Audio Enhancements ruining my VO

[Walker27322513aj42]

Apologies for the dramatic title, but I'm about at wits end. I've been having trouble with my recorded voice-overs where my voice just sounds kind of murky, without much range, and Audition cuts off the beginning or end of some consonants (such as the 't' in 'touch' or the 'k' in 'work'.) I also found that after a few seconds of silence, when I started speaking again, there was a decent chance that the first letter of the first would would sound muted or murky. I thought the issue was my microphone - I went from USB to XLR dynamic and now have XLR condensor AT2035 Audiotechnica. I thought the issue was my articulation or my distance to the mic or my gain levels. I practiced and made adjustments. I researched online and couldn't find much. I recently saw on another thread a user talked about the "Audio Enhancements" setting on their computer (both on Mac and Windows) and how disabling Audio Enhance helped them figure something out. I turned off this setting and...BOOM! My voice had more range, you could hear EVERY syllable I said, and no murkiness. It was the sound I thought I SHOULD have had for the past six months. However, when Audio Enhance is disabled, my mic became super duper sensitive. Every mouth click, the sound of someone walking by my studio, it even picked up my stomach grumbling during my VO. Also I heard this slight static/air sound in the background and it looked like my meter was constantly reading -57 or above.

This of course, won't do either. It seems to me like Audio Enhance automatically adds some noise cancelling/plosive removal, but this is doing more harm than good as I have to go back to my voice overs and re-record sections where letters are missing from words. And no, it's not because i'm not pronouncing the letter. A 'th' in 'the' was removed from my most recent VO...I know I didn't say 'uh'. I know I can't be the only one with this issue. Please Help! Thanks for reading.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Well, you've correctly identified that it's not Audition causing your problems (Audition always records very faithfully exactly what it's been sent). There is one other thing you should look at first before exploring anything exotic: If you go back to the Microphone Properties panel (where you turned the Enhancements off), have a look at the Levels tab. You may well find that the Microphone Boost setting is too high. As far as I can make out, you don't normally need any boost at all - so a good starting point for this would be 0dB. If this is already at 0dB, then we need to know a bit more about your mic, etc and how it's connected to your computer.

[Walker27322513aj42]

Thanks for replying Steve. I've attached a couple of screenshots - I don't know if I have mic boost settings. The only thing I could find were mic levels, which seems to operate similarly to 'gain' on my interface. Turning these levels down to 0 resulted in the mic being totally muted, while turning them to 100 resulted in constant background static and all input sounds being way too high db.

I'm connecting my Audiotechnica AT2035 XLR to a Behringer U-Phoria UM2 audio interface that's plugging into my HP Pavillion on Windows 11.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

If you are using a U-Phoria UM2 via the USB connection, all you have to do is turn the mic/line gain control knob down. Probably a good starting point for the slider is 50%, but you may have to experiment a bit to get a good result. Strictly speaking a USB input like that doesn't need a level control, and I'm not quite sure why they've done it like that; most external preamps with USB connections rely entirely on the preamp gain control. It may be, in this case, that you have to put the slider at 100% and then regulate the gain on the preamp - you'll have to see. But because the U-Phoria has a 'clip' indicator, probably the best thing to do is speak into the mic and turn the gain down until the clip indicator doesn't light, and then set the slider for a reasonable record level in Audition (Reasonable means leaving at least 6d\b of headroom).

[Walker27322513aj42]

I tried turning the windows setting slider all the way up to 100 and the mic gain all the way down, but that produced constant feedback and clipping on my Audition meter. I ended up setting the slider at 35 and the gain just a touch above 50% - maybe around 60%. This seems to produce enough input volume for good quality into Audition without getting too much mic sensitivity/background noise. Although, I still have to amplify my recording a significant amount just to get the peaks betweek -6 and -3db. I think this'll give me the quality I'm looking for, but it seems a bit rediculous - do most people actually use Audio Enhancements, or do they have to tweak away on these levels? Perhaps it depends on recording environment and voice frequency? Thanks for the help, Steve! 

[Walker27322513aj42]

update - at these settings my voice still has a tinny aspect to it, probably because I have to amplify so much. Back to the drawing board...

[Walker27322513aj42 · Accepted solution]

Hi Steve and anyone else interested, I've (think i've) found the solution to my issue! Another person suggested that I use different audio drivers, specifically Behringer's drivers specific to my UMD-2 or the ASIO4ALL drivers. I did the former by downloading Behringers drivers in place of my windows 11 driver. My audio sounds so much better - way clearer, more range, less murkiness, and consonants are not randomly cut off. After this, I'm just playing with my mic settings in windows and the gain on my interface to find levels that are high enough to be useful in Audition, but not so high that they're clicking/introduce sibilance. I hope this is helpful for someone else.