As the COVID-19 pandemic forces all non-essential businesses to move to remote work, recording studios, artists, and producers are getting increasingly creative and flexible in making remote recording a feasible replacement for the in-studio experience. At Dubway, we’ve been doing remote recordings for years, but there’s no time like the present to iterate and consider the various alternative options that are popping up during the crisis. If you’re an artist or producer looking to make a deadline or hit the studio, read on to hear a bit about how we can make that happen, and if you’re an engineer, we’ll have some tips for you as well.
Dubway has offered a variety of remote sessions for artists and actors for nearly two decades. Many of our post-production and VO clients have worked remote or semi-remote for years and are already (more or less) adjusted to a socially-distant workplace. When we have no clients in-studio, we have a number of ways of recording audio that’s every bit as high-quality as the in-studio recording chain. If the client has a DAW on their side, the best solution is generally a stable remote connection via an ISDN replacement like SourceConnect, which we use extensively. For some clients without a DAW, we can offer in-home services, such as setting them up with a recording platform and mic, monitoring remotely, and then receiving the recordings to edit and mix in our studio environment. Dubway engineer Zach Grappone has had great results using in-home recording platforms with some of our podcasting clients, including CloudBerry. Whether you’re looking to dub vocals, record your podcast, or get edits on mixes, we can ensure the sound will be every bit as professional. When coupled with the now-ubiquitous Zoom app, it’s the next-best thing to being in the room—the same results, but with no commute!
For producers, we also have an extensive network of VO talent with in-home recording environments of their own, and we are more than happy to offer booking services, alongside the entire end-to-end audio process of recording, editing, mixing, and mastering your projects.
Our engineers have been getting creative as well, testing and comparing various technological strategies for different remote workflows. For those curious, we’ve found our favorite apps during this have included the aforementioned SourceConnect and Zoom, and we’ve been having success using the Open Broadcaster Software Project’s eponymous OBS to stream ProTools with relatively low latency to YouTube Live, Facebook Live, and Twitch; we’ve also heard great things (and seen some cool results) using Listento from Audiomovers, which is like a more affordable SourceConnect, without the ISDN part. Operations Manager Nathaniel Reichman lead the team in a test of some of these technologies’ latency results, and has been using them to successfully conduct mixes with remote production teams (he swears by SourceConnect and OBS).
While the pandemic is certainly worrying for every industry, we’re committed at Dubway to do our best to make sure it has as little impact on our work together as possible. If you have questions about our remote options, session-specific inquiries, or want to let us in on another helpful tool, you can always drop us a line at our general contact email (info@dubway.com)—we love hearing from you!