Help with audio quality

[johnsmith246]

Hi,

I've got a clip url attached where i want  to improve the audio quality as there is what I can only describe (no audio techie here) a hiss at the high end of y speech. Can someone kindly help me adjust / help me understand what I need to tweak. The original effect did include multi compressor and noise cancelling when recorded.

Thanks

Rob.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3tczdp6flqo4n8m/Weird%20hissing.wav?dl=0

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

All I can hear in that clip is gated distortion - and that, you simply can't fix, I'm afraid. What you need is the original, before somebody's wrecked it, as I'm sure that most of this is down to processing errors. They can't be undone, but a more sympathetic approach in the first place would almost certainly yield a slightly better result.

[johnsmith246]

ok thanks so turn the gate down / limiter when i'm next recording?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

johnsmith246  wrote

ok thanks so turn the gate down / limiter when i'm next recording?

Rule 1 of making a good recording - record dry. No effects, nothing. You only make changes afterwards, on a copy of the original. That way you always have the original to go back to when you screw up the processing...

And, you leave what's called 'headroom'. In other words, don't bang the meters up against the end stops, as this will inevitably make everything sound worse. With speech, leave at least 10dB of level, so that the occasional peak doesn't distort. You can optimise the level afterwards without ever running into clipping or distortion, and it makes applying compression a lot more accurate. All these things will improve your end results a lot.