Family Guy: How they do Voice-Overs

On Family Guy, Fox's animated series popular for its cutting-edge humor, dialogue reigns supreme. The show avoids audio effects altogether whenever a character speaks. That priority is not lost on the crew that records and edits dialogue for the show (along with sister production American Dad). But while maintaining quality, the crew also has to work quickly. In fact, the same directive even applied to setting up the studios at Fox Animation suites. Set in the middle of an office building with an open floor plan, the studios consist of modular, solid-looking prefab booths.

The Fox Animation audio crew records Family Guy dialogue with Neumann TLM 193 mics through a Yamaha DM1000 console and Aphex 661 compressors, though only light compression is actually used.

Three booths comprise the setup: one serves as control room; one as the main recording space; and one as a second, smaller iso space. “On these shows, there tends to be a lot of arguing back and forth between characters.  So they keep the talent in separate rooms and record them to separate tracks. The modular booths/flexibooths (http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/64) are incredibly cost effective. By themselves they're not inexpensive, but they can be moved, stored, and reused in another location. And the building's management loves them because they're so unobtrusive.

The recording chain is the same for everyone: Neumann TLM 193 microphones through the Yamaha DM1000 console's preamps and Aphex 661 compressors. The TLM requires zero EQ, other than rolling off everything below 80Hz, It's the mic they've used since the beginning. [Family Guy and American Dad creator] Seth [MacFarlane] likes it, and he knows music. The TLM has a high mid bump that cuts right through.
Recording to Pro Tools HD is straight ahead, with no plug-ins involved.  They use very light compression with the Aphex, and the use limiting in the sense that they like to keep their levels between -6 and -12, [on a 0 to -20 reference] so there's at least 6dB of headroom.


MLA: http://digitalcontentproducer.com/soundforpic/revfeat/video_dialogue_animation/