Need audio tips for solo video recording

[Astro]

I wanted to do some utube videos of songs from my set list. Eventually I'd like to do some good enough to show venues in order to get bookings but first I need to put together another band and what I've done so far just isnt good enough (performance or audio recording wise) to land a job. So I figured I would keep recording songs so that potential band members could see if its something they want to do and then if so, gives them a way to practice the set list at home. Meanwhile I'm learning how to get better.

I have an ear trumpet Louise going into an iRig pre and then into my smart phone (LG). This LG has 3 adjustments - gain, low end cut, and a limiter. I so far have always engaged the low end cut halfway to cut out any room rumble.

1) When I try to EQ, I have to turn down the gain a lot to keep it from going into the red. Is it better to turn down the gain mostly on the irig pre wheel or on the smart phone?

2) When I turn down the gain enough to not go into red, the volume in the recording seems really low when it is played back on the computer (both Facebook and utube). Also, and maybe because of that, it seems to lack the same quality of tone as when I record at higher gains (into the red). But then at higher gains when its in the red a bit, it is blasting on the utube video and I have to turn down the computers volume and I dont want to have people scrambling to turn their computer down. But the quality of the tone seems better.

3) I turned the irig pre gain way down and left the LG gain level at neutral and then engaged the limiter halfway up and that seemed to give adequate volume without going into the red. But then I noticed the audio quality might again be effected when the limiter kicks in. It becomes a little "hissey" or something.

4) My room acoustics seem very flat. Is there any way to add some natural reverb? I have no way of adding effects as I'm uploading straight from phone to utube. If I back into a corner of the room, will that help ?

I realize it takes a load of time, repeat performances, and technical understanding to get good results and there are no short cuts to get the great video demos I see all over utube. But I am not one to spend hours recording a utube song. I plan to do a quick rough run and move on and learn as much as I can as I go. Any suggestions appreciated.

[fscotte]

Get an iPhone.

[Astro]

I did a little research before getting my smart phone. The LG I think has several advantages to the iphone in video/audio recording. The LG is suppose to have the best audio capability.

Anyone have experience with different phones?

[Tom Haywood]

My experience is that the phones do a good job for most tasks. My research found that the iPhone has a microphone with greater range than the Androids. I've found that the iPhone does a better job with video and audio, but the Samsung S series does just fine. The iPhone files are MP4 and are huge. It can be time consuming editing or converting them because of the size. You also might want to pick up a couple of large thumb drives for storage and transport, rather than using CD or DVD.

[Astro]

Yeah, but remember I'm not using the smart phone's microphone. The new LG has the best mic for me and it can be configured in figure 8 bipolar or all front or all rear. The demo videos of the iphone mic and LG mic convinced me to get the LG. Plus it has the low cut and limiter dials.

But any real mic would be vastly superior to any smart phone mic. I'm using a good condenser mic and patching into the smart phone video thereby bypassing the smart phone mic. So this isnt really about the smart phone mic. And this phone has a wide angle camera lens built in which can be switched on the fly. I've compared the video features and they each have plus and minuses and for me this LG was better suited than the iphone for music video. But I do get the iphone craze. Not knocking anything. But

I'm actually ok on my smart phone choice. Didnt mean to tangent off on smart phones. I dont think this is a smart phone issue.

Also, I'm sure I could spend gazillion on better pre/interface, but I'd like to just optimize anything I can do with what I have. The iRig pre has phantom power which I need and is suppose to be ok considering its all just going to get dumbed down into utube audio. So also I am not planning to do any post editing or any downloading or transport. No patience for it. I'm uploading straight from smart phone to utube. So I dont need to worry about drives , transport, or storage for this. Its raw. I'm not planning to get fame or fortune out of this. Just looking to get a new bar band. The audio quality isnt horrible, I'm just trying to see if there are suggestions to get it better so I dont have so much trial and error...

[Mark Wilson]

Nice mic. Windering if the irig is a match for the mic?

[Don Grieser]

Any reason you have to record to the phone? A better interface into a computer will give you results that mic is capable of.

[Baron Collins-Hill]

I expect the iRig preamp is better than the phone preamp. Try turning down the gain on the phone as far as you can and turn up the gain on the iRig. I'm not positive this will help, but it's what I do when I run mics into my video camera with the iRig+.

Thanks,
Baron

[Astro]

I expect the iRig preamp is better than the phone preamp. Try turning down the gain on the phone as far as you can and turn up the gain on the iRig. I'm not positive this will help, but it's what I do when I run mics into my video camera with the iRig+.

Thanks,
Baron

Thanks. I was wondering which signal would be better to attenuate. I'll try this next.

[Astro]

Any reason you have to record to the phone? A better interface into a computer will give you results that mic is capable of.

Thanks Don. Its just that I need to do these as video-thus the smart phone- for a quick and easy post on FB or UTube.

[Folkmusician.com]

Agree that iRig is where to run the most gain (assuming iRig has the better pre), then adjust the phone accordingly... Not familar with the phone, but just make sure settings match as far as mic/line on the iRig and phone. It should work great...

Lastly, don't slam the meters when tracking, this needs to be done in mixing/mastering. At that point you can use a plugin to take care of the dynamics.

[Astro]

I think its the limiter that bothers me tone wise. I am going to just turn it off and get a couple inches further back from the mic. Then I'll turn the camera's gain input down and turn the irigs gain back up to something in the middle rather than rolled way down.

Finally I've seen some smart phone apps that allow for adding reverb and adjusting eq but I'm not sure if it does that in live time or something that has to process. Plus the reviews on all the irig effects apps are lousy. Maybe I should just record in the bathroom (lol)

[Folkmusician.com]

Oh yeah, Even a good limiter can really mess up your sound, and a bad one can be terrible if you are pushing it hard. Best to only use a limiter in cases where you have no control of what is going on and you could lose the entire recording otherwise.


There are some excellent limiter pluggins that can be used afterwards. Same for effects. Some pluggins are awesome! I can't comment on the iRig though. I wouldn't do this while recording. Much easier and better to do afterward.
There are some great effects availabe

[Mark Wilson]

I'm interested in making a better sounding video myself. Was planning on using a hd camcorder with ext mic rounted in thru a preamp or something like your irig. Then process audio track in a daw. Your way seems quicker. If you find a good solution post it plz.

[Folkmusician.com]

Most camcorcers (without XLR inputs) have fairly low quality preamps. It will work, but it won't be great. I have had ok luck using an external pre into them.

Ideally record the audio on a seperate device then sync later.

[Tom Haywood]

Sorry, Astro, I read the OP incompletely and sort of stopped at the phone question. What is lurking behind my answer may not be very helpful either, but I'll put it out there. Looks like you did the homework and bought the best ideas for getting good recordings on a phone. I came very close to buying the iRig a few years ago, and have tried a variety of ways to hook good microphones to my Samsung phone. I've also tried recording the audio separately onto the computer using a good condenser mic and then syncing that with the video from the phone. And I've tried several digital camcorders and dealt with converting to useful file formats. Also tried using mixing software on the phone. The short answer for me was that none of that is worth the time and effort when a "git-r-done" recording and posting is the goal. I might feel differently if the phones didn't do such a good job without all that, or if I was already invested in hook ups for the phone. I dislike Apple products very, very much - including the iPhone. But if somebody has one and is willing to record my show or solo playing, the results are always impressive. The androids generally do a good enough job for me. But to my ear, the phones simply are not high fidelity recording or playback instruments, so only so much improvement can be added.

About reducing the gain, on the computer mixing board I usually record with the input well below the red line to get a clean signal, save that, then boost the gain on playback for exporting to a separate output file. I would probably turn off the limiter.

Room acoustics have everything to do with surface materials and the fundamental frequency of the room based on its size and shape. Reverb is just short echos. The bathroom, with all it's hard surfaces, is perfect. So is a concrete stairwell inside block walls. The corner of an average room, even if the floor is a hard material, is not likely to produce much reverb because the initial sound wave will travel across the room and get mostly absorbed by the soft sheet rock walls and ceiling, so not enough echo for reverb.

OTH, a flat or dead room with some reflection can be very desirable for recording. Thoughtful placement of the microphone is the key. My office is a small room fully carpeted and sheet rocked. I put a sheet of 3/4" plywood on top of the carpet at my desk. I play on top of the plywood, and place a microphone so it will pick up the "hard" reflection from the plywood, the desk, the bookcases, and the metal closet door behind me, all sort of before picking up the soft sound from the rest of the room. This gives a pretty good clean sound recording without having to add reverb. You could put another sheet of plywood or something hard against a wall to add a little more reflection.

[Astro]

Thanks all. I did notice that between one recording with the limiter and one without, the one without the limiter sounded better. I do think the limiter is making the tone quality worse and wont use it in the future. I also went back and found a recording I did where the smart phone's gain knob was down to 1/2 (below neutral) and the pre's gain wheel was set at about half way (I guess that would be neutral?). That recording did sound fuller than the one I did with the smart phones meter set at neutral and the pre's gain way down below halfway on the wheel... So that is the direction I will head.

I do see a lot of variability in FB & Utube recording volumes. I guess my mind set was such where I thought the goal was to make the recording to play at comfortable levels when the lap top's (or whatever the audience is watching it on) volume level was set all the way up. I guess that is where I usually keep mine. But now I see that a lot of these music videos are too loud when my lap top computer volume is all the way up and in fact I turn it down a lot of the time when watching others videos.

So maybe I should just let them be louder and let folks turn down their volumes ? There is some truth to the old Eddie Van Halen quote that volume = tone.

Is there a common goal for the targeted volume of the most common lap tops/ smart phones? The sad reality is that lap tops/tablets/smart phones are what the majority of people listen on, so I'd like to target that. Should that targeted volume be halfway up the lap top volume knob for the listener ? That would mean that at full lap top volume it is too loud to listen to. I dont like that myself, but I wonder if that is the standard goal for these things?

[Folkmusician.com]

There is truth in volume. Louder almost always sounds better (assuming it is not distorting). The guide line is always to get it as close to maxed (0db) as possible. But here you are right at the edge, so be sure to test and if needed drop it to -0.5db.

Most of what we hear is compressed. Even with acoustic, a little compression is nice if done correctly. I am not sure what free pluggins there are for mastering, but there should be something out there.

[Astro]

All good advise. Really appreciated. One of my goals for these quick and dirty takes is to get it as good as I can live and straight out of the phone and onto utube that moment without any post production edits or using any post production add ons that require conversion or downloading into computer. All I do is shorten the clip to the beginning of the song and stop it at the of the song so no one has to watch me turn the camera on and off. Less than 5 minutes after I play it, its on utube. If there was an ap that lets me add reverb that quick (or even live), I would do that. But that is about all I want to do to it. So I'm trying to maximize what can be done on the live recording. The tricky part is getting the right gain setting adjusting for distance to mic for how loud the sound goes on a particular song and getting the guitar distance right relative to vocal. But I'd pay for a little reverb if I could buy it somehow. So flat.

I also realize I have timing issues on these solo takes so I may end up setting a click track although they bug the crap out of me.

[Folkmusician.com]

In that case, you probably do want to run the limiter, but also a Compressor. Play with the compressor settings so you are leveling out the peaks without squashing all the dynamics.... then set the gain so you are just clipping the limiter on the rare peak. The compressor and limiter will both degrade the sound a little, but if done correctly it won't be bad, and it will allow you to get the volume up without having any post. Normally the limiter will be mostly transparent unless it is kicking in. Where the degradation gets bad is when you slam the limiter. The compressor will help a lot.

[BrianWilliam]

Hey Astro, have you tried putting a mixer in between the mic and iRig? It requires more set up time but I found it was easier to get the sound I was after. Depending on your mixer, that might solve your reverb/compression issue. Good luck and have fun.

[Scott L]

If I'm understanding, it's sound like you want to keep it simple. I can relate. I know you don't have an iPhone, but this is what I've done with my iPhone and laptop setup (Macbook). You could probably do something similar with your phone and computer, perhaps using a free program like Audacity. I've recorded music as a simple voice memo on the phone, e-mailed the voice memo file to myself, and then copied that file into a track inside Garage Band (free if you've got Apple). From there you can do simple EQ and add reverb, etc. Makes a simple phone recording sound much better and is easy, but limited as far as how much you can do. If you're already using a better mic to capture the original audio, you're off to a good start.

[Astro]

If I'm understanding, it's sound like you want to keep it simple. I can relate. I know you don't have an iPhone, but this is what I've done with my iPhone and laptop setup (Macbook). You could probably do something similar with your phone and computer, perhaps using a free program like Audacity. I've recorded music as a simple voice memo on the phone, e-mailed the voice memo file to myself, and then copied that file into a track inside Garage Band (free if you've got Apple). From there you can do simple EQ and add reverb, etc. Makes a simple phone recording sound much better and is easy, but limited as far as how much you can do. If you're already using a better mic to capture the original audio, you're off to a good start.

I'm trying to find a way to make the audio better on a video. So it would have to get down loaded into my macbook pro movie editor from Garage Band which is too much trouble for me for what I want to do. I have often wondered about how it would sound to mix the voice dictation recorder sound files in order to record music. Without doing something to it, it sounds pretty terrible (I've tried recording music on it before). Good to know it can be improved through Garage band.

[Astro]

Hey Astro, have you tried putting a mixer in between the mic and iRig? It requires more set up time but I found it was easier to get the sound I was after. Depending on your mixer, that might solve your reverb/compression issue. Good luck and have fun.

Thats a neat idea. I guess I would need a cable with headphone female on one end and quarter inch (or xlr) on the other to go from Irig into mixer, and then another cable that goes headphone jack of the mixer to the smart phone (male headphone jack on both ends)? It might be worth setting this up since I'm planning to knock out a bunch.

I was just listening to the videos again and although I'm self conscious about them and wished they sounded better, they probably aren't that bad for just something other musicians can learn their part of the song from. They might not be good enough to impress a bar manager on their own but then me as a solo act probably wont either no matter how great the sound is, especially if they're looking for a band.

So for the purpose of "band practice" for others to learn my version of the songs, I think its fine for now.

I like the idea of inserting a mixer though if I can figure it out.

[Baron Collins-Hill]

Would love to see a video when you are ready to share!