VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Bish · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 11:38 am Post subject:

I'm experimenting with the same. I have one M-Audio BX5a in the booth area (his brother died, so he now lives a mono life)... it's connected to the aux channel of my mixer so I can feed the ISDN receive channel to it and go headphone free. It would be perfect except that I don't have a mic mute switch close to me when recording so I can't kill my audio easily (a nice foot-switch would do it)... with the mic open and the speaker on, the remote engineer will complain of slap-back... and nobody wants that!
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Eddie Eagle · M&M Joined: 23 Apr 2008 Posts: 2393

Mike Harrison · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:23 pm Post subject:

Bish · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 4:24 pm Post subject:

Eddie Eagle · M&M Joined: 23 Apr 2008 Posts: 2393

Philip Banks · Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 7:28 am Post subject:

On my own I work without headphones and for the benefit of the public often without mic.

For promos and documentaries or whilst reacting to other sounds/voices a speaker would be useless, one needs headphones.

I like George of VOBS and value his opinion. I tried to watch an episode of VOBS a few weeks ago. In order to encourage me to stay the course I chose to view the edition in which a few (now former) friends appeared. It was dreadful with outbreaks of dire. After 3 minutes I reported it to my local Constable who made a note of my concerns in his notebook.

JasonSound · Joined: 28 Sep 2016 Posts: 16 Location: Atlanta, GA

Dan-O · The Gates of Troy Joined: 17 Jan 2005 Posts: 1638

No headphones here except during ISDN sessions. Even then I have my channel muted and can only hear the feed from the other studio.

Being a former radio jock of 20 years, it's understandable you want to use headphones. But, we were also engineering at the same time, so we had to listen to everything. In VO, our job is to perform not to engineer. Having headphones you start paying attention to the pops and clicks and the "Oh, That sounded sooo coooll" and you become distracted from the imagery you're supposed to be creating in your mind.

A couple years ago, I went into a studio in another city for a job. Asked the engineer to mute my voice in the headphones. After the session, the engineer said: "I knew you were an actor simply because you asked to turn down your headphones. All those "radio people" want it loud and you can tell they're in radio." I chuckled quietly.

Rob Ellis · M&M Joined: 01 Aug 2006 Posts: 2385 Location: Detroit

I stopped using headphones during my last couple of years of radio......well, what I did was just use them on one ear and even that one was turned way down.....now they hang in my booth for directed sessions and are turned up loud enough for me to hear without wearing them.

Glenn Moore · Been Here Awhile Joined: 24 Jan 2005 Posts: 241

I have never used headphones for VO unless recording at a studio outside of my home or for ISDN/Source Connect sessions. I hated using them because I tend to get louder with them on, but I had to wear them to hear the director/engineer/client. So a few years ago I went to Radio Shack and found a set of small round earbuds with foam pads, They are shaped not to go in my ears, but rest just inside the ear above the ear lobe. They are cheap and music doesn't sound good with them but if you are just listening to the person on the other end of the line give direction they do the job. I wear one usually and then flip the other one over my shoulder. They fit so lightly in my ear I can still hear myself out of both ears and it feels like I am not using anything at all. You can probably find them somewhere or online but sad to say there aren't too many Radio Shack stores to go to anymore for a quick cable, plug or adapter.

Rick Riley · Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2017 8:11 pm Post subject:

Joining the conversation late, but being the rebel that I am, I DID NOT wear headphones when I was on the radio, and DO wear them when I’m doing VO. Take THAT!

I did a talk show in Miami and had a producer, so for 16 years they wouldn’t let me touch anything. And to hear the callers we had an Overhead instead of having to wear headphones. It made it very natural to interact with the caller, providing you interact naturally on the phone with a 12 inch speaker over your head. But in the new studio I just finished, the room is so quiet, you can’t hear yourself. In normal conversation your voice bounces off of things and comes back to you. But in my booth, the sound just gets sucked into the walls. It’s like talking in Space.

So being coached to not use headphones, I’ve been wearing one over my left ear so I can hear me enough just to know that I’m alive. Otherwise it’s like talking when you have a head cold, and you know how normal THAT can be.
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Philip Banks · Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 7:45 am Post subject:

Go to the Gear section and discover which headphones are the best not to use.

jsgilbert · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 1:41 pm Post subject:

I remember when I was starting out that I almost always thought I did a better job without cans. In those days, everybody wore them and it was almost a cardinal sin to go to a studio and not want to use them. I would keep the cans lying on a stand near me and ask them to crank the talkback microphone up and mute me. That way, when I was done with a take, I could hear them giving me direction through the cans as if they were a little speaker. Sometimes I had to pick them up and hold them near my head. It also had the effect of my being able to get out more reads without being stepped on. A local studio actually put a nearfield speaker in, saying it was because of me and one other guy.
I started casting and directing relatively early on and often would ask talent to take off their cans for a few takes to see how it would go and the reads were almost always better. There are both psychological and physiological reasons why this might be so.
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ConnieTerwilliger · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 5:28 pm Post subject:

Hhhuh hhuh...having trouble breathing. JS is back!

(Welcome home my friend.)
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Rick Riley · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 5:58 pm Post subject: