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🎬 YouTube Mastery

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Audio is surprisingly important for Video, especially for talking-head videos...

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Audio is surprisingly important for good videos. Why? Especially those of us making talking head videos. How many of you are trying to communicate knowledge, wisdom, ideas, stories. Raise your hand if that's true.
Particularly through your voice? Well, this is where audio is incredibly important because a lot of people watch I'm sorry. A lot of people listen to YouTube videos. Raise your hand if you often listen to YouTube videos instead of watching them the whole time. I do.
I know many people do a lot of people raise your hands here. So don't shortchange your audio. What I noticed is that I just watch a TEDx talk just now, and I'm like, This is TEDx, and this is like someone recording from their home on on on the TEDx. I'm like, your audio is terrible. Okay.
So what? Don't don't you what shouldn't you do? You shouldn't record with your computer microphone. I'm gonna just blanket statements say that. I don't think it's a good idea.
You've got to use something like this. The closer the mic is to your mouth, generally the audio is better than when the mic is When the mic is farther away, right, I'm gonna pull the mic farther away. You can still hear what I'm saying, but there's more reverb. There's more echo y sound, and it's just not pleasant after a few seconds. Okay?
And and here's the thing. A lot of people don't even know to, like, look for it, but they know something is not right. On vice versa, when your audio is good, it feels intimate. It feels comfortable. For the person to keep listening.
Less echo. And so, basically, like I said, Mike closer to your mouth, with the exception of too close. Sorry. It's not really loud. Okay.
Really distorted. Too close is not good either. But, basically, this is this is this is why I know there's a headsets, right, that with a boom mic, they usually come to about here and you can adjust it a little bit here. So what I've noticed, what I've done now over many years, I've tested the blue YETI mic. I've tested headsets, the best selling cheap cheapo headsets on Amazon.
I've tested, like, about a dozen of them actually. And I still find the best sound being the Apple wired, not the not the ear pods that are wireless, but the Apple wired had set that used to come with iPhones back in the back in the day, but that are $20 US. If you buy it by in the US, it's 20 bucks directly from Apple. There are many knock offs on Amazon and many knock offs. I'm here in Mexico or and we're we're gonna go traveling and go to a store and they look like they're selling an apple.
It looks like an apple Apple container looks just like this. It's a knock off. The mic sucks. So go directly to apple.com. To the mothership and buy this directly from them.
If you wanna give this a try, it's 20 bucks as of this recording, and it's still the best mic that I've that I've ever encountered. The low mics that are $200. You you either go with 20 bucks or you have to go with the the ones that are 22 to $500. The sure mics Very popular, those sound amazing too. And some of you have splurged on that.
I haven't even splurged on that because I kinda wanna model this, by the way. No. This is good enough to build build this mid 6 figure business. Good enough. You know?
So I hope this helped. And the other thing is The the other thing that causes reverb. Again, a lot of you don't even know to listen for it, but you know something's not as good of a sound. Right? That's all you know.
To those of us who are more trained, can hear the reverb. The other thing is when you have walls where sound is bouncing off, imagine just picture it right now. Picture your voice going out from you and going in different directions and the sound waves are bouncing off of the walls and going back into your mic, that's what causes reverb. So if you have more padded setting, which is why a lot of people record audio in a closet full of clothes because the sound bounces into the clothing and it doesn't bounce back. It gets absorbed by cloth.
Right? This is why I have a piece of cloth. I can't understand. Oh, wow. I have a I have a cloth for my for my table.
My my my working table. This is a felt felt cloth, and that helps because my voice is definitely bouncing all over my table, but it's getting absorbed by the felt. Cloth. There are sound tiles you can't see because it's too dark in my background now. But there are there are artistic sound tiles that you can buy.
That looks like paintings, but it's actually absorbing sound as well. So anyway and those things aren't aren't that expensive, but At least the very least you can do is spend $20 from apple.com directly, not from Amazon, from apple.com, and try out one of these, and it's fine. Okay? Some people don't like don't like the look of, like, I'm not listening to you when I'm talking. Right?
So some people do this. Some people I've I've noticed They they speak like this on video. They they literally are holding up an Apple mic to their to their mouth as they speak with one hand gesturing or whatever. And that's okay too if you wanna look this way. But I don't wanna do that.
It's just too much trouble. I like gesturing with both hands. So I hope this helps, and please feel free to comment below if you if you have a mic that you you just love, and it sounds great. Comment below, and give us a link to a video where you're using that mic.

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0:00
Audio is surprisingly important for good videos. The closer the mic is to your mouth, generally the audio is better. When your audio is good, it feels intimate.
3:37
The sound waves are bouncing off of the walls and going back into your mic, that's what causes reverb. To those of us who are more trained, can hear the reverb, which is why a lot of people record audio in a closet full of clothes.

Think of it this way -- you're essentially recording a podcast, except including your video as well.

Become really aware of reverb/echoey sound in your audio, and adjust for it. Ideas to try:

  • Bring your mic as close to your mouth as possible (well, not so close as to distort the sound.)

  • Fewer hard surfaces around you where sound can bounce around -- cover it with soft material like clothing or blankets. Or sound tiles. Which can be pieces of art!

  • Get a better mic :) my favorite are Earpods (the wired type) purchased direct from Apple (don't get the knockoffs from Amazon and many retailers)

Comment below with mics that have great sound for you!

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Last updated 30 Jan 2024.