Thanks Billae! I could be overthinking it. Was thinking I should use some compression to make it really stand out against the background music. Would you suggest wavehammer if I want to do that?

I think you are right on the EQ. It sounds a little muddy when I play this back on different TV's. What settings would you use in the paragraphic EQ to help? Bit of a novice on that stuff now.

Best,
Jeff

Hello Jeff,

Well to be frank with you, I don't think that track is very suitable for something as a workout DVD with voiceover. First of all, the pops and rumble in the sound are very annoying, not to mention the background sounds(traffic). The noise (and hiss) is pretty loud and the sound not very steady in volume. Besides that, sometimes the man speaking is, because of his intense movements, less in clarity. The midtones stated before is what I consider in this case a minor priority. Here is what I would do:

Invite the speaker over to your studio and make a new recording in better circumstances and make sure it is synchronized with the movement of the lips (unless his mouth is not shown). Like for example the introduction will be also smoother that way, since he hesitates a while in his words.

OR

If that is not possible, I would say:
Cut out the pops first, then optimize the track with a noisereduction tool or audiorestoration plugin. To get rid of the background sounds, you might want to use a gate, mildly set, with slow action (to prevend big differences in silence and sound too fast and obvious). To make the level of the voice a bit more constant I would indeed use the compressor, to make the sound have a more equal level, rather than for the use of really pumping up the volume. For making the voiceover stand out on the music, I would use what we call in audio bizz, a ducking system. This means that the voice triggers the music to become softer as soon as he speaks. If you don't have that possibility in a (virtual)device, you can draw in the volume of the music tracks, making it softer when the voice is talking and back to the normal volume as soon as he stops for a while his talking. Also be sure that those fades will be not too fast, neither they should be too soft or too loud, the overall volume should stay more or less the same...

And to get back to your EQ settings.
First of all you might want to get rid of the pops in the voice (caused by the proximaty effects) on the plosive sounds: (since they are already there, it is no use giving tips how to prevent it) I would cut them all mainly out if I had no tools for it, or otherwise turn down the lower bands (filter off under approx 100Hz). For clarity, you need to try to filter around 400Hz first to see if you can get rid of the 'boxy'sound. If that does not help (enough) you can add some in the higher regions, from approx 1500 till 5000 Hz or parts from that by using several bands on particular frequencies. For the hiss you could take away the most high frequencies, let's say above 15 kHz or so. The background noise (doors, traffic) that are audible during the talking are the problem that are not going to be solved, therefor I would suggest strongly to use my very first solution, by re-recording the voice (in sync)...

goodluck!