How To Get The Perfect Voiceover

Joey gives you his mixing setup for getting a high quality voiceover chain, even when recording outside of the studio. What kind of projects do you use voiceovers for? Let us know in the comments!

0:00 Introduction
0:30 Recording Prep
2:11 Recording
3:04 Editing
4:29 Mixing
5:09 Noise Reduction
6:20 EQ
7:22 Compression
7:48 De-Essing
8:21 Limiting
9:30 Closing thoughts

Tags: voiceovers,home recording,mixing tutorials
#voiceovers #homerecording #mixingtutorials

[stephaniesims]

I am a voice actor, and have been searching for videos that could help me on the post editing of my submissions. This has been SO helpful, so thank you for sharing your knowledge.

[calebbright]

I needed some general guidance on how to approach something more natural like VO work rather than music, and this was perfect. Turns out I was WAY overdoing it like a Pop or Rock vocal rather than something more natural. Thanks a ton man, and thanks for the great plugins, too.

[lukepelletier]

This is great! The one thing I'd suggest is emphasizing subjectivity. These tools are so important to know, but the way you use them will definitely change based on who's talking and how they sound naturally. I've recorded voiceovers for a bunch of different projects ranging from video games and audiobooks to commercials, training videos, and apps, and while i TOTALLY use signal chain templates to improve my workflow, I know the way I process my voice will totally differ from when I mix other VO artists

[crookedriverstudios]

Joey you're the man. A helpful free download that's not behind a mailing list signup? Wonderful!

[Syklonus]

Kudos on making videos which are all short, well explained, and to the point. Almost every other tutorial is bloated and features a host who meanders around a topic by either getting too personal, or going into unnecessary history about the technique. Sifting through an hour or 2 hour's worth of content is a motivation killer, so these bite-sized tutorials are gold.

[cullenkenneth]

Thanks Joey! As a producer who also dabbles on voiceover work, this is really helpful. keep up the helpful content 💪🏼

[mikeearley]

Thank you so much! Just getting started, this has helped end weeks of frustration.

[hilltop]

Best tutorials on the net guys, your gonna reach 100k in no time once people catch up! Thanks again.

[RogerioSales]

Thank you very much! You just saved my life

[ashnacestach]

Thanks for the great guiding video. I started to do voice overs for my travel videos, as I am a little bit too shy to do so in front of camera. So I can focus on my shots, and do voice over to fill some story and information later. It´s better for me, as I can squeeze the best from script, in compare of spontageous talk on camera. Using Davinci Resolve, I am still finding the best vsti tools to get the best I can. Also, I found that dynamic mics need some preamp even when you have one in the audio interface. This is really great tutorial, thanks for all hints.

[DommoDommo]

I just started a new voice-over gig which has me recording several scripts throughout the week. It's pretty crazy how close our settings are to each-other!

[OleVinny]

Good stuff! At work I've mixed hundreds of voice overs and I still find them one of the more challenging sound sources to get right, especially cause we often don't control where and how they were recorded. There are almost no general rules to follow that always lead to success as a recording often needs the exact opposite approach.

We use Izotope RX a lot for cleanup (noise, mouth clicks, de-essing - love the RX de-esser) and for unmixed voices I often use match EQ to immediately get it in the ballpark. Other than that transparency is usually what I aim for; Using multiple compressors at low ratios and trying to minimize the EQ bands. I've found that compression is easily overused on a voice. It can be nice to leave it really dynamic, if there's no huge issues on that front.
Nothing will show more clearly how destructive our processing actually is than voice: Often it's more desirable to have a voice sound somewhat shit rather than over processed shit :)

Bypass is your biggest friend, often the natural voice sounds inexplicably better, cleaner, calmer than what you and all your efforts managed to do. Gotta rethink your moves and kill your darlings.

Fresh Air from Slate (free) works nicely for adding some sparkle (as does Revival).

Multiband compression can be useful when a voice's timbre changes (most extremely when "yelling" and speaking more softly), I've been using a ton of dynamic EQ too to tame infrequent offending resonances, and there's nifty stuff to be done when you duplicate the channel, compress one very hard, leave the other dynamic, combine both to where the loud VO is louder in the loud parts and the flat VO is louder during the soft parts, and do separate EQ on the softer or louder parts.

Most stuff can be fixed, except phase issues/comb filtering (when the room becomes part of the direct signal, so you can't edit out a reverb tail) - it's like chopping off the head of a monster and new offending frequencies will keep appearing - and distortion also can't be dialed back, so those are the best to watch out for when recording yourself.

[fedefrusciantejohn]

Joey recorded this, and his milk went bad

[timoratus_music]

This is perfect for us as we're currently recording skits for our upcoming album!

[tonebenderx]

Thank you for this information, but I find a lot of vids like this while helpful leave out the audio interfaces (and pre-amps).

[emanuel_soundtrack]

Waves Nx2 saved my life close to loud computer fan

[Kainkrup]

Wich mic and preamp did you used here? sounds good from the raw file!

[BrianMarcWhittaker]

I’m an educator and editor. I’m recording tutorials and voiceovers for training and film/tv.

[popseeco]

QUESTION: is it good practice to use a "mic pre & Compressor" BEFORE recording into the DAW? I'm using Logic BTW Thanks for any advice

[MrTsetso]

As for me, I apply de-click after eq and compression.