How To Improve The Sound Of The Elgato Wave:3 Microphone For Voice-Overs

okay I'm going to play the raw voice recording captured with the Elgato Wave 3 and while it's playing I'm going to engage the custom processing that I've created it's basically EQ and compression and I want you to hear the difference I believe the human voice is the most important vehicle of empathy and that there is nothing as powerful as bringing a character to life and sharing their struggles with the listening audience the difference is pretty big let me show you exactly what I did to get that optimized sound from the Elgato Wave 3 microphone the voiceover artist who sent me this submission is a full-time engineer with a family of four so he doesn't have too much time to start learning how to do all the production and that's why he's coming to me for the help he wants some direction he wants me to point him in the right direction and say uh hey how this is how to make it sound better uh but I want to talk a little bit about the microphone so this Elgato Wave 3 this is a microphone that is very popular with uh streamers and gamers in relatively speaking this is a inexpensive microphone it's a beginner voiceover microphone let's put it that way um he uh has told me that you know this is what I can afford at this this moment and I want to try to scale up slowly so I need your help uh and guidance to what order I should do things in so uh he understands this isn't and I'll emphasize this too this is not not a professional voiceover microphone and I think the the tech here falls short if you want to compete as a voiceover artist because it's just it's not at that quality that most professional and when I say professional that means people who are getting paid to deliver uh professional voice recordings for whatever content um they're working on um it this microphone the Elgato Wave 3 is not of that quality now with that said it can sound pretty good and if you're doing gaming and your streaming um it's actually very popular Elgato is is massively popular with the streaming Community um especially the um the capture card the Elgato 4K capture card kind of put them on the map but this particular microphone um you know at the time of this video it's going for about $150 US and you know why is it not of professional quality a couple things it's a USB microphone so it actually is doing several things in this one uh rather inexpensive unit so um it is capturing the audio as a microphone it is translating the audio from analog to digital uh with uh an audio interface and um so usually those are two separate components a professional level microphone will have higher quality components uh which translates into uh less noise uh higher quality microphone will capture frequencies more evenly it'll capture a higher resolution of frequencies and it will capture uh frequencies more evenly usually when you upgrade to an XLR microphone an XLR is the connection uh that is used to connect the microphone to your preamplifier or an audio interface um usually those mics will you know the difference is when you start upgrading and you start graduating to more expensive microphones is the resolution it's the analog frequency resolution that you get with a microphone it captures a wider frequency spectrum uh and it also it also captures those frequencies more evenly it's more sensitive so um it could pick up all the detail uh in a voice recording and then um when you talk about a pre-amplifier or the audio interface which you know the mic audio interface and analog to digital digital to analog converter it's all in this $150 unit I'm not in any way beating up on Elgato I think what they do they've got a particular market and they do it well and and um as you'll hear you know he's able to get a particular level which we'll kind of examine um but I just want to I want you to understand the difference between why um you know you would want to spend $300 on a microphone and uh you know maybe that much on an audio interface as well the differences are going to give you less noise overall less noise when you're recording it's going to capture your uh audio with a a higher quality microphone uh with a more detail more resolution ution and then um you'll be able to capture that better by having independent uh an independent audio interface and an independent microphone two separate um two separate pieces of equipment with higher quality components the microphone is going to pick up the audio it has a place to put your earphones in so you can monitor what you've recorded it also has um a gain knob so you can increase the gain and then they have what's called wave link which is the software that you use to um um connect the audio from the Elgato wave3 microphone now not only will the software allow you to change the ratio between your computer audio and the and the audio coming from the microphone and other things if you're doing streaming but it also has the capability to do some signal processing now I will say that it's limited in my opinion um the EQ is limited it only has a a minimal number of bands and some of the compression and things you just can't go too deep you can't get too Surgical like I can with plugins let's take a listen to Just the raw audio again from this Elgato wave three microphone I believe the human voice is the most important vehicle of empathy and right away when I listen to this kind of diagnosing the audio I'm hearing kind of a boxy sound and then that kind of makes me think of all right let's talk about and um let me share with you about the room because that has a big play uh that has a big effect on the type of um sound that you're going to get with any microphone um now the person that sent in this audio says he has a homemade voice recording booth and it is about 4x4 fet with a 7 and 1/2t ceiling so it's rather small it's a it's a small little uh booth that he's created and it's symmetrical 4x4 so it's a square right he describes it as being uh rock wool filled so I think there's insulation in the walls and it's a woodframe construction uh with 2-in wedge acoustic foam attached to the walls now the reason why um I think this is important to know is because that uh is directly related you know how the room is treated the length width height of that room the the voiceover booth that he's recording in with any microphone but with this one and specifically that is going to have a big effect on the audio that's being recorded and I'll give you an example um you know the microphone captures your pure voice but your voice continues past the microphone hits that 4x4 Wall constructed space bounces back and into the microphone again so those Reflections are happening while you're capturing your pure voice so what happens is um those Reflections interact with the pure voice and they cause phase and and cancellation it could have lots of different effects on your voice recording it could make it two Bassy it could make it boxy it could make um it have very little Basse it could cancel out the base frequencies all different sorts of things that could kind of wreak havoc on your recording and it depends you know if you move the microphone just uh a foot to the left or more to the center or more up against a wall it's going to change the time uh it is going to change the delay time of those Reflections and that changes which frequencies are affected so it all translates into uh less than optimal audio in this case I believe that is one of the big things that's happening here so uh I I feel and hear that it is um uh uh creating a overabundance of mid frequencies because it's giving it kind of a boxy type of sound in the recording we'll listen to The Raw audio again and I believe it's also robbing this file this recording of bass it's canceling out some of the really low frequencies and what we're going to do is rebalance that with EQ let's listen to that again I want you to hear how it's lacking bass and I want you to hear how it's emphasizing some of the low and mid frequencies to give it a boxy sound let's listen to it I believe the human voice is the most important vehicle of empathy and that there is nothing as powerful as bringing a character to life and sharing their struggles with the listening audience I listen constantly to voice recordings because I'm in the studio here and this is kind of what I'm doing but um you know I'm also listening unbalanced speakers in a balanced Studio that is treated to have no reflection so I'm getting a very good reference of what this uh recording is so for example I want you just to understand this because this plays into what you're hearing too and if you're listening on earbuds let's say uh you're not going to get the same type of bass frequencies when you're hearing back than you are if you had a subwoofer let's say in your monitor system so are you listening to a a a true representation of what is being recorded now when you have a studio as I do that's one of the things we strive for is I want to hear exactly uh uh a true reference to what's being recorded So to me in my studio that is what I'm hearing and we could look at it on on some of the meters which which will look at a little bit and you'll see how it is um off balance so now before I show you some of the details of how I have used EQ and other processing to improve the sound and what I've done to improve that imbalance we should talk about uh and really discuss how this person can improve the room because you know I can fix with EQ and I can optimize or try to get a more balanced sound with an EQ but nothing it's going to sound better let's put it this way no EQ or processing will improve more than if the raw recording was captured um better meaning meaning this is a big part of it meaning if the raw recording was void of those Reflections and that all boils down to acoustic treatment I know you've probably heard that too right if you're if you're in this world at all of trying to record highquality voice recordings you've heard that room treatment is probably the priority it's the biggest thing it and it is it's going to help you because when you capture a recording with pure voice void of Reflections and that could be done with a particular microphone depends on how big your room is depends on the type of uh absorbing material that you have um that is going to make it that could make a inexpensive microphone sound more expensive it really is probably the most it's the area that you can improve the most it you you'll notice a the biggest difference by adding the proper room treatment which means getting rid of those Reflections now I have an acoustic treatment course and I want uh to tell you about it because I think it's so important the reason why I put it together is because having those Reflections in a recording is probably one of the biggest problems that people have and they may not even understand how that it works and it's like um this is one of the things that happens all the time oh I think I just need a better microphone you might not right your microphone may not be uh you know a boutique $3,000 microphone but uh whatever microphone you're using could probably benefit a lot if you were getting rid of of those Reflections because that interaction that causes the imbalance is is it's such a huge thing when you talk about getting a good raw recording that's really what they mean getting your mic and your voice in a space that is void of Reflections it it really makes a big difference uh check out this course uh the first chapter is actually on the website for free you could you could watch the first chapter the first video it's really quick I I try to uh make sure that everything's in lame terms and I go through it pretty quickly it's not like it it's a course that goes on forever but it will show you exactly how to uh listen for the problem find out what is wrong in your room your recording space and then I'll show you exactly how to remove those Reflections the right way if you feel like you just can't EQ your voice right to get a good sound and you can't figure out what it is this course will help you save time money and frustration uh it's on my website Lenny be.com it's acoustic treatment for voiceover just going through this course and understanding more about how sound travels in your voiceover recording space will help you improve even with like the existing acoustic treatment that you have right now with placement and stuff just understanding it will help you get a better recorded sound okay let's look at the EQ changes that I have made and what I want to do is I'm going to play the raw audio again and then I'm going to engage just this EQ and you'll remember what I said was there was kind of this uh midrange emphasis that we were hearing and then there was a a low frequencies there was like a void of low frequencies here and that is and we're going to listen to it now but I want to show you first that is what I've done I've replenished some of the low frequencies to balance it out they were being canceled out and I've raised them up and then there's this scoop this mid-range scoop here that I've made and uh there's a couple other things we'll talk about but what this has done has balanced the imbalances of the room uh and the effect on that microphone and also the fact that maybe the microphone isn't uh of the highest resolution so we are emphasizing certain things that just gives it more clarity and gives it more of a punch okay I'm going to play back the audio with the EQ disengaged and then I'm going to engage just the EQ uh halfway through here so you can hear the difference I believe the human voice is the most important vehicle of empathy and that there is nothing as powerful is bringing a character to life and sharing their struggles with the listening audience now this is the uh the F6 by waves uh by the way U I'm working in logic pro and that's my Daw of choice I use quite a few different dos but um it's just the playback here uh I'm the um the EQ that I'm using and the concepts that I'm sharing with you about EQ apply to any EQ that you're using whether it's the EQ that comes with Adobe Audition but this is not the stock um logic Apple Logic Pro this is not the stock EQ this is from waves it's called F6 and it's a very affordable wave waves plugin it's one of my favorite eqs by the way and and I'll tell you why um when I have I'm I'll play this this is so cool I'm going show you again this is really what helps me EQ and balance something out I'm going to play uh this audio again through the EQ but I want you to see this yellow line uh and this is a peak hold line I'm going to tell the EQ to show me a peak of where all the frequencies are so it's showing me the balance of the EQ I'm going to put it on pre so this line that it's going to show you is before the EQ changes that I've made okay let's see what what the line gives us here I believe the human voice is the most important vehicle of empathy and that there is nothing as powerful as bringing a character to life and sharing their struggles with the listening audience now when I first heard this audio and and kind of made the diagnosis and this says before these EQ changes that I've made uh you know I said it would had it had this mid-range kind of poking mid-range um overabundance right and gave it that boxy kind of mid- rangey sound and I was missing a lot of the bass and this peak hold line is showing showing us exactly that um the Bas is is you know 1 two 300 the Bas is from here down and in a human voice recording in a male voice that is um you know this type of tone you know it's it's it's from about here down maybe 300 400 Hertz to the left that's the low frequencies then uh then the mids are are around here where which is exactly what we're seeing and then the uh upper mids and the highs um you know they go to about 5,000 Hertz and then and up is kind of that air but this yellow line is saying hey yes what you were hearing is exactly right it had a big mid-range presence so it's imbalanced right balance would be flat and and look at the low's drop off pretty quickly okay now what you were hearing was the eqed audio by the way and we're still again I'm going to play it back I'm going to tell this peak hold line to give us a Reading Post EQ changes that I've made here let's move this over here actually let's let's move this over here this time and I'll put them both so you can see um once this is finished I'll put them both on the screen so we can compare so now let's listen again and this peak hold line reading is going to give us what the audio looks like after the EQ changes I've made I believe the human voice is the most important vehicle of empathy and that there is nothing as powerful as bringing a character to life and sharing their struggles with the listening audience now you may be saying hey Lenny I still kind of see this this mid peak but it's definitely more um it's more balanced it was you can see the two the difference here it's more balanced and I want you to understand something I say this I say this often because it's true I use the data that I get from this peak hold line and I use the data information with the bands and the frequencies and you know I get familiar with these changes that I'm making but the data helps me make decisions but the B the final decision is made with the ears so I listen as well so you know these guide us I feel like the you know the frequency analysis and the data that we get from these eqs and these frequency analyzers and tools they help us make the decisions but I don't base everything on the data you got to use your ears because ultimately that's what matters right so I've gone this far with the EQ to help balance the um the audio coming from the microphone now what I what I tend to do is try to get surgical I try to balance out large imbalances I try to attack or address big uh big changes in certain frequency spaces and I'll I'll draw your attention to this one here uh number six this is what is number six 3100 Hertz or 3.1 khz so this is kind of a upper mid-range um I felt let's listen to it and one of the cool things about the F6 is you could actually solo the band so let's listen to what just this area is I believe believe the human voice is the most important vehicle of empathy and that there is nothing as powerful as bringing a character to life and sharing their struggles with the listening audience I feel like there was a particular specific imbalance with that frequency and what's cool about the F6 and plugins like this like the parametric EQ this F6 is you can get really surgical I could I could listen I could hear one frequency space and really like zoom in on it and not affect anything else uh higher or lower but I could just mess with that particular space and bring it down it's a it's a more surgical adjustment on a one narrow frequency band and again um you know I'm going to use another EQ after this one kind of in series so this one does the correcting and then I'm going to do some sweetening and more balancing with broader Strokes with a second EQ and that happens in the Shep's Omni channel in this particular uh preset that I've created the Shep's Omni Channel looks completely confusing um it must look if you if you're seeing this for the first time you're like what the uh but I'll Focus you here on this EQ this um this EQ is a uh it's also a parametric EQ I'm able to get specific but I can also use it in a broad sweeping way too where it's further balancing the audio and I'll point this to you here um I am increasing the high frequencies uh with a shelf and I'm also with a broad Q meaning it's a broad uh a bigger push of a lot of frequencies I'm increasing the mid-range so you'll see that with the F6 we are you know there's it's flat here but I'm I'm further adjusting this area here to balance the sound further with these two upper bands in this EQ and these come after the F6 and then I'm further attenuating or lowering that low mid space where is this 398 so that's 400 HZ let's look at the F6 again that the Band 3 is 450 right so this I'm further flattening this Broadband out uh with the second EQ again my whole effort is to try to balance the audio and and and you know um we're going to hear it we'll hear the raw and we'll hear the processed sound again uh where you can hear the difference this big sweeping change is like wow that sounds more natural it sounds like a better microphone it sounds like he's in a natural space as opposed to that boxy sound it's because of this balance so let's just kind of recap real quick here like what's happened you know because of the situation with those Reflections interacting with the pure voice they've modified the balance that interaction it's blurred the capability of the microphone to capture the true voice sound because of those Reflections so what we're doing is we're putting a big fat Band-Aid on the audio here with EQ and uh I just want you to understand so you know is this optimal is this the best thing to do if he wants to compete as a voiceover artist no so it's not he needs to improve his equipment he needs to improve his room but he has come to me and he has asked me uh for guidance and Direction and say hey we can at least for right now if you can't uh um you know if you can't spend whatever money is necessary to improve your equipment if this is what you have to work with let's get you processed here and let's get you an optimized an optimized sound and work with what you have for the moment and then we can scale up so U you know what I'm what I'm doing for uh him is improving with what we've got to work with right now and then suggesting okay hey the first step we need the next thing we need to do is treat your uh your space better or get you in a bigger space that offers less Reflections and then we can start improving um maybe the the level of your equipment but I want you to understand that with processing and with these um changes that we're making we're able to rebalance his audio by putting um uh it's basically a banded it's not going to sound better than if we were able to capture a well balanced or a better balanced um raw audio and then when you add compression and EQ and dsers and Gates and expanders and saturation on top of that it's going to sound even better so um incrementally optimizing is is really what we're talking about here all right let's put both of these on the screen so we can see them uh at the same time when we play back the audio and I want you to just kind of let's listen again and I want you to think about um some of the stuff we've talked about you know we're cre we're correcting the imbalance with surgical changes and and really um doing some Grand fixing in the first EQ and then with the second EQ plus some of the other things that are happening um we are further balancing the audio to give us a more true representation of the captured voice I'm going to put these both on the screen here so you can kind of look at both of them at the same time while we listen to the fully processed sound so what I'm going to do is play The Raw audio and then I'll engage both of the eqs and all of the other processing um so you can hear the difference of what this optimization has done for the voice if you are interested in learning how to EQ and you are not exactly sure which changes to make do I raise it do I lower it which bands how do I find the right bands I have a fantastic course it's called EQ fundamentals for voice it really gives you a fundamental understanding of how EQ can modify how EQ can sculpt a voice and I'll tell you that um you know yes we're using it here to fix less than optimal audio but when you've got a better recording when when you have a better raw recording EQ can help things just sound over the top and and that's the sound that you when you hear like wow that voice sounds so good it's usually generally a good raw recording with some EQ changes to optimize certain frequencies to really make a strong emotional connection you know these are the tools that help you um really uh emphasize the emotion in a voice and uh I I'll tell you one um one analogy that that I think is fantastic you know um EQ is kind of the equivalent to like a Instagram filter you know when you take a you take a a photo with your mobile phone or whatever and then you put the filter on top of it and it it really puts an emotion on a picture right on a portrait you know by changing the tone by changing certain colors by changing the contrast by uh emphasizing certain colors certain bright points you can amplify the emotion of a photograph it's exactly what EQ can do to your audio get all the details on both of those courses on my website Lenny be.com all right let's listen to the uh the in this voiceover recording captured on the Elgato Wave 3 microphone we'll hear the raw recording and then I'll engage all of the processing at once here so you can hear the difference I believe the human voice is the most important vehicle of empathy and that there is nothing as powerful is bringing a character to life and sharing their struggles with the listening audience the type of voiceovers I am drawn to most is character voice acting while I'm okay with the concept of narration or instructional voiceovers my true passion is to do character voiceovers if I can get the voice recording part off the ground and start making money with it I can shift my focus away from my soul destroying job to start chasing my dream if you have any questions about well you know some of the processing or some of the EQ changes and things that I've made here by all means uh leave those questions in the comments that's how I come up with more um content to teach you how to optimize your voice uh and if you are interested in sending me voice just like this gentleman did you can do it and I will for free send back to you an example of what my custom processing sounds like with your voice recording there's just a couple things you have to follow a few directions because I need uh I need a raw recording and it has to be um just some specifics but I give you all the details on how to do it it's really simple to submit your audio go to my website Lenny be.com and at the top there is a red button that says submit your voice follow the instructions uh you'll receive an email with a uh a link to where you upload your audio and I even include uh some copy if you don't have uh something to read there's some suggestions up there the whole thing I want to show you here is the path to improving you know everybody's kind of on a different place in their journey and so if you are using an inexpensive you know entry-level microphone that's okay and there's things you can do and that's really what I want to show you is you know why is it sounding this way okay it's the resolution of the mic we need to get a better capturing device that's going to give you more resolution and more detail and more quality um is the interface uh and microphone together in one unit with lower quality components uh you know and and then so if you want to upgrade separate your microphone and your audio interface and those are going to be um each better quality and together combined using those at a higher level is going to give you a better raw recording and then your room you know I it doesn't really matter what if if I think it's a good or bad mic if this is the one you're using and this is what you got to deal with right now which is what's happening in this case it's the mic but the bigger question is you know how do we improve and and what can I do to get a better quality recording too the reason why we want to improve our recording quality is to make a better emotional connection you want to connect on an emotional level and make a stronger emotional connection with your listener that is what is going to compel your voiceover career further get you more gigs win more additions that's what we're looking to do here I want to thank you for watching I'm Lenny B voiceover audio engineer let's make your voice sound better

Channel: Lenny B

Views: 697

Keywords: Voice Over, Voiceover, Elgato Wave:3 Microphone, USB Microphone

Id: bV6oyC2V4cY

Length: 29min 34sec (1774 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2024