VO Studio Setup: Quest for a Better Booth

Once things sound good in your voiceover studio, do we need to worry about a better sounding booth?

The recording space is the heart of your VO production facility. When your audio sounds good and clients like what you provide to them, it’s helpful to not muck about in there carelessly. 

Conversely, if we aren’t evaluating things on a regular basis, that can lead to a slow erosion of quality. Conditions shift, gear ages, and we may change focus to different genres of voiceover which our space doesn’t handle well. A small issue can grow in to a larger problem or we may not have set something up the right way to begin with. 

We often compensate for those imperceptible changes and not-quite-right conditions. Many of those tiny problems don’t seem that bad, and we learn to work around the weak spots in our recording spaces. We may recognize issues, but ignore them until it becomes obvious they must be dealt with it. The more hours we spend in our booth the clearer those imperfections become.

Certainly, no space is perfect. As I was saying last week, we often latch onto the shortcomings in our work. The same is true with our recording environment. 

I was cleaning up things in the studio a couple weeks back and found myself standing in my booth, wondering how I could make things a little bit better. Though my current setup was much improved from my earlier solutions, I haven’t recently focused on what I could change to create an even better space. 

When it comes to voiceover recording spaces, what exactly is “better”? 

The past couple years, we’ve had to rely upon our setups for more actual recording sessions. That’s unlikely to change dramatically. Even if pandemic restrictions ease, producers, directors, and clients are getting used to Source-Connect recording sessions, or Zoom-directed sessions. 

At the same time, many of our neighbors now work from home, which increases both physical traffic and internet loads. Though I have not had direct impacts from those things, it feels as though there’s less of a sonic “buffer” from this increased activity. A few years ago, I had bumped up my internet speeds, that’s feeling pretty solid. However, I’d still like to improve my general isolation from environmental noise.

Inside the booth, the stock acoustic treatment is the original eggshell foam, (though I’d added some small bass traps and panels when I tuned the booth). The foam feels a little less resilient to the touch these days and I’ve noticed small bits flaking off here and there. That indicates the foam is likely past its prime and will only continue to get worse. 

Thicker inserts would likely solve both those problems. Since I’m going to be up-armoring the interior walls, perhaps I can refine placement of mics and copy stands and other knick-knacks. As the interior gets changed a bit, that should translate to a more usable space. This is one of those projects which feels as though a simple question may cause a significant set of changes. I’m looking forward to the challenge. 

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