How to record your voice for dubbing: mic, room and settings

By the TryToAct team · Published October 25, 2026

A good dub starts with a clean take. You don't need a studio: with the mic you already have, a few habits around the room, mic distance and volume are enough to make your voice clear and pleasant to listen to.

Why the quality of your take matters so much

In a dub, the picture does half the work and your voice has to do the rest. A well-acted line that's drowned in echo, clipped by distortion or buried under a fan loses all its punch. On the other hand, a clean take makes an average performance far more convincing, because the ear instantly believes a voice that sounds like it's "in" the scene.

The good news: most sound problems come from your surroundings and how you position yourself, not from your gear. The tips below work for any dubbing game, and especially for TryToAct, which records straight from your browser.

Which mic should you use?

You don't need to buy anything to get started. Here's what to expect from the most common setups:

• Your phone's mic: often better than you'd think, because it's built for voice. Hold the phone about a hand's width away with the mic (at the bottom of the phone) pointed at your mouth, and don't lay it flat on a table that resonates.

• A laptop's built-in mic: the trickiest one. It's far from your mouth and picks up the keyboard and the fan. Lean in toward the screen and don't type during the take.

• A headset or earbuds with a mic: a great compromise. The mic stays at the same distance from your mouth and you hear the scene without it bleeding into the recording.

• A USB mic: the best results on a small budget, as long as it's positioned well (see below). An expensive mic in the wrong spot will sound worse than a phone mic used properly.

If you're playing on a computer without headphones, turn the speakers down a bit while you record: otherwise the mic can pick up the scene's audio and mix it with your voice.

Choosing the right room

Enemy number one of a home recording is reverb: your voice bounces off bare walls, tiles and windows and comes back into the mic with a slight delay. The result sounds like a bathroom or a train station.

• Pick a furnished, cluttered room: a bedroom with a bed, curtains, a couch or a closet full of clothes absorbs sound much better than a kitchen or a hallway.

• Avoid speaking toward a bare wall or a window. Face into the room instead, or toward a full bookshelf.

• Turn off anything that hums: fans, AC, the washing machine, a TV in the next room. You stop noticing them, but the mic doesn't.

• A voice actor's trick: a blanket or comforter draped behind your screen, or over a chair in front of you, is often enough to make the echo disappear.

The right distance and position

For most mics, about an open hand's width away, roughly 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm), gives you a full voice without overdoing it. Any closer and your voice gets boomy, and every plosive (p, b, t) makes an ugly "pop". Any farther and the room takes over, so your voice sounds distant.

Place the mic slightly off to the side or a little below your mouth rather than straight in front: your breath goes past it instead of hitting the capsule. Above all, keep the same distance for the whole take. If you lean toward the screen to read a line and then sit back to breathe, your volume will go up and down.

Finally, stand up or sit up straight if you can. An open chest gives you more breath and more presence, especially for shouted or emotional lines.

Setting your level without clipping

Clipping is that crackle you get when your voice is too loud for the mic. It can't be fixed afterward. In TryToAct, the recording screen has a mic volume control and shows your take's waveform: if it hits the edges on your loudest parts, turn the volume down or back off a little.

The right habit: do a test take with your loudest line, not your quietest. If that one comes through without crackling, the rest will too. And if your voice barely shows up on the waveform, move closer rather than cranking the volume all the way up, which would also boost the background noise.

Allowing mic access in your browser

Like any site that records your voice, TryToAct needs your permission. When you start your first take, your browser asks for access to the mic: choose "Allow". The countdown then starts.

If nothing happens, check the mic or padlock icon in the address bar: you may have denied access once and the browser remembers it. On a phone, also check the system settings, which can block the mic for the browser itself. And if you have several mics plugged in, make sure the right one is selected in your browser settings.

Getting ready right before the take

• Watch the whole scene once without recording, to spot when each line starts.

• Drink a little room-temperature water: a dry mouth makes small tongue clicks that are very audible.

• Yawn a few times and do some lip trills to loosen your jaw (we go through these warm-ups in our diction exercises, in French).

• Start the take and play it through to the end, even if you fluff a word: the overall rhythm matters more than one syllable.

• Listen back, then do another take if you need to. It's normal to do two or three before you're happy.

The most common mistakes

• Recording with the scene blasting from your speakers: it bleeds into the mic and muddies your voice.

• Covering the mic with your fingers while holding your phone: it's often at the bottom of the device.

• Whispering too close to the mic: your breath gets louder than your words. For a whisper, back off a little and articulate more.

• Shouting at the end of a line without bringing the level down: the end clips even though the start was perfect.

• Moving your chair, desk or cable during the take: that rustling is surprisingly audible.

Once your take is clean, you can have fun with voice filters (guide in French) to change your tone. And for the acting side, our guide to playing a character takes it from there.

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