Voice over sound varies??

[Jeff David]

I bought the 3.0 usb drive John. Hopefully that will help. I’m transferring all of my clips over now. I can still keep the Seagate drive as triple back-up as that has all of my clips on it for the entire project. Of course, I won’t have it plugged in I’ll just store it in a safe place. Thanks.

Lenovo quad core i7 16gb of ram, Windows 8.1 MS 13 64 bit Thumbnail is view out of the Olde North Church window where the signal lanterns were hung, as in, \”1 if by land 2 if by sea\” looking across the Charles River to the Charlestown Naval Yard where rebels awaited the signal April 18th, 1775.

[Steve King]

Just a couple of points to add to John’s and Old Smokes good advice: You can place your microphone sideways just as long as the front face of the mic is pointing at the sound source, your mouth in this case. As the mic is moved farther away from the sound source the the ratio of the sound of your voice and the other sound sources in the room, the computer fans for instance changes. Farther away, more room sound compared to voice sound. Not good. In your case eleven inches should be fine if the mic is correctly pointed at your mouth. Here’s another issue: having the mic low and looking up at your mouth will result in a different sound than having the mic high and looking down…more chest sound in the former and less in the latter. The difference is often not much but usually is enough that recordings made both ways are noticeably different, when edited together. About John’s point of dynamic mics being less sensitive than condenser mics, that is true and all settings being equal using a dynamic mic will result in a lower level recording. That can be corrected by increasing the amplification; however, microphone preamplifiers in computers are not very high quality. Among other deficiencies computer mic preamps generate self-noise; the more gain you use the more that self noise will be amplified along with the desired signal from the microphone. Therefore, it is desirable to use condenser mics because of their higher output. To get back to your specific problem, if you are experiencing a difference in sound quality between two recordings something changed: settings in Vegas, mic distance, mic placement, or how you used your voice. Here’s one more tip. You can use a microphone’s directional pattern not only to focus on the sound source, your voice for instance, but also to reduce unwanted sound in the room by orienting the back of the microphone in the case of a cardioid toward the unwanted sound. Not too long ago I decided to simplify my editing/recording room. I had placed the computer in a closet about 10 feet away from my desk, which meant longer monitor cables, USB lines, etc. Very quiet, but very inconvenient. I moved the computer to under my desk. That changed the noise lever in my voice recordings. However, by reorienting my Sennheiser 416 shotgun mic a little I was able to use the mic’s direction characteristics to reject much of the CPU fan noise, enough so that the result is acceptable for the work I now do. Hope this helps.

Steve K
Full time writer/director
Pt. Time Video Editor

[Jeff David]

Thanks!

Lenovo quad core i7 16gb of ram, Windows 8.1 MS 13 64 bit Thumbnail is view out of the Olde North Church window where the signal lanterns were hung, as in, \”1 if by land 2 if by sea\” looking across the Charles River to the Charlestown Naval Yard where rebels awaited the signal April 18th, 1775.