The Purpose of Post Processing

the purpose of post-processing spoken word audio  in my opinion is not to make your voice sound   different it's not to change the way that your  microphone sounds but rather it's to make sure   that your audio is easy to listen to for your  audience greetings earthlings and welcome back   to podcastage my name is andrew and today i want  to talk to you about how i think you ought to be   approaching post processing your spoken word audio  step number one get your audio right before you   hit record i don't know who needs to hear this so  i'm going to say it anyway post processing cannot   fix terrible audio will fix it in post should not  be in your vocabulary you should be willing and   able to publish your unprocessed audio without  getting any kind of complaints to drive home   this point i have some examples here is raw audio  of the neumann u87 that i think is recorded well   and i would be happy with and here is what i would  classify as poorly recorded audio on the neumann   u87 and here is that same poorly recorded audio  that i have tried to post process and salvage   and get something useful out of but in the end  the audio going in was so bad that the final   product still is absolute garbage maybe i'm biased  because i recorded it but out of those examples   i would 10 times out of 10 pick the unprocessed  audio and i think that audio was good enough to   publish it as the final product for my podcast let  me know if i'm crazy and you disagree with me but   i think that's the level that your audio needs  to be at before you hit record step number two   process with a purpose i know how tempting it is  to go out and download all of the channel strips   and all of the presets because then you don't  have to think about anything you can just put it   on your audio and it's going to be great right no  before you add any plugins to your channel strip   you need to determine how that plugin is going to  be solving an issue what this means is before you   add any plugins you need to listen to your audio  and identify the issues that exist for example   here i am right on top of the neumann u87ai and  the proximity effect is in full effect and the   audio is likely too muddy but now i've applied a  little bit of eq which you can see on screen to   hopefully clear up a little bit of that muddiness  and make it a little bit more intelligible to boil   it down and make it simple every plug-in in  your channel strip needs to serve a purpose   step number three make sure that your  audience has a good listening experience   like i said in the intro to this video this is why  i think we should be processing our youtube videos   our podcasts our tick tocks are live streams  anything that has audio that we're post-processing   should be to this end like the first two steps  i have some examples but i need to lead into   them with a question what is post-processing for  it's to ensure that if too much background noise   made it into your recording you can get rid  of that to remove distractions it's to ensure   that you don't have too many sharp s sounds  like sally sells seashells by this seashore   it's also to ensure that you don't have too many  plosives please bring pizza pronto no one wants to   hear it it's also to get rid of any unwanted low  end rumble you'll also want to use it to decrease   the dynamic range between the quietest parts and  the loudest parts my voice cracked while i was   clipping the microphone i don't think anything  more embarrassing has ever occurred on this   channel step four don't add the flavor yet i have  encountered a lot of people on their audio journey   who are trying to get their post processing right  and a lot of them are trying to sound like some   famous broadcaster some radio host some podcast  some twitch streamer some youtuber and a lot of   the time they don't end up happy with the results  and i think this all goes back to step number one   the audio that they are recording is not good  enough the reason that i'm bringing this up is   they are trying to process and add a bunch of  compression add a bunch of eq to audio that is   absolute rubbish this is why step number one  exists this is why you need to make sure the   audio is as good as it can possibly be before you  hit record then you need to clean up the audio and   post if there's anything that needs to be fixed  once that is done then go on to adding the flavor   go on to trying to mimic somebody else's  sound to get the sound that you really want   but first the most important thing is having great  sounding audio before you start messing around   with it yo here i am on my very first amazing  sounding podcast i got the background noise   i got the close talk in super duper proximity  effect i got the plosives and most importantly   most importantly i got my hat and what kind of  sound do i want um uh i want the radio sound so   we are going to compress it we are going to eq  it we are going to bask the boost and bass the   treble boost the treble nut bass the treble boost  the treble and that is what we are going to get   it's already going to sound terrible  just based on that processing   but on top of that the audio going into it i  just turned into what's his name not jack black   lewis black it's just terrible going into it  okay that's enough of this example this i get   i apologize and there you go that's what a video  of me waxing poetic about post-processing looks   and sounds like i know there are going to be  plenty of people who disagree with me and there   will be exceptions let me know in the comments  down below what those exceptions are for you   and what you disagree with but if you did find  this video fun interesting or helpful go ahead   and give me a thumbs up if you hated it big old  thumbs down subscribe if you want more of these   videos and if you want to be one of these amazing  people you can do so by clicking that join button   or going to patreon.com podcastage and  joining at the five dollar tier or higher   it really does help me continue to bring you these  videos so until next time thank you so much for   watching thank you so much for listening happy  post-processing i'll talk to you next week bye

Channel: Podcastage

Views: 57,517

Keywords: podcastage, podcast, bandrew, scott, microphone, review, audio, sound, test, demo

Id: s7i5hkeyQ1Q

Length: 6min 36sec (396 seconds)

Published: Tue May 03 2022