Lessons
Lesson Info
How to Monitor Your Audio
Monitoring audio. So super critical piece of gear are headphones. People will see you with these big headphones on, they'll be like, what, are you just listening to yourself 'cause you sound amazing through that big, professional microphone? You love yourself. Well, yeah, it does sound cool, and it is good to listen to yourself back, but no, headphone prevent problems, and that's the key why we wanna use them. So, sorry. They prevent audio bleed. So if you have a remote cohost or guest who's on Skype, you want them to wear headphones, you need to wear headphones, 'cause if they're listening to you, and your voice comes out of their speakers, it goes back in the microphone, it creates a feedback loop that you don't want. So headphones prevent that issue. You can even use earbuds in this case, if you have a guest that doesn't have over the ear headphones but the audio can leak out of there, so you just have to be careful. It prevents you from going off microphone. We know that these thin...
gs have tight polar patterns, and you kinda need to stay near it. You'll get that audio cue. You'll start to hear yourself falling off microphone, or you'll hear your guest, hopefully, who's not used to being on microphone, will hear themselves getting off microphone sometimes. And you, sometimes you have to bring them back, but it can help with that, and I think it actually is an immersive experience. You put on the headphones, the rest of the world drops away and you get into the story. You get into the interview. So I don't hear a lot of people talking about that, but I think it helps prevent distraction and just sort of places you right in the moment. And if a guest doesn't wanna wear headphones, you at least wear headphones so you can pick up the issues as they happen in real time. So that's the key. On some of these recorders, you can set them up that if the SD card fails, if the battery dies, if something happens and the recording stops, I'm not going to hear myself, so I immediately know, whoa, something's wrong. 'Cause you're not staring at the recorder. So you're wearing headphones. You wouldn't catch that if you didn't have headphones on. Things like peaking and distortion, clipping that you wouldn't hear otherwise if you weren't looking at the recorder and it was telling you. You'll hear that, and for editing, you're gonna use headphones to process your audio and to hear the subtleties of the things you want to improve or take away. So background noises, again, interference, mouth noises, they're all things you wouldn't pick up if you didn't have headphones on. So the type to get is over the ear. These say studio monitors. They're the Sony MDR7506. I talked about those guys or women wearing a big pack around their neck. Usually, they have these on. This is sort of an industry standard. And they're affordable. They're still around that hundred dollar mark. But why they're called studio monitors is you don't want a pair of headphones that hypes the sound, so there are headphones, I won't mention names, but if you're listening to music, it increases the bass or the treble. You need to hear it as it was recorded, especially in post-production, so that you can fix stuff. If you are hearing it, and it's increasing the bass, you're like, ah, I'm good. I don't need to do that. So you don't want that. This is a flat sound, so you're hearing it the way it was recorded, which is important. And then over the ear. These have big pads. It goes over your ear, locks in the sound, and so I like a pair that are almost just like this, a little more affordable, where the cable comes detached. This cable's built in, but these are pretty much a standard that everyone loves, and they're fantastic. And now if those sit a little close to your ears, you're gonna wear these for a long time. If you record a podcast for an hour, and then you go spend two hours in editing, it can get a little sore. These go way over the ear, and sit more on your head, so you spend a little bit more money, but it may be a little more comfortable for you, depending on your ears. It just depends. And again, what are earbuds good for? That is how your audience is gonna listen to your podcast, so you should always have a pair of those, as well, to hear how your final result sounds. You should listen to as many speakers as possible, nice headphones, earbuds, car stereo, so definitely monitoring audio is important.
Ratings and Reviews
Colin Keil
Thanks Ray, Great gig, simple and very informative a very good place to start, for someone like me who is considering adding Podcasting and looking for a place to start..
Ara Fitzgerald
Thank you. A helpful introduction!