I got Matthew's clip on Boromir.
You act well but the recording is pretty terrible...
I'd give you (all) two pieces of advice.
1. Don't record your voice too loud so that the voice breaks down. Adjust the input in a way that the recording levels stay in the middle or little above it. Whatever the recording device it normally goes red when the input volume is too high. If the voice breaks down already in the recording session there's no way to mend it afterwards. One shouldn't record on too low levels either as then all the background noises come to the fore: so try to find the levels just below the "red zone" as it gives the optimal quality of sound.
2. Get away from your computer, as far as is possible - or at least build some kind of a sound-wall between the microphone and the central unit of your PC. It's no problem if you record from far away of the PC and there's some empty track before your recording starts (if you have to move yourselves to the place where you will make the recording after pushing the rec-button) as that can be always cut away. When you record by your computer the humming of the cooler-system of your PC will come through to the recording and it sounds really nasty indeed - like you'd be talking on the deck of an old-fashioned steam-boat
. My friend who's a professional told me there's no solution for that as the pitch of the noise the computer has is low enough to be on the same wavelengths as the speech so cutting those will also cut out important lower tones from the voice.
I'll send a few clips to anyone who sends me their e-mail addresses. There will be two versions of Matthew as Boromir: one where I have tried to downplay the background humming as well as I could and one where I have tried to make his tone as Boromirish I could (which ended up sounding Boromir being on board of a steam-riverboat as heightening the lower frequencies to make the tone more forceful and low ends up also heightening the background humming of the computer...). Then there is one where I play Gimli and it has been done near the computer (and you can hear the humming) and on the other I play Bilbo a few meters away from the PC (and you can't hear the humming any more).
Btw. Those parts I've made myself you should not judge by the acting merits as they are basically just read-throughs with a lots of mistakes as my main focus was on finding the fitting tone to my speech as those characters - both acting-wise and mixing-wise. And I'm in no way trying to steal those characters to myself. I just tried them.
Speaking of audiosoftware once more. You Nerwen should especially listen to
this - and why not the others who have not heard it yet (use headphones if you can). For I just remembered that I do have a Myspace account where there is my version of
the Song of Boromir (a Finnish composition to the local theatrical version of the book which I have arranged myself and turned back to the original lyrics; it's all done in my room eg. I played all the instruments and made the vocals there). From it you can hear what I can do with my sofware; the possibilities and the limits as well - basically the interesting stuff from this point of view is in the end of the song as it's one that grows little by little. But I think we should aim for that kind of sound-quality (and it's an mp3 and not an audio file!).
Just keep on sending me your emails and audio clips! We'll overcome the technical obstacles!