Sound Recording Advice

[SketchMichaels]

Hey, I was wondering if anyone had any tips or tricks for recording audio of decent quality. I have a ten dollar Labtec mic that I purchased at WalMart (boo hiss evil empire, I know), and I record in Sound Forge with the computer volume muted. However, it seems that a general complaint with my audio is that it's still of low quality.

Anyway, if anyone has any secrets, or knows if its possible without grabbing a better mic (in which case, can you make a recommendation?), it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Evil-Dog]

Hey there buddy
I think I'm pretty good with sounds and use em well in my movies

Here's some tricks you might already know...

I disable the "mic boost" option in the mic properties in the windows recording properties.
you might wanna speak behind the mic, so there's no "sshhhh" and "PPP" and you can speak louder and closer when the voice comes from behind the mic (behind...from the side...as long as it's not directly into the mic hole)
you can also try to put a sock on the mic :)

Then I use sound forge to equalize the voices, you select a quiet part of the voices and raise the volume bit by bit...with a small gain everytime....like 115% and you use ctrl+y to redo the volume gain...so you try to make every part loud and clear

So good luck dude

[Evil-Dog]

Oh and after a recording without the mic boost, the sound generaly requires an overall volume boost.

peace

[SketchMichaels]

Ah ha... I've got the sock (well, soft foam) on the mic, never played around with the equalizer. Thanks a bunch, much appreciated.

[Supi]

Hey Evil,can you tell me how to make my recorded voice sound like females in SoundForge...or share some other cool effects(how to change speed)...that program is kind of hard...

[schorhr]

Well i know how it works in http://audacity.sf.net
...
Probably similar:

Effects-change speed/change tempo

[Jigganis]

I found this site here http://stickslaughter.com/site/soundfx.php that has all these Flash resources and a flash portal (a rip of NGs)
(Ive reached my 4 topics per hour quota so im just gonna put the link here since its somewhat related lol.)

[schorhr]

err... ok?

[Evil-Dog]

At 8/7/04 10:56 AM, SuPi wrote: Hey Evil,can you tell me how to make my recorded voice sound like females in SoundForge...or share some other cool effects(how to change speed)...that program is kind of hard...

Hey there, ok well to make your voice sound like a woman you can try to pitch it up, but I'm sure it won'T give a perfect result, you're better wih a female voice actor :P
but you can give it a try, maybe by talking higher than usual and more sensually haha then you go in sound forge and do Effects >> Pitch >> Bend... in there you can set the slider on the left to set the intensity of the pitch shifting and you can move the point in the graphic to make your voice shift in any way, so for a female voice you can just click on reset envelope and put the 2 squares a little higher above the middle bar....that will give you a pitched up voice that may sound like a female voice.

For the time stretching it's also very easy (I suggest you try all the effects that are in the menus Effects and Process).
You go in the menu Process >> Time Stretch and then you select the right mode and move the slider to set the final time you want, different mode will give different results, depending on what your sound is, some modes are better.

Good luck :)