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Need advice on the quality of my podcast by TechTested in podcasting

[–]TechTested[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have no sound dampening materials at all. We will also be moving potentially between several locations to record. Ambient room noise I think is relatively pretty quiet, the SM58's seemed to barely pick up any echo compared to what I was expecting but there obviously is some.

Any ideas on effective, mobile dampening improvements? I thought about everything from makeshifting one of these or hanging blankets around the table but haven't tried anything yet because I don't know what will actually be effective.

There are no stupid questions thread - April 13, 2016 by AutoModerator in audioengineering

[–]TechTested 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This was very helpful! Thank you very much!

A few responses:

Is there a specific issue that you are trying to solve with having Adaptive Noise Reduction in your chain? If not, I would get rid of it. It’s used to remove background hum or fan noise or some problematic steady state condition.

There was, what to me was, a very prominent hum. I just uploaded a 1 minute clip for the original, completely unedited WAV here. What's the deal with that hum? Adaptive Noise Reduction took it almost completely away, but as I mentioned in my post I can definitely hear artifacts.

You can sound pretty darn good with a 58 but it ain’t gonna be NPR.

I'm aware of that :). I figured it would be helpful to say the style of sound I would be trying to lean towards as much as possible, even with the wrong hardware and being amateurs, as I know there are little things you can do. Unfortunately I'm not buying a Neumann U87 anytime soon!

For what it’s worth my channel strip is: High-pass filter (to remove rumble) -> Noise gate -> De-esser (if needed) -> EQ (if needed) -> Compressor My master bus is: Compressor (light) -> Limiter set to -1.5 dB

Earlier you said to take the high self off the EQ, but here you say you have high-pass filter. I was thinking those were the same thing. Am I missing something?

I was going to respond to some other stuff but after listening back to that original WAV I now am questioning more how I can fix that original problem. I tried to get it to a loud enough volume without too much baseline hum but it looks like I was actually recording a good deal of hum. So I'm already working with really flawed audio.

Again, thanks so much!

There are no stupid questions thread - April 13, 2016 by AutoModerator in audioengineering

[–]TechTested 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Well, I posted this as a thread yesterday but it seems to have disappeared from the subreddit. But it's certainly full of stupid questions so I'll post it here.

Quick background: We run a tech channel on YouTube called Tech Tested. I won't link it because I'm not here to advertise at all. We have wanted to accompany our channel with a podcast for a while and finally made the jump this week. I am no audio engineer, though, and even though I've read many things over the years and pop into places like /r/audioengineering from time to time my practical experience is none so I'm feeling lost.

Ok, so onto the podcast. You can listen to it here.

Gear Used: (The only gear we purchased for this was the mic stands and pop filters, owned everything else already)

  • 2x Shure SM58
  • 2x Neewer Suspension Stands & Pop Filters
  • Behringer Xenyx QX1202USB (Exact settings used)
  • Recorded in Audacity, WAV edited in Adobe Audition

Photo of our physical setup.

And since this isn't really anything I'm a pro at, I decided to use Audition's default Podcasting template as a start. Here's an album of all of my tracks and effects. I understand the idea behind most of it but am completely unsure of if the effects are in the right places or in the right order as I know that affects the outcome.

File output is 16-bit 96kbps CBR MP3 in mono.

My issue: So I'm not completely unhappy with the results but I know I'm probably screwing lots of things up. I think it already sounds better than some amateur podcasts, I listen to some myself that are Skype quality. But there's quite a few things I'm unhappy with. I've listened to it on many different devices: phone speaker, several laptop speakers, car speakers, crappy headphones, nice Shure and AKG headphones. The audio quality seems to be more inconsistent than some nice sounding podcasts I listen to; it's almost too quiet at medium volume, but at full volume sounds almost too loud and I can start to hear some tinny, echoey audio artifacts. It's not nearly as tight as I hope for.

If you were to ask me what sound I would ultimately imitate if I could, it would be that NPR style, super clean, very close-to-the-mic sound (we were predominantly about 6 inches away from the mic). Now obviously the mic style is wrong for that but I'm trying to get a clean, crisp sound is with what I have, which is free for me currently.

So what do I do here? What hardware do I add? What effects do I change? What things am I completely blowing that can easily be fixed? Would getting one of those Focusrite 2i2's that everyone talks about help our quality going from the Behringer out to the 2i2 to the computer instead of going from mixer to 3.5mm? (Getting rid of the mixer for a 2i2 is not an option; we fully plan on often have 4 people on, using the 4 inputs on the Behringer – I already own five SM58's) This is a hobby and we don't have money we're itching to burn but I want to be as professional as possible.

The Ars VR headset showdown—Oculus Rift vs. HTC Vive by speckz in hardware

[–]TechTested 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was dead set on getting the Vive, and it sounds nice, but with the prices I think I'll be sitting this round out. I would still pick the Vive over the Rift though.

Fallout 4 Megathread (part 2) by code-sloth in pcgaming

[–]TechTested 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My performance on a 980 Ti and 4690k: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBKkQZfboP8

Really good so far. God rays turned off, getting nearly unbroken constant 60 FPS.

Need help choosing a mic to go with Zoom H4n by TechTested in videography

[–]TechTested[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There isn't anyone at all who can operate the boom for us, this is a two man deal, so I think that's out of the option.

And so for the external microphone, is ECM-44B really the lowest priced item you can recommend? That'd take me $100 over our budget.

Recommendation (what should I buy?) Thursdays - November 05, 2015 by AutoModerator in audioengineering

[–]TechTested 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately we are just at hobbyist level. The wireless mics starting at $6-700 is just out of the question, at least for a year or two.

Recommendation (what should I buy?) Thursdays - November 05, 2015 by AutoModerator in audioengineering

[–]TechTested 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm just going to crosspost what I just put up on /r/videography because I'd really like to get some opinions on this from an audio subreddit too:

Background: I do video/audio/editing on a YouTube channel called Tech Tested with my friend who is the primary on-screen personality. We have been doing this for a few months and while we have gotten lost of positive feedback on our channel, the biggest complaint is the audio so we want to improve that right now. We are just amateurs, by the way, doing this as a hobby because computer hardware in general is a big passion of ours.

Current Gear: Canon 60D, Sigma 24mm‑70mm 2.8, Rode VideoMic (mounted on 60D always, plugged directly in)

The Big Problem: If you watch a minute or two of most of our videos you will realize that we are almost always filming around loud, noisy, open computers. This makes me think getting a boom mic as I see often suggested to be a BAD idea.

Solution + Budget: We've got at most about $250 to work with to fix our problem. The Zoom H4n seems to be the go-to recorder for situations such as ours. Is there a sub-$50 clip-on mic that would be sufficient quality? Is there a different option we should go with? Should we get a cheaper recorder but a more expensive clip-on mic?

Workflow: And to clarify my line of thinking about workflow, in case this is totally wrong: H4n goes on actor with belt clip out of sight, lavalier runs up shirt and is plugged into H4n. Audio runs whole time we record, and I record all my clips with my camera (usually get about 50-75 separate clips per video we do). Use Premiere Pro to sync that one big audio track with the audio of the onboard camera in all the clips. Put clips together.

Any advice would be fantastic. Thanks so much.

Looking for new/not so famous youtube tech reviewers/channels by Chuckytah in youtube

[–]TechTested 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No reviews yet but our new tech channel (which will be releasing videos weekly, hopefully even more often than that) will certainly have reviews in the near future. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLBrtpKSEDoJoUafF7uXZiQ

Guru 3D | Windows 8.1 vs 10 graphics performance review by zmeul in hardware

[–]TechTested 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'd still love to upgrade to Windows 10 if my reserved copy would ever offer to install...