Lance Blair Atlanta Voiceovers

GIK Bass Traps and Acoustic Panels for Voice Over Recording

2009-06-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

I just put in two 2x4 triangular corner bass traps by GIK Acoustics (based in Atlanta) in my voice over recording space. They're not cheap (but they are fairly priced), but let's put it this way - they cost $250 and the sound improvement is far far more than a $250 improvement in my sound.

Consider this also - without fixing the bumps and dips in the low end response of my room, I could be throwing money away when I upgrade from my TLM 103 to say a U87 because the improvement would be masked by the effects of the room.

If you have a $250 microphone, don't buy a $500 mic next - buy a $250 set of bass traps.

Also, I had my room treated with Auralex foam which of course did nothing to rein in the low end. I replaced them with three acoustic panels from GIK which really improved the sound all across the frequency range from 80Hz to 20kHz. The Acoustic panels cost less than the giant box of Auralex that I needed to place everywhere just to get the room reasonably tamed. Three 2x4 panels were all it took to make my voice over recording space sound terrific. My wife, who can't tell the difference in sound between one mic or another immediately though the room sounded great.

This also positively affects my performance because dynamic rises and falls in my voice aren't masked by surges of boominess and pings. I can be me, and let my talking do the talking without the acoustics getting in the way.

Lance Blair's New Atlanta Voice Over Studio Upgrades

2009-06-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

I've made some nice upgrades to my voice over control room and recording area. In the control room I'm now using a much faster and more powerful Quad Processor computer which is making everything sound better, especially in terms of mixing, mastering, and using plugins. I've also purchased and installed custom made bass traps and acoustic panels from Atlanta's own GIK Acoustics in the control room and voice over recording area which makes for very smooth sounding recordings across the full range of frequencies. The results are excellent, and I'll have to re-record my demos to reflect the better service I can now offer. I'm looking forward to it!

Great Free VST Plugins for Voice Over Artists

2009-06-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

So we're the voice over artists and not the engineers. We're supposed to provide our clients with clean unprocessed files. No compression, no EQ, and please...no transformers or tubes, we're clinical here.

This can all be very true for broadcast voice over work. But what if you have a client that isn't audio savvy and they're okay with you processing things slightly for that e-learning program? What if a client wants a produced audition or demo; or what if you're engineering clips for your own demo if you're so inclined and well versed in those skills?

If this is the case, don't assume that the plugins bundled with your recording software are all that great, unless you have rather pricey software. For example, many of the Izotope Ozone plugins that come with Adobe Audition are next to useless to me. The multiband compressor does many versions of crunchy and strident, and that's about it. The hard limiter is very inflexible and again crunches the sound. The reverb is a complete resources hog, even with plenty of memory, and many of the effects are not subtle enough for voice over, even if you want an obvious sounding effect, they tend towards the cartoonish. I've had the same results with Izotope plugins that I've demoed independent of Adobe Audition as well.

So where does the voice over artist that dabbles in self-engineering turn, especially for low to no cost (as in free)? The answer is kvraudio.com. There you'll find links to hundreds of compressors, EQs, reverbs, and general effects. I've tried dozens of them, and here are the free ones that work for voice over in that they are not overbearing to either the sound or your software.

Seek these plugins at kvraudio.com, and thou shalst findeth a new kingdom of sound for your voice overs:

Buzzroom's GranComp3Mono - a multiband compressor that is smooth and warm and very programmable and user friendly.
Buzzroom's Limiter - with a smooth and a hard setting, this limiter won't crush your sound like many limiters will.
Slim Slow Slider's Multiband Compressor - again, very programmable like the GranComp, this compressor can dial in a range of character to your sound. It's not as smooth, but it's very musical - it will make it sound like you've changed your preamp!

Lance Blair Atlanta Live Announcer and VOG

2009-05-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

Atlanta voice over artist Lance Blair is experienced as the Live
Announcer/VOG and on-camera talent for the annual meetings and
award presentations of Fidelity Investments and Greenway Medical
among other clients. For samples of Lance's Live Announcer work listen to his new Live Announcer Demo at lanceblair.net Or Click Here

New Clients for New Voice Over Projects

2009-05-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

In the second half of April I provided the voice for nine videos for a major national retailer and five videos for an international capital management company. The producer for the US retailer's office is in my neighborhood; for the international company we worked via emails and phone calls to France, Germany, and Austria. With both clients I appreciated that they trusted me to work without a phone patch or ISDN session. I sent them two minute reads for their approval and then maintained that tone throughout the respective projects while working with the direction for the scripts that we discussed ahead of time.

There were challenges with the international piece in that I was reading a script for the English translation of a German video that didn't adhere to the timing of the original German script in a few places, so we had to make some last minute retakes of an amended script while I was on holiday. Fortunately, I always travel with my trusty TLM 103, Sennheiser e935, Speck 5.0, and Echo Audio 2: they all fit in a briefcase with my laptop.

Whether you're down the street or in another continent, or whether I'm at my studio or on the road: we can work together to get the voice over you want for your project.
Hey, that sounds like pretty decent copy, no?

Metal Pop Filters vs. Mesh Pop Filters for Voice Overs

2009-04-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

I just picked up a Steadman Metal Pop Filter. Check out the sample of the old mesh popfilter with a normal read at 8" and then a loud read at 4" and then the same again with the Steadman. I'm using a TLM 103 through a Speck 5.0 preamp in this voice over test.

The Steadman seems to get rid of a thin jangly or brittle sound and keeps the sound more focused, and handled the loudness and plosives better. I like it a lot. Well worth the $60 I paid for it, but they (and other makes and models) can be had for $35-$70. It almost single-handedly clears up the qualities of the TLM 103 I don't like for voiceover and then features the qualities I do like: all without touching any EQ at all.

Next up I'll do a test with some other microphones - dynamics (Sennheiser e935) and shotguns (Sanken CS-1) at close range.

Listen Here

New Look for Lance Blair Atlanta Voice Over Talent Website (lanceblair.net)

2009-03-20T11:49:00.001-07:00

Necessity is the Mother of Invention (and cliches), and a fit of needing to spruce things up online has brought me to redesign my Atlanta Voiceovers webpage at lanceblair.net . You'll find the same text content but more color and hopefully a touch more of my personality at least in so far as I incorporated my fave color: orange. The old design, while very corporate looking (and I book a lot of corporate work) was overtly corporate: clean, but a touch boring...perhaps I should say "sterile".

Too many of the male VO sites are black, blue, and red; and I've been stuck in that branding rut for a while as well. The new Lance Blair VOs are going to more fun and 3-D, less flat and announcery. There are enough guys out there with voices that are 99% the same in the "Black Blue and Red" voice over world. Good luck to them.

As of now, the old "boring" narration and commercial demos are not out for display. They will be back very shortly with dynamic, lively, and engaging material. Most of the clips are edited and ready to go, just a few more tweaks are required. This is 2009, so I'll be bringing the 2009!

Recording Levels for Voice Over: 0 db = -18 dbFS

2009-02-19T11:19:00.000-08:00

I read about more and more people trying to record at levels as close to 0 dbFS as possible. They are wrong.

O db on a analog preamp is (or should be) calibrated to -18dbFS in your digital domain. On professional video cameras, analog tone is calibrated to -20 dbFS.

Recording with consistent peaks from -24dbFS to -18dbFS is absolutely fine, and consistent peaks above -15 or -12 are just pushing the converter harder than you need to.

What needs to be addressed is the noise in a signal path, not the levels.

Once the noise is fixed, record at -18dbFS and then you can bring them up to -3dbFS or what have you in post...but that bringing up of the levels ought to be the client's/post production job. NOT the talents.

Talents shouldn't be serving up files at -3dbFS. They should be serving up clean files at -18dbFS to -9dbFS...but everybody has fallen into the trap of the loudness wars where everything needs to be near 0. If you give clients files that are already at -3dbFS there's already less they can do with compression and limiting.

Don't record it hot, but fix your noise floor so that it can be made hot in post!

Real Men of Genius: Mr. Incomprehensible Voice Over Script Writer Guy

2009-01-22T16:45:00.000-08:00

I was reading some venting and general gnashing of teeth and fretting over difficult tongue-twisting copy written by those who don't necessarily take into consideration how a sentence will sound once spoken aloud. Kinda like the sentence you just read, actually.

Inspired by such drama, I re-recorded today a piece I wrote last year but has stuck with me (and becomes more certifiably pertinent to my experience each day). It is my salute to you, "Mr. Incomprehensible Voice Over Script Writer Guy". The backing track is performed by the wonderful and talented Mr. Victor Harris.
RMOG2009.mp3

Lance Blair Voice over for "Low End of the Dial" trailer

2009-01-12T12:43:00.001-08:00

Hope everyone is enjoying 2009 so far...

My filmaking colleagues in Boston Brian Corbett and John Coyne have after a decade finished their in depth documentary looking at the state of College Radio. It's a great piece of work and I'm proud to have been able to pitch in with my voice over for the film's teaser/trailer.

See the trailer at the film's official website here.

The Latest From the Voice Over Front

2008-12-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

So what's new on the Voice Over Front?

I did a spot last week with the wonderful and talented Mary McKitrick which we recorded together via phone patch. I'm in Georgia, she's in Massachusetts, and the spot was for Virginia. What a country! Check out the spot here...Watch it!

I'm working on a large e-learning project for The American Cancer Society on Smoking Cessation. They continue to be a wonderful organization for which to work, and this new initiative for workplace support groups for quitting smoking hopefully will help many people finally break the habit. (I've been there, I know...).

Thanks to the many voiceover colleagues that gave me a heads-up about the new internet voiceover site Bodalgo.com. It's based in Germany, but they have a steady demand for American and English voice overs for global corporate and industrial presentations. I have many international and US global market-driven clients who have used my voice for American, English, and Trans-Atlantic voice overs so I look forward to earning new clients with this great new website with its excellent service.

My TLM 103 and Speck 5.0 and ART MPA Gold are still making me a very happy voice over talent.

A big thank you to Bob Souer for making a connection for me that is looking to turn out quite fruitful, but I'll write more about that when everything is finalized.

Senator John McCain Impersonation Voice-Over by Lance Blair

2008-10-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

Impersonating Senator John McCain isn't as easy as it sounds, especially for voice-over. His voice whistles unmistakably and consistently, but how much is too much? His voice has many regional influences, and yet he has a very folksy cadence of his own. I've done many impersonations of John McCain for humorous effect, emphasizing an impulsive and frustrated character, but I wanted to try John McCain as he often speaks: slowly, softly, and confidently. That was an even greater challenge. Attached is a sample of my more serious McCain impersonation using his acceptance speech from the Republican Convention in St. Paul.

Lance_Blair_as_John_McCain.mp3

Enjoying Narration for E-Learning Voiceover

2008-09-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

I always wanted to be a teacher, largely because I was fortunate to have great teachers in the public and private schools that I attended as a kid: I knew from experience these teachers had a vital impact. Working with brilliant tutors at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland where I earned my Master's with Honours (2-1) in English Language and Literature reinforced my love of learning and of teaching. A few years before launching my career as a voiceover talent I interviewed at Simmons College in Boston and was considering following a career in teaching.

So I'm not a licensed teacher...but when I record e-learning voiceovers, that is my character. I assume the role of teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend. Sometimes I imagine that I am talking to a lecture hall, although it may seem against the rule of "speaking to one person" in voiceover. Mostly, I am speaking to a colleague who wishes to know more. I imagine my chair pulled up next to theirs, with me leaning over pointing to their laptop screens and papers...drawing out examples on my own notepad as I explain a point in further detail. For e-learning voice overs, the narrator is far more than an announcer. He or she is a mentor and a colleague: a teacher.

When I first recorded e-learning voiceovers years back part of me thought "Ugh. 10,000 words of technobabble." That impression was wrong. As an effective e-learning voice over talent, one ought to learn the content. You can't just become familiar with it, and you can't just read it cold using your bag of voiceover tricks; that would result in a painful e-learning voiceover. I've heard many strong narrators in e-learning voiceover sound perfectly bored and lifeless even though their voice is clear and strong. In e-learning voiceovers, You have to think like a teacher: "This is what I've learned, and this what I'm sharing with you."

For e-learning voice-overs, I'm given the responsibility to connect with the listener through content that really matters: content that trains future engineers or reinforces the knowledge and skills of engineers and other professionals, and content that improves the exchange of ideas and knowledge. When so much in the media is merely distraction and diversion, e-learning voice overs are a welcome opportunity to be a part of contemporary teaching.

Tweaking Your Laptop for Audio Recording

2008-09-13T08:07:00.000-07:00

I have a laptop for recording voice-overs on the road, even when on vacation. A voice talent's work is never done (cue the superhero music). Today's laptops pretty much can get the job done in a stellar fashion right out of the box, but then there are some issues with Vista...but it seems that recently A/D soundcard manufacturers are making drivers that work better with Vista. Everyone's computer will have its own hang-ups and glitches, and there are a many different tweaks one can make to improve audio recording performance, and many of them are well documented. Here are some of the more unusual ones I've stumbled across that actually can make a difference if you're at your wits' end about tweaking your laptop for optimized audio recording:

1.) Put your Temp files and Session files on different drives. Use an external drive for your Temp files. Audition recommends this, and it makes a load of sense: why make the computer work on two levels with the same drive simultaneously? I've done this tweak with an old laptop, and it made the 4200 rpm drives sound like 7200 rpm drives.

2.) Disable your CD/DVD drive temporarily. This will really get a computer that limps along back up to speed.

3.) Knock out your Startup Items via (run > msconfig > startup ...then de-select the junk). You don't need Quick Time auto-start or the Printer Updater or Advanced Monitor Configuration or various software updaters. Chuck 'em out!

4.) Use windows classic display scheme, and knock out all of the display effects, and set your color quality to lower settings. In general, do what you can to have your display and video working at the lowest level possible.

It's tough being chef, cook, and bottle-washer...good luck!

Political Voiceovers

2008-09-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

Some voice over colleagues are asking themselves about the ethical ramifications of doing voiceovers for political spots with which they don't agree. Well, I don't think I would have done a Khan for a Greater Mongolia or Cromwell - Reform We Can Trust spot back in the day, but in general I'm one of those guys who thinks whomever you vote for the government gets in. I might as well do the gig because somebody else is going to do it, and do it well enough to make the cause look good.

Or are they?

I was surprised at how bland I thought the voiceovers were at the Republican Convention. In general they were fine, but at times the narrator completely lost focus. They weren't being casual, or conversational...they slipped completely out of the moment and disengaged: as if to say "And then McCain also did x and y, yadda yadda yadda." It can happen to the best of talents - but repeatedly in the same session? For such a big gig? My suspicion is that the blame needs to be laid more at the feet of the directors and not the talents. Especially since the narrator of the Cindy McCain tribute wasn't checked when he read the word liaison as "lay-ee-zhan".

Could I have done better? Yeah. Bring it on. I also know many, many other talents that would have knocked these relatively brief narrations out of the park and kept engaged throughout.

I'll leave you with a political voiceover.

political.mp3

What are conversational voiceovers?

2008-09-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, I haven't been posting much lately...there's this thing called summer...it cuts into my Online Life.

Anyhow, today I had a great back n' forth on a voiceover messageboard where we all posted "conversational" takes of a real commercial. There were many substantially different successful versions of what a "conversational" read was: just some food for thought.

My contribution was a parody of a conversational vo session...but there's a good conversational read snuck in there as well.

check%20md.mp3

Lance Blair Atlanta Voiceovers Goes Upmarket (Neumann TLM-103, Speck Electronics 5.0 Mic Pre)

2008-06-29T18:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, enough of the whining about things going downmarket with the bad economy. How about helping a fantastic American audio company like Speck Electronics by adding the Speck 5.0 Mic Pre to the Lance Blair Atlanta Voiceovers studio arsenal? Sounds good to me!

The Speck 5.0 has 70db of clean gain (great for my PR40 dynamic and my ribbon mics) and a lovely switchable output transformer that has a clean tone for character and narration voiceover without being overbearing. There's a -20db pad, phase reversal, and sweepable HPF, a whole "mix matrix" and a linkable option to their amazing EQ unit or additional 5.0 Mic Preamps. Ted Fletcher of Boston's Mercenary Audio has compared it favorably to Millennia's HV-3C...adding that the Speck's sound has an added "opulence" that the Millennia lacks. That's more than good enough for pro voiceover work...and now I'm proud to offer it as a part of my signal chain. I tried a Speck out a year ago with the fine folks at Atlanta Pro audio and I should have taken one home then. I wasn't going to make that same mistake again.

I've compared clips of the Speck 5.0 against two other vo preamp champs, the Great River and the John Hardy. I'll admit that the very low end on both are a bit better than the Speck...you know, the bit that gets taken out of the signal in post. However, the transistor in the Speck is much more tasteful for vo...if you want more grit and color leave it to the project's engineers. What really won me over, was the "opulence" that Ted Fletcher of Mercenary was referring to: this opulence comes from how the Speck creates a greater sense of three dimensional space than the John Hardy or the Great River. They might sound bigger or have more presence at times, but the Speck sounds naturally intimate - much better for voice acting and helping the voice connect to the audience. The sound seems to come from all around your ears more than just from a point in front of you; at least as much as a mono voice signal can without processing. Good stuff.

Yet what's a microphone preamp without a good microphone? Got it. Now I have the Neumann TLM-103. I've turned my nose up at this mic in the past because it sounds very harsh on more nasal and thin/cutting American voices. Thankfully, that doesn't apply to me. I borrowed one from my colleague Mike Filosa from Advanced Field Production to check my signal chain as a part of my continuous QC. My thinking was "I know how the 103 can be harsh, let's see how harsh it is in my studio". I was shocked. Even through my plain old Yamaha monitoring board I sounded great on it. No sibilance issues. No harshness. Plenty of low end. No muddied mids. What I liked best was the amazing focus and articulation which I've heard the 103 lend to quality voices. There's no second guessing if the verbs are past-tense or not (did he say "walked" or "walk"?) that you find with the woofy mics. There's no crazy shrillness that you find with dozens of other mics in that class range. Finally, I was surpised how the mic is focused on the voice. No excessive ambience or mouth mechanics. All this being very surprising to me because I've heard too many DYI voiceover talents suffer with the TLM 103 from a.) poor mic placement - you can't crowd this mic! and b.) simply not having the right voice for the mic. If you check out the mic test at transom.org, the guy with a rich low voice sounds like an ace on the 103 (better than on the U87ai, I might add) while his more nasally thin typical American guy partner sounds like an utter dork on it (and the 103 may be the worst mic of the lot on his voice).

So I'm man enough to admit I was wrong about the TLM 103. It has its many uses, and fortunately a really good use for this mic is to capture my voice! Paired with the clean "opulence" of the Speck Electronics 5.0 mic pre, I've found myself really nice set of tools to make great recordings. That's what it's all about, really: I find myself much freer and more confident to make the right choices in the vocal delivery knowing that my chosen tools are up to the task. If I push them loudly, they respond without saturation. If I whisper, they don't let me fall away. If I make brash consonant sounds, nothing distorts. I can even physically act out my characters without worrying about going off axis. It's a beautiful thing.

PS: I still don't like the TLM 49 or 93. The 49 sounds a lot like my PR40 dynamic, which is just flat out wrong for a $1500 condenser.

Voice123 Goes Downmarket

2008-06-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

As far as pay-to-play internet voiceover sites go, Voice123 has been a pioneer and a standard in the industry. That's still true, but now the site forges ahead with new standards of going downmarket. Largely, it's been a victim of its own success. The number of talent subscriptions has at least doubled in the past few years, which has thoroughly diluted the talent pool. It's harder for good talents to be heard or found which is bad for both the quality talents and quality "voice seekers" from potential clients. I know many high quality talents (even some personally, not just on the internet) who left voice123 because they simply could not get gigs through all the rabble. As of today there are 3342 talents (not all have Premium Subscriptions whereby they can audition for leads) fighting for the handful of gigs which pop up each day. Most of these leads are for jobs under $250 (less than the subscription cost).

In my first two years on voice123 won a few auditions each year and received a handful of jobs through private leads. One of these leads became my best e-learning client for whom I continue to work, and I'm thankful to voice123 for these opportunities. Also, I received many direct calls for jobs by people who heard me on the site and decided to go right to the source and call me. So in the past, voice123 has been a great marketing tool for not a lot of money...especially since I spent very little time actually auditioning.

In the past year, I've auditioned nearly a hundred times. I won a decent job for the voice of a DVD manual and another for a podcast introduction, but received only four private leads. I intentionally market myself as an Atlanta Voiceover talent, but I'm buried in their search engine. A talent from Phoenix came up as their #8 Atlantan voiceover talent the last time I checked. Certainly nobody deserves gigs: you earn them, and luck has a bit to do with it too. However, I've heard from many other talents who are frustrated with the diminishing ROI that voice123 provides. Again, the source of this problem is their success in attracting more competetive talent, but also a sinking boat full of wannabees. I listened to 50 v123 talents at random yesterday and honestly, four were of a pro level and two of the four were nondescript (boring). When you're with an agency, you're not one of 3342 roster talents. Also, most of those 3342 aren't rank amateurs who don't know what a pop-filter is.

As a result of the dilution of the "talent" in the Voice123 talent base, it's clear that the quality voice seekers have been turned off by the service. There is an increasing number of revised auditions from seekers dissatisfied with all of the talents who initially replied. Most leads these days are cheap, paying less than going market rates; and cheaper than those of other pay-to-play sites who have also seen their service go slightly downmarket, it should be noted.
Too many of the jobs are for joke sites or animations of no real marketable purpose, un-ethical nutritional supplements and get-rich-quick tutorials, or vague international products written with even vaguer rules of grammar. Voice123 has become an excellent downmarket marketing tool for the bottom-feeding clients and voice-talkers to get together and share shoddy services in exchange for hissy unprofessional files and late low paychecks.

Has Voice123 become the Black Market of voiceovers? No, but as the economy sours and desperate amateurs flood the talent roster, this Market has a darkening shade of gray.

Voiceover Scripts Made Easy

2008-04-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

Hi. I didn't write what you're reading right now.
It's all a transcription of me talking into my
microphone in my recording booth.  I want to make
some points about writing scripts for voiceovers.
You'll notice, first of all, that  even though I'm
speaking very quickly for just one minute there
really aren't that many words. This goes to show
that there's only so much information a person can
say in a minute, never mind understand. The sentences
are very short, allowing for natural breathing.
Also, the verbs are largely active.

I want to drive the point home that while some say
that voiceovers are just "voice talking" or reading,
that it's somehow simple, that view is dead wrong.
It's trying to take a script, breathe life into it,
be a character even if it's the spokesman of a product,
and make a connection with just one person. That's a
difficult thing to do.

I'll leave you with this thought raised by my Professor
of English, Stephen Boyd, from the University of
St. Andrews from years back. He asked us why George Orwell
was the best selling author on the Penguin Classics
roster. Lots of people brought up his politics,
but I got the answer right. I said it's because
he's the easiest to read.

ART MPA Gold Microphone Preamp

2008-04-16T20:01:00.001-07:00

The first preamp I ever bought was an ART Tube MP. It was noisy and picked up WBOS, but when I could get it to settle I could get an okay sound out of it for $30. Lately, I've seen a few threads about people putting good tubes into low end microphone preamps with pleasant results. One preamp with which people had varied but interesting results was the ART MPA Gold. Unlike many of ART's other products, the MPA isn't a starved-plate low voltage device. Well, let's just say that it has a high plate voltage setting which is noticeable in its effect on the sound. This reminds me of the recent Joemeeks: they're okay as is, but when you employ the "Iron" button, you've got yourself a pretty good piece of gear for not a lot of money.

The tubes with which the ART MPA comes with are terrible. They only say "China 12AX7B" on them. 'Nuff said. You can do better with almost any old $8 replacement tube. I went with a $19 JJ/Tesla 12AX7 (or "ECC83S") for one channel of the MPA, and with a $29 Tung Sol 12AX7 for the other (each with gold tips). Both are newly made tubes and sound decent: they certainly make the MPA a workable preamp with some good tone. The Tung Sol really works well with my Heil PR40 microphone, but I will probably upgrade the JJ to a GE NOS tube in the near future.

What I really like about the MPA is that for $300 you get two channels with plenty of clean gain and each has their own sweepable high pass filter and their own sweepable input impedance (up to 3k). The Heil PR40 is a really bright mic, and sometimes it needs to be slowed down a touch to a 2k impedance even though that's against the recommended ratios. With condensers, the sweepable impedance isn't as important as it is with dynamic microphones that I like to use.

My True Systems P-Solo has been replaced. While that unit is fantastic for guitars (both as a DI and for micing acoustic guitar) the ART MPA Gold is working for me, and I'm getting comments on my sound and more importantly my voice that I wasn't ever getting with the P-Solo. It feels funny going back to a brand that I started out with, but it's kind of fun having a piece of gear and tricking it out - customizing it for your own needs, and making it your own.

Next I guess I should get some cheesy stickers and rhinestones to put on it. Someone might mistake it for an Avalon then.

Echo AudioFire Soundcard

2008-04-16T07:42:00.000-07:00

In another nice upgrade for the voiceover studio, I now have an Echo Audio AudioFire soundcard/interface in the signal path. This is a substantial improvement over the Presonus interface I was previously using and was never happy with. It took some time to research and choose the right replacement soundcard for my studio. I wanted something simple, since I usually only record two channels at a time at most. I also wanted something reliable that was rock-solid for recording and provided quality audio and would work with my computers. E-MU was a contender as they make very good products, but they are going out of business. The Apogee Duet was also intriguing. Echo Audio's AudioFire was the winner, as they have a great reputation and will be around to provide support and driver upgrades (they upgrade their drivers very frequently). I also like that my AudioFire is small and runs without generating much heat (the Presonus was like a toaster). Thanks to technical gear maven and voiceover pro Gregory Houser for his opinions on the Echo.

The Presonus was rock-solid for playback, very flexible for routing, but was not rock-solid for recording and did not provide the level of quality audio that I wanted to provide to my clients. The Presonus, in the end, was a fradulent device incapable of providing the 96kHz recordings it claimed that it could. A long-delayed replacement driver from Presonus may have solved the issue (some people claim that it's still not a 96kHz device even after the upgrade), but it introduced an unreasonable amount of noise. I'm glad that the Presonus experiment is over and that I can move on to a much better device with Echo Audio. The improvement in sound is obvious: the Echo is much more present, detailed, and rich while the Presonus relied on the crutch of smeared hyped frequencies at the low and high ends to mask the fact that it lacks midrange detail.

If you're more concerned about playback and signal routing, by all means buy a Presonus product, they're great in that regard. If you want better recordings for the same money go with Echo Audio.

Recent Work & Going Tubular

2008-04-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

I've had some nice work recently for some excellent people. I just finished up a piece about Cellular Biology for Genzyme with Blue Wave and also a website voiceover for Nortel with Mars Productions. Both production companies are Boston-based: I suppose you can take the lad out of Boston but you can't take the Boston out of the lad. I do quite a bit of work with Boston clients still, which is one of the joys of phone patch voiceover sessions.

The Nortel piece was interesting because I did it with my transatlantic pan-British accent which was my main speaking voice for a long time. I developed it while living in Scotland for five years and didn't let it go for ages; only in the past four years have I made a concerted effort to re-Americanize my voice. Being a voice talent, i can pretty much turn it on and off like a spigot (or spicket...see?). The fine folks at Mars and Nortel didn't realiz(s)e that they were choosing a Yank. I'm rather pleased about this because they were trying to find a voice to match spots done with born and bred English talent.

The Genzyme voiceover "Cell and Organelle" was a hoot because of the oral acrobatics which the copy required. "MPS, glycoproteinoses, glycogen storage lysosomal diseases (i.e Pompe), and other LSD's" was my favourite list in the copy.

Today I ordered a twin-channel tube mic preamp with sweepable input impedance and HPF. I also made sure to order two nice tubes to go with the unit: one for the Violet Designs condenser channel, and one for the Heil PR40 channel. Yet another weapon in the arsenal.

Atlanta Tornado Disaster Relief

2008-03-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

Over March 14 -15 2008 much of Northern Georgia was pounded with numerous tornadoes and hailstorms, the most notable being the F2 tornado that ripped through Downtown, Old Fourth Ward, and Cabbagetown in Atlanta.

While the affected areas are too dangerous for the general public to enter at this time, once the damage is properly assessed and contained, there are many ways that people can help.

One good way to help is to register as a volunteer at HandsOnAtlanta.org and they will contact you with information about volunteer disaster relief projects that you can work on.

Studio Cables Matter (Now 100% Mogami)

2008-01-03T18:29:00.000-08:00

I was using ProCo Quad XLR cables with gold Neutrik connectors from my mic to my preamp (and then a short TRS 1/4" to the interface). They are very good cables, but they were a bit old and had been used (but not harshly) before I put them in my studio.

Out of curiosity, I subbed them out with an old used Audio Technica cable which are made in the Mogami factory to Mogami specs. It sounded better: as if I had a noticeable preamp upgrade. Sure enough, on the analyzer there was more low and high end as I was hearing.

So I put two and two together and purchased all new Mogami cable with gold Neutriks for my studio. I'm very happy with the results. I've dropped my noise floor by about 3db and it just plain sounds better!

Meaning and Technique

2007-12-09T19:43:00.000-08:00

I spent part of this afternoon with my family at the Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, GA. It's a children's bookstore which comes as close to fitting the description of a 'magical place' as much as a contemporary establishment of commerce can. It is an island unto itself. They have a small but well selected big-person-book section (I wouldn't call it 'Adult Fiction' since that sounds naughty) which could keep the avid reader nicely well-read for some time. I picked up Colin McGinn's Shakespeare's Philosophy: Discovering the Meaning Behind the Plays because frankly, it's so well written that it's an easy read. It has that Orwellian quality: you will breeze through it and actually learn more than you would from erudite stodge. In his examination of how The Tempest is occupied with the magical influences of language and silence, he brings up the important point which I've seen written many times yet always rings true: the meaning behind the sounds/words we speak are more important than their technical quality.

In voiceover, or any type of performance, being preoccupied with how one appears to others may be the worst thing one can do. Prepare and train physically and mentally so that you avoid bad technique, but after that preoccupations should be firmly affixed to the meaning, even if that meaning is "Come to our store this Labor Day and buy our stuff".