In the VO Studio: What Matters More: Upgrades or Workflow?

We all want efficient VO studio workflow. But it’s easy to be convinced that we can do so just by getting the newest gear or gadget, or upgrading software immediately. As I’ve said frequently in the past, a working system that’s a bit out of date beats a current system that does not function. That’s a mildly indirect way of saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

While there may be some compelling reasons to upgrade gear, the simple test is whether your studio lets you deliver quality audio within required deadlines. The nagging reminder from your helpful computer to upgrade to the nebulous benefits of the latest OS can generally be ignored. However, if it takes 20 minutes for your software to render a 60 second audition into an MP3, that’s worth paying attention to.

TRUTH – small changes in production workflows can have outsized impacts.

Process Is Important – Look at the whole picture

Back in my bicycle-biz days, I had an enjoyable lunch with a successful maker of bikes and innovative component parts – someone who actually made their own stuff. There was one specific task in the machining process for a particular component which made no sense until about 30 steps later. If you didn’t do that one simple thing correctly, there was no way to fix it later on. The maker shared how almost every single one of their prospective new trainees tried skipping that step when learning the process. Those who still worked there had come over to ask why it was there, or stopped their process and figured out why the step existed.

All of which is to restate the fact that how we do things matters a great deal. You’ve probably made many small adjustments with the goal to provide efficient studio workflow. They might create immediate improvements or simply prevent issues from occurring later on. It might be something as simple as always working on a copy of the original recording or as subtle as changing the order of your Effects in a production workflow. We get better at anything the more we do it, because we gain a deeper understanding of which steps are critical.

Getting More Efficient: What can I eliminate? What can I automate?

For me, those two questions always come first.

Eliminating a printed script was a really big step for me. I’d always worked from hard copies in classes and workshops, so it had become habit with no actual benefits. Changing that workflow meant reworking how I tracked audition priority and deadlines. It felt like I was getting away with something by not printing things out. Those changes made things really odd and clumsy for a couple weeks. But, the shift to digital scripts made things work better (and saved money on paper and ink!)

When to automate a step in your VO Studio

When considering automation, there’s a simple test: are you watching your computer work? Twisted Wave and Izotope RX (among others) have excellent batch processing tools. Rather than waiting and watching the Mouth DeClick effect chew slowly through a 45 minute eLearning file, then finally applying other effects one at a time to that, then repeating on other sections I’ve recorded, a Batch Processor can line up the effects in your mastering workflow and sequentially apply those to a group of selected files.

In practical terms, that means I let my (mumble-mumble) year old studio computer, with its slightly clunky processors, chew its way slowly through those steps with a bunch of files while I go answer emails or simply take a break and walk the dogs. Automated batch processes can easily offset a minor bottleneck caused by a slower computer. Of course, there’s no point in watching even a newer, faster model if you don’t have to…

Focus on the big picture: Efficient Studio Workflow

The important issue is getting work out the door efficiently – be it auditions, revisions or booked projects. We need to bring enough attention to those things to ensure quality, which is why my focus remains upon obtaining consistent recording results.

If the audio is of consistent, usable quality at the beginning, that lets us simplify the steps to completion. We have to do less to the audio for final delivery, and the steps we take to do so are largely repeatable.

While more RAM or a faster processor can always help, jumping immediately to that solution can often obscure core issues of process and quality. An efficient workflow will generally benefit from improved hardware, but upgrades to the newest/latest/greatest may obscure an underlying issue best addressed first.

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