Subject:How to do "mastering" for "voiceover"

Posted by: Umforrest

Date:12/14/2009 11:39:07 PM

Hi all,

Please could somebody suggest how to do mastering or normalizing voiceover work.

Any suggestion or advice is welcome.

Thank you!

Subject:RE: How to do "mastering" for "voiceover"

Reply by: jbolley

Date:12/15/2009 12:29:44 PM

Those are two big questions that can't easily be answered in a text box. I would buy some magazines, hire a mastering engineer and watch him, go to school, buy some books, listen to a lot of music and narration, then practice for a few years...
There's no hotkey.

Jesse

Subject:RE: How to do "mastering" for "voiceover"

Reply by: Umforrest

Date:12/15/2009 7:05:39 PM

Jesse,

I understand that there's no shortcut to the answers but I would like to have some idea, in general about what we should do, what to avoid etc etc.

Umforrest

Subject:RE: How to do "mastering" for "voiceover"

Reply by: rraud

Date:12/16/2009 12:28:06 PM

"in general about what we should do, what to avoid etc etc."

Generally.... to start with..... Pro VO person, pro recording engineer, pro mic, pro preamp, pro monitors...ect. ect.
Generally.... If it sounds good, don't fork with it, especially in inexperienced hands with dangerous tools. I just turned my garage into an operating room and bought some surgical tools, I'm looking forward to doing my first operation this afternoon.
Can you post an audio sample somewhere?

Subject:RE: How to do "mastering" for "voiceover"

Reply by: dlion

Date:12/17/2009 11:21:10 AM

try the izotope mastering plugins.

Subject:RE: How to do "mastering" for "voiceover"

Reply by: jeffjams

Date:1/8/2010 4:42:36 PM

One very important tool is Sound Forge's Wavehammer compressor. Look for the preset named "voice." I've used it for years on a lot of my radio, TV and game audio tracks (though I lean more toward my Waves L3 these days).

That's usually used last, after any EQ and a number of editing tricks to fix, brighten up and master tracks.

If you're looking for a book, I recommend "Producing Great Sound for Digital Video," written by Jay Rose. You might still find it at Amazon. It came out 10 years ago, but it's filled with a ton of still-relevant and useful information to get you going.

Subject:RE: How to do "mastering" for "voiceover"

Reply by: thmilin

Date:2/11/2010 9:04:12 AM

do a google search for it. i'm in the same boat and while I took a protools cert class and have equipment (dangerous tools) it's still good to get industry advice from active engineers in a centralized location for a "checklist" of generally how to handle audio files, regardless of the quality of the recording. obviously which tools and how heavily they're applied will differ.

i've spent this week looking up "remove pops" and "compression voiceover" and such and come up with some useful articles that are easy to use and understand general guides.

Subject:RE: How to do "mastering" for "voiceover"

Reply by: Vocalpoint

Date:2/16/2010 11:10:31 AM

Been doing VO for almost 30 years now...I would never "master" a voice track and and certainly never normalize it.

Always best to strive for a natural sound (by this I mean - you should not be able to detect any processing)...and that comes from a solid voice, through a solid audio chain (good mic->good preamp) with a slight (and I do mean very slight) touch of hardware comp to gentle tame any out of control peaks and to lend a touch of "glue" to the read. A gentle natural gate should also be considered if there is a concerns about lip smacks, mouth noises and so on.

Normalizing is just adding volume where it didn't exist and removes the natural ebb/flow of the read while over-compression can be a bit ridiculous - unless that's the effect you want.

Listen to Morgan Freeman on the latest round of the Olympic Visa ads. Pure, clean and..very real. Granted - he has one of the best voices in the biz...but I will bet there is very little "mastering" going on there. Wouldn't doubt if burned off these reads in 10 minutes straight to the hard drive with little to no processing whatsoever

Cheers!

VP

Subject:RE: How to do "mastering" for "voiceover"

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:2/16/2010 10:29:36 PM

I think I posted something on this a few years back in answer to a similar query.

My own experience is in recording poetry voiceovers to go with music. Similar comments to some of the above:

- The job is easier if you can do a clean capture of a good performance. I was surprised how important the performance is. It takes a while to get the talent relaxed and performing rather than just reading or talking. I used a large-diaphragm condenser with a pop filter.

- Getting rid of pops and esses was usually the first issue. I used the wave de-esser and the Waves C1 compressor with a "pop-filter" preset.

- The second issue was background noise between phrases. I used the C1 expander to control this without becoming unnatural. It becomes really obvious if you drop to complete silence between phrases.

- next in line, some light compression with the C1. I adjusted this so the words didn't disappear behind the backing music.

- actually, just before th C1 I put a Waves Q8 equaliser. Between the EQ and compressor, I tweaked for clearest diction - generally had to add a bit of air to the (male) voice and cut a little low end.

- last but quite important was reverb. If you are close-miking, you will end up with a very dry sound. You don't want a concert hall, but you may need at least a small room to make it sound natural. For poetry, I played with the reverb on some tracks to get a particular effect, but the standard was generally a light amount of early reflection.

I used Waves because they are good and I have them. However, the Sony equivalents should do pretty much the same job.