USING SOFTWARE FOR EFFECTIVE VOICE RECORDING

There are many software’s that have emerged in the last two decades to revolutionize the audio recording and mixing techniques.The most powerful of them all are Pro Tools and Nuendo. We also have otherSoftwares such as cakewalk, sonar, Apple’s soundtrack and so on. In some of the FM Radio stations Sony Vega is also used. Each of them have their own plus and minus. Pro tools is more of a sound software till the recent versions that have introduced music programming tools and plug in instruments to compete the VST’s of Nuendo. With so much of power at our finger tips, it is a common notion that anything can be done with the software. But the reality is that software helps with tools that can give you more control to record tracks, and arrange them sequentially to design an audio. It also helps in visualizing sound using waveforms and bandwidths. To get a good sound mix, it is essential that a sound recordist has to take care in primary steps of recording the audio signal is weak or bad, the entire mix can go bad. So ensure to record a clean and tight sound. Acoustic corrections using onboard plug ins will further detiorate the sound signal. Avoid hollow rooms, even walls while recording your voice. Also if you are having a home studio, try to get one or make a horizontal V shaped portable isolation booth, using acoustic foam. This is a very useful tool to avoid hollowness of room acoustics. You can use a pop filter if you are recording with amateurs, this helps in reducing the blows and pops of the lips. But for those who have the liking for crispness and grain in voice, need to avoid this filter. So record the voice absolutely flat without any tweaking pre or post processing on software. Now that you have recorded your voice with a good signal, work on the compression to tackle the peaks and overshoots. Do not overCompress the voice, there are chances of loosing the fine aspects of subtle expressions. Next is to use the Eq’s effectively. Equalization is a very tricky area and it will vary from singer to singer. Though the standard values for male and female singers is identified on the bandwidth, each singer will have a certain tonal quality which sounds good on some frequencies and not on some. Use the high pass and low pass filters to isolate the voice on various bandwidths before you actually finalize the settings. This helps you to identify the power of the voice in various bands. It also depends on the song orchestration and the feel for the song. For getting more presence play around with 6200 hertz, for sibilance, use still higher frequencies, but be careful not to over do it. To avoid noisy high frequency mixes, use a DE Esser for voice on the insert mode to filter the ESSS sounds and avoid sibilance distorting your mixes. To cut on throat noises, room ambience you can have a low cut on 100 hertz. After you are done and happy with the voice EQ, the next challenging task will be to color the voice with Reverb or delays or both. While using these effects, always create a stereo bus, and apply reverb or delay to the selected track by assigning desired level of the dry signal. The bus out will add a stereo reverb to the mono voice signal and hence the dry and wet signals create a 3 dimensional effect. The above are some basic tips to enhance your voice mix. Use them and experiment more to find the infinite possibilities that make music an ocean