VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Bill Campbell · DC Joined: 09 Mar 2007 Posts: 621

You're right. It is the GEAR section. My bad.

But, once you have a great mic, for your voice, and a clean pre-amp, move on to the performance.

As I'm sure Yoda will agree, there is no end to trying and buying new equipment!!! I own 12 mics! Guilty as charged.
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Yoda117 · Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 10:18 am Post subject:

right there with you Bill.

Though I must say, some recent acqusitions (Horch, LMNOPre, and others) are going to keep me gear happy for some time... mainly because it'll take a while to learn all the stuff they can do on a VO.

I'll add one thing that wasn't mentioned as an "initial need", a quiet recording space. If you don't have a good area, then all your high priced gear is pretty much useless because the acoustics won't sound pleasant when picked up by the microphone.
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Voiceovers by Gregory Houser
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Blog - A man, a martini, and a lot of microphones

MelissaVoicer · Guest

I would love NOT to be a producer...but alas, since I am a "one woman band," I have to be. And not knowing how to get the best sound out of my equipment hurts my business...so my "performance" suffers for not having the best sound...When I needed some additional voices for a project awhile back, there were some auditions I got through Voice 123 that I threw out immediately without even listening to the "performance" because the studio sounded so crappy. Eliminate all the reasons for clients to say "no" to you that you can BESIDES your performance! Smile

donrandall · Guest

MelissaVoicer · Guest

good points...and that's exactly what I mean. I have to be a producer to the point that I know how to set my existing (or new if I choose to buy it) equipment...or my sound suffers...which in turn means I suffer as an overall voice actor.

sdelgo · Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 7:36 am Post subject:

Melissa,

Just keep doing what you're doing but as donrandall stated: experiment, practice and think out of the box. I'm speaking strictly about the recording process here. A good thing to do is make a few different recordings with different settings and play them back in different settings (car, boombox, dvd player through a tv etc...) and even better let other people hear your material and get their objective opinion. Music producers rarely master their own material... they'll record it, mix it and send it off to a mastering house and let an objective set of ears sweeten it up. I'm not saying you should do this, my point is get all the input you can from different people.

Steve
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TheVoiceOfBob · Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 7:13 am Post subject:

It's threads like this though that help me. I'm very technical, so if I can get my mind around what is happening and know that how my equipment is set up I can concentrate better on the performance. If I have doubts about the technical part that hinders me mentally. I need to have that assurance that the technical portion is correct.

Thanks for the thorough explanation of balanced inputs. That goes along with my understanding of balanced vs. unbalanced transmission lines for RF. I just needed that bridge between the two worlds.

One other thing I found on the PreSonus Firebox. If you use the TPS and bypass the preamps, you lose the phantom power. Another reason for using the XLR on that box.
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Jowillie · Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 7:36 pm Post subject:

Just to confuse choices further, this is soon to be released from a major broadcast equipment manufacturer:
http://www.vorsis.com/m1.html
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Mixwell · Guest

Hi Melissa,

There are many, really great high end pre-amps listed above. I would say that any of these choices will give you a great tone with the NTK. The NTK is a great microphone that is has a very full response and high headroom. I found that the NTK has very little noise, if any.

The NTK is a very smooth, full frequency response microphone that works well on many applications, most certainly voice over work. It does have very pleasing texture, at least to my ears. I think the Great River would be a solid way to go. Perhaps the single channel combo with the EQ-1NV. This will give you more versatility and enable you to shape the sound if needed.

The EQ-1NV is a highly surgical unit that will maintain the tone of your signal while helping to counter some anomalies if any.

The Great river will give you a much more classic, vintage tone.
I would say that the GR would be the most versatile. It will be more colored if you drive more input and tone down the output. It will be cleaner if you pin the output gain to the max and back off the input.

Hit the Loading and Impedance feature to add some really rich, low end harmonics for more of the "1081/1073" dense midrange flavor.

peace
mixwell

cackerman · Guest

Melissa,

I just got a shiny new Grace 101. Transparency, gain and simplicity for less than $600. This thing sounds GREAT. I love it. Just my 2 cents

Chris

Yoda117 · Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 4:09 pm Post subject:

Are we still on this?

GML, Harvey, Great River, GML are the high end discrete preamps most commonly found in VO studios

Grace isn't bad for the money.

Get in front of one with your mic, play around, and go from there.

It's the only way to know for sure.
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Voiceovers by Gregory Houser
Philadelphia based Voice Actor

Blog - A man, a martini, and a lot of microphones

marko · Guest

I have to say that the Avalon 737 is very high end and is usually in every studio I work within. Upon noticing that, I promptly bought one and absolutely LOVE it.

Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

Wow. I've been using a Firebox with a line level balanced #1 input (very little Firebox gain). My preamp before the Firebox is decent, not great, but it should do the job in theory*...No matter what I did, I always found the recording to be very boxy and lifeless, much like the results from plugging a mic directly into the #1 input. Voilá! I plug into the #3 line input, figure out how to alter my Cubase routing, and the sound finally opens up and sounds vibrant. It's always the weakest link, isn't it?

Thanks!

* (Joemeek OneQ: the Pres are decent, and the compressor, eq, and other tools are relentless if I need them, usually I just record raw of course. I figure, for hardware, I want funky/character. I can always get nuance out of software).
I adore the Grace101 and Great River gear, btw.

Yoda117 · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:27 pm Post subject:

I don't know the wiring of the firebox, so I might be wrong, but it sounds like you were forcing the output of your preamp to go through the firebox preamp circuit...

yeah, that'd be a quick way to mess up your sound...
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Voiceovers by Gregory Houser
Philadelphia based Voice Actor

Blog - A man, a martini, and a lot of microphones