Showing posts with label Recording. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Recording. Show all posts

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Using a Phone Patch in Your Voice Over Home Recording Studio

 How will a Phone Patch enhance your voice over job opportunities?

The latest trend in voice overs is to have your own home studio. This allows you to work from home and to accept work from anyone in the world. Often the scripts are sent to you via email and you interpret the script, record it, and return the finished files to the client. However this process requires that you fully understand the requirements of your client so that you can direct your own performance. But what if the clients wants to listen in and direct you as you record? This adds another layer of complexity to your studio setup so you can supply this capability with your studio gear. An easy and inexpensive way of doing this is with a Phone Patch.

A Phone Patch allows two way communication with the client

A Phone Patch is a electronic box that allows you to connect your mixer or digital audio interface to standard telephone lines. When you talk into your microphone the mic signal is routed to the telephone as if you are speaking into a telephone receiver. And when the client speaks, their voice is routed into your headphones. Also, when properly set up, you can play back recorded tracks for the client and they can hear that as well. Overall the experience feels like you're in a studio with the client in the control room speaking over the "talkback" mic.

Allowing instant adjustment and correction of your performance gives you a much higher probability that the client will be satisfied with the end results. This reduces the need for retakes or pickups at a later date and makes the entire recording process more efficient and quicker.

You should add Phone Patch capability to your studio

Today's voice over market includes online casting. This gives you the opportunity to perform for clients all over the world. And you want these clients to feel as comfortable hiring you as the talent who lives down the street. Directing with a phone patch session will make them feel just like they're in the next room. They will experience your personality. They'll be able to judge your response to direction. You can solve pronunciation questions immediately. You can even chat about the weather or the Yankees chances this year. Remember building rapport with the client is an important part of voice over marketing. We all want to work with someone we like.

Analog and digital hybrids

The actual box that you buy to create a phone patch system is called a "hybrid." There are two types. The older version is analog and passive, meaning it doesn't require a power supply. The newer versions are digital and need power to operate. There are two benefits to the digital version. One is much greater separation of incoming signal from the outgoing signal. A regular phone needs to lower the incoming voice so it doesn't feedback into the outgoing signal. Callers don't want to hear their own voice coming back or worse a loud feedback whine. A digital hybrid can lower (attenuate) the signal by 50 dB. The second advantage is, since the unit is powered, you can supply gain to the signals. That means if you can't hear them or they can't hear you, you can turn the volume up. The analog hybrid does mix a bit of the two signals together but still provides 20dB of attenuation. And usually the phone signals are adequate so yo don't have to turn anything up. Also if you're using a mixer you can supply some gain with the mixer.

Hooking it all up

I can't go into specifics for each piece of hardware and recording software but you will need a mixing board or a separate audio interface to hook up the hybrid. Most of the audio interfaces have "virtual" mixing capabilities which you can access from your recording software. So here's the secret to hooking it up.

The hybrid has a phone connector--the typical "phone jack"-- on the back to plug the phone line into. (You can also plug a regular phone into an additional jack so you can use the phone line as a regular phone.)

The hybrid also has a "line in" connector to which you supply signals that you want to go down the telephone line to the client. And it has a "line out" connector which supplies your mixer with the telephone signal from the caller.

There are five different signals that you will have in a typical session:

1. Your Microphone in--plugged into the mixer providing your voice to the recording software and to the clients telephone
2. The Playback Tracks in--routed into the mixer so you can play back the recorded tracks and hear them in your headphones and have the client hear them on their phone.
3. The client's voice in--coming from the telephone line via the hybrid's "line out" into the mixer.
4.The signal out of the mixer to your headphones
5. The signal out of the mixer back via the hybrid's "line in" to the client's phone for them to hear.

To achieve this you need to create a "mix" of signals for your headphones and a "mix minus one" signal that goes out to the telephone as follows:

Mix of inputs to you headphones:

1. Your Microphone
2. The Playback
3. The Client's voice on the phone

Mix of inputs to the telephone via the hybrid.

1. Your Microphone
2. The Playback

Exactly how you do this is specific to your hardware and software but this gives you the outline of what you're trying to achieve. The important point to note is you DON'T want the clients voice going back out to the telephone (hence the "minus one".) This will create the dreaded feedback loop.

I've been doing mixing for years and this still makes me scratch my head. It's best to write it down and diagram it on a piece of paper. And save the paper so you don't have to decipher it again at a later date!

If you don't have an audio interface or mixer--other phone patch alternatives

Suppose you have a really simple recording system. Just your trusty USB mic and your laptop. Without the mixer or interface you cant use the telephone hybrid but there are other alternatives that can work almost as well. Remember the goal is for the client to hear you when you talk and for you to hear the client give direction. Here are some other ways to do this.

A wireless portable phone and a headset. I used this for years. The portable phone is connected to your landline (or VoIP phone such as a cable phone, Vonage, or even the remarkable MagicJack.) You then plug a headset into the receiver and clip it to your belt. Put the headset on and put your headphones over it. Voila! The client can hear you talk and you can hear them direct.

The same set-up with a cell phone. Simpler cell phones have a headset jack. Newer phones may need an adapter to use a headset but the principle is the same. A similar result can be achieved with a bluetooth hands-free device but I think the audio quality really degrades between the bluetooth and the cell phone.

You can use Skype. Skype is like an internet phone. It's free for Skype-to-Skype calls but there may be a charge for phone-to-Skype. With a little time spent in the "preferences" you can have Skype recognize your microphone as the input device and your headphones as the output.

These alternatives all provide the two-way communication you need for a successful voice over session. The only drawback is you can't directly PLAY BACK the track if the client would like to hear it. I used to worry about this but, believe it or not, I've never had a client ask for a playback!

You should have phone patch capability in your voice over studio

Phone patch capability enhances your voice over service. Being directed in a session can speed up the session, provide a more acceptable read, demonstrate you ability to take direction and reduce the need for picks and retakes at a later date. It will also be required for the more sophisticated--and lucrative--jobs. So use one of these methods to add this to your studio and kick your voice over service up to a higher level.

If you live in the Los Angeles area you should look into my live Voice Over Classes. For those who live in other ares I also offer Online Voice Over Classes which offer the same quality of instruction in a modular, online format

William Williams is a voice over talent, instructor and coach located in Burbank near Los Angeles California. With experience as a marketing director, commercial and animation producer and voice over talent he knows what's required for excellence on "both sides of the glass." For 25 years he has been the owner and operator of Aliso Creek Productions, a full service audio production company specializing in radio, TV, and industrial audio, and voice over instruction and coaching. William has produced or performed in hundreds of commercials, videos and animation projects.


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Using ISDN in Your Voice Over Home Recording Studio

Will ISDN enhance your voice over job opportunities?

The latest trend in voice overs is to have your own home studio. This allows you to work from home and to accept work from anyone in the world. Often the scripts are sent to you via email and you interpret the script, record it, and return the finished files to the client. However this process requires that you fully understand the requirements of your client so that you can direct your own performance. But what if the clients wants to listen in and direct you as you record? This adds another layer of complexity to your studio setup so you can supply this capability with your studio gear. This need can be met with an ISDN connection.

The grandaddy of remote monitoring (listening in, commenting and recording from a distant location) is the ISDN connection. ISDN stands for Integrated Services Digital Network and it provides a constant direct digital connection over telephone lines to a remote studio.

ISDN has two major advantages.

ISDN allows you to send high fidelity (20-20kHz) audio signals from your studio to the remote studio. This allows you to speak into your microphone while the remote studio receives your signal at high quality in their studio. The producer, director and engineer can hear your performance clearly on their monitor speakers as though you were in the other room, so they can hear the subtlety of your performance and catch any stumbles in your performance. More importantly, since the signal is high fidelity, it can be recorded on the remote studio's recording equipment and used immediately. Back in the day, this eliminated the need to send tapes recorded at your studio via overnight express in order to deliver your performance to the distant studio.

The director can also speak to you over a phone quality line to give you performance notes and you hear this direction in your headphones as if s/he were in the control room next door. You can speak back to the director through your mic.

So ISDN has two benefits: High fidelity sound quality for remote monitoring and recording. And real-time delivery through the ability to record this high fidelity sound in the remote location.

So why shouldn't all voice over talents run right out and get ISDN?

One issue is cost. ISDN can cost several hundred dollars to install and set up and there is also a monthly charge for the line of about $60.00. You also need an ISDN CODEC. This is a box that receives the analog signal from your mixing board and converts it to the digital signals that are sent over the ISDN line. This codec can cost around $5000.00. So unless you're doing enough high-end jobs that require ISDN you may never recoup your investment.

And remember, the receiving studio needs an ISDN line and codec as well. It is useless to supply ISDN service to your client if they don't have access to an ISDN studio on their end. Renting an ISDN studio can cost up to $250.00 an hour.

Also, as broadband internet becomes universal, the recording process is changing. You now record your jobs as digital files, not a 1/4 inch tape. So the second and more important benefit of ISDN--real-time remote delivery--has disappeared. You can now record your work in high fidelity on your computer and upload those files to a client's server in a matter of minutes.

ISDN allows two way communication with a remote voice director.

ISDN still does allow two way communication with a voice director in a remote studio. But this communication can also be achieved with the use of a PHONE PATCH, which is a much simpler and more universal means of communication with the client for simply receiving direction. However a phone patch transmits and receives telephone quality audio which is not high fidelity. You should pay close attention to your own recordings and performance to assure they are high quality and to catch mistakes that the client might not hear over the phone.

I have found that ISDN is requested mostly by "media" companies. Companies that produce movie trailers or TV promos, or companies that produce material for broadcast--live interviews, syndicated programs and so forth. Perhaps in the future, casting companies and voice over agents may require it but many of them haven't caught up with the new world of talent with home studios.

The moral of the ISDN story

So what's the moral of the story? Hold off on installing ISDN capability until a pressing need--and the corresponding ability to pay for it-- arises. For now, stick to a phone patch.

If you live in the Los Angeles area you should look into my live Voice Over Classes. For those who live in other ares I also offer Online Voice Over Classes which offer the same quality of instruction in a modular, online format

William Williams is a voice over talent, instructor and coach located in Burbank near Los Angeles California. With experience as a marketing director, commercial and animation producer and voice over talent he knows what's required for excellence on "both sides of the glass." For 25 years he has been the owner and operator of Aliso Creek Productions, a full service audio production company specializing in radio, TV, and industrial audio, and voice over instruction and coaching. William has produced or performed in hundreds of commercials, videos and animation projects.


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Using "Delete" and "Silence" Audacity Edit Commands for Voice Over Recording

Today's voice over talent is required to have their own home studio. And along with the equipment required, you need recording software to actually record sounds to your computer as digital files. One software program I recommend that works just fine for voice over recording is Audacity. In a job where you're rarely doing more than recording one track of audio it is more than adequate for auditions and jobs. Along with the basic skills of recording, playing back and exporting your audio, you find very quickly that you need some basic editing skills to clean up your performances and finalize your tracks before export. Here are two editing commands that can speed up your production and improve your final product.

The "Delete" and "Silence" editing commands

There are two editing commands in Audacity that you'll find very useful. They are "Delete" and "Silence". You'll find them under the "Edit" heading in the top toolbar. Here's how you use them and some useful applications.

You use these commands by first highlighting the section of your recording that you want to edit. You highlight a section by placing the cursor at the beginning of the required section and "clicking and dragging" to the end of the desired selection. (Click and hold down the click button while you drag the cursor along the soundwave to the end.) If you've done word processing you should be familiar with selecting text this way. By the way you can unselect by clicking anywhere on the waveform. To make sure that you've selected only the sound you want, you can press the play button or the spacebar. Audacity will play only the highlighted sound.

Selecting the editing commands

Now you're ready to select an edit. Let's look at what each command does. "Delete" does what it says--it eliminates the section of audio you have just highlighted and pulls the recording together at that point. Just as in word processing if you Delete a highlighted sentence it disappears and the text below is pulled up.

"Silence" works differently. When you select Silence, the audio that is highlighted is replaced by digital silence but the space where the audio had been remains the same.

In the old world of tape, Delete would be similar to cutting out the section of tape you don't want and pulling the two ends together and splicing them. Silence would be equivalent to erasing that section of tape but leaving the blank erased tape in place.

So to perform and edit you highlight the sound you want to edit, hit the space bar to hear that your selection is, in fact, what you intended, and then select Delete or Silence from the Edit menu. Very quickly you'll realize that this goes much faster if you learn the keyboard shortcuts for these commands. They are Ctrl-K (Command-K on Macs) for Delete and Ctrl-L (Command-L on Macs). (I use Kill and siLence as mnemonics.)

So what are the real-world applications for these commands?

First we'll look at Delete. Imagine you're recording a short script and you stumble on a sentence. You wait a couple seconds and repeat ("pick up") the sentence perfectly and continue to the end of the read. You play it back and hear the bad sentence followed by the good sentence. Here's how to fix it. Highlight the bad sentence from its exact beginning to the exact beginning of the good sentence. Hit the space bar to hear that your selection is accurate. Now select Edit >> Delete from the toolbar or push Ctrl-K (Command-K on Macs) and the bad sentence will vanish as the good sentence is pulled up to replace it.

OK, let's look at Silence. This is useful for eliminating breaths. If you look carefully at the waveform of your performance you see small ovals of sound after phrases or sentences. If you highlight one of these ovals and play it you'll hear that it's most likely a breath. There's always a tiny space around the breath oval because you breath out to talk and you breath in to take a breath. Then you breath out to continue talking. So locate a breath on the waveform--look for the oval at the end of a sentence--and highlight the breath. Once again always hit the spacebar to assure you've selected what you intended to select. Now select Edit >> Silence from the toolbar or push Ctrl-L (Command-L on Macs) and the breath will be replaced with silence but the spacing will remain. (Note that if you used Delete the two sentence would be pulled together which would sound very unnatural.)

Practice and perfect your editing to speed up your auditions and your jobs

These techniques are useful for cleaning up auditions and for supplying "finished tracks" if your client requires that in a job. Learning to do these edits takes some practice but it's like knitting: if you practice, it will become so natural you can do it without thinking. Give it a try and soon you'll be Deleting and Silencing like Joe Pesci in Good Fellas!

If you live in the Los Angeles area you should look into my live Voice Over Classes. For those who live in other ares I also have Online Voice Over Classes which offer the same quality of instruction in a modular, online format

William Williams is a voice over talent, instructor and coach located in Burbank near Los Angeles California. With experience as a marketing director, commercial and animation producer and voice over talent he knows what's required for excellence on "both sides of the glass." For 25 years he has been the owner and operator of Aliso Creek Productions, a full service audio production company specializing in radio, TV, and industrial audio, and voice over instruction and coaching. William has produced or performed in hundreds of commercials, videos and animation projects.


View the original article here

Friday, July 8, 2011

Home Recording Studio Equipment You Will Need to Work From Home

For those of you who wish to work from home in the recording industry you are going to need to have home recording studio equipment. What home recording studio equipment you will need to get started will vary based on the type of recording you plan to do from home. For example, if you only plan to record narration for online videos or podcasts you will need less equipment than if you were trying to record music. Another thought is how much you plan to record at one time, one or two tracks and adding vocals in layers requires less equipment than if you plan to do more than two tracks or recording a full band.

One of the most important pieces of home recording studio equipment that you will need to have is a microphone (or microphones). While that might seem obvious to most people, some people do miss it. Without the microphone you will not be able to record anything. To start out, I recommend a USB mic like the Samson Q1U. If you plan to only do voice-overs or simple solo-type music, this just might be enough for you. There are several more advanced models of USB mic as well that you can upgrade to. If you have the budget though, I highly recommend a large diaphragm condenser mic like the Rode NT2-a, along with a computer audio interface box like the M-Audio Fast Track. Again, if you're planning to record a band, you'll need more mics and a larger interface capable of recording several sources at once.

Along with the microphone you will need to have a computer. Most folks reading this will already have one, so it won't be much of an issue. And these days, most normal computers with sound cards will work just fine.

You will also need recording software. Most computers nowadays come with some basic form of recording software, but that isn't going to be quite enough for those wishing to make some money from recording. Rather than spending money on professional recording software many professionals use Audacity, which is available to download for free. Audacity has an amazing array of features and capabilities for the price, which, as I mentioned in case you missed it, is FREE. I would also suggest adding a program called Reaper for $49 (unless and until you start making 10-20 thousand clams a year using it. Then you are asked to spring for the commercial license for $150).

This next bit of studio equipment stirs up quite a lot of controversy. I refer to studio monitors, as in loud-speakers. I've written before about how our ears lie to us at the best of times, but even the most honest of ears can be easily tricked by things like the room you mix in, and the loud-speaker response. In an ideal world you would do your critical listening and mixing in a room that doesn't mangle several frequencies before they get to your ears (Google the term room acoustics for more detail on that fun little topic), even if reproduced on perfect speakers. Also, you would have perfect response from the speakers in this perfect world. If your mixing room is a bedroom, as it is for most home recordists, just know that what you hear is already mangled in several ways. You can improve that situation, if you have really good speakers, but it isn't easy (I refer you again to the topic of room acoustics).

Another way to monitor is through headphones. To start out, you don't need anything special in that department as long as you can hear clearly what you're recorded. For music, you'll want at least one pair of closed-back headphones for overdubbing so that the sound coming from the headphones doesn't bleed down your cheeks into the microphone.

What is the best monitoring solution then? Should you buy special monitor speakers? My heretical advice is that if you're recording music, yes you should. Mixing while listening to sound coming through the air is too critical when recording several instruments and vocals, etc. If you're merely recording voice-overs and narration, then I say you can get by with the speakers on your computers along with your headphones, at least to start out. In order to compensate for audio-mangle-age, do your final listening on both your headphones and your computer speakers. Then listen in the car, you iPod, and perhaps a few other systems, to make sure your final product sounds good on all of them. That's the trade-off for not having monitor speakers in a treated bedroom.

So what kind of monitors should you buy? Well there are two main types, active and passive. I'd say that active monitor speakers are better to have than passive speakers. The reason is that they have the amplifier built into them, where as the passive speakers do not. And the reason this is a good thing is that passive speakers require you to also have an amplifier as a separate piece of gear altogether, which will drive the cost up, as well as adding other logistical and electrical complications.

So in a nutshell, in order to outfit yourself with the basic home recording studio equipment, you'll need:

A computer with a sound cardRecording SoftwareMicrophone(s)Monitors (both headphones and speakers)

No matter what equipment you purchase the most important thing to remember is that knowledge of the key audio fundamentals is far more useful than expensive equipment. If you lack basic knowledge you will always end up with poor sounding audio, no matter how expensive the equipment is. Remember this mantra: knowledge trumps gear. There are gazillions of people making crap recordings every day with really expensive gear. But if you have some basic knowledge, you can make great recordings with very modest equipment. Therefore, never let an employee talk you into the most expensive equipment in the store, in most cases the $50 USB microphone will provide you with the professional sounding results.

Learn to record and produce professional sounding audio from home. With fun and short video tutorials we'll show you how to start with a $0-$5 budget, and then how to improve your studio for a few dollars at a time as your knowledge and confidence increase. If you would like to start doing home recording on computer in the next hour, visit us here: Home Recording.


View the original article here

Friday, July 1, 2011

Running a Virtual Recording Studio

There isn't that much difference in 2011 between a traditional recording studio, as in recording onto tape, and a virtual recording studio, where you record directly to a computer. Audio immediately enters into what we might call the virtual realm immediately upon recording. Instead of being held on tape format, audio can literally be beamed through the air and transferred from one box to another. It can also be duplicated and replicated any number of times without losing any fidelity.

The best news of all is that the virtual recording studio is the one that is simultaneously more advanced AND more affordable. In fact, odds are incredibly high that you already own a virtual recording studio. If you have a computer with a sound card and any kind of microphone, then your virtual recording studio is probably sitting in a room in your house, or on your laptop.

Just a few years ago, that kind of home recording studio would not have been quite enough to yield professional quality audio. But today, with the availability of unbelievably affordable (some ever free!) recording software and USB microphones, professional sound audio is achievable for just about anyone with a computer, or even a smart phone now!

At the risk of over-simplifying it, the process goes something like this:

Open your recording software that might have cost you anywhere between $0 and $50 to start out with.Speak, sing, or play an instrument in front of a microphone that is hooked up to your computer via a USB cable (or to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch).Save your finished song, voice-over, or whatever audio you were recording.Done.

Speed, quality and ease are the benefits of the virtual recording studio. And if you are collaborating with others on a project involving audio, there is no better way to do it than virtually. Say you need someone with that movie-announce voice to do the intro and "outtro" of your podcast or radio show. Just send that person (if you don't know them already, you can hire them from places like Voices.com...all in cyberspace) the script via e-mail. They record your script and send it back to you via e-mail. Now all you have to do is insert the movie-announcer voice into your recording software, put some royalty-free background music behind it (or even music you composed and recorded), and voila, you have a professional podcast or radio show introduction and closer, all done in the virtual world; no tapes or CDs to mail back and forth, etc.

Of course you can do the same thing with music. Is your singer in Washington, your other singer in London, and your bass player in Los Angeles? No problem. Send them all an audio file of the demo song over the internet, have them record their parts and e-mail them back to you, then mix it all together into a final song. Your band may never have even seen each other during recording! How amazing is that?

If you'd like to investigate the virtually (no pun intended) limitless audio possibilities of a virtual recording studio, come visit Home Brew Audio on the web. Who knows? A new career may be in the offing with the virtual recording studio you may not even know you already had.

Learn to record and produce professional sounding audio from home. With fun and short video tutorials we'll show you how to start with a $0-$5 budget, and then how to improve your studio for a few dollars at a time as your knowledge and confidence increase. If you would like to start doing home recording on computer in the next hour, visit us here: Home Recording


View the original article here

Sunday, June 26, 2011

USB Microphones for Voice Over Recording - Pros and Cons

Voice over recording has become much easier and convenient since the invention of USB mics. Your entire studio can be a laptop computer and a USB mic. But there are some drawbacks in using a USB mic instead of a conventional analog mic. Let's look at the good, the bad and the ugly of USB mics.

First of all, what is a USB mic? For decades microphones have been devices that have converted sound waves into a continuous analog electrical signal. This signal was then fed through a mixer to a tape recorder which then recorded the waveform on tape. When the tape was played back, the electrical signal reproduced was amplified through speakers and the original sound was reproduced. But that was so last millenium! As the new century dawned tape disappeared and sound was being recorded as numbers on a computer--digital recording. To convert sound to numbers (digital), the analog microphone signal was put through equipment that contained an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). These numbers were then passed on to the computer to record. When the numbers were played back through the opposite equipment -- a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) sound was heard once again in the speakers.

Then some bright inventor decided to put that analog-to-digital converter into the base of the microphone and send the digital signal out over a USB computer cable (yep, just like your printer cable!) and thus was born the USB mic. And the world of recording was much better... well, not exactly.

The Good. Convenience. Cost. In its simplest form you can now have a recording studio that consists of your microphone and your laptop (or desktop) computer. The devices are "plug and play" which means they don't require a sound card or drivers to operate. You just plug it into the USB port of your computer and the mic appears in your sound control panel. Traditional analog mics required a preamp, a mixer and then the A-to-D converter to get the same job done. For voice over talent this means you can record with much less investment. And your studio is much more portable. Just take your mic and laptop with you to the Bahamas and you can still nail that "must do" audition or job and send the finished files to the client via the internet. Reasonable quality mics are available starting at around $100. When you get up to around $200 the quality is just fine for VO work. And you don't have to buy all that extra equipment.

The Bad. Not quite professional. Single mic use. Early mic designs used a standard A-to-D chip that was limited to 16 bit/44.1 kHz recordings. Although this is CD quality, many pro recordings use the higher 24 bit/96 kHz standard. But this is changing. The latest mics are using a new chip that provides this 24 bit/96 kHz option. Also If you have a application where you need multiple mics or you need to mix the mic with other signals you'll need a mixer and you'll want to use analog mics. Because the USB mics are seen as computer signals, recording software can usually only handle one, or at the most a stereo pair of USB mics. This shouldn't be a drawback for simple voice over jobs where you're only recording one voice.

The Ugly. No gain adjust. Latency. Some USB mics don't have gain adjustment, or at best they have a level switch. When you do voice overs you might whisper for one job and shout for the next. You need a way to ensure that the recording level is adequate but not clipping in any performance. Analog mixers had "gain" knob that let you adjust the mic level. You shouldn't have to adjust your speech volume or your mic distance to achieve the correct recording level. So no gain knob is a problem. USB mics also have latency. This is a computer processing delay between the time you talk and the time you hear your voice. In the worst case this can be as long as a quarter second. This makes monitoring yourself with headphones annoying or impossible. The latest generation of USB mics has recognized these two problems with the addition of infinite gain knobs and direct monitoring. So you can adjust the mic gain to fit your situation. And now you can plug headphones directly into the mic and hear your voice in real time through an analog headphone jack with a volume adjust.

All In All I Like Them. I think the pros of USB mic far outweigh the cons. The latest generation of USB mics with gain control and latency-free monitoring allow you to sling your studio over your shoulder and take it anywhere in the world. Add a high-speed internet connection and it's "have voice-will travel". Bahamas here I come!

If you live in the Los Angeles area you should look into my live Voice Over Classes. For those who live in other ares I also offer Online Voice Over Classes which offer the same quality of instruction in a modular, online format

William Williams is a voice over talent, instructor and coach located in Burbank near Los Angeles California. With experience as a marketing director, commercial and animation producer and voice over talent he knows what's required for excellence on "both sides of the glass." For 25 years he has been the owner and operator of Aliso Creek Productions, a full service audio production company specializing in radio, TV, and industrial audio, and voice over instruction and coaching. William has produced or performed in hundreds of commercials, videos and animation projects.


View the original article here