Improving The Sound in My Video Studio

0:00I recently made a very expensive change to my video studio that I need to talk about. And it, I don't think it was necessary, but I had to do it. One of the biggest problems with my video studio, which is a permanent setup in my basement and I'll, let me just go through the context of what I'm talking about here. So for my company, some university, I have a section, like a whole half of my basement is dedicated to filming our course videos, our app videos, our YouTube videos, our shorts, all of that stuff. And it's a studio that has two big giant soft boxes, like 35 inch soft boxes, these big lights. That's what that is. I have a Sony A7S3 with a 50 millimeter fixed lens on that with a teleprompter that's all hooked up to a Mac Mini, which has its own monitor, its own keyboard and trackpad. And I use a, at first I use, for sound, there's a, so there's a desk and then behind the

1:05desk there's a shelving unit with lights set up. And that's my entire studio. And I've been using for audio a few different mics. The first mic that I used was a Shore M7V, which is a, a Shore USB mic, USB C mic. And I had this plugged in and I plugged into the Mac Mini and I record everything using e-cam live in 4K at 30 frames per second. And this worked great because I had a boom arm for the microphone that's at right in front of my face. Microphone was on camera. You can see it. If you watch any of my older videos that's from University, you will see that microphone in the shot. And the audio quality was great, but it had one big problem. If I accidentally touched it or if I, you know, hit my elbow on the table or I put down a book or I did any sort of like movement, that microphone would pick it up.

2:08And also if I talked too close to the microphone, it would pick up the popping sound of my voice or the booming sound of anything else. And it also limited me of using my hands when I talked to be more animated, which is something I'm doing. Right now I'm sitting down with a microphone in my hand and my other hand is doing a lot of hand gestures because I guess I'm Italian and that's just the way that I do things. But that is, that kind of, having that like boom arm in front of me with the microphone in front of my face limited me. And also like that microphone covers a lot of area. So if I ever wanted to get like an aerial shot, so maybe I'm looking at my book and I wanted an aerial shot of that, I wasn't able to do that because I got this boom mic just like jetting across the desk, getting in the way of that. So I knew that I had to up like even though this sound quality of that microphone was excellent, I knew that it wasn't sustainable because it limited me to what I could show on film.

3:11So if I, again, like if I wanted to, you know, show a robotic pool cleaner on my desk in front of me, I can't do that because I got a microphone there. So that was the first thing that needed to go and I had two options. The first option was to wear a lapel mic. So wearing a lapel mic definitely works and I do have a wireless lapel mic that connects to, that could connect to either the computer or a, you know, an outboard system or the camera itself to record the audio that would sync within ecam live. The problem with that is that I would have to put on this microphone every single time I wanted to record. So one of the stipulations of the studio or one of the benefits of the studio is I can sit down at my desk, hit a button and within a second or two, I'm recording video. So I have it done and I can do that even more so.

4:14But if I were to have to also put on a lapel mic and make sure that's hooked up and make sure everything's working, that kind of becomes a bit of a problem. So a lapel mic doesn't have the greatest sound quality compared to that nice microphone that $300 microphone that was on the desk. So I would be trading audio quality for, you know, a mild inconvenience, which is like okay, also the chances of that microphone going out in the middle of a broadcast is fairly high because it's wireless. Also you could lose sync sometimes because it's wireless. Now this is usually not the case, but it was definitely something that I was concerned about. And also you see the microphone. So like the microphone is attached to my shirt and if it's not placed in the right spot,

5:17you'll be able to see that in every shot and it's going to move. So while I certainly think it is an option, I don't think it was the best option. The best option is to add a boom mic, which is a mic that is slightly off camera and it's usually in the form of a shotgun mic. So it's a long microphone that's unidirectional, meaning wherever you point it at, that's where it's going to pick up the sound and it's not going to pick up any of the sound behind or around it. It's only going to pick up the sound that's coming directly from the front. So the reason why, so you could do this with any microphone, any sort of unidirectional microphone. In fact, the microphone that I'm using right now, I believe is unidirectional, but it doesn't have a long range. So if I move this microphone back, it's not going to pick up my voice nearly as well. But with a shotgun mic, I can move the microphone far away from my mouth and it'll still pick

6:18it up at really good quality. So this was, and this is obviously something like I was watching every night before I go to bed or as I'm falling asleep, I usually watch a television show of some kind. I usually fall asleep to either a rest of development or 30 rock or parks and rack. Those are kind of my three right now. And right now, I'm watching a rest of development. And I'm watching the show and so I'm watching the show and I say, okay, how are they getting? None of these actors are wearing lapel mics. You would see them in the shot. So they're clearly using a boom mic and in fact, in a couple of the episodes, I think one of the episodes, you see the boom mic on purpose as part of the joke and I've seen it in other shots by accident, right? And so I'm like, okay, boom mic is the way to go. But I don't want to just, if I'm going to upgrade and make this, you know, because I put

7:19a lot of attention to detail into filming and this is kind of where I nerd out a lot. What is the best microphone to use? Like what are the pros using here? I don't want to just buy because I have a shotgun mic. You know, I could set it up right now, but it's a, I think it's an audio technical mic. I think it only cost me a couple hundred bucks, which is, you know, it's not nothing. It's definitely a nice microphone, but it is not what the pros use in the video field. So I figured out what that was. And I don't know the exact, I think it's MKH416 shotgun microphone, right? It's long, Sennheiser microphone costs about a thousand bucks, it's expensive. When you see it live in a shoot somewhere, like a, like a Hollywood shoot, it's usually covered in some type of win sock or what they call a dead cat. So it looks way bigger than it actually is. It's like this is long pencil mic.

8:20And it's usually covered in a giant fur ball or some big like oblong sort of pill shaped wind blocker. But I don't need that because I'm not outside, I'm just in my studio. So I don't even need the, the, the windscreen that comes with it or the, like the foam that goes over it, I can just set it up directly. So I did that. I bought a C stand and I set that up. I set the microphone up. I plugged it into an old mix three that I had. I think it's a, I think it's called a mix three. Yeah. A company called Sound Design and they make this product called a mix three, which is a audio interface for a camera. So you can plug two XLR inputs into it. It has a little mini screen so you can see the, you know, the, the decibel meters. And I plugged the microphone into it and I set it up on the C stands slightly out of frame. And I've been using that microphone for about a year.

9:23But while I will say it has done a lot of good one, I don't have any, I can bang on the table, right? I don't have to worry about that. So I can be very animated with my hand gestures. If I want to say something important, I can bang my fist on the table and it's not going to pick up this huge boom. You'll still hear the sound of the table, but it won't be like that annoying boom sound. You never get the popping noises that come from like being your lips being too close to a microphone and that the wind hitting the microphone. It's completely out of the way I can, I can be wherever I want to. It's created a lot of freedom. There's just one problem. One problem that I ran into was it picks up a lot more room noise. So for about a year and if you go back to our videos, not even a couple of weeks ago, you will, if you put on headphones because the reason I was okay with it for a year was

10:24most people are probably watching our videos on an iPhone or a, you know, a crappy laptop or whatever with shitty speakers. I doubt there are people watching our stuff with good quality headphones on, but if you wear good quality headphones while listening to our videos, you will hear the room noise. You will hear the ambient echoing of my voice while it hits walls and bounces all over the place. Again, 95% of people could give two shits about this. In fact, I am recording this podcast on a decent $100 microphone, USB-C microphone, and to some of you, dog, if you're listening, are like, hey, that sound quality is so much better. But I've gotten so many people who've emailed me and said, I kind of like the old way when I was just walking around the brewery with my iPhone and talking into my iPhone.

11:28And in that, you hear the room noise. It bothers people like me, it bothers people like dog, and it bothers people who wear headphones who listen to podcasts. It is kind of annoying. But I will say that's maybe 5% of people. But guess what? I'm part of the 5% and so it bothers me. It bothered me watching our videos with headphones on. And even if the headphones aren't on, I can still hear it, especially when compared to the older videos where the microphone is directly in front of me, which I thought sounded much better. And I kept saying to myself, okay, one day I'm going to solve this problem. I don't know how to solve it, but I'm going to solve it. Now my first instinct in solving this issue was I could go back to the old microphone, which would be on the desk and just deal with it. The second option I had, at least I thought, was to sound treat the room.

12:31That meant buying high quality sound proofing panels, stuff that you see in restaurants. I have them here in the brewery, there's these white panels that I have on my ceiling on the door as well. They're made with very, very thick insulation foam that absorb that bouncing that happens. And it reduces the room noise. So I just kept saying to myself, well, that's going to cost me a lot of money buying a bunch of sound panels, having to hang them up on the ceilings and the walls of the basement. The basement already isn't very echoey. It's a carpeted basement with furniture, with not a lot of hard surfaces. So it was just annoying that I got this room noise, even though of all the rooms in my house, it's probably the deadest room. And I thought, all right, this is the only way to solve this. And I go, well, because it's the only way to solve it, there's no urgency in solving it. Although I knew one day I wanted to do this.

13:32And so of course, I researched sound panels and how it was going to hang them and where I was going to place them and all this stuff. Then one night, not too long ago, a couple weeks ago, as I normally do, I go to bed and I'm watching a rest of development. And I'm watching it on my phone. So it's not like, you know, I'm not watching it with good headphones. But I'm watching the show and I'm like, okay. They are in a giant model home for most of the show. And none of them are wearing lapel mics. And yet I can hear every word of dialogue crystal clear with no echo. Now sometimes I will hear an echo depending on where the actor is in the shot. If the actor, because that show is very shot like a reality TV, like a reality TV show. And so if you see a character come from off screen in and they're talking as they're

14:36coming in from off screen while they're coming into frame, there's going to be sound. There's going to be room noise. And then as they enter the frame and become close to the like, you know, the main action, their audio gets crystal clear. And I was sitting there going, well, okay, I doubt. Now it's not, it is definitely possible. I'm sure they do it. But I doubt that they are treating this room with sound panels. Because what about reality TV? You can't just, if you're just out in public, you're out of the restaurant, you're out wherever and you're shooting this stuff, you can't do that. You can't just sound treat every room you're in. Now for, in some cases, you would get a lapel mic, right? Which is, because if it depends on the type of show, but a show that scripted it is probably not going to have lapel mics, right, where every actor's miced up. So the only way to do this is with a boom mic.

15:36And I'm going, okay, but how are they doing, they, there must be a trick because they're using the same microphone that I have. They're in a much bigger space than I'm in. And yet, whether it's treated or not, it's still a bigger space. You're still going to have bounce. And yet they're getting like crystal clear, non-room noise audio. How are they doing this? Go on YouTube, right? I'm, I literally, I'm sitting in bed, I'm watching the show, I'm trying to fall asleep, I have this thought, I'm watching the show and I'm like, okay, there's got to be a way to solve this without sound panels then, because clearly this has been solved. So I go on YouTube and I'm like, okay, how do you do this? And I thought I've already looked this up, by the way. So I found this YouTube video, this guy, he was comparing two different microphones. He was comparing the, the MKH416, which is the microphone that I have to another Sennheiser

16:39microphone called the MKH50. He did a side by side test in an empty room where he spoke and the 50 sound it better. And he said that the 416 is great for outdoor, for outdoor use, which in an outdoor environment, you don't have the reflection, you don't have the bounce, you won't get a room noise because there's nothing for the sound to bounce off of. So the, so the audio is going to be much better. And so this other microphone, which is a little bit shorter, it's a pencil microphone, but it picks up more resonance. It's not as tinny. And he showcased it in the same room and it sat, and you could hear less room noise. And I thought, oh, I just bought the wrong mic. I bought the outdoor mic. And I really should be using the indoor mic. And so I immediately pull up Amazon and I purchased a $1,300 microphone because I'm like spare no expense when it comes to making videos.

17:39It's my goddamn livelihood. Let's go. Alright, so I buy this microphone. I set it up, same exact spot, and I start testing the audio and I'm like, okay. It's a little better, but I still hear the room noise, still driving me nuts. And I go, what the fuck am I doing wrong? This cannot be the way it is. It wasn't the microphone. Now of course, the microphone sounds better. So I didn't need to return it because I do like the way it sounds over the other mic in just the terms of like how it picks up the resonance of my voice. And hey, I could always use another microphone. There's no, I don't have that many. But I have more than the average bear, I just, I do like microphones, so whatever. So I go, there must be something I'm missing here. So I go on YouTube again and I find another video of a, of a creator similar, doing a similar

18:42thing to me where he's sitting at a desk, he's got two cameras set up, and he's got these two microphones, right? The same two that we're talking about, the 416 and the 50, and he's got them set up side by side in front of him. You can see it in the frame. And he's just flipping back and forth between the two mics to hear the difference. Now of course, as he's flipping back and forth, I personally like the 50. Which is the new one I bought. So again, happy with the purchase. But then he goes, but then, so he did something interesting. He said, well, right now, none of these microphones are picking me up. What's picking me up is the microphone above me. And he cuts to a shot where he's got another very, very, very expensive shotgun mic, pencil mic, I guess a shotgun mic above him. But where it was placed was interesting. It was placed almost directly above him pointing, perpendicular to him.

19:45Like straight down, almost at his crotch. And I go, well, how the hell is it doing that? That's insane. So I looked at my microphone. So my microphone, if you can imagine this, if I'm sitting at a desk and I place my hand straight in front of me and I tilted it up about 45 degrees, that is where the mic sat. Almost an arm and a half length away from my mouth pointing at a 45 degree angle towards my chest. That's where it was pointed. And this guy, that was way too far away, but that was like the furthest away I could get where it wouldn't be in the shot and it was still pointed at my mouth. But what he had it was, it was almost like dangling over top of him, point it straight

20:45down. So not pointed at his mouth, pointing down at his crotch. If you can imagine that. And I know that sounds graphic, but I had no other way to describe it. Okay, like he's sitting down. That's where it's pointed. Well, there's no way that that works because that's that's not the shock on Mike's pointing. Like like if you're if your mouth is, this is well, if you know where I'm going with this, your mouth is blowing the sound, the air forward, I thought. So I'm like, well, I should be pointing it at like trying, trying to hit the air. And no, no, I was wrong. That's not how it works. And instead, I go and move the microphone where it is directly above my head, pointing almost directly straight down at my crotch and holy shit, the sound is amazing. In fact, there's zero room noise. And I went, oh, shit, I didn't need to buy a new microphone.

21:45It was all microphone placement, which then immediately when I did that, I went, oh, that's how they do it in the rest of development. The microphone is pointed straight down directly above them, not pointed at a 45 degree angle toward them. If that makes sense, well, I solved my problem. And it took 22 minutes to explain all of that, but it was a giant revelation for me. And I hope that if you are struggling with something similar, that that's a revelation for you too, I feel like a friggin idiot because as someone who considers himself sort of an audio file, audio nerd, I do not know that, Johnny Carson, okay? I did not know that. Here I am. You learn something new and I didn't have to go buy a bunch of sound panels. And now I can use boom mics in a lot more of my videos and feel confident that I'm doing

22:49it right because now I know how to place the microphone for sound recording in video. Anyway, if you have any questions, shoot me an email at jveneasy.com, or you can just go to jveneasy.com, subscribe to my newsletter, and I will talk to you next time.