I Became Obsessed With Audio... Here's what I learned

Heat. super crisp so that you have the best possible. — You It wasn't plugged in. You plugged in. — You did it again. The audio. It wasn't It was like No, it was like half It wasn't fully in. So, you did the thing. — You do this all the time, man. — A dude. It's always pushed all the way in. — And your curse has jumped over to me. I've been having audio problems like this. What the heck, man? No, this is a curse. This is an audio curse. — It's been awful. I've had, you know, more than half a billion views and I still suck at this. Okay, over the last 2 years, I have just sucked. Absolutely been the worst with audio. My audio has been abysmal to the point where I've like developed PTSD in not wanting to make videos with the fear of messing up the audio and not being able to use what I just shot. I'm talking like it's been so bad. It's been that most of my close friends know about this issue. I literally turn my levels around and set them manually before we even start vlogging and let everyone I'm with see the levels so we can all confirm. — It's true. Like I it's all it literally is a curse. Like every time you do something wrong and I help you and I'm like I think everything's good and then it's not good every time. — I don't know why — we've been doing this for so long. How can that be? — I show I showed you the screen. — How are we going back to like the mics from like 2017 to fix our audio problems? — I don't know. Jesse's giving me a while. Here's wild, dude. Jesse's been giving me help, too. And he's like, I'm still using mics from 2017. — My brother uses the bro video mic pro plus whatever THE BIG — WHY IT'S LIKE we've just tried to reinvent too many things when it was all working. — My Sony mic is just like clock like what the heck is that? I don't Well, it's Sony, but you know, I hit set, I film, I come back, they're peeking. Anyway, I don't know if I should blame the microphone or the audio or the camera or the editing software or myself, but I took it upon myself to fix this problem because I can't not be making videos because I'm scared of the audio and how it sounds. I just need to figure it out. It needs to be a nonpoint of friction. Again, 2026, no friction. All these things need to be sorted right now immediately so I can do what I need to do. And this goes across the board. This applies to literally everybody that makes content or makes videos. Anyway, I digress. I think I figured it out. It's multiaceted. It's microphones. It's software. It's all of those things combined. And I'm going to show you the mic that I'm using and how I can get that super crispy, crunchy, delicious audio that I've been getting complimented on, which is a first for me. I'm going to show you all those things uh right now. All right, take two. I'm a little rusty. I haven't made videos in a little while. Um, I keep joking with my friends cuz they're like, "Pe, when are you coming back? When are you going to start vlogging again? " Ah, so I thought we'd just start with the tutorial and a little bit about my PTSD and how I am legitimately terrified of audio. The last 2 years has been a journey. Uh, not a great journey. It's been the journey of me trying to figure out why my audio sucks so bad. Now, I mentioned it a little bit at the beginning of this video. You saw that, so I'm going to touch on that a little bit. But long story long, every mic I feel like I've used has given me some kind of different flavor of audio that I haven't been super stoked with. Don't get me wrong, the lavs and things you can get now are great. Like wireless mics have come so far from a guy that used to just like run around with Sennheiser G2 packs and if you were on the same frequency as like a random shop in New York like it would start being fuzzy and you'd get these weird horrible little spikes in your you'd be filming something with a wired headphone and then it would just absolutely just jack your ear and send you to the moon. And then you'd have to be going in and fixing all of that. like you would spend so long just with the pen tool just making points and just like it looked like a heartbeat that was failing around your audio. But that's what we had. Then the Zoom H4n came out and like that was the coolest thing ever cuz you could now record audio off camera. So I would have a Zoom H4n in my back left pocket, my G2 in my back right pocket, and then I would be filming on my 5D Mark II with a monopod

headphones plugged into the Zoom. Like it was a system and it was great and it worked. But now we're so spoiled with like Hollland mics and DJI mics and all of these brands that make these tiny little wireless magnetic buttons all with noise cancellation and thank God for AI audio processing because it has saved me over the last 2 years from many absolutely tragic scenarios. And it's not for a lack of trying. When I used to vlog with the 1DX Mark II in 2017, 18, 19, even into 2020 before the R5 came out, I used the road video mic pro. It was massive with a big old dead cat on it. I never had audio problems. Not once. Not once was audio ever a thought. And that's how it should be. I don't want to be on location filming something worrying about how to craft this story, tell this narrative properly with care and finesse and be worrying about like did the did we get the audio? Did I remember to hit the button physically so that I would have 32-bit float audio? Like should we listen to that back just to know if it's peing before we continue with the next clips? It's like I don't want to be taken out of the scene like that. And so many times last year I would be and I'd be stressed and anxious and I would wonder I hope that sounded good. Those thoughts and those feelings would overpower my actual thought process for what I was filming which turned into honestly making me not want to film much cuz it was just becoming hard and it was becoming problematic and difficult and there was friction there. I'm figuring it out. I want crispy, delicious, tasty, voluminous audio. Yeah, voluminous. Write it down. You'll use it. You're welcome. So, I switched to the Sennheiser mic that I used for a while, but I it's just I found it to be too hollow. Sounded kind of tiny and just not great and distant, you know? I had my friends reaching out being like, "Yeah, the audio doesn't sound good, dude. " And I was like, "I know. I know. This kind of audio for a vlog would just be weird. It would take you out of the moment. It doesn't suit that kind of raw, gritty, authentic, onthe-go footage. It suits in a studio where you've lit it. I've got a nice background. Insane background, by the way. Look at that. Are you kidding? Are you kidding me? Are you Looks like a Zoom background where I just selected like the library. I feel like Daniel Craig should be back there right now like setting his Omega having a little drink and a beautiful highball glass just crystal shining through the light of the morning. This beautiful hair with a two-piece suit, linen vest. Give me a pipe, dude. Just secondhand smoke. Let's go. When you have a nice setup like this, I want the audio to match the feeling of this vibe right now. Bad audio in general is just always bad. It always sounds bad and it always takes you out of the moment no matter what you're filming. Doesn't matter how good the camera is. piece story is. If the audio sucks, the video likely sucks. I was talking to Jesse Driftwood and he actually recommended this mic. This is the video mic goto. And he was like, "Dude, I've still been using that for years. It works. It just works. It sounds fine. " All right, Pete, you ready? This is it. The only microphone you're going to ever need. That's not true, but it is my favorite microphone ever. This is the Rode Video Mic Go 2. I have the old version. They have a newer one. I think it's called the Helix Edition or something. It's got a better shock mount, but I've been using this for years now. It is a $150 Canadian microphone. It doesn't require a battery, which is a huge win on its own, and it sounds really good. Sun's getting brighter. I was using the Sennheiser MK400 before this, which is I think a decently well- reggarded mic, but I didn't like how I sounded in it. It sounded like kind of thin, a little tiny. Whereas with the road, it's just richer. It's a little bit more full. And all that from a cheaper mic that doesn't require batteries is amazing. We've got 3 and 1 half mil uh to plug right into your camera or USBC if you want to plug it straight into your computer for like Zoom calls, face calls. You can use this to record voiceovers through the USBC. I do that all the time. Uh, and I just think like price to performance, there's nothing else that hits it quite like the video mic goto. I think I'm at least like four or 5 years into using it. And I just have no regrets. I convinced everyone at the studio to buy one and uh, unfortunately, they also had to buy this. It's the only real flaw is that the dead cat, the windscreen here is not included in the purchase price. So, if you're picking it up, definitely get this as well. When you're outside, you need some wind protection. And the foam ones that come with mics is just not enough. This right here, perfect runin gun setup. in the studio indoors microphone. So good. Love it. You're going to love it. Thank me later. Okay, it's maybe too bright. Sorry if that screwed that up. Love you. Talk to you soon. Bye. So, I went backwards and bought this and it's been fine. It's not like the best mic I've ever heard in my life, but I'm not noticing it. I'm just able to film, set the levels manually, record whatever I need, drop it in my timeline, and it sounds fine. That's all I'm asking for. Today's video is I wanted to share that. So, if you've been having audio problems, like maybe your mic needs to be switched. Obviously, depending on the mic that you're going to use, you're

going to get different quality audio out of it. That sounds better to me than a lav mic. If I'm filming myself, it's fine with a lav, but the second I turn it around and start filming someone 4T away from me, if they don't have a lav, then that sucks. And I don't want to have to mic up every single person I come in contact to when I'm just on the go trying to get back into making stories on the fly. You just got to be able to turn the camera and document, turn it back, document, and just know that it's going to be there. Now, for this audio, I've been using the Sure SM7B. I don't love the podcast. It's one of the most popular podcast mics out there. I've got it on a music stand so that I can boom it over to where I'm sitting. Don't love that either. Tabletop stands are nice. podcast mic stands I hate because they always start moving and your face is getting pushed up. It's just it's obnoxious, right? If you like the way this sounds, I'll show you the four things I click to make it sound this juicy. Just thick tomato soup sound. That's just give that to me. I'm going to give it to you. The audio. that I'm going to give you the audio. That's specifically what I will be delivering to you. Yes. So, I've got the Sure SM7B that's going into a cloud lifter. the noise floor of these mics is generally a little bit lower. So, if you're not using the Cloud Lifter and then you got to kind of like raise the volume of the mic in post, you get that kind of like background kind of hiss because you're raising that noise floor up too high. Hate that. Cloud Lifter just makes this mic louder without ruining that noise floor. And then all of this is going into the sound devices mix pre. Marquez got me on that years ago when we were chatting and I was like, "Yo, give me your best audio recommendations. " It was this off- camerara recorder and the boom mic that he uses, the Sennheiser MK. I forget. Let's just call it MKBHD. It's not, but it's great. I'll link it if I remember. I likely won't, but I I'll try. I won't. I'll try. This setup sounds great. I bring this into Audition and then I run the soup. I run the bowl of soup on it and then it sounds awesome. And then I sync that in post and delete the audio that's coming out of the camera. Just got a scratch mic on this. I clap sync to line her up. Off to the races. Now, with that said, that's a lot of work. I'm going to show you something at the end here where you don't need any of this stuff to get the audio to sound probably just as good in my opinion, or at least unnoticeable to the audience who's watching. So, let's start with the disclaimer. I'm not an audio engineer. I literally really don't understand how any of this works. I'm not even sure what half these things mean. I just click them and then things sound great. So, this is just going to be fast and dirty because that's uh that's all it needs to be. Okay. So, we're going to start off with a little EQ, little parametric equalizer that is going to equalize things in a very parametric way. Okay. And you get to that by clicking here. Click on parametric equalizer. That brings up this window. You see this fun little graph? This is also just information that I have scoured the internet for over 2 years and hundreds of videos. I almost couldn't even tell you why the graph looks the way it does. That's just how it looks. I set it like that once. Now, I hit okay every single time and it sounds great. So, I've never bothered to change it. The way I could like easily describe a parametric equalizer, if I had to compare it to photos, it would be like instead of just changing the temperature of a photo, your white balance or your you're going to go super warm and 3200 Kelvin, up to 5600. Instead of just blanket changing that warm or cool, you're going into the hue saturation tabs and actually selecting the color itself and just adjusting only the blue by a small percent. That's kind of what's happening here. We're fine-tuning details within the audio. And if I'm wrong, sorry. Next up, we're going to compress that Just give me compression. That's like someone saying like it gets too loud and they kind of tone it down. It gets too quiet, they tone it up. It just like it kind of levels out everything and gives it like a punch and an even tone that I feel like just works. If that's wrong, yeah, sorry. It sounds good, right? So, I guess here we are. I've got an audio friend named Gabe and when I need something to sound really spicy, I send things to him and he does things and then they sound way better. But as far as you and I are concerned right now, if you like this sound, we'll keep going. Now, beyond that, I use something called excite. That's in the mastering tab right here. It's like adding brightness and clarity, like fake um fake sparkle and excitement to your clip. usually affects the mid to high tones, but it really makes it kind of a little more crunchy, a little more crispy. Gives it that like radio sound. I really like that. And then to finish things off, I go to match loudness. So, I drag the clip from the clip window here down into the next window where you go to match loudness. And it has presets and LUF targets set up. And I think LUF targets YouTube has some. I think broadcast TV has broad broadcast TV. Broadcast TV L. You know what? None of these settings even matter. I go to match loudness so that it just like streamlines the clip throughout the entire everything's the same volume. We'll leave it at that. I often use noise reduction so that way in between every single word that I use there's silence instead of that. So there's a few ways to do that. I use the noise reduction process which lets you

capture a noise print. So, if there is a specific section of your clip that's a little bit noisier, you can zoom into that by hitting plus on your keyboard if you're on a Mac, and then just take your cursor and click and drag and highlight over the section where there's no talking, like right in there, and then capture noise print. And then you select the entire clip in that window and hit okay, and it applies it to the whole thing. So, now you've got your compressor, you've got your equalizer, you've got your excite, you've got your match loudness, and your noise correction. And that's what's giving you audio that sounds like this. Now, you don't need a mic like this or all these accessories for it to still sound great. Last week, I did a video in my hallway with a voice over and that was on my phone. I needed to do that last minute and I just recorded something quick on my phone. Used all these same steps and it sounded great. For instance, we could record something just using voice memos. This is if you're on an iPhone, Android, I don't know. Let's record one right here. This is what it sounds like when I use voice memos to record a voice over. I'm going to use all the techniques I just learned in a Peter McKinnon video talking about audio and soup and apply those to this clip to see how it sounds. Hopefully, I don't need a huge professional setup or a recording studio or sound blankets or anything else to get great sounding audio. All right. Now, we'll take that audio, which sounds like this when you play it back. One right here. This is what it sounds techniques I just learned in a — Okay, cool. Let's apply that entire bowl of soup to this clip here. Now, it sounds like this one right here. I'm going to use all the techniques I just learned. I mean, that's great. That's absolutely passable. I did it last week and no one said anything. In fact, I've been getting more compliments about my audio since I started doing all of this than before. If you have a phone, you can get great sounding audio just with that. And again, you don't need a vocal booth. You don't need all these accessories and things you have to pay for to get great sounding audio. Okay, that's it. That's my uh that's my spiel on how to get better audio for your videos. I wanted to share it because one, I think this sounds great and I want you to have those tools. Okay, that's good. Two, it's been a journey. It's been a journey of mine getting decent audio. Also three kind of selfishly in the future if my audio ever does suck again for some reason unforeseen a mistake you can give me some grace cuz you'll now know I'm trying. Okay, I'm trying. Hit the like button if you like this video. Smash it if that's something that you're into 2026 style. Subscribe if you haven't already and I will see you in the next video. Yeah, I'm filming it tomorrow and then I'm filming something on Friday. I'm back, baby. I'm back. We are back.