So not entirely music related, but my don’t-use-reddit policy and this looking like the closest not entirely dead community has led me to post sooo…
I have an audio question about recording levels. I’m doing voice-over stuff for some really bad Youtube videos I’d like to make and it never sounds remotely good.
I get that the recording volume should be just the green side of clipping, but how do you take a track, and then add it to other tracks and balance the whole thing to not sound like ass?
It always seems that it’s either too loud or too quiet and I’m baffled as to how to tweak the mix correctly so that things sound right.
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Sounds like you need ducking. Side chain compression on the audio tracks keyed to your voiceover track.
Compressors and complementary EQing will solve 90% of your problems. The rest is the subjective stuff.
People are going at this with a music production mindset, and while not wrong, I think it’s overkill and it might not be the result you want.
At the studio I work at, where we do voiceovers and dubbing, the mix is made by manually adjusting the levels while listening to it. That’s it. If the voice is too loud, move the fader down a bit; if it’s too quiet, move the fader up. No compression needed, just volume automation.
We do use some sidechaining but only for narrator.
You can also check the overall levels to see if your LUFS and true peak and all that is correct; but if you’re doing it for yourself, just keep the original audio at around -18dB, and that should give you margin for the voiceover (if the voiceover peaks above -1dB and it still feels too quiet, you may need to go a bit lower with the background).
I suggest you first think about what your sources are? What microphones? Does it match the voice? How’s the proximity? How does the room sound? Can you hear the room? Not saying this is your case and it sounds harsher than what it means, but the old saying of “shit in, shit out” is always a good place to start. Check your sources.
It also sounds like compression might be needed on the vocal to level it. That way, whether you duck the BG music to the vocal, or have just vocals alone, things are even. EQ also plays a part in where stuff fits in the whole spectrum of sound.
Keep in mind that if the dynamics and equalization is off on each individual track, it’s trickier to balance stuff out bc it’s kinda untamed.
Seconding track leveling and compression, especially if the parts are recorded separately or you’re not used to live performance.
(This isn’t to say that track level dynamics aren’t important, especially in non-pop music)
Solution update:
Lots of advice, and I found what I needed: it was audio compression. This was not a thing I had a clue existed, but it’s exactly what I needed.
Resolve does it natively, and having it compress the voice track, and then adding some ducking and fiddling with the volume levels resulted in closer (if not exactly) to what I was expecting/needing.
Like, that was 90% of the problem, and I’m sure the last 10% is simply a skill issue and I’ll get it sorted out.
Thanks for telling me what I should be looking for, since it’s kinda hard to find the answer for something when you don’t know what the thing you need is called.
