VO Weekly Workflow – Batches and Stacks

If you are a Twisted Wave user, you may have seen a flurry of updates in the past month or so. While there were a few minor bug fixes along the way, most of these new versions added solid functionality that might be easy to miss. It feels like this has been a continuing gift from the developer, Thomas Thirez.

Yes, I realize that if you pay for something, it’s not technically a “gift”… however, back in early 2023 when Thomas announced a change in the pricing structure, there were a few concerns. While almost every software company has shifted to a subscription model, there’s been tremendous variance in benefits to users from those changes. Some companies have done very little to provide continued development for critical software. Others have added features that don’t really move the needle for us in the relatively narrow niche of voiceover recording.

A clear focus on VO users is one of the strengths of Twisted Wave. It remains one of the few pieces of software developed specifically for our needs. While we can turn off most of the functionality of a multitrack music recording environment like Audacity or Studio One (or as it’s now known, Fender Studio Pro), future developments will generally be towards that music-focused workflow.

Thomas understands the needs of voice actors delivering audio to clients. With the most recent update (version 32.4 as of this writing), there’s now a subtle addition that simplifies how we might polish an audition. Most of us use the same discrete set of Effects when delivering an audition. It would be quite common to use a High Pass Filter, maybe some EQ, a dab of the Mouth Declick tool, perhaps a bit of DeEssing, and perhaps a touch of Noise Reduction before we send in an audition. Most savvy voice actors will use the same settings on those Effects if their recording space does not change. Rather than reach for each one individually, those single Effects can be put in a specific order within the Twisted Wave Stack (or RX’s Module Chain, Adobe Audition’s Effects Rack, Audacity’s Macro tool, etc.). That way you can use one command to apply all the fixes to your file.

For various mathematical reasons, the Normalize function could not be accessed inside of the Twisted Wave Stacks. It was a minor extra step to then boost your audio to be competitively loud with the Normalize tool. Not the end of the world, certainly, but a step you might periodically forget. One workaround was to create a Batch Process, as that tool did allow incorporation of the Normalize tool. But you had to open the Batch Processor separately, which made it a little clunky.

The new Twisted Wave update now allows you to apply a Batch Process to any open file. Since that appears as a menu item, you can also apply a specific keystroke to activate that Batch Process. That actually makes it even more efficient to invoke when you are ready to send off a file.

As I’ve said before, these small gains of efficiency add up. They allow us to focus more time on the parts that matter – being brilliant behind the microphone.

Posted 2/17/26

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