gain stage has a noise of 1. Now if you set the gain of stages
to 1 x 1 and x 10 you get the noise of the first stage times 1,
plus the noise of the second stage times 1 plus the noise of the third stage times 10.
And you get a noise level of 30 at your recorder.
But if you set your gains to
1-10-1 you get the noise of the first stage times 1 plus the noise of the second stage times 10 plus the noise
of the third stage times 1 and you get 21.
And if you set your gains to 10-1-1 you get the noise of the first stage times 10
plus the noise of the second stage times 1
plus the noise of the third stage times 1 and you only get 12.
So always remember: If you need to amplify, do it at the source and make sure to place your sensor as close as possible
to the signal you're sensing. In any case a corded microphone wouldn't work for me either.
I don't want more loose wires between my already loose wires. I need a wireless lavalier system.
200 dollars to over a 1000 dollars? Fu** that, I'll make my own!
I just need a radio transmitter and sprinkle some components on it. This video has been long enough,
so I'll try to make a wireless lavalier in my next video. And maybe I can find a sponsor for a good wireless system too,
otherwise I'll be stuck using my own
contraption, which with no doubt would work better than all of them! In conclusion, you have three good options:
And in all of them you have to reduce the camera gain as far as possible.
But keeping the automatic gain control is a good option to avoid clipping the sound.
Number 3 is a good microphone - well not this sh**!
It should sit right in front of you, closest to the source, like many people do. But it will greatly reduce your mobility.
Number 2 is a good low noise shotgun
microphone with lots of built in gains so you can reduce the gain at the camera as far as possible.
This could sit a little bit further from the source unless you like to hang it close to yourself.
And Number 1 is a wireless lavalier, which I don't have. It sits close to the source and typically has
adjustable gain in the transmitter,
so you can drop the gain in the camera, AND you can walk away with it anywhere within the range of the transmitter.
Let's hope the error of fu**ed up audio is behind me.