Gain, Volume, and Audio Filters Settings:

Reference for adjusting the P4Next settings. It will review setting gain for the mics, volume of the headphones, and different audio filter options: tone, compressor, and AI noise reduction.

Setting Gain (Mic Sensitivity)

note: Gain is not Volume

If you are new to audio recording, gain refers to how sensitive the mic. The more sensitive, the stronger your interviewee's signal will become, but with an increase in noise as well. Setting gain is about finding the right balance between clarity of your subject's signal while producing as little noise as possible. Because a stronger signal can often sound louder, some think of gain as volume, but this is incorrect. Gain is input and volume is input, thus setting the gain will be different for each person speaking/mic because we tend to all talk at different at different levels of loudness. This video provides a good example:

https://youtube.com/shorts/XAoE4_jAqxc?si=bEUMaOfFrgpkB1XL

Do the following 1 person at a time:

1. Put your headphones on, guests should keep theirs off

2. have your guest sit and place their mic where it will be during the recording session

3. Ask them to talk for about a minute at their normal voice/loudness

   1. Some questions might help

      1. Tell me about the last movie you watched? What was the plot?

      2. What are the top 5 things you did last month?

      3. is a hot dog a sandwich and why do you think so?

4. Ignore what you are hearing in terms of loudness or volume and instead look at the lcd screen on the P4Next while they are talking to see their input signal

   1. if you don't hear anything though, that is a good indicator that you are not getting a signal at all. troubleshoot:

      1. Check that the gain and headphone volume knobs are set to the middle

      2. check XLR connections and headphone connections

      3. Check that phantom power is off

5. adjust the corresponding gain knob for their mic so that for the majority of the time they are speaking, their signal falls in between -6 and -12 db, indicated by the following image

6. 
7. Repeat this for every person using a mic, including yourself.

Setting Volume for Headphones

1. Invite your guests to put on their headphones and ask them to talk amongst themselves, perhaps give them a question.

2. One by one ask each person for feedback on how they like the volume in their headphones. This is a personal preference, so unlike setting gain, there is no standard way of setting the correct volume.

3. Adjust the volume to their liking by using the corresponding volume knob.

Audio Filter Options

All of the following filter options are being applied live, meaning you can test and hear whether your like them or not before you start recording and decide accordingly

note: These filters are here for less experienced users who may not want to do much post-production work. They automatically apply effects to the recording which can not be undone in post. If you are an advanced user, you may wish to apply these yourself in post rather than enable them on the P4Next.

Tone

The tone filter attempts to make the human voice sound warmer and clearer by applying EQ and de-essing to remove harsher frequencies like strong "S" sounds. However, on certain voices it may sound strange.

1. Press the tone button to turn on. The button will turn green

Compressor

Compressor filters try to make make the signal input more consistent, leading to more of your recording sounding like its all at the same volume. This can be great if the type of recording you are doing has lots of dynamics or changes in loudness. For example, a comedy podcast might cause someone who is normally speaking to laugh loudly, blowing out the signal and leading to clipping, or they have a wheezing silent laugh which the mic gain you set may not be sensitive enough to hear. Compressor smooths this out, by making the loud softer and softer louder. However, in some cases, it can make the audio sound too flat for some people's liking.

1. Press the "comp" button to turn on. The button will turn green.

AI Noise Reduction

This filter takes a brief audio sample of the room, and then treats those frequencies as background noise that it then tries to remove. This has mixed reviews and shouldn't be as important for recording in the Capture Studio. It may affect overall audio quality depending on the environment, so test before recording. AI reduction may also cause a slight delay in your headphones, which some people can percieve and may find distracting.

1. Ask everyone to be completely silent. You don't want anyone's voice as part of the audio sample

2. press the AI Noise Reduction button. It will blink for about 5-10 seconds. This indicateds it is capturing and analyzing the audio sample.

3. The button will turn a stable green, indicating that it is applying the noise reduction, and it is safe to speak

4. Important to note:

   1. you will need to reapply the AI Noise Reduction any time you change the gain level of any mic, headphone volume is fine as that is output not input.

   2. if you turn this off, you will lose the original audio sample. This means takes a new audio sample every time you turn it on, so it doesn't act like a toggle on/off the way tone and compressor do.