Evaluating your VO Audio: What Are You Hearing? Tuesday Tech Tip

It’s a tricky balance. It’s normal to want stuff to sound “good” before sending it out. That causes us to concentrate on the broken bits. However, focusing only on problems can skew our perception until that’s all we hear.

I always give a warning to students in my recording classes: “I may ruin you for listening to audio.” As you gain awareness of flaws, those things can overwhelm other aspects of the performance. As we develop a more critical “engineer’s ear” to our recordings, there is a tendency to push out the “creative director” part of the process, preventing us from enjoying a quality performance.

It’s a matter of focus. And ultimately a matter of balance. 

While how we sound is part of what we deliver, it’s not the ultimate goal. When we chase an audio ideal, we can lose what’s important.

In our voiceover studio, we need to create a foundation of good sound that supports our performance. That’s the Practice. Good sound comes from the entire chain. Everything from the quality of the recording space to the consistency of the input process matters. 

It can be tough to maintain that confidence in the day-to-day process of auditioning. If we don’t book jobs, there’s a natural tendency to change everything up. We might blame our equipment, or suddenly decide that we’re too animated, or not energetic enough, or talking too fast, or have too laconic an approach. 

There are an incredible amount of variables outside of our control which impact our booking success. Heck, I got bounced mid-session because the client suddenly decided I sounded too much like the VO their competitor was using. 

We listen and find a flaw. Then we focus on the flaw. Often that obscures our perspective on the whole of the work. We become too aware of details and lose our flow. The flow is what saves us. Flow is about finding the current of good in what we created and building upon that. 

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