YouTube is a great method for promoting your business. But good audio is essential for viewer enjoyment on YouTube, as well as a good looking video. You really want both clear video and good audio for YouTube, and don’t compromise on either. This doesn’t mean it needs to be expensive though.
Get the Mic Closer
One of the easiest ways to capture good audio for YouTube is to simply place the microphone closer to the subject being recorded, whether that is you or another person. Choosing the right mic is also important, but we will cover this later in the blog.
There are several methods you can use to get the mic closer, put it on a person, point it at a person, or put it next to a person. The first two are determined by the mic choice, the last one can be done with virtually any cardioid mic and a versatile gadget.
Eliminate Ambient Noise
Just like a mirror reflects light, hard surfaces such as walls and floors reflect sound. Recording on a tile floor with bare walls behind the subject will reflect all the extra noise around them. You can either soften the surfaces or cut down the surrounding noise.
The easier and cheaper method is to reduce the extra noise around you. If you are interviewing someone in a crowded room, it could be hard to focus on the subject’s audio. If you can wait until the room is less crowded, you will have less noise to deal with.
Outdoors, you might encounter traffic noise, industrial noise, or wind. If you have the opportunity to choose another time when the noise level is lower, you will be able to capture better YouTube video audio quality. Lens focus motor noise can be a major source of distraction.
Either prefocus and turn off autofocus or choose lenses with quieter focusing. Built in hyper sonic or ultrasonic focus motors that are in many newer versions of lenses can virtually eliminate this problem.
A few good options that you can use to eliminate ambient noise is to use acoustic foam soundproofing panels to be able to eliminate the ambient noise when recording audio as this will stop any audio bouncing off of surfaces.
Choose a Good Mic For YouTube Ads
While the built-in microphone on a new camera or smartphone is good quality, you can improve your YouTube video audio quality dramatically by the simple addition of an external microphone.
For voice recording, lavalier mics, either wired or wireless, are an industry standard. Other microphones for recording good audio for YouTube ads are cardioid mics on a mount or an on camera shotgun mic.
Lavalier mics are preferred by many YouTubers for voice recording. They fit right on a person and you can either opt for inexpensive wired versions or spend more for the wireless mics. If you use wireless mics, you will need to watch out for radio interference that can negatively affect your audio for YouTube ads.
Having good quality visual and audio is incredibly important on YouTube to give your viewers the best possible experience, which should bring them back over and over again to your channel.