30 Minutes to a Better Sound Featuring George Whittam

Working from home is taking on new meaning for entrepreneurs, and if you’re making a bigger commitment to your career in voice-over, you know your sound quality is going to make or break your book-ability. With so much more time spent in your booth, we’re exploring some easy ways for you to upgrade your recording space with help from gear pro, George the Tech. We’ll review your recording fundamentals and talk about the best ways to upgrade your room. Plus, we’ll get crafty to show you a few home hacks to build new studio extras using items you have around the house. Whether you’re dipping your toe into full-time narration or finally tackling much-needed upgrades to your space, this episode of ACX University has something for everyone.

[@dominiccarlos4854]

Geroge the Tech is a wealth of information for home studio. Thank you ACX for having him!

[@TrePreston]

His tip about the CLICKER......FIIIIIIRE!!! Such a dope simple idea!!! Watching every single video that you guys have out!! THANK YOU so much for all the info!!

[@dangracia7805]

***WARNING*** Be careful about cloud backups if you don't have a fast internet connection. Had used a cloud backup for my computer a few years back and had a catastrophic hard drive fail. I thought, "no problem, I'll just download the backup." I had a DSL 3mbs connection and it would have taken a month of only using that connection to download the backup to get the 1TB file from the backup company. Instead I paid them an additional $100 to have them send me a small external USB drive with my back up on it. Found out I could have purchased a similar drive for about $60 instead of paying them $100 per year for doing the backup. Windows comes with a backup program as part of the OS and I now use a 3TB USB3 external hard drive to do my back-ups on a constant basis. I also put one on my wife's computer and when her hard drive failed, I installed a new hard drive and loaded the back-up image onto the new drive. Then she was able to pick up where she left off. If you have FIOS, then cloud backup makes sense. If you only need to recover a single file at a time, cloud makes sense too. But if you have a DSL connection and you need to replace your entire hard drive, it's a poor solution.

[@cedarhillpublishing6703]

Thank you for doing this series. The information is always helpful.

[@sheristewart2333]

Thank you so much.. such great information!!!

[@dangracia7805]

Hannah Wall's sound was kind of hollow and echoing while George the Tech was not. Quite a contrast in sound comparing home recording to home studio. Information was excellent!

[@LearnAudacity]

This was excellent. Thank you!

[@GetOutandKayakMalta]

Thanks! I'm always struggling to get my RMS levels up to snuff without using the plugin. Everything else is fine and passes my checks, just RMS.

[@JaCeeMusic]

thanks hannah! good job. excellent info.

[@WanderingRobotStudio]

I use FFMPEG to list the RMS and peak levels of a mastered file to ensure they match what ACX expects. The Brainworx Masterdesk plugin works very well for mastering. Logic Pro and GarageBand are great. When editing, don't overuse the remove silence function, and make sure disparate sections that were separated by removing silence are faded in and out.

[@janeserafini]

How would you suggest setting up or editing in GarageBand to meet the requirements for ACX?

[@richardbarnett1917]

Thank you for this video.

[@dangracia7805]

The Behringer audio interface is their U-PHORIA UMC202HD. I had one and dropped it damaging the power port. Was almost as expensive to fix as to by another one. They are usually around $100-$119. So bought a better one instead, which is the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Gen3 for a little more ($159). I got the 2 input one because Iprimarily use it for recording a vocal track and instrument track at the same time. The Scarlett has a better sounding preamp than the Midas mic preamps in the Behringer. It also has level lights around the gain knob with green (good signal), Yellow (just below clipping), and red (clipping). That's an LED equivalent to the old analog needle gauges. I've found this very handy because I can set my gain level so the loudest parts go yellow but not red. When they go red (clipping) it distorts the signal in a very ugly way. The Scarlett also has 1/4" balanced outputs (TPS) to send to an external device besides the computer if needed.

[@bobbybrillphotography]

George is awesome!!!

[@clyderouge1894]

Great stuff, thanks :o)

[@ctursi3234]

where can we find George's "mastering techniques" ??

[@aprilteesdale3146]

These were the exact questions I had. Thank you both for this video and the resources provided.

[@robertcherny8660]

Colleagues, one concept that was touched upon might bear additional discussion. Editing with headphones versus speakers becomes even more relevant than the presenters implied when we consider how the end-user will listen to the finished product. The majority of our customers will listen to the works we produce on earbuds or headphones. I have spent my entire career in the live event business and we always adapt our audio delivery systems to the size of the venue. If the final product is to be delivered in a giant stadium over a flown line-array speaker system for thousands of people, it should be edited using speakers. If the final product is to be delivered to an individual using earbuds or even the highest of high-tech headphones, it should be edited on headphones. IMHO, even after the final edit, you might be well advised to listen to the final product, the MP3, on the type of device the user is likely to use wearing a set of earbuds.

[@LeahAnn4]

Loving all of this!

[@luisamedina1]

Where can we find some Mastering tutorials for Audacity and such? Thanks a lot!

[@ereman6]

What do you think of the bose noise canceling headphones.

[@fullchargefightgear]

The latest audacity update includes punch and roll. Nice!

[@MrScratch69]

Can anyone tell me if lexis audio editor is suitable for getting the sound and manipulation I need?

[@TechnologyJunkie]

Reaper also works well on Linux.

[@laurennikole9695]

I have the yeti blue. Does anyone else use this mic?

[@ctursi3234]

i am newbie and bought a Blue Yeti USB mic. would i benefit from a "pop filter" ??

[@WilliamShakspere]

Always use a pop filter, and if you have a Blue Yeti make certain to check the Audacity forum for information on how to remove the evil "Mosquito Whine" of the Yeti. If you can get a better microphone, you should, as soon as possible. The yeti is really not intended for this kind of work, though there are some narrators who have gotten by with it.

[@thomas6866]

Why Acx does not pay authors and never answer to emails???

[@fletcherbrown728]

Hanna. Go back s as and listen, starting at about 25 minutes and then apply the lessons prior to your next attempt. I’m glad a stayed past my initial impulse to click off after first first 20 seconds of horrible audio because this episode is full of great, practical, beginners tips.

[@justnotg00d]

Wealth of information, very useful. I wish you had a better perspective / viewpoint of what is affordable. Mic: $100-$200, Software: $100-$200, pre-amp: $100-$200, headphones: $100-$200, sound insulation, blankets, all types of items. Are you hearing yourself? Not even close to affordable. Yes, affordable for someone who is already making $30,000 - $50,000 per year, but not for someone who lost their job because of COVID. Not even. Thanks though, for making my dream even further away. I am going to look for some "cheap" quilts or something. Get some 2x4 to make a frame (carpenter, can do) and see what I can "throw" together, to see if it sticks to the wall. . . .

[@robertcherny8660]

John, I was working at a tradeshow where we needed a recording booth in a hurry so we built one out of a bunch of PVC and multiple layers of hotel towels. It wasn't perfect, but it eliminated everything but the forklifts' backup beepers.

[@GeorgeTheTech]

Losing a job due to COVID is a major hardship, that's awful, John! I have a $300 bicycle I love to ride that would be considered laughably cheap to a cycling enthusiast and out of reach to a person without a job. There is no single bar for what affordable can mean. Also, please don't consider starting a new business recording audiobooks a way out of debt. It takes more than.a year to reach a point of profitability, let alone making a living wage.

[@sunnydaze7580]

It's bizarre and ironic that George sounds great and you are painful to listen to, on a video tutorial about sound quality! He's talking about a closet and you're like ABSOLUTELY, whilst sounding ear-piercingly tinny in a large room. Beyond that though, failure to edit the final product's sound leaves me totally baffled. A video about none other than, wait for it, SOUND QUALITY, should be exemplary and have, sorry to be pedantic, good sound quality. Clearly, the entire basis of this video is that not having a sound studio in your home is not an excuse. George sounds great though. Maybe you should've practiced what he was preaching instead of giving him (and us) lip service. This oversight is, at best, farcical, and at worst, negligent.

[@marliw]

Unhelpful Videos it’s not that deep. Take a deep breath

[@beckyboyd2136]

I don't know. I think he had an awful lot of mouth noise. Agree about her. First thing I thought.

[@ianmorris2593]

Alternatively, it could be seen as a useful juxtaposition. Untreated vs. treated. She’s also not positioning herself as an audio expert, but instead bringing the expert in to contribute. I get what you’re saying, and I went the studiobricks/Neumann/Apollo route, because I’m obsessive about audio quality too. Let’s keep the space positive though!

[@GeorgeTheTech]

@@beckyboyd2136 I must have been nervous! I didn't the post-production on this video, or I would have cleaned that up.