Not sure what audio effects to use with your auditions or finished projects? I have the answer! AND I even gives tips for beginners that don't have top of the line equipment.
Audio Editing for Any VO Audition/Job - 4:07
Pretty scary stuff, huh? That is what happens when someone gets a little too happy with Photoshop. Well, this is what happens when we get a little too happy with EQ.
“Welcome to the most epic, horribly wrong EQ voiceover montage ever! This is not the stuff we should be doing to sweeten our audio."
See, here's the thing. EQ, and compression and all of these really fun things that our audio software can do, is kind of like the audio equivalent of Photoshop. There is a really, really old phrase that a lot of producers still use. When they want audio from you, whether it be an audition or an actual recording for a job, they want it flat, flat as piss on a rock. Yes, that's frequently how it’s been described in the past. Matter of fact, when I used to work in radio, this was a frequently referenced picture. So what's the rule here? Any equalization, any type of compression that alters your sound and makes it noticeably altered is not acceptable, and you want to stay away from it. A lot of people heavily over-compress their sound. Yes, it makes it beefier, it makes it boomier, but see the problem with us as the voice talent, taking those steps, is that when we do that, we’re taking the job away from the producer. We’re taking the job away from the person who is going to receive the final audio, and you have to think about that individual. You have to think about the team who’s responsible for making the final product out of your voice, because that is part of your client's team. You’re servicing that individual, so you have to make sure that you give them the control to be able to take that information and manipulate it how they want to. OK? So it’s OK to send things with a lot less.
Now do we really send things with nothing? Well, that depends on who you talk to and it also depends on how good your equipment is. If you’ve got some really, really banging equipment like a lot of us do, yeah. I don't do anything to my audio files. Literally nothing. I record them, I send them. If you are not yet at a place where you’re working with a high dollar microphone or a high dollar interface, you may have to do some tweaking. But again, remember what I said earlier. That tweaking should not be so apparent, so obvious, that we are aware of the fact that you have altered your sound. It should be subtle. It should be minimal. These are the things that you can do. It is perfectly OK to normalize a file. Normalizing an audio file just raises peak volumes and sort of evens everything out from a level standpoint. That's cool. You’re also able to put what’s called a high-pass filter on your material. And high-pass filters are really handy when you have ground rumble or a little bit of background noise. Those things can help in that situation. But you want to kind of test it out on your voice and with your set-up and see if it works well for you or not. Could be a beneficial tool though. Outside of that, leave it alone, guys. Flat really is better.
If you want to learn more tricks and tips from me on what you should and shouldn't be doing with your voiceover auditions and audio, check out my book, VO101. This bad boy has been around for a while. I update it frequently and it’s packed with information that will help you know the do's and don'ts of the voiceover industry. Also you can feel free to check out my latest video, and you may also want to take a look at this video that we created about soundproofing in home studios.
704-674-8294 / GabrielleNistico.com / gabby@voiceovervixen.com
Gabrielle Nistico, Gabby Nistico, The Voiceover Vixen, The Business First VO Coach, #VoiceoverVixen #VoiceOnFire #BusinessFirstVOCoach Voiceover, Success, Entrepreneur, Voiceover Coaching, VO Coaching, Voiceover Coaches, Working Actors, Los Angeles, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, audio, audio troubleshooting, audio editing, voiceover audition, voiceover audition audio editing, voiceover job editing, normalizing, high pass filter, EQ, VO 101, voiceover beginners