Recommend a Beginners MAC voice-over set up

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

A retired friend of mine studied communications at the college level years ago, and "dabbled" some in radio back then. Today he told me he would like to set up an elementary voice-over recording system and asked for some suggestions and guidance. If he were a PC oriented guy, I would have him operational in a couple of days.

He is a MAC guy!!! Help me. I want to steer him to some software that would allow him to do the kind of editing I do with Adobe Audition. What works on the MAC?

We for years have been told that on PCs to go with an EXTERNAL card lest your sound get infected with all the radio-frequency noise and trip that floats around inside the case of the PC. I have had acceptable results by using an M-Audio pro-sumer grade card like the 24/96 Audiophile which is internal. But in the last few years even the on-the-mother-board built-in PC sound cards seem to work well enough for someone just learning how it all goes together. Give me some MAC advice: Are the built-in MAC sound devices adequate? How do you know when you have outgrown the built-in on a MAC, and what becomes the non-MAC sound attachment-of-choice?

He has done enough reading to know about room acoustics and some of the schemes people use to isolate a mic from bad room acoustics. This ought to be fun watching someone else bang their head against the wall for a while. In return for all all the help and advice, here is what I expect from him: He can come over here and help me repair all the damage to my walls.... all those nasty head-shaped dents!!!

 

[RadioMan203]

Adobe recently rolled out Audition 4 for the Mac which can be had separate from the CS 5.5 bundle. Mind you, if your friend has experience with the Windows version Adobe has either replaced or dropped functionality from Audition which was outlined on this Adobe page.

Depending on the budget, M-Audio makes some good audio interfaces for the Mac. I've used their USB interfaces and have had good luck with them. I've also used their sound cards as well but I believe most Macs don't have any onboard slots for anything internal.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Bill: thank you for the link to the web page outlining the changes. I had read a forum post by someone associated with Adobe in which it was suggested that the CS5.5 version came to market before it the programmers had time to complete work on all the normal features. This link makes it sound like they don't intend to implement some of the past features unless there is evidence from those of us who are users that we jolly well expect this or that feature to be retained!

I'm trying to get my friend "operational" so he can dink around and then come back to me with questions like: "How can I do this? Is there a way to do this?" Oh, If I had know THAT is what you wanted to do, I would have recommended this instead. (I'm talking both hardware and software.)

For that reason I would prefer to start him out with software that sells for less money than CS5.5 until he knows he is serious about some particular facet and direction of voice recording and production.

My un-educated guess is that for his beginner status the on-board standard Apple sound hardware will be adequate. What I am hoping for is some advice from you and others about the available inputs. Will a MAC have a single input or will there we a mic-level and a line-level in? How forgiving will the input be about out-ofrange levels or the need for transformer isolation? (I know from experience that on the PC there are no firm answers to such questions! Depending on the sound hardware of choice, you become a "test pilot" on starting day. ;D )

 

[whit979]

I've been using a simple setup on my MacBook Pro for the past few months. I've got an Audio Technica AT2020 USB mic plugged straight into the MacBook's USB port, doing recording and editing in GarageBand. While this works fine for the college station and the small-market country station I help, it wouldn't be enough for anything on a more professional level. I tried out Audition for the Mac while it was still in beta and found that GarageBand actually provided a better overall sound. Audition (at the time) was a little inconsistent in the overall sound it was producing, though the controls were pretty much the same as the Windows version.

 

[RadioMan203]

Bill: thank you for the link to the web page outlining the changes. I had read a forum post by someone associated with Adobe in which it was suggested that the CS5.5 version came to market before it the programmers had time to complete work on all the normal features. This link makes it sound like they don't intend to implement some of the past features unless there is evidence from those of us who are users that we jolly well expect this or that feature to be retained!

I had heard the same thing and not long afterwards I heard that Adobe tends to cater the Audition features toward the "audio for video" crowd and not toward the radio audio folks. I know that I purchased Adobe Soundbooth, which was first hyped as "Audition for the Macintosh" - it was the biggest turd on toast I've ever seen out of Adobe. They should have been ashamed of putting out such garbage! Now that they have a version of Audition for the Mac, albeit a half-hearted attempt, they offer a discount to suckers like myself who purchased SoundBooth.

I wouldn't have cared if Adobe delayed the Mac version for 6 months if it had all the functionality I would expect out of it! I still used Audition 1.5 as I can't stand the interface of the newer versions. Now they come out with newer versions with less features? Is this progress?

Of course another way around things is your colleague could get a copy of Windows and use the Boot Camp utility to run Windows and an older version of Audition. Intel-based Macs will run Windows without a hitch - in fact I do this for a couple of programs that are only available for Windows.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Of course another way around things is your colleague could get a copy of Windows and use the Boot Camp utility to run Windows and an older version of Audition. Intel-based Macs will run Windows without a hitch - in fact I do this for a couple of programs that are only available for Windows.

My friend is retired and I would guess financially comfortable. He is looking to do things that are fun, maybe useful. As a sideline, he built, sold and serviced PCs for 25 years. Now that he gets to decide how the drummer beats the drum he has taken on the Apple world as a fun place to be. iPhone. iPad.

If he were to get involved in recording and doing something that became a productive business and to get the production he needed for the business to work, then he might regress to his old PC ways for this venture. But for now it is fun. I don't know if he wants to record things for his grandchildren, reading services for the blind, or what. I think he does some mentoring and tutoring for disadvantaged children. (He convinced me HE doesn't know yet!) So for now, I'm going to help him conquer sound via the MAC. It would be a big failure of the "macho mechanism" to admit we can't get it done via the MAC.

I heard that Adobe tends to cater the Audition features toward the "audio for video" crowd and not toward the radio audio folks. I know that I purchased Adobe Soundbooth, which was first hyped as "Audition for the Macintosh" - it was the biggest turd on toast I've ever seen out of Adobe. They should have been ashamed of putting out such garbage! Now that they have a version of Audition for the Mac, albeit a half-hearted attempt, they offer a discount to suckers like myself who purchased SoundBooth.

Adobe, Microsoft, Intuit and others are looking for BIG VOLUME products. If they came out with a product and every radio person in America bought a copy, it would probably be a loser for them. Not enough volume. And it is obvious to me from various posts here in the forums radio people do not come anywhere close to agreeing on what would be the desired features of an audio editing program.

Abourt this time last year I came face to face with a fact. I volunteered to do sound mixing and production at our church Vacation Bible School for children. When I showed up for the rehearsal/preparation meeting, they said to me: "And here is what you need to do with the video."

Excuse me. I don't do video. I'm strictly an audio guy.

That's the day I decided it was time to learn video. Based on the advice of another friend of mine who is a video nut, I bought Pinnacle Studio. I found it very frustrating to learn. No magazine articles. No books in the bookstore. So I bought ADOBE Premiere Elements. Good tutorials! More books at Barnes and Noble than I could every afford or find time to read. I did spend as much or more on books as I did the software. Once I got the hang of A-P-E, I went back to Pinnacle for awhile and it made sense and I could work it also. What all of this taught me was that video is a MONSTER market while audio is a PIP-SQUEAK market in comparison. Next time you are in a big book store, look at how many photography and video books there are. Then go looking to see if they have ANY books on audio. In five years of looking I have found one half-baked book on Adobe Audition!

Both Pinnacle and Permiere Elements have audio editing built in. Sort of. It is about as muscular as some audio program you would buy for $29.95. The good news is that my Adobe Audition will swallow a video, deliver the audio into my hands, let me do ROBUST audio editing and/or replacement, stick it back into the video and export. You can't change the video in Audition... but who wants to!!!

The guys who are really good and serious about audio are creating the high-dollar programs that multi-track recording studios want. Adobe Audition has been one of the few mid-range audio programs in the market place. Affordable, yet capable. I hope it survives. It has features a nuts-and-bolts guy like me values.

 

[bobbybooey]

Never used it, but I have heard rave reviews from many v-o people about Twisted Wave: http://twistedwave.com/

Looks like it's got all the functions you'd need to record and edit a stereo track, plus plug-ins, it's Mac-only, and it's only $80. I would imagine if he was doing multi-track assembly, he could record/edit/process a good amount with Twisted Wave and then import into Garage Band to add whatever music and sfx.

 

[RadioMan203]

If he's looking for a fairly decent two-track editor on the cheap he can always try Audacity, which is free, too.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

If he's looking for a fairly decent two-track editor on the cheap he can always try Audacity, which is free, too.

That is probably the first philosophical discussion he and I will work our way through. What kind of editing, if any, does he plan to do, need to do. If I had to do the kind of audio editing I do, and all that was made available to me was Audacity, I would throw up my hands and quit. I have another friend who uses Audacity and is quite happy with it. If I gave him some raw audio, told him I wanted him to "fluff it up" the way I normally do while I was unavailable, he would throw up his hands and quit. The tool must match the task. The friend I am working with now must decide what his task is.

The second philosopical discussion he and I will work out is where his recordings will happen. If the only thing he will be recording is his own voice in his little home studio, then the USB mic like the AT2020 or the Sampson will be the simple, trouble-ree way to go. But, if he is going to inflict pain on himself like i do,... going out and recording on site to capture lectures, pipe organ concerts, etc., then he is going to need a traditional mic with a traditional XLR cable plugged into some kind of mixer that provides phantom power.

(Trust me, if you go to a big cathedral style church and put a microphone 12 feet in the air right up front-and-center and then leave your laptop dangling about halfway down the mast at the end of a five foot USB cable, the Decor Police will be in your face rather quickly.) ;D

When my friend approached me for help, I interpreted his request as being for the philosophical advice on his alternatives. I think he wants to have the fun of wading through the learning swamp on his own when it comes to picking specific hardware and software.

 

[VODood]

For what it's worth VO Beau Weaver raves about Twisted Wave (he's a Mac user and hates Pro Tools".

 

[RadioMan203]

I've heard people rave and brag about ProTools but I just never warmed up to it. I had played with the TwistWave demo and while I found it OK it didn't thrill me all that much.

I had been using a program called Amadeus Pro and it's fairly versatile for the price ($59). I've been using the 1.x version and have decided to put off updating to 2.0 since I was part of the Adobe Audition beta program and can upgrade from my pig program SoundBooth (Adobe did a crap job on that) for $99. At least it will give me a reason to learn the newer interface since I've been dead set against upgrading form the old 1.5 version that I feel quite comfortable with.

 

[petsy]

I don't believe in buying cheap(er) gear and upgrading. It's a waste of money. A person is better off buying good pro gear and selling it with little or no loss if he grows tired of recording. That's one of the main advantages of real pro gear, it holds its value very well over time. My go-to setup would be a Safe Sound P1 into a decent soundcard (there are many but Henry Engineering makes a good one) and then a good mic in front of that. Maybe a Neumann TLM102.