Recording a great voiceover is a task that can be undertaken for many reasons. You might want to add a commentary to an iMovie video, podcast or iPhoto slideshow, for instance, or perhaps tidy up the audio track to a screencast you’ve produced in a screen capture app. Whatever the end result is destined for, what’s important is the need for crisp, clear, intelligible speech, free of distracting pops, keyboard clicks, computer fan noise and other unwanted sounds. With its built-in stash of professional audio editing plug-ins, Logic thus represents the perfect solution.
To follow this tutorial, first copy the file ‘LPX Voiceover.cst’ from File Silo (www.filesilo.co.uk/icreate-143) to Macintosh HD>Users>Username> Library>Application Support>Logic>Channel Strip Settings>Track.
1 Record a voiceover
Select either your Mac’s built-in microphone, or a microphone connected to a suitable interface, as the input for a new audio track. Then just hit the Record button.
2 Zoom in
Alternatively, drag and drop our demo audio ‘LPX Voiceover.wav’ file from the supplied files into your Timeline. Zoom in vertically to reveal plenty of low-level waveform detail.
3 Load channel strip
If it’s not already on show, open the Inspector pane by clicking its button in the control bar. Click on the Setting slot and load the LPX Voiceover channel strip preset.
4 Enable High Pass filter
You’ll notice that our recording contains quite a lot of excess low frequency, so use the filter to roll off the low end from around 140Hz downwards, as shown.
5 Enable Noise Gate
Enable the Noise Gate by clicking the power button on its slot. Set as shown; this should remove most of the pops, clicks and other unwanted sounds between words.
6 Enable Speech Enhancer
Set the Speech Enhancer’s Denoise threshold at -41dB to mask the background noise during the speech. Uncheck the Voice Enhance box to preserve the start of words.
7 Compress
Finally, enable the Compressor. With its fairly high ratio and makeup gain, this setting will reveal all the voice’s lower volume detail and even out the higher volume peaks.
8 Check it
Play through the track. If any loud problem noises are slipping through the gate, use the Scissors tool to snip them out, then delete them using the Backspace key.
9 Export duty
The Parameters tab in the right corner lets you toggle additional knobs for tailoring how the sample sounds, adding Delay, Attack, Hold, Decay, Sustain and Release times.
