Voice Over Mic Pre

[thatvoice]

Which mic pre amp do you like for Voice Over? and why?

 

[chessrock]

Whatever's available.

I don't stress out over it too much.

Benefits of - and differences between - various mic pres, tends to be subtle and cumulative.

When you're dealing with just one track, basically, the whole "cumulative" thing doesn't come much in to play. You might have a really generic-sounding music bed and possibly some sound effects to compete with. But not like you're dealing with layer upon layer of backing vocal or rythm guitar track along with 12 drum mics to compete with.

It's a lot like rap. You know you're in for a pretty easy session, so no need to really sweat a lot of the details.

 

[kojdogg]

I don't do voice over, but I had a Safe Sound P1 Channel Strip for a while and its feature set seems really well suited for voiceover. The pre is clean and has lots of headroom, plus it has an expander (kind of like a noise gate), which would be very helpful if you're working in an enviroment where external noises (from the outside, from a computer, etc.) could be a problem and a great and sophisticated compressor and limiter section. The limiter is almost "predictive" in that it has two stages which it will kick in depending on how much and how quickly the signal is rising in gain, which helps it to seem more transparent then most.
In terms of just a pre, I'd mostly agree with Chessrock, though I would say that if you skimp too much, you might end up with a pre that is really noisy, distorts easily or both.

 

[jeffs789]

The pre i have is the art mpa gold. i replaced the stock tubes with some tungsol a12x7's and they do my singing for me. I would recommend going down the tube preamp path for voice overs to give the vocals some extra depth.