Tuesday VO Studio Tech Tip: “It Sounds Different”

In setting up a home recording space, the initial goal is to make things sound better. But, there’s a point where priorities change. Establishing a point where audio consistently sounds good changes the playing field. When that occurs, the desire to improve audio quality has to be tempered a bit. Changing any aspect of your recording chain – a new microphone, improved acoustic treatment, or audio processing – runs the risk of causing other issues.

There’s one core tenet:
Don’t mess with stuff when you are in “production.”

There’s a time and place to consider upgrades and improvements, and it’s not when you are halfway through a project. While you could end up with things sounding better, you’ll definitely end up with things sounding “different”.

This became clear when I first improved my home “studio” many years ago. I’d been recording in a less-than-pretty setup within a short interior hallway. While the recordings sounded good, the space itself had some strong limitations requiring both a setup and breakdown process each time, as well as taking over a central area of our living space.

After finally locating and setting up an actual dedicated booth, I spent time improving the space so that the resulting audio had a more balanced tone with improved handling of reflections. Things sounded good. A month or so later, an ongoing client reached out with a project. They had added some service enhancements and needed to expand their website descriptions. I recorded, edited and polished up the audio, matching the Loudness to what they had requested and sent it off. With that done and dusted, it was on to the next bit of VO work.

The next morning, I received a very polite but slightly concerned email from the client, asking if there was possibly something wrong with what I’d sent. Listening through and checking the quality, there were no noticeable issues. In fact, it sounded a bit better than what I’d been providing previously.

“What was it you were noticing?” I asked in an email.

“It doesn’t sound like what you sent before…” came the response.

While to my ear the new recordings sounded better, the client found that difference jarring. By improving the audio quality, I’d created a customer service issue. 

The root cause of the issue – our “filtered” perception

The issue is rooted in how we “hear” things – how sound gets filtered by our brain makes us very responsive to differences. Even someone who is not focused upon audio quality will easily notice volume differences and tend to prefer audio which is slightly louder. That’s one reason why we want to make audio comparisons between samples at the same volume. More insidiously, our hearing picks up on the “feel” of the recording space itself.

This is why I stress consistency in microphone position and placement. Changes to microphone position our location can create an audible tonal difference. Improving the quality of acoustic treatment can definitely alter the nature of your sound. Even though it’s likely to sound better, the audio will still sound “different”, causing issues when matching prior work. I encourage people never to make changes to their setup when they are in the middle of a project. Even small “improvements” in your recording space or workflow can result in noticeable changes to the resulting audio.

There are ways to make recordings match. It helps to work with raw baseline reference tracks of the new and old recordings. It’s also possible to craft EQ corrections which can adjust between different microphones. But all of that adds extra steps to the production process and can take a fair amount of time.

Project resolution – how I fixed the issue

As for that client project? I decided against the option of making the new stuff sound, well… “bad.” I explained the changes to my setup and offered to upgrade the earlier work with the new setup. Luckily, it was not an excessive amount of content and the client appreciated the overall improvements.

But, the first time they had heard the better audio, it had simply sounded “different…”

If you would like a free review of your vocal recordings, please use the upload tool on my Audio Review page.

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