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I get asked quite often 'what kind of mic should I get' or 'I dont get it, how do I start VA-ing'. I don't feel like writing tutorials. There are some great articles out there. Figured I'd collect them here. Anyone wanna add to, link em.

- Beginners guide to microphones
- Recording vocals in a bedroom
- Top 10 affordable home mics

Maglok wrote: I get asked quite often 'what kind of mic should I get' or 'I dont get it, how do I start VA-ing'. I don't feel like writing tutorials. There are some great articles out there. Figured I'd collect them here. Anyone wanna add to, link em.

- Beginners guide to microphones
- Recording vocals in a bedroom
- Top 10 affordable home mics

Wow, never even noticed this thread! These are some good articles for sure. Wish I read these when I started.

Anyway, good plan. Although I do think that people who start asking questions like "How do I voice act?" are either lazy or ignorant. All it takes is a mic and some recording software (Google). It's the next million steps that people should be focusing on.

Maybe we should work on a FAQ as well or something. I think you, me, IskatuMesk, Oracle, Laconius and some others should be able to answer some basic questions about getting into serious amateur voice acting and audio editing. Asking experienced people for tips is the cheapest way to gain knowledge of audio engineering, and it might even be fun for us, too. This way, we can share our endless knowledge of soundwave manipulation.

Krazy wrote: Did you ever consider that when people ask "how do you voice act?" that they might actually mean the thousand steps after the mic purchase?  This "you're lazy if you ask" stuff is bullshit.  Yeah, anyone can make something that sounds like shit, but generally when people ask, "how do I do something" they're really asking "how do I do something *well*".

No, I never considered that. That's because people expect to get great answers when they ask questions that aren't specific. I didn't say "they're lazy if they ask", I said that they're lazy or ignorant if that's *all* they ask -- it generally is.

Krazy wrote: It is the habit of ignorant people to ask questions.

You're still missing the point.

Krazy wrote: All I'm saying is that there's a lot of little things you take advantage of without really thinking about it any more. The post-recording process has so many little tics that far more effort is probably going to be spent in it than the actual mic/recording time.

Hence my idea for an FAQ...

Hey derailage!

I figure some of those tutorials/articles are quite nice and writing our own FAQs is possible, I just don't want to spend the time on it.

If people have questions I have no problem explaining. I believe our dear Laconius has also been schooled by Mesk and me on matters sound.

The main gripe people should 'focus' on imho is that people press buttons and do not understand what they are doing. What does it mean that the waveform hits the top and bottom? I don't hear anything wrong, it can't be that bad (Hint: It is). Also stuff like converting before going into the comp, normalizing, etc. People tend to not know what it means, thus a lot of the problems that pop up they do not understand.