Back to Recording

With the final run of edits out of the way, I am at last back to recording audio. The break from recording was much needed in retrospect. I was fumbling with equipment and programs and getting nowhere in a hurry. Taking time to step back from the process gave my head a bit of room to breathe.

Having jumped back in, I was able to narrow down some of the problems and get them more or less squared away. One of the big ones was sounding pitchy. This was also probably the most straightforward aspect to fix. I put some time into learning how equalizers work rather than just letting the audio on a flat frequency curve (sounds like an oxymoron). That has helped keep some of the higher registers, like when I'm trying to make distinct female voices, a lot more palatable to listen to.

The other major problem I had been running into was a mid-recording gain drop. I would be recording for a few minutes and then notice the recording volume make a sharp drop. Having a new headset to listen back to my voice while I record helped me notice the problem for what it was. Ended up banging my head against a wall for the better part of a few days before stumbling on what seems to have fixed the problem: power settings for Windows. Seems like background processing on my laptop was occasionally throttling power. Walked through the UAD manual to grab better settings and we were off to the races.

I feel a lot better about the process now that I've got the main culprits pinned down. My mic still occasionally drops gain, but I'm able to notice with my headset and pause recording. A quick toggle on the preamp gets me back into shape. Hoping I'll still be able to get everything recorded and cleaned by time Shikaree hits shelves. Fingers crossed.

Toodles.