Match EQ Techniques for Voiceover

Are any history. Welcome, Hi the pro Audio Suite. Thanks you guys, a professional and motivator. Thanks to try Booth, the best vocal booth for home or on the road voice recording and Austrian Audio Making Passion Herd. Introducing Robert Marshall from Source Elements and Someone Audio Post Chicago, Aaron Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging Sydney to the video Stars, George the Tech Whittam from LA and Me, Andrew Peters Voice Sober Talent and home Studio Guy out and welcome to another pro audio suite. Don't forget to subscribe, give us a like and ring the bell. It certainly helps us with our analytics thanks to Austrian Audio Making, Passion Heard and try Booth. Now speaking of try Booth, George, you've been playing around with trying to make your try booth because you do off for processing. If anyone buys a try booth, don't forget the code trip AP two hundred to get to. A well played such a well done. Yes, you don't get paid enough. I don't get paid enough, but you offer a service of setting up sound wise Someone's try booth, and recently you've been playing around trying to match someone's U eighty seven in their booth with a forty one six in the try booth. How did you go? I did it, worn'd out well enough where you know, I thought the two were not obviously identical, but much more close in EQ. And I sent it to the customer my voice after customer, and he was impressed with the way it sounded. And so now my goal is to not just have it be a post plug in that he has to load and then process and then you know, send on a file, but actually have it print that way, so using an EQ, a multiban parametric EQ in his Apollo system. He's using an Apollo so he can print that EQ live real time, you know, And so that's going to be the final step. I need to set that up for him. But I looked at ways to automate this using modern tools, using match eque plug ins and different things, and a little bit of experimenting, and the research I did it just looked like it was never going to nail it. And at the end it just came down to old fashioned listening, tweaking, listening, comparing back and forth. I sprit probably spent twenty to thirty minutes trying to get them as lined up as close as I could. I couldn't find an easy way to do it. It's not an easy thing. I mean, it's like I struggle with it with especially with like when they pick up dialogue lines from stuff that's been shot on set and all that sort of stuff. That's difficult, you know, even eighty R I guess, is what I'm trying to say. You know, matching that stuff up to what's on location is always a He's always an issue too, especially if they sort of you know, they just grab him, they just book the talent to come back into a studio somewhere and recall the line and then throw it at you and say, hey, can you put this into the spot or whatever. It's It's always one of those interesting ones, is trying to match that up. It's interesting when you if you're using a forty one six, because even if you're in the same booth, same mike, doing the same read, there's always a chance it's not going to sound the same because those things. It's the proximity is always an issue with a forty one six. And I've done stuff where I've had to pick up even just like coming in editing and made a mistake, go back in pick up that line, cut it in and it's like, oh mane, it just sounds different. And that's the same day. Well, your voice change is daily too. I mean, when your voice is tired at the end of the day, it sounds different at the beginning of the day. I mean, you sound different today than you did last time we recorded a podcast because you've got a sore throat at the moment. You know, it's like and so, you know, so try and matching that up. Yeah, you know, it's one of those constant sort of battles. And it's always interesting when they come back to pick up. You know, they pick up a campaign they did last year, a TV campaign and they just want to retag it or they want to just drop a new line in and they get the talent back and all that sort of stuff. And it's the stuff that we do behind the scenes that never gets mentioned to them. You know, I don't turn around and go, well, you know, I spend ages matching that up. But you know, it's it's the stuff that just has to happen, and you just have to make it happen because you know that if you don't, it's going to come back and they're going to go it sounds different, yeah, you know or whatever. So you know, you just got to do it. I was actually listening to an interview just the other day and someone was talking about make placement and stuff like that, and someone said, oh, you know, just just wax some eke on that to make it sound blah blah blah, and the engine is just hang on before you start putting you qy on this, try and moving the microphone first. That's right. Let's get it right first, exactly, you know, get it as close as you can first, and then but it's the same as you know, it's the same as we talk about with noise reduction and you know, de reverb and all that sort of stuff. Get it right first and then use that stuff. Don't don't sort of just rely on that doing the job. I mean, all that stuff is basically for a disaster. It's interesting when they turn around, you know, and it's not their money, but you know, it's like a you know, two hundred thousand dollar TV campaign or something, or a million dollar TV campaign and the directors they're going, oh, well, just you know, it just slaps an EQ on it. It's like, well, hang on, you know, it's not your money, mate, Seriously, let's do it properly. I hate it when I watch local localized dub because in the States, Netflix is spending a lot less money shooting shows and a lot more money licensing shows, to the point where they've I think they've closed an entire Maybe it was Amazon, one of these big big companies closed a studio completely. Oh, actually, no, Paramount just closed or they just announced the closing of Paramount studios in Hollywood. They're not shooting exactly reason. They're just not shooting enough content. It's just not worth it. They're like, we've got enough studios, and so they're going to shoot everything at the Sony or some other some other studio complex because they don't need it, which is sad. Yeah, but that's that's the real reality. But the localization the thing that bugs me about it. And I know my partner could care less, she just wants to hear the dialogue. But for me, the localization typically is recorded too dry and too close. So they're doing all the localization in a booth with a U eighty seven, you know, six to ten inches away from the mic and the original dialogue sounds a little bit more authentic, or it was done with a shotgun and or a laugh, and it just doesn't sound the same, doesn't sound as authentic. Sometimes it's really good. Sometimes you know there's an extra care put into it. They probably use some ambience plug in or something to try. To match the room. And there are room what. Is it called convolution reverbs or something where you can Yeah, you can get the reverb of a space and then. Apply to wives have a great one. Yeah, that's really cool technology. But you know a lot of times that's going to get kind of lost and because someone either doesn't know how, doesn't care, and you know, it just needs to get done. You know, it's funny with a lot of YouTube channels, you'll hear that, whether on location or something, and they'll be talking like here kind of thing, you know, blah blah blah blah blah, and then they cut to do a voiceover and it's all like and blah blah blah, and it's so jarring, really jarring. There's a podcast I listen to their Mountain Bikers and you know, you don't expect great production value, right, but they've gotten better and there's one little funny thing where they do a fake commercial during the podcast because it's their own. It's the podcast is supported by their bike shop, so they're a sponsor, right, they called Worldwide CycL Ry And they always do this thing. And so they always have a little thing where a guy goes no time for commercial break to the show and he always said it the same way, and it's and it's normalized. So it's like it's so much louder then them sitting around. The you know, the booth or their or their office, you know, recording the content. It's just when it's become like this, to me, I just I laughed for myself, you know, because I'm like, I don't think at this point it's I don't think they're doing it out of ignorance. I think now they realize it's just goofy, it's just your tongue and chee. Yeah. I certainly wait you up. You know, if you've sort of if you've if you've lost a bit of interest in it and you've waited, you know, mentally wandered off somewhere, it certainly brings you back to center, doesn't it. Yeah, now talk about U eighty seven's. This came up yesterday in a session, and the engineer I was working with, he just doesn't like them, doesn't like them at all, hates the sound of them, and if he can avoid anyone using an U eighty seven, he will, which is kind of ironic in the sense that the U eighty seven, like the forty one six, is basically industry standard. I guess, but yeah, how do you how do you find you eighty seven's in a shop? Not any old shop. You know, wooden box on this. That's right, exactly one of my client's studios. To be honest, A lot of clients that both and unless they're really genre switching a lot where they're doing an animation and they're doing a commercial and maybe doing a promo. I have a few clients who are super versatile, and they really do cover all these different genres. A handful of them really do switch between their forty one six and their one oh three. They're ten three is how it's called. Now three three? Yeah, that's supposed toddy ten three, big buddy, Yeah body, yep. They do switch between them relatively actively, but many others once they just got the sound that they went out of their forty one six, that the Uity seven collects dust and or it goes on a shelf because it's just the forty one sixth sound is just so familiar to a voice, a commercial voice or a promotion promo voice, that the Uity seven sounds foreign. Even though it me sound nice and me sound more detailed, and it might be more accurate, it's not really what we're going for in the end. So it's just a little bit more work. Like you said, I don't like you he's saving. It's far more work for him to get the sound out of that mike that he wants. He's trying to. Yeah, he's got to eque a crap out of it to get back to where he wants it. But it's like I kind of I think two things. I think here in Australia. I think large diaphragm. I don't know that U eighty seven would even be the industry standard. I think what the one O three would probably be in more home studios for sure, talking about voiceover artists. And secondly, I would also argue that I think the industry stranded in general is just the four one six. I don't know. I don't know that you know unless you sort of say to someone, hey, if you got a one o three for whatever reason. I don't know why you would, I've never had to, but unless you ask, most people are going to open up the session or jump onto the session with their four or forty one six. Yeah, I've found I do find that Melbourne and Sydney are quite different. When I first came down to Melbourne, I would see a lot of eighty sevens and then they would have the forty one six as well if they're doing promos and stuff. But that is that home studios or are you talking studios? I'm talking about professional studios commercial studios. Yea, yeah, yeah, I think professional studios definitely, probably the U eighty seven, but I don't know, Yeah, I don't know about home studios. I kind of yeah, that's the vibe I get. So funny you said that we have a similar thing in the States, which is U eighty seven is the New York MIC and forty one six is the LA. Right, Well there you go, absolutely, yeah, yeah, it's exactly the same. I was going to say the same thing because the first time I went to the States, I went to New York first, and it was the U. Eighty seven's and then the next stop was La and I to go and do a job. Actually, so I went to La Sound and it was forty one six and in fact it was pretty well forty one sixties everywhere in LA. So it is quite different. And it's like Melbourne and Sydney. I always say that Sydney is more like La and Melbourn's more like New York. So funny a lot of the similarities between different countries and our production. You know, how do certain mics become the it mike? How does this you know, this momentum of a certain sound. Where does it get established? Like I would love to do a story about the forty one six and where it came from and why it became the mic that it is. And Ernie Anderson if you guys don't know who Ernie Anderson is good at YouTube and typing Ernie Anderson ABC. Either dude that you that first grabbed at one six and shoved it up as a is that him? Is that the guy I'm thinking of it? Well? Yeah, he the legend has it as was he didn't like being in the in the ice, yeah all day, you know, because the seventies and probably seventies and earlier. A lot of that promo was done live, and so he would, you know, we just have to sit in that damn. I saw booth waiting for the next break, you know, and he was bored and he he's watching everybody behind the glass and they're all shooting the shit behind the glass. And he's like, I want to be a part of that. I hated it, you know. And I think, you know, some people are like he hated people talking shit behind his back. Well, I don't know, I don't know how true that is, but he was could be a son of a bitch. He was. He was rough, gruff. Uh. You know, let people have it here and there, and you know, there's some good there's some such good outtakes. On YouTube and elsewhere or of Ernie stuff. But that microphone was chosen because, yeah, it was they needed some way to get a clean dialogue track in a machine room. And those studios were pretty noisy. They're full of machinery, like mechanical tape machines, you manic decks and fans and all this. That's what they had handy. So it's just like you'll see a few clips of him, it's just the mic is on like a flexible goose neeck arm that's mounted to the console. Maybe that's was for the talkback, I don't even know. And then he's just right off the side of the board with the mic pointing at the corner of his mouth, and he's reading the script right next to the board man. That's that's became a. Sound, you know, And I would imagine it had to be a bit of a departure from the sound that they had established prior to that, you know, in a booth, beautifully tuned room probably. I mean, this is why be fun of Research'll be curious to see what did they do before the forty one six or the forty one five, it might have been the four fifteen at that time. What did they use before that? What was on him in the booth? Was he on a ribbon mic? Was he on a U ety seven? What? That would be fun to see. But that there's just absolutely no doubt that that forty one six on his voice became so iconic that it just was like, oh, well, better th that up on, don you know? And we better throwing up on Hal Douglas and better throwing up on that old guy Andrew Peters and we'll just throw up on him. Yeah, it just it created a sound. It's like, it's the history of that mic. It's fascinating. And well, we were saying, how that one engineer hates the U eighty seven. There's a guy who's still in the business today does tons tons of Disney voice work named Corey Burton, and Corey had a whole blog post about his hatred of the forty one six. I'm saying it. I've read that. I've read that. I think he's taking it down long by now. But it was a bit a hell of a rant, you know. But this is a man who was doing Disney, and Disney didn't use shotgun, they didn't use condensers. They used ribbon. They used RCA. I can't think it was a K four U or K five you something like that. It was a very unique super cardioid ribbon mic you know that they used on a boom, you know. And so he would carry that thing around. It's like, this is the sound this I'm doing Disney, this is the mic they use. And he would carry that sucker around five thousand dollars mic in a case and bring it to studios. He was that hardcore about that's the sound, that is the sound that my voice identifies with because it's I'm doing a genre and that genre is Disney animation. That's the level of he's reason for the hydred. Then with the fact that it was the four one six was so shop and edgy? Is that or was it? Yeah? I mean to him it was such a heinous mic because it didn't lack. It lacked all the things that he loved about the other. Okay, so you know it's again it's one man's opinion, and he's a very smart guy and very well respected in circles here in Hollywood and and voiceover. But you know that was his opinion because it didn't work for his voice and his type of work. So know, as we have a. Blog, we're here, we have a podcast, we're here to share what we think about things, and he was sharing what he had to think about. Did it apply to most voiceover? Probably not. Did it apply to most people to go get a five thousand dollars vintage ribbon microphone? Probably not. Imagine equeuing a ribbon mic to work on a TV commercial day these days or radio imaging. Seriously, it would be like. Yeah, you'd have to spice it up quite a bit, you would. You'd have to work on Yeah, yeah, yeah you would. But you know, I've been watching podcasters and some of them are the geeks like are like like Mike DelGaudio from The Booth Junkie from his The Booth Junkie watch him lately. He has been using a mic outside the booth for when he does interviews and stuff, and he doesn't want to be in the booth. He's using a ribbon, a ribbon broadcast mic. Right, it's an interesting microphone. He's using an AEA microphone. I don't know if you guys know who he is, but yeah, yeah, yeah. This is Wes Dooley, who was one of the engineers that was responsible for tuning and repairing RCAA microphones and he eventually went on to do his own thing and start his own company and make his own mics. And he's got a really interesting. Ribbon mic that looks exactly well not exactly, but it looks way more like a broadcaster's microphone. It's called the the k U five A and it's totally broadcast style. It's end address doesn't look like any ribbon mic you've probably seen before. And it's a super cardioid ribbon mic. It's not a bi directional you know, figure eight like most ribbon mics are. Ye. So, and it's a great sounding mic. I mean it's fifteen dollars, so it should be. But it's a really nice sounding mic. And it has of course built in active it has an active circuit. No, it has that booster built in. Yeah, so talk about ribbon Mike's talk about mikes that come out from a totally different category that. Manded up sounding really amazing. But one of us has to just get one to tell you whether it's this is one of those mics. I I don't know when I'll have the opportunity to get one, my hands on one to demo, but unless I physically go to Wes's place in Glendale, I'll. Be interested to I'd be interested to put the question out there to our voiceover voiceover artists with home studios who are listening and say, who's going to be the first person brave enough to jump onto a session with a ribbon mic. There's gonna be two people in there, like I already use. Yeah, It's it's an interesting question, isn't it. Are really well respected for being accurate. And that's what's funny, is a is we we certainly like think of them as a very warm, very vintage sound, sort of a veiled top end. But they're respected for their incredible accuracy because the ribbon is so fast, it's so responsive. Man, you can e q to make them sound beautiful. But the interesting thing is the reason we're talking about A four one six being an industry standard is because of its inaccuracies. Yeah, yes, that is true. That is true. It's inaccurate in all the right ways, exactly. It's just it's just inaccurate enough probably is the best way to put it. It's And that's the interesting thing though, is yeah, absolutely ribbon MIC's yeah, sound great, hows you say? And completely natural? But it's not what I want. But that that sound is coming up on fifty years olah, right, yeah, that shotgun condenser. I don't know when the forty one five came out, but that sound has been around since the seventies. So we're due for we'll probably. Do for a revolution. You wrecking George, m't be a time for a revolution. I think Andrew's going to do. What am I going to be revolting with. It could be what you're on right now. Yeah, well, I think I finally found the perfect mic for me. That's the the eight one eight. We'll call it the OC eighty one night. Well mine hasn't you know, Mine hasn't shifted from my desk since I got it either. I'll be honest, and I'm not a voiceover artist, but I do like it. Yeah, I mean when I got I got the mic I'm on now, this is the OC seven zero seven. The first thing I did was EQ it to make it sound more like the eight one. Right, because I was like that, because I had already had the e one eight and I was like eighty one eight. I already had the eighty one eight and it sounds so good. And when this OC seven seventy seven came, talk about confusing naming there, it's not a seventy seven. When the seven oh seven came, I was like, ooh, the EQ character is unique. Let's just be let's be nice about it. It's unique. It is not my cup of tea. So I eq'ed it with my roadcaster to to tame it's mid range. Kind of bumped that a hand and smoothed it out and gave it a little bit of top end, and now I'm pretty happy with it. And that's what I talk on most of the day, is the seven O seven now, but I'll swing the swing the eight one eight in and I will use it in conjunction with the Apollo. Now that's my chain. That's like my ultra high fire rig I guess, I don't know, or the tweaky the tweaky one where it can tweak it a lot and have a lot of fun. It's the it's the fantasy rack of gear that Andrew has been using for years, just in a virtual seven seven. Must be handy when you want to, you know, take it off. It's off. It's Mike, stand and hand hold it and break into a bit of Madonna or pet Chop Boys or something. You know. It's like that must be it must. Be, Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a darn good sounding condensed and it's a really cool looking hand alenduncter Mike too. I mean, like, I don't know how much that matters, but I think to some pop artists it definitely matters. I mean some of the cover of the Damn Things and the Ryan's Stone sequence or something. Yeah, exactly. But you know, the funny thing is talking about when you walk into we used to walk into commercial studios, you always look at the mic that's in front of you. Sometimes you just sort of go, that's a bit. Well, you know, speak for yourself. I haven't had that opportunity enough to, but I imagine you do. Yeah. Well, I don't know if we could say. I don't even know if I would love for you the name of Mike that you saw in front of you, and you're like, don't. Name the studio I named the mic. Go on, it's difficult. Well that was eight. There was actually actually talking about there was the what's the long barrel? It's a dynamic mic? I lot of podcast is podcast? Use it twenty the ri twenty Mike with the huge suspension. I won't tell you where I was, but it was a TV series that I was voicing, and the first day I got in the booth, I saw it and went, I'm not. I'm sorry, I'm sorry that microphone. And do you know what they replace it with? I'm seventy No, they had a U eighty nine. I don't know. Well, there you go. I don't know if I've ever heard one is that kind of like a they do they make that mic anymore? Is that? Just know? I don't know. It looks like an U eighty seven, but it was dark color, so it was like a dark yeah blue. Yeah, there's one. Yeah, I'm looking at one now. I know. It looks like it's still in production. Yeah, it's about the same price. It's got multi pattern about the same price. Is that U eighty seven. Is that what you're saying? That's what I mean. Yeah, about the same price as at U eighty seven. Oh, how fascinating. It must be voiced differently. It was slightly different because what ended up happened. I didn't really like it that much either, So yeah, I ended up taking in my own mic and I used to I just used the I taken the M nine thirty, the Microtech cafell for. What I'm seeing is the U eighty seven, the U eighty nine. It literally looks like it was intended to be like the high Fi U eighty seven. Yeah, more top end response, morechine, also more patterns. It's got five pickup patterns instead of the UK. So yeah, it's just interesting. Yeah, it could theoretically be a better voice over Mike than in eighty seven, I guess with that, but it never caught traction because the Uit seven became exactly everybody already. Blew their wand on. Those three. Another one, yes, exactly, Yeah, they're like, I. Aady got one of those. You know, we're not talking about the ocean waves of the world, you know where they have six of everything. So this and Andrew talking about walking into different studios and you can built the answer is better than me. But something I noticed in my ten years of freelance audio working walking in out of different studios is the condition of pop filters that people shoving trying a voiceaver, some of those skanky, stinky, falling apart pieces of shit that you'd look at and you go, you touch that and it's going to fall apart. I was constantly surprised that, you know, twenty bucks or thirty bucks for a new pop filter just wasn't occurring to anybody that maybe that's something we should look at. Well, you know the interesting thing is that, particularly because I mean I didn't do like voiceovers for a living in Sydney. It was when I moved to Melbourne, and that's twenty seven years ago I really saw a pop filter. Oh, there you go, because the engineers would come in place the mic properly so you didn't know there. Was I always put a pop filter on anyway. I'd be honest, it didn't matter what I was doing, I always have them on there. Wow, those are brief engineers. They really test, They're really true. Yeah, and that was the thing, you know, It's like it just saves that, you know, perfect take. They'd get spoilt. The ones that did do it, they'd set the mic up like this, and it's like, you want me to read what the pop filter? Or can I actually when you let me read the script. I know. Those are the ones that are clearly music recording engineers. They're used to having a rapper or singer, a pop singer in front of their precious microphone. They don't want them to spit on it, touch it, get anywhere damn near close to it. Yeah. Yeah, that's a whole. Different animal than a trained voice actor, you know that knows how to use a microphone correctly. I'm looking at the specs comparison because Norman has compare feature. So each Mikey Low you click compare this mic and then you go to another mic. Compare and then it shows them all in columns, so you can and so the eighty nine. Is a high SBL. Circuit as well, so it it can handle way more inputs and handle someone belting into Yeah, it can handle close proximity. The eighty seven only can handle one hundred and twenty seven, which is a lot, but not something you're going to put in front of a kick you. Eighty nine can handle one hundred and forty. Yeah. It is also nowhere near as sensitive, or is it? How does that work? Sensitivity is measured in micro vaults per Pascal. Well without Robert here, somebody had it. Send us into a rabb hole. Someone needs to geek out exactly, Yeah, that's right? Time is it? Over? The pro Audio Suite and Austrian Audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging. George don't forget to subscribe to the show and joining the conversation on our Facebook group to leave a comment, suggested toffee or just say today drop us a note at our website.