Voice Acting Demo Reel 2024 (Placeholder)

Voice Acting Demo Reel 2024

Voice acting started as a side experiment and became a serious practice. I now have a treated home booth, a solid chain, and a workflow that goes from first take to delivered file in under an hour.

The reel

Three sections, each demonstrating different range:

1. Animation characters — a gravel-voiced antagonist, a nervous bureaucrat, a hyperactive kid sidekick.
2. Narration — documentary warmth, measured pace, authority without stiffness.
3. Promo — punchy commercial energy, call to action, 15-second spot format.

Recording chain

Signal path:

• Microphone: Rode NT1-A — large condenser, low self-noise (4.5 dB), warm presence.
• Interface: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 — 24-bit/96 kHz, clean preamp, no colouring.
• DAW: Adobe Audition for editing and session management.
• Post: iZotope RX 10 for cleanup, then a light mastering chain.

Why the NT1-A?

Most budget condensers have a presence boost at 6–10 kHz that adds harshness on close-mic work. The NT1-A is flatter in that region, which means less corrective EQ in post and a cleaner foundation for character voices that need heavy processing.

Post-processing chain

The key principle: inline code for the rule — if the denoise pass changes the timbre noticeably, the recording environment isn't treated well enough. Fix the room, don't over-process.

Character samples

Punch and roll workflow

For longer narration sessions I use punch-and-roll: the DAW plays back the last three seconds of a good take, and I continue speaking — if the punch lands clean, it drops straight into the timeline without a cut.

Shortcut: Cmd+Shift+Space (punch record)
Review window: 3 s
Crossfade: 15 ms

This keeps the session moving at conversation pace rather than stopping to review every line.

Booth treatment

The booth is a converted wardrobe with 2-inch rockwool panels on three walls and corner bass traps. RT60 is approximately 0.12 seconds, measured with a Room EQ Wizard sweep.

Important: treatment kills reflections but doesn't add bass frequency control. The bass traps are the part most home booths skip, and the part that matters most for a clean low end on baritone reads.

The best performances happen when the tech disappears and you stop thinking about the chain.