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Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

mattstauffer.com

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Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#81

Post by nickjj »

adamwathan wrote: post #74
nickjj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A noise gate does not remove hiss or static, it simply reduces the volume of the signal when it gets below a certain level. But the end result is with a configured noise gate the audio coming out will not appear to have as much hiss or room noise. Check out the Youtube video I linked of his. It's super noticeable. With Sony MDR-V6 headphones, I hear a huge amount of hiss in his audio. To the point where it's distra…

What you're hearing in that video is a space heater running in my office — I don't put a ton of effort into making everything perfect for ad hoc live streams. A proper screencast is probably the better thing to judge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff_n_QClipQ I'm sure you'll find something to nitpick over but I think it's pretty good for a programming tutorial recorded in my home office.

> I'm sure you'll find something to nitpick over but I think it's pretty good for a programming tutorial recorded in my home office.

It's not nit picking.

The video you linked sounds much much better and really really good. Besides turning off your heater did you do any other processing with software afterwards? Such as using your video editor's noise cancellation filters or a proper DAW?

I'm just asking because taking a quick skim through your videos, your live stream videos all have some form of hiss but your shorter non-live screencasts do not which makes me think additional post-processing is being done on them.

But I think the OP's channel intro video and your live stream video is a good example of the importance of managing background noise, which isn't mentioned in the article at all but it's probably the most important thing to do and you can't just blindly throw money at the problem to fix it with no prior knowledge.

For a professional set up, it seems like a no brainer to want to filter out background and room noise before it even hits your computer. That's some of what the DBX does. This way the amount of effort it takes to do a live stream or screencast is the same when it comes to audio quality. You just turn it on and hit record, and you're done. It also works the same in OBS, your video recording tool of choice, zoom, hangouts, skype or any program that records your mic.

You mentioned being an audio engineer. Surely you know how important having a good audio source is, and how time consuming the editing process is when you need to fiddle with cleaning things up after the fact. Configuring all of this stuff to happen live is something I did after recording about 20 videos. Now 400+ videos later I couldn't imagine having to do post-processing on videos just to clean up audio.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#82

Post by zigzaggy »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #76

One 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…

What would that look like? Can you provide a couple of specific pieces of hardware examples?

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#83

Post by meheleventyone »

adamwathan wrote: post #74
nickjj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A noise gate does not remove hiss or static, it simply reduces the volume of the signal when it gets below a certain level. But the end result is with a configured noise gate the audio coming out will not appear to have as much hiss or room noise. Check out the Youtube video I linked of his. It's super noticeable. With Sony MDR-V6 headphones, I hear a huge amount of hiss in his audio. To the point where it's distra…

What you're hearing in that video is a space heater running in my office — I don't put a ton of effort into making everything perfect for ad hoc live streams. A proper screencast is probably the better thing to judge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff_n_QClipQ I'm sure you'll find something to nitpick over but I think it's pretty good for a programming tutorial recorded in my home office.

You’ve probably tried it but OBS has a reasonable software noise cancellation filter you can apply to audio sources.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#84

Post by codetrotter »

nickjj wrote: post #10

You 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?

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#85

Post by nickjj »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #66
nickjj wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the example you posted is so obvious I was surprised at it. Yeah I was surprised too. Considering that clip is from the author of the post. > you definitely need to be more mindful of your setup and not just have some wall-mounted panels and your tower right next to your mic. Mine is on the floor, under my desk, which has a large thick piece of wood (the desktop) as a barrier and it still comes through without a no…

A single wooden panel won't do much to help you in that situation regardless. It's a great reflector and wouldn't absorb much of the noise, especially of the sides are wide open. Most people, especially someone just recording dev screencasts or video conferencing don't at all need a $300-350 preamp. It just seems like so much overkill. You could get perfectly usable noise reduction baked into Audacity, or with $50 pl…

> Most people, especially someone just recording dev screencasts or video conferencing don't at all need a $300-350 preamp. It just seems like so much overkill. You could get perfectly usable noise reduction baked into Audacity, or with $50 plugin if the noise is existing.

I do record dev screencasts. Using Audacity is ok but it's extremely tedious if you record a lot of videos.

That means for every video you create you need to split and export your audio, import it into Audacity, get a noise sample, filter it out, export the new audio, import it back into your video editor and then edit as planned.

That work flow will drain your soul if you're trying to record a 150 video course, or you put out new videos every day.

Some video editors like Camtasia, Screenflow and Resolve have decent enough noise cancellation filters where you can press 1 button and wait 10 seconds to avoid having to do that with Audacity, but it also means if you ever do live streaming you'll need to set up a different type of VST with OBS, otherwise your live streams will sound bad.

But you're right, for starting out I wouldn't bother with any of that. That's why I think the AT2005 is a great mic for $80 bucks. It works over USB on its own but it also has XLR support so you can "grow" into it if you decide to use hardware to save time later. The DBX is a lot more than a $300 pre-amp btw.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#86

Post by devmunchies »

JshWright wrote: post #69
nickjj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A noise gate does not remove hiss or static, it simply reduces the volume of the signal when it gets below a certain level. But the end result is with a configured noise gate the audio coming out will not appear to have as much hiss or room noise. Check out the Youtube video I linked of his. It's super noticeable. With Sony MDR-V6 headphones, I hear a huge amount of hiss in his audio. To the point where it's distra…

> But the end result is with a configured noise gate the audio coming out will not appear to have as much hiss or room noise. > Check out the Youtube video I linked of his. It's super noticeable. With Sony MDR-V6 headphones, I hear a huge amount of hiss in his audio. To the point where it's distracting and drowns out his voice. If the noise floor is high enough that it interferes with the actual signal, a gate is jus…

> a gate is just going to make it more annoying to listen to (as you hear the noise cut in and out)

my experience as well. its best to just use an EQ to dampen all high frequencies over a threshold so that its not distracting.

It would like this in the EQ: https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/styles/news_large/s3/im...

I was a recording engineer at a TV studio before I got into programming. When we used gates it was very shallow, long compression so you couldn't notice abrupt changes.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#87

Post by ravenstine »

SuddsMcDuff wrote: post #79
ravenstine wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use my Blue Yeti on cardioid mode without headphones and the noise picked up is relatively minimal. My apartment is pretty quiet to begin with, but cardioid limits some of the noise and also seems to prevent feedback. (which is taken care of to some degree by the software, but I never have issues when cardioid is on)

Do you remember what the factory default was? I expect most people who aren't au fait with pickup patterns will either leave it on the factory default or put it in stereo (which looks very similar to omni).

Unfortunately, I don't.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#88

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

zigzaggy wrote: post #82
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #76

One 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…

What would that look like? Can you provide a couple of specific pieces of hardware examples?

Any USB audio interface such as those made by Focusrite, MOTU and many others. That plugs into your computer.

Any XLR mic, such as the Shure models mentioned in the article. That plugs into the audio interface.

Any (analog+wired) headphones (you'll have my MDR-7506s over my dead body). These plug into the audio interface.

Done.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#90

Post by leviathant »

nickjj wrote: post #81
adamwathan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're hearing in that video is a space heater running in my office — I don't put a ton of effort into making everything perfect for ad hoc live streams. A proper screencast is probably the better thing to judge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff_n_QClipQ I'm sure you'll find something to nitpick over but I think it's pretty good for a programming tutorial recorded in my home office.

> I'm sure you'll find something to nitpick over but I think it's pretty good for a programming tutorial recorded in my home office. It's not nit picking. The video you linked sounds much much better and really really good. Besides turning off your heater did you do any other processing with software afterwards? Such as using your video editor's noise cancellation filters or a proper DAW? I'm just asking because taki…

I listened to the first clip expecting it to be much worse than it ended up being. I'm listening on HD280pros, the headphones I keep at work, although I use Sony MDR-7506s when I'm in front of my audio gear.

The noise floor sounded more to me like bad gain staging than it sounds like fans and room noise. And I honestly think that the majority of people who watch that video aren't going to notice. I think you're too close to the process. 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.

A long time ago, I was mixing down some rough recordings of my band, and as I was putting everything together, I kept hearing the squeak of my cheap kick pedal every time I hit the bass drum. It was incessant, and it didn't help that I typically played at upwards of 160bpm. I tried EQ, notch filtering, all kinds of things available to me back in 2002 to try and get rid of that squeak without destroying the other things coming through the room mic, and I just couldn't do it, so I had to leave it in. No one else in the band could hear what I was talking about.

On my way home, I put in a CD by the band Cake that I'd had for a couple of years at this point, and I had heard probably a hundred times before. And even though it had never stood out to me at all before, all of the sudden the only thing I could hear on this professionally recorded album was THE SQUEAK OF THE KICK PEDAL. It was absolutely maddening.

I went on an electronic music binge for a couple of months after that, just to cleanse my palette.

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