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Voice over/text readings

Joel Arvidsson

Joel Arvidsson

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Voice over/text readings
What preamp and microphone would you recommend for a wide range of different voices (voices not singing). Audio Hardware is not my strongest knowledge so im reaching out here. Some say you should spend as much you can on a nice preamp. Others say its better to save money on preamp and getting like a mackie VLZ4 (wich suppose to have good preamps) and spend the rest on a microphone. I have been recomended the nuemann tlm102 and tlm 103 microphones.

What preamp would you recomend. Whats the downside on getting a new field recorder like the "zoom f8" instead of a "studio preamp". Are rmes baby face pro any good? http://babyface.rme-audio.de

What large diaphragm condenser microphone would you recomend for a wide range of voices?
 
I would ask around on the Gearslutz Forum, which has a section for people recording vocals in studios. The standard VO microphone for a long time is the Neumann U87, but preamps are kind of all over the map. They generally record with the actor/announcer in a booth, then use a Pro Tools system (or something like it) outside, with drives in soundproof boxes or in a closet down the hall. Getting the acoustics of the room right is 50% of the battle. A great mic with a great voice in a bad room will still sound like absolute crap.

It's fair to say this is an area that's much more complicated than people think it is, and it does require a level of expertise, time, and money. There are portable booths you can buy for temporary VO, but you run into problems of air conditioning, comfort, communications, and so on very quickly.
 
Steve DiMaggio said:
whats your budget? grace are great for clarity
Click to expand...

I have note decided yet if I should build A soundboth or B try to fix the studio space for even better acoustics.
But I think I will start with the Neumann TLM 103 microphone and a soundcard. From there I can later get a pure preamp like "SOLO/610 Classic Tube Preamplifier" or perhaps even a "LA-610 MkII". My guess is that the preamps in some of the soundcards is so good you have to climb up quiet a bit to actually improve the audio.

Microphone:
Neumann TLM 103.

Soundcard:
Apollo Twin Solo (This is my favorite right now)
RME Baby face pro
Apogee duett
Focusrite (Have note decied wich model is most interesting yet).

What soundcards of these would you recomend??

Also when its time to get even a better preamp, wich one would you choose to get?
 
It is now time to buy the neuman tlm 103 and the Apollo Twin Preamp.

But I have a last question.
Apollo Twin duo or solo? The ony difference betwen the two preamps is that the duo have twice the processing power. I will only use it for dialogs reading, but i like to use it on occation for singer + gitarr.

Also its Namm next week...
 
Joel Arvidsson said:
It is now time to buy the neuman tlm 103 and the Apollo Twin Preamp.

But I have a last question.
Apollo Twin duo or solo? The ony difference betwen the two preamps is that the duo have twice the processing power. I will only use it for dialogs reading, but i like to use it on occation for singer + gitarr.

Also its Namm next week...
Click to expand...

I would be worried about the apollo pres, I had the an apollo and would not have tracked with them, I would go duet and a solid pre and sacrifice the mic to something a bit lower end personally. You can pick up a AT 4033 for a steal!

steve
 
Duet is the best of that bunch. The pres are actually the best ive heard out of the typically cheaper "all in one" audio interface category, and so are their adc's. Btw their not sound cards lol. Tlm 103 is your highest value mic. cheapest of the good, I had one many years ago and never loved it. The audio thru it will be thinner than u87 etc. like Mark said, the u87 is the general standard. And Pre's vary from clean to harmonically saturated/warm, I would not suggest the UA or most other tube base pre's, as they arent typically clean enough for most VO work. if you don't find the duet's pre's to be enough quality for your needs, then go with millennia, GML, or grace for super clean low SN ratio, or great river, pacifica, or the much more expensive neve for the fullest timbre.
 
Joel Arvidsson said:
I have note decided yet if I should build A soundboth or B try to fix the studio space for even better acoustics.
But I think I will start with the Neumann TLM 103 microphone and a soundcard.
Click to expand...
The TLM-103 is a fantastic microphone capable of great VO results, widely used in American radio. Be sure to get a windscreen and a shockmount for it.

There's lots of good preamps out there -- Focusrite, Millenia, and Universal Audio are very good. The stock preamps in the Yamaha digital mixing panels are actually pretty good, too.
 
Brody_B said:
Duet is the best of that bunch. The pres are actually the best ive heard out of the typically cheaper "all in one" audio interface category, and so are their adc's. Btw their not sound cards lol. Tlm 103 is your highest value mic. cheapest of the good, I had one many years ago and never loved it. The audio thru it will be thinner than u87 etc. like Mark said, the u87 is the general standard. And Pre's vary from clean to harmonically saturated/warm, I would not suggest the UA or most other tube base pre's, as they arent typically clean enough for most VO work. if you don't find the duet's pre's to be enough quality for your needs, then go with millennia, GML, or grace for super clean low SN ratio, or great river, pacifica, or the much more expensive neve for the fullest timbre.
Click to expand...

oh man you are speaking my language here, still use a pair of AT headphones that George himself told me to monitor with! Brodys advice is right on point!

You can also try an x73, but I think in the end you will end up with a channel strip of some kind.

steve
 
Steve DiMaggio said:
oh man you are speaking my language here, still use a pair of AT headphones that George himself told me to monitor with! Brodys advice is right on point!

You can also try an x73, but I think in the end you will end up with a channel strip of some kind.

steve
Click to expand...

:thumbup1: :beer: and ya those x73's id say are one of the best clones out there, and for a great price.
 
Brody_B said:
:thumbup1: :beer: and ya those x73's id say are one of the best clones out there, and for a great price.
Click to expand...

and dallas is a class act, a great alternative is if you can get your hands on any daking pres, they are extremely clean and Geoff is a great guy, you can literally email him and he will probably call you!

so many options, man I miss audio, so much cheaper to get the good stuff!

steve
 
If you haven't already purchased your pre's I'd suggest:
Apogee Quartet ( 4channel) or Duet (2 channel). The pre's sound good for this price point but the other half of the battle are the convertors and the apogee convertors sound very good/clean.
I'd suggest NOT using a tube pre like the UA610. You can't take the coloration of the tubes out of the recording but it's pretty easy to add that sound with plugins when you record clean.
 
As I wrote in your other post, the room ist the most important part for recording.
A booth is not really ideal, better to get your room done with some bass traps, broadband absorption and diffusion.
If it is the same room you record and will mix the recordings you can hear/mix your sound better.

The X73 is a great preamp but after testing I decided to go BAE, but hey thats only my personal decission.

Do you need more than one channel at one for recording?

In VO, the tlm 103, the U87, Brauner VM1 and Neumann U47 is used a lot.
 
I got the apollo twin duo mk2 and the neumann tlm 103 and im very pleased with the result. Finally I decided to put the talent in the studio space as its already sound proofed. Also i dont have to worry about any noise from the mac getting into to the recordings.
 
Simon Leonhardt said:
Sounds great.
How do you process the recordings?
Click to expand...

As of now I have an hour of cutted raw audio recordings. But it actually sounds good of the bat. This is for E-learning so I dont plan to process it so much. I have the vocal rider from waves i might try to run before any compressors. The main question is if i should take out most of the breathing. The voice talent have a very soft and natural breathing but Im a fan of taking those out as I think it makes speach become even more clear. But its would be a pretty time consuming task. Tomoroww is next session and I guess we will record atleast a couple of hours of "finished cut materials".
I wish it was a automated way to take out breathing...but its not really a problem. Just my persanal preference.

Also I have not locked down the post workflow yet (been busy with so much other work) and the main "problem" is to find the smoothest way to export out each paragraphing as a unic file with its own name (the name of each file is already set by the programmers).
The easiest way so far saems to be to send it to adobe audition and manually there set ranges for each paragraphing and also the put the file name in on each range. Then I could spit out everything as needed.

But I bet there is even a better way and every improvment will save hours!
 
Thanks alot for the tip. Will start ti check out the debreath tomorrow after the session.
 
I've been into audio for years.. cut my teeth recording albums, and now produce a science and technical podcast for my work (among other things) named STEM-Talk.

https://www.ihmc.us/stemtalks/

Feel free to pm me with any questions, but for what it's worth... Our signal chain is the neumann bcm 705 > pre > compressor > AD > Apogee ensemble.

For any sort of audio scrubbing... I highly recommend Izotope RX5.

be careful... audio gear is far more addicting than the isolated world of Jim Jannard's photon catchers.
 
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