0537 – How To Fix A Recorded Level That’s Too High… Or Low

2022.06.21 – 0537 – How To Fix A Recorded Level That’s Too High… Or Low

If your mic level is too low

Your ‘live’ level can be boosted, not just with the main microphone channel but also the booster ‘gain’ setting’. But this may also increase the background noise from the studio that’s picked up, that is the general ambience of the room, as well as making the mic more sensitive to your own mouth noises. If audio has been recorded at too low a level, it’s pretty easy to raise it higher without a change in quality.

If your recorded or live volume is too high

Voice volume per se is seldom needed in studio broadcasting. That is, it is rarely necessary for you to raise your voice as you can simply speak at a near-normal level and increase the input on your microphone channel so it boosts the level of the sound that it captures.

Additional human-produced volume may be needed outside of a sound-proofed studio where other noises will compete for the microphone’s attention. And that’s when distortion of ‘over modding’ may happen (which we’ll talk about more tomorrow).

To stop this in a live situation you can either pull away from the mic, or pull the fader down a touch, or move somewhere quieter. But if the levels have been recorded too high, there’s very little you can do except retake the entire piece again. Compare that with if levels have been recorded too low when, with digital recording, you can boost them significantly without altering the quality of the piece.

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