The new voiceover booth is coming along nicely thanks to the generosity of some fantastic people that know much more about acoustic design than I do.  The isolation walls and ceiling are done.  Over 300 square feet of acoustic insulation is on it’s way.  The new door should be delivered on Monday or Tuesday of next week.  It’s a heavy beastie but it has to be to provide the kind of isolation I want (and feel that you as my client deserve).

The Hart Voice Overs Booth

Today I got the flooring installed. Boy it looks pretty. And it won’t mess with the high frequencies in the voice range the way carpet does.

The new floor in Hart Voice Overs Vocal Booth

I’ll have the door system installed next week. The acoustic insulation should arrive in about another week. As soon as it gets here I’ll be able to treat the walls and hang a “cloud” on the ceiling. Then the new booth will be ready to go!

I’m very excited about the upgrade to this booth and I hope you, as a client or potential client, are excited about the great enhancements it will provide for your projects with Hart Voice Overs as well.

It sure did tighten up the bass response in my studio, lol.

Posted from my iPhone.

“There are only so many combinations of notes that a musician can use. It’s inevitable that we’re going to run out of original songs eventually, hence this video. Even my beloved Journey is unoriginal. I’ve officially stopped believin’.”

photo credit: re_birf

How do you write good copy for voice over?

Writing for the spoken word can be dramatically different than composing a piece that is meant to be read.  Take a magazine article or newspaper and read it out loud and you will quickly see what I mean.  You have to think about the context, the target audience, the speaker’s point of view… and on and on.  A lot goes into good VO copy.

I referenced good copy in my article “How to Hire A Voice Over” to some extent with the intention of addressing copy later in a separate post.  Digital Newsgathering has beaten me to the punch with a great  piece called “Say What? Best Practices for Writing Voice Over Copy” that you should read before sending that script off for the VO.

Its all good stuff but pay particular attention to the section on timing.  It can be very hard to condense your message into 30 seconds and keep the pacing at a good speed but it’s critcal to having a great voiceover read.

It is also good practice to read your script out loud after you have written it.  You’ll find things that may seem clear on paper but don’t translate well in speech.  We also tend to write rather formally and your VO may call for a more informal approach.  For example I might write  “We are all going to the store”.  However you might not say we are in casual conversation, you might say we’re.  It’s those little details that can really bring out the character and enhance your message in great copy.

In addition to being a professional voice actor Brian Hart also offers copywriting consults and services.

I’ve participated in several radio station builds over the years as well as building two studios for myself.

I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly ways to hang acoustic foam.

While there are options for leaving an air gap between your panels and walls, for this discussion we’ll focus on placing foam panels directly on the wall.  Here are a 5 examples of how and how not to hang that expensive foam.

1.

Direct From the Manufacturer.

For the first option I’m going to stick with the Auralex Studio Foam since that’s what I own but other manufacturers have adhesives/fasteners they sell with their foam products as well.  Auralex recommends using Foamtak, Tubetak Pro, or Temp Tabs.  From the Auralex site:

“The world’s best acoustic foam adhesives, guaranteed to keep your foam up for as long as you want it there and not to “eat” your foam. Also works great to attach various materials to each other during construction of your studio. Our adhesives apply easily and give a solid, permanent bond that actually improves the sound isolation of your construction. You don’t want to use Liquid Nails brand because its very manufacturer published a memo some time back advising that it not be used with acoustic foam due to possible chemical interactions that can cause the foam to disintegrate prematurely.”

I haven’t used any of these products but I know many people that have and have been satisfied with the results.  I especially like the idea of the Temp Tabs for Studio Foam as it’s a temporary solution and allows you to move your panels around when needed.  But all of these are expensive and there are cheaper options.

2.

Another alternative is construction adhesive from the local hardware store but that’s a bad choice as the excerpt from Auralex’s site mentions above.  I worked with a client station that used the Liquid Nails brand to hang their foam despite my recommendation against it.  Now I love Liquid Nails in the right application but this isn’t it.  Why is it a bad idea?

As you can see there are a couple problems.  This type of adhesive tears up the foam and that stuff is expensive!  It also tears up the walls you attached it to so when it comes time to remove your panel you have to do sheet rock repair and repaint.  Another potential problem is that some adhesives will actually eat away at acoustic foam.  I always recommend checking with the foam panel manufacturer before using a 3rd party product.

3.

Your third option is to use a 3rd party spray adhesive.  I’ve had mixed success with 3m’s Super 77 spray adhesive.  As you can see in the following photo it does a great job of holding this Sonex to my “portable” VO booth’s wood surface.

I built this box a few years ago and I’ve never had to reapply the adhesive.

On the other hand, at one radio station we used this spray adhesive to attach Sonex panels to sheetrock.  After a few months they started coming down.  Trust me, you don’t want to be respraying that stuff on your panels around all your expensive electronics.

So sometimes it works great and sometimes it doesn’t.  It depends on what materials you are attaching.

You might consider testing any adhesive in an inconspicuous area with a small piece of foam first to make sure it’s suitable for the job.  Actually, that’s good advice for lots of projects if you have the time, not just hanging foam.

4.

You can always use nails to hold your acoustic foam panels on the wall.  Obviously they won’t let go so that’s a plus.  But I don’t like to put the big holes in the wall.  That’s just more stuff to repair later.  And you’ve got the whole “I hit my thumb with the hammer and my thumbnail turned purple and is falling off” thing to explain to your friends.

5.

My personal favorite option is to use T pins:

You can find them just about anywhere that sells sewing supplies.  I usually get mine at Wal-Mart.  They are cheap and come in different lengths.  The beauty of these little guys is that they leave small holes in the wall that are easily filled later.  They “disappear” into the foam panels nicely so you don’t see the pins and they don’t damage your foam.  Check the photo in the intro of this post.  Those panels are held by two pins each.  The “T” head holds the foam panels in place very well and it only takes two pins to hold up a 2′x4′ sheet.  You can usually push them in by hand.  They make it very easy to experiment and move your panels around for the best placement.

So there you have it.  5 ways to hang (or not hang) acoustic foam.  Do you have another example of how or how not to do it?  Leave a comment below.  I always love to hear new ideas.  I hope you found this information helpful.

In addition to being such a great designer, he is also kind enough to help out the little guys and do it your-selfers. John hosts a wonderful forum at www.johnlsayers.com that is all about studio design and construction and is one of my main sources for research into studio construction. There is a ton of great knowledge and plenty of experts willing to help you apply it as long as you show them you’re willing to listen and learn.  Bookmark it. Read it. Use it.

John has posted a sketchup file of plans for a vocal booth designed to fit in the corner of a room.  (Click on the sentence to go to the post).  You need to install the free  Google SketchUp to view the plans.

John Sayers' designed vocal booth

John says the aircon ducting is an option.  Anyway, at first glance the plan looks fantastic!  Pay particular attention to the wall construction as well as the absorbers in the corners.

Two more thoughts:  If you choose to build this design or something similar you should create a build diary on John’s forum.  You’ll get lots of advice and expert help.  And if you do build on John’s design consider making a donation to his site to help him defray the costs of providing all the great information for free.

For today, ponder this if you have a few minutes:

“The safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” – C.S. Lewis

Multi Track Mix in Adobe Audition 3.0

Panning

Let’s be technical for a bit – and I’m going to use tech terms and jargon in this posting so be prepared if you’re new to the production game.  This post is for all you creative services directors, production directors – whatever it is you call yourselves in radio these days.  Me?  I prefer prod guy (or girl) or if I’m feeling particularly cocky: prod guru.  Yesterday I was working on a piece with a very high production value.  Lots of compression, reverb, EQ, various whooshes, stutters and gizmos.  You get the idea.  I decided to spice it up a bit more with some creative panning and that’s when I broke one of Hart’s rules:

Hart’s Rule #214

“Never pan a track more than 30% out of center”

I was playing with a plugin I’ve got that has some pretty neat panning effects and it sounded great in the studio.  Just awesome.  So I finished the piece up and ftp’d it on out into the ether.  On my way to pick up my son at daycare I decided to listen to it on my iphone because; boy I just really nailed that one.  Hmm, where’s that cool panning effect?  Yeah, couldn’t hear it at all.  I plugged the phone into the truck’s sound system.  Still couldn’t hear it.  That portion of the VO had vanished faster than  Bernie Madoff’s golf buddies.  That  reminds me of another of Hart’s rules:

Hart’s Rule #3

“Listen to your mixes outside of the studio”

But that’s a topic for another post.  Back to panning.  When you are playing with stereo effects in your mixes it’s generally a good idea to mix for mono compatible stereo.  Don’t pan a track more than 30% out of center.  Your vocal track or effect or whatever it is will stay nicely in the mix if you have to convert to mono at some point in the future.   And there are reasons you might.  If you happen to have an AM stick in your cluster you know what I’m talking about.  Sure some AM setups will handle a stereo file but what if the sum gets reversed somewhere?  Engineers do make mistakes occasionally despite what they may tell you. That beautiful commercial or promo you produced either sounds like crap or is unintelligible over the air.

Believe it or not a small percentage of your audience still listens to your FM in mono too so a mono compatible mix keeps them happy as well.  For that matter I know quite a few FM talkers that broadcast in FM mono to help out the signal footprint.

Mono files work best for phone systems and some internet applications too if you plan on playing the station or a set of promos through your phone system for example.  So it’s generally a good idea to keep your panning at a reasonable level.

Like most rules this one IS meant to be broken:  There’s a PSA about driving out right now where the VO only speaks in the right channel for a bit.  It’s cute, it’s clever and memorable, and it emphasizes the point of the PSA very well.

I’ve heard some killer imaging where the stereo field is wider than Kevin Smith’s butt.  And there are times when I too follow the sage words: Go Big or Go Home.  Just make sure you know the final destination of your mix and that it doesn’t need to be mono compatible for sure before you break that 30% threshold.

Now the savvy among you are saying, “But wait, Brian you played your mix in stereo devices so it shouldn’t have mattered.”  Right.  It shouldn’t have but it did. So I investigated today.  The new plugin I was playing with sounded great in the multi track mode but after I ran the mixdown through a multiband compressor with the brickwall limiter set it royally screwed it all up.  Yet another lesson – pay attention to how your plugins interact with each other.

So there you have it.  Hart’s rule #214

Agree?  Disagree?  Leave a comment below.

-Brian Hart is a prod guy guru and voiceover  actor.

False eloquence is exaggeration; true eloquence is emphasis. – William R. Alger