Create your own soundtrack

Whether you’re creating a video, presentation or podcast, with well-balanced audio your production will engage an audience rather than force them to cover their ears.

Far too many productions are blighted by noise, poor tone and a lacklustre score. Yet it only takes a little thought and effort to create sound that excites. You don’t need composers, studios or voiceover artists – the computer, some specialist technology and tips on technique, along with your own sensibilities, will do the trick.

If you haven’t got a musical bone in your body, but your production demands a tune, there are ways to sort it. And if the sound of your recorded voice makes you cringe, that’s easily rectified, too. With a compelling tale to tell, you’re most of the way there, so let’s look at how to ensure a production’s soundtrack truly completes the piece.

There are extras to buy, but they need not cost a lot, and some pro-studio advice to take in, although it’s largely common sense. We’ll start by looking at voice narratives for video and podcasts, moving on to movies and music later, so keep your ears fresh, be critical of your work, and stay receptive to the practices of professional producers.

Loud and clear
Quality capture of the human voice is crucial to success. Everybody has a voice and so the audience is sensitised towards it. Timbre varies, but whomever the speaker, the idea is to record what is spoken or sung as cleanly and as fully as possible.

The first instinct is to plug a microphone into your soundcard’s mic socket, hold it in front of your mouth, hit Record and start waffling. But you’ll end up with a thin, noisy recording because the tools and technique are not right for the job.

Soundcards are useless for our purposes. Not only does re-plugging mean scrabbling around at the back of the PC, but also soundcard sockets provide a very small, easily tarnished, contact patch that can create distortion of the audio signal. Most importantly, however, the connections are unbalanced.

A microphone cable makes an efficient aerial and so the electromagnetic interference pumping out of your computer setup will be received, recorded and then amplified into a take-ruining buzz. It’s better, then, to use an external desktop audio interface with balanced connections. The sockets will be more accessible and, used with balanced cables, noise at the pre-amplification stage will be less of a worry.

Yamaha has recently unveiled a portable hardware audio interface – the £279 GO46 – which not only has impressive analogue-to-digital conversion specs and balanced connectors, but also links to your computer via Firewire, so it can be cabled up and placed within easy reach. There are USB2 interfaces that do the same job, but you’ll not be able to daisy-chain them should you wish to expand.

See Edirol, M-Audio and Echo for more interface options. Whatever you choose, make sure it has XLR sockets (the name for the standard three-pin round connectors used for microphones) and phantom power (a way of powering a mic via its signal cables) so you can use the right type of microphone.

Taking the mic
You’re probably familiar with the 1/4-in or 6.3mm jack plug that’s used to connect electric guitars and dynamic microphones to preamplifiers. In studio circles, you’ll find that microphones hook up via three-pin XLR connectors, one of two types of balanced connector. There’s also the tip/ring/sleeve (TRS) type, which looks like a stereo headphone jack, but the XLR connector is used to deliver power to active microphones called condensers.

Passive mics, such as those bundled with multimedia PCs or used by singers on stage, generate an electrical signal mechanically and are not very sensitive. Condenser mics work by modifying an existing voltage (48V phantom power) and are much more sensitive, capturing a wider tonal range, thus making your voice sound rich and natural.

With such sensitivity, however, comes a downside. The human body makes sound other than speech. Breathing is a major problem, while certain other noises can mess with people’s minds if heard through in-ear headphones. Then there’s mechanical noise from handling or other sources.

To counter the latter, invest in a boom-arm microphone stand, such as Quiklok’s, or one from a major mic manufacturer. This will enable you to position the microphone without having to resort to a desk stand. And ensure you get a cradle with the mic; it’s a unit that supports the microphone’s barrel via bungee cords for further mechanical damping.

An AKG Perception 200 with a cradle and stand, for example, costs less than £150, and there are other good condenser mics available from Sennheiser, Beyer Dynamic, Audio-Technica and Rode.

A popular technique for reducing noise from breath is to invert the mic and suspend it opposite the bridge of your nose, where it’s out of the path of mouth and nostrils. Otherwise, a windshield (also known as a pop shield or pop filter), such as Shure’s PS-6 popper stopper, can be clamped to the stand, its cloth diaphragm reducing the pickup of vocal ‘plosives’. Moving the mic further away from the body helps limit other body-generated sounds, but that means turning up the recording level.

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