Quality Control Sample for Review
Hello Bunnystudio staff and quality control team.
My name is Adam Hardin, I am an actor and voiceover artist living in Chicago, Illinois. I have a strong interest in joining the Bunny Studio team as a Pro and have been working during Covid-19 on setting up a recording studio at my home. I have submitted quality control tests to Bunny Studio in the past (back when it was VoiceBunny) but always ran into a problem of a lot of loose low-end that was surrounding the bassier notes of my voice. I believe (after a long period of A B-ing the various parts of my signal chain) I have fixed the issue, but would deeply appreciate the BunnyStudio team taking a listen to determine if the sample is up to Bunnystudio standards. Thank you so much for your time and help.
Please find the sample attached to a folder in my Google Drive, it is the sample titled: VoiceBunny Sound Test-Adam Hardin. Please disregard all other samples. Those are samples before the issue was fixed.
If the issue is still there I would deeply appreciate any and all constructive feedback on how to sort the issue.
If you have any trouble accessing the file please don't hesitate to let me know.
Thank you!
Adam Hardin
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Hello Adam!
Thanks a lot for reaching out and for your commitment and interest to join our team.
I listened to your sample and I do think your voice is great and definitely it would be amazing to have you working with us. Nevertheless, there is indeed a slight issue of acoustics present in your audio. I can notice some slight reverberations that surely are a consequence of the acoustic environment where you are recording. In order to provide you with detailed feedback and advice on how to manage this situation accordingly, I would really appreciate if you could send me a couple of pictures of your working space so we can see what might be causing the issue.
Let me know your thoughts about it, hoping you have an amazing weekend.
Gabriel
Hello Gabriel,
Thank you so much for your reply.
I want to provide you the following pictures for your reference.
Equipment:
Scarlett Solo Preamplifier, Blue Bluebird SL Microphone, iMac Computer, Logic Pro X, Kaotica Eyeball.
Please view the pictures here.
I will also, for the sake of speed and solving the issue quickly give you a brief summation of the problems I have encountered and the measures I have taken to solve it.
1. I believe I chatted with you, Mr. Uribe, a few months back and we had encountered the issue with what sounded like excessive low end that was distorting my voice, but after troubleshooting, we were confused because the Kaotica Eyeball should have solved the issue of environment.
2. After talking with you and some head scratching, I consulted a local audio engineer to help me test the equipment in my signal chain to try to narrow down the issue. After working with him to test the signal chain, ,the issue was still present. But we determined it wasn't the microphone, the preamplifier, or the cables.
3. After that I decided that the recording environment was the most likely culprit and that the Eyeball was nothing more than a glorified pop-filter. I decided to build out my closet to make a sound booth, which I did my hand.
4. Did another test, and consulted the engineer again to test the room. He confirmed the room is properly absorbing sound, but the issue was still present.
5. I added large bass traps to the corners after construction to try to absorb more of the low-end.
6. Issue still present.
7. After determining that the issue wasn't the environment, I tried turning off my monitor speakers as I record, and switching to headphones.
8. Issue "Appears" to have disappeared. After listening through my monitor headphones I could not detect the issue any longer. I had a 3rd party (not the audio engineer) come in and listen to se if they could hear the issue and they couldn't hear it as well.
9. I have submitted the issue to BunnyStudio for a quality control test (which is where we are right now.)
I know this is a lot to absorb, but I have a few questions for you that I hope you might be able to answer, and could help expedite the process.
A) How are you listening to the sample? Through headphones or through monitors?
B) Can you tell me what frequency the issue is occurring?
C) I know that BunnyStudio want the vocals delivered from their pros to be as clean and unprocessed as possible. Would I be able to send in another test with an EQ added that does nothing other than cut the troubling frequency a small amount?
Thank you so much for your attention to this issue and your response. I'm committed to solving this issue and seeing it through to the end. Please let me know if I can answer any questions you may have.
Best Regards,
Adam Hardin
Hello Adam!!
How are you?? Hope everything is going amazing and you are having a wonderful weekend.
First of all, I want to thank you a lot on behalf the whole Bunny Studio team. More than anything, we love and value the incredible commitment of our pros and their compromise in order to deliver high quality voice overs. This is the core of what we do and we don't have words to say how much we value your commitment, so big kudos for that :). I'm sure we will be able to get things sorted out so you can start working with us as soon as possible.
Reading your post above, I totally remember you my friend (specially for the confusion we were having about the Kaotica Eyeball). So, before giving you further advice, I'll reply your questions:
A). I'm listening to your sample through headphones. And this is not only me, but all the QC team listens to the audios through professional headphones. In my case, I'm also passing the signal through my Universal Audio interface, so the sound detail is very accurate. I have to admit that we as QC agents can be sometimes very picky about sound quality (and we can note things that maybe are not very noticeable to normal ears that are not related with audio matters like you and me), but one of the main objectives of our QC team is also to help pros to get to the best quality possible even though their current audio setups are sounding fair or good enough. We are obsessed to deliver the best results always and that includes helping our pros to get their audios to the best quality possible. Once we achieve this, the process is pretty straightforward. It is only repeating what you have done already in the past.
B). More than a frequency boost, the issues present in your audio have to do more with some sound tails and reverberations present in your room as well as some slight background noise. I have to admit that by seeing your pictures I'm really amazed because it seems you have done a pretty good job treating your closet. Please allow me to ask you, as I can see perfectly well the front and right walls, but don't have a view of the left wall. Are all the corners and walls treated the same?
Also, I was thinking that maybe the issue could be caused because of the position that you are recording. Maybe you could try different positions and upload different audios to see which one works best. However, I would encourage you to record at a further distance that the audio you submitted. I think this might be really helpful if you record several cms apart of the microphone. Recording at a further distance will help to avoid the boost in the low frequency spectrum. Also, please make sure your laptop or any other equipment is located outside the closet. This is really, really important in order to avoid background noises. Also, please be aware that background noises should be edited out of your audios. This can be done using volume automation.
Talking about exact frequencies, the boost that your audio is having as a consequence of the reverb is around 100-200Hz. Again, recording further apart might help to avoid this problem. If you want, feel free to experiment and record using several distances. You can upload your audios here properly labeled to see which one works better.
C). Please do. In fact, I have downloaded your audio and processed it a little bit to see how you might want to tweak it. Please, keep in mind that we encourage our pros not to process their audios not because this is bad or it is not helpful, but because we do consider that most of the problems that recordings usually have can be resolved from the source, that means from the rooms and recording conditions where people work. This way, if pros get to resolve the issues from the source, audios will tend to sound more natural and will conserve the original tone and color of the voice of each Pro. Being said that, another major reason why we encourage pros not to process their audios is because a lot of pros don't have the technical proficiency and knowledge needed to do it precisely and accurately, without degrading the overall quality of the signal. Most of the times, over processing will cause the audio to sound even worse than the original version.
So, please let me know if this makes sense to you. I'm attaching to this thread the processed audio that I crafted for you, as well as the screenshots of the processing. I only used a transient designer (to remove slightly the reverb tail at the end), and an EQ to cut a little bit the frequencies that are being boosted by the reverb. Also, I cleaned up the audio and removed the silent gaps in order to eliminate the background noise that was present. This is an idea but feel free to experiment to see if you can get better results.
Also, I'm attaching some examples of audios of our pros that might have a similar color and tone of your voice and have really good quality. This way you can guide yourself and note what might be consider an objective to reach in terms of overall sound and quality.
Here is the link for the audio: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CFsA3NoYUqSjgET5-LDxSYrCykbk7Edl/view?usp=sharing
Please keep in mind the room echo is still a bit present, but it sounds a lot less than the original source. As I mentioned before, it is way better to get everything solved from the source than with processing,
Here are the link of the samples that you might want to reference:
1. https://bunnystudio.com/es/voice/samples/199513?ref=shared
2. https://bunnystudio.com/es/voice/samples/133295?ref=shared
3. https://bunnystudio.com/es/voice/samples/144131?ref=shared
4. https://bunnystudio.com/es/voice/samples/192140?ref=shared
5. https://bunnystudio.com/es/voice/samples/180040?ref=shared
6. https://bunnystudio.com/es/voice/samples/178706?ref=shared
7. https://bunnystudio.com/voice/samples/183447?ref=shared
Looking forward to hear from you! Hope this is useful and hope we can get you working with us really soon!
Best regards,
Gabriel
Hello Gabriel,
First off, thank you so very much for the wealth of information as well as the support from you and the Bunny Studio team! This will be a big help in guiding my next steps. Thank you for being so open with your help and transparency with Bunny Studio quality control. You've removed a lot of the guess work and your efforts are noticed and make a BIG BIG difference. :)
To quickly answer your questions:
1) You are correct in your assumption that the sound room is covered on all sides with sound absorbing foam except for the door which is covered by a fabric cloth. All walls and surfaces are treated the same with a few exceptions. A) the Bass traps are only on the back right and left corners. The wall with the door, however, is too small to accommodate the bass traps in the corners. But all flat surfaces are treated with the same sound absorbing panels you see in the pictures. The floor is treated with a fabric rug. (If you would like more detailed photographs of the closet, please don't hesitate to ask).
2) I will take the information you provided and try your suggestions of : sending in a few samples of different distances from the mic, applying volume automation to remove background noise, and removing my iPad from the closet (I used my iPad to remotely hit record and to display my copy) I plan on using the VO Samples you sent as a quality control to guide me.
3) Once I have gone as far as I can, I will send in another sample to make sure I am on the right track if needed. If the issues still persist, I will then add the EQ and Transient Designer to smooth out the remaining issues (Thanks again for including your settings!)
I will need some time to put this all together (I am writing you on my lunch break). But I wanted to give you an update to stay tuned and I will do my best to send in some updated samples by the end of the week at latest.
If you have any further questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out.
Best wishes and I will be in touch soon,
Adam Hardin
Hello Adam!
Thanks a lot for your prompt response.
I want to thank you for your kind words, we are really happy to help :). Please let me know how everything goes, it sounds good to me your planned steps. I do think the positioning might help because your acoustic conditioning apparently is pretty accurate. However, it might be worth to see if the door is causing the reflections that we are trying to avoid.
I think with the examples I provided you can guide yourself being aware of what are the issues and you can try to nail it as close as possible to the examples. If after all the experimentation you think you were not able to get it, we could see what else could be done to treat the door or floor of your room, because honestly the walls seem pretty well treated to me.
Hope you have an amazing week. Looking forward to hear from you soon!
Gabriel
Hi Gabriel!
I hope you had a pleasant weekend and that this message finds you well.
Thank you for your patience, work this past week was quite busy, (at a local High School here in Chicago) but we are just wrapping up for the summer and I should be able to respond to all future correspondence in a more timely manner. :)
It was great to listen to the samples you provided for me, as well as the sample that you processed. Thank you! This really gives me a lot of good information that I will use to increase my recording quality. I will send samples and questions focusing on reducing background noise later on this week.
What I want to tackle right now is your notes regarding the reverb tails on my previous samples. I have done as you suggested, (in this link) I have run a series of tests at different distances to the microphone. I have separate files for each distance: 6", 9", 12" and 15". I also did as you requested and removed my Ipad from the recording room and I also made sure the central air in my home is turned off to help reduce background noise.
Please let me know if these samples address the issue, and thank you again for all your help!
Best regards,
Adam.
Hello Adam!
Hope everything is going great :).
I'm glad that you are finding useful the tips and the information provided! I just asked for permission to access the files to review them as the link you posted has a restricted view.
Please let me know once you grant me access to the files.
Hope you have an amazing week.
Gabriel
Access granted! Thank you for your patience. Please let me know if you have any further issues.
Best,
Adam
Hello Adam! How are you?
Hope you had an amazing week. I listened to your samples and definitely the one that sounds better is the one that is closer to the mic (6 inches to the mic). I don't know if you were able to notice, but the one of 15 " from mic has a lot of boxiness and one can notice the reverberations of the space where you are recording.
The one from 6" sounds good although still slightly boxy. Maybe with a little bit of EQ, removing around 200-250 Hz will make it. Would you like to give it a try? If you want, you could try different settings and we can see which one sounds better. You can guide yourself as well with the previously sent audios.
Let me know what you think! Hope you have an amazing weekend.
Gabriel
Hello Gabriel!
I hope you had a great weekend. Mine was quite pleasant and spent with family, thank you for asking! And thank you for your feedback. I definitely did notice that the boxiness increased as I got further away.
As per your advice, I cut 4.5db from 200Hz. I used your post on May 23rd as a template. This is what I have done.
I have included the EQ processed sample here and your email should already have access.
As you predicted, more of the boxiness came out. Please let me know what you think and I hope you have a great week.
Best,
Adam Hardin
Hello Adam! How are you?? Hope you are great.
I'm glad to bring you good news. After discussing your sample with the QC team and appreciating a lot your diligence and good will, we've decided you are good to go!
Please make sure your audios have exactly this same quality to avoid issues in the future.
Please let me know if you need anything else :).
Looking forward to hearing from you and I'm glad you are able to work with us.
Bests,
Gabriel
Hello Gabriel!
That is great news! I'm thrilled to have confirmation that my samples have been approved by the Bunny Studio QC Team. :)
I will submit my audition with this same quality later this week to become a Bunny Studio Pro and I look forward to beginning work!
Thank you so much for your patience and advice, Gabriel. If I do have any issues, I will be sure to reach out on the Community board.
Best,
Adam Hardin
It was my pleasure Adam :)! You are welcome anytime.
See you around and glad you were able to make it. Thank you for your commitment and patience as well.
Best regards,
Gabriel