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Making just a few small edits to your recorded audio can make a big difference in the final product. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

  • Use mono: Converting your stereo audio to mono (or just using mono in the first place) prevents one side of the track from being louder than the other, and ensures your voice is evenly heard against any ambient noise.

  • Equalize your audio track: Equalization makes the lowest volume sounds in an audio track equal to the highest volume sounds. This is important in dynamic situation when you may be further away from the microphone for a few minutes, or your decibel level varies. Without it, your clients may need to continually adjust their volume to hear what you're saying, and certain sounds can become jarringly loud. Their ear drums will thank you

  • Normalize your audio levels: Normalization sets the maximum level of volume allowed on your audio track; this is known as audio limiting. By setting an appropriate decibel level, your clients won't blow out their speakers or eardrums at maximum volume. The level you choose is entirely up to you, but we recommend about -6 dB.

  • Remove unwanted background sound and fix audio anomalies: The 30 seconds to 1 minute of ambient room noise you recorded earlier during filming is a very helpful audio sample. There's two ways this sample can help you during the audio editing phase.
    a) If the room was noisy: Sometimes, your room will have background noise you couldn't fix or didn't notice at the time, for example: the hum of an A/C unit or the drone of a fan. This can end up sounding much louder in the recording than it did in person. Using the room noise sample, you can use audio editing programs like Audacity or Adobe Audition to help remove these problem noises from the recording after the fact.
    b) If the room was quiet: In situations where you have a siren wailing or a cat meowing, the ambient room noise can be used to cover this up. Simply silence this section of the audio and replace it with the ambient room sound you previously recorded. This will prevent your audio track from sounding like was suddenly muted.

  • Don't underestimate music: If your audio has issues, or your video seems way less energetic than you expected, music can help. A good music track can be very useful in distracting from or hiding ambient noise and echo that exists in the audio recording. However, you'll want to make certain your voice can still be heard over any music you place in the video.

Once you've made the edits to your sound, you want to listen to it from a variety of sources. Play your video from a laptop using both cheap and expensive headphones. Play it out loud on the laptop's speaker. Listen to it on your phone. Your clients will be watching (and listening) to your VOD content in all of these different ways and you'll want to make sure it sounds great across every platform.