The Key to Recording Better Audio is Not a More Expensive Microphone - Knowledge Trumps Gear
Have you ever had your air conditioner break down in your house in the middle of summer in one of those hot states? You probably suffered for hours, if not days, before a repair person came to your house, climbed into the attic for 30 seconds, and presented you with a bill for $100.
00.
If this made you feel like it made me feel, you probably thought "I just paid $100 for a guy push a reset button (or whatever only took 30 seconds).
" You thought, "heck I could have done that for free!" Am I right? Yeah, me too.
Although it is true that you or I could have just as easily pushed a button as a repair person, the thing we couldn't have easily done is KNOW what button to push.
The knowledge is what we paid for, not the finger pushing the button.
OK, so what does this have to do with audio? I'm glad you asked.
I was recording a podcast interview with someone who had recently purchased a microphone costing over $300.
We played the recording on the show, and it sounded terrible! The voice was distorted (that fuzzy sound you hear when something was too loud for the microphone), as well as filled with hissy noise.
Just for kicks, I played him a recording of my voice that I had made using a $5.
00 microphone going straight into my computer.
He agreed the quality was much better than his, and asked how much I had paid for my gear.
When I told him it was $5.
00 he was floored.
So now you're wondering how this happened, right? Simple.
I've been recording audio for over 20 years.
He has only just started.
Yup, I was the repair guy who knew which button to push.
He should have had much better audio quality than I did with the gear he had, but he did not know how to use that gear.
As it turns out, all I did was make sure my voice was always close to the microphone, and that my voice was being recorded quite loud (software meters can show you this), but that it wasn't too loud to cause distortion.
After that I cleaned up the noise in the audio with some software.
How easy is that? Well, it was almost as easy as pushing a button on an air conditioner.
The software was free, the mic was $5.
00.
The difference was KNOWLEDGE.
So before you decide you need to drop hundreds of dollars on a microphone, try some of the techniques I mentioned above.
You can find much more useful knowledge that will save you money and improve your audio at Home Brew Audio on the web.
Our motto is "knowledge trumps gear.
" And happily, in this case anyway, knowledge is much more affordable than gear;).
00.
If this made you feel like it made me feel, you probably thought "I just paid $100 for a guy push a reset button (or whatever only took 30 seconds).
" You thought, "heck I could have done that for free!" Am I right? Yeah, me too.
Although it is true that you or I could have just as easily pushed a button as a repair person, the thing we couldn't have easily done is KNOW what button to push.
The knowledge is what we paid for, not the finger pushing the button.
OK, so what does this have to do with audio? I'm glad you asked.
I was recording a podcast interview with someone who had recently purchased a microphone costing over $300.
We played the recording on the show, and it sounded terrible! The voice was distorted (that fuzzy sound you hear when something was too loud for the microphone), as well as filled with hissy noise.
Just for kicks, I played him a recording of my voice that I had made using a $5.
00 microphone going straight into my computer.
He agreed the quality was much better than his, and asked how much I had paid for my gear.
When I told him it was $5.
00 he was floored.
So now you're wondering how this happened, right? Simple.
I've been recording audio for over 20 years.
He has only just started.
Yup, I was the repair guy who knew which button to push.
He should have had much better audio quality than I did with the gear he had, but he did not know how to use that gear.
As it turns out, all I did was make sure my voice was always close to the microphone, and that my voice was being recorded quite loud (software meters can show you this), but that it wasn't too loud to cause distortion.
After that I cleaned up the noise in the audio with some software.
How easy is that? Well, it was almost as easy as pushing a button on an air conditioner.
The software was free, the mic was $5.
00.
The difference was KNOWLEDGE.
So before you decide you need to drop hundreds of dollars on a microphone, try some of the techniques I mentioned above.
You can find much more useful knowledge that will save you money and improve your audio at Home Brew Audio on the web.
Our motto is "knowledge trumps gear.
" And happily, in this case anyway, knowledge is much more affordable than gear;).
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