 open with the three of us, then it'll be the break, then it'll be the intro video. Dan and I do an opening spiel, and then we introduce you and bring you back in. But if I want to pick my nose during your opening spiel, I don't have to worry about people seeing it. Yeah, well, you know if you're on camera, because if you see yourself on the show, you're on camera. Gotcha, okay. You can't confuse it. I'll take that as my cue. The main video window is what's on the air, so yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah. You know, just be very careful not to do that while we're live. Right, and normally we have a director, but she has back pain today. Oh, she's in pain, so we're... Why do I get shafted with the no director, broken refrigerator? Come on. It's a retrograde mercury, clearly. What the hell, man? Yeah. Yo, our toilet spray thing sprung a leak this morning. Oh, it's good. Remind me not to take the October 30th show next year. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. My girlfriend dumped a full cup of water last night on both her MacBook and iPhone, so I don't know, honestly. No. Did they survive? Yeah, the computer lid was shut, so it rolled off and, you know, but yeah. It's just like, it's all happening right now. Yeah. So yeah, so we're live now so that we can have a little pre-show banter that the audience will engage with. They know we're on there, they can confirm, they can hear us. So can you guys hear us? Let us know. Yeah, put it in the chat room there. And then when we go to any, when we play any video packages, we won't be heard anymore, but we have the private chat on one of the sides of the window. If you click that, we can communicate to each other offline, you know, while the show's, while something else is going on. So that's where we'll be like, you know. That's where we'll say goodbye, because when we're done the interview, there's no post-show wrap-up thing. You just, we say goodbye and yeah. You can go on your merry way. Yeah. Then I can log out and just piss off. Yeah, you can literally. Well, I wouldn't put it like that, but yeah. You can close the browser window tab and it's gone. Right on. And then George and I do another hour of tech talk and. Yeah, we do a whole another hour after that. Wow. Yeah, and then, yeah, but we do it live so we get live questions, but then I just, we just chop it and make it two shows. Nice. And then next week it's tech talk number 113. Nice. Two shows produced back to back one night. So what does that mean? You get together live twice a month then instead of every week? Yeah. Good. Yeah. Turned out to make more sense. Yeah. It was hard to sustain a two hour, essentially a two hour live show every single week. It's a lot, huh? And keep good content going. Right. Well, we were doing an hour and a half. It was supposed, then we tried to cut it down to an hour and then George and I would talk for 20, 25 minutes and then we'd bring the guest and then the guest would invariably talk for another 45 minutes. Yeah. Whether we wanted them to or not. And that's when we decided, why don't we just do two shows? And, you know, we'll just edit it and that way it'll always be perfect, which is never the way people expect their show to go. It can become a full time job, you know, when you're doing that. And if you're doing it on a weekly basis, it goes two hours and you've got to prep for the show. I mean, it's one thing to, you know, improv a bit, but you've got to prepare. You got to know who you're talking to or have topics to get into. So it's substantive and it really, it can become a full time job for sure. I do a lot of that work over the weekend, I have to come up with the promo, the picture I put, you know, throw into Facebook and LinkedIn and where else? Where else do I put it? Share it with a bunch of people. And then, you know, and come up with a copy to saying here, I think it's going to be our guest. Here's what we're going to talk about, you know, join us live or catch the replay, that sort of thing. But I got to write that stuff up and then post all that. And that's usually during the Sunday morning talk shows and I'd rather be listening to what all these stupid politicians were saying than doing that. And my wife is like, when are you doing? Anyway. So anyhow, all right, let's see. What's, where are you in town? DJ, which neighborhood? Tarzana. He's in Tarzana. Yeah. And why is Tarzana, his name? Because what's his name? Bryce Burroughs. Bryce Burroughs lives there, that's right. Whose family estate office is still here down on Ventura? Really? Yeah, they still, the estate is still run from the same office down in Ventura, a lovely little place actually. I'm sure, and for those who don't know, and for those who don't know what that is or who that is, is he the actual, is he the actor? No, he wrote Tarzana, he wrote Tarzana. He wrote Tarzana, yeah. Yeah, yeah, along with John Carter and you know, the Bar Zoom series and lots of really cool stuff. Basically invented the sword and planet genre, which is a subgenre of sci-fi, where they combined, that's what John Carter is, that whole idea of like, almost like medieval fighting with sci-fi monsters on different planets, swords and that kind of thing. Yeah, it's wild, it was all his property. Tarzana is like this wedge that goes, if you know the area, it goes south of Ventura, up into the hills, we're at like 1200 feet. And you've got Braemar up here and El Caballero and all that. And yeah, he had this whole property and then got developed, there were a lot of orchards for a long time. There's one that still exists, if you've ever driven past it, really massive property down closer to Ventura, yeah, it's wild. Oh, so that's where the Caballero trail name came from. Yeah, I guess so. I'm not sure which came first though, but yeah. I've hiked that, have you? Yeah, and I have friends who live up there but right above Braemar, there's a community that's up there where if you have dogs, coyotes are just waiting. Exactly. We have coyotes in the yard a lot, that's why we have big dogs. I got one little dog. Yeah, no, it's not a little dog friendly area. It's really not. Trail is no joke, I think it's steeper and steeper and it's pretty rutted. I mean, we mountain bike it and it's sketchy. It's intense. Did you ever go to the caves that are at the top of Van Alden? Yeah, the Van Alden trail caves, yeah. Yeah, they're crazy. A couple of weeks ago, actually. So crazy. I know. I know. There's a little trail that goes over the roof of the caves where if you don't watch, you could fall through. Yeah, there's a bunch of holes in the top of it. Yeah, there's holes in the top, yeah. And then you can kind of make your way through the brambles up to the Dirt, Mulholland fire road and we hike up there a lot because we're exactly one mile from the entrance to where Mulholland is, like if we go up Greenbrier. And it's gorgeous. It is just amazing. You're right on the saddle of the mountains and you can see off to the west side. Yeah, we're lucky to have a lot of open space right in Los Angeles. It's amazing. Even here at the house, I always say to people, you never believe you're in the city of LA when you're up here, it really is incredible. Yeah, I mean, you just head up the 101 and suddenly it's just a totally different place. You're heading up into just even the Calabasas or something like that. Right, yeah. Yeah, I lived in Topanga for a while. Talk about feeling detached from the city. I mean, you really... Topanga's different. Yeah, you were like really like, you weren't that far, but it felt far. Yeah. Especially if the bottom of the mountain, of the bottom of the canyon closed off because of a... Which happens a lot. Mud slide. You really felt detached from the rest of the city. Yep, yeah, they get cut off. It's rare that it gets cut off on both sides and there's ways to get out of there, but yeah, it's wild. PCH closes over there a lot, you know, when you get those crazy rainy seasons. That's right. Well, it's supposed to be one of those this year, which is okay. It just was one of those. It was. Well, the spring was really wet. But even with that wind yesterday, there were no fires or anything. I know. Actually, from the house, we could see a couple of supersoakers and we were wondering. They flew kind of close and they were in formation or like, oh boy, are they... But I think they were just in preparation. I don't think anything was going on, but yeah. Just in case. Just in case. This is zero mountains, just in case. 45 mile per hour gusts yesterday. Yeah, it was humping down here. And usually this is here in Sherman Oaks. This is like the most protected part of the valley. Except for heat, it gets hot here. It gets a little toasty. Just a bit, you know, which is why we now have a swim spa, which is at a nice 82 degrees. There you go. No matter what's going on into the swim spa. You guys know, do you guys know I'm a pilot? Have we ever talked about that? No. Yeah, yeah, I'm a pilot. I assess this, but I flew on Sunday. I'm sorry, I flew on Saturday because I knew the storm was coming on Sunday. So I got out there, I just did a flight on Saturday afternoon because the wind event, the National Weather Service was reporting like we were gonna get nailed. And it was, the forecast was right. We got blasted. You did not wanna be in the air yesterday afternoon. Which airport? Have you flown? Van Nuys. Yeah, I fly to Van Nuys. Alrighty. It is five o'clock and we are ready to roll here. Let's make it happen. Let's see if I can remember how to do this. Okay. Okay, so we go five, say five, five, four, three. Hey, it's time for VoiceOver Body Shop. How's everybody doing out there? Of course, if I could hear you, you could tell me. But anyway. You can type in the comments. Yeah, well you can do that, absolutely. Our guest this week, we're gonna talk about dialects and a few other fun things too. Our guest is PJ Auckland. PJ, how you doing? Well, how are you, Dan? We're doing great. So if you got any questions for PJ about dialects and all this stuff that is really important to learn if you're a voice actor, put it in the chat room. And maybe as we talk, you'll have a question based on something we're talking about and we will get to that in the next segment. So stay tuned. You ready, George? I'm ready as ever. It's time for VoiceOver Body Shop right now. VoiceOver Body Shop is brought to you by VoiceOverEssentials.com, the home of Harlan Hogan's signature products. Source Elements, the folks who bring you Source Connect, VioHeroes.com, become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training. VoiceActor.com, your voiceover website ready in minutes. VoiceOver Extra, your daily resource for voiceover success and by World Voices, the industry association of freelance voice talent. And now here's your hosts, Dan and George. Hey, how's it going out there? I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Woodham. And this is VoiceOver Body Shop, or V-O-B-S. Well, I keep forgetting that tomorrow night is Halloween, depending on what time you're watching this. So if you're watching the replay. When Halloween's on a Tuesday, it's like it's been done already. Right. And so all the partying happened. There was tons of people in the streets. Culver City, I just was riding through there on Sunday at five and it was full of kids. So they already, it's been done already. Yes. We've been told that we have one bag of candy less than what we should. So now we're gonna go buy another bag. It means that, somebody said, oh yeah, we usually go through this many bags of candy on Halloween. Really? You know, how many do you have? Well, we got, oh, you're gonna need more than that. We've been doing it for, you know, we've been here for eight years. It's Halloween every year. We must have printed more kids, or you either have more of the breed here. I know, and people just decorate their places like crazy. My neighbor with the graveyard. Yeah, your neighbor really goes off, goes off. Yeah, all we do is take a lemon and write boo on it. That's certainly like hanging there. And that's Halloween for us. Anyway, I hope you're all enjoying your Halloween or had a great Halloween, depending on when you're watching this. Tonight we have a great guest because we wanna talk about dialects. And the number one guy in town who can do that is award-winning actor and producer and coach P.J. Auckland. He's been working in the entertainment industry for nearly 40 years. P.J. is best known behind the microphone as the widely acclaimed and record-setting audiobook narrator of more than 500 titles. And P.J. is also one of the industry's leading dialect and performance coaches. He's founder of Dr. Dialect, which is www.drdialect.com, co-founder of the Diane Institute of Voice Art History in Los Angeles and teaches from coast to coast at conferences and universities. And P.J. is the official dialect coach for Universal Studios and the wizarding world of Harry Potter. So he's one of the only people on the planet who actually teaches at Hogwarts. Let's welcome to VoiceOver Body Shop, P.J. Auckland. P.J. Hey, Dan. Hello again. Hey, great to see you. How do I get one of those Boo lemons? Oh, just come on over. I'll just... Okay, great, awesome. I want to make a note. I've got to stop by because that's a treat. I want to get my hands on. Yeah, it's like, just write Boo on it. It'll be fine. Someone will see it. Anyway, welcome to the show again. You know, accents are a really tough thing and we'll get into talking about that in a second. But as the introduction said, you wear a lot of hats doing a lot of different things. How do you handle all that? I assume you don't do it all at exactly the same time. There's some crossover, you know, but no, generally speaking, it's sort of like divided into three things. The acting, and I'll lump the voice acting in with that, the producing and the coaching. And no, I just somehow make it work. You know, I'm not... Nowadays, I'm doing a lot more of the producing and coaching you know, with the pandemic time and with the strike and everything else, the on-camera stuff is quieter than it's been in decades past. So that's not taking up as much time as it has. And then VOYs, I'm doing at least 90% of my work is in audiobooks. And you can kind of write your own schedule with audiobooks. The vast majority is self-recorded, self-engineered, self-directed in my home studio. So you can kind of make that work. And then the producing, it's not passive, obviously. You're still participating in every project you're producing, but it's not that direct one-to-one every minute of the project, it's you in the booth, the way it is with narrating. So somehow it all works and it's good. It keeps me on my toes. Yeah, what sort of voiceover projects are you working on right now that you can tell us about? I'm working on today. In fact, I was in the booth doing the follow-up to a really popular Japanese detective mystery series that I do and this Roman, these adventure stories, fictional, but they incorporate a lot of Roman history into these stories of these Roman legionaries and just a ton of things. Mostly again, mostly the audiobooks, but across all different genres, my wife's series, which is my favorite thing that I do, hands down. And yes, obviously I'm biased, but they really are amazing. That's a YA fantasy series that are just a blast to record. So there's always something keeping me on my toes in the booth. So when you do something Roman, do you do it in a British accent the way every Roman movie I ever watched? It's so funny you should say that. As a matter of fact, as we've often joked sometimes, especially as Americans, Brits don't do this. Brits don't take on American accents when they're playing ancient Romans because it's different from RFE England. But we do that for whatever reason. It just sounds right and the audience buys in. Accent choices don't always necessarily, they're not always informed by reality and history, but we go with maybe what the audience expects and what makes for hopefully the best listening experience. And for some reason, British RP for ancient Rome just works. It's Shakespearean, that's why. Maybe that's what it is. But yeah, I don't always strikes me as, would they all speak with British accents in ancient Rome? And of course they were all speaking English too. Of course, exactly. Nobody can speak Latin. There you go. What do you do when a book lands on your desk that you know it's gonna be, I don't know, how far have you gotten into a book where you realize I shouldn't have picked it up? Yeah, really. What do you do when that happens? It's gotta happen once in a while. Unless it's some crazy, like, like you're absolutely wrong casting for a variety of reasons, you know? That could be like background or even a gender. There have been situations where I've said to a publisher, this is written in like third person limited perspective, but it's, they might have just glanced at it and you realize it's third person limited limited to the POV of like the female lead of the book. Like this should totally be her book, you know what I mean? So you get situations like that occasionally and you'll go back and say, this was a, I don't know if you guys noticed this and they'll say, oh, thanks for pointing it out on recast and bring it to their attention. But when it comes to like accents or characters, unless I feel like I'm wildly miscast, it's a challenge, you know, you take it on. And even if it's something you haven't done before, I guess I've always been known a little bit for my versatility, so that doesn't really happen too much. And more often than not, the casting directors and the producers responsible for the books, they have a clue, you know? So they're looking at the book and unless something has slipped through the cracks, they're picking you for a reason, you know? Something that falls within your range or something you've done before, or maybe you have a little bit of a fan base in that particular genre, who knows? But lots of different factors. Yeah. If you've got a question for PJ Auckland about dialects, which I'm sure everybody is fascinated with, put it in the chat room, because I know that Jeff Holman is sitting back there somewhere, typing out every word that we say here, or at least he's taking your questions and we'll get to those questions in a little bit. All you have to do is, whether you're on Facebook Live or whether you're on our website in YouTube or even on LinkedIn, we're everywhere live, which means the entire world is watching. Just put it in the chat room where you are and Jeff will get that question to us in a little bit. So we really like it if you ask some questions and get involved and interactive with our show. So trying different dialects isn't for everyone, but should everyone try? Well, sure. I mean, are we talking about voice actors? Yes, of course. I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, trying, I guess it depends. It comes down to, yes, there's some innate talent, but you can learn things, as I'm sure your audience is well aware of. There's coaching available in every aspect of this industry as you both specialize in your areas. Dialects no different. And there are techniques you can use to take on these skills to acquire them over time. It helps to have an ear, obviously, to come to the table with some innate talent that's factory installed. But even if you don't, you can learn techniques that will help you improve. And then what you have to ask yourself, I believe then is what are the requirements of the job? Like take audiobooks. Audiobooks are a great example. The listener, I say this all the time, the listener is in on the conceit. They sign up for the idea that it's one narrator playing the entire cast. And you want them to become immersed in that, but at no point do you have to convince the listener that you stepped out of the booth and some German dude stepped in to read that dialogue. There's still that built-in understanding that it's you. So a little bit of flavor goes a long way, right? Absolutely. There's that gray area that you can live within. Whereas if you've been cast as one role in animation or multiple roles in interactive, like in a video game, and you're hired to play the Russian guy, the German guy, and the Israeli, there is no conceit built in. You have to be 100% convincing in those roles individually, right? So that's the distinction. So really we have to figure out what's the threshold you need to cross for the job requirements. And with audiobooks, I often teach, I developed a thing because an audiobook narrator can find themselves in a unique position where they've been cast in a job and it has some character and accent requirements and they accept the gig. And then they realize, oh boy, the publisher or the casting director didn't tell me, there's like five different accents in here that I haven't done before. Now in that situation, it's not really practical to hire a dialect coach like me to do five one-hour sessions on these five different accents that you need to start recording four days from now. So what I developed was this program on how to be your own dialect coach. And that's really, really useful, I think for any VO discipline, but more so when we talk about an audiobook situation like that where you're playing these five different accents that you need to acquire, again, that concept of a little bit of flavor goes a long way. If you can pick out three or five sound changes and the concept of the placement for those particular accents, that's more than enough to sell the audience on those characters who have those accents. So that's, just to give you an example of what the different genres or different disciplines of VO might require, I think audiobooks are a good example where you don't have to be a master of the accents to do the job well. And one last thought on that, what I always tell people is who the character is is always more important than what they sound like. And I think that applies across the board with VO. But especially in that example with audiobooks, understand who they are, tap into their personality, their motivations, the acting one-to-one kind of stuff. And then the accent or the character voice and aspects you bring to it to distinguish them from other characters, that's gravy. Once again, we're talking with PJ Auklin and we're talking about dialects. Your questions are welcome as well. So make sure you throw them in the chat room. This is a question I've always wondered because especially in talking about dialects, what's the difference between dialects and accents? Explain. Okay. So the first easy answer is that they're pretty interchangeable in today's parlance because people talk about a dialect coach is not technically teaching dialects or teaching accents. So the term dialect coach has been used in the entertainment industry for a really long time, but we're doing accent coaching. The more technical answer is when we get into dialects, we're talking about linguistic differences. An accent is the sound someone has when they're speaking another language, let's say, the accent that comes with it or even in their own native language. The accent is the sound. The dialect is the linguistic difference. So for example, you've got classic Italian versus the Neapolitan dialect, right? So when you see those, they're also written differently. So sometimes you can have copy or script and we can say it's written in dialect. You might even see this like with the Scottish accent, for example. If it's written in the dialect, you'll see things like the WI apostrophe or the NO apostrophe representing the glottalized T. So you see things like that. That's another example of the definition of dialect. So linguistic differences or a language written into your actual script, written with the dialect, written in dialect. Hope that answers your question. Well, no, that makes total sense. The thing that I think a lot of people, we sort of talked about this a little bit before, but some people just have an ear for this. Like, I know I can imitate certain things and it's mostly every different nationality that lives in my neighborhood. Russians, Latin Americans, everything. But of course, when you're walking down the street and they're talking in some other language on their phone and you're like, it's kind of weird. Not was that Russian, was that Ukrainian, was that from Kazakhstan or were they talking Chinese like my neighbors do? We hear yelling from across the street, but we can't stand a word they're saying. But the dialects and those are all so different. I mean, I know I can do an accent, someone speaking English in another accent. Like, you know, my old acupuncturist, Dr. Wu, who would talk real quiet like this, you know, or someone who's speaking with an Indian accent. I don't know if I can do that one. It's very easy to do that. I'm mixing a little bit of Yiddish in there, but it's... Is that a remix or a mixer? It might be, might be. I'm always listening and I'm always listening to see what is different about that, but then again, everything starts to get a little bit stereotyped. When you're working with somebody, how do you get them perhaps out of their preconceived notions of what it is they're supposed to be doing? That's such a good question. The preconceived notions when, since I have the great advantage of working primarily with actors, it's rare, you know, just in my career, there have been a few situations where you work with a business professional who's looking for like accent reduction, things like that. But by and large, 99 plus percent of the people I work with are actors. So their preconceived notions, I think are largely an advantage. They're bringing something to the table where, okay, let me explain it this way. I break down accent work into two buckets, basically. I say there's the placement bucket and the sound change bucket or phonetics. And I often demonstrate how you can't have one without the other. I'll say each bucket is worth 50%. So the only way the math works is with some combination of the two if you wanna get to a passing grade. If this bucket's full, you're at 50, that ain't a passing grade. You need some combination of the two to get there. And that's sort of how I demonstrate placement. So an example I use all the time, I'm happy to share with you now, is let's say we're on set and we've learned a German accent together and they just added a line to the script. And you're freaking out because we didn't work on that specific line and the line they added is do you have it? Now, if we're only working on sound changes and I look at this line, if the only thing we're doing is re-spelling the line in the accent, right? Only phonetic changes. I look at this line, there's not a whole lot that we can do there. The long you sound and do and you doesn't change a whole lot, the short I and it. Germans can handle that, doesn't change very much. The one word that's gonna change phonetically would be the word have. And I could say, well, a German, generally speaking, and we often work in these generalizations, not stereotypes, but generalizations in terms of most Germans will do this when speaking English. That's what gives us something to latch onto and what ultimately makes it recognizable for the audience member, which is our goal. They know you're doing a German accent. So I'll say they generally will change a short A to a short E and a V to an F. F, yeah. So we take this H-A-V phonetically and turn it into H-E-F phonetically. So the new spelling of the line, if I haven't changed anything else, is do you have it? With me so far? Yeah. But there in the problem lies because I just said that out loud and it didn't make me sound remotely German. Right. But then we start to imagine, I start to move the placement of my voice. We get to the front of the mouth, the lips and the teeth. And I say, well, do you have it? Do you have it? Well, now I'm something German. So this works. This works for the character and that's good. But let's go a step further, say there's this P-check I. He doesn't know what he's talking about. I am a diplomat. I speak on the world stage. I know what a V is. Thank you very much. I've been using English by all. And I say, well, do you have it? Do you have it? Yeah? And I still sound German. So now as I go back to standard American, the thing I want you to notice is the placement shift. In other words, even though the example makes it seem like placement trumps phonetics, it doesn't, but they have equal importance. So bringing this back to what I was saying that working with actors, placement is a really tricky thing to teach and learn. I help people with that, obviously, but it's something that often gets jumped over or skipped because dialect coaches, especially in the private world, as opposed to working on set with someone and you're there all day or what have you, or working for the duration of a project. If you're doing a one hour session with a dialect coach, placement is a hard thing to get into. So I spent a good amount of my career realizing that's not acceptable and trying to make it more digestible, understandable, comprehensible, and so on. And I think I've succeeded in that. What do you mean by placement though? I'll get there. Okay, I'm sorry. The cool thing is actors are coming with this automatic understanding, if you will, most of the time. Like just through mimicry alone, you're leapfrogging a lot of the more esoteric aspects of acquiring placement. So what I mean by placement, Dan, to answer your question is, it's not about where we create sound, it's more where we send it. So when I was doing that example with the German, I talked about the lips and the teeth. As far forward as we can possibly imagine, the same sort of placement we use for British RP, those are the two you could say most forward accents. Standard American, this is a good tip for everybody. If you want to acquire different placement, it's essential to kind of know what your baseline placement is. So if you want to just talk, I recommend you do this, just talk at a normal level, say anything and just keep talking, it doesn't matter. Don't pay attention to the words you're using. Rather, pay attention to what it feels like in your mouth while you're doing it. So if you're a standard American speaker, more often than not, you're gonna feel this ring of vibration in the middle of your mouth. Tongue, jaw, cheek muscles really engaged, vibration up to the roof of your mouth in like the highest part of the cavern in there. Right in the middle, that ring right here. I feel that when I'm just talking normally, standard American and I bet you will too, all of you listening in and that's really good. Once you've acquired that and you understand it, then you can start to play around with your placement and move it and you go all the way down like the deepest guttural most throaty thing is where we would place Russian and then all the way forward. The other extreme end of the spectrum would be British RP and German. So that's the concept of placement and you need that. So in that example that I did, it's not that the placement's more important, but you need both and you can really get away. There's a lot more room for error when you have a good understanding of placement because as I demonstrated, I could ignore the dialect coach's advice about those sound changes and still manage to sound German by holding that placement, right? So there you go. Hopefully that answers it. Once again, we're talking with PJ Auckland and we're talking about dialects, which is a real important part of voiceover, especially if you're doing audio books or if you're doing audio drama, which is now becoming really important since podcasting has become the democratization of broadcasting. Everybody can do it. So let's bring back the theater of the mind and doing audio. Have you worked with anybody doing audio drama? Yeah, just did this really, really cool project. I've done quite a few, but just did a really great one with the folks from LA Theatre Works and also Alison Larkin. You might know Alison who does some beautiful work and we put together this very, very cool piece yet to be released, but we did, it was this amazing thing, civil war in their own words and it combined elements of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Lincoln Douglas debates. And I played Stephen Douglas and a few characters from Uncle Tom's Cabin and others as well, John Brown. It was really, really cool. But in those circumstances, that's where it's different from what we talked about with audiobooks where the listener is not in on some conceit that it's one narrator doing the whole thing. Now you're back to the idea of like animation or a stage production or a film production. You're cast in those roles, so now the bar is higher. Now you need to be fully convincing in those accents or in those character voice portrayals, right? Right, once again, we're talking with PJ Auckland and if you're just joining us, well, you've missed a whole lot already, but you still get the chance to ask your questions in the chat room where Jeff Holman is standing by and taking those down. If this is something fascinating to you and as a voice actor, it really should be, feel free to ask your questions. How often do you get a chance to talk to somebody like PJ and ask the right questions? Now, we talked a little bit about technique. I mean, I have my techniques for doing these sorts of things. A lot of it is mimicking more than anything else. And sometimes it's talking gibberish like if I want to talk right now. There's a British need that should do it. But it's definitely gibberish. I love gibberish, you know. Well, you're talking in French, you're talking like that. I thought the funniest video that was a, I think it was a, no, Italian video, like a song from the 70s. Precise and calling names to name Chuzol. Yeah, were they imitating American accent but it's all gibberish? Yeah, yeah. Precise and calling names to name Chuzol. I encourage everybody to look it up. And it's such a catchy song. This goes back to like the 60s. And yeah, amazing. The video too is so good. It's so good. I remember seeing an interview with Ricardo Montalban once. I think it was in a tonight show. And he's like, why? I grew up in Mexico. And we thought we'd heard American TV. It sounded like a dog barking. You know. That doesn't sound like that to me. If you ever hear that song that George was just talking about, it's great because like the only thing in there that's actually English is at the end of certain lines, they say, all right. So it's like this long string of gibberish and it ends in all right. It's brilliant. It's so brilliant. Alrighty. Once again, we're talking with PJ Auckland. How do you think AI is going to affect all this stuff when it comes to the audio world? Can a computer do a dialect? Or what have you seen? What are you seeing coming? And how do you think it's going to affect the industry? Wow, we go from fluffy questions about dialect work into like the big giant herd of elephants in the room. Okay. Huge topic. Huge. Dropping a bomb, Dan. Okay. Can it do it? Amazingly right now, not yet. But I think like anything else in VO we have to be completely prepared for the fact that it will. That's just, there's just no getting around that. And I think with any, the advent of any technology, especially on a show with a guy named George the tech, we have to appreciate that you're not going to stop the technology, it is coming. So when we get into like these deeper AI conversations, my sort of baseline is always we've got to focus on, in terms of job security, we've got to focus on what we can do that by definition AI can't do. And that's really the focus on the humanity, the soul of the performance, what makes art truly art. That as I say is the baseline for me. The next layer to that, while we can't stop the technology, so I'm not much of a fan of just raging against it because I just don't think that'll do any good. But here's the deeper side in where my thoughts have been going lately. I think that the collective power centers, corporations, major producers, this type of thing, the industry at large, decision makers, I think there's a responsibility there to not fully embrace it and understand that key difference. Maintaining artistic integrity is such a big deal. And there have been situations throughout history where these power centers will start doing something differently and the public is sort of forced to accept it. And I was in a conversation with someone recently about this making this point and she hadn't thought of it in this way before but then she brought up a brilliant example which I'll use with you today and she said, oh, you mean like architecture? And I said, yeah, exactly. In other words, you have this period in history where so much, so much effort was put into architecture because of this belief that we wanna be surrounded by beauty. And in time, that beauty becomes impractical and there's a shift and we start accepting something less than beauty. And this is what I mean where it gets certainly more philosophical but I think it's a really important point. If for example, the industry accepts AI in its entirety. In other words, that's the only thing out there that's available unless you're seeking out the underground, independent sort of stuff. Your plumber, your mortgage broker, your real estate agent, they don't suddenly go out and start producing their own movies because they're unhappy with what's being shown to them in the theaters. They will start to consume what is delivered. That's the part where it's not as clear cut as the free market, the simple, well, it'll work itself out. If you're force fed something and it's something you still want to be part of your life, IE entertainment and this is all you're given. This is the only option you're given. If a city is built up out of prefab sheet metal structures that's all you're given. Unless you go out there and build your own cathedral unless you go out there and produce your own film you get what you get. So this is where I look for some balance and where I'll certainly advocate for some balance. The AI is coming, it's already here we're already seeing the impact on jobs. Yes, that's scary. I understand all that. The best way we can resist it is to focus on our art. Remember what the A stands for and as creators don't be that. Understand that by definition we are not what the A stands for. So focus on the opposite of that, that humanity, that soul and at the same time advocate for the responsibility of the power centers to not embrace AI as a whole because it's an economic replacement because just like with architecture we will find ourselves at some point in the future surrounded not by beauty and not by artistic creation but by what came easiest. And that would be sad. Alrighty, once again we're talking with PJ Ocklin and we're talking about dialects and accents and any question you have on that like how do you do that? Throw it in the chat room right now we'll get to it in just a minute but right now we're gonna take a break and we'll be right back with PJ Ocklin right here on VoiceOver Body Shop so don't go away. This is Bill Ratner and you're enjoying VoiceOver Body Shop with Dan Leonard and George Wittem, VOBS.TV. Oh, hi. You know, if you live in a house and your voiceover studio is in that house you don't wanna disturb everybody else who's living in there. So what you need are good headphones that are made specifically for voiceover and that's why we have Harlan Hogan's signature series voice optimized headphones 2.0. What's so great about these? Well, one, they have a very flat response so you only hear exactly what it is you sound like. Second, incredibly comfortable. Letter pads on the outside filled with memory foam a really comfortable headband that really, it really works with your head. The most important thing, you can wear them for long periods of time. That's really important. Where do you get them? Only at voiceoveressentials.com that's voiceoveressentials.com. Just go there, look at the headphones and get them now, tell them we sent you. Thanks, Harlan. Well, it's my chance to talk about source elements and actually I think I've got something different to talk about for a change, right? They finally announced a new version of Source Nexus. And why that's interesting to a voice actor? It just gives sessions a new way to run and a new way that you can be brought into a session. But not only that, if you ever wanted to host your own show, if you ever want to do podcasts, things like this, there are features built into Nexus now that make running your own show or podcast better than ever as well. Because it not only gives great quality audio connections between you and your guests, but it also locally captures the audio for the show and uploads the files to you afterwards. So you've got the raw audio in the best possible quality. And that all works through what's called the Source Nexus Gateway. So it's a very interesting new take on Source Connect. There is going to be a roadmap going where Source Nexus and the Gateway and the Portal and all these different features all start to have a giant mind meld and create a very cohesive system. But for now, Source Connect 3.9 is still the one that voice actors need to have access to, learn how to use and just be familiar. So head over to Source-Elements.com and get Source Connect going on your system today. So you are ready for the big gigs when they come along because they are the ones that tend to use Source Connect standard in your home studio. Thanks for listening. We got a lot more to talk about with PJ Oakland just coming up right after this. Well, hey there, it's David H. Lawrence with VO Heroes and wouldn't it be cool if there was a very simple tool, drag and drop tool that would guarantee that the audio you need to upload to ACX or any other audio book platform is perfectly set up in terms of the tech standards, the root mean square normalization, the peak normalization, the noise floor. Guess what? There is and I want you to have it absolutely free. It's called Audio Cupcake and you can find it at audiocupcake.com. I helped create this software. It was built to my specs and my standards for when I do audio books and I know it's gonna work for you. Now it's only available for Macintosh because you Windows users, you have the ability to use other tools that work for you. But in this case, you edit your final raw wave file for a chapter, you drop it on Audio Cupcake and out comes the 192K Mono MP3 file you can upload immediately. That's audiocupcake.com, audiocupcake.com. I hope you love it. You're still watching VOBS? Nope, your mic's cut right now, Dan. Take two. There we go, it says PJ. There we go, perfect. Okay, we got it. Still, our director has a bad back, so. You're doing a really good job, my friend, keeping it all going. Yeah, concentrate on this, concentrate on that. A lot to do, yeah. As long as George and I don't fight over the switcher, it'll be fine. We're talking with PJ Auclin, we're talking about, we're talking about dialects, which is what he teaches over at, it is www.doctordialect.com. And you can go over there and see all the stuff that he does. And if you want to take some coaching on how to do that, he's the guy to talk to. Now, George, you had a question in the last half hour about the quality of audiobook publishing. What was that? It seems that the quality of audio that's released in audiobook publishing has stagnated and not really changed or improved. Well, since I've known about the industry, really, to be honest, maybe 15 years. Do you see a roadmap to where that's going to change? You know, I'm a little concerned because AI voices are so clinically perfect and absolutely what, you know, that I'm a little bit afraid that people will get so used to hearing these, like absolutely sterile, clear, perfectly recorded audio samples of AI voice that, you know, the real recordings will become kind of outmoded. Do you see any end of evolution happening in that area? I do see evolution. However, one aspect you said that I don't know that I'm entirely on board with is has to do with that perfection of AI. I don't see as a positive. No, I don't mean it as a positive either. I'm just afraid that people will get used to this overly sterile thing. And then I've actually heard somebody say that I listened to a lot. He was another journalist, essentially, who says that I like AI books on certain topics because I can listen to them at 2X and hear everything they are saying. And that's a totally different, that's a different thing from performing. That is, that's just pumping data into someone's brain as quickly as possible. And that's what some people are looking for. But I mean, not to distract with the AI comment, but I just feel like there's some room to go with. We're talking production value? Just, those sound like the fidelity of the audiobook production itself, like on HD version or on Res version. Sure. I mean, one thing I think you've seen at one of the Advents in the audiobook industry that changed things a lot. And of course, this is across the board with VO, not just audiobooks, but especially with audiobooks is the prevalence of the home studio narrator and the prevalence of ACX, the Audiobook Creation Exchange, which is a subsidiary of Amazon. So you've got the Amazon ACX Audible Triumvirate, if you will. And that brought about the more, I hate to use the word amateur because a lot of pros, including me, we produce on ACX because often that's the platform we're using to release books we're doing for independent authors and so on. So it's not across the board amateur, but when I started teaching, like when I co-founded the Dion Institute with Deb Dion, which was right after Bob Dion had passed and I do all of our classes, we do the audiobook introductory intensive, for example. And when I first started teaching that intro class, I would bring up, we were doing it in person at the Dion Studios, now almost everything's virtual, but I would bring up on the screen ACX and we'd see, and there were so few producers and the producers on ACX are the narrators, but you have a producer account because on ACX you're responsible for delivering retail ready audio, as opposed to you're just narrating for a publisher or another production company, you are the producer on ACX. And that number was tiny and now it's gigantic. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people are signed up with ACX producer accounts. And with that in mind, obviously a huge percentage of those are not professionals. And in terms of passing the audio quality standards to get an independent book released through the ACX platform, you just have to hit mastering marks and it's gonna get released, that's it. So there's no additional vetting. That floods the market with a lot of things that are subpar in terms of production value. And also, again, the advent of home studios, you've got a lot of situations where most of these home studios, it's not like everyone's going in and recording on a Neumann U87 and a beautiful booth set up in a professional environment. So that obviously is quite different, but there's also the practicality of the audiobook market. There's only so much a publisher can feasibly invest in the production of an audiobook. And I mean, even the big five, when they're doing several thousand books a year each, many of those books they're producing but they know they're not gonna be money makers even remotely. So there is a consideration for budget that they wanna get them in under a certain bar to make it even viable to produce. And many they choose not to produce an audio because they don't think it'll even reach that bar even on a bare bones type of budget. So those practicalities have to be brought in as well. In terms of evolution, I think we're seeing a lot more in terms of multicast production, full soundscape, fully produced audio dramas. The ones that merit that and the publisher of the production company believe this is gonna be a worthwhile endeavor, you see more of that now. And the quality of those are really, really fantastic. So I guess it's ultimately- The audio drama is now starting to be, audio dramas are starting to be released under the umbrella of the audiobook publisher world. All of the publishers now have their audio originals. Audible was I think the first one to say audible originals but now all the publishers have their originals arm and they're doing things that aren't necessarily traditional books and they're doing a lot of things that are being written specifically for audio. This is an audio play if you will, perhaps from traditional authors but totally brought into existence for the sole purpose of audio production and not to be released in a text form. So you're seeing more and more of this even from the traditional publishers. I just did one of those with Simon and Schuster, PRH, Penguin Random House is doing a bunch of those. So it's happening more and more. Obviously Audible's been in that game for a while and that's bridging the gap between the podcasting, the fictional podcasting world and the traditional audiobook world. And I guess it ultimately comes down to the difference between what we might think of as a very small film festival in the entry and a summer blockbuster. That's gonna exist in every craft. It exists in movies and I think that's gonna exist with the audiobook world as well in all the different iterations. That's good to know. I wanna check out some of those finished products that you've worked on and maybe there are some links to some of those in the end of the show we can check them out because I'd like to listen to them just for out of fascination as being more of a tech than a book reader myself. That's most of my own library, right? Oh, but I'm definitely very interested in hearing how those productions sound and how they're produced and stuff. Because my job as a technologist like Dan's is to really raise the quality of everybody's home studio and if they're getting confused all the time with, well, all I have to do is hit these marks on the RMS and the noise floor and I'm good, right? Exactly. I'm always pushing people to move beyond those basics. As you should, I think you're providing a huge service by doing that because that was exactly my point. When the threshold is simply, oh, it hits the mastering specs, well, that doesn't mean the quality of the production is high, you know? Right, it all depends on what it sounds like. There you go. And does it sound what it's supposed to sound like? We got a question here from FiberJazz. He says, for PJ, if I wanted to work, say, on a French accent, would you want me to already know French? I mean, speaking English with a French accent? No, not necessary at all. Sometimes it can come in handy because if you speak the other language, the source language of the accent we're working on, that can help in terms of like for French, if you already speak the language, je l'ai étudié à l'université depuis deux années seulement. I already have an understanding of where that placement is. So I'm comfortable there or I might understand the French R, rouge, rouge. And I understand where that comes from. That can help, but not only is it not necessary because we don't need any of the French words for doing the accent on English, that's number one. And number two, I've actually had situations where I work with someone who does speak the language, they're coming to me to learn how to apply the language to English because they don't have experience keeping the accent from the language on English. And sometimes it's really hard for them because they can't separate the accent from the language. So it's not always a benefit even. That's a good point. If you grew up learning and speaking French, then you learned English from an American teacher or whatever you're gonna speak English with an American accent. You're not gonna speak it with a French accent, at least once you become an American. More than likely, depending on the age you learned it at. Through the age, yeah. Yeah, the age is everything. We're a weird glitch of the brain or one of the aspects. This, by the way, fun fact for anybody like when you're deciding should this character have an accent or not, it's right around puberty. If you move to the new location and you acquire that language prior to puberty, there's a hard wiring in the brain that happens right around 12, 13-ish. And we've probably all had that experience where you might meet a couple of siblings and the older sibling has an accent that sound like they just moved here yesterday, a really heavy accent, and their younger sibling sounds like they were born and raised down the street. And you can do a little bit of accent sleuthing there and say, I'm thinking when your family moved here, you were like 15 and you were about seven. Like, how did you know that? And it's like, it's that giveaway because there's that cutoff point. And we see that all the time. That person who moved here at 15, they could be in America for 25 years and sound like they did the day they stepped off the plane. Ah, that makes so much sense, I listened to my girlfriend's got five siblings, all not in the US. She's lived here 15 years, but she's got one of the strongest accents out of all of her siblings. And I'm thinking, a lot of them don't, none of them live in the US. They're all overseas. So that is really fascinating, actually. I wouldn't think about that. Yeah, it's incredible. It really is amazing how it works. It's really like flipping a switch, you know? You've got the next question, George, Ron M. PJ, where do you, where do we find your training? What is your training site again? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, for any private coaching, DrDialect.com, you can reach out to me. My information's on there. I'm very easy to get ahold of. Busy, but I'll certainly get back to you. So my email's on there and there's contact form as well, if you prefer that, but that's D-R-D-I-A-L-E-C-T.com. DrDialect.com. Since you mentioned the busy part, I mean, all those fine ways to make time for different aspects. How do you determine how much of your time you dedicate to coaching versus working on book projects? You know, it's a great question and I just don't know that I have a decent answer. It just always works out. You know, I mean, if you start to book out, you know, sometimes you book out farther and sometimes you have more immediate availability. It depends. I've been taking on less recording work, I guess just in the last year or two. And some of that is just, I'm happy with the current sort of balance. And some of it is just the demand for the producing time and the coaching time. The other, I'll parlay this into a second answer to the other question, which is the other site is D-ON Institute, D-ON spell D-E-Y-A-N Institute.com. And we have a wildly popular the master class series that we do has nothing to do with dialects. This is where the performance coaching side of things comes in. And every week, it's an every other week thing. We do a series, a season of six guests. And I'm your lead coach and host. And I have with me a special guest who's a casting director or publisher, producer from the industry, decision makers who all bring, you know, different aspects. Some of them work as directors, some of them work only in casting, some of them work only in producing, some of them work as engineers, but they're all decision makers on casting as well. And the insights they bring, I let them take the lead on directing pieces. Everybody reads a piece. And it's just, it's so meaningful. And that's what really excites me. It really is incredibly meaningful. Everybody who does it, the letters I get, you guys wouldn't believe. It's just, it's made such an impact and it's so rewarding. It's so gratifying that things like that start to make up a big part of my schedule because we do two seasons per year now and each one is 18 classes because I'm doing three nights with each guest just to fulfill the demand. And that's as much as we can go because I can't ask them to do a fourth night. It's already crazy. And they sell out in like two hours, no joke. It's like 360 slots or something, but they're so good. And it means so much to me that it's having such a positive impact that, you know, that changes things. I want to put effort into that because it's making a difference. And if that takes away a little bit of time from my narrating, I'm okay with that at this point in my career. So somehow I just juggle it and it works, you know? Yeah, and then there's, if anybody wants, there's the character voice toolbox, which is my seven Ps. The tools that I use, again, the who's more important than the what, but nonetheless, I've had books, I've had series where each book has upwards of 150, 200 characters and I'm trying to keep them all unique from each other. And in the series, you're exceeding 1,000 characters in five or seven books. And these are the tools I use to try and make sure that the nine different bartenders and the eight different posseys and the eight different bandit gangs in the Western all kind of sound unique. And that is the first half. The second half is the how to be your own dialect coach thing. I do that live once a year, but it's available as a video. So that's on the website, on the Dr. Dialect website too. So I think that's really useful. It's like three and a half hours of instruction. So I highly recommend that if anybody is looking to acquire those skills and as used for them in their VO career. All right, we got time for a question, maybe two. Larry Oblander, the seconds asks, I missed a lot already, but do you recommend for learning or practicing dialects on your own? What do I recommend for practicing on your own? Is that the question? Yes. The thing I just mentioned, I mean, totally self promotion, but the how to be your own dialect coach, I think is huge because it's so hard to know what to look for. If you don't have experience or have worked with the dialect coach, you need to first figure out, what am I listening for? What am I looking for? So I break down the key aspects of the phonetics, the concept of placement, how to acquire placement, where to look for it, how to execute. That's where I think it comes in really handy. Understanding even basics, like not just the phonetics, but also how significant understanding of a schwa is. If you guys remember from school, the upside down backwards E symbol, it's all over the place in English. And sometimes understanding whether your speaker, your accented speaker knows what that is and understands that is going to affect their accent on the English. So I go through all that kind of stuff. When you have that kind of a handle, then hopefully it equips you to go out, listen to resources through places like YouTube, through places like Paul Meyers dialects archive, through places like George Mason University, the accents.gmu. Is that the one? Yeah, close to that. I might be misstating it, but that's the George Mason University one. These are wonderful resources, but you got to know what to do with them. Just having a database of the accents, mimicry will get you pretty far, but not typically far enough if you don't know what you're listening for. So that's where like really capitalizing on the most significant sound changes that separate that accent from another. I think that's a big deal. All right. George, you have one last question there. Yeah, what are the, what do you feel like the strongest conference there's so many conferences now, for people that are really focused on audiobook narrating, what do you think is the best resource for them on the conference level? On the conference level, if it's about audiobook narrating specifically, APAC, the Audio Publishers Association Conference, hands down. That's the one because it's not just about the learning that comes from the panels and so on, but it's also when you do a conference, let's be honest, part of your reason for attending and participating is your networking and you're looking to meet the people who are in a position to hire you. You want to get jobs. You don't just want to learn about the craft. You want to get gigs. APAC I think delivers more than any other in that regard because it is entirely audiobook focused and because it gets the most participation from the publishers and the production companies who can cast you. So if that's your goal, that's an easy answer. Alrighty. Well, PJ, thanks so much for being with us. This was a very informative hour. And once again, where can people find you? What's your website? For coaching purposes, DrDialect.com or my name, PJOakland.com is my personal site, but I think I'm pretty easy to find on all the social. It's just at PJOakland. Reach out. I really am always happy to hear from people and if I can help, I promise I'm glad to. Alrighty. Thanks for being with us. This has been great. Thank you guys. It's great to see you too. Thanks for having me. All right. We'll run into each other, probably in Gelsons or something. All right. We'll be right back to wrap things up and re-rack it for Tech Talk right after this. So do not go away. Yeah. Hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky, the voice of Rocco and you're watching VoiceOver Body Shop. Your dynamic voiceover 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 voiceoverhackstra.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. VoiceOver Extra has hundreds of articles, free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed. Learn from the most respected talents, coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books, auditioning, home studio setup and equipment, marketing, performance techniques and much more. It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success. Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports. It's all here at voiceoverhackstra.com. That's voiceoverxtra.com. All right, it's time for my little talk about voiceactor.com. That's voiceactor.com. What is voiceactor.com? Well, voiceactor.com is a website where you can create your own voice actor website. And it's important that you have a website. At World Voices, when we're trying to determine whether you are a professional or not to qualify to be a professional, you gotta have a website. If you're a professional voice actor, you gotta have a website. It is your business card with the stuff that makes you what you are, which is your name, your demos, which are really important and how to get a hold of you. And sometimes trying to put a website together is very, very hard if you really don't know how to code and do all this other stuff. Voiceactor.com has made it incredibly simple for you. All you do is you go in there, you sign up, create an account, and setup is free. Yes, it's absolutely free to set up your initial website with a template. Templates make it super easy. There are different layouts and different color schemes. You can change the colors. You can change the background pictures. You can do anything you want, and it's all very simple, menu-driven, not code-driven. So go over to voiceactor.com and get your voice actor website up in no time. I mean, really quick. Not only that, you can use it for other types of websites as well. And then for $20 a month, you get your own URL and it will be on a server and that will be your voice actor website. Go over to voiceactor.com right now and get your website up and running ASAP. We are the World Voices Organization. Also known as WoVo. We're the not-for-profit industry association of freelance voice talent. VoiceOver is a complex entrepreneurial business. WoVo 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 WoVoCon conference, a fun and educational weekend with other members with a 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 WoVo part of it. World Voices Organization. We speak for those who speak for a living. This is Ariana Ratner and you're enjoying VoiceOver Body Shop with Dan Leonard and George Whitom, vOBS.tv. Alrighty, we're back here at VoiceOver Body Shop. We're gonna re-rack it for Tech Talk here in a second, and we're glad that you joined us tonight and our thanks again to P.J. Auckland teaching us about doing dialects. Go on over to his website and check him out, and maybe if you want to learn how to do it better, he's the guy to talk to. Alrighty, next week on this very show, if you happen to be in this same place next week, you can come on to Facebook or our Facebook or our website or LinkedIn or wherever our podcast that's on Podbean, you will hear and watch Tech Talk number 113, which we are about to record if you happen to be watching live. Don't go anywhere because we got another hour of great stuff that you do not wanna miss. And in two weeks, we've got a great coach who teaches promo, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in a couple of weeks, so make sure you join us for that one. You've got discounts for your people that go over to georged.tech. It's amazing how many of my clients know, I know they know about this show, I know they've seen this show, but they don't use the coupon code. What are they thinking? georged.tech slash vobs for our coupon code for discounts on videos. We've got a huge library, always growing of recorded content now, webinars and modules, things that are longer, shorter, all different topics that are gonna help you with your home studio. If you wanna go check that out, but use the, get that passcode. I mean, get that coupon code, guys. Come on, let's see. VobsFan10, all righty. And now we need to talk about our donors of the week. You can become a donor, make sure that this show continues on technically perfect when the director is here. And- Hey, you did a darn good job. You really did. That's not easy to juggle all those things. It's going back and forth. It reminds me of my radio days with video. Anyway. In the radio days, you had a console with all these buttons on it. You're just doing all this for the mouse. All right. Well, anyway, you can become a donor to the show and here are some of the people that have done it like Greg Cooper, Grace Newton, Christopher Epperson, Robert Liedem, Steven Chandler, Casey Clack, Jonathan Grant, Thomas Pinto, Greg Thomas, A Doctor Voice, Antland Productions, Martha Kahn, Feel Better Martha 949 Designs, Sarah Borges, Phillip Sapir, Brian Page, Rob Ryder, Shauna Pennington-Baird, Don Griffith, Tray Moseley, Diana Birdsall, Maria Mackis, and Sandra Mann-Willard. Also, join our mailing list. All you have to do is go to our website, vobs.tv, and down at the bottom it says, subscribe to our newsletter. So you know who's gonna be on the show this week. Anyway. Also, we need to thank our sponsors, Harlan Hogan's Voice Over Essentials, Voice Over Extra, Source Elements, VioHeroes.com, VoiceActor.com, and worldvoices.org, the industry association of freelance voice talent. Alrighty. Now I gotta find the other thing that I gotta put up here, which is our email address, which is the guys at vobs.tv. You can email us a question at any time during the week, and if you email us, guess what? You get to be first in line. So it's not a matter of, you know, all you have to do is email us, say, hey, I got a question, a tech question for you, and then we'll answer it, and not have to wait. Exactly. Or if you, that's right. It's all free. We're giving you all this free information. I mean, for crying out loud. Anyway, which, well, I gotta hide that one. There we go. All right. So coming up next is tech talk. If you got a question for us, throw it in the chat room right now. If you're watching live, you get to interact with us. If you're watching this in replay, oh well. But you're still gonna get lots of great information. So anyway, look, this is not an easy business. Voice over requires training and knowing how to run a business and all that other stuff. But we've discovered that if you're recording right, if it sounds good. It is good. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Woodham. And this is voice over. Body shop. Or VO. B. S. Stay tuned for tech talk. Stop that. Sometimes I just have to, the temptation to ask that last question and that'll throw us over a little bit. But what are you gonna do? No, you did. Like I said, all the years of radio broadcast training is definitely coming to handy. With broadcast training? And then 12 years of doing the show. Well, don't forget that part. There is that. There is that. We used to do it without a director. And it was, you know, so anyway. The one thing that you learn in broadcasting is back timing. It's like, you have three minutes and 20 seconds. Which, this record is three minutes and 10 seconds. Cue it up. And then watching the clock and hitting it right at the top of the hour when the network news comes in. And that was. Now it's all on the computer. It's auto sequenced and automated. Yeah. All you do is record your voice into a recorder. And then it plays it when it wants to. That's right. Yeah, that's very good. I learned how to count in base 60. So it's anyway. Okay, we're about to do tech talk here right now. And glad you're with us. Now's an opportunity. If you ever wanted to ask George or I a question about your home voiceover studio equipment or technique or anything, now would be a great time to throw it in the chat room because Jeff Holman is right there. Okay. Let's see him rehearsing too. He's all set. Okay. So let's get in there and let's start voiceover body shop tech talk. So here we go in five, four, three, two. Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Great time for the phone to ring. Oh, Jeff. Anyway. It's big moment. If you have a question for George or I on home voiceover studios, put it in the chat room. And Jeff Holman, who's sitting there right now still talking tech talk is going to write it down and give it to us in the next half hour. We will get to your question. Great opportunity for you right now. Anyway, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk. So don't go away. It's time for that right now. Voiceover body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials.com, the home of Harlan Hogan signature products, source elements, the folks who bring you source connect, theohuros.com, become a hero to your clients with award winning voiceover training, voiceactor.com, your voiceover website ready in minutes. Voiceover Extra, your daily resource for voiceover success and by World Voices, the industry association of freelance voice talent. And now here's your hosts, Dan and George. Hi there. Guess what? I'm Dan Leonard. Hey, and I'm George Whittem. And this is voiceover body shop or V-O-B-S-E-S. Tech talk. What are you doing? Tech talk. Tech talk, tech talk, tech talk, tech talk, tech talk. That's Jeff Holman, by the way, who's sitting in our chat room and getting all of your questions to us just to make sure that it's all complete. Dan, I like the big head shot. Let's switch to the big heads. You mean this one? Yeah, yeah, let's go big head tonight. Okay, we'll try that. Because we have big heads. Well, we'll try this for a little bit. About tech. That's right. The big heads about tech. Now it's too distracting. Is it too much? It's just a little bit. Too much, it's just too much. Just too much. We'll just go back to that view. Okay, cool. Anyway, what is it that George and I do? We do home voiceover studio tech. You want to talk about a niche. Yeah, there's a bunch of other people out there saying, yeah, I do this and yeah, I can help you with it. I can generally count on less than two hands the people that actually know what they're talking about. I won't mention any names. And I certainly won't mention the names of the people who we think I have no idea what on earth they're talking about. Just remember that most people are experts in one studio, their own. And what works for them may not necessarily work for you in the environment in which you are working. And what George and I do is we help you understand all of the important things that have to go on in your home studio. And we will physically, we happen to be close by. I mean, we do house calls here in LA. George, you go all over the place. When you're traveling you offer the opportunity for people to have you come over and work on their studios. And actually next week or actually as you're watching this in replay, I'm heading to Boise, Idaho. Of all places. If you happen to be Boise, Idaho and you'd really like me to come by, you know where to find me. Oh, Boise, all right. And so if you wanna work with one of us, because clearly if you've been watching this show you know what we're talking. You know we know that we're talking about. You can work with either one of us. Like for instance, if you wanna work with George, where do you go? You go over to? There it is, george.tech. Wait, is that one? I'm sorry. And go to slash V-O-B-S because that's where you get our special deals. Oh, okay. Yeah, but nothing wrong with that. But yeah, george.tech is the site and we are growing in terms of our content and our service offerings and our team. There are a growing number of team members. We have a lot of different people. Keeps getting bigger and bigger. And we've got the 911 tech support service, which I'll tell you, fortunately for the last month, it's been pretty quiet. There's really been very, very few emergency tech calls coming in, which it's a good thing. We don't wanna see emergencies, but if you do, you can call us 424-226-8528 and press option nine and you will actually reach live dispatchers who will get you to one of our emergency on-call tech team. So pretty amazing stuff at over george.tech. Dan, what you doing over there at homevoiceoverstudio.com? Well, I tell people the reality of a home voiceover studio. It's not like it's something with lots of dials and buttons and a mixer and a nice furniture and guitars hanging on the wall. And it also is in a gamer's headset. No, no, it is not. And although I've seen it, there are some good headsets, but you can't afford them. It's important to get your setup done right. I will teach you about acoustics and proper microphone technique and why I always sound fabulous, even if I have a cold. And you can sound that way too. If you use your microphone right and setting levels, no one seems to understand that stuff. If you wanna learn how to do it right, if you're here in the Los Angeles area, I do house calls and I just love going into people's homes and ripping out all the wires and making things a lot simpler for them. And they're like, Geez, it sounds so much better. How'd you do that? I got rid of all the stuff that you had plugged in and stuff. It's not about the technology. It really is all physical. The technology is kind of secondary. You don't want crappy technology, but you certainly do wanna have stuff that is going to work properly. And we know exactly what will work properly in your particular environment without all of those equations that acousticians use. It's like, sounds good to me. And generally, if you send in a sample to me at my specimen collection cup, it's like, I want some silence. I want you to read some copy and I want you to have more open mic silence. And I will listen and within five seconds at the least, I will know what's going on in your studio. I can see the background noise. I can hear what the reverberation is. You do this a couple of thousand times. You actually get to know what you're doing. So go on over to homevoiceoverstudio.com and you'll get your home studio put together right. Look, you're looking at the two top guys in the business here. That's why we do this. We give you lots of free information, but we really would like, if you really need some help specifically with your home studio, you can't do better than either of us. Well, I know you'll do great with George. What happens with me is you'll have a great time because I end up talking about the voiceover business with people. You've probably got a lot more than you bargained for with Dan. Yeah, most likely, most likely. As a voice actor, there's an awful lot I know about the industry and I have a great time talking with people. Anyway, it's time for George's tech update. We got lots of stuff. What do you got for us this week? Well, his timing should have it. This never happens on the show, but Apple decided it was time to have their scary fast release, which normally they do their big press releases launching a brand new Mac in the fall. That's nothing new. This time, they squeezed it in. They decided not to do it on Halloween, but do it the night before, call it scary fast and launch a few big, well, I don't know, big announcements, maybe, just faster computers. The computers are exactly the same in terms of performance. Let's take a look at what you're gonna see. This is from the Verge, by the way. The Verge does great. They do great reporting on their live events. There's an M3 chip now? It's the M3 chip, that's right. So all the, you're not gonna see it in the MacBook Air yet, but strangely, you will see it in the iMac. Yes, they released a new iMac. New meaning, exactly the same as the other iMac that was already out, just with a faster chip. So if you've been thinking about buying an iMac, now is probably the time to get the iMac. Now, who's an iMac for? It's not my first choice for a home studio. I'm always gonna go these days to a Mac mini for a home studio. I just like that you can get any size monitor you want. You're not stuck with a specific size, but if you like an extremely minimalistic-looking setup, well, look at those pictures of the iMac, you can't get more minimal than that. That is an extremely clean-looking little computer. And I've set up a few in some home studios, and they work fine. They don't make any noise, and they're plenty fast. I mean, listen guys, anything with the M1 or higher chip is a light year ahead of anything made before it from Apple. It really is true. So it doesn't matter what you get, just they're faster now than they were. M3, confusingly, is double the speed of an M1. If you're looking, trying to compare apples to apples, see what it's like there. Yikes, in Apple. Yeah, exactly. So it is definitely faster. Will you notice it? I guess if you already have an M1 and you use it all the time, you might notice it. If you're coming from an older machine, they're all faster. So you're not gonna notice how much crazier fast it is. And then the MacBook Pro is released as well with the newest M3 chips going up to the M3 Macs. You'll notice that you can, for the mega power users who are ready to spend $7,100 on a new MacBook Pro. Holy crap. You can get 128 gigabytes of memory or RAM in your MacBook Pro and eight terabytes of storage. So that is one monster computer and a portable computer. And it supports up to four external screens. And it's 16 core or up to 40 core? I mean, remember it was like two cores was really cool. It's insane. It's clearly for video professionals and photography professionals. It does have a memory card slot in it again. So yes, and you don't have to carry another fricking adapter when you wanna dump your cards to your computer, but it is an absolute beast. But even the base base model, the M3 MacBook Pro 16 inch, it starts at $1599. So, you know, it's a reasonable price point. A lot of people buying a new computer for work have no problem spending 2000 plus. So 1600 for an MacBook Pro 16, no 14 inch. It's a pretty good deal. If I hadn't just invested in the 20, what is it? The 13 inch MacBook Air M2 would have considered this one. But I'm fine. I'm cool with that. So that's the new things from Apple. You know, I'm not gonna go buy a brand new Mac day and date when it comes out. I don't care how many generations. And I just don't think it's a good idea to have not only the new Mac, that's not even what I'm worried about. It's the new OS. If you get a brand new Apple computer that comes out, then they start shipping November 7th. It's gonna have Sonoma on it. You can guarantee it. That is the newest, newest, newest OS. And it's just, it's still not quite, we're not quite ready, folks. Give everybody some time to get used to the new version, find all its quirks and features and the developers can find all the quirks and let everybody else deal with that before you put that into your production computer. If you have two computers, put it on the one you don't rely on to make a living with if you really wanna try it out. Which is what I did with my MacBook Air. I'm like, I gotta try this. Totally seamless. Seamless, yeah. It was... If you don't use a lot of hardware and devices and you just really use it as a laptop with mostly bread browser stuff and Apple software and stuff, you're probably fine. You're probably fine. It's always the things, the surprises always come with hardware and like hardware drivers and like plugins. You know, that's where things will sneak up on you. So, in a totally different area, just a little update from Sentrence. I've been getting, you know, the occasional email or comment, hey, what's going on with that audio interface that you helped kind of invent? His name, I can't remember. Nobody seems to be able to remember the name of this thing. The Passport VO? I did get an update from Michael and I did encourage him to release this to the investors who have pre-purchased theirs. But he said, essentially, the good news is the prototyping machine is finally working and is assembled to of the chipboard, of the boards so far. The boards are the circuit board inside the product. So they have their own in-house chip bot that will make the circuit board. So he said, you know, that means we won't need to rely on China so much. I don't know if that means they won't make any in China or if that's just for the prototype. Not sure on that one, but that's what I've got from them so far. They've pretty much, they've drawn up all the analog schematics for the product. The last thing, the last X Factor is the USB chip for the product. He said, I asked a friend who lives in Taiwan to go down to see the manufacturer and we're still waiting to hear the results of the evaluation. So there you go, TMI, but you know, this is what it takes to get a new product to market when certain things like, pardon me, like your USB chip just vanishes in the thin air and you have to find a new chip and redesign the board and make it all over again. So that's what's up with PS, the Passport VO. All right, now I've got a little quick, I'm gonna take a snippet from a 14 minute video, show you what I think may be one of the more interesting parts than some of you. This is gonna feel like watching this old house for a few minutes. This is a little clip from the factory tour that I took vocalbooth.com when I was up there a few weeks ago. And this is the segment where we start looking at the doors and how the doors are made. So let's take a look at this. Use for building those doors. Pretty serious piece of machinery. Mill. All right. This is the infamous door machine. Nate's gonna demonstrate it for us. So he's routering out the little tabs, you know, the little plate where the plates go for the hinges, does that first. And you gotta have three of those. You gotta have three, and if the door is big enough, it might have four. And as you can see, this is a solid core door made out of oak or what did they say it was made of? I actually didn't ask them what materials they make the doors out of, you know? I don't know. They get the door blanks sent to them, right? They don't make the door blanks in the house. That's done somewhere else. But this huge machine, which was the first thing I'd really noticed when I walked into the facility, this and the plasma cutter, which they also have. This thing is cutting where the doorknob goes. It's got a Forstner bit thing that pokes through and just cuts that hole. That's all it does. And then on the bottom, there's another one punch in the hole for the plunger. You know, and that's all that thing does. It does one job. And then he goes on and he cuts the rest of the hinge plates. This is real time. It takes about three minutes to cut and mill all the different parts of the door. And this huge machine, they only have it because the door supplier that they were using for their doors closed their doors. And Calvin, the owner, I have another video, by the way, interviewing Calvin. You guys can check out on the George the Tech YouTube channel. He said, hey, can we buy that machine from you guys? And they did. So they have this very, very large machine that's just for precision milling all the parts of a door, which I thought was obviously really fascinating and impressive piece of machinery. Yeah. And the door is probably when it comes to a vocal booth, probably one of the most important pieces of any particular, you know, soundproof booth because without the, without a solid core door and the right fittings and it fitting just right. Yeah. It can get the whole thing worthless. Another router underneath. So it's an upside down router. It's cutting the strike plate area. Oh, I'm so glad you know the actual technical nerves. There's the strike and the strike plate having done a lot of videos on how to install doors. So. Yeah. Yeah. So there, that's done. And then he drills the holes. I love air drills, man. They're so fast. Sounds like the ND 500. I know exactly. Air drills are the coolest. I would hope not. Yeah. Nothing's more fun than trying to hang a door. Well, I mean, Calvin made a good point as well. He said, you know, listen, it's one thing to have this big heavy door. That's one thing. It's another thing to hang a big heavy door off of a thing that you assembled at home. And have it, you know, the weight of that door when it swings wide open, that thing's pulling on the structure. You know, all that force is pulling on the thing. It's essentially a flimsy door frame is what it is because you're just screwing. It's not framed and hung and mounted to the house. So it's even trickier to get those things to get those things dialed in, right? So yeah, I was really impressed by that. Really, really, really cool seeing that stuff being done in person. All right, well, that's it for my tech update. And Dan, we're talking about the cloud, the theory of the cloud. No, it's the theory of the cloud panel. Now this is, and it's not even a theory. I mean, I call it a theory, but in working with a lot of people and how many of you are in a closet deliberately? And if you're in there, closets can be very different. I mean, every closet is different. I mean, there's a standard closet. There's a 12-inch or an 18-inch deep closet with a sliding door. And then there's a walk-in closet. You open a door and all your clothes are in there and stuff. And the ceiling is generally pretty high or if you're in a smaller closet, it's built into a wall that has a higher ceiling and that ceiling is sort of like that big hole in a guitar. It creates a big acoustical space above you that is going to create bass reflex like you wouldn't believe. And it's gonna sound like you're down the hallway or something along those lines. So one of the things that George and I have been doing with people is we've been creating what we call clouds. And what is a cloud? Well, if I use my camera here and I can actually go up and show you what a cloud looks like. Hey, look at that. Yeah, look at that. Isn't that cool that I can do all that? Yeah. That is what clouds look like. They are panels that are made out of wood. They can be fiberglass or rock-sill filled. And then I usually put like a backing of weed block behind it to keep the fiberglass or the rock-sill installed. And see, it goes right back to where it's supposed to. And what a cloud does is, you know, it's like a regular sound panel that will absorb sound and not let it reflect back to your microphone. But here's the theory about this that I find fascinating. Then if you're in your booth and you go up and down, like, you know, trying to go down on your knees or stand up really straight, you will find that as your mouth goes higher or lower inside that space, it will change the dynamic of the room, you know. And if it's a very small room, it's going to really affect the sound. It's gonna become very, very hollow sounding. So by hanging a cloud, you're doing a couple of things. One, you're reducing the upper area of the closet or the room you're in. So it's not going up into that chamber and reflecting all over the place and then coming back down. But here's the cool thing, because as I was just describing, going up and down and listening in your own ears how the sound changes depending on where in the particular booth you are. I came up with this idea that I was proven to be 1,000% correct because it just made sense. And that is when you're hanging a cloud, make it adjustable, maybe put it on a pulley, maybe have, you know, having been a sailor and knowing an awful lot about pulleys and all that stuff, you can make something that is totally adjustable. So what we're trying to do is we wanna create a sweet spot in your booth that will work every time. And if you're standing or sitting, you can adjust that cloud to maintain a consistent sound within your booth. And I know some booth manufacturers and we've talked to them and they're like, I'm like, why don't you put a cloud in here and make it adjustable? And they're like, eh, we don't wanna do that. Well, that's their problem because it works great in a closet. I just installed one in somebody's closet the other day and it sounds sweet. And before I put it in, it sounded pretty sour. It was very, very reverberant. And it was, the thing is, is it has to be custom cut for that particular room. And if you've ever watched me measure something and cut it, you know, maybe I'm not the one to be building those, but I thought that was 21 inches. Why is it 23? Carpentry is, you know, yeah, it's a lot of work. I don't like making that stuff more than I have to either. Yeah. I mean, I just made a clock out of a Zenith radio face and I built a wooden frame with it and did it all by hand. You do it by hand, it looks like crap. So until you're really, really skilled at it. Like that door machine. Not by hand. You do it by precision. Perfect. You know, what do they say? Measure twice, cut once. That's right. So it's not perfect, but if you can get it, you know, fitting inside and not necessarily really tightly, so you can get it so it moves up and down, you know, it cuts off the angle of your voice and doesn't let it reverberate up in the, in the upper chamber of the closet. And so that's something you might want to consider when you're building your home studio. Or if you have no idea what you're doing, what you do is you go over to one of our websites, homevoiceoverstudio.com or over to georged.tech and tell them what you want to, tell us what you want to do and we can help you out. But making one yourself is not that hard. I can build one with an electric staple gun in less than an hour, which is actually kind of cool, considering the kind of space I have here to actually do that. Your thoughts, Mr. Woodham? No, I agree totally. I mean, a sound cloud or acoustic cloud, whatever you want to call it, it works so well. It does a very good job of dealing with a lot of issues in small spaces. It doesn't take up more wall space, so you can kind of use more wall space for other purposes. It can really, really make a dramatic improvement with, you know, the hardest part really is just the physical hanging of it from the ceiling. That is the hardest part of the install. You know, other than that, absolutely worth the effort. No, no brainer. Yeah, toggle bolts are fabulous. Yeah, these are the ones that like, you, there's like a plastic thing, you shove it in the hole and then it goes like, deeek! Yeah, yeah. Holds it to the ceiling. There are a lot of those in this studio as George will attest to. And they're all still holding, so that's even better. Yeah. But if you put it up there with rings and the right type of rope, it can, you can really make it very, very precise to make it sound exactly the way we want it to sound. So that's a good thing to know. And that's why I figured I'd talk about my cloud theory. Love it. I love that you could show us too. Yes. Anyway, we're gonna take a quick break here. And if you have a question, we would like to see your questions here on VoiceOver Body Shop Tech Talk because that's why we're here. I see there's a bunch of people watching. I know you have questions, even if it's about, you know, marriage difficulties or about your medical issues. Yeah. As long as it relates to VoiceOver, put it in the chat room right now and Jeff Holman will get that to us. In the meantime, we're gonna take a break and we'll be right back here on VoiceOver Body Shop. So do not go away. Hi, this is Bill Farmer and you are watching VoiceOver Body Shop. It's great. Oh, hi. You know, if you live in a house and your VoiceOver studio is in that house, you don't wanna disturb everybody else who's living in there. So what you need are good headphones that are made specifically for VoiceOver. And that's why we have Harlan Hogan's Signature Series Voice Optimized Headphones 2.0. What's so great about these? Well, one, they have a very flat response. So you only hear exactly what it is you sound like. Second, incredibly comfortable. Letter pads on the outside filled with memory foam, a really comfortable headband that really, it really works with your head. The most important thing, you can wear them for long periods of time. That's really important. Where do you get them? Only at voiceoveressentials.com. That's voiceoveressentials.com. Just go there, look at the headphones and get them now, tell them we sent you. Thanks, Harlan. All right, well, it's time to talk about Source Elements. It creators a Source Connect and Source Nexus 2.0, which was just released very recently. And it provides a different set of tools that you're not probably accustomed to from Source Elements. Now the Nexus thing's been around for a while. It's a virtual sound router for your computer, works on Windows or Mac and allows you to take any audio source or destination on your computer, whether it be a Chrome web browser, Zoom, Skype, whatever it is, you can assign them their own unique sets of audio drivers. And that allows those things to do is to communicate with other applications in the computer. And Nexus is basically the traffic cop. It's the Nexus. It's the intersection of all those things. But it also creates a driver so that any one of those sound sources or destinations can show up and become a plug-in. The plug-in in your multi-track software, whether you're using Pro Tools, Logic, Reaper, whatever you use Nuendo for your post-production, can now allow those signals to stream in and out seamlessly. So if you're doing a Zoom or a Skype and you are producing and you need to get the talent in and the client listening in on their favorite Zoom platform, maybe they're using Google Meet or it's corporate and they have to use Teams from Microsoft, no worries, you have a way to get that audio in and out of the production smoothly to make everybody's life easier and make it work the way it feels like when they're all in the studio with you, which seems to happen so much less often. So if you wanna learn more about Nexus and of course, if you wanna get Source Connect because you're starting to get the big job auditions coming in that say, must have Source Connect, head over to source-elements.com and get started and tell them we sent you. We appreciate it. We'll be right back with your questions. Send them in right after this. Well, hey there, it's David H. Lawrence with VO Heroes and wouldn't it be cool if there was a very simple tool, drag and drop tool that would guarantee that the audio you need to upload to ACX or any other audio book platform is perfectly set up in terms of the tech standards, the root mean square normalization, the peak normalization, the noise floor? Guess what? There is. And I want you to have it absolutely free. It's called Audio Cupcake and you can find it at audiocupcake.com. I helped create this software. It was built to my specs and my standards for when I do audio books and I know it's gonna work for you. Now it's only available for Macintosh because you Windows users, you have the ability to use other tools that work for you. But in this case, you edit your final raw WAV file for a chapter, you drop it onto Audio Cupcake and out comes the 192K Mono MP3 file you can upload immediately. That's audiocupcake.com, audiocupcake.com. I hope you love it. This is the Latin lover narrator from Jane the Virgin, Anthony Mendez. And you're enjoying Dan and George on the voiceover body shop. All right, we're back here at voiceover body shop. Again, if you have a tech question for us and it could be anything at all regarding your home voiceover studio, George and I will talk about it incessantly for hours on end. Any time, I mean, we do this. That's why you better ask some questions. Otherwise, we're gonna just go off on a new challenge. On and on and on and on and on. But we've got a couple of questions that we're gonna get to in a minute here. But by the way, Jeff, what were you so angry? I see you going, what is that? Jeff Holman, everybody. I think he's talking to his agent. Yeah. We gotta unmute you here. There you go. Oh, everything's fine. I just, you know, it's just like George said, like, that's my moment for the show and I get a phone call right then, it's like, it's just, you know. All right, that's the... Somebody's had a case of the Mondays. Right. Anyway, if you've got a question, this is where it's going, before it comes here. So if it gets kind of weird before then, now you know why. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you. All right. Anyway, we have a couple of questions here. And again, just throw it in the chat room. George and I will be happy to answer your questions on your home voiceover studio or technology. We'll start off with the question from Jeff. Since he's in there, he gets priority because that's right. He says, every time I hear artificially produced voices on YouTube videos, I think they sound like total crap. I won't use the word he used, but where are these great AI voices I keep hearing about? The canned tomato sauce of voiceover. That's what I call it. Yeah. The reason why you're hearing all these like lousy voice models on YouTube is they're mostly extremely cheap or free. They're built into the free freemium or free apps people are using. And that's why I just thought, I mean, when you mentioned that question, the name, the idea of the canned tomato sauce comes to mind. Because listen, if you were a chef at a restaurant and you made pasta and you literally opened a can of tomato sauce, you would not be a chef for very long, right? Yeah, exactly. Those restaurants pride themselves on that sauce. They make the Sunday gravy, right? You make the best sauce you ever had. That's why you come back. For me, it's pizza, the best taste in sauce. Imagine if voice actors were to just be using an AI version of a voice. And that would be accepted as a great performance. Ain't gonna happen. Is it good enough for at home to feed the kids? Yeah, that's what the canned tomato sauce is for. It's Chef Boyard. Maybe it'll get him to shut up, yeah, exactly. But you wouldn't dare share that with guests or it's like we're at a restaurant, right? So that's the way I kind of look at it. Like these are just the canned tomato sauce voices that are cheap free, built into the apps, and you're hearing them way too often now, right? Yeah, I mean, we had PJ Auclin on with us last week and we were talking about this. I look at AI and everybody's, oh, it's getting better. It's all this, it's all that. I got quoted in Wired Magazine a couple of weeks ago about AI voices, which I was totally honored to be in. For well voices, right? Yeah, as president of World Voices and they contacted me, so do you have a comment? I'm like, as a matter of fact, I do. To me, I am convinced and they'll tell me, oh, it's gonna happen. And I'm like, yeah, I'll believe it when I hear it. That a computer cannot cry. A computer-generated voice cannot sigh. A computer-generated voice cannot laugh. Yeah, it can. You can program it to do those things. You can program it to do those things, but it'll do it over and over and over again. And every time I will. Up, up, up, up, up, up. Or at the end of a sentence, you'll hear, and then you'll hear the exact same breath throughout the entire thing. Or if you're watching something like ancient aliens, which we've been sort of hooked on, but you know it's an AI voice because ancient alien theorists suggest it's the same intonation constantly and it is perfect every time. No variation. There's no variation. It actually gets kind of... Drone-y. Yeah, a little bit. And, but they said the horseless carriage will never take off, but what did we know? Look, as technology changes, human beings do what human beings do. We adapt. And if you're a voice actor and you see a change in the industry like that, make the changes in your marketing to show people that you're a human being and that you can laugh and that you can sigh and you can cry. I'm sorry, a computer can't do it. It cannot replace humans. That's totally. I just saw an incredible musical musical artist last night, Pat Matheny. He's a renowned jazz guitar player. A legend, yeah. The sound, his tone is unique, his style of playing is unique and it crosses borders between classical and jazz and it's just incredible. He's one of the most amazing guitar players alive, right? And on stage he had at least nine different guitars. He had some of them covered in a black duvetine so you didn't see it until the last second. He'd pull it off and then play it. He had a whole this huge, crazy automated instrument that he created a few years ago that he triggers from his guitar and it's playing mallets and bells and drums. I mean, it is just an unbelievable thing. And the thing is that is entertaining. It's real equipment making real sound in a real space. By a human. By a human. Yes, you could program all of that in a computer. You could sequence it and you could walk on stage and hit a play button, right? In fact, I actually saw an artist a few six months ago where it was the weirdest thing. The lead singer guy basically yells at the audience and the musician has a laptop and at the beginning of each song he hits play and then he dances around. It was the weirdest freaking thing I've ever seen. It was called Sleaford Mods. Anyway, my point I'm getting at. Hire the human. People still are gonna wanna see humans, be human, do human things, share human experiences, listen to human voices. Yes, there's always gonna be a place where AI voice comes in and yes, it's going to get better. Just like synthesizers came and changed a lot of music. Just like there's a lot of things that have been substituted in over the years but it's not gonna replace it. I just, it's not gonna. It's not gonna. And I keep saying this, it's gonna be more work to make the fake version sound real than it will be for a real person to provide the real voice. It's gonna take more time, more programming. It's gonna be more difficult. So humans win. Absolutely, humans win. Humans win, the computer is zero. All right, Justin Ramos asked a question. This is regarding the cloud thingies and these guys up here. Any problem regarding earthquake safety? Nah, unless you're living in a, I think earthquake-wise, first off, if you're in Los Angeles, it's not a problem. Nothing breaks here. They're making everything out of wood. It just goes, whoa, whoa, whoa. Everything's designed to handle that but I guess, don't just, just don't use good quality hooks. Don't use a staple gun. Good anchors, you know, the things are gonna swing around in the ceiling and that's probably fine. I don't know if I'd wanna be underneath one in a major earthquake. If they were swinging around over my head, I might consider leaving the room but I don't think you're gonna have too much to worry about but interesting question. Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it too much. If you set it up right, if you've got more, a couple of anchors in there, if the whole ceiling doesn't fall down, it's not gonna hurt you. Plus it's made out of soft stuff, except for the frame. So if the frame doesn't hit you, it's like getting hit on the head with a pillow. As long as it's not the very edge of the frame. Right, right, right. And on to a different subject from the same question here with the same sort of question, Justin asks, speaking of clouds, cloud storage recommendation for backups of auditions, et cetera, what do you think, George? Clever, clever. I'll just tell you what I use. I use oDrive, which is a way to like synchronize and move files between your computer and different cloud storages. So it works with oDrive, it works with Google Drive. It works with Dropbox. And that's what I'm using with those two services. And it just makes it easier for me to have more than one Google Drive account synchronizing to my computer at the same time. So that's what I use. All of my work exists on Google Drive, right? So that is my file syncing, file sharing, cloud backup all wrapped up in the one bundle, right? It's there, if it's in those folders, it's a backed up, it's in the cloud. If I have to run out of my house with my laptop and my girlfriend and my wallet, I'll get all my work back because I can download that again from the cloud. So that works for me. Dan, what do you do? Same, you know, I use, you know, as much problem as Google is getting themselves in, troubles Google's getting themselves into in different places. Google Drive works great. You know, it's, you know, you just set up your folders, it's there, it makes it easy to share them. But I also use iCloud, which is why when I open my laptop in the house, everything that was ever on my desktop suddenly appears on there. I'm like, I don't want that stuff and you should start moving it around and stuff. But iCloud is great for saving the stuff that is actually, you know, the downloads in your computer and stuff like that. But for actually, for transferring files because you can make them huge, GDrive works just great. And it's not expensive to have a couple of terabytes of GDrive. And totally worth it if you're moving a lot of files. Otherwise, you don't really want to storm on your machine. Yeah, don't think of a drive, a file just sitting on your computer as permanent. Exactly. We like to say if it doesn't exist in at least two places at once, consider that it doesn't exist at all. Unless you put it on a CD-ROM. Right, right. If you happen to have a CD-ROM burner, which, you know, if you have a 1911 or a 2011 computer, you might actually have it. I do still use a time machine hard drive. So I mean, just an external laptop-sized hard drive plugged into my computer to do another backup onto the physical disk. And I just, I haven't had to restore from one of those in a very long time. Maybe I've been lucky. But I haven't had to worry about that at all, so. OSes are just incredibly stable now. I think they figured out how to make them now. So they're, Yeah, I mean, they're stable. I mean, the physical memory chip that stores everything can fail. Like, when's that gonna happen? That happened in the early days of flash storage 10 plus years ago. It was more common. It is very uncommon nowadays. You'd need an EMP, electronic, or EPM. What is it, electronic pulse weapon or something? Yeah, somebody drops a nuclear bomb over your house. One, your hard drive is the least of your concerns. It's the last one I'm thinking about. Cause there ain't no coming back from a nuclear attack. Anyway, yeah. Okay, so we got another question. You get it, George, from Dave. Dave just upgraded a mid-2012. He just upgraded a 10-year-old MacBook Pro. He does now from stock to two one terabyte solid state drives. Good move. 16 gigabytes of memory. Good move. A new battery, and it's a 2.5 megahertz Core i5. It's like a mid-level MacBook Pro. Do you think this can be a decent backup laptop for the road? Yeah, of course. The thing is once it's a 2012 or older, really if it's a 2015 or older, you're gonna start running into web browser compatibility problems. Certain things are just not gonna work on that system. Browsers won't stay up to date any longer. There's gonna be some issues, and it's not because of the hardware, it's because of Apple just rolling out new machines and sun setting the old ones and stopping supporting the old ones with the newer OSes. And it kinda rolls, it's like everyone, this time of year, when the new OS comes out, something just lost support. So I think maybe that was High Sierra maybe, maybe Mojave is kinda the end of the road in terms of getting support and staying supported and current. So yes, it'll work. If you just need a computer to travel with and record, that's technically overkill with all those specs, but it'll work fine. He says, can I get a second Twisted Wave license on it? Yes. When you want a Twisted Wave license, you can install it on as many computers as you want. Which is actually very different from a lot of other platforms. Either have one or two or five limit, I mean maybe even five or something. Right, right, and it's great because then you've got it on one computer, it makes it easy to transfer to the other, and you're working in the same environment. And Twisted Wave's great software. So. And just for relative speed, he made a little observation. Even with all those upgrades, the faster storage, the more memory, it's still one sixth the speed of the M1 storage or performance. I don't know if he means the speed of storage or the speed of the computer. But yeah, the M1s are dramatically faster, no doubt about it. The storage on the silicon chips because everything's unified into one small chip, the storage is lightning fast. Which at the end of the day, that's what makes a computer from a day-to-day use case. Just opening the apps, loading files, saving things, exporting this, that's the speed of that storage. Is it really is what you're gonna notice? That is what makes the computer feel extremely snappy. That's what keeps you from seeing a spinning pinwheel all the time. That's what you're really gonna notice more than anything, I think. So yeah, it's a good experience for most people. Keep an old machine around as a backup, I do the same. I just, believe it or not, I took my old backup computer that I gave to my daughter. She's like, this thing stinks, dad, it's slow. So I gave her my 2019 MacBook Pro, which is a very base model, right? And I cleaned it and put her system on it. She's fine, she's happy as a camper. I took her old MacBook Air 2015 and I wiped it and installed my user account on it, and it's fine. Like it still works fine. Yes, it's slow, but it will still do basic things. And if I need to run an Intel-specific thing, like I have a Windows version on there, it runs. You know, Windows 32, Windows 7, Windows 7, whatever. Oh my God, Windows 7. It will actually run on that old Intel Mac and it won't run on my new one. So I still keep it around. Very cool, use a Mac. I mean, a lot of people out there are, you know, like, oh, I'm a PC person. That's fabulous. If you're good at that, I'm gonna get that skeeter. I'm telling you, this guy. God, we support Windows over at George the Tech. We've got a few on our team who are very Windows-centric. Yep. Even the ones that are the most experienced still, we run into technical brick walls where it's like, I don't know why it's glitching. What's going on there? You know, it's like, at the end of the day, I don't want to be the guy who says, why don't you try getting a Mac? Because people on Windows hate being told to try a Mac. They just, it just makes them crazy. And okay, whatever the reasons you might, maybe you have some political reason you don't like Apple. I don't know. But it's, it just is proven to be a great, stable, easy to use, well-supported platform for creating media. Which is what we do. Which is what it's really designed for. I mean, yeah. Like PCs are great for doing spreadsheets. And they're great for maybe doing some graphic work and stuff like that. Yeah, and definitely for gaming. Do not game on a Mac unless, you know, you can. But for voiceover, nothing is simpler than a Mac. You don't want all these different variables in the operating system. And Macs just are really designed for creatives like us. And that's why we- Antivirus scanners running all the time? Absolutely. No one's infected my computer. Now, of course, someone's going to attack it today. But, you know- That would end up the Monday night sleep, wouldn't it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, after the show. You can hack my computer after the show. Please, wait, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, I think that's it for most of the questions tonight. Thanks for all of those. Again, if you want to write to us and you've got a question, let me get the right banner up there so I can show you exactly what it is you're supposed to say, write to. You write to the guys at VOVS.TV. How do you like that? If you write to that address and you have a question for us, anytime of the week you wake up in the middle of the night going, what about this interface I've got? Write to us at the guys at VOVS.TV and we'll be happy to answer it on our next show. Your head is set in like a suction cup on a glass wall. Don't make me do that again. Okay, and so that's an important thing to know. If you've got a question, you can always ask one of us. Come at me. Yes. So anyway, I'm going to kiss this mosquito. We should wrap it up into a nice tight little ball and get rolling here. So don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages to wrap things up and make it more important to you because we'll be talking about you. We'll be right back here on VoiceOver Body Shop so do not go away. Catch that skater. Yeah, hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky, the voice of Rocco 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 voiceoverextra.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. VoiceOver Extra has hundreds of articles, free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed. Learn from the most respected talents, coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books, auditioning, home studio setup and equipment, marketing, performance techniques and much more. It's time to hit your one stop daily resource for voiceover success. Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports. It's all here at voiceoverextra.com. That's voiceoverextra.com. All right, it's time for me to talk about a great product, a great website and that is voiceactor.com. Yes, voiceactor.com. An affiliate of voiceactorwebsites.com. Now, what do they do over at voiceactor.com? They have templated websites. If you've tried to build your own website using Wix or you're trying to do things with HTML and WordPress or one of the... There's a lot to learn. We have taken that problem out of the equation because a templated website gives you all sorts of options, different designs, different ways to present your name, your demos and your contact information which is probably far the most important stuff that you can have on your website. And you can change the background picture, you can change the colors, you can add anything you want and it's all menu driven, not code driven. And what they've been able to do is the technology has been updated so everything is just a menu, a dropdown, okay, use this color, use that. Is it simple? Yes. Do you need something complex to show that you're a great voice actor? What you wanna show as a voice actor is what you sound like and how to contact you. And that's really the most important thing. Other people spend six months designing the perfect website and in two years it's out of date already. Or it's too elaborate. You don't want people going in there and going to all these different places. They wanna see your name, they wanna hear your demos and they wanna know how to contact you. That's what your website is for. So go over to voiceactor.com and get yourself a website really, really quick like in 20 minutes. So go over to voiceactor.com right now. We are the World Voices Organization. Also known as Wobo. 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 WoboCon conference, a fun and educational weekend with other members with a 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 Voices Organization. We speak for those who speak for a living. This is Ariana Ratner and you're enjoying VoiceOver Body Shop with Dan Leonard and George Wittem, vOBS.tv. All righty, unmute. We're unmuted, aren't we? We're unmuted and we'll mix up. I'm mixing this back up again. No, okay. Is that the way you're gonna be? No, we're gonna switch it around again. No. Okay. Having fun with the switcher. Okay, let's go back to where we usually are. Okay. Hey, technology. It's fascinating trying to direct this and catch a mosquito at the same time. I must say. Anyway, thanks for watching tonight. It's always fun doing this show and Mr. Wittem, it is always a pleasure doing it with you. Next week, Jeff... Why can I never remember his last name? Howell? Jeff Howell will be our guest. Hey, don't laugh. I'm amazed I pulled that name out of my butt, too. I'm just as amazed as you are. I'm taking the lion's mane. It actually is helping a little bit. Actually, okay, good to know. Lion's mane coffee. This is a mushroom. It's a good kind of mushroom. It's not like one of those things that will send you off to another planet. Hey, what's wrong with that? That's true. Anyway, if you want to work with one of us, we have to remind you once again that if you want to work with me, just go on over to homevoiceoverstudio.com and put in your specimen in my specimen cup and for $25, I'll give your stuff a listen. Or you can go over to... GeorgeThe.tech. All right. And you can head over to the slash V-O-B-S landing page to remind you what our coupon code is, which is V-O-B-S-Fan-10. All right. 10% off anything on the website. All right. Let's see here. Are you still selling the Studio Bricks and the Vocal Booth? Oh, yeah, we have a vocalbooth.com diamond, the diamond-shaped one for sale still here and actually belong to Atlas Talent. It's out there. They don't need it anymore. They don't have actors come in. So they shoved it in your closet? No, it's still there. Thank goodness. It's still there. It's just over in Playa Vista near Marina Del Rey and you can come check it out. Yeah, email me at GeorgeThe.tech. And we also have two Studio Bricks booths for sale that my friend, our friend, actually our producer, Sue, is helping us get sold. And so again, just email me if you're interested in finding out more about those Studio Bricks booths that are for sale. They're some pretty big ones. Twice as big as this one. Oh, wow. And the small ones are nice too. So anyway, we need to thank our donors of the week and you can donate to our show by going to our page if you're already there. It says vobs.tv right underneath all that stuff. It says donate now. Click on that and you can get a dollar a month. Be fabulous. It all adds up. It makes us sound like public radio but we're better than that. We give you stuff you actually need and not anything spun a certain way except our way. But we need to thank our donors of the week like Greg Cooper, Grace Newton, Christopher Epperson, Robert Liedem, Steve Chandler, Casey Clack, Jonathan Grant, Thomas Pinto, Greg Thomas, A Doctor Voice, Antland Productions, Martha Kahn, 949 Designs, Sarah Borges, Phillip Sapir, Brian Page, Rob Ryder, Shauna Pennington-Baird, Don Griffith, Trimozli, Diana Birdsal, Maria Makis, and Sandra Manwheeler. Also, we need to thank our amazing sponsors like Harlan Hogan's Voiceover Essentials, Voiceover Extra, Source Elements, VeroHeroes.com, VoiceActor.com, and WorldVoices.org. Wovo, the Industry Association of Freelance Voice Talent. Yes, I am in charge of that right now for the next year or so. We're making lots of changes. It's going to be a great organization with some great benefits for people, so go over to world-voices.org and join up. We need to thank Mr. Jeff Holman. Where's Jeff Holman? There it is. Yeah, Jeff Holman. And there he is, Jeff Holman. See, it's like BJ Leaderman. They have to mention it every Saturday morning on National Public Radio, but there he is. Can I get him out? There we go. He is in all sorts of stuff. He's making money. Go to hire him. Absolutely. Go to find him at imdb.me slash Jeff Holman. One L, one M, one N. Okay, very good. Thanks for all your help in the chat room tonight. Sue Merlino, we thank you for just being Sue because she's got a real bad back problem and she could not help us out tonight. So I've been doing all the switching and doing the best I can. And of course, Lee Penny, simply for being Lee Penny. Well, that's going to do it for us this week. Thanks for tuning in. You know, voiceover is a very difficult entrepreneurial freelance business. You got so much you got to learn. One of the most important parts is do you sound good? But we found that if it sounds good. It is good. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Whidham. And this is voiceover. Body shop. Or VOBS. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Alrighty. Have a good week, everybody. We will see you next time here at VoiceOver Body Shop. Okay.