A VO's Journey: Voiceover and more voice over

Send us Fan Mail
Someone asked how to keep going with voice over during a hard stretch, and it turned into the whole episode.
When you start building a VO business, the people closest to you often don't get it. You're spending nights in a closet or a blanket fort with nothing to show for it yet, and it costs money. They get worried, and worry usually comes out as frustration. I talk about what I learned the hard way: shoulder that worry instead of fighting it, keep going, and prove two things. That this works, and that you're not going to quit.
(00:00) Open Forum Friday, solo today
(01:51) How do you keep going with VO during a hardship?
(02:35) When your partner or family doesn't understand
(06:03) Why it's so lonely at first
(06:49) Shoulder their worry instead of fighting it
(07:25) Businesses take three to five years
(08:47) Fear comes out as anger
(10:06) The hobo fort years
(11:09) You have to prove it works
(15:48) "What video games are you in?"
(17:10) Prove you're not going to quit
(19:02) Why the to-do list isn't enough
(25:46) Never waking up wishing for another job
(28:56) Why a supportive community matters
Sit in on our live VO Journey Academy classes free during Free Class Week, 12-15 October. It's four live classes, no charge:
https://www.avosjourney.com/free-class-week-october-2026?src=podcast
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vJS4Uicx0bw
Support the show
Social Links:   
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/anthony_pica_vo/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/AVOsJOURNEY
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/avosjourney/ 
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonypicavo/

Send us Fan Mail
One week after the new Academy Voices website went live, Gabby, Angela and I got together to talk about how it's going, what's coming next, and the news everyone has been asking us about: what's being said about Audible letting listeners interact with characters in the narrator's voice, and ACX's new room tone rule.
(00:00) One week in, and the new site is holding up.
(01:23) How week one went. New authors posting per-finished-hour work, authors bringing their audio over, and narrators using the tools bundle or buying tools as they need them.
(03:21) Fewer questions than the old site. The fifteen-minute check is now a recommendation if you've already done books with us, and contracts are created automatically when you accept an offer.
(04:48) Coming soon: an Academy Voices store and app, so listeners can buy audiobooks straight from the people who made them.
(08:39) Seeing your sales almost in real time.
(10:00) Is an AI-enhanced headshot OK? I check every profile myself. Subtle editing is one thing. If people can tell straight away it was made by AI, don't use it.
(14:38) You'll get an email whether or not you were cast for an audition on the new site.
(16:03) Selfie headshots are fine. Get your whole face in, and hold the camera up high.
(17:38) Short stories under 5,000 words? Yes, we have those.
(19:08) What's going around on social media about Audible and interactive characters, and the questions nobody has clear answers to yet: the author's rights, the narrator's consent, and pay.
(22:56) If your voice gets used for hours of conversation, should you be paid for that time?
(25:52) Why listeners still want a real person.
(26:58) ACX's room tone change. It's now 1 to 5 seconds at the start and the end of every file, and our audio checker has been updated to match.
(30:26) Why the change worries us, starting with retail samples that open on four seconds of silence.
(36:20) An author who tried AI narration before coming to us, and why AI narration isn't free.
(38:17) Don't forget the listener.
(38:44) Duet narration on Academy Voices. How to audition, and why each narrator signs their own contract.
(41:29) Moving your account over: use the same name and email.
(41:57) Can you opt out of voice replicas on ACX? We don't know yet, and that's part of the problem.
(43:15) What authors and narrators earn on our own store. Academy Voices keeps 20 percent.
(44:31) Auditioning for a duet without a partner? Audition anyway.
(46:22) A safe space for human narration.
(47:17) Disclosure and consent, and how writing tools are blurring what counts as AI.
(48:48) Getting the word out, with a press release once the store is ready.
(50:03) Should the Academy Voices app carry podcasts?
(52:14) Distributors and AI-narrated books.
(54:00) Running a convention? We'd love to come.
Academy Voices is $9 a month or $97 for the year. https://academyvoices.com
Our live classes are open to anyone during Free Class Week, 12 to 15 October. https://www.avosjourney.com/free-class-week-october-2026?src=podcast
When you're ready to train with us, here's VO Journey Academy. https://www.avosjourney.com/join?src=podcast
Every episode of the podcast is at https://www.avosjourney.com/podcast/
Support the show
Social Links:   
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/anthony_pica_vo/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/AVOsJOURNEY
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/avosjourney/ 
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonypicavo/

Send us Fan Mail
If editing takes you longer than recording, this one's for you. Gabby and I talk about how to edit an audiobook faster. Learn your shortcuts, keep moving forward while you listen, and fix your room before you reach for a plugin. Then I go through my whole editing and mastering chain, the order I do it in, and why I do the exact same thing every time.
(00:00) Editing audiobooks, commercials, all of it. Free Class Week is next week.
(01:29) Why editing turns into a bottleneck for so many people.
(02:02) Learn your keyboard shortcuts. If you're doing everything with the mouse, you're probably taking twice as long. I have about seven or eight keys bound to the things I do every single time.
(04:37) Keep moving forward. Edit while you listen and only stop for something big.
(05:57) Why editing speed decides how many auditions you can send in a day.
(07:21) Why I edited my first audiobooks by hand, and what it taught me.
(08:43) My DAW editing workflow. Step one isn't in the software at all. It's your studio. Get four to six inches of treatment if you can.
(11:07) Record clean, then a simple EQ with the high pass filter on. Save it as a preset so it's one click.
(12:36) A single band compressor. Minus 12 dB threshold, 2.5 to 1 ratio. Then a boost and a hard limiter if you need it.
(14:37) Clean-up. Mouth de-click and voice de-noise, both saved as presets.
(15:19) Why I don't trust breath plugins. They can clip your consonants.
(17:21) Do audiobooks need breaths? When in doubt, take them out, but watch your pauses.
(18:58) Do it in the right order, or you'll end up running the same fix four times.
(20:28) The same chain every single time on my own audio.
(21:22) What a hard limiter actually does, and how it's different from a soft limiter.
(23:46) Editing vs mastering. Gabby and I explain the difference.
(27:12) Every engineer does it a little differently. Find what works for you.
(28:54) If you're doing 20 or 30 things to your audio, pull it back. The box I bought early on and finally unplugged.
(31:04) Most raw audio sounds better than the processed version. Processing should never make your audio sound worse.
(31:31) Time is money. Find your bottleneck and go looking for a better way.
(33:27) How to trust your process once you have one.
(36:18) What is mixing?
Post a read in our Facebook group and get a note on it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/avosjourney
New to your DAW? Adobe Audition For Beginners: https://www.avosjourney.com/offers/TtoY2qLB?src=podcast-ep313
Audacity For Beginners: https://www.avosjourney.com/offers/R6NzcQrq?src=podcast-ep313
Our live classes are open to anyone during Free Class Week, 12 to 15 October. https://www.avosjourney.com/free-class?src=podcast-ep313
Every episode of the podcast is at https://www.avosjourney.com/podcast/
Support the show
Social Links:   
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/anthony_pica_vo/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/AVOsJOURNEY
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/avosjourney/ 
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonypicavo/

Send us Fan Mail
You sent 10 auditions, heard nothing, and now you're wondering if this works. In this episode I talk about why voice acting is an auditions numbers game, how many auditions it really takes to book an audiobook, and how to keep going and track your numbers while you work a day job.
(00:45) The auditions numbers game. Quality matters, but quantity gets you further. Casting is subjective, so give your best take and move on to the next one.
(02:11) Why people quit after 10 auditions. Nobody gives you feedback, you doubt yourself (imposter syndrome, and we've all had it), and you don't have a community telling you to send 10 more.
(05:40) What booking looked like in my first year. I auditioned for everything on every platform I could, with a $40 microphone and a pop filter made out of pantyhose. In the first three to four months I booked maybe one to three jobs. Training and better equipment made the difference, and year two got a lot better.
(10:45) Titles that fit your voice, or audition for everything? Casting often doesn't know what they want until they hear it. Do the titles that fit your voice first, then go back and audition for the rest.
(14:05) A weekly number that works with your job. When I started I worked all day, had dinner and put the kids to bed, then worked from 10 or 11pm until 3am. Find the number you can hit each day and week, then grow it.
(15:02) Track every audition. Pen and paper or a spreadsheet. The numbers show what you're actually doing, not what you think you're doing.
(15:49) 30 auditions and nothing back? It takes hundreds, even thousands of auditions. Like flipping a coin, the odds only even out over a big enough sample.
(18:23) Do this today. Find titles that fit your voice and style and get five or 10 auditions in, then five or 10 more outside your usual style.
(19:00) Keep training while you keep auditioning. If you're not hearing back, it may be your audio, your read of the directions, or that you're not quite ready yet. That's normal early on. You need both.
(21:43) Don't quit. When you're not booking, that's the time to send more auditions and get training.
Post a read in our Facebook group and get a note on it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/avosjourney
Our live classes are open to anyone during Free Class Week, 12 to 15 October. https://www.avosjourney.com/free-class?src=podcast-ep312
Support the show
Social Links:   
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/anthony_pica_vo/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/AVOsJOURNEY
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/avosjourney/ 
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonypicavo/

Send us Fan Mail
Casting directors are starting to ask voice actors for video proof that they're real. One of our members was asked to send a video of themselves reading the script before they could be booked, and it was a real casting agency, not a scam. Gabby and I talk about why this is happening, what it means for your audio and your branding, and why the people hiring you want to see who they're getting.
(00:00) Day two of the new Academy Voices. Unused tool credits now roll over for up to three months.
(01:40) Today's topic. Casting directors want video proof you're not AI.
(02:20) The member who had to send a video of themselves reading before they got the job.
(03:02) Who owns it? Why work made mostly by AI causes problems with rights, royalties and contracts.
(04:18) Clients feel duped. When the audition, the finished audio and the directed session don't sound like the same person. Gabby on why agents test talent beyond the demo.
(05:41) Audio tools are like Photoshop for your voice. Too much, and the client isn't getting what they cast.
(06:41) The real reason we'd lose work. It's not that clients don't want human voices. It's when we're too hard to work with.
(07:34) Mouth noise. Processing it out instead of fixing the problem at the source.
(08:07) Should your samples be video? A listener asks about Upwork. Try a couple of live performances.
(09:04) The people who hire you want to picture you as the voice of their brand.
(09:48) Business on top, party on the bottom. Looking presentable on camera.
(10:26) From phone patches to browser sessions. The more tools clients have, the more they'll want to see you.
(11:42) Why requests for proof will keep growing, and California's new rule that AI voices and actors have to be disclosed.
(13:01) Can you still tell what's AI? The pull back to analog and the political ad problem.
(15:18) There's proof in the pudding, but you have to make the pudding. Put your work out there so people can see you're real.
(17:11) Is the AI threat overhyped? There's still plenty of work out there.
(18:09) Why younger people spot fakes faster than older ones.
(19:30) You need proof too. If someone asks for a video, check who they are first. Scams on automated platforms.
(20:38) It's no different from a client asking for a noise floor test or a short raw file.
(21:13) What actually hurts us is the AI companies' marketing. You have to run your business and market it.
(22:19) Being found when people search with AI instead of Google.
(23:24) A listener asks about custom samples on Upwork that never get a reply.
(24:13) Why you rarely get feedback. Most voice over companies are one to five people looking after hundreds of talent.
(26:30) Get your profile up on the new Academy Voices. Human only, from the start.
(27:30) Voice cloning offers on casting sites, and ACX's rule on AI. More on this next week.
(28:55) Free Class Week, 12 to 15 October.
Our live classes are open to anyone during Free Class Week, 12 to 15 October. https://www.avosjourney.com/free-class-week-october-2026?src=podcast
When you're ready to train with us, here's VO Journey Academy. https://www.avosjourney.com/join?src=podcast
Narrators, Academy Voices is human only. https://academyvoices.com
Every episode of the podcast is at https://www.avosjourney.com/podcast/
Support the show
Social Links:   
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/anthony_pica_vo/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/AVOsJOURNEY
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/avosjourney/ 
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonypicavo/