To record a professional voice talent correctly, you must ensure proper audio signal flow from the voice to the final captured digital audio data.

But what is audio signal flow?

Audio signal flow is the path an audio signal takes from its source to its destination. In our case, this is a straightforward path from the professional voice talent through a microphone, into a microphone preamp (often housed within an audio interface), and into the computer, which operates as a digital audio workstation (DAW).

Understanding audio signal flow is essential for any voice professional because it allows you to:

1. Optimize your setup for the best possible sound quality.
2. Troubleshoot any problems that may occur during recording.
3. Get creative with your recording and mixing techniques.

Basic audio signal flow for professional voice recording

The basic signal flow for professional voice recording is as follows:

1. Microphone: The microphone captures the sound waves of your voice and converts them into an electrical signal.
2. Microphone preamp: The microphone preamp boosts the level of the electrical signal from the microphone so that it can be processed by other devices.
3. Audio interface: The audio interface converts the electrical signal from the microphone preamp into a digital signal that can be recorded and processed by your computer.
4. Digital audio workstation (DAW): The DAW is a software program that allows you to record, edit, and mix audio.
5. Monitor speakers: Monitor speakers allow you to hear the audio signal that you are recording and mixing.

Additional devices and processing steps

In addition to the basic components listed above, there are many other devices and processing steps that can be used in professional voice recording. These include:

1. EQ (equalization): EQ allows you to boost or cut certain frequencies in the audio signal to improve its sound quality.
2. Compression: Compression reduces the dynamic range of the audio signal, making it sound more consistent and polished.
3. De-essing: De-essing is used to remove harsh sibilance sounds from the audio signal.
4. Reverb: Reverb adds a sense of space and depth to the audio signal.
5. Delay: Delay creates echoes that can be used to create a variety of effects.

Understanding audio signal flow is essential for professional voice recording. By understanding the different components and processing steps involved, you can optimize your recording setup for the best possible sound quality and get creative with your recording and mixing techniques.

As audio geeks, we’ve been honing our own signal flow for years, both for fun and to improve the quality of our output. We work with a large roster of professional voice talents who’ve perfected their own audio paths as well. This helps guarantee that our IVR recordings, auto-attendant greetings, and on-hold messages play perfectly for our customers.

The post Check Your Audio Signal Flow for Professional Voice Recordings appeared first on Marketing Messages.

We listen closely to more than we’re aware. Our brains are constantly blocking sounds that our ears pick up from reaching our conscious thoughts because if we did actually listen to all the sounds around us all the time we’d go quite mad. I listened to a fascinating podcast the other week that described this in detail. I’ve provided a link because it was so well explained and you might enjoy the listen too.

Back to audio production’s ebb and flow, and how it’s related to this post. Audio gets recorded. It gets passed through the production department. We listen to it as it arrives, as we process, as we edit, and once we’re done we listen to it one more time to ensure accuracy.

The sound changes each time.

First, it’s raw and imperfect, full of little noises and the occasional false start or complete mistake.

As audio editors we act like the brain does for the ear/mind connection, we find such sounds and remove them. No one wants to hear clicks, pops, static, or distortion in speech when they need to understand the content. We remove all the ‘noise’ and leave only the best bits.

We tighten up the speech here, we add a needed pause there, and we finely craft the perfect voice prompts by whittling down the recording of one of our many professional voice talents into small, precisely named nuggets. Most are .wav files, some are .mp3, and others are formatted for increasingly rare IVR systems that play VOX files.

The playback of each edited audio file is optimized for the system on which it will be used. Some take a 44.1 kHz, 16-bit, mono PCM wav file. Other systems prefer an ITU G.711 encoded wav file. These sound radically different in my headphones on my PC, but in use, as they are designed to be used, they sound just perfect alongside the other digital prompts in the library.

Sometimes I’ll get to hear the same speech in as many as 32 different languages on a given day. This is a fairly rare occurrence, to be sure, but it sure is neat when it happens. Which languages you might wonder? Why so many all at once you may ask? If you really want the details I’m happy to share, just comment below and I’ll let you know. By the way, we’ve worked with over 80 different languages in the past and always enjoy learning to work with a new one.

The post The Ebb and Flow of Audio Production appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Being present mentally and physically takes constant effort and like all such things that take effort the results make it a worthy pursuit.

When I’m feeling mentally hectic, I like to slow down, sit in a sunny spot, and read. If I don’t have much time, a magazine is a great option because of all the short articles. But which magazine should I read?

Tape Op is a Great Magazine

This magazine checks all the boxes for me because it’s chock full of articles and ads that are focused on my passion, my hobby, and my career as an audio engineer. I’ve subscribed to Tape Op magazine since 2011 because it’s so well written, edited, put together, and altogether extraordinary. Most of the recording gear I’ve purchased since 2011 was selected after a favorable writeup in its Gear Review column. I’ve turned dozens of friends onto the magazine as a fantastic resource but until today I never thought to share it with all of our blog visitors.
I’d like to share today because of one article in particular that I found so wonderful, so profoundly insightful, and inspirational that I think anyone who records audio should read it. I’d tell you about it, but really, you should take some time and read it for yourself.
Mindfulness

How This Factors Into Our Workflow

I read the article and found I had to pause and reflect several times because it was so on point!

We’ve all been there, in the studio, professional voice talent ready, engineer ready, producer ready, client present. In our sessions at Marketing Messages, we work from a carefully crafted IVR voice prompt script. It’s been looked at by all involved parties, iterated over, finessed, and finally approved by the powers that be.

Paper savers that we are, we’re each looking at the copy on our screens. The session begins, the talent speaks, the engineer listens, the producer listens, and the client speaks. “Oh, wait, that’s not the latest version. We made some changes this morning. Can we work from this version instead?”

Game-changer or mere hiccup?

Fortunately, we too practice mindfulness in our sessions. We pause and reflect before recording. We are present and open to acceptance. We do not resist the change but embrace it willingly, finding a way to readily distribute the new version of that IVR voice prompt script to everyone’s unique device. The talent takes a moment to drink water. The engineer double-checks the audio levels. The producer does something magical that no one else understands and the client smiles contentedly. We accept that we’ve been given the chance to record the best version of the latest copy. We smile, we get quiet, and we record the most natural-sounding VUI audio to date.

If you’d like to book a session with us to record your IVR prompts, auto-attendant greetings, on-hold messages, e-learning speech, narration, or more, please contact us.

The post Preparing to Record Your Audio in Studio? Pause and Reflect appeared first on Marketing Messages.