What is Room Tone and Why do we Need it?
If you’ve been on a film or video set, you’ve probably heard someone say:
“Alright, let’s get some room tone!”
Then suddenly everyone has to sit still for 15–30 seconds. To do what?
🧘 Meditate?
🍔 Think about lunch?
Not exactly. What’s really happening is one of the most important steps for great sound in your film or video.
Table of Contents
What is Room Tone?
Every space — no matter how hard we try to make it quiet for our interviews or actors — has a sound. A tone, if you will.
Ask audio pros, and some might even get mystical about it...
“Rooms have personalities.”
“No two rooms are alike.”
“I hear dead people.” 👻
So we capture that sound without anyone talking. That’s room tone.
Keep in mind, you don’t have to be in a literal room for it to count as “room tone.” It’s just the background or ambient sound of wherever you’re filming.
Editors and post production sound professionals use room tone to smooth out edits, fill gaps, and create consistent, natural-sounding audio across a scene. More on this below!
Quick Tips for Gathering the Best Room Tone
Announce it — Some people on set may not understand room tone, so it’s best to clearly explain: “Okay let’s get some room tone please. We need everyone completely quiet for 10 to 20 seconds, starting now.” This usually (but not always) happens after the scene or interview is shot.
Slate it — This helps in post. The DP / Camera Operator can simply shoot the mic (see photo above) for a visual reference, and the sound person can slate the audio tracks with something like: “This is room tone, lav on 1 and boom on 2.”
Match the mics — Use the same mics, positions, and angles as you used during the actual shoot. Directional microphones in particular can sound completely different depending on where they are pointed.
Match the conditions — If HVAC was on, keep it on for the room tone. If it was intermittent, get room tone with it on and off. If you’re outside, capture the natural environment under all the conditions that the scene was recorded in.
Get enough — Ten seconds is plenty in a quiet room, but outdoors it’s smart to get more to capture all the varying sounds — wind, sirens, dogs, etc.
How is Room Tone Used? (Interview with an Audio Pro - Eric Singer)
That’s how we capture it — but the real magic happens in post.
To learn more, we asked Eric Singer, Creative Director at Coupe Studios in Boulder, how his team uses room tone when editing and mixing audio for film and video.
🎧 Listen to my interview with Eric (~11 seconds):
Key Takeaways from my interview with Eric Singer at Coupe Studios
Eric dropped a lot of wisdom in our chat. Here are the big points about why room tone matters and how the pros use it:
Room tone is invisible — until it’s not. When it’s done right, no one notices. But if it’s missing or wrong, it jumps out and feels jarring.
It’s critical for ADR. When dialogue has to be re-recorded in the studio (ADR), room tone helps blend it seamlessly with on-set audio — so your audience never knows the difference.
It sets the scene. Beyond matching, room tone can be used creatively to “place” a voice in a specific environment, making sterile studio recordings sound natural and alive.
New tools help, but don’t replace it. Plugins like iZotope can work wonders with just a few seconds of room tone, but capturing clean samples on set still makes the editor’s job much easier.
Capture it right. Keep mic placement the same as during filming, match conditions (like HVAC on/off), and slate your recordings. Consistency = better results.
Even short takes are useful. Ten seconds is often enough indoors, but in dynamic outdoor environments, it pays to record longer.
The bottom line: room tone may seem like a throwaway moment on set, but it’s a huge factor in whether your video feels polished or amateur.
Full transcript of my interview with Eric Singer (edited):
Eric Singer
Room tone is one of those things that is the kind of thing that flies completely under the radar for audiences. Unless it's wrong. Like so much of what we do in audio post, people in the general viewing public really only noticed when something is off. And ring tone is one of those things that, if it is off, it is a glaring error that everybody will notice. And when it's done right, no one will think about it.
Tom Miller
That's actually true of so many things in production, right? Can you talk about the different ways that you can use room tone?
Eric Singer
So in addition to matching, let's say, an ADR clip, something that's that that had to be captured either in a different location or even at a, at a different time. You know, sometimes you'll run into a situation where there's HVAC running in, on a set and you then capture a different take and the HVAC has turned off, things like that.
And then so in addition to filling in the gaps and making sure that things match, another place where, where room tone can be really useful and used in a more creative way is to reset the the setting for whether it's a conversation or just one person speaking, rather than have something that sounds very sterile, like it was recorded in a studio.
If your goal is to present a piece of dialog, in a more natural way, you could add room tone from any location that you want to want to conjure up in the in the post process to make it sound like it was captured in a more natural environment than a studio.
Tom Miller
Can you just give a quick overview of what ADR is and then, how room tone can then bring that studio recording back into the world that it was meant to be seen (heard) in?
Eric Singer
Yeah. For sure. So, I'll give you an example from, a project we're working on today here at the studio. So we, we have a film that is set in the 19th century. And there is a piece of dialog that was recorded on on location on set. And there, unfortunately is a helicopter in the background, which, is a little, a little anachronistic for a film set of 100 and some years ago.
So they had the actor rerecord that line. And this could apply whether they were still on set or they went into a studio to do it.
Let's say they went into a studio. So the actor would come into a place like Coupe, and they would be watching a video monitor of their original performance. They would hear how they delivered the original line, and then we'll walk them through a series of takes where we attempt to recreate that line of dialog, but without the offending noise in the background.
So once we have that recorded, we'll always try to get as close as we can to the recording conditions on set. So in this example, the actor was wearing a lavalier mike and we also had a boom like a Sennheiser 416 that was on set. So we used both of those same microphones to try to get the sound as close as we could to the original production audio, so we can match it, but that microphone choice and microphone placement is only half of the puzzle.
The other piece of the puzzle is recreating that background, and that's where we really rely on either the location production mixer, capturing some of that room tone, or as tools have gotten more and more sophisticated. We no longer necessary need to have that 20 to 30s of room tone that that we always like to have in the past.
These days, we can we can get, quite a lot of mileage using some more sophisticated plug ins that we can use, even if we've only got 2 or 3 seconds of room tone, we can often use that, you know, whether we loop it or use other techniques to recreate the room tone so that we can fill in that line of studio recorded dialog and really match the sound pretty darn closely.
Tom Miller
Interesting. Would you say that's the in your world, the primary use, the practical use of room tone?
Eric Singer
I would say so.
Tom Miller
I know it more as simply capturing room tone for interviews. And then, you know, the interview cuts away to something and then back to the interview. And you want to have that be a little less abrupt.
Eric Singer
Yeah, yeah. Boy, that that's a great example. I hadn't even thought about that. But yeah, especially if you've got a noisier environment, that is obviously pretty critical. I think the good news there is that the dialog cleanup tools have gotten so good. You know, five, ten years ago we couldn't dream of a world where we could remove, let's say, echo.
If somebody was recording in a large, empty space and there was some reverb that was naturally happening because of the, the architecture. If there was echo, we were kind of stuck with it and it was baked in.
These days we can clean that up quite a bit, but it's always that fine balance between making it sound good, but also making it sound not too sterile.
Tom Miller
Yes, indeed. I know that some of those tools can really take away the life.
Eric Singer
Yeah, totally
Tom Miller
And then some people also say you can use the room tone if it's, if it's been recorded in a place where the background noise is not optimal, you actually can use room tone to subtract that frequency out. Is that also true?
Eric Singer
Yeah. And that that's another one of those sets of tools that has gotten better and better, especially in the last couple of years. So yeah, we can we can feed, something like iZotope, a sample of room tone that now can be fairly short and we can say, all right, fine, this, this, frequency spectrum and pull it out.
Tom Miller
That's amazing. That's that's a really cool way to use it. Yeah. All right. What else? So, what, would you like to see us do in the field? What could we be doing differently with regards to room tone?
Eric Singer
I think most production mixers are pretty darn good about it. For folks who might be doing a more run and gun scenario and don't have a dedicated audio person on set, the the important pointers that I would give, would be, the microphone placement can make a big difference. So, you know, if you've got a boom mic and it's aimed at the on camera person who's speaking, when you go to record the the room tone, keep that mic in that same position.
Eric Singer
Because just especially with the boom mics that are so directional, it'll make a huge difference. Even just turning that microphone a few degrees can really change the way the room tone sounds. So the the microphone placement is pretty darn important. Obviously making sure that everybody on set is completely quiet while they're capturing the room tone. And just kind of be aware of those things that I mentioned earlier, like if it was their HVAC running during this and it's off now, or vice versa.
Just try to to aim for consistency. When you when you provide those files.
Tom Miller
Is it helpful for you to have it be slated?
Eric Singer
Absolutely. That's, great. Great thought. This this is making me realize I should have brought in one of our engineers who's in this every day, because I'm sure that's the one of the first things they would have said. Yes. Slating it. Even when you get into the video post process, having that room tone, maybe just sitting at the end of your timeline on the dialog track that it's intended for and labeled as such is is hugely helpful.
Tom Miller
Oh, that's a good idea. I see what you mean. On another note might be that you probably if someone is wearing a boom and a lav you probably want room tone from both of those microphones, right. So the person speaking who has been speaking, who has the lav on, needs to continue to wear the lav and try not to breathe.
Eric Singer
Yeah. And ideally standing in the same place and all that for sure.
Tom Miller
Okay. Good. Let me see if I have any other questions. Oh, ten seconds is long enough these days? Ten to twenty seconds.
Eric Singer
I would say so. You know, unless you are in an environment that is changing a lot, you know, so for example, in an outdoor environment where there's variable wind conditions, then it may be helpful to capture more of it. But if it's in a fairly stable sonic environment inside somewhere, then 10s would do it usually.
Tom Miller
And if we are in a situation where there's Hvac and then non track and we've done the interviews during both scenarios, you probably would like room tone from each.
Eric Singer
Yeah, absolutely. And you know that's Hvac is something that we're able to remove or reduce really really well these days with plug ins. But as a best practice I would say, ideally keep the Hvac off the entire time. So second best keep it on the, the whole time. And, you know, either of those options would be preferable than having it cycle on and off multiple times throughout the interview.
Tom Miller
Oh, that's a good tip. Okay, we always assumed we needed it off or intermittent was the second best, but it sounds like the second best is just to be constant.
Eric Singer
I think. Yeah, I think so. The noise cleanup tools have gotten so freaking good.
Tom Miller
I love it, man. Listen, thanks for your time. I sure enjoyed this conversation.
Eric Singer
Likewise. All right. Talk to you soon.
Why Room Tone Matters for Quality Video Production
For marketing teams and agencies, polished sound isn’t just a technical detail — it’s part of how your brand is experienced.
Room tone may sound like “dead air” on set, but in post-production it’s what makes dialogue feel natural, edits invisible, and stories immersive. Without it, even the best-looking video can feel distracting or unprofessional.
That’s why experienced production crews always take time for room tone. It’s a small step on set that delivers a big payoff: videos that sound seamless, authentic, and ready to represent your brand at the highest level.
👉 Want to see how these details come together? Check out our latest work →