How Do You Get Those Crispy Clear Vocals?

When you say room sound, are you talking about "room noise" (like rumble/hiss from HVAC, traffic, computer fan, etc.) or the room's reverb/echo characteristics (this includes comb filtering which causes your voice to sound thin, boomy, phasey, etc.)? In either case, I would avoid your steps 4 and 5 - especially for audio book narration, there should be no need for any compression or de-essing; those problems should be dealt with via mic placement and manual volume automation.

For room noise - the best thing you can do is try to turn off anything noisy while recording. The second best is to use a plugin like iZotope RX to remove noise (expensive). After that, the best you can do is hope that you can use low-pass/high-pass filters to reduce noise without doing too much damage to the voice.

If you're talking about the room's reverberant characteristics, then the best/only solution (especially if you will be recording a lot of dialogue) is to invest in some room treatment. I've never used those reflection filters, but I'm skeptical about how useful they are for the price. You're paying $100-$300 to add a couple square feet of very thin absorptive material to... the back of the microphone, which already doesn't pick up that much sound. I built my own acoustic panels and came away with six 16"x48"x6" panels for about $100. Even if you just build a few of these, you can place them behind your head when you record your vocals, which will do a lot more to reduce reflections than one of those reflection filters. Even better would be to mount these on the walls and ceilings, so that you don't have reflection problems in the first place.

/r/ableton Thread