News
Voice-overs? It’s all in the delivery
3 June 2011
Hackenbacker relies on AMS Neve processing to help Peter Dickson retain his X-factor
Peter Dickson’s voice is his fortune. Regular viewers will recognize it from top TV shows such as The X Factor, Family Fortunes, Britain’s Got Talent and The Paul O’Grady Show. And as the country’s first-call voice-over artist, he’s also in constant demand for live productions – which means his very success gives rise to a potential problem.
Being on the road, he can’t always make it in person to the London studios when the producer’s call comes in – so he has his own portable recording setup that he takes round with him. ‘I’ve recorded on cruise ships, in hotels, in wardrobes, even in cars,’ he says. But, he adds, without studio quality monitoring he’s never been confident that he was delivering a sound consistent with his signature ‘vocal print’. And that signature sound is what his producer clients are paying for.
The answer, he realized, was to seek professional help – from Hackenbacker’s Nigel Heath, who, with the assistance of engineer Alex Fielding, modified the settings on Dickson’s mobile rig to match up with the AMS Neve MMC at Hackenbacker Studio One. The result is that Dickson can now be confident that when he sends in a recording made on the road, it will hit the processing chain in the studio in a ‘Neve-ready’ format.
‘I can now,’ says Dickson, ‘deliver the best sounding audio possible while on the road – and all thanks to the guys at Hackenbacker and Neve’s wonderful processors.’ In other words, by ensuring that he’s always got that AMS Neve ‘X Factor’, he protects his own family fortune.
