Hi, and welcome back.
Lots of people have asked me about my voice over chain, so I thought I'd show you what
I'm using.
My setup hasn't always been the same, but hasn't changed significantly over the last
3 or 4 years, so the chain I'm going to show you is the one I've used for almost all the
videos on this channel.
However, before we get into it, and at the risk of spoilers: the only one secret magic
ingredient is my voice. I'm lucky to have a voice that people seem to like listening
to, along with an accent that lends an air of authority, and if you don't sound like
me off mic, you're not going to sound like me on mic either.
As a demonstration of that fact, I'm not actually using my normal voice over chain at the moment.
So far in this video I've been speaking into an old and battered SM58, plugged into a focusrite
Scarlett 2i2 interface, and processed only using Reaper stock plugins.
Now I'm on my usual voice over chain.
Yes it sounds better: there is a reason why we don't just use 58s for everything in the
studio. But the sound from the 58 was fine, in my opinion, and if you're listening on
your phone you probably didn't know anything was different until I told you. I still sounded
like me, right?
So I'll start by showing you my normal setup that I'm using now, then I'll switch back
to the 58 at the end and show you my stock plugin chain as well.
Ok, let's start with the mic, which is a bit unusual, and you can't buy one quite like
it.
It's made by 3u audio, and it's a Warbler IV model. But it's not like the ones advertised
on their website: there's no voicing switch for a start… and there are no markings on
the body at all… not even to label the high pass filter and pad switches. I've had to
use sparky tape and a Sharpie to label them, and also to mark this out as the IV model
because I also have a similarly plain clothes Warbler II.
3u audio mics aren't available in the UK as far as I'm aware, certainly they weren't at
the time I bought mine, so when I stumbled across these on eBay after reading much praise
for them online I decided to take a punt, and I'm very happy I did as both mics sound
great and have been very useful.
Anyway, I've added a Rycote shock mount and pop shield combo, and I get right up close
to it. You probably guessed that part, but I'll say it explicitly anyway because it's
important.
Getting close to the mic does several things, which I'll address one by one:
First of all, it boosts the low frequencies due to proximity effect. Those of you who
thought I was boosting and compressing the bass frequencies were quite wrong: in fact
I do the opposite really, I have to tame the low end with high pass filters to prevent
it from getting too boomy. But I try to leave enough of it in to give that warm, intimate,
late night radio type of sound.
Next: getting close gives me a better signal to noise ratio. Voice recordings tend to need
a lot of gain, especially if you're relatively softly spoken like me, so the noise floor
of your studio can become an issue.
Fortunately my room is nice and quiet. But I'm making quite specific types of videos
that usually involve audio examples: I don't want background noise from my mic interfering
with those in any way, so I tend to mute my audio when I'm not speaking. As background
noise tends to be much more noticeable if it stops and starts rather than runs continuously,
I make a special effort to keep the noise levels as low as I possibly can.
Third: it reduces the room sound. Of course you don't want lots of echoing untreated room
smearing up your voice. And if you're recording in that kind of room, getting up close to
the mic probably isn't going to fix the issue, though it might help a bit.
But let's assume you're in a moderately treated room that sounds nicely balanced and isn't
too lively: in that case you can get a decent distance from the mic and it will still sound
fine.
That would be unavoidable if I were talking to a camera. And in that case it would seem
quite appropriate to hear a little hint of the room that you can see in the background.
But of course I'm not talking into a camera. I'm just a disembodied voice: the voice in
your head if you like; and it seems to me that the more I eliminate the sound of the
room I'm in, the better I create that impression.
There are also downsides to getting up close however: plosive Bs and Ps can hit the capsule
too hard, even through the pop shield; K sounds can end up super hard and clicky; and I pick
up lots of unwanted lip smacking ticks and funny little clicky sounds that then need
editing out afterwards.
I have two methods to mitigate these problems: first I consciously try to eliminate them
from my performance, softening my Bs and Ps and Ks whenever I remember to. And I monitor
on good quality headphones, turned up quite loud, so when I forget and hit a K sound too
hard I'm usually aware of it and can redo that line a bit more gently.
And second, I keep my mouth slightly off axis to the mic capsule. Partly this is just because
I need to turn my head to read the script off my phone, and I'm close enough to the
mic that this makes a difference. But I also place the mic a little higher than you might
expect, about nose height, angled down to pick up more of my chest resonances along
with my voice.
The mic is plugged into a DAV BG1 preamp: not much to say here, it adds gain, and I
have a gentle high pass filter switched in, as well as the one on the mic.
That goes to an aging RME Multiface line in, and thence into Reaper, usually at 48KHz and
always 24 bit.
And here's my plugin chain. I'm slightly embarrassed by how many plugins I'm using, it seems like
overkill really. But none of them are doing anything too extreme.
So first up, the most important: the EQ. And this is the only one that's arguably doing
a lot… although do note my graph scale is set to 6dB: this looks less alarming with
the default 12dB setting.
Nevertheless, its more EQ than I would normally want to use for a voice over: generally speaking
I would aim to pick a mic that sounds right in the first place, and only needs a high
pass filter.
In fact I have other mics in my collection that tick that box. But I still prefer the
sound of this mic with the EQ, so I break my own rules and continue to use it.
Here's how it sounds totally flat… now with the high pass filter, which is much steeper
than those in the mic and preamp, and is set to gently tame the low boomy part of my voice
as well as remove subsonic rubbish.
The high shelf adds some air and presence, as the mic is quite warm sounding without
it… the low mid cut reduces muddiness and increases clarity… while the higher mid
cut dips down the nasal region, and stops it becoming hard and brittle without the lower
mid range to balance it.
Ok, next a gate. My noise floor is already pretty low without it, as you can hear if
I bypass… but I duck it down by another 12dB just to be on the safe side. I'm using
some lookahead, so the gate opens just before I start to speak… and I've got 50ms of hold,
so it doesn't start to close until just after I've stopped speaking… and consequently
the gain modulation shouldn't be touching the vocal at all, and I don't feel any need
to use oversampling in this case.
Ok, next a de clicker. This is just lazy really: I should deal with the clicks individually,
and that's how I used to do it. But I make so many of them that fixing them in post is
a real chore, so I've found some declicker settings that deal with about 90% of them
automatically, and don't seem to do too much harm otherwise, and this saves me a lot of
tedious cleanup work.
Ok, now POWAIR: this is mostly for the leveler section, which evens out the loudness, and
saves me having to automate this in post. Basically I have an unfortunate tendency to
eat the ends of my words and the last syllable of a phrase often end up inaudible. POWAIR
is set to do a very subtle 2dB of leveling, but that's 2 dB up and down, so there's really
4dB of gain riding, which is enough to stop the ends of my words disappearing, while never
becoming too obvious and noticeable.
I also have a touch of compression going on, but this is very gentle and just aims to soften
hard consonant sounds slightly. As much as I love compression in general, I hate hearing
it on my voice, so I only use just enough to keep my performance under control, and
I keep the settings as transparent as possible.
That said, the next plugin is another compressor, and it looks like it's spanking me quite hard,
but notice the gain settings: the dry level is at unity, while the wet signal is in negative
numbers, so this is actually fairly subtle parallel compression, giving a gentle upward
compression effect, and this finishes the job of keeping the ends of my sentences from
tailing off too much and becoming inaudible.
I've turned on oversampling for this one because theoretically these settings could result
in aliasing otherwise, but I'll be honest: I can't hear a difference in this case.
Ok, a de esser. I can't say the Fabfilter is the best de esser as I haven't tried them
all. But I can say its the best de esser I've ever tried: in many cases all you have to
do is load it up, and the default settings will just magically work. And I think that
may be what I've done in this case, except once again I've enabled oversampling because
I'm modulating high frequencies, and this could cause aliasing.
And I finish all that off with a limiter. Pro-L, set to its Safe style for minimum distortion,
and just shaving a dB or two off the very loudest peaks.
This voice over usually still needs to be mixed with audio examples or intro and outro
music however, so I leave myself 6dB of peak headroom on the output, rather than pushing
it up near full scale. I'll do that right at the end, with another limiter on the master
bus that's processing the mix of my voice plus any background music.
And, although we've reached the end of my voice over chain, there's still another important
plugin to consider: everything except my voice goes through a ducker plugin, which is usually
Pro-G in ducking mode, which is keyed from my voice, and turns down the music whenever
I speak.
This usually does quite a lot of ducking: typically 9dB, which I find is the most I
can get away with without it becoming too obvious and distracting. Even so I need to
be a bit careful with it: sometimes I'll start speaking just after a transient in the music
like a snare drum or something, and you'll hear the ducking clamp down on the transient
and choke it as if it were compressed way too hard… in that case I'll need to shift
my voice a tiny bit earlier or later to fix it.
Ok, let's go back to the 58… but the Scarlett is back plugged into our living room PC, so
I can play guitars through the Hi Fi, and I can't be bothered to retrieve it again,
so this time I'm plugged into the same DAV preamp I usually use for the condenser mic.
And I honestly haven't felt the need to change any of my processing to compensate: here's
my EQ; not too different to the usual mic to be honest. I've had to stack up two 12dB
high pass filters to achieve a 24dB per octave roll off. And the high shelf is tuned much
higher, as the 58 has plenty of upper mid range already… on the other hand I needed
6dB of high shelf boost right at the top compared to just 3 and a bit for the usual mic.
Ok, next is ReaGate to drop the noise floor a bit… honestly ReaGate frustrates me in
not having a Range control: that's essential in a gate in my opinion. I've mimicked the
effect by mixing in some dry signal, and dropping the wet level a touch to compensate, but this
is fiddly and annoying if you ask me, and shouldn't be necessary
Moving on; this ReaComp is performing the same function as the POWAIR leveler in my
usual setup: I've got a whole 400ms of RMS window, plus a high pass filter, to get as
close as possible to the momentary loudness setting I use in POWAIR, and I'm using a fairly
high ratio, with the threshold set carefully so it doesn't squash more than a handful of
decibels, plus a healthy dose of lookahead.
Honestly, a range control would be useful in this plugin as well, though it's not as
vital as having one in a gate.
I thought I would spice things up next with an 1175 plugin, now that it's working as intended
again… but notice the mix slider is mostly over at the dry end, so this is subtle parallel
compression again.
Next a ReaComp, set up for de-essing using the sidechain filters. This works well enough:
full band de-essing often sounds more natural than only ducking the sibilant region, and
this is also how I run Pro-DS, so I don't feel any need for anything more complex.
But, while this was reasonably easy to set up, it still took an order of magnitude longer
than just loading a Pro-DS and going with the Lll, which is what half the timeline Andrewu
I use it. Ol
Ok, finally anothers ReaComp, this time set up as a final limitoer with a touch of lookahead.
This isn't really equivalent to a Pro-L2 in any way, but in this case I'm just kissing
the top dB or two of the peaks, and it works fine.
There's no de clicking in this setup: maybe there's a JS plugin that can do that? Let
me know in the commentsi. But I'll be de clicking it manually for this video. I'm not going
to show you how, but maybe there's scope for an editing and spectral editing video in future?
Again, comment if you'd be interested in that.
Anyway, that's all for now, I'm going to sign off on this dented and much gigged 58, and
say thanks for watching.