 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk Tech talk tech talk. Now Jeff says tech talk tech talk. We got lots of tech to talk about You got a couple of things. I got a I want to talk about sound treatment a little bit something acoustic treatment acoustic talk Okay, cool, you know, so that that'll be that'll be interesting wax poetically on that for a long time Right, and if you have a question about home voiceover studios You know, you don't get the chance to talk to two experts that actually know more about this than just about everybody else because and for free Yeah, really, I mean you can hire us, but we're giving you the information here that you need But then again, you got to learn how to do it and having the equipment isn't necessarily What makes you good? Mm-hmm? So anyway people are also upgrading and quit upgrading the equipment that they have no business upgrading to because they feel My career requires me to upgrade now Oh, and they buy things and they have no idea why they bought them and yeah, all righty So if you got a question about stuff like that or anything else with it regarding voiceover technology put it in the chat room whether you're watching on Facebook live or YouTube live mm-hmm or on CBS, you know, they might pick us up if their program really sucks anyway Voiceover body shop tech talk right now Oh Brought to you by voiceover essentials calm the home of Harlan Hogan signature products source elements the makers of source connect Voiceover heroes become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training voice actor websites calm where your voice actor website Doesn't have to be a pain in the butt voiceover extra your daily resource for voiceover success and World voices the industry Association of freelance voice talent and Now here's your hosts Dan and George Hey there, I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whittem. This is voiceover body shop or VO BES tech talk tech talk Tech talk tech talk not tick-tock tech talk. That's right. We may talk about tick-tock But but tick-tock don't have sex talk. That's right in the audio and tech talk and tick-tock is really bad It is okay. I'm in one of those moods tonight. So Tick-tock yes, anyway This is a show about home voiceover studios you want to talk about a niche It's you know in the entire world of subject matter. It's a niche But when you only have a couple of big fish swimming in this little lake You're gonna get all the right information because you and I have built Probably close to a thousand studios or more. Yes. I mean we've both been doing this for over like 15 years and You learn stuff I mean we knew what to do when we started and then you go through everybody's place and it's like well Well, this could be like this that could be like that I you know, I was at that was a young lady's house this week and she's like should I be in this closet or that closet? And it's like well This one is bigger This one has more crap in it This one has an air conditioning vent. Yeah, there's that but you have to you know You don't know those things until you go in there and hear it Sniff around a bit right and she was telling me how some panel company I won't mention who was came in and they've got all these calculations and they're measuring the whole thing and I'm like You don't need all over thinking it and you know what a lot of times those those companies they do all these measurements, right? They'd actually don't know how to properly acoustically treat a small booth You know why because the math doesn't work This the physics models of acoustics don't apply to small rooms So they just even if they do all the measurements it don't matter What matters is experience exactly knowing what works and what you hear, right? You know my ears are still pretty sharp. Don't tell my wife, but they're still pretty sharp. I Can hear things. I'm like there's a note over here anyway, you want our expertise because We know what's going on and you can work with either one of us Sometimes you end up working with both of us because you'll like ask a question on here I'm like, well, what do you think that we should I don't know but believe that guy. I'm gonna hire that other guy exactly But if you want to work with George, all you got to do is go over to George the tech We have a shiny new website And you'll notice there's a tremendous amount of options of services over there We now have services for every popular DAW So if you are if you want somebody that really knows their thing when it comes to a W audition the people that are available that to hire in our website are specifically Experts in a W audition including Dan So you'll be able to hire those folks directly through our site and get the help you need on the schedule that works for you George the tech and Dan has his world happening over at Home voiceover studio calm. I know you would have killed to have that one But what are you gonna do? I I've had too many brands already Well, at least I stay consistent. Yeah, if you go over to home voiceover studio calm One of the first things you will see and I'm I've been thinking about it is my specimen collection come And I wonder if people see the humor in it or they're like, well, that's this guy thing I hope they get the human right. I know that's Anyway, you click on the specimen collection cup and it opens up a drop box where you can place an mp3 of your audio You follow my instructions because I'm looking for very specific things. I need to hear the background noise I need to hear you talking on your microphone and then I need to hear more of your background noise So I can compare all these things. Yeah, and need both folks. Don't send in just room tone Right, we need to hear voice when you hear signal and the noise exactly And you'd be amazed at what we can find from there There are things that are I'm finding are consistent in a lot of people's audio But a lot you can tell the size of the room there in oh, oh easily easily Yeah, within a probably a small or margin of error if it's badly treated. Yeah, which we will talk about in a little bit but yeah, it's There are a lot of techniques for getting a room to sound the way it's supposed to But you have to go into each individual one because yeah, every voice is different every room is different and Everyone has to be it when we say it has to be custom built It doesn't mean that you've got to bring in a crew and like, okay, we're gonna measure this and do all that No, it's more a matter of Trying to keep it as simple as possible so you're not spending a fortune on stuff Especially if after a while you're like a voiceover is not for me You're not investing in a tremendous amount in it if you start making money Then you can upgrade things a little bit, but we'll also talk about that a little bit Right speaking about talking about a little bit of things. What's in your tech update this way? Well, I mean in absolutely zero particular order Starting off. I think it was I think it was Jason linear white. It was on the show about a month ago Yeah mentioned bone conduction headphones. So I've started looking into it. I haven't bought any yet but they the brand the brand apparent the brand it's kind of like the one that is the Kind of the innovator in this space is called shocks used to be called aftershocks And you can buy their open run for example for well roughly $130, right? But of course like many different technologies, especially Bluetooth, there are plenty of knockoffs And so you might want to consider looking at some of the lesser less expensive ones that are like on things like Amazon If you're on a budget and you don't want to over invest in something that you're kind of dubious as to how useful it is So why would you want these things? The idea is kind of the best of both worlds. It's the pros of wearing headphones meaning You can hear communication. So if you're on a phone patch, you're being directed you're on zoom source connect Whatever you can hear them speaking to you. So and and you're you've got it It goes with you. You can physically move around because it's Bluetooth. Yeah, I know people who ski with these things Absolutely. Yeah, it also has the added benefit of not plugging your ears So it's not yeah here anything going around around you, right? And it's not so it's not really like wearing headphones because what you don't listen to on these bone conduction headphones is yourself the whole point is to Only use these to hear what's playing back and so that's really nice because now when you're performing You don't have that feedback loop into your headphones. You don't have your Ear canals being plugged within your monitors or some kind of thing which changes the way you hear yourself, right? So your ears can hear you can hear your voice in the natural way your voice sounds the way it should be, right? Yeah, and and so you have this way of monitoring only things that you really need to hear Which would be like let's say you're doing punch-and-roll of an audiobook. You can hear the pre-roll, right? You're being directed. You can hear the director, right? But you don't hear anything else you don't need to hear including yourself And I think that's a really interesting thing to consider and I would be loving I would love to hear in the comments On Facebook or YouTube who has tried these right and found these to be really useful be no feedback either So no feedback in front of a mic and it wouldn't it wouldn't feedback. That's right So so I'm curious to see if you've tried them before what was your experience? Let us know down below in the comments because I I would love to hear how people have used them and If if I'm getting a lot of good feedback about them. I'll start recommending to our clients. Excellent So that's that's kind of a different direction to go with headphones I'm coming up also my cables. We all deal with my cables this studio We've got a lot of cables because we have a lot of microphones Well leftover cables and a lot of leftover cables and what we find is that the cables that we have the most trouble with Dan Where's the one that we just unplugged? They tend to have a connector that looks like this can we try this camera Maybe this won't give us a better a better view of it, so They tend to have this kind of a connector now This is an old-fashioned design connector from the original was made by I think switchcraft. Does that sound right? Yeah, and the problem with these is a lot of them the wiring inside is Terminated with little screws instead of actually being soldered in place. That's one problem Which guarantee is going to cause those connections The other thing I've noticed with these is I don't know if it's a shielding issue But these tend to allow more RFI and noise to get in Versus the Neutrik style connectors now the Neutrik ones and it's one on Dan's mic right here There's one on my mic actually actually have a good look at it right here. This is this is a Neutrik style this is actually a Neutrik brand connector and They seem to have a better a better better termination with the cable But pardon me better termination better solder joints and They seem to be they seem to hold up to a lot more abuse. Yeah soldering these things is a nightmare Yeah, these I don't know what it is about these types of connectors But the ones that have give us the most trouble overall look kind of like this. So when you're looking at my cables Gravitate though the ones that have the connectors that look like this the Neutrik style They tend to just be a lot more robust and more reliable And I think the connector is probably the most important thing of all out of my cable. Here's another thing There seems to be a gap between the outside and the inside wiring. Oh, you can almost feel it twisting around inside. Oh Yeah, you're right. You're right And that could be you know what it is is in this case probably It's a thin outer rubber coating with a big airspace inside where the wiring inside floats around Right, so that's probably what's going on. I don't know if that's why It was giving us trouble But when you squeeze one of these high quality whirlwind, this is a whirlwind You can feel it has a lot of it's substantial. You're not squeezing the thing Right, it's got a very heavy coating and it's got a very good shielding and the shielding is that metal foil That's on the outside keeps the RF from getting into you. Yeah, so important So when you're looking at cables, it's not really how expensive it is It's the quality of the connectors and it's the quality of the shielding um And so yeah, you can spend 60 to 80 dollars for one my cable if you get like a mogami gold But if you start googling and look for the words like Noitrick Belden or mogami and look for other my cables. You'll find some out there that are about half that price That still have those important features. So gotta stop buying these at all electronics around the corner Yeah, some of them some of them come from china. They're just designed to be cheap and they forget some of the important details that make a cable reliable Next up going into the software side of things I've recently started playing around with waves plugin called studio rack And what's cool about it or has multiple layers of coolness But one of the main things that I love about studio rack is it is free first of all It's absolutely a free plugin I have it installed here on twisted wave so I can throw a screenshot so you guys can see what it looks like So it runs on twisted wave. It really runs on absolutely any DAW Let's go to window and twisted wave and now Now you should see My whole twisted wave window as well as the studio rack plugin The cool thing about studio rack is it allows you to make a chain of plugins that you want in their plugin And they they don't have to be waves plugins So what you see right here on this screen every plugin you see in this window With the exception of ozone. That's a not a free one but a cheap one Every plugin in here is a free plugin tdr nova denoiser um from bur tom denoiser Loud max which we're all quite familiar with for setting your output level your your Makeup gain and then what I threw on the end called dp meter It's a little bit like the waves meter, but you know, it's it's a free meter And so I was able to put together a completely free chain of plugins that you can now Install in another DAW I could take this same rack And then install it on adobe audition Or audacity and I will get back exactly the same settings everything and it's portable from system to system The next part that's cool about it Is this macro area these macro knobs? I can set up knobs that do specific jobs. So for example You don't have to understand that a low-cut filter is go to td tdr nova Pardon me a lot of dust in the air. I don't know what it is Um, I don't have to know to go into this kind of complicated looking plugin To go find the hp or high pass filter plugin And Learn how to Excuse me And learn how to dial this thing in because if somebody like george set it up for you Now you can turn the low-cut filter knob that's been predetermined to adjust exactly that tool and now you'll be able to adjust The tdr nova high pass filter without having to understand how the tdr nova high pass filter works You don't have to open this Go over here and turn this knob. I don't have enough room. Maybe I can make these work But what happens? Oh, look at that when I turn the low-cut filter knob I'm actually adjusting the high put high pass filter cutoff Right going from like 80 hertz to 100 hertz to 120 and and this is all real time If you're playing back your track, you will hear the effect in real time as you adjust it And as you can see looking at all these knobs, I have one for reduced noise Now this is tied to the denoiser plugin, right? And it's adjusting the threshold. I have one for warm which adds sort of a low frequency warmth, right? I have a bright which adds some top end et cetera et cetera at all these knobs And they're predetermined to do certain features. So you don't have to Understand the minutiae. You don't have to be afraid To actually adjust your settings, but you got to know what to listen for that's right And that's the beauty of this instead of having potentially 77 parameters to play with You can have six or eight and now there's far far less controls Do you ever go into a car museum and you see a Model T many times and you look at and go Wow, there's two different little levers on the steering wheel And then there's another dial on the dashboard and you look at the floor and there's like how many foot pedals are there? These things were really complicated to drive back then because they didn't know how to automate a lot of things like choke and everything else As cars got more modern choke became automatic. There's a lot of things in a modern car now electric cars are the logical conclusion, you know You just press it's like a golf cart you press the the pedal and it starts to go right This is where we're trying to go. This is where I'm trying to go with this processing, right? Where it's not a Model T anymore. You don't have to understand how adjust the timing the spark all this other stuff You can just get in and drive that's the idea and that's what's so cool about studio racks so i'm looking forward to making more use of that and Showing more folks how to use it and I've set up a studio rack service on the website Where you can actually get that set up for you very very last thing I'll jump into real quick jump in and out. Do you know twisted wave has a video editing function? I've heard that And I use twisted wave. I just haven't had the occasion to use it yet Well, I'll tell you the video editing function is nice because if you're doing self tapes and you want to edit something up really quickly It's a very quick way to just chop up something and take out the dead space, right? It's beautiful for that But why I found the other hidden benefit of the twisted wave video editing isn't the video editing at all It's the audio processing So you've recorded something on your iPhone or your camera and there's Rumbling background noise because the air conditioning the heater was on There's you know, it sounds a little bit thin or whatever it is It's hard to use the processing tools in In uh, let's say for example iMovie they're not that great. They're not very intuitive blah blah blah Now you can drag that video clip into twisted wave and use the processing in twisted waves I think is more intuitive. Yeah, especially if you have a stack made for you for your video editing And now you just drag your video in apply a processing stack of appropriate for the for the video production And then save the video again and you don't have to know oh, wait a minute now that i'm saving the video again What resolution am I supposed to save it at? It allows you to what bit rate am I supposed to do? You don't have to think about it It's just going to it's just going to use the same settings that the original video had So it takes away a ton of that annoying Video stuff You know, there's too many settings in video software because you have to worry about the video and the audio Twisted wave just I think just makes it so elegant and easy to get an file in Do a little audio cleanup get it back out again and not worry about loss of video quality You know bit rate settings and all this other stuff. So I thought that was a really I just I've been playing with it More I found it to be a really useful sort of side effect of having a Audio slash video editor like twist it right if you do a lot of video editing You know if you're doing a lot of video because everybody's doing video these days Yeah, it's probably a very valuable tool. I mean, I love twisted wave because it's just so simple It's it's it is the simple audio editing twisted wave equivalent for video. Right. I don't know of anything that's more Efficient and easy to operate everything else is I'm considerably more complicated and people are very thankful when we recommend it I wish we had a nickel for every time we've sold a copy of that Well, we just we we get it back because we give out the right advice for the right tools and it comes back around And we get to thank thomas the developer of twisted wave. He is the man. Thank you thomas. You're awesome. Yeah That's a that's a great program. I actually used it this way I mean I usually use adobe audition for everything But if it's a long format thing Just let it roll it's not gonna I mean not that anything it's gonna make my computer sweat We've got those mac minis with the m1 chip. Yeah, the m1 chips are smoking fast But I but I've gotten used to use the wave and you know, just you could take a file and throw it in something else That's the other thing. It's a lot of people are like well I I want to use this program But I got to do it through this to do that and I'm like You take the file and you put it in the other one Yeah, twisted wave is not good for over thinkers. Like if you're like I want to know every single parameter I need to I need under No, it's good for very efficient workflow. It's like it's it's a switchblade You know, it's on a swiss army knife so to speak. So that's what I love about anyway sound treatment acoustics Yeah, I've what have been dealing with lead. Well, I've I've had a it's been a week of People as you just mentioned who overthink things. Mm-hmm. There's everybody's they read too much They ask a lot. I mean, it's important to ask questions Sure, but they ask questions of people who don't give them the right answers. Yeah, you know, don't ask on facebook Somebody told me that dot dot dot I heard that dot dot dot right. Oh, I get that four or five times a day. Yeah One of the things that I keep hearing and hearing badly People not understanding the physical difference between soundproofing And sound treatment. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know It's like, you know, should I put more or Alex to keep to isolate myself more? Yeah, yeah, no They are two Very different physical things right you have when it comes to the acoustics of your room Which George and I agree is by far the most important thing That happens with your your audio Because if it's clean on the outside when you're doing it It saves you so much trouble on the back end because you don't really have to do a whole lot to it if you if you record it, right? Yep isolation requires a number of things mass thickness Being far away from noise You know, like if you're if you live under a you know the runway of an airport Not a great place to be doing voiceover. Yeah, it's gonna be expensive Right. Let's put that one. Well, I know it can be done if you want to spend the money That's right You know and as I always like to say you live where you choose to live Yeah, and if you want to do voiceover you better choose a good place You know out in the woods is a good place Out in the cow pasture is a good place You know just the occasional moo every now and then but Soundproofing is a is not easy and it is by far the most expensive part of having a home voiceover studio Yeah, so one of the things we recommend is well one find a good closet that has Doesn't have an exterior wall, right doesn't have a window Got to deal with the closet that has a window got to do a window plug in there I mean like right on third avenue. It's like Both ways and you know, it's tough to an apartment a lot of times those closets a share a wall with the corridor, right? Exactly any other clunk clunk clunk and yeah, or somebody else flushing a toilet or something like that, right? so You have a couple of choices when it comes to soundproofing One you could spend a crap load of money On something something good like a studio brooks. Yeah, or you know whisper room or You know vocal booth, I mean there's a lot of companies and there's obviously more now I think people need to understand the simple concept about boots They were never designed to do voiceover They were designed to prevent and somebody actually called me about this this week I yeah, I'm gonna be doing voiceover, but I have to I have to practice my saxophone So, um That I want to bother my roommates. Mm-hmm. Well, you need something like that to do that Well, that's the thing is most of those iso booths. I think it would get into are better At keeping the sound in the booth as opposed to then they are keeping sound from getting into the booth Exactly outside and that's right that studio bricks is one of the few companies that give you test data showing both both Types of isolation right both sound Originating outside and getting in and sound Originating inside and getting out and you'll notice that the booth has pretty different levels of performance for those two things And the guy that started studio bricks started it because he's a saxophone player. It's the play saxophone So it makes no sense. Yeah So you either invest in a booth or you find the right closet and then you talk to you or I and we're like, okay Here's how you isolate yourself better One of the things that one of the sounds that comes in more than anything else aside from air conditioning and furnaces is refrigerators It's like why you can look at it on a waveform. You can look at it at a spectrogram It is a a steady mechanical noise You know below 180 Hertz or thereabouts And how do you deal with it? Well, you can filter it out because it usually your voice doesn't even I think it's one of the more kind of easier type of things to filter out But I've learned to recognize it. Yeah here and I'm like, well, of course, you don't even hear it But it shows up on the meter because it's actually pretty loud You know if you have you know elephant hearing I suppose um, but isolation is Important soundproofing is preventing sound from coming into where your microphone is right. All right, right The other part of this is sound treatment and That requires a lot of different things Because you can use materials that you have sitting around the house to do it a duvet come true duvet cover killer Just fabulous. I call it practical acoustic treatment. Exactly Use what you have right because no one needs to see how the sausage is made if it sounds good It is good. That's right. So that's the important thing. There are there are products, you know, we've got audio mute and You know vocal booth to go makes makes the producer's choice And those work really really well, but they're not really that cheap So if you're just starting out use what you got You know to put it on the walls old duvets from goodwill Exactly or even old curtains work real old draperies. Yeah heavy stuff But the thing is heavier the better you got to drape it because not only does it has that pleading That's right. So it you know it will diffuse the sound so it bounces and then it gets absorbed Yeah, but there's a difference between soundproofing And sound treatment and the next person says i'm going to get some foam to soundproof my studio soundproof foam dot com It's yeah, it's it's not it's not going to help. Yeah, that one's been driving me nuts lately. Yeah Well, okay, it's been driving me nuts for about 15 years. Yeah, since ever since we've learned the difference ourselves Right, exactly. It's been driving us nuts. Yeah. Anyway, so that's that's my little rant for this week So learn that get it in your heads. There's a difference between soundproofing and sound treatment Thank you dan. You're welcome. All right We got more to come. Uh, do we got any questions there, jeff? Oh, we've got them We're gonna get to those right after these very important messages So do not go away from voiceover body shop tech talk This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on The voiceover body shop Have you noticed the increasing demands of clients regarding our home studios? Are they at a professional level to record vo for broadcast? I've seen several now demanding cardioid condenser microphones along with ad converters at 24 bit 44 1k Now that eliminates the majority of usb microphones the vo1a and the mic port pro solve that problem You know how i'm always saying that all the equipment we use is designed for making music The vo1a harlan hogan signature series studio condenser mic is tailored to the unique needs of voiceover recording And the mic port pro 3 from sentrance has been the industry standard audio interface for over a decade at home and on the road The new mic port pro 3 brings incredible features like the new mic preamp with 65 db of crystal clear gain usb cjax with adapter for compatibility with standard usb ports and a stunning headphone amplifier with a super convenient gain switch You can get them both at voiceover essentials.com where you'll see all their great products made just for us vo people All right Well, let's talk about one of our other wonderful sponsors source elements the creators of source connect and source nexus And a whole cadre of other tools well The thing about these tools is they're all about facilitating a session in a most efficient possible way At a certain point your voiceover career you start realizing that your job is to make the job of everybody else on the production Go smoothly and easily There's a lot of people out there with talent right but at the end of the day if you're the one that brings the talent Ann is easy to work with understands your own tools and gets consistent performances every time not just performance acting wise but Technical performance every time you're going to be they're going to want to keep hiring you I mean, that's the bottom line. They want someone that fits into their Their workflow you might say you're a cog in a giant machine Doesn't sound very glamorous, but it's true and the best voice actors know that that's true And they're the ones that are going to keep getting hired So if you want to be that really smooth running cog that really fits into workflows You probably want to have source connect So go over to source dash elements calm and you can just kind of kick the tires over there get get your account set up You can get a trial license And see how it works and if you want help they have tremendous amounts of training and resources I am also available over at george d.tech to help you with our tech team over there as well So there's lots of resources. Anyway, thank you source elements Let's get on with the rest of the show. There's too many questions. Let's get to it Hey there, i'm david h. laurence the 17th and with my company vio heroes and my team of coaches and my community of voiceover talent We guide voiceover actors along their journey And you may be watching v obs here And not nearly as far along as many of the other people who are watching you may not even have Started yet And we actually specialize in helping you do just that so if you're watching all the stuff going on here on v obs I'm going I have no idea what they're talking about. I don't know, but I really want to do this I'd really like to help you Please go to vio heroes.com slash start That's vio heroes.com slash start and you can take our getting started in voiceover class Which tells you everything you need to get started as a voice talent And I'd love to hold your hand along the way and help you with that journey Again vio heroes.com slash start That's vio heroes.com slash start This is bill radner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv And we're back here on voiceover body shop tech talk And we got questions from our amazing worldwide audience You guys tune in you know, you can ask the questions here and we appreciate it and jeff holman is over here Typing them down just as fast as you are typing them in Pretty amazing. Anyway, this one came from email, right the first one. Absolutely from daniel brit. All right This is a fascinating question. Why don't you read it? So all righty? I've stopped coughing now. Good. Good Um, I have a whisper room booth in the basement of my house I have taken care to use double sheet rock on the ceiling above my whisper room And plan to add mass loaded vinyl to that construction as well To help mitigate footfall noise footfall noise foot foot. Oh footfall noise. Yes footfall noise. Yes But An idea hit me Would there be any benefits to surrounding my whisper room with mlv instead? If I don't necessarily need the whole basement to be sound treated Can it essentially place the mlv either inside or outside the walls of the whisper room And achieve some of the same benefit and ultimately take it with me if I move Rather than installing it permanently in the ceiling above me. Wow We need a crane to get it out there mlv is heavy so every heavy stuff typically it's one pound per square foot Right, it's pretty heavy stuff. It's close to as heavy as like a sheet of drywall So mlv there's a lot of misconceptions about what mlv is good at and what it's not right or mostly what they think it's good at Well, here's where you don't want to use mlv. This is where it's a big waste of money Putting it flat up against a sheet of drywall Or putting it between two pieces of drywall just making a sandwich, right? This is not A good use of mlv if you're going to spend that kind of money You're not getting the maximum benefit if you're going to just sandwich it I hit this mic again. This is why we put mics up here folks. That's right only for on camera. Do I do this? The whole point of mlv is that it's allowed to be left limp It's limp. So mass loaded vinyl is flimsy. It's flexible And it does its job when it's allowed to be limp So if you have it flat against something just glued to a wall Or just stuck to something else you might as well just have another layer of sheet Rock it at the cost of sheet rock Way cheaper than the same amount of mass loaded vinyl easier to work with it's easier to work with Yeah, absolutely And you're going to get the benefit the only way you're going to get benefit truly the maximum benefit of mlv Is to mount it to studs Like in a in a wall cavity Where there's a space between the stud and the drywall Where that material is allowed to sort of essentially Limply hang there limp mass Um, and then you want to airtight seal the perimeter all the way around it That's when you get the full maximum effect out of mlv Only when you use it in this way and i've only learned this in the last four or five years Gotting to talk to some really Much more experienced acousticians than i have i've learned that this is really where mlv shines This is what it's really made to do will you get benefit sticking on the wall of your booth? Yeah But it's expensive for doing that. Oh, it's a lot of money for what it is You might as well just literally sheet the outside of your whisper room with another layer drywall and just Just to give you more mass. I mean, but footfall noise is by far the most difficult thing to eliminate Really, it really is we have gone To great lengths to eliminate footfall people walking around upstairs from going into a wall Coming up through the ceiling coming into your whisper room or any kind of booth for that matter It is by far the most complex and challenging thing to eliminate completely I know how to do it because i've worked with the best guys in the business when it comes to figuring out isolation for vibration and other things and i we have systems there's It's sort of the turducken approach or the belton suspender You've got multiple layers of things that are all working Together but one thing like mass little vinyl on its own Whether you attach it to the wall above the inside of your booth or the outside Is going to give you very very little improvement not enough to justify the clock like an onion or a russian doll essentially Yeah, well, there you go. I like the russian doll one. Yeah, absolutely All right, thanks for the question, uh, daniel if you don't overthink that one Yeah, and if and if you're realizing that the cost is not making sense Or if you want to find out how to make use of the stuff because you already You already bought it Then reach out to me i'll I'll help you come up with a plan All right. All right next jeff holman has a product question our very own Should I swing the mic around to jeff for sure? All right go jeff What do you think of the apple watch and what do you think about the ultra versus the regular? All right. Well, my wife and I got her gonna apple watches for our anniversary a couple years ago I used it for a while And it started to bother me because It sometimes it would you could answer the phone with sometimes you couldn't Sometimes suddenly you hear someone talking to you over it Sometimes there was all sorts of weird stuff and i'm like there's a clock on the wall I have my iphone. Why do I need it to be connected to this thing? Yeah, there were things I did like about it How about the ekg functionality? Did yours have that it did? Yeah, but I You know, I figure if i'm still breathing it doesn't really matter So I you know, I I'm I'm I wasn't really sold on it. It was neat. It was like, oh, I don't have to answer the phone I just go, you know dick tracy calling joe jitsu or whatever It was fun But it was more of an annoyance to me than anything else But I think to some people who are who can multitask like that And and and understand how to use wearable technology like yeah, and that was probably one of the first real pieces of wearable technology The really good one. Yeah, uh, I mean it works But programming it and you know just putting the mickey mouse face on it was tough You know, and then suddenly you do an update like where's mickey mouse? Where'd he go? Yeah, I I mean it's a good question. Jeff. I mean neither of us are wearing one, right? I I don't have one and believe me Trust me. I've thought about it many times, especially when the ultimate came out The thing that the the ultimate $800 the thing it was missing was the feature that I wanted it to have that the phones now have Which is this gps two-way communication For someone that goes out mountain biking and is off the l I'm completely off the 5g lte network a lot The San Gabriel mountains all that stuff's off the grid like you are offline all the time and it's it's stressful for your Your lovely partner at home Is wondering when the heck you're coming home. Where are you? Are you alive handle bars? Right? And so so the iphone 14 has that feature But the ultra watch doesn't now if the ultra watch had it and I bet the next one probably will That's a lot more compelling because it's built into the watch. It's all new all the time And that feature I think would be kind of worthwhile But that's the problem. The problem is and I love tech But I think I would be futzing with that thing constantly. I think I would be that's what I didn't like fiddling with it Wanting to look at it. It's bad enough that the phone is this constant addiction to hold it I think I would just be using it constantly The one thing that I that would use I might buy like a cheap used one just for this one thing And that is it can be a second screen for your camera on your phone So if you're doing self tapes with an iphone, right? And you want to shoot with the good camera the one on this side It's a big pain in the ass because you don't know if you're in frame. You can't hit record, etc But with the watch you can preview this the camera on the watch and hit record on the watch That is like to me the killer. That's the killer app. That's the one thing that would can I would Maybe I'll get like the apple watch three on ebay, you know just to have that feature But I don't think I would wear it all the time. I wear a garmin watch when I go mountain biking. It's cheaper It's lighter. The battery lasts for a week I don't have to think about it. It tracks my ride. It does what it needs to do It has heart rate tracking and stuff. So it's I don't know. I'm so tempted but it's it's gadget Too much gadget get a fit bit Well, yeah again my garment was like 90 dollars and it does just enough stuff Yeah, it'll it'll show me notifications. I can read a text on it I can't reply but I can see if it was important And it's nice if your phone's in your pocket or not on you to have something occasionally that gives you a text message How many times do you miss texts? Oh, I didn't see that until later, you know, but that is handy and it's just distracting enough not to the point of being Constant annoyance. So ah, I don't know There you go. It's not an easy answer, but I hope that was helpful. Yeah Okay, grace newton asks for the guys on tech talk. That would be you and me. Oh us, right? Yeah, um Where are the one of the pros and cons of the new road nt1 fifth generation? Especially for one who likes to record well up front and do less editing in post Well, gee that sounds like just about everybody sure Now the generation five that's the combination xlr and usb. That's right. Yeah, no the nt1 Now that's a that's a mic that I recommend all the time It's it is a I would call it a gold standard at this point right at the budget level, right? Absolutely, right? And the fact is is it's great price Uh, this particular model is very versatile because you can use it as you it's got its own interface in it Right, but you can also hook it up to xlr and it becomes just a regular good old Road nt1 right the nt1 is great one because it's very quiet It's a has very low noise very low self-noise. They claim it to be the lowest in the business It's gets right in there with a couple others So it's hard to say is the quietest, but it is it is really quiet Yeah, yeah, and it comes down to that equation that you and I always talk about For every thousand dollars you go up in price on a microphone You maybe get one percent increase in actual vocal quality, you know It's it and sometimes it's worse. Yeah, the mic has too much color Everything or too sensitive or too much character or whatever, you know, exactly So, you know and the and the real bottom line with the microphone And this is one that you know, people have yelled at me about it Absolutely wrong. I'm like, oh man. There is no microphone out there that is going to change the way You read copy It's not gonna change unless it's a mic that literally is in your freaking way That's right So, you know, I've seen people with like yeti and a giant chaotic eyeball and they're like They're like craning their neck or they have to look in tour to try to read their script Or they have a big round pop screen that their script they're trying to read I'm like that's when that's where it can help you read copy. Exactly, you know And as you can hear, you don't need a pop screen if you use your mic properly Right as we have it set up here. Well, well the rodent one is interesting. I've seen videos. I've seen the test I know it sounds good It's it's they they know how to make a usb mic because they've made the NT USB for a while I have the usb and t usb plus so they just probably took the same technology and shoved it in the tube I think so. I mean What's interesting is you there's a trade-off between the NT usb plus and the NT one Fifth gen fifth gen the big trade-off is that there's no zero latency monitor headphone Level mixer headphone jack, right? So again, if you need that feature, you don't get it, right? A lot of us know that you don't need headphones while you're at voice acting So for then you won't need it and the whole idea of this Listen, listen the 32 bit float technology is getting a huge amount of Hey, let me in. Let me explain to you what it really does, right at the end of the day It's not a game changer. It's just another technology that you're going to be mystified about right Just at the recording levels with peaks between minus 12 and minus 6 And move on with your life If the script says oh, we want peaks somewhere around minus 18. Don't even freaking worry about it. Just read it Just record. Don't worry about just make sure you're getting nowhere near clipping You're going to be fine and this microphone's usb interface is going to make that easy for you If you want to buy this mic as a spare or a travel mic So you don't have to have an interface with you great right it It's it's a really awesome mic. It's the same price within a few bucks of the prior generation And you get usb for free So it seems like a no-brainer I don't want to try it. So you see how yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't like buy it If I already have an nt1 and an interface right I wouldn't need that right Yeah, I already have that but if you have if you want that backup capability or that All-in-one capability then it's then it's cool. So anyway, good. It's a good product. Yeah proven proven technology Yes, tony de sander. You get this one. All right I'm a newbie to vio. Welcome. No, great. Great to have I'm glad you're here. Um, and have been trained on audacity Good, um sounds like you prefer adobe audition Um, appreciate your thoughts on adobe audition versus Audacity I'll go and then dan goes Because we both have opinions Um, well audacity is perfectly fine Except um, the problem with audacity is it's free software maintained by a bunch of volunteers You don't have tech support directly for audacity because there's nobody Nobody directly to call on to get help Um because it's free software all the third party plug-in companies like waves and others don't take it seriously They don't usually test it So um when audacity does updates sometimes there are a little bit irrational They add a feature that makes no sense or it's not well thought out Or they remove a feature or they kind of do things that don't really make a lot of sense And that's to the problem with audacity as good as it is and as good as it's getting all the time It's still this little bit of unpredictableness to it. I get that a lot I just upgraded audacity and now this doesn't work and That's what really bugs me and this is why I know dan loves adobe audition because it's stable And you get support and you can count on it solid as a rock Yeah, and it's and they they make little improvements on it. Yeah, they're not adding a lot of new features No, no, no, they're really it really it's as as the chronic ages as they continue to update it The engine gets faster It uh, it does things very very quickly right the spectrograph in that is as good Is anything else for getting rid of lips max absolutely the spectrograph and audacity has got a long way to go I mean getting rid of mic pops not that I ever do mic pops because I use my mic right And occasionally, you know, you might lift up and go Oh, peter piper picked a peck of pick, you know, you want to get oh crap Yeah, but but it shows up so clearly in a spectrograph as a big Bright yellow blob with gets darker in the middle. Hey, just highlight it and you hit On a few times gone And you'll never even know it was there Which is which is nice and and then you don't have to worry about lots of plugins I know you love the plugins. I never use any plugins. I just I find that software that has Like audition or even twisted wave has basically everything you need To produce proper recording, you know the voiceover If you record properly as we said the environment has to be right Your mic technique has to be right and you've got to understand how to set levels properly And that seems that's another one that people don't get it's like Because as you say they're you're getting instructions from engineers who currently don't know what they're talking about either They know what game of telephone. Right exactly It's oftentimes you're seeing these specs from you know casting companies and video game companies and that they don't really understand How would you even get that number to begin with? Right? How would you measure that? I remember an email thread that you had with with the producer That was talking about and it was like well, they said this and they said that and you would not realize It's like well this person talked to that person that talked to that And they and none and only one person at the beginning of the line actually may have owned what they were talking about I want to see the family tree or the genealogy chart on on how that information made it from You know from one end of the other because yeah, somebody initiated originated that spec Somebody I don't know who I'd love to talk to them. Yeah, call me They're they're hiding behind a brick wall because they know you're there Terry Frisco asks What's your take on the sphere l 22? How good is it how good its ability to mimic the mics? It claims it can well Really good. Yeah, it can do it. Exactly. Here's the thing Why would you want to keep mimicking all these different mics? It's not going to change the way you read copy I don't get that at all. It's a good mic on its own If your environment's right, you set your levels, right and you use it properly What do you mean? Okay, maybe it sounds like a u 87. I don't know an engineer I don't think even you could tell if jeff was using a u 87 And I was using a u 87 that you'd be able to tell or I was using say a caddy 100 You wouldn't know or even this the ma 50 m v 5 I would probably end up liking the sound of him a 50 better than anointment I like this mic. This is it's Yeah, it's it's smooth. It's it's But and it's still crisp and It's not peaky. It doesn't have like a nasal nest or honk to it or just it's pleasing Right. Um, yeah, the l 22 is an amazing piece of technology and it's not just the mic. It's the software, right? It's a whole system It has a learning curve. It has an expense attached to it. It's really impractical unless you also have already invested it in an Apollo It's harder to get, you know, you can use it without the Apollo, but you won't get the same kind of work flow And Yeah, it's it's amazing if you just have absolute an incurable gas Yeah, or you're a guitarist and you're like trying to you know do different things and different effects Yeah, if you're a multi instrumentalist performer and you need to record drums and a guitar and then acoustic guitar And then a cello and then some singing and you don't want to have 12 15 microphones It makes a heck of a lot of sense if you're a voice actor And you just you you you don't know your career is stuck You don't know what it is You've tried everything you've been to the best coaches and you're like, I just got to get a new mic Okay, go ahead and give it a shot Because at least then you're not married to one choice. You can now try with other mics It's kind of the tender of microphones Inter microphones You don't have to commit to anybody from personal experience You can swipe left and right and and try them all out until you find One you like and then when you're done sell it and buy the real thing I had more fun with my ribbon mics, you know, it was like Well, that's what's I mean, you can if you've always wanted to play with ribbon mics There's ribbon mics in this sphere and you can play with those too. So it's great for playing around and it's fun to experiment with And yes with the right training and the right tech setting it up for you. Yes. I can help you It can sound amazing if you're just playing around with it. It will lead you down Many many rattles of of distraction. Okay, we got a couple more questions one comment Okay, I which you know, you know, we appreciate your comments, but it's our show we get to make all the comments Uh and one was about ai and john bailey was talking about that last week And it came up when john bailey was talking about it. Yeah, got you It's a curious comment. Gotcha. Right. Okay. So, uh Last one, uh, what do you think of the mk 600? I haven't used it Using the the AA battery for on the go recording with its high pass filter that's on I've I've never I'm not familiar. It's a noisy. It's annoying. It's a noisier mkh 4 60 That's the mk 800 is fine. It's noisier. Like it's just got more noise. It's his here Um, yeah bait bottom line Um Tara and I know you want to get your comment ai won't be able to replace character acting But it is a real problem for vio genres like corporate narration and ivr. Yeah, you're probably you're probably right All right. Well, we we don't know we just don't know when it comes to ai I think it's a whole another discussion that you know, maybe we need to bring all these conferences are going to have round tables about ai We have a webinar coming up with with world voices with With a bunch of different experts on it people were licensing voices people who are using it You know and and that's gonna I think it's on the 23rd So join world voices and then you can listen to that webinar and yeah and figure that one out But i we're gonna hear a lot about that in that voice over at lamb for sure For sure which which you and I will both be at and very quickly just to put rob Williams' question to bed you're using a 15 year old version of adobe audition that's not supported What do you want? What do you want? What do you want for nothing? Exactly? All right. Well, that's gonna do it for your questions and for tech talk And we're gonna take a quick break right now and then we'll wrap it up right after these messages Yeah, hi, this is carlo zellers rocky the voice of rocko and you're watching voiceover body shop Your dynamic voice over career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead There's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer That place is voiceover extra.com 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 Voice over 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 blows auditioning home studio setup and equipment Marketing performance techniques and much more. 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That's voiceover xtra.com 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.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.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.com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish They'll try it yourself. 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We're the not-for-profit industry association of freelance voice talent voiceover is a complex entrepreneurial business Wobo is there to promote the professional nature of voice work to the public to those already established in their voiceover practice And to those who want to pursue voiceover as a career membership benefits include a supportive and creative community A profile and demos on voiceover.biz our searchable directory of vetted professional voice talent our exclusive demo player for your personal website Our mentoring program business resources and our video library our annual wobo con conference A fun and educational weekend with other members with the chance to learn and network Webinars and great speakers and weekly social chats with other members around the world If your world is voiceover make wobo part of it World voice is organization. We speak for those who seek for a living Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great Are we on I think we're on she didn't point to her. How are we supposed to know? I mean she's a good director, but you know, you got to go like this and i'm okay Especially if you're not looking at everything Uh next week on this very show. I know we have a great guest coming up I'm not going to say that person's name Because eventually they're going to write back to me. There's two people actually that I the waiting for them to reveal themselves That's right. You know like i've talked to them on facebook take the you know, send them any They they said they wanted to do the show many great guests to be had We just have to be persistent and patient Yeah, but speaking of great things there are people who donate to our show to help us straight to free the cost of doing this perfectly every week like we do Uh, let's see here robert ledham Oh, yes. Thank you robert the bristol group Uh, steven chandler kasey clack jonathan grant Thomas pinto shelly abilino a red thomas Uh, dr. Voice antlion productions martha con 949 designs christopher epperson sarborges phillips apyr brian page patty gibbons rob rider Shawna pentington baird done griffith tray moseley dad or birdsall and sandra man willard. Alrighty Uh, hey Home voiceover studio.com if you want to talk to me about getting your home voiceover studio, right? Uh, or you have no idea what you're doing and you're like what equipment do I buy? Go over there For the advanced stuff Well advanced stuff, but also something i'm actually going to veo atlanta. I'm actually a speaker Yeah, i'm paying to be a sponsor so I can be at veo atlanta And i'm doing an x session so help me offset the cost of attending veo atlanta. Would you Can I hang out in your session? Yeah, so the x session. I think there's 12 seats Last time I checked I think I had eight remaining. So there's plenty of seats It's 199 books and it's three hours of me talking about mic to mp3 It's really sort of just everything you need to know to get great audio And get it quick like get Y'all don't have time to mess around so it's like how do you get efficient great sounding audio To your clients with the least amount of fuss and all that stuff. So that's what mic to mp3 is about So if you're going to veo atlanta check out my x session, please. I'd love to see you there. It's on thursday Um, so anyway, that's that's what i'm plugging and by the by the time you see the show We're still offering the gt t2 number two point p o i n t Oh oh h coupon code for 20 off That's good till the end of march at the new george the dot tech excellent We need to thank our wonderful sponsors because they have been incredibly loyal like harland hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover x source elements veo heroes dot com voice actor Dot com that's right. This is a new product from voice actor websites, which is both used it's a it's a templated System for creating your voiceover studio or your voiceover Website acting website. Yeah super duper 10 minutes. You can have your voiceover website perfectly templated You don't have to overthink it. So we appreciate that And world voices dot org the industry association of freelance voice talent Wovo con is coming up may 5th through the 7th in orlando You got to be a member to go. So join up and join us in orlando It's going to be a great time different type of conference not it's not no hype no selling It's just members helping members. So that's going to be great Anyway, thanks to jeff holman for doing a killer job tonight on the couch over here just getting us all those questions and sumer lino for You know getting it done even with her with the mouse the kippy mouse. Yeah, it's interesting Without and thanks for wearing the hokey's colors sweatshirt tonight. I really appreciate it. Yeah, go hokey's Yes, and lee pennie because he's lee pennie Alrighty that's going to do it for us this week We're here to help you with your home voiceover studio because your audio is really really important The thing is is if it's right, it's right and if it's bad It's usually something that is wrong. That's going to prevent you from getting the job not if it's right So if it sounds good It is good. I'm dan lennard and i'm george wim and this is voiceover body shop or vio b s tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk Have a great week everybody later everybody