Greetings earthlings!
Today I'm going to talk about four common mistakes that people make when recording audio
for their youtube videos.
Number one is probably the most common mistake that I come across
whenever I go out and watch a bunch of youtube videos
and that is: people are just setting their gain way too high.
Ultimately, this leads to a couple of different problems
the first one being, if you get really excited and start screaming or talking really loudly
your audio may clip or distort, and once the audio is recorded with those clipping artifacts
there's absolutely nothing you can do to remove them.
So it's always better to air on the side of caution, and record a little bit quieter than you want to.
When I'm personally recording I like to shoot anywhere between -12db and -6db
and those are for the peaks, the loudest part of what I'm recording.
AND THIS IS WHAT A CLIPPING SIGNAL LOOKS LIKE, AND THIS IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE
IT SOUNDS ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE
And the second issue, if you're driving your pre-amps a bit too hard... that can introduce a lot of line noise
and hiss.
Which just distracts from what you're trying to communicate in your video.
Number two! and this one drives me absolutely insane!
People are just setting their microphones up WAY too far away from their mouth.
I'll try to sum this up in a single sentence and that would be:
You're not going to get the same audio quality with the microphone a couple of feet away from your mouth
as you would if the microphone was just a couple (of) inches away.
And I think this problem stems from the stupid idea that's perpetuated, that you cant have the microphone
in frame when you're recording video.
I see so many people with really nice microphones but they set it up so far away!
that you don't get any benefit from it!
So let me go ahead and put your minds at ease here.
Having a microphone in frame is NOT going to piss off your audience.
What WILL piss off your audience though, is crappy crappy audio because you're WAY too far away
from your microphone!
Number three is really easy to make the mistake of doing, and that would be overprocessing your audio.
Now I understand why people do this and it's because you don't have the ideal recording environment
or an ideal microphone.
But just keep in mind, if you add any extreme compression
any extreme noise removal, or any extreme equalisation.
It just makes your audio sound unnatural, and it makes it sound unpleasant to listen to.
So keep that in mind before you add that crazy compression and crazy noise removal.
And just to give you an idea of how awful it can truly sound, I have added those extreme processing tricks
to this audio clip right here.
There is extreme compression, extreme EQ, extreme noise removal!
And as you can tell! it is VERY VERY unpleasant to listen to.
And number four, people are not buying microphones that are well fitted for their use case.
They're buying microphones based on what they see other people using.
Something I always see in the comments are people asking: Well, what's the setup that jacksepticeye uses?
Or what's the setup that PewDiePie uses?
And I do understand the interest in that gear, and I think it's a good jumping off point.
But I think it's incredibly important to remember: That what works for one person, is not going to work for everybody.
Keep in mind, that everybody has a different sounding voice, a different sounding room
and they have a different recording environment.
That means, that everybody's going to have hurdles to overcome to get good audio.
So what I would recommend here is do some research on the attributes of microphones
then assess what kind of issues you're gonna have in your recording environment with your voice.
All of that stuff, and then make a purchase based off of that rather than just saying:
"This is the mic PewDiePie uses!! so I'm gonna buy it to!!"
Cause' that's not the right way to go about it!
Alright guys! I guess that'll do it for today, and I know this was quite a bit different than usual
so I would love your feedback - do you like this type of video? do you hate this type of video?
Do you think my advice was good?
Do you think it SUCKED?
Do you think I missed some really big issues?!
Let me know in the comments!
And also if you want more videos like this subscribe by clicking the logo!
Check the Discord server, link in the description!
And I will see ya all later, thanks for watching. BYE.
Fun fact: 'Jacksepticeye' was pronounced wrong in the video.