[3rd&4thT]

Hi,

For voiceovers, the gold standard is the U87. It cuts well on the air and makes almost everybody sound good. The 416 and the SM7B are more specialty mics, good for some, awful for others. Even fewer talent sound good on a 414 or a 103, and nobody sounds good on an RE20. The only advantage of the last is that it does really well at losing a bad room, so it can be useful.

Your preamp should complement the mic, but if you get a fast mic and a fast preamp, you may wind up with more mouth clicks, saliva bubbles, etc. You're not recording jangling keys here.

A lot of people are crazy about the Waves Ren series of plugins. But if you're putting a tube mic through a colored preamp, the last thing you need is added artificial distortion. You're not stuck with the Waves Ren DeEsser; the regular Waves DeEsser can be preferable, depending. Or if you have no money, fool around with the Tonmann DeEsser.

One really great plugin that a lot of people don't know about is the Waves DeBreath. This one works like a charm, properly set is totally inaudible, and will save you hours of inhale removals. If you're going to record longform with less than gold standard talent, it's worth every penny.

A limiter during tracking is a great idea. Even pro's used to ironing out their own dynamics can surprise themselves, and you wind up losing a good take.

For plugins, as bad as the L2 is, the L1 is worse - it's gritty, so avoid it. You'll do better with the Voxengo Elephant. If your room is bad, set the release as long as you can without artifacts.

Do not use multiband compression for broadcast material - the station probably uses their own in the transmission chain, and one MB on top of another can produce very strange VO effects.

Cheers,
3rd&4thT