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I need to record a male voice for narration. I want to strengthen the natural "warmness" of the voice. I am not sure what the technical term would be, but I am looking to get a warm, deep voice. Think Samuel L. Jackson. I currently use a condenser mic, of good quality, but it does not add any warmness to the voice. It is very flat.

What is the best way to achieve that? I can think of 2 ways :

1) buy a new mic that would give a warmer voice

2) use effects in my DAW (I use Logic Pro X) to make the voice warmer

My preference would be to go to 2, because then I do not have to go through the trouble of choosing a new mic (without really having the ability to get the speaker to try).

Is it possible to achieve the effect that I want with audio effect, or should I really look to buy a new mic ?

I am currently trying to explore option 2. And I'll admit I am a bit lost. My approach to this has been to try and play with the different effects randomly and hear what I get. I am not even sure I am playing with all the necessary parameters. And I am not sure this approach is correct.

I would be grateful for any advice, but let me try to ask 3 specific questions:

  • Is this the full list of parameters I should play with : compression, eq , squeeze, ambience, reverb, noise gate ? What am I missing ?

  • Is this the right approach?

  • I am willing to learn, but I do not even know where to start... Is there a reasonable tutorial/manual somewhere that I can go through in a couple of hours/days, to learn this ?

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  • Start smoking cigarettes like Mr Leonard Bernstein. No don’t, seriously, but I think you’ll be hired for your voice, not the voice of someone else. You have a fine voice, I am sure of it. Someone in the voice over industry once said, sorry, I can’t remember exactly who said it: “it takes a long time to sound like yourself”.
    – cmp
    Commented May 10, 2020 at 19:15
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    I never tried any of those voice transformers that came out a while back. Were they any good? You were meant to be able to completely change the quality of the voice. Roland? Boss? I can't remember.
    – Old Brixtonian
    Commented May 11, 2020 at 2:12

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Vocal microphones usually exhibit "proximity effect", so as you get closer the sound gets bassier. I think this is the effect you're after.

You may well have to use a pop shield so you can get close to the microphone without the plosive "p" and "b" sounds sticking out too much.

Think about the recording as a performance, and try and centre your voice a bit lower than your natural speaking voice. And think about the pace too.

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