A friend of mine wants to get in to doing voice overs so he came over and I recorded some quick stuff for him. I wanted to see if any one had any pointers or suggestions for him (and me).

The tracks were recorded in my living room (I know it's not a good environment) with an AT 3050 mic through a sound devices box and into my laptop. I Eqed, compressed, gated, and put the music bed in it all in soundtrack pro.

The MP3 files are at Index of /jamesvo (http://www.cgllc.com/jamesvo/) if that's easier for you.

Try to be nice it's his first time and we didn't spend a ton of time getting the tracking down perfect.

Also If anyone needs a VO for cheap or free let me know he would do anything for experience / portfolio

I would say first that the recording environment needs to be more "dead" sounding. I hear reflections bouncing off the walls - that screams 'amateur". Also your music is too loud. Duck it down more when he starts talking.

Second I would say that your friend needs to stop with the cheesy impersonations. If an announcer can't do something like an accent spot-on perfect, then don't do it at all. Just relax, don't try so hard and get the VO out with clarity. Inflect the important words. If something isn't working try different emphasis on different words/syllables. I think your guy has a great low voice, but the way he says things sounds young. He says "Fer free" or "twunny" in stead of "twenty" with a 't' in the lawyer ad. You need to speak the king's English with proper pronunciation. He has to lose words like "innernet" or "yer" where it should be "your" with an O sound. It also sounds like he is yelling a lot too. Mellow it out. Maybe too much compression?

If he is serious he needs to take lessons just like all the pro VO guys do. He has the instrument. He just needs to learn how to play it.

Really good voice for the radio, but for the video I'd choose deep whispering voice, something as close as possible to Don LaFontaine;)
I know, there is only one Don