HOW TO RECORD HIGH QUALITY AUDIO ON SET

When it comes to recording high quality audio, for music, video or podcasts, what are the tips that will help you to minimise things like hum, buzz and hiss, and maximise your sound?

Read on for our top tips on equipment, location, editing, testing and more.

Equipment

If you’re aiming for a really clean sound, then investing in the right microphone is your key starting point. But how to choose which one is the best for you?

It’ll depend on whether you’re recording vocals or instruments. One way to decide is to book a session at a professional recording studio and try out a variety of microphones. Then listen back to your recordings and get some feedback. (Make sure to note down which mics you used on which track!)

Check out mics from brands such as Rode, Shure, Sennheiser, Blue and Audio Technica. Plug in an external microphone into your camera’s microphone jack if you’re recording video as well, or record your audio completely separately.

NPR Music’s video shows you how to mic up speakers and amps in the same way as they do for their ‘Tiny Desk’ performances, which have featured everyone from London’s Ezra Collective to cast and musicians from The Lion King and Santigold:

Get the microphone – or your speaker/amp – as close as you can to you, to minimise crowd noise if you’re playing at a live gig. And unless you’re aiming to record ambient sound, the closer your mic is to the source of the sound you’re recording, the lower the sensitivity setting can be on your microphone. Which means that any sounds you’re not trying to record will sound fainter.

Audio for Video Content

What kind of mic is best for YouTube or podcasts? Javier Mercedes has you covered, across a variety of budgets:

Ideally, mics should be at a distance of around 6-14 inches from your subject. If you can’t get that close because you’re using an overhead mic and it’ll appear in the shot, then just get as near to it as possible. This will then avoid picking up ambient noise or any reverb that’s bouncing around your space.

Different Microphone Types

To record sound on a set, depending on what you’re shooting, these are the microphone options: handheld, mounted, suspended, boundary, lavalier (or lav) and wireless. Most handheld mics can also be mounted to stands, booms or camera attachments.

Videomaker.com advises that ‘stage productions use a blend of suspended overheads, dynamic boundary mics along the front of the stage and flesh-coloured wireless headsets.’

Lavaliers are the small, clip or tape-on mics that you often see newsreaders wearing – you attach them to clothes. They have the advantage of being discreet and portable, and they’re easy to conceal under clothes if you don’t want to see them on-screen.

If you’re shooting music videos, where people are moving around a lot, you’ll need a boom operator to track your subject(s) to keep the mic as close as possible.

Where possible, always have at least two mics, so that you have a back-up recording if anything goes wrong!

Location

Not everyone gets to record in spaces that are specifically designed for it. Which was something that a lot of broadcasters and podcasters realised when they had to broadcast from home during the pandemic lockdowns.

To make audio sound better, you need to be really attuned to the acoustics and subtle sounds in the background – whether these are in the room, or coming from outside.

To check if you’re in a room with a lot of echo, or reverb, you can do a quick clap test – see how much sound bounces back from things like hardwood floors, bare walls and ceilings.

How do you record clear and crisp audio? Here are some options:

• Try to eliminate or minimise those hard surfaces – the sound will bounce off them
• Books can be a good option for covering hard surfaces – making a study a good place to record, if you have one
• With hard floors, try to cover them with a rug or carpet
• Add curtains or blankets to the walls. Or put up acoustic materials like sound dampening panels or acoustic foam
• Put up lights stands, with blankets over them
• Furniture also works, if you have room – a big couch will block echo
• Are there things in the room that are generating noise? Look out for computer fans, heating, air con or fluorescent lights.
• What about outside noise? Think about how to screen out traffic if you’re near a road

For outside noise, try to choose the best location for recording. Think about somewhere that’s out of the wind (it can sound surprisingly loud!), away from traffic or noise such as building work and other street sounds. You can even record later at night, when most people are at home, have stopped working, or are sleeping, if you’re recording in a flat or building where there are lots of other people around.

If you’re recording audio indoors, then if you don’t need a huge amount of space, using a small room – even a closet – is often easier than trying acoustically treat a bigger room.

For podcasts, tutorials or video content you’re recording at home, or in an office, try noise-cancelling tool Krisp, which removes background voices, noises and echo.

How to Improve the Audio Quality of a Recording

So, you’ve tried as hard as possible to follow all the advice above, but your audio still has a few problems. Or, you had to record something on the fly, without being able to go through all your usual noise-reduction hacks. What are the best ways to remove background noise from your recording?

Repairing damaged audio files is called audio restoration. Engineers most often recommend audio repair plugin bundles, such as iZotope’s RX 7 bundle. BlackGhostAudio.com recommends RX 7 Elements, which will remove clicks, clips, hum and noise: ‘Most music producers dealing with controlled environment recordings will be happy with RX 7 Standard, while post-production engineers dealing with problematic field recordings will want to take a look at RX 7 Advanced.’

They also recommend Waves’ Restoration bundle and Accsuonus’ ERA Bundle PRO. Clicks and other digital impulse noise can be fixed using a de-click plugin. Vinyl crackle or dry-mouthed dialogue on podcasts can be tackled with iZotope’s De-crackle, or Waves’ X-Crackle.

If you’re dealing with the kind of ambient noise from recording in a flat or house, then de-noise plugins are your friend. Ideally, you want to capture a ‘noise profile’ by analysing a section of your audio recording in which there’s only noise, and nothing else. The plugin will then use the profile to remove that noise from beneath vocals or instruments. iZotope’s RX 7 Voice De-noise and Waves’ Z-Noise will both do the trick.

Other recommended software includes Camtasia, which has a built-in noise removal feature, or use Audiate, which also makes audio editing easy.

If you’re recording podcasts, then you need to get close to the mic. However, this can result in ‘plosives’, the air from consonant sounds. Grab yourself a pop filter – the screen that goes around or in front of the microphone – and you’ll have instantly improved your audio quality. (Some mics have a built-in pop filter.)

Editing

Videomaker.com advises that, ‘editing means lining up your tracks, creating your timeline, stripping away silence, removing unwanted sounds and checking for correctness.’ Quality editing and production will massively improve your audio quality. If you’re creating podcasts, then hire a producer if you have the budget. Alternatively, check out Auphonic, a useful piece of software which helps you to level your audio and remove background hiss and noise.

Audacity is a free, cross-platform audio software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux that’s a multi-track audio editor and recorder. Check out this beginner’s tutorial to get started:

Using a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and editing tools in post-production will help your audio sound the best it can. You can use these tools to fix common problems such as changing audio levels through a recording, from very loud to very quiet. If you’re using Premiere Pro, then try the EQ (parametric equalizer) and compression tools.

Simply put, compression closes the gap between the loud and quiet parts of an audio track by making the loud parts quieter, and the quiet parts louder, evening out the audio track so that it’s playing at a consistent volume. The Premiere Pro tool you’re looking for is ‘Dynamics’.

A top tip when you’re editing and mixing is to listen to the audio through different headphones and speakers. Studio monitors will have a lot more ‘low end’ than cheap laptop or phone speakers.

Expert Guides

So there you have it – how to record high quality audio in a few easy steps. Want more expert advice? Check out our articles on how to make a great YouTube video and tips on making music videos, or the ultimate guide to starting as a podcaster.

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