The Clean Voice Plan

Work the mic inside your room's reach, put every voice at one distance, land each platform's loudness target under its peak ceiling, and export a file the right size

MikeLoss's free Mic Distance & Gain calculator gives the inverse-square level change: about 6 dB quieter for every doubling of distance. That holds for a small source in open air, and the calculator's page says it does not model the room. You record in a room, where the reflected sound stays at roughly the same level wherever you sit, so moving back makes the room louder compared with you. While writing this plan we checked our own calculators and changed two: our RT60 estimator called a room at 0.51 s "well suited" despite its own 0.3 to 0.5 s aim, and our loudness calculator offered Audible as a -19 LUFS target checked against a -1 dBTP ceiling, when ACX measures RMS and wants peaks below -3 dB. The Clean Voice Plan takes your room from the RT60 estimator and works out its critical distance, the point where the room is as loud as your voice. In the worked example (an example, not a promise), a 4 x 3.5 x 2.5 m spare bedroom has an RT60 of 0.72 s and a critical distance of 69 cm on a cardioid; moving from 30 cm to 10 cm lifts the voice above the room from 7.2 dB to 16.8 dB for nothing, while panels taking the room to 0.35 average absorption buy 4.7 dB and take about 31 of them. Then it puts every voice at one distance, lands a platform's published target under a true-peak ceiling (an episode at -21.4 LUFS needs +5.4 dB for Apple's -16 and a limiter taking 2.3 dB off its peaks), and sizes recordings and exports. It is a planning aid, not acoustic consulting or legal advice. The room figures are rules of thumb from a Sabine estimate; every loudness target names its source and the month it was checked, and platforms change them, so check before you rely on one. It quotes NIOSH's exposure limits and says to monitor at moderate levels; music in a show needs the rights. Included: 23 printable pages, seven steps, a room and mic card, an episode delivery sheet, a session log, room and file reference tables, a quickstart, and a personalised sheet worked on the figures you entered in our calculators.

Look inside

Two full pages from the plan, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• Know Your Room's Reach: your room's RT60 and its critical distance, where the room is as loud as your voice
• Inside the Line: the distance that keeps your voice 10 dB clear of the room, for a cardioid and an omni
• Closer Beats Panels: what moving closer, soft furnishings and panels each buy, and how many panels a target takes
• One Distance, Every Voice: why gain can match two voices' levels but not their rooms, and how much leaks between mics
• Target, Then Ceiling: each platform's published target with its source and date, the limiter it needs, and what happens without one
• Bits Are Not Bytes: recording sizes per hour and per card, and mono or stereo exports sized for a month of episodes
• Level Before Loud: NIOSH's listening limits, and why you normalize before you edit
• The room and mic card and the episode delivery sheet, printable
• The session log for listening hours, breaks and backups, printable
• Critical distance and file size reference tables, and a one-page quickstart

The plan picks up where the free Mic Distance & Gain calculator leaves off. The calculator gives the inverse-square level change, about 6 dB per doubling of distance in open air; the plan takes your room from the RT60 Reverb Estimator and works out its critical distance, the point where the room is as loud as your voice, then shows why moving closer beats buying panels and how to put every voice at one distance. With the LUFS Loudness Target calculatorit lands each platform's published target under a true-peak ceiling, every target labeled with its source and the date it was checked, and with the Bitrate calculator and the Audio File Size calculatorit sizes your recordings and exports. It ends with NIOSH's exposure limits and how to monitor at a level your ears will thank you for. It recommends no product, is not legal advice on music rights, and the worked figures are examples.