Audio upgrade

Dear Supporters

Thanks to you I've been able to do a little upgrade to combat a tiny problem that has been niggling at me. 

Despite having perhaps the best voiceover microphone on the market, the Blue Yeti USB, occasionally I'll get a strange comment such as:

"Your microphone sounds like it cost $0.85 from Ali Express"
"Fix your microphone please!"
"There's a weird mid-range resonance like your microphone doesn't like you"

As you know my policy these days with negative comments is to ask for clarification then extract the nugget of useful info from it. But these people never responded or couldn't explain any better.

They're obviously a very specific type of audiophile or perfectionist. Then again, so am I! But I think I narrowed it down to this:

I've shown in the supporter-only "Editor Commentaries" that I use an echo reduction plugin. When recording in an office as I do, the sound can bounce off the walls and back into the microphone slightly later. This is heard as an echo or reverb. 

I have always used the fantastic UNVEIL De-reverb plugin to combat this. But it does do some audio processing that can - to a certain ear - sound very slightly "different" or "off" compared to unprocessed voiceover. The best way I can describe it is, in return for beautifully removing the yucky echo, it leaves perhaps a 3% "Dalek" kind of effect on the end trails of words.

The ultimate solution is to record in a fully enclosed vocal booth lined with sound absorbing panels. I don't do this (and no YouTuber I know does) because I need to be able to see and operate the computer so as to narrate along to the video.

The next best solution without plugins is to add those sound absorbing panels to the walls of the room you're in. It's still a work in progress, but you've been seeing the results in these photos!

The plan now is to turn off the plugin and just go with the unprocessed vocal (with some other less intrusive EQ and hiss removal tweaks as before).

Oh, and I also invested in a shotgun mic to replace the lavaliere collar mic for on-camera stuff, which can sound a bit boxy as it's below the chin instead of in the path of the voice.

So, thank you for your support which enabled me to buy a lot of these rather pricey fibreglass panels! I hope you like the result as you hear the slight difference or dare I say it - improvement - across the next couple of videos. And if you're an audiophile of a certain kind, you'll enjoy it even more! (If however you're part Dalek, my apologies for - ahem - exterminating the problem...)

Your friend in retro, Perifractic