Black Friday Plugin Essentials for Voice Actors
By Frank Verderosa, Essential Reading from the Archives
If you’re doing the kind of voiceover work where you are the last stop—mixed, mastered, and delivering final-ready audio—this post is for you.
Keep an eye out in early 2026 for a series of classes built around these exact tools, designed specifically for audiobook and long-form narration pros.
A Toolkit Worth Owning to Streamline Your Workflow
From Waves (killer Black Friday pricing right now—seriously good deals)
Each of these is currently $29.99:
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– Voice Rider: Vocal Rider saves you time by riding gain automatically, while preserving the vocal’s full fidelity. Set a target level for the vocal, and Vocal Rider will take care of the rest. It unobtrusively raises or lowers the vocal’s gain to maintain the target level—just as if you were making fast, precise fader moves.
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– Clarity VX: Got great vocal recordings ruined by unwanted background noise—air conditioner, room rumble, rain, traffic, airplane flyovers, background talking, etc.? Solve these issues with Clarity™ Vx, whose advanced Neural Networks (the same engine as in the larger Clarity™ Vx Pro) are trained to recognize vocals, and separate them from noise.
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– L4 Ultramaximizer: Are you hitting that ACX spec? Tame those peaks and set that range limit.
From iZotope: Quick Cleanup from the GOAT
Every year, RX Elements drops to around $29 during holiday sales. It’s currently listed at $99, but expect that price to move—this bundle is almost always discounted.-
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– De-Click: Perfect for fast and efficient mouth noise cleanup.
- – Voice De-Noise plugin. It works really well, but Waves Clarity does a better job for basic issues.
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– De-Clip: Accidentally distorted a work on a perfect take? This makes light work out of fixing it.
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– De-Hum: Did a nearby appliance give you and unwelcome hum? This will get rid of it quick!
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– Repair assistant: A great starting point! It will help identify issues and suggest a place to begin cleaning up.
Once you get your first chapter dialed in, save your settings. Recalling them later will speed up your entire workflow and keep your book sounding consistent from start to finish.
Keep an eye out in early 2026 for small-group classes where we don’t just learn these tools—we actually use them together. You’ll walk away with a solid understanding of what each tool does, when to use it, and—most importantly—how to produce crystal-clear, mastered voice files.♦︎♦︎♦︎
Frank Verderosa is a 34 year veteran of the audio industry. Currently on staff at Digital Arts in NYC, he continues to ply his trade for ad agencies, production companies, most major animation, film studios, and more. Having met early success as a music engineer, Verderosa shifted to the world of post production. In those years, he’s worked for some of the biggest companies in the industry, as well as his own boutique shop. In addition to a full time career, he continues to be a valued resource for the audio and voice over community as a blogger, consultant, teacher, writer, and speaker.
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