The DMFA Radio Project

[Tezkat]

Have you got any unreleased recordings kicking around?  I believe you had some from Christmas...

Most of my unposted stuff isn't that useful yet. It largely falls under either condenser mic replacements for kill it with fire era recordings or experiments with strips in new arcs. I'm not in the habit of recording entire arcs unless I know we'll be working on them soon. I don't have access to my stash right now, but off the top of my head, it includes:


New recordings and mixes of the flashback to Dan's parents. The angry mob at the inn is a massively multitracked monstrosity that I haven't finished yet, but it should sound awesome once I do.

New recordings of the guys in the bar. I also recorded a few variants on the somewhat awkward phrasing of the demon's lines.

New recordings of the human arc. I should probably edit them together for easier insertion into the old mix.

New Pegasus lines. Well... actually... beside his line from Merlitz's Tale, I just recorded the "Hittin' that kitten" bit. He's only got like three other lines in that scene, however, so I'd likely do those as well before posting them.

Several of the strips from Life is Wonderful. (Seriously, that arc has some of the best Jyrras lines in the whole comic.) A lot of them date back to just before we had a confirmed Abel, and they feature me doing Abel's lines as well as Jyrras's. There were quite a few outtakes of me ad libbing funny banter between the two.

A variety of newer Dr. Ink recordings. It's not a complete set. Given the stage the SAIA sequences are at now, they're probably not that helpful except to hear how my Dr. Ink voice has evolved over the years.

Kid Jyrras stuff. Meh... I'm still not happy with it, but I'm unlikely to improve upon it anytime soon.

Bits and pieces of Dr. Jyrras from the Janus Bond arc.


Um... there's probably other random stuff in there, too. I'll admit... I haven't even started working on those other strips you asked about before Christmas.

[Sienna Maiu - M T]

Are you any good at doing dim-witted?

Only every single day of my life!!! zomg!


Kay, so just to proove I didn't dead -... I mean die... I'm posting this!
Clearly a few lines went through wrong, not too many though -fortunately, so I'm just going to go through and redo those later. For now though... tell me what you think.
The only problem with this is that since I have a cold, it (being my voice) might be slightly different next time.
And yes, incubus so do steal heads. It's not faces at all. I mean seriously, that would be gross.
http://rapidshare.com/files/25697432/All_the_lines_.wav

[Tapewolf]

Thanks, I'll check those out tomorrow!

[Tezkat]

Kay, so just to proove I didn't dead -... I mean die... I'm posting this!
Clearly a few lines went through wrong, not too many though -fortunately, so I'm just going to go through and redo those later. For now though... tell me what you think.
The only problem with this is that since I have a cold, it (being my voice) might be slightly different next time.
And yes, incubus so do steal heads. It's not faces at all. I mean seriously, that would be gross.
http://rapidshare.com/files/25697432/All_the_lines_.wav

Overall, the acting was great.

I loved the first half of page 70, but after you flubbed that line, it sounded like you stopped acting for a bit and were just reading off the page.

You were speaking very quickly. For the most part, I think it worked for the character, but you might want to slow down for some of the more serious parts, like when she's examining Abel (page 73).

It might help to spread out your copy in advance. (A lot of pro VAs like music stands for that purpose.) Or just print it all out on one sheet. Hennya has a lot of dialog in this scene that crosses multiple strips; it sounds a bit unnatural when there's a pause in between while you flip pages (although we can mostly fix that in editing).

The popping was under control this time around, but you unfortunately still have problems with clipping. (Recall that when digital recordings exceed a certain volume level, you lose all the information about those sounds--they can't be recovered.) Please turn down the gain (recording volume) on your mic, and maybe sit a bit farther back from it.

[Sienna Maiu - M T]

Point the first, I'm using a new mic again as the last one died, I did turn it down, but I can certainly put it down further. As for stepping back... I'm currently using a headset, so nyah~
Point the second... I'm really not sure I had a point the second. Obviously I've gone through the lines before, but this was the first chance I got to record, so I'm going to back through as I said, but over-all I rather liked this *shrug* I'll go back through later to see just exactly what you're talking about, but currently it is 6am (friggin whoa!) so that's for later. I'm off to bed.

*mumbles to self* jeez... how did 6am creep-up on me

[Tezkat]

Ah... I suspected a headset from all the breath sounds. Still, aside from the clipping, the recording quality on your new mic is pretty good.


Are you using Audacity (or a similiar program that lets you see the waveforms) to record? Clipping is fairly easy to spot, even without listening to the track.

Here's a portion of your recording being edited in Audacity:



As you can see, the waveform for the first line ("You were mugged by Miss Soulstealer?!") touches the upper/lower edges. That's what clipping looks like. If you listen to it, it sounds very distorted. The second half ("You were killed by Miss Soulstealer?") falls well within the boundaries. That's what you're aiming for.

Your voice does get pretty loud when you're doing the really excited lines. Pick one of the lines in which Hennya is really excited to use for a level test, then adjust the volume on your mic so that the resulting waveform has some room at the upper and lower edges. In general, it's better to err on the side of recordings being too soft. We can easily amplify a soft recording (unless there are serious noise issues), but it's hard to restore a recording that got so loud that it clipped.

[Tapewolf]

As usual, Tezkat has hit the nail on the head.  I'm going to use these for now but cleaner recordings would be very handy.  There was distortion in mine too, but they were only placeholders and I'm not sure I could do that performance again 

[Tapewolf]

Here it is again.  I'm going to burn the old version with fire because it was crap.  This one has Sienna's (overdriven) rendition of Hennya, and a wonderful Gothic version of Abel's Theme.

http://dmfa.it-he.org/dmfa/abel71.wav.mp3

[Sienna Maiu - M T]

Please, if I were actually emphatic enough, I might have actually gotten a role in the school musical.

Well alright then, instead of replacing my old dead dollarstore mic, (that's supposed to sit on top of the comp, but isn't mine to sticky things to) I'll ask my father for a headset like the one I borrowed for this thing ^.^ He did offer after all.
I have the volume down to half, I'll try it all again with .3 later if you'ld like. (aka-I'm planning to as soon as Sienna-ly possible)

[Tapewolf]

Please, if I were actually emphatic enough, I might have actually gotten a role in the school musical.

Heh.  When I said 'overdriven' I was referring to the distortion, not the acting.  My brother and I used to do this to get heavy-metal guitar power-chords out of his acoustic guitar 
Acting-wise I was impressed with most of it except for the bottom pane of page 72 ("thanks for helping me plan" etc...)

I have the volume down to half, I'll try it all again with .3 later if you'ld like. (aka-I'm planning to as soon as Sienna-ly possible)

That would be very nice.  As Tezkat said, some of it is rather rushed... the bits where she's talking about her degree in particular so you might want to slow down there.

Also as he says, if you record with Audacity or something you can see when it's going into overload.

[Sienna Maiu - M T]

Yes, I've noticed before, was just never too sure what to do about it.
I did a couple tests with .3 tonight comparitively with the normal volume using a nicely high-pitched peice of music, I don't think I'll need it to be any quieter, so as soon as I can run through my mistakes and set-up my sheets properly, I'll redo this. Plus the new line ^-^

Heh.  When I said 'overdriven' I was referring to the distortion, not the acting. 

I also considered if you meant that, but someone commented earlier that when I got to the more excited parts it clipped more (I think)

EDIT:
Okay, I lied. I wound-up doing it tonight, I'm not even sure how, but the point is it sucks *dies*
Turns out as I was playing it back I realized this also got recorded at .5. Except no new line, haven't printed it off yet. Or... have I? *shrugs*

[Tapewolf]

Okay, I lied. I wound-up doing it tonight, I'm not even sure how, but the point is it sucks *dies*
Turns out as I was playing it back I realized this also got recorded at .5. Except no new line, haven't printed it off yet. Or... have I? *shrugs*

Thanks.  The volume is about right although it still goes into distortion slightly here and there and there's a bit more popping although I was able to remove some of it.
I can't use the "Tasty Ones" line unfortunately because it fades into the sound of the paper rustling.

Overall the acting is more subdued - I definitely preferred the "Ooh! Ooh! Will there be bacon in them???" line from the previous version, so a more energetic performance of that would be very nice - assuming you can both keep it from overloading and get it to sound excitable

The "wait a minute" line should be stretched out longer like it was before.
If you have time, yet another recording of the entire set would be nice, that would allow me to pick and choose from different takes which is always handy...

[Sienna Maiu - M T]

PAPER!?!?!? nooooo!!! *emo*

yeah, the fact I wasn't even planning to do it could have been a factor on the acting... but of course I'll do another one. In fact, I won't stop till it's perfect!!! Or at the very least until you're satisfied and done with it ^-^

Well, that's for later in any case. *prepares a scalpel and other tools for the dissection*

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Might I make a couple of suggestions?

the "popping" mentioned is also discussed earlier in the thread, and is, IIRC, caused by speaking into the mike when it's too close, to speaking -across- the mike, rather than -over- it, or something.

I'm sure someone will be able to correct me. And probably point to the post where they corrected me last time, too... However, some digging in the earlier thread might pass some suggestions from, I think, Tezkat or Tapewolf, about how best to minimise distortion and other unwanted artefacts...

[superluser]

Might I make a couple of suggestions?

You *may*, though it appears that you can only make one.

the "popping" mentioned is also discussed earlier in the thread, and is, IIRC, caused by speaking into the mike when it's too close, to speaking -across- the mike, rather than -over- it, or something.

Is there anything wrong with using a pop filter?  I highly recommend it for women, since they can buy pantyhose without getting weird looks.

[Tezkat]

Is there anything wrong with using a pop filter?  I highly recommend it for women, since they can buy pantyhose without getting weird looks.

Heh... nobody batted an eyelash when I bought pantyhose for my first pop filter. I even got them in extra large.

I highly recommend that any amateur VA put together a pop filter for recording. The link on that wiki page shows you how to make a cheap one. You can make an even cheaper one which requires absolutely no craftsmanship skills just by pulling the pantyhose over a wire coat hanger.

Unfortunately, that won't work in Sienna's case because she's using a headset mic. Headsets often have problems with popping--one of the reasons they're not ideal for VO work. You can't move the mic very far away from your mouth--rarely enough to make the side miking or finger techniques useable. The only real recourse to reduce popping on a headset mic involves training yourself not to pop your plosives.

Hold your hand up in front of your mouth and say the word "pore". Notice the puff of air hitting your hand. When that hits the mic, it creates the popping sound in the recording. Now try it again with the word "spore". Can you feel the difference? The former P is an aspirated plosive; the latter is not. Try to say "pore" with the P from "spore". With a bit of practice, you can learn to speak all your Ps without aspiration (or at least limit it to the point that mics no longer pick up the extra air).

[superluser]

Heh... nobody batted an eyelash when I bought pantyhose for my first pop filter. I even got them in extra large.

Actually, no one batted an eye when I bought mine, either.  It was when I threw the excess pantyhose into the garbage can, and forgot to take the garbage out before my parents saw it.  (When I used tampons as brushes for an art project, no one batted an eye, either.  I keep the half-full box in my apartment just to mess with my folks' heads whenever they come by)

Unfortunately, that won't work in Sienna's case because she's using a headset mic.

Ah.  May I suggest buying a cheap Radio Shack `professional' microphone?  I think I have the omnidirectional equivalent of this microphone.  It's not the Shure 55 Unidyne, but it sounds OK, and it's only $20.

If you're thinking of doing any serious (not necessarily professional, just more than a few lines here and there) voice work, you're going to have to graduate from a headset mic eventually.  Might as well get one good enough to get you into amateur projects to hold you off for a few years until you have to buy a Neumann for $800.

Try to say "pore" with the P from "spore".

Then try to say the `s' from ``spore'' like the `c' from ``Rocinante.''

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Might I make a couple of suggestions?

You *may*, though it appears that you can only make one.

... what, "try speaking over the mike" and "look earlier in the thread" and "wait for someone to correct me" aren't all valid suggestions?

By my count that's (at least) three. Is there something off in your counting, perhaps? :-]

[Fuyudenki]

I listened to some of "Daniel Ti'Fiona, Warrior for Hire," and a few other clips from the site, and honestly, it reminded me of "The Gamers."  Everyone sounded a bit...bland...weak acting.  No offense intended.

I love both of the new Hennya test dubs!  I agree, though, that the first one is probably better, despite clipping and popping problems.  DMFA's characters all sound over-the-top when my head-voices read them.(when I read or write things, there's always a voice in my head speaking them to me.  I can't read without the voices.)

I would like to say that I would not have made this post if I hadn't had the good to say for the Hennya dubs.

[Sienna Maiu - M T]

I highly recommend it for women, since they can buy pantyhose without getting weird looks.

ch'man, I don't need to go out and buy pantyhose *eyeroll* *snicker*

If you're thinking of doing any serious (not necessarily professional, just more than a few lines here and there) voice work, you're going to have to graduate from a headset mic eventually.  Might as well get one good enough to get you into amateur projects to hold you off for a few years until you have to buy a Neumann for $800.

Dang, and right after I just told my dad to buy me a headset too...

Might I make a couple of suggestions?

You *may*, though it appears that you can only make one.

... what, "try speaking over the mike" and "look earlier in the thread" and "wait for someone to correct me" aren't all valid suggestions?

By my count that's (at least) three. Is there something off in your counting, perhaps? :-]

I agree and the very same thoughts came to my mind as well, although I figured the counting error was based on a group-counting method. I however appreciate your numerous (well okay, numbered) input of suggestions.

I listened to some of "Daniel Ti'Fiona, Warrior for Hire," and a few other clips from the site, and honestly, it reminded me of "The Gamers."  Everyone sounded a bit...bland...weak acting.  No offense intended.

I love both of the new Hennya test dubs!  I agree, though, that the first one is probably better, despite clipping and popping problems.  DMFA's characters all sound over-the-top when my head-voices read them.(when I read or write things, there's always a voice in my head speaking them to me.  I can't read without the voices.)

I would like to say that I would not have made this post if I hadn't had the good to say for the Hennya dubs.

You just made my day!  -err... night, whatever.
but still! *hugs*

I agree though, I also have voices in my head *snicker* each character has their own unique voice.

[Tapewolf]

I listened to some of "Daniel Ti'Fiona, Warrior for Hire," and a few other clips from the site, and honestly, it reminded me of "The Gamers."  Everyone sounded a bit...bland...weak acting.  No offense intended.

I do not understand the reference, but yeah, that one could have been better.  Most of the material in that was very early.  Given the choice I would have rerecorded much of it but I couldn't do an exact match of the DP voice anymore, and various key actors were unavailable at the time.  I was also working to a deadline of the project's first anniversary.

Try 'Recipe for disaster part 4' and some of the SAIA recordings (trapped in saia 2).  That reminds me, I've got to go and bug Blade about Fa'Lina again.  And Marin as well...

Sienna, how close are you to making a third take?  Or are you holding until you've got a fix for the popping issue?

[Fuyudenki]

The Gamers was a DnD spoof movie made by a group calling themselves "Dead Gentlemen productions.  If you've got any RP experience, it's a riot, but the acting is severely underdone, especially in the first 20 or so minutes.

I'm really looking forward to their second movie in the series, "Dorkness rising."  Among other things, the actors seem to have better training("He tripped, and on the way down, he beat himself to death."), the story seems better written, and they got permission from Wizards of the Coast to use official Dungeons and Dragons terminology, so they won't be playing some made-up hack-job of a game, they'll actually be playing Dungeons and Dragons version 3.5, with extra sourcebooks.

Listening to your reccomended samples now.

aaaaaaaaaand done.

While Merlitz never sounded much like Arthur Dent in my mental voices, I have to give mad kudos to whoever's doing his voice.  The tonal attitudes match Amber's writing beautifully.

Dan and Abel's exchanges follow a sine wave in quality.  Sometimes, they're good, sometimes, they're bad.  The overall trend in the "Trapped in SAIA version 2" clip, however, seemed to be that Abel got better as Dan got worse.  Also, we've now got the opposite problem from before in that some of the characters are over-acting.  I'm not a big fan of method acting, but there's something to be said for putting yourself in the mindset of the characters at a given time.(Don't actually be angry, but remember a time when you felt angry, and try to emulate that.)  When I first read the strips, I did not get the general impression of Dan maintaining a teeth-gritting angry tone.

One thing that kinda tends to wierd me out is some of the pronunciations.  I usually pronounce "Cubi" as "kyoo-bee," as opposed to Dan's typical "koo-bai" or the other characters' "kyoo-bai."  I'm also used to hearing/saying "Wildy" as "Will-dee," instead of "while-dee."

and Jyrras just sounds wierd.  Wildy did, too, but her voice kinda grows on you.

I'm still toying with the idea of asking if I can audition for a couple of voices.  Largely trying to decide if I've got the time, or if I want to hold onto the ability to run screaming off into the distance in case the forums here just get too wacky for me, and I decide I liked just reading the comics better.

[Tapewolf]

Listening to your reccomended samples now.
While Merlitz never sounded much like Arthur Dent in my mental voices, I have to give mad kudos to whoever's doing his voice.  The tonal attitudes match Amber's writing beautifully.

That would be me.

Dan and Abel's exchanges follow a sine wave in quality.  Sometimes, they're good, sometimes, they're bad.  The overall trend in the "Trapped in SAIA version 2" clip, however, seemed to be that Abel got better as Dan got worse.  Also, we've now got the opposite problem from before in that some of the characters are over-acting.  I'm not a big fan of method acting, but there's something to be said for putting yourself in the mindset of the characters at a given time.(Don't actually be angry, but remember a time when you felt angry, and try to emulate that.)  When I first read the strips, I did not get the general impression of Dan maintaining a teeth-gritting angry tone.

I think James was actually going through a bad patch when those were recorded.

One thing that kinda tends to wierd me out is some of the pronunciations.  I usually pronounce "Cubi" as "kyoo-bee," as opposed to Dan's typical "koo-bai" or the other characters' "kyoo-bai."  I'm also used to hearing/saying "Wildy" as "Will-dee," instead of "while-dee."

Yeah, it was a problem at first, with different people pronouncing things in different ways, so we standardised.  (Not necessarily correctly, in some cases).  I'm reasonably confident about 'Kyoo-Bye' since it's a contraction of "incubi".  "Warp Aci" is slightly wrong, though.  It should be "ah-see"...

and Jyrras just sounds weird.

That was my initial reaction, I must admit, although it grew on me pretty fast.  This doesn't seem to be the case for everyone though, and has been the source of some contention.

I'm still toying with the idea of asking if I can audition for a couple of voices.  Largely trying to decide if I've got the time, or if I want to hold onto the ability to run screaming off into the distance in case the forums here just get too wacky for me, and I decide I liked just reading the comics better.

Heh.  We are kind of stuffed with male voice actors and I don't really have the heart to kick someone off unless they've gone for good.  I have a feeling we are still kind of stuck for Devin though.

[Aridas]

Actually, I've been trying to find a replacement for the Devin I gave you. turns out he wasn't much of a team player despite how eager he was/pretended to be.

I'm also used to hearing/saying "Wildy" as "Will-dee," instead of "while-dee."

I think we were told on the forum at one point that the latter pronunciation is correct.

[GabrielsThoughts]

you know I actually  pronounce Cubi  Que-bee

[Fuyudenki]

Heh.  We are kind of stuffed with male voice actors and I don't really have the heart to kick someone off unless they've gone for good.  I have a feeling we are still kind of stuck for Devin though.

That makes it easy enough, as I flat-out refuse to use profanity, which would merit a character-breaking re-write of some of Devin's lines.  Just as well, I was about to decide I didn't have the time, anyway.

I think I got my pronunciation for Wildy's name from my brother, who introduced me to the comic.  What Wildy wants is what Wildy gets, even if it makes me cringe at first(like "keltic" vs. "seltic" did).  I've always been a big Wildy fan.

and I think a lot of how I pronounce "Cubi" comes from recently taking some Japanese classes, where the 'I' romanization is pronounced "ee," plus I think the same word is both a gender-neutral singular and a plural, where-as the "aye" sound generally denotes plurality(I do say "suck-you-bye" and "ink-you-bye").  Good to know I was at least pronouncing "Warp-aci" correctly.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

If you're still stuck, TW, I'll give Devin a go, if you want.

[Aridas]

you know I actually  pronounce Cubi  Que-bee

do you also say octo-pee and vy-ree?

[GabrielsThoughts]

no I use Octi-pie, I use Que-bee because I'm half Latino so many vowels to unknown words in my brain translate into  Ah, ay, ee, oh, oo, sounds as easily as  a, e, i, o,  u.


I still think of warp-aci as as warp Ace-see despite Ambers disputed Ay-shee pronunciation, because of Aci's close resemblance to  the word Ace.

[Aridas]

it's still supposed to be bye, not bee. If you say bee, you're just lying to yourself. i don't see you saying in-que-bee or suck-que-bee (yet) >.>