As a voice actor, I have a modest home studio where I record commercials for my VO clients and auditions that have been sent to me by my agent. My studio has been configured throughout the years with all the gadgets and gear I would need to send quality audio. I started out with a lot of bulky analog equipment like a reel-to-reel tape recorder, bulky microphones, processing gear, etc. Not very portable in any way shape or form. You can imagine that trying to record commercials and auditions when you went on vacation would be next to impossible in those analog days. As a freelancer, you would have to sign out for however long your vacation was and probably miss out on auditions that could mean income. I remember taking my family on vacation to Disney World in the early nineties. My steady client at the time needed some commercials recorded and on the air during my vacation, but I had no access to remote equipment. Fortunately, the recording studio where I normally recorded these spots secured the Disney broadcast studio right there in the Magic Kingdom for me. Through the wizardry of ISDN phone lines, I was able to record the spots at Disney studios and the spots made it to air on time. It was actually kinda cool. The Disney audio engineer videotaped my recording session (with my hi-8 video camera) as another Disney souvenir that, for me, was even better than the t-shirts and mouse ears. Then, along came the home computer and everything went digital.
As computers and the internet became the central hub of an audio studio, the analog machines, bulky recording gear, and even ISDN telephony has gone the way of the dinosaur. You can now record using a laptop and a microphone with a USB interface. You can take it all with you on vacation and record from your hotel room, or inside your car. There are now internet connections such as SourceConnect and iPDTL that enable you to record live sessions remotely, from anywhere, to anywhere.
Today, the gear, gadgets, and gizmos have all gotten even smaller and more compact than ever. I found a little gem of a device that’s designed for musicians, who now have the same capabilities to record and collaborate with fellow musicians anywhere inspiration strikes. Just bring along your guitar. It’s a relatively new gadget on the market called Spire Studio, created by iZotope, a company renowned for its fantastic professional audio enhancement and restoration plugins. This little round, portable recording wonder was specifically created for musicians on the go. You can plug in your guitar and /or bass right into Spire Studio and start recording a new song. It has an amazing microphone and professional audio plugins built right in that work to create incredible sounding audio! Or you can bypass the built-in mic and plug in your own preferred professional microphone. You can plug in a drum machine or any other auxiliary source to make music. Mix it down on the companion iPhone app and send it to a bandmate or fellow musical collaborator. The app allows you to record multi-track audio, mix all your tracks and send the finished file anywhere, from anywhere. You can even send your recorded audio to another audio editing app, make your edits and then email the finished product. No bulky, space-eating laptop, no extra microphone or interface to carry with you, just a small round recording device and your iPhone.
I’ve always been kind of an early adopter with gadgets. I discovered this wonderful little round box and immediately thought it would be extremely useful to record auditions when I was traveling. And I was right. I absolutely love it. I bring my Spire Studio and Bluetooth earbuds with me and I can do all sorts of editing and audio corrections right from my iPhone. It’s fabulous and very affordable. I’ve written to iZotope to implore them to include voice-over artists as well as musicians into their marketing. Also to update the app to make a definitive iPad version. They haven’t yet …and I believe they’re missing out on another revenue stream here. But I think they will eventually come around to it. Musician or VO talent …you can check it out here: Spire Studio from iZotope