Audio Post
Why you need an Audio Engineer
When audio post is skipped, everything else slows down.
- Deadlines slip
- editors fix what should’ve been caught upstream
- “good enough” recordings fall apart on mobile or broadcast.’
Our work begins where most stop – making sure every take, tone, and platform plays back exactly as intended.
Audio branding increases brand recognition by up to 46% –
if done professionally.
Get sound that carries your message safely from studio to audience
- Broadcast-ready audio on the first export
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Consistent brand sound across markets
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Zero surprises at delivery
How we transform your audio file
Cleanup
Remove breaths, clicks, hums, and room noise to keeps focus on the message, not the mic.
Tone shaping
Balance frequencies for warmth and clarity, every word stays intelligible – even on phones.
Dynamics in Mastering
Smooth peaks, control sibilance, preserve energy, so content sounds natural and fatigue-free.
Loudness & specs
Master to platform LUFS and true-peak for predictable playback on every channel.
The effect you’ll get
Make audience listen – and colleagues focus
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Higher clarity and comprehension even on small speakers
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Consistent brand sound across regions and years
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Predictable loudness next to other media
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Fewer review rounds and faster approvals
Meet your audio experts
They live and breathe audio
Jarrod
Senior Post Producer
Marco
Audio Post / Project ManagerFAQ: Everything you need to know about audio-post
Audio post-production is the stage between raw recordings and files that are genuinely ready for broadcast, digital distribution, or multi-market release. Done properly it involves linguistic validation, technical compliance to broadcaster or platform specifications, creative audio refinement, and structured multi-market delivery management. Not just cleaning up audio.
Our process covers five distinct stages:
1. Linguistic QA — native script and performance validation: Raw recordings reviewed by native linguistic reviewers in each language. We verify correct pronunciation of product names, brand terms, geographic references, taglines. We check that word flow sounds like it was written for that language – not translated into it. We assess tempo against cultural listening norms: German typically carries more syllables per sentence than English for the same content; Italian tends to flow faster in conversational register. We verify tone and intent consistency across all language versions. Issues get corrected before the file advances.
2. Technical compliance: Every delivery format has specific technical requirements. European broadcast requires loudness levels to EBU R128 standards. North American broadcast uses ATSC A/85. Streaming platforms have their own specs. Beyond loudness: file format, bitrate, sample rate, channel configuration, naming conventions. We confirm the exact specifications for each delivery channel and produce to those specs. Files validated before delivery. Broadcaster rejection for technical non-compliance is entirely avoidable, and we eliminate it.
3. Creative audio enhancement: Editing for performance – selecting the best takes, trimming breaths and clicks, smoothing pacing – plus EQ and compression applied to reinforce brand voice and ensure tonal consistency across languages. A German read and a Spanish read of the same campaign should feel like the same brand, even though they sound entirely different. That tonal alignment is a deliberate production choice.
4. Multi-market output management: For multi-language campaigns, each language is QA’d independently, then cross-checked for consistency across the full campaign. Delivery organised into structured packs — per country, per cut, per format – with usage rights and metadata documented. One consolidated delivery to you. Not files trickling in from six different sources.
5. Final playback and approval: The finished mixed audio plays back to the client in context – video, VO, and music together. Sync issues, tone problems, version errors get caught before air. Nothing releases from our side without signed-off approval on the locked version.
EBU R128 is the loudness normalisation standard European broadcasters adopted to ensure consistent audio levels across programming and advertising. Before normalisation standards were enforced, broadcast audio varied significantly between content – some material noticeably louder than others, leading to audience complaints and poor viewing experience.
Under EBU R128, all audio delivered to European broadcasters must meet a target integrated loudness of -23 LUFS, with specific tolerances for true peak levels and short-term loudness variation. Audio outside those tolerances gets rejected by broadcast QC systems or automatically levelled down by the broadcaster’s playout system – which flattens the dynamic range of a carefully produced VO and makes it sound compressed and lifeless on air.
The complication for international campaigns: different regions run different standards. North American broadcast uses ATSC A/85, targeting -24 LKFS. Streaming platforms — YouTube, Spotify, Apple – each apply their own normalisation targets. A file mixed for European broadcast at -23 LUFS sounds wrong on a platform normalising to -14 LUFS.
We produce files to the specific loudness standard required by each delivery channel, per market. Simultaneous delivery to European TV, North American TV, and digital platforms means three different sets of specs — not one file applied everywhere. A detail that doesn’t matter until it does, then it matters enormously.
Fair question, and an important one when evaluating any international VO production partner.
We use a network of native linguistic reviewers – working professionals with language expertise, typically with backgrounds in broadcasting, translation, or commercial audio – in the markets we regularly serve. Not freelancers sourced through a language marketplace. Qualified reviewers with specific experience in broadcast and commercial audio standards for their language market.
At the Linguistic QA stage, the reviewer is listening for: correct pronunciation of brand-specific terms, natural word flow that sounds written rather than translated, tempo appropriateness for the cultural context, CTA clarity and emphasis, and consistency with the approved performance direction from the session.
Reviewers flag issues with a specific timestamp and description. Those issues get resolved by re-editing existing takes, or where it’s a performance problem rather than an audio problem, by scheduling a targeted retake of the specific lines. The file doesn’t advance to technical compliance until linguistic QA is signed off.
For markets where regional dialect is especially sensitive – specific Italian regions, Swiss German, Brazilian versus European Portuguese — we apply the same scrutiny to dialect accuracy, not just language accuracy.
Selected works
At VoiceArchive we’re lucky to work with some of the world’s top brands. This is some of our selected work.
