Voiceover Studio Refinement Results: Back in the Booth – Tuesday VO Tech Tip

As I was finishing up a recording session the other day, I found myself staring into my recording space and smiling. As documented a few months back, I gutted the insides of my booth and upgraded both the isolation and treatment of the space. I have to say the results have been quite pleasing. 

Given the complexity of acoustics and the nature of sound, there’s always a possibility that you’ll end up worse than when you started. Granted, there are plenty of guidelines and best practices, so paying attention to details and asking thorough questions is always a good plan. Listening back to the resulting audio, I have to admit that things still sound good. 

I also have the benefit of encountering hundreds of different home recording spaces each year. Everyone’s space is unique. Working with a wide variety of other voice actors means I’ve seen many elegant solutions, from which I’m constantly learning.

The interesting thing I realized: the booth now truly feels like “mine” in a new way. Even with all the hours spent within its walls, the space had remained a “Vocalbooth” that I owned. Relayering the walls and fitting panels let me really tune things to my taste, finding placements of surfaces and equipment that meant a bit less wasted movement and a lot more comfort. It all serves to both calm and focus creative efforts. 

Those ATS panels feel like they were worth the investment as well. Their acoustic benefit is significant, of course. They also provide a much more finished look versus the strongly repeating pattern of the original foam. The top edge of one of the bass panels let me retire my kludgey old shelf and place my keyboard and trackpad on top of it. 

All of this serves my current workflow. It makes me realize how often we just tolerate what is, rather than explore what can be, simply because it takes such an effort to pull things apart and build it back up. However, each time I do that, I’m incredibly grateful I took the time to do so. 

This information recently went out directly to my email community. Each week I send out a new article about using technology in the home voiceover studio, and how to balance those challenges with the need to be creative behind the microphone.
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