 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number sixty one sixty one. There it is. I'm so proud of Su for getting that in there. That's so much easier than like how many fingers do we got? And I gave up on counting fingers. That's true. Well, we got lots of cool stuff to talk about on tech talk tonight. And you guys are asking for it. And so we give it to you every week. You've got some cool stuff in your tech update. I do. We're going to talk about the newest version of Twisted Wave, my favorite noise reduction software, my favorite EQ plug-in. New piece of equipment called the revelator. Oh, cool. All right. All that and your questions. Write them down in the chat rooms now. And we'll get to them here on voiceover body shop tech talk right now. From the outer reaches, they came bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio. And together from the center of the VO universe. They bring it to you now. George Wittem, the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build, set up and maintain the professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard, the voiceover home studio master, a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio. And each week they allow you into their world, making the complex simple debunking a myth of what it takes to create great sounding audio, answering your questions, showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it. Welcome to voiceover body shop tech talk voiceover body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials dot com home of Harlin Hogan signature products source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites dot com where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt. VO heroes dot com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training. J. Michael Collins demos when quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success. And now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California. Here are the guys. Well, hello there. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Wittem and this is voice over body shop or VO. B. S. Tech talk talk talk talk talk. Jeff is back talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk. Glad to have him back. Can't wait to hear about all his his adventures in in in movie land. Doing some really cool stuff. So Dan, what's your mic of the week? We noticed that you have a mic change. Oh, although this is just very receptive. This is my Alfonso D credenza. Now this this this was originally an old crappy MXL 2001 which had the guts ripped out of it by yours truly and our friends at mic parts dot com have a retrofit kit for this and I rebuilt it and soldered it together. It's got like a, you know, a TLM 47 capsule in it. Okay. So it's a great sounding thing. But being able to just do to get the instructions and solder these things together and put it together and then plug it in and go, holy crap, it works. That's how long how long do you remember? I was a while ago. You did that. How long did it take to put it together? Oh, I did it in a day or two. Actually, it's probably less than the day. And I, you know, I got nothing to do. So that's cool. Yeah, it's fun. And as you can hear, it sounds great. Is it trying to be something like is it trying to sound like a certain mic, like a U 87 or something? You know, I think the guys over at mic parts realize that yeah, you know, there's subtle little sound changes and stuff like that. But as I always say, every voice is different. So any engineer out there that's going to say, oh, that's a K 47 or a TLM 47 or a TLM 103 or one of those, they're not going to be able to tell. So when they ask if I'm ever on video and they go, oh, it's an Alfonso decredence or tell Lori DeCesco. That's a joke for my dad. Oh, I don't know if he's watching, but if he does, he'll like that one. Well, if you're if you're wondering what George and I are doing here, we're here to help you with your home voiceover studio. But I figured you probably know that because that's why you're tuned into it. But you know, there's so much you have to know. But is there really what you really need to know is who can help you get the sound that is best for voiceover and it's different from music. Remember all of the stuff that we use is all of this podcasting too. Yeah. And podcasting is come along and the manufacturers are like, it's all made for making music. It's all designed for making music. And then in the last three years, you know, the corporation's like, well, we've got to have podcast equipment. Did they think about voiceover? Nope. Not really. So we're just we're just adapting all this technology to our uses for voiceover. So you need to know who knows how to use this stuff properly because it's not so much dust stuff. It's how you use it and how you set it up and then what it ultimately does sound like. And that's what George and I do. We help you pick the right stuff, set up the right stuff and then show you how to use it right, which is will save you a lot of trouble down the line. It will save you hours and hours of mind-numbing frustration. And wasted time and forums asking committees to advise you on what equipment to use and don't crowd source your home studio. But if you'd like to work with one of us, a professional that actually knows and understands what it takes to have a home voiceover studio and how to do it. Work with one of us. If you want to work with George, where do they go? What can they do? You go to the weird web address. Get ready for this. George the dot tech. That's right. George the dot tech. My name is my address. You can head over there and look at the menus of options that we have available and recently added our webinars and the recordings of said webinar. So if you're looking at to see what's coming up or what we've already taught, you can go to georgethetech.com or george the dot tech slash webinars and check out. We've only gotten two in the under the under the in in the queue so far or at least completed in the can. That's the word I'm looking for. We did one on adobe audition and we did one on twisted waves. So but anyway, that's what we're doing around these parts, but Dan, you're helping people with studios to where do they find you every single day over at home voiceover studio dot com. And you know, I I like working with people who are trying to get it. It's amazing how much people don't know what they don't know, especially when it comes to home voiceover studios. It's it's not rocket science, but it helps to have a helping hand guide you through it. And that's one of the things I can do and I can teach you how to do it properly. So, you know, it's the old thing about, you know, better to teach someone to fish than keep giving him a fish. And that's pretty much what I do. I teach you how to do it properly up front. So you can be a voice actor and all you have to do is hit record. It's the right amount of information. That's right. I don't know if you can find the information and you can get the information avalanche aka the Internet, right, but you're getting the right information in the right amount. And that's really what we want to help you with exactly a lot of time, right? And if you're already set up, if you got all your equipment and you want to find out what your studio sounds like to someone who actually knows what it's supposed to sound like. You can go over to home voiceover studio dot com, scroll down all the way to the bottom of the home page and there is my specimen collection cup and follow the instructions there. Send me an MP3 of your audio raw, please. I don't want to hear all the processing you're doing because everybody who's doing lots of processing probably doesn't know how to use it. And as I like to say, if you don't know what something does, don't use it. Anyway, go on over there and for $25, I will give you a very, very thorough analysis of your audio and if it's good, I'll say it's good. If it's not and you're like way off the bat, you know, I will, I will certainly, we can certainly schedule some timing and teach you how to use it right. So let's get into your tech update this week, George, starting with something we were talking about last week. Somebody asked about Twisted Wave 26. It's got video editing capability like Adobe Audition does or? Yeah, well it's in Thomas's, the developer of Twisted Wave in his, in his very clever way of thinking, he keeps it simple, which I love. You know, which is why we love him. Yeah. If you've used any video editing application, they have a common thread of that, of being maybe a little arcane sometimes, maybe a little confusing, maybe much more complicated than necessary. But what if you just need to record just a quick promo of something for a vlog or you just want to edit a quick vlog or you want to take some something you recorded for your website with video and you just want to cut it down, tighten it up. It can do that now. You can drag a video into Twisted Wave and before it would just strip the audio and you'd have no picture but now it'll pop a video window up and it'll follow the video will stay in sync with the audio. Not a big deal. But what's interesting is if you do any cuts in the audio, video, sorry the audio, if you edit the audio and take out flubs, dead space, gaps, whatever, the video follows right along. So it just does jump cuts wherever you edit the audio. So again, it's a, it's a niche thing, but I think if you do a lot of vlogging and you want to put up videos on Instagram or possibly even like a TikTok where you want to just have a lot of speech in a short amount of time and have, you know, your video follow, it can do that. I've played around with the beta, did exactly what he said it did. It was really, it was just, I like the elegance of it and, you know, Dan and I use something called ScreenFlow and we like that it works the way we are used to with audio, like when you can cut and edit, it feels like an audio editor, right? Like an audio multi-track. Yeah. This is like video, a video tape deck where you just cut out the stuff you, it's just super elegant. Anyway, that's now in 26. It's in a demo mode for 30 days. And if you do want it, he is now actually offering upgrades so you can upgrade and add the video editing feature for $40 something like that. Yeah, but you can edit the audio but not have necessarily edit the video. Yeah, the video can just be in a window over here, right? And so every time you hit you play, it looks just like old plain old twisted wave. That's what's interesting. It, there's almost no change to the interface. Everything's the same. You edit the same way except there's this video window flowing over here and it's just following along. So when you can't cut out a flub or you remove a breath whatever and you shorten the video in some way or the audio in some way, the video shortens too. It's just it's so it's so simple. It's it's just clever. So it's something interesting to experiment with if you find yourself doing that a lot. Yeah. Can't wait to try. I mean, if I've done, you know, it's not wouldn't necessarily call it dubbing work, but it's you know, something a foreign company will say, Hey, can you, you know, here's here's the script. Can you do this in English? You know, it doesn't necessarily have to match, but you know, it's like it helps you. It helps you sync that kind of stuff. Yeah. The fact that you even if you're not intending to edit, it's if you want to work to a video where you need to be in sync, this this can work for you, but the audio has to come in with the video. Right. Then they also add speech recognition, another add-on. So good for him. You know, he hasn't charged anything to upgrade twists to wave in a very, very long time. So these are new add-ons that cost a little extra to speak speak recognition tool is designed to allow you to load in a script. And as you're reading, it highlights the script showing what you have read. So you could have a script right next to your, even a second screen or a different half of the screen. And as you're going, it will highlight the words you're speaking. If you don't say the word or you say the wrong word, it doesn't get highlighted. So you can add a glance. No, right away. If you missed a word. So another new thing that came out of his, you know, wanting to meet the needs of, I think, probably more so, I'm guessing maybe e-learning and audio book world, I would imagine. But that's something new as well. So something you can play with again for 30 days for free and see if it's useful for your use case. In the world of processing, I have been really, really loving this plugin called Bertam D Noiser. That's B-E-R-T-O-M. That's the name of the developer. And I like it for a few reasons. One, it's very free. It's very inexpensive or free or expensive. You pay what you want. It's, you know, Honorware, which I really like. So the licensing is very easy. You don't have to sign up for this account and subscribe and all this stuff. It's very, it's very, if you're used to a lot of the other plugins out there, it's very low friction to get it up and running and use it. It's really, yeah, I like that. If you don't want to, if you don't have Isotope or you want an alternative to Isotope or waves and you want to have something that's weird, the money's going directly to a guy like Twisted Wave, the developer. That's kind of nice. And it's, I like it because it's really transparent, meaning a lot of those other noise reductions like an audacity where you select the noise profile, Adobe Audition, Isotope RX, they get a little funky sounding as you turn it up. So when you're trying to really get rid of noise, the sound gets washy and what's that underwater sound? You get, you get weird artifacts. This one doesn't do that kind of thing. It's very transparent sounding, even when you slide the slider up and do more and more. And it also lets you tune it a little bit. Okay. This is a little bit more heady than I think a lot of people may want. But if I'm setting up the processing for somebody else, that allows me to bias how much bass noise reduction I'm doing versus how much middle or treble bass noise reduction, which is nice. So let's say most people don't have a lot of noise, maybe in the treble range. It's just sort of a soft white noise. You can kind of leave that in there. So it has a nice even room tone, right? You still have that sound of a little bit of natural hiss. But if they have a really bad rumbling air conditioning compressor noise, you can go in there and say, that's the frequency area I need to get rid of. And you can really tune that frequency band out. It just sounds amazing. So give it a shot. And they have a new version just came out 2.0, which has a universal binary. So that means it runs natively on the new M1 silicon max. So that's here. Yeah. Moving on quickly, the TDR Nova plugin is another one that I've known of or heard of, but started making use of because I've always found that the EQ settings and audacity to be horrendously hard to use. The tools are not great to begin with, but you can't tune and preview at the same time. So I call that like painting with a blindfold. You kind of like you get the color you want. Okay. And you look at the canvas and then you put the blindfold on and you go over and see if you got the line on the right spot. That's how it is. Traditionally setting up, you know, some EQ and audacity. You have to test it, play it back. Did it sound right? It's terrible now. But with TDR Nova, which is a really great EQ that also has dynamics and you can use it for de-essing. I got over the little learning curve quickly and I found it to be a huge advantage. And so now anytime anybody has me make a macro and audacity, it's a requirement to get TDR Nova. And guess what? I don't know why, but it's free. So it's another great free tool. You like the price of free, right? How do they make money doing that? I don't know. I think they do have like a deluxe version. Yeah, that has more features that they charge for. They're hoping that, you know, someone will say I want more more bands of something or whatever. But yeah, it's it's totally free for those using an eye lock. You remember these things? I got an eye lock. I got an eye lock hiding here somewhere. Yeah. Here's here's an eye lock three. This is the most modern one. Looks like a tiny little flash card, right? And I got the old one here. Yep. There's there's the og one right there. Now they have a USB C version. So if you're tired of having a hub around just or a USB dongle thing of a Bob just to plug this into your MacBook, they have a USB C version that just came out. The next thing and the last thing is personas. Now I have a love. I'm not sorry to say hate, but personas for me has kind of been hit or miss in terms of products like quality and longevity. I've had certain products to them fail on more than one occasion for my clients. And at the same time, they make these incredibly good audio monitors, the Iris series that everybody I know that has them loves and I recommended to a lot of people. So I'll say all that to say when they come out with a new product, I am cautiously optimistic, but they have this new interface called the revelator I owe 24 and it's a $200 stereo audio interface, nothing too revolutionary, not $800 not 800 $200. So it's right in that sweet spot between like the Scarlet to I to and the like the SSL to Richard to that I recommend all the time. And what makes it unique is that it now has the processing that they would include in their big mixing consoles and and something that's very similar from studio one. It's called the fat channel. So basically you can now insert into your signal some processing. And this is very controversial right? Should you be doing any processing? If you do nothing else at the very least, hasn't an adjustable high pass filter. And for me, I think that could be alone. One of those tools that's so helpful for so many people who go out and for some reason by a TLM 103 and try to use it in their closet in their apartment and it picks up. Yes, something like that. Sounds just like that. And they just pick up so much rumble in background. And so you can fine tune that out and it happens at the preamp. So it's already been removed. Yeah. And you can go way down the rabbit, the rat hole here. This, you know, compression EQ. The EQ for me could be really nice. You know, if you know that this mic is sibilant with your voice, it's a little bright. You can tune that out and it's set $200. I'm again, cautiously optimistic. I'm not going to go out to say go replace what you have now with this. But give it a try. If you want something a little more flexible. It's actually if you remember the Yamaha AGO 3 used one for a while, right, Dan? That one's sitting here somewhere. I know it's in there somewhere. They're starting to pile up in the car. Me too. I got a box over here. It's like that. Just a little more power, a little more feature rich. So it's got the EQ, the compression, but it also has an expander gate. You know, so it's got some more interesting tricks up its sleeve. I think it's really they clearly did this for the podcasting community. You know, it has all these loopback features and you can play back and do, you know, it's got really every bell and whistle you could possibly want. And it could be for voiceover an Apollo killer at a third the cost or, you know, that alone will kill it. I mean, right. And it's Windows and Mac. It's USB. So I'd like to get one and put it through its paces and see if it really stands up to the potential. I'm not going to say the hype. I just I saw a good video about it and I was impressed. So just thought I'd mention that. We just rarely mentioned personas interfaces and I'm hopeful. Yeah. Anyway, last thing my dad is selling his pinball machine. So if you're interested in a vintage 1966 Williams Super or eight ball pinball machine. It's on eBay. If you want to link, let me know. I played that game and everybody came to the house play that game and I I think they got it when I was four or five. So hard to see it go if I had room for it. I can only imagine if my girlfriend came back from Iran and there was a pinball machine in the living. I mean, it is huge. Not going to be cheap to ship across the country. No, but anyway, I just it's just something something that it hits hope hits home. But hey, dad, you do what you got to do and slut and get rid of things. You don't need any more. I'm proud of you for forgetting the things that you don't want. So Dan, that's a discussion that came up, which is perfectly timed, which is what causes rumble? Yeah, because, you know, I work with a lot of people like George does and they send me their audio and, you know, and I generally will go into Adobe Audition and just look at the spectrograph because that within of a couple of seconds and just looking at it. I can tell what's going on in the space that they're recording. Most of the time there's a low frequency rumble. And so we generally recommend people use what's called a high pass filter and what's a high pass filter? It's basically an EQ setting and it's dependent on. You know, what is the range of the person's voice? Women's voices very rarely go below 100 Hertz. I mean, we know a few women that were that probably does happen. I mean, Nina Simone or something. Yeah, exactly. And you've got to be able to get rid of that rumble without affecting your voice. And a lot of people like, well, just use the noise reduction stuff that we were just talking about. It's much easier and much cleaner to use a high pass filter to clean that up, especially for women. You know, trying take everything out below 100 Hertz. I know some engineers will say, well, there's still some residual voice in there. No one's going to notice, but that will. Yeah. I mean, that can take a noise floor from minus 48 to under minus 60 like that. But what causes those rumbles? I mean, we have found all sorts of weird stuff that causes it. Sometimes it's road noise. You know, and I always and one of the things I do is I ask a lot of questions. Do you live near a major highway? Well, I do, you know, and I have a picture window. That faces this major highway. It acts like a little diaphragm that'll vibrate the entire house. Mm hmm. Yeah. A lot of times it is air conditioning. You know, usually it's and it's not the sound of the motor so much as it is the rush of air through ducks and stuff like that. And sometimes it's not your air conditioning. It's your neighbors. The problem. It's the neighbor that the condo upstairs. Right. Yeah. My favorite though and no one ever thinks about this is the refrigerator. Hmm. You know, and because I've I've heard this so many times because you can look at a spectrogram and you can tell a number of things. One, that it's mechanical. That it, you know, it might even be a ceiling fan. You know, you can you can actually hear those sorts of things and but more importantly, you can see them, which is why it's important to talk to an expert like George and I about this kind of stuff. So we can see where those noises are. My philosophy is yeah, it's great that we've got all these filters and they're getting better and better and better. But if you can get rid of the noise physically, that goes a long way to making the rest of your life a lot easier by not having you know, those denoising programs. They're cool to have. They work. As you said, we're they're getting better, but never rely on those. Better to find the source and turn it off. So fridges, sealing fans, air conditioning. You can really get in trouble relying on them if you get a source connect session. Yeah, exactly. They're like, okay. And they open up the mic and they're like, okay, I hear this. I hear this. And they're like, well, I don't have the stack that George made for me. I guess. Yeah. No, you can't rely on those processing tools for those kinds of real time sessions generally. So especially if you don't know how to use them. Yeah, I mean, it's it's pretty important. But but a high-pass filter is super duper easy. Just put up a 30 band equalizer or something like that. Take down everything below 80 Hertz and then, you know, and then try 100 Hertz and see if that affects your voice at all. And take the 100 Hertz one up and down. Right. And find the point where your voice starts to get a little thin. Right. And then back and most it. Yeah. And with most women's voices, that's not even. It's you don't even know it. And it completely eliminates that stuff. Now you've got other noises in there. When you've got multiple noises in the background, you've got to figure out what those are. And they're generally, you know, we know to look at what frequency these things are at because that's a real good clue as to what's causing it. Yeah. Another one's 120 Hertz. Right. Which is usually electric. The same. It's an electrical current of some. Yeah, electrical humming like from transformers and motors at HVAC systems sometimes can make that sound with the motor. And that's not a high-pass filter thing. That's a specific frequency. Well, you want to turn it off, but you can remove that specific frequency. But obviously, if you've got a thing like isotope RX, the tendency is to do what I call like a scorched earth approach, which is just hit adaptive voice noise reduction mode and just hope for the best. And you know, that's what it was designed for people that are not technical. Maybe a voice, maybe they're more video oriented and they've got to get something sounds decent. And it will get you sounding decent and not great. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I thought I'd throw that in there. I thought that definitely a good subject. Now, we really have it. Okay, we got lots of questions and we love questions from lots of people. So stay tuned. We'll answer your questions right after these incredibly important messages. So don't go away. Hi, this is Bill Farmer and you are watching Voice over Body Shop. It's great. From FaceOverEssentials.com, it's the relationship savior, the multicolor LED VO recording sign, not just a stock on the air or recording sign. It's our exclusive voice over recording sign. This brilliantly lit LED 20 color beacon tells everybody at home, which is currently everybody. Hey, I'm auditioning, recording, podcasting, narrating or broadcasting here. And a few moments relative to quiet would be very much appreciated. What's more, the wafer thin remote control lets you choose a multitude of options from color to brightness, flashing to fade in and out. You can even set up your own personal codes. Red means I'm recording. Blue, playing back. Green, it's a wrap. Plug in the 7 foot long cord and hang it on a door knob or wall hook using the included chain. For voice workers, silence really is golden and gold is one of the 20 colors you can choose from. Order yours now for just $69.95 from voiceoveressentials.com. That's voiceoveressentials.com. Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice denouncer guy on your new orientation training for Snapchat, were you? Stick around. You don't want to miss this. Power 1039. At Target, we want you to come as you are. Be comfortable. Okay, maybe not. Bathrobe comfortable. Pants for the customer on aisle four, please. Nuevo México necesita un cambio. La representante Michelle Lujan Grisham ha luchado por nuestro estado en la Cámara de Representantes. Watch anywhere, anytime on an unlimited number of devices. Sign in with your Netflix account to watch instantly at Netflix.com. The ice cream maker is a big risk that can have huge reward until you forget to turn it on. Well, that's it guys. Time is up. Hey, it's JMC. Thanks for watching the VoiceOver Body Shop. If you're demo ready or looking to get there, check out JMCDemos.com and see a sample of our work. Now let's get back to Dan and George and this week's Tech Wisdom. Well, it's that time of the show where we thank Source Elements for sponsoring our show. Thank you Source Elements. Who the heck are they anyway? Well, Source Elements are the creators of a tool called Source Connect. And Source Connect allows you to be in your studio at home and be connected to studios anywhere in the world over the internet and allows them to hear your studio, your voice and your microphone exactly as it exists. This is what engineers want. They want a clean, clear, unprocessed sound from you in your studio and they want to record it in theirs and they want the client that's listening in sometimes to hear it as well. And this facilitates this really seamless workflow for them. The audio is already in the timeline of their Pro Tools system. They can immediately adjust the timing, move it around if they need to, comp together one or two takes, meaning, you know, choose the ones they like and then let the client approve it all on the fly. And this is what things like Source Connect would like to do. Just Source Connect is the one that's been at it for a really long time, over 10 years. And it's very much become a go-to tool for production. Tends to be the jobs that pay better. It tends to be the higher budget productions that use it because there is a studio being hired to record you. So it's if you are wanting to get those jobs, you need to have the right tools. So head over to source-elements.com and sign up for a 15-day free trial and get up and running so you can be ready when those jobs do come. You'll be able to say I am ready with Source Connect. Anyway, thanks Source Elements. We'll be right back to answer tons of questions. Bring them in. You are watching vobs.tv. I don't know why. It's crazy what they do here. I think I'm going to go somewhere else and have a cheese sandwich. And we're back to answer your questions. Alrighty. Can I say something real quick about the Anthony Bourdain thing that was mentioned on the other show? Other episodes? Last week? Yeah. This is the thing. If you go into Google, type in Anthony Bourdain, faked voice or dubbed voice, et cetera, et cetera. There's a bunch of stories about this. And yeah, it turns out they did. The director of this film, this documentary about Anthony hired a software synthesized voice like an AI voice company to synthesize his voice to use in the documentary. So this is sort of like it's not breaking the fourth wall, but it's sort of like one of those like, I don't know if you'd call it like a it's there's a barrier that's been broken. Maybe ethically, tastefully. I don't know what it is, but this is happening. So it's it's for real. Anyway, I don't know what to say about it, but it's watch it and see if it sounds good. Yeah. People are saying it's not the word is eerie. Eerie. Okay. Yeah. That's the word people are either. I don't know if that means it's really, really good. So it seems real or it's like that Uncanny Valley thing where it's almost right, but not right. So, you know, I was sitting in JFK airport a couple of weeks ago before we went to Iceland and I was listening to some announcements over the PA and one voice was clearly like, you know, welcome to this, you know, but and then something another voice came on and it just sounded very not quite right. And I was sitting next to this guy said, did you hear those announcements ago? Yeah. Yeah. Did did one not sound quite right to you? Yeah. The second one was like, you know, and then of course we get into oh, I do voiceover and you know, that sort of thing. And but that's an AI voice and I don't fear AI. I really don't. So don't fear AI. It'll put out the people, you know, the people that want to be cheap and use AI for their productions fine. You don't want to work for people who are cheap anyway. So anyway, let's get to some of these questions that we got tonight. This one from Patricia Andrea. Would you talk about security as a network or if needed when it comes to hackers and protecting the work that's done? You know, can keep your keep your your software up to date. Keep your you know, your your spam software and your malware software and you know, don't leave your computer on at night. Yeah. I that's a good question. That might be a guest we can seek out at some point because I'm not an IT security maven by any stretch of the imagination. I would imagine I allow more to be accessible out there maybe then should should be possibly but anybody. Yeah. Yeah, what Luke Truett has that that newsletter of perhaps we should get him back on and talk about that. I think you're right. I we would be great to have someone that really understands this stuff. It can be a little little intimidating can be a little scary. If you really want a resource to listen to you really talk about this stuff check out a show called security now on the this weekend tech the twit network. It's a little bit it's a little scary. Hmm. Yeah, they're they're they're everywhere. They're they're hunting, you know, and apparently it's like shooting fish in a barrel in this country with the way they're these hackers are getting in there. Anyway, now what's this question about a fusion drive? Can you catch that one? Oh, yeah, this one this one's a bit involved. So I'm going to try to like try to edit it down a little bit. Yeah. So, um, so Michael writes in and says, you know, as the fusion drive on my old 2013 iMac is making frightening sounds. A fusion drive is Apple was like making these hybrid spinning hard drive with an SSD with an SSD. So it's like is one of these with a memory car jammed inside that's physically what the what the those drives were. I never liked them. But anyway, the case in his case, he's thinking I might need to get a new Mac soon. So he was looking at the M1 Macs and then of course did a little Googling. He thought maybe I can use my 27 inch iMac as a monitor after the drive crashes, which actually you can you can use it on iMac as a monitor. And then I ran into this because we all do our research and he found this article that talks about how when the solid state drive the storage part of your the memory, not the memory, but the storage area on a MacBook Air or Mac mini or whatever, when that fails, the computer can't be booted anymore. It's basically dead. It's broken. And maybe that's obvious to some probably a lot of people assume that's normal when it dies. The computers junk. That's how phones are right when that if the phone's memory storage thing dies, you're probably going to get a new phone. Well, that's that's also true. It turns out for the MacBook M1 system. So I won't get into a crazy amount of detail that you can go to as an article on a website called tidbits. T I D B I T S dot com look for M1 Mac can't boot from an external drive. You'll find this article, but it is true. If the storage internally on a Mac Mac M1 fails that that literally is what has failed. You can't boot from another drive. We're used to being able to do this. You can plug an external flash drive or USB drive or anything that has a system on it and you can boot your Mac off of that. Now, for the vast majority of you out there, this doesn't really matter. Okay, because one, you're backing up. You're backing up, right? You're backing up, right? Oh, I'm always back. You're always backing up. And two, it's going to happen so. Rarely and randomly that either the computer is going to be under warranty still or it's going to be quite a few years old and you'll probably be ready to upgrade. So I know this has people a little upset and I kind of get it. I mean, here's the here's the deal. I found a little order. I found a little story about this. I'll read this little bit of information and maybe this will put some perspective into what this is really all about. This is from the tidbit article. A large majority of people don't even possess bootable external drives. This is people just don't even do this. And so they wouldn't even care that this feature doesn't even exist. It's so unusual for normal users to do it. Modern solid states are very reliable. The vast majority of people with Apple silicon Macs will never experience a failure of their internal SSD storage. And they said they'll never encounter a situation where they can't boot from an external tribe. So iPhones and iPads. When's the last time your iPhone wouldn't boot? Right now it's pretty rare. I mean Apple's pretty darn good at sourcing good components that don't fail. And this is this is still the case with the M one. Should the internal boot volume become corrupted or the firmware in the secure enclave develop issues Apple has recovery options. So if it's not an actual failure of the chip, like something burns out, it's just corrupted. There are ways to repair it and recover it. Get it running again. So yes, it is a little concerning that yes, you can't boot from an external drive. But it's I don't think it's a good reason to not get one. It's just progress. It's the fact that the solid state is all it's all combined into one ship inside there and which is why it's so stinking fast and really efficient and really, really, really quiet. This is the cost of progress I have to admit. And so I don't like the idea that it's just that's the way it goes and I don't think it's going to happen that often. So I wouldn't keep it from I wouldn't keep from buying one for that reason. Yeah, the thing is, is how often do these things actually burn out? I mean, I've seen logic boards go and stuff like that, you know, my old my old Mac, the logic board went on it, you know, as I was trying to sell it, of course, that wasn't cheap. But, you know, it they do fail. But are there lots of examples of SSDs failing and burning out? These things burn out. But, you know, solid state stuff doesn't really burn out that these things fail and crash. Did you stop buying computers because hard drives crash? No, yeah, it's it's it's a little bit of tech tech fright or tech fear, tech phobia kind of stuff. I really feel it's not not something to be worried about. Yeah, Jeff Holman has an interesting question for you. He says, I see that you have the Shura A15 high pass filter on your website gear recommendations, George. Can it be set up to have different attenuation slopes like the TTR Nova 12 DB arcades? No, he's rambling on. It can't, Jeff. It's an extremely simple analog filter device that either will help your situation or it won't. So it's kind of a Band-Aid fixed. I guess if you wanted to try it with your TLM 103 as a way to filter out the rumble, the whole idea is to remove rumble. It's something that you could try. I would say it's definitely a try try test return. Buy test and return if it doesn't work for you. But no, it's a very simple, simple device. How expensive is one of those things? I don't remember $50. Something like that. It's it's like it looks like a really chunky USB or chunky XLR. It's like a like if you took a male and a female just attached into each other and that's that's what it looks like like that kind of like that a little bit bigger. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, same idea. So yeah, I it's funny. I forget to mention them all the time, but it's worth a shot and it certainly makes it simpler to deal with. You don't have to do post processing and muck around with it later. You know, and a lot of good microphones have had the base roll off on them too. So I love that same thing. I wish that the Neumanns had that it's such an important thing. But those mics were designed for, you know, studio environments where the engineer has total control of absolutely every aspect of the signal. They never, you know, it just was designed for different reason. And also when you add switches to a microphone like this classic Audio Technica as little switches being for a high pass when you add switches, there's failure. Those are points of failure. There are places where noise can happen. Switches can go bad. And you know, that's another reason why they I think they avoided switches on those mics. Yeah. Now, here's an interesting question from Vox Virtus. Cool. Yeah. How soon do you think it'll be cheaper for engineers to fine tune synthetic voice versus directing and editing live talent? Now this is probably in reference to what we were talking about last week with Harry Berkeley about you know, dubbing and stuff like that, but also cheaper for engineers to fine tune synthetic voice. They are still a long way off. I mean, how do you fine tune a synthetic voice? It still has to have it still people breathe people sigh. They, you know, there's there's just a little subtle these are endless. Yeah. If you can program that in you're you're using a bubble drive. I mean, they take all of the, you know, remember those from like the 60s bubble drive. That's going to be the thing that you know, that's going to be the beast. And that's how they're going to store things. It's going to take a tremendous amount of information and processing to do that. Power. Yeah. Yeah. I don't see it happening. I mean, they can try and like I said, the cheapo's can they can use their AI and they can create synthetic voices, but I can tell a synthetic voice a mile away. I mean, when they when they make it accessible to synthesize, you know, a human on camera and there are, you know, there are now they are getting very good at that, right? They are recreating celebrities that are that are passed on. Yeah. Or they're de-aging them that becomes accessible. Yeah. We're aging them. When that becomes accessible to like low budget productions, you know, then it will start to become more mainstream. But right now, these technologies are going to be either done poorly and cheaply or done extremely well and be very, very expensive. We're a we're quite away away from that, I think, but just, you know, stay tuned because there's new news all the time. Yeah, we'll find out. But, you know, it's it's an interesting topic, you know, that we've been we've been tossing around over World Voices, the industry association. How do we address this? Right. Like it's out there, you know, if people want to use it and I'm sure if you're on Facebook, you see there, you know, they're they're pressing, you know, they're pushing it on Facebook saying, oh, you can get a use a voice that's, you know, do it by, you know, it'll make it sound real. It's nonsense. And the fact that it's on Facebook because I'm constantly telling my wife, stop buying stuff on Facebook because it's usually garbage. I mean, I have I have a client who's got many years in broadcast and voiceover and he is he has done he is selling his voice. He there's a European company that is buying his voice and he is training training their software on his voice. They shipped him a computer. He's running their proprietary software. He reads back thousands of somewhat nonsensical phrases and sentences and it learns his voice. So this is happening. Yeah, it's happening. Will it pick up the subtleties of his voice? I he he knows that his cash the cash was good enough. Yeah, he was like, it's OK. OK, so I'm going to retire on and pay for his daughter's college. If that was true, I think everybody doing I don't think it's that good, but you know, really, sometimes you got to do what you got to do. Yeah, well, here's here's time for a little ad for you and and Mr. Wasserman from Grace Newton. What are the advantages of the tri booth over a PVC grommeted blanket booth? Oh, let me channel my inner Rick Wasserman. No, from from a purely basic functional level. Not much. Like if you were to it's if we are using a good quality sound blanket that we found worked really well. We configure it for you so that it's easy to set up. But from a pure functional like sound quality perspective, you can make something that will sound very, very similar to a tri booth yourself, right? So you can DIY there are like various levels of DIY meaning like go to the hardware store by the PVC Dan. Dan's got a classic video from E Wabs days. If you tip and if you type into into YouTube, you can find it of him putting together one of these booths. But what the tri booth did was we we made it. We got rid of the DIY apart. It's completely a hundred percent is simple and easy to assemble as quickly and quickly as possible. It's also extremely portable. It's the most portable of anything of this nature that you can assemble and stand inside of. The whole thing packed down is less than 50 pounds, 40 to 45 pounds depending on what accessories are in there. So it may sound like a lot, but when you if you check out anything else similar, they tend to be a good deal heavier and just too bulky to think about even checking as a bag. So that those are the main things. The tri booth is better packaged, much, much easier to assemble and take around with you. Has a resale value. Because it's a commercial product. It's backed by Rick and me. So, you know, it's going to he's going to make sure you're happy with it for the long term. I can tell you that. And it's designed to be a travel booth. I mean, that's that's the that was the initial. Yeah, that was clearly our intention. Then when COVID came, it became a home booth and people started buying them for their home setups. And then hopefully they'll want to one day start taking them with taking them with them and they'll be able to. So that's that's really the difference. You know, and it just has everything. We obsessed over what you we think you would want our need. And that's that's really the main. That's the difference, you know, and with that comes a price because it is hand built and hand assembled and everything by Rick and his wife in Culver City, California. So it's a very much a boutique, you know, artist, artisanally made product. But we were proud of it. It doesn't sounds good. Oh, and Jeff, you know what, Jeff, you're a good man. It also comes with an audio processing preset by yours truly. How could I forget? So when you get a booth, you're also getting you can either have me make a setting for you or we can just do a 30 minute consult and I'll just make sure you're getting everything out of the booth that you can possibly get. You're setting it up right. You're using proper mic technique and your sound quality is where it needs to be. So you have your choice when you buy a tri booth. Thanks for mentioning that. Yeah, Jeff, you're a good man. Yeah, you got to put it in a quiet room. It's got to be quiet. That's I mean, that's the one thing I find about, you know, because I build the, you know, the PVC booths. I recommend people have a have a tri booth or something along those lines. If you have a really quiet room, like say an outbuilding in back like your own she shed or something like we all do in LA. Yeah, many people do. Those are great places to use those because if because there's no blankets going to keep sound out. But they certainly they create the perfect acoustical environment for reflection and stuff. It reduces like a white noise. Like if you had a little bit of a noisy computer fan or something and it's sitting outside, it knocks it down a good a good amount. But that's about it. Can't have a dog or a cat in the room. Can't have your kids around. You know, you're going to hear it. Yeah, the cat's going to scratch on it anyway. So okay, more. Acoustical stuff. You get to read this one from Jim McNicholas. All right, Jim says I'm thinking about building two walls in a corner of my basement. So just creating a closet, essentially Florida ceiling and enclose it. It says Florida ceiling comma and enclose it comma before treating the box. Question mark. I'm not sure about what that means, but then says Owens Corning 703 in the wall. Oh, it's just sort of he's speaking extemporaneously here. He's basically saying how do I design this thing guys? Well, glad you asked. Here's the here are the two big with the main gotcha of a basement studio is you better pray that nobody's home when you're recording. You will hear them doing everything up. Exactly honey refrigerator. Can you can you go outside? Can you go? You'll hear every footstep there. Yeah, yeah, you'll hear you'll hear everything going on in that house in the basement. So don't forget that you're going to have to deal with that and to deal with that properly is complicated and I have a design for that that I've put together with the help of another consultant. It's quite that's the that's the hard part. It's not hard to get the noise from traveling through the walls coming from, you know, equipment or the HVAC system or the heater. That's not so hard. It's it's the it's the ceiling isolation. Yeah, so constantly reminded of my one of my roommates in college who where we had no carpets on the floor and he loved wearing bestowed clogs. You know, yeah, yeah, the ceiling is is is really bright. Let's put it this way. I had a client who had a three car garage in Colorado took the last bit. So the car garage three car garage was off the side of the house, but it was attached to the house. Hmm. So it's like house three car garage and they're adjoined so you can walk right into the house. It's Colorado. You don't want to go outside. Right. The last bay farthest end of the house. He has a triple wall studio brick booth. One of the best you can buy. Okay. And then that's inside a fully enclosed room. That's all dry walled off. Right. So far from the house possible in a separate room in a tri booth. Okay. You can hear his boys playing running around upstairs in the house at the other end of the house because it's transmitted to the whole ceiling structure because it's all one unit. It's all connected, right? Right. And he can still hear that. It's like a guitar. Yes. I use that analogy all the time. It's like pluck a string. The sound goes down the string through the tiny little bridge and then radiates into the. Yeah. It's that's that's the gotcha of the basement. If you if you live alone or you're you know it's your your your family is you're just you and your wife and she's in the other part of the room knitting or whatever it is, you're going to be fine. Just keep that in mind. Unless she's using really big needles. Anyway, well, it's amazing how fast the time goes when you and I just talk shop. I know it's past seven o'clock. We got to go. We get we got to go. We got to go. Anyway, it's it's great getting your questions. You can ask us questions anytime right to us at the guys at the v o b s dot TV. There it is. If you got a question, write it in there, you know, George and I are checking an email and like, okay, that's a good question and we throw it in because there was a question this week about about network security and stuff like that, which is important to talk if you want to join us live in the clubhouse room as some folks did tonight. That's another place you can ask questions and we'll ask to them answer them live like radio show style. Yeah, we want to hear your voice. Your voice actors. Why would you be afraid of us hearing your voice? Anyway, all right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back to wrap things up right after this. Yeah. Hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky, the voice of Rocco and you're watching voiceover body shop. Getting into VO is quite an accomplishment and accomplishing anything in the world of performance can be really tough. Getting great information is tough. Getting the right advice and mentoring is tough. Simply getting ahead is tough and the best way to get ahead is to simply get started. Let's make it simple to get started in voiceover. The best way is with VO heroes free online course getting started in voiceover. You'll learn everything you need to know to create a successful satisfying and profitable voiceover career. The link is really simple. Here it is VO heroes dot com forward slash start. Again, that's VO heroes dot com forward slash start. Get ahead in voiceover simply by getting started. Go to VO heroes dot com forward slash start in these modern times. Every business needs a website when you need a website for your voice acting business. There's only one place to go like the name says voice actor websites dot com. Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept to live online in a much shorter time. When you contact voice actor websites dot com their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are they work with you to highlight what you do then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are and how your voice is the one for them. Plus voice actor websites dot com has other great resources like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish. Don't try it yourself. Go with the pros voice actor websites dot com where your via website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what. This is the Latin Lover narrator from Jane the Virgin Anthony Mendez and you're enjoying Dan and George on the voiceover buddy show and we're back to say goodbye. At a rest my ears these things are this is the last time I wear them for two hours on the show. Yeah now now next week you're going to be out camping I guess. Let's see. Two weeks from now. Yes that would be the 23rd I think yeah I will be on the road. Yeah. So we might do something like we might do something different who knows we haven't figured it out yet pre-record something there's always something we can talk about but I know we have is it Pam Chapman Sue Chapman to the Amy Chapman Amy Chapman. Yes yes yes who is a speech pathologist or she is a she is an expert on getting your voice working right. Yeah she does like laryngeal massages. I've heard are really really good. Anyway you know she'll be out in a couple of weeks. She's been on before if you want to see who she is just type their type her name into YouTube the OBS. But anyway we're looking forward to having her on the show. Yeah we've got lots of great people coming up as we head into fall and maybe it'll cool off a little bit who are our donors this week. We have Robert Liedem. Yes I con Martha con productions. Don Griffith George A. Wittem my dad Brian Page Rob Ryder Patty Gibbons Greg Thomas Antland Productions Shawna Payton Timberd Thomas Pinto Thomas Pinto really still. Thanks and Shelly Avellino. You know those names well because we read them almost every single episode and that's because they subscribe they they've been donating a little bit of money automatically using our PayPal link and you can do if you like we'll just keep reading your name which is why we've kept the show on the air for 10 years because we've been able to technologically move with the times. What we call those associate producers is how that works. No we call them executives producers. Anyway look if you need help with your home studio you can go to work with George at George the dot tech and Dan ever at home VO home voiceover studio dot com. Alrighty our sponsors we thank them immensely every week Harlan Hogan's voiceover essentials voice over extra source elements. Vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and GMC demos. Thank you. Thanks to Jeff Holman for holding down the fort in the check rooms tonight. Danny Burnside over on Clubhouse Sumer Lino hope you're feeling better and but she still got it done and we can still do it remotely but I can't wait for everybody to get back in here. It's always much more fun when we're all together for sure and of course Lee penny for being Lee penny. Well that's going to do it for us this week. And so George is frozen. So I will say I'm not making a ridiculous face. Thank God for that. That's true. But at least we can hear him. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George with him and this is voiceover body shop or Vio B. S. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. See you next week kids. Thanks for watching.