Does Your Software Lock You In? Tuesday VO Studio Tech Tip

Last week’s Waves saga got me thinking once more about flexibility in our home voiceover studios. I’ve spoken before about how a self-reliant studio might need a few key backup hardware items like an extra mic or interface. We need to continue working when things get a bit dicey. It’s important to minimize downtime, and yes, everything always seems to break on a Sunday night when we have a Monday deadline. 

The resilience of our software is another area where we might be overlooking potential impact to our workflow. 

I encourage a reasonably conservative approach with software. Immediately upgrading to the newest/latest/greatest version of something rarely comes without unintended effects. As voice actors, we work in a niche of a subset within the discipline of “home recording.” Software fixes for issues which might only impact voiceover studios can take a while. That means that when our systems are working well, there’s not a huge reason to change things. If something is working, it might be better to resist updating our software tools. 

In the VO Studio: We don’t need the latest/greatest version

Running a bit behind what is current can be a tricky balance. If we wait too long, we start to get well behind the curve. There are people who currently continue to use Audition 3.0, even though it has not been supported by Adobe for more than a decade. Changing from software that old can be challenging. Getting a new computer can also cause upset as current hardware will often no longer run legacy software. The takeaway here is to acknowledge that software will continue to iterate, and so keeping reasonably current is a better plan. 

For example, with Izotope RX (which seems to be back on promotion this week), I tend to update every 2-3 versions, depending upon what features are being added. That keeps things current enough that I don’t have to rebuild everything from scratch. Even then, I try not to jump on a new version immediately when it comes out. There are often fixes and patches that quickly follow a big version release. I will wait until those settle down – the leading edge of the changes is where functionality might break and cause downtime. 

Identify mission critical studio tools – and find alternatives

Coming back to the topic of Waves, the possibility of restricted access caused me to consider what I depend upon. While I prefer the Waves Sibilance tool user interface, setting up the RX DeEsser is not a problem. I can even adjust the NOVA EQ to dynamically address sharp S-sounds. Ticking through my list of useful and sometimes needed tools, Noise Reduction, EQ, Limiting, and Compression all have many options. 

And that’s kind of the key point. Understanding what each of our production tools do allows us to replace “parts” as needed. That lets us keep working. 

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