[LAU] Looking for voice recording suggestions

[Jeanette C.]

Hi There,
Dec 14 2018, hollundertee at gmx.net has written:
...
> 1) Room: Besides corridors and such I have access to a roughly 2x10 m
> room or a bigger room, I guess 10x20 m. I guess go for the bigger one?
Choose the bigger one. You might position the mic on the diagonal of the
room, the back not too close ton one corner. The duvet - or something
behind the actor(s) is not a bad idea.
> They are both rather empty, safe for tables and chairs.
>
> 2) Recording software? Ardour, something simpler?
I suppose audacity could suffice for recording, or even something
commandline. For cutting use what you feel most comfortable with.
Editing depends on your demands. Could be anything from sox to Ardour.
>
> 3) Post processing, normalization of some sort. I'll have at least four
> total amateur voice actors and all in all hundreds of lines.
I will assume that you record them one at a time. Are your recordings
the only ones for the finished "product"? If not: normalise and cut. If
you have a good denoiser you might want to try that - if applicable -,
and if you have a good dereverberator you might try that as well.

If yours are the only recordings to go into the finished "product", you
might want to do much more. Some compression/limiting, definitely
EQ'ing, possibly de'essing and if you couldn't completely filter
plosives, de'popping as well. So first all kinds of "restauration",
which might in addition to noise, include hum (perhaps solved by a notch
filter), reverb, too strong sybillants, plosives, other mouth or vocal
noises and too loud breaths. Depending on your plugins, you might find
ready-made solutions, or you'd have to cut and filter as best as
possible. Not sure how much of that can be done with LV2/LADSPA/VST
plugins. The second step would be sound enhancement, where compression,
(additional) filtering and EQ'ing comes in.

Compare the loudness of voice snippets to match them in volume and
perceived spectrum.
>
> 4) What did I forget?
If they are recorded one after the other, you might actually mark the
speakers position on the floor (chalk would do). So every actor is - as
much as possible - at the same position compared to the mic, this will
give a basically similar starting point and might allow for some
automation in processing, but at least in setting out from the same good
starting point with only minor tweaks.

Hope that wasn't too long and not too patronising. :)

Best wishes and good luck,

Jeanette

-- 
  * Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound
  * SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/jeanette_c
  * Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g
  * GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c
  * Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeanette_c_s

Say hello to the girl that I am! <3
(Britney Spears)