I don’t like your (room) tone, or rather lack of it: Tips for getting better sound

If I were to play you two slightly different versions of a radio news report, or perhaps one for television, I wonder if you could tell the difference. I bet you could.

The content, structure and writing would be the same, the clips would be the same, the length would be the same … and yet one just, well, sounds better.

I’ll cut to the chase. A radio piece with proper mixing will usually sound so much better than one without.

During compare and contrast sessions I’ve seen through the years, a listener will generally prefer the mix with ambient noise included. Asked to identify what’s missing (without having been told the difference), they’ll say the one with just voices sounds “cold” or “sterile” or “flat,” or descriptions of that nature.

Most people never listen to the radio (or to podcasts) and dissect a mix in real time, but our ears automatically appreciate what adding ambient sound can offer.

In his new book The Breath of the Gods — an absolutely absorbing history of wind, of all things — the author Simon Winchester describes how audio professionals will record what’s often called a “wild track” during interviews outdoors. He writes:

It was customary for anyone recording to ask the guest after the interview was over to please be quiet for 30 seconds while he held his microphone high in the air, simply to record background sound.

This is one of the few times I’ve encountered a bang-on description of a production technique outside the workplace or a training manual (or video).

As Winchester, who’s probably been interviewed enough times to be accustomed to the process, “the wind becomes an inevitable component of the ambient sound.” The journalist or technician on site will gather it as part of a routine checklist tied to the assignment.

(Collecting wild track is, of course, used in other types of production, too, including movies. Regardless of intent or budget, ambient noises can be mixed to smooth out the overall audio, so that dialogue recorded in different places and circumstances sounds consistent in the final product.)

Every room has a tone

Back to journalism. We do — or rather should do — this indoors, too.

Inside, the track is what is often called room tone. Room tone is really important, and it’s often overlooked.

This is a concept that I learned in 1993, not long after I joined the newsroom at Here & Now. I was enrolled in a course that covered all kinds of things about visual storytelling. I still remember a lot of that course, and what trainers Carlyn Moulton and Chris Mullington had to say. One of the clues to top-notch storytelling, they said, is paying close attention to audio. Television news obviously relies on pictures, but we experience a story with all our senses, and — as great radio professionals know — our ears do a lot of work in understanding a report.

I had largely only worked for print up to that point, so Carlyn’s how-to advice — like finding a quiet corner of the room and, yup, sticking your arm up or out to gather a bed of 30 seconds or so — really made an impression.

That was an analogue era. We collected things on videotape or audiotape, and I’m old enough to remember cutting audio with an X-acto knife or razor blade and keeping track of the little bits of tape. We switched to digital editing at CBC Radio around 1995, I think. That of course changed everything, and eventually we started recording digitally, too.

But the principles of a good mix remain the same.

And I’ll say this: I really do notice it when I hear a piece that sounds cold or sterile or flat.

It happens, unfortunately, much too often.

My advice to journalists starting out (and anyone else): take advantage of ambient noise. What an amazing lift it will give your work, whether you’re working on a video or audio piece.

Listen to the results yourself. You will notice it, I guarantee it. You will change your workflow to allow it to happen.

Your audience will probably not thank you, and they may not even notice what you did. But they will be more engaged, and your work will sound so much better.

Some more resources

If you want to know a lot more about audio mixing, CBC’s The Doc Project posted great tutorials to YouTube some years ago. Here’s one:

For a look at how important room tone is for indie filmmaking, check this video: