Sound too quiet

JonathanRyan

JonathanRyan

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Looks like there a couple of audio experts here - hopefully somebody can give me some advice.

I wanted to capture some ambient sound at a wedding at the w/e. There was a DJ rig with some big speakers and when it wasn't pumping out Turkish dance music it was used for the speeches etc.

I have a Zoom H2 (NOT the N) so I placed it on a table between the speakers and left it running using just the built in front mics. Standing there, the sound was nice and loud (to my ears). Not painful but you wouldn't choose to hold a conversation there. I left AGC set to "general".

I have a recording that's very quiet.

When I play it on my Mac at a volume level I'd use for everyday it's hard to make out the words. Audacity shows it's peaking at -12.

1. Is this normal? Without getting into the whole clipping debate (which I don't really understand) is it reasonable to collect sound at -12 and then amplify in "post"?

2. Is it best just to use "amplify" in Audacity? It's suggesting I boost the sound by 9.9 to avoid clipping.


3. Please list some of the things I could do better next time :)
 
I have found that sometimes when you leave the recorder in Auto Gain Control that if you get a loud spike at the start of the recording then the AGC turns way down to accommodate the loudness and then the remainder of the recording is really low.

You are better off adjusting the gain yourself to about 70% of the input audio before it clips. You may get the odd clipped sound if someone shouts etc but for unmanned audio you have to expect that.

Now the caveat :) I'm a photographer who dabbles in video so my knowledge mightn't be 100% b ut this is what works for me!!!
 
Thanks - that makes a sort of sense. I'd assumed AGC monitored the sound in real time (apparently it can lead to "pumping"?). Maybe I really should read the manual...
 
In this situation I would be tempted to set it to peak around -5 manually and not bother with AGC as it can cause the volume to go all over the place as the music naturally increases and decreases in volume. With a DJ its unlikely that you will get a huge average volume difference between each song so its fairly easy to prevent too much clipping if you leave a little headroom. However there is definitely nothing wrong with amplifying a track that peaks at -12 if that is all you have and it isn't terrible quality
 
I'll look into whether I can set a peak limit.

I assumed AGC would help since the music was a lot louder than the speeches.

More reading to do...
 
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