Voiceover studio design? It all starts with a good room…
Anyone who has kicked around this business for a while will tell you the same thing; for a great voiceover recording the most important elements are the talent, the room and the equipment (in that order).
Acoustic panels: the first of three pallet-loads
Nick Whittaker…
When we designed our new studio rooms in 2014 there was only one man we wanted to help: Nick Whittaker. Nick is something of a legend in the field of acoustic design, having been a lead consultant for Recording Architecture Ltd . His client list reads like a studio who’s who: Abbey Road, the BBC, De Lane Lea and Olympia, plus artists like Coldplay, Annie Lennox, Mark Knopfler and Bryan Ferry – it’s almost endless.
We knew he’s also had a hand in the rooms at two of our favourite voiceover facilities in London’s West End: Angell Sound and Silk Sound.¬† But would he take on a relatively small project for a pair of ambitious voiceovers on a somewhat less impressive budget?
Booth. The first panel goes up…
The Brief…
Actually, Nick was a dream to work with. Really friendly and obliging. Our brief was simple; we wanted a West End studio in the West Mids. Nick came up with a scheme for each room using acoustic panels from RPG Europe. The RPG panels are a portable solution so we could optimise the acoustics in two rooms without too much impact on the structure of the house. RPG also have the ability to custom print the surface of any panels. You just supply a high quality JPEG. The absorber panel above the control room fireplace is a good example.
The Result…
Well the proof of the pudding is in the eating, or in the listening, but we couldn’t be more thrilled. Our work is heard every day on major networks worldwide and we get regular compliments from our clients on the quality of our voiceover recordings. Did we mention that audiophile companies like Dolby Labs, Bose and Lydkraft have all used us to showcase the quality of their respective solutions? You might¬†struggle to do that with egg boxes and duvets.
Control Room. A rather groovy acoustic panel with a custom screen-print from RPG Europe. The pic we used was a vintage RCA short-wave radio.