Recording Levels, Noise and Normalization

MH_Stevens wrote on 8/3/2005, 6:56 PM

I hang out in the Video room and havn't been here for ages. I just posted a post in the Vegas video forum that I now think I should have posted here, so I'll ask a similar question now.

I am recording voice-overs into Vegas6 with an AT3035 mic (7" from side of mouth) and the m-audio Firewire410 preamp/interface (and Spot's sound box). If I raise the gain as high as I can without cliping (0dB) as recommended in the Vegas manual I am getting amp noise that I can plainly hear in my monitoring cans. For any of you who have the same setup the gain knob in this setting is at 3 'O' clock. To remove the noise and get clean audio I need cut back the gain to the 2 'O' clock position. This gives a wave form in Vegas of only half full-scale and so my normal work flow with voice-overs is to "Normalize" every recording as a first step. Then I use Track EQ, Wave Hammer and a Noise gate. Surly a good recording should not need to be "Normalized" and I am wondering if I should in fact not be normalizing. Just letting the Wave Hammer gain do this job.

Any thoughts on this or my equipment, settings etc?

Cheers,

Mike S

Comments

James Young wrote on 8/4/2005, 7:09 AM

You ussually want to peak at around 12-6 dBFS, don't worry you are not losing bits or anything like that. As far as normalization goes, you don't need to do that. If you really want things to be hitting the ceiling, then I personally would probably just use Wave Hammer and not bother using the normalization feature in Vegas - because normalization just turns the gain up and that amount will be different with different audio clips, so it's actually rather inconsistent overall. Better to just turn the track up by 6dB, for example. Hope that makes sense.

Don't for a minute think that a "half fulle-scale" waveform is anything to be bothered about, there is plenty of room for dynamics. Most of my recording in 24-bit look like about 1/8th full-scale, I ussually just do the horizontal waveform zoom (I believe it's shift+up/down)

As far as noise floor goes, it probably depends more on the ambient level in your room. The mic and preamp you are using is fine, I think.

adowrx wrote on 8/4/2005, 9:33 AM

Are you using the 10 db pad on the mic? If so and you're only doing VO work, this maybe unnecessary causing you to use too much gain from a a noisy pre amp.

rraud wrote on 8/5/2005, 4:08 PM

7 inches from side of mouth? That's a long ways' away being off-axis....
Get on-axis, 3-8". (with a windscreen if needed.)
Addendum:
Don't be afraid to use some dynamics compression too. Most if not all VO's get compressed at some point in a record/post chain. At least in the pro world.