Make Your Audio Loud But Not Too Loud Part 2

For a long time, I struggled to get my audio loud enough without over compressing it or making it clip and distort. And I also seemed to have a hard time getting the loudness of my audio to match from one episode to the next. Incredibly frustrating… But thanks to some recent developments in the broadcast TV world, I stumbled upon this idea called Loudness Normalization along with some standards specified by European and US broadcast agencies. This is part 2 where we look at the technical details and how to do this loudness normalization and true peak limiting using Adobe Audition (or at least a true peak limiting work-around until we get a real true peak limiter in Audition).

http://youtu.be/r0U6KX65NGA

Boom Mics Revealed!

Here are the microphones that we compared in our boom microphone blind comparison! Microphone A - RODE NT5 Cardioid Small Diaphragm Condenser Microphone

Microphone B - Audio Technica AT4053B Hypercardioid Small Diaphragm Condenser Microphone

Microphone C - RODE NTG-2 Shotgun Microphone

Microphone D - RODE NT5 with Michael Joly Replacement Capsule Cardioid Small Diaphragm Condenser Microphone

Which did you choose as your favorite?

Dialogue Boom Microphone (Blind) Comparison

A few weeks ago we did a blind comparison of lavalier microphones--let you listen to them to see which one you preferred before we told you which was which. The results were pretty interesting. So now, let's do a similar thing with boom mics you might use to record indoor dialogue for your film or video projects! http://youtu.be/34T-Q0TZQVI

More on Microphones for Indoor Dialogue

I have a new mic in that I'm testing and a special capsule mod for that mic as well. I don't want to reveal which mic it is just yet because I think we need to do another blind mic comparison, this time with boom mics you could plausibly use to record indoor dialogue. This may come as a surprise to some, but I must confess: If I have a choice, I'll always opt for a boom mic over a lavalier. I know, I know, why do I spend all this time reviewing cheap lavalier mics? Well, it seems that's what you people want to know more about. And despite my efforts to pitch the idea that boom mics are a better choice in many cases, people still gravitate to the episodes on lavalier mics. It is as if there is some sort of amazing gravitational field that draws beginning video and filmmakers to lav mics.

And there's also the fact that I don't really have as solid a handle on the best affordable boom mics we indie folks can put to good use in our projects. I have a $600 hypercardioid mic (Audio Technica AT4053b) and it is pretty good but I must confess, I'm not completely in love with it. It works fine for people with not-too-sibilant voices but doesn't seem to reject any more echo than cardioid mics when recording in acoustically untreated rooms (i.e., almost every possible room aside from professional recording studios). Was that $600 wasted? I don't think so. But I can say with confidence that it probably isn't the right solution for most of us that shoot indoor dialogue on a tight budget.

So I've bought this new mic and a third-party modded replacement capsule for it. It is significantly less expensive than the Audio Technica hypercardioid mic on its own and still only about 1/2 the price of the Audio Technica with the modded capsule. I'm dying to see which works best for indoor dialogue in rooms with lots of echo.

Stick around, we should have this episode for you next week...