How Voice Actors can make an Audio Engineer's life easier
- Mark Mullens
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Audio post production companies are often responsible for handling, voice over recording, mixing of the voice over audio and potentially the final audio mix for entire piece of content, be it a commercial, corporate video, brand video, etc.
They have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders, and ultimately for a lot of them, how the voice actor behaves reflects on them, especially if they are responsible for sourcing the voice over.
They might be held accountable or responsible for anything that happens during the session. This means a voice actor can make them look good, but also make them look bad.
This is why I make sure everything on my end is in place before the session starts.
Here are a few example of what I do to ensure a smoother session.
I connect 5-10 minutes early to remote sessions, and arrive early to in-person sessions.For remote sessions in particular, it allows the audio engineer to do a sound check. Remember that in a remote session audio engineers have limited control over the sound, so they have to trust that I have everything setup properly. If there is a problem it must be resolved before the client connect.For in-person sessions it is more of a check for gain and microphone placement. I just stand there and look as pretty as I reasonably can.
I ask if I need to take any notes or add markers for preferred takes. I always record locally as well, even if the audio goes through Source-Connect or SessionLink Pro.I don't usually need to do this but I think it's good to have the option.
I don't mess with the audio.I know my way around audio software and plugins, but I don't know as much as someone who's craft is dedicated to understanding audio and its production, which means my job is to perform, not mess around with settings. This means no noise reduction, compression, or anything.If I'm not certain about how something sounded, I can ask to have it played back. If there's no negative reaction to it, it means there is no problem. End of story.
If I need to make adjustments, such as reducing my gain for louder parts, I specifically state by how much I'm reducing my gain, so maybe it's 6dB or 12dB. If I communicate it we avoid confusion. My Neumann MT48 audio interface makes this very easy because I can specifically check the gain number.
I am transparent
If there are issues, they need to be communicated.
One time there was some freakishly strong wind going on outside. So I contacted the audio engineer saying that there's some pretty loud background noise, and I wanted his opinion as to whether or not it was ok to record. Turns out it was low enough to not need significant noise reduction, but I couldn't say that with certainty.
There's no benefit to hiding problems, because it just creates confusion and issues down the line.
This means they have either an advertising agency or the end-client potentially breathing down their neck.
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