Two fundamentals for great audio capture

David Binstead
Aug 31, 2018 · 5 min read

With crappy quality your listeners will be zoning out quicker than dub-step at a monastery.

Contrary to what AM radio fed the Olds, audio quality is paramount. Good to great content deserves (demands!) good to great listening quality. With crappy quality your listeners will be zoning out quicker than dub-step at a monastery.

Today, mindfully organising your recording environment, and brushing up on basic microphone technique, to best capture usable audio-in.

Jenny and Samantha talking social impact on Ep.50

1. Environment — the good [audio] place

Isolate extraneous noise by [telling people to shut the f*** up] making a quiet corral…

  • Good quiet: a consistent (low) level of background (or white) noise. Old-style library volume.
  • Bad quiet: sharp knocks, engine backfires, sirens, snorting or baying laughter, any sharp changes in background noise, chair mating calls on hard/concrete floors.

If you can’t eliminate, by choosing a consistently quiet (or silent) place, try to minimise by selecting known quiet times of day, and avoiding places where there are large flows of humans. My podcasting mates over at Access Granted NZ simply love the bustle of GoldingsFD, and they’ve worked hard to retain the casual feel of a public bar while using quite fancy gear that minimises the inevitable noise intrusion.

Isolate extraneous noise by [telling people to shut the f*** up] making a quiet corral, surrounding yourselves with [fluffy toys] soft, padded stuff that absorbs sound. Modern business furnishings have broken out of the (literally plastic) mould with a steady shift towards more flexible work (and coworking) spaces. Don’t get me started on unplanned ‘open-plan’.

I sometimes record at the very wonderful BizDojo, Tory St Wellington. Their high-backed felt-covered meeting pods make for truly great ad-hoc sound panels. See (+how much fun are they having!):

Meeting pods facing each other making a great podcave. Jen and Tony on Ep.78

Shortcut: environment +microphone:

  • The perfect, silent recording environment with stuff that absorbs, not reflects sound = consider condenser mics // will pickup everything.
  • Anywhere else = dynamic mics // solid capture +background noise rejection.

Really didn’t want to call that a hack as it reminds me of a hacking cough, another thing you don’t want in your audio. Unless it’s a show about coughs.


2. Technique: maximise what you’ve got

Audio capture top tip:

***Use an external mic***

Microphones record *everything* around them, they don’t discern between sound sources like your brain. Mics have different ‘polar patterns’ — the visualised shape of the space within which they work best. Dive right in here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphone#Polar_patterns

Gear head.

Comes in a nice shiny pack with headphones for about US$60

Save yourself a bunch of pain, and simply start out with this mic for close voice use: Audio Technica ATR2100/Samson Q2U (they’re the same mic). The cheapest good dynamic mic around. Can plug indirectly into either a computer, any modern phone, or an iPad, with a cheap-ish USB dongle.

How close (to your mic)?

Any more than about 10cm away and you’re going to lose a lot of quality. While you’re at it, splash on a $3–20 foam pop filter to reduce the plosives in natural speech.

Speak good.

Audio memos on your phone are a great starting point to be working on your pronunciation and tempo, sentence structure, and avoiding hesitations (umm’s and aah’s).

Steady Eddie.

Speak at a reasonably consistent level, otherwise you’ll hit the next problem — input volume higher than what your gear can capture without distortion.

Monitor how loud the conversation gets recorded.

Record within the range of -6 to -12 db, and avoid getting near or over 0db, where you’ll distort the audio (and can’t recover it). Like capturing photos on film with a manual camera, you don’t want to over-expose the image (too light/bright), nor under-expose (too dark/black). Live monitoring, hearing yourself speaking into your headphones, will give you real-time feedback of whether you’re recording too hot, too cold or just right.


Podcast pleasures

If you care about your listeners make it as easy as possible for them to listen. You’ve only got the one (and the richest, most emotively valuable) sense to connect through.

One of the many pleasures of podcasting is breaking accepted audio rules by recording anywhere. However, your listeners won’t care for the atmosphere when they can’t clearly hear the audio gems your guests are unveiling. If your personal goal is simply chatting with interesting people, then go ahead don’t worry about the input quality. Accept that you’re not in with a chance to keep them interested for very long.

Summary:

  • Get started with what you’ve got: phone (or iPad), audio recorder, or computer. Spend later when you know what you need.
  • Please use/get an external mic — you owe it to everyone.
  • Carefully choose where you record.
  • Practice your capture technique.
  • Live monitoring is your friend.

About

#2 in an Audio Adventures series, to guide you meaningfully in creating quality digital audio stories. By David Binstead, who’s writing up audio learns here, so you can effortlessly jump the hurdles he crashed straight into. Video is a thing too, apparently.

The boxed set [in progress]:


Talks with innovators, creatives & enterprisers (acronym/show title: twice) is ninety five episodes of learns in digital audio published fortnightly (or more often) 2015–2018. Capturing and sharing the stories of people making positive impact in society, from Aotearoa New Zealand. 🎧 via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts; and anywhere else you listen to digital radio.

Footnote: Close listens to many recent episodes of ‘Talks with innovators…’ may reveal a distinctive coffee grinder announcing itself as just about the only background noise I haven’t been able to eliminate, minimise or isolate before recording. Coffee beats most errything else in a cowork space…

Disclosure: I’m fortunate to have received support from BizDojo, and their rad community of humans. I’m not paid to promote or advertise their services, but you’d do well to check them out when you’re passing through Aotearoa New Zealand.

David Binstead

Written by

Making and breaking stuff, being useful, sharing (sometimes hard) learns. Focused contributor, creator, & sailor. On a #sustainability journey | @david_binstead

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