Big Bottoms

FartSword

FartSword

New member
Most of the spoken word on radio and in broadcasting these days has big, full bottoms which are still clear and articulate, while also having plenty of top end too. Is that more a function of the microphones they're using, or of something like an aural exciter in the signal chain?
 
Massive Master said:
It's more a function of the voice than anything else...
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I used to hate this answer. But now I know it's true. I've recently started engineering voice over work for a local company. We do everything in English and Spanish. The English guy is well known--he's been the voice of national retail chains, Anhueser-Busch for a while (I'm in St. Louis), and various other folks. So I knew his recorded history before I started working with him. I also knew that we was once a recording engineer himself. So I was looking forward to hearing what he did to get that killer sound out of his voice.

Then, right before we started working together, he called me. On my cell phone. I was blown away--it sounded like one of those commercials just chatting with him. Then we got into the studio, and the retiring engineer went over the signal chain with me: No compression, no EQ, no anything!

It's a killer voice with good mic technique. (And yeah, it's a decent mic--though I'm sure he'd sound like this through a 58).

It was eye-opening (or should I say ear-opening) to say the least.
 
Having a good voice can certainly lend itself to what I was talking about, but by the same token, I've heard some people... actors and such... who don't have such a voice, and yet when they go into the studio and do an interview on the radio, suddenly they have that big, rich, articulate clear bottom with the clear top end I was talking about, so in those situations, there has to be more to it than just that.
 
WhiteStrat said:
I used to hate this answer. But now I know it's true. I've recently started engineering voice over work for a local company. We do everything in English and Spanish. The English guy is well known--he's been the voice of national retail chains, Anhueser-Busch for a while (I'm in St. Louis), and various other folks. So I knew his recorded history before I started working with him. I also knew that we was once a recording engineer himself. So I was looking forward to hearing what he did to get that killer sound out of his voice.

Then, right before we started working together, he called me. On my cell phone. I was blown away--it sounded like one of those commercials just chatting with him. Then we got into the studio, and the retiring engineer went over the signal chain with me: No compression, no EQ, no anything!

It's a killer voice with good mic technique. (And yeah, it's a decent mic--though I'm sure he'd sound like this through a 58).

It was eye-opening (or should I say ear-opening) to say the least.
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Ain't no doubt. On a personal note, I still do a bit of voiceover work (as the voice) and NOT being blessed with that natural tone and gravitas most of the pro VO guys have, I need to draw on the years of vocal training from "back in the day" when I used to make a living screaming and whacking at my guitar. It can take me a loooong time of warm-ups and vocal exercises to get into voice -- the funny part is usually when I'm coming down from a bad cold, I'll be "in voice" for a couple days. People I've known for years will give me the "Whoa - you sound like you're coming out of the radio today" treatment. And believe me -- I wish that was the voice I had all the time.

Blah, blah, blah -- WHEN I'm in-voice, the mic really doesn't matter much. It can be a SM7b (personal favorite), RE27ND (another personal fave and in-use at one place I VO at frequently), U87, SM58, etc.

Sure, all of those mics are going to pick things up differently -- But just like anything else in recording, it's always 95% "The Source" and then trying to do everything possible to stay out of the way.
 
Mo Facta said:
Proximity effect has a lot to do with it.
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That's what I'd have said if you didn't beat me to it. :thumbs up:

I'll also add that a decent microphone can sound perfect with no further processing, both for spoken voice and singing. Yes, sometimes EQ or compression is helpful, but I rarely do any processing at all on voices.

--Ethan
 
The Aural exicter is for DJing and playing Cd's before your band plays. It makes them sound crappy than you. How I use it anyway.

The BBe 362 is a little different. You can use that in front of a tube amplifier with awesome results. For DSP and solid state it would not do anything good.

Seriously, the voice is important. But it is not giving you the radio movie trailer voice on its own. Look into quality microphone transformers, and compression. I think you are referring to the effect where you overcome the expander gate, and break thru the overeasy point.
 
Keep it simple. Proximity effect man! We all know it works. Oh and maybe a broadcast mic with a good low end to begin with - an RE20 comes to mind. Oh and a deep voice that sounds like a movie trailer guy! ha!

Or would you prefer some geeky answer that probably isn't true?... like...

Step 1) Lots and lots of clown f*ckery (I'd credit whoever coined that phrase on here but I forget who)
Step 2) Multiband compression ,followed by a 30 band multi-semi-hydraulic-parametric passive eq, followed by an aural exciter, maxx bass, Rennaissance Bass, Big Bottom, pushed through a sub speaker, mic'ed and fed back in in parallel " blend to taste" (I f'ing hate that term haha)
 
The RE20 actually has very polite bass and virtually no proximity effect, IMO. Ok, it's got a little but it's the mic that I find least prone to it.

Cheers :)
 
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