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Scratchy voice fix??
Hello All,
This is my first time posting on the CrativeCow, although I have been reading the great advice here for over a year.
I have some VO where the speaker has a really scratchy voice. I don’t mind as that is how he talks, but my client has asked if I could tone it down some.
here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH3nzdaryzII work in FCP 6. I was wondering if there is an easy fix, as I do not have the budget to go to a sound guy. In the past, I have been able to record good sound, so I have never had to use filters,etc.
Any help would be appreciated, even if it is to say “There is no easy fix” as I can go back to my client with that.
Thanks,
John Ries -
5 Replies
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There is no easy fix. 😉
But, I think the voice has “character.”
You can increase the “low-end” and roll-off some of the “top-end” with EQ, but why mess with it?
Now, if the guy doesn’t normally sound like that because he was
suffering from a sore throat and/or a touch of laryngitis, you want to just re-record it
after he recovers. -
If you’ve got FCP 6, I think that means you have to have Soundtrack Pro, as well. (They don’t sell them separately anymore, do they?)
Open it up in Soundtrack, add a Fat EQ filter, and try playing with it some. The odds of it working are kind of slim, but I can’t think of anything else that’s likely to work any better.
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Novamation Studios
http://www.NovamationStudios.com -
You may, as others suggested, want to add some low end (guys like that – makes us feel more masculine, I guess), but it sounds fine to me. You could always overdub his part with another person, but I don’t think he would like that very much, if you know what I mean.
Seriously, though…I say lave it alone. It’s his voice – and that’s how others know and recognize him. If he was chosen as a semi-famous/recognizable person to endorse something, then people need to be able to say, “Hey, I know who that voice belongs to!”.
Take John Lennon’s advice on this one:
Let it be…let it be…
Wolf
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Thanks,
I will play with the EQ, mainly because it will be good practice for me, but I will tell the client it has “character”. Personally, I like his voice.thanks all
John Ries -
Hi John and thanks for stopping by the Cow Audio Forum,
You got good advice from everyone. I like his voice as well. Try the parametric EQ and bump it up a little around 125 Hz. That’ll bring up the “warmth” and mask some of the edginess. I don’t think I’d roll off any top, but you might try the parametric EQ at 6 kHz and pull down just a dB or two. That will pull back some of the overtones that are in part responsible for that edgy sound.
Don’t go overboard or you’ll muddy things up. Make sure you test your changes on a system similar to the one your clients expect to play back on.
Laptop speakers have no low end response, so if you boost the bass until the voice sounds fuller on a laptop and they play it back on a system with decent woofers, it’ll probably sound way too bassy.
Regards,
Ty
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