Does anyone know of a plugin that adds raspiness to voice recordings?
You see, I’ve got the voice down, but it’s a bit raspy at the same time. With me having no vocal training, when I try to get the hint of raspiness in there, it ends up sounding like some kind of idiot henchman from a silly old Saturday morning cartoon.
So, any tips, or tutorials, or links to plugins would be highly appreciated.
You might need to post a little bit of it so we can make an intelligent assessment. Export a representative 2-second sample as mono FLAC and post it here using the attachment tools on the bottom of the forum page. You can post longer clips (recommended) but you’ll need to do it on an outside service.
It would be really easy for us to suggest solutions that may produce other serious damage. My first reaction would be an equalizer filter, but that may make you sound muddy or muffled.
Wearing my Hollywood hat for a minute, if your natural voice sounds like that, that may be your marketing opportunity. I really want to hear this now. Everybody thinks they need to sound “like a professional announcer” and that was the subject of a really silly April’s Fool joke last year. You can do that if you want, but clear and distinctive voices are rare.
Koz
Steve does raspy … https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/voice-sound-like-deathmetal-scream-growl/11634/6
I replicated a line from Star Fox 64 for an audition. I tried to make it sound as accurate as I could with the way he says things, but I just don’t have that very slight raspiness that he has in his voice. Hmm, but now that I think about it, I would probably do a better Falco than I do Fox, but that’s not the case here. 
That link is the line I tried to replicate, if you didn’t notice.
That’s what I was afraid of. You don’t have a raspy, distinctive voice. You just overloaded the microphone signal.
Are you in Audacity 1.3.12 like you should be? If you are, then open that clip and View > Show Clipping. See all those red lines? That’s all the places your voice got too loud and the digital sound signal is now permanently damaged.
As you record, watch the red recording meters…
http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_record.jpg
Those meters should never go all the way up. Ever. Turn down or moderate the performance loudness until the meters and blue lines look more or less like that illustration.
Koz
Ah, that is something I didn’t know, thank you.
And yeah… I know my voice is crappy, but I’d really like to do voice-overs one day. I should probably take vocal lessons, no?
Update: Hmm, the quality does seem to be a bit better now that the red lines are gone. Now there’s that whole raspiness business…
You’ve not given us a lot to work with : it sounds like it was recorded on a narrow bandwidth device like a mobile phone, or digital voice recorder on a low sample rate (~8KHz).
I’ve aged you about 25 years but it still sounds like you’re on the phone …
You should try to master getting a good quality recording of voice before trying to manipulate it.
You need to set a sample rate of around 44KHz on your recording device and the same sample rate in all the software you use to manipulate (and save) the recording.
It’s an Xbox 360 headset.
I can’t afford good equipment at the moment.
You can still work on Interp and Presentation. Most people talk in a monotone with very little expression. Announcers/Presenters are pretty much the exact opposite. They have wild swings to the pitch, force, and expression in their voices and that’s why they still get paid to stand in front of a microphone. It’s hard to (a) do that in software, and (b) “filter” someone’s voice so it sounds like that.
Pick a voice you like and record some. Do you like Don Lafontaine?
“In a world that knows no limits, one man and one woman strive to.” etc. His “In A World” thing is a standing Hollywood joke, and he’s in on it. He’s recorded some spoofs that are drop-dead funny.
http://www.milton-rotary.org/automobile-insurance/don-lafontaine-geico-spot
PBS has a presenter with a sucky voice, but he gets work because he does his Lafontaine Simulation, even with the wrong voice. BBC/NBC/News presenters play straight, but have pitch swing and interpretation. Nothing like recording on a murder with a comedy voice.
Etc. You can do that on any microphone.
Koz
Koz has had some very good results with a $15 USB microphone - I think it was a “Logitec” USB mic.
Re. the “Raspiness” - if you want to reproduce the distortion effect on the “fox” voice, try the “soft clipping limiter” plug-in available here: Peak Limiter / Expander - #21 by vinylivo
Set the threshold level quite low.
Then use the Equalizer effect to reduce the bass and reduce very high frequencies (turn down the frequencies below about 300 Hz and above about 7 kHz).
You will get better results if you have a better, cleaner recording to start with.
As has already been said - go for it with the “acting” part of the recording.
The phone effect isn’t due to the microphone, its due to a low (8KHz) sample rate on the software you’ve used to record or process the sound. The sample rate can usually be adjusted by the user to a higher rate, e.g. 22025Hz 32000Hz or 44100Hz or 48000KHz. (8000Hz may be a default setting, it’s just adequate for intelligibility, but very phone-like).