Improving Sound in Sermons

[Matthewlawson3]

Hi I've been putting my church's sermons in the form of a podcast for about a year now. Though I am happy with the sound. I guess basically exactly step by step I would like to know what features and settings in Adobe Audition could I use to make it sound better? Thanks and God Bless.

[RobotsLove]

Well there is a rule: Junk in = Junk out. The first thing I have to ask you about is mic placement. Since you didn't leave a link, I don't know how it sounds now so I'll just give you some general tips.

1. Get the mic closer
Use a podium mic from the pulpit if you aren't already. There is no amount of processing that will make someone who is talking into the mic at the back of the room sound like they're talking right into it. I don't think most churches would mind if you could ask to have a pulpit mic.

2. Setting a proper recording level
Since you don't have to mix speech with anything else, you can set your mixers channel and master level to 7 and then adjust the channel's mic gain until talking produces a nice high level, but not clipping, on your mixer. If your pastor is a little enthuastic, you might need to lower the level so you have some headroom to work with.

3. EQ
You can fatten up speech by raising 100hz slightly, and you can add some presence from raising around 2kHz slightly. Going too crazy will make your mic sound cheap and tinny or muddy/boxy.

If you could explain your recording setup and give a link to your recordings I may be able to give you more advice.

[Matthewlawson3]

Thanks for the tip on the mixer, though we have a guy who handles the mixer. I just handle the post production-digital conversion, etc. So that's basically where I need some help mostly. But I will keep those tips in mind and relay them.

The link to my blog for the podcasts is

http://reidtowncommunitychurchpodcast.blogspot.com/


And you can just listen to the first one listed "Vessels of Honor".

The recording setup he knows more about but the mic is a Lavelier mic(Lapel Mic). We do not have a podium mic because well my preacher likes to move around alot.


Thanks and God Bless.

[WyethDigital]

Too much bass or compression. Probably on the mixer side. I don't really use Audacity, so I can't help with that. All I can tell you is to tell your sound guy that the least amount of processing the better; and if the minister has the mic buried under a robe or frock, he should loosen the garments over it, or wear it under less layers. He could also move it up closer to his neck.

Eric

[RobotsLove]

I would do noise removal, add a little presence at 2kHz, maybe remove a little muddiness around 250hz to 500Hz (both using the EQ).

Also use the FFT filter to do a lowpass filter around 10kHz, the high end is making a lot of mp3 sound artifacts but I think noise reduction will also help that.

When encoding mp3, pick the best quality codec under advanced settings.