The Sound Company Ltd Bookings Guidance Notes

“The best voice sound in town” “A centre of excellence” Please also see our full bookings terms, hints & tips

Since 1993 we've been providing voice recording & audio post services in London's West End. What hasn’t changed since 1993 is our founder's old-fashioned philosophy (some would say) of an ethical approach to business, providing technical excellence & superb client support - using our very best endeavours at all times. Our founder, Geoff Oliver, still steers the business ensuring there is no "mission creep".

Unfortunately, we have to say that we cannot be held financially responsible for items outside our control - such as, but not limited to - transport delays or strikes, staff illness, power outages, bad weather, adjacent construction work, poor voices/scripts, previous session unplanned over-runs, poor session management, late voices/clients...

Our brilliant staff are friendly, experienced & helpful - and provide strong support both before and after your session. Our aim is to work harmoniously with you to achieve the best result for your project.

For those not used to working in sound studios, some of the items below may seem a little harsh – but with seven studios, usually heavily booked, they are essential to maintain our realistic rates - and to avoid chaos! Feel free to chat to us (in advance) if they don't work for your project. By making a booking you are accepting our payment terms of strictly within 30 days of the invoice date.

Our minimum booking period is 1 hour. We charge from the confirmed start time to the confirmed end time, plus any over-run used in 1/4 hr blocks. Please note that over-runs may not always be possible, so please book enough time to cover common problems such as transport delays or script re-writes. At the start of each session it may take 5 minutes to seat the voice(s), adjust mic positioning etc. Allow in your booking period any time required to import audio or video files, ditto for exporting/saving files or sessions at the end. We have a large reception area which can be used for pre-session briefings so that when you go into the studio everyone is ready.

On request, and subject to availability at the time of booking, we may be able to offer you a 30 minute buffer. If it’s not used – we won’t charge. But - we also reserve the right to withdraw the buffer if another client can confirm a booking using that time slot – so it’s not an alternative to booking a proper amount of time.

Bookings must be confirmed by email or fax prior to the session. If a confirmed booking is cancelled with less than 24 hours notice then a 100% cancellation fee normally applies.

Our basic non-picture voice recording & editing rate is Ł130 per hour with one of our very talented sound engineers. Our minimum booking is one hour, thereafter multiples of ˝ hr. Bookings start on the hour or half-hour only. Voice-to-picture (MOV or Digi) is Ł150 p/h – whether sync record, guide or just playback. Voice-to-picture via ISDN or Source Connect is Ł170 p/h. Not-to-picture 2-line ISDN starts at Ł150 p/h - and increases if extra lines or additional codecs are used. Outgoing phone patch or ISDN calls are charged at BT Business + 20%. Please see our full detailed rate card

Digitisation. Working to MOV makes for a faster and smoother sound-to-picture session as there's no waiting time for mechanical shuttling & locking. If you are planning to provide DigiBeta tapes, and they arrive well in advance, we will give you the opportunity to decide which way you'd like to work. Picture digitisation and/or laying-off of audio has to be carried out in real time. Depending on how busy we are at the time, the rate may vary between Ł100 & Ł150 p/h chargable in 1/4 hr blocks. Any resultant MOV's may be the smallest/quickest files that are suitable for the purpose. They will not be suitable for any other use.

All prices exclude UK VAT. Non-EU clients will not be charged this tax, but EU clients must provide their VAT number in order not to be charged UK VAT - which is currently 20% for jobs from 4th Jan 2011.

Fruit, biscuits, various teas, coffee and fruit juice are available in all studios. Bought-in meals/refreshments costing over Ł2 will be added to your invoice at cost plus 5%.

All deliveries/cabs are charged. All postage/courier costs are charged. Photocopying/printing - over 20 pages per session will be charged at 5p per page - not ideal, but sometimes it's just not physically posssible to deal with huge numbers of last-minute scripts. When possible, please bring your own script sets and avoid the charge!

Uploads/downloads over 10MB are charged at Ł10 per 500MB or part of (under 10MB are free). We have our own secure FTP sites connected to an internet backbone - and our upload speed is blisteringly fast! (You may have your own local FTP site and/or Digidelivery server -these will be probably much slower than ours). Why do we charge? It costs a fortune for a dedicated uncontended very high speed upload business circuit with built-in redundancy! It's our policy to keep the basic studio rate as low as we can for the majority of clients. Most clients are happy with paying extra for "extras". The alternative would be for all clients to suffer much higher studio rates.

New clients are subject to a check on our credit-risk database. If OK we can offer a 30 day account – this means payment within 30 days of the date of the invoice. Our ratecard prices only apply if payment is indeed made within 30 days. If your own payment policy is to pay later than 30 days, then at least 10% will be added to rate card prices. If the credit check fails then you must pay by credit/debit card at the end of the session. A “paid” invoice will be emailed within a few days.

After a period of inactivity, we may ask your company to resubmit an account application for forthcoming sessions.

We are not in the business of financing productions, so ongoing sessions spread over a period of time will be generally be invoiced on a session-by-session basis unless arranged otherwise in advance.