Improving vocal "presence"

[ajfriedman]

I'm not sure if this falls under mastering, but here is my problem:

I recorded a walking tour through busy city streets, and I'm producing a CD for the museum that sponsored the tour. My live digital recording used one stereo mic, hand held near the tour guides. I editted 2 hours down to CD Length, and created cuts for each stop on the tour.

Listening to my mix in headphones, the tour guides' voices are heard clearly enough over the ambient strret noise, but one of them (a woman) doesn't project well, and her voice isn't clear enough when the mix is played through speakers on a generic CD player.

Is there any way I can boost the presence of the female speaker?
Is there a way to filter to reduce the street noise a bit while she is speaking? Any other ideas?

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

You might have some succes with multiband compression, homing in on the specific frequency range of the woman's voice.

 

[The Green Hornet]

YO AJ:

How about writing a script of what she says and get her into a studio and let her track her voice under optimum conditions; then, just dub her into the project.

You'd still have the street ambience, etc.

Green Hornet

 

[ajfriedman]

I'll try compression first

Thanks to both of you for helpful ideas.

A studio recording date might work. I could also record a second take on the next scheduled tour date, which is Oct 3, but the plan was to have the CD ready by then.

This is an all-volunteer low budget operation, so wireless mics on each guide are not an option.

 

[ajfriedman]

Here's what worked (mostly)

For all cuts but one, I was able to pump the woman's delivery using a noise filter to reduce the background, and a compressor-expander intended to emphasis voice. For the filter, I used a sample of just street noise, and set noise reduction to 20%. On these cuts, the resulting mix had the woman much clearer and dominant above the noise.

There was one cut that turned to mud using the above process. For that one, I applied a band-pass filter at -20 db for 0 - 300 Hz and + 6db in the woman's voice range. I followed this with a little manual adjustment of the signal level where needed. I still get recognizable street sounds, but the voice comes through.

I think I have a usable demo CD now, but I may go back and re-record that one cut on Oct 3.

Thanks again for the good advice.