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Tips for getting great sound (no matter what gear you have)!

 
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Lance Blair
M&M


Joined: 03 Jun 2007
Posts: 2279
Location: Atlanta

PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 6:10 am    Post subject: Tips for getting great sound (no matter what gear you have)! Reply with quote

Here's my latest blog post about how to get great sounding voice overs in your home studio without paying a fortune. It also covers doing subtle processing and QC for corporate and E Learning clients that don't have post production capabilities.

http://lanceblairvo.com/2016/10/19/10-tips-for-great-voice-over-recordings/

Yesterday I had the pleasant surprise that the head of Auralex wrote and and thanked me for the post! Smile
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and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!
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iannyc
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Joined: 04 Oct 2016
Posts: 261
Location: Brooklyn, NYC

PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 9:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great!!! Some of it was above my head like the low-pass filter literally and metaphorically but really helpful stuff!
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DenaliDave
Club 300


Joined: 09 Jan 2016
Posts: 307
Location: Anchorage, Alaska

PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 9:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's some solid advice!

When you have a bunch of different pieces of gear all with volume knobs, it can be easy to be all out of whack. Learning about "unity gain" and how to adjust your levels properly is very important -- I'm glad to see you brought that topic up!

And of course, as always, the ROOM Laugh

People can blow tens of thousands on gear and sound bad if their room has echos and you can hear cars and trains outside.

A good sounding recording space is like the concrete foundation of your house. It's the bedrock upon all other things are built. If you don't start with that, nothing else you do will work out well.

Great tips!

EDIT: There's a lot of debate on whether to EQ before or after compression. I'm in the same camp as you. If I decide to do EQ and compression, I EQ first.

There's really no "rule" -- and it just takes trial/error/practice to find what seems to work best.

If you're lowering/cutting with the EQ that would go better before compression. If you're boosting/adding to a frequency range, that EQ might go better after compression.

But as I said ... it's one of those "potato/potatoe" type things. Everyone has their own workflow and way of doing things that works for them. As long as it sounds good, it's gravy!
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Last edited by DenaliDave on Tue Oct 25, 2016 10:09 am; edited 1 time in total
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todd ellis
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Joined: 02 Jan 2007
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Location: little egypt

PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 9:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

cool stuff!

t.
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iannyc
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Joined: 04 Oct 2016
Posts: 261
Location: Brooklyn, NYC

PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 11:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey Lance, I work with a shure sm7b (no volume controls, low output, no phantom power), a ua solo 610 preamp, and an apogee duet interface.

I had both the gain and the volume up on the preamp to about 70% and the apogee up the rest (like usually... 25 out of 72?)

I then read that the first knob, the gain, on the solo 610 should be relatively low (like 1.5) in order to not create too much distortion.

Is that generally true, you want every volume setting up until the final input (the interface) to be almost as high as possible for the best sound?

Thanks!!!!! And awesome article, you RAWK!!
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Bruce
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Joined: 06 Jun 2005
Posts: 7921
Location: Portland, OR

PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 11:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I moved a copy of this thread to Research and Development since Lance's tips are most worthy of sharing there.




Bruce
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Lance Blair
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Joined: 03 Jun 2007
Posts: 2279
Location: Atlanta

PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 1:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks all - and thanks for moving it Bruce! Smile

I haven't run a 610 preamp. But dynamic mics need a lot of gain. The maximum gain on a 610 is, 61 dB. An SM7b is going to need at least 50 dB gain. So you want the gain high first and then set the levels low. Gotta drive the mic first, and then keep all the levels cool along the chain.
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iannyc
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Joined: 04 Oct 2016
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great! Any reason not to put the gain at a 10?

Thanks!!
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