Level Balancing Questions Producers Ask Us Most Often, Answered

The question behind most enquiries

By far the most common question we hear from producers is some version of this: why does my voiceover sound fine on its own, then vanish the moment I add music? It arrives by email, in the Level Balancing module and after nearly every review session. Behind it sits a simple confusion between how loud something is and how clearly it can be heard.

The answer is rarely a single fader move. A voice, a music bed and a sound effect all occupy a similar range of the spectrum and of loudness, so they compete. Balancing means giving each element a clear job and a sensible distance from the others, so the listener never has to strain to follow the words.

In this article I will take the question apart in the order learners usually meet it: what balance actually means, how far apart to place speech and music, what to do about two speakers who record at different volumes, and how to check your work before it goes for review.

What balance means in practice

Level balancing is the work of evening out loudness between speakers, music and effects so every segment sits comfortably together. Notice the word comfortably. The goal is not that every element measures the same, but that the audience can listen from the start of a segment to the end without reaching for the volume control.

When we teach this, we begin with the voice. Speech carries the information in a recorded report, an interview film or an explainer, so it becomes the anchor. Everything else is placed relative to it. If a decision about music or effects makes a sentence harder to understand, that decision is wrong, however good it sounds in isolation.

Learners often try to fix balance by adjusting everything at once. I would suggest the opposite: settle the spoken track first, then bring in one other element at a time, listening each time to whether the words are still effortless to follow.

• Set the voice first and treat it as the anchor
• Add music, then effects, one at a time
• Judge by comprehension, not by how a meter looks

How far under the voice should music sit

This is the second most frequent question, and it has no fixed number. Music under speech needs to be present enough to give the segment feeling, and quiet enough that it never masks consonants. A bed that feels right at a loud monitoring level often turns out to be too prominent when someone plays it on a laptop or phone.

A habit we encourage is lowering the music until it seems slightly too quiet, then raising it only a little. Listeners who are not editors tend to notice a competing bed far sooner than a shy one. Where there are pauses in the speech, the music can rise gently, then ease back before the next sentence begins.

Remember also that the music itself changes. A quiet opening and a busy chorus may need different settings within one piece, so check the whole length of the bed rather than the first few seconds, and listen to the transitions as carefully as the steady sections.

Two speakers, two different volumes

Interview recordings present a related problem. The presenter sits close to a good microphone, the guest was recorded in a different room, and suddenly one voice is noticeably louder than the other. Producers ask whether this should be fixed by turning one down or the other up.

Usually the quieter voice is lifted and the louder one is trimmed slightly, so the average sits in the middle. Do this clip by clip rather than with a blunt change to the whole track, because speakers vary within a conversation too. A laugh, a raised voice or a leaning-in moment can all shift the level.

Cleanup comes before balancing in our order of work, since raising a quiet voice also raises its background noise. If hum or room tone becomes obvious after the lift, return to the cleanup stage instead of compensating further with levels. The two stages inform each other, and patience here saves repeated rework later.

• Lift the quiet voice, trim the loud one a little
• Work clip by clip, not across the entire track
• Return to cleanup if noise rises with the level

Checking your balance before review

Before a review version leaves your hands, listen to it in conditions your audience will actually use. Play it on small speakers, on ordinary headphones and, if you can, on a phone held at arm's length. Problems that were hidden in a studio setting tend to show themselves quickly.

Take a short break before the final listen. Ears tire, and a balance that seemed right after two hours of editing can sound different after a cup of tea. Then play the whole piece without stopping, noting any place where you lean in or reach for the volume. Those moments are your to-do list.

Finally, keep a note of what you decided and why. If a reviewer asks for the music to come down, you will know whether that fits the original intent or contradicts it, which keeps the revision conversation short and inside the scope you agreed.

Common slips we see in the course

A few patterns come up again and again among learners. Some set the music by eye on a waveform instead of by ear. Others balance on headphones only, then find the result thin on speakers. A third group raises the whole voice track to compensate for one quiet sentence, which pushes every other sentence too loud.

None of these is a failing of ability; they are simply habits that form before anyone has been shown the alternative. In the module we deliberately give learners a recording with each of these traps built in, so they can hear the consequence and correct it in a calm setting.

If you find yourself repeating one of these, the fix is almost always to slow down, listen more and move fewer controls. Balance rewards small, deliberate adjustments far more than dramatic ones, and a quiet, steady hand tends to produce the most natural result.

• Do not set levels by eye alone
• Check on more than one kind of playback
• Fix single quiet words locally, not globally