5 Reasons Professional Voice Over is a Better Investment than DIY

It’s tempting to record your voice over with a low budget, especially with how simple it is to sound-treat a closet and record with your smartphone. But these solutions are insufficient for your most important audio content. To record high-quality professional voice over, you still need excellent diction, a flexible voice style, proper microphone technique, and more knowledge you can’t learn overnight. 

Conversely, service providers for professional voice overs have mastered these practices. As a result, they are capable of recording clearer, more engaging voice overs that align more with what your audience likes than what you or a team member could produce.

They know the nuances of audio recording

Voice over artists and websites offering professional voice overs know the nuances of recording audio, which allows them to record high-quality audio.

Professional voice over artists know nuances like proper mic placement and how to prevent echo and distortions. Plosives, for example, are a common issue at amateur-made voice overs. Plosives are strong sounds we cause while pronouncing consonants like P or B, which can clip your audio, causing uneditable distortion. Professional voice over service providers aren’t immune to plosives, but they know how to avoid them.

Professional voice over artists know nuances like proper mic placement and how to prevent echo and distortions.

Individuals offering professional voice overs built a perfect recording space and trained their voices through trial and error. As a result, when you hire them, you get immediate access to their studios and skills instead of spending years building and understanding your own. The final result is clear.

They can convey tone, style, and emotion

Voice artists rehearse thousands of lines each year in different tones and styles. So to record a voice over that matches the qualities and emotions of different client’s stories, voice artists learned to adapt their voice without compromising clear diction, unlike amateur voice over artists.

When an amateur voice over artist, say, a team member, has to record a voice over, it’s common for them to sound unnatural, like a robot or an old radio host. In their minds, an expert has to emphasize and add energy to each word, so they do it. But that’s far from reality.

Professionals execute your script flawlessly, representing your brand how you want.

Professional voice over artists modify the tone, volume, personality, and intensity of their voice based on the purpose of the voiceover and the script. So while they may sound excited during a voiceover for a sports commercial, they’ll reduce their energy while recording the voice for an emotional or sad situation.

An amateur voice over artist can hit record, but they may not be able to communicate the emotions and voice qualities your team defined as effectively as a professional, which may affect your story’s message. On the other hand, professionals execute your script flawlessly, representing your brand how you want.

They can help you understand your audience better

Some experts offer professional voice over services to a few niches. They know these industries’ listeners’ emotions and performance expectations, which allows them to choose the style, tones, words, and pauses necessary to entertain them.

For instance, voice actors unspecialized in your niche will record a high-quality voice over based on your script’s notes. So you’ll be in charge of telling them which words to emphasize and describing the voice style. The issue, however, is you likely don’t have experience recording audio for your audience, so your script’s notes are educated guesses and not data-backed suggestions.

Voice actors specialized in your niche understand your audience’s reaction to different voice styles, allowing them to choose the best one depending on your scene’s purpose.

In contrast, voice actors specialized in your niche understand your audience’s reaction to different voice styles, allowing them to choose the best one depending on your scene’s purpose. They can recommend rewriting an entire scene to make it more appealing, too, backing their suggestion with data and hands-on experience.

Internal teams use information from their buyer personas and other customer-defining frameworks to ensure their voice over has a pace, language, and tone appealing to their customers. Unfortunately, these frameworks define a fictional customer based on ideal qualities instead of using information from the real world, as a specialized voice over artist does.

They come in different price ranges

Professional voice over costs can vary depending on a variety of factors. Voice artists set prices based on their turnaround time, involvement in unions, focus industry, experience, and the length of your script. Because of the diversity of actors and projects, there’s voice talent within your budget.

For example, companies seeking next-day deliveries will likely invest more than those placing projects within a month of their deadline. Besides reducing costs, the latter also has more time to submit feedback to the artist, increasing the likelihood of receiving a recording every team member loves.

Because of several price ranges for professional voice over services, it’s simple to find an artist who suits your budget.

The cost of hiring a voice artist also varies depending on whether they are part of a union or not. When you hire a union member, you’ll usually pay a higher rate than an independent voice talent. That pay increase is perhaps explained by how unions set a minimum pay rate to provide above-average pay to members. However, if any dispute happened between you and the voice talent, you can contact the union’s members to solve the conflict.

In contrast, non-union voice talent typically charges less because they don’t have to invest in a union’s membership fees. Unlike with unions, no one acts as an intermediary if any dispute arises.

Because of several price ranges for professional voice over services, it’s simple to find an artist who suits your budget. For example, at Bunny Studio, a professional search site for pre-vetted voice artists, you can find affordable options for $46 for a hundred-word script to over $1,000 for the same length.

They can edit and add music to your voice over’s audio

Voice artists know not every client has an audio production team ready to synchronize their voice over to their video or animation or add music and sound effects. So many professional voice over artists can assist these clients through additional services.

If none of your team’s members can work with many audio tracks or video clips at once, hire an expert who can. Otherwise, you risk ruining a high-quality voice over.

For example, there are voice artists who have mastered Audacity and Adobe Audition, two well-known audio editing software, to include and edit any audio tracks the client wants for their project—with the characteristics they want. Others specialize in video editing software so they can help clients to synchronize their audio and video perfectly.

Not every company needs a voice artist who offers audio or video editing. But if none of your team’s members can work with many audio tracks or video clips at once, hire an expert who can. Otherwise, you risk ruining a high-quality voice over.

Hire a professional voice over artist for your next project

Professional voice over service providers, like freelancers, marketplaces, and professional search sites, can execute your script’s ideas flawlessly.

You can use Bunny Studio, a professional voice over artist search site, to find pre-vetted voice actors for your upcoming project. Then, once your voice over is ready, you can add your audio to Vyond Studio and synchronize it with your video effortlessly.