Audacity 3 Voice Recording Setup For Beginners
A couple of important things to help beginners exploring voice recording with Audacity 3.3.
Keep out of trouble and get some great recordings with Audacity, a perfectly good single or two track recording software. All these tips come directly from real live voice actor confusion, suffering, and panic situations. I made a previous and a bit less aesthetically cleaned up version of this for some people getting into voice acting work, and this is an attempt tp clean that up and make some things easier to get used to and understand.
• A Casual Stroll Throug...
Here is the old video.
There are seven things covered in this new video that keep coming up in conversations and trouble shooting. This complete presentation is about a half hour, which is a lot of time to be talking, but it seems easier to use and keep track of on KZhead, so feel free to skip around.
00:00 Intro and overview
01:41 Project Rate
03:52 The Meter Range
07:19 Clip Indicator
09:33 Recording Levels
13:17 Stereo to Mono
16:40 Compression
25:48 Normalization
Project Rate
Recording at the wrong sample rate is not a good thing, and once you start recording, it's hard to go back. A lot of things can go wrong reprocessing the audio into the bit rate needed. Worth making sure everything is correct at the start.
The Meter Range
Audacity has the ability to change the range of the meters so you can see way better than the way it is set up stock. Worth trying out.
Clip Indicator
A very useful tool to see if you really messed up when you shouted a minute ago.
Recording Levels
Quick talk about what a normal recording level is and why.
Stereo to Mono
This briefly discusses the glitch when recording mono using some hardware Audacity return the wrong audio levels 6dB further than would compensate for two incoming channels plugging into one input for mono recording, and what to do about it. This only happens with some audio hosts and some hardware.
Compression
A brief discussion on the function of compression, followed by an overview of the controls and usable default settings that avoid disasters.
Normalization
This including the two normalizers available in Audacity and which one is very much the wrong idea for our voice recording use.
Hope these help and that you get some excellent recordings.
#edwardthesoundguy #audiorecording #audacity3.0 #voiceactor #audacitytutorial
I've been buried in learning about how to use Audacity, how to record properly, what mic to buy, etc, and the more I study/practice, the more "batting coaches" there are telling me how to change my swing. There's WAY too much horrible information (KZhead, Reddit, Quora, forums, paid tutorials, etc). I REALLY appreciate your pace, and how you break things down. You're an excellent teacher. I've watched (too) MANY videos, and I feel a lot less hopeless after watching two of your videos. Too many audio engineers have no idea about "Genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complex." -- Einstein You're the first person who explained - and helped conceptualize - what compression/ratio is, and how it works. Literally everyone else, jumps past it like it's nothing.
How absolutely incredible lay useful is this video? Think I’ll subscribe, this is quality information, really clearly and professionally presented.
That robot animation is so cute, I love it!
You are an excellent teacher. I'm subscribing to your channel.
First time someone explained clearly what are the most important settings for recording voice. THANK YOU. Can you make a video about the way to "enrich" voices, to make them more in a radio style?
I can try. It can be quite a challenge because voices can be very different and respond to processing in different ways. Thanks for the idea. I'll see if there is a way to do this. Thank you for mentioning the idea.
At least, there should be a « recipe » or similar process or steps to do it?
Finally! A video for those of us who are true beginners. Well done! And thank you for including some keyboard shortcuts. 30:22
Glad this is of use. There seem to be a lot of good tutorials for people that already use Audacity, and not many that just lay out what you would want to know from the top. It is weird. Thanks for watching, and let me know if I an improve anything or cover anything that is causing you trouble.
Thank you. this is exactly what i have been looking for. i am new at Audio recording and frankly dont have much of a clue. and you have explained what i need to know in language that i understand and can use. thank you
Glad this helps. You will likely find Audacity second nature pretty quickly. I know this stuff can be bewildering and weird at first, and the more people know, the harder it is for them to explain how things work for you. If I can improve anything or anything is confusing, let me know.
Terima kasih untuk video yang sangat berguna!
Very well explained! Thank you so much.
This is an excellent guide with tips I haven't seen in any other Audacity tutorial, and I've watched scores of Audacity videos. Nicely done. Thanks for sharing your expertise.
Hey, I really appreciate the kind words.
thanks, you are doing great. My problem has solved.
Very helpful and great explanations. Nicely done.
Many thanks! Let me know if there is anything I can improve.
I couldn't find an expert that actually explains things until this video, Please more software tutorials 👍
Thanks! Let me know if you need anything covered in particular and I'll see if I can cover it.
Thank you for the replay, I want to learn about Audacity plugins and effects that can help me to get the best of my voice recording. I'm at the beginning. Also liked the Intro of this video so much, and your cool way of teaching,,@@edwardthesoundguy
Thanks for this, it was so useful as I'm just beginning to use Audacity
Should become comfortable to use in no time. Glad this has been helpful.
Verry verrrrry useful 👌 thank u
Great video! I learned a ton, and everything was easy to understand.
Hey thanks! Let me know if you can think of anything to improve.
Man you are GOOD. Best video on Audacity and compression on the net. Off to look at some more of your videos. Thank you very much Sir for your time and effort.
Awesome, thank you! I only have a few other videos, but working on it. Let me know anything specific you are looking for and I'll try to make it happen.
Thank you for this terrific explanation of these basic settings.
Glad it was helpful!
Very helpful, thank you. Just found your channel and very glad I did. I host an on-line radio 2 hour show from my home studio. Have been using Audacity for about 6 months and your tips are extremely helpful.
Hey, thanks! I really appreciate the kind words. Let me know if I forgot to include anything.
Thank you! :D you really helped me.
Glad I could help!
Thanks for this great explanation. Definitely learned a lot and finally understand what the normaliser and compressor are supposed to do.
That is really great to hear!
Quality to the pont videos, thats why I subscribed 5 stars !!!!!
Thank you sir! I'll try to keep the quality going! Let me know if there is anything I can improve, and again, thank you!
Great job Edward. You are a fantastic teacher and your voice is very easy to listen to.
I believe he used to be an alpha male in his younger years, his nickname was the black stallion and not because he was black
Finally someone using audacity, not liking premiere pro or some shit
Audacity works very well for a lot of things. People do seem to forget that all the time and yes, it's unfortunate.
Hello and congratulations on your video! I wanted to ask you for some info: if I have an mp3 audio file and I import it into Audacity to modify it when I export it, I always export it in mp3 or to have better quality(?) I export it in wav for example with a setting like: freq.44100 and a 32bit encoding? Or doesn't it make anything better? Thank you!
Another great tutorial, Edward. Since starting my new KZhead channel (PsychRad) a couple of months ago, I've been watching videos like yours to get the best voice-over sound from Audacity. I've watched several different audacity tutorials, but yours seem to be the best; Clear, concise, easy to follow, and very up-to-date. Thank you for providing these informative videos. They have been immensely helpful.
Hey thanks! Glad it's helping!
1:34 ❤ 1:46 1:48 😊 1:51
😊
Good information. I liked the analogy to VOR navigation. I am a flight instructor and A&P.
Just now realizing that the VOR thing might be a little obscure to the general public, but I am glad you found it entertaining!
@@edwardthesoundguy I also wondered how many people would catch on to that one.
One point of confusion, what if there are two mics (two people) and stereo. Can you adjust each separately? Oh, and BTW, fantastic video, thank you.
If you are recording two microphones simultaneously, yes you can adjust them as separate tracks no problem. Once you record, there will be one "stereo" track with one mic on each side. This is just how Audacity does it. At 13:17 here I mention splitting the stereo track into two centered mono tracks. This is the point where you make two tracks you can fix up however you need. Once the stereo track is split, in this case you do not throw away the empty track since it has the other audio on it. From there you can process each one however you want by selecting the audio and applying any process you need. Hoping this makes sense. Let me know. Thanks for the kind words too. I am trying to find a moment to add a few more videos (more of a sound technician than a decent KZheadr) so it really helps to hear.
Edward, when I'm done recording and I'm editing my voice over tracks, I usually start with sound reduction, and then I compress and normalize. Do you think it is better to do noise reduction before or after compressing and normalizing, or does it matter?
That's interesting stuff. Often, people want noise reduction before compression. This way the noise floor is not "moving," and the dynamic range has not been reduced. Both of these help with noise reduction. So, yes. The order you are doing it gives the highest possible performance.
Hi there - am ancient as well . . . and trying to learn to podcast. I love your video and wanted to know if you had an e-mail address so that I could contact you. I want to find someone to take my audacity podcast recording, listen to it, tell me all of the settings I should use - or realtime effects - and then I can have those for going forward. Thougths?
Edward are you available to hire to make a custom EQ for me to use on my voiceovers in audacity ?
Hey, I am not able to do a lot of that kind of work right now, but can listen to some test audio as soon as there is a minute and make an EQ suggestion or two. Sure no problem. Let me know.
@@edwardthesoundguy How do I contact you to send the audio?
@@dreamtimerelaxation8761 If you go to the contact form at ED-EQ.COM, just drop a message in there and let me know. If you link to somewhere with at least a minute of speech I can take a look as soon as there is a minute and see how things are going.
Your background music is too loud.
Hey thanks! I'll keep an eye on it in future videos.
Threadbomb has bad speakers... And should hush and watch
@@edwardthesoundguyyour so polite