Woooo, it’s Tuesday! 2/5 weekdays done. The weekend is so close I can taste it. Hopefully you’re enjoying my posts by now and are learning a thing or two. Today’s post is also a cool little skill I learned how to do through Communications Media, and that is using the soundboard.

The soundboard is what you use in the studio to deal with the level of noise for background music, microphones, cameras, etc. The main problem you have to worry about with soundboards is what type of sounds you want to be heard very clearly (guest speakers), and what can be more faint (background music).

When dealing with soundboards, some obstacles you need to overcome are how spiked you want the noises to be, how well you can hear what the speakers are saying, and making sure the microphones are within a good reach so you do not pick up any static.

Overcoming these obstacles can be tricky at times, but usually there are quick fixes when you are the audio person working on soundboards. For example, if you want to hear one person more clearly than another, you just tune up the person you want to hear while you fade out the other speakers voice so the audience can focus strictly on what you want to be heard in the script. Luckily, microphones keep enhancing as time goes on so they don’t pick up as much static as they would have used to if super far away, but making sure you have a strong microphone connection prior to filming is key to ensuring you don’t lose sound during the shoot.

The solution to using soundboards is to know your script and to know what you want to hear. Knowing what should be loud and what should be quiet can affect a good and bad shoot. If emphasis is put on some phrases or words, you want to make sure the audience can hear it clearly and that is your job to make sure there are no flaws with sound. Double check the microphones before shooting so you have full battery and can pick up the voices, and just adjust as needed during production. Using your own common sense can help a lot, if you can’t hear something, turn it up, because odds are the audience can’t hear either. Soundboards are very simply once you get the hang of them, they just take a little practice.

Here’s a question for you to see if you paid attention: if you are on the soundboard and an interview is going on, who’s microphone do you turn up to hear better and why? Comment your answers below so we can see your views! That’s the cup o’ Joe for today, until next time friends!

-Joe