Voice Over Equipment

O

Orson

Well-known member
Hi

I am in the process of building myself a little sound booth but need some advice on the equipment to use.

I am producing some ongoing product promotional videos for myself and also some dvd work all of which is non musical except for intro and background music.

The voice over work I will do myself but need advice on what to purchase for this small scale venture (I do not intend to be a professional voice over artiste) but sometimes it will entail multiple recorded voices.

I need advice on what to use after the good quality microphone, whether I need a mixer that I can adjust sound before it goes to the PC. I know I can buy professional audio software for the PC which I will then have to learn :eek: but the chance of fiddling with manual controls appeals to me much more as I would find this a lot easier to learn and play with.

I have used Audacity which is ok. I gave up on Cubase which came with my Zoom H5 recorder as I couldn't get it to work correctly :cursing: which pushes me towards some kind of manual plaything as I do find some software not user friendly or I am just a dummy.

Any advice I would be very grateful ...... Thanks.
 
Others here are better qualified to help you with the electronic stuff. However, I have found that having a truly flexible (height, boom, angle) microphone stand to be essential. The miniature desktop models never did it for more. I found myself leaning into the script and constricting the smooth passage of air. Being able to fully relax without neck stretch does help.

Bubba Speare
 
Thanks Bubba. I have been looking for 3 days solid now and 99% say get PC processing software so looks like a good microphone and Adobe is going to be on the equipment list.
 
Orson, you do NOT want a booth and certainly not a "small" one. It will sound horrible.

Treat the room in which you intend to record. You will find 1,000s of words about this in other parts of the forum and other places but essentially you need an absorbent "wall" behind the microphone and another one behind the speaker.

You really should get a proper Audio Interface. The Alesis i02 is $100 or less and if you go for a Large Diaphragm Capacitor* microphone you will get a system noise below the room noise (unless you live down a mine!) . Speech recording demands a very low noise system so look for mics such as the Rode NT1a but others here have vastly more experience of useful mics.

You may not THINK you want a "professional" setup but trust me, not spending a few $100 now will just lead to hours of frustration and you will either give up or spend again!

Audacity is fine for what it does, you might bump up against certain limitations (like it cannot save the standard .wav files) and if that is the case try Reaper or the freebie Studio One. Do not be fazed by these DAWs (as the software is called) a day's larnin and you will get the basics for vox pops!

*AKA (by the arcane!) as a condenser microphone.

Dave.
 
Dave what do you mean by --- Orson, you do NOT want a booth and certainly not a "small" one. It will sound horrible.

I was going to soundproof a room I have spare as many people say this is the thing to do so why do you say no to this?
 
Orson said:
Dave what do you mean by --- Orson, you do NOT want a booth and certainly not a "small" one. It will sound horrible.

I was going to soundproof a room I have spare as many people say this is the thing to do so why do you say no to this?
Click to expand...

You did not say "room" friend. You said "small BOOTH"! That immediately makes me think "broom cupboard" with a walls lined with 1" foam. Such a box will resonate, honk, terribly.

And I don't want to discourage you but sound PROOFING a room is a major structural undertaking. You effectively have to build a second room inside the first taking enormous care not to couple the two together acoustically. The best most of us can do (for recording, critical monitoring and mixing requires rather different treatment) is throw up a couple of duvets and try to keep the nasty room resonances out of the mic.

There is little you can do about noise ingress, especially low frequency noise like traffic rumble (get a mic with a "High Pass Filter switch) . Double (triple?) glazing of course. Add mass to doors, might need heavier hinges/rising butts and get them really airtight. But mostly "we" have to work at unsocial hours.

Dave.
 
I too thought small. A good interface and to start, a modest mic. Probably an anglepoise mic stand and good sealed headphones. Cubase, even the light versions is an excellent software application, but is worth persevering with, especially for its music production side, and excellent midi facilities. A bigger room is easier to treat, but for most amateurs and just starting pros, set the room up, find its bad areas and treat them with the products easily available now.
 
I cannot add much to what has already been suggested. If you can get the recording space right, then your equipment will have a chance to operate as designed.

My personal recording philosophy is to record as clean as possible going in, and sweeten it in the DAW. Too many knobs and tweaks, going in, increases my chances of "garbage in, garbage out" that cannot be fixed ITB.
Dale
 
Thanks Rob & Dale

Before I had seen your replies I ordered the Rode NT 1A kit this morning.

Dave I have a large wooden shed and it will be well insulated and the spoace for my sound booth could be about 7ft x 12ft but I was thinking about half of that partly because I priced the egg box foam up today.... JESUS :eek: . How come when I do things they always cost more than expected never less. Think I will be stapling old socks to my walls.

I have been looking at Adobe Audition which seems quite easy to use and they have a good price plan in place, but for some music has anybody ever used FruityLoops?
 
Orson said:
Thanks Rob & Dale

Before I had seen your replies I ordered the Rode NT 1A kit this morning.

Dave I have a large wooden shed and it will be well insulated and the spoace for my sound booth could be about 7ft x 12ft but I was thinking about half of that partly because I priced the egg box foam up today.... JESUS :eek: . How come when I do things they always cost more than expected never less. Think I will be stapling old socks to my walls.

I have been looking at Adobe Audition which seems quite easy to use and they have a good price plan in place, but for some music has anybody ever used FruityLoops?
Click to expand...

Attaching foam, egg boxes even old socks to a shed wall will do nothing to stop external noise. That can only be done by adding mass, plasterboard, usually two sheets separated by a layer of "Green Glue" and yes, we are talking serious money here.
Instead make up some wooden frames, 3 or 4 about 1.5 x 1 mtr and cover with layer of fibreglass or rockwool. Make the layers at least 200mm deep, more if possible*. Any spare bags of GF or RW stack in the corners to act (a bit!) as bass traps.

The frames are used as I described earlier front and back (side won't hurt) of you to kill room resonances. You need to aim for a dead, non reverberant sound to which you can add reverb to taste.

I have AA 1.5 and it is good but Reaper is AT LEAST as easy (or hard!) to learn, is free until guilt kicks in and even then just ~ $60 FOREVER! AND you get always free upgrades.

*I am NO acoustician! These wafflings are just ideas (based on a little knowledge!) of ways to make a tolerable recording in a bad space (all small rooms are bad!) with little money.

Oh yes! F L? No, IMHO you want a "linear" recording system.

Dave.
 
Idea

Would 4 detached movable screens of egg box foam stuck on chipboard on 4 stands which could be placed around the area of the microphone desk/chair do the job if the shed was insulated ? This way the eggbox foam isnt touching the walls of the shed and is free standing.

Dave the socks was a joke.:) What is a linear recording system?
 
Orson said:
Idea

Would 4 detached movable screens of egg box foam stuck on chipboard on 4 stands which could be placed around the area of the microphone desk/chair do the job if the shed was insulated ? This way the eggbox foam isnt touching the walls of the shed and is free standing.

Dave the socks was a joke.:) What is a linear recording system?
Click to expand...

No, not IMHO. The screen needs to be open, a solid panel will cause reflections and phase issues. The idea is that you mic gets the direct, crisp sound but the front screen then attenuates the sound and stops some of it reaching the walls. That sound which does escape will rattle around and some of it enter the FRONT of the mic from behind you, hence a screen there. A directional mic will reject return from the front and of course that sound will be attenuated twice by the screen.

Pyramid foam is not thick enough to have much effect and putting it on the walls* will simply kill the high frequencies and make the room "dim". (good trick in a dim room for adding sparkle to say acoustic guitar? a few sq mtrs of hardboard on the floor)

You can make the frames from 100mm (4") by 25mm timber and use steel angle plates plus white glue.

"Linear recording is "tape machine like" . Most DAWs emulate to some degree the form of a tape recorder and mixer and us old farts find that a comfort (but not a lot!) . F L is what I dub a "cut and shunt" system where blocks of sounds are moved about. I can function as a straight recorder but is not, I think ideal for your intended usage.

Almost any AI you get will have a bundled "lite" DAW, often Cubase. That is a leeetle harder to grasp than some but since all DAWs have a learning curve why not give C a do? It's free!

BTW I have just managed to renew my activation of Samplitude Silver (an excellent free DAW op) after the W10 install/rollback to W7 borked it. I have not as yet managed to restore Sam SE8 on my Asus AMD 6 core but I shall have a grovel now I have a valid password!

*Is used for "mirror points" in a monitor speaker context but I won't confuse you!)
Dave
 
Just wanted to add, there IS a place for solid screens in a studio. Called "Gobos" and they are used to block, to a degree, loud sound coming from amps and drums. Like any solid object they will modify the sound and cause "colouration" and so need to be used with care and skill. Not easy this sound lark!

Yes, I got socks was a joke. So are egg boxes!

Dave.
 
A few or most here might disagree, but I might suggest getting the mic (with shockmount and a pop filter), USB interface, and DAW up and running at least to get started and then look at your needs for sound treatment once you get a feel for using the gear properly. Nothing is going to explode or break without the room treatment, it just may not sound as pristine as you might like from reflections in the room or ambient room sounds like computer fans or other things you wouldn't normally hear. This way you have a baseline of what the room is like without having yet done any thing to treat the room or isolate other noises. Once you have a feel what the problems may be then start looking at what is needed to fix the problem. I would probably not recommend that device from Amazon. If it isn't properly designed it could possibly introduce other problems.
 
"I" would certainly not disagree with you Mark good idea! Get a baseline idea of room noise (fans and such) and the qualities of the room. I am afraid I was launched into "treat the fekkin' room" mode by the trigger word "booth"!

The best of those mic screens, the Reflection Filter seems to do a fairly decent job of keeping out SOME room modes (can't stop stuff coming over shoulder) but they also cause colouration of the sound due to an object being close to the microphone...Yer pays yer money? Useful where you have neither the time nor opportunity to setup the duvets and for location work I suppose?

I reckon a couple of 4' by 3' by 4" GF screens would do better and probably cost close to the same.

Dave.
 
Cheers both.

Dave the "duvet" ........... is there a homemade alternative to expensive egg box foam like using old duvets as i have a few and also can get hold of used pillows from a hotel. Sounds a little mad but if they work it would save £100's.
 
For voice over work (as opposed to music) you want the recording space to be as dead as possible. You don't want a nice sounding room--you want as little room tone as possible since your voice has to go with any background.

A couple of options:

You might consider an sE Reflexion filter behind you mic. This, coupled with anything soft on the wall behind you, can work remarkably well. I once recorded an author reading one of her books this way in her kitchen and the results were remarkably good.

Or, for a home made system, buy some PVC pipes and joints from your local plumbing supplies place. Built a three-sided frame that can go around you then hang duvets or movers blankets from the frames. Try to work with the mic only just into the framework, not up against a side. Again, soft stuff behind you helps. (If you don't glue the joints, you can dismantle the frames for easy storage.)
 
Orson said:
Cheers both.

Dave the "duvet" ........... is there a homemade alternative to expensive egg box foam like using old duvets as i have a few and also can get hold of used pillows from a hotel. Sounds a little mad but if they work it would save £100's.
Click to expand...

Forget foam! Anything "warm" works, duvets, thick blankets (as per Bob) GF, Rockwooll, dead cats (long haired) .

See, the sound pressure waves in moving through the material heat up and lose energy. The thicker the material, the lower the frequency the effect works but 4" should be enough for speech frequencies.

Dave.
 
Thanks everybody. I am certainly going to experiment with some old duvets and pillows first, and maybe if it works I would probably keep the set up as that accoustic foam just too expensive. I am surprised nobody has bought out a cheaper alternative.
 
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