How to Make Your Voice Sound Better When Recording Audio for Multimedia Content

You can make your voice sound better when recording by enunciating words correctly, using the right flow and inflection, and recording in a quiet room.

And there are several additional things you can do to ensure your voice sounds better when recording like:

• Use a professional microphone

• Breathe full, deep breaths and slow down

• Open your mouth more than usual

• Pretend you're speaking to a friend

• Refine your script and timing

In short, you can easily make your voice sound better when recording audio for your multimedia content.

As a full-stack content marketer, there will come a time where recording a voiceover for video content will be needed. And if you're reading to capture a clean voice recording with professional voice quality, you'll be prepared to impress your colleagues or clients.

But should you listen to us?

We've got over five years experience as broadcast journalists, where we were classically trained by a professional voice coach during our military service—and we've won military videographer of the year and Emmy-nominations for our work.

This is not a generic post on voice recording—this post will dramatically improve your audio quality.

Let's get started.

How to make your voice sound better when recording

You can make your voice sound better when recording by deploying a few voice recording best practices like reducing background noise or using decent microphones.

But before we dive into what that looks like, we'd like to make a disclaimer:

• There is no perfect business voice or broadcast style you must accomplish to record great audio. Your voice is enough, accent and all—you just need to follow a few steps to improve the overall quality of the sound, not change your natural vocal tone.

Capturing audio files can be broken up into two phases: voice recording and audio enhancement.

Phase #1: How to improve your voice recording

Before you get started recording, make sure you've got a plan in place.

Are you reading from a script? Or are you simply recording an off-the-cuff voiceover?

It's worth noting using a script can dramatically improve your voice recording, so please consider writing one.

Either way, here's what you need to do to make your voice sound better when recording:

• Record in a quiet room - This is the easiest part to control. Please recording in a quiet room where you will be undisturbed. Proactive noise reduction is key.

• Use an external microphone - Whether you're using a fancy dynamic microphone, a condenser microphone, or a cheap external one—using an external mic will improve quality.

• Take full, deep breaths - It's easy to get nervous when recording audio, which means you'll start experiencing short, choppy breaths. This will affect your voice recording...slow down.

• Open your mouth more than usual - When you're recording audio, go ahead and open your mouth more than usual. You want to ensure you're enunciating words well.

• Pretend you're speaking to a friend - A great way to make your voice recording sound better is by making it feel natural. And pretending to be speaking to a friend, or smiling, helps a lot.

It doesn't matter whether you're recording audio in a professional studio or straight off your phone. Because if you deploy these voice recording best practices, you will improve the quality of your audio content.

But what about once you're done recording, how can you improve voice recordings then?

That's where phase two comes in.

Phase #2: How to improve audio quality of a recording

You can improve audio quality of a recording by following voice recording best practices, using separate tracks, and adding sound effects to your audio tracks.

First, you need to do everything you can to record high-quality audio prior to attempting to tweak your audio files in post-production.

That said, you won't always get a perfect recording.

So you need to know how to improve a pre-recorded audio file.

Here's a couple ways you can improve audio quality of a recording:

• Use separate audio or vocal tracks - Think of your multimedia content like a puzzle; each piece matters. Don't mix everything up, give each audio file/recording it's own track.

• Keep track of your dB levels - A great practice is to ensure your main voiceover is no greater than -6dB, and your background music is no greater than -24dB (while main v.o. is playing).

• Add sound effects - If you're using Adobe Premiere Pro, like we recommend, you can add effects like DeNoise, Dynamics, and Mastering to instantly improve your audio quality.

• Remove ambient noises - Ambient sounds, popping sounds, and crazy background noises are best avoided prior to recording. But using sound effects can help you remove them.

• Use complimentary audio/video - If you add relevant sound effects, natural sounds, or video footage to your finished piece, you will ensure the audio track is well complimented.

As you can see, if you don't record great audio the first time, all hope is not lost.

You can improve the audio quality of a recording in post - production, too.

In closing

No need to strain your vocal cords or pretend to sound like someone else.

If you'd like to make your voice sound better when recording, follow the guidelines we provided for you today. And you'll be sure to sound clean, professional, and powerful.

Improving the quality of your audio is one of many multimedia and video production tips that'll transform the way your content marketing assets perform.

Go give this a shot.

And let us know how it goes.

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