Black closed-back studio headphones hanging from a hook on a mic stand in an empty home voiceover booth lined with acoustic foam, a condenser microphone behind a pop filter at the left. © Voice Over Herald
Voice Over Articles

Your Headphones Can Leak Into Your Take: How to Choose a Pair for Voice Work, From Ohms to Earpads

Priya Raman · November 11, 2026 · 7 min read

Your headphones never show up in the finished file, but they can still ruin it. The wrong pair leaks the director's voice into your take, goes quiet on your interface, or pinches so hard that chapter nine sounds tired. Here's how to pick a pair for voice work from what the makers actually publish, and why one well known voice actor wears his over only one ear.

Most voice actors buy a microphone after weeks of reading reviews, then grab whatever headphones are on sale. It's an easy habit to fall into, because headphones feel like the passive part of the chain. They don't record anything.

But in a home booth they do three jobs at once. They carry the director's voice on a live session, they let you hear clicks and room noise before a client does, and they sit on your head for hours. Each of those jobs maps to a number on a spec sheet, and once you know which numbers matter, the choice gets a lot smaller.

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