![]() ![]() Knowing about potential noise issues beforehand helps you put together a strategy to deal with them before they become a problem for your show. ![]() Does your guest have dogs that bark at every person who walks by the house? Is the house in a busy traffic area? Will there be big trucks driving by? Will your audience be able to hear a fire truck or ambulance passing? Will someone be mowing the lawn right when you need to bring your guest into your show? Are there doors that can be closed so kids and other activity in the house can be shut out for your guests’ time on screen? Ask your guest these questions when you do the tech check. Your only concern (visually) is what looks good in front of the camera.Īnother thing to consider with audio is extraneous sounds. We kept the ironing board and bed out of the frame, so no one was the wiser as to the location. She arranged it so there was wall and a bit of a painting behind her, and it looked and sounded great. I did one show in which the host used an ironing board in her bedroom as a laptop stand. Find a clean wall or even a wall with one nice picture behind the remote guest, and you’ll have pretty video and cleaner audio. If your remote guest has a room with carpet and some cloth furniture in it, that room will sound a lot quieter than a big, open, wood-floored office. A big, empty room sounds like a big, empty room. People love tile rooms and hardwood floors because they look nice, but they pose real impediments to getting clean audio. The remote guest’s location has a huge effect on sound as well. to/3b177nC) and even models that can plug right into tablets or phones, if you decide to go that route ( amzn.to/2NDc9Op). If you add a lavaliere mic, it can really help get quality audio. Adding more throws off the normal timing of conversation, and it can create instances in which people start speaking at the same time. And, if the guest will be standing and maybe positioning themselves a little further from the computer, we include an extension cable ( amzn.to/3pZHXtL) so they can put the headphone wire behind their back, making it less visible-just as you might do with a wired lav in an on-location interview.īluetooth headsets work too, and there’s no visible cord, but they also add a tiny bit more delay, and there’s usually already a tiny bit of delay with any remote connection. We use these earbuds because they specifically do not have a microphone. If the microphones hear nothing but your guest, then you can ensure their audio can come through. This is especially important when you have a panel or multiple people speaking, as the software canceling out the people speaking will always make your remote guest’s dialogue sound garbled. If you can get the guest to use even basic earbuds, like the $12 Sony set we include in some of the remote kits we send out to guests ( amzn.to/3uCOga9), your production quality will improve because then, the microphone only has to hear the person speaking. The software then has to cancel out the computer audio from the microphone audio-and invariably that makes the remote guest’s audio sound worse. This is made worse when the guest is also using the computer’s built-in speakers to hear, because the microphone is picking up the output of the computer’s speakers as well as the person speaking. Built-in mics tend to pick up the whole room, and they’re prone to echo, reverb, etc., making it harder to hear your remote guest. Much like built-in webcams, your laptop’s built-in mic is most likely of poorer quality than you should be using for live shows. Jabra’s Evolve 20 UC wired headset ($38.58 amzn.to/3suxesQ ) Plus, the headset is very lightweight and does not enclose my ears, which helps my ears to remain cool even if I have to use the headset for hours.įigure 4. I like the Jabra Evolve headset ( Figure 4, below) because of the long USB cable that allows me to stand or sit. to/37UTCUp) despite the great sound they deliver to both the user and the show, and they refuse to wear them. But many people don’t like over-the-head headsets ( amzn. Using a USB headset for audio is a great way to make sure your remote guests sound awesome and can hear the show well. As long as we could hear them cleanly, the audience proved willing to overlook video issues. ![]() ![]() Conversely, I’ve had guests who had great audio-usually from a headset with a boom mic-and it didn’t matter if the video glitched or their connection was a rough one. As producers, we tend to get hung up on making sure the picture looks pretty, but if the audio is noisy, distorted, or hard to hear, it doesn’t matter what the picture looks like. Getting good audio is the next critical aspect of remote production, and it might be even more important than the video side. ![]()
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