So here is my first epiphany on the personal studio. You know what your space sounds like, right…right? Most coaches and engineers will tell you it’s hard or nearly impossible to know what you really sound like. The way sound resonates in the human body colors your perception of your own voice. So, how then can you tell if your space is up to snuff?
GET SOMEBODY ELSE IN YOUR SPACE!
I don’t know any other pros nearby, and even if I did, I would feel guilty putting pressure on them to come to my home and help me tune my studio. So I did the next best thing. I stumbled upon this quite by accident last week. I had my 10 year old daughter get in the booth and record a short passage from Alice In Wonderland. The genesis of why is not important but I am going to tell you anyway. I had a client ask me if I had any kids around to help with a short project. Not being a professional, we didn’t have a demo ready for my daughter, so we thought we would just quickly throw something together. So, we recorded, and played it back and my first thought was WOW, that quality is GREAT! Now I have worked hard to make my personal studio sound great. I’ve done tons of research, asked advice and experimented, a lot. After all of that ,however…I reached out to George Whittam and he got me sorted. Still, I had no idea how great it had become. Remember the point above about not hearing your own voice accurately? All it took was for me to hear another voice in the space to appreciate it.
So voice actors, when you are creating, or even fine tuning your space, consider listening to something other than your own voice for once. You might just find out you are a better engineer than you thought.