In this jam-packed episode of CLIPPED, Eric dives into the often misunderstood world of audio levels, focusing on the crucial distinction between gain and volume.
Sponsors:
This episode is sponsored by Riverside. Go to Riverside.fm and enter promo code CLIPPED for 20% off.
Here's What You'll Learn:
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The difference between gain and volume, and why each matters for your podcast.
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How to dial in the perfect level of gain for crystal-clear, robust audio
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Strategies for achieving an optimal signal-to-noise ratio, ensuring your voice cuts through without unwanted background noise.
Episode Highlights:
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Gain controls the sensitivity and the amplification of your microphone. Volume relates to the playback loudness in your headphones or speakers.
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Finding the sweet spot for your gain is key to avoiding both distortion and too much ambient noise, aiming for a signal that's full-bodied but not overloaded.
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Signal-to-Noise Ratio Explained: A crucial concept in achieving professional-quality audio, ensuring your voice stands out clearly against any background noise.
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Eric shares insights on using visual metering to set your levels correctly, aiming for a peak between -6 to -12 decibels for optimal clarity.
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A reminder of the age-old audio maxim, "shit in, shit out,". It’s important to get a good sound when recording to ease the editing and mixing process.
Dialing In The Perfect Recording Level
Achieving the perfect audio level requires a bit of experimentation to find what works best for your unique setup and voice.
Remember, nailing your sound on the way in not only makes for a more pleasant listening experience but also makes your life easier during the editing and mixing phases.
As we always say, start strong to end strong, and you'll save yourself a heap of time in post-production.
[00:00:00] This is the gain, see it's distorted. This is the gain at 100%. So I'm going to need to back it off. I'm talking at the same level, my voice, my projection, but I'm just changing the amount of power in the microphone so to speak. What up, potty people? Welcome back to Clipped. As always, I'm Eric
[00:00:30] you host and clip brings you podcasts, production tips, industry insights, education resources, a conversation with my potty pals all aim to help you become a better more efficient podcaster. I'm on a mission to help you start grow and monetize your show and yes, we're back Episode 95 if you can believe it. So in this episode, you're going to learn three different things you're going to learn what gain is and what volume is and how those things correlate to each other. And then
[00:01:00] phone so that you get a clean, robust sound and that your voice sounds full.
[00:01:05] And there's the minimal noise.
[00:01:06] That's going to be important because in 2024 you've got to have clean audio and I'm going
[00:01:12] to teach you how to achieve that.
[00:01:13] But before we get into it, given a shout out to this week's sponsor Riverside.
[00:01:17] If you're looking for a great place to record remote podcasts online, check out Riverside
[00:01:23] get that high fidelity audio all remotely.
[00:01:27] That's Riverside.fm and your promo code Clip to the name of this show, CLIPPD at checkout
[00:01:33] all caps for 20% off.
[00:01:42] Okay, so gain versus volume.
[00:01:51] What are they?
[00:01:52] How are they?
[00:01:53] Are they important and how do you optimize them?
[00:01:55] Well gain is the level of input of your audio when it controls how strong your mic is going
[00:02:06] to pick up your voice or your instrument or whatever you put in front of it.
[00:02:11] So XLR microphones need to be plugged into some kind of amplifier.
[00:02:17] If you have an XLR microphone, chances are it's plugged into an audio interface and within
[00:02:21] that audio interface there's a control to crank up the gain of the microphone.
[00:02:30] And to make it simple, like think about the more I turn up the gain, the more sensitive
[00:02:37] this mic is going to get and so it's going to start picking up my voice at a much higher
[00:02:43] stronger level.
[00:02:44] And so I'm cranking it right now.
[00:02:47] This is the gain.
[00:02:48] See it's distorted.
[00:02:50] This is the gain at 100%.
[00:02:52] So I'm going to need to back it off.
[00:02:53] I'm talking at the same level, my projection, but I'm just changing the amount of power in
[00:03:00] the microphone so to speak.
[00:03:01] Okay, so I'll dial it back to where it was which is right about here and that's gained.
[00:03:07] So it's basically going to boost the level that your microphone picks up sound at.
[00:03:12] USB microphones actually have the amplifier built into the microphone and you can adjust
[00:03:18] the gain on some USB microphones.
[00:03:21] On this I know you can, there's a little slider.
[00:03:23] This is the Sure MV7.
[00:03:24] On some you can't.
[00:03:25] On some there's like a built-in auto gain feature which kind of adjust based on how loud
[00:03:32] you're projecting.
[00:03:33] It's kind of like an auto gain that goes up and down but that's more or less how gain
[00:03:37] works.
[00:03:38] And there's going to be a control if you are using audio interface or mixer and on some
[00:03:43] USB mics there's also going to be a control to dial it up and down.
[00:03:48] Now volume is a little bit different so I could be talking at the same level just right
[00:03:54] here but the volume that I hear myself in my headphones is a totally different thing
[00:04:00] so I could crank the volume up like now I'm hearing myself super loud in my headphones
[00:04:07] or I can turn it all the way down and now I can't hear myself at all in my headphones
[00:04:11] but I haven't actually changed the amount of power in the microphone or the gain in
[00:04:16] the microphone.
[00:04:17] So volume is just like the level that you hear things and that can be personalized if
[00:04:22] you like to hear yourself loud or if you like to hear yourself quiet but it's just two
[00:04:26] terms that tend to get mixed up.
[00:04:30] And I want to talk about gain and how to dial in the right amount of gain so that your voice
[00:04:36] sounds full, it sounds robust, it sounds beefy and you're not getting a lot of ambient noise
[00:04:42] in your record.
[00:04:43] So as a general rule you want a nice healthy gain level.
[00:04:48] You don't want it to be so quiet that your voice is being recorded at like a super low
[00:04:52] level like here I just adjusted the gain, you can probably barely hear me although
[00:04:57] I'm talking at the same level and now I'm going to put it back up to kind of where I like
[00:05:01] it.
[00:05:02] You're going to need some kind of metering if you're recording into like audio software
[00:05:06] it's a bit difficult to do it without that because you're going to want to see your
[00:05:13] leveling and you're going to want it to peak and let's say like as a general rule,
[00:05:18] will everyone online says between minus six decibels and minus 12 decibels as a general
[00:05:24] rule.
[00:05:25] And if you're looking at like an audio meter you'll see from the bottom there's numbers
[00:05:30] that start to go up and when you get to zero here my gain is exceeding zero.
[00:05:36] On my meter and so it sounds blown out.
[00:05:39] It sounds like it's clipp- they call that clipping it induces distortion and basically
[00:05:43] like you're overpowering the amp and it's creating that sound.
[00:05:48] But if you're peaking at like let's say minus 12 to minus six or if you don't have a
[00:05:57] meter that has numbers, it kind of goes like this.
[00:06:01] It's like green.
[00:06:04] It's kind of like stoplights actually whereas like green it means go.
[00:06:08] Like you can kind of crank your level up even more.
[00:06:12] Like keep going, it's not an optimal point.
[00:06:15] When it gets to yellow it's kind of like oh you might want to slow down.
[00:06:19] It's probably like right in that zone before you need to stop which is red.
[00:06:23] When the signal's red it's way too hot, it's way too loud.
[00:06:27] And if you're using like audio recording software chances are you're going to be able
[00:06:32] to meter this and there's numbers associated with green yellow and red.
[00:06:37] But let's make it easy, don't even worry about the numbers.
[00:06:40] I would say you want your signal to be just kind of hitting the level of yellow.
[00:06:47] So green go a little bit yellow slow down probably stop on the gain knob.
[00:06:53] Red way too loud you're going to start clipping.
[00:06:55] And green you know if you don't go loud enough it's going to sound really quiet.
[00:07:01] You want to dial it in with your headphones so you can hear because sometimes if there's
[00:07:06] some real quiet ambient noise in the room and you crank the gain just a little bit and get
[00:07:10] close to your microphone, your voice will overcome that ambient noise until you'll get
[00:07:18] a clean signal.
[00:07:19] However you've got to be careful when you dial it in because if you go too loud sometimes
[00:07:25] the microphone and the room noise will even get amplified even louder and you'll be
[00:07:33] able to hear that noise even more.
[00:07:35] So you want to get that sweet spot where you're talking into the mic like so and you are
[00:07:42] overpowering some of that noise without raising that noise up, that's called the noise
[00:07:47] floor is like if I'm just sitting here quiet it looks like my signal without me speaking
[00:07:58] into it just with the microphone on with the gain set to where it was was hovering right
[00:08:03] around all the way at the bottom minus like 55 minus 60 decibels barely audible that's
[00:08:08] called the noise floor.
[00:08:09] And so that's just this out of my room.
[00:08:13] There's noise from like a little bit outside the electronics in here, the speakers and
[00:08:19] the lights and everything produce like noise frequencies.
[00:08:23] And so that's what that is.
[00:08:26] So basically you want an optimal ratio of the sound that you want, your desired sound
[00:08:32] which is going to be your voice for your podcast with the least amount of ambient or
[00:08:38] auxiliary noise external noise.
[00:08:41] It's your signal to noise ratio.
[00:08:43] And to achieve that you've got to wear headphones, I speak about this at nazi and where your
[00:08:47] headphones so you can hear yourself and you can hear your microphone and then you can
[00:08:50] dial in that gain to get that clean level where you're the majority of what you're hearing
[00:08:56] is your voice without that ambient noise but you got to be careful because you crank it
[00:09:00] too high.
[00:09:01] You might start clipping your signal might start going into the red.
[00:09:04] If you're too low you're going to get more of that noise and less of your voice.
[00:09:10] And so it's all kind of a game where you're playing around to dial in that healthy signal
[00:09:16] is full and rich as you can without the noise.
[00:09:18] And so you're going to have to play around.
[00:09:20] You want to achieve like the optimal sound going in, they call it like into your recording
[00:09:26] because then it's less work editing mixing.
[00:09:28] You've already got like a pretty good sound.
[00:09:30] They say shit in, shit out.
[00:09:32] That's like an audio industry term.
[00:09:34] If it sounds like shit going in, it's going to sound like shit on the way out or I eat
[00:09:38] the final product is going to sound like shit.
[00:09:41] And so hopefully you have a better understanding of what gain is versus volume and how to
[00:09:49] dial that gain incorrectly so you achieve that optimal sound and volume.
[00:09:55] Hey, how loud do you want to hear yourself or when you listen to your podcast on your
[00:09:59] mobile device or on your computer?
[00:10:02] When you're wearing headphones you crank up the volume of the overall episode or you can
[00:10:07] crank it down, but that's not going to affect the level that you recorded your voice
[00:10:12] at or the level that like the strength of your microphone when recording your episode.
[00:10:19] So I'm out guys.
[00:10:20] Hopefully you got a better understanding of what gain is versus what volume is.
[00:10:25] Now this episode was a little heady or maybe a little more technical.
[00:10:28] So for those of you that are into it, perfect.
[00:10:30] Love it.
[00:10:31] Those of you that aren't.
[00:10:32] Oh well, there'll be others.
[00:10:34] And I'm Eric.
[00:10:35] This is ClipT.
[00:10:36] Keep listening.
[00:10:37] Keep engaging.
[00:10:38] Keep creating.
[00:10:39] I'm out.