Trying to make a good 'narrator' voice sound

[breslin]

Hello all,

I am doing a small piece of audio localization work for an upcoming Russian game that is being translated for the English-speaking audience. You can find the original Russian narration here: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~breslin/intro_speech.ogg

I have not yet recorded the actor. I am planning to use audacity, going through an m-audio mixer w/ Delta 66 sound card, and a Shure SM58 mic. This is my first professional recording job, and it's an audition for me as well, so I want it to go perfectly. Any advice would be appreciated.

Listening to the original sound file, it sounds like the Russian engineer did a light 'duck' on the music track. (So the music is a little quieter while the narrator is speaking.) I don't know what other effects are being used on the Russian voice. (Not that I necessarily have to match the exact effect profile, so long as the final result sounds good.) I guess I'll mess around with light reverb, compression, and... well, probably try a lot of random things. I'm getting the Russian studio to send me a clean music track, so I can experiment with the music+voice mixdown.

Anyhow, please let me know if there's anything in particular I should look into for voice actor recording, particularly for this little project.

[kozikowski]

You're writing that like the voice capture step is a snap. Describe your studio. Do you have a nice quiet, echo free room? Most people don't. This came up before in a similar post.

http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic ... rry+sorbet

Koz

[kozikowski]

Don't fall in love with that music ducking thing. That can get really annoying in a hurry. The sound people call that "pumping" and it's the sure sign of somebody trying to record a track in their basement.

The Russian track could easily have been someone applying a compressor to the final in order to make it tight and dense. You might try Chris's Compressor for that. He wrote a very graceful compressor that can be made to sound like a radio station. The show has limited dynamic range and you can't quite put your finger on why.

http://pdf23ds.net/software/dynamic-compressor/

Koz

[orgelquaeler]

Yah to be honest, the music in the backgroud sounds heavily compressed, and -like is mentioned above- gets tiring after awhile. Really, it is what keeps the audio from having that crisp, professional sound. What a pity, too, because it is quite a stunning soundtrack, and matches the Russian quite well.

[kozikowski]

To build on all the above, apply Chris's Compressor (or any of the other compressors) to just the voice to make it more forceful and dense, then gently mix in the background music. This only works if the voice track is clean -- no echo or trash underneath.

You still need to start the day with a good voice and no Metrobus in the background.

Koz

[breslin]

Thanks!

Yes I do have a good recording space, so no worries about room ambiance problems or external sounds (metrobus, etc.).

About the music. Probably the original sound engineer was dealing with a compressed file. Actually I think he mixed two compressed files to make the music track. Then, he mixed the result with the voice track and compressed that. Maybe I can get the original uncompressed music files. I will certainly look into this.

For reference, here is my recreation of the background music: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~breslin/in ... gmusic.ogg

@Koz -- Understood about applying a compressor to the voice alone. But then you say "gently mix in the background music"... Obviously you mean gently in the sense of "not too loud background" but do you also mean compressing the music+voice tracks together (or other operation)?

[kozikowski]

<<<gently in the sense of "not too loud background">>>

I mean without aggressively trying to follow the vocals. Rent major movies and listen to what they do with the sound. I don't know that I would listen to other games. They're all making the same mistakes.

<<<do you also mean compressing the music+voice tracks together (or other operation)?>>>

Do Not Do That.

The interaction between the vocal and the background during joint compression is what gives you the odd pumping and strange volume changes. You can gently manually duck maybe once at the beginning of the narrative and just leave it down there for the duration of the dialog.

If there is a stinger point or place where the interest or plot changes, that's when you change things around. I wish I had a sample of a popular movie before they added the sound. It's stunning how flat it seems until all the track sounds are added -- manually.

Koz

[breslin]

Thank you. Let me share a couple sound files with you. First, I have a file which contains a number of sound tests. I hope you can help evaluate it.

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~breslin/voice_test.ogg

I think I have already learned that I should do noise reduction *before* amplification.

Otherwise, I think this test reflects a reasonably good setup. Any suggestions for improvement?

Now I want your thoughts on the project. First, here is the original Russian audio file, for your reference:

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~breslin/intro_speech.ogg

And now, I have mocked-up an English version. This is just my voice, not the actor's:

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~breslin/in ... mockup.ogg

Thanks to Koz, I think the English music track sounds much better than the original Russian, because we're avoiding the pumping.

Still, I can certainly tell that the voice doesn't sound correct yet. (And not only because I don't have a good acting voice.) But I don't know what precisely is lacking. It feels like I need more aggressive compression on the voice track, and maybe a bass-heavy equalizer effect. But honestly I'm shooting in the dark. All suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: I'm recording the actor tomorrow. Then I will edit the recording over the weekend.

[kozikowski]

You need to do that again and this time put the round nylon pop filter between you and the microphone. Then back up another foot. The track is full of the ultra presence and odd dynamics that only happen when an announcer is trying to talk to you in real life three inches away from your ear. There are actually a number of crack sounds in there from plosive overload and peak distortion. Back off, dude.

And take the waveforms with you. The track I got has voice waveforms that live at 0dB. That's very dangerous because sound systems run out of steam right there and it invites overly crisp peak distortion. Tracks rarely recover from that. If you're going to Normalize or Amplify, do it to -1dB.

A surgically clean straight capture track is really important. I would probably not be able to fix that mixed track even if I had the voice by itself. Capture with lots of headroom -- don't get anywhere near zero during the live performance and do final production in production, not during the capture.

I did a live capture last week for one of our productions. I didn't have a working script -- the director didn't either -- so nobody told the sound guy, me with the headphones, that the next shot was the actor yelling at the top of his voice. We did that one over and my ears are still ringing.

After you straighten that out, duck the orchestra very gently just as the voice starts. In this sample, the orchestra is too hot behind the vocal, but it probably starts out OK.

Viva Don LaFontaine.

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?secti ... id=6365552
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJMGS7l0wT8


Koz

[kozikowski]

Have you noticed that this entire thread is in the wrong forum? We should be in Recording Techniques.
Koz
[Moderators note] Topic Moved [/Moderators note]