Turning A $10 Mic To A $1000 Professional Mic - Maximize Audio Quality!

1. Welcome To The Class!: Does your mic sound something like this? Well, if it does, then this is your lucky day because by the end, your mic will sound something like this, no paid plugins, no extra wires, no money spent at all. I bought this mic for exactly $20... with its own kit. and this is not even the mic I normally use. I use this mic, It costs like $10 or something. I believe it's not about the gear. It's about you as a creator, making the most out of your current situation. It's okay to not have the best mic. What is not okay... Is you not trying to make the most out of your current mic, and This is what this course will be covering. And the class project is quite simple and straightforward. Post a before and after of the recording in the project discussions area. And I will see you in the next lesson. 2. 12 Practical Tips To Limit Noise: In the next lesson I will show you how to use Adobe Premier to improve the quality of your audio. But in this lesson, you will give you practical tips you can apply to your surroundings and to Your mic to help you improve the quality of your mic that we will be working with I wont be using any of those practical tricks. In the next lesson, I will record my audio using the worst mic. I have in the worst environment, so that I am in the worst case scenario ever, but if I were you, I would definitely apply those ticks if I want to get every extra bit of quality out of my MiC without needing to invest in a new mic, I will give you 6 practical tips that are totally free that you don't need to spend any extra cent in applying them and 6 practical tips that might require you to spend like $10 on the needed materials or equipment. Let's start with the first 6 practical tips elevate your wires of the ground. If you have bad cable management, like I do, try and elevate your mic's cables off the ground so that it doesn't catch any of their vibrations coming from the ground or the other electrical devices in your room, it might get rid of zzzzz noise that you are hearing in your mic, speak to the correct side of the mike. this kinda embarrassing But am guilty of this too. Make sure you are speaking to the correct side of the mic. Most of the mic's correct side is the side with the name of the mic or the logo of the company. Most mic's have a pickup pattern this is a cardioid pickup patter it looks something like this. the mic will pick up audio from the front of it, but it will eliminate any noise coming from the back. I know this might be getting a bit complicated and overwhelming, but there is a really high chance is that all you need to do to your mic is just speak to the side where there is a logo or the name of the mic in front of it. So you can just go with that for now. And if you want to learn more about pickup patterns, I will leave a link in the description place your mic closer to you, but not too close. Most mics come with a small disk stand, but using it, it will make your mic so far away from your mic's quality increase with how close your mic is to you And using this desk stand will also means that your mic will be closer to your keyboard, so the viewer will probably hear your keystrokes, which can get really annoying try to get the mic closer to you. Whether that be using equipment at your disposal like books or something, or getting a boom stand to hold your mic are you struggling to grow on YouTube? If so, you should definitely check my courses on Skillshare, but also doesn't set the mic too close to your mouth because then all of the air that is coming out of your mouth will bump into the mic and actually make it more annoying to the listener. Do you happen to be struggling to make the perfect YouTube thumbnails? Will if so, then you should definitely check my courses on Skillshare. Don't place your mic directly in front of you. Don't set your mic directly in front of you. that way any air that is coming out of your mouth, will crash into it try and set your mic mic a bit to the side and tilted a few degrees towards you to that you arent speaking directly into it and also it will not cover your entire face. Don't overthink your mic's quality. Most of the time, we overthink our max quality and the little noises in the background. But actually, when a viewer is watching the video, his brain just automatically ignores the most of their background noises. I used to worry so much about my mic's audio being clean I was watching a YouTube vlog midway through the ten minute video, I was like, Oh, there is strong air and noises getting picked up by the mic. I was halfway through the video. and I didn't notice that at all. And you don't do try to make the most out of the mic you have. use subtitles, Subtitles on your video can really help and he will be more likely continue watching your video even with bad audio quality, invest in a cheap mic instead of expensive headset mics, the thing with expensive headsets is that most of the time, the mic is just a bonus on the headset, just as an extra functionality of you are planning to play some online games with friends. But it's also no way as good as a $10 mic a $10 dollar mic is basically overpowered compared to an expensive headset mic, invest in a windshield. It will help if there is like tons of air getting directed at your mic , it is like about $3 or something, and it will make a massive improvement in the quality of your audio. If there is like a fan pointing at you or if you are vlogging then it is needed. Invest in a pop filter. a pop Filter is something I personally don't use because I can't be asked. I would rather use my camera's mic than having this huge thing that takes tons of space on my mic. It costs us about $10 It will help eliminate is a Ps of your voice. Maybe you should consider buying it. But personally I wouldn't this thing is the definition of overthinking your mic's quality invest in a microphone shock mount. A microphone shock mount can help you if you are always shaken your desk, been gaming or doing lots of movement, it will help reduce the vibrations coming out of the boom arm into mic. But if you are going to invest in a shock mount, you're probably need a boom arm as well, then just invest in $17 pack that has everything you may need to help increase your mic's quality, invest in a phantom power supply. Some mics can do with a phantom power supply if your mic uses an XLR cable, which is the cable like this then you might need to invest in a $20 phantom power supply. It will totally level up the quality of your audio. I would invest in a phantom power supply Just make sure you do some Googling to make sure you mic actually needs a phantom power supply invest in a door and window seal. If there is lots of noises coming out from outside sources, you can always get a new window or a new sealed door, which are solutions that will cost you a ton, but you can get a cheap door seal and apply it to your door and window to make the door really tight when it's closed it won't help that much, but it will help and it will give you a small edge. So consider investing in it. Here are the practical tricks I mentioned. Take a screenshot to keep them in mind. You'll also find the links in the description of the materials you may need to buy. Hopefully you learned something new and I will see you in the next lesson. 3. Limit Noise Using Premiere Pro: In this lesson, I will show you how to improve your mic's quality using Adobe Premiere Pro, I will record the audio sample. We will be optimizing in this lesson in the worst environment possible. I'm talking to a $10 mic and I live by a busy road and the window is totally open and I have a fan pointing at me. First of all, you should drag and drops the video recordings. that has the audio you want to optimize, okay, I forgot the music playing in The background that will make it even harder. but I am pretty sure we can take care of that. Okay, Now I'll start by pressing C on my keyboard, and just trimming out the audio sample I want, I will press V and then I will delete the other audio clips. I will just take get rid of the video layer because we don't really need it in this tutorial. so I will just right-click. then I will press on unlink I will delete the video layer and I will try to zoom in on the audio layer, something like that. Now I will press ctrl+c and I will duplicate the audio clip so that we can review it later on and see before and after the AudioClip we are going to try to optimize. I will right-click on the timeline of it marked selection. Now after I've done that, I will press on the bottom and then I will pick this one. This one is basically going to loop the audio sample we are trying to optimize so we can Hear the difference, real-time, I will drag it and drop it down here. It will keep looping around Now let's start with the basics. We will add the denoise effect. So we will go to the effects tap and we will type de-noise, we will drag it and drop it on the audio clip. then in the effects control tab? I will click on the denoise. I will press on it and then I will start looping the audio track we will search for the dehummer and drag it and drop it on the audio clip in the effects control there, we will select it, then we'll press on edit. I like to leave it on default and then just mess around with this board. So we're gonna drag it all the way to the left we can increase it more Now we move on. We go for the deesser effect. We drag it and drop it on the audio clip in the Effects Control tab, we press on it and low voice desser Now we move on to the next three effects DBT dynamics bass treble We go to effects we type dynamics . then We drag it and drop it to the audio clip. We press on Edit. Then we're gonna click on presets and select the soft compression. Now we're gonna start playing it back and we will miss with just those 2 settings I think that's okay. Now we move on to the next one, Now we move on to bass. We drag it and we drop it on the audio clip We're gonna mess around with the boost settings, Okay, now we're gonna search for treble. We drag it and drop it onto the audio clip. Now we are gonna miss the way around with the boost. I think that's already enough. Now I'm pretty sure you don't want to go through this process every time you are recording a new video. So what you gotta do is go to the effects tab hold Control on your keyboard and try to select the those 6 effects, then press, right-click, Save preset, now in the effects control tab, you will find the presets. We will find the preset we saved, and we can just drag and drop it onto your clip. Now we are going to see the difference before and after. Here are all the effects you should apply to your audio recording, take a screenshot to keep them in mind. Hopefully you've learned something new and I will see you in the next course.