Nick, I'd leave this close to as-is, don't compress it any more than already is, unless you've got a good compressor such as the iZotope, WAVES, or similar. You can get the Kjearhus VST plugs for free as well, they've got a good free comp.
it is just a tad bass-heavy, but not enough that it would bother me too much, because you sound like a documentary V/O oriented guy. I can only imagine what the footage looks like, having seen some of your work before. Smooth, and easy. It's also just a tiny bit driven in places, but depending on the footage, it will probably fit right in.

I'd spend some time cleaning up. Pops, breaths, etc shouldn't be there at all.

Not to hijack, but Douglas said, "I'd spend some time cleaning up. Pops, breaths, etc shouldn't be there at all."

How do the pros do this? Try to avoid it in the first place (how?) And/or clean-up manually (or are there automated tools?)

Thanks ahead of time.

Pierre

Douglas knows WAY more about this than I do, but here's a little bit of semi-pro experience: I use Sound Forge to do away with the pops and breaths... very easy to do when they occur "between" spoken phrases, which most of them do. It's not an automatic process, but it's very straightforward.

For "warming up" my voice-overs, my favorite tool is a judicious application of Antares "Tube"... details are here (I have no relationship with the company except as a customer):
http://www.antarestech.com/products/tube.html

And as the last step in my post-production chain, I apply the Waves L1 UltraMaximizer+, using the "broadcast VO" preset.

--Ernie

Every audio guy and wannabees can pick at this because they would have EQ'd it differently, but having run studios since 1966, I'd say that overall it is very good. The S/N is acceptable - sure there are a few extranious sounds that could be minimized. Perhaps a little more mid-bottom but it's much better than poorly or over EQ'd VO's.

Sounds pretty good to me Nick.
I often remove breaths and pops by 'S' splitting in Vegas to remove the breath then a very short fade up to the word.
Similarly with a few prolonged "esses" at the end of words I would split and fade down to shorten the "s" without sounding truncated.

Hi Nick.

Your narration sounds quite good. It's possible that you're being overly-critical of yourself. Everybody hates the sound of their own voice - even quite a few people who make their living doing voice-over.

In my opinion, the mic also sounds pretty good.

What do you consider a "professional" sound? There are literally thousands of different ways to narrate a piece of copy. And there are hundreds of ways to record a narration - all "professional", which give the character of your piece a different "feel". Many people have different ideas as to what a "professional" or "quality" sound is.

So here are my "nit-picks":

To my ear, the audio is a bit "dry" - I don't hear any of the room it was recorded in. I like a little bit of natural reverb in a narration recording -- I'm not talking about echo, used for effect, but rather a bit of early room reflections, to make the recording sound natural. Of course, some rooms sound good, others less so.

I get the feeling you're working the mic a bit too close, which is why your "p"s are popping a bit. I've heard worse in "big-time" Hollywood recordings, so take that for what it's worth.

On my system, it didn't sound "bassy", but that changes from playback system to playback system, and listener to listener.

Cutting out some, but not all, of the breaths is a good way to improve a narration. I used to work with a producer who cut out all the breaths in his productions. His main thing was commercials, however, and I was the enginneer for his first "long form" project. (this was long before I started my voice-over career) After I followed his directions, and removed all the breaths from his project, it was shown to a large audience, where I happened to be present. After a while, I noticed that members of the audience were, from time to time, gasping for air. They were unconsciously "breathing" for the announcer.

If you feel the narration needs more energy, adding a bit of compression will help. But the best way to create more energy is to read with more energy. Energy is not speed or volume, it's enthusiasm.

Adding music helps - if music is chosen carefully, it helps a lot.

Above all, have fun when you narrate.

Travis
www.Announcing.biz (Site may be down temporarily 'cause serving host is in Downtown New Orleans.)

Thanks very much for all the feedback guys, and for the tactful encouragement regarding my performance.

Just to clarify, I didn't put any EQ or compression or anything on those clips. They are just the raw recording.

Travis, I think I may have overdone the padding a bit, despite what you advised previously. I was in a corner of a room with a tiled floor so I hung quilts and towels around the corner to deaden it a bit. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered. Next time I'll try without.

You're right, I may well have been a bit close to the mic. I kind of new that when I was into the recording but I didn't want to start all over again. My voice gets tired and tight quite quickly, and it's a 110-minute production.

I've now put the Kjaerhus Classic Compressor on the track with the vocal preset (threshold -20, ratio 2.5:1, knee "soft", attack 0.5ms, release 0.04sec) and I think it makes me sound a little more "authoritative" if you know what I mean (never mind that I gave up biology at 12 and haven't really got a clue what I'm talking about LOL). Nice software for free, those Kjaerhus plug-ins, thanks for the tip Spot :-)

I'll get to work on the breaths and clicks....

Bearing in mind that the voiceover is now chopped up into a couple of hundred clips, I'm still wondering whether to put the normalize switch on them all. I'm considering putting the normalize switch on but at -1dB leaving me a bit of overhead for the music. I did this with my previous DVD version using voiceover recorded on the cheaper dynamic mic and the result seemed OK. Would it be a good idea to do this and am I right in thinking the normalize would be applied before the compressor?

Thanks again