VO Studio Tuneup: Winter Pruning – Tuesday Tech Tip

Winter is a great time to clean out stuff you don’t need

Our needs in VO are pretty simple. It’s easy to think we might not be doing enough to our audio. 

How do we know what is “enough”?

The first rule is to know what your client needs from you.

Don’t do anything which makes things more difficult for anyone who has to work with your audio next.

The second rule?
Even the best Effects won’t hide a sub-par performance. 

I recently finished up an advanced home voiceover studio tools workshop. My recommendation remains “…sometimes, it’s best to just get back into your booth and do it better….”   It can be just too easy to spend time polishing a … well, let’s call it a “sub par effort”.  

Just what do we need for what we do in VO?  
Our requirements are much less comprehensive than music production. 

We (almost) never need:

Reverb, Reverb’s slower cousin Delay/Echo, Pitch Correction or Autotune type tools, or any Distortion (though “Tube effects” are a type of distortion which we sometimes find pleasing). 

For VO, Effects we often need include:

• EQ / Filter to reduce certain frequencies
• DeClick because… well, we all make those sounds
• DeNoise if you can’t isolate your space well enough 
• Dynamics controls (Compression / Limiting) if we have to meet loudness requirements
• and maybe DeEssing (oh, those sizzly sibilants!)

We likely don’t need eight different options for each of these. Our workflow is generally better served by having one tool which does what we want quickly.

A Graphic EQ might be faster than a more versatile Parametric EQ.  If something does the same thing with less fiddling… well, that’s likely the right choice.

The more you use a certain tool, the more you’ll have a sense of how and when to apply it. I probably reach for TDR’s NOVA EQ about 90% of the time, so I think less about the “how” of using it and focus on what I want it to do.  

Is there stuff cluttering up your Effects menu which you simply don’t use? Or do you have 38 Presets in your favorite DeClick tool, but only use two of them? This is a good time to simplify your setup or replace those tools which aren’t achieving what you need.  

If you need any help clearing up the undergrowth, we can easily go through that during a session. You can always reserve time through my calendar.

Each week, I send a “Tuesday Tech Tip” to my email community. It includes technical tricks I’ve come across, refinements for voiceover workflow, and insights gained as a working voice actor and VO technical audio consultant. If you would like to receive these as soon as they come out, please take a moment to sign up here. Thank you.