VO Reference Tracks: Does that sound different? – Tuesday Tech Tip

When we begin to produce work from our VO studio, it’s important to establish a baseline. Reference tracks provide this useful information.

As creative individuals, we love to reinvent things. That’s why we can dream up an endless cavalcade of new characters for our voiceover auditions, or find a unique angle to approach narration or commercial projects. We often push ourselves past the edge of comfort to see what lies beyond. 

However in the actual recording process that tendency to change things can cause issues. Developing the practice of a consistent approach to the technical side – how you set levels, where you position yourself, what gear you use, etc. – provides the framework to support the performance. When you dial in your sound and settings, it’s best not to mess with it.

At some point, we will choose to upgrade gear or improve the studio acoustics. Before ripping things up and starting over, it’s important to have a strong sense of how things actually sound. Without knowing that, it’s entirely possible to end up with a result which was not even as good as what you had before. It helps to create a baseline reference. 

When things sound good in your space, that is the perfect time to save an audio sample for posterity. Archiving a recorded voice sample creates a “reference track” that lets us hear what “good” sounded like on a given day. Over time, this becomes an even more important resource, as it lets you directly compare how any changes might impact your VO audio quality.

In its simplest form, a reference track is the raw recording of a specific type of performance, captured through your regular audio chain. The thing to keep in mind is that a consistent performance will more clearly demonstrate differences in space, equipment or processing.

Recommendations for Creating Reference Tracks

• Use a specific script that you can read the same way each time. Our energy can vary quite a bit from day to day, and it’s helpful to reduce the variables as much as possible. When evaluating the quality of the sound, it’s important that the actual performance be consistent. 
• Record a separate reference track for each change of variable. That might mean a track for your “regular non-announcery read” and another for higher energy characters since changes in performance energy will energize the room differently. Different microphones should have separate references. An interface with changeable tone settings deserves a recording with them on and off.  It may be helpful to list all of your options before you start. 
• Have a target Loudness level. There will be natural variance in recorded levels, so adjust to a specific LUFS or RMS value so that volume doesn’t throw off your perception.
• The recording should be of sufficient length to be useful. A short audio snippet of just a word or two makes it very difficult to come to much of a conclusion. Depending upon the genre, 30-60 seconds is a good target, and a few seconds of room tone is a good idea. Remember that we can get misled by volume, so establishing a consistent loudness level is essential.
• Save the audio in a specific place, with a boringly consistent naming format. I’ve got a “Reference Audio” folder on my local drive and accessible via the cloud. DATE_MIC_GENRE_PROCESSING_LOUDNESS is a good approach, as is saving them as an uncompressed WAV.

Though this may seem a bit excessive, it allows us to hear how things change. With the baseline reference, we’ll hear differences in our space. This can protect us from aging equipment or other changes in our local environment. The reference track can help us match recordings when working in different recording locations. It will provide specific proof of any improvements to our space when we move or upgrade. In all cases, if gives us assurance of the audio we deliver. 

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