Dreaded Audio

Some of you might recall that I am a technical writer for a software company. I write training manuals. Well, lately we've been on a big push to convert our instructor-led training to e-learning, so it's been a zoo. Four new softwares to learn, a whole different perspective on learning/etc. And then last week, the most dreaded moment of all - recording audio.

I am one of those people who absolutely HATES hearing my recorded voice. I am also one of those people who will swear and be damn that I do NOT really sound like that. So what if my company spent a million dollars building a recording studio, and the microphone alone cost more than I make in a month.....that's still not how I sound, I swear!

So I head to one of the sound booths on recording day, ready to just get it over with. That wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. First off, my allergies are simply horrid right now and they give me asthma. So I was in the sound booth with coffee and chapstick. Also, I found that standing straight gives me more air in more lungs, but standing for a long time leaves me just as short of breath. Some of the audio sounded like an x-rated phone call.

Then there was the group of people who thought the RECORDING STUDIO was a great place to have a staff meeting - a loud staff meeting. Yeah, the fact that none of them had card access and that the room was labeled RECORDING STUDIO shouldn't have filled them in on the fact that hey, maybe, just maybe, someone was RECORDING! Idiots. I had to go get the audio guru to change all my settings to screen them out.

But then hammer guy started. Yeah, they're doing build-out on the floor above me. What are the odds, right? And of course, dude started hammering every single time I was in the middle of a long paragraph. And not just hammering - hammering each nail at least five times - right above my head. C'mon, people. This is a corporate building. It's made of steel and sheetrock and cheap cabinetry. No one should take five hits to get a nail into sheetrock or cheap cabinets. Heck, my cat can pull a nail out of sheetrock with her paw and she doesn't even have claws. So I'd tried recording the same slide five times and almost got done when hammering dude started again. I lost it and yelled "get a nail gun, you weakling."

The people having the meeting were amused. Hammer dude probably wasn't, but I don't care.

So what about you....do you like your voice on tape?

Deadly DeLeon