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Obtaining great sound
Dear CC-forum,
A question on obtaining good audio for narrated-videos w interviews.
Science-journalist thingy.I was hoping that perhaps on this forum I could obtain an expert piece of advice/discuss a choice of a good microphone system.
Perhaps also, audio program (at the moment I have Sound Forge Audio Studio 10.0, which I guess is pretty ok. I just need to start using it).(i) Microphone.
(ii) Audio program
a) How much more is Sound Forge Pro when it comes to HQual
optimizing interviews/narrated text. Again, the raw footage
is probably the most important part?? hence the need for
upgrading on the hardware side -> microphone.(iii) Addon question: Do services exist where you send a short text for someone with a ‘good narrative voice’, and pay a small amount. Then you receive a sound-file back in HQual, which you can use in your video?
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9 Replies
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Budget:
Microphone – no strict limitation but from what I searched around for, around 200$ perhaps? -
The best audio for interviews is the cheapest solution. Use a wired lav plugged into the camera like this one from Audio-Technica.
The worst – absolutely – is to use the on-camera microphone.
I use a Sony UWP-V1 wireless lav.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Ah, excellent advice. Thanks a lot.
Surely looks mangeable from a $-perspective. I think I’ll go with that.As for recording narration:
Could you also throw me a piece of advice on this subject?
I am looking at the RØDE Podcast microphone. In particular I like the easy-USB connection.Alternative, there is the new NT1, but its XLR-connected, which brings up the problems with pre-amp for phantom power and an adapter XLR->USB, both of which are not extremely cheap I guess.
As for the sound quality I have no real-life experience on any of them, and with youtube guides you only get this far..
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R0de and Blue make pretty good USB microphones – I use both here. The only downside to USB microphones is the latency measured in hundreds of milliseconds. If you on;y have one microphone, you won’t really notice the latency, but if you have two USB microphones they could respond different from each other.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
[Søren Sørensen] “(i) Microphone.”
That’s a big question. To help narrow it down, you have to consider its use. Is this connecting to a camcorder? A dedicated recording device (Zoom, etc)? A PC — what sound interface? Do you have a professional XLR jack with 48V phantom power, or are you limited to things that work with a consumer 1/8″ jack and probably some kind of battery in the mic.
Your best bet is a professional mic of some kind. If you’re doing voiceovers for already-created video, I’d recommend, well, what I use for that: a large diaphragm condenser mic. You can something like a MXL V67G or an Audio Technical AT2020 for under $100 that’s just dandy — good enough for music (I have both of these). You’re going to sit in front of this mic when recording, a couple of feet away.
If you’re looking for something on-camera, your best bet is a wired lavalier mic. Lavalier mics aren’t really for music, but great for speech — you’ll see them, occasionally, on practically every talk show. They’re recording very close to the speaker, and of course, if applied correctly, they’ll pick up the speaker as she moves around… a big advantage over any other kind of mic for interview situations. I have both the MXL FR-350 omni and the MXL FR-351 cardioid…. these sell for about $99 each, but mysteriously, MXL sells the FR-355K “Interview Pack” which contains both, and can be found online for $99.
If you can’t wire-in, there are wireless lavalier solutions. They’re not cheap, particularly if you want one that’s not going to pick up electrical noise. The cheapest one I’ve used (not mine) that I’d trust is the Line 6 XD system… you can get a lavalier, transmitter, and receiver for about $300. This is a digital system, using the 2.4GHz ISM band, so there’s no license, or worries, other than maybe channel overlaps with local WiFi gear. Or microwave ovens.
Aside from a lav mic, sound folks use shotguns. I have a couple that are better on-camera than, well, other kinds of mics on-camera. The worst possible mic to use with a camcorder is the built-in one. These should never, ever, ever be used for audio — ok as a time sync with your other cameras (you sync mult-camera shoots via audio). The only things worse are the mics built-in to smartphones and DSLRs, in that order. A shotgun mic will get your speaker, but it’ll also pick up way more room acoustics than you’d want in a typical voiceover. You want that sound as dry as Arizona in July; you can add reverb yourself if the situation calls for it. Better, if you have to use the shotgun, is to put it up on a boom pole, and have a sound guy work it, keeping it on the speaker, just out of camera range. You can’t do this by yourself… ok, I have, but it’s not recommended. And that’s actually why I bought the lav mics. I have a Rode NTG1 and an MXL FR-304 shotgun, and something that came with my Sony HVR-A1 that I basically don’t use anymore. The NTG1 is a good on-camera mic, also a little out of your price-range, the FR-304 is better suited to boom pole or mic-stands… it’s 14″-something inches long. There are tons of shotguns made, and they’ll work, but the lav is what you want for on-camera interviews if you’re doing them seated, not “run and gun” or some-such.
If you do any walking around shooting, get two mics on the camera. Set one at low gain, one at high gain, and protect them from the wind with the foamy socks that come with them, or a dead cat if you can get those for your mics. Or a blimp, if you have it on a boom pole… ok, probably getting off-topic here.
As for USB mics, I’m kind of against them. Yeah, ok, if you only every need to record audio in front of your PC — you’re a blogger/vlogger or something, it’s probably ok. A USB mic is, after all, some kind of real mic connected to a monophonic (and not necessarily all that great) USB sound card. They’re literally adding a couple of bucks in cost and $50-$75 to the price of that same mic you can probably buy with an XLR interface. Trust me on this… at my day job, I designed just such an interface last spring… about $3.50 in parts, and that’s only because I put in a booster amp for the headphones, which needed two $.25 coupling capacitors. But if that’s your setup, I know the AT2020 is available in USB-mic form. You can certainly also buy a PC audio interface with XLR, phantom power, and not totally heinous preamps for around $100. My Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 was slightly more, that’s my regular PC sound interface (the 16-channel Tascam comes out on special occasions), and I’ve seen basic units for under $70.
[Søren Sørensen] “(ii) Audio program”
Sound Forge is really kind of overkill if you’re just working on sound for video. I do nearly everything in Vegas… in fact, I’ve mixed whole albums in Vegas — it’s not just for video. Forge would be handy for things that really need to be modified; maybe I want to normalize the whole track or something — there are more options in Forge than Vegas, that kind of thing. I think of Forge as an audio editor and Vegas as an audio sequencer… well, my brain grew up doing sound and music. Vegas being non-destructive is great for most of the things you might do with voice: reverb, compression, etc.
-Dave
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As with any other USB audio interface, you can get much lower latency IF that USB mic has ASIO drivers available. I have two different audio interfaces that use USB, but they’re both shipped with device-specific ASIO drivers.. down to 5ms or so latency, with minimum buffering. Many of the USB mics are “generic” USB audio devices, which work with drivers included in every OS. So they don’t necessarily ship with any drivers, and that means, by default, you’re probably using an MME (MCI?) driver for that sound device. It’s not just that the driver has a high latency (it does), but it’s run through Microsoft’s audio bit-rate-conversion and software mixer… that’s the reason every program on your PC can play out your default sound card all at the same time… each thinks it’s talking to a sound card, but it’s really just a channel on the mixer. ASIO drivers are for music and other high quality sound, and you can adjust parameters, like latency, right on the driver setup panel in Vegas, Forge, etc.
Also, for voice-over, if you’re syncing to video, you only care about record latency, not round-trip latency. This can even be mitigated as long as it’s PREDICTABLE record latency. For example, if it’s always 200ms, your voice-over is going to be terribly out of sync with the video. So slide it ahead 200ms, and you’re golden. Some recording programs can compensate for known latency.
If you’re just using the PC as a recording deck, you don’t care about latency at all. When you use a PC as a musical instrument, then round-trip latency is the problem… I have to put a signal or sound into the PC, process it, and it get back out fast enough to not introduce an audible lag.
But you really don’t want to use two USB mics anyway. The problem there is that they may each have their own clock. It’s possible for a USB audio device to phase-lock to the USB clock. That’s actually kind of ok, because USB clocks need to be something like 25ppm or better, versus the typical 100ppm of a generic PC clock. But if they don’t, you wind up recording two tracks from different time bases. Some DAWs can compensate in software, others get confused.
Plus, by the time you’re talkin’ two mics, you’re better off buying a sound interface and two “real” microphones.
-Dave
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“Alternative, there is the new NT1, but its XLR-connected, which brings up the problems with pre-amp for phantom power and an adapter XLR->USB, both of which are not extremely cheap I guess.”
I use an “MXL Mike Mate” for voiceover recordings. It provides phantom power through an XLR connector and plugs into my USB port on a laptop. I think it was about $60.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Thanks for nice answers. I think I follow some of what you say Dave:-)
Stephen:
Great links you send. I was not aware of the MXL Mic Mate (or similar) adapters. I now find myself having to choose btw two configurations.1: RØDE USB Podcast Microphone (250 USD)
2: The RØDE NT1 Condenser Microphone (325 USD) + a ICICLE XLR-USB converter w preamp (75 USD)
The video for which I need the mic is similar in concept to this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLgORMlAYV0&feature=youtu.be
The audio qual. should be around the same +/-.Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
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I am not familiar with either Rode mic. As I said, I am using an inexpensive MXL 661 Dynamic microphone and an MXL Mike Mate USB adapter. I do voiceovers with it and my daughter uses if to record voices for animation.
The golden key to good audio is absurdly simple and cheap – get the microphone close to the subject. A $50 wired lav will sound so much better than any on-camera microphone that you will wonder why there is even a microphone on the camera. Except for what Dave said, I do use the on-camera microphones only to synch multiple cameras by matching the sound tracks. (OK, it saved my ass once when a wireless failed during an interview).
Shotgun microphones are only marginally better than on-camera microphones. I don’t like the term “Shotgun”, but we’re stuck with it. All a shotgun microphone offers is a more focused response curve, but you’re still at the same distance from the subject and the sound level reaching the shotgun is the same as what your on-camera microphone hears. The shotgun just minimizes sounds from the sides. They are best used on a boom pole.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com
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