VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Philip Banks]

A few weeks ago I spent a day and a half helping my friend Richard with his VO studio.

Richard's Prima codec had gone phut so he decided to go the AudioTX route for his next ISDN codec and send his Prima away to be repaired to be a back up; assuming the latter was an economically viable option.

A test dial with a studio in Glasgow worked both out-going and incoming, the producer/engineer gave the thumbs up.

The following day when Richard was once more open for business he did a session for local radio commercial producer. Ben knew things had changed at Richard's place.

"Mmmmmmmmm too much bass and there's compression on the audio"

Richard called me and I pointed out that ben heard no compression (audio) because Richard doesn't own a compressor and as his EQ was set at zero across the range, all that Ben heard was Richard's raw mic. What did Ben really hear? The fact that he doesn't like AudioTX because it's, somehow not proper codec, you know, it doesn't have flashing lights and an LCD screen and anyway, AudioTX is troublesome. Actually that's not true. The reason I know this is because, whilst I've never worked for Ben he has called another VO in my studio, the session passed without technical comment.

Surely a producer knows what's good. May be Richard's old set up was simply ....better. Using Richard's old set up I did an ISDN session with a TV production company in Holland. When my studio was up and running again I had to do the session again because Richard's studio sounded too "dark".

Sometimes, you just can't win.