random unsolicited basic, cheapo advice for home recording of audio for podcast VAs who have no experience with recording. from me, a person with some experience recording
you need muffling. not for sounds outside but for your voice, so it doesnāt sound too echoey ā thatās why people record in closets full of clothes or under a duvet. if you can get one of these type of things cheap and drape blankets over it I find thatās a pretty good, mobile little fake recording booth setup that is slightly less suffocating than a closet
whatever you do itās probably gonna get horribly warm, though, so watch for that
have water with you. drink the water.
also eat a slice of untoasted bread or a green apple, it helps to cut down on all the little wet noises and clicking sounds that your mouth makes.
donāt have computers too close, especially laptops, the fans make too much noise
if you splay out the fingers of your hand and have your pinky touching the mic and your thumb touching your lips, thatās usually a good distance for recording
have a pop filter somewhere in that space, otherwise your plosives (p and b sounds) are gonna blow out the audio. theyre pretty cheap but thereās a lot of guides online to making one from stuff youāve probably got around the house
also really helpful with this: instead of speaking with your mouth directly facing the mic, angle just a little bit so youāre kind of speaking past it
watch your levels, which if like me you really donāt understand technical audio terms basically just means not speaking so loud so that the little waveform or moving bar doesnāt go into the red or hit the top and flatten out
record like 30 seconds of silence along with everything else, itās really helpful for cleaning up the kind of ambient tone of the room youāre in
basically if you do these things then audio editors will love you, and it can make stuff recorded even on a really inexpensive mic sound a lot better
#YES ALL OF THISĀ #also if you mess up! take a breath and pause before you start againĀ #less relevant if youāre not reading from a script but it makes it a lot easier to trim out the correct linesĀ #also re: levels - if the top of the scale is 0 (which it usually is) aim for your normal speaking voice to be around -10Ā #-30 is ānormalā background room noise and -60 is the threshold what most mics can pick upĀ #sorry for the infodump this is what i do for a job currentlyĀ (via @song-the-doggo)
please do not apologize bc 1. It is very reassuring to hear from someone who actually knows anything real about this that I have not given 2.5k people bad advice and 2. I genuinely didnāt know that about the levels so seriously thank you
