How to record your voice cleanly with Audacity in 2024

in this video you will learn how to record your voice in audacity you will learn several important things about audio recording like how to set the microphone how to set proper recording Channel and proper project and bit rate how to set the correct recording level recording in audacity is very simple if you press the red record button the recording will start though the recording is as simple as clicking a button you have to configure audacity properly to get the best possible recording please remember this Golden Rule about audio production the final audio quality always depends on the original recording quality if the original recording is bad it does not matter how much editing you do on it later it will always remain bad I will show you how to get the best quality recording possible in audacity there are mainly three things that need to be set the microphone the gain or input level and the sample rate you can set most of these things from the audio setup button go to audio setup and choose the recording device you will see all your connected microphones from the recording device the currently selected microphone will have a tick mark beside it for me currently it is MacBook Pro microphone if you want any other microphone on the list click on that and that will be selected as the recording device sometimes you may not see all your connected microphones in the list it happens when you open audacity first and then you connect the microphone in such cases you have to reskin audio devices you can see the reskin audio devices here if you rescan audacity will recognize all the connected microphones you now can see a new Option appears Scarlet 2i2 USB it is the audio interface through which my microphone is connected different audio interfaces or microphones will show a different name I am using the Scarlet 2i2 audio interface so I see this name you have to understand what name your mic is showing in this list I will click on it and it will be selected as the recording device if I check the recording device now you will see the tick mark is beside Scarlet 2i2 USB besides microphone selection you have to set other things things like recording channels you can see two options for me mono and stereo recording Channel I will get back to which channel you should choose for the voiceover before that let me share a course from me quickly I have an audacity course for beginners and an advanced audacity course for voice editing if you want to learn audacity step by-step very well the audacity course for beginners is for you if you want to upgrade your audacity skill to a truly professional level the advanced audacity course is for you these two are separate courses but you can get both as a bundle offer I will put this by m a coffee Link in the description I strongly recommend you check the curriculum of these courses after completing those courses there will be no more guessing games in professional quality voice production back to the recording Channel we are seeing there are two options for recording channels mono and stereo for voiceover mono is fine and you should choose mono unless you need stereo specifically for music recording you might want to select the stereo recording Channel with a stereo recording Channel you can add different effects on the left and right sides of the headphones you will not need such effects for voice recording so select mono to keep things simple you can convert a mono track to a stereo track if required later for some microphones you may see only mono channels showing on the list you may see more than two channels in the list if you use a multi-channel mixer whatever option you see in the list stick to Mono for voice recording the next thing you have to set is the sample rate you will see the sample rate settings in the audio settings audio settings also show the recording device and channel audacity shows the same option in multiple places you can configure from any of these places you find Convenient I came to these settings for the sample rate and Sample format the microphone captures audio as an analog signal and must be converted to Digital Data to store on a computer sample rate is the number of samples taken per second during the conversion theoretically the more samples are taken the more details of the audio are stored digitally it is under the quality section and you can see two options project sample rate and default sample rate the project sample rate is for this project only and the default sample rate works as the default value for any new project you do not need to use a higher sample rate than 44.1 khz still you need to be aware of the sample rate a lower sample rate like 32 khz or more down may fail to capture all the good bits of your recording so you should not choose a lower sample rate like 32 khz however the opposite is not true you will not notice any difference in audio quality with a higher sample rate like 88 khz or more instead your file size will grow significantly and take up much disc space you can get the best possible recording with 44.1 khz or 48 khz all the Fantastic MP3s you listen to are 44.1 khz 48 khz is used as the sample rate of CD burning you should choose the sample rate as 44.1 khz unless you know a good reason for other values I see no good reason to use any other sample rate than 44.1 khz so I will use it though 44.1 khz is the default sample rate I discussed this as many beginners wrongly think their bad recording is due to the sample rate if you record audio in 44.1 khz and it still sounds bad it is not the sample rate it may be the microphone or the recording environment or the way you are talking in the mic the default sample format should be 32-bit float I changed it to 24-bit for some experiments but it should be 32-bit float keep the default sample format to 32-bit float once again you may not notice any difference with 24-bit or 16-bit recording but 32-bit float recording has some advantages during the editing process so choose 32-bit recording some people set 24bit as the sample rate because some platforms ask for 24-bit encoding you can always export the audio as 24-bit so there is no harm in recording in 32-bit float if these talks look complicated follow one simple rule the sample rate is 44.1 khz and the sample format is 32-bit float you can figure out other things as you progress in your audio recording Journey all the things from the audio settings are configured however I find it inconvenient as I cannot see which device is selected for recording audacity has a toolbar named device toolbar that always shows the recording device from view toolbars select device toolbar keeping this toolbar open all the time actually saves lots of time and headaches sometimes you may forget to select the appropriate microphone and record a long session if you always see which mic is selected you will not make the mistake of recording with the wrong microphone the last drop down with the speaker icon is the playback device it may or may not be important during recording if you enable live monitoring this drop down is important otherwise you can ignore this while recording live monitoring means you listen to the audio while recording in the transport options you will see enable audible input monitoring if you are using an older version of of audacity it will be labeled as software play through I can listen through the playback device while recording if I enable this option I do not usually use this option but if you are interested in using such a feature you know where it is there is another option named he other tracks during recording previously it was named overdub in multi-track recording you can listen to other tracks while recording you can disable this option if you do not wish to listen to other tracks in multitrack recording now I will move to the next settings of the input level or gain staging audacity has two meters to monitor the Audio Level the first is the record meter and the second one is the playback meter we need to focus on the record meter during recording this meter is very important to achieve a good input level these meters are placed side by side and a bit small by default I will reposition these meters and make them bigger for better reading if you achieve a proper level in the meter the rest of the audio processing becomes easy click on the the mic icon and enable silent monitoring you can see a green bar appears denoting the audio signal strength you can check the input signal before recording and ensure the gain is set properly it is vital to set the recording volume level properly postprocessing your audio heavily depends on the input level of your recording your goal is to hit between -12 and -6 during the loudest Peaks not every spoken word has to be in this range only the louder sounds should be in this range and should not exceed my - 6 other spoken words should cross - 24 at least and be around -8 to -1 most of the time please note that you do not have to be very precise about these numbers these are more of a guideline to achieve a good signal level that is not too hot a hot signal means when it is becoming red if you record audio in the Red Zone you run the risk of clipping and Distortion of the voice you will also have less Headroom for post-processing if your Audio Level never crosses minus 6 during recording you will have a Headroom of six that is a good enough Headroom for post-processing the less Headroom you have the more risk you have a voice Distortion in postprocessing alternatively you should not aim for too much Headroom like 18 your signal can be too close to the noise floor in that case the main goal is to have a good enough audio signal that is easier to postprocess the recording meter also has a slider that can be used to control gain you can drag this slider to adjust the recording level however this slider sometimes freezes when I screen record it is freezing at the moment as I am screen recording let me show that from the playback meter slider as both work similarly you can adjust the slider and check if the meter is hitting the right place when it hits the right place you set the slider in that position I usually keep the recording meter to 100% because even after it is 100% I hit in the proper range you may have to position the microphone differently if you fail to hit the correct range even after increasing the gain you may have to come closer to the microphone talk louder or adjust your talking dire Direction you may have to increase the gain if you are not achieving such a level in the record meter you may increase the gain through the volume knob of the microphone or audio interface you may ask me why you have to hit the meter range of -12 to -6 well you can hit higher than that but notice the maximum on this meter is zero the closer to zero you record the less Headroom you will have in post- production if you boost some signals in postprocessing and it crosses zero it would result in clipping or distorted sound you can always boost your volume level after recording the audio so keeping some Headroom for post-processing is a smart thing to do you can stop monitoring by clicking disable silent monitoring as everything is set I will press the record button now and let you hear the original recording this is a test recording for AAC City AAC city is a pree audio recording and editing software available on Windows Mac and Linux audacity is pretty simple to use the recording is done and you see the track you can see the audio waveform inside the track after recording your first task would be to save the project the audacity project is not a typical audio file it is an OP three file and can be opened only in audacity choose a location to save and give your project a name if I check the folder now I will see the audacity project here is the audacity project I just saved you can open the project at any time by double clicking on this op three file I am closing audacity to show you how to open this project file you see opening the project file is simple and you get the same audio you can play the recorded audio by pressing the space bar on the keyboard this is a test recording for AAC City AAC city is a pre audio recording and editing software available on Windows Mac and Linux if you want want an audio file from this recording you have to export audio you can export it as MP3 wave or other audio file formats usually export is done once you are done editing your audio file however you may notice one thing about the loudness of the recorded audio the audio was recorded following the best recording practices but the loudness is not ideal as a final audio that's where the post-processing comes in after recording your audio you have to process it for the final output I have several videos on that in this channel I also have developed a tool for faster audio processing it is quite simple to use select the whole Track by double clicking and go to tools the thing I developed is called a macro from apply macro choose the type of audio Improvement you want I will choose the clear vocal improve I will show you in a moment where you can get this macro once you apply the macro the audio will improve almost instantly this is a test recording for AAC City AAC city is a pre audio recording and editing software available on Windows Mac and Linux you can get 11 fantastic macros from this by Mia coffee page all these macros improve the original voice recording in a single click these macros have professional EQ built into them you can use the EQ separately if you want the description has more details about the macros you will also find a detailed installation guide I want to show you quickly how easy it is to install these macros you will get some TX t files once you purchase this macro pack go to the macro manager from the tools menu click on import to import the txt files you will get a zip file and unzip that file you will see the macros and eq's folder navigate to this folder and then navigate to macros select a txt file and open you have to open the txt files one by one as audacity does not support bulk import once you import a macro it is ready to use I will keep the link to this macro pack and audacity course for beginners in the descript description you can visit the shop page to see what audio courses and tools I offer you can see already 91 people are already taking my courses and using my audio tools I am sure you will find something useful for you thanks for watching and have a happy Journey with audio

Channel: Master Editor

Views: 1,150

Keywords: how to use audacity, audacity, audacity tutorial, how to use audacity for beginners, audacity tutorial for beginners, audacity voice editing, Record Voice Audacity, Record voice 2024, Audacity voice recording

Id: SPfHYIm02D8

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2024