How To Reduce Your Noise Floor - For Beginners 

Thank you so much for taking the time to watch and comment!

Thank you for the support, I'm glad it was informative :) :)

You are so welcome!

I'm so glad it was helpful!

That's great! I mostly recommend avoiding noise reduction to beginners because some people think you can just apply it without understanding what it does and it really messes up the quality. If you find a way to use it that works well for you that is awesome! I still think getting the cleanest quietest noise floor to start with is the best option so you don't even need it, but you need to work with what you have.

Thank you so much!

You're welcome! Thanks for listening :)

@@KatelynDawnVoiceover I look forward to watching more of your videos. I am still a newbie! Did two demos but still have a ton of technical questions :) Thanks again!

Yes! It is definitely helpful to check your levels before you record. The nice thing is, once you set them you can pretty much leave them as is. Unless you have a job that requires you to be a lot louder than normal. Most DAWs have this feature so you can probably search for tutorials online on where to find that in your DAW. Best of luck!

Thank you Karyn! That is a great idea! I should do a video showing my whole studio space :)

Cool! I don't even know what that is! I'll have to look into it!

An Furman pl8c would work ?

Thanks, Ryan! Great to have you here. The advice I received in my training from the audio engineer at Edge Studio was to have vocal levels hit -12dB and -6dB while you are recording. You will need to normalize to -3dB.

@@KatelynDawnVoiceover ah, maybe voiceover has a different target range than music.

Here's one example video that talks about -18db: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LJHm931XQGk.html

Thank you so much!

You are great teacher

You are great teacher

You are great teacher

Hi Leah, I made a blanket statement to never use noise reduction as a lot of people new to audio editing treat it as a bandaid quick fix when there are many other things you can do first. If you listen to my interview I did with Larry Hudson he chats a bit about noise reduction and you can check that out as Larry is a proponent of noise reduction - with the caveat that you need to get your noise floor low enough that when you apply your noise reduction it is barely noticeable. If it is just taking your noise floor from -55dB to -60dB that is when you want to use it. I recommend shooting Larry Hudson a message, or "Uncle Roy". These are 2 great resources in the VO industry who can do a studio consult with you. My long answer to your question is this: Follow all the steps I provided in the video to make your audio as clean as possible. Try to mitigate noise in your room. Create some kind of booth for yourself. Add as much noise absorbing materials as you can. Then I would use a high pass filter (accidentally called it a low pass filter in the video). This is a setting in your EQ settings. You want to do what is called a "roll off" for your very low frequencies. These are those annoying rumbles when a car drives down your street, or your air conditioner and fridge are on. These low frequencies (from 0kHz to about 75 kHz or 100 kHz if female) are not in the spectrum of where your voice lies. So we just get rid of those completely. This can sometimes be that last final trick to get you to -60dB WITHOUT impacting the frequencies that your voice lies within. There is also the factor of "self-noise" in your microphone. My Neumann TLM 103 has self noise of 7dB. The Rode NT1 is 4.5. These are usually so minimal that it doesn't matter. But mic quality plays a role in giving you clean audio. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk haha! I also love using IZotope RX to do some final polishing, but Audacity should give you all the tools I mentioned in the video

Yes!! The multimeter is so helpful in logic! If you want to get forensic about it, Waveform stats in Izotope RX is even better!

@@KatelynDawnVoiceover perfect!

Yes! Thank you for this comment. I wish I could put a little note on the screen. One of those "oopsies" you can't fix arg! lol :)

Good note!! I actually don't use my noise gate anymore. I played around with it but don't actually need it based on the other sound deadening materials I use in my space.

Well there are no silly questions! And you're right, it does kind of start at 0. On computers we use a different scale with 0 being the clipping point of audio. Everything below 0 (in the minus scale) allows audio not to clip. -5dB has 5dB "head room" until you get to 0. In the real world an acoustic dB of "0" is the quietest that sound can be. But we have a different scale in digital audio. So really, the dB scale could be defined as the scale downward from clipping, or, 0dB. The answer is very technical and I'm not an audio engineer, and there are actually many answers. dB is also a reference to how you are measuring audio. There are many, like: dB, SPL, dBfs, dBm, dBu, dBV, and they all have their own unique ways of measuring audio. Anyway. if anyone is an audio engineer feel free to rip this apart and explain it in a different way LOL Here's a link to a reddit post to learn some more: www.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/comments/dkourt/why_do_we_measure_db_in_negatives/

@@KatelynDawnVoiceover Interesting, thank you for taking the time to explain! Trying to wrap my head around it still but will take a read of the link too. :)

Yay! Way to go on the noise floor. I recently created a double wall for my vocal booth because there were tree removal services AND a house being built beside my house. I'm like a dog with a bone... IT WILL BE QUIET lol!

Not sure how you would of determined that idea considering the fact that the nt1 is the only mic with the quietest self noise.

​@@anthonybrooks3039 Both the 416 and NT1 produce low self noise. The Nt1 however is a large-diaphragm condenser mic which picks up more room noise whereas the 416 has a tight polar pattern and the short interference tube picks up more voice and less room noise.

I would say the same thing about distortion. It is in every DAW as well, but should you use it? You just need to learn about and understand each function and tool within your DAW and what it is doing to your audio overall before you use it.

@@KatelynDawnVoiceover Well you use daw functions to make your voice sound better, which distortion would not. Gotta figure the techies behind every daw put things there for a reason. For me there are no “Do nots.” Use whatever it takes to produce a product you’re happy with.

One of the main use of noise reduction is cleaning up recordings that have too much noise. But nothing beats a clean source with little to no noise!

@@RyanMcQuen I agree 100%. A quiet recording space where you get as close to -60db is essential. My point is, not everyone can reach that holy grail or anywhere near because life gets in the way, that’s why there are noise reduction options in daws and plug ins. So, let’s not say “never use them.” Audio experts invented them for a reason and they can help produce professional sounding results.

@@nogginnogg1788 I think the argument here is a bit of hyperbole, you shouldn't be planning to use them, they are a failsafe in times when you cannot get an ideal recording.

A combination of working with my uncle who is an audio engineer and my training through Edge Studio! :) Happy to help!

Ah I also trained with Edge! They are great. Lovely video.

Yup! Totes right - can't change it now though, LOL

I'd suggest consulting a coach. "Uncle Roy" is probably the VO industry's top audio consulting coach. There are just so many variables to really comment on this. Depends on what DAW you are using, and your setup. I mentioned tools available in most DAWs. I'm not an audio expert but have worked out a system that works for me by consulting with and audio engineer which I can't recommend enough. Best of luck!

lol, thanks for the COMMENT! When giving tips to people brand new to the industry (and audio editing), often you can look at an issue like a noisey background and apply something like a noise reduction plugin and go way overboard and it will sound terrible. I know some big pros in the industry who like the noise reduction tool in AA. When you are dealing with minor noise reduction, it can be a great asset. When you're brand new to the whole idea, I would always suggest that people fix their noise issue at the source, and be very sparing with the many plugins available to them. My 2 cents ;) you don't have to like it. Peace!

@@KatelynDawnVoiceover I agree always best to start with not recording noise. That said, In the city it can be hard to get a -60db noise floor and the aforementioned plugins literally make it a non-issue-without any loss of voice clarity or tonal quality. $200 million productions like Dune wouldn't be using them on Timothy Chalemet's voice if they sounded bad. And they are not removing "light noise." They are removing super noisy gusts of wind hitting boom mics and much more! If you haven't seen the video demos of the aforementioned plugins I highly suggest taking the time to watch and hear is possible today. Wishing you much success!

@@Gnosis2078 Thanks! This video is definitely directed toward beginners. We've all been beginners and there is a tendency to bandaid things by using effects - and using them too heavily. So I'm really focused on helping people learn they need to fix the problem at the source. I'll definitely check out that tool though! Thanks for the comments!