How to Record & Process Exceptional Audio for Creators : Video/Podcast/Music

1. Introduction: As a new creator, you probably have so many questions, but how to record great audio. Why does my audio sound dull or echoey? Why doesn't it sound the same day-to-day? How do I set up my studio so that it sounds great every time? It can be challenging to produce great audio when you're unfamiliar with how sound works and the flow of sound as it's recorded and processed. What most creators don't understand is, you don't need state of the art expensive gear to capture clean audio. You can get great sounding audio with minimal gear. My name is Maddie Kenny and I've been a musician and music producer for over 10 years. I continued producing even while training to become a doctor. Med school forced me to travel around often, and I had to live frugally. I had to get resourceful, to figure out how to record crisp audio anyway. I've also been editing audio engineering and sound designing YouTube videos, courses and online content for the past few years. Having worked with all kinds of content and recordings, I can safely say that the most difficult and frustrating things to fix are bad audio recordings, I believe in educating alongside providing guidance. That way, you understand why and will have an easier time troubleshooting when issues arise as opposed to simply following a checklist. This course is for beginner and intermediate level of creators, whether YouTubers, TikTokers or podcasters, looking to learn about how sound works in order to improve the quality of their content. No prior experience with recording audio is needed, but it will be useful to have a little bit of experience when using audio editing software. Specifically in this course, I'll be using Ableton Live. It's my favorite DAW and what I use to produce music. We'll first explore what sound is and its relationship with acoustics. We'll use that knowledge to design an optimal recording environment and choose the right type of microphone. Then I'll walk you through the entire process of preparing, recording, and processing audio to produce something that sounds professional. For the class project, I'll have you upload it before and after of your audio recording to truly appreciate the change in quality. There's so much content that's being created on the Internet, from social media, to YouTube, to audio books, to podcasts. The thing is, most people nowadays are only listening to content, whether they're in their car or at the gym, or just doing chores at home. Having crisp, high-quality audio is super important to make your content bendable and valuable. 2. Class Project: For the class project of this course, I want you to be able to noticeably hear a difference in audio quality. [MUSIC] At this moment, whatever your current audio setup is whether that's just your phone microphone or whatever setup you currently have, I want you to record a short audio clip of yourself sharing a brief about yourself. This is also going to be great practice to do if you plan to create content in the future, it's really valuable to get comfortable telling your own story. At the end of the course, I'll have you re-record that story using your new audio setup, so you can compare and contrast the difference. Because this course is designed to help you produce a start to finish audio recording that's ready to be used in any content, you will need a few tools for this course. First, you need an open mind to reorganize your room and your recording environment, and forget all these little notions you might have had about sound. You'll also need a microphone, and I'll cover how to find the right one for you to use in a later lesson if you don't already have one. Finally, you'll need some software to modify the recording in post-processing. This can be any video editing software, such as Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere if you make videos, or it can be a DAW or digital audio workstation. The one I use is Ableton Live, it's a DAW. If you want to follow along with me and do exactly what I'm doing, definitely consider using that one. It is a little bit pricey though. Other DAWs that are available include Logic Pro, Pro Tools, FruityLoops, or even some of the free ones would work fine too, like GarageBand, or Audacity. I'll be covering the basic concepts of audio engineering, which can be applied to whichever tool you have. It doesn't really matter which one you use, as long as it has the basic tools which we'll cover in the last lesson. That's it. At the end of the course, remember to upload your class project, your re-recorded audio, so that all the other students can see your progress. 3. What is Sound?: In order to capture a good recording, it's important to understand what sound actually is and how it behaves. If we know what the mechanics of sound, we can make adjustments in the way that we record to improve the quality. What is sound? Sound is a displacement of air molecules. When a particular sound is made, they cause vibrations in air molecules that travel into our ears. Our ears then act as amplifiers, to boost the volume of the sound and they also act as transducers, which means they change the form of energy from these sound waves, these vibrations, into something that our brain can actually interpret. There are two properties about sound that our brain can actually process. First, is sound loudness. We measure the loudness of sound in decibels or dB, the next property is pitch, or how high or low the sound is. We measure the pitch of audio by how fast the sound waves are vibrating, which is also known as the frequency of vibrations. Slower vibrations create lower sounds, faster vibrations create higher sound. Our ears can detect frequencies from 20 hertz all the way to 20,000 hertz, 20 hertz being the lowest rumble like a sub-bass or car engine on standby and 20,000 being the highest whistle of a hi-hat drum or an alarm. Why is understanding all of this important? Well, if we know the range of frequencies that a particular sound occupies, what we call the frequency spectrum. We can prevent interference from audio signals to get cleaner recordings. For example, the frequency spectrum of normal speaking, like I'm doing right now, is anywhere between 100-5,000 hertz. For women, this tends to be a little higher, for men, this tends to be a little lower. If you plan to record in an environment with music playing or some ambient noises that are in the background, that also occupy that same frequency range, those audio signals will clash and it'll create a muddier recording. It will also be very useful to know about frequency spectrums, when we process our audio in post-production. That's a little bit about how sound works and how our brains and ears interpret it. In the next lesson, we'll explore acoustics. 4. Acoustics: Now that we know that sound is made of vibrations that move air molecules around, we can learn about sound acoustics. Acoustics are the distinct properties of the environment that determine how sound waves are transmitted. Acoustics explain why things sound different in a room for example versus a concert hall or somewhere like the Grand Canyon. When sound waves travel across the air and they come into contact with a solid surface, they do one of two things. It'll be reflected or absorbed. Soft surfaces tend to absorb sounds, hard surfaces tend to reflect the sounds. Some examples of soft surfaces are things like rugs or clothing or phone panels and blankets. Examples of hard surfaces are wood, windows, flooring, walls, hollow boxes. Because sound reflects off of hard surfaces, the size of the room we record in is very important. Small spaces sound different from big spaces. Small spaces sound more intimate and clear because the sound waves don't have to travel very far before reflecting. Whereas in big spaces, things sound very echoey. They have a lot of reverberations. Reverb is the amount of time it takes for sound to travel to an object, reflect, and then come back to you, like echolocation. Further the distance to the object like in a big room, the more prolonged the echo or the reverb effect is. This is something that you can try for yourself. If you enter a big empty room, or a church, or a temple or something like that, just clap your hands, and notice how long it takes that echo sound actually fade away. That's what reverb is. Natural reverb is super cool in certain situations but it's pretty terrible for trying to get a clear audio recording. That being said, the majority of creators who do YouTube like I do or any other podcasting would probably like a smaller space more to get a clearer and more intimate recording. But smaller spaces also have problems too. Let's talk about some of the acoustic issues in small spaces. First are parallel walls. Rooms with parallel walls are especially bad. Think about it this way. If we speak directly at a wall it's going to bounce right back at us, and then to the wall behind us, and then back-and-forth, creating this looping interfering signal. This interference is something called phasing. Remember that sound travels in waves. Let's look at an example like a sine wave that has this smooth shape. If two identical sine waves are 180 degrees off because of interference, it will actually cancel each other out and our ears won't be able to hear certain elements of that sound. The opposite is also true. If we have two sine waves that happen to line up perfectly, they wouldn't interfere, they would stack, they'll double in sound. If the sound waves are anywhere in between zero and 180 degrees, we can get funny delays in sound or this robotic facie like sound similar to the '60s psychedelic stuff, which is actually the entire basis of the phaser effect that was popularly used in that era. These are all situations we want to avoid when capturing good audio. That was a bit about the science of how sound works with our brain and with the environment around us. In the next lesson, we'll explore how to use these concepts to set up the perfect environment for high-quality recording. 5. Optimizing Recording Environment: Now that we understand how sound and acoustics work, let's learn about how we can optimize our recording environments. The goal of sound treatment is to create what we call a dead room. This is a room that contains as much sound absorbing material as possible to prevent reverb and reflections of unwanted audio signals. Let's walk through all of the things to consider to create a dead room. First and the most obvious, is to remove any sources of loud or steady background noise. This means things like turning off the air conditioning or the heater, close any windows, turn off any air humidifiers or air purifiers, put your pets in another room, put your siblings, parents, or spouses in another room, mute your TV. These things seem pretty obvious, but it's actually funny how often I've forgotten to do them. Next is to replace as many hard surfaces as possible with sound dampening materials like rugs, blankets, or insulation. Sound waves travel in all directions. This means you want to put rugs on the floor and if possible, have some way to dampen sound that goes to the ceiling as well. Having furniture in the room also helps to absorb and reflect sound. Couches, chairs, or plants are great options that also add to the aesthetic if you're getting a video as well, and they can help reflect the sound. But obviously putting absorbing surfaces all over can be impossible in many cases. Another trick we can do is to create asymmetric surfaces to reflect the sound. Remember from the last lesson that parallel walls are criminal to audio signals because the sounds will just bounce back and forth, causing this looping interference. This is why if you go to a lot of music studios, you'll see these custom created funny shapes or pieces of art on the walls. They're meant to create this asymmetric vibe so that the sounds bounce off and don't interfere with each other, but if you're not in the market for custom shapes, using acoustic panels are also another great option. These panels are usually textured or ribbed, the reason being that sound is reflected in a different direction as opposed to coming straight back to you. Really what we want to do is pick an odd shaped room or set it up in a way that the reflections don't bounce back and forth by using furniture, by using objects, or by using these ribbed acoustic panels that reflect sound in different directions. Another option would be to grab a reflection filter. These are similar to acoustic panels that can help create a more intimate close space in a larger room so sound doesn't revert. This can be especially handy when doing voice-overs or audio recordings. They don't require a video because they can create a really mini encased bubble, a mini studio setup around your microphones to prevent any of that unwanted interference. But if you do need to record a video like I'm doing right now, we can still use these large filters and put them behind the camera or behind our microphones to absorb sound. All of this is great if you plan to record audio in the same room and sitting still like I'm doing right now. What if you need to also record audio on the go or out in public? Maybe you're shooting a vlog or shooting a video for a wedding or a commercial, or something that can't be treated beforehand. In these cases, it's a good idea to have a dead cat for your microphone. No, it's not actually a dead animal, it's just this fuzzy looking rug thing that covers your microphone that helps block wind noise or other rustling sounds when you're on the go. It's really handy and it can just go right on top of your microphone like that. We covered a lot of information about how to sound treat your environment. Now, it's your turn. Go take a look at your current recording area and make adjustments to optimize the acoustics. Remove any unwanted noisy things. Replace as many hard surfaces as you can with absorbing materials. Try to get rid of parallel walls by using furniture or materials like acoustic panels and don't forget about the ceiling and the floor. In the next lesson, we'll talk about choosing the right microphone for your projects. 6. Choosing Your Microphone: Now that we know how to sound treat our room, the next question is to decide, what microphone should I use? If you already have a microphone and aren't looking to purchase a new one, that's totally fine as well. You can go ahead and skip this lesson. But if you're overwhelmed by how many options there are and aren't sure which one to get, carry on with this video. There are two types of microphones we can use, dynamic microphones or condenser microphones. These microphones are actually built differently, and therefore, function differently. I won't bore you with how they work, but I have simplified the need-to-know points to help you make a decision for your recording needs. Dynamic microphones are better for louder recordings, that need to handle higher SPL or sound pressure levels. If you plan to record loud live instruments like drums or guitars or screaming children, a dynamic microphone might be better. It's also a good option to use a dynamic microphone if you're recording further away from the microphone itself. For example, in YouTube videos, I like to hide the microphone from frame. The one I'm currently using actually right here, the Shure SM7. I'm just going to bring it into the frame so you can see, is actually hidden from frame, but I can move it up above, and it'll still capture pretty good audio. I also like this microphone because I use it to record vocals or instruments for music production, so I need more of that dynamic range. Condenser microphones are better for recordings that are detail-oriented. These microphones are typically a bit more expensive for similar specs because they're able to capture the details in higher frequencies, and articulation a bit better. But they also tend to pick up background noise much clear. If you don't have a well-treated room or weren't able to optimize your environment from the last lesson, I would advise against getting a condenser microphone. That's why condenser microphones are much more common in music studios when everything is already sound treated. They're also much more prone to damage from temperature or changes in climate, so they need to be taken care of more closely. I also have a Rode NT condenser microphone. I use this microphone when I'm up-close to the microphone doing voice-overs or podcasts. The next thing to think about is the polar pattern of your microphone. The polar pattern of microphone is the shape in which it captures audio signals. Polar patterns determine the sensitivity, your microphone will pick up audio from different angles. By choosing the right pattern, we can avoid unwanted sound sources that bleed into the signal. The most common kinds of polar patterns are cardioid, shotgun, or circular. If you're creating talking head YouTube videos, or podcasts, or courses like this one, where you're the only person talking into a microphone, a cardioid or a shotgun pattern are probably the best bet. They have a narrower pattern that only captures audio from one direction. Shotgun microphones, like this road mic right here, are similar to cardioid ones, except they're much more narrow in their audio capture. These are pretty good for capturing audio from farther away sources without getting interference from the outside environment. Circular microphones capture audio from all around, 360 degrees. These probably wouldn't be the best for podcasts. For example, if you're using a circular microphone while having a podcast conversation with someone sitting across from you, both microphone to pick up the voice from the other person, and there'll be a lot of feedback and bleed resulting in messier audio recordings. I don't personally have any circular microphones, but these are really useful when recording live music sessions, or situations where two vocalists are sharing a microphone and need to stand on opposite sides of each other. I've also seen some strange setups where they have one circular microphone in the middle of the table, and there's a podcast of like four or five people sitting around the table. Sure you wouldn't get any bleed, but personally, I don't like it as much because you'll have less control over each individual person's audio level. If you're planning to record audio and settings with lots of movements, like a vlog or moving interview or orientation training or something, you can also consider using a lapel microphone. This is a microphone that attaches to your clothing like so, or at your collar or something like that, and you can move around with it, and you'll have your audio record that way. In this lesson, we covered the essential considerations for choosing a microphone for your content creation. I'd recommend choosing a dynamic microphone if you aren't as confident with your sound treatment or plan to record audio with the microphone further away from your mouth. Choose a condenser microphone if you have a very nice sound treated room, where you need to capture details and articulations up-close to the microphone. Regardless of dynamic or a condenser microphone, you also want to pay attention to the polar pattern of that microphone. Choose a cardioid pattern if you're the only person speaking into the microphone from a single direction. Choose a shotgun pattern for vlogging. Or if you're using a boom mic like for actors and you're recording a very narrow window. Choose a circular microphone if you need to capture audio from 360 degrees. In the next lesson, we'll go through the steps of actually recording the audio. 7. Recording Audio: Now that we've optimized our recording environment and chosen the right microphone to use, let's learn how to capture great audio. I follow a simple three-step process: Prepare, test, then record. Let's start with prepare. Prepare is a mini checklist I run through before capturing audio. Similar to how surgeons do time-out before operating, we want to make sure everything is in order for a great recording. First, make sure your microphone is plugged into your camera or your laptop or your audio interface if you're using one of those. I can't count how many times in the past I forgotten to turn on my microphone and had to redo an entire recording session. Next, make sure that your microphone is routed properly to your camera or computer. Double-check to see that the input is coming from the correct microphone and not the internal computer or internal camera microphone. You might think that your mic sounds bad when in fact, you're just recording with the wrong microphone. A good way to check is to actually tap the microphone or snap your fingers [NOISE] in front of it. You'll notice if the signal rises or not. Next is microphone placement. Depending on which type of polar pattern your microphone has, make sure you position it so that your voice will actually transmit signal to that microphone. In general, the closer you can get to the microphone, the better. There are multiple benefits to being closer. First, your voice will sound clear and you won't have to speak as loudly or unnaturally. Next, you can turn the preamp or gain of your microphone down so that it captures less of that background hiss or ambient noise in your environment. When setting up your mic placement, I recommend turning the gain of your microphones to be very low. We can adjust this later in the test phase. If you plan to be really close to your microphone when recording, like doing podcasts or voice-overs, you'll likely get pops and spikes when pronouncing certain syllables. Hard p sounds like power, planet, pullover. These p sounds often release very loud spikes in a recording and it can be really annoying to listen to. There are a couple of solutions by just adjusting the microphone placement that can help alleviate this problem. First, you can invest in something called pop filter, which sits in front of your microphone and catches and teams those hard p sounds. Another option is to just move the microphone a little bit to the side, maybe 45 degrees, so that the pressure waves of those p sounds don't blast directly into the microphone but the polar patterns of microphones still captures your audio. But what if your microphone is far from your mouth because you don't want it in your shot like I have here? Well, it's still best to get that microphone as close to your mouth as possible while still being out of the shot. In the case of me recording right now, my microphone is literally just outside of the frame of the shot. I can tap it right here. [NOISE] If it's going to be outside of the frame of the shot, the best angle actually is to have your microphone pointed downwards, towards your mouth into the floor. This is because we can easily just put a rug or mat on the floor to absorb that sound. Having a microphone pointing upward below the camera, there's a lot more chance it will reflect off the walls and off the ceilings and cause interference. Finally, if there are background noises that you can't remove from your environment, then try putting them behind your microphone, if it's a cardioid shape. This helps reduce interference as much as possible. For example, I use a GoTalk's light to light all my shots from this angle to capture a more cinematic lighting look. But when I turn it on, it has this steady humming hiss noise. Instead of putting my microphone on top of my camera or pointed in a way that's facing the light, I actually have my microphone positioned directly in front of the light, pointed the other way to prevent capturing any noise from it. Before you get into the zone for recording your audio, do a quick test recording. You want to make sure that your input levels are appropriate. You're in the right position for that polar pattern of your microphone. The correct microphone is being recorded and that there's no hissing or buzzing sound that's present. We definitely don't want to spend an hour filming or recording, only to find that a very simple blunder like that ruined the entire session. Sometimes we do a test recording, we'll notice a robotic buzzing or hissing sound coming from the microphone, and we won't know why. Here are a few common reasons why this could be happening. First, a cable could be loose. So double-check that all your cables are plugged in very well. Second, cable could be damaged. Switch out your cable and see if that fixes the problem. Third, your USB or XLR port might be damaged. Ports can get damaged too, surprisingly. Try switching to different USB ports on your computer or different XLR ports on your audio interface and see if that resolves the problem. The last thing is, just restart your computer or your camera. Sometimes the signal gets corrupt somewhere in the audio chain and a simple reboot solves the issue. When testing the microphone, we want to give ourselves headroom. What does that mean? Headroom refers to providing enough dynamic range in volume so our voice doesn't clip or distort. Distorted audio sounds absolutely awful. This is why I recommend turning the preamp or input gain very low. That way when you test in your recording device, whether that's your camera or a computer, make sure to turn your audio signal display on to visually see the audio levels. As you test, slowly turn up the preamp until the audio signal hits around minus 12 DB. Hitting minus 12 DB should sit in the green range for most displays. We want to avoid any yellow or red spikes as that means the audio is distorting or clipping. A general rule of thumb for me is that I want my microphone to hit minus 12 DB when I'm speaking naturally, when I'm speaking comfortably, and I don't have to strain my voice. Next, as you test, move your body around the microphone to figure out the best position to record it. I like to say aloud while I'm testing where I am in relationship to the microphone so that when I listen to the test recording, I can identify which location is best. For example, I might do something like this. This is a test. I am now on the left side of my microphone. I'm on the left side, moving back to the center of my microphone. Now I'm on the right side of my microphone. That way when I play back the test recording, I'll know exactly how my microphone sounds from different positions based on that cardioid shape. Only after I get a good test recording will I actually start to record my audio. Let's talk about recording. As you record, here are a few tips to make sure your audio continues to sound great. Try not to move too much to prevent your voice for moving away from the polar pattern of the microphone. Speak comfortably and naturally to sound as authentic as possible. Also make sure you have room in your SD card if you're recording audio directly into your camera. Now this may seem like a very tedious process, but being systematic and calculated with how we approach recording audio is the best way to prevent mistakes, retakes, and wasting a lot of time. Practice using this checklist every time until it becomes habitual and you'll have a great recording every single time. We covered a lot of information in this lesson. I'll leave a downloadable PDF, the three-phase checklist that you can refer to and have with you whenever you are about to record an audio. Now it's your turn. It's time to prepare, test, and then record the retake of your audio recording for the class project. This recording itself should sound substantially better than your initial take after the room optimization, after choosing a better camera, and after putting your microphone in the right place. But we're not finished yet. In the next lesson, I'll show you how to process your audio in post-production to add that extra professional touch. See you then. 8. Post Processing: Hopefully, now you'll have re-recorded your little about me voice over in your new optimized environment and with your new microphone. The next thing to do is post-processing. I'm going to hop over to my computer now and let's get started. Here is my Ableton Live. This is my favorite DAW to use. But remember that you can use any editing software, whether that's final cuts, Adobe Audacity, whichever. I'll only be using stock plug-ins and effects from Ableton. All of these effects can be found in all of the other programs as well. You don't really need any fancy equipment. It's just the concepts about how to use these plug-ins that'll be carried across all the other editing software. Here is my very brief audio recording that I just took in this sound optimized room using this current microphone that I'm speaking in. I'm also going to go ahead and play it so you guys can hear. Hey, this is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. We were actually born and raised here. Some of my favorite hobbies include producing music, which I've been doing for the path. You get the picture. That is just my simple story, audio recording. Now let's make it sound more professional. Just like the last lesson, I'll be following a checklist. We're going to be using a series of audio effects or plug-ins to create something called an audio effect chain. This means that after one effect is applied to the audio, that new signal is going to go into the next plug-in. Then it's going to change again. That new signal is going to go into the next plugin and the next plugin, just like a chain. They're going through one at a time in series. The first effect that I'm going to add to my audio recording is something called a gate or a noise reduction effect. What the gate plugin does is that it prevents any audio from coming through if it doesn't reach a certain threshold. Since we have that background hissing noise at a very low level, if we set the threshold to right above that level, then none of that audio will come through and we'll hear silence. In order to use the gate plugin properly, I'm just going to go ahead and loop an area of my audio track that has no talking in it. If I move the threshold down to where the hissing sound actually comes in, you'll hear it come through just a little bit. [NOISE] What I'm going to do with the threshold is just actually move it right above to where no sound comes through. Now whenever there's a hissing sound, it shouldn't come through when I'm speaking. I'm going to unloop it now and let's see how it sounds when I put this simple gate effect on. Hey, this is Matty Kenny, I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. We were actually born and raised here. Some of my favorite hobbies include producing music, which I've been doing for the past 10 years. I play guitar, I play piano, I play the drums. As you can hear, all that gate effect really did was take out any of the hissing noise when I wasn't speaking. But when I started to speak, my voice actually went above that threshold, meaning sound was let through. But if I move the threshold too high, it can actually distort the audio and make it sound very thin because some of the words that I say are going to come through and some of the words I say won't come through. Let's take a listen to see what that sounds like. Hey, brother called Cajun Koi Academy, we're also both doctors living in Orange California. Because the threshold is set so high, only some of the words I say are actually loud enough to come through. That's why I set the threshold just above the background noise, but not any higher because I still I want all the words to come through cleanly. I'm pretty happy with how that gates sounds. Now for every effect that I add to this audio effect chain, I'm going to want to do a before and after to hear the difference. Let's turn off and listen. Hey, this is Matty Kenny. Then if I turn it back on we can listen. We hear that there was more silence in the beginning. AB testing every time you add on an effect is a good way to train your ears to notice what the effects are actually doing to the audio signal. Now let's move on to the next plugin of the audio chain, which is an EQ or equalizer. An EQ allows us to see the entire frequency spectrum of our audio recording. We can add or remove specific frequencies. This current EQ that I just added on will be something called a subtraction EQ, meaning I'll be removing specific frequencies to clean up the audio. Recall in the first lesson that we can only hear sounds in the frequency range of 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz. I'm going to go ahead and play back my audio track here and we can see what frequency spectrum my voice takes up. Hey, this is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. As you can see, most of those frequencies were sitting around this 100 area all the way up until about 5,000. The first thing I'm going to do with this subtraction EQ is create a high-pass filter, which means I'm going to remove all of the noise below that filter. I'm going to move this filter up to about 70-90 hertz because I want to remove any of the low rumbly sound in the audio. Hey, this is Matty Kenny, I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. We were actually born and raised here. For male voices like mine here, I also like to remove just a little bit, maybe 1-1.5 dB around the low mid frequencies. This is an area of about 400-600 hertz. I'm going to go ahead and click this, and I'm going to pull it down just a little bit right here. I'm going to change the queue here to go up a little bit to narrow in that frequency range. For females, I would do around 500-700 hertz. The reason that I'm taking a little bit of frequency away from this area is because this is where our voices usually sound boxy or boomy. For vocals that sound a bit nasally like we have allergies, I would remove about 1-1.5 dB around the 700-1,000 range. I'm not saying that your voice sounds this way or that my voice sounds that way, well, actually, my voice does sound a little bit nasally, but it's the way that our voice interacts with the recording environment, they might collect reflections that buildup in those frequency ranges, and that'll add unwanted nasal or boxy sounds. This first subtraction EQ is just a tame and remove those frequencies if they build up. Again, I'm going to do an AB test right here by turning off this EQ and listening to it. Then I'm going to turn it back on to here, the subtle difference. Hey, this is Matty Kenny, I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. Hey, this is Matty Kenny, I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. Pretty subtle difference, but I think it sounds a little bit cleaner and a little bit less boxy, a little less like I'm talking into a hollow room. The next effect in the chain is going to be something called a DSR. Any S sounds or SH sounds like ss or shh tend to cut through the mix and sound much louder than any other syllables or consonants. This can be very harsh on our ears, especially for people listening to your audio. The DSR is a tool that teams those S frequencies. In your software if you have a specific DSR tool, you can go ahead and use that. It also might be called something like a high-frequency reducer or high-frequency removal tool. Ableton naturally doesn't have a native DSR tool. What I'm going to be using is something called a multi-band compressor. So a compressor is a tool that reads incoming signal and increases or reduces its volume to hit a certain threshold. In music, we call this reducing the dynamic range or squashing the audio. So if we have an audio signal that switches between talking loudly and then whispering, compression will help us make the louder sound softer and the whispering sounds louder so that the audio levels overall are more equal. But using a multiband compressor, it allows me to only choose a specific frequency range to apply that compressor effect, right? Because I only want to capture those hash S sounds that sit anywhere between 5,000 and 8,000 hertz. So what I'm going to do it in my multiband compressor here is I'm going to turn off the compressors for the mid and the low frequencies and I'm only going to move this high band up to about 5,000. So what I'm going to do is lower the threshold of the multiband compressor just so that the high frequencies get tamed just a little bit and I'm also going to turn the output town by 2dB. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. We were actually born and raised here. Some of my favorite hobbies include producing music, which I've been doing for the past 10 years. I play guitar, I play piano, I play the drums. So anytime you hear those S-words, you can see here that it's being tamed just a little bit. Let me turn off the multiband compressor and we can hear it without, and then I'll turn it back on so we can hear the difference. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. So as you can see, those S-sounds just got tamed a little bit, not so harsh on our ears, especially if we want to crank the volume when we're listening to our audio recording later on. So those first three effects that I use, were all for subtraction purposes, I was removing frequencies that I didn't like. The next thing I'm going to add is just a regular compressor. Now that we've removed all the unwanted frequencies, I can compress the remaining audio recording so that it sounds more even in volume, less dynamic, and serves to be a more enjoyable listening experience for our audience. But instead of just choosing one band like I did for the multi-band compression, I'm just going to lower the overall threshold of this compressor right here until I get about 2-3 dBs of gain reduction. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. We were actually born and raised here. Some of my favorite hobbies include producing music, which I've been doing for the past 10 years. I play guitar, I play piano, I play the drums. The next thing is to play around with the attack and release of my compressor. The attack basically means how quickly the compressor activates when signal crosses the threshold. A faster attack time means the compressor squashes the audio signal faster, a slower attack means the gain reduction is more gradual. Release means how long the compressor stays active once the signal drops below the threshold. A faster release means that the compressor turns off more quickly when the signal fades. A slower release means the compressor more gradually turns off. So I'm going to play around with changing the attack and release and you can take a list to see how that changes the way my audio sounds. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. We were actually born and raised here. Some of my favorite hobbies include producing music, which I've been doing for the past 10 years. I play guitar, I play piano, I play the drums and I also like to rock climb, do yoga, and hanging out with my friends. Peace. So as you can see, when I moved the attack too far to the right or too long, no compression was actually happening. The reason is because the compressor was activating too slowly to catch any of the gain reduction. So in general, I like to put my attacks a little bit faster. I want to put it at about 0.1 milliseconds, and for the release, I also want to keep it a little on the shorter side because I don't want too much gain reduction happening, that totally squashes the dynamic range of my audio. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. I'm pretty happy with the way that sounds, but let's AB test it again to see the difference. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors. Hey, this is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. Cool, so I'm pretty happy with the way that the compression is acting on my audio. So now that I've compressed the audio and made it sound more even and enjoyable, and we've also removed any of those unwanted frequencies. We can do additive EQ now. So I'm going to put another EQ on after this compressor. Additive EQ just adds a little bit of color back into our recording to bring out the good qualities of the recording. So for podcasts or a voice-over, what I'd like to do is add just a little tiny kick in the 100-200 frequency spectrum range. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. What that does is add a little bit of warmth and baseness to our voice so it doesn't sound too thin. I also like to inject just a slight bump at around the 5,000 hertz area to add some more clarity and a little bit of airiness to the voice to give it more contrast. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. We were actually born and raised here. Some of my favorite hobbies include producing music, which I've been doing for the past 10 years. I play. Great. So I added a little bit of clarity and a little bit of a high-end, and also just a little bit of baseness to bring out that warmth. Let's do an AB test again. I'll turn it off. We can take a listen. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. Now let's listen to it with it on. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. Cool. So the audio is starting to sound a lot better, it's cleaned up. And we've also added in a little bit of color to accentuate the good parts of the recording. Now, the final step in this audio effect chain is going to be adding a limiter. Now a limiter acts very similar to the way a compressor does. What it does is it does gain reduction for the signal when it crosses a certain threshold but it doesn't try to create an even distribution like a compressor. The only thing it does is just to make sure that nothing clips or peaks. So what we can do with the limiter is set a ceiling so that no matter how loud the signal coming through is, the limiter will make sure it doesn't get higher than a certain dB. So what I'm going to do with the limiter is actually pull it down to about negative 6dB and what that's going to do is make sure that my audio clip never goes higher than negative 6dB. With a limiter, I'm going to increase the volume of my recording until it gets to the point where it's just about to start doing gain reduction because I don't want it to get too distorted. But I want to bring up the level, the overall volume of my recording so that it's easier to mix later on if I'm layering it with sound effects or with music in my actual content. So I'm going to go ahead and play the track and I'm going to push the gain up until I start to see any kind of gain reduction. Hey, This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. We were actually born and raised here. Some of my favorite hobbies include producing music, which I've been doing for the past 10 years. I play guitar, I play. Great. So what the limit did there was bring the overall volume of my audio track up but it kept it at negative 6 dB, or the ceiling that I set. Giving yourself at least 6dB of headroom is going to be very useful if you plan to use this content in your videos or you can actually give yourself some room to adjust that volume. So that was the last plugin in my audio effect chain. Let's do one final AB test with all the plugins turned off, and then all the plugins turned on again and see the difference in sound. So here's it with it off. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. Hey. This is Matty Kenny. I run a YouTube channel with my brother called Cajun Koi Academy. We're also both medical doctors living in Orange County, California. So as you can hear, day and night difference, huge change. All that's left to do is export this audio, which I can do from the file menu or using Control Shift R to export it out into another MP3 or .wav file and then I can use that as part of my content audio. I also want to mention that this is just my workflow for how to think about cleaning up audio. First of all, doing subtraction, EQ, gating, and multi-band compression to remove any unwanted frequencies, then I do a full compression to squash and stabilize the audio, and then I'll add in a little bit more color with additive EQ at the end before putting a limiter on to bring up the total volume up until negative 6dB. As you work with your own recording for longer, you might not like some of the effects that I use and that's totally okay. Maybe you don't feel like you need to do an EQ boost like I did or maybe the compression that I did was too much. There's no right or wrong formula for working with audio. It's up to your own ear to decide if it sounds good or not. So now it's your turn. Feel free to pause and re-watch this video as many times as you need to, to learn the basics of post-processing. Using your newly recorded voice recording, process the audio using the audio effect chain we covered in this video. Once you finish, admire your work and upload your class projects so we can all hear the difference in your audio from the very beginning before the entire class and at the very end after you've optimized your environment, got a new microphone and processed it to sound professional. 9. Wrap Up: [MUSIC] Congrats on making it to the end of the course, we covered so much information. We learned a little bit about the science, about sound and acoustics. We also covered how that affects our recording environment and which microphones we should choose that are right for us. Then we talked about how to prepare, record and process our audio to make it sound professional. I've also provided downloadable checklist you can run through to make sure your recording process is more systematic and reproducible so you can get great sound recordings over and over again. Where do you go from here? As a content creator, our setups and workflows are constantly changing. You'll start to experiment with new equipment, new rooms, new microphones and new software. That's awesome. I believe we should always be iterating and improving on our processes to make better content. Capturing and processing great audio is a skill that requires practice. Most people don't spend enough time training their ears to hear the nuances in specific frequencies or sounds. Yet they don't realize that what makes an enjoyable listening experience is this attention to detail it took to make that audio recording sound crisp, clear and clean. I encourage you all to keep practicing your recording and your producing skills, and I wish you the best of luck in your content creation journey.