Hello everyone
today's video is to share my experiences and answer many questions I received
about how I recorded my voice for video,
how to get the best recording quality,
what is the microphone i use and how to remove background noise, etc...
I'm not an audio expert,
so my sharing here is from personal experience
Of course, those are the experiences I spent time and money on,
but I will share them all without hiding anything.
If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments.
Looking back at the very early videos on this Youtube channel, at that time my recording process was very simple,
I only used the iPhone's headset, the headset had a built-in microphone
and I recorded my voice directly on my phone.
At that time, no one complained about the sound quality,
but I still found myself not very satisfied with the echo, noise...
Not long after that, to improve the sound quality,
I changed to Rode's microphone, a lavalier lapel mic,
specifically used for smartphones.
Now, after using it for more than 2 years,
I still have no complaints about the quality, the sound is clear, there is a noise-reducing air filter
Recently, to be more convenient when recording at home, I want to have a hanging or desktop microphone
so I bought a Shure MV7, a legendary microphone model that many streamers, youtubers or professional podcasters love
But not necessarily if you want to have a good recording, you have to buy expensive microphones
I think with each different budget range, you will find the best option according to your needs.
I have used many microphones in many different price ranges from cheap to expensive
now the most frequent ones I use are still Rode Smartlav+ and Shure MV7
the price is a bit higher than average but the performance is completely better than expected
Moreover, it also ensures my requirements are: the device must be compact,
no need to install additional equipment or complicated wires,
just plug it directly into the computer or phone to record and still have studio sound with studio quality
You should choose to buy microphones with noise reduction features
or can add noise reduction foam or noise filter
However, the most important thing is to have a quiet recording place.
Especially important, no matter how good the microphone is,
no matter how expensive it is, it is absolutely necessary to avoid:
the sound of the wind, the fan, the sound of the air conditioner, the engine, etc.... that is, the repetitive background noises
These environmental noises can be handled but are very difficult
or if they can be removed, the voice will become raspy and mechanical.
There are many tools to support noise removal, noise reduction
Some video editing software already have this feature built-in,
as well as many websites that allow online noise removal, noise reduction.
However, their noise reduction method is usually default and automatic,
so the quality of the audio file after processing is not high, the sound is easily distorted and unnatural
Professional noise reduction software and applications are often not free
or require high configuration settings or are difficult to use.
So today I will show you how to reduce noise and remove background noise with Audacity
Because it's completely free, very simple, easy to use, in just a few clicks
Go to Audacity's website and you can easily download the installation file that is compatible with your operating system or computer
The software is very compact, only a few dozen MB,
after the installation is complete, open Audacity. This is the home page interface of Audacity.
If your recording file has an uncommon format,
you need to convert it to a common format using online format conversion tools as I suggest.
It is recommended to convert to MP3 or for the best quality, convert to WAV
For example, if you record on iPhone, iPad, the recording file will have the extension m4a,
so you will need to convert it to the WAV file extension.
When you have the recording file, drag and drop it into the Audacity window
It will be displayed as a sound wave like this
The words you speak will appear as waveforms, the quiet parts will appear as straight lines.
Click the magnifying glass icon to zoom in or out to see more clearly if needed
You can click Play to listen to it
Any sentence you have said wrong or interrupted and mixed with noise,
drag the mouse to select it, and then delete it by pressing Delete on the keyboard.
The method is as simple as word processing, select in the audio tracks and click delete or copy and move as you like.
The parts that are unevenly wrinkled with such low waveforms are the noise parts.
When listening at a slightly high volume level, you will hear gurgling sounds or boiling, sizzling sounds... like this.
To remove this type of environmental noise, first drag the mouse to select the part of the noise sample
Usually, as soon as we press the record button,
we should be silent for the first 5.10 seconds to capture this type of noise as a sample before we start speaking
Select which part is the noise sample, then go to Effect, Noise Reduction. You choose Get Noise Profile
that is, take the selected part just now as the noise sample
The main screen window will return, now you will choose which parts of the noise need to be processed,
or you want to remove the noise for this entire recording file, so you will choose Cltr A to select all.
Again, go to Effect and Noise Reduction.
Step 1 to select the noise sample is done.
Now step 2 is to automatically find the parts with similar noise to delete
The settings for noise removal level or noise sensitivity… are already preset by default
If you have sound knowledge, you can adjust it yourself
However, in my experience, these default settings are almost effective for most cases of noise reduction
You can click Preview to listen again to see if the noise has been processed or not
When done, click OK to confirm.
Now the lines that were wrinkled earlier have been straightened like this,
which means it's completely silent without any noise
You review the entire recording file to see which part is still wrinkled,
then you do the same thing as just once again to straighten it out.
Of course, we record at home, not a professional studio,
so using any microphone will have noise, just more or less and easy to handle or not.
With the Micro Rode SmartLav Plus and Shure MV7 I'm using right now,
when the recording is done,
there's almost no background noise or noise that needs to be handled anymore.
If noise reduction by chance causes the recorded volume to be lower,
you can increase it by selecting only the low volume part or Cltr A selecting all
Then go to Effect and Amplify
The tool will display the maximum sound amplification level that can be increased in dB,
ou can drag the slider to adjust the volume to just right, click listen first if it's ok then Ok confirm
At this point you will see the sound waves are louder and denser, meaning the volume is higher.
In addition, Audacity has many other audio editing tools, but really, you will also need to have a bit of sound knowledge to use it.
Moreover, in addition to reducing the noise, I also like to leave my real voice as it is,
do not like to edit anything more because I am afraid that it will sound fake and unnatural.
After editing your audio clip, select File, Export
and export the file as MP3 or WAV and save it to a folder on your computer.
Here, I hope that my sharing can help your next project to have better sound quality.
If you have any discussion about recording or audio equipment, please share it with me in the comments section. Good bye and see you again.