Awaaz Media makes audio, video, post and delivery for broadcasters, publishers and brands, in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. The studio sits alongside the group's own radio stations, so the work is planned to broadcast deadlines rather than around them.
Awaaz means voice in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. Switch channels to see the word in each script.
The shape of work a station, a masthead or a public body brings to a studio like this one. Each lane is a type of project and how we would run it, not a finished job for a named client.
The kind of format a station actually runs. One recording day produces an English and a Hindi version that share music beds, timing and structure, with each voiced for its own audience instead of dubbed over the other.
The brief a masthead brings when it has reporters, archives and opinions but no sound. We build the format, record the hosts, cut the episodes and hand back a feed the newsroom can keep running without us.
The kind of package a station needs before it opens: names, stings, beds, hourly promos and sponsor formats, built so the same identity carries across an English hour and a Punjabi one rather than being remade for each. One voice brief, one music palette, and versions that sit together on air.
The sort of work that has to say exactly the same thing in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu without sounding translated. Scripts are adapted for each language, then voiced and mixed to matching lengths so one media buy covers all of them.
A station does not get to file late, redo the mix tomorrow or hope the audience forgives a rough edit. The studio works to that standard from the first job.
Six lines of work patched into one studio. Take the whole chain, or bring us the part you are missing.
Post: edit, colour, sound design and mixProgrammes, station imaging, promos, sponsor reads and podcast series, recorded and mixed for the way each platform actually plays them back.
Studio and location shoots, interview sets and multi-camera event recordings for broadcast and on demand, shot with the edit already planned rather than discovered afterwards. Work made first for a social feed sits with Internet Media in the same group, and we point you there rather than approximate it.
Edit, colour, sound design, mix and master. We take on work that arrived from someone else's crew as readily as we finish our own.
Scripts adapted rather than translated word for word, then voiced by speakers who grew up in the language, so the emphasis survives the move.
Broadcast specs, podcast feeds, station libraries and archive masters, prepared in the formats each destination will accept without a phone call. Standalone captioning and batch cutdowns are Vidz's line of work in the same group, and versions built for a social platform are Internet Media's.
Sponsor messages, campaign spots and longer brand storytelling, made to sit inside a schedule without sounding like the moment listeners tune out.
Pick a format, the languages and where it has to play. The run sheet sets out a typical shape for that kind of work and what to bring to the first conversation. It is guidance to start a brief, never a quote.
Choose a format to see a run sheet.
Awaaz means voice. Here is who we are, and a walk round the desk: select any marker to see what the kit does and why it matters to your project.
Awaaz Media is the production arm of a group building a network of online radio stations, and that shapes how we work. Awaaz means voice. A station does not get to file late, redo the mix tomorrow or hope the audience forgives a rough edit, and the studio works to that standard from the first job, for broadcasters, publishers and brands.
We work in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu, and the difference is not cosmetic. A script translated word for word lands flat: the joke dies, the emphasis moves to the wrong syllable and the audience hears an outsider. A script that is adapted keeps all three. Everything is written, recorded and mixed in the language the audience listens in, by speakers of that language, and the work is run from Melbourne.
Where a brief is really a social channel plan, or a run of fixed scope cutdowns from footage you already hold, we say so and point you to Internet Media or Vidz in the same group, rather than writing our own quote around work another studio here is built for. The company behind the studio is SUKH SANDHU PTY LTD.
What it does. Absorbent panels on the walls and ceiling soak up reflections, so the microphone hears the voice and not the room.
Why it matters. A dry recording can be given space in the mix later. A recording full of room echo cannot be properly cleaned up afterwards.
What it does. Large diaphragm microphones are a common choice for studio voice work because they capture detail and warmth close up.
Why it matters. Choice and distance are set for each voice, so a quiet reader and a projecting presenter both reach the mix sounding like themselves.
What it does. A fine mesh screen between mouth and microphone breaks up the bursts of air that come with sounds like p and b.
Why it matters. Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu all have aspirated consonants that push extra air at the microphone. Plosives are hard to remove once they are recorded.
What it does. Speakers designed to sound flat rather than flattering, so the mix is judged on what is really there.
Why it matters. A mix that only sounds right on one pair of speakers falls apart on a car radio or a phone. Monitors, plus a check on small speakers, catch that.
What it does. The edit, the music beds and every language version sit in one session, aligned on the same timeline.
Why it matters. Shared timing is what lets an English and a Hindi version drop into the same slot in a schedule.
What it does. Sets levels, routes the microphones and turns the signal into clean digital audio for the edit.
Why it matters. Getting level right at the source avoids distortion that no edit can undo.
What it does. Let the voice artist and producer hear the take without the sound leaking back into the microphone.
Why it matters. Remote sessions run the same way: the producer is on the line, listening on the same kind of monitoring.
Scripts adapted rather than translated word for word, then voiced by speakers who grew up in the language, so the emphasis survives the move.
The language most briefs arrive in, and often the master the other versions are planned alongside rather than translated from.
Spoken Hindi and Urdu share a great deal of everyday vocabulary, which is exactly why a script written for one cannot simply be relabelled as the other.
Written in Gurmukhi in India and in Shahmukhi, a Perso-Arabic script, in Pakistan. Which one your audience reads is settled before anything is written.
Written right to left in Perso-Arabic script, usually set in the flowing Nastaliq style, which changes how on screen text and graphics have to be laid out.
A script translated word for word lands flat: the joke dies, the emphasis moves to the wrong syllable and the audience hears an outsider. A script that is adapted keeps all three.
The things people ask before a first session.
No. English only briefs are taken on the same terms. What we add is the ability to make the same piece properly in Hindi, Punjabi or Urdu as well, rather than bolting a translation onto a finished master at the end.
Yes. It is work the studio is set up for. Send the rushes, the delivery specs and whatever paperwork exists, and we will tell you honestly what can be saved in the grade and the mix and what needs to be shot again.
Yes. Record sessions can run remotely with a producer on the line, and delivery is digital. Anything that needs a room, a camera or a treated space is arranged here in Melbourne.
With a conversation about where the finished thing has to go. Broadcast, feed, big screen or a phone held sideways, because that decides format, length, how we shoot and how we record long before anyone writes a script.
Broadcast, feed, big screen or a phone held sideways. Tell us where the work will play and the format, length, shoot and record are planned around it from the start.
sukh@sukhsandhu.com