Post by benedict on Jun 4, 2018 14:26:31 GMT -8
Back in October of last year, Duffy Webber wrote a really good tutorial on how to travel as a voice actor: what to pack, how to turn a hotel room into a makeshift recording studio, and how to match the frequency response of your travel mic to your booth mic. Before launching into this experiment, I highly recommend reading Duffy's thread:
Recording While on the Road
This experiment is an extension of the EQ matching part of Duffy's tutorial that can be explored by anyone who uses a Blue Snowball and Audacity.
[The details may be boring for anyone who's not eyeballs-deep in mics and DAWs, so feel free to skip this part if you just want to get going.]
I took a Blue Snowball and a pair of XLR mics and did a more automated version of Duffy's EQ matching using the Eventide EQuivocate plug-in in Reaper. The mics were fed with two broadband signals - a song and a frequency sweep. The mics themselves can be used in two configurations. They have switches for rolling off the presence peak of their respective capsules, which results in a slightly warmer sound. The upshot is that this process resulted in eight EQ curves ranging from relatively bright sounding to relatively dark sounding, depending on which mic was used and how it was configured.
The two broadband input signals produced different curves as well. The curves generated from the song tended to be more shallow, resulting in softer EQ. The curves generated from the frequency sweep tended to be more pronounced, resulting in harder EQ. The two sets are labeled as "Soft" and "Hard", respectively.
As-is the EQ curves generated this way only really work with the EQuivocate plug-in, which doesn't do anyone other than me much good. The rest of the process was to export the curves (aka "type them in manually to text files") and interpolate them into the XML format used by Audacity's Equalization effect. At that point, the curves were ready to import directly to Audacity.
[End boring details]
The Snowball EQ Kit consists of the eight XML files for each of the eight EQ curves along with a text file with notes on how to import the files:
Snowball EQ Kit
I invite anyone who uses a Blue Snowball with Audacity to play with these curves. My guess is that at least half of these will sound harsh or unnatural. My hope is that there will be at least one in the set that is a good match for each person's voice who tries this. But as a friend of mine is fond of quoting, "No expectations. Only hope. - Amy Tan".
If there's one that works particularly well with your voice, please let me know. If there's one that works well enough you feel comfortable using it in an audition, please PLEASE let me know.
Cheers,
Tom
Recording While on the Road
This experiment is an extension of the EQ matching part of Duffy's tutorial that can be explored by anyone who uses a Blue Snowball and Audacity.
[The details may be boring for anyone who's not eyeballs-deep in mics and DAWs, so feel free to skip this part if you just want to get going.]
I took a Blue Snowball and a pair of XLR mics and did a more automated version of Duffy's EQ matching using the Eventide EQuivocate plug-in in Reaper. The mics were fed with two broadband signals - a song and a frequency sweep. The mics themselves can be used in two configurations. They have switches for rolling off the presence peak of their respective capsules, which results in a slightly warmer sound. The upshot is that this process resulted in eight EQ curves ranging from relatively bright sounding to relatively dark sounding, depending on which mic was used and how it was configured.
The two broadband input signals produced different curves as well. The curves generated from the song tended to be more shallow, resulting in softer EQ. The curves generated from the frequency sweep tended to be more pronounced, resulting in harder EQ. The two sets are labeled as "Soft" and "Hard", respectively.
As-is the EQ curves generated this way only really work with the EQuivocate plug-in, which doesn't do anyone other than me much good. The rest of the process was to export the curves (aka "type them in manually to text files") and interpolate them into the XML format used by Audacity's Equalization effect. At that point, the curves were ready to import directly to Audacity.
[End boring details]
The Snowball EQ Kit consists of the eight XML files for each of the eight EQ curves along with a text file with notes on how to import the files:
Snowball EQ Kit
I invite anyone who uses a Blue Snowball with Audacity to play with these curves. My guess is that at least half of these will sound harsh or unnatural. My hope is that there will be at least one in the set that is a good match for each person's voice who tries this. But as a friend of mine is fond of quoting, "No expectations. Only hope. - Amy Tan".
If there's one that works particularly well with your voice, please let me know. If there's one that works well enough you feel comfortable using it in an audition, please PLEASE let me know.
Cheers,
Tom