What good is a great message or idea if no one can hear it?
Don’t let that happen to you!
With our virtual lives becoming more and more entwined with work, we as fundraising professionals must keep up. When putting together a virtual event, you must think about the end user/ viewer with the most basic setup, a single cellphone without earbuds. When you plan for clarity with the most basic of setups, you will be loud and clear for all!
A quality USB microphone is a must for your updated toolkit. When you add a microphone to your setup, you’re letting everyone else know that you want them to hear you. Instead of sounding like a person talking through a can or trying to compete with all the sounds of life around the house, a good microphone will make getting your message across much easier.
For me and many of my gamer friends, we all knew that this moment would come. Online gamers have been using microphones for years to communicate with each other, typically from locations like living rooms and other loud environments. The common pitfalls that come up would be: background noise, poor microphone quality, too many talkers and bandwidth. Let’s go over these issues and see what solutions can be offered.
Background noise is something that we all have had to deal with. From cars honking to babies crying, background sounds interfere with our messaging. This, thankfully, can be the easiest to deal with. If you’re doing an indoor broadcast, close the windows, shut the door and turn off the fan. Physically stopping those sounds from coming through is a clear and actionable step one. If you have kids, you can even make a game of it! First one to make noise does the dishes should do the trick!
You can even take it a step further and make or buy an On Air sign, to let family or roommates know that you need temporary quiet.
With those background sounds lessened or eliminated, we can turn our attention to the microphone itself. Though most standard webcams have one, the microphone in a webcam will almost certainly be a poor choice. A quick solution is to get a bluetooth dongle and pair your iPhone AirPod or smartphone earpiece with your computer. This isn’t the highest quality, but it will work in a pinch. For a better option, I would suggest getting a lavalier microphone. An inexpensive wired mic like the Vidpro XM-L works wonders for your audio quality. It’s a decent near field microphone, which means that it is designed to pick up sounds close to it, which helps ensure your voice is the only sound that is captured.
The next potential issue to focus on is too many talkers. I’m sure by now many of you had a Zoom meeting where two power talkers insisted on speaking over each other. You heard them, there were words, but very little would have been clear. If only one would pause speaking so that everyone could hear the other person! So much cacophony could be avoided.
In zoom meetings, having a moderator who can mute and unmute participants can help cut down on several people talking at once. When it comes to your event’s presenters, rehearsing your virtual event will show the folks who will be speaking what their cues are, and will give them a chance to practice pausing to let the other person finish before responding or launching into their own segment. An extra beat goes a long way towards letting the software switch to the person whose turn it is.
The final factor that goes into how well you are heard is bandwidth. This is how fast you can transmit and receive data. As you can imagine, the faster the better! If you have anyone in your house that plays online games, there’s a good chance that your bandwidth is sufficient. To make the most of what you have, what you can do is ensure that other programs aren’t hogging bandwidth when you want to use it. You will want to turn off any programs that automatically connect to the internet. These range from Netflix to DropBox- whenever these programs run they will take bandwidth from your broadcast.
Additionally, you’ll want to make sure that your computer or other device is connected to the internet via a hard-wired connection. Wifi is great but unpredictable, so your safest bet is plugging directly into the modem.
With these tips plus the professional experience and setup from Bliss Auctions, we are confident that your virtual fundraiser will be a hit. We have also partnered with Event.Gives, a fantastic virtual fundraising platform that we highlighted in a previous post, which will help streamline your event from setup to payment processing.
Have questions about how to optimize your audio? We can help!
