 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number 73 73 I always think a ham radio because I'd remember my dad saying 73s when he was signing off from a conversation That was his set that over that was no, that's that's the ham. I amateur radio speak for see you later Yeah, 73s. No, like ten four or see ya upside. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Alrighty We got lots of cool stuff to talk about tonight You've got churcher always looking at all this stuff and then reporting it back to us You report the stuff of the week in tech We're gonna get to that again if you've got questions throw them in the chat room right now If you got a problem with your home studio or a question about equipment or just general stuff about what makes your audio good We'll be happy to answer might be some ranting. Oh and yes, this is going to be an official rant episode Yeah, stay tuned for that. It's voiceover body shop tech talk coming up 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 video 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 the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest and VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials calm home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites calm where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt Vio 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 by the way, I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whidham and this is voice over body shop or VO Bs tech talk tech tech talk tech talk Talk talk talk talk Thank you Jeff. All righty. Well, of course you keep seeing that picture of the Hollywood sign supposedly they've You know after the Super Bowl they made it something about, you know, congratulations rams or something I don't know how they did that But do you have to put on special glasses to see it? Maybe that's what it is Of course, I remember when they legalized pot in California and someone changed Hollywood to Holly weed That was amazing That was quite impressive. They got to do that. I don't know. Yeah Anyway, we're here to talk about your home voiceover studio because that's what allows us to be professional voice actors at home and we want to be able to sound as good as we can But how do you do that? You know, it's amazing how often people say I want to get started in voiceover and how to do it people are so intimidated by the technology and if you take the time and speak to someone who actually knows how simple it is like say George Or I which is why by the way we do this program in the first place It's it's a great opportunity to learn it right and that's what George and I do We probably don't think about it that much, but we're teachers. We are instructors We tell you what the best equipment to get is for you and we'll be talking about that a little bit more later on But we will show you how easy it is and it's always a relief At the end of our sessions with people who are just starting out and they all go Oh That's what that is Look, we've been doing this a long time We know how to do it and we know how to get you up and running very very quickly That's what George and I do. We are professional home studio consultants George works with all the big talent in town. I get to work with a few of the big talent every now and again, but We know how it's done and if you want to work with us and you want to learn how to do it right You can contact us. For example, if you want to talk to mr. Whitham you go to George the tech it's over here See how it's every time I go the wrong way um George the tech is my home on the web for Booking time with uh me and my support team Tim Friedlander as well is available if I'm not he can take over and take on Bookings dan is available on our hotline for tech support if you have an emergency We actually have a hotline phone number We're trying to find many different ways to support you whether it's uh, just need a sound check Have a tech emergency or need to design a studio, you know That's we're just trying to serve you that way and the best way we possibly can um, and that's where we are george the tech and Dan has his brand of support over on his little place on the web and that's uh down there Home home voiceover studio dot com. Yes, which is going to have a whole new look very shortly Um, you're beating me to it, but I'm going to have one by the end of this year Mark my words Yes, we've moved the specimen collection cop cup to the top So when you get to my website and you want to submit some audio to me, you just click on that. It's a drop box Uh, follow the instructions carefully a lot of people like yeah, so don't listen to my audio and you know And they've done all sorts of processing and all this stuff and I'm like no, I want it raw I want to hear the raw sound of your studio and uh, you know without any processing What is it? What are the acoustics like? You know, how are you using your microphone? Do I hear Sibilance or do I hear? pops, uh, you know plosives and uh Are your levels right is amazing. Nobody understands levels even though we try to tell them that every week Levels are are actually pretty simple. Uh, when you break it down Uh, but if you go over to home voiceover studio dot com $25 I will analyze your audio if I think you got some major problems. We can talk about it But generally it's like any raise your luck and put a little bit Uh, or are you under a shelf? I get that one a lot Uh, so but we we will get you where you need to be So if you're not getting voice work, it won't be because of your audio I guess that's the simplest way to put it Anyway, here on voiceover body shop. We like to talk tech and we always start it off with George's weekly or by by monthly Tech update what's going on out there and the internet stuff with all sorts of gear Well, I'll save the rants for later, but starting off. We'll get into it. Yeah Some new tech and some interesting stuff. I've come across in the last couple weeks um Conversation comes up often with us that use the max because Yes, they are cute. They are tiny and cuddly and very sexy and quiet and all amazing Pixie dust sprinkled little machines except they're very low on ports Really low on ports, especially the macbook air But even the mac mini has uh, the new one is coming this year and we understand it's going to have more ports but in the meantime If you have a mac mini of any of the of the current generation the m1 mac minis Which dan and I both have great computer very powerful very low on ports And this uh product from owc other world computing a k a also known as mac sales.com Is called the mini stack stx. Uh jim edgar mentioned it in one of the facebook groups and Here's here's the pros and the cons the quickie pros Four it has four ports on the back one would be plugged into your mac and the other three Are available to plug into other stuff and those are usb 4 And thunderbolt four ports they do both in it. So they're extremely extremely fast So anything you plug into those ports are going to give you the same exact speed As though you were plugged into the computer. So that's great Um, but its other little magic trick is that inside the unit and it's about the shape It's designed to be the shape of a mac mini just sitting underneath of one Inside it stores two different drives that you can add in or you can buy with it pre-installed It'll hold a 2.5 inch drive, which is a typical laptop size drive and that could be a hard drive or solid state Or and it can hold a and I can never remember the name of this thing It can hold an nvme PCie storage device And those are the ones that look really more like a memory card like a RAND chip and that's actually the kind of storage that's inside of your Your your modern mac or pc computers and they are extremely extremely fast in terms of how they Read and write so You basically inside this little box you can have an extremely high high performance Drive for video and audio production Whether whatever level that you do and then you can have a secondary drive Which is just really where your media will live after you're finished where you export everything You know all your documents things like that. This is a definitely a power user kind of project or product It's probably more Hardcore than maybe most video audio audiobook people or narrators might need But it is a pretty impressive thing, but there's a catch And it does have a fan And I guess in order to have the yeah to have the ventilation to keep those drives inside there cool It it it does actually have a fan I haven't heard it yet. I haven't used it I did read the reviews one person in the reviews mentioned the fan was a little distracting which I'm a little concerned about so if you have if you're like me and you have your mac mini Right in front of you like I do This may not be a great solution. Um, owc does have a ton of other thunderbolt docks That are fanless. I have their their original thunderbolt three dock here and it's completely fanless So just so you know, there's other products out there that will soup up Your mac mini hopefully reducing your number of outboard docks and hubs to a minimum I haven't seemed to be able to get away without having an external thunderbolt dock And as well as at least a four port hub usb hub to give me enough ports to do everything At least in my in my setup where I've got a little bit more going on maybe than than average my Another little thing is my my I'm always looking for cool gadgets That will make your daily life easier, especially if you do a lot of live directed sessions Or zoom rooms or anything where it's live and you want to have a really good way to control your mic And whirlwind makes the mic mute ppd and it looks it's a box. It looks like this Right. I have it plugged in right now. So I can't Hold it upright. It's the cords are short This is the mic mute ppd by whirlwind But it's not because it's been modified The this one would belong to a client and they had it long enough that the original Toggle switch, you know click click just a normal toggle it failed that actually eventually failed So I thought, you know, it'd be fun to modify one of these and make it do one more thing than it normally does So my my awesome dad I sent it to him He replaced the switch with a foot switch. He happened to have laying around. So yeah, you can just push it It works But when you turn it back on it makes a little bit of a loud click, right You can hear the Sound it makes, right? Just use it under your foot. Yeah, it's a foot switch. You can throw the floor But here's the bonus it has contact closures aka fancy for Just a switch So it'll switch anything that you plug through it now my dad said the switch is rated to two amps So you don't want to switch really powerful things But if you wanted to just make a simple 12 volt led sign Oh, some kind of light bulb or something that you want to trigger outside the studio You could just easily hook that up with just a normal power supply Splice the wire into this thing and boom You can have a light turn on and off at the press of a foot switch every time your mic comes on and off Cool I can't believe I had to have my dad make this. I'm some I'm kind of shocked It doesn't exist in the real world But it's such a simple thing and it and hey it works, but dad I promise I will actually hook something up to it Uh, I haven't gotten a chance to to plug an actual sign into it um Another couple little things Graham Spicer Recently told me very recently like yesterday Mentioned in an email about hindenburg narrators studio danif. Have you heard of hindenburg the audio software people use it for podcasting It was originally designed for podcasting. So yeah for reporter I think it was like for reporters and doing field reporting then podcasting Well, they they've branched in the narrator production like really like Literally audiobook production and they have an addition now Designed completely around audiobook production And it automates like a lot of stuff We were talking last time about to jody about what do you dare automate? This thing takes it to another level. Um, I again, I've only just heard about it. I'm curious about it's You know when you're leaving so much of the processing and the post and everything completely up to Software to make decisions. I get nervous as an engineer I'm a little bit of a control freak, but if it does what it says on the tin as they say in england If it really does it's it's uh, it could be a massive Time saver for audiobook narrators and you guys know that do your own audiobook production. You know, you're not getting paid By the hour to engineer. So um again A jury's still out. I haven't demoed it but based on what I've read It's quite an impressive tool set for for what it is. And hindenburg has a lot of flavors Right, they're not just one app. They have a lot of different versions So check out the uh, it's called narrator studio From hindenburg. Give that a look now dan You got the mic. I was I was I was kind of gushing about a couple weeks ago the The road video might go to I know we weren't able to do a really good demo of it So at some point maybe you can get them Some audio. I'm actually Oh, it's on now. It is on now All right, what do you it may not work on the way? Well, what are my impressions? Well, it sounds fine It's got actually got a little light on it sort of like the the halo meter on a on us on a focus, right? So you can tell if you're over modulating it's designed to be attached to a camera or an iphone and The problem with it is now as you can hear it sounds fine. It sounds like it's got compression. Does it have a compressor? I it might But now a little app that has there's a little app But I don't necessarily think that there's anything compressing about interesting. It sounds compressed. That's yeah, but you know If I back off this is really what it's going to sound like when you know, you're talking on a camera It sounds really good from yeah from like six eight inches away. Yeah, which is really what it's designed for So it's sort of like a 416. Only it's not a thousand bucks. It's this big It's not it's not very big at all and you know, I can and it comes, you know with a with a clown nose too, so Um, but you know, could it be used as a as a as a voiceover mic? I don't know It sounds exactly the same as this one sort of Uh, but you know, it's there it works But it doesn't come with the right adapter to work with an iphone because it's not the the usb-c that comes out of it is Goes into an iphone lightning connector, but it's not a lightning Charging cable. It's a lightning accessory cable. It's wired just a little bit differently So to use it with your your iphone, uh, it It's there's another 20 30 bucks that you got to spend. Yeah, one of those guys So that's you know, that's and it could be powered by usb-c Or by a tr s You know cable, you know, right? Yeah, like one of these guys. Yeah, it's a it's a two for one It's you get the video mic feature of the tr s cable that plugs into your camera And you get the usb feature to plug into a laptop pc or our phone To for it's a two for one. Um, but yeah, it's interesting I know it's got software that controls it that you actually set the gain with It may even have an auto gain mode that i'm not aware of it sounds like maybe that's It's an auto gain mode. I'm not sure it has to sound like it sounds like it's compressing a little bit But it sounds clear. I mean the audio quality coming off is pretty good I'm curious to hear it in some spots. Maybe you do a maybe do one of your spots coming up on on that I'll try that. Yeah. Yeah. I was able to switch back Yay I'm glad that happened. That would have been some major editing Yeah, so the road video might go to Dan's got one if you want to know more about it And just keep in mind if you're buying it for the purpose of being like a usb mic that you throw in your Car your bag or whatever you're gonna have to buy some more cables to actually use it that way as a usb mic Right and that leads me to granting rant ranting about more things. Let's have some quick rants here. It's quicky Well, yeah, we'll keep it moving. Um, first of all A client of mine, unfortunately wasn't Well, it wasn't a client before she made this decision. Uh, she bought an apigee symphony desktop and um Apigee, I don't know what it is you guys. Dear your gear is second to none in terms of quality of hardware build ad conversion preamps are great Software's good. It's getting better all the time But firmware and drivers and stability. It's just another thing and I The the hoops she had to jump through just to get it functioning So we could work together and just get it set up was pretty painful for her Um, the support she received was clearly, you know, it was clearly targeted to engineers um, and Again, she was recommended this gear by none other than salespeople at banjo emporium. Oh not by Me and not by anybody in voiceover and by the time she realized she had been recommended the wrong thing It was no longer in the return policy time period. So she was essentially stuck with it so I You know, I I shouldn't bash something that has a has a function that actors That product producers and musicians would find useful But for what that thing costs They should have rolled out the red carpet in terms of support It was a it she waited a long time to hear from them And and it was just a very painful process. So Um, I'm I'm still the only apigee thing I'm really behind right now and even then I'm kind of me is the apigee mic. Otherwise Uh, I just won't recommend apigee hardware. It's just too Too finicky and too complex for what it is. Um, another thing that's kind of let me down Uh, well, not really me but one of my clients as I hate to say it the personas revelator io 24 Uh, I'm using it here and it's still working well for me. I recommended it to somebody He bought it as a replacement for his app his, um universal audio apollo solo So he started with something really good but really complicated and he went to this and the sound quality was a decided drop in quality like You guys know we have compared many usb interfaces even including the apollo and found all of them to be shades of Maw of different from each other like barely noticeable You know some of them more so but very small subtle list of this was like Whoa something is something's not right. This thing sounded bad and personas They uh, didn't really they we sent them the audio samples. We said here's one with the solo. Here's one with yours And they kind of denied that anything was really wrong. They're like, no, I think I think it's we think it's fine so I mean fortunately my client was able to return it to the retailer and get it and I believe he actually is Even after that getting another one Because honestly that's the problem is it there's nothing else that does exactly what it does in the way it does it but buyer beware buying a very affordable gear That does a lot of stuff You know something might give and that could be quality control. So I'm just saying Beware I I'm I'm frustrated But this is just how this is the way it goes and that also goes for microphones and road Of road road of all companies. I love I love their products again another innovative company. It makes really cool stuff Really great prices Right in australia I've been using the road ntg 5 for over a year And mine has started Showing some signs of problems and what that is it it can sometimes start to clip And distort Well before you're actually reaching the clipping point in your Preamp, um, it's hard to describe what it sounds like but you're just like talking into it. It's going It's like why is it crunchy? um So that started happening with my road ntg 5 now I wouldn't have thought much of it But a year ago when these things came out or maybe a little bit before I had recommended it to quite a few people because I was really amazed by it and More than one probably three that I'd heard of personally Had the same exact problem So what does that mean? I don't know if it's a design thing or I don't know if it was a batch thing It may have been a batch of these that were made that had that issue But it's frustrating. It's disappointing. They are going to make it right and I know in fact that road is going to There's just no questions asked. They're going to replace it And so I have to give them huge props for their support Um and wanting to make it right Now full disclosure that could be the relationship. I have with road. I've demoed their gear I've had them send me gear My podcast of pro audio suite is supported by road So they might be giving me extra special treatment. I don't know But then nonetheless, they are sending me another one, which I'll be swapping out in the meantime I'm using the ntg 4 Which is a good backup mic. It just needs about 10 to 12 db more gain To to get a good signal out of it. It's interesting. That's not nearly as sensitive And I use a little more processing on it to get the sound that I was kind of accustomed to from the ntg 5, but it's It's working and it's always good. It's always important to have backup gear So keep that in mind. Anyway end of ramp. Dan, did you have a mini rant about rx 7? Let's keep the rant thing going. Yeah, we're just a couple minutes before the break here All right, I got it. I got something from a client this morning Uh, she's like, what's wrong with my audio? It would you know, it sounds hissy and then it fades out After words And I'm like, well, it sounds like adaptive noise reduction. Are you using any of that? And why is it hissy because she's using a good microphone and a good interface and it's like And she had and she had a booth a good a good booth And I'm like it just shouldn't sound that way and then I thought about I'm like you're using Something you shouldn't be using Chances are she was recording too low normalizing and getting a lot of hiss and then to get rid of the hiss she was using rx 8 To try and remove it The fact of the matter is there's a lot of professionals out there. Oh man, you got to have this rx 8. It's great It's it does all this great stuff. None of it has and it's on sale for valentine's day last week The fact of the matter is it's not designed for voiceover There's so much stuff that is marketed to voice actors that's got nothing to do with it rx 7 and 8 and the these isotope nothing against isotope great company But this stuff is designed to clean up the audio on old records And all recordings. Yes, exactly and it's a video editor's fixing tool to deal with cruddy audio that they've been sent Right, which is a lot. Um, but for voiceover for a clean dry audio in your booth with a good microphone There is absolutely no reason to be cleaning that up and twisting the waves and stretching it and doing all the things that it does Stop recommending rx 8 to people Because I don't need it. Yeah, but the worst thing is is people exactly It's they're recommending it because they use it for all their work Having it doesn't mean it's going to make you sound better because if you don't know how to use it It's going to make you sound like my client did this morning Yeah, exactly. It's exactly. Yeah, that's adaptive noise reduction tools You need to you know, those tools can still cause more damage than they are helping you You have to be really Careful the only thing I find the isotope rx is editor the rx editor has tools in it that make audiobook production or mastering Automated that that is something that I find helpful whether you use the mouth the clickers and all that stuff or not There is some helpful tools in there if you have a w audition You don't need it. You know, I mean it's already I can do everything in adobe audition That's good. You know, but it's I'd say rx is a good complement to the Twisted wave or audacity if you really have nightmare mouth noise or you're doing a lot of Mastering right anyway, but other than that now, you know, you got to learn how to use it There's guys teaching classes on it and remember somebody who's teaching a class on it has the experience In their studio Yeah, their audio and you've got to be able to know your own voice and your own sound before you start using something Anyway enough ranting for now. We got lots of questions to get to Let's take a break and we'll get to your questions right after these very important announcements. So don't go away Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great Now at voiceover essentials It's the legend reimagined the mic port pro 3.0 brings incredible new features all in the handheld Self-powered package the mic port pro has always been known for like a new mic preamp with 65 db of crystal clear gain usb cjacks and a stunning headphone amplifier with a super convenient gain switch You've no doubt heard of or recorded with the mic port pro the mic port pro breakthrough audio interface connected any studio quality microphone to a micro digital interface this newest iteration of the legendary usb mic port pro turns your phone tablet laptop or desktop Into a professional recording studio smaller the most microphones It's feature rich easy to use and travel friendly and right now voiceover essentials is paying the shipping in the continental us And they're including one of their ever popular vo caps for a limited time get it now at voiceover essentials dot com Hey That's me and that means it's time for me to talk about source elements the creators of source connect The original tool to supplant or sorry supplant or replace so istn Back in the day when I started working with source elements to Actually not working with them as much as just working with their stuff It was designed as a way to create a backup for istn It was the tool that tons of the busiest voice actors the ones that we say where the golden handcuffs We're using because allowed them to now do istn type sessions From anywhere in fact many of them were employing things like bridges to connect from source connect to istn And that was the norm right that was happening everywhere. Well, I'll tell you istn clung on for life until Really the pandemic and that was the death now for istn and that's main reason really Was because the studios that actually support using it their doors were closed the engineers They were at home in their bedrooms just like you guys Recording you and so source connect obviously took over. I know there's a lot of tools out there that do similar things There's a lot of innovation in this space But it's established itself as a standard It works as a plugin directly into pro tools There's a lot of things it's got this thing called q-manager that allows auto replacing of audio There's a lot of things that really adds to its value to productions And that's why you probably want to know about it So head over to source dash elements calm and get a 15 day free trial over there and make sure you're Aware of it. Make sure you know how it works and make sure you know That your studio is up to par as well to be able to make use of a tool like this your studio's got to sound good All right, let's get on to the questions right after this break Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. Were you? This is virgin radio. Well, okay. We're not that innocent There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working Dickies because i'm here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values A leader for california and a voice for america. It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smart phone But it's so much more. It's a the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs. What time is hockey practice? Check out this song. It's the end of the road for red When hope is lost the i8 from bmw Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's j michael collins. Bet you think i'm gonna try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves, but I will give you my email It's j michael at jmc voiceover.com now if dan will stop waxing this mustache for a minute. We'll get back to the show This is ariana rattner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widdum v obs dot tv And we're back Time for a lightning round. We got a lot of questions tonight. Gotta love sweet love the questions You know, I haven't even looked at them yet. So i'm gonna i'm going in cold right now Meet me too. All right, so let's start off our our of course our chat room monitor. Jeff holman has a question Does the zoom feature called touch up my appearance? Make for lower quality i'm audio wise does it smooth things out to the point of taking out video detail So the feed of your face looks less clear. I haven't used it I I mean I think I never use it if you Well, I've tried it. I've just turned it on and turn it off. You'll see The the the change of the appearance immediately if you turn it on and turn it off like it's it's real time So all you have to do is turn it on and what you see is what you get and see what happens See what happens That was weird your camera went out of focus. No, I was doing that deliberately Oh Yeah, no, I uh Jeff, you don't need it. You're an actor man. Yeah, you got an actor face Tim Branson Says hey guys, have you had a chance to check out audience upgrade to their id 14? Which is called the mark id 14 mark 2 thoughts Yeah, a couple years ago. Did you ever get one in studio to review dan? I didn't yeah No, they they sent me one and I wrote a review, you know, primarily they wanted to what's how does it work for podcasting? So I had to talk about that The audience stuff is pretty good. Um, it you know, they're they're british audio engineers So they're you know, they're sound quality not a problem not not a problem It had we found out it had a little bit of You had a really crank it though for voiceover unless you're doing the game is yeah It it has a weird Once you get like over 75 80 percent. That's where all the heavy gain is But you know, they're great. They're great little units. We know a lot of people that use them But you know, they do the same thing they turn the analog audio into the ones and zeros our computers understand They all do it pretty much the same way. It has a little bit more to do with the uh, you know the The preamps that are in them, but they're all pretty good So the 14 mark 2 and the 4 mark 2 has more Fancy mixing monitoring loopback features at them. So yes, if you need those loopback tools Those will be more useful to you. Um, I gotta admit uh for me and my clients and just overall The company while their products are great designs. The sound quality is awesome Kind of in the same range vein a little bit of with apogee there with stability Is an issue a long time stability is a bit of a problem on some products that I've dealt with I'm hoping the up mark twos are a whole new design Ground up that is more stable and more reliable long term Still juries out if you're watching the show and you've got an id 14 mark 2 Or the id 4 mark 2 and you use it and love it and you've had no problems Or if you've had problems, let us know In the in the chat, you know, because we we'd love to I'd love to know I just when I recommend gear it's I want to make sure it's gonna solve as many people's problems as possible Alrighty, uh professor larry hudson. That's what I call Don't ask me why says george. I need to utilize two mics at one time and have loopback So you can hear you know what you can play back stuff I'm still using the old macchi 1202 and it's time to upgrade you think Are you still hot for the personas revelator 24? I will call you too. I'm about to buy a new mini Should I wait sounds like two questions? It is two questions, but he says he'll call you about the first one But oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I'm ranting about the revelator a few minutes ago, but I did have yeah Well, you heard my rant. Okay, but Um, I just I actually did a video on vimeo pro Um, uh, which I actually don't even think I've linked on my website yet. Shame on me I did a video Walking you through how to set up a revelator i o 24 To do really everything a voiceover could ever need Um with martha con actually she was like she was the guinea pig So I would check that out because that video really goes into a lot of depth It's a video that's a pay-per-view like a rental you can go and rent it for a year And watch it as much as you want But it really goes into the nuts and bolts of how to set up all of its mix minuses and And how the driver works and how the fat channel works, etc. I you know again beware of buying Consumery pursumer gear it's not Quality isn't always going to be where it should be if they had like a pro version of it that was higher quality everything I would recommend it. That's just not how personas kind of rolls They're very much price point company make it cheap if we can But it's it's pretty neat in terms of the new mac mini. I don't know. Did I wait? I didn't I'm happy I'm really happy with my mac mini m1 2020. I guess it's a 2020 model. It's fantastic. Um, So no, I don't know if you should wait Uh, because then you might just decide you didn't need the new thing And you've just deprived yourself of the thing you already needed. So Go get one. Yeah, just go get one Get 16 gigs of ram though. Yeah, I always yeah, always get you know the maximum Yeah, the extra ram, yeah, of course, of course, you can't add chips in the new max. Nope They've hardwired everything everything's hardwired. You with a with a dock like I mentioned earlier if you if you are Okay, frugal Like me and you get the 512 storage or the I think I actually have the 256 Uh gig storage No big deal with one of those docks. You can add in a 1 2 3 4 terabyte Superfast drive later and get all that storage back for A lot cheaper than Apple sells it for so you have options Uh, j. Horace black Have you had a chance to review the universal audio volt one and the ua volt two yet? I know people who have them I think uh Who was it the mention he likes it? Um Peter bishop mentioned it Peter bishop did okay. Yeah, uh, and somebody else uses it on the road. I think it was um, Dave Dave, Dave, and always mentioned that he likes it. Yeah, he likes taking it on the road It's I guess it's a real simple version of uh, you know the uh, the arrow and the uh, and the and the apollo twin Yeah, I don't know how much you don't can't do plugins with it Yeah, it doesn't have all the crazy bells and whistles and the console but that's probably a big pro to be honest Like if it has the quality of the converters and the preamps of the solo the $500 apollo solo But the simple operation of a scarlet That could be compelling So yeah, I haven't tried it yet. I I'm still kind of hooked on the ssl two as my favorite mid-priced Really nice well-designed interface. I'm really loving that one. But yeah, one of these days. I'm sure I'll get one across my desk Yeah, I wanted I wanted to try the ssl two myself the volt the volt Or is it the bolt? No, it's a volt. Yeah, it's a volt. Yeah, the bolt is a car Um, but there's also a car that's in a volt car. That's right. My friend had one I was driving it over the weekend. The bolt is awesome. Yeah. Oh, the electric cars are cool. Yeah Um, let's see here Grace mitten question for me Uh, were we to submit audio to your specimen collection cup for analysis? Do you need to know what equipment we're using our booths set up in dimensions, etc? For the most part. Yeah, I mean I I it'll say what what microphone are you using? What uh interface are you using? What computer what software and how are you physically set up? You know, are you in a closet? Are you in a booth? Are you in your living room? Um, you know, are you living out of your car? Which, you know, very popular here in l.a. Um Yeah, I will ask I will ask you give me as much detailed information as possible Yeah, uh, the reason that we we do the specimen collection cup The reason we need to hear it is people say I got this I got a You know a hissing sound or I got this or I got that Everybody hears differently and everybody describes things very very different Uh, we see this on facebook all the time people say I got I got a a buzz And and of course we immediately say can we hear it? Because it's the sound that we hear that tells us what the problem is And uh, so yeah Tell me everything you can about your setup so I can make an honest analysis Sometimes someone will say well, yeah, I'm using a you know an xl mic mate Like well, there's your problem right there That's oh boy. Yeah, I I have one still sitting in a drawer here just in case you know i'm bringing around You plug it in just to prove that okay. The problem is with your interface Yeah, yeah, it's just a tester to make sure the mic actually works right It was an early attempt to make an interface that it was not It had not too hissy very hissy and incredibly hissy Yeah Okay, you get the shelly erin kohen karen kohen Um, hi guys. Are you aware of any d s-ser that can be applied while you are recording? So real time I guess as recording Um instead of in post um, well In my in my experience you can really use any d s-ser plugin real time Uh While you're recording if you have the right dawg you have to have multi-track Multi-track dawg so it could be done. You could rig it up in audition. You could rig it up in reaper Studio one pro tools logic, but you do need those multi-track dawgs to actually do that Um, so yes. Yes and no it just depends on your Your setup, but that's a dynamic processor and they have extremely extremely fast low latency How you know they how they react to the audio? So they can be used real time as opposed to like dan was talking about earlier those noise reduction tools that Kind of have a delay where they have to analyze the audio as it goes through then figure out what to do and then Apply a filter those cannot be used Uh real time Yeah, you know and and generally and of course people some people say i'm really sibilant I've only seen that a couple of times where somebody is really sibilant to me. It's always a physical thing um And essentially what I guess sibilance is although i'm sure Byron Wagner will tell me no you're wrong Uh, is that it sibilance is an over modulation of a higher frequency Uh, which is why it it sounds the way it does Um, it's an automata pia Yeah, that's it sibilance Yes, like Bang, is that the right use of that word on automata pia? Yes, it's it's the sound It's the talking the sound describing the sound that something has like crunch. Yeah, or you know It's like Batman, um, yeah, you know, um What were we talking about? I lost my train of thought there using processing. Oh, yeah, yeah I'm not a big fan of upfront processing. Yeah, I mean either everything to me everything is is physical You want to improve your vocal technique? Uh, you don't want to over modulate. You don't want to over emphasize any sibilant types of Sounds right, you know, there's no sibilance there. It's just the sound of an s But if you push the s Too hard You can get some sibilance, but you know some people just the way their mouths are again They might be a little bit more sibilant. Can you fix that? In in a front end processor. I don't recommend it, but some people do and if it works for you Who am I to say? Danny Henkla, how you doing Danny? Hey, Danny or Danny. I said Danny Henkla. No, no Danny. Danny. Sorry, Danny Um, he mentioned, um, oh, we were oh, there was a conversation about docs because I mentioned one earlier for Thunderbolt He mentioned one that's not fanned and he's using himself and it's made by Kensington And it is the model people. Yes the model sd 5700 t It's a Thunderbolt 4 docking station It can support up to two 4k displays It can charge up to 90 watts of power out of its usb to your your mac or windows Um, it looks like a beast and it's got ethernet. It's got three usb No four usba ports Uh, it's got a memory card reader Uh, four Thunderbolt or three Thunderbolt ports. It's wow. It's that's a heck of a package It's pretty awesome. It ain't cheap either, but I'm telling you these good brand new Thunderbolt technology Docs are not cheap. They're gonna be 300 dollars usually or more Um, and this one's around around that. So thanks for the recommendation, Denny Yeah, Carl Jolet says he uses an inline cough blocks to interrupt his mic output. Love it Obviously a radio guy That sounds like a radio thing for sure. I think of yeah a cough button, isn't that it's all that's a radio broadcast term for sure Yeah cough buttons Of course, we got those on you know on the on the road podcaster here or a broadcaster. I just Is it right off and like There we go Yeah, I mean I can do it on my thing, but I still have to use a I have to have I have an iPad over here and I could tap a button But there's a lot less of a chance that I would hit it at the right time instead of having a Push button switch that can really it that's the there's something satisfying about that Uh, you get the last question from Dave G Uh from Dave, um, oh, sorry about your gear acquisition syndrome. Lenny Lenny I'm just gonna call you Lee penny. Sorry, Lee Um My Dave G says my id 14 one mark one first generation Crapped out. Um, it took six months to get fixed. It was a horrible service Center in los angeles audience was no help. They passed the buck But my mark two is awesome. So Hopefully that's the case that the mark twos. I have a better Power supply. I think it's power supplies that was plaguing the the first generation Stuff. Hopefully they've they solved that problem and then and they're awesome. So That's good to know Dave. Sorry about your bad experience the first time round Yeah, well, hopefully we're not giving you gear acquisition syndrome or gas Uh, we try to keep it simple now. We talk about some of this stuff But you'll notice that we don't talk about a really high-end equipment No, we don't and the fact of the matter is is you don't need high-end equipment Uh, what one of my favorite expressions is if you're gonna buy a Ferrari, you have to have a nice garage for it Uh, you know, people are like, I want to have a u87. I want to have this great expensive mic It's not going to change the way you perform copy And we we keep emphasizing this everybody's like bragging about you know this equipment or that equipment You know, we had jody krangeland last week bless her heart. She does it exactly the way we say She got a 416 into an interface into her computer And a good environment if your environment is right That's the most important thing. Uh, and how you use your microphone and if you set your levels right Otherwise all this gear is you know distracting. It's for geeks You can be a geek and a voice actor, but you don't want to be a geek to be a voice actor I'm telling you it's just downright distracting. Uh, gosh, I've been pushing harder and harder Uh, I've been pushing harder and harder about not wearing headphones and I dance like duh But man because I'm just telling people like if you are in any way making a judgment call on a sound problem Whether it's a mouth click Or a passing car You are not in the act. You're not in that role at that moment You have switched roles from acting to engineering And then that's it just stop like stop the session not the session, but just stop the take because you are no longer in it Um, I I really feel strongly you really have to limit your time wearing headphones recording voice over It is just too darn distracting and you can't do both engineering and acting You can think you're doing it But you can't do both This is what matters not all the bells and whistles and the flashing lights and yeah The more gadgetry it's going on that you have to be concerned about working Let alone whether it's been pre fab pre configured and tweaked within an inch of its life by me It doesn't matter if you have any concern whether it's actually working or not Or what to do if something doesn't work It's not work. It's not serving you So keep it simple. Alrighty Thank you for your questions. We love them. And of course, you can send the questions to us anytime All you have to do is go into your email program and write to us at The guys at v obs dot tv if you got a question if you send it there Guaranteed it'll be first in line No, when we do our next tech dot So it'll be waiting for us. That's right. Okay. We'll take a quick break. We'll wrap things up for this week right after these messages Before time began there was v obs dot tv watch or else Hey, it's david h. Lawrence the 17th and we talk a lot in this business about moving forward with our career getting more information We often don't talk about simply Getting started It can be one of the most immovable objects In in our life getting out of our own way and just simply taking the first step And if you're watching this podcast voiceover body shop For some tips on how to get started in voiceover or to change something about your voiceover career or to increase your knowledge in a certain area Check out vio heroes comms getting started in voiceover If you go to vio heroes comm slash start you'll get all the information Uh, it's really cheap And I give you a lot to get started in the business But you might also learn something if you've been in the voiceover business for a while vio heroes comm slash start That's vio heroes comm 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 They'll try it yourself go with the pros voice actor websites dot com For your vio website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what 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 got a little bit of time to say good boy so we could talk slower Anyway, um Let's see. Where are we here? Ah Next week on this very show We have another great guest. I got a lot of great people line. We've been nice planning Did you see my list and I saw your list and by the way, who was first on that list? It was jerry krangel. She was awesome. She was thrilled to be with us. Yeah, which was great Um, but we got a few others that i've been in touch with and people want to be on our show They want to be seen they want to be heard and they got great stuff to offer So make sure that you uh you tune in next week when we present somebody else really good Uh, let's see here. We need to thank our donors of the week like rob raider patty gibbons greg tomas Shana panes and baird. I always let you say her name. Yes icon productions. That's martha con don griffith steven chandler, thanks so much sondra manwheeler robert ledham antland productions uncle roy shelly avaleno thomas pinto brian page george a widham my dad nathan carlson graham spicer and uh lea pennie thanks because he wants his name to be mentioned He wants it mentioned at least four times the show possible You've got office hours, don't you? Oh, yeah office hours. That's uh for anybody. That's a client of george the tech um You can access my private clubhouse room And uh, i'm on there twice a week generally. It's 10 30 a.m. Monday's and 4 p.m fridays just 30 minutes just answering technical stuff and uh It's just an extra service we provide at george the dot tech and dan you're over there at home voiceover studio dot com Yes, home voiceover studio dot com got the uh, you know the specimen collection cup got all sorts of stuff I can't wait for the new website, but we're gonna it's we're gonna really upgrade what we're doing You know after 15 years, maybe it's time to do that But then again a whole lot hasn't changed just a little bit of tech I'm also going to start doing more videos again. It's been a while So I think it's time to update some of the tips of the week that I did seven eight years ago Yeah, I mean some of that stuff ever is evergreen and some of it is ready for updates. So yeah There's a lot of it was tonight glitch-free A little bit of echo on my voice when I talk louder That's say it's right there Yeah, I guess must be getting a lot of bleed from these headphones. I know it must be what it is Yeah, you know, we're all going deaf. What can I say and of course headphones? Oh my gosh. I'm so embarrassed Okay, now tell me now if the echo goes away Uh test one two Yep, that's what it was Okay, I am so embarrassed actually my headphones don't bleed The problem is they don't bleed at all and I couldn't hear that my monitor speakers were still on at a low volume Oops Oops Did the whole show that way That mattered Okay, well, okay Pay no attention to what just went on George actually knows what he's doing Oh my gosh, we we need to thank our amazing sponsors. You start this time Okay, where are we harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements Vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and jmc Demo yes Our thanks to jeff holman great job in the chat room tonight getting all our questions out to us our amazing Technical director. I can't wait till we can all get back together in the studio Maybe one more time remotely, but you know, not the mask mandates come down in la. I think we should probably I think we can start. Yeah when we do our next show on february 28th. If you want to listen then watch live Sumer lino. Thanks so much for all the work you do and Lee penny for being lee penny. I think that's five times get mentioned today Anyway, well, that's gonna do it for us this week. Uh, thanks for all your questions. Thanks for your business Thank you for trusting us with your home studio audio, but it really comes down to one thing You can get all this equipment you can do all this stuff But if it sounds good, it is good I'm dan lennard. I'm george wittem and this is voiceover body shop or vio B Tech talk Tech talk Well now the echo is gone. Okay Have a great week everybody. Can we start over again? So stick around