[gregory butterworth]

I will be doing some voice over work soon.
It will be a male voice for a tv documentary.
Are there any well established universal methods.
I was planning to use a re20 or tlm103.
Do you need a really dead room and are there any standard eq boost/cut or
compression settings?
Or is it a case of tweak it on a case by case basis.

Many thanks )

[Ty Ford]

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:13:26 -0400, gregory butterworth wrote
(in article ):

I will be doing some voice over work soon.
It will be a male voice for a tv documentary.
Are there any well established universal methods.
I was planning to use a re20 or tlm103.
Do you need a really dead room and are there any standard eq boost/cut or
compression settings?
Or is it a case of tweak it on a case by case basis.

Many thanks )



Either will work. A totally dead room is different than a totally quiet room.
Totally dead refers to the acoustic environment. Totally quiet refers to the
lack of external noise.

A totally dead room has (usually) too much foam on the walls, will rob the
voice of higher frequencies and will make the talent talk louder than they
normally do.

A totally quiet room may have not intervening external noise, but may have
hard surfaces that bounce the voice around a lot.

What you want, ideally, is a totally quiet room with good (but not totally
dead) acoustical design.

Gear adjustment depends on the talent and the gear on a case by case basis
and also has to take into consideration over or under what the voice will
co-exist with in the mix.

TLM 103 or RE20 will work. Careful with the TLM 103 preamp. The wrong one
will make it sound spitty and too bright.

Too much compression will make the voice too prevalent.

If you want the "invisible golf narrator", the talent has to back off to half
voice.

My last narration gig was 68 pages for a training CD. It took pretty much all
day. The sentences and paragraphs were fairly short. I read with as few
breaths as possible and stitched the sentences together in post, leaving a
few breaths in, but taking many out. It made for a much smoother read with
fewer little breaths to take out.

Be aware that putting two pages of copy side by side on the copy stand often
invites the talent to turn his/her head a bit too much.

Regards,

Ty Ford

--Audio Equipment Reviews Audio Production Services
Acting and Voiceover Demos http://www.tyford.com
Guitar player?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RZJ9MptZmU

[Roy W. Rising[_2_]]

"gregory butterworth" wrote:
I will be doing some voice over work soon.
It will be a male voice for a tv documentary.
Are there any well established universal methods.
I was planning to use a re20 or tlm103.
Do you need a really dead room and are there any standard eq boost/cut or
compression settings?
Or is it a case of tweak it on a case by case basis.

Many thanks )

I strongly recommend the RE20. It gives the VO talent freedom to move
about some, without change due to proximity effect. I, personally, always
use an LA-3A, just barely kicking. It gives me a solid, constant aural
image, keeping more excited moments in good perspective with softer parts.

Close mic'ing takes care of most of the room problems, but a somewhat dead
and very quiet room is recommended.

If the VO is going to a track to be mixed later, save some of the
compression for the mix. Sometimes co-compressing the VO *with* the music
and/or natural sound lets the voice subtly "punch a hole" in the BG,
leaving a fuller track between narration. It takes finesse, but the
results can be superb.

As for EQ, listen for a pleasant Bass/Treble balance and use
shelving/rolloff like a teeter-totter to get the balance that works.

--
~
~ Roy
"If you notice the sound, it's wrong!"

[[email protected]]

On 2007-10-13 said:
I will be doing some voice over work soon.
It will be a male voice for a tv documentary.
Are there any well established universal methods.
FOr starters, keep the pipes well hydrated using good ol'
fashioned water. NOt real cold, but a bit below room temp
to make it comfortable for sipping occasionally to keep the
apparatus working smoothly.

WHen doing a lot of this work I find that when I"m slacking
back too much on the hydration I have to do more fixing and
retakes.

Make sure lighting is good and the copy visible from your
position in front of the mic. YOu're not shooting for
ambience here as you are when the musos record, good even
lighting that makes it easy for you to see the copy and
doesn't cause your eyes to readjust when you look away.

I was planning to use a re20 or tlm103.
EIther one's a good choice. I prefer a good dead room, but
a lot of modern broadcast studios don't fit that
description. IF it isn't really dead you'll just have to
work closer.

Eq and compression, no hard and fast rules of them. USe
your ears.



Richard webb,
Replace anything before the @ symbol with elspider for real
email address.



Great audio is never heard by the average person, but bad
audio is heard by everyone.

[[email protected]]

On 2007-10-13 said:
Either will work. A totally dead room is different than a totally
quiet room. Totally dead refers to the acoustic environment.
Totally quiet refers to the lack of external noise.
A totally dead room has (usually) too much foam on the walls, will
rob the voice of higher frequencies and will make the talent talk
louder than they normally do.
AGreed, good explanation for the op.

Too much compression will make the voice too prevalent.
If you want the "invisible golf narrator", the talent has to back
off to half voice.
Agreed. depending on the material with which the vo must
coexist I might employ a compressor or limiter as a ducker
by using the sidechain keyed off the othersources.

My last narration gig was 68 pages for a training CD. It took
pretty much all day. The sentences and paragraphs were fairly short.
I read with as few breaths as possible and stitched the sentences
together in post, leaving a few breaths in, but taking many out.
It made for a much smoother read with fewer little breaths to take
out.
DOne that one too. THose are fun becuse I must read from
braille copy. IF I'm not careful I can get too much noise
from my fingers reading the text. Also as braille pages
hold less information than standard inkprint pages it calls
for more frequent page turns etc.

Be aware that putting two pages of copy side by side on the copy
stand often invites the talent to turn his/her head a bit too much.
AGreed. I discouraged that when recording voice overs for
others. I just told them to shuffle the pages, we'd take
that out.




Richard webb,
Replace anything before the @ symbol with elspider for real
email address.

[Don Pearce]

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:01:04 GMT, wrote:

FOr starters, keep the pipes well hydrated using good ol'
fashioned water. NOt real cold, but a bit below room temp
to make it comfortable for sipping occasionally to keep the
apparatus working smoothly.

And never, ever, ever, ever drink milk. One mouthful and you may as
well go home for the day.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[[email protected]]

On Oct 13, 9:13 am, "gregory butterworth"
wrote:
Do you need a really dead room and are there any standard eq boost/cut or
compression settings?
Or is it a case of tweak it on a case by case basis.


One important thing regarding eq and compression is that before you
can assume that flat is better (so the choice can be made by the
mixer, and also so that retakes are easier to match) be aware if
you're handing the audio off to does in fact have a system that
enables them to do it easily. I always get the video person's # from
the client and find out where they're at as far as audio. Believe it
or not, some video folks really do regard audio as barely important,
and don't like to/know how to touch it, so they don't.

I nearly always do voice work flat eq (with a touch of low ratio
compression in the Pendulum because I like several eventual stages of
slight compression rather than the aggressive settings needed to set a
completely uncompressed voiceover into a mix, and because the Pendulum
has a great compressor) But I was vaguely horrified once to learn
that the client gave the totally flat 24 bit audio files (as per his
direction) to someone who imported them into a 16 bit PC video session
(lopping off the last bits, no dither) and gave them no further eq or
compression, and only limited the master output. Sounded lame. Now
I assume the client does not have the right answers and politely ask
to talk to the person doing post production. Flat? Sure. Something
else? Sure.

If you have a great preamp with terrific sounding eq and compression
that makes it sound much better to you, you can do no harm with a
little of each, especially in such instances where the post person has
only crummy plugins for both and doesn't like to use much of them.
The key is "little". Use it to improve what's not quite perfect
about the sound, don't do it to boost what you think is a decent sound
just to make it more impressive. The latter is getting to the "don't
eq it if you don't know how what else is in the mix" area while the
former isn't really. (Anyone who has done post has gotten sent
elements that are too bright and it ain't fun) When I get voice
elements to add to a project I'm not hoping for a finished sound, I'm
hoping for something well recorded that will work with everything else
after a little eq, comp, limting, etc.

I do, however resent having to deal with extraneous sounds that
aren't in the clear (paper noise, chair noise, etc.) The room needn't
be totally dead, but you have to find the deadest part of it to
record. If you can hear any reflection at all on the track it's no
good. Kill the reflection with something. And it really does need to
be dead quiet. No computer fans or truck noise. : )

Cheers,

v

[Roy W. Rising[_2_]]

(Don Pearce) wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:01:04 GMT, wrote:

FOr starters, keep the pipes well hydrated using good ol'
fashioned water. NOt real cold, but a bit below room temp
to make it comfortable for sipping occasionally to keep the
apparatus working smoothly.

And never, ever, ever, ever drink milk. One mouthful and you may as
well go home for the day.

d

Sometimes, if the pipes are clogged, a *very small* amount of grain alcohol
is a good cleaner. ;-)

--
~
~ Roy
"If you notice the sound, it's wrong!"

[Steve King]

"Roy W. Rising" wrote in message
...
(Don Pearce) wrote:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:01:04 GMT, wrote:

FOr starters, keep the pipes well hydrated using good ol'
fashioned water. NOt real cold, but a bit below room temp
to make it comfortable for sipping occasionally to keep the
apparatus working smoothly.

And never, ever, ever, ever drink milk. One mouthful and you may as
well go home for the day.

d

Sometimes, if the pipes are clogged, a *very small* amount of grain
alcohol
is a good cleaner. ;-)

Jingle singers, back when there were a lot of those working, did a lemon
juice and honey kind of thing that worked pretty good, too.

Steve King

[[email protected]]

On 2007-10-13 said:
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:01:04 GMT, wrote:
FOr starters, keep the pipes well hydrated using good ol'
fashioned water. NOt real cold, but a bit below room temp
to make it comfortable for sipping occasionally to keep the
apparatus working smoothly.
And never, ever, ever, ever drink milk. One mouthful and you may
as well go home for the day.
Sometimes, if the pipes are clogged, a *very small* amount of
grain alcohol
is a good cleaner. ;-)
Jingle singers, back when there were a lot of those working, did a
lemon juice and honey kind of thing that worked pretty good, too.
rEmember seeing folks use that. my ex wife who was very
good stuck with plain ol' water as well, unless she had a
cold then she'd go with the lemon juice and honey possibly.

I also find that posture has as much to do with it as it
does proper singing technique. I like a chair that gives me
good back support and doesn't let me slouch.



Richard webb,
Replace anything before the @ symbol with elspider for real
email address.