The All-Things-Audio Blog
Avoid Fake Sounding Audio
Nov 26, 2018
When we capture sound, we always to get the best, most clean signal possible. That is why we like to use lav microphones (The microphones that clip on to people's shirts). The signal from a lav is usually really clean and present because it's right against the talent's chest. It's not picking up a lot of room or ambience around them. That's a good thing is it not? The cleaner the better. Get rid of all the room tone that could pick up on the microphone, then you don't have to deal with all the nasty reverb in post. It sounds great in writing, but surprisingly, being super "clean" and dry doesn't always make something sound better.
You see, acoustics are part of the way we hear things. It's how we identify sounds in our everyday life. We don't hear things perfectly clean because of all the distracting elements going on around us (traffic, planes, air conditioners, children screaming). Luckily, our brains are smart enough to tune those things out....