How to EQ Your Dialogue from Start to Finish: Recording Step 3

To capture your voice recording, you already made sure to follow all the tips and tricks to get the clearest dialogue audio possible. Great job!

Now, after the recording process, how do you bring the quality up even higher using an equalizer or EQ?

We've been learning to mold and transform our raw voice recording (like a voice-over for video) into a professional sounding recording using an EQ.

Let's continue from the last several posts in this series - EQ Your Voice Recording from Start to Finish - that covered the first steps to start EQing your recording of spoken word audio.

We already dialed in our low pass and high pass filters and started EQing the upper parts of the frequency to sculpt our voice recording's sound toward a good sounding reference recording.

But how do we tackle the low-mid range and low frequencies?

Cut Before Boost

Firstly, you'll start by cutting in those low-mid and low frequencies, but why do we cut first?

Let's review the general principle of EQing voice recordings from Recording Step 2: cut before boosting for the best results.

Most voice recordings will have areas in their frequency spectrum that are out of balance and need to be reduced or cut to let the good parts of the frequency shine through.

This cutting brings balance to the sound and will actually help your voice recording translate through the speakers and to your listener better! 

Our end goal for recordings of spoken words is a clear and understandable sound rather than an affected sound.

In contrast, a song with sung vocals may include all kinds of effects such as lush reverbs or echoing delays, but not so for dialogue voice recordings.

Dialogue voice recordings need to be able to stand on their own clearly since they don't have the supporting instruments to blend with like vocals in a mix do. 

Down in the Low-Mids

Continuing, let's move down to the low-mid range frequencies (the three white knobs below the blue knobs in the center of the plug-in).

The range of this area goes from 190 Hz up to 2000 Hz. Sonically this covers what could be called the body or the heft of the sound of the voice.

Without a good balance of these lower mid frequencies, your voice audio will have a thin sound and too much can muddy the clarity of the recording.

I did a broad cut to an overbearing lump between 500 and 600 Hz that was causing the sound of my voice recording to be "boxy" and unclear (it obscured the upper end).

Also the lavalier mic I was using in my particular space emphasized more of the lower-mid range but left the top end lacking.

My exact settings are: a -2 dB cut at 520.4 Hz using a wide 0.7 Q bell filter (see image below).

Here is some of the thinking behind these settings:

• -2 dB cut - the voice recording needed to be sculpted in the direction of my reference recording:
• in this case that meant less boxiness to try and emphasize what little upper end there was from the lav mic I was using
• in effect my reduction in the body meant a boost for the upper end, since it allowed them to shine through without the low-mids hiding their sound
• you could also see the lump of low-mids sticking out constantly in the spectrum analyzer
• this helps you to confirm what you hear in comparison to your reference (get your free spectrum analyzer plug-in here)
  
  
• 520 Hz using 0.7 Q bell filter - 520 is the general area of the low-mid lump:
• the wide setting of 0.7 Q allowed the bell-shaped filter to very broadly affect the body of the sound of my voice recording
• the area in question that needed to be reduced is quite broad necessitating the broad Q setting

Straight to the Bottom

Continuing, let's scrape the bottom of the barrel and move to the low range frequencies (the two black knobs at the bottom center of the plug-in) that go from 33 Hz to 370 Hz.

Sonically, the low frequencies contain the weight and usually the fundamental of the voice recording.

The fundamental is the lowest and loudest frequency that our ears will identify as the pitch of the voice recording (or a recording of any instrument that produces a pitch).

Pitch is what lets us identify a frequency on a musical scale.

For our concern, we mainly want to remember that the fundamental of our voice recording acts as a sort of "foundation" for the sound of the recording, so it will probably be prominent to some degree.

Whether you need to reduce it or leave it alone will depend on your specific voice recording and, once again, how it compares to your reference recording.

With that being said, I used a shelving filter to do a gentle cut in the lows to continue to reduce the low end in conjunction with the high pass filter that was already cutting out extreme lows.

The fundamental of my voice was very prominent since my voice is just low in general and I had some proximity effect adding to the boominess of the lows.

Proximity effect is when the lows are boosted from my voice being close to the mic during recording.

My exact settings are: a -1.5 dB cut at 130.2 Hz using the shelving function (see image above).

Here is some of the thinking behind these settings:

• -1.5 dB cut - a gentle cut since I didn't want to lose too much of my low end weight:
• I already had the high pass filter cutting lows and the low-mid cut mentioned above reducing some of the body
• I just wanted a touch more to gently turn down the boominess of the fundamental a bit
  
  
• 130 Hz shelf - in this EQ, the shelves sound very musical and Neve EQs are noted for this quality: 
  
• so, the shelf cut is doing some gentle sculpting in and around the fundamental of my voice to help balance and bring out everything above it

Lo and Behold

Try improving your voice audio for video by using an EQ and following these simple steps for the lower frequencies today!

Remember to focus on removing or reducing with your EQ before doing lots of boosting to unveil the good sounding parts of your voice recording.

Then you can boost to improve any deficient areas (e.g. top end, high-mids etc.).

Next, the low-mids contain the body of your voice recording, so whether you should boost or cut depends on the sound of it.

If thin sounding, then boost; if muffled, then cut (or leave it alone if it sounds balanced compared to your reference).

Finally, the lows will usually contain the foundation of your recording for voice called the fundamental. 

This low frequency can become overbearing with lower voices or from the proximity effect exaggerating the low frequencies.

In those cases a reduction will help balance the overall sound.

Have YOU used these steps on a recent voice-over recording? How did they help?

Cheers, Bryan
Your Dialogue Editing Mentor