Tuesday VO Studio Tech Tip: Three Simple Steps – “E-R-P”

When it comes time to start recording voiceover, it’s helpful to keep in mind one simple truth: “it does not matter what your studio space looks like – it matters how it sounds!”

Those who have attended my intro to VO recording classes have seen that the actual space in which we record can be downright ugly. As long as the audio we produce is of appropriate quality, we have done our job. There are no extra points for how pretty the recording studio looks.

Set Up Your Recording Space the Right Way

While dedicated booths or fancy foam backgrounds may look impressive, they aren’t a necessity. To get usable audio quality, it helps to break things down into three primary tasks: E-R-P – “Environmental Noise”, “Reflections”, and “Placement/Position”. Solving those three challenges will result in solid, consistent sound.

Studio Challenge #1: E = Environmental Noise

This is really the easiest to recognize and sometimes the most difficult to solve. Before worrying about any specifics, take a few minutes to position yourself in the space where you are thinking about recording, close your eyes, and simply listen for a few minutes. With your eyes closed, start identifying the noises you notice. The loudest ones should jump right out – the whirr of a computer fan, the hum of a refrigerator, the buzzing of overhead lighting. Keep going. What about distant traffic, pipes in the walls, footfalls in the attic? All of those sounds want to find their way into your recordings. While we can use software to remove them, the best approach is to avoid them in the first place.

It may mean that a inner room might be better than one which has an outside wall. You may find that one side of your location is louder than the other, or that certain times of the day are excessively noisy. The challenge here is that some types of sounds – particularly the low frequency noises – will be very hard to keep out. Those environmental bass tones tend to travel through structural framing and penetrate lighter wall material, ending up in our audio. Finding a location where those are minimized is key and sets the foundation for good quality sound.

Studio Challenge #2: R = Reflections

Most home recording environments contain too many hard surfaces. Sound will tend to reflect off of any hard surface the way waves splash off a breakwater. Those audio “splashes” are what we perceive as echoes in our recordings. They obscure the original signal and cause us to sound unclear. One quick way to test for this would be to clap sharply in your recording space. Compare that sound to the result in a tiled kitchen or bathroom. Any slap back echo you hear is going to be an unwanted echo when trying to record.

While there are resources recommending some reflective surfaces (technically “dispersion”) in an optimum recording space, it is kind of difficult to have too much absorption in a voiceover booth. Most commonly, people end up using thin, inexpensive foam which only absorbs higher frequencies. This can create an imbalance in the space, causing a weirdly muffled result.

I’ve been recommending acoustic foam products much less frequently for a few years now. Acoustic panels from ATS Acoustics or GiK Acoustics are usually a much more effective investment. Panels will typically use Rockwool or other insulation material which has better Sound Transmission Class (STC) ratings over a wider frequency range. Acoustic Blankets – which are often just moving blankets on steroids – also tend to perform well. Their natural gap from any hard surface makes them do “double duty” as sound waves have to pass through them twice to get back to the microphone.

Studio Challenge #3: P = Placement/Position

Once you’ve solved those first two issues, you’ll likely notice that a microphone will tend to sound better in anything other than the center of a space. The common mics used in VO have a certain pickup pattern which we can often use to our advantage. Positioning the “null” side of a cardioid microphone so it ignores a directional sound source is a helpful trick.

Our position, distance, and angle from the microphone will impact how we sound. As voice actors, we are always trying to find the right balance between being present on the mic while trying to reduce the “other” noises we make. Sibilance, mouth noise, plosives, and other biomechanical artifacts can be reduced by moving away. Presence is generally increased by being closer. The trick is to find a mic position that balances the two without moving “off-axis” or using an aggressive angle.

Having another set of ears can be helpful. The more we listen to our own audio, the less perspective we have. A trusted set of ears can help. I’ve been offering free audio reviews for many years and provide quick booth tuneup sessions to help dial things in.

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