Recording your best voice is like living your best life. You want to sound great, both through your own headphones and to your listening audience. In this short video, Josh Blood, ModPod's Creative Director, tackles the issue of adjusting his recording level while keeping two important perspectives in mind.
1. The way he sounds in his headphones
The first thing Josh does is make sure he hears his own voice, comfortably, in his headphones. He wants to hear himself and any co-hosts and guests. He demonstrates adjusting his headphone volume dial on his USB audio device. Once he hears himself and his co-host clearly and comfortably, he moves on to 2.
2. His microphone recording level
Next, Josh focuses on getting a proper input level into his recording device. In this case, Josh records to his computer and uses a USB audio device to set his microphone input level. Looking at his VU meter, Josh demonstrates how moving the microphone gain dial raises and lowers the microphone input. Josh wants his audio to go from green to yellow, but not so loud as to light up the red. Turning down the gain dial too much means no one can hear his voice. Just as bad, raising the gain higher and higher causes his audio to become uncomfortably loud and distorted. No one wants to hear that.
Proper microphone input finds the audio in the green, peaking in the yellow. Once this is achieved, Josh recommends taking the extra step of re-adjusting headphone volume for comfortable listening at this ideal microphone input level.
