DaVinci Resolve 21: dialogue cleanup tutorial

Jason Yadlovski works through a viewer's Swedish maths dialogue in DaVinci Resolve 21. He hears excess bass and muddiness, then demonstrates most of the cleanup on the Edit page before moving to Fairlight for final loudness checks.

He recommends starting dialogue near -10 dB on the meters. His EQ workflow uses a high-pass filter and frequency sweeps to locate unwanted resonance before adding a small clarity boost. The example includes cuts around 400 Hz and 765 Hz, but he stresses that useful settings depend on the speaker and recording environment. Compression reduces the gap between loud and quiet passages; an expander lowers quieter background sounds.

The basic processing shown works in the free version, according to Jason. Voice Isolation requires Studio. He reports that a setting around 30 reduces room echo in this recording, while noting that he often finds it less effective on reverb. He then adds Resolve's de-esser and multiband compressor and compares the result with the viewer's CapCut no-bass example.

For delivery, he selects Fairlight's YouTube loudness preset and adjusts bus processing, finishing near -15 LUFS integrated with a limiter. These are his working targets and judgments for this example. He closes by suggesting reusable presets for recordings made with the same setup.