VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

iannyc

Hi all!

Another n00bz question

Ive been using audacity cuz its free... is that a good choice?

Their noise cancellation software seems pretty dope-- i also use their limiter which seems to work well, and I like to play with their customizable eq adjustment filter.

Their compressor sometimes sounds good when turned down for subtlety although it makes the breaths way more prominent when I don't have time to delete them (btw when do you or do you not delete your breaths when sending in auditions??)

I have not found a decent de-esser through audacity, is that a specific frequency I should just take down a little?

And..... i heard a lot of y'all also use twisted wave? Is that better for commercials and then audacity is more for audiobooks?

THANKS!!!! Any links to instructional vids would be fantastic, I watched several but couldnt find exactly what I wanted

-I

Bish · Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 11:25 am Post subject:

Personally I find Audacity to be worth exactly what you pay for it. I find it clunky and not intuitive in any way. That being said, others love it. Personally I use Adobe Audition... but, I also use (and love) Twisted Wave. It's lightweight and intuitive... plus it can access all of the AU effects you already have. I'd be careful about judging a DAW by the way it reduces noise... you should be reducing the noise at source, not fixing it in post. I do appreciate that this isn't always possible... but please understand that good ears will pick up noise cancellation however good it purports to be. Same with the compressor really... if you can hear it... it's too much. These bells and whistles are great to play with... but unless you are doing full production work, they can be a distraction. As for the de-essing... record an "essy" passage and play with a parametric or 30-band graphic equalizer... you'll soon find your problem frequency... around 8kHz maybe... we're all slightly different, and the problem will probably be in a very narrow band.
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iannyc · Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 12:08 pm Post subject:

Thankyou so much bish!!!

iannyc · Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 12:26 pm Post subject:

Btw do you always go in and manually delete breaths or can software do that?

Are there any times you leave them in?

Kristin Lennox · Flight Attendant Joined: 30 Apr 2011 Posts: 858

I started with ProTools, then had to switch to Audacity when ProTools wouldn't play nicely with my computer upgrade.

And now that I've used it for many years, I have no reason to switch to anything else -- Audacity does everything I need it to do, and I'm good and fast at editing.

Your choice of DAW really should have no bearing on your audio output -- you can edit crap audio with Protools and it will still sound like crap audio. If your recording space is good, and you have a good microphone for your voice and space, your choice of DAW should be whatever best serves your workflow. MHO.
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Bish · Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 1:51 pm Post subject:

I have never used anything automatic to de-breath. I find that it either sounds un-natural (the incredible non-breathing man!), or it takes out stuff it shouldn't have and it takes longer to fix the screw-ups than to do it by hand in the first place! Even with audiobooks I'll do it by hand. A very rough rule of thumb is that breaths preceding a paragraph should be punished in the extreme, but breaths during the flow of the narrative make it more natural. Of course, occasional manual intervention is required if you sound like an asthmatic donkey! Some fast-paced stuff (like automotive) will need the breaths taken out... and the space they occupy as well... only 5 nano-seconds allowed between each word in automotive Smile

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Lee Gordon · Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2016 2:20 pm Post subject:

Like Bish, I don't find the Audacity interface particularly user friendly. However, as with any program, what you use the most becomes what's easiest to use.

I keep a copy of Audacity open, but I rarely use it for recording or editing. However, I find it's time compression and noise reduction plug-ins to be quite good. I don't use most of the other doodads.

Again, agreeing with Bish, I hope most of the things you are playing with are just that -- things to play with, rather than things you use on audio you sent to clients or auditions. Usually, the closer you can get to raw, original audio, the better.
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iannyc · Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 4:25 am Post subject:

What does anybody like about twisted wave? Its a little prettier, does it have a de-esser? Or noise cancellation or a limiter? Is it a plugin thing or purely an aesthetic thing?

-I

Bish · Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 4:48 am Post subject:

Hey... don't knock pretty! Pretty will get you a long way in this world (shallow beings that we are!)

Form and function... it does what it does, and it makes doing what it does easy and intuitive. The effects available are all the AU plugins that come on-board the Mac as well as thousand of quality ones available either free or at a reasonable cost. It handles effects stacks nicely, it has multiple clipboards, it has a cheeky smile and it wakes you with a wink in the morning and then goes and makes the coffee. The customer service is superb with the author/developer personally involved with the voiceover community.

Yes, it's a tool... but like all good tools, when I pick it up, it fits my hand and is comfortable... it does what I want, not force me to jump through hoops while waving the rubber chicken around my head to make it work, which, in my view, is what Audacity does. Simply put, TW fits my hand, Audacity doesn't.
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls.

iannyc · Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 5:44 am Post subject:

I dig it!

DenaliDave · Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 11:15 am Post subject:

The best way to remove breaths? Learn how to control breathing! Smile

I don't like Audacity. I appreciate it for what it is, but I find the interface ugly, clunky, awkward and not very efficient.
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Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

I don't remove breaths, but I duck them when it sounds wrong. Sometimes the copy has long run on sentences just like this one and you can't break it up and it all sounds just a bit breathy because there are frankly too many superfluous words thrown in for good measure. I tame the odd extra breathy breaths post-recording by doing a gentle fade-out over the breath section between words. Say from 0 to -18 dBFS. Nobody has ever complained about it.
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