record-room-tone

name	record-room-tone
category	media
description	Record usable room tone with matching microphones, gain, position, environment, and metadata for clean dialogue edits. Use when a production needs authentic ambient sound from the interview or scene location.

record-room-tone

Capture the room under the same conditions as the dialogue.

When to use

• Use after the primary setup and whenever location, microphone, gain, occupancy, or background sound changes.
• Do not record private conversation under the label of room tone.

Procedure

1. Keep microphone, recorder, channel, gain, sample rate, placement, doors, ventilation, and occupants matched.
2. Ask everyone for quiet and state the take without adding avoidable movement.
3. Record at least one sustained clean interval plus relevant steady ambient variants.
4. Monitor hum, HVAC cycles, traffic, appliances, wireless noise, handling, and automatic gain.
5. Capture microphone-specific tone when multiple sources will be edited independently.
6. Label scene, location, microphone, channel, time, condition, and take.
7. Listen back on headphones and verify waveform, duration, noise, and no private speech.

Done

• A labeled audio file records clean matching ambience for each materially different microphone or environment
• Playback checks verify duration, noise floor, metadata, channel mapping, privacy, and freedom from voices or handling noise