How to make an amateur performance recording sound better
Upload the recording and tell Vizard Agent the singing and the music both need help. Vizard Agent measures the loudness of the speech and the song sections separately, sets the limiter from the recording's own peaks, brings the voices forward without thinning them, and tidies the cuts to real shot changes.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Name the parts separately. Vizard Agent measures speech and singing on their own terms, and telling it that the recording contains both is what stops a single noise-reduction pass being applied across material that needs two different settings. Upload the original recording, not a re-exported copy.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
A phone recording of a live performance has two audio problems in one file. Noise reduction strong enough to clean a spoken passage will hollow out a sung one, and a limiter set from a guess either does nothing or squashes the loudest notes, so Vizard Agent measures rather than estimates. In the session behind this article it:
- Looked at the video's content, duration, picture quality and audio character, and measured the loudness and peaks of the original.
- Confirmed where the black screen starts and mapped the shot changes.
- Refined the cut points against real frame changes rather than a fixed interval.
- Measured the spoken section's loudness so noise reduction would not thin it, and the song section so the singers could come forward.
- Read the digital peaks to set the limiter, and delivered 229.37 seconds (576x1024, 30fps) with the singers audible above the backing.
When does this not work well?
Audio repair can only work with what was captured, and a phone microphone at the back of a hall has limits. Clipping is permanent, because distortion recorded into the file cannot be undone. One microphone hears one place, so distance and room are baked in. Heavy noise reduction thins voices, bad picture stays bad, and a wrong note stays a wrong note.
Common questions
Can Vizard Agent fix a phone recording of a concert? It can improve it considerably. It cannot undo distortion or move the microphone.
Can it tidy the video cuts too? Yes. Vizard Agent maps the shot changes and moves cuts onto real ones.
How does it decide the limiter setting? Vizard Agent reads the recording's measured digital peaks, rather than using a default that may be far off.