Anthony Smith

What’s more important when setting up your home studio; the quality of your recording equipment or the quality of your recording space? 

Expensive Gear is Fun!

There’s a point of pride in having that fancy “holy grail” mic you’ve had your eyes on.  There’s satisfaction in having that awesome interface you’ve dreamed about and those nice, expensive Mogami studio cables.  Most people that I’ve known in any sort of music or recording industry have a taste for expensive gear, myself included.  It’s exciting seeing that new Neumann, Sennheiser, or AKG mic that just showed up from the delivery guy!  Is expensive gear really what it takes for success, though?

The Need for Proper Voice Over Equipment

Sure, the microphone you’re packing in your setup makes a difference.  There’s no denying that.  An XLR microphone is king for professional voice over.  You just can’t get the same out of a USB mic that you can out of an XLR.  Even looking at a “one to one” comparison between the XLR Audio-Technica AT2020 and USB Audio-Technica AT2020USB, you can get far more clarity and headroom out of the XLR version with a good interface.  This isn’t to say that USB microphones don’t have their time and place.  They are fantastic for YouTube and streaming services like Twitch or for the hobbyist that is looking at Voice Over to see if it’s something they would like to pursue.  For professional voice over, however, the truth is that an XLR microphone is necessary to make a career.

Voice Over Doesn’t Need to be Expensive

It’s also worth noting that the quality of your XLR microphone makes a difference, too, but not as much as you want to think.  The industry standards for voice over are the Sennheiser MKE416, the Neumann TLM 103, the Neumann U 87, and the AKG c414.  They’re all fantastic microphones to be sure, but they aren’t inherently necessary to get somewhere in the industry; well, save for some places that require specific microphones.  There are other great options for microphones out there.  Lewitt comes to mind as a company that makes microphones of extremely high quality for a very reasonable price point.  My backup mic (and the one currently in my booth) is a Lewitt LCT 540 Sub-Zero, and I love it.  Aston has a wonderful line of microphones, as well, and the CAD e100s is a phenomenal microphone that is more than capable of standing up to the “big boys”.  Even the extremely affordable Rode NT1A is a great option for a booth mic.  All of this microphone talk leads me to my big point though.  Your microphone choice plays a much smaller role in your setup than you think it does.  

If my Microphone Doesn’t, What Does?

So, you’ve got your Neumann U 87, your Apollo Twin interface, your Beyerdynamic HD1770 Pro headphones, and an AMS Neve 1073 preamp in your booth.  You’ve spent well over $5,000 in setting up your recording space with top of the line equipment.  You step into your booth, get everything turned on, and start to record.  When you listen back to it, you find your entire recording tainted by echo and your neighbor’s lawn work since he apparently picked that exact moment to trim his hedges.  Why?  You haven’t spent time or money to ensure your recording space is treated properly.  The Single.  Most.  Important.  Thing.  You.  Can.  Do.  Is to properly treat your recording space to soundproof it and minimize echo.  The ONLY sound we want to hear is the sound of your lovely voice.  How you treat your recording space is infinitely more important than the gear you fill it with.  

How do I Know That’s True?

Mike DelGaudio’s YouTube channel, Booth Junkie, is a phenomenal resource for both new and established voice actors alike.  He has a video entitled “$50 mic vs $1000 mic: an UNFAIR comparison!”. In this video, he compares a $50 used AKG Perception 100 and an industry standard Neumann TLM 103 which, as of writing this, cost about $1300 new.  It should be a complete and total blow out, right?  Well, it is, but probably not in the way you’re thinking.  He keeps the AKG Perception in his booth, which is very well treated, and it sounds beautiful when he speaks into it.  Meanwhile he speaks into the Neumann mic in various places around his house which aren’t treated.  There is no comparison.  The audio of the cheap AKG would get selected by a casting director every time over the Neumann, which cost 26 times as much, in these circumstances.  I’ve taken the liberty of linking the video >HERE< so you can check it out in your free time! 

Are There Other Options for New Voice Actors?

Of course, there is an understanding that not everyone starting out has the option of, or access to, a soundproof recording space that they can treat properly with acoustic panels and acoustic foam.  There are a few ways to “cheat” at doing this that can help.  If you have a walk-in closet that is filled with clothes you can wrap yourself in blankets.  That helps deaden the sound quite a bit!  If you have a space that you can treat but isn’t completely soundproof, then there are different microphone options than the traditional condenser mic.  The Sennheiser MKE416 shotgun mic is a great option if you do have extra money to blow on a microphone.  A second and much more affordable option is a dynamic microphone such as a Shure SM7B (MV7 for a cheaper option) or an Electro-Voice RE20 (RE320 for a cheaper option) which cuts out a large majority of sound once you get a few inches from the mic.  These are great options to help, but they still aren’t a complete alternative to a fully and well treated area.  

In Conclusion

Voice over can be an exceptionally fun and exciting business to get into.  It has the potential to be an incredibly rewarding career.  Just like with any other business, you need to have the “tools of the trade” in order to do your job properly.  Yes, your microphone and preamp quality is extremely important, but all else pales in comparison to the importance of a well treated recording space.  If you are starting out, I would give you some simple advice.  Treat your recording space with your budget before buying your equipment.  If you need to save a little bit longer to buy your microphone and preamp after treating your workspace, then do so knowing that you’ve given yourself your best chance to succeed by treating your workspace.  I wish you the best of luck as you build your way into this business.  Happy recording!

A Rough Year

2020 has been a rough year for all of us. Between COVID, the most volatile election this country and, arguably, the world has ever seen, the superfluous number of social issues, and the death of so many celebrities that many of us have known since we were children, it’s no wonder that anxiety and depression are running rampant now more than ever. My life and family are no different. In January, my mother had a mini stroke and then was diagnosed with Kidney Disease in March. Conviently just in time for the country to shut down in the first wave of the pandemic. I ended up having to work my day…well…night job all the way through the shutdown, and, because of her health issues, I have had to be extremely careful with everything I do for risk of bringing COVID home to my mother. Though COVID wasn’t the only reason, it was a large part of the reason that, on July 25 of 2020, I quit my job.

Finding My Voice

I worked the midnight shift for almost half a decade.  I’m sure you can imagine how it’s been trying to reset my circadian rhythm. Here we are, the middle of November, and I am still finding myself having to work at it. I found a love of voice over while I was working at this job.  It became an escape for a couple of years before I started realizing that it was growing into a passion and the first few inklings that I might want to pursue this as a career began to creep into the back of my mind. I used my job to fund the beginning of my voice over journey while also paying off my debts so I could push into this venture as debt-free as possible. Fast forward a few years, voice over classes, tens of thousands of dollars, and formal coaching with the wonderful J. Michael Collins later, I found myself in a position where I needed to choose between my job and a career in voice over. As I’m sure you can already tell, I chose the latter. Now, I will state that I am not writing this in search of pity.  Nor is it to talk myself up, or to downplay anyone else’s misfortunes from this hellspawn of a year. I write all of this out merely for exposition to the main point of this post. If you’ve made it this far, thank you!  Please permit me a few more moments of your time to write out my thoughts for both of our benefits.

Building a Career in Voice Over

When I left my job, I dove headlong into voice over. I had a few odd jobs at first but found myself afraid to audition for projects while still working.  This being due to my overwhelming and unpredictable work schedule. I had a bit of savings when I left which I was able to use to pad my departure, however, I still had to deal with the fact that I lost all of my income. Slowly and surely my savings has dwindled in these months between necessary purchases for myself and the business, paying bills, paying for my website from the amazing people at voiceactorwebsites.com, and the occasional frivolous purchase to satisfy my hobbies and interests. However, I’ve managed to get very little work since I fully buried myself in voice over in August. I will say that there were several weeks in which I was unable to work due to the construction of a barn on our property and home renovations that had to be rescheduled from pre-Covid until the Covid restrictions had been lifted.. Even so, I held my chin up high for quite a while; that is until the first week of November when I had my first real and true taste of discouragement.

Discouragement in Voice Over

This is what I wanted to talk about in this post. Discouragement is a very real part of voice over. I see it a lot on twitter with the up and coming voice over artists that I follow, and it’s played around the edges of my psyche for a little bit; but this was the first time I had honestly felt discouraged enough to question if I had made the right choice. It’s a very tough pill to swallow that’s even harder for those of us diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I have spent the last week or so between this experience and the time of writing this reflecting, and I think I’ve arrived at some sort of conclusion. I think that there are two ways of dealing with discouragement in voice over. Neither one of them are what I could call unhealthy, but they are distinctly different from one another. I hope that, if you are facing discouragement, you will find something in my insights to help you through it. If you don’t find encouragement in this post, then I hope that you will, at least, find my thoughts relatable.

Fight For Your Dreams

Voice Work Takes Work

The first option I wish to discuss is, in my opinion, the better of the two options in most circumstances. This is simply making the choice and effort to push through the discouragement. There are so many things throughout history that, if people hadn’t pushed through discouragement, we wouldn’t have even though we take them for granted today; lightbulbs, vehicles, and computers all come to mind. I once heard it said that our job as voice over artists isn’t voice over, itself.  It’s the time we spend auditioning. That the projects we give our voices to are a happy byproduct of the time we invest into our auditions and the time we invest into networking. That, honestly, couldn’t be truer. Congruously, the people who are the most successful in the industry are the ones who invest the most time and energy into wading into the veritable ocean of auditions and potential spots that are out there.

Give Yourself Your Best Chance

So long as you give yourself your best chance to succeed by putting forth the time, effort, and, let’s be honest here, funds for equipment, demos, recording space, and coaching (even if slowly as I know it’s a lot to afford all at once), the work is out there. Trust me, there is no better cure for discouragement than a paycheck. Well, except maybe the friends we make along the way.  At the end of the day, though, payment is the reward for all of your hard work.  With a career in a field like this, we don’t get a regular paycheck like a normal 9-5. That should be quite a push, in its own right, to power through the discouragement and into auditioning as much as possible.  It’s the only way for us to get regular cash flow. Of course, money isn’t the only rewarding part of this career. Self-expression, creativity, pride in your work, and the satisfaction of seeing everything come together at the end is very rewarding in their own right. I personally get very deep satisfaction from meeting new and amazing people as there are a lot of incredible people within this industry.

Understanding When It’s Over

“Hanging Up” Your Microphone

Of course, there are situations where the second option is the more appropriate.  This is, simply, to close the door on your voice over journey and find a different path. I refuse to say “give up” because that is a completely different situation than what I am discussing here. However, to touch on that subject, I think a lot of people preemptively cut their careers short by losing the heart to continue on. We, as a society, have largely developed a complex where we “give up” at the first sign of difficulty. That being said, please know that I’m not here to chastise people for their choices. This paragraph is referring to those who know that they have reached their journey’s end. There are many situations that can lead to this conclusion; far too many to put here in one post, but please believe me when I say that you are not a lesser person if you choose to seek a different path in life. You are only “giving up” if you know you can still fight for what you want but choose not to. Only you know how much you can give; how much you can fight for what you want. I can assure you that the people who love you will stand with you and your decision if they truly care for you. The most obvious of the reasons one might arrive to this conclusion are undermining circumstances; family issues, medical issues, “act of God” occurrences that are outside of your capabilities to control, etc., but there may also be a point in which you know that it’s just not working anymore and your time would be better spent pursuing other career options.

Stand Strong In Failure

Voice over is a tough business to break into, and, even if you give yourself your best chance to succeed, it might not work out for everyone as a full-time career. Such is the sad and cruel way of life at times. If you come to the realization that you’ve given all you can and are getting nothing in return, so be it.  The strength of your character is not undercut by choosing to close that door. I have said it once, but I will say it again. Only you know how much fight you have in you, and if you can’t fight anymore then you can’t. The longer you beat the proverbial “dead horse”, the worse your quality of life and mental health will become. I’m a firm believer that everyone deserves happiness.  If more people in this world were happier, it would be a much kinder place. I can promise you that there is no shame in trying to find something else that brings you happiness in life. We only have one life to live, so we have no excuse to not live our life to the best of our abilities and to find joy in that life.

A Friend and Ally

If you’re still here and reading this, I’d like to thank you for reading this post. As I said at the beginning of this, writing this out was for my own benefit as well. Dealing with discouragement is hard, and this was a wonderful outlet to give myself a pep talk, too. I hope you were able to get something out of this post. Discouragement can come in many other facets of life than just voice over.  I feel that what I’ve talked about here can be applied to most of them. The duty just falls to us to apply them. Now, please understand, I am not a psychiatrist or therapist or anything like that. These are merely my own thoughts. If you feel need someone to talk to, please don’t hesitate to speak with a therapist or counselor. I hope that you are able to keep fighting.  We may not know each other, but I am rooting for you to push through whatever discouragement you are facing. I wish you all the best in life and a 2021 infinitely better than the hellscape that was 2020. Thank you, and God bless.