FabFilter User Forum

Voice over/interview signal path

Hi folks,

I am currently working on a podcast project for a government client. This is a little outside of my usual work, so I thought I'd ask for a little help.

Using Audition, my FX signal path is as follows:

Dereverb
Denoise (both on 5% & working effectively)

Pro-MB (using Expanded & Sibilance Controlled bM Preset)
I'm finding the mid range expansion is helping to suppress some distracting room noise. Not sure the upper two bands are really doing much. Just a starting point.

Pro-Q3 Low cut 80Hz 30db/oct. A double of narrow cuts to smooth out some room modes & a high self at 10K + 7db for some air.

I'm new to expansion & the decongestion it's providing is really attractive. Problem is it's not really inline with the kind of compressed audio suitable for broadcast/podcasts. Applying broadband compression after the Pro-MB just seems to bring the room noise & congestion back.

Kind of just thinking out loud here, would love some feedback on voice over & interview signal paths, male voice eq & dynamics.

Cheers!


Lucas

Sorry, bit of a vague post...

Asking for general advice. I don't really know where to look on YouTube for reliable tutorials, podcasts seem to attract a lot of unprofessional seeming advice....

Lucas

Lucas, if the noise is the big concern here, then start with the Noise gate Pro-G if you have it. You want to try to get rid of the background noise as much as possible before adding any dynamics.

When you do voice only, having the gate as step one of your process is a good start. But like compression gating can start to pump the begin and end of the content you want to keep.

Hope that helps.

Dave

Sorry Lucas, I missed the Dereverb plugin. Is the ambient noise in the room really that reverberant, that you need to start there? If so, that does make this tougher.

If Dereverb does clean up the room reflections well, I would place the gate after that to try to then remove what room noise is left when the voices are quieter.

But if the room noise is really heavy, it is just hard to get rid of because it's baked into the voice recording. Seeing this a lot the last month with streamed and home recorded content.

Dave

I will not profess to be an expert on the matter, but I'd start with using a different microphone, or doing something about the room treatment (ie, hanging up curtains or something). Don't know if that's at all possible. A lot of this may be better dealt with at the source. It sounds like it's a cardioid condenser mic, maybe exchange it for a dynamic mic?

Again, I realise this doesn't really answer your question and maybe these things are out of your control, so feel free to ignore this post :)

Bram

Thanks for all you comments. Feels good to have a conversation going.

This is the final edit. 1st step will be to treat our "studio" space to reduce the need to surgically eq. Tis was the best I could do with the vocal eq considering the lowed/mid issues in the room.

Any general or specific comments welcome.

soundcloud.com/lucas-martin-394249869/occ-e1-mixdown-v2

My goal is to get a commercial quality product for our clients as quick as possible. Running on the demos for fabfilter plugins for now, but will will purchase soon. Nicest, most transparent plugins I've ever used.

Lucas
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