In their own words

"I can't say enough about AudioLink They completely surpass my expectations by ensuring timely deliveries and quick turnaround of high-quality voice overing. If all businesses could be as customer-focused as they are, life would be so much easier. Thank you for making it painless, pleasant, and -most of all-hassle-free! I would refer anyone I know to use AudioLink as their audio vendor!"

Kim Heintz, Instructional Designer, Resource Bridge

"Audiolink consistently produces a quality product in excellent time. Their flexibility and commitment to creating partnerships with their customers allow them to maintain a seamless virtual relationship with us, across the Atlantic and multiple time zones. As we say in South Africa, "Jislaaik, hulle is bakgat!" (wow, they are great!)"

Jeremy Bristow,
Production Manager -
Laragh Courseware

The Voice as a Social Entity

Words on screen are open to the interpretation of the reader. Words spoken by a voice actor are rich with interpretation, interpretation the media developer controls. Voice overing can convey trust, and touch the listener in a way that the written word simply cannot.

In a classic 1956 article, (Horton and Wohl) suggested that even though the relationship between a television personality and a television viewer is one-sided, with no possibility of real time interaction, skilled personalities use direct address, informal speech patterns, sincerity, and simplicity to generate a ‘(sense) of conversational give and take [that] may be called para-social interaction.’

In the previous passage the authors are talking about television, but of course ‘virtual actors’ can exist in any kind of media that provides visual images and audio. Voice overing by a voice actor can give us a sense that we are interacting with a social entity.

Presence is the extent to which a medium is perceived as sociable, warm, sensitive, personal or intimate when it is used to interact with other people.

Although real immediacy is best achieved through eye contact, interaction and conversation; media can create a sense of immediacy. The tone, pauses and inflection of voice overing create more presence than text alone.

When media is used as a teacher “…..the relationship with the instructor/computer is so close, so immediate, that it is really not mass mediated instruction at all, but interpersonal tutoring.