How to Remove Something to Improve Your Voice Recording

Did you know you can sweeten and improve the sound of your voice recording (podcasts, voice-overs for video and sermons) simply by removing a few particular trouble spots?

It's true and it's often the best place to start when you're recording dialogue or spoken word recordings from home.

There's sure to be some imperfections in your voice recording when capturing it with your mic in the typical square rooms that we have in our homes.

Not to mention from that ill-timed passing train (this gets me all the time...) or the pesky computer fan that always seems to make its way onto my recordings.

But there are other problem areas in our spoken word recordings that are less obvious than that train whistle...

Stabbing Sibilance

The first thing to reduce are those harsh sounding "T" and "S" sounds in words that jump out of your speakers or headphones (this is called sibilance).

These kill my ears when I record myself speaking and are some of the most prominent sounds in any voice recording.

You can test this by turning any dialogue recording you're listening to way down where you barely hear the words.

Now, notice how most of what you hear at this low volume will be the "S" and "T" sounds of words jumping out even though you can't hear the rest of the speech! 

This shows that these sounds are at a higher volume and are very apparent to the human ear.

This means, you'll almost always need to reduce these sibilant sounds that reside in the upper frequency areas somewhere between 3000 and 10,000 Hz (Hertz) to sweeten your voice-over or podcast recording.

For a complete step by step guide on how to do this and with what tools (i.e. plug-ins) check out my free Voice Recording Problem Solving Guide

• see Problem 1: The Piercing "S" on page 3.

Muddy Lows and Mids

Another area you can reduce if your voice recording doesn't sound clear is "muddy" lows and low-mids in the frequency spectrum.

It's common to need some balancing in these frequency areas in sermon, podcast or voice-over for video recordings.

The specific area in question is around 200 to 500 Hz if your voice recording is sounding dull or muffled.

You would look for a broad bump or peak in that area that jumps out above the rest of the frequencies on the spectrum.

See red box below where I'm cutting just under 500 Hz:

A gentle EQ cut or reduction in this area can "clear out" or "open up" the sound of the higher frequencies in your voice recording.

This gives you that crisp and clear sound that is easily understandable by whoever is listening.

However, only reduce in this area if something is out of balance.

You don't want to cut out that "warm" part of your voice too much or you'll end up with a thin and unnatural sounding dialogue recording.

Again, for a step by step approach that will help you learn to use an EQ, check out my free Voice Recording Problem Solving Guide

• see Problem 2: Dull and Muffled on page 6.

Rumble and High Frequency Harshness

Finally, two less obvious areas, that you can easily remove and sweeten your voice recording in the process, are the extreme low and high frequencies.

We typically can't hear these areas easily, but they do affect the most important parts of your voice recording that everyone hears.

Microphones pick up extreme low frequency hum and rumble while digital processing can introduce ultra high frequency issues that result in a brittle sounding upper end of our voice.

Get in the habit of cutting these areas to improve the clarity and loudness potential of your voice recording.

When you bring up the overall volume of your recording before release, you don't want to amplify rumble and harsh upper frequencies in the process - just the good stuff!

Look at the same EQ image from above again to see how I used high pass and low pass filters on my voice recording:

Notice the steep drop-off at the left and right of the yellow marking over the frequency spectrum.

Those are the filters, also called cuts, and you can see them ending roughly around the 10 Hz and 40,000 Hz areas.

This is way outside of human hearing, but the actual frequencies of the cuts are at 15 Hz (very low) and 25,000 Hz (very high).

This is to remove audio garbage while not affecting the most important frequencies of your voice!

Summary

You can quickly and easily improve the sound of your podcast, sermon or voice-over for video with these steps!

Just try removing the 3 problem areas I mentioned above if you notice them cropping up in your voice recording.

Bear in mind that the very low and high frequency issues (rumble and high frequency harshness) have a much more subtle effect on your voice recording than the sibilance or mud issues.

Sibilance and muddy audio you can hear quite easily.

And, if you need a tool to do these steps, here's a free and fantastic plug-in from Tokyo Dawn Records that I use all the time (called TDR Nova).

This plug-in can easily solve the 3 problem areas I mentioned and many, many more.

Try these simple steps on your voice recordings today and achieve a clearer and more professional sound for your listeners.

What other suggestions do you have for improving the quality of your dialogue voice recordings?

I would love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

Cheers, Bryan
Your Dialogue Editing Mentor