Post by duffyweber on Oct 7, 2017 5:38:52 GMT -8
Tech Tutorial: Multi-mic Setups
This one's going to seem extravagant by a lot of people's standards, but I feel it's a valuable tool for the busy studio VA/VO who has to double as their own sound engineer.
During very long recordings, especially character reads, there are times when you will be very quiet and times when you need to shout. Now, good mic technique dictates that you work the mic in such a way that you don't peak when you're loud, and you don't get TOO quiet for the mic to properly pick up clear, useful audio.
Buuut sometimes we forget. And in long reads with a lot of variance, you don't want to have to go back and re-record 30 lines with an already-tired voice.
If you have two mics with similar audio profiles (similar response patterns, audio quality, overall sound) and can match the two to have nearly identical sound (quick and dirty mic match tutorial here: voiceacting.boards.net/thread/1425/tech-tutorial-matching-ancillary-alliteration ) then you can save yourself a LOT of time adjusting gain during long recordings. AND you can spare yourself the pain of having to repeat those loud ones that you got a little overzealous with, and avoid the risk of stripping your throat out by having to repeat them.
First, set up your mics and level them as you would for normal use. Make sure the gain is high enough for the quiet stuff to be clear and have a full, good quality capture of, and make sure the nominally louder stuff doesn't come close to peaking.
Then, adjust the gain on your second mic down by -12dB to -20dB (I recommend closer to -20db). You can also use an attenuation pad.
Record away! The two mics will be recorded as separate channels of the same audio, so be sure to separate them afterward and eliminate the "quiet" track from your final production. Set the quiet track aside, and save it as a separate file for insurance.
When you're an hour into editing the audio file, you notice a GREEAT big blob of blue (or whatever color your spectrogram is).
Oh no! Oh horror! That perfect line you recorded while screaming has clipped! The sound is warped and horrible!
Well, no worries. Crack open your "quiet" track, and grab the low-gain copy. Amplify it to about -0.1db, then run the compressor on it to richen it up (or it'll sound thin compared to everything else) and adjust the volume so that it's correctly proportioned to everything else.
TA-DAA!
I realize for amateurs and hobbyists this isn't really important or viable, but some of you are semi-pro VAs with studios that you're cranking out paid production work on a deadline in, and this saves time, effort, AND your voice.
Cheers, and happy recording!
NOTE TO MODS: This one's a bit useless to a lot of people here, I do realize that, so we prolly don't need to pin this one. Your call. ; )
This one's going to seem extravagant by a lot of people's standards, but I feel it's a valuable tool for the busy studio VA/VO who has to double as their own sound engineer.
During very long recordings, especially character reads, there are times when you will be very quiet and times when you need to shout. Now, good mic technique dictates that you work the mic in such a way that you don't peak when you're loud, and you don't get TOO quiet for the mic to properly pick up clear, useful audio.
Buuut sometimes we forget. And in long reads with a lot of variance, you don't want to have to go back and re-record 30 lines with an already-tired voice.
If you have two mics with similar audio profiles (similar response patterns, audio quality, overall sound) and can match the two to have nearly identical sound (quick and dirty mic match tutorial here: voiceacting.boards.net/thread/1425/tech-tutorial-matching-ancillary-alliteration ) then you can save yourself a LOT of time adjusting gain during long recordings. AND you can spare yourself the pain of having to repeat those loud ones that you got a little overzealous with, and avoid the risk of stripping your throat out by having to repeat them.
First, set up your mics and level them as you would for normal use. Make sure the gain is high enough for the quiet stuff to be clear and have a full, good quality capture of, and make sure the nominally louder stuff doesn't come close to peaking.
Then, adjust the gain on your second mic down by -12dB to -20dB (I recommend closer to -20db). You can also use an attenuation pad.
Record away! The two mics will be recorded as separate channels of the same audio, so be sure to separate them afterward and eliminate the "quiet" track from your final production. Set the quiet track aside, and save it as a separate file for insurance.
When you're an hour into editing the audio file, you notice a GREEAT big blob of blue (or whatever color your spectrogram is).
Oh no! Oh horror! That perfect line you recorded while screaming has clipped! The sound is warped and horrible!
Well, no worries. Crack open your "quiet" track, and grab the low-gain copy. Amplify it to about -0.1db, then run the compressor on it to richen it up (or it'll sound thin compared to everything else) and adjust the volume so that it's correctly proportioned to everything else.
TA-DAA!
I realize for amateurs and hobbyists this isn't really important or viable, but some of you are semi-pro VAs with studios that you're cranking out paid production work on a deadline in, and this saves time, effort, AND your voice.
Cheers, and happy recording!
NOTE TO MODS: This one's a bit useless to a lot of people here, I do realize that, so we prolly don't need to pin this one. Your call. ; )