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How to Record Clean Audio Anywhere

Room, distance and levels beat expensive equipment every time.

RecordingBy FindRecording2 min read

Recording quality is decided by three things before any equipment is involved: the noise in the room, the reflections in the room, and how far the microphone is from the mouth.

Deal with noise first

Walk into the space and stand still for thirty seconds with your eyes closed. Everything you hear will be on the recording. Switch off air conditioning, fans, fridges and dehumidifiers. Close windows. Move away from lifts, corridors and plumbing. Choose the quietest hour of the day if you have a choice.

Then deal with reflections

Echo is the problem that cannot be removed later. Soft, irregular surfaces absorb it: curtains, sofas, rugs, full bookshelves, hanging coats, a duvet on a stand behind you. Bare walls, glass and hard floors make the worst rooms. A small carpeted room with furniture beats a large empty hall almost every time.

Distance is the free upgrade

Move the microphone closer. At roughly a hand span from the mouth, your voice dominates the room. At arm's length, the room dominates your voice. Speak slightly across the microphone rather than straight into it to reduce plosives, and keep a consistent distance.

Set levels with headroom

Set your loudest normal speech to peak well below the top of the meter. Leaving headroom costs you nothing, while a clipped peak is permanently damaged. Record at 24 bit if you have the option, because quiet recordings can be raised cleanly afterwards.

Monitor while you record

Wear closed headphones and actually listen, not just watch the meter. Hum, radio interference, a loose cable and clothing rustle are all obvious in headphones and invisible on a screen.

Record safety material

Capture thirty seconds of the empty room at the start of each session. This room tone lets an editor patch gaps invisibly. Keep recording between questions rather than stopping and starting, and clap once at the start if more than one device is running.

What cannot be fixed later

Echo, clipping, and a person talking over another on a single shared microphone. Everything else is negotiable. If one of those three appears in your test recording, change something in the room before you continue.

  • audio
  • recording
  • room treatment
  • field recording

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