Easy Home Recording Tips To Avoid Ruining Your Audio

Here is an article that gives the kind of advice I really like. It shows you how to prevent messing something up, as opposed to figuring out after the fact when fixing it is hard or impossible. Sure, it’s great to learn from your mistakes. But it can be much faster and less frustrating to learn from somebody else’s mistakes.

This article is pretty brief and I agree with all the points. I will clarify one and add to another though.

#5 says Don’t Do Nothing, and yes, the double-negative is deliberate;). He’s talking about failing to take any actions to prevent recording bad sound from the outset. These actions, the ones you SHOULD take, include things like making sure you use the right mic, putting it on a stand, doing something to reduce the effect of room noise (my best advice for that if you do nothing else is to get your lips close to the mic – like 2-3 inches close; assuming you’re recording vocals, of course.)

# 4 says Don’t Record With Reverb. Though I agree, I think this should be expanded to not recording with any effect. Sometimes a limiter of compressor is useful – maybe – if you are VERY careful and there is no other way to control dynamics. But as a rule, avoid recording with any effects printing along with the source. Once it’s there it can’t be removed. Apply all the effects you want AFTER the pure sound is recorded.

The original article is here: https://www.audio-issues.com/recording-tips/recording-ruin/

Cheers,

Ken