Over the last few weeks, I have been hearing and trying to resolve some issues I have had with voice tracks sounding just a little ‘off’. It has sent me to make few variations of my master template and I hope that my attempt today has just about snipped it.
I was hearing some artefacts that I’d not noticed before from the files of our usually impeccable voice talents. Wavering, a little distortion, sounds that normally don’t get through, were getting through. I questioned myself more when other voice talents were sounding fine. Picking that they were so inconsistent that it could be my session (and my ears too), being exposed to a little more critical ear.
A change, to my template, was the way to go. Firstly when I do this I make sure all the plugins are turned off. then adding a voice track that I was curious about. First plugin, a Waves MV2 to add presence to the voice. It does not do much else here but it’s clean and not too complicated. Also leaning off the 0dbfs by a lot. Next the eq, I have presets here starting with generic male eq, that’s serviceable when the times are manic. The same for female and 2 tracks for the multi-voice commercial 4 voice tracks in all. Finally, on each voice track, I have L1 Limiter to catch the spikes from talent when they get too excited.
4 Stereo tracks as well, clean settings, these are mapped directly to the Master as all music has already been compressed, so it doesn’t need doing again.
My changes, firstly to add an Aux Bus to cope with SFX only, so I can mix them with and compression needed away from other music channels. Next, I have tried a different multi-band compressor to give a smoother feel across all the voices in one hit. On the final master track, the removal of the old faithful L1 Ultramaximiser. Adding in a different multi band compressor and a peak limiter for the “just in case” moments.
It’s working well at the moment but who knows what next week will bring as I do keep the old ones around to compare.
Sometime you just have to try..
