Recording Audio: Tips - Berkeley-MDes/24f-desinv-202 GitHub Wiki

Recording audio with consumer equipment

This page aims to outline best practices alongside things to avoid when recording audio with cheaper audio equipment such as a cell phone, field recorder, USB microphone, laptop microphone, etc. The list is not exhaustive nor does it guarantee success with devices that suffer from physical limitations, but is rather a living knowledgebase of tips and tricks to mitigate issues we've found in video submissions in past classes.

Video link: Quality Audio for Video


Best practices (do these!)

  • Record in a quiet environment to avoid picking up extraneous background sounds
  • Point the microphone generally at the source of sound (use a cell phone stand if you have it handy)
    • Place the microphone close to the source (your mouth)
    • Place the microphone "off-axis" (not directly into or pointed towards the path the breath takes) may help to alleviate (ex)plosive "pops"

Goals to strive for in your recordings

Pay attention to recording levels

  • If the sound is distorted upon recording or playback:

    • Move farther away from the microphone, or
    • Turn the recording volume down
  • If the sound is too quiet upon recording or playback:

    • Move closer to the microphone, or
    • Turn the recording volume up (be aware that just turning the volume up will also increase the background noise and may not sound great)

Speaking intelligibly

  • Speak slowly enough to be able to enunciate each word clearly

  • Pro Tip: Record yourself speaking slowly in order to enunciate, then time compress the audio in software.

    • Beware: too much time compression will sound unnatural
  • You can improve overall intelligibility by editing out breaths and pauses between words and phrases

    • Beware: Too much editing will sound unnatural
    • This may sometimes help in shortening the overall length of your video/audio material (if that's what you want)

Practices to avoid (do not do these)

  • Avoid handling the microphone/audio recorder while recording
  • Avoid moving around while recording
    • this can cause fluctuating volume levels
    • objects on your body might create extraneous noise

Noise Considerations

If you find yourself in an overly reverberant environment

  • go somewhere else, or
  • put a blanket over your head (including the microphone) to reduce the reverberance

Mouth Noise

  • If you are picking up lots of mouth sounds, try taking a sip of water or a bite of a green apple to reduce mucus
  • Pro Tip: The acid in a green apple stimulates the production of alkaline saliva, which can hydrate the mouth, remove mucus, and prevent sticky sounds

Breaths

  • Be aware of your breathing
  • give yourself space between phrases to edit out the breaths (this is extra super PRO)

Noteworthy applications for usage

Suggested iPhone recording apps

  • Apple Voice Memos (built-in)
    • Automatically applies dynamic audio compression (confusing because you can save files as compressed or lossless, but this refers to data compression not dynamic AUDIO compression)
    • Auto-compression can be good in some cases and not good in others...
    • Allows for quick audio notes
  • Voice Record Pro
    • offers customization
  • CocoonWeaver
    • Allows for quick audio notes
  • AudioNote 2
    • An app for visual and auditory note-taking

Suggested Android recording apps

Cross-platform applications for audio recording on a computer