The Quest For Clean And Constant Leveled Audio

[Abay]

I'm having a hard time trying to get my audio loud enough and still clean. I use an aputure a.lav mic connected to my phone for capturing separate audio from my gopro, and I place my deadcat-ed mic right in front of my mouth on the chin bar. When I do vlogs sometimes I speak softly sometimes I kinda screamed. And I find it hard balancing both situation. Also slow speed vs high speed riding results in noticeably different wind noise level.

So, how do you guys try to balance your audio and get it both clean and loud enough? How much edit do you guys do in post?

 

[Hippo-Drones]

I very rarely do any post audio editing. I don't often use an external audio recorder though (not that that should make much difference). Experiment with different mic positions, is it wind noise you get or clipping from you speaking too loudly? I have my mic just to the side of my mouth in front of the cheek padding and am currently just using a foam cover on it.

 

[Panotaker]

Audio is one of those things that unless you get really lucky on your first try, you have to try a bunch of different things before you get it right. Also, what works for one person, doesn't necessarily work for somebody else. What works real good at 40 mph, might not necessarily work at 70 mph.

 

[2WV]

I have presets saved for my audio. Audio is just as important as the footage imo. In fact, you should treat every vlog as a piece of art - And you just cant rush art.

You should try a few post editing techniques for audio to clean it up and remove background noise and distortion. But most importantly normalise ALL your levels within audio. I cant stress how important this is. If one minute you're quiet, and i adjust my speakers to hear, then the next you're shouting and blowing my speakers up... you wont be in my good books

 

[EpicNick]

One thing I've done at my home setup when doing normal vlogs and live streams is to use a conjunction of a compressor and a hard limiter to keep all my audio leveled. Downside to doing this is that any small bumps or background noise is also tuned to the same level so if you're not in a quiet environment it may be harder to deal with that.

Personally, from my experience, placing a mic right in front of your mouth generally doesn't result in great audio (Think of the kiddie gamers who are constantly puffing into their mic). What has worked for me in the past is to try and place it a little bit towards the cheek, around a bit above your jaw line. As far as wind noise goes, try seeing if you can find discussions around the net about redirecting the wind with some sort of shield. I think I remember a great thread in these forums from a while back talking about this very subject.

 

[Reize]

Audio is one of those things that unless you get really lucky on your first try, you have to try a bunch of different things before you get it right. Also, what works for one person, doesn't necessarily work for somebody else. What works real good at 40 mph, might not necessarily work at 70 mph.

Yea, I agree it's all about luck. My early videos had very muffled audio, then the audio got better and better as I tried different cheap chinese mics until I struck gold.

The problem is maintaining that consistency once you know what works. Because those god damned chinese love making shit in one off batches that don't even maintain the same level of audio quality in between production batches for the same product.

Or you could buy this particular lavalier mic that you really liked because of the audio, jack size and mic head, and when yours eventually break (they all do) and you try to find the same exact one you previously bought, they don't have it anymore.

I could go with expensive established brands, but honestly, they're not worth the money since they break as well eventually anyway, and the audio is usually not on par with the chinese stuff.

 

[2WV]

I've been using the same mic since 2015 and that isn't chinese. I always find its the gopro mic adapters which are chinese that break for me :/

 

[Abay]

I very rarely do any post audio editing. I don't often use an external audio recorder though (not that that should make much difference). Experiment with different mic positions, is it wind noise you get or clipping from you speaking too loudly? I have my mic just to the side of my mouth in front of the cheek padding and am currently just using a foam cover on it.

I get a lot of clippings. And it's hard to adjust the volume so it's loud enough but without clipping. Hmm, I always thought different audio recorder would give different results. The audio that I get from my phone sometimes have a lot of "skips" in it, only a fraction of seconds but that is very noticeable.

 

[Abay]

One thing I've done at my home setup when doing normal vlogs and live streams is to use a conjunction of a compressor and a hard limiter to keep all my audio leveled. Downside to doing this is that any small bumps or background noise is also tuned to the same level so if you're not in a quiet environment it may be harder to deal with that.

Personally, from my experience, placing a mic right in front of your mouth generally doesn't result in great audio (Think of the kiddie gamers who are constantly puffing into their mic). What has worked for me in the past is to try and place it a little bit towards the cheek, around a bit above your jaw line. As far as wind noise goes, try seeing if you can find discussions around the net about redirecting the wind with some sort of shield. I think I remember a great thread in these forums from a while back talking about this very subject.

Thanks for the tips! I looked at how to use compression and hard limiter, makes it a lot easier than just manually adjusting volume on my clips. Which software do you use to process your audio?

 

[Hippo-Drones]

I get a lot of clippings. And it's hard to adjust the volume so it's loud enough but without clipping. Hmm, I always thought different audio recorder would give different results. The audio that I get from my phone sometimes have a lot of "skips" in it, only a fraction of seconds but that is very noticeable.

I'd def look at repositioning it so your voice doesn't overpower it. If you put it in the cheek pad it may help reduce the background noise and being further from your mouth and in padding will also muffle it a bit. In the cheek pad can muffle it a bit much though so it takes a bit of experimentation.

 

[Srider]

I use a gm100 lav mic and finding it pretty good I think, just to the left in front of cheek pad

 

[MrNapper]

I use a gm100 lav mic and finding it pretty good I think, just to the left in front of cheek pad

Exactly the mic and placement I use as well. My helmets have tons of wind noise and I was getting a lot of clipping and audio noise at first at high speeds thinking it was the crapdapter but then I changed my audio setting In my gopro 5 and seems to have helped but haven't road dual vlog with the wife again yet to see how she sounds.

 

[Undead MV]

Hi, I had the same struggle, i started normalicing the audio level, i use camtasia studio to edit my videos, it worked for me, but the best recommendation is, buy a cam with external mic, you´ll save a lot of time and normally those mics for action cams are sensitive enough to capture your voice without background noise, the camera i use (Gitup, Git1) actually has 3 options to capture audio: High, Medium, Low. I use Low in the city and medium on the highway.