Podcast & Audiobook: Home Audio Production & Audio Editing

1. Welcome!: This is home audio production and audio editing for podcast and audiobooks. In this course, I'll show you how I made this $20 mic sound good, using a free app and with a little more than a few heavy curtains in my tiny flat. If you want to do podcast and narrate audiobooks, this is a great course to help you record better audio and edit your audio to make it sound amazing. My name is Pong Lizardo and this course is the result of questions and common concerns I got in my YouTube channel from beginners, such as yourself. Questions, such as which mic should I use? Should I use a recorder or an interface? How do you edit your audio? What do I do with thin, hollow, noisy hey sound. In this course, we'll address all of those concerns, and more. We'll do simple acoustic treatments to reduce echoes and noise. If you have no clue which audio gear to buy, I got you covered. We'll talk about the equipment you need to get started from the ideal mic, the best interface or recorder and which headphones you should use. Along the way, we'll address concerns such as do ELR USB cable converters work? Should I use a dynamic or a condenser mic? What is the best mic? What audio gear to buy and much, much more. To make your gear search faster, I also included gear recommendations. These are equipment I'm familiar with or bought and used in the past. In addition, I'll show you how to set up your audio gear from start to finish, how to connect your mic to your interface, how to position your mic properly, what audio levels you should be recording in, et cetera. Once we covered the hardware part, I'll show you how to edit your audio. How to properly process your audio for podcast and audio books. We'll talk about reducing noise, making your audio sound louder, preventing audio distortions, which effects to use and how to use them properly. In this course, you don't have to listen to highly technical jargon, you'll never use or sift through thousands of YouTube videos, which confuse more than help. All you need to do to get started is right here in this course. So enroll now and I'll see you in the course. 2. S1L1 Introduction: Most people who encountered me on YouTube were wondering how I made $120 mic sound decent with no fancy acoustic treatment or sophisticated gear. Curious, how I did that? Well, hello, my friends. I'm very happy you enrolled to this course to learn how to do home audio production and audio editing for your podcasts or audiobooks. I made this course for beginners or for those who may want to improve their audio. If you follow this course, I assure you. In the end, you'll get better audio quality. Chances are you made your way to this course through my YouTube channel, and you already know me. If not, I'm your new best friend Pong Lizardo and I'll be your instructor for this course. In addition to my YouTube channel, I hosted and produced a podcast which made it the top three of Tune's philosophy category. I also wrote and narrated an audio book. I did all of my recordings in the comfort of my own home. Using this same setup, which I'll show you in greater detail later. My main goal is to help you create good clean audio for your podcast and audio books. But I'm sure what you'll learn here will also apply to other projects which require audio, like videos and voice overs. Like my other courses, I kept this course simple and practical. I've cut out the fat and focus on easy to understand practical information you could apply right away. Our course is arranged in a logical manner. We start with the basics, then the audio equipment you'll need before we proceed to setting up your recording space. Then once you have your equipment and your space, we are going to put everything together, start recording, and editing. Those who may have already bought their equipment, I urge you to stick with me. Because while we're discussing audio gear, I'll explain certain things which you don't want to miss. Or maybe you may want to change your equipment and need some ideas. It may even reveal a few things which can improve your audio. Before we begin, I want to ask you for a review. These reviews are very, very important. Okay. It helps me know what you like about this course. It lets other students find this course, and it tells me how to improve this course. If you're not ready to leave me a review, you can do that later. Thank you for understanding, and thank you in advance for hopefully your positive review and rating. Without further ado, let's get started. 3. S1L2 Good Audio: Before we go to the next video, I think we first need to talk about what makes a good audio. So here are a few things to look for when we talk about good audio. Natural sounding. We want the sound we produce to be as natural sounding as possible. It means it should be as close to the original source as possible. We don't want to sound like we're inside the can or sound like our voice is coming out of a cheap radio. If you're doing an narration, for example, we want the recording to sound as close to your own voice as possible. Of course, it won't be 100% the same as the original source because our mic has its own sound signature. But we aim to be as close to how we heard it in real life. Free of unwanted sound. When we listen to someone speak, we don't normally hear other sounds. Like the sound of the room, room tone, The AC humming in the background, for example, or the small mouth clicks, plosives or sibilance. These sounds are there, but our ears or more accurately, our brains tune it out. But our mics don't. Our mic will pick up every sound in its polar pattern. So we aim to remove these unwanted sounds. Low noise floor. We want a low noise floor. The noise floor is unwanted sound or his produced by our equipment. The noise floor doesn't exist in real life. When we edit our audio, we usually aim for a noise floor of negative 60 decibels or better. Anything louder just gets in the way. Don't worry. We'll talk about reducing noise floor later. Low reverb. Reverberation or echo is something we want to minimize but not completely remove from our audio. Otherwise, it would sound unnatural. We want some in our recordings, but not too much that it stands out and it's noticeable. We want our listeners to hear it but not notice it. We want them to think it's part of the whole acoustic characteristic of what they're listening to. Although take note, some musicians intentionally put a higher amount of reverb in their audio. In other words in word. I love I totally forgot how that went at the end. Woops improvise. But for audiobooks and podcasts, this is not generally a good idea. Those are a few things we're looking for in terms of audio for podcasts and audiobooks. In simple terms, those characteristics are what makes a good audio. 4. S1L3 Audio Chain: Here's a quick one. To understand how to create audio, the equipment you need, and the process you need to go through, you must understand the audio chain. The audio chain is simply how your equipment is stringed together. The signal sound travels through this chain. Here is a simple audio chain which we'll use in this course. When you speak, your voice is picked up by your mic. It travels through the cable, enters your interface where it's amplified and converted from analog signals to digital information. This information is then recorded or saved to your computer or recorder. This is how the signal flows from one link of the chain to the other. Roughly speaking, this is how audio is produced. From this simple diagram, you can already see the equipment you'll need and how to set up your studio. We'll discuss this step in greater detail later. I want you to keep this in mind because when you encounter problems later, chances are one of the components in this chain is faulty. With this knowledge, let's go to the next video. 5. S1L4 Before You Proceed: The setup I'm about to show you in the next sections is the setup I use for my courses, audio nations, and videos. In fact, it's the same setup I'm using right now. To give you some reference, I live in a flat, in a building near a main road. I'm recording in a more or less 20 square meter space with one big window, I have no fancy sound treatment, just normal stuff in my flat. Although you can have success with the same setup you're hearing right now, take note. There are limits to this. If you're in a place with two loud noises like stations, airports, factories, construction sites, and the likes, this setup may not work for you. Very loud sound is very hard to deal with without professional sound proofing. In addition, bear in mind in reducing noise in your recording space. Tick and dense materials will dampen sound. So if you have thin walls and doors, it may not stop sound from seeping in. B that as it may. This course will be useful for you to get some idea on how to address your own space. I also recommend you use your headphones when you take this course. There will be a lot of instances where you may want to hear the sound samples in the videos. For this, having headphones is crucial. But enough of that, let's see what's in store for us. 6. S2L1 Audio Gear Intro: In this section, we'll discuss the gear you need in order to make great audio and the comfort of your own home. I suggest you go through this entire section before making any purchasing decisions. Making great sound starts with choice of equipment. We need to bear in mind where recording in a space which was not designed to be a recording space. As such, choosing our audio gear is crucial. If we want to get good audio quality. We don't want to buy equipment just because everybody uses it or because it's new or trending. We choose and buy equipment which solves our problem. Good equipment is not determined by price, but how appropriate your gear is to your situation. Cheap doesn't necessarily mean horrible. I'm using $120 mic because it's the most appropriate mic for my purposes. Although note, there are more horrible products in the lower price range than the higher price range. Also, be aware, high priced products may not be what you need. Every situation and every space will be different. In addition, availability of gear may be an issue. Some gear may be available to some people, some may not. So I don't want to just throw out gear recommendations. I want you to learn how to choose your audio gear. Here's a quick rundown of the core things you need in your home studio. Reference headphones, microphone, pop filter, interface or recorder, something to hold your mic and an audio editing app. To narrow down your search and help you with your purchasing decision, I've included a PDF gear recommendations. These are items I've used before or are familiar with. It includes the price, a short description, and links to where you can buy it. 7. S2L2 Reference Headphones: You should put more energy in getting good headphones because you cannot control what you cannot hear. We use headphones to hear sound coming out of our equipment. When it comes to audio recording, a lot of people put too much focus on the right mic. But your audio is only as good as what you can hear and control. Professionals usually have two headphones, one for mixing and one for monitoring. But for us, we'll accomplish both with one headphones. Here are the top three things you should be looking at when buying headphones. One, closed back. Closed back headphones are headphones, which as the name suggests, have a closed back, as opposed to open back headphones, which have an open back. Closed back headphones prevent sound from leaking out and bleeding into the mic. It also prevents external sound from seeping in when you're working. Good sound isolation will make your job easier. Leaks from headphones ruin recordings and sound entering your headphones interfere when you're monitoring or editing audio. Two reference headphones. You should buy headphones which are designated as a reference headphones or studio headphones. These are headphones which reproduce sound accurately with as little coloration as possible. Coloration is when manufacturers modify the sound produced by the headphones to suit a target market, like beats by Dre and bows, which are said to have too much base. Editing audio with these headphones is like looking at the world with rose colored glasses. We want to perceive the world as is. We want the headphones tuned flat because we want to hear the sound from our equipment as is. Hree impedance. We are looking for low impedance headphones, below 50 s or ideally, 32 s. A 32 M headphones can't be used without pre AMPs. It can also be used on mobile devices and laptops. Impedance refers to the resistance of the headphones audio coil. It has nothing to do with quality. Higher impedance doesn't mean better headphones. Impedance greater than 50 s may not produce a loud enough sound when plugged on low voltage devices like computers. The higher the impedance, the more voltage a headphone needs in order to produce sound. Okay. Higher impedance headphones like a 250 M headphones are usually in professional sound studios because studios usually have higher voltage equipment, not because a dare of better quality. So to recap, we want to buy a headphone that is closed back, designated as a studio headphones or reference headphones and we want low impedance headphones, so we can use it on low voltage equipment like recorders, computers and mobile devices. If you're interested to know, I'm using here a special edition Bayer dynamic DT 770 P 32 OMS. I had this one for a couple of years now, and I use it both for monitoring audio and for post processing. If Bayer dynamic is not your thing, I used a couple of headphones in the past. If you want to check those out, I've included a PDF document in the course resources. This document contains a list of those headphones, how much and a link to where you can buy those headphones. Choose one which strikes your fancy or one which fits your budget. 8. S2L3 Microphones: The heart of any audio studio is the microphone. If you want to know, I'm using a Baringer X 8,500 ultra voice. For a home studio, there are a couple of things we are looking for in a mic. Cardoid polar pattern. This is how the mic picks up sound. We want a mic which has a cardoid polar pattern. You'll see this in a mic's specifications. This polar pattern looks like a heart, hence the name Cardoid polar pattern. This means the mic is most sensitive to sound in front of it and least sensitive at the back. Our makeshift home studio is not 100% sound proof, and there are a lot of things which generate unwanted sound in a house. We want to minimize or prevent the mic from picking up these unwanted sounds. A cardoid polar pattern is perfect for this purpose because it will ignore or not pick up sound well outside its polar pattern. Dynamic mic. There are two types of mics, dynamic and condenser microphones. We want a dynamic mic because it's less sensitive than a condenser mic. And it doesn't require phantom power. Though the reduced sensitivity would mean increasing our gain when recording and amplifying the sound in post. The reduced sensitivity also means the mic won't hear sounds which are too quiet and outside its polar pattern. In addition, it also won't hear minimal echoes from your recording environment. XLR connection. Look for mics with XLR connectors. This is a round connector with three prongs. Avoid mics with USB connectors. USB connections and cables produce a lot of noise and are prone to static and interference. A XLR connector lets you capture the cleanest sound possible. We'll talk about XLR more in a later video. XLR cables and connections produce better sound quality, and we want to get the most quality out of our equipment. In addition, you get some future proofing when you buy an XLR mic. You don't have to worry of USB ports and connections changing on you or any compatibility issues with computers. This was one of my problems in the past when I upgraded my laptop. Sensitivity. Here's an additional tip based on my experience recording in my noisy flat. If you're between two microphones, choose the less sensitive mic. The one with the lower number. You can check this information in the mic's specification sheet. The gain may be a pain, but it will reject a lot of the ambient noise and echoes in the environment. When it comes to which specific mic or which brand you should get, there's no straight answer. You can buy a shore, a road, an audio technica, et cetera. But what I've discovered in the past is the right mic is like Harry Potter's one. The one chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter. In our case, the right mic, For you chooses you. Again, our equipment is a solution to a specific problem. It should address your specific needs. Factors, such as your voice, your preferences, your budget, and your space will affect your decision. There's no such thing as one best mic to rule them all. I've used a lot of mics in the past, even expensive ones. You can see this on my YouTube channel, but for some reason, I always go back to this mic. I like the sound it produces and it suits my needs. Really well. Choose a mic who sound you like. Trust your ears with this. You may not be an expert yet, but you know what crappy audio is. I mean, very few of us would watch YouTube videos which hurts our ears. The same applies when choosing mics. You can check out the PDF gear recommendation and the course resources for mics I've used in the past. All of those are excellent choices. Just choose which one you like. I've also included a link to my YouTube playlist where you will find me testing different mics. 9. S2L4 Interface Recorder: You need a way to get signal sound from your mic to your computer. For this task, you can use either an audio interface or an audio recorder. An audio interface is a device which converts analog signals to digital information that is then passed to your computer. Audio interfaces need to be connected to a computer in order to work. This is because the audio interface records the audio in your computer. Additionally, you'll need an app to control it. An audio recorder is a stand alone device. As the name suggests, it records sound. It has a built in mic, SD card storage, audio in out ports, and other built in features. Generally speaking, audio interfaces are cheaper than audio recorders. So if budget is a concern, get an audio interface. However, knowing what I know now, and if I could go back in time, I tell my past self to buy a recorder instead. This may be very highly biased opinion, but if you're serious about audio, here are several reasons why you should go for a recorder instead of an interface. Easy, simple setup. You only need to connect your mic to your recorder. That's it. You can start recording. No need to turn on your computer, launch an app, or a desk to set up everything. A audio recorder is a standalone portable device. This means you can record almost anywhere and take it with you to onsite recordings. You can even mount it on cameras to get better audio for videos. Because it's small and portable, it allows you to set up your recording space almost anywhere, even in a closet. Because you can set up a recorder almost anywhere, you can record away from your computer. This is a big thing. Most computers create a lot of noise when its fans kick in. The noise from the computer's fans get in the recording. This sounds like a high noise floor. Noise from your computer can sometimes be enough to ruin an otherwise perfect recording. I know this because I had this problem when I was starting out. In addition, power fluctuations could create problems in the recording. Sometimes a buzz could also be heard if a computer is not well grounded, or if there's something with the USB port. Recorders are designed to do one thing really well. Capture sound. This means there are fewer points of failure. You avoid app crashes, computer hanging or crashing, sudden update restarts, not enough storage, et cetera. It happens often to interfaces on computers, especially on long sessions where your computer fails on you and you lose everything you've worked on. I had this problem before. Recorders give you a lot of flexibility. May it be narrations, jam sessions, interviews, capturing ambient sound and audio for videos. This flexibility is important when you're beginning because you just don't know what you'll do in the future. If you buy an audio interface, you may need to buy a recorder in the future to suit a specific need. You might as well invest a little right now. In addition, some recorders also give you the option of using it as an audio interface. These are just my opinions based on my experience. I'm sharing this with you because I wish somebody told me these things when I was starting out. Again, for gear recommendations, check out the course resources. 10. S2L5 XLR Cables: We mentioned this before. We need an XLR mic. As such, we'll need XLR cables or what is sometimes called balanced cables. I want to take some time to talk about balanced cables or XLR cables to address possible questions regarding XLR to USB converters or USB mics. We want to use XLR cables because it offers the cleanest sound possible, and it reduces noise from the system. An XLR cable works like this. An XLR cable has three pins and three wires. One is ground which reduces his or noise and two pins both transfer signal from our mic to our recorder. When signal enters one end of the cable, one of the wires flips the signal. Then it flips it back once it exits the other end. So what is with the flipping? This is actually how we get a cleaner sound with an XLR cable. Let's say there's some interference. It's going to be picked up by the wires. The wires will carry the interference together with my voice as it travels through the cable. When the signal gets to the other end, something cool happens. If you remember, one of the signals was flip in the beginning, making the signal out of face with each other. When it reaches the other end, it gets flipped back and the interference gets canceled out completely. This is because the interference is picked up by both wires. When the signal is flipped back at the other end. The signal of the interference also gets flipped and it cancels itself out. Leaving you with just your voice. This is why we use XLR cables. USB cables and unbalanced connections don't do this. There's a little you can do when interference gets in the recording. 11. S2L6 Pop n Stands: The final pieces of gear you'll need are stands, clips, and pop filters. I know these are just little things. But in the spirit of being thorough, I want us to talk about this. Something to hold your mic. Never handhold your mic when recording. Even if you have a live mic like this, don't handhold your mic when doing podcast or narrations. As much as possible, you want to avoid holding or touching your mic during recordings. Vibrations from your hands translate into unwanted sounds called handling noises. So, you need to get yourself something to hold your mic for you. You have two options here, a mic stand and a boom arm. If you're working on a desk, you may want to get a boom arm. If you're like me, you may want to get a mic stand. Choose which one fits your needs better. Pop filters reduce plosives. These are popping sounds from Ps and Bs. Like when you say words like popcorn, Peter Piper, pizza, black, bun, Peter Piper, pizza, pronto perfect, et cetera. In terms of reducing plosives, your choice is between a windscreen and a foam mother. Both do a decent job preventing plosives. Wind screens are usually more expensive than mothers. Mothers, on the other hand are cheaper, but has a tendency to make some mics well, sound muddy or muffled. In addition, some mics don't have mothers which fit. So you may need to use a windscreen instead. Whatever you choose, make sure you use something to prevent or reduce plosives. Some of you may be considering or was enticed by the marketing of shock mounts. Here's the thing. You don't need one. Shock mounts are designed to suspend the mic on elastic bands, so the mic doesn't hear the vibrations from where it's attached. This is useful when you have a camera mounted mic. But if you're just recording from a fixed location like this, you can save the money and skip the shock mount. They included Mc clip, which may come with your mic or stand will do. Besides, some mic models, especially live mics, those which are usually hand held during live performances like this one, are designed to reduce vibrations from handling. Think of this as a built in shock mount. To make things easier for you, please check our gear recommendations PDF. It contains a link to where you can order these items. 12. S2L7 Amplifiers: Amplifiers or pre amps. This is not a necessary equipment to have at this point, but it is very nice to have, especially if you have a dynamic mic. If budget allows by one, pre amp is connected between the mic and your recorder or audio interface via an XLR cable. All it does is amplify the signal from your mic before reaching your interface or audio recorder. With a louder signal sound from your mic, you can reduce your gain. This results in a louder audio that has a lower noise floor. Again, this is nice to have but not necessary. I suggest you consider this in the future once you get a feel for your equipment. I just thought I'd mention it here just in case you encounter this in the wild. 13. S2L8 Before Moving On: After this point, we'll be talking about how to set up your audio gear and how to use them. You can either go through all the videos before getting your audio gear and then applying what you've learned. Or you can acquire your audio gear and follow along the videos. Either way, do what works for you. Okay. The important thing is you understand the videos and what you need to do. With that, let's go and let's start setting up your studio. Okay. 14. S3L1 Install DAW: This video will install audacity to our computer. Though I think most of you know how to install an app on a computer, we still need to do this for people who may not know how to do this. I also must apologize for Windows and Linux users. I use AMAC so the demo will be done on AMAC. Start by heading over to Audacity's website and download Audacity. Link can be found in the course resources. We also need an additional plug in to process audiobook narrations. We need audacitys ACX check plug in. We'll talk about these plug ins later. For now, we just need to download and install all the software we need. Again, links are in the course resources. To install audacity, simply double click it and follow the prompts. If you receive some security issues during installation, simply head over to system preferences, security, general, and just allow the app there. Once you have audacity installed, we need to put the plug in in audacity. We do that by going to library, application support, audacity plug ins. Once you found this folder, drag and drop the plug in, then close. Check if you see the plug ins. You should find the ACX check plug in. Here. If you don't see the plug in, just go to add remove plug ins. Look for our plug in and enable, then hit. At this point, we can start using audacity to record and edit audio. If you're using an interface, there's an extra step you need to do. We need to make sure audacity is using your USB audio interface, and not your computer's sound card. To do that, connect your interface to your computer. Lunch audacity, go to audacitys preferences. Click here and choose your USB audio interface for playback and recording. Leave the rest as is and hit. If you don't see your interface, quit and re launch audacity, or try restarting your computer. That's it. Now it's your turn to install audacity in your computer. 15. S3L2 Equipment Setup: Do you remember the audio chain? Connecting all of these together is a simple and straightforward process. In this video, we are going to set up our equipment. So let's first do a quick rundown of our gear. We have our headphones, Mc recorder or interface XLR cable, stand or boom arm and popFilter. Here is the setup I'm using right now. As you can see, everything is attached to my mic stand. We're going to use this as a reference for setting up your audio gear. First, using your mic clip, attach your mic to your mic stand or boom arm. If you're using an interface, you will need to set up on a desk near your computer. Here, I'm using a friction arm to attach my recorder to my mic stand. This setup allows me to move around my entire recording gear. Important, make sure the back of the mic, the least sensitive part of the mic is pointed to the source of greatest noise in your room. This way, you reduce or muffle unwanted sounds. Make sure phantom power is turned off. Dynamic mics don't need phantom power. Although phantom power will not hurt or ruin a dynamic mic, it's better to be safe than Sorry. I had experience before where the phantom power was introducing noise to my dynamic mic. Attach your pop filter to your mic. If you're using a foam mother, just slip the foam on your mic. Different wind screens have different ways of attaching. Some just clamp on to your mic stand or boom arm. Some may need a specific mount, like the one we have here. Position the wind screen or pop filter two to 3 ", or what I do is two or three fingers away from the mic. Take your XLR cable. Connect one end to your mic, then connect the other end to your interface or recorders XLR audio in. If you have more than one XLR N, use Channel one. It's best practice to connect your main mic to channel one. Now, connect your headphones. You'll know where to connect it because you'll see the headphone icon, where you should be connecting it. This should provide you with zero latency audio monitoring. Note do not connect your headphones to your computer when recording because you'll have a delay between when you spoke and when you hear your voice on your headphones. This is called latency, and it is annoying. If you're using a recorder, at this point, you're ready to start recording. But if you're using an interface, you need to connect your interface to your computer's USB port. As you can see, setting up your equipment is easy and straight forward. And now that we have our setup complete, it's time to go to the next video and actually start recording. 16. S3L3 Recording Pt1: In this video, we are going to start recording. I will be using the Zoom H five as our demo device, both as a recorder and an interface. Put on your headphones. Position your mic two to 6 " away from your mouth. Position the mic slightly to the side of your mouth to prevent plosives. The closer you are to the mic, the boomer or more base your voice will have. This is called proximity effect. Some people like it. Some people think it's ugly. But it all depends on your voice and your preferences. Just see what works for you. Proximity effect doesn't really bother me. In fact, I like it. Make sure the back of the mic is pointed to the area where unwanted sound may come from. This could be a window or a door. Also, make sure you're as far away from these areas as possible. I'll first show you how to record on a recorder. Then I'll show you how to do the same on an interface. Four recorders, arm or select the proper channel on your recorder. In our demo unit, I'll press Channel one. You should now hear sound in your headphones from Channel one. Start talking with your recording voice. Observe how the audio levels on your audiometers go up and down. What we're trying to do here is maintain audio levels at around negative 12 decibels. This way, you get a loud enough sound with a good head room. It's okay to go around negative nine or negative 6 decibels from time to time, but any higher should be avoided. The key here is consistency. Do your best to stay close to negative 12 decibels. When you go too high, the audio distorts. It's called clipping and it's painful to hear. But too low around negative 18 decibels to negative 20 decibels or lower may be too quiet. And it will raise the noise floor when you amplify it in post. If your levels are above negative 12 decibels, decrease your gain. If you're below negative 12 decibels, increase your gain. Alternatively, you can speak louder or quieter depending on what the audiometer tells you. Once you're done adjusting audio levels, press record to start recording. Pressing the record button again or pressing the stop button will end the recording. This may be different for other recorders, so please check your user manual. For audio interfaces, connect your audio interface to your computer via USB and then launch audacity. I just want to repeat this because this is a common mistake. Make sure your audio interface is selected in audacitys preferences. Otherwise, you would end up using your computer's awful built in mic rather than the good mic on your interface. If you're getting thin hollow hes audio, then you may be on your computer's mic instead of your dynamic mic. To start monitoring, just click on the recording audiometer on audacity. Then using your recording voice, start talking. Observe the audio levels on the audiometer. Like what we previously did with a recorder, make sure the audio levels are around negative 12 decibels. Adjust the volume of your voice or the interface gain depending on where you are on the audio meters. Once you're done adjusting the audio levels, simply press record. Audacity will now start recording. Pressing the stop button stops the recording. Before we close this video, remember two important things. One, don't talk right away after hitting the record button. Record at least five to 10 seconds of silence in the beginning and ending of the track. This silence is useful in post processing, as you will see later. Two, always check your audio meters before you start recording and while you're recording. Keeping your audio levels at around negative 12 decibels will save you a lot of trouble moving forward. That's it. This is all you need to know to start recording. In the next video, I'll give you some recording tips. So click on the next video and let's see what we have. 17. S3L4 Recording Pt2: Here are a few useful tips you can use when you're recording. Make sure to speak with consistent volume. Monitor your audio levels on the meters. Stay close to around negative 12 decibels. This assures your audio is not too quiet and not too loud that it peaks and distorts. Consciously modulating your voice will be a lot better than using noise gates and filters. Don't move your head around too much. Stay within the mic's polar pattern. Moving your head, side to side in and out of the mic's polar pattern may affect the recording. This may be impossible to fix in post. Become aware of your speaking quirks and do your best to fix it. For example, clacking and clicking when talking. This may be okay in normal speech, but this is very annoying in recordings, especially when your listeners are using headphones. Be aware of fillers, like, you know, we may ignore these in normal speech, but this is a very annoying to listen to in a recording, especially on podcasts. If you don't know what to say or at a loss for words, just stop. Think, then continue speaking. You'll sound more professional this way. If you're doing narrations or voice overs with a script, it's better to use a tablet instead of paper. Unless, of course, you can turn pages without making a sound. Okay. Okay. Sound from page turning is enough to get in a recording. This is very hard to fix, especially when the page turning sound is laid over your voice. This should go without saying, Always use your reference headphones to monitor your audio. This will alert you of any changes in the recording and adjust accordingly. Relying on your naked ear is not enough. What you hear and what the mic hears are two different things. Open your closet. The clothes inside your closet can absorb sound and prevent it from echoing around the room. If you find those tips useful, make sure you use them when you start recording. 18. S4L1 Intro: The key to great audio is the setup. No amount of editing could ever fix a bad audio. Therefore, you must put a lot of effort in setting up your environment. If you could focus on something, focus on making your environment free from external noises. Professionals refer to this as isolation. The only sound that should exist in your recording space is the sound you want to record. Begin at the source. Start with a good setup to end up with a good audio. Again, no amount of editing could ever fix a bad audio. Once unwanted sound or noise is recorded with your voice, it's very hard, if not impossible to remove when editing. 19. S4L2 Closet 1: A closet full of clothes is a good place for recording. If you need something quick and easy, or maybe you're on a vacation or somebody else's house. I've done a lot of my mic tests in my YouTube channel or in front of a closet. The clothes and other soft things in your closet will absorb most of the echoes and muffle unwanted sounds. If your closet is big enough for you to get in, you can use your closet as an audio booth. All you have to do is get inside the closet. With your audio gear, close the door and start recording. Alternatively, if your closet is not big enough. You can part the clothes in it. Put your mic between your clothes, drape some thick blankets around the opening of your closet and start recording. Most of the time, you can get a decent result doing this. But sometimes doing this is not enough. Also, this way of doing things could be very uncomfortable. In addition, you may also be doing a video and your closet may not be the most appealing thing to look at. In the next video, we'll see another alternative. 20. S4L3 Bedroom Studio: In this section, we'll turn your bedroom into a recording studio. The bedroom is typically the quietest space in a house, and the presence of mattresses, duvase carpets and other soft items reduces any reverb. Now that we have all our audio gear, it's time to prepare our recording space. This course assumes you don't have an extra space in your home to dedicate for a recording studio. If you're fortunate enough to have the extra space, most of the things we'll discuss will also apply to you. Generally speaking, there are two main problems we need to address, unwanted sound or noise and two reverb or echoes. We're trying to make the space as quiet as possible to prevent unwanted sounds from being picked up by our mic. We're also trying to eliminate excessive echoes. This is very important. I know I've said this before, but I must hammer it in. There's little we can do once noise gets in the recording. If your mic is picking up crappy sound, you'll have a crappy audio. If you have the budget, and if you don't mind sticking, well, less than beautiful acoustic foam on the walls and ceiling of your bedroom. Your job is almost done. But for most people, this may not be an option because their bedrooms are functional parts of their homes or they're sharing this space with another person. Nobody wants to stay in a bedroom or a home plastered with acoustic foam all over the place. So we need to have a different approach in treating these spaces. In the next few videos, we are going to address noise and reverb. Addressing those properly could mean the difference between a good audio and a bad audio. 21. S4L4 Sound of Silence: I want you to take a good look and listen to your bedroom. I want you to pay attention to what's in your bedroom. In addition, I want you to identify potential sources of unwanted sounds. We'll take a look at a few things we could do to improve the acoustic characteristics of your bedroom, or any space you may want to use as your recording studio. In order to improve a space acoustic characteristics, you first need to listen to the acoustic characteristics of the space. The best way to do this is to use your audio gear. What your naked ear hears is different from what your mic hears. So take your equipment and start recording, but stay quiet. What we're doing here is listening to the room. Listen to what kind of sounds your mit picks up. You want to know how the room sounds like. Or more accurately, what you want to know is how your mic interacts with the space. Places are very rarely devoid of sound. Can you hear the neighbors? How about the rumbling traffic down the street? How about his or noise from the air conditioning system or air vents? You want to know the typical noises in the room. And where it's coming from. So we can address it later. Once you get a good idea of how the space sounds like test for reverb or how your voice bounces in the room. Say a line or two in your recording voice. Testing for reverb, one, two, three, testing for one, two, three. Testing for reverb, one, two, three, testing for reverb, one two, three, will do. Here you're listening for reverb or echo. In addition, you can also clap to test for echoes or reverbs. What we're trying to do here is determine how your voice interacts with the space. Can you hear any echoes with your voice? How much or how little? How does it affect your voice? Once you're done, stop recording. We'll use it as a reference when treating the space. Remember your observations as this will guide you in the next steps. 22. S4L5 Treating Noise: The first problem you'll surely encounter is noise. You may not hear anything with the naked ear, but when you start recording, your mic ends up picking up all sorts of sound you never knew were there. Note. We're not trying to create a professional studio. What we want to accomplish is improved acoustic characteristics to make the room good enough to record in. The things I'm about to show you are not intended to make your room sound proof. There's only so much we can do without modifying the room structurally. And there are limits to what I'm about to show you. Sounds coming through thick walls may not be possible to prevent without modifying the wall. Sounds that are too loud may still get through, but we'll do as much as we can to reduce noise coming into our chosen room. So here are a few things we need to do to reduce noise in our recording space. The first thing you should do is close doors and windows tight. This reduces outside noise instantly. If you have open air vents, close or cover those vents. While recording, turn off all appliances, especially ones with a motor. Appliances such as air conditioners, fans and refrigerators are notorious for introducing noise in the recording. Remember this where air can pass sound can pass. Common air gaps can be found around doors, especially the gap between the floor and the door. Place weather strips, also called foam seals around the door frame. Weather strips are a piece of foam which has an adhesive on one side. You can buy this cheaply from hardware stores. This strip of foam plugs any air gaps and creates a good seal when you close the door. In addition, also place a door sweep under the door to seal the air gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. Alternatively, a rolled towel under the door will accomplish the same thing. This will plug the air gap under the door. While you're at it, check if your window also need some weather strips. If the existing weather strip is already worn out, replace if need be. Okay. If it doesn't have any, consider putting weather strips on your windows to seal any potential air gaps. Hang heavy curtains on your window. Using heavy curtains could help muffle the sounds coming from the window. This in combination with pointing the back of your mic to the window is sometimes enough to negate sounds coming from the window. This may not be here or there, but lastly, pay attention to how loud your computer's fans are if you're going to use an interface. Those fans will create noise in the recording. If you can isolate your computer by putting it in a closet, do so. Though, if you have a laptop, this may not work? You may want to consider using a record instead of an interface if your computer has loud fans. Recorders are cheaper than new computers. Once you're done, listen to the room with your audio gear. Repeat the steps we did before. Listen to noises present in the room. Have you eliminated the unwanted sounds you're hearing before? If not, try to look for air gaps where sound can seep through and plug it. Repeat until you're satisfied or until you've eliminated or reduced all unwanted sound. I'll repeat this method can only do so much. Very loud sounds like someone banging on the door or someone hitting your walls and sounds passing through the walls and ceiling can't be prevented by this method. You may need to reconsider your space if this is the case. 23. S4L6 Treating Echo: It's important not to have any noticeable reverb or echoes in the recording. To a certain extent, you can remove mild reverbs during post processing. But as I've said before, having clean audio to start with should be our goal. The less processing you have to do the more natural and the better your final audio will be. After all, you don't want to sound like obsessed cattle. Echoes happen when sound repeatedly bounces off hard flat surfaces like glass, wall, floor, and ceiling. So to prevent reverb, we need to stop sound from bouncing off these surfaces. Okay. Usually, the mattress in your bedroom and clothes hanging in your closet is enough to reduce or prevent any reverb. If not, we can do a few simple things to reduce it. If you have the budget, and this is just if and only if you don't mind making small modifications to your space. You can stick acoustic foam on your walls. This will absorb and prevent sound from bouncing off walls. Walls are notorious for creating echoes in a room. As mentioned before, some of you may not want or may not have the budget for acoustic foams. As an alternative, you can hang heavy curtains or thick blankets on your walls. Like what I did here. I had small stick on hooks to hang curtains on my wall. As you can hear right now for the space I have, hanging heavy blackout curtains were enough to dampen sound and prevent echoes. I did not need to buy any acoustic foam. Remember to hang heavy curtains on the windows. Heavy curtains not only muffle the sound outside your windows, but it also prevents sound from bouncing off the glass. Put a carpet or a big rug on the floor. In my case, it wasn't necessary. But if you're getting a lot of reverb, you can add a big rug or carpet on the floor. Ideally, you'll be recording on this area. The rug or carpet will prevent sound from bouncing off the floor. Spreading several thick towels or a Duve on the floor, will also do the trick. You can also put pillows on the floor to dampen sound. Remember, we want soft and fluffy things to absorb the sound and prevent it from bouncing off. Once you've done your audio treatment, doing all of those things, listen to the room once more. Then compare this audio after the audio treatment to the audio before the audio treatment. Listen to how your voice sounds. Now, compared to how it sounded before. Testing for reverb, one two, three, testing for reverb 123. Okay. Testing for reverb, 123 testing for reverb, 123. Were you able to remove any noticeable reverb in your recording space? If not, cover more surfaces and add more soft and fluffy stuff. The thicker and the softer the material is, the more it will dampen the sound. Okay. Your goal should be to cover hard surfaces with soft materials to prevent sound from bouncing off these surfaces. Alternatively, filling up the space with a furniture like a couch can also reduce echoes. As you can see, a lot of these solutions are practical and easy to do. It could easily be done with common household items. In addition, all of these solutions can easily be taken down after recording. 24. S4L7 Quick Review: Doing some acoustic treatment in your space is a very important step in producing decent audio quality without a dedicated sound studio. With just a few modifications, we can go from this ugly sounding space. To this space where we can produce decent recordings, and it didn't take a lot. As you've been hearing throughout this course, I don't have excessive noise despite my flat being next to a highway. You also don't hear a lot of excessive reverb, despite me having concrete walls and floors. The main thing I did to improve the acoustic characteristics of this room is one, isolate the room. That is preventing unwanted sound from getting in the space. Two, I reduced or prevented echoes by covering large, hard flat surfaces with soft, fluffy stuff. There are limits to this approach. If you're not getting any significant improvement, you may want to consider using your closet. You can apply the same things we did for treating a room to your closet. You can also try to find another space in your house. You can better control. We can not sound proof a room with this approach. Only reduce unwanted sound. Enough so the mic don't hear these noises or make these noises quiet enough that we can edit it out. 25. S5L1 Post Processing: Once you're done recording, you'll need to do some editing or post processing to get your audio to sound just right. Oh. To get you started, in this section, I'll show you how I process my own audio. You can copy this or you can use it as a base for your own editing. How you edit your audio will depend on what your intended output is and how clean your audio is. In general, The less processing we do, the more natural the audio will sound like. This is not an audacity course, and some of you may prefer to use other apps. So I won't go through specifics or in depth details on how to use audacity. I'll only demonstrate specific concepts we need to learn. So without further ado, click on the next video and let's see what we have on our computer. 26. S5L2 Audiobook Rec: When it comes to audio books, there are a couple of specifications we need to meet in order to be approved for distribution. The basic requirements are as follows. Each chapter must be on one file. This means do a separate recording for each chapter of the book, half a second to 1 second of silence in the beginning of the track. Three to 5 seconds of silence in the end of the track. Audio Track must measure negative 23 to negative 18 decibels RMS. Think of this as overall sound output. Peak values no higher than negative 3 decibels. Noise floor no higher than negative 60 decibels. Exported to Ag file or 192 K BPS or higher MP three file with constant bit rate. Finally, must have a sample rate of 44.1 kilohertz or better. For other audio specifications, you must meet, please check the requirements of the distributor you're planning to use. Each distributor will have their own requirements. But generally speaking, the specifications mentioned above are the common requirements for audiobook distribution. Let's begin. We need to first change the project's sample rate before we start recording. This ensures we meet sample rate requirements. In audacity, we simply have to change the sample rate here. Choose 44.1 kilohertz. Higher sample rates don't hurt, but the minimum we should use is 44.1 kilohertz. Remember to do this, first, whether you're using a recorder or an interface. For our recorder, we also need to make sure we have the proper sample rate. Press menu record record format. Choose 44.1 kilohertz slash 24 bit. If you decide to use 48 kilohertz 24 bit, higher sample rates don't hurt. Press. Then exit by pressing menu until we get back to the recording screen. Once you've changed the project's sample rate, you can start recording. Press record, but don't read yet. Allow five to 10 seconds of silence or room tone in the beginning, and of course, the ending of the recording. You'll need this later. Then start reading. Remember to speak with constant volume. Each chapter you read should be on a separate track. To do that after you're done reading a chapter, stop the recording, then begin with another recording. Repeat the last few steps until you've finished reading the entire book. If you're using an interface, remember to always save after you stop recording. Once you're done recording, we can start processing the audio track to meet distribution requirements. 27. S5L3 Audiobook Processing: After you're done recording, you can start processing your audio in audacity. Fortunately, this is easy to do in audacity. If you're using a recorder, we need to first import the audio from our recorder to our computer. Then bring the audio file in audacity, then save our project. If you are using an interface and recorded directly in your computer, then you need to open the audio file you want to edit. Now we can start the actual work. When it comes to audio books, we'll be doing a lot of the same things over and over and over and over again for each chapter of the audiobook. So it helps to do some automation. So the first thing we need to do is to create a macro. Go to tools, Macros, then press. Enter any name. I'll just type this, then. Then we need to insert the effects we'll be using over and over and over again for each chapter of the audiobook. For the particular mic I'm using and for my voice, I usually drop the base and the extreme highs. So I'll start with a filter curve. That is Insert. Choose filter curve in the list. Then we need to modify the filter curve. Select filter curve, and edit. What I'm doing here is just cleaning out the frequencies by dropping the extreme highs and extreme lows. What you do here will depend on your mic and your voice. There's no one way to do this. Once I'm done, I'll hit. Next, we need to insert a loudness normalized effect to meet the negative 23 to negative 18 decibels RMS. Hit insert again and look for loudness normalize in the effects list. Okay. Then select loudness normalize, then edit. Here, choose RMS. Then I just put negative 20, so I'm in between negative 23 and negative 18. Hit again. Finally, we need an effect to meet the required peak values. For that, hit insert once more, and look for the effect limter, y? Then select, edit, choose soft limit. Then for the mitter value, use negative 3.5 decibels. We use 3.5 because soft limit falls a little below the mitter value. Leave the rest as is, then hit k on the way out. Don't forget to save along the way. I know this looks like a lot of work. But if you have to edit multiple chapters for one audiobook, then setting this up will be a life saver, because we have to apply all the same effects we placed in our macros on each chapter of the audiobook. And doing this manually is a pain. But with our macro setup, all we need to do is to run the macro and audacity will apply all of those effects for us. To start the actual editing process, first, make sure you're working on a mono track. You'll know if you have a stereo track if you can see two tracks on audacity. If you're seeing two tracks, just go to tracks, mix, mix down stereo to mono. Then what I want to do is to drop the noise floor to meet the requirements. To do that, just zoom in the silence you recorded in the beginning or end of the track. Highlight two to 3 seconds of silence. Hit effects, noise reduction, get noise profile. This will sample the noise it has to work with. Once it's done, select the entire track. Command A, then go back to effects, noise reduction, reduce by 12 decibels hit K. I did not include this in the macro because sometimes the noise profile is different. Then this is where the macro we set up earlier come in handy. Go to tools. Apply macro. And if you remember, we made this macro. Hit that. What it will do is apply all the effects we've inserted in that macro. So just let it run. Once done, let's check if we meet distribution standards. So go to analyze ACX check. This is the plug in we installed in the previous video. Hit that, then it will run a check on our track, and tell us if we meet ACX standard. So there, right, it tells us our audio meets ACX standard. At this point, all we have to do is to cut out mistakes. If you've done things right during recording, then you don't have a lot of work to do. If not, then you have a lot of work to do. After you're done, cutting out mistakes, listen to the entire track once more, just to check if everything is okay. And by the way, don't forget to save along the way. If something happens, you lose everything you've worked on. So always remember to save. Now, before you export, cut out any excess silence in the beginning or end of the track. Remember, we need to allow 1 second of silence in the beginning of the track and three to 5 seconds of silence in the end of the track. This is as per audiobook distribution requirements. Once you're satisfied, export the track to its final distribution format. I use MP three file. So that's file export, export as MP three. Here, I choose constant bit rate, 192 K BPS, force export to Mono, then save. That's it. Now, unfortunately, you just need to do this for all the chapters of your audio book. 28. S5L4 Podcast Recording: Although recording a podcast may be as simple as talking to a mic, you still need to remember a few best practices, which will make your recording better. Let's very quickly go through those practices before we get into podcast post processing. Maintain proper mic distance. Avoid moving your head around too much. Some people forget to do this especially on laid back podcasts. Avoid or fix speaking quirks. Clicking and clacking sounds are annoying to listen to. Fillers such as, you know, et cetera, are also annoying. You should avoid these. Editing these out later is a lot of work. So it's best to just not have it in the first place. Even if there's a lot of variation in normal speech, do try to maintain a negative 12 decibel audio level. Never forget to record a few seconds of silence in the beginning and ending of the recording. And the next few videos we'll see how to process audio for podcasts. You may notice I edit my podcast and audio books differently. This is because I noticed editing my podcast the way I do makes unwanted noise in the background unnoticeable or almost disappear. The same cannot be said with my audio book editing process. I think it has something to do with RMS normalize. And since I don't need to meet RMS requirements for a podcast, I don't use it. This may sound lame, but this editing is what works for my courses and YouTube videos. So, I'm a bit reluctant to change what works. Besides, it's nice to have a few options. No? 29. S5L5A Podcast Post Processing: The audio you're listening to in this video was edited using the same process I'm about to show you. Other than cutting and editing out mistakes, we need to do several things to the recording to make it podcast ready. If you're using a recorder, we need to first import the audio from our record to our computer, then bring the audio file in audacity. Then we save the project. Remember to always have a mono track when doing a podcast. It makes a smaller file size, and that is very important when streaming long form podcasts. And normally, we don't even need stereo when doing podcasts. Again, if your audio is in stereo, just go to tracks, mix down stereo to mono. Since normal speech has a lot of variations. The first thing I want to do is to bring down any high peaks in the audio track, so it matches the rest of the track. These high points here are annoying, if not painful for the listeners. In addition, we also don't want to distort the audio. What we want to do is to just bring these peaks down. To bring these down, hit effects miter, set it to hard limit. Now, this setting will depend on how high your peaks are. We don't want this too high that it affects the rest of the track. We don't want it too low either. It does nothing. Each audio track is different, so I suggest you experiment on what works for you. For the audio we have here, I think this is enough. Then I'll leave the rest as is and hit okay. As you can see, the limitor only touched the high points of the audio track and left the rest untouched. I'll undo and redo so you see the difference. After bringing down the high peaks, we will clean the audio frequency using equalization. Hit effects filter curve here. This is what I do is to bring down the extreme low ends. It's around here in the spectrum and bring down the extreme high ends here. These extremes usually make the audio track sound code code dirty. Of course, how you go about this cleaning will depend a lot on your mic and the kind of voice you have. Just play around with this. But be sure not to overuse this filter. Too much and your audio will sound artificial and may accentuate speaking quirks. After equalization, we want to reduce the noise floor. We do that by using the noise. Remember that a few seconds of silence in the beginning of the recording, find that part of the track and highlight two to 5 seconds of it. Then effects noise reduction, get noise profile. Then select the entire track. Press Command A. Then go back to the the noise filter. The default setting is 12, six, and three. That's fine, but you can't play around with this setting if the default doesn't work for you. But for me, this is fine, so okay. Then we need to run a compressor on the audio. The compressor will make the sound louder and beefier. In layman's terms, we are going to increase the code code volume of the audio. Now effects, then compressor. For my podcast, I like bringing the threshold to around negative 25 or negative 27. Remember to click compressed based on peaks and deselect make up gain for 0 decibels after compressing. Leave the rest as is, then. This brings up the low points of the track closer to the high points of the track. Finally, we want to normalize the audio track. This ensures the final audio is within comfortable listening range. Hit effects, normalize, put negative one, then hit. At this point, we're done. We can export our audio in MP three format. So that's file, Export, Export as MP three. Take note, the settings you'll use will depend on the audio requirements of your podcast hosting. Please check your hosting service for specific requirements. Here, choose constant bit rate, 192 KBPS, force Export to Mono, then save. This is the file you'll need to upload to your distributor's website. 30. S5L5B Add Music: You may want to insert an intro music to your podcast. In that case, I got you covered. Inserting intro music is easy. Just drag your intromusic in audacity. To edit or adjust your music, you need to know how to use these three tools. The time shift tool, the mult select tool and the envelope tool. The time shift tool allows you to move around your audio. The multi select allows you to reduce or increase the loudness of the audio. The envelope tool allows you to fade in and fade out your audio. I think it's simpler for me to just show you how to do this than to explain it with words because I think using words will be more complicated, so I just want you to observe and look at what I'm doing with the audio. So here, after dragging, all I do is adjust the position of my audio like so. Using the time shift tool. Then for what I have here, I want to reduce the overall sound, so I'll do this. I think that's enough. Of course, what you do here will depend on the type of music you want and what you want to do. Then I'll use my envelope tool to fade in my intro music. Then I'll fade out the tail. Then I'll fade in my podcast track. Then once again, using the time shift tool, I'll overlap my intro music and my podcast track. Once I'm satisfied, I'll go ahead and export this project to MP three. That's it. This is all you have to do to insert music in your podcast. 31. S5L6 Troubleshooting: In a perfect world. Everything should be working as it should. But of course, we don't live in a perfect world and we encounter some problems. Although it's impossible for me to address all issues you might encounter because I can't physically examine your equipment. I made this video to address common issues people encounter when they're starting out. Common problem is the noise floor is too high. There are a lot of things which causes noise. Your audio gear has some level of self noise. If you followed the instructions in this course and still have noise issues. Start with your connections. Loose connections can cause noise. Bad cables and defective equipment also cause noise. Check each equipment you have to isolate the problem. Low battery levels and audio recorders can also introduce noise. If your hardware checks out, you may want to check your editing. Amplifying and compressing audio tracks raises the noise floor. If this is the case, you just have to denise the track. In addition, things like computers fans and other appliances also cause noise. This is why I recommend using a recorder and turning off appliances during recording. Thin hollow sound like you speaking inside a can or sounding like a possessed kettle is sometimes caused by too much editing. The more effects you put the more you risk making a mistake. Try not to edit your audio too much. It may also be your mic. Simply put, this might be your mic's characteristic sound or you bought a bad mic or a defective mic. But chances are if you're using one of our gear recommendations, you won't have a bad mic. Unless of course you get a defective mic. You may also want to check audacity settings if you're getting thin hollow sound. Sometimes people just forget to select their audio interface as their recording device. Instead, they end up recording with the thin hollow sounding noise ridden mic on their computer. Bad headphones. Sometimes bad sound and noise could be caused by the headphones. Everything might be okay, but the way your headphones was tuned causes your audio to sound thin and hollow. It can also make you hear a loud noise floor. That is not really there. Your headphones might be defective. Try using different headphones to check if your headphones are the problem. Audio distortion is caused by your audio going above 0 decibels. You'll see this manifest as red in your audiometers. If you have distortion problems, try reducing your gain or normalizing to negative one decibels. Remember to never go beyond 0 decibels when recording or editing your audio. Always maintain around negative 12 decibels when recording. So hopefully, those tips are helpful to you. And I repeat this. It's physically impossible for me to check your equipment and see what you're doing. So if you're still encountering problems, try to retrace your steps. Check each and every gear to isolate the problem. Go through the audio chain and every connection. Rwatch the videos. Also consider that you may have a defective equipment. 32. S5L7 Skillshare Conclusion: Congratulations. We now reached the end of our course. You want to reach out or just say hi. I'm most active in Instagram and YouTube. I wish I could meet all of you who enrolled to this course, but you know, unfortunately, social media is the next big thing. And if you've not done so already, remember to let me know how you like this course by, leaving me a rating and a review. These reviews are very, very important. It lets me know how I can improve this course for you, of course, and let's other students find this course. Also, if you enjoyed this course, please share it with your family and friends. I'd be happy to see them take the course. Once again, thank you for enrolling to this course, good luck. Enjoy and Namaste.