Commercial Audition Loudness Survey

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been discussing how most of the time we don’t actually have a target for audition delivery volume. Voiceover auditions need to be “Competitively Loud”, but the specs are fairly vague. We generally talk about Normalizing to a Peak value, but that has a high potential to get thrown off by an errant single wave height.

To better understand Loudness in our audio files, perhaps It makes sense to start generating some data.

I’d love to have you share your Loudness values through a quick survey. 

Just pull up the last half a dozen auditions you submitted and determine the RMS values for those audio files (I list the specific tools below). The numbers will vary, of course. However, they should fall within a reasonable range.

Once you record those numbers, click on the button below and you’ll be taken to a Survey Monkey page where you can select the most appropriate response. Responses are anonymous. I’ll post the results next week.

Survey Submission Guidelines: Commercial Auditions

Let’s start with the most common type of auditions – please review only your COMMERCIAL auditions – those which have been submitted for advertising used for commercial products. 

Include any commercial VO’s (e.g. “AVO”, “Annc”, “Annoucer”, “Voice”, etc.) in addition to those commercial characters which often inhabit those projects (e.g. “Mom”, “Boss”, “Coworker”, “Uncle”, “Aunt”, “Dad”, “IT Person”, etc.)

How to measure Loudness in your audio files

For those of you using Twisted Wave, Average RMS one of the statistics generated when using the “Analyze” function under the FILE menu. Adobe Audition provides “Amplitude Statistics”, which may be turned on under your WINDOW menu, Izotope RX has a “Waveform Statistics” tool available which can be applied to your audio, and Ocenaudio provides a “Statistics” tool under the ANALYZE menu. If you have the “ACX Check tool” in Audacity, that will also provide RMS.

If your recording software doesn’t easily provide that information, you could use the ACX Audiolab tool, though you do need to have an active ACX profile to access that page. 

NOTE: RMS (which stands for “Root Mean Squared”) is a negative scale, with -0 dB RMS as the loudest, and -99 (or lower) dB RMS being the quietest.

Loudness Resources on JustAskJimVO.studio

• Setting the Right Levels – Proper Input for Recording
• How Loud Do They Want? – Decoding Volume Specs
• Competitively Loud Auditions – What Does That Mean?
• How Loud is “Loud”? Understand Peaks and Loudness
• Is Louder Better? A Key Question
• Understanding “Normalize” in Voiceover Recording Software

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