Rich, deep, trailer-type voice effect

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Try using a good shotgun for this. The 897 is great, but the 8035 is even better. Compression and EQ are critical. Dead space is dire as well.
Talent is a big part of getting this right, but if your own voice is weak, try pitching it down 2 steps. Deck will do a good job of this.
Next, try using a harmonizer without harmony to insert just a touch of chorus.
Jeffrey P. Fisher just released a book on doing great VO, should be shipping by NAB. We edited it with him, it's very informative. You could also try the voice over box we built, www.indigipix.com will get you to the URL. I've forgotten the specific one.

[Brandt Wilson]

Douglas,

My eyes must be failing be, but I didn't see any links to your voice over box. Where on the site would I see this?

Thanks!

[Ryan Baker]

Brandt,

I think this is the link Douglas was referring to for the "voice over box"

http://www.indigipix.com/voicebox.htm

[Brandt Wilson]

Excellent! Thanks, Ryan!

[Martin Yap]

Hi guys!

I find that using the Rode NT-1000 with a DBX 286A for Trailer Voicework is a great solution on the cheap. I recently got a Sennheiser 416 exclusively for Trailers but I'm stummped as to what to pair it off with for that fat trailer sound.
Any suggestions at various price ranges? Many thanks in advance!

[Ty Ford]

Originally Posted by John Locke

Hey audio experts,

Anyone have any pointers about which filters to use on a voice recording to give it that really great sound that you hear in movie trailers?

Expensive audio equipment and years of experience aside (don't have either right now)...what would be the "best shot" at getting "close" using FCP's built-in audio filters?

So far, I've used:

- Expander/Noise Gate to get rid of background hum
- 3 Band Equalizer, pumping up bass, keeping midtones and high pitch at their presets
- Reverberation, set very low (5) at a small room setting.

But it just isn't getting there...

It's not an effect. You're born with it or you're not.

Ty Ford

[Jon Fairhurst]

One trick that I've used is to copy the recording to two tracks, compress the h3ll out of one of the tracks (like 20:1 or 30:1 with a low threshold) and mix to taste. The compressed track fills the space, and the natural track maintains the peaks and dynamics. The natural track alone is generally to "bumpy", and the compressed track will sound too lifeless. Together is the best of both worlds.

Here's another processing post that I made that you might find helpful:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...ht=compression

[Russ Ivey]

Originally Posted by Peter Jefferson

afew things i woud suggest on top of what u have already listed...
One thing to note, is that FCP doesnt have facilities like soundforge or any hardware units, so its really hard to say what would work and what wouldnt, obviously the source is the key factore hear, and working with what u got make it hard when ur only limiting yourself to the one applicaiton.
anywyas

to fatten it, i would suggest a chorus plugin.

Compression - A nice tight comp to keep the freq stable

Aural Exciter - I dunno if these are available as plugs for FCP, but i use a hardware Aphex Aural Exciter which is integrated with 2 of my samplers (A3000mkII and RS7000) but can be bought as standalone rackmount
Petites annonces pour musiciens, vente et achat de matériel de musique

Its also available in SW form now Avid | Digidesign is now Avid Audio - home of Pro Tools, VENUE, ICON, and Mbox

As mentioned a nice Chorus plugin, such as the DBAudioware plugs, they make some really nice fat verbs too.

Another trick with woudl be to run the effect thru a LP filter and slowly tweak it open as it builds to the ful effect takes hold at teh peak.

theres lots u can do with audio :)

I have a question about your comments regarding SoundForge. I have that program and am having the same problems about getting that movie rich sound. What settings would you use to assist with getting rid of the background hum, fattening up the voice, and making sure you're not making that "cut off" noise between sentences?

[Gerry Gallegos]

Russ.

Getting that Don Lafontaine voice is 99.99% the voice, and their talent in reading.

That being said there is really no set way to achieve it , it all depends on how you recorded and what it sounds like before it is treated with any effects or dynamics, its %100 a need to hear to tell you what to do to it, kinda thing.

but here is some advice in recording voice talent well.

1. use a large diaphragm mic. the better quality the better (not always but usually reflected in price). some of the favorite go-to mics in the VO field are the Neumann U87, EV RE20, Shure SM-7, AKG C-414, bu tnowdays there are plenty of large D condensers out there (yes I know the EV and Shure are dynamic but they are large diaghragm and are teh most common mics used in radio broadcasting).

2. a good pre-amp. this is where the signal goes from mic level to line level and may be built into a computer interface, however most studios will use a separate mic preamp or a console with good mic preamps or a stand alone combination voice processor that includes a great preamp coupled to a nice compressor and eq. BTW.. contrary to some things said in this thread, Tubes are NOT all that and a bag of chips, they do add something nice to the sound but the simple fact that it has tubes doesn't mean much, it is more reflected in the quality of the preamp design or mic , not just that it has a tube.

3. compression, best if applied before a computer interface, or in the software but compression will limit the dynamic range of the signal (the difference between the loudest and the softest level) this is what makes professional recordings sound like there is very little difference in the volume of the speaker no matter how loud or soft their enunciations are, like if they do a scream, you can tell its a scream but its no louder than regular speech. compressors do this.

4. EQ this is totally dependent on how your recording sounds. to roll off rumble you can reduce anythign below 80hz or so, this also varies along with how your recording sounds, as far as the rest of the audio try an exercise i use to explain to people how to learn frequencies , insert a parameteric EQ into the track, then boost the one eq about 6 db on the gain,then take the frequency and slowly sweep it around as the audio plays thru, you will find out what frequencies apply to what part of the audio spectrum, wich lets you make precise eq changes. good way to learn frequencies.

5 . adjust your settings according to what your recording sounds like and make it how you want it to sound.


Sound is an art form in itself, and a completely separate skill set, keep messing with it till you get what you want or employ some one that has been at it longer if you need instant results. there really isn't any formula for getting good sound other than knowing the difference between what you hear and what you want to hear , and knowing how to make the changes to make them both the same.

Good luck

[Russ Ivey]

Thank you Gerry for that information. That helps A LOT. I will have to just break down and get a preamp/compressor combo of some sort. Any suggestions that won't break the bank? Also, because I'm a COMPLETE novice at audio, is it best to record off-camera instead of on-camera?

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Russ Ivey

Thank you Gerry for that information. That helps A LOT. I will have to just break down and get a preamp/compressor combo of some sort. Any suggestions that won't break the bank? Also, because I'm a COMPLETE novice at audio, is it best to record off-camera instead of on-camera?

Symmetrix 528e Voice Processor is one candidate and not too exotic (read .. expensive). Absolutely record off camera, directly into your audio workstation. Most consumer and prosumer camera's audio is an afterthought on the part of the designers. Of course I'm assuming you have a quiet location and a proper computer audio setup with a decent audio interface, not just the builtin soundcard.

Voice talent Don Capone has an interesting website, www.nurple.com, that has some excelent demos of various commonly used mics - http://www.nurple.com/voice-talent/v...crophones.html - and also a range of preamps etc at price points from bargains to the astronomical - http://www.nurple.com/voice-talent/v...equipment.html

[Gerry Gallegos]

Depends how big your bank is...

for the most part the cheaper stuff will get you by (ART, Presonus and things like that), but you don't really gert to the WOW stuff till you get into Focusrite and Universal audio and things in that range, however Focusrite makes some affordable units as well as some others. it all really depends on your budget, but pretty much most of the "voice processor" type units will be a drastic improvement over just pluggin in directly to your computer.
Again some good quality solid state will run circles around cheap tube stuff.

if its a camera situation it is traditionally best to record to a separate recorder, that is why Hollywood does this, well one of the reasons, a good stand alone recorder beats recording in camera where by design audio is secondary. but if all you can do is record into the camera, well then you have no choice unless you're willing to invest into a nice separate sound rig.but camera is deff not the thing to do for voice over stuff.

[Russ Ivey]

Thanks Steve/Gerry. Great information.

[Helen Habib]

I observed the recommendations of tube preamps in the first couple pages. I'm surprised that even as far back - or as recent as - 2004 (depending on which way you look at it) the discussion centred around the use of tube amps. I thought use of such amps were discontinued even before 2004. Are they still in use?

[Ty Ford]

Hello Helen,

Tubes, solid state, all good. here's the deal.

Good tubes are better than bad solid state. Good solid state is better than bad tubes.

Regards,

Ty Ford