 Hey, it's time for tech talk and we got lots of stuff to talk about tonight in your tech update We're talking about what maybe isn't yeah We talk about the Mac mini you just got the have you been pwned? We want to know we talk about the ur12 Skype it died on Valentine's Day. Why and maybe you kind of portable SSD drive You might want to get all right and all your questions so many questions that have been sent in to the guys at Vobs.tv so stay tuned. You name it twisted wave Tech stuff out the wazoo DS. There's you name it more than you can handle. Stay tuned coming up right now two men Twin sons from different mothers with a passion for voiceover recording technology and the desire to make recording easy for voice actors everywhere together in one place George Wittem the home studio engineer to the stars a Virginia Tech grad with an unmatched knowledge of all the latest gear and technology in voiceover today Dan Leonard the home studio master a voice actor with over 30 years experience in Broadcasting and recording and a no-holds-barred myth-busting attitude for teaching you how easy it is together to bring you all the latest technology today's voiceover superstars and Leading the discussion on how to make the most of your voiceover business This is voiceover body shop Voiceover body shop is brought to you by voice over essentials comm home of Harlan Hogan signature products source elements Remote connections made even easier Vio to go-go.com everything you need to be a successful voiceover artist J. Michael Collins demos award-winning demo production voice actor websites.com where your voiceover website won't be a pain in the butt and voiceover extra your daily resource for Vio success and Now live from their super-secret multimedia studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are George Whidham and Dan Leonard and we're back and now what are we doing? We're doing tech Talk home tech talk tech talk. I can actually straighten the microphone. Oh, it's not nice I know don't ever do that in the studio ever touch the microphone. No, yeah, let the union guys do that Yes anyway What's new we're gonna talk about first your tech update because you got a lot of stuff you want to cover here like The new Mac mini which I have actually pulled the trigger on Yes, it is it is and I know you have to for real. I haven't it's still No, you thought you you bought one because you thought I bought one Okay, the problem is I found a mountain bike I want and that's kind of distracting me right now My sister got a car I got a computer no So no, yeah, it's the the Mac mini 2018. It's it's for real Tell us why it's for real Well, I mean I finally got to set up one in a studio having it up and running doing voiceover studio work and it It's it does what you want it to do it boots up fast it launches applications quickly It it runs really well. It's got all the right ports on it, you know, it's got actual USB ports Which a lot of new Macs don't have right one does It's got two three ports on it It's got four Thunderbolt four or three ports that are also USB. You just need a little adapter, but it's got those But another thing is it's quiet, right? So normally the real test of a Mac is when you first turn it on and it starts updating a million things the fan goes berserk Right, this thing is still relatively quiet like it's I don't I wouldn't say I could have it sitting right underneath My voiceover mic, you know in a good studio, but it's no one near as loud as the older Mac mini So I mean they would they would you know, you know hair dryer. It is like a little You can and it works as a driver you hold it upright. Yeah, in fact, if I have an old Mac mini Right here and you can plug it in and you can use So yeah, the slot where the air comes out on the old Mac mini was a little teeny slit and the new one It's a huge opening. They just have much better air flow. They're there for inch conduit Yeah, put in there with it. It's a real good design This is this is the old my way you can tell the new one because it's new ones are like Like black they've gone to a black color. I called the Mac mini pro because it's it's so good It's it really actually as good as a Mac pro was five years ago I was a Mac mini Wow, which is just pretty impressive tenth the size Yeah, so how much about I mean you can start at like 750 and you're probably good If you're gonna be doing a lot of video editing you got a crunch a lot of video Maybe even 4k video then you want to go upgrade to one. It's gonna be about 1,100 bucks Even then not too crazy not too hard on the wallet and and all you need is a flat screen All you need is it as a monitor and I just set one up with an LG 21 by 9 ultra-wide monitor for Joseph Riano and and and actually Paul P both and It works beautifully with those big wide screens. So, you know, it's I'm I'm thrilled with it So I think you're gonna be happy when you get yours. I can't wait. You got a little upgrade on yours, right? You got the i5 Quint up no sex. It's the it's the i5 six core. It's the six core i5 I5 and it's with a with 16 gigabytes. It gives a ram. Yeah, it comes with a Handlebars Yeah, I already have the handlebars. So it's I mean honestly the base model has the base model is eight gigs of RAM It's our memory It's it's enough for the majority of you But if you're multitasking like crazy video editing all this stuff the extra memory would be appreciated If you're editing massive through 30 megabyte raw video or photo files, you'll appreciate the extra memory, right? You can upgrade the memory. What here's what Apple does They're stinkers you can actually upgrade the memory. Yay, but but the old Mac you just popped off the lid Sorry about that pop off the lid and the memory was right there You can get to it easily on the new one. They install a little metal fence It's a good security there's a border wall over the ramp And you have to take this thing completely apart to change the ram on the new one It's not horribly scary to do but it's 17 steps one instead of two, right? So you can do it. It's just not as easy So if you think you need the ram and you don't want to pay for it later get it now It'll be already in there painless. Okay. It's a good machine if you want the horsepower go for it Now last week you talked about getting pwned pwned. Yeah, what's the latest we talked about pawning or getting pwned So I mentioned last week and let me remind myself what that was called. There's a web It's it's President's Day. Everybody's fooling around in their warbirds. Sorry about the noise Have I been pwned calm I mentioned this pwned is is geek speak for owned and owned means have you been hacked? And this somebody have access to your data And I mentioned a website have I been pwned and I'm wondering if anybody actually did go on to have I been Pwned typed in their email or password and found your information was leaked on the internet So if that's you put something in the in the Facebook or the YouTube comments Let us know, you know, what websites you found out were Leaking your information because that's the kind of stuff you can find out on have I been pwned Yeah, you may not Yeah, your chances are you're gonna type in a password that you you use on every website that you're too lazy to make a new one And it's gonna be on some database out there. That is in the public So check that out. I'm wondering if any of you guys have gotten I've checked on there to see String the Steinberg you are 12. Yeah, I've probably mentioned this one on the show Do you remember me bringing this thing? No, it's the first time I've heard this I mean a lot of us. That's what I was listening, but We love the focus right on the scarlet scarlet solo the two right to right and they're great And they have a new gen 2 version. It's greater. It's got better headphones and everything But it's still missing this one feature and somehow Steinberg thought well We'll write a driver that nobody else has for our thing what it does is it allows you to have loop back Right, so you just pop in a little window. It's gonna be in system preferences Blah blah blah it's buried under a few things But once you have that window open if you check the box you now have loop back So if you have that need to you know make a client happy who really has to have Playback in their studio. They want to hear the last take you did because they were on snapchat when they were directing you You're gonna want to have something like the building play back now There's a million ways to do this, you know, you can hold your headphones up to the phone You can turn up your speakers There's a lot of ways to do this But if you have it set up with this it's a little checkbox right turn it on and now when you hit play They're gonna hear whatever you play back on Skype or zoom or whatever phone system you're using on your computer Right. Well, I kind of Yamaha a geo three or six. It's just a little. Yes, which why it's not Steinberg who are Yamaha and one of the yeah, they have they not put that on there as an actual physical switch Yeah, well, I think maybe because when they bought the um, here's my theory. Okay, but the Yamaha company They had now the a geo three in there in there, you know In their arsenal and they saw there's a demand for this lodge this loop-back thing But rather than go back to the drawing board and redesign the you are 12 They're smart Brainiac guys were like we can drive it make a driver that does that so it just made it a software thing Ah, is it as convenient as a flicking of a switch? No, definitely not But if you already have a you are 12 or the you are 22 Any of those variances that feature is already very probably didn't even know it and it's just kind of cool bonus All right, I mean a hundred bucks you get an interface with a mic preamp a good headphone app and that function and it's it's a good piece Of gear sounds good, right now. What happened with Skype out of you Skype anymore I mean I have it, but I don't use it. I guess there was a problem on Valentine's Day It just seemed to be that timing overwhelmed when you called grandma for Valentine's Day Well, it's I don't know it just was the timing of it Maybe that was the first day I'd use Skype in a couple of days, but whatever the case maybe I was one of those holdouts using Skype 7-point whatever it was 7.6 and I was telling everybody Stick with seven eight stinks. They broke it blah blah blah blah Well, they there was rumors that they were eventually going to basically deprecated or basically kill the functionality of seven and that's basically what they did I found out the thing was you had to kind of do some research to figure out what was going on instead of it saying Sorry, you're gonna have to upgrade to keep working. You would start Skype It would log in it would you'd see your contacts everything and then within two seconds It would log you back out again and say you need to verify your account information You go through all that and then it would still then it would give you a little air message with a sad face saying We're sorry we can't log you in right no explanation, right? No, it's nothing saying you must upgrade to version 8 right so the way I found out that it was the wrong version was by You know, this is what you do in these days and age you tweet So I tweeted Skype support and I was like hey guys What the hell is going on with version blah blah blah and they said sir Have you updated to the latest version? Of course, of course. Yeah say that So I did I updated and yes indeed that fixed the problem The good news is that it's been long enough now since eight came out that they have Fixed all the problems pretty much. They they put back into features. They remove they fix the preferences window You can actually choose which microphone you're using and speakers There's a little meter now what they got rid of all these things. They put them all back So now it ain't so bad being stuck on Skype 8 it works I I know there's other things there's zoom. There's all these other tools I just I have a Skype phone number and that's just kind of where I run everything. I just used my phone I want to call my mom. I use this well I do a lot of support So I'll be on the phone with them and then they'll say let me Skype you and I'll go go ahead and then they Skype me and I'm I don't have to do a thing. It's just now that I'm on Skype It's just seamless grab the microphone there Scott because I guess our guest engineer has a comment I I use Skype almost exclusively for coaching. Yeah, because of the same thing. I'm not Smart so I want to touch it and have it go and it makes that great little Song and then there's my person Come on So yeah, I like that. I've used zoom before when I'm doing multiple people I would like it if Skype had a multiple person format, but I don't it does but it's just not thought out as well Yeah, zoom works really well for zooms. Yeah zoom is a is a conferencing tool Skype is a chatting phone You know void video chatting. Yeah, that has conferencing as sort of a feature, but it's not well implemented I bet a bunch of your work is on Skype. Yeah, you need to be need to see what the hell you're you know Yeah, I mean I do it on Skype I use a remote can screen access something called screen connect. I use a couple different things, but at the end of the day Skype is so ubiquitous So I can almost guarantee that the other person probably hasn't and if they've probably used it So Well, we were at NAMM a couple of weeks ago. We were and we convention. Yes war. Yes I Was hoping Peter Coyote could narrate these but it just didn't happen. There was one more thing. Oh, oh, oh I'm sorry. I missed something. There's one more thing. Wow. Look at that If you're looking for fast, but affordable external storage for your computer, which you probably are this is a Sandis extreme portable SSD. So this is basically yeah, it's a flash drive, but you know, you plug it into a USB 3 or USB 2 port and it also plugs into all the new Macs with the little USB C port So it's got a adapter. Yeah, shiny and it's it's really fast So like I plugged it into my MacBook Air, which is a 2013. I think and This is a little baby when it's only 500 gigabytes which sounds like a lot, but by today's standards It's not but 500 gigabytes and that's something that big. Yeah 90 bucks You want your I'll turn your mic on now because Miranda have that mic turned off so much. Does it cost how much is it? so a 500 gig one like this is about 90-ish bucks and they go up from there pretty quick All right, I'm up to four terabytes cool. She's and it you can beat on this thing Like that and it's not gonna crash because it's not why would you but why would you that was what I just did that was dumb Yes, all righty, it's good piece. All right, so we were at NAMM and had a great time Five six seven open the pearly gates. That's right Well, you know that one Anyway But we talked to a bunch of cool people and the first one of the first videos we want to show is with our good friends it's studio bricks and I got to talk to Miguel you did let's play that Once again, we're here at NAMM 2019 here in Anaheim and we're here with our good friends at Studio bricks and we're here with Miguel. Nice to see you again. Nice to see you again. Wow We had such fun putting that studio bricks together in Las Vegas at Ovalcon this year It was easy and it sounded great Thank you really glad to hear that. Yeah What is it that makes studio bricks so different from all the other booths that we see out there? Well, this is you know as we spoke, you know, this is our fifth year in In a row here in in the NAMM so so and we are this year. We are coming with this studio bricks one voice-over edition What is making this product different, you know, this is like a big Lego It's really fun to assemble the booth The quality of the product is, you know, the the the quality of the walls This is like MDF varnish That makes a really big difference because you know the other booth they are they have this carpet in around and we Don't have that and then we are using this kind of fancy acoustic panels And as I told you this is that the voice-over edition it coming with this kind of amazing yellow tech Microphone arms and the you know inside here. Yeah. Yeah, here's the biggest part of this though It's this vault door that they have on here. It weighs a ton But it's the real secret to sealing up this booth. Yeah. Yeah, the door is an important Let's take the one mic so we can wirelessly, okay, perfect All right, so we'll close the door in here We seal we seal the door so no one can get out You know we hear just a little bit of rumble from you know the air conditioning maybe but you're not gonna have that in a normal studio Yeah, but Sound in here doesn't bounce around at all You know, you've got these great little lights that fit right inside the See if you can get a shot of that George the lighting strip that fits inside the acoustic paneling here and You know a desk that goes on here and as you were saying the yellow tech arm. That's really nice So you've got and there's plenty of room in here. Yeah voice over. Yeah Even is the this is the smallest one, you know because this is the studio bricks one three by four inside Right, and I have a lot of you know reviews from our customers saying that you know, even this is a three by four You cannot feel trapped inside of the booth, you know, two of us. It's a little But you got the big bass trap back up in here and that reduces a lot of the standing waves Really really well, but beautifully constructed. It's heavy-duty you know if They're not the least expensive But totally worth it if you're in a fairly noisy environment. Yeah We really like them. What is it that you really like about your product? Well, I really like the style of the product also the quality of the sound side, you know and The the materials we are using we are using like this. We are improving always with different kind of Eco-friendly materials. Yeah, this is like water-based paints and also, you know, we are always like improving our products looking for different kind of solutions really eco-friendly with the environment and Yeah, we are always, you know, like keeping keep going and That's that is our main Now you're you're located in Spain so they get shipped over from Spain So it's like everybody waits in anticipation as this big box shows. Yeah, you know, we see this big box And it was like, well, why don't we just put the box in the corner and tell everybody this is the booth? But no, we opened it up And I guess you put together one for Joseph Riano yesterday yesterday. Yeah, he was fun, too It's a fun project. It's like working with Legos. Yeah working with Lego a little bit, you know a little bit bigger bigger I'm heavier than you know that the regular Lego, but yeah, it also has a ventilation system You've got this unit down here. Yes, we have the air up back there. It's super quiet right now It's working, but you know, you cannot thank you very much. Nice to see you again. Nice to see you again And I hope to see you next year Indeed those are they really make a great product. I mean, and it's a very very different from What the other guys are doing? Yeah, I mean the amount of effort that went into designing and constructing this thing It's kind of mind-boggling. He showed us pictures of the factory. Yeah, it is massive Now keep in mind the voiceover segment for them is small They put them in these places called we work. Maybe you've heard of we work those group workspaces. We'd work. We'd work. Yeah But we work is bought over a thousand Joseph got one he he just happened to be He happened to get his delivery the same week they were visiting out of town and they physically came over and helped us put it together Yeah, yeah, but it's a quick thing you just like boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. Yeah I mean, it takes longer to get it out of the box. Yeah, it's like, okay. How do we do this? Okay? Now the other thing we looked at was something new from effigy the effigy hype That's right, which is a very you know if you're used to like the effigy mic, which a lot of people have Which is great to have on your road. They've got something new. Let's take a look at that This is a this is a new product here at NAMM 2019 by our friends at effigy and It's called The effigy hype mic if you're familiar with the effigy mic. This is It's it's there. It's a more advanced version of it But what what it has is a lot of forward processing not that I'm a big fan of forward processing But for something simple it works on your iPad and you can adjust the EQ You can adjust the pitch you can add compression to it But doing stuff like that, you know, you can add You know, you can use the you know some reverb on it and I guess that's supposed to simulate a tube drive and It's actually kind of cool if this is the kind of thing that you want to be able to do if you're using any front front-end processing Of course, I like to keep things dry But if you're somebody that has to do a little bit of this kind of stuff Or if you're doing music it actually could probably be very useful, but you see this thing It's just this tiny little thing, but it also has a much better Visual of a you meter on it, which you know, it's not just a little one little green light that flashes now It's it's at least giving you an accurate level, but I'm sure it's still Not very forgiving for plosives But how well does this work Peter Piper picked a peck of art well that helps a little bit What's a nice unit and what are these things going for now these are Yeah, it's the way that pop screen wraps around and then it's pop screen screws on to the rear of the mic Yeah, and it's kind of interesting that's a good design, but here's another interesting thing about it it works with Windows With Windows not just Mac only yeah, so you're seeing more cross compatibility now from Apogee, which is kind of cool More more flexible Anyway, you might want to look at something like this you want to have some fun with a little mic It's the Apogee hype like I could see it being good for podcasters Maybe even more so as for a podcasting would probably be excellent And when you put up in front of somebody who doesn't have a good vocal technique That way you can deal with their You know, they're up and down volume when they're really exactly exactly All right, yeah, but you hype Apogee. Thank you, Dan Now that thing's a little pricey I mean, it's it's 350 for that I need to figure out if those extra bells and whistles are worth a little benefit. Yeah, I think you know Again, I'm always talking about high-pass filters. It has one. So if that works well, it could be worthwhile I don't know. Well, we'll get one in the demo Apogee. You know how to find us. We've only met you probably 37 times they're just on the other side of the hill here. I know the right and sound Monica, right? So anyway, I you know the headphone jacks cool that the Apogee mic plus has that for about a hundred dollars less If you need that kind of a feature so, you know, the hype is it worth the hype? It's a pretty bold statement to call their product the hype Let's see all right. Well, if you probably figured out that George and I know an awful lot about home voiceover studios by now See, we've all been doing this show since what? 2011 has it been that long it has been it's almost eight years Wow March. I'll drink juice to that I actually I think that's I think that's an excellent idea Almost a couple couple of couple of donuts short of a decade, but Anyway, but if you want help with your home studio I mean you can watch our show and you can pick up a tip here or there But it always helps to work with guys that have been in the trenches and been doing this stuff for years And also know what the trend is now what's happening now, you know, absolutely I mean you could find people that used to do it 15 20 years ago But you guys are you guys are in the in the trenches every freaking day. It seems like it Yeah, some days you dress like it. Yeah But if you want help with your home studio, there's only two places you can go You could work with George and the way you do that is by you go over to George the tech comm or the short version short George the dot tech And that's where you can find me you can book services with me. You can do virtual processing stacks You can do a stout a sound check Or you can book time just good old-fashioned phone call if you like to work that way Whatever you want Helen over there and if you'd like to work with Dan in his world in his corner of the web You can go on over to You can find me right here at home voiceover studio dot com Where I you know, I do a lot of the same things work a lot with beginners help them Really get the understanding of what it is that you have to do to start your home voiceover studio Yeah, and or if you're someone that's already set up their studio and you want to hear what it sounds like I've got my world-famous specimen collection cup sitting at the bottom of page click on that for 25 bucks And I will analyze your audio and if you need some help We'll work it out for audio Scott. Oh, yes, only for Anyway, we've got a bunch of questions from our amazing audience, so we'll be right back to answer those Right after these important messages Hi, this is Kat Cressida and this is voiceover body shop As a voice talent you have to have a website But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you and when they finally do they break or don't look right on mobile devices They're not built for marketing and SEO. They're expensive You have limited or no control and it takes forever to get one built and go live So what's the best way to get you online in no time go to voice actor websites dot com like our name implies voice actor Websites dot com just does websites for voice actors We believe in creating fast mobile friendly responsive highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use You have full control no need to hire someone every time you want to make a change and our upfront pricing means you know Exactly what your costs are ahead of time You can get your voice over website going for as little as $700 So if you want your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options Go to voicehactor websites dot com where your VO website shouldn't be a pain in the you know, what? Do we get most often well far and away? It's how do I even get started in voiceover? And we have a great answer to that question take VO to go goes free Getting started in VO class. You heard right. It's free and it's available online 24-7 at getting started in VO comm that's getting started in VO comm if you've been watching VO BS and Thinking that you need to get in gear and start your own voice over career This is the class you should start with you'll learn about the vocal skills You need the storytelling skills you need the equipment you need and the business skills You need all in one single comprehensive online class taught by VO to go goes David H. Lawrence the 17th This class won the backstage readers choice award four years in a row and again. There's no charge. It's absolutely free Want to take it? Sure you do Go to getting started in VO comm that's getting started in VO comm Well, hello there, I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big-voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat Were you this is virgin radio? Well, okay? We're not that innocent. There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working Dickies cuz I ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values a leader for California and a voice for America It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smart phone, but it's so much more It's a the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs. What time is hockey practice? Check out this song It's the end of the road for Rick When hope is lost the I8 from BMW Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's J. Michael Collins bet you think I'm gonna try and sell you a demo now I think they speak for themselves, but I will give you my email. It's J. Michael at JMC voiceover.com Now if they will stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show Hi, this is Bill Farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great I can see that we're back here on voiceover body shop. We got questions from our our audience they're out there all across the fruit and plain and all across God's green earth and What are some of the questions we have what let's there was one that was there were a couple that were mailed in so we'll start with Catherine Campion's question awesome And as you as you bring that one up on I'm finding more okay now They're all just piling in more keep coming in all righty She says I'm pretty secure in the overall sound quality of my studio in the past ten years I've only had one client comment on my audio quality and it was back when I was using a USB mic into a Noisy laptop. All right. Well, she lucked out It's just occasional noise from heating equipment cars going by mouth clicks, etc That I'd love to reduce eliminate more easily than tackling one noise at a time I invested an isotope RX 7 elements and can't for the life of me find a tutorial that actually teaches me how to use it I record and twisted wave and port the mp3 into your RX elements click Repair assistant and each time it tells me no significant clipping clicks hum noise Even when I know there was noise from the washing machine boiler street boiler street my mouth She has a boiler. She must live in the Northeast Actually, I think she lives in LA really I've worked with her. That's all I know personally that she's got good audio Okay, right well it offers three levels of repair options all of which sound identical to the original Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong and do I need to invest in yet another thing? well What you're doing wrong is relying on an automatic thing to do something that you can't really I don't think you can do automatically yet presets are nice, but Yeah, it's it only takes you so far I think I think if your issues are on the morse of I let me start by saying I have not used That tool yet. I have not used either this wizard. So I I don't know if it's because You're your particular situation you're having a problem or if it's just something doesn't work well for everybody But I will assume that it's not working well because your issues are all too subtle for it to pick up That's my guess like they're all there and to the trained voice actors ear. They're all quite audible but to the Whatever algorithms in this thing somebody listening on their iPad. They're gonna hear. Yeah, they're probably not severe enough So yeah, so you're asking a tutorial that yeah, I don't know many tutorials that explain how to fine-tune these tools, right? I You're doing where I know to do is by here Yeah, you know I if you don't know what to do Maybe you can start by putting all of the sliders. It has a couple different controls Yeah, I'm thinking about the noise the D clicker for example start with them somewhere in the middle, right? Then start incrementally moving one of them at a time not all of them But one at a time to the left or to the right And see if you can notice a change in what you're doing That is how I start using something I've never used before I go well if I move sensitivity really far to the right What happens is it get worse or better right and that that's because a lot of tools It's not that clear what these things are gonna do and you just you have to trust your hearing right At the end of the day and fortunately the tools in rx The rx tools for the most part the D clicker The denoiser they're they're relatively simplified. They don't have 15 different controls You have to play with they have three or four settings and so it doesn't take more than maybe 15 minutes to Dial in a setting again. You have to use your ears You got to use some good headphones or really good studio monitors But you should be able to find changes in those settings after you play with them for a while, right? But then and also again You've got to know what it's supposed to sound like and yeah, and if you overdo it It's going you're gonna notice it and sometimes I'm gonna notice it and Sometimes people are overly sensitive to their own little sound issues, right voice actors This can happen very commonly once the old saying why can't unhear it, you know once you've heard it You can't unhear it. I can't unsee it Once you start hearing a mouth click or a sibilance That's a big one sibilance voice actors are really sensitive to their siblings Maybe one client ever says you're sibilant and then now you're always sibilant for the rest of your life No matter what you think about it Don't don't get too sensitive to that stuff because especially your own headphones could be totally fooling you Making you sound way more sibilant than you actually are so playback is a significant thing Yeah, and you know I and I'm like sounds fine to me in my studio on my expensive speakers and my monitors So maybe it's what you're listening on yeah our good buddy Jack de Gaulia I'm sitting out there in the desert who used to write every word that we would say yeah, good guy It has a question. He says does room tone mixed and twisted waves special paste command make existing room tone louder Hmm. I understood it did not but I'm getting pushback from voice actors Well, there's your problem right there who think adding room tone this way will double the volume of the room tone Something I've not experienced Well, if you haven't experienced it it probably isn't a problem We are not experiencing it because you're using it, right? So could be if you use special paste the way that I use special paste in twisted wave You're not mixing room tone in over other sound. You're replacing What's there with room tone right so no the room tone isn't gonna get louder You're just putting in a sample of your existing room tone Using special paste as a way to paste it over the selection, right? You know instead of just doing a normal paste If you do a normal paste whatever length of the copy was is how long the paste will be Chances are it's not gonna be the right length, but with special paste if you select a range that you want to replace Boom it just takes the room tone copied no matter how long it is good three seconds eight seconds and overrides it and overrides that Point three seven second long thing that you want so it's yeah, it's moot Don't listen to him Jack. No crazy. They're they're thinking of the idea of mixing room tone Over the track or under the track as it were and yeah years ago We talked about this if you take white noise and take other white noise and mix them together If they're both the same volume and you mix them together the volume does not increase by 6db does not go up It just sort of doubles itself and it just increases the density of the right other of the white noise But it doesn't go up, right? So maybe that's what they're thinking. Oh, they're they're wrong not to be worried not to worry. Yeah Michael Kennedy Asses he says if getting a new Mac Mini What configuration might you suggest if you go all out with the highest capability memory and you know And solid-state drive it can add up. Well, I figured that one out myself Yeah, because they charge a lot for each upgrade. Yes, they do You know just going for the 16 gigs of RAM over I mean It's like 200 bucks more for an extra eight gigs of RAM and how much is eight gigs of RAM But as you explained earlier, it's they've made it hard for you. Oh boy Apple Apple. Yeah, I love their hardware But they really play games with the pricing What's upgradeable? What's not they change the what's upgradeable from model to model, right? You know they make it a little challenging for us, but still it's a Mac you plug it in and it works Yeah, I'm the majority of the problems that you and I deal with in troubleshooting Generally, it's usually a PC problem. Yeah, mostly. I mean you can have audio issues one on max If you're using some really high-end audio gear that has special drivers and a control panel and all this kind of Things it's like really external to it and yeah, but it's it's less likely on the Mac I mean the the the RAM Or memory as Apple calls it same thing RAM memory They overcharge for it for sure The advantage of it is you don't have to upgrade it later And I've I have upgraded RAM for many people on max and Sometimes that third-party memory goes bad or something goes bad or one of the two chips goes bad or something And then that's another problem to troubleshoot and if you get it from Apple that's probably not gonna happen no guarantee but Basically the base model the base base model iMac is a six core i3 Which on paper sounds slow because we have an i5 and i7 But in reality is quite six cores in it quite fast for it for most uses The then one step up for about a thousand bucks 12 maybe 1100 is the i5 Six core that one is really quite fast and that's what I went for yeah And that is worth the up step up in price because you you know you cannot upgrade the processor right you can upgrade the memory Go to iFixit.com and you can watch videos on how to upgrade you can see how long it's gonna take How difficult it is that every step involved it's a Little scary okay if you have a brand new Mac that's under warranty You're probably not gonna crack it open as your first upgrade But it is doable in terms of storage the built-in storage it starts at 256 I believe if they have a 128 model definitely that's much too small for most of us What 256 gig is fine for many of us yeah, and if you got the scratch go up to the 512 It might be nice to have a little bit extra storage, but again I was gonna say just get the sand disc 500 500 gigs for 90 bucks, and this is fast Really fast. It's not that big a deal anymore. Yeah, really cool. Okay. We got one last question from our dear friend Debbie Irwin Who's there in New York City and she she asks? I'm in need of a reasonably priced de-essered just keep my eyes open for our ex's occasional sales But what were we just saying it's probably not that bad it may be what she's listening Before you buy a de-essered Debbie Let's give a little get a demo of it. You can play with it. It's free to get a demo But definitely I know you're a pro you've been doing this a real long time But you're a pro at hearing your own voice and your own headphones, and you don't know what it's sounding like out of context more than likely What it sounds like to everybody else and maybe that one client complained about your siblings Sent to one of us. We're gonna listen to it in our familiar environment in our familiar headphones We'll tell you a lot of times siblings can be corrected with just a simple Little dip right in that siblings range and not much else is required if it's only needed for really severe I call it ice pick in the forehead Where it's like And that's probably more of a function of microphone and my technique than anything else it sometimes correct times It is already there's a few more questions. Well, we're gonna wrap or I think we're gonna wrap and we'll save them for next time and Okay, lots of questions and we're running out of time, but anyway We've got to come back and say goodbye and mop up after this mess, so we'll be right back after this This is Bill Ratner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with Dan Leonard and George Whittom V obs dot TV Well, look at that There's voiceover essentials company mascot Lila the dog sunbathing on Turtle Beach in front of a porta booth pro on spring break With her spiffy free VO as heard on TV baseball cap Yep, the OBS viewers only can get their famous voiceover cap Which is a 1995 value free when they order their porta bruce pro Never miss a session or audition even while taking a well-deserved spring break You can just add the porta booth pro and the voiceover baseball cap in your cart and then put the promo code pbpr Oh cap in the promo code field and click the submit promo code button to get their discount for the cap Both items are on the home page The porta bruce is at the top and the cap near the bottom of the page All you have to do is go over to voiceover essentials comm just go down the bottom of our home page You'll find it there and order your porta booth pro now and get your free baseball cap. Thanks, Harlan Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead now There's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer that place is voiceover extra comm Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level Stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls Voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed Learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books auditioning casting home studio setup and equipment Marketing performance techniques and much more. 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That's voice over Xtra.com Well, this is the point the show where I have to talk about source elements because they're one of our wonderful sponsors And they make some really cool stuff Primarily source connect that's the tool for voice actors that need to be able to record from their studio to other studios all around the globe and they've got support as well all around the globe so chances are if you're logged on to source connect One beautiful thing about them is they have live support technicians available to you because they're multinational I mean their headquarters is in Chicago But also in New Zealand so they cross time zones and they got you covered no matter where you are So go check out source connect right now and the way you do that is you go to source dash Elements comm they can get a 15-day free trial you can get source connect Standard the version that you should be using as voice over actors these days Get source connect standard demo for 15 days right away and start using it get accustomed to it Learn how to use the iLock get the license set up Get your system rocking and rolling and then that day that a session comes along and they want you on source connect You're ready to pull the trigger you're ready to go You don't have to buy it that day you can do it as a demo keep it for a few months for the day You need it you can pay for it. It's great. So if you want to give a try You know where to go source dash elements comm and tell them we sent you Thanks so much for your support and we'll be right back with more tech talk I did hear the voice of a body shop Back to say good-bye. That's where next week on this show Well in two weeks on the 18th Kiff Vanden Heuvel will be here. Oh cool another one of those guys who I see you're watching TV and it's like oh, there's kiff TVs and movies. Yeah, he plays cops. Yes. He just happens to get he has that guy look like a cop kind of guy But he does a lot more than that right to find out and he does voice over and he was doing his voice over podcast too So we'll be talking to him about that super cool. Nice guy. Yeah, um Who are our donors of the week? I've noticed many and we really appreciate it. Yeah, let's go Let's go take a dab in the donors box This is where we should have the donors music that I can play to kill time when I go look up We have donors we have donors We have lots and lots of donors Michael Kennedy. Thanks Mike. We answered his question and he gave us some money What a guy whoa. Thanks a lot brother. It was very generous of you Andrew Kaufman. He is one of our subscribers sends money in our regular basis because he's subscribing using the Subscribe function that PayPal has built in Phillips appear. Thank you I'm keeping down the list That's a sponsor. So that's even better Sereborges you can anybody can sponsor if you if there's something you'd like to advertise to the voiceover community We're here for you. We're here. Sereborges. Thank you CJ ring wall. Thank you CJ Michael Blanker, oh, that's not Michael. I'm sorry, Michelle. Michelle apologies. Blanker Handland productions and Graham Spicer. Thanks, Graham Brian rush and Joseph Harrison and Man, there's a lot of names. Oh, yeah, it was a lot this week. Holy smokes Thank you so many so many of you are coming to helping to boost the show up a little bit with Maria Makis as well All right, so yeah, it's been wonderful. We really appreciate all these contributions They just help us boost up the show a little bit more fill in the gaps when we need gear and keep things up to date software updates All this stuff and it really is helpful. So which is why we look so damn good Yes, no, I would probably be yes. We'd like you to show us your booths This is CJ ring walls booth. Let's see if we can yeah, there's his speaker. Yeah We were thinking well looks like you know, we just got moving blankets behind us Can I put my head on that? Yeah went to the Harbor freight got moving blankets. They work There we go. They're a good view of it. You can see everything and that's in there Yeah, I'm telling you those don't they do look like Harbor freight blankets, don't they? Oh definitely definitely they work They do you have enough layers of those things and I think one thin layer of blanket Isn't quite cutting it for most people double them up though, and you're getting there and for the price. You can't be Crazy cheap. Absolutely. Nice job. Thanks for sending in your picture. We do appreciate it. Yeah, send them into the guys at VOBS dot TV in Landscape not portrait Okay Again, if you want to talk to George and have him help you with your home studio you go to the tech George George the tech calm Yeah, that's where you go to find me and Dan is also available online for tech support over at home voiceover studio calm Yes, I'm there all the time. I just live in my studio My wife comes in just you're never leaving here. Are you that's why we put the beer keg in here? That's right Okay, well We're here on alternate Mondays live, but we're also doing tech talk We're taking this segment and we will replay this next week the this amazing interview with with Scott Parking will be all this week. So that that'll be really cool want to be in our studio like Gary is today Let's get a shot of Gary here That's Gary. There's Gary Gary. Call him Gary. There's Gary in the corner there Yeah, I have to do is write to us again at the guys at VOBS dot TV and tell us what when you're in town or when you Can be here and we'll give you the secret handshake and maybe give you the address Maybe give you the right address in an outdoor. That's right Okay, we need to thank our sponsors, of course Harlan Hogan's voiceover essentials and And voiceover extra source elements Vio to go go voice actor websites dot com and J. Michael Collins demos. All right. I'm working. I know I'm working with him tomorrow We're cutting a new announcer demo. Oh, that'll be great announcing. I hear it's coming back. That's why I'm doing it That's the rumor. That's right. We're doing an announcer demo and not ironically either. Yeah, exactly We'd like to thank the Dan and Marcy Leonard Foundation for the betterment of webcasting Also our producer Catherine Curtin for getting Great guests for us like Scott Park and Kit Vandenhovell in two weeks Mike Merlino wasn't in chat room duty. It was you and Sue were doing the chat room tonight Yeah, Mike's doing more important things like how dare he did the big-time stuff in Hollywood And also our amazing technical director who just was par excellence tonight Sue Merlino Mike's mom Yeah, so change the credit. That's right. So that's gonna do it for us this week. Thanks for tuning in. We're here It seems like every week, but you'll find us here on YouTube or on Facebook or all those other places podcasting We're here. We're everywhere. I'd be OBS. Yeah, and you'll find us or some organization. That's V. OBS acronym, but anyway, that's gonna do it for us this week. We know it's not an easy business But we're here to help. I'm Dan Leonard. I'm George Whidham and this is voiceover body shop or V. O Bs Take care everybody Are you confused about how to set up and maintain a professional quality voiceover studio? No wonder the information out there is mostly Mythology, this is the best microphone to use You'll have to have a preamp. You need a soundproof booth This software is the best your audio must be broadcast quality Consult with someone who knows the truth someone who's been there in the trenches doing voiceover for over 30 years Someone with unparalleled experience with voiceover studios who's worked with hundreds of voice actors and designed hundreds of personal studios He knows how to teach and cares about your success in one of the harshest environments known to voiceover your home Dan Leonard the home studio master Separate myth from fact and get a handle on your personal voiceover studio Contact the home studio master at home voiceover studio comm