Studio
How my booth near Zagreb sounds and what’s in it, with the details of live sessions and delivery.
Sample
Each take has a slate, a short read, a soft line, a projected line, a shout and a few claps, so you can hear how the booth sounds at every level. It ends with 10 seconds of room tone.
Recorded on at one gain, 48 kHz, 24-bit, mono. The projected line, the shout and the claps are lowered so each take plays at one level; nothing else is processed.
English
Projected line lowered 15 dB, shout 23 dB, claps 25 dB. Noise floor: -69 dBFS.
Croatian
Projected line lowered 11 dB, shout 21 dB, claps 26 dB. Noise floor: -69 dBFS.
Transcript
English
Ivan Benko, booth sample, recorded in my treated booth on a LEWITT LCT 440 PURE into a Zoom UAC-232, 32-bit float at one fixed gain, about 10 centimeters from the mic.
Okay, so there’s this little bakery on Pine Street. Nothing fancy. But walk past around six in the morning and the back door’s propped open, and the whole street smells like brown bread and burnt sugar. You can’t not stop. The baker’s this older guy. Flour all over his sleeves, pencil behind his ear. I don’t even know his name. I don’t think anybody does. But when he thinks you’re not looking, he slips an extra roll into your bag. Every time. Never says a word about it. And you know the best part? It’s closed on Sundays, but he still goes in. Alone. Bakes one loaf, just for himself, and sits there listening to the street wake up. Anyway. Go early. Trust me.
[Softly] This is a softer, more intimate read.
[Projected] This is projected.
[At full voice] And this is full projection. Hey! Over here!
Back to normal. Three claps. [Three claps, each left to die away]
[10 seconds of room tone]
Croatian
Ivan Benko, uzorak kabine, snimljen u mojoj akustički obrađenoj kabini, LEWITT LCT 440 PURE u Zoom UAC-232, 32-bitni float uz stalno pojačanje, oko 10 centimetara od mikrofona.
Dobro, slušaj. Ima jedna mala pekara u Borovoj ulici. Ništa posebno. Ali kad prođeš tuda oko šest ujutro, stražnja vrata su širom otvorena i cijela ulica miriše na crni kruh i karamel. Ne možeš proći, a da ne staneš. Pekar je neki stariji lik. Rukavi puni brašna, olovka iza uha. Ne znam ni kako se zove. Mislim da to nitko ne zna. Ali kad misli da ne gledaš, ubaci ti još jedno pecivo u vrećicu. Svaki put. I nikad ništa ne kaže. A znaš što je najbolje? Nedjeljom je zatvoreno, ali on svejedno dođe. Sam. Ispeče jedan kruh, samo za sebe, sjedne i sluša kako se ulica budi. Uglavnom, idi rano. Vjeruj mi.
[Tiho] Ovo je tiše, intimnije čitanje.
[Glasnije] Ovo je glasnije.
[Punim glasom] A ovo je puni glas. Hej! Ovamo!
Opet normalno. Tri pljeska. [Tri pljeska, svaki pušten da zamre]
[10 sekundi tišine kabine]
Connectivity
Sessions and direction
- Live direction
- Zoom, Teams, Meet or Discord
- Broadcast-quality remote (on request)
- Cleanfeed, SessionLinkPRO or ipDTL
- Camera (2K, for video calls)
- Anker PowerConf C200 (opens in a new tab)
Internet
- Speed (wired Ethernet)
- Latency (round trip)
Measured on testmy.net (opens in a new tab) on . Speeds via Frankfurt, Germany.
Equipment
Audio
- Microphone
- Lewitt LCT 440 PURE (opens in a new tab)
- Audio interface
- ZOOM UAC-232 (opens in a new tab)
- Headphones (recording)
- Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO (opens in a new tab)
- Headphones (mixing & mastering)
- Sennheiser HD 600 (opens in a new tab)
Computer
- Build
- Custom-built silent computer
- Processor fan
- Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 LS-PWM (opens in a new tab)
- Recording software (DAW)
- REAPER (opens in a new tab)
Booth
It might look like a plush dungeon, but it’s cozy and gets the job done. Broadband absorbers cover the first reflection points, more are hung overhead where a bare ceiling would otherwise throw sound straight back down at the mic, and moving blankets close the gaps behind and beside the recording position.
The computer sits in the booth with me, so I built it to be silent. The power supply has no fan, and the processor fan is a low-speed Noctua. It stays quiet with a recording, a video call and a browser running at once.
Acoustic treatment
Delivery
If you don’t specify a format, you get a 48 kHz, 24-bit mono WAV.
- Sample rate
- 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz
- Bit depth
- 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit float
- Transfer
- Google Drive, Dropbox, WeTransfer, (S)FTP, Amazon S3 or email
Formats
WAV
Uncompressed (Waveform Audio File Format). It takes every bit depth listed, and it’s the only one of the three that can hold 32-bit float. A float file can’t clip, so a line recorded too hot can still be turned down cleanly in post.
FLAC
Lossless compression (Free Lossless Audio Codec): the same audio as the WAV, bit for bit, in about half the size. It holds 16 and 24-bit, but not float.
MP3
Lossy compression (MPEG Audio Layer III): smaller files, with some quality lost. MP3 has a bitrate instead of a bit depth. The default is 320 kbps constant bitrate (CBR), the highest MP3 allows. Lower rates, such as 192 kbps or 128 kbps mono for the web, and variable bitrate (VBR) are available on request.
Free audition or a quote
Email a script and a deadline to hey@ib.actor, and I’ll send a quote. To hear your script first, paste up to 50 words into the form for a free audition.