The best way to use plugins on your Voice Over audio.

Any history. Welcome, Hi the Pro Audio this week. Those guys are professional and motivated with text. The video stars George Whittam, founder of Source Element, Robert Marshall, International audio Engineer Darren Robbo Roberts and Global Voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Tribus, Austrian audio making passion, her Sauce Elements, George the Tech Whittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check the Pro Audio Suite dot com and don't forget the code tri I p A P two hundred to get two hundred bucks off your triboos. Now we have a special guest today, MPa, known to us as Gomez from Waves, is here to talk about some simple well let's put it this way, plugins for people like myself, a simpleton when it comes to audio engineer, simple people exactly exactly. So Breen folks, right, Breen, not simple, just rate brand, Yes, exactly. And I guess that's where the premise for this episode came from. Really was about keeping it simple. Because I was reading a Facebook post from a guy who was proclaiming the fact that he'd sort of been doing a session in a hotel room and hadn't bothered to build the pillow fort or do anything to negate the sound of the room, and then recorded his session and then used some sort of noise reduction plug in like Clarity like you know whatever like RX to clean it up. And my first thought was, well, you know, you're making the plug in work harder than it needs to, and that means that you're going to end up with artifacts in the audio that you want to keep because you've got this thing working so hard, Whereas you know, I would prefer to hear as an engineer, I would prefer to hear that you've done what you can to negate the room and then used a noise reduction plug in if you feel it is absolutely necessary to just clean up what little artifacts are left, because there's less chance of that doing any sort of damage to the to the audio that I want to use. But then also, you know, for voiceover artists and people who aren't techy, you know, the words ratio, attack time, release time, threshold mean nothing, So you know, how do you use these plugins? And I guess the reason for getting you on, Michael was to sort of go, well, you know, what can they do the thing with pillow thoughts from a pro point of view and an advisory point of view is people can actually go way over the top with those, to the point that it degrades the sound. Yep, the you know more is not better. And I say the same thing to somebody. It's like when I'm advising them and they say, well, you know, we've been recording, we've been recording the voiceovers in the clothes closet, and I'm like okay, and the result They're like, well it sounds really muffled and horrible and dead. No, there's no higher or mid or high frequencies. And I'm like, okay. So the first thing I want you to tell me is is that cover it filled with coats. If it's filled with things like coats then and nothing else, then you're basically killing your sound. If it's filled with things that is a variety of different kinds of cloth and material, you've got a much better chance of it just you know, stopping audio dead rather than absorbing it. You don't want everything absorbed you you want it not bouncing around the room. The other one that I always love is when somebody goes, yeah, we'll like, you know, put pillows and stuff around me, and I said, well, where in the room are you? This is next to the window. I said, you floored a ceiling window and most hotels yep, yep, that's the one. It's a beautiful view. I wanted to see the view. It's like, well, the view is killing you right now balancing off the window. Yeah. So there are varying levels of problem that needs to be looked at, and that's literally one of the first things that we do when we're helping somebody is go, not only tell me that yes, you're doing a pillow, what all this? I want to know what kind of clothes are in those closet, Not in the creepy way, but in a Are we talking heavy winter coats? Are we talking big felt coats? So we're talking dresses, jeens? What are we talking about? How high? But at some point do you solve the problem acoustically so much that you don't need a waves product or at what point is it like, okay, well I can't actually bring in or maybe I don't even want to go through the extent of flipping the mattress up on its side to put it along a wall. Well, flipping a mattress as far as I'm concerned just says more like you're worried about an assassin. So nearly every single masterclass I do with my waves hat on, I spend as much time telling people about the fact that I want you to use as few plugins as you possibly can to making sure that you're just not overdoing things. And it's one of the biggest problems is that people people throw plugins on with way too much kind of ease and breeze and you know, without actually really thinking about it sometimes and that also degrades. So you have to really decide is this plug in going to fix something? Or am I just putting it on because I've heard it helps. You don't hear it helps, but you heard it helps. Yeah. But the other thing is two game, is that you know you should exhaust all your options in terms of getting a clean recording before you even put a plug in. Yeah, right, to just open up the mic in the middle of the in the middle of the room and then and then go, oh, well, I'll just chuck a plug in on. You're going to have in some cases you're gonna have to work that plug in so hard to get it cleaned up that it's to the detriment of the audio. Whereas if you've if you've done everything absolutely and then you only need a tiny bit of plug in to get that tiny last few artifacts out of there, then that's that's much better way of approaching it. Right. There's also you know, the positioning in a locality to them of your face and your your mouth to the microphone, even when you're in a you know, if you're in a room that's really kind of echoey entirely, like you know, like a normal hotel room or anything that's got wooden floors like this room for example. I have no plug ins on this because I didn't have time to put any on. But the simple reality is the closer you get to the microphone, the more chance that you've got of mitigating some of those issues without putting anything on it at all, And then you've got more of a chance of Okay, so what do I need to put on here? Clarity clarity vx DE reverb or clarity x vx DE reverb pro are definitely plugins that I waive a flag for. I mean the amount of effort, the amount of years and the amount of time that we put into them. And you know, people shouldn't buy them or try them just because somebody said years there's just as many things out there that sound amazing that somebody created in a month. But we did that. There's so many samples that we fed into this AI, like hundreds of thousands, and because of that, the result is it really works. But again, like any plug in, you can't overdo it. So my best suggestion with the plug in like Clarity VX the reverb in a tel room or an office or somewhere where you are that is not your ideal place or the place that you know, is take it all the way to the extreme and then pull it back. Just a quick question for you. So if I was in a position where I couldn't actually manage the room that, well, I've done everything I possibly can to control whatever artifacts, particularly reverb in a hotel room or whatever. If I use Clarity VX de reverb, is it destructive? So when I'm sending the file off to an engineer, an they that depends on your routing and what what platform are are you using it, and like how would you be setting it up? Well, I'm just saying it like if I give it too much, you're going to do damage to the audio. Yes, yes, you will do damage to the audio like anything anything over compressed, over noise reduction or you know, overuse of noise reduction. You know you can even over EQ. Really yeah, definitely anything like that because you're fucking with the audio, so you're changing the audio. Yes, it's as Gomez said, you know one hundreds of thousands of samples. But you know if you if you make it work too hard, it's got no choice but to start eating into the audio you want to keep. I would presume gomeses, Oh, absolutely, absolutely, which is why I say take it all the way to the extreme and then work your way back. Yeah you want to. And by the way, I give that advice for pretty much every plug in. It's like, if you really want to know what how to you subtract to the EQ, go to the extreme and then move your way back. Same with you know, compressed and everything else. But with something like an AI powered d rumor, which is effectively what clarity the XD reverb is. It cleans up the noise and the reverb in the room. You are going to get to a point where you're basically saying, okay, I've taken it out of automatic mode, and I'm just going to get what it gives me on extreme and it's going to kill your audio file. However, I will tell you that it's very, very hard to do that in Clarity any of the Clarity plugins, because way back when we when we released vocal Writer, I remember a vocal writer. I use the vocal Writer all the time. Okay. So vocal Writer was one of the first plugins that we ever designed and developed that was focused specifically on identifying the frequency range and spectrum of a human voice. So if you put vocal Writer on like a drum, it's not going to work as well as a human voice. It's not even going to know what to do with it. You put it on a guitar, same deal, it's not going to know what to do with it. This is also why we then released bass Rider and then we focus that on the spectrum and frequencies for bass. Now, going back to vocal Rider, that was our first jump into that field of okay, so we want this to only understand what's going on with the human voice. Now, let's move forward to twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two when we release Clarity VX. This is very very much designed around the human voice, and we've actually created it in such a way that it's hard to really mess it up. But depending on how much noise you've gotten, how bad the room is, especially on the pro version of the plugin where there's more to tweak, Yeah, you can. You can over dig yourself into a hole with the simple one with just a big knob in the middle and a couple of small switches. It's really hot to mess it up. Can I ask you when does it become When does it go from being reverb to being resonance or maybe early reflections? Right, Because there's a certain point where reverb is the sound that the artifacts or the room itself. When it gets to a certain size, maybe less than I don't know, six by eight feet or something, reverb no longer is the thing problem anymore. Now you're dealing with like pressure zones and early reflections. Is are we get to the point yet with AI where we can start actually dealing with that stuff too, because that's the you sound like you're in a tube, you sound like you're in a box problem. Are we getting to the point where we can fix that too? I figured that's part of the room, part of the reverb it is. It is part of the room and de reverb it's it totally is we can fix that. That's awesome, Yeah, because that's much more complex than just a reverb tail. Well, that's always been the problem most other you know, there's been various de reverb plugins out there, and to be honest, what I used to use before Clarity came out with a de reverb is you just take a waves C four and you put it all the way on expand and you can tweak each frequency band and you can kind of sit on the tail, but you never and none of the other products out there could get rid of the early reflections, which were really the tailtalees saying have you been in a small space right? Essentially, Yeah, there's a lot you could do with Clarity VX, just the noise fixing plugins, but with de reverb, we went all the way and it's down to the little nuances of reflections as well as the big tails and everything else. It's like, we want to make you sound like you're in a room that has no reflections. And that's one of the reasons why one of the one of the controls you have is basically controlling the presence of the plug in, so and it kind of takes your voice and make sure that you know you're telling the plug in okay. So I'm now, now that we've cleaned up that noise, I want you to take my voice and focus more exactly on that, and then the pluger will go okay, right, So now you're in a cleaner room and you've got the ability to take your voice and put it right out front. So the other thing that you can do is you can basically choose which neural network you want to use. So if you're doing spoken voice, pick one for spoken voice. If you're singing, then use that neural network. You can choose whether you want stereo or whether you want mono. So if it's just a voice, a voiceover and that's it, then you can actually tell it okay, I'm just dealing with mono single here, so and it's going to work in a different way, but it will clean it up really nicely for you. It's funny though, because it is quite subjective, because I do remember I was away in April, and I obviously have to work while I was away in some pretty weird environments, and I sent a file to Robert and I sent the same file. In fact, I think I sent it to all three of you, George and Robbo. I got feedback from Robbo and I said, would you use that? He said I'd use that. And I got one back from Robert saying I wouldn't be happy if I received that. So to me, that that is a sign of the whole thing being a bit subjective as well. Some people have no problem with it and some people have a major problem with it. Is subjective, I guess in its own just in and of itself, audio is subjective, I suppose, yeah. But the question, of course is so if that's the case, I would I use it for Robo? No? Would I use it for Robert? Probably? It also depends. It also depends on you know, your listening environment. I mean, I can tell you that if I'm listening to something in this room, in this this home studio through my speakers, then it's going to sound different to if I'm in in British Columbia at EA Sports in their mastering studio, and the same voiceover would sound probably completely different because they're listening to There I be listening through PMCs and here I'm listening through Adams so it's very extensive room, I would guess yeah, oh yeah, yeah, there's EA Sports has I think about twenty eight rooms right now. I heard the video game industry is doing okay, like there's a budget. Yeah, it's yeah. Their audio rooms are insane. It's it's so. You know, when a company like EA Sports stops calling itself a headquarters and calls itself a campus, that's welcome to the Voodoo Sound Campus. Can I just say too, By the way, campus is a road ten campus road. Let's have a look at something else. If I'm speaking of games, say I'm a voiceover artist and I've just finished recording an hour or so of gaming voiceover, and I look at the fart and I think, oh shit, that's a little dynamic, and for whatever reason, god knows why, but I feel like I should put some compression on it. But the word ratio to me means nothing and attack and release time. What's what's a what's a good one for that? Something really transparent and relatively hard to screw it up too badly? Yeah? Well, everything, You want everything to be the best edit that you never heard. If somebody can, if somebody is listening to something and going oh, let's plugging on that. Then you failed. It's it's as simple as that. So the term the best edit I never heard is one of my favorites. I use it all the time. I stole it off you. So you did, didn't you? Yeah? I did. Yeah. So now that I've said that, I forgot what you asked Rob, so something like, I mean, I might my thought would be our Vox. But but you guys also have all the one knob series and all that sort of stuff. Someone a compress her in the hands of somebody who knows nothing about what they're doing but needs to put a tiny bit of compression on something. What's a what's a good one in that case? In that case, yes Orvox. So in studio Rack, I have a chain that I save and it's just my voice over chain for this specific microphone, and the first plug in on it is Clarity VX de Reverb, the second one is our Vox, and the third one is one knob brighter. Such a good plug in which which one sorry let me say let me say it in another act one Knob Braider detail moved back to Australia. Why not brighter is such a good plug in? And you know, I think we've talked about this before, but Slate Digital do a similar one, fresh Air, But they're both equally good and and I guess I suppose, like like Clara and all the other noise reduction plugins, each seemed to have their own sort of niche that they work best in. I suppose, you know, I think you're right. I think one. I think one not brighter on voice is awesome, but fresh air on it across a mix, for me, just gives that that little extra bit of sheene. Oh absolutely, and fresh air is I mean, I nearly look at fresh Air as something that's more comparative to something from us that would not be anything to do with restoration or equeuing of any kind. So yeah, it's there's a plug in which I'm trying to remember the name of, and good god, I can't remember it for my life now, but it lets you adjust the width of each of the frequency your frequency groups like low, med, high, mid, high lets you monitor the more stereo thin Embarrassed that the product name has gone out of my head, But yeah, that's the one that I usually compare more to to the air one from those guys. When you make the leaps from clarity VxD reverb to de reverb pro. Realistically, if you're not producing the audio yourself, then from my perspective, clarity VxD reverb is totally good for you. That's you know, that's that's kind of what you need right now. If, however, you are taking on and you're you're doing post production, and you're you're dealing with everything that's coming in from multiple voices, multiple places, and you've got a multi track in front of you, and you're dealing with that on a day to day basis, then that's when pro comes in, because that's where you have the ability to control the tail more so you could smooth out the tail. You've got independent knob rather than just a simple fadure for presents. You've got the ability to You've got something that we call a strength multiplier. You've got the ability to go into every single part of the frequencies and choose which ones you really want the plug in working on which ones you don't. Is that that EQ curve looking thing across the middle, it's the one of the ground. Yeah, the one that says strength and frequency so effectively, that's exactly its strength and frequency. It's like okay, rather than rather than just a knob, what we did was go okay, right, so we're dealing this for the seasoned post production guy or somebody of that ILK going okay, So this is where that room is. Let me focus all that and bring out I don't want much of the strength on that part, but I do over here between three and AK. It's very tweaky. Oh, it is very now like if you were trying to match, like if you had five different sources and you wanted in this sound like they're literally in the same space. Sounds like the level of tweak ability you would want to have. Absolutely. But if you're a voiceover, or you're somebody that's doing your own stuff and you're doing it in or you're doing a podcast and you've got a guest coming in and they're on their MacBook Pro microphone and they're sitting in a kitchen with on a tiled floor with a window behind them, and you know, that's the kind of thing where honestly, just use the normal one with the one big knob in the middle. It's like a lot of plugins. You can get yourself into a hole really quickly unless you've got the expertise to be able to deal with them, which is also why we release two versions of these. One of them is a quick Fix, and by quick fix I do not mean degraded quality at all. It's exactly the same neural engines, but it gives you less tweak ability so that there's less risk of you messing it up yourself. And then you know, then you've got Pro, which has more tweak ability, plus a limitter built in, plus width control, plus tail smoothing, plus the ability to get more neural networks, and an analysis of both mono and stereo. It gives you a lot more. Yeah. Yeah, that was just part one of our chat with Michael Pearson Adams or Gomez if you like, from Waves. We'll be back next week for a continuation of this conversation, and we're also tapping into something which is kind of topical as we age because some of us are doing that. We'll be talking about hearing loss and how best to manage it when you do this for a living. So join us next week. More chat about hearing, more chat about plugins, and more chats with Michael Pearson Adams from Waves. See you next week. The Pro Audio Suite and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and by Voodoo Radio Imaging. We have to take support from George the Techo, don't forget to subscribe to the show and joining the conversation on our Facebook group to leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say good day. Drop us a note at our website dot com.