I'm the typical Newbie. Where I work, I do the tech end of recording books on tape. We do a digital master first, then eventually generate a casette master. I've got the bug to improve my voice to do narration. I also have an idea for recording in a niche market I believe is undertapped. I don't want to go into that here just yet . . .

Anyway, for starters, I have what I beleieve is a good mic, AKG Perception 200. This is run into an M-Box Audio Buddy preamp and all of this ends up on my PC via and Audigy sound card. I have Audacity on my laptop for capture and Adobe Audition 1.5 is on the desktop for edit / capture. I have Audition 2.0, but do not have a desktop to put it on and for now, no compelling reason to upgrade.

What I'm after here is some pointers for mic techniques and simple post recording techniques that will help me improve my recording technique.

If my equipment sounds familiar, I sometimes use a work account. I'm going to be phasing use of that one out.

DragonMan wrote:

I'm the typical Newbie. Where I work, I do the tech end of recording books on tape. We do a digital master first, then eventually generate a casette master. I've got the bug to improve my voice to do narration. I also have an idea for recording in a niche market I believe is undertapped. I don't want to go into that here just yet . . . Anyway, for starters, I have what I beleieve is a good mic, AKG Perception 200. This is run into an M-Box Audio Buddy preamp and all of this ends up on my PC via and Audigy sound card. I have Audacity on my laptop for capture and Adobe Audition 1.5 is on the desktop for edit / capture. I have Audition 2.0, but do not have a desktop to put it on and for now, no compelling reason to upgrade. What I'm after here is some pointers for mic techniques and simple post recording techniques that will help me improve my recording technique. If my equipment sounds familiar, I sometimes use a work account. I'm going to be phasing use of that one out.

Sounds like fun work.

This is actually a tricky question to answer without hearing your work, though we can map out two or three points for a check list.

1. Ensure your room is acoustically dead, if indeed you want a dead, non reverb, sound for your voice. I'd assume you would so that you can apply digital reverb footprints in post for the desired narrative, big hall, plate, phonebox etc.

2. Use a pop shield to avoid the P and B consonants creating a blast of air on the signal, this is kind of essential. You can also turn your head ever so slightly on those words.

3. Use a de-esser to remove sibilance from the signal which can be annoying.

4. Don't waste too much time with the HF as if the signal goes to cassette tape it wont reproduce it very well anyway.

5. Use mild compression on your vocals to control the dynamics and ensure the signal is fairly constant throughout, unless you want the large dynamic range, although cassette has a very low signal to noise ratio, so too large a dynamic will be wasted, you'll have to compress to fit it in.

You may use all or non of the above already, hope they help.
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Recording Studio Suntans