Like it or not, I found having a successful voice over career requires that I, as a VO talent, become familiar with acoustics and audio engineering. Before getting started, keep in mind two artifacts of editing:
- Any modifications you make cannot be undone once sent off to a client or a client’s audio engineer
- Over-processing can cause more harm than good, resulting in low-quality audio
So with these aspects in mind, go easy on your editing and processing for voice overs and strongly consider manual, surgical editing. For booked gigs, most clients will request raw, unedited audio files and you should send your files as such. For demos, auditions, mixed audio/video, or self-produced content, here is the full stack of effects and edits I apply to my voice over files.
Recording
As covered in my blog post on setting up Adobe Audition for Voice Over, be sure to use industry standard recording settings for voice overs:
- Sample rate: 44,100 (44.1kHz) or 48,000 (48.0kHz)
- Channels: Mono
- Bit depth: 16 bits or 24 bits
Surgical Editing
Lorem ipsum…types of noise disturbances…first try using the amplitude wheel on specific words, phrases, or breathes to fix surgetically…..Adobe’s Auto Heal (Ctrl + U)… …use room tone for pauses with 1/2 second between sentences… Insert Markers (M shortcut)…
Punch and Roll
This technique simply means editing on-the-fly…Punch and Roll Mode in Adobe Audition…
Effects Chain
To optimize the performance of each one, it is important to apply your effects in the following order:
- Equalization
- De-clicker
- De-noiser
- Compression
- Normalization
Effects Rack
Equalization is this… I suggest using either Adobe’s FFT Filter (Effects > Filter and EQ > FFT Filter) or Parametric Equalizer (Effects > Filter and EQ > Parametric Equalizer). A common equalization fix is a low frequency rumble below 100Hz, such as an HVAC system running in the background. In this example, enable the high pass filter by clicking on the HP button within the Parametric Equalizer window, changing the Frequency to -60Hz (or the problematic frequency identified using spectral view), and changing the Gain to 24dB/Oct. You can then preview, fine tune as needed, and apply the revisions.
Background noises and transient sounds like clicks, pops, smacks, and … are highly undesirable and you will want to spend your time finding and eliminating. In my opinion, iZotope’s RX plugins do a better job than anything else on the market, but the new Clarity Vx from Waves Audio is another popular tool. I suggest treading very lightly here, applying the light reduction presets or the following settings only:
Threshold: -12dB?
Ratio: 2 x 1?
Attack: 10ms?
Release: 100ms?
Output gain: 0dB?
Compression is an automatic volume leveler, reducing the dynamic range, and making for a more consistent volume level. Adobe’s Single-band Compressor (Effects > Amplitude and Compression > Single-band Compressor) is a good all around tool with the following settings as a good starting point for voice over recordings:
- Threshold: -12dB
- Ratio: 2 x 1
- Attack: 10ms
- Release: 100ms
- Output gain: 0dB
Again, go easy with the editing here, as too much compression can make your audio sound muffler or…
Normalization is the application of a constant amount of gain throughout the recording to bring the amplitude to a desired level. As a final editing step for voice over work, you want to normalize the entire audio file to -3dB (Favorites> Normalize to -3dB).
Effects Presets and Shortcuts
…should lead to more consistent and efficient…
Exporting
Now that you are done editing your audio and ready to send off the file to your client, navigate to the File menu, scroll down to Export, then select File. Be sure to use a file name exactly as the client has requested. Next, there are many file formats to choose from, but you will typically be asked to use MP3 (.mp3) for auditions and WAV (.wav) for booked gigs. There is rarely the need to change sample rate, channels, or format settings from the default options: Same as source, Mono, and 192Kpbs respectively.
This should be enough editing and processing knowledge to produce the vast majority of your voice over sessions, but there is no better teacher than practice, so continue editing and you will become proficient over time.