Audio sounds very "computerized". Help with EQ?

Report · May 10, 2018

I understand that this is not really a question that pertains to the actual Audition software itself but I don't know who else to ask so I'm posting on here in hopes of getting some advice from all the great audiophiles on here

Here is the problem: I have an interview recording (lav mic) which sounds very computerized. Here's a sample of the original recording: Dropbox - test_original.wav

I have tried EQ-ing it every way I know how but I feel like my ears have gone deaf from listening to that recording for hours while editing the footage and no matter what EQ preset or trick I try to use nothing seems to make this recording sound better. Is it too much bass? Is it too much on the high end? I can't even figure out what the problem is anymore. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this sound less computerized? Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Report · May 11, 2018

Well, it sounds slightly distorted (although not very), and distortion simply can't be fixed, as there's no reference to what 'correct' should be. That applies to all distortion, I'm afraid. Other than that, what I can hear is a lot of room tone, which is now also an inherent part of the audio (think mixing and baking a cake), and is, of course, another form of distortion. Once again, same thing applies - no fix possible. So I'm sorry, but we can't help you with that.

The clue to fixing all of these things is at source, when you make the recording. No recording can ever be made 'better' than the original; yes you can get rid of noise and sometimes extraneous sounds, but you can't alter the fundamental characteristics of what the microphone picks up at all - even applying EQ only alters the levels of different frequency bands; it doesn't alter the characteristic sound at all, and indeed often makes things significantly worse by removing things that should be there.

Report · May 11, 2018

Hey SteveG, thank you so much for the detailed explanation! Just so that I know for next time, what do you think I could have done better at the source when recording this in order to avoid the distortion (besides acoustically treating the space)?

Report · May 11, 2018

In order to give some advice on improving the recording at source we need to know a bit more about how you did it this time. What mic did you use and where was it placed?

Having had a quick listen I felt that a bit of an improvement could be made by using the parametric EQ to put in dips at about 115Hz and 440Hz with a Q of 2 and level of -9dB. To my ears this made it sound a bit less 'cardboardy'.

Report · May 11, 2018

That does help a bit. Thank you!

I used the sennheiser wireless lav (ew-g3) connected to a Zoom H4n. I had a 80Hz low cut off and a general limiter applied on the Zoom.