Achieving professional-sounding home recordings is essential to your success as a voice actor. When you book a home studio coaching session with GVAA, we’ll give you detailed feedback on your audio, answer all your questions about the recording and editing process, and make personalized recommendations that will dramatically improve the quality of your home recordings. Regardless of your experience level or budget, we’ll help you make the (sometimes intimidating) process of recording and editing from home as seamless as possible!

Prospective voice over clients may feel like your voice is exactly what they’re looking for, but if your audio quality doesn’t meet industry standards, they will unfortunately have to pass on the opportunity to work with you. Even if your recording sounds pristine, a bad editing job will ruin your chances of booking a job as well. During your coaching sessions, you’ll learn:

When making recommendations, we always take into account your vocal type and budget. Far too often we come across voice actors who (prior to working with us) have spent a lot of time and money setting up equipment that’s not a good fit. USB microphones, earbuds, flimsy stands, the lack of a pop filter or a shock mount, unbalanced XLR cables, and old audio interfaces tend to be the most common culprits.

By the time you’re done working with us, you’ll have a really good handle on how to make your recording space as quiet as possible. This involves being aware of sounds coming from outside your home (animal noises, traffic noises, etc.) as well as sounds from inside your home (air conditioners, ceiling fans, and other white noise we learn to tune out).

This can be tricky to do on your own because there are so many products out there making false promises about fixing the sound of your room. Too much reverb (or echo) is one of the tell-tale signs of an amateur recording, so to remedy this, we’ll tell you which areas of the room to prioritize and also let you know when DIY approaches will be just as (if not more) efficient and cost-effective. Lastly, we always rely on pictures and/or videos of your space. This allows us to be extremely specific with our feedback, so that you don’t have to rely on generic advice.

Knowing how to avoid excess mouth noise (the sound of your lips parting or your tongue moving around), plosive-ness (generally defined as harsh “p” and “b” sounds), and sibilance (harsh “s” sounds) is often not given enough attention by voice actors. Additionally, you’ll want to make sure that your recording levels are neither too loud or too quiet. You may have read that standing 6-8 inches away from the mic is the sweet spot (and sometimes this is the case), but we’ll help you train your ears to determine whether you are too close or far away from your microphone. There’s no substitute for a highly trained ear.

The surgical use of effects such as EQ (equalization), normalization, noise reduction, and compression is always one of the major differences between an amateur home recording and a professional one. We’ll demystify some common misconceptions about these effects and give you a really consistent workflow you can use in all your voice over recordings. We’ll also teach you how to piece all your takes together in a way that sounds as if you did one perfect take (no breaths cutting in or out, no clicks or pops, just a clean recording of you showcasing your voice acting talent.

After our sessions together, you’ll no longer have to ask the question, “does this sound okay?” You’ll know exactly what red flags stand out to a prospective client so that you can run through a mental checklist each time you do a final listen before exporting your voice over recordings. By doing this, you’ll be setting yourself apart from the majority of other voice actors who don’t have this level of attention to detail, and you’ll have a much higher number of bookings as a result.

Frankly, there is a TON of information online for voice actors to comb through. Some advice you may come across will be great, some will be outdated, some will be downright terrible, and oftentimes it can be hard to tell the difference between the three. That’s why when you book a home studio session with GVAA, you’ll be taking all the guesswork out of the equation. No more Youtube videos to click on, no more forums to browse, just personalized advice from audio experts you can rely on!