Tempting Studio Gear – The Allure of the New – Tuesday VO Tech Tip

Are we wired to accumulate stuff? Every discipline or industry encourages us toward “more”… When I was doing a lot of photography, having two camera bodies was a thing – one for color, one for black & white film… or just for having a different lens ready to go at a moment’s notice. Playing bass more regularly again, I find there’s a steady pull to have another instrument which plays a bit differently: a Jazz bass vs. Precision bass and rounds vs flats… And don’t get me started on bicycles.

Here in our voiceover studio, new stuff keeps appearing on the virtual shelf, adding that one elusive feature we didn’t know we needed. It gets back to the Law of Necessary Accumulation, where the correct number of (fill in the blank) to possess is “N + 1”.

It’s hard to tell precisely how deeply seated that urge is. Perhaps it is what kept us alive as we foraged for food way back when. Now it may be more of an alluring distraction.

Recently, SSL announced their SSL12 audio interface. The coals of desire seemed to flare up as I read the spec sheet – more inputs, a software control panel, Loopback… mmmmmm….

It was difficult to remember that my current SSL2+ does everything I need. It sounds great. I’ve never run out of mic inputs. There has been no practical need for Loopback which I couldn’t solve another way. In fact, I’ve still yet to use the second headphone output which was one of the reasons I opted for the Plus over the standard model. Luckily, I have just enough cynicism left over from my days as a retail buyer that it can be flagged as a “want” rather than a “need.”

Familiarity breeds contempt? 
Maybe.  I mean, Chaucer wrote about that back in the 1300’s, so it’s not a new idea. If we have a few weeks of poor results, we may look around our voiceover studio and wonder whether that sparkly interface is working all that hard, or if our microphone is actually pulling its weight. Should some new whiz-bang gizmo land in our inbox or get touted in a video, it can certainly seem like the answer to our problems. While the placebo effect is real, that idea taken too far can send us on a spiral of continually chasing down the next thing. 

One thing to keep in mind is that we don’t actually ask that much of our voiceover hardware. For most of us, a clean input signal might be all that is necessary. If we don’t take the time to use our gear, we’ll likely never establish a trust for our equipment. That trust is a strong foundation. Knowing something will work establishes confidence behind the mic. Understanding where things fail gives us a solid guardrail. Confidence and understanding create a wonderful playing field. 

New stuff is always alluring, often simply because it is new. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating improvements as they appear. Yet, that does not make our current stuff obsolete. If you are looking for specific key functionality, then it can certainly be worth considering the upgrade.

Just as Moore’s Law posits a continuing increase in computer efficiency, all manner of interesting functionality continues to appear on new gear these days. While that can spur us to find new ways of creative expression, it’s helpful to think about why you chose your equipment in the first place. If it’s still quietly doing its job day in, day out, that’s a solid contribution. 

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