Update metadata and transcripts through end of July 2026
Refreshed episodes/hosts/comments/series from hpr.sql, and added official HPR transcripts for the 180 episodes aired since the last sync (hpr4516-hpr4695).
This commit is contained in:
Lee Hanken
@@ -0,0 +1,347 @@
|
||||
Episode: 4598
|
||||
Title: Recording good audio using open source tools
|
||||
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4598/hpr4598.mp3
|
||||
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:14:48 (official HPR transcript)
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4598, for 2026-03-18
|
||||
Today's show is entitled, "Recording good audio using open source tools"
|
||||
The host is Shane - StrandedOutput and the duration is 00:40:24
|
||||
The flag is Explicit, and the license is CC-BY-SA
|
||||
The summary is "This is my advice from several years of podcasting and tinkering with audio software."
|
||||
Hello and welcome to another episode of HPR. My name is Shane. I have recorded an episode
|
||||
before. I'll include a link to that in the show notes accompanying this episode. That was my
|
||||
introductory episode. If you'd like to get to know a bit more about me. This episode is intended
|
||||
to be a part of a series about being creative on Linux and open source software. But not
|
||||
necessarily limited to those things. So this episode in particular is going to be about recording
|
||||
good audio in the context of recording a podcast basically. So I'll cover several things. So I
|
||||
will cover kind of the sort of philosophical angle of it, which I'm very fond of. I'll cover
|
||||
the hardware that you need. I'll cover the technique of actually speaking into the microphone.
|
||||
And I will then go briefly because it's a very dense topic. I will cover
|
||||
editing the podcast. The software you used to record, et cetera, et cetera. Today I'm focusing purely
|
||||
on creating good audio and creating good podcasts audio specifically. Now this doesn't
|
||||
necessarily have to be just podcasts. This could be voiceover work. This could be narration for a
|
||||
story that's then incorporated into a video. This could be an audio book, whatever. You know,
|
||||
anything where the speaker speaks into a microphone needs to sound very present and very
|
||||
authoritative and the tone of the voice catches your attention. That's kind of the that's the
|
||||
point when it comes to this kind of thing. When you're talking about like I don't know if there's
|
||||
a specific term for this, but I would say single speaker audio. That's how I would phrase it.
|
||||
Before I get into specifics, what gives me the right to talk about all this? I have been on
|
||||
a Linux podcast called Linux Lads for the last seven and a bit years. We have gone through the
|
||||
trials and tribulations over the years of improving our audio piecemeal. And I think we've gotten
|
||||
to a point where we sound quite professional. I myself have actually recorded a voiceover real
|
||||
professionally in a studio and gotten some coaching on that. I have had some experience with
|
||||
audio editing and sound engineering, not professional, but you know, self-taught. I do have
|
||||
enough information to be dangerous, as they say. So I'll start with some tips for just speaking
|
||||
into the microphone, which I am not following at all. The reason I'm not following those tips is because
|
||||
I'm just on my own speaking into what microphone and I'm very used to having at least two or three
|
||||
co-hosts. I'm also aware there's a dog barking in the background. There's probably
|
||||
sirens in the background, but as many of you may know, we're having a bit of a heat wave in Western
|
||||
Europe over the last few weeks. And it's just too warm to keep the window closed and air conditioning
|
||||
is not a thing in this part of the world. So this advice that I'm not following myself right now
|
||||
is breathing. So you need to sit upright, you need to have your chest cavity, be as big as possible,
|
||||
so that you're not struggling to breathe as you talk. So I would recommend that before you start to speak
|
||||
you're in a comfortable position, you're upright, you're not hunched over, you're not leaning
|
||||
too far back, you're just in the middle in a very natural position. As I'm saying this, I'm starting to do
|
||||
it. So you're in this position, your lungs can fill with air, they can empty air without much effort.
|
||||
That makes your voice sound a bit more natural and that bit more professional because that's how
|
||||
the professionals do it. Someone's on TV, they're standing up with a microphone, they're up,
|
||||
bolt upright, they're breathing naturally, they're they're sounding pretty good. In a radio show,
|
||||
you've probably seen video feeds of radio shows where they're sitting upright in their chair
|
||||
or they're leaning slightly forward, talking into the mic and it just makes them sound obviously,
|
||||
they have professional audio equipment and stuff as well to make them sound great and they have
|
||||
years of experience. But that's where the breathing comes in, isn't it? Like they know how to
|
||||
measure their words and they know how to breathe so that they can sound as good as possible.
|
||||
So they don't sound like they're choking on their words like I'm a little bit myself right now.
|
||||
There can be nerves that come into it. So you know your breathing can be a little bit shallow and
|
||||
you're really, you know, you're a bit unsure of what you're saying. So you're kind of, you know,
|
||||
you're not really taking in the breaths and letting them out in a nice calm manner.
|
||||
Because I myself am not following that advice right now, I'm not going to spend too much time
|
||||
speaking about that and I'm going to get to what I really know. As I said, I'm used to speaking
|
||||
with other people on a podcast. So when I'm doing it solo, it's that bit more nerve-wracking.
|
||||
I wanted to leave that in just to demonstrate the importance of that breathing. So let's talk
|
||||
about the fun stuff hardware. A lot of HPR episodes would tend to be recorded by people who
|
||||
don't have the same experience with audio recording and audio editing as other people who
|
||||
maybe do that on a more regular basis, which is completely fine. I mean, once the content is good,
|
||||
it doesn't really matter. If you do want that spit and polish on your recording and you do want
|
||||
that extra little bit of professionalism, then there are some very easy steps and some very
|
||||
cheap purchases you can make to make that happen. So first of all, don't record on a webcam
|
||||
mic because it's just going to sound absolutely terrible. Don't record on a phone mic, unless you
|
||||
have a particularly good phone. If you can get a USB microphone, make sure it's not the cheapest
|
||||
one you can find off Amazon. I would not recommend anything by Blue Yeti. Personally, I just don't
|
||||
think they sound very good for the money that they cost. I don't know how much they cost these days.
|
||||
When I last checked, it was in and around a hundred euro, which I just don't think it's a
|
||||
product that's worth a hundred euro. It doesn't have the audio quality. If you already have one,
|
||||
okay, fine. What I will say though is the environment that you record in is incredibly important.
|
||||
Probably more important than your microphone and I'll come back to microphones and recording
|
||||
equipment in just a moment because I think it is also important. But the environment that you
|
||||
record in is incredibly important. So if you're recording in your kitchen with tiles and hard wood
|
||||
and bare walls, it's going sound echoey and tinny and rubbish. If you're recording in a bedroom with
|
||||
lovely soft pillows and a big duvet and shelves and clothes and wardrobes, that's going to sound
|
||||
better, obviously because it absorbs the sound and there's not as much echo. It's not going
|
||||
to sound as hollow and echoey. Currently, I am in my office slash future child's room with
|
||||
there's three bedrooms or three bedrooms. My god, there's three doors on a wardrobe here and I
|
||||
have basically opened the doors and wedged blankets into the top. So I've just three blankets
|
||||
draped over the top of these bed wardrobe doors and then I have the the baby's future caught,
|
||||
which I haven't gotten around to assembling properly and I have my dressing gown and some pillows
|
||||
draped over that. So that's created quite a nice sound environment and there's probably still a
|
||||
bit of echo and there's probably some incidental sounds from outside because I had the window
|
||||
a jar because it's a bit warm. But the point is is that you have to do the best with what you have,
|
||||
you know and I'm sure if you have an apartment or a house you're going to have one very small room.
|
||||
I'll share with you an anecdote from the early days of recording Linux Lads. So I was living
|
||||
in a rental house with a housemate and my housemate was an artist and she had a spare room or a
|
||||
boxroom as we'd say. Just full of just other shit, just wardrobe full of old clothes that she
|
||||
used in art projects and boxes and boxes of them just random random rubbish. That was the best room
|
||||
to record it. I had a blue snowball microphone which is a very bad microphone, don't buy it and
|
||||
it was what I had at the time though so I used it. What I would do with that microphone as they place
|
||||
it on a cardboard box, get another cardboard box with one of the sides cut out, place it on top,
|
||||
place a towel on top of that to stop it from rustling too much and then honkered down
|
||||
nearly on the floor and speak into the little hole in the box and that's the only way I could get
|
||||
this to sound in any way good was by entoming it in cardboard and towels. So that's the lengths
|
||||
you would go to and that was in a small room with a lot of clothes and boxes and soft material in it
|
||||
and it still didn't sound very good. Your hardware does sort of matter even if your environment is
|
||||
you know it's kind of a 50-50 as far as I'm concerned. Your environment matters about 50%
|
||||
and then what you're recording through matters the other 50% and then of course there's editing
|
||||
and etc etc but I don't think that has quite as much of an impact you know it's as they say like
|
||||
you can only take things out in editing you can't put them in you can't make bad audio sound good
|
||||
you can make good audio sound bad but you can't do it the other way around so to get to the good
|
||||
stuff hardware what would I recommend my first I would say decent sounding audio setup was
|
||||
the microphone I currently using actually know that's not true sorry my first good microphone was
|
||||
an audio technique at 80 2020 the thing with that was was that it was a condenser microphone so
|
||||
a condenser microphone is very very good for recording vocals from music in a very well-treated
|
||||
audio environment in a studio so it's actually not the best mic to use for podcasting unless
|
||||
you are literally in a phone booth with styrofoam all around you yes your voice will sound great
|
||||
but also the dog barking 6 doors down will also sound great so a dynamic mic is the way to go
|
||||
for most people because you're going to be in a domestic situation you're going to be
|
||||
unless you live out in the woods then you're going to be in an apartment close to or in a city
|
||||
or even in a house I'm in a house but I am quite close to a city there's a busy road nearby there's
|
||||
there's a hospital or two nearby there's dogs and everything there's cats fighting so
|
||||
you know I'm going to pick up ambulances and police cars and cats and dogs and people shouting
|
||||
on the street coming home from the pub so you know you pick up all that stuff and so I'd recommend
|
||||
a dynamic mic and a dynamic mic is what people use when they're on stage so that literally picks up
|
||||
the zone just around it it's not quite as sensitive as a as a condenser mic so just to get
|
||||
down to brass tax and give you actual recommendations here mine is a sure SM58 so that's a pretty
|
||||
common microphone that's that's a bit of a standard you know so many people use that same microphone
|
||||
I got a mic stand for about 20 quid in my local music shop it's it's if anyone's curious it's a
|
||||
stag desktop mic stand so it's got a very heavy metal bass and then a little poll that juts up
|
||||
and you can just slot the microphone into it and it's because the bass is like made of solid metal
|
||||
and it's very heavy it doesn't move it doesn't rattle it's and create any additional noise and
|
||||
then I have some acoustic tiles on the desk that I picked up years and years ago from a whole
|
||||
sailor for almost nothing and they just sit on the desk and just absorb any additional reflections
|
||||
that come off the bare walls in here the thing is though if you have like a stage microphone like
|
||||
a dynamic mic phone or a condenser you need an audio interface because the connector for that is an
|
||||
XLR which is a big beefy circular connector that doesn't fit into a computer so you'll need an
|
||||
audio interface thankfully those are cheapest chips the one I'm using did cost me about a hundred
|
||||
quid but I got it second hand and it's a bit more than I really need it's got four inputs and four
|
||||
outputs so that means you can plug four instruments or microphones into it I do also
|
||||
play guitar sometimes and I mess around with synthesizers and stuff so that's why I have this
|
||||
but it's it's still more than I need really so the audio interface that I started out with was the
|
||||
barringer u4ia um2 so that's u-4ia um2 so that is a single input audio interface the thing is
|
||||
very very cheap I actually had it I got it for nothing actually because my partner is a singer
|
||||
and she was given it as a gift by by a friend in the past but if you were to buy it
|
||||
second hand or even new in some places it would cost you only about 20 or 30 quid it's a very
|
||||
plasticy light piece of equipment it's got three knobs on it and a couple of buttons you can plug
|
||||
your microphone your XLR microphone into it you can plug your headphones into it it does direct
|
||||
monitoring so that you can push about and then you can hear what's going into your input so you
|
||||
can just make sure that it sounds alright it's got a couple of knobs there so you can you can
|
||||
adjust the gain so that's like how much amplification is on your input you can adjust the volume
|
||||
on the headphones etc so lovely little piece of equipment and great for traveling you can plug it into
|
||||
a laptop it's completely USB powered as well you don't have to plug it in separately so if I was
|
||||
to recommend anyone just like right at the beginning starting out who just wants some decent audio
|
||||
I would say I sure SM58 a barangir u4ia um2 and then the only extra fancy stuff that you need is
|
||||
an XLR cable which can be picked up for a five or ten quid and obviously the USB cable for the
|
||||
audio interface which is similar to what you would have for a printer it's that big square
|
||||
square USB one I don't know what the name of that standard is but I'm sure you can find out
|
||||
online I'll put it in the show notes if I if I if I find out now I will say the sure SM58
|
||||
has gone up in price over the last few years when I bought it it was only about 60 euro
|
||||
these days I don't know if it's just become quite popular because it's quite a capable microphone
|
||||
for the price and maybe inflation and cost living has pushed up the price at a bit I don't really
|
||||
know but it's now retailing for about a hundred quid I don't know why the price has gone up maybe
|
||||
sure I actually thought oh wait this square to popular microphone let's jack up the price a bit
|
||||
who knows but um yeah but honestly dynamic microphone don't spend less than 50 or 60
|
||||
units of your own currency be that dollars pounds euro guineas you know boolean whatever I don't know
|
||||
just get something that's not very cheap but not very expensive and I think you'll be all right
|
||||
it's going to sound better than any USB microphone that you will buy now that said there are
|
||||
good USB microphones out there but I don't think you're going to get one for cheap you know I think
|
||||
if you buy that barrenger audio interface you buy the kind of mid range dynamic microphone
|
||||
then I think you're just going to get better audio done with those USB microphones like a blue
|
||||
yetty just for comparison here just just to illustrate what I'm talking about here so I'm looking
|
||||
at a website here a blue yetty USB microphone is 145 euro now that's on the higher end I suppose but
|
||||
you're looking at a hundred to a hundred and fifty quit for that one microphone which honestly
|
||||
is not a good microphone it does not sound good it does have some features that might appeal to
|
||||
people who don't really care about audio they just want to start streaming a game or they just
|
||||
want to record some audio very quickly and they just want to know for solution with no extra
|
||||
equipment or cables they can plug it with USB into their computer and they're they're away
|
||||
yeah fine I get it but the audio is just very bad it's not good it doesn't sound good for the
|
||||
price you can spend 20 or 30 quit less and get in my opinion better sound so I don't know
|
||||
maybe it comes down to space convenience who knows but that's my two cents on the
|
||||
issue I think if you get a cheap audio interface a cheap condenser no sorry no condenser a cheap
|
||||
dynamic microphone then you are going to get superior audio quality done one of those USB stream
|
||||
or microphones unless there is some product these days that is completely blowing everyone's minds
|
||||
and I'm just not aware of it so as I talked about earlier you could record on your phone
|
||||
you could record on your iPad you could record on your on like a little dictifone if you want to be
|
||||
really old school if you do want to follow what I'm saying here and you want to record on a very basic
|
||||
XLR mic setup you know with your sure SM58 and your barringer audio interface I just want to
|
||||
stress though those are not the only options I'm just saying that those are those are very solid
|
||||
options if you're looking for a low price point that will give you the best bang for your book
|
||||
obviously if you spend more you'll get more unless it comes to USB microphones of course
|
||||
but what I'm saying is that spend more on the microphone yeah there's better microphones
|
||||
there's there's there's there's other sure models and there's 18 models like audio technique
|
||||
and stuff that do offer you like really really buttery sound that really sound really nice
|
||||
I would say though if you're in a very poor noise environment always go for dynamic mics
|
||||
just avoid condenser mics some condenser mics can actually handle a poor noise environment
|
||||
better than others but I would say if you're a podcaster you know if it's a single speaker
|
||||
kind of in deal that you're trying to accomplish you know a podcast or narration or a voice over
|
||||
I would say stick to a dynamic microphone especially if you're in a house with other people
|
||||
or you have kids or you have pets or you have you know you live in a built up neighborhood
|
||||
I would say just stick to dynamic microphone so when it goes to the software that you used to record
|
||||
I'm I'm gonna focus on Linux honestly because I have not been a Windows user for
|
||||
I want to say six or seven years I've been a Linux daily driver for for quite some time
|
||||
so the only recommendations I can authoritatively give here are in an express
|
||||
I would just say use audacity audacity might seem a bit intimidating for the average person
|
||||
but it really isn't you look at the top you see pause play stop skip back skip forward record loop
|
||||
those are the big square buttons on the top I think a monkey could figure that out you know
|
||||
you hit record you record you hit play you play hit stop you stop you hit pause you pause
|
||||
these are buttons that have been on every remote control for the past 40 years so
|
||||
and longer probably so I think audacity is the way to go
|
||||
one thing I would make sure to do is to click the audio setup button
|
||||
if you're recording for a podcast it's a very good idea to record in mono
|
||||
by default it will assume you're recording music and record in stereo
|
||||
so that's two channels left and right
|
||||
mono records on just the left channel so if you don't record in mono or sorry if you record
|
||||
mono into a stereo track and then you listen back to it you will only hear it in your left ear
|
||||
because it's only on the left channel that's just one little thing to be aware of it's
|
||||
a simple enough matter to just go to tracks mix and then mix stereo down to mono
|
||||
but not everyone will be aware of that and those are menu options you know audacity just
|
||||
to be clear so you go tracks mix stereo down to mono and that will take your two stereo tracks
|
||||
and mush them into one so all that does is basically take the left ear of the stereo track
|
||||
and put it on both the left on the right it makes no difference whether you record in mono
|
||||
or you record in stereo on the left channel and then mix it down to mono it really doesn't matter
|
||||
some very seasoned audio engineers might have a different opinion I don't know but yeah it doesn't
|
||||
but I would say just for your own kind of convenience just record in mono so you know you'll
|
||||
see it in audacity when you're recording you'll have two lines moving across the screen
|
||||
and you'll only see one of them produce a waveform produced of the bumpy bumps and the one
|
||||
below it will produce nothing and that's an easy way to tell if you're recording in mono you'll only see
|
||||
one line and that will have the bumpy bumps on it so I'm trying to make this as
|
||||
simplest possible for people so that there isn't any confusion here editing your audio is another
|
||||
thing entirely to share a bit of my journey on Linux lives on the podcast I started out editing
|
||||
podcasts in audacity audacity has changed quite a bit over the years when I originally started
|
||||
using it it didn't have non-destructive editing so non-destructive means that when you delete or
|
||||
change a part of the audio in the track that you've recorded it it doesn't completely delete it let's
|
||||
say for instance there was a cough or a fumble in the audio or someone said something and then
|
||||
ten seconds later said oh no I want to do that again something like that with destructive
|
||||
audio editing which which was audacity at the time you would have to go back you would have to control
|
||||
Z you would have to undo every single action and you would have to go back and say you made a mistake
|
||||
in the editing you have to keep control Z control Z control Z keep on doing everything you did
|
||||
for the past five minutes until you got to a point where that little piece of audio reappeared
|
||||
and wasn't deleted anymore with non-destructive audio editing you can trim clips you can
|
||||
like basically drag them from the edge and you know shorten them or lengthen them or you know split
|
||||
them into new tracks but then when you split them into new tracks you can shorten them or lengthen
|
||||
them again and all the audio on either side of that little clip that you have produced will still
|
||||
be there it's all still there so you have a lot more flexibility in terms of editing so my work flow
|
||||
when I first started Benix Lads when I was the editor I'm not the editor anymore we have another editor
|
||||
who is not a host thank god what I would do was in my little workflow in audacity was to import
|
||||
everyone's audio track into audacity run the noise removal tool so it would take 10 seconds
|
||||
at the start of the episode to just basically say nothing I would take that 10 seconds of silence
|
||||
run it through their little noise removal algorithm which is actually incredibly good I'll get to
|
||||
this later but other audio programs don't seem to have as good a noise removal algorithm and I don't
|
||||
understand why and just remove the background kind of falls in the room you know the room tone
|
||||
as they call it and that would just give your audio just a little bit of a level up so if you just
|
||||
capture 10 seconds of just the background noise of the room obviously if a dog barks or an ambulance
|
||||
goes by it completely ruins it because it's going to identify that frequency and it's going to
|
||||
cut that frequency out from everything else in the recording so you have to be selective about
|
||||
period of audio that you select for your noise removal because it's going to sample that audio and
|
||||
think right this is the background noise this is what we don't want and then if I apply this to
|
||||
the rest of the track it's just going to remove all of those frequencies it's happened on several
|
||||
occasions where there was something left in that little sample for the noise removal algorithm
|
||||
and then it removed that frequency from a person's audio for the rest of the recording and it sounded
|
||||
really weird I used to do the entire podcast in audacity but then what I started doing later on was
|
||||
because the editing experience in audacity was not great since then it has introduced
|
||||
just non-destructive editing so that means you can resize and you know adjust the length of clips
|
||||
split them up transfer them to different tracks increase or decrease the length without
|
||||
deleting anything so as I got used to audacity I started to notice pain points and friction
|
||||
so I moved on to ardor so I will say that even though I moved on to ardor audacity's noise
|
||||
removal tool was still fantastic and I would even to this day I would still use it because I
|
||||
have not found an equivalent in other applications and I know other podcasters who still
|
||||
swear by it they say the noise removal tool and audacity is fantastic and they just cannot
|
||||
father musing anything else it's one of a kind the ease of use with ardor though is in the editing
|
||||
it has it has always had non-destructive editing right from the beginning and even having used
|
||||
more recent versions of audacity that do have non-destructive editing now I would say that ardor
|
||||
ardor's workflow is still far superior they've made not to throw shade audacity they've made
|
||||
great strides there but ardor's editing workflow is just miles ahead still it's just a different
|
||||
animal in terms of audio editing software audacity's definitely aimed at a more
|
||||
beginner kind of market and ardor is definitely aimed more of a professional market you know
|
||||
them audacity's like a sound recorder with some additional features and it's thoroughly meant to be
|
||||
more of an entry level to mid level kind of tool whereas ardor is targeting more of a professional
|
||||
audience so they're both very good for what they are so it's good to use them in tandem you know
|
||||
let like I used to we we we now have an editor for the next lads and I don't do the editing
|
||||
myself anymore which is good because I personally don't enjoy audio editing but yeah audacity
|
||||
is great for the initial treatment and you know trimming kind of the silence at the start the
|
||||
silence at the end just getting all your tracks ready for editing and removing the noise
|
||||
doing the initial treatment and then exporting them as kind of a lossless format like flag or
|
||||
something and then plugging them into ardor for like chopping them up and you know putting fades
|
||||
on the end of things and the beginning of things and making everything sound good so
|
||||
while you're editing in ardor the whole point is to cut out all the fath and the fumbles and
|
||||
the things that people didn't mean to say and like let me repeat that and that and that
|
||||
cutting all that like awkward stuff out entirely depends on your style but if you
|
||||
want to leave some of that in just for humanity and character that's also fine but
|
||||
if you leave too much of that stuff in it's going to sound a bit
|
||||
on professional and rubbish if it sounds like something you know your
|
||||
cousin or your brother might have recorded on their laptop then it's not something that people are
|
||||
going to want to listen to again and again so if you're trying to produce like in our case
|
||||
we're trying to produce a podcast that people want to listen to every two weeks you do want
|
||||
a certain level of quality now there are other podcasts out there that do have that level of
|
||||
quality and I think they they slightly exceed our level of quality they do take take that care and
|
||||
attention to making audio that sounds quite good but on the next slides we kind of embrace more
|
||||
of a ad hoc nature if you will so personally we're happy to leave in some of the imperfections
|
||||
that said the audio needs to be listenable it cannot sound harsh or irritating to your ears
|
||||
it cannot sound grainy or staticky or harsh or annoying or any of those things like it needs
|
||||
you need to be able to listen to it for half an hour when I was publishing YouTube videos the advice
|
||||
I always heard was people will put up with bad video but they will not put up with bad audio
|
||||
and that's very true how many YouTube videos have you clicked on the video quality was terrible
|
||||
put the audio quality was very good and you keep watching it I think that's what happens with
|
||||
audio and video so with video you see an image and the image makes sense with less information
|
||||
that's my theory anyway I think you need a lot more you need a lot more audio information to kind of
|
||||
understand a scene then you do visual information all the things I've said don't necessarily mean
|
||||
you have to live up to a certain standard nobody's expecting you to do that if you just want to
|
||||
record something that you are passionate about and that you want to speak about don't worry about
|
||||
audio quality just do it don't be too concerned with what people think of you or how professional
|
||||
your audio sounds or any of the things I've just said I would thoroughly encourage anyone to just
|
||||
record a HPore episode and just upload it and learn by experience and if you listen to it
|
||||
and you want to improve your audio quality and you want to improve your sounds then by all means
|
||||
use the advice I've given in this episode but what I would say is that don't aspire to a standard
|
||||
that someone else has said the advice I'm giving here simply just if you do want to reach a certain
|
||||
level and you want to sound a certain way then by all means follow my advice but if you're happy to
|
||||
talk about a novel you love if you're happy to talk about your hobby or something on the internet
|
||||
that interests you and you don't honestly care about how it sounds you just want to convey
|
||||
what you enjoy then by all means go ahead so I'll finish on some very easy easy tips that you
|
||||
can use so say you're using a webcam mic using a built-in mic on your laptop you're just using
|
||||
something that you have and you're really not bothered buying new equipment or you're really not bothered
|
||||
delving deep into audio editing or anything like that so what I would say is be in a small room
|
||||
with some soft things around so be in a small room some cushions a bed things like that
|
||||
and then record on your laptop you can maybe boost the effect a little bit by wearing a hoodie
|
||||
you know I've often recorded with a hoodie on and the hoodie upper on my head that acts as a sort of
|
||||
audio booth effect almost it it's surprisingly effective if you really want to go the whole
|
||||
hog I would say get a blanket and put it over your head on the microphone that's actually quite an
|
||||
effective way to get your audio sound quite good the only danger there it though is that as the
|
||||
microphone or as the blanket moves around it will rustle like that against the microphone
|
||||
and against the microphone stand and against the laptop or against your clothes and it will sound
|
||||
really bad so I don't know come up with your own solution there and just those are just some
|
||||
easy suggestions you know just put some soft material around you to absorb the sound as much as possible
|
||||
you would be quite surprised how good you can get a bad microphone sound in the right environment
|
||||
contrary to what I said earlier in this episode yeah if it depends on the level of quality
|
||||
that you're going for you can get it to it it's kind of a difference between getting its
|
||||
sounding quote unquote professional and sounding not irritating to your listeners is the point I'm
|
||||
so you can have poor quality audio but the sound that you're producing won't be abrasive in
|
||||
anyway so I will come back with another episode on on this if you do have any suggestions or questions
|
||||
please reach out to me on info at strandedoutput.com that's STR, A&D, E-D, O-U-T, P-U-T.com
|
||||
you can also get my website on strandedoutput.com you can reach out to me on mastered on my handle there
|
||||
is also stranded output I'm I'm happy to receive feedback I'm happy to receive messages feedback
|
||||
criticisms insults whatever you have if you insult me I will hone you down and kill you though
|
||||
just so you know other than that I will see you in the next one and thank you very much for listening
|
||||
You have been listening to the Hacker Public Radio podcast, at hackerpublicradio.org.
|
||||
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
|
||||
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then visit the HPR site to find out how easy it really is.
|
||||
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by anhonesthost.com, the Internet Archive, rsync.net, and the HPR Community Content Delivery Network.
|
||||
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user