💡 Wanna save time? Download my Multiband Compressor preset and use it on your audio files to make them instantly sound better.
This is how I edit audio in my wedding films. And whenever I say “edit audio,” I mean mixing, EQ, audio sweetening, all the terms people use to describe making your audio sound as good as possible as quickly as possible.
Two things get covered here. First, one audio effect you can apply to anything you recorded on the wedding day that will make it sound incredible. Second, how to mix a person speaking against the music you picked, so one isn’t too loud, the other isn’t too soft, and you can actually hear everything.
Quick note before we start: this was shot in Premiere Pro CC 2018, but nothing here depends on the version. It works the same in whatever Premiere you’re running today.
The Timeline We’re Starting From
Pretend the edit is done and we’re at the audio stage. Video track one is a clip of my friend Noah reading a letter to his bride. Audio track one is that letter, recorded off a Sennheiser G3 lav mic clipped to his lapel and running into a Zoom H5. Audio track two is the WAV file for the song. No effects have been applied to anything, this is straight off the recorder.
Played back with no mixing at all, you can barely tell what’s going on. Solo the voice track and it actually sounds pretty good on its own: quiet room, no air conditioner, no echo. But it can sound a lot better.
(That letter reading is from Noah and Mallorie’s wedding. If you want to see exactly how I mic’d him and set that shot up, that’s a whole behind-the-scenes video, and here is the finished film.)
Why Lav Audio Needs Help
I use lav mics all day at a wedding, and lavs have two specific weaknesses: bass reproduction and presence. Not Christmas presents under the tree. Presence, as in how close the speaker sounds to the mic. The whole point of a lav is that you’re hiding it, so it usually ends up down on somebody’s chest, out of the shot, which means the person you’re recording sounds far away from the microphone. That’s not what we want.
Whenever I was starting out, my answer to “make the audio sound better” was “make it louder, duh.” So I’d drag the track up three decibels and, honestly, it doesn’t sound much better. Volume is not quality. And on top of that, nobody who isn’t a trained voice actor keeps their voice at a consistent level. Look at the waveform: he takes a breath, gets louder, then trails off quieter and quieter. If you fix that by hand you’re keyframing louder, quieter, louder, quieter for the length of the film, and that is a major pain.
What we want is one effect that adds the bass, adds the clarity, adds the presence, and levels all of that out for us. Good news. There’s a plugin for that.
The Multiband Compressor
A compressor, through a lot of audio witchcraft, takes the quiet parts of your track (somebody nearly whispering) and brings them up, and takes the loud parts (somebody practically yelling into the mic) and brings them down. What you end up with is a track that’s never too loud and never too quiet and mixes in with everything else with very little effort on your part. It’s incredible.
Go to the Effects tab and search for Multiband Compressor. You’ll see one sitting under Obsolete Audio Effects, ignore that, we want the current one. Drag it onto your audio clip.
Now go to Effect Controls, find the Multiband Compressor you just added, and click Edit. That opens the settings window, and my goodness, the first time you see it this thing is intimidating.
Do not worry about it. You’re going to ignore 99% of what’s on that screen, because Adobe ships presets.
Pick The Broadcast Preset (The Weird Way)
Open the Presets dropdown at the top and you’ll see a pile of options. The one we want is Broadcast. But hold on, isn’t Broadcast already selected?
Premiere is kind of weird here. Whenever you first open the Multiband Compressor it says Broadcast, but Broadcast is not actually applied, no settings are applied at all, it’s just showing you the name. So to genuinely turn it on, click any other random preset first (I use Drums), watch a bunch of settings change, then go back up and select Broadcast. Now it’s real.
Change Attack And Release
Two changes to the Broadcast preset and you’re done. Set Attack to 1 millisecond and Release to 250 milliseconds.
Are we attacking something? Technically, yes. A compressor is constantly analyzing your audio as it plays and adjusting the level on the fly, and attack and release control how fast it reacts. Attack is how quickly it notices the volume changed and starts doing something about it, which we want basically instant for someone speaking, because a person’s voice jumps around much faster than a song does. Release is what happens after the compressor has done its thing, and there we want a smoother roll-off, just quicker than the default. One millisecond and 250 milliseconds.
That’s it. Those are the only two adjustments you need to make. Your audio is ready to go.
Save It As A Preset So You Never Do This Again
Close the settings window, right click the Multiband Compressor in Effect Controls, and hit Save Preset. Name it something cool. I named mine Matt Multiband Compressor, and you’re welcome to use my name too, it’s cool.
It now lives under Presets in the Effects tab, and from here on out it’s a single drag onto any clip.
And if you don’t want to go through even those two whole steps, oh my gosh, I know, I’ve made my preset available as a download so you can just grab mine. There is one hoop, which is signing up for my email newsletter. Yes, give me your email. I promise I won’t spam you, I’ll send you camera news and other video news I find interesting.
Toggle the compressor off and back on and listen to the difference. You can hear the extra bass, you can hear the extra presence. It sounds so much better.
I put together Adobe Enhance Speech EXPLAINED – Make Audio Sound Incredible In 1 Click In Premiere Pro as well, which covers the part I skipped over here.
What Volume Should You Actually Hit?
Now check your meters, because after the compressor that voice is close to peaking.
You have two ways to bring it down: drag the audio level down on the timeline, or go back into the Multiband Compressor and lower Output Gain (I pulled mine to negative 4). I’d think doing it inside the compressor, where all the processing is happening, would be better, but I have honestly never been able to hear a difference, so I just use the level on the timeline.
As for what number to aim at, if you Google this you’ll get about a billion answers and they’ll all disagree, and most of them are talking about broadcast standards. You gotta hit this level, you gotta hit that level, don’t be blowing out grandma’s TV from 1965. In my experience most of that advice is irrelevant for what we’re making, because people are watching on a computer, or on YouTube or Vimeo or Facebook, or, worse, on a phone. All that careful mixing for television speakers goes out the window when it lands on a six-inch screen with a mono speaker.
So to be clear: if you’re making a TV commercial or anything for broadcast, call your contact and ask what levels they need. If you’re making wedding films and YouTube videos, here’s what I use.
Voice: Target Negative 3 dB
Everything I record on a wedding day, letter reading, ceremony, speeches, toasts, I want hitting negative 3 dB after the compressor is applied. I know, that’s loud, that’s really close to peaking. But once you account for people watching on a phone or a small speaker, that’s where it sounds best without them having to touch their volume at all. Setting this particular track to negative 4 gets me averaging around negative 3 on the meters.
Music: About 10 dB Below The Voice
Music is a different beast entirely, because every song has different instruments and different levels, so there’s no single number to chase. What I use is a rule of thumb instead: for quieter, ambient music, a solo guitar, a piano, soft strings, nothing building to a big moment, I target roughly 10 dB below the voice track. If the speaking is at negative 4, the music goes somewhere around negative 14.
The song in this edit isn’t a quiet one. It has multiple instruments and it builds, so it needs to come down further than that. I dragged it to about negative 17 and played both tracks together, and that got it pretty close.
All of this comes down to one thing: the music must never overpower the recorded voice. My top priority whenever I’m mixing is clarity of whoever is speaking. If the song is swelling because the couple is about to kiss and the minister is still talking, the minister still wins, because otherwise your audience gets confused and distracted and starts wondering why they can’t hear what’s being said. You never want that.
Three More Things
Do not peak. Never peak. Keep an eye on your meters and don’t let them go into the red, because the second they do you get distortion on your audience’s speakers, and that’s the last thing you want to hear about.
Buy studio monitors. Speakers, to be clear, not screens. They give you clear, crisp sound and show you what your audio actually is. Do not trust your laptop speakers.
Buy real headphones. Do not trust the earbuds that came with your phone. Get a good pair of over-ear headphones, because speakers and headphones are the two ways your audience is most likely to hear this. Then play the finished thing back on your phone too. The more sources you check it on, the better it holds up everywhere.
One Honest Caveat
I do not consider myself an expert on audio mixing or EQ in any sense of the word. There are people whose entire job is mixing audio, and I am not one of them. I’m just showing you how I do it in Premiere. If you have a better way or a different way that works, please leave a comment, because I’m trying to get better at this and I’d love the help.
I also didn’t cover repairing audio that’s genuinely damaged, air conditioners, a truck driving by, dogs barking, birds overhead, because that’s a zillion different variables with a different fix for each one. If there’s a specific one you want covered, leave a comment and I’ll consider it.
Everything Mentioned
- 💡 Download my Multiband Compressor preset
- 🎤 My audio gear video, the exact recorders, mics, and cables I use to record wedding audio
- 👰 How I film groom and bride letter reading on a wedding day
- 📷 My favorite filmmaking gear
- Don’t have Premiere Pro? Download a free trial
- 🎬 My wedding film editing course
- ✌ The Learn Wedding Filmmaking Facebook Group
- ►► My free guide to booking more wedding clients
- 😍 Color graded with WhoisMatt LUTs
