Hello,

I have the following:

- SENNHEISER MKE2-P-C, condenser lavalier microphone, omni directional, with XLR-preamp , black,
- Focusrite ISA One Analog

Do you think that the RODE NTG-3 would be the best bet?

For announcing purposes, you generally want a Uni-directional (cardioid pattern) dynamic microphone or a Large Diaphragm Condenser Uni-directional cardioid microphone. And for good sounding tracks, you'll need some compression and you want some downward expansion to virtually eliminate the room entirely. Most software is capable of doing this. It might take you a little experimentation to get it all right. I've recorded thousands of commercials with hundreds of the best announcers in the US. Processing of the microphone is very important for proper sounding announcer tracks. Without any processing, it will sound, regardless of the quality of the microphone, surprisingly awful. Listening to people speak requires some processing. At least some compression but that raises room noise & gasping breaths of air. Downward expansion or gating, set to the proper threshold just below that of speech, we'll eliminate a lot of roomy sound and asthmatic sounding breaths. And that's a critical ingredient in cutting good commercials, talking books, explanatory examples, etc..

Commercial cutter
Mx. Remy Ann David

Also you can remove the offending ambient sound using a program like Izotope. It is not cheap, but has saved my butt in a couple of occasions, like when the bass player used the club's old DI box which injected a loud BUZZ into the signal... Izotope has a feature that allows you to sample the offending noise and then it subtracts those frequencies which comprise the noise from the signal. In most cases it works with little or no noticeable affect on the remaining audio, but not always. Worth considering, though.

Jeff