Basic Audio Production Tips: Working With a Shitty Microphone, Instead of Against It!

Hi! Welcome to our second Basic Tips & Tricks post focusing on Audio Production! 🎉 Today, we’re going to learn how to make audios recorded with a poor microphone sound better. Let’s start! (As usual, nothing in this post is an affiliate link.)

The Shitty Microphone

As a definition, “shitty” isn’t terribly descriptive, I know. A microphone that could make a professional audio engineer for a major record label run screaming may well be a freelance voice actor’s dream equipment. An ASMRtist who’s just starting out might save up for a fifty dollar mic while another VA turns up their nose at anything under $500.

What’s important to remember is that while having quality equipment is great and all, what matters most is what you do with it. You are the instrument, your voice, your technique, your commitment to creating the best art you can; the equipment is just how you translate sound into a form that can be broadcast. Like so much in life: it’s not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean, as it were.

Basically: if you can’t play Chopsticks on a Casio keyboard you found in a dumpster, you can’t play it on a Steinway. Don’t go into hock for expensive equipment thinking it’s an easy edge. It isn’t. A poor performance with half-assed editing and a lousy acoustic environment will sound icky no matter what you record it with.

Now, before we get into how to make bad mics sound better, let’s try to break down what “bad” means a little bit and have a crash course on mics.

FIRST TIER: Truly Shitty

The Truly Shitty microphone is one that is not primarily for audio production. An iPhone for example fits well this tier. It has the capability to record audio but that isn’t its primary function, so it can’t do the task very well. Your laptop’s built in microphone or a headset mic also qualify for this group.

These microphones can record and transmit sound, but audios recorded with this kind of equipment are often flat, tinny and noisy. Because of their size or design they simply can’t capture the real depth of a voice, and are more likely to pick up background noise that can’t be cleaned up later. That doesn’t mean they can’t be used to make fine audio! But we’ll get into that later.

SECOND TIER: Less Shitty/Basically Okay

Less Shitty microphones have one job: to record sound. These are already a step up from a phone or a headset because the equipment is meant for a single purpose. A smartphone has so many uses that it’s not financially/mechanically feasible for each piece to be anywhere close to professional grade. But a dedicated mic doesn’t have to worry about browsing the internet or being small enough to fit in your pocket!

Less Shitty mics are suitable for podcasts, music recording, ASMR, etc. and range between $50-$250. They’re usually USB compatible, which means you simply plug them into your computer and they run on the power your PC produces.

Meanwhile, more powerful microphones can require external power sources or USB interfaces, additional adapters and more. These are extra expenses and headaches that some folks just don’t need. So for most people, this is a perfectly cromulant microphone range to stay in. Small youtubers, podcasters, or freelancers who don’t work on major productions, etc. can get by with these mics just fine!

A few examples:

$$: The Blue Snowball iCE is a solid $50-$70 microphone that’s on the low end of this tier. With a good acoustic environment to record in and sufficient post-production audio clean-up, this one sounds pretty good to the average listener. I use one myself at the moment! If you keep an eye out for sales or second hand mics, you can snag one for as low as $30.

$$$: The Blue Yeti is probably one of the most used microphones I can think of in the streaming/youtube space. Its plug-and-play USB interface makes it quite popular, and its got even better sound than the Snowball. The improvement in sound does come with a hefty price jump: this one is usually in the $100-$130 range.

$$$$: The Blue Yeti X is basically an upgraded fancy-pants version of the Blue Yeti; this one gets up to $170-$220. If a Blue Snowball is a two star mic, and a Blue Yeti a three and a half star, this one hits five.

THIRD TIER: Professional Grade

Condenser mics with large, sexy diaphragms are where it’s at for the professional tier, and there are frankly too many possible options to list. They can range between $300-$2000! If that’s too rich for your blood, that’s understandable. That’s definitely too rich for mine at the moment too!

More expensive mics are more complicated and, as mentioned before, require more goodies to work properly. For instance, to connect a fancier mic to your computer, you’ll need a USB interface. One I’ve seen highly recommended by VAs is the Focusrite Scarlett Solo, which is about $100-$150.

That said, most ASMRtists and audio RP artists don’t generally get into this tier of microphones except for these: 3Dio mics.

These mics are designed to mimic the way the human ear picks up sound and are multi directional—meaning, you can record on the left side and the listener will hear your voice in their left ear, etc. They create a more immersive audio experience. Some mics from the Less Shitty tier like the Blue Yeti X have this capability, but to a much less sophisticated extent.

The cheapest 3Dio options are about $400-$900. The most expensive...well...

FOURTH TIER: God Tier

This is the tier I’ll likely never reach myself, but hey, maybe you will! God Tier mics are what big productions use. We’re talking big animation studios, record companies, etc.

In the ASMR/RP space, this tier doesn’t make many appearances. But there is one notable exception:

This Cronenbergian fever dream is the 3Dio Omni Pro Binaural Microphone. Top of the line, and more than $5k. It has eight “ears” for even more immersive sound than the cheaper options.

Working With a Shitty Mic, Instead of Against It

Now that we’ve compared equipment a bit and set the low bar, let’s get to the real meat of this post: the best ways to make audio recorded on even the crappiest microphone sound better.

Now, I’m not just talking about actual sound enhancements here, though we will get into those eventually. I’m also talking about the little cheats and tweaks that work with a mic’s limitations and disguise them. Like a guerrilla filmmaker making blood and guts visual effects out of spaghetti and chocolate sauce, we’re going to work with what we’ve got.

Bear in mind that all of these tips that will benefit you with a bad mic with also help you with a better one! Remember how I said if you can’t play music on a Casio, you can’t play it on a Steinway? The reverse is also true: if you can learn Mozart on a Casio, you can definitely play it on a Steinway.

For the purposes of this section, I’m going to talk about recording with a phone’s built-in mic. Partly because it’s what I started with, and partly because it’s probably something you already have. Let’s get to it!

BEFORE YOU RECORD:

Treat Your Space: I talked about this at length in the first Tips and Tricks post, but here’s a short refresher: where you record matters just as much as your performance and your equipment. Sometimes it matters even more! And at no time is this more true than when you’re using a shitty microphone.

A poor mic in a quiet, well treated space can sound better than a more expensive one in a terrible acoustic environment. This matter is of the utmost importance.

If you don’t have a closet or similar compact space to record in, I can’t recommend building a DIY isolation booth enough. A box with foam inside it, or at least some fabric, will help cut down on reverb, background sound, and make the mic pick up your voice more clearly.

At the very least, get under a blanket to record if you have nothing better!

Pay Attention to Background Noise: Turn off fans, ACs, put the cat out, close doors, windows, whatever. Remove anything and everything from your space that will make noise and interfere with your recording session. If you don’t live alone, try to set aside a time to record when the rest of your household is quiet.

Body and Microphone Placement: Make sure you’re in a comfortable position to record, where you can breathe well and the microphone can be placed in front of your face so that it’s aiming at you as directly as possible. Posture matters: nobody likes an overly gaspy, raspy recording because your lungs are compressed.

Next, pay attention to how far you are from the mic. Putting your mouth directly next to it will result in terrible sound quality, so don’t do that. Your breath will boom, your plosives will explode against it, and your sibilants will whistle or be crispy. The end result will sound bad, and there’s nothing you can do about it in post, so fix the problem up front instead of trying to clean it up later. You want at least four to six inches between your mouth and the mic.

You Need a Pop Filter: A pop filter is a piece of fabric that diffuses the pops of air from certain words, sounds that you may not hear but that your microphone will. A pop filter doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to do its job. If you can’t afford one (on the cheap end they’re about $10) you can take a t-shirt or other piece of thin fabric and drape it between you and the mic.

My DIY sound booth has a proper pop filter now, but for the early part of my recording career one of the things I did to help reduce pops was cover it with a t-shirt. You could also take an embroidery hoop and a bit of pantyhose to make something closer to the real thing, if you have either of those lying around like I did ^^;

Look for Scripts With the Potential for Vocal Effects: This is a great way to disguise a microphone’s shortcomings. I did it quite a bit before upgrading to my Blue Snowball. Here are some of the audios I actually recorded using this particular strategy:

Perky Yandere Robot Maid Thinks You're Perfect! used layering of the main vocal track to accomplish an intentionally tinny robot effect.

Cute Clingy Girlfriend Misses You and Relaxing Space Travel: A Guided Tour of Jupiter’s Moons used graphic equalizer tweaks to get telephone/intercom quality.

Shy Ghost Girl Fails to Haunt You Out of Her House used intentional reverb to create a ghostly tone.

Each of these vocal effects disguise a bad mic’s quality to some extent; when you’re looking for (or even writing!) scripts, keep your eyes peeled for storylines like these that will let you find creative solutions to sound problems.

Get (and Stay) Hydrated: The human mouth makes lots of sounds during speech that you likely won’t notice until you record your voice and listen to it for long periods. The tongue clicks, the lips smack, saliva squishes, on and on.

In a pure audio production, whether ASMR/RP, radio or a podcast, there’s no visual component to distract from these sounds. A smacky mouth is just, well, bad. Downright unpleasant. Have you ever been in a quiet room where you can hear someone else noisily chewing, all those gooey, smacky noises that make you want to leave? You don’t want your listeners to have that experience!

Some sounds can be edited out in post production, but those that come from a dry mouth usually can’t. So before you record: drink water! And continue to sip some throughout your recording session. If you’re mildly dehydrated, it takes about an hour and 20 oz. of water to rehydrate. If you’re perpetually dehydrated (like me ^^;) you have to keep on top of it.

WHILE RECORDING

Record a Few Seconds of Silence/Room Tone Before You Begin Speaking: You want to record a few seconds of your environment first because this will make noise reduction easier in post-production. Do your best to remain completely silent during those seconds. Hold your breath if necessary.

Pay Attention to How Your Speech Will Sound When Recorded: I’ve spoken briefly about plosives and sibilants, but now it’s time to break them down more in depth. Let’s use some common tongue twisters to examine them.

Plosives: The letters p, b, t, k, g and d create a sound called a plosive. This is a harsh sound with a lot of energy behind it. When spoken into a microphone without the proper distance and/or a pop filter, plosives create an unpleasant burst of air that distorts the sound of a word. Try saying the following phrase slowly, while holding your hand about an inch from your mouth:

Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers

Did you feel the hard pop of air against your hand with each P sound? Your microphone will feel it too. And while plosives may not sound too bad to the naked ear, a microphone is more sensitive. Each plosive spoken will become a harsh, windy  sound in your recording.

Sibilants: A sibilant is the high frequency, high pitched hiss or whistle that is produced with s, z, sh and zh sounds. Try making a snake-y hiss, right now. Notice how part of your tongue touches the roof of the mouth and air whistles past it? That’s a sibilant, and a microphone will pick it up as high, sharp and crispy. Say this tongue twister slowly, and pay attention to all the times that same hiss or a similar shush escapes:

She Sells Seashells by the Sea Shore

Each s and sh creates a sharp, hissing sibilant that will affect the quality of your recording. At their absolute worst, sibilants can even whistle. Shudder.

How Can You Get Rid of Plosives and Sibilants? There are some shortcuts to reduce them in post-production (we’ll talk about those little tweaks below) but this is another problem that can be greatly lessened by working on it up front rather than trying to fix it later.

Trying to be aware of the posture of your mouth when speaking and learning to reduce the sharpness of these particular sounds will save you a lot of headaches later. What’s most important is training your ear to notice them in your speech patterns in the first place.

When you notice a strong whistling sibilant during a line reading, try it again. Is a plosive particularly harsh and gusty coming out of your mouth? Redo the line. One of the great things about audio production is that you can edit out your bad takes. You don’t necessarily have to get the line right every time, you just have to get it right enough once.

Learning to hear and reduce problematic sounds in your speech is an acquired skill and takes a long time to master. I still struggle with it myself! But it’s worth it to become mindful of these elements of speech so you can save yourself time in the post-production phase.

DURING POST-PRODUCTION

Noise Reduction: Audacity has a built-in noise reduction setting, which is really handy for getting rid of background noise. However, one reason why I recommend treating a space/building a DIY sound booth to reduce noise rather than relying on this particular tool is you can easily overdo it. Too much noise reduction can accidentally eliminate certain normal sounds in speech, and make your voice sound muddy and unclear!

The noise reduction setting I personally use right now is this:

(I literally can't remember anymore if this is the default setting, but just in case it isn't lmao)

Mute Anything Between Lines That Noise Reduction Didn’t Catch: When I first started my channel and was recording on my phone, this was one of the little tricks I used to reduce noise that audacity didn’t eliminate automatically. I think it’s most obvious in my Tricky Yandere Kitsune Familiar Claims You audio; if you listen carefully, you can hear some slight background noise during my lines, but it vanishes in between.

To do this in audacity, simply highlight a portion of the recording between lines, go into the effects menu, select “Amplify” and slide the amplification dB down to -50 like so:

This is also a good way to remove mouse clicks and other such environmental sounds. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard another ASMRtist’s mouse go clickity clack between lines because they didn’t bother to remove them!

Remove/Mute Your Breaths: Next time you listen to an ASMRtist you like, listen for their breathing. Some never remove their breaths between lines. I find it distracting myself, especially when a line is long and they need to take several breaths to get it out in its entirety. It can definitely mess with an audio’s pacing and make it less immersive if you’re distracted by the ASMRtist’s gasping.

Personally, I like to remove or deamplify most of my breathing in an audio. There are exceptions, of course—if a character is meant to be breathless, if  it adds to the storytelling/mood or if I ran out of time while editing (hey, at least I’m honest!) I’ll leave it in. But the best practice, especially with a bad mic, is to get rid of it.

Deleting breaths entirely results in a faster paced speech pattern, which can work for certain characters, but your best bet is to simply mute them using the same trick we used for background noise above. The amplify tool is your friend!

Minimize Sibilants and Plosives: Between a pop filter and working on paying attention to how your mouth makes sounds, hopefully you’ve already reduced the most problematic plosives and sibilants in your recording. Unfortunately, unless you’re a professional VA/Audio Engineer, it’s guaranteed that at least a few will slip under the radar. What can you do about them? I have a few short-cuts that will do the trick.

De-Essing: This is the (unofficial?) term for removing/reducing sibilants. There are actually de-essers out there, plug-ins for Audacity and other recording programs that lessen the sharpest sibilants for you at the touch of a button. There are a lot of free plug-ins for this particular task, but they’re often complicated to use and can be easily overdone.

Personally, I prefer a DIY approach even though it’s more time consuming, because it gives me the precision I want when editing my audios. The easiest way to lessen a sibilant is to just...well, shorten it! These sounds tend to be very long waveforms, so luckily they’re pretty forgiving to edit. You can simply cut out a chunk of the middle of a sibilant without affecting the word too much. (My favorite quick and dirty tutorial for that is here!)

Softening Plosives: Even with a pop filter, some plosives can sneak into your audio. Occasionally the line in question may be unsalvageable and you’ll have to re-record, but most of the time you can save it with a couple of tweaks.

First you’ll want to highlight the plosive in question in Audacity, then go into the Effect menu and hit “Fade In”. This will reduce the initial burst of air so the plosive isn’t quite so forceful. If necessary you can repeat this process or even reduce the amplification a few decibels to help make even the most egregious plosives far less noticeable. (Another quick and dirty tutorial for that is here!)

Use a Less Lossy Audio Format: When you export your finished audio file, you may be tempted to make it an MP3. The problem is, MP3 is a compressed format and some of the audio information will be lost! This isn’t such a problem when you’re working with a high quality microphone, but when your mic is shitty it’s a disaster. If possible, use .wav format for your audios!

Use the Proper Video Codecs to Preserve Your Audio Quality: Similar to above, when you’re making a video for youtube, the way the audio is encoded can affect your sound quality! When you’ve finished making a video in your preferred editing software, pay attention to the export settings. I use Animotica because it's cheap and easy and I'm lazy. It has three options for audio encoding: FLAC, MPEG, and AAC. The best audio codec, hands down, is FLAC.

Some Final Words of Advice

Before I upgraded to a Basically Okay microphone, the last audio I recorded with my Shitty Mic was Bossy, Sassy but Loving Wife Demands You Take Care of Yourself, and I used every single one of the tricks above (and a couple of others we'll get into later) to make it sound the best it possibly could.

Is it an amazing quality audio? Does it sound professional grade? Does it have the richness of sound that a thousand dollar microphone can offer? No, of course not! BUT: it sounds a million times better than it could have, and far better than many of my contemporaries who also used their phones to record. You don't have to be the best there is at what you do, you just have to be the best you can be.

So, I worked with my equipment’s limitations instead of against them, and everything I learned while doing so has benefited me through subsequent equipment and studio upgrades. I worked hard to mitigate my set-up's shortcomings and deliver the best quality product I could while working within my equipment's limitations. That skill set will always work in my favor.

I hope these tips and tricks will help you on your journey to becoming an ASMRtist/VA! Next time, we’ll delve into some basic audio enhancements that can make an audio sound even better. See you soon!

Xoxo,

-Vel