How to Set Up Your Recording Space Soundboard for a Deep Voice

Setting up a soundboard — also known as a mixing board or mix console — can be intimidating. There are many settings and knobs, and multiple ports for input and output. Once you include your digital audio workstation, or DAW, into the mix it can feel overwhelming. Thankfully, it’s a much more streamlined process than it appears. Setting up a deep voice soundboard is quick and easy, provided you have the right equipment and don’t mind experimenting with your specific software. 

This article will help you determine what you need so that you can jump right into working on your projects, and with our massive library of royalty-free stock music and sound effects, you’ll be able to create content in no time.

Making Your Recorded Voice Sound Deep

When you think of the host of your favorite podcast or your local radio station, you’ll mostly recall deep, rich voices that draw your attention and pull you in. That’s known as a broadcasting voice, and it used to be standard for broadcasters to try and deepen their voices as much as possible to reach those levels. While it’s now considered more important to have an even, conversational tone, people still strive for the comforting sounds of a deep, rich voice.

Everyone wants to sound good when recording themselves, but people usually have a strange reaction to hearing their voice. Most people don’t like the sound of themselves because there’s a difference in the way we hear ourselves versus the way others hear us and how we sound on recordings. When your vocal cords vibrate, the vibrations travel through the bone and muscle in your head and give a false sense of bass. 

This change in how you perceive your voice can be distracting, irritating, and difficult to look past when listening to the recordings of yourself. Your soundboard and digital audio workspace can help you achieve your goals whether you want to match what you hear in your head, give yourself a deeper voice than you have, or give yourself a deeper voice for some laughs in a chatroom.

It’s Not Just About the Soundboard

Picking the right soundboard is important, but it’s not the only important aspect of creating quality recordings. In addition to a quality soundboard, you will also need:

• A quality microphone tailored to your style.
• Quality pre-amp for condenser microphones to clean your signal before you further alter it
• Quality audio connectors, adapters, and cables to carry the signal from your microphone or instruments through the preamp into the soundboard

Connectors, adapters, and cables might seem like a good place to save a few dollars — it’s not! The quality of the rest of your setup won’t matter if the cables and connectors carrying the signal transmit poor-quality recordings.

Microphones and Accessories for Deep Voice Recording  

Arguably the most important part of recording a deep voice is using a quality microphone. Microphones come in all shapes and sizes, but they can mostly be broken down into two categories: condenser microphones and dynamic microphones. There are also some accessories you’ll want to make sure you have to get the best recordings possible, but let’s start with some microphones perfect for a deep voice.

• AKG C414 XLII condenser microphone is a top-of-the-line mic perfect for capturing a deep booming voice. It produces a classic recording sound focused on voice and produces the clarity you’re looking for when recording lower frequency sounds like a deep voice. It’s also a small-diaphragm mic — this means that it’s great at reproducing sound evenly and cutting out background noise from your recordings. 
• Shure SM78 dynamic microphone is a popular entry-level mic perfect for projects focusing on voice work. It produces clean, natural sound and records rich, smooth low frequencies, which make it a great option for deep vocal work.  

These aren’t the only microphones recommended for recording a deep voice, but they’re great places to start in the condenser and dynamic categories. Once you have a microphone selected, you’ll want to make sure to get a few accessories to make your recording as clean as possible.

• A reflection filter sits behind the mic and stops sound from reflecting off of the walls back into the mic. This important accessory helps reduce the general room noises, most of which have low frequencies. When you’re trying to capture deep, low-frequency vocals, you want to eliminate as much ambient noise as possible. 
• A pop shield reduces the sounds naturally made by your body. Your body makes popping sounds when inhaling and exhaling and everyone makes plosive sounds when speaking s’s, p’s, and b’s in speech. As mentioned before, you’ll want to have as much signal transmitting from your mic as possible to pick up a deep voice, which means the mic will also pick up these popping sounds, and a pop shield is the best way to minimize the amount of editing work you’ll need later.

Soundboards for Deep Voice Recording

There are three kinds of soundboards you’ll likely see when searching for a new audio mixer: 

• Analog Soundboards — These soundboards are commonly used in recording studios. Full of potentiometers and sliders, these soundboards allow you to adjust the signal coming into the soundboard for individual channels. These can be powered or unpowered depending on the output setup and speakers being used.
• Digital Soundboards — Digital soundboards are similar to analog soundboards, except, as the name suggests, they mix audio digitally. They come with more presets, additional fine-tuning options, and more settings to dive into. Though they’re becoming more popular, they more complicated than analog soundboards and come with a steeper learning curve. 
• Downloadable Application Soundboards — These are programs and services you can download online. They let you color and alter your recordings with different styles and preset settings. While not as powerful and robust as an analog or digital soundboard, they offer a better user experience and are easier start-up and are always ready to go. These programs are great for recording and creating funny sound effects and meme soundboards. They also give you access to quick soundbites you can drop into zoom calls, game chats, and live streams.

While analog and digital soundboards are the most widely used, downloadable soundboards are becoming more popular in the today’s digital world.    

Choosing a Deep Voice Soundboard

All of the soundboards listed above are capable of mixing audio and creating the right blend for a deep voice. Ultimately, the deciding factor in choosing the right soundboard will come down to what you want to record and how much is your budget. While you can choose whichever soundboard fits your budget, make sure to pair it with a high-quality microphone and accessories for perfect signal transmission through your soundboard. 

If you’re a streamer, podcaster, or voice actor looking to enhance and modulate your voice, an application soundboard will do almost everything you need. Especially with a selection of music and sound effects readily available, you’ll be all set to start recording. 

If you’re a vocal artist, either solo or part of a band, analog and digital soundboards are more than equipped to handle a deep voice and will provide you with that extra oomph when mixing multiple live audio signals.

If you’re planning to capture vocals only, you can even skip the soundboard and use an audio interface to connect your microphone straight to your computer. If you’re planning to incorporate other live signals into your recording, you would do best getting one of the types of soundboards mentioned above. 

Setting Up a Deep Voice Soundboard 

If you choose to go with an analog or digital soundboard, setting it up should be simple. Follow the instructions provided with your system to get the most out of your soundboard. The input section is made up of separate channels, each with a set of inputs labeled on the front or back of the board and controls on the front of the board. The usual controls you’ll find on a soundboard are:

• Gain — This controls how much sound is allowed through the channel. Turning it up will allow all sound the mic picks up or the instrument creates through to the soundboard. Turning it down will allow only the loudest input through to the soundboard.
• EQ Knobs — EQ knobs allow you to further control the input coming into the soundboard. Usually, there’ll be high, mid, and low knobs, which will control the amount of input allowed to the soundboard for the corresponding frequencies. 
• Auxiliary Knobs — Auxiliary knobs, also known as AUX, send the channel’s sound to output locations and control how much sound may leave the soundboard. 
• Fader — The fader is the sliding knob usually at the bottom of each channel. Think of this as the channel’s volume. This will adjust the output of each channel at the final output location. 

These are the basic components you’ll find on most soundboards and because each soundboard is different and will respond differently depending on what is sent to the input, there aren’t any hard-and-fast rules for these settings. Depending on what you have plugged into the input for a channel, you’ll need to adjust these settings to find a sound that suits you best. For recording deep voices, you may want to experiment with extra gain initially and turn your low-frequency EQ knob further toward its limit. 

DAWs for Deep Voice Recording

The last piece of equipment you’ll need is a DAW. DAWs are powerful programs that convert analog audio from one of the interfaces mentioned above into a digital file that can be processed on a computer. The audio information displays digitally on your screen as sonic waveforms or musical notation and can be manipulated using a DAW software program. A DAW lets you stack multiple tracks — vocal, musical, or both — and cut and paste them similar to words in a document. This allows you to cut, edit, paste, and isolate full tracks or the smallest portions of audio files and organize them as you see fit. 

DAWs can also help with more advanced post-production mastering and editing and offer a wide selection of functionality:

• You can finetune audio effects such as delay, reverb, tremolo, EQ, and compression 
• You can playing virtual instruments using MIDI sequencer keyboards. Specifically, you can replicate the sounds of acoustic instruments like guitar, piano, violin, cello, and drums and then stack them or any other premade effects into your DAW and manipulate them as needed.
• You can create custom fades, panning effects, and other audio processing. 

DAWs are great for editing any audio file, whether it’s a musical track or a three-hour-long podcast. DAWs allow you to eliminate any bits and pieces you don’t want to use as well as enhance the audio quality of your tracks. 

Most DAWs on the market today offer similar benefits and features. Research a few, and pick one that works with your preferred operating system. After you stick with it for some time, you’ll eventually get the hang of it.

Set-Up of a Recording Space With a Deep Voice Soundboard

Now that you have everything you’ll need and a general idea of how to use it to best capture a deep voice, it’s almost time to record. Before you do so, take a moment to make sure your recording space is set up in a way that encourages you to create. If you are familiar with how to set up a video editing desk, setting up an audio recording and editing space would be a piece of cake. If you aren’t familiar with it, no need to worry. 

You’ll want your editing and recording space to feel comfortable and inviting because you’ll be spending a lot of time there. Also, make sure that you follow some of these tips to enhance your experience: 

• Place your microphone towards the corner of the room, but not completely in the corner. Corners generally give the best sound in a room that’s not a recording studio. Think of this as a bigger version of the reflection filter discussed earlier. The corner helps eliminate more of the ambient room noise. 
• Keep furniture that promotes good posture in front of your mic. A stool or hard-backed chair is best for this. Posture is important when speaking or singing into a microphone or when playing an instrument. Good posture allows your voice to relax and makes it easier for you to record a deep voice and cut down on unwanted noise. 
• Organize your wires. Most recording spaces are full of wires and gadgets scattered across the room. Organizing your wires will help you keep track of what should be where and make the room feel more inviting for you to create in. 

If you’re still having a difficult time capturing your voice the way you would like to present it, here are some tips to help give you a deeper voice on the mic: 

• Get closer to the mic. You already have installed a reflection filter and a pop shield, so don’t be afraid to get right on the mic. The closer you are to a microphone, the more bass frequencies the mic will pick up in your voice.
• Warm up your voice. Just like you’d warm up your muscles before a workout, you should warm up your voice before doing any vocal work. 
• Upgrade your microphone. If you have one of the microphones listed earlier or any other high-quality mic, this likely isn’t your problem. If you have a low-quality mic, it may be worth investing in a nice condenser microphone to truly capture the depth of your voice. 
• Experiment with a pitch transposer. Pitch transposers can alter the way your voice sounds on a microphone. These usually come with specialized software that allows you to finetune the way your voice sounds on the mic. They range from extremely nice ones meant to be used with quality microphones to applications that can be downloaded online.

Start Creating Today!

Press record and start capturing your deep voice with crystal clarity! And when your content needs that extra little something, use StockMusic.net‘s great selection of royalty-free music and sound effects to make it perfect.