Dry Raw Audio Rejected as processed and with Reverb!?!?

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March 17, 2021 10:06

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I created a video, a sort of open letter, but showing you my process, that my audio is infact raw, and unprocessed. Please let me know how I can get it to you. I really need someone there to watch it and hear what is happening. I was going to share the link but it was downloadable and I dont want it going out on social media. There is nothing bad being said, just sharing my frustrations openly and honestly. It is a walk through of the entire recording process of the file in question.

Below are my words, that are not as well put together, but they comprise the 3 emails I sent to you during my attempt to "Pass" QC. They were my pleas for help fallen of deaf ears since you don't accept emails for QC issues, which IMHO is very much the wrong approach. (how do we contact you when there is an urgent matter in the middle of a speedy???)

Thanks.

I thought i was posting here but aparently I used the Email. This is a QC issue so here it goes. MAJOR PROBLEM HERE FOLKS!!!

ATTN JOHNATAN SANCHEZ!

I am only submitting this again as its directly related to the previous thread from 3 months ago.

I submitted this via emial system, but trying here too as this is directly related to the conversation we had 3 months ago about your QC standards inparticular one or two employees, mainly Hiroshi, mentioned below.

I am challenging Hiroshi's rejection and Revision request. (adding this parenthetical statement now, as i forgot to include in original request...[I am thankful for the opportunity to revise this and fix it, the following open letter is regarding the bigger issue which I had when i first started, as well as now unfortunately also]).

I have reviewed the file. There is a Consonant P that has an odd echo, which came from my mouth chamber!!!! , >THAT IS NOT ROOM ECHO< It is a particular sound that needs correction. I want Johnatan Sanchez to review this and I will be submitting it to him separately. I also want the head of I am in a professionally acoustically treated booth, I have a noise floor of -75. I spent a significant amount of time with Johnatan several months ago regarding your QC methods. The rate at which this was rejected, and the lack of detail, and total and complete generalities, shows the absolute lack of professional attention to detail that you claim to advocate for the client. I submitted the file, checked the details and saw Hiroshis name. I put my browser on a 5 second refresh and within less than a minute there was the revision request. That tells me he is using software to "See" audio instead of HEARING it with HIS EARS! Sure, Use the tools, then LISTEN to it with the ears on your head. Unless of course your hearing impared, which gives me seriouse pause. ( I say that in all seriousness, and NOT to be rude). The Ears MUST be used to HEAR, not just a digital representation of sound. Visual sound is AMAZING and spectralgraphs have radically changed our world but NOTHING can replace the ears. PLEASE I beg you, use them. There is no way EARS were used in the amount of time that the revision hit. IF they were, there clearly was no attention paid to detail in order to give me any idea what to correct. Just a blanket statement. And why, if that was so fast, is my status still in a pending state? I know you use iZotope, so do I, but my audio is completely unprocessed aside from removing breaths and replacing it with my natural room tone, and removing mouth noise which I do VERY CAREFULLY, by hand, and with MINIMAL iZotope plugin use, on its default gentle setting, and NEVER to the entire file!

I am a member of many VO groups and everyone's main problem when it comes to rejection is Hiroshi. And Reverb is one of his biggest go to's You cannot call everything that sounds funny reverb. It simply isn't. Regardless of whether or not this is accepted, I am challenging Mr Hiroshis abilities as a competent Quality Control agent! I have attached the original, the corrected P sound, and a reproduction of the actual word from the script along with the soft p and the p with the MOUTH ECHO. Yes I am frustrated, even if i get the job payment, I am frustrated. I have friends that Know Hirosihs schedule and simply avoid attempting to submit due to his draconian uneducated methods. Johnatan, You promised me that this was going to be addressed over 3 months ago, that you would revise your methods of QC to bring uniformity among your agents. Please do so! This is so maddening. I am perfectly fine making a correction, but this general blanket statement implying that im an inadequately treated space is just obscene. I love your platform, but i DO NOT love this persons idea of QC. Forgive me for being a bit harsh, but this is something that is a constant complaint from the Professional VO Community who are on this platform. Were talking about people who make 6 figure incomes doing TV promos and HUGE name brands like mercedes, nikey and the likes being rejected because of room echo. Come On. OK, Rant over, and I hope you canunderstand mine, and all of our frustration regarding this particular issue, and agent.

I am genuinely looking forward to your careful reply.

Bryan Dawson

I demand to speak with the highest authority regarding this 4625898ACF6FF14F615A

You say i have a processing chain. MY AUDIO IS RAW!!! I removed breaths manually, and did not, DID NOT add any kind of eq. I demand to be paid for my work, and i am highly suspicioius that this is a trumped up reason due to my fairly scathing messages sent due to the initial poor qc. Here is the original file with replaced p. RAW!!!

This is absoultely unacceptable!

I also just listened to the "winners audio, and hes distorting in a couple places!!! WHAT the ACTUAL HECK!?!?!?

Last thing, Hiroshi, I know I called you out, I am just so perplexed. Credit where credit is due, you accepted my audio last night, thank you, but that makes this all the more frustrating! Why last night but not tonight??? I am not angry with you but SOOOOOO frustrated with the lack of consistency and apparent lack of competence.

Johnatan Sanchez #362611690500

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March 17, 2021 15:46
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Hi Bryan,

Thank you very much for reaching out and helping us understand this whole situation. We completely understand where you’re coming from and will do our best to do right by you.

Let’s break in a couple of sections, that way we’ll be able to tackle all your concerns.

About that video and those samples, it pretty easy, please upload them to your Google Drive folder and share the links with us. Make sure to set the sharing setting to “Anyone with the link”. That will grant us full access to your files and we’ll be able to see and hear what you’ve carefully planned for us. I’ll be giving our QC agents a heads up so they can be aware of this particular case and use it for alignment purposes for future events. Cases like this do help our QC team become better at evaluating audios and improving our consistency among agents. We did receive them via email and we’ll provide our feedback, but if you want other Pros to listen and hear to your setup, that’s the best way to do it.

Revision and quality, as mentioned in your email, we’ve had some work on your audio and it is completely different from what it was before. With that in mind, we asked some of our QC agents for second opinions on these particular audios. Yes, they did notice some minor issues, yet, after some debate, we did agree it is could be approved by the team under certain circumstances.

However, we’ll do our best to deliver even better quality together. Here’s what we collectively found on the audios:
- Boxiness: As you know, this might be caused by early reflections due to having flat surfaces near the recording environment.
- Processing: This became evident when we noticed that the audio might be lacking some information in the low-end spectrum. We’re not entirely sure if it’s en EQ processing or something else that might be causing this.
Both things have easy solutions tho, we believe once you share that video with us we’ll be able to figure out the boxiness part. And for the processing, we’d love it if you could share your chain of processing with us, that way we’ll be able to better understand what’s being applied to the voice, and find the best way to solve that processing issue.

I will personally bring this matter to our QC team meeting, that way we’ll be able to better align on this front.

Also, I'll bring Daniel Matiz to the case, he’s been a tremendous help for our Pros lately and I believe he’ll be able to help us as well.

Looking forward to your files, thoughts, and comments,
Kind regards
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Bryan Dawson #374988860260

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March 17, 2021 19:56
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Ok, here is the link to the video and picture and audio files. You already have the original edited, and revised, so i didnt include them, however i added the raw audo which you will see in the video but this way you can analyze it. I mentioned in the video, that i completely forgot at the time of sending the emails due to my frustration, that i did add an izotope default ozone 8 remove boxiness preset, but its actually the neutron 3 remove boxiness filter, which by the way I had used in the past and you accepted it, just sayin. That being said my booth treatment has been greatly improved since then so it (the neutron plugin, must have overcompensated. I am attaching pictures of the Insight 2 3D Spectrogram. The only processing I hav, literally, is my mic has a bass rolloff switch which is enabled. I forgot about that until now. Forgive me if im rambling, i have not slept but 1 hour, im a little brain dead.

I also, using a chrome plugin, downloaded the "winners" audio and ran the same 3D Spectrogram on it, there is not a ton of difference between his audio and mine. His audio has a bit more low end, but frankly it sounds a little muddy to me. And looking at in rx8 there are breaths left in, and clear mouth noise, and its frankly sloppier. Im really trying to be fair. His isnt horrile, but mine is free of all of that, but over all they look fairly close. Im intrested to see your comparisons. Please, if you can make a walkthrough as i have done for you, either critiquing my process, or just how you all want things handled, i am extreemly visual so pictures and video will really help me. AGAIN! THANK YOU for your wilingness to have this conversation.

Here is the link.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1luQOmAWby8kussWsYVAcrjMqL65ClJLU?usp=sharing
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Dunia Piña #375903570740

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March 18, 2021 16:06
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Hello Bryan!

Sorry I took a bit to answer, I wanted to review your video, images, and audio files completely before giving you an answer.

Before we get to the core of the matter, I just wanted to say that as a Pro Tools advocate and lifelong user, I find the Mix paste function and the History section of Adobe Audition quite amazing! They look incredibly useful and you are making me think that I might want to get used to Audition too.

Just to answer some of your concerns, we do have a set of standards that we sometimes share and are available on the forums:

https://help.bunnystudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000322144-Voice-Quality-Control-Standards

As you see, they are not extremely specific regarding measurements, because the differences in mics, audio interfaces, even DAWs can make it difficult to have very “Hard” standards, so it ends up on our agents’ ears.

Also, I’m not the best reader of spectrograms, but just with a quick look, I can’t see anything strange on them, other than a weird first frequency on the audio you downloaded from our site just before the 1st second mark, no idea if it might be due to the plugin used to download it or those compression artifacts that can happen with audio on the internet as you said! (I don't like YouTube audio compression precisely because of that).

Now, onto the real talk!

I guide myself by my ears all the time (as you said), as I think it is the best approach since audio is made to be heard and not seen, so, ignoring those spectrograms, I reviewed the files you sent us on that Drive folder again. My thoughts are that the RAW audio definitely needs those edits you did for the breaths and clicks. Regarding the other two audios, they sound pretty good! Although I think the issues that caused the comments Johnatan left above (The boxiness and the processing) and I will address them one by one:
- Boxiness: I believe the section that creates the impression of boxiness is around the 0:15 second mark, on the words “struggle and juggle”. If you listen closely, the high-frequency spectrum of those words has an excess of (most likely) close reflections! That is my first guess without seeing the vocal booth, and although it can be heard, I would have personally not cared much about them since it is just a small section of the whole read.
- Overprocessing: This is trickier since it is just present (for me at least) on one single word. And that is at 0:19, at the end of “raising kids”. Please give that tiny section a listen, and you can hear something similar to the “birdie effect” which is sometimes caused by compression artifacts. No idea if this was caused by any of the FX stated before (De-click, or the Neutron boxiness filter, for example) and it is the only section of the whole read that I think gives that impression. I, of course, am open to having any other ears review the files to give us some extra insight, but that is what I can find.
However, as a QC agent myself, I think that I would have passed the recording without much hassle since I know listening through my Beyerdynamics can be a bit of an overkill, those are very minor details, and the delivery sounds great to me!

Please let me know if this helps clarify the issue a bit more, and I’m open to any answers, questions, or anything else you would like to share with us!

Kind regards,

Daniel
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Bryan Dawson #374988860260

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March 18, 2021 19:03
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I replied to the email you send, but not seeing it here. Posting now so others can benefit.

Daniel, thank you for the validation! The mix paste feature is amazing. It does make life so much better and gives a much better end product than just highlighting and lowering the breaths manually. As for pro tools, it’s awesome but the subscription mod they went to just doesn’t make sense for VO. Unless you're producing your own demos it’s just too much that isn’t needed. That being said I would love to have it and would have bought it but no buyout option anymore. 😞

I will absolutely no longer put the boxiness filter on, I literally only used it as a precautionary measure since it worked in the past, what I forgot was that my booth has been seriously upgraded since then and it’s just hurt rather than helped.

You seem to be on the same page as me, in regard to thoughts on the overall passing of the File. Having identified these small issues, I would think as a policy, you would identify them, send back for revision of those specific words, then "grade" the revision of those words, passing or rejecting on that basis alone. My EXETREME frustration is with mainly Hiroshi, and Hector, but mainly Hiroshi as mentioned in my letters and video is that he seems to as a rule of thumb, give a general quick response (blanket statement) to us, frankly speaking, so he can bang out as many jobs as possible to meet a quota perhaps, or just to get through a job that maybe he doesn't really enjoy or is qualified for. Then we, the talent, kind of freak out cause there is so little time to fix things, if we are new, or just being the middle of the night not thinking clearly, put a filter on, or re-record the whole thing, thus making it worse than it was before, and all that was needed was for the agent to take the care and time to identify as you did, the specific faults, which is what happens both on other platforms and in real life with direct client relationships, and pass that back to the talent via a revision request thus giving the talent specific points to fix thus resulting in a passed VO, Payment, and most importantly those excellent coveted stats. This is what I mean by standards. Basic technical standards are great, and greatly needed, but as you mentioned with such a vast variety of options out there only so much can be asked in that arena. What I am advocating for on behalf of myself AND the entire community of both seasoned vets in the VO world, and the newbies, trying to get a foothold in the market place, is that the process of passing or failing peoples hard work, literally in the middle of the night knowing that all their hard work very well is going to be flushed down the toilet by Hiroshi, and not only that but be negatively affected by 1, missing out on the money, and 2, even more, important is the stats taking a hit and getting less opportunities, MUST BE STANDARDIZED. This is what MUST change. Like you said, you would have passed it, I would have made my $30(woohoo, lol) and had another good addition to my stats. NOW, here we sit, hopefully making the future better for everyone on the platform, in which case ill gladly take the hit for the sake of everyone. If everyone worked on the same VERY FAIR AND REASONABLE standards that you hold, no one would care about the website glitches or other silly things that happen. No one would avoid working a particular night or day because they know that "Hiroshi is working and my audio is going to get rejected" so id rather do something else and NOT MAKE MONEY.

Daniel, Thank you for your AWESOME feedback! Can you please address the points I just raised regarding my comments above with Hiroshi specifically, and the overall lack of common or standard practices when determining wether to pass, fail or request revisions, and how those revisions are asked to be handled. Telling us that it's "Boxy" does nothing when as you heard, my audio is NOT BOXY but there are SPECIFIC WORDS that are, or have a reflection coloring its sound. Those tiny fixes are fast and specific and are really nonissues as your said since you would have passed it anyway. I think I'm being clear enough, I truly hope so.

By the way, your QC standards are Great! So clear and reasonable! Easy to understand and follow, frankly those summarize my standards aside from client requested formats and specs they may need for their unique situation. Again, the issue is how your agents are handling those very standards. Personally what you did for me as I mentioned above IS the way each agent needs to be trained to handle EVERY submitted vo. If there are 2 or 3 words, tell us, if it's garbage, reject it flat, but if you're going to ask for a revision, BE SPECIFIC so every person's time involved is respected.
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Dunia Piña #375903570740

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March 23, 2021 16:25
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Hello again Bryan!

Sorry, I took a bit to answer, it was a crazy weekend for me and an extremely busy Monday too.

Thank you for your reply! I definitely agree with you. We as a QC team do use some Macros (those standardized statements) that can sound a bit too general in some cases and can cause confusion and frustration like the ones you saw in your revisions. I do believe that more specific feedback can greatly help, and I will bring this to our next QC meeting so our team can start being much more specific in those cases that it is required.

Just to address one of the comments, we as QC agents do not have a Quota of projects to review, although the Macros do help when there is a high amount of projects to review, but again, in some cases, a much more specific approach is needed, so this is definitely being addressed in our next QC meeting. I will let all the team, and not only them, know about this case so we can keep it as an example in order to align our QC standards more and more. This is an ongoing effort, although the only way to be all the same would be to have literally each other's brains and ears (crazy comment hahaha sorry for that), we keep working on this constantly and cases like this help us improve and learn.

I'm glad you liked the way I gave you feedback, this is the reason why this space exists, so we can have this type of conversation that can not only help us as a team and you as a Pro, but also anyone else in the community that wants to learn from experiences like yours.

Regarding the rejection and your stats, please send me a reply to our email thread with the project IDs again, so I can review them with the Pro Management team and see if we have the approval to help you with them so they don't affect your stats.

I hope you had a great weekend, that you have an awesome day today, and let me know if you have any other questions or comments on this matter!

Kind regards,

Daniel
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Bryan Dawson #374988860260

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March 24, 2021 01:07
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Thanks again. No worries on the crazy comment, lol, and thank you for sharing the info regarding the macros. Regarding my case, were those Macros used, Macros as in an automated process to pass or reject audio, or are you calling a specific set of the listed standards you send me the link to, or is it an automated response macro. If an automated process for passing or rejecting, I would really appreciate understanding that process and depending on what that process looks like, perhaps a further discussion on the use of those macros and to what extent they are used would be a helpful conversation to have. Using them for Workload ease is completely understandable, but my concern is at what cost. If your trying to get through the workload and you wind up rejecting 5 people due to this "easy button" approach, then the cost that the talent actually would receive goes up, which benefits the talent that finally lands it, but winds up hurting you, which makes no sense, It also hurts the other 5 talents that were rejected via their numbers. Of course, they can contest the rejection but there is no guarantee they will win and then are stuck with those poor stats. If by macro you mean an automated response email that is generated, the same unintended consequence is inevitable. as seen in my case as no detailed instruction is given.

I am glad you don't have a quota, quotas are horrible, but the outcome of using the above-mentioned macro may have the same unintended consequence for everyone, frankly.

Lastly, a point in both my open (Video) letter and my emails remains unaddressed. The issue of Hiroshi. In our communication thus far, you have not acknowledged this glaring issue at all, but have only alluded to it when speaking of your QC agents in general and their practices, which frankly speaking gives me pause. I realize you want to protect your employee, and I understand and respect that, however, the fact still stands, that Hiroshi seems to be running rogue and is causing untold problems for a lot of talent. I am directly frustrated with this individual's practices, yes, but my advocacy is for the entirety of the voice talent being affected by this individual's practices and the quality of work performed by them. Whether He (or she, sorry, it sounds like a guys name so my sincere apologies if its a female) is simply being lazy and relying too heavily on the Macro, whatever that is, or if they just are not a very objective person as yourself, I do not know, but I want this issue addressed in this forum...please. This person is absolutely reckless when it comes to their respect for the talent's hard work, their talent, the obscene hours they are waking at to fil the jobs, and their time given to these projects. How are you addressing this issue? No one deserves to have their work rejected, or as in my case THIS time, glossed over by an auto-response, without allowing them to fix the very few, and simple corrections, causing stress, and frustration at minimum, not to mention the loss of revenue.

Additionally, I do find it frustrating that this macro is being used, whatever it is. It appears that it is not actually doing you any good at all as you are indicating it does. If it generates more frustration for the talent, and causes an influx of emails, or floods the chat room with cases, thus occupying your agent's time answering these issues that could have been used simply taking a little extra time in the first place clearly communicating any revision details, it seems it all could have been avoided by a careful approach to the talents original submission in the first place.

Thank you again for your insight, transparency, and in advance, for addressing directly this issue of Hiroshi specifically as well as the macros used and just what they are.
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Dunia Piña #375903570740

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March 24, 2021 16:06
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Hello again Bryan!

Just to clarify, the macros are pieces of text Pre-crafted for specific scenarios, for example, the room echo one goes like this:

There is audible room echo (reverberation) impacting your recording. Please ensure you record in an acoustically treated space. If you already have acoustic treatment, it may not be adequate.

You'll find tips on acoustic treatment on our community page: https://bit.ly/2MrNsSV.

They are chosen in some cases depending on the issue the Pro has, and they have been created and modified depending on feedback from Pros, clients, and our QC team. This means our QC team can send that one for a project that has room echo, and we have found that they can be useful in the majority of situations. Still, and how we said it before, I do believe that some cases need a more detailed approach that goes above and beyond the macros since some details can not be explained through them.

Rest assured that they do have to be related to whatever issue our QC agent finds, so every audio always goes through a review before sending any of those texts.

Regarding Hiroshi, I haven't said anything since we are completely against direct blaming to any of our agents (we are all human and can make mistakes, I've personally come to the forums before to apologize for an incorrect rejection from my end, for example, trying always to be as clear and transparent as possible), but rest assured that he is always part of our QC meetings, and he will be there and present when we talk about your case, and as I said before, I do expect this will help us improve as a team and be more aligned so it stops feeling like someone specific is rejecting you, and more like you are receiving feedback from our QC team as a whole!

Let me know if there are any other questions I can help you with!

Kind regards,

Daniel
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Bryan Dawson #374988860260

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March 24, 2021 20:51
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Daniel, thank you for clarification on these points and for acknowledging my concerns with Hiroshi. For my case in particular I do not feel Hiroshi is to blame for this. Merely that more detailed measures can be taken by Hiroshi and not use the macros as a default as it appears. Hiroshi did give me a chance to fix it though, and as you stated in a previous communication, you would have passed it. My reason for pursuing this, as I think you know by now, is partly for myself sure, but mainly due to the sheer outcry from a Big part of the VO communities I belong to who have been having the same issues with mainly Hiroshi for quite some time now. I do feel it necessary to give credit to Hiroshi as I forgot to mention it in the video there at the end. I was so exhausted by the end of my video that I failed to give props to Hiroshi for accepting one of my previous projects to this one. Again, It just appears to many that He is too critical or just taking the easy way out trying to get through a pile of work. I appreciate the effort of being quick, but not at the cost of quality.

My biggest hope is that there will be notable change, including the way the macros are used. I fully understand their value to your team, and when properly used they will obviously save a ton of time on your end. I personally feel that the macros are being abused as an easy button to speed things up at the expense (literally) of the talent. (Which does affect you as those projects keep popping back up over and over thus creating a higher payout from your profit margins)

Again, Daniel, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and on behalf of everyone else facing these same frustrations. Your transparency has been greatly appreciated and I am trusting that you all will be making some changes for the better. My honest fear though is that the changes won’t be adhered to by the agents. There is no greater reality than perception, and if folks perceive that their work is being taken for granted, and rushed by, then that is their reality, and I am just trying to get across that many are experiencing this reality, and until the perception changes, their reality stays the same. Frustration grows, and we all know how that often plays out.

To sum up, we need a more detailed approach to be given a fair chance. We need the agents to be held to a higher standard of uniformity so that the macros are not abused and that every submission is given a fair shot... I feel that quite literally some more detailed training on what is and is not passable is needed. Sharing your philosophy of what can be passed would greatly improve things if all agents adhered to that. PLEASE, and I mean this, use my audio, the one you said was totally acceptable and you would have passed, and play that for them, train them using that until they all get an “ear” for that type of situation. Pound into their psyche that just because there may be one or two anomalies, they can pass it without a blanket fail, OR, they can request a revision with SPECIFICS! If this approach is taken as your standard operating procedures, I truly believe you will have much less need for a macro, you will have MUCH happier talent, and I bet the workload would ease as you don't have this constant influx of jobs being regurgitated over and over due to constant rejections that are unnecessary. If you can assure me that this will be done, I, nay WE, can have a much better experience, and people would gladly recruit more talent for your site. Frankly, I have been discouraging people from joining solely due to the mass outcry regarding these issues and the inevitable frustration they will face because of it. The website bugs while maddening at times, especially when you miss jobs, are gladly overlooked for an enjoyable experience knowing your work won’t be blindly rejected unjustly, which if your honest with yourself, happens waaaaaaayyyyu to often, again, strongly appears due to laziness or stress of backlogged jobs and trying to unbury oneself from the workload..."Easy Buton"

Anyway, This has been a great dialogue and I am looking forward to some concrete changes in the very near future. Please let me know your thoughts on these points, I know there’s some redundancy but that is only due to me wanting to be sure I am clearly heard, understood and that each item is being addressed fully.

Cheers for now!

Bryan
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Dunia Piña #375903570740

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March 25, 2021 15:03
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Hi Bryan,

I agree with you, I do think more detailed feedback is really important, and it will help with all stages of the process since it will decrease revisions from us and from the client as well, as it will also help Pros understand better what might be going on in a specific project. This will be one of the topics for our next QC meeting (specific feedback and macro usage), and I do hope too that this will help us improve as a team and improve your experience as a Pro in our platform.

Thank you for the openness and sincerity during this conversation, I appreciate your feedback a lot, and as always, please feel free to reach out through any of our channels in order to let us know your thoughts, concerns, and ideas to improve and be better!

I wish you a great day and an awesome weekend!

Kind regards,

Daniel
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