I've recently been thinking about really improving my home office lighting setup. For example, most of my meetings are with Zoom and on video, and proper studio lighting can go a long way to making a good impression. We all want to look good, right?
Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
101–110 of 131 posts
Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
#102One small point I'd like to make regarding USB mics (and USB headsets): the #1 rule of digital audio is to only have a single sample clock for the entire system (the sample clock is the thing that defines when a voltage value gets converted to/generated from a digital sample). Although I understand the plug-n-play appeal of these devices, they uniformly violate this rule because they cannot share whatever sample cloc…
Are you claiming to be able to "hear" resampling, and I dont mean 20 year old naive implementations like Cretive SB Live. Sample clock, and its phase is irrelevant as long as you pass Nyquist threshold, reconstructed signal will be indistinguishable from original.
You might want to read https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that linked YouTube video, I didn't hear hiss or find anything objectionable in the sound. But I found it really distracting the way the microphone was so big in the picture. It even looked like it could be easily adjusted so the mic was in the same place but the stand was more out of the way. But if it was me, I'd go for a smaller / less obtrusive one even if the sound wasn't quite as good. Funny how different pe…
Headphones play a big role here. If I plug in my budget earbuds I can't notice anything but with my studio headphones (which I normally use for everything) it's super distracting.
Studio headphones ftw!
But yeah it's true, you hear more 'imperfections' when using higher-end audio gear. Wouldn't go back though.
Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
#104I've recently been thinking about really improving my home office lighting setup. For example, most of my meetings are with Zoom and on video, and proper studio lighting can go a long way to making a good impression. We all want to look good, right?
I've been thinking the same, well that I need to get better lighting in general - I have remote calls daily and during the summer that's fine because there's sunlight all the time whilst I'm working.
But now in the winter, it gets dark quite early and my normal room lighting is not bright enough. Doesn't make me look exactly as if I'm sitting in the dark but it's close to it :P
Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
#105You can spend $700+ on his high end audio recommendations but 90% of home office style recording environments (even with acoustic panels) are going to have a noticeable amount of background hiss (computer fans, etc.) get picked up and his set up doesn't account for that. If you goto the OP's Youtube channel and listen to his recordings, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh0sTxLs9VA , there is a HUGE amount…
> Ultimately your real natural voice is going to play one of the biggest roles in how you sound in the end. Therein lies the main problem for me personally. Is there a way to train your voice to become more comfortable for others to listen to?
If you're serious about it, I'd look for a voice coach. It's likely easier to find someone who trains singers than who focuses only on speaking. That is fine. Vocal technique is largely the same.
Additionally, I'd look into something like Toastmasters. This will give you a great place to practice outside of formal lessons with a voice coach.
Being comfortable to listen to is about both your vocal technique - the mechanics of how you form sound - and about your content and delivery.
Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
#106To be honest, investing in a whole studio setup for remote work seems to go against one of the biggest perks of remote work itself: freedom. Stock is usually good enough. That money is better invested on a pair of comfortable headphones, and also some good on-the-go light headphones with micro to hold remote calls outside of a quiet environment.
Freedom to arrange my workspace in whatever form makes me the most effective, productive, and comfortable sounds like freedom to me.
But most importantly, I'm 100% sure my expensive ($1500-ish?) audio setup has been a competitive advantage for me. I've had numerous people comment that they are relieved when they find out they can comfortably converse with me, and how outside the norm that is. From my own experience, I can attest that most people are oblivious to the discomfort they can cause by not putting reasonable effort into the quality of their team or client's experience.
Two things annoy me greatly enough to want to avoid having to work with someone.
1. Being late / unprepared / distracted in meetings
2. Having to tolerate a literal headache due to background noise, awful sound quality, or constant technical issues during a call.
Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
#107You can spend $700+ on his high end audio recommendations but 90% of home office style recording environments (even with acoustic panels) are going to have a noticeable amount of background hiss (computer fans, etc.) get picked up and his set up doesn't account for that. If you goto the OP's Youtube channel and listen to his recordings, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh0sTxLs9VA , there is a HUGE amount…
> Ultimately your real natural voice is going to play one of the biggest roles in how you sound in the end. Therein lies the main problem for me personally. Is there a way to train your voice to become more comfortable for others to listen to?
> Is there a way to train your voice to become more comfortable for others to listen to?
This is something I struggle with too honestly.
I've recorded 400+ videos and I still think my voice is -ultra- cringe and I feel like it gets worn out after talking for only maybe an hour straight.
So what I usually do is record for about 45 minutes, then edit for a few hours and then go back to recording when my voice is fresh. I drink plenty of water while editing too.
I don't have any professional advice since I'm just a dude who records screencasts. But I think my biggest problem related to getting worn out is I tend to talk slightly louder than normal when I'm recording because I still internally link loudness with tone variance and "energy". So maybe talking less loud, raising the gain on my mic and learning how to have more tone variance without talking louder would be something to look into. If I were to guess this is probably a common problem for many folks.
Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
#108I recently got a green screen to use during my video conferencing. I thought it would be fun just to mess with my co-workers, make it look like I'm on the Mars or something. I've yet to figure out how to get it to work with gotomeeting/skype/hangouts video though. I've found apps that can do it for recorded video, but I suppose it's on the camera to have the chroma effect available. Which the one I have doesn't do. I…
Check out http://camtwiststudio.com or http://manycam.com.
Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would venture that almost no one else in this thread would watch that video and call that an all-caps HUGE amount of noise. I listened to the video and while I wouldn’t go all-caps, it’s way more noise that I like to listen to. So I downloaded the audio track and measured the RMS noise and signal levels, getting about a 30dB SNR. That’s a somewhat bad number, which matches my subjective experience. A few years ag…
Thanks for doing the work to get the RMS noise and signal levels. Yeah just casually comparing it to other random videos and podcasts, IMO it's really noticeable. I was going to post a screenshot comparison of that between all 3 videos but it's probably not worth the effort. It's tricky to compare just by hearing because headphone quality plays a massive difference. On some headphones you can't hear anything but on o…
As I’m reading your comment I have the MDR-7506 (the V6 is discontinued, I think) right next to me.
They’re almost useless for mixing, but whenever I record something with a mic, I’ll put headphones on and crank up the mic gain. Does wonders for getting clean recordings.
Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming
#110A little off topic: has anyone managed to have chroma key effect on Mac ? I'm also thinking to have almost same concept youtube channel. But, I also want to have chroma-key background. any ideas ?
Check out http://camtwiststudio.com or maybe http://manycam.com.