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Fixing a “blown out” live speaker…but dB is only -18 to -12
Hi all! I’m working with video a client shot. He recorded a live conference, but didn’t capture audio directly from the mic. I imagine he used a VideoMic Pro on his camera or some other kind of shotgun mic from far away to capture the audio. The levels are okay – even Audition tells me nothing is clipped and none of the peaks are traditionally “blown out”. But as you can tell, the speaker’s audio is kind of crummy because it sounds too much like he’s speaking into a mic. Is there any way to fix this? I tried messing around with Premiere’s EQ and the Multiband Compressor, and got some different results, but I’m not sure if they’re necessarily better.
I’ve rummaged around some of the forums for solutions to blown out audio, but in all of those cases the levels were ruined. Hoping that since the levels are decent on this, there might be enough information in the waveform to fix it. If not, we’ll just have to live with it.
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3 Replies
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Hello Michelle and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.
It sounds typical of a live event. I’ve heard much worse.
Sounds like some mic was somewhere near a PA speaker and that’s what you got. A de-reverb plugin might help a little. It’s a little grainy around the edges from the distortion in the PA system. Can’t fix the latter, but what do you want to do with it.
Regards,
Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum LeaderWant better production audio?: Ty Ford\’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford\’s Blog -
Thank you Ty! Good to know it isn’t totally a lost cause. In addition to being a videographer, I do boom op and sound mixing for films pretty frequently, so I’ve become very sensitive to bad sound. The client might not be as picky about it as I am. I’ll try playing with the reverb and see if that helps.
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Hi Michelle,
Yes, the client’s ears are usually more forgiving.There are several DE-reverb plugins out there. I think there’s one in Adobe Audition. I think Apple has one and I use one in iZotope RX.
Regards,
Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum LeaderWant better production audio?: Ty Ford\’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford\’s Blog
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