General Voicepack Tips

Voice Pack Design Tips

Make the clips short. Five seconds should be the max for most clips. Longer ones should be rare, but still no more than ten seconds. In general, the short, the better.
Try to show personality through the words chosen. “Attack!” may convey the message, but “It’s curtains for you!” is more interesting and tells you something about the character.
Don’t go too crazy with the number of clips. Too many clips, and most of them will never be heard, and you’ll severely bloat the download size.

Don’t Get too close to the microphone. Keep at least a couple of inches away. The closer you are to the mic, the more distortions will be recorded.
Put the microphone slightly below your mouth. This will reduce distortions often heard during consonants forms by puffs of air. (such as s or p)
Make sure you speak as loudly as possible. Fill the room with sound. It’s a lot easier to lower the volume later on than to try to artificially raise it.
Be aware of backround noises and eliminate as many as possible. Noise removers are nice, but they add a metallic sound if used too much.
Audacity is a great free program for recording and editing sound clips. There are other good freeware programs out there as well, so use what you feel comfortable with.

When you have to use the noise reducer, use it on the lowest setting needed to remove the noise. Watch an area with no speech. When it’s mostly or completely flat, you used enough noise reduction.
Try to make your editing settings exactly the same for all clips for the same character. Write the settings you need down if you have to.
Look at pauses and spaces. Try to eliminate as much as possible. Most pauses can be drastically reduced or even eliminated without ever being missed. Doing so reduces the file size and makes the clips more interesting to listen to.