The Studio

For many people wishing to work with a professional British Voiceover Artist and Audiobook Narrator, you may not need to know the technical details about my home studio. You may just have one questions “Does it sound good?” The answer to that is “YES!” but don’t take my word for it. Have a browse around the website and listen for yourself. There are lots of examples of Audiobook Narration i have produced, commercial Voice Over video projects and various Demos.

If you want a bit more detail then here you go

Inside the space there is a large amount of acoustic treatment. This is a combination of acoustic foam (Egg box style material) and Rockwool insulation. This makes the space acoustically dead and is perfect for Voiceover as it stops any unnecessary and distracting sounds such as echo and reverb.

The space is vital in allowing the clearest possible sound to be produced. This is particularly important with audiobooks as the listener will be expecting a more intimate listening experience and will not want to be distracted by extraneous noise (computer hums or air conditioning units) or have the text muddled by echo or reverb.

The Equipment

First is the Microphone. I have two main Mics i use for Voice Over and Audiobook Narration. Both Mics are excellent but have slightly different Qualities to them. My Main Mic is the AKG C414. This is an excellent Microphone and if you go into any BBC Recording Studio this most likely the Mic you will find in front of you….If it’s good enough for the Beeb its good enough for me. My 2nd choice of Mic is the Sennheiser MK416 this is a shotgun mic and is most commonly used on film sets. It has a lovely sound and can produce really deep sonorous clarity. Its also a great Mic for location work and i use it for podcasts when interviewing people as its particularly good at expelling background noise.

Next is the preamp which boosts the gain to the Mic signal (it makes it louder). I use a inline class A Preamp The Fethead Phantom, this runs via a XLR cable to the next piece of equipment, The Audio Interface. This little box turns the Analogue Signal into a digital signal that the computer software can understand.

The Audio Interface is plugged Via USB into my computer. My studio runs on a MAC Pro that is connected outside the booth itself (computers make too much noise to be inside the booth). The software that records the audio is known as a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I use Apple MACS legendary Logic Pro, however there are lots of other DAWS you can use.

Once the audio is recorded onto the DAW there are a number of final processes to go through before it is complete and ready for the client. Logic Pro itself has many useful editing tools and i also use Izotope RX7 which is an excellent suite of editing and mastering tools.

And finally because my booth is connected to high speed internet, it is possible (should people wish) to monitor any of my recordings in real time via low latency, high quality audio connections such as Source Connect, IPDTL and my favourite Boldagocall. You can also dial in via Skype and Zoom if you wish.