Voice Tracking: Bad for Radio?

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,October 10, 2017     courtesy All Access Music Group

“What do you think of voice-tracking?” came a voice in Q&A after one of my presentations.

The question came from a man wearing a t-shirt. The t-shirt was black, with a community radio logo on the front, and on the back, in bright white capital letters: “CORPORATE RADIO STILL SUCKS.”

Voice-tracking has a bad reputation, and I can understand why. It’s been used, in many cases, as a tool to remove skilled presenters from stations, and a tool to stop stations from being live. Many people feel that it is a destroyer of all that was good in radio twenty or thirty years ago.

In the country I was in, New Zealand, the feeling against voice-tracking runs strong. A devastating earthquake in Christchurch six years ago was accompanied by some radio stations – yes, the “corporate” ones – just continuing in automation mode. It caused severe damage, yet some stations took too long to come out of cheery-sounding DJs voice-tracking music as if nothing had happened.

So, voice-tracking is bad, and radio should go back to being live and local, you’d assume.I’m not so sure.

Just like any other tool, voice-tracking can be used badly or well.

Used well, voice-tracking can allow you to get stuff on the air really very quickly. We don’t need offices or studios to drive to; with an iPhone and remote access, we can get high quality information out much quicker from anywhere.