Movie Trailer Narrator Voice Settings

[Will Salley]

No reverb.
No EQ.

[Gearshift.TV] “What are the main filters and settings I should be playing with to get that really crispy tone from a voice”

You should be playing with a real good, large-diaphragm microphone.

Heavy compression (8:1 with -30 threshold, medium attack, slow release) (note: These figures mean nothing if the input level is not calibrated)

BUT, Don’t expect it to sound like the movie trailer vo guys – even most vo talent will not have the delivery and voice quallty to match.

System Info – G5/Dual 2 – 10.4.8 – QT v7.1.3 – 8GB ram – Radeon 9800Pro – External SATA Raid – Decklink Extreme – Wacom 6×8

[Ty Ford]

Right. It’s in the throat, not in the box.

Regards,

Ty Ford

Ty Ford’s “Audio Bootcamp Field Guide” was written for video people who want better audio. Find out more at https://home.comcast.net/~tyreeford/AudioBootcamp.html
or https://www.tyford.com
Download Ty Ford’s “Existential Boogie” from iTunes now.

[Jean-christophe Boulay]

You really do need to have one of those guys in front of the mic. When you do, there is nothing special to do to get that ballsy voice. If you don’t have one, you should be boosting a little bit of lows and highs while tracking (both with shelving filters). You want your talent way up close to the mic, using two pop filters if necessary. You should instruct him to push out the sound with his stomach, not his throat as he will most probably try to do. That just sounds cartoonish, not authentic. Once recorded, using a multiband compressor to compress the low-mids and lows more than the rest of the spectrum and then boosting those bands by the same number of dBs you get on gain reduction will get you someway towards giving balls to your VO. Won’t turn Mickey into Isaac Hayes, but goes some way to making the talent sound bigger.

The ideal is to get someone with that voice. Tracking those guys on big speakers with a really good big mic tingles my spine every time.