Studio Workflow: How To Use These New Tools? – Tuesday Tech Tip

There’s a nagging question on the edge of each technological advance that makes its way into our voiceover studios. If we use all these new cool tools, does the quality of our recording space actually matter? 

In the most recent home recording class I was teaching, we ended up talking about Effects and Audio Tools more than normal. Part of it has to do with what Waves has achieved with their Clarity Vx plug-in, or how effective Izotope’s Mouth DeClick tool can be. It’s hard to argue that they don’t work. However, a key thing to remember is that they don’t fix everything. 

I’m often cautious when something is touted as the newest/latest/greatest solution. My hesitation is due to things generally not living up to the hype. New product demos are always exhibited with best case scenarios, right? 

The arrival of the Waves Clarity Vx plugin has certainly disrupted that narrative. Waves raised the bar significantly. I continue to use that tool on audio test samples and come away with clean, usable results. 

That brings up the question: is it wrong to just lean on that as a way to obtain “good” audio?

What ultimately matters is the quality of audio we deliver to our clients. The adage still holds – if it sounds good, then it is good. 

In the past, the danger has been the impact upon our voice recordings. When we record our work for voiceover, there’s really no place to hide. We can’t bury imperfections in a wash of reverb. Nor can we autotune our way back into the right key. It’s just our core tone, being captured in a specific space. 

What Clarity does (arguably better than most other options) is identify that core tone, and reduce those other noises which are not related. While that nicely solves the issue of environmental noise, it does not address imperfections inside of the space. That’s an important distinction. 

In other words, if you record in a tiled bathroom, Clarity may remove the sound of someone singing in the shower, but it’s not going to fix the resonance and reflections inside of that space. (Maybe that is the next module which Waves is developing…). 

Clarity fixes one thing (well, ok…maybe one and a half…). But it won’t cure reverberant sounds. It can’t deal with the comb filtering that occurs in a poorly treated space. If we get those things addressed, we still need to place the mic appropriately, and use good microphone technique when we get loud or quiet. Certainly p-pops, sibilance and other lip-smacky goodness will not be cured by this plug-in. 

Keep all this in perspective. It may be that the engineer who deals with our work would rather get a nice, full recording from us with a little bit of noise. That noise may not matter if we’re being mixed in with music and sound effects. Nased on how it’s going to fit in the overall sound design, the fix they want to employ may be different that what we provide.

It gets back to “do no harm.” At a certain point, overprocessing our audio leaves fewer options for the next person who has to deal with it.

We also need to think about how hard we want to lean on these tools. Clarity reshuffles the equation a bit. It lets us focus more upon the treatment of the space and not worry quite so much if we don’t have the most isolated location in which to record. That can allow us work the mic from a decent distance, capturing our tone while reducing the sibilance, plosives and mouth clicks which accompany a closely mic’d instrument. 

That’s a good thing. As we encounter new fixes and tools, it’s important to focus on precisely what they will solve, and what we still need to manage.

This information recently went out directly to my email community.
If you would like to join in to receive those emails the day they publish, please take a moment to share your contact information through this sign up form.
Thank you!