Do your eyes start to roll back in your head when you start thinking of what to do about voice over software? You are not alone! Lots of actors are actors first, and engineers…
Well, they are definitely not engineers first!
There is so much that you can do with recording software today, and as a voice actor, you need to use about 1% of that. When you’re doing a music or film production, there are a TON of variables, and those advanced features in Pro Tools sure do come in handy.
When you’re recording just one voice however, all those variables will vary you into a confused apathy! I don’t need to spit out technical jargon here to show you that there is enough of that in any software to make you want to leave it all alone. I’m sure you’ve looked at the back of a box, or read a bit from a manufacturer’s website, or even had a friend try to explain software to you, and you went completely blank!
For voice over you don’t need to worry about 99% of that nonsense!
Most voice actors are doing auditions & not full productions at home. For that here are the 3 things your software does for you:
- Allows you to record your voice
- Lets you edit (delete parts you don’t want or combine the parts you do want)
- Convert it into an.MP3 to send to your agent
Just about any software will do that. In fact, your computer most likely even came with some. If not you can grab some for free, just look for a program called Audacity online and that will work fantastically for VO.
Myth: More expensive software sounds better.
Mythbust: Not true. The quality of your recording is determined by your microphone and interface. The software is just letting you do things with it once it’s already recorded.
Myth: You need lots of plugins to make your voice sound good.
Mythbust: Who are you kidding? You’re voice sounds GREAT! Seriously, that is why people hire you. Furthermore, if you process your voice with lots of plugins there are 2 terrible things that can happen. One: you can screw it up and make your voice sound BAD. Two: when the engineer gets it on the other side, there isn’t much more they can do with it. Once it’s been processed and sent to them, they can’t un-process it if you did something to the sound they need to change.
Let me ask you something: When you don’t know how to use or are confused about something do you go and use it to it’s fullest?
Of course not. You back off from it. Maybe you «don’t want to break» it or maybe you’re «busy» today. But the fact is if you’re afraid of it in any way, you’re not going to dive right in and attack it.
So my recommendation to you is, when you’re looking for voice over software, don’t fuss over whizbangs and features, go for what’s simple, go for what works, go for what you’ll use.