First, welcome to RO. Good folks here who will be able to help you... but I'm sorry for jumpin in here like this... but I gotta ask...

Can you possibly ask anymore vague of a question?

I know you probably think it's legit, but here's what you've essentially asked;

"I need to buy a car, and I want to go somewhere... what should I buy?"

Lemme ask you a couple of questions in return...

What kind of vocals - male, female, teen, child?
What kind of products?
What's the producer asking for, or given you for guidance?
Any input from the client?
What kind of session - tape, live-onair, location, studio?
What kind of gear do you have?
Do you have a script?
Do you have a budget?
Do you have a deadline?
Are you a student asking for someone to do your homework for you?

Kinda' need a bit of relevant info before anyone can really give you any solid advice.

Thanks for welcoming me :-)
Well you're right my generic question could have a few more informations.

I have to produce a radiospot for a cosmetic salon. Vocaltype is female and I like to know how to improve the characteristics of the vocals and if there are a few recommendations for VST/AU Plugins.
I do not need a full featured HowTo but I am asking for Best Practices to get a real cool sound for my radiospot.

Thanks
Christian

We still don't know what platform you are using. Here in the States, I know that a program called Cool Edit Pro is used for many spots. At least it was when I did VO's and it was highly recommended by a bigtime VO artist who did national ad campaigns for Black Flag, Ford, etc.
Do You have a properly treated room and a decent mic for this job? That will make a BIG difference in how the talent comes across.

As always, Max and Moon are right on the money. Who, what, where, when, how and why are all very important questions.

I think the OP is looking for an effect that will help him achieve a 'really good sound'.

There are lots of them, but they all make different 'really good sounds', and of course every one of them can make different 'really bad sounds'.

As for a 'really cool sound', are you talking about a sound you've heard before that in your opinion was really cool? Got an example?

(-Please, please, please, I beg of you, don't let it be Autotune...)

moonbaby wrote: We still don't know what platform you are using. Here in the States, I know that a program called Cool Edit Pro is used for many spots. At least it was when I did VO's and it was highly recommended by a bigtime VO artist who did national ad campaigns for Black Flag, Ford, etc.
Do You have a properly treated room and a decent mic for this job? That will make a BIG difference in how the talent comes across.

We have a full blown up recording studio with studio mics, MACs and Logic 8/9 and I've played around with different vocal types and AU settings in Logic. Used High Compression, DeEsser, spezail ChanEQ's etc.
Since this is the first time I have to record talking voices (so no singing !)
I need compare my recordings with others to get train my ears.
I really thought there were any guys which did the job before to share some practice experiences.

Thanks for your help
Christian

Christian,

Here's the skinny....

Just as picky and anal as most people get about music for entertainment... in this industry, it's about 10x worse for commercial stuff... ESPECIALLY spoken word.

I've got a bit of spoken word experience... but not much. However, I can tell you this much, you should take far more care to get a product that the client will be happy with.

Why?

Glad you asked!

Because nothing will loose a client any faster than not doing your best.

There aren't too many things that you can do to cover up mistakes in spoken word/dialogue recording. Sure, you can move stuff around and all that, but that's just editing.

You have to get it good going in. How can you expect to get a good end product if you haven't done your homework to prepare for the session?

I've got a studio FULL of gear, and if I haven't got an idea what a client wants, it does me little good to have all of it just sitting there.

You've got to have input from someone on the client side. THAT is what is going to dictate what you do.

I mean... you're doing a radio spot for a cosmetic salon... and????

Are they doing something high energy like a used car sales ad... a la' big boomy VOG, or is it nice soft spring garden appeal to the female senses of warmth and comfort of a relaxing atmosphere? Something in between?

All of this will dictate what you'll do for the end product... comps, gates, verbs, delays, etc... are all subjective to a greater extent, but you probably wouldn't use a tape saturation and 3.5 second delay plug-in for a string quartet and a lightly whispered female voice.

That's why I asked about the producer and/or clients input...

Then there's also the standard atmosphere work from a soundstage perspective... are you doing foley, soundscape or ??? What about the background music... if any...

You need to kinda' break this down into a bit more detail before you're gonna get much of anything more than the general answers to your general questions... make sense?