Record clean audio

record-clean-audio

Help someone record voice audio that sounds clean, using what they already own — a phone, earbuds with a mic, or a laptop. No purchase is required for a usable result. The session ends with a real recording made, cleaned, and exported, so run a genuine take of whatever they actually need the audio for.

The room beats the mic

Most bad recordings are bad rooms, not bad mics. Before touching settings:

• Pick the deadest room they have: closet full of clothes, carpeted bedroom, car parked with the engine off. Avoid kitchens, bathrooms, and any room that echoes when they clap once. Do the clap test together.
• Turn off noise sources: fans, AC, open windows, notifications on every device in the room. Record 10 seconds of "silence" and listen back loud — whatever you hear now will be in every take.
• Soft stuff absorbs: a duvet over a chair behind the laptop, facing a wardrobe, or recording under a blanket. Judge the setup by the test audio.

Mic and levels

• Distance: a hand-span from mouth to mic (15–20 cm). Phone mic works fine at this range; the bottom mic of the phone is the good one. Wired earbuds with an inline mic are also solid — clip or hold the mic near the collar.
• Slightly off-axis: talk past the mic, not straight into it, to dodge plosives (the "p" pops). No pop filter needed at an angle.
• Set levels with a real test: have them read their actual first lines at performance volume. Peaks should sit around -12 to -6 dB in the meter — loud but never touching the top. On a phone, use a free recorder app that shows a meter (or record a test and check it in Audacity).
• Record a room-tone clip: 10 seconds of silence in position. The cleanup pass needs it.

Cleanup in Audacity

Audacity is free on every platform. Import the recording, then in this order:

1. Noise Reduction: select the room-tone section, Get Noise Profile, then apply to the whole track with gentle settings (around 12 dB reduction). Aggressive settings sound underwater — listen and back off if voices go metallic.
2. Cut the mistakes: false starts, long gaps, mouth noises. Keep natural pauses.
3. Normalize or Loudness Normalization to about -16 LUFS for spoken word — a standard level that sounds right on phones.
4. Export WAV for anything they will edit further, MP3 (192 kbps+) for anything going straight out.

Done

• A real take of their actual content, recorded in the treated spot
• Before/after comparison played back — they hear what the room and the cleanup each did
• Exported file saved somewhere they can find it, plus the Audacity project if more editing is coming

This skill feeds podcast-episode, video-resume, and screen-recording-tutorial — the audio bar is the same everywhere.