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Post by benedict on Feb 13, 2018 16:15:28 GMT -8
That's a really good analogy (re: the professional mover).
This same debate shows up in photography. I can't count how many times I've been told I should donate unrestricted online and print media rights for a particular image ad infinitum because it would be "good for my exposure". Every single time I've been told this, it's been a company that actually has a budget for their project, but who is trying to pinch pennies.
That being said, I do a lot of photography for fun. If friends are heading down to the beach, I'm happy to do the photography. If a friend of one of my kids needs a headshot to get into a community play, I'm all-in. If the school jazz ensemble is doing a performance, I'm there with my gear. But if a realtor tells me that giving them one of my aerial photos of a beachfront property will give me "exposure", they're just plain wrong.
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Post by benedict on Feb 9, 2018 13:27:31 GMT -8
I just realized the simplest explanation is "talk normal/lower pitch but using the part of your throat you normally use to talk higher pitched." It requires a little bit of control, and DON'T go whole-hog with it. Just do it a LITTLE bit until you get used to it or you're gonna have a sore throat/injury. And (And I know I say this a lot) having a tube stuck up your nose and down your throat is NOT fun. I love the advice you can get here! Just tried your simplest explanation and came out with a voice I've never used before. W00t!!! I'll take it slow and work it into my repertoire in a safe way, but I gotta play with this. And please do keep saying the bit about the tube up the nose! I've only had to do it once for a throat injury, but I'm on my third now, with a fourth visit penciled in the planner. (The ENT I'm seeing is extremely smooth, but there's nothing fun about hearing a doctor say, "I'd like to stick this camera up your nose." Mmmyeah...)
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Post by benedict on Feb 7, 2018 15:19:23 GMT -8
If you edit your audio in spectral mode rather than waveform mode you don't need to reduce mouth noises since you can easily cut them out; they're the bright vertical lines that seem out of place. Ooooh. I need to play with that. I use spectral mode for field recording, but I haven't tried it for VO. Cool! This'll be fun!
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Post by benedict on Feb 6, 2018 17:26:34 GMT -8
That's weird! I just tried it, and it works! Thanks, charly.
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Post by benedict on Feb 1, 2018 17:28:39 GMT -8
"...the little fire lizard..."
I just recorded the first two books in Anne McCaffrey's Harper Hall trilogy. I swear that line shows up in EVERY CHAPTER! Like you said, fine if I'm reading it slowly and deliberately. But as soon as I'm reading it at speed and in character? I swear it turns into two words. I've added this to my list of practice tongue twisters.
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Post by benedict on Jan 24, 2018 11:14:33 GMT -8
I tried to watch the video, Holly, but the link points back to this thread here in the forums. I'm looking forward to watching it, though!
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Post by benedict on Jan 21, 2018 11:08:56 GMT -8
I think the same ideas apply, at least in VO. You're still having a conversation. It's just very one-sided. Take something like a safety training video that'll get shown to a bunch of people in a conference room. You, the voice actor, are speaking to a group of people. Some of them will take safety seriously, and are already on your side. Some will sit there with their arm's crossed, wondering why corporate's going through the motions. Others will think of all the times they got away with violating safety rules without getting hurt, and wonder why they have to pay attention at all. That's your Who, your Where, your When, at least some of your What. You're left with finding the most effective answer to Why and How that'll help you engage that diverse conversation partner and hold their attention long enough for the information to sink in. (But try not to pick a Why and How that makes it sound like you're explaining safety to that guy who just passed five cars in a no passing zone. It'll sound like you're trying to throttle them through the screen. )
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Post by benedict on Jan 21, 2018 0:44:07 GMT -8
Classic Bowie? (Tell me it's Bowie!)
Cheers, Casey!
Tom
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Post by benedict on Jan 18, 2018 18:53:16 GMT -8
You just switched to an AT4040, right? I'm going out on a limb, but I'm guessing you started noticing this after you made the switch. The AT4040 has a pretty broad peak in its frequency response out around 6500Hz. I can't remember what you were using before, but my guess is its presence peak was weaker, or peaked somewhere else. This ties back to what Kira said about maybe being hyper-aware of your mouth noise. My guess is the mouth noise has been there since day one, but with the new mic and interface you're just now noticing it. And now that you've noticed it it's hard to forget it's there.
This is not a bad thing, mind you. I remember some time last year you were having issues matching your sound to another actor's, and it came down to their using a microphone with more presence and clarity. The AT4040 provides both.
Welcome to presence and clarity!
Just for grins, listen to "Lullaby" by Shawn Mullins and enjoy all the mouth sounds he put in his vocals. (They're still playing that song on the radio twenty years after he first released it!) It won't help you solve the mouth noise issue, but it might make you smile while you work on a remedy.
Do you have a sample you could post in the clips and critiques? Might help to get another set of ears on it.
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Post by benedict on Jan 15, 2018 11:20:37 GMT -8
Not sure about Mac, but on my Windows machine the native software plays mono tracks panned to center so both ears hear it. Same with Audacity and Reaper unless you intentionally pan a mono track to one side or the other. There really shouldn't be an advantage to sending a stereo file of a mono source over just sending a mono file, and as Kira said, it doubles the size of the file. From a mixing standpoint, the only time I really need a stereo track (or a 5.0, 5.1, etc. polywav) is when I'm laying down backgrounds. (The irony here is that most of what I record IS backgrounds.) Otherwise it's preferable to have mono sources so they can be individually panned to their location in the mix. Having a stereo source that's going to be mixed in over a background means the mixer first has to either mix the stereo track to mono, or split the file and discard one track. It's just extra work in the end. Sorry for waxing technical and straying so far from the question, but since it came up...
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Post by benedict on Jan 10, 2018 11:36:51 GMT -8
Yeah, compression will exacerbate noise, especially if you're bringing up the overall level in the process. When your new interface arrives, I'd be curious to see a raw file off your new interface and another one off the Behringer. Ideally set the gains on the interfaces to get your average signal around -12dB to -9dB on both and do a straight recording to WAV. If you can leave about five seconds of silence at the beginning and end of each track, that can be really useful for analyzing noise.
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Post by benedict on Jan 7, 2018 23:16:30 GMT -8
That's some odd noise. Just looking at your file in Audacity, it looks like the noise has most of its power over 7.5kHz, but there's a spot in the recording with very little noise right around 11.5 seconds in. Can I ask what processing you're doing on the file? It almost looks like a gate closing, but it's right between two spots of dialogue. There's another spot just after with no dialogue, but the noise is present.
Reading through the specs on the Behringer mixer I'm tempted to point fingers there, but I wouldn't rush out and buy a new interface until you have a chance to verify that.
If you have some spare bits and pieces lying around, I like to keep an XLR plug with a 150 ohm metal film resistor soldered between pins 2 and 3. This lets you measure the input noise on your preamp/input combination. Leaving all your other settings the same, replace the mic with the 150 ohm load plug and record. What you'll get in the file is the noise of your system minus the mic. If all the noise disappears, that points toward the mic or the cable. If the noise is still there, it points toward the preamp/input end.
As far as software goes, Audacity always provides a good sanity check. It's free, and does a really good job with VA. If you record two tracks, one in your current software and one in Audacity, and the noise disappears in Audacity, something's likely weird with the software. But I can't think of anything in the digital end of things that would add the noise I saw in your file. That really looks like something in the analog end of the chain.
Sorry for rambling. I'm short on sleep at the moment.
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Post by benedict on Jan 2, 2018 12:44:04 GMT -8
Just starting out here and I'm 49. It's NEVER too late to launch.
Cheers!
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Post by benedict on Dec 21, 2017 18:27:17 GMT -8
Two other goals for 2018:
1 - I'm recording a new book (one of my favorites), and I realized way too late the cast of characters is larger than I remembered, and out-strips the voices I can call up on demand. I am bound and determined to add new voices to my repertoire, and as spearcarrier said, learn to STAY in them and call them up at will when I need them.
2 - I'm gearing up for another round of microphone building some time mid-2018. I want to finalize plans for a couple of internal PCBs for building mics tailored specifically toward voice acting. I figure it'll require a couple of rounds of prototyping before they're ready, but I'm looking forward to the results.
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Post by benedict on Dec 18, 2017 9:13:02 GMT -8
Excellent article! Thanks for taking the time to write this. I really appreciate that last point. (That's why tutorials like this are so valuable!)
The only thing I can think to add is room treatment. It's a whole snowball (no pun intended) of a topic and should probably be another tutorial entirely, but it's worth mentioning that even with the best of the best of everything you listed, recording in an untreated room won't sound as good as a recording made using much more affordable gear in a treated room.
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