Weekend Extra: Lists – The Gathering

In going back through my notes for emails in 2025, I realized a few snippets never coalesced into full posts. Given that it’s the season completion, here a few of those scattered thoughts. Enjoy!

Voiceover Studio Gear

It’s always interesting to see which gear makes a big splash but then drops from sight. The ones that stick around often appear with a less spectacular rollout, but continue to quietly and effectively do their job. The Roswell Pro Audio Mini K87 microphone continues to impress me. I’ve now used it for a dozen or more voice actors, with a variety of tones and textures, and it just works well, with good detail, balance, and much less sibilance than the go-to TLM102/103. Matt at Roswell got it right on this one.

I did significantly more traveling this year and came to appreciate the AT875R short shotgun microphone. It’s economically priced, has decent tone, and a reasonably focused pickup pattern. Please don’t believe anyone’s youtube claim that it sounds “just like a four-sixteen!” but know that it does its task well and won’t break the bank.

For much of what we do in VO, audio interfaces just need to function reliably. Unless you are working in some very narrow niches, advanced processing and sophisticated routing don’t give much return on investment. It has been a pleasure to experience how well the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Gen4 solves the home VO studio equation. Good gain, solid software controls, the “SAFE” mode, and useful Auto-Gain setting tool all improved a solid option without losing the simplicity that made it useful in the first place.

Of course, I’m continuing to appreciate my PASport VO with its sublime compression circuit, solid construction, and useful size. After replacing the innards of my Vocalbooth and tuning the sound in the StudioBricks booth, I’ve become a much stronger proponent of proper acoustic panels over foam. They provide better results without being bulky and provide a much more finished look within the smaller spaces of our home voiceover setups. Acoustic blankets continue to work well for a more economical solution, but it’s hard to recommend the oft-used 2″ acoustic foam since it just doesn’t handle low end frequencies.

Recording and Editing Studio Software Tools

Though we can spend way too much time searching for a “perfect solution” when existing tools work perfectly well, it remains helpful to be aware of new studio tools when they appear. As with any software, good stuff disappears, so no matter which tools you use, it’s helpful to have other options in reserve. Becoming reliant upon esoteric pieces of software can cause trouble. Luckily between companies such as Melda Productions, Tokyo Dawn Labs, and a few others, we continue to have useful options.

Acon Digital quietly released a full restoration suite called Acoustica with spectral editing and an array of post-production tools similar to RX. More importantly, Acon took their exceptional Extract Dialogue denoising tool to a whole new level. I’ve been a fan since v1.5 came out.  Extract Dialogue 2.0 has separated out additional discrete controls for reverb and tone allowing even more control.

The truth is that no single noise reduction tool works well for every type of situation. If you have to handle a variety of issues, you need a variety of approaches. Often, the biggest “noise” issue in most home setups is just inherent rumble which can be addressed through effective use of a High Pass Filter. These days, the only noise reduction tools I recommend against are the “Sample and Apply” tools found inside recording apps. They just aren’t in the same league as the newer tools. I am certainly not walking away from Izotope’s RX, but do feel the last few versions have been incremental rather than earth-shaking. Their Voice Denoise continues to handle simple challenges well. Honestly, if all they did was maintain their Mouth Declick tool, I’d be fine with that.

In the last month, I’ve been playing with a very interesting compression-type tool from Playfair Audio called “Body”. It provides frequency-focused compression and visualizes dynamic control in a very intuitive way through its UI. Their approach lets Body prevent noise from overwhelming compressed results in a unique way. I’m continuing to experiment with and learn more about this tool.

One concern I can’t quite dislodge is about Adobe Audition’s future. Adobe works phenomenally well for VO. As a paid subscriber, I’ve received at least two major surveys from Adobe this past year asking for feedback. In both, they asked about every other app they produce (including several I’d never heard of) except for Audition. I had to manually enter it under “Other” in several responses. They have been relatively slow to respond to OS and hardware issues and there have been no significant features added. (For example they have never implemented the Speech to Text tool found in Premiere or Firefly. Twisted Wave, Izotope RX, and Pro Tools have all implemented this). It’s hard to encourage someone to invest in the subscription when Adobe seems reluctant to provide continued support.    

Social Media

This last year, I’ve been watching the continued Facebook decay but not wanting to get on the TikTok train. I’ve dipped back into reddit a bit more recently as that platform actually allows you to follow and maintain longer conversations. I may be the only human on reddit using their actual name, but as D. Boone suggested in History Lesson, Part II, “….real names’d be truth…” and that idea still resonates with me.

I also find myself frustrated with the fairly unnecessary video podcast surge. Maybe I’m an outlier, but I like to catch up on podcasts when walking the dogs or running errands. I don’t really have time to sit in front of a computer for more hours in a day to watch something on youtube. It feels like that’s waning a bit as a lot of solid podcasters realize how much extra effort it is to create a video feed.

A salient review of our current social media landscape can be found in Chris Hayes’ book The Sirens’ Call – not necessarily the most uplifting message, but it lays out the challenge we’ve created for ourselves. No one gets exactly the same feed any more and dealing with that culturally is something we need to address. As some of you know, I’ve been knocking around the internet since the days of USENET, and enjoyed the rise and fall of subject-specific Bulletin Boards (kids, ask your parents…). There were solid benefits from user-driven rather than algorithmic content.

AI

Obviously, you can’t turn a blind eye to AI and say it doesn’t matter. But, so far the sky has not fallen (or at least SKYNET has not been implemented) and these tools have shown significant strengths and weaknesses. I continue to recommend Kevin Kelly’s book “What Technology Wants” because the ongoing implementation is going to continue to be imperfect and unequal. Obviously, AI has impacted areas of voiceover – and huge thanks again to NAVA for their efforts on that front. It does feel like even the best AI voices create significantly more work to begin to approximate the subtleties and dynamics of a live human. Clients and companies are slowly figuring that out.

One area I think some of us ignore is how AI tools can assist with the challenges of running a solo creative services business. Our attention is a limited resource and demands upon it compound. Using specific tools can allow us to apply that attention where it’s uniquely required.  

VO Studio Workflow: Using Presets and the OSFA Approach

Back when I was messing with synthesizers, the one thing you didn’t do was just “play the presets”… otherwise you just sounded like everyone else. I always had the interest to dig deeper and tweak things. A voice actor will often state that a studio software effect or tool doesn’t work for them. Digging into the details, I often find they are just using generic default settings. While those presets may get you started in the right direction, they seldom fully address what needs to be fixed.

One of the things I’ve learned since I started helping folks build up their home VO setups in 2007 is that everyone’s situation is different. The small spaces in which most of us work magnify those differences. Even those who owned the same commercial booth tended to get differing results. What works in one environment seldom works universally, and it’s usually the application of consistent small improvements that yield the best results. “One Size Fits All” (OSFA) seldom works well.

Other Non-VO Things that Caught My Eyes & Ears

David McRainey – his book “How Minds Change” and his “You are not so smart” podcast.

Adam Grant – his books “Think Again”  and “Hidden Potential” and his “Rethinking” podcast

The History Of Rock Music in 500 Songs by Andrew Hickey (currently at #182 as of January 2026).

Cautionary Tales podcast with Tim Harford continues to be a fine example of great storytelling.

What Now with Trevor Noah is probably the only interview podcast I listen to regularly. Most other podcasts of this type devolve into infomercials or inane chatter. But Trevor has an interesting knack of reframing questions and ideas to spark compelling conversations.

As we roll into the new year, I want to again take a moment to thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to read these thoughts, provide feedback, and ask questions. It has been my great pleasure to watch former students, current clients, and voice actors I’m lucky to know, break through and find successes. Keep it rolling.

And of course, go be brilliant!