Increasing the bass
 

Hi

I have some narration that I would like to give a little more 'oomph!' to - it sounds a little weedy at the moment. I know that the person's voice is the key (and I don't have a pre-amp or any expensive sound software just Final Cut) - I'm not expecting to click a button and magically turn the voice into Orson Welles - I just want to up the bass a LITTLE to give it a bit more kick and power. I've been playing a little with the Final Cut audio filters but don't really know what I'm doing. What are the best filters/settings to play with to help with this.

Thanks.

Try rolling off the unwanted frequencies before adding anything.
Does Final Cut have basic EQ? We use Avid so I am not real familiar with Final Cut.

It has a '3 band EQ' filter and a few of the other filters have EQ options in them - and Q...

You can pump the bottom at around 100Hz to give the voice some push. If you have a mid range sound you don't like, you can drop the voice slightly around 500 Hz, and finally, for a little more 'cut' you can boost (just a tiny bit) more around the 1.5-2KHz mark.
Using a compressor will go a long way here. Start compression at 2:1, beginning at -18dB and experiment depending on program material.

These are rough settings/approximate starting points, so tweak away.
You can get a few free AU plugs that will work just fine in FCP if you look around the web a bit. Or download WAVES most recent version in demo form. It works for 2 weeks and then times out.

Thanks Douglas - I'll have a play with some of the settings you mention tonight. Compressor is not one I would have thought of myself - I had no idea what it did... but I'll give that a try too.

Cheers