5 STEPS to Improve Your VOICEOVER in Audacity

hey guys what's up my name is Serge and welcome back to my channel today we're going to take a look at five steps you can take in post-production to make your voiceover sound better most of the stuff can be done directly in Final Cut Pro but I personally prefer to use audacity for recording and editing voiceovers audacity is an open-source cross-platform audio software for multitrack recording and editing this software can be downloaded for free from audacity website which I'll link in the description like I mentioned before this video will focus on post-production steps after your voiceover has been recorded but to get the best results you should still make every possible effort to get a good recording in the first place this includes a good quality microphone recording in a suitable and quiet environment and making sure to speak loud and clear once your audio file has been recorded let's take a look at the five steps to improve it step 1 noise reduction noise reduction can be used to remove a constant background noise from your recording such as the hum noise of an air conditioner or the hiss of a cooling fountain on your computer that cannot be eliminated beforehand it is not suitable for removing individual clicks and pops or irregular background noises such as traffic or a live audience to apply noise reduction to your clip you first have to get a noise profile this teaches audacity about the noise you want to remove click and drag out a part of your clip where the waveform is as close to a flat line as you can get your selection needs to be at least 0.05 seconds long but a longer profile is better next from the menu bar select effect and noise reduction in the noise reduction pop-up window click a get noise profile button to complete this step next press command a to select your entire waveform and once again choose effect and noise reduction from my experience the default settings do a great job here so leave them at 12 6 and 3 and press ok to apply noise reduction to your waveform step 2 compressor the compressor effect compresses louder parts of your recording allowing the entire clip to be amplified the result will allow you to amplify the quieter parts of your clip without clipping the louder passages to apply the compressor a factory clip in the menu bar select effect and compressor in the compressor effect popup window there's a few adjustments that need to be made first one is the compressor threshold this is the volume level above which your audio will get compressed for voiceovers i'd recommend about -12 - -14 decibels next setting is your noise floor set this to around negative 40 decibels to make sure none of your quieter background noises get unnecessarily amplified the third slider is for your compression ratio this is the ratio at which you're louder parts get compressed a two-to-one ratio will suffice most of the time but if your recording has lots of very loud and very quiet parts you can go up to five to one ratio a talk and release time sliders determine how fast the compressor kicks in and out for your sounds above the set threshold if your volume increases Rajal set these to a higher number if the changes are more sudden then a lower number will work better but maybe a little more noticeable to your listener I'd recommend leaving the bottom two options unchecked press ok to apply the compressor effect to your clip step 3 limiter filter whereas the compressor effect is used to turn down the louder parts the lemon air filter turns up the quieter parts of your clip to be more exact it amplifies the softer passages more than the louder ones both these effects are used to narrow down the dynamic range and make your volume more consistent throughout your clip from the effect drop-down menu select limiter to apply it to a clip for voiceovers set the type to hard limit and if your volume levels are fairly normal set the game to about three to four decibels the limit to setting decides how long your loudest parts will go set this to negative three decibels if this is the only audio track in your video or - four and a half decibels if this will be part of a mix next such a hold - two milliseconds and choose no to apply makeup gain hit the ok' button to apply the limiter filter step four equalizer this step is very objective and will be very different depending on your voice to apply the equalizer effect select equalizer from the drop-down menu what I like to do for my voiceovers is first apply the bass boost preset then open the equalizer again and apply the treble boost preset this works for me but like I said before this will be very different for different voices step 5 normalize the normalize effect applies a constant amount of gain to bring up peak volume to a target level this effect should always be applied lost after the compressor effect and the limiter filter are used to narrow down the dynamic range this will ensure the softer parts are you recording have enough gain applied to them to make them clearly audible select the remove DC offset and normalize maximum amplitude checkboxes and set the value to minus 1 decibels press ok to normalize your recording now let's take a listen to my demo clip before hey guys what's up welcome back to my channel for another tutorial video and after hey guys what's up welcome back to my channel for another tutorial video not all these effects are necessary and everyone's taken what sounds better will be very different this is what I find works for me let me know in the comments below what kind of effects you apply to your audio clips and if there's any audio experts watching this and have some tips for me I would love to hear from them as always if you found this video helpful please hit the like button and share with someone else who might enjoy and if you haven't yet check out the rest of my channel for more tutorial videos thanks for watching and I hope to see you back next week

Channel: Serge M

Views: 542,347

Keywords: 5 STEPS to Improve Your VOICEOVER in Audacity, improve voiceover audio in audacity, make voiceovers sound better, make voice sound better, use audacity to improve narration, even out volume levels in voiceovers, consistent volume level in narration, audacity noise reduction, audacity compressor effect, audacity limiter, audacity equalizer, audacity normalize, remove background noise, normalize audio, lpt guy, lptguy, lpt guy tutorials, final cut pro tutorial, audacity tutorial

Id: Rj7sbBng-T8

Length: 6min 8sec (368 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 27 2018