Sound booth: a new approach

Some audio professional friends of mine had an opinion on the garbage voice overs i had produced so far.

First off, the previous voiceovers were successful practice reads but still lacked energy -- I recorded them at 10 pm and I was wearing down. And although I'm able to employ the mechanics and workflow of the recording and editing process in Adobe Audition, still, technique and filtering, up to this point, had been completely absent. 

Of course I had a million questions about what the million buttons do in Audition. I'm seeing lots of filters. Surely I need to use them. So my question is, what are the few essential filters all pros run on nearly every sound file they process? Let's go ask Tom the pro. Tom has built his own sound studio in his home. He's got to have a good approach. 

TOM'S ADVICE

1. High pass filter - generally speaking, this eliminates hum -- all frequencies below 120 Hz, (These first three steps are accomplished at the same time within an Audition dialog box.)

2. Low pass filter - generally speaking, this eliminates hiss -- all frequencies above 5,000 Hz

3. Boost bass vocal qualities to add richness by boosting the sound curve in the midrange area. Audition gives you  control over the width of that midrange focus area. 

4. Compression filter - this essentially increases volume in the low volume areas of the voice and decreases high volume areas to give a more consistent overall voice volume. This is NOT the same as an EQ adjustment where you boost midrange. 

What's sound advice without a little variation? Glenn the Pro has been a sound guy for a thousand years. How does he do it?

GLENN'S ADVICE

1. High pass filter

2. Normalize filter -

3. EQ adjustment 

4. Other filters depending on the condition of the audio. 

I let Glenn listen to an excerpt of my  recording. He asked me why I was hand holding the mic--he could hear it when I turned off the music bed layer. He said as he looked at me, "what is that? Is that a hand on the mic?" 

I'm like, "well, uh I don't have a mic stand yet."

He said, "pawn shop, $10."

Another thing that could improve the acoustics is a U-Haul moving blanket draped behind the microphone. It could eliminate echo and improve acoustics.