Audio Voice Recording Questions

[MakoEyes]

Hi guys,

I really REALLY apologize in advance if I completely missed the answer to my question. I checked a bunch of different threads and I'm notoriously bad at looking for anything whether it's in real life or online. (I also misplace everything, not that you care.)

So to get to the point, my friend and I were basically recording ourselves just talking about random topics. We have many hours of recorded audio of us.

After listening to some of them, we were wondering what the most efficient way of having the highest sound quality possible for just a recorded voice on a computer.

When I say efficient, I mean taking into account costs primarily.

Currently for my microphone I am using a Logitech HD Webcam C270, and for recording I am using my computer's default "Sound Recorder."

There's nothing really "wrong" with the sound quality right now persay, but again I'm just curious as to what it would sound like at the highest quality possible, and what the cheapest way (if I need money at all) to get that would be.

I did some google searches but I decided that I'd want to discuss/hear from people real time as opposed to reading what someone else wrote, just to make sure I can get any questions answered and I actually understand everything.

I decided to come here because I've been a gamer for a long time and love the music this community puts out. Truly great.

So I guess I'll just ask a few questions and see where it goes.

1.) I assume that the highest "level" of audio quality in terms of voice is mainstream music. Is this true?

2.) If 1 is true, or I guess even if it's not, WHATEVER the highest level of audio quality for voice is, is it a result of superior equipment, or production techniques?

I guess I'm asking these questions to determine how close an average person can get to creating high level audio quality on their own.

3.) I read a thread in here that seems SUPER helpful to anyone wanting/needing to purchase music equipment. I saw a couple of microphones on there around $100 that were recommended for beginners. I'm assuming that this is because the quality is very high for the price.

Does the microphone itself actually determine how good the quality of the sound is?

4.) This one might be a no brainer...Ironically enough I actually own a copy of FL Studio thanks to a gift I received a while ago, but I've never actually used it.

I'm pretty positive that compared to Sound Recorder, I could probably get way better audio quality in FL Studio.

Are there any simple steps I can take in FL Studio to dramatically increase the quality of what I record? And, would I actually use FL Studio to record my voice, or do I use Sound Recorder and import the file to FL Studio to modify?

When I say modify, I'm just going off of what I read online earlier. An example would be an article I read on "How to Record With Realtek HD Audio Manager":

Click "Noise Suppression" to cancel out background noise. Click "Acoustic Echo Cancellation" to prevent whatever you're recording from playing back through your speakers and being picked up by a microphone. These two settings are optional.

How many of these little "techniques" or whatever you want to call them are required for optimal voice recording?

5. I've seen some youtube videos and articles titled "How to make your music sound professional" or "How to master your music to make it sound high quality."

I assume people that are new to producing or mixing or music in general end up creating their own music, only to have it sound lackluster and noobie.

I'm just curious if any of those articles would contain information pertaining to me, and if so, what would that information be?

I think I've asked enough questions to give a general sense of what I'm looking for.

Normally I just figure things out on my own, but when it comes to music some things are confusing, such as the above example of Acoustic Echo Cancellation.

To a music noobie (me), I have no idea what the article means when it says "prevent whatever you're recording from playing back through your speakers and being picked up by a microphone."

Does Realtek HD Audio Manager simultaneously play what you're recording in real time, or do I just not understand this?

And is this specific to that program or is this common in all audio recording software?

Any and all help is appreciated, so thanks in advance!

Oh also, I play Super Smash Brothers Melee competitively and am usually considered to be of the upper echelon of players, so if you're curious about anything, I'll answer any questions you have.

Just my attempt at reciprocating any help I get.

[timaeus222]

...

After listening to some of them, we were wondering what the most efficient way of having the highest sound quality possible for just a recorded voice on a computer.

When I say efficient, I mean taking into account costs primarily.

Currently for my microphone I am using a Logitech HD Webcam C270, and for recording I am using my computer's default "Sound Recorder."

There's nothing really "wrong" with the sound quality right now persay, but again I'm just curious as to what it would sound like at the highest quality possible, and what the cheapest way (if I need money at all) to get that would be.

...

...I've been a gamer for a long time and love the music this community puts out. Truly great.

So I guess I'll just ask a few questions and see where it goes.

The most efficient way is to buy, literally, the "best bang for your buck". Best audio quality out of the box for the lowest price. I wouldn't say I know which microphones are best nor do I have the "best" microphone, but I can say that I have a solid idea of how it should sound based on analyzing music that I strongly believe is well-made. I think you just want a microphone for gaming LPs and such, but that's open for interpretation, and I'll assume that you're a music producer so this post helps more than just you.

A good microphone setup is one that minimizes background noise through the installment of acoustic diffusers, absorber panels, and bass traps around your room. Acoustic diffusers, the way I interpret them, reduce messy room ambience, but doesn't eliminate them completely, and can make a small room sound bigger by, well, diffusing the sound. Absorber panels reduce the early reflections in the natural room reverb so that the sound is as dry as possible---as reverb-free as possible. Bass traps basically make the bass response of the room more accurate than without them, although I believe these are more often used when you actually have sub woofers and speakers with nice bass.

A common type of microphone uses USB to connect to your computer, and as a result, you can use recording software compatible with your DAW, FL Studio, to record what the microphone picks up. Oftentimes, the microphone will preferably be set up to pick up sounds in your room, but not what's playing internally in your computer. What that means is, in a signal chain that goes input->microphone->computer, oftentimes you don't want the input to be from your software, such as VSTi's and sample libraries, as it wasn't your initial intention. Personally, I've somehow set it up to pick up both and it was what I wanted so I kept it, but that's just me so far.

With the hardware you're using now, there isn't something "wrong" that you know of because you haven't encountered this before. Anything that can be "wrong" in your case merely pertains to whether or not you've taken the preferable precautions to fine-tune your room ambience and reduce overall background noise. It doesn't really count if you haven't even figured out how to set up the microphone or your room yet to say, "you're using your microphone incorrectly!" since you wouldn't be aware of the "mistakes" you can make.

So then, the best sound possible would be just your voice, dry, without background noise, covering as full a frequency spectrum as possible, with as flat a curve as possible on the frequency response, and a wide but not too wide stereo image. Stereo image comes with what type of microphone you use and its pickup wideness or narrowness. You'll have a general idea if you read its manual, and then you may be able to return it if you think it's not right for you.

1.) I assume that the highest "level" of audio quality in terms of voice is mainstream music. Is this true?

Well, not necessarily. There is music from people in this community that I believe, without any reservations, is better-produced than in mainstream music in both its vocals and its instrumentation/instrumental area. A good example is zircon's Identity Sequence album being better-produced than most other mainstream artists (arguably, Pentatonix has a fantastic producer). When you listen to a woman sing, and you hear the intimacy/closeness of her voice (lots of treble), then it's reasonable to say that both the microphone was good "enough" in quality and the production was good "enough" in quality. If the microphone quality was bad, then the production would have to be exceptional to account for that and match decent production with good microphone quality.

2.) If 1 is true, or I guess even if it's not, WHATEVER the highest level of audio quality for voice is, is it a result of superior equipment, or production techniques?

I guess I'm asking these questions to determine how close an average person can get to creating high level audio quality on their own.

In the case of the "average" person, they may have to rely on great equipment rather than their production abilities, as the scenario is the average person. It's somewhat uncommon to find a person with good production abilities at that particular moment, which is why mixing and mastering jobs exist---to capitalize on that circumstance.

In other words, it's a combination of either bad equipment and exceptional production quality, decent equipment and great production quality, or great equipment and good/great production quality. No one starts perfect, so you could either wait a long time before you get a microphone, or get a really good one from a smart recommendation that you trust.

3.) I read a thread in here that seems SUPER helpful to anyone wanting/needing to purchase music equipment. I saw a couple of microphones on there around $100 that were recommended for beginners. I'm assuming that this is because the quality is very high for the price.

Does the microphone itself actually determine how good the quality of the sound is?

Absolutely. The microphone itself determines what frequency response you'll get (the accuracy of the sound to what you think you should be hearing). Like mentioned above, the production quality will have to make up for any flaws in your microphone, so if you're confident in your production abilities, feel free to get a microphone of okay quality if you don't have the money (or save up). If you're not confident in your production quality, try to save up money for the best recommended microphone at the best price. The better microphone is NOT always the more expensive one. I can analogize to headphones and how my $350 headphones have a flatter and more accurate frequency response than most $1500 headphones. Analogizing to restaurants, it seems like lots of stuff is priced based on how much it cost to make them, so even the most expensive headphones can be worse than a pair of headphones costing half as much, and the same can probably be said for microphones.

4.) This one might be a no brainer...Ironically enough I actually own a copy of FL Studio thanks to a gift I received a while ago, but I've never actually used it.

I'm pretty positive that compared to Sound Recorder, I could probably get way better audio quality in FL Studio.

Are there any simple steps I can take in FL Studio to dramatically increase the quality of what I record? And, would I actually use FL Studio to record my voice, or do I use Sound Recorder and import the file to FL Studio to modify?

When I say modify, I'm just going off of what I read online earlier. An example would be an article I read on "How to Record With Realtek HD Audio Manager":

Click "Noise Suppression" to cancel out background noise. Click "Acoustic Echo Cancellation" to prevent whatever you're recording from playing back through your speakers and being picked up by a microphone. These two settings are optional.

How many of these little "techniques" or whatever you want to call them are required for optimal voice recording?

I'd imagine the Sound Recorder functions in exactly the same way as the recording software I mentioned earlier, except it doesn't require a DAW and you'd, like you guessed, import the resultant audio file into FL Studio. Another example is Silver Spike's TapeIt, which is something you can load into FL Studio and then use to ONLY record what's in FL or any other DAW (but somehow I've made it so it records both what's in the DAW and what I say into the microphone, which is great for tutorials). TapeIt does NOT pick up music you play in a media player such as WinAmp (this needs to not be discontinued!). FL Studio does NOT improve the sound quality that comes into it by itself with any "special sound enhancements", nor would I personally recommend leaving the Windows default "sound enhancements" turned on in the Sound panel. It disrupts and alters the sound that comes into your ears. FL only hosts a sound recording software that requires a DAW in the first place. It's all about how good or bad the sound quality is coming into the host, and you can just EQ the result later.

5. I've seen some youtube videos and articles titled "How to make your music sound professional" or "How to master your music to make it sound high quality."

I assume people that are new to producing or mixing or music in general end up creating their own music, only to have it sound lackluster and noobie.

I'm just curious if any of those articles would contain information pertaining to me, and if so, what would that information be?

I think I've asked enough questions to give a general sense of what I'm looking for.

Some of those are good, some are not. It's hard to tell without having gotten better at it, so it takes a little direction to point people towards the more accurate and consistent tutorials. The people that say their tutorials are "sure-fire" are not considering that they are teaching an arbitrary art, or they're making a joke video with a satirical/sardonic purpose. Everyone perceives the results of production qualities differently simply because not everyone has the same audio equipment on hand as the person who made the video in the first place. A better way to really present those tutorials is in a humble way, and those are the best, in my opinion, because they are showing a person who isn't banking on himself/herself being right all the time.

Personally, I'd recommend Sound On Sound magazine (which can be read online, of course), as I've actually found it, although very technical, very useful and correct at the same time. There's articles on many (but not all) topics. Off the top of my head, there's reverb, delay, EQ, FM synthesis, headphones vs. speakers, synthesizers, and so on.

Normally I just figure things out on my own, but when it comes to music some things are confusing, such as the above example of Acoustic Echo Cancellation.

To a music noobie (me), I have no idea what the article means when it says "prevent whatever you're recording from playing back through your speakers and being picked up by a microphone."

Does Realtek HD Audio Manager simultaneously play what you're recording in real time, or do I just not understand this?

And is this specific to that program or is this common in all audio recording software?

Any and all help is appreciated, so thanks in advance!

Specifically, what that means is to watch your signal chain---the setup of how your sound is processed and in what order. For example, if it's the case that the input goes into the microphone and the input is your software while the output is your speakers, your speakers will play sound that will layer onto the sound that your computer already made once, some milliseconds after the initial moment the sound is made by the computer software, which means the sound that you gave with your mouth is good to go, but you hear a doubled signal on audio that originated from your computer software (VSTi's, sample libraries, etc.) and it sounds like it's echoing. Hence, Acoustic Echo Cancellation must be a precautionary measure that is supposed to eliminate the possibility of your speakers or any audible output to go back into the microphone and be re-inputted. How this could happen is that you start the voice recording and you say something while you twiddle around on a VST and make sounds, and your voice is recorded once, while what you hear in your computer plays as normal on your speakers, and whatever sound from your speakers reaching your microphone is taken in and recorded on top of what you hear yourself playing on your VST. Your final recorded result would be you talking while quiet, slightly distant sounds from your computer are also playing, but some milliseconds late.

Personally, I turn off all Windows "sound enhancements" to ensure that every "wrong" thing that occurs is all my fault, and that makes it much easier to figure out what went wrong. Otherwise it's just covering up your mistakes, rather than facing them head-on. It's like solving a math problem in the wrong way and getting the right answer by accident. Just like how you get credit for the right answer but not the wrong work, you would get a good audio result but not learn the behind-the-scenes of what actually went wrong.

Edited January 15, 2014 by timaeus222

[Ryan Jobson]

Ummm I don't really have the time to read all of this... but from the few lines I did read, my answer would be to invest in a decent microphone and a soundcard. If that's too expensive, then maybe get yourself a USB microphone with a pop-filter. Make sure the room you're recording in is quiet (windows shut, no one vacuuming in the room next to you... and keep an ear out for how loud your computer fan is...).

Do some light research on "proximity effect" and how it affects your voice when being recorded. I think this, combined with the above, should help you out.

[Darangen]

My eyes got tired reading so much, but what I gathered you're looking for a relatively cheap/free way to get high quality spoken voice recordings?

Audacity is a great, free sound program that is very simple to use and would do almost anything you'd need to do to your voice tracks.

As for quality, the mic does matter. The go-to mic for most podcasters seems to be the Blue Yeti (there's an XLR and USB option). I own one (USB) and can attest to the quality being high. They're built very well, come with their own stand, and are basically plug and play. They run around $90 for the USB version.

As far as the how-to for getting the highest quality, sound treatment is nice but probably unnecessary unless you're doing voice acting. If your recordings sound airy then you'll want to look into treating your recording area a bit. A cheap/temporary treatment is using thick blankets, towels, pillows, anything that'll eat up the sound reflections in the room. something directly behind the mic is usually the most efficient option. This should give you an idea of what I mean.

Other than that, just make sure you don't have fans or vents blowing air into the mic, or any other sounds being picked up, and you should be on your way to better quality voice recordings.