Tip #5 Room noise - My (messy) studio setup!
Last episode today - 5 - Room noise.
It's important to provide voice tracks that are clean, with no outside noise present and no echo or reverb.
Toby shows his studio setup and some principles on how to achieve the best sound you can. I covered this recently in more detail on VOLIFE - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIreiw5jcmI
Transcription here:
It's Toby Ricketts here again back with my series, my mini series on how to provide better audio tracks for your clients as a voiceover artist - starting outside today because today we are talking about the outside and the inside. Number five is room noise. I've called this because there are two types of room noise there's the noise outside - listen to the trees it's decidedly winter here in New Zealand. We've got all the trees up there with the leaves blowing in the wind. And that causes noise. Rain is a problem sometimes can always is a problem and just general city noise other people in your house can be a problem. Luckily I've got my little studio here in the woods. So there's not too much car noise. There's not too much other people noise going on, but there is the noise of nature. So when we step inside here, cut most of that out which is what we want. This is called soundproofing, it's keeping the outside noise from coming inside. The other problem noise is called room treatment. And when you're in a room, especially modern houses with the stuff on the wall like drywall, jib plywood, it's pretty reflective. So you go in here, this like ringing, it's kind of it's just, it's a little bit live. So we need to install some room treatment, which is this stuff here, Autex. This is called Autex, quietspace panels. And it's polyester layers of polyester sheeting, and it just soaks up sound. So if I go into the scene, and I go back, it's really nice and, and quiet because this just soaks up all that sound. So as an audio engineer, if I get tracks that have car noise, rain on the roof, wind or lightness, then it's not very useful. So as a voiceover artist, it's your job to cut all that out of the recording stage. Now that doesn't mean you have to go out By $10,000 studio bricks or whisper room unnecessarily, although if you do want to do this as a full time gig then like that might make sense. But what you can do when you're starting out is find a place which cuts out a lot of the outside noise, which is soundproof and this is often somewhere in the core of the house this is under the stairs. It can be a walk in wardrobe. These places are insulated from the sounds of the outside so they're very good. Walk-in wardrobes are perfect because they've also got lots of clothes in racks which soaks up the sound soaks up all that lightness so you effectively have a studio mic environment and yeah, if you can get some power and microphone into them. Also on the soundproofing front, it's worth I'm gonna flip the camera. I have some backup panels here, which is also the autex quiet space. And basically if it starts raining heavily because this has quite a thin roof and got some panels up on the roof there that just this cut it out a little bit, but I kind of I sometimes have to build kind of a A little, little pillow fort. And I basically have to get these panels and pile them on top of each other like this. I just had to do this with one hand in the camera, but basically like this and you can build yourself like a little, a little, a little cozy like this and get inside. And then it cuts out a lot of the room noise. I've left the door open. So that's why but that's like an emergency backup. If I've got like a live direct session that's happening. And I need to have audio that is as nice and pure. I will go through the trauma of installing these panels as you can see that a bit unwieldy. And if you're judging me about the messyness of my studio, which it is and I apologize for that. But, these are real, real podcasts. And check out Tim Harford. He's a great writer who talks about the benefits of a messy desk. Apparently it helps you be more creative and productive. So I'm going to delegate to him on this one. And thank you for tuning in to this series this mini series about how to provide better audio tracks to your clients and sound engineers. I hope you've enjoyed it. Please interact leave comments, ask questions, because I love hearing from people who are enjoying these videos. So yeah, if you can give me a bit of feedback, that would be great. You can subscribe to my my video blog on YouTube, my voiceover channel, Toby Ricketts, just youtube.com/Toby Ricketts and subscribe to that. And you can also find me at gravy for the brain Oceania where I do tutoring. We do live script script read throughs and things like that. And check out my voiceover blog as well Toby, the voice over comm slash blog. You go there's all the channels. Cool. I'll catch you guys for the next mini series. Thanks for tuning in.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
