Get the best voiceover sound with an Equalizer

hey I have an idea how about we try and do one in focus this time all right what's happening booth junkies here we go I'm gonna talk today about Equalization now luckily as voice artists we don't have a ton to do Equalization wise but there are a couple of tricks that you can do to try and make your recordings sound a little cleaner a little crisper a little nicer and you can eliminate some trouble spots that typically happen in recordings with an equaliser what's an equalizer I don't know where the name comes from but I think it's just to equalize the different frequencies and make sure certain frequencies don't stand out excessively sort of make everything seem more natural what happens though is sometimes in in different rooms and different locations different voices you'll naturally have certain frequencies that stand out a little bit and sometimes that could be problematic very commonly in home studios home recording booths ones that you've treated yourself or maybe haven't treated as thoroughly as possible for they can sound boxy it sounds like you're talking from within your shower sometimes it can sound a little muddy sometimes it can sound echoey although equalization really doesn't help that much with echoes but there are certain frequencies that can stand out and they can affect the clarity of your voice and using an equalizer can help so let's get started let's see what equalizers are present in our da W again we're using Reaper and it comes with a really just a really good equalizer that hopefully we'll be able to do some good to my voice with I don't do a lot and luckily we don't usually have to do a lot as voice artists but I'll show you what to do and I'll show you I'll give you the advice that I've learned over time and we'll see if that helps we are going to first add a another effect to our chain so we see that we already have the gate applied from when our other gate lesson that we use for managing breath and background noise so now we're going to add the next item in our chain and that's going to be the equalizer so if we click add down here we search for pretty much all the reaper ones start with our e or ei so you starts where our ei e Q and you get the re EQ VST the plug-in and you get this this pretty chart with four items in it one two three four and a nice flat line that flat line that that teal blue green that line that's a that's there is a nice flat representation of all the frequencies and whether they're boosted or reduced cut is what that's called and right now it's flat nothing is boosted or cut there are different kinds of equalizers that are different kinds of parameters that you can add to equalizers and for our purposes there's really only a couple that we need to worry about but they have different names frustratingly for us we care about pass or shelf and band equalizers a pass equalizer will say what frequencies are allowed to pass it's almost like a like a filter and so there are low-pass high-pass and then it's converse low shelf and high shelf and it's there they're frustrating frustratingly named I can't help that I didn't come up with the names so let's talk first about that number one on there that is the low shelf and essentially it dictates nothing below that designated frequency will be allowed through for most human voices there's a certain frequency below which there isn't a lot of information it's really just noise it's just unwanted frequency and for most people it's in the 70 to 80 Hertz range so anything below that in the base there might be some bass in that voice but it can often be distracting it can sound really bumi and boxy on headphones it can make things rattle when you don't want it to rattle and really when you're talking with somebody your voice doesn't make them vibrate right so you want to uh you want to cut some of that lower frequency beginning voice artistic man I want that boom and they'll want to start boosting bass frequencies oh never boost the bass frequencies everybody will see it everybody will figure it out don't do that the low frequency we're going to cut the low frequency and you see we can just move it and that frequency slider tells us what frequency we are cutting and I typically set mine and around 70 to 75 Hertz and so everything below that is gonna taper off and the other great thing about that is not only does it take away some of the the Rumble in your voice that really isn't real information but if outside your booth a truck goes by that usually vibrates down at like 40 or 50 Hertz and you'll be able to take away the rumble of outside traffic sometimes you be able to cut out the rumble from your furnace if you have a furnace that's nearby so taking away that lowest base frequency it's gonna make it more pleasant for people to listen to depending on your microphone you may also want to notch or take away some of the high frequency stuff I usually don't do this much my microphone is a pretty good one this Sennheiser microphone so I usually don't mess around too much with but with the high shelf but you can roll off some of that high frequency and usually there's not much of our voice that's up over like twelve or fourteen kilohertz there's probably some harmonics up there if you were a singer but for voice actors there isn't a ton so if you find that there's static or hiss or something it's okay to roll off or use the high shelf and cut some of that higher frequencies and do it up above you know twelve or fourteen thousand killer maybe 12 might be on the lowest side that you'd want to go the next two frequencies that we have here in the in the middle that come with Rea cue Riku and you can add more you can take them away but there are two band parameters and those will boost a certain or boost or cut a certain frequency within the range so they'll they'll still affect a certain range in the middle and it will taper off both on the high and low side so you're affecting a certain range of frequencies within the entire spectrum the the way that I typically do it is you try and do as little as possible and it should be subtle and it should not be heard the thing that I start with is usually for my voice is I usually end up needing to cut usually in that 250 to 300 Hertz range we'll listen to it and see if we can hear a difference but I usually end up cutting just a little tiny bit that's called cutting asserting certain frequency and you see that I cos dragged that number to around and it says right now it looks like it's at a hundred and eighty five Hertz and we'll see that we'll see how that does the the lowermost slider is the bandwidth it says in octaves you'll also sometimes see this referred to as the cue and that is how wide that parameter how wide a band that parameter affects so it can be very wide and smooth or you can really notch out a very specific frequency so if there's some some frequency that's really irritating you can notch that out but I usually keep it as a as a fairly wide cue about an octave octave and a half on either side of my effected frequency and you can see I'm not notching I'm not dipping it down too much I'm not putting this this low part right into it I'm just knocking it down a bit oh I should say that what we're doing there with that number too that you'll frequently call here that called D mudding and it's especially prevalent on on men's lower voices you'll want to D mod it and by cutting a little bit of that that mid bass frequency you can actually add some clarity to your voice the other one is you can you can overcome some of your room tone with this other band I usually on my microphone in my studio I don't mess around with it too much I don't think we'll listen to it and get any benefit out of it here sometimes you can also notch out if you if you can identify a frequency if your room does sound boxy you can sometimes help some of that boxiness by finding that frequency and adding a band and a very narrow cue a very narrow bandwidth and notching that out so if we let's say we had a problem frequency at 3 or 400 Hertz which might be about right for a room this size I don't know not a mathematician I don't really know I'm making it up but you can notch out these frequencies and reduce them and that will help you to reduce some of that boom eNOS will get rid of it completely but you can help it but that's what those are the different types of parameters and for a voice actor that's probably all you should do I wouldn't mess around with your EQ curves much more than that so let's turn it off and let's see what our bass sound sounds like our original sound sounds like it was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on Engine 3 on the east side of town the backstep man was out sick so they were sending a replacement for me so while my voice I I do have some pretty good this microphone I love this microphone I love it so much we do have some weight I love the the the high-end clarity on this microphone it's crisp some people do think it's a little bright so my voice is reasonably deep but if you have a higher voice you may want to cut some of that high end so let's reset our bands here and let's see what what those things would do let's first mess around with the high shelf if that sounds too bright for you let's see how we could reduce some of that it was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on Engine 3 on the east side of town the backstep man was out sick so they were sending a replacement from headquarters to fill in for the day two privates right so you here as we're shelfing off that that high-frequency stuff it gets it just sounds more more more and more muffled muted the nice thing about the EQ it was the hot summer's day you can see that yellow line that's showing you where the frequency information is so if you want was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on Engine 3 on the east side of town my voice my voice barely gets up above 10k ever and that's usually Justin that's the sibilant s sound so I could potentially cut all the way it like 10k and that would get rid of any hiss or noise that's infiltrating from the outside if there's any high whistles or anything like that you'd be able to cut those and it really wouldn't affect your voice at all it was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on Engine 3 I'm taking away nearly half the frequency spectrum and really there's not a ton noticeable difference wise it was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on Engine 3 on the east side of so the next thing we'll do is we'll cut the bass like I said I usually cut around 70 75 Hertz it was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on engine 3 we can see that it's rolling off some of the de beste the deepest part of my voice that chest resonance that maybe isn't as pleasant to listen to when you're listening to me on on headphones or you're listening to it in a car that have you know subwoofers and big woofers it'll make it really boo me and it won't sound natural it actually sound kind of bad so you want to roll some of that stuff off the next thing is that number two band at that first band what I would use typically do for demora D mudding it was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on engine 3 on the east side so what I hear and this is pretty subtle is somewhere in the well let's see let's look at the frequency and see it was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on Engine 3 you see them first that first bump that we have there you'll see it right here at about 200 Hertz it was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on Engine 3 on the east side first bump that first bump that we get there that often can sound Boxey and unpleasant and muddy and can make your voice lack a little bit of clarity so if you take that bump away and smooth it out it can actually make the voice sound a lot crisper it was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on Engine three on the east side of town Harriman's weren't natural that sounds it's subtle it's subtle you won't hear it necessarily like over your laptop speakers but if you listen to it on on headphones or on studio monitors or if you've got a you know in-ear monitors it really does it makes it sound crisper and it's much less fatiguing to listen to in the long run it was a hot summer's day and I was the driver on engine 3 and all we're doing is taking away that that first little batch and that's it that's all I ever do for EQ that's what my EQ curve looks like the next person down the line if I'm sending this off to somebody they may mess around with it more you want to mess around with it as little as possible before you send it off to the client because they may still yet want to do things so don't mess around too much but that is a pretty normal looking EQ curve for what mine is and I like I said I don't roll off the high end on mine so that's my EQ curve right there I pull I roll off some bass and I D mud a little bit in the 200 Hertz range or so because that's where my voice has a has a little bit of a boost that can get fatiguing to listen to so that's it that's how to EQ your voice for voice over now get in your booth and record something amazing

Channel: Booth Junkie

Views: 70,472

Keywords: voiceover, vocalbooth, voiceacting, voicework, equalizer

Id: V6XtciKhgUY

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2016