What are your top tips and best practices for reducing background noise?

[MarinaT]

Hey there, instructors! 👋

Let's talk about a common challenge we all face: background noise in our course audio. It's often the unwelcome guest that can distract learners and diminish the quality of our content. While we can't always control external noise, we do have power over our recording environments.

So, I'm reaching out to all of you for some shared wisdom! What are your top tips and best practices for reducing background noise in your videos?

 Whether it's through equipment choices, setup tweaks, or innovative solutions, I'm eager to learn from your experiences.

Drop your insights in the comments below! Let's collaborate and help each other create clearer, more professional audio for our courses.

[IanBradley63]

As someone with a dog that loves attention when he knows I am recording, I have a few steps.

A good microphone will help, don't have it on the desk. Close to your face to remove the need for boosting the volume in the post

I use the adobe suite, they have some great tools to remove background rumble and noise.

Multiple takes really help, when you feel a take is ruined do another take, and splice together them in post, having options is great! If you have a decent PC there is a NVIDIA Broadcast which does wonders for me in live learns

[Edouard Renard]

If I'm recording in a coworking place (private office): go to the office on Sunday morning, or record between 6am-8am 🙃. If there is noise (door smashing somewhere, etc), pause, start talking again, and cut when editing.

If there are dogs in the background, wait (and sometimes swear) while the dogs are barking, and of course, cut all that when editing.

If it happens that there will be construction nearby and it's just too noisy, take the day off or do something else.

Then on top of that, to remove unwanted reverb, I use pillows, blankets, clothes, or acoustic panels. (although this doesn't remove background noises, it's only for reverb and getting a cleaner voice)

[PhillipBurton]

I use Auphonic.com to remove background noises. 

See https://auphonic.com/blog/2023/11/29/eliminate-breathing-sounds-and-mouth-noises/ for details.

Phillip

[Edouard Renard]

Thanks for sharing! I will probably try on my next course.

[Joomik3]

Hello MarinaT,

First you should always record in a quiet environment as good as it can be. Then in post production you can clean it more without damaging the audio quality by not over doing it. Personally through my experience in sound, i use Edison in fl studio to track the nouse profile and reduce it so its not audible. Other option is to use the Izotope RX denoise plugin. In most DAW you will find plugins for nouse reduction. 

[FrankKane]

Using a directional, dynamic microphone instead of a condenser can help too. They are less sensitive, and pick up less background noise as a result.

Also getting the mic as close to you as possible (without clipping the input) will ensure it picks up more of you, and less of everything else. A boom arm can help a lot with this. For most mics, if you extend your thumb and pinky fingers from each other, that's about the right distance. But for some dynamic mics (like the Shure SM7B I use) you want to be pretty much on top of it, which helps even more.

[ChrisWoodward]

I use OBS and a gaming headset to record a window capture of my material. When I use PowerPoint, I can use my headset to record my audio. It isn't pristine studio quality, but every training video I've ever watched at work that was supplied by a $1Billion+ company definitely wasn't pristine studio quality.

I would say a general effort to minimize background noise will suffice in most cases.

Using a directional mic will do wonders, but will limit how much you can move around. Reducing the level of the mic will also make it pick up less. If you are right in front of it where you should be, it shouldn't create an issue.

I was a professional musician in the studio and on the stage for twenty years. Perfection really is the enemy of execution. Do a good job, but don't make courses for the quality of your sound.