Home Recording kit

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mironsavan

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Hello,

I have my own development company and would like to create some professional videos that are meant for youtube/vimeo online in general.
I have all I need, video editor guy, designer as well.
All I need is to do simple voice recording that would sound good (as good as my gf's voice can make it) and would like to accomplish the following:
- record clear sound
- no hissing or other background noise (we are in a villa in a pretty quiet place, outside interference is not an issue)
- some editing capabilities from the sound card maybe that would allow some minor adjustments (something with auto would be fantastic:) )
- simple software that would allow us to cut and merge sentences.

Biggest problem from our trials (30 USD mic + normal, quiet laptop) is: hissing background sound. Everything else is fine

Aditionaly it would be great if we got any advice on how to proceed as our goals are:
- create training videos on how to manage our web platform
- promotional videos

-- Miron
 
Hi,
The first thing to do would be to determine where the hiss is coming from.
If it's generated by the USB mic then that's fine and upgrading will help, but if it's really the mic picking up fans in the room or whatever then changing out microphones won't really solve the problem.

Also, it's not uncommon for laptop's to introduce noise of all kinds so if you have a desktop computer I'd recommend using that just to be safe.
This might be overkill, but it happens...

As far as gear, you could do very well with a simple mic/interface setup.
A cheap condenser (Rode NT-1a, MXL ***) and a tascam us122, presonus fire-studio mobile, focusrite 2i2 etc would be fine.

Those condenser mics are sensitive enough to let you keep the interface gain down.
You'd also need a pop filter for close speech.

If room ambience is an issue just get closer to the mic for starters.
The closer you can get without air blasts, the fuller and strong it's going to sound.

For software - Audacity is free and should be capable enough for simple speech editing/production.
Reaper is free to try and cheap to buy and it's definitely capable!

The editing capabilities are nothing to do with the sound card. They are limitations of your software.

Hope this is useful.
 
Hi Miron and welcome.
(No, I mean that despite what I am going on to say!)

Um? You are (presumably) PAYING a video guy and have a villa! So why, WTHGR, are you looking for cheap sound* solutions? Surely this should be the province of the video person as well? If you are setting up for training/promo vids it is HE that should be sourcing gear and software IMHO.

At an entry level I would think you would need some software such as Sony Vegas or Camtasia, Then a modest mixing desk since you will likely have more than one speaker/sound source?

The company I have retired from <www.blackstaramps.com> put out a lot of very simple video promotional stuff but even so have several £1000 worth of kit.

*Hobby Horse of mine! "Sound" is always the "enfant froid" in most companies spending. How many supermarkets do you know with clean, clear intelligable PA? From town halls to disco bars, sound repro' is always a bolt on afterthought and since by then all the money has gone, (twice!) the firms fit up any old Tandy ***t and think "problem solved".

Rant over!

Should have said. For video work you will need a powerful PC and shedloads of memory. 8gig should be looked upon as a minimum. It would also be wise to invest in a NAS hard drive of at least 2TB for storage and backup.
.

Dave.
 
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