I’m working on a Dutch documentary doing music, sound design and post-production. The doc needed a few short voice over parts which I recorded yesterday. The voice was delivered by the well experienced Rob Captijn. I recorded him in my home studio, which is not yet fully treated (which is okay if you know what you’re doing). It’s great being able to record at home. Sure a helicopter, rain hitting the windows hard and alarms going off will definitely ruin the recordings, but that’s the price you pay for recording in a convenient environment.

I recorded the voice over in Ableton Live 8 and processed it in Propellerhead Reason 7. Listen to a short example, the first 24 seconds is the original recording and the second half is the processed track.

A few more details on the process:

• I’m using Ableton Live because I can use video and audio in sync at the same time (Propellerhead Reason can’t do that)
• Ableton Live is great for exports to MONO aif/wav files (Propellerhead Reason can’t do that)
• I processed the files in Propellerhead Reason using 2 additional parallel channels (some additional High Pass and Low Pass filtering)
• The 3 voice channels (original, high pass parallel, low pass parallel) where grouped and I added some RE-2A compression and SSL Enhancer + Gating
• I used the iZotope Maximizer RE in Reason for dithering
• I used Audacity to make the stereo files of Propellerhead Reason mono again (Propellerhead MUST add this feature in Reason, not being able to make mono exports feels silly)

Although the original recording sounded fine the magic of the RE-2A and added EQ and Enhancer created a more in your face sound which I prefer for a voice over.

(photo: Punkmedia)