What effect is best to produce best quality vocals?

[intoxicatexme]

Which effect/s should I use and what settings should I put them on to produce a clearer and fixed kind of voice?

[kozikowski]

While it's fun to think you can solve most audio problems with a filter or effect, if you didn't start out with an excellent recording, you're pretty much doomed. For example, you can make a voice sound crisper and clearer with Effect > Equalizer, but unless you started with a perfect recording, the mic preamp hiss noise will kill you. Yes, you can apply noise reduction, but that makes the voice sound honky and bubbling, and so it goes.

It looks like you can do amazing things with the tool sets in Audacity (or most audio programs), but one of the things that separates home recordists from the pros is expectations. We cringe when somebody posts that they're going into a recording session with the idea of rescuing it in post production. Those people will be back. Some will have no show.

I posted this a while back.


The four horsemen of audio recording:

-- Echoes and room reverberation
-- Overload and Clipping
-- Compression Damage
-- Background Conversations

If you have any of these problems, that's the end of your show. There are no filters that fix it. Note that one and four have to do with recording in a quiet room. Two and three are stupid mistakes -- but fatal. Number three covers MP3. Never do production in MP3.

You can post a brief segment of your track here and we will look at it to see if there is anything to be done. Many times we can make specific suggestions to help the recording just based on our doing this for a while.

Koz

[steve]

Which effect/s should I use and what settings should I put them on to produce a clearer and fixed kind of voice?

Use a reasonable quality microphone and sound card.
Speak clearly.
Position the microphone close to the mouth with a "pop shield" between the mouth and microphone.
Record in a quiet room.
Record in a room that has little echo - lots of soft furnishings can help a lot. Rugs and heavy blankets can be used to cover hard reflective surfaces.

"mobile microphone booths" can also be purchased or made, for example:

[steve]

If you have any of these problems, that's the end of your show. There are no filters that fix it.

How about the "Professional Audio Filter"?

[kozikowski]

I was hoping not to have to use that. It wears out after a while and it leaves that ozone haze after.
Koz

[intoxicatexme]

Um @Koz

You said never do productions in MP3...if I wanted to export my vocals only...what format is best to produce in? e.g. WMA, WAV etc.

and how do I change the settings so it doesn't export as MP3?