improving the quality of sound

marcinzm wrote on 7/28/2023, 10:50 AM

Hello,

In Poland when young people get married, we celebrate organising a big wedding party. People dance on dance floor, shout and have fun. I use Zoom H4NPro device to register this sound track. First of all, I register music played by dj. I notice that this sound track is not so good in compare to CD quality. I know that these wav files should be improved in post production.

What is the best possible way to correct soprano, vocal and bass in Vegas Pro to achieve the best quality result? Maybe I should use third party plugins to do this to get the best possible quality?

Vocal level should be litte down and bass should be on little up level. I don`t know what about with soprano.

Can you help me?

Regards

Marcin

Comments

rraud wrote on 7/28/2023, 11:56 AM

Hi @marcinzm, If the source audio was recorded properly, it should sound good in Vegas. If it is poorly recorded, your options are limited.. even with SpectraLayers Pro or RX10 Adv.

Do you take a direct feed from the DJ's mixer? (in addition to using the H4n's internal mics to pick up the room sound on separate tracks).
Most audio mixers outputs are line level (typically +4dBu nominal), confirm your recorder's external inputs are set to line level. Feeding line level into a mic level input can produce distortion, regardless of the recorder's record volume setting. I am not familiar with the H4N Pro's input level settings. The first generation H4 could only handle line level input via the 1/4 inch jacks, the XLR inputs were for mic level only. I think subsequent H4 versions were switchable for the XLR/1/4 in. combo connector.

wjauch wrote on 7/28/2023, 6:09 PM

Hello,

In Poland when young people get married, we celebrate organising a big wedding party. People dance on dance floor, shout and have fun. I use Zoom H4NPro device to register this sound track. First of all, I register music played by dj. I notice that this sound track is not so good in compare to CD quality. I know that these wav files should be improved in post production.

What is the best possible way to correct soprano, vocal and bass in Vegas Pro to achieve the best quality result? Maybe I should use third party plugins to do this to get the best possible quality?

Vocal level should be litte down and bass should be on little up level. I don`t know what about with soprano.

Can you help me?

Regards

Marcin

Hi Marcin

Try clicking the Fx button, bottom right hand corner of the audio event, click Graphic EQ, then click add. Now adjust bass etc as you wish.

Dexcon wrote on 7/31/2023, 8:17 AM

For starters, hopefully the waveform is not hitting the tops and bottoms of the audio waveform window. If yes, you've very likely got clipping issues - are the soprano issues related to clipping? Next, the microphones on anything like the Zoom are not exactly high-end so expectations of high-end quality audio are likely to end in disappointment particularly in challenging audio environments as may very possibly apply here.

iZotrope has a useful product called Neutron which can auto rebalance audio - https://www.izotope.com/en/products/neutron.html - it has a 10 days free trial version.

For future events, if the Zoom has inputs for external microphones, think about using quality external microphones instead of the built-in microphones (unless of course you are already using external microphones). They won't totally solve such problems but may provide a better soundscape to work with. And if not already done, set volumes to not max out the waveform height.

john_dennis wrote on 7/31/2023, 10:05 AM

The second video shows a comparison of a mic capsule in about the same price range as the Zoom might have to a more capable stage mic. Disregard the power line disturbance issue and just listen to the difference in sound from the two mics.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/out-of-phase-sound-problem-the-sequel--141669/

Disclaimer:

Even I won't hump two of those mics across a soccer field.