Raw Voice Over Samples

My job as an American voice over actor has two primary objectives. First, it is to deliver the performance my clients need. The second job, is to deliver raw voice over audio files to my clients that are as clean as possible to start. This gives producers and studios the dynamic range and headroom to process them as they like. I only process audio slightly for some long-term corporate and eLearning clients that told me they do not process on their own. You can read about my processing for eLearning voice overs here. Otherwise, I leave the compression, EQ, etc. to the engineers to make it fit their own sound design.

Below we have raw voice over samples of my voice recorded using my RODE NTG3 short shotgun supercardioid microphone.
It has the same specs as the Sennheiser MKH 416 in terms of frequency range, self noise, output impedance, and Maximum Sound Pressure Level.
It has a fuller low end than the MKH 416 but the same sounding top end. The NTG3 is powered by a Yamaha mixer and then sent line-in to a MOTU M2 audio interface. In fact, in the Raw Audio Sample I am saying the last four sentences!

There is no processing whatsoever on the raw voice over recorded sample. No High Pass Filter or EQ on the mixer, and no processing done in my DAW. The resulting file has peaks just over -3 dB and a noise floor of -68 dB. It is a 44.1 kHz 16 bit .wav file.

In this raw voice over sample I modulate my voice between different levels of loudness and pitch so that you can hear the acoustics of my voiceover studio. It’s not just about having raw voiceover samples with a clean signal chain, and a quiet room, but also about having a treated room without far reflections. Another consideration is early reflection points, which unfortunately are a big problem in booths and small recording spaces. My recording area is quite roomy but well treated with bass traps and acoustic panels by GIK Acoustics based here in Atlanta. There are also extra dense sound blankets from Vocal Booths to Go. It gives my voice overs a nice open but controlled sound as opposed to the boxy muddy sound that comes from sound booths.

The second version of the voice over sample below is the same audio as the first raw voice over sample processed with an 80 Hz High Pass Filter at 12 dB per octave engaged. There is further EQ and compression using plugins from Tokyo Dawn Labs. Finally, there is slight noise reduction from iZotope RX9 as shown above. It is a 44.1 kHz 16 bit .wav file.