If you only have time to set up one thing properly, set up the audio. People will watch a soft picture with good sound for an hour. They will leave a sharp picture with bad sound in ninety seconds.
1. The microphone is too far away
This causes more bad audio than everything else combined. Every doubling of distance takes a large bite out of the signal and brings the room up with it.
A microphone at fifteen centimetres sounds professional. The same microphone at a metre sounds like a conference call. Before you touch any setting, move the microphone closer.
2. Too many open microphones
Six open microphones means six copies of the room summed together — air conditioning, chairs, traffic — all louder than the person actually talking.
A noise gate closes each microphone when nobody is speaking into it. Automatic microphone mixing goes further and gives the gain to whoever is talking, closing the rest as it goes. On a panel, this is transformative.
3. The level keeps moving
Somebody leans in, then steps back. A singer belts a line. The viewer spends the event with a hand on the volume control.
Three tools, in order. A compressor evens out the moment-to-moment swing. A leveller catches the sudden spikes. Automatic gain control holds the overall level over minutes.
4. There is a hum under everything
Usually an earth loop, a cheap cable, a light dimmer or an amplifier left on. The correct fix is to find it — unplug things one at a time until it stops.
When you cannot, voice isolation separates the human voice from everything else and keeps only the voice. It will remove a hum that no EQ setting will touch cleanly.
5. The room is echoing
A hard room — glass, tile, bare walls — puts the same sound into the microphone several times. No processing removes reverb convincingly once recorded.
Fix the room. Anything soft helps: curtains, a rug, people. Or move the microphone closer, which raises the direct sound relative to the reflected sound.
6. The stream is quieter than everything else
If your broadcast is noticeably quieter than the video the viewer watched before it, that reads as amateur before a word is spoken.
A loudness pilot holds the programme inside broadcast targets so platforms do not turn you down. Aim for around -16 LUFS for streaming.
The order to work in
- Move the microphone closer.
- Set gain with the person speaking at real volume, meter around two-thirds.
- Gate, so closed microphones stay closed.
- EQ — cut what is wrong before boosting what is missing.
- Compress, then level.
- Check the loudness target.
- Listen on phone speakers, because that is what most of your audience uses.