Epiphany in Voiceover – What You Have is Probably Better than You Think
I have a cute little voice-over studio. It’s not beautiful, but it’s functional, the equipment is good, and it’s pretty darn convenient. And although it isn’t absolutely soundproof, it’s quiet.
Well, it wasn’t always quiet. In fact, until a few hours ago, I had a noise problem that I found very troubling. Most people didn’t seem to notice it, but some did, and I’ve tried a lot of ways of addressing it. I checked all my equipment. All my cables. I swapped out the video card in my computer in case it was causing problems. I replaced the sound card (that actually helped a great deal, and the problem was diminished, but not gone). I wondered if maybe there was something wrong with the house wiring. For a while I was considering buying a power conditioner to see if that might help, although for some reason never got around to it.
Recently, I started carefully examining the noise spectrographically. It’s only 10 Herz, in other words, very low frequency. If I amplified it, it sounded like a low rumble. Did I maybe have seismic activity in my neighborhood? Or was there perhaps something in the studio that was causing reverberation? The room is small, 5.5’ x 6’ x 8’, and treated with Sonex foam. What could possibly be causing reverb in this setting? I confess I was storing some things in the room that didn’t belong there – stuff that was on its way out of my life, waiting to be freecycled – so I stepped up the pace on freecycling and got it all out of there. Then I turned my attention to the things that do belong in my studio – the door, for example, which is not covered with foam, but rather with acoustic ceiling tile. Leaving the door open while recording would at least tell me if that flat vertical surface was having an effect – nope. Ackk!! What was left??
Finally, the beginnings of a compelling hypothesis – could my microphone stand be moving ever so slightly – it’s sitting on carpet, so possibly my own movements were causing micromovements in the stand, which my microphone was picking up???
Regardless of how it was happening, my microphone stand was indeed the culprit. Whether it was simply air movement or the effect of my own movements traveling through the stand, I don’t know. My dear husband suggested weighting the stand with some wrist weights we had gathering dust upstairs, and I put one at the base of the stand and one higher up, near the microphone itself. Then I made a test recording.
Well I tell you what, I thought at first that I had forgotten to turn my preamp back on, because my computer monitor showed a flat line. The only time I’ve ever seen a perfectly flat line here is when I’ve forgotten to turn something on or plug something in. But in fact, I WAS RECORDING!!!!! And what I was recording was silence – blessed, blessed silence. I never thought I would see this because after 3 years of enduring it I thought my studio was just somehow, inexplicably, inferior. Which of course is preposterous. Because, as it turns out, I have a cute little voice-over studio. It’s not beautiful, but it’s functional, the equipment is good, and it’s pretty darn convenient. And although it isn’t absolutely soundproof, it’s really, really quiet.
A very happy new year!
Well, it wasn’t always quiet. In fact, until a few hours ago, I had a noise problem that I found very troubling. Most people didn’t seem to notice it, but some did, and I’ve tried a lot of ways of addressing it. I checked all my equipment. All my cables. I swapped out the video card in my computer in case it was causing problems. I replaced the sound card (that actually helped a great deal, and the problem was diminished, but not gone). I wondered if maybe there was something wrong with the house wiring. For a while I was considering buying a power conditioner to see if that might help, although for some reason never got around to it.
Recently, I started carefully examining the noise spectrographically. It’s only 10 Herz, in other words, very low frequency. If I amplified it, it sounded like a low rumble. Did I maybe have seismic activity in my neighborhood? Or was there perhaps something in the studio that was causing reverberation? The room is small, 5.5’ x 6’ x 8’, and treated with Sonex foam. What could possibly be causing reverb in this setting? I confess I was storing some things in the room that didn’t belong there – stuff that was on its way out of my life, waiting to be freecycled – so I stepped up the pace on freecycling and got it all out of there. Then I turned my attention to the things that do belong in my studio – the door, for example, which is not covered with foam, but rather with acoustic ceiling tile. Leaving the door open while recording would at least tell me if that flat vertical surface was having an effect – nope. Ackk!! What was left??
Finally, the beginnings of a compelling hypothesis – could my microphone stand be moving ever so slightly – it’s sitting on carpet, so possibly my own movements were causing micromovements in the stand, which my microphone was picking up???
Regardless of how it was happening, my microphone stand was indeed the culprit. Whether it was simply air movement or the effect of my own movements traveling through the stand, I don’t know. My dear husband suggested weighting the stand with some wrist weights we had gathering dust upstairs, and I put one at the base of the stand and one higher up, near the microphone itself. Then I made a test recording.
Well I tell you what, I thought at first that I had forgotten to turn my preamp back on, because my computer monitor showed a flat line. The only time I’ve ever seen a perfectly flat line here is when I’ve forgotten to turn something on or plug something in. But in fact, I WAS RECORDING!!!!! And what I was recording was silence – blessed, blessed silence. I never thought I would see this because after 3 years of enduring it I thought my studio was just somehow, inexplicably, inferior. Which of course is preposterous. Because, as it turns out, I have a cute little voice-over studio. It’s not beautiful, but it’s functional, the equipment is good, and it’s pretty darn convenient. And although it isn’t absolutely soundproof, it’s really, really quiet.
A very happy new year!
Labels: noise, recording equipment, voice-over studio
posted by MCM Voices at
1/06/2008
5 Comments:
I'm glad you solved this dilema. So much of what goes wrong technically in a studio is due to hardware or acoustic issues.
Yours is a insightful and very thoughtful blog. I'll definitely be reading it often.
Mary:
Your story reminds me of a very famous recording story in the 80's.
Quincy Jones was producing and recording "We are the World" and during the choral piece (I don't think its was small group vocal sessions), engineers kept hearing this rattling and jingling sound.
Now this was a HIGH end recording studio with all the bells and whistles not to mention the millions of dollars worth of talent standing around waiting.
They figured it out...Cyndi Lauper was covered in her trademark (at the time) 80's jewelry and THAT's what was making the noise.
Congrats on the fix,
Best always,
- Peter
Mary,
It's so great that you've been able to wrestle this problem to the ground. I know it's been bugging you for a long time.
May your next challenge take much less time to solve.
Be well,
Bob
Lance, many thanks for the kind words and for visiting! I'm very pleased that you plan to come back and will try to make it worth your while :)
Peter, that's a classic! I heard a story about a guy who made the mistake of wearing a starched shirt to a recording session. He ended up removing it and recording in his undershirt!
Bob, I simply can't believe it took so long. This morning I turned all the equipment on first thing, afraid that somehow in the night the poltergeist had returned. But all is still very very quiet indeed. Hooray!
Thanks for visiting.
M.
That's so funny. I had a similar problem where I had two different mics, and one was "popping" really bad. My K2 was fine, but my KM184 would just pop and rumble the whole time. I was upset as the mic is a $700 mic, and was about to try and return it.
Turns out my K2 was so heavy that I had to weight the stand (I used free weight discs), but my KM was so light I didn't think I had to worry about it.
Sure enough the first time I used it on the weighted stand, problem solved.
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