VO Recording: In Praise of Presets – Tuesday Tech Tip

The ability to save Effect Presets is a core function in any recording workflow. Understanding how these Presets work can be a bit non-obvious, and many voice actors don’t take the time to use them. With a few quick steps, you can refine your VO recording steps and make Effect Presets a useful tool.

I fell in love with Presets very early on. Way back when I first wandered into a computer music class, the Advanced Lab was off-limits to anyone who hadn’t spent time in the modular Moog synthesizer room. The instructor felt that students needed to develop a clear sense of what tone oscillators were, how those could be modified through filtering or other tools, and how all of that combined to create distinct acoustic timbres. That led to long hours connecting physical patch cords between modules and gingerly tweaking aging dials and knobs. It also meant that when you had crafted that unique sound, you absolutely needed to be get it recorded. Given the age and temperament of the instrument, it was reasonably difficult to make stuff sound exactly the same way twice.

The advanced studio synthesizers had memory banks. Which meant after you had painstakingly developed an engaging sonic texture, you could lock it into a programmable preset and actually get back to that exact sound when you needed it. It was a glorious improvement.

I realize that seems simple these days. Even though it’s all around us in every device we use, I’m surprised more voice actors don’t embrace that technology in their recording workflow.

Often, when working with a client to refine studio workflow, I find they are deeply concerned that we might change something and not be able to get back to the earlier settings. Most of the time, a quick check shows that they have not saved necessary settings as a Preset.

Presets should be your best friends

Presets let you lock down the multitude of numbers and settings which control any Effect you apply to your audio. This may not matter too much if you are only using the Apple AU High Pass filter (shown below), since it has only two settings. It’s easy enough to nudge the inflection point of the filter back to 80 Hz or where ever you might find it helpful.

However, with a more complex EQ tool, you have to set the frequency point, the width of the filter (the “Q”), the strength of the filter and more. In the example below, you might have 5 or more individual points, with all that information for each one.

Many VO’s I work with never experiment with their Effects because they aren’t quite sure how to get back to where they started. (I will admit that is a healthy attitude – you always need to know how to backtrack to where you started).

Twisted Wave supports Presets in a consistent manner (most other recording software should as well). One of the really nice Twisted Wave features is the easy access it provides through the “Manage presets…” option. This gives you immediate access to the folder where these Presets are stored, you can easily delete, duplicate or rename them for each individual Effect. For this reason, I strongly encourage you to “Save” any Effect Preset whenever you think you have something useable. It’s very easy to get rid of the “extras” later.

You can also use Keyboard Shortcuts in Twisted Wave and other recording apps to speed up your workflow.

How To Save an Effect Preset – The Basics

• Simply click on the drop-down menu that says “Save preset…”
• Give it an easy-to-remember name. I’ll often include numbers with the values for settings as a quick reminder.
• If I’m not sure I’m going to keep the Preset, I might add the date or a version number to keep things straight. I can later delete or rename the ones I’m not going to keep.

Presets: The Long Game

Using Presets also simplifies more automated tasks later on. If you are creating “Stacks” or “Macros” to apply multiple Effects, then having a solid Preset lets you specify that more quickly. I’ll spend more time dialing in the Effect Preset so I can spend less time when building a Stack or Batch.

If you have never used Presets, I’d recommend you give it a try. Any tool that you use frequently will benefit from having key settings easily accessible. For example, my Izotope Mouth Declick tool has “De Clack”, “De Cluck”, and “Too Much Coffee” settings – all of which were refinements on my “Basic DeClick” Preset. Those quick menu options save me from manually dialing in the set of little tweaks which make all the difference in the effectiveness of that useful Effect.

Note – Presets are stored differently within each recording software application. That means that if you use the same Effects on two different recording software systems, you may need to manually duplicate preferred settings so they are the same on each.

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