Monitor In Your Booth

So Today’s Facebook query about voiceover comes from the Gardner Collective Group and it came in the form of a poll. The options were.

Computer Outside booth, Monitors Inside

Computer + Monitor in booth

Fanless/Silent Laptop in booth + Extra Monitors

Now, I’m not sure why those were the only available options. There are any number of ways you can configure your voice acting booth. Personally, I wrote “none of the above”.

Firstly, are we talking Computer monitor or Speakers? That can change some things.

In my opinion there is no reason to have your computer inside the vocal booth. All that is really needed is a couple of longer cables and a Computer monitor inside the booth. I use a wireless keyboard with mouse buttons to control my PC when I’m doing voice work. As for speakers? I find those not necessary in the booth either. I have headphones, but I don’t even wear those most of the time. On a directed session, sure. Everyday though, I just leave the volume up loud enough to hear the playback, just barely, and that is all I need to pull off punch and roll recording.

There are simply too many reasons NOT to keep a computer in your booth when doing voice recording.

1. They are noisy. There are some fanless models, but they are few and far between. Also, you sacrifice power for that silence in most cases.
2. They get hot! You definitely don’t want anything generating MORE heat inside your booth.
3. You need your computer accessible outside your booth more than inside. At least I do. I do all editing and production outside the booth, so if the computer needs to be restarted, have extra peripherals plugged in like USB drives, webcams or interfaces, I want to be able to get to it quickly and easily

As always YMMV but for me the computer and speakers need to be OUTSIDE the booth.