2019 - 08 - 15 - The Importance Of Quality Audio

Our learners will forgive a lot, especially video-wise, but learners will not forgive bad audio. If your project has bad audio your learners will disengage and shut down if they don't turn the entire project off. Personally, I break audio into three quality categories: Unacceptable audio is audio that has distracting elements whatever they may be the air conditioner, other background noise, too quiet, too loud, out of sync, if there is an element that is distracting to your learners the audio is unacceptable. Acceptable Audio, this is the most common level of audio instructional designers should be aiming for, I sometimes also call this the "prosumer" level of audio. I remember the "prosumer" name from the cameras that weren't quite professional but they were "good enough" for most enthusiasts. For instructional designers, this means doing whatever you can to get the best quality audio that is realistic given your situation. A quality external microphone, a sampling of the background noise to use the noise reduction features of professional tools, calibrating your microphone so you aren't too quiet or too loud. Professional quality audio is when you send the script to a professional voice actor. There are two warnings though, first is that the price for a quality professional voice actor is not cheap. This isn't a "Fiver Gig" this is a professional. The second warning is that if you get approval to hire a professional voice actor you will want one for every project of importance. So the big question is what do you do to increase the quality of the audio in your projects?