It\u2019s not long ago I wrote a piece describing my older process\u2014one that was ingenious, thought-through, bullet-proof, and, it turns out, flawed. It\u2019s not that the old process was bad. It\u2019s just that it turned out to be less efficient than I\u2019d thought, and it also turned out I was looking at things backwards. In the past, I recorded my audio, did some processing, edited it, then continued the processing. I had bought iZotope RX11 and it performs near-miracles on poor audio to make it useful.<\/p>\n
And the problem with that? It meant I\u2019d accept poor audio and then try to fix it.<\/p>\n
But having lived through and discarded a lengthy editing process, I now realise that repairing poor audio doesn\u2019t give as good a result as polishing good audio. Who\u2019d have thought?<\/p>\n
I was tidying up my audio, removing mouth clicks, those smacking sounds your mouth can make when it opens and closes, and after a while noticed something odd. Some of my consonants were disappearing as well. I dialled back the strength of the tool, and managed to get to a position that removed some clicks and no consonants. Happy, I moved on.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed something else odd. I was removing breath noise, and some of my consonants were disappearing. Again. I dialled back the settings, tweaking them this way and that, but no matter what I did, I couldn\u2019t save the consonants whilst removing the breath noise. In fact, the tool was identifying and cleaning my consonants before even touching the breath.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what made me stop, pause, and reflect.
\nThat\u2019s when I realised I had this all wrong.
\nThat\u2019s when I decided to make this series\u2014to push myself to understand properly what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve spent several hours learning, testing, and learning some more. I like learning. After that time, I\u2019m now in a place where I believe, from a position of understanding, these three things:<\/p>\n
That means, ideally, no RX11 De-click, Voice De-noise, Mouth De-click, De-ess, or even EQ (though that\u2019s probably going a bit too far). In practice, I\u2019m not quite there, but I\u2019m surprisingly close: only a gentle bit of denoising and Mouth De-click early on and a subtle EQ adjustment before Loudness Control.<\/p>\n
It all now starts with me trying to get the best audio I can out of the microphone\u2014which really means getting as close to the final product as I can. I\u2019ll go into that properly in the next couple of segments, because this turns out to be the real lever. For now, all that\u2019s relevant is that I record using Audio Hijack, which is simply a rock-solid app that saves an uncompressed 32-bit, 44.1 kHz audio file.
\nOh, and I do have one confession.<\/p>\n
Going against best practice, as if that\u2019s a solid thing, I put trust in my microphone\u2014the Shure MV7+\u2014and I enable its internal De-noise functionality. Nothing else, but it does mean the audio I record is technically called dry<\/strong> not raw<\/strong>, because it has been processed. However, I have really tested this, and I cannot find any problems with its de-noising: no artefacts in the audio\u2014and it reduces background noise. Purists would say I should turn it off and use RX11 instead, so that I hold onto a true raw file, but in blind tests, the MV7+ has seemed to do a better job than RX11. I\u2019m keeping it on.<\/p>\n At this point, I run a gentle Mouth De-click using RX11, though I keep the original file as well in case I notice something I want to recover. It hasn\u2019t happened yet. I actually do this as a plug-in to Audio Hijack as it records, so it doesn\u2019t cost me any time.<\/p>\n I then import the file into Logic Pro, with each chapter being a separate track. Logic has a great function that removes silences, so I choose something quite conservative to get rid of the long pauses I sometimes have when a train goes past, or when I stop to read ahead. The settings I use look for places where the volume stays below -40 dB for at least 1.8 seconds, and then it trims that near-silence to just 1.8 seconds long. It doesn\u2019t do much, but it saves me some time.<\/p>\n Now we\u2019re onto the editing stage, which is lengthy. I listen through on the computer with my good headphones, and do just a few things, ideally:<\/p>\n Once all that is done, it\u2019s just a question of deciding if the EQ is correct \u2014 or if I want to reduce the bass a little, or suppress a particular frequency (500 Hz and 5000 Hz can be a bit boomy for my voice).<\/p>\n This audio chain leaves me with a minimal number of tools. I know, it sounded quite long, but I have tried to make it minimal. I\u2019ve stripped out de-essing and breath control, and switched to a light touch with other passes so that I can just run them and not worry about losing things. They’re simply not aggressive enough to cause problems, which also means they\u2019re not aggressive enough to do much fixing. The goal is simple: capture close to the target<\/strong>, and do as little as possible afterwards. And what that means is that if I\u2019m not going to repair tone later, then tone has to be right at capture<\/strong>. And if tone has to be right at capture, then the biggest part of the \u201cprocessing\u201d isn\u2019t a plugin at all\u2014it\u2019s microphone technique.<\/p>\n And that<\/em>, is the subject for the next couple of segments: how I made mic position boring, repeatable, and reliable enough that I could stop guessing.<\/p>\n If you want to know more, come and ask me over in the Slack community at podfeet.com\/slack<\/a>, where I and all the other lovely NosillaCastaways enjoy friendly, positive online conversations. Feel free to message me, Eddie Tonkoi, if you have any thoughts, questions, or techniques you’re using. It would be nice to share ideas.<\/p>\n\n
Where this leaves me<\/h3>\n
\nBut, here\u2019s the point, what that chain really does is remove excuses\u2014it shifts my time from repairing damage to enhancing something that\u2019s already good.<\/p>\n