 We're happening. We're happening. It's it's happening. We got lots of stuff great stuff to talk about tonight when it comes to your home voiceover studio George, what are you gonna bring us in your tech update? You know some kind of random stuff some things that were announced this year at the NAMM show or the virtual NAMM show a little blurb about the new road and video mic NTG a New plug-in that could be revolutionary for voiceover recording, but I don't know quite yet and Yeah, you know the usual tech stuff. Yeah, and we're gonna talk about should I get a new Mac mini and if we have time We're gonna talk about mudflaps and we're not talking about trucker stuff We're talking about those acoustic panel things So yeah, if you've got a question throw it in the Facebook chat room or on YouTube or wherever it is You're watching and we will get back to that question tonight as well So stay tuned time for voiceover body shop tech talk right now from the outer reaches They came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe. They bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain the professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio and Each week they allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials comm home of Harlan Hogan signature products source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites.com where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training J. Michael Collins demos when quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success and Now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Well, good evening. Good morning. Good afternoon wherever it is. You happen to be watching this show I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whidham and this is voice over body shop or VO Not tick-tock not tick-tock Tech talk tech talk. I may have been well, let's see anyway, we're here to talk about your home voiceover studio and And how to make yourself sound the way you're supposed to sound what it's supposed to sound like or is what it's supposed to sound like Going that way. I never remember what I'm going right a lot. Maybe if I was writing it in Hebrew I could be going that way Anyway How's life been with you it's in your newer newer digs It's going pretty well There's less to do with my daughter when she's here, you know going to the pool was always fun But it can't right now everything shut down So, you know, fortunately she keeps herself better more busy. Thanks to electronics You know, she's got a laptop and iPad and an iPhone and she will use all that stuff simultaneously so yeah, we're doing fine here it's um You know Just trying to be creative to find new ways to keep ourselves sane Also, my girlfriend is back in Iran to be with her family and checking in our dad on her dad who has a health scare So, you know, it's it's a little bit stressful time, but we're doing okay Yeah, I'm finally recovered from that kidney stone a couple weeks ago. Hallelujah. My goodness You want to talk about some pain, but somebody sent me some really good gourmet cookies I want to thank them again for that and there was nothing special in those cookies There was nothing except a tremendous lots of layers of flavor. You know, you know Cookies are cookies. These weren't cookies. It was like I taste a little bit of this I taste nice of that. It was like, okay, let me savor them. That's a good skill Maybe they were magic cookies. They were I was not cookie monster with you We got lots of tech taught to cover tonight and we're glad you're here again If you've got a question throw it in the chat room about your home voiceover studio about equipment or technique or But not my little advice. We don't want to talk about that. Um, anyway, what's in your update? Oh Yeah It's the corniest lead inside ever find another one. That's so good. Oh God, okay, so So first of all, I want to get out of the way this it's not tech stuff, but there's this thing called clubhouse Everybody's talking about it It feels a little bit Well, they're trying to make it feel very exclusive. There's a couple of ways they're doing this one You have to be invited in you can request to be in there But unless somebody it's already in there says hey, come on in you can't get in so that's one way It's kind of exclusive and the other way is that it's only iOS So you have to have an iPhone or an iPad now. I know there's people out there going Android, you know what go buy it and used iPad mini for a hundred bucks and Have some device that runs Apple iOS so that you can feel more connected to a lot of the universe that Unfortunately is developed in the iOS environment first because Apple makes it easier for developers That's why but anyways clubhouse is a unique news social media platform. That's completely audio based There's absolutely no typing. There's no video all there is are a bunch of little icons showing who's talking and the ability to host clubs or create clubs and then hosts shows and In your club and then invite speakers in to speak It's very interactive. You can have people ask questions of you or your you can be on a panel And then have people ask questions in the panel It's an amazing new Platform and obviously voiceovers voice actors have taken to it because it is a voice only medium It's a vocal medium. Yeah, there's a no-brainer. So anyway, I've been spending a little time in there If you jump into that platform, you know You'll you'll probably be swept into it by your compadres who are already using it I think it's I Think it's worthwhile spending a little time in there because if you're new to voiceover It's a great way to learn and if you're a seasoned veteran It's a great way to reconnect and chat with others in the business and have a little bit of a social time Yes, we've already been doing that in zoom and other things, but Sometimes a new platform is kind of fun. So Anyway, that's clubhouse and yes, I've been in there quite a bit Lately it's now and I got to check it out and figure out both see down there And it's like you just got on tic-tac, didn't you? Yeah, a couple weeks ago. I Think but I'm only on there because my daughter wanted to be on there last year or two years ago And so I want to make sure I could check in on her and it's funny how at first You're like I got to see what she's up to and after about a year goes by you're like Okay, honey. Yeah dad. I don't show my face on there and it's only cartoons. Okay, honey Yeah, it's just hope nothing goes wrong Nam the Nam show or some flavor of Nam show happened a couple weeks ago And it was just an on-stream online thing. I didn't really do anything with the Nam show itself I signed up and but there wasn't really much for me to I really was relevant so But this time of year is when companies start releasing new products And so a few things came out and popped up and I looked at sound on sound calm Which is an awesome audio great magazine. It's a really good magazine. I'm I'm so tempted to sign up for an online Subscription it's 45 bucks for a year for the PDF. It's not cheap But there are articles and their reviews and everything are really top-notch So they had an a 2021 sound-on-sound awards and gave out awards to some products You guys have heard us talk about the cloud lifter a million times for heck. We've had Roger cloud We've interviewed them on the show It's a product that was revolutionary because it allowed you to plug very low output dynamic microphones Into low-gain devices like a scarlet. They have 50 something DB of gain Not nearly is not enough for like a ribbon mic or some of the dynamic mics. So he invented this product. Well Years go by many many companies that made their own versions of this cloud lifter But this fellow this company has come out. We're like, well, if we're gonna have cloud lifters Why can't they have something more going on something more interesting? So show that throw that up on the screen Sue. I've got the screen share from the article On the on the sound-on-sound website, there's products from a company called tiara and They're mic boosters with color or rather in the parlance of these guys flavors chili vanilla pepper Cocoa salt, I think it's a really really clever idea now. Is this something that's super relevant to a voice actor. I Don't know But I will say this if I know people sometimes buy Outboard mic preamps or they buy this plug-in or that plug-in because they're trying to get some new sound Something that's got a color to it or a flavor to it This could be some way to give it that a try without over committing buying some really crazy expensive Very elaborate channel strip, you know with tubes and all that and give you a new way to Give you a way to get some different color out of the microphones that you already have so I Don't know I just thought it was kind of interesting and I found that the the fellow who is doing the video on this product Well, I'm not gonna play the whole thing, but here's a little taste of these of the product. Oh, can't wait There's the best accent right now. You guys can go you guys can go check out tiara's website and watch the whole video about their product Anyway, it's a it's a unique idea I Don't know Dan. Do you ever see for see you wanting to experiment with some? I mean, I know you like microphones and you've had a lot of mics But you thought about changing the color of a mic you already have You know, I'm not a singer at least not a very good one and I really don't worry about that that much, you know to me my philosophy is always You know the idea is not to sound great The idea is to sound like you if you're a good voice actor. You already sound great You just want to capture you as you exist If you're nerdy and you want to play with stuff and have fun on tick-tock and all these other things Yeah, you can use it for that whatever use it on an audition or on a production probably not I'm finding a lot of people have gotten cloud lifters because Someone told them that oh the great mic for voiceover is an SM7B You're running into that a lot, you know, I still bet that okay Here's a reason why this mic is being sold to voice actors. I got the latest sweetwater catalog, okay? Guess what the description for the SM7B says voice over good for voice over ADR Definitely if there's any mic that it is not good for is ADR. Yeah And then it says a podcasting and broadcasting well those last two are correct. Absolutely It is definitely not an ideal Voice-over microphone every time I hear people try to gussy it up get the output high enough to be a good voice over mic So much noise comes along with it even with the cloud lifter. Yeah, it ends up being so noisy It just just doesn't make sense and when you buy a $400 mic and $150 cloud lifter Think about all the mics you can buy at that price point, right? Are you getting $800 worth of sound there? You know, I see a lot of vocalists using it because people who are singing are putting out a lot more sound pressure They're louder and therefore an interface and a pre-app is gonna pick it up without having to add a whole lot of gain to it Yeah, I think people need to stop thinking that that's a great voiceover mic and just listen to what we say Get a studio condenser mic. It's really the best way to do things I think some people are getting it because they think there's not gonna be a lot of background noise But folks fear folks are feeling a little deprived because when I played that video the audio didn't come along with it So I'm gonna play ten seconds with the audio. Hopefully you guys hear this Hello everybody. I'm Javier. I'm the co-founder of the audio. I want to say we use something that really excites us it's called flavors Flavor is a collection of analog inline microphone plimp fires They are designed to bring seven different sonic flavors. Okay, you get You get the idea there's a lot of flavor in that video Besides the guy's amazing accent You know, he was speaking into an SM7B Completely reverberant room, you know doing everything wrong for voiceover, right? But I just thought that was entertaining but it sounded colorful it certainly did I don't know how to I don't know how to make this make sense for voiceover But I just it's just something that tangentially was related. So I thought it was interesting another thing that You know trying to solve a problem that maybe we should solve in the room first other than trying to fix it in post Well, here's a plug-in that's gonna try to fix another problem and this is a plug-in called sooth and Sooth the idea behind sooth is the idea that you should be able to By using the right kind of compression You should be able to smooth out things that don't sound very good in the audio I'm gonna share that tab as well. I didn't I didn't set it up in advance. Sorry about that But let me bring it up so you guys can see it and there's no audio to share here I'm just gonna let you see what it actually looks like There we go That's the sooth plug-in So what sooth does you guys are familiar with a dsr, right? Absolutely. So yeah, exactly So a dsr will when you tune it correctly Smooth out sibilants so that those sharp s's don't jump out which some voices and some people the way they deliver They have too much sibilants and the microphone just exaggerates it So what this one is is kind of like a dsr on steroids and So it attempts through its own automated process to find any other things that resonate or ring or jump out of the frequency band sibilants Muddiness so like if the sound is very bottom-heavy and lacks clarity And it basically finds all those frequencies that stand out and tries to squash them down or sooth the sound I If it works an audition, I will try it on audition. It's a standard plug-in standard that works on any platform so Your basic parametric equalizer It is and I think what makes it interesting to me is theoretically the Smartness of it because as an engineer as a geek and someone that's used all these plugins I could make like a multi-band compressor or whatever and I could make this try to emulate this But the thing about this that makes it interesting it to me is the is the I guess maybe machine learning Part of it the part where it listens Determines what shouldn't be there and tries to suppress it I'm talking about a plug and I haven't tried yet So I'm going to be giving it a try in fact I think we might do a little pro audio suite quick bite about this on our next episode and have the all the geeks in our audio suite Room that our engineers throw some time at this and see if it's useful useful It's not cheap at $200. So if you got $200 to spend First try to work out the issues you're having in your studio with your acoustics and your mic technique Yeah, start there. That's where you should spend your money first A couple more things the road video mic NTG Interesting microphone. So this mic is sort of like road throwing kind of everything at it and Trying to make the ultimate do all microphone It's a mic that was really designed to be lightweight and very compact as a shotgun mic that works on a camera or could be used on a boom and It also has a audio interface. It's usb as well But the problem was the usb feature was not Compatible with ios So if you want to use it with an iphone, which I thought was the ultimate way to use this mic It's a very small light and it sounds really good plug it into an iphone Well, you couldn't do it But now you can somehow they managed to update the firmware So you can plug a video mic NTG Directly into an ios device So why is this mic? It's interesting Think of the apogee mic and all of its issues the fact that it it's very very easy to pop It's a cardioid mic. So it's going to pick up a little bit more background noise This is a shotgun mic a true shotgun mic So it's going to be easier to use In less than ideal situations like in a car for example or working on the road So it could be the ultimate throw it in your glove box or throw it in your bag mic That you use with the iphone 250 range. There's a picture of it. Thanks sue As you can see it's it's got that really awesome Liar shock mount You can plug headphones into it I won't even go through the list because this is a massive list of features it has it has Safety track so to record the main track at your standard level But in a safety track at minus 20 db It's it's all built into this little guy. So Pretty cool. I'd love to find out who of you have tried it out and and use it Um, and if you did put comments below, I'd love to hear who likes it The last thing I want to talk about and this is what dan is Dan's been asking me the last couple of weeks. We do actually talk to each other. We do He's having some right do this He's having some gear fomo and I totally get it fomo, baby Dan's thinking about getting the new mac mini m1 Here's the thing Should I write it? This is a tough question. Actually, we're at this like precipice because dan and I have the same 2018 mac minis We have the same exact one as far as I know It's a six core i5 chip And so it's pretty darn fast. It does everything. We've thrown at it. No problem so far, right, right um I put 32 gigs of memory in mine. I don't know how do you know how much how much you have in your stand I don't know enough enough right I bought it with eight and then I put 32 gig in because it was the last mac that I could actually upgrade myself I think I think I put more ram into it too. I just don't yeah, it was so inexpensive Desk there it's like I know you're over there right so so the question is right. Is this the time to upgrade Okay, so let's talk about the pros the pros are You can buy the m1 with 16 gigabytes of memory for about I think it's 899 The current street price of the computers that dan and I have Are really darn close to that price. So it's practically a break even, right? Yeah, it's a break even makes it a no-brainer, but it's technology A huge improvement or are the others still bugs to it and is everything all my stuff going to still work with Because there's only yes I would recommend that you do if you're really serious about it do buy the new m1 mac mini um clone over your system migrated over whatever just import everything over to the new machine And Give it a shot. I I've tested a bunch of stuff with the m1 macbook air um Other the things that other than things that said we don't run on big sir And there was a few things but that's that problem starting to go away because everybody's now pretty much supporting it Um except pro tools, but that's nothing new Everything pretty much. I've thrown on there has worked including Even though it's not supported the apollo. I got the apollo to work on the m1 So dan you don't use the apollo, but you've got the scarlet. You've got the road caster caster, which I love Which is a great unit. What are the gear do you have to plug into this thing? Uh, not a whole lot. Yeah, just this webcam the brio. Is it the brio webcam? Yeah with the high definition camera and Yeah, but not a whole lot else. I mean, you know me keeping it simple Yeah, you know, so just have a couple of different mic inputs. So the road caster and Not much else a couple of extra external hard drives to you know clear off the internal drives on that thing Well, dan I think for the in the interest of science Okay, go by the m1 macbook mac book uh mac mini. Sorry get the mac mini yeah clone your system over get it all up and running on the m1 and and report back to us Okay, well, let us know how it goes the next time we do this show we'll probably be going through it and if it's like We'll know. Okay, right. We don't pre-flight anything. We just we do it all right right to the air Yeah, no, I think it's been a couple of months since it's been out and it's smoothed out This was one of the smoothest launches. I think of any brand new apple computer that I can think of considering it's such a new Um internally it's all new Um, it seems to be working out exceptionally well So, um, I know shon daily got a mac book pro m1 and a mac mini m1 and he's loving them So if you want somebody to commiserate about um, he would be somebody. Yeah, but um I've had good experiences. I just haven't committed to it. It's not the centerpiece of my studio But dan you've got a mac book pro 2015. I think so. Yeah, you've got your bases covered Right. Oh, yeah, go buy one. Yeah, tell your wife I said yes No, it's okay She doesn't have to know Especially if it's an even trade. So Exactly, it is it break even already late for that out for now It is pretty much it you know as time goes on it won't be so much a even break even but For now, it certainly it certainly is so yeah We'll see we'll report dan will report back I shall I shall and you know what I'm doing first thing tomorrow morning Or tonight after I post the show Um, we were going to talk about mudflaps and ruma ruma acoustics Maybe we'll get to that in a little bit But we got a ton of questions from you guys and that's what george and I really like to do So we'll answer those right after the break and I guess it's just stay tuned. We'll be right back with us This is v obs proven anybody can have a show these days So for the first time ever voice over essentials.com has created a discount coupon code in honor of february 14th valentine's day with a store-wide discount of 14 percent While checking out at voice over essentials.com just enter v obs 14 in the discount code box and your discount will be deducted automatically You know nothing says I love you like a colorful LED recording sign or port-a-booth plus or pro for those romantic trips will all be ticking again before long One caution the promotion ends at midnight on february 14th central standard time So start shopping. Remember just enter v obs 14 in the discount code box and your discount will be deducted automatically voiceover essentials.com For all your home voiceover studio needs Thanks harlan Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. Were you stick around? You don't want to miss this At target we want you to come as you are be comfortable. Okay, maybe not bathrobe comfortable Pants for the customer on aisle four, please Watch anywhere anytime on an unlimited number of devices sign in with your netflix account to watch instantly at netflix.com The ice cream maker is a big risk that can have huge reward Until you forget to turn it on Well, that's it guys time is up Hey, it's jmc. Thanks for watching the voiceover body shop If you're demo ready or looking to get there check out jmc demos.com and see a sample of our work Now let's get back to dan and george and this week's tech wisdom Well, it's time to talk about source connect Source connect is the tool that any voice actor who really wants to be playing at that Next level really wants to have in their toolkit. It's a software that runs on mac or windows and it is a Well, it definitely is has become a standard In terms of how studios are doing remote production And at this point saying remote production is almost redundant because almost everything is recorded Remotely these days and we'll be done that way for the foreseeable future I remember just a year ago when things were starting to get bad Um, you know, we all kind of panicked. We had a surge of home studios come together And source connect was on the tip of everyone's tongue And that's when I produced a video on how to get started with source connect So I would definitely check that out so you can feel more confident At you can go to george the george the dot tech. I know my own website Slash sc and take a look at that so that you can feel like you're confident When it's time to get source connect running Get yourself that demo too. You don't need to have an iLock dongle key thing of a bob You can just sign up and put the license right on your computer And get up and running right away. So you know that you're confident That when you're when you're asked upon you'll be ready to use Source connect. Anyway, we appreciate source elements source elements for supporting us for so long now And uh, we'll be right back to get to all your tech questions Yeah, hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky the voice of Rocco and you're watching voiceover body shop Can I get a take two on that commercial? No, sorry, I'm just kidding Live reads and you know, you've been doing it for 10 years. You're getting a read man. If it was a read it'd be far far worse Trust me I'm better speaking extemporaneously. Yeah, I am no voice actor Well, but I'm sure hanging out with them. You've gotten better at it. Maybe it's just no Who knows maybe I think I'm getting better at if you gave me a script I would I would sound just like anybody else Yeah Well, as you know, George and I are experts on home voiceover studios. That's what we do Uh, I'm a professional voice actor. George is not but he is a professional Audio engineer a professional voice listener That's true and and trying to keep things the way they're supposed to sound and if you need help with your home Voiceover studio is really only two places to go everybody else can give you like well This is what makes me sound great. Right. We don't do that for you We don't do what it is. It makes us sound great We're gonna find out what you sound like and make sure that how you sound Is how it comes over on a hard drive somewhere on a file that you sound like you the idea of a home voiceover studio Is not to sound great. The idea is to sound like you there's an awful lot of people out there saying Oh, manipulate it this way and do this and do that If you're just starting out, you really want to keep it simple Once you've been at it for a while and there are certain things perhaps you have to do You learn some techniques and stuff. We had debbie dairyberry on last week Who was talking about how she had to learn all this stuff? Having this stuff is not the same as knowing how Or when or why to use it But george and i know that stuff and we try to keep it simple for you And if you have you know a problem with your studio or you really have no idea what how to start out You can work with one of us and if you want to work with george, where did they go? You head over to george the tech and you check out my massive menu of options Not quite the greek restaurant by getting there There's a lot of stuff on there a lot of things you can select You can get a sound check at the at the bargain end of the price range and get your audio listened to Or I can design your dream studio or create a processing chain for your apollo system Whatever you need. I do it all over there But dan does the same thing just a little different over at homevoiceoverstudio.com Yeah, you know I I I work with a lot of beginners people who are like I'm a techno this right? I'm not tech savvy. You know, it's like You don't have to be I think people forget that it's you know, you may be looking at a computer But you gotta think about it's like a cassette recorder play Stop record Yeah, people just need to change what they look at so I try to write software. Damn it. That's right Use the easiest software not the most complex software and by the way all software sounds the same Initially some things can do more than others But the thing is is if you do it right up front If your acoustics are good if you use your microphone properly And you set your levels which we talked about in the last tech talk properly That's really all you're required to do and we I'll show you how to do that So go over to homevoiceoverstudio.com Well, let's get into some of these A massive amount of questions we have tonight and we'll start off with the david curell who says now this is Try and follow what he's saying here. It's all right. Let's say Let's just say I'm using a microphone with a frequency response of 80 hertz to 12 kilohertz All right, basically the range of the human voice and in post processing Which we have to ask why I apply bass roll off at 60 hertz Why do I hear changes in audio meaning that there is a low cut which I can hear After applying the eq. Isn't it supposed to give no effects and 60 hertz is outside the frequency response? Thanks. Now. I you know once I read that slowly. I understood what he was talking about Well, a lot could depend on what he's listening to it on You know headphones monitors that sort of thing Something tells me that perhaps he's not hitting the 60 hertz. He might be hitting something else. What do you think? When people think of a microphone of having a frequency response of 80 hertz to 12 kilohertz I don't even know of a microphone in existence that has exactly that frequency response It sounds like a casino like a like a radio shack electric condenser mic Yeah, a mic that doesn't have any pickup below 80 hertz pretty much doesn't exist and the reason is Is when you and a lot of mics have like a switch on them like this audio technique that has a low cut switch When you engage it it on this mic, I believe it and it turns on a 80 hertz low cut But that isn't a fall off the cliff Low cut in other words when the sound gets to 80 It doesn't disappear into the abyss The what there's what's called a slope and you'll see on the specifications It'll say something like 12 db per octave or something like that So as you go below 80, it's sloping off on an angle And you're getting quieter and quieter as you go down So what's going on in your case is well, you must a have a massive voice And b you probably have maybe a slightly resonant studio that really resonates at that frequency So when you add another roll off at 60 You're still hearing a little bit of that low end that still remains at 60 hertz When you have a mic that's cutting off below 80 Kind of hard to explain this with just hand gestures But as you understand what I'm saying the mic doesn't just cut off at 80 Right it starts reducing low end at 80, but it's not just a Flat cut off it's a slope Right and if you can hear under 80 hertz, you know, you probably have long ears and a lot of fur Yeah, you're probably feeling it as much as you're hearing it But yeah, you're gonna get some of that resonance that can still exist Below 80 hertz with some men's voices. So Everybody has that kind of low end resonance There's a few we won't mention. Yeah, not many. Yeah. Uh, why don't you take the one from one s to this? Okay. Hey Juan I was gifted a 2013 iMac and it's running high sierra High sierra 10 13 6 Is there a way to change the previous owners apple id? To my own Without wiping it clean Aka so I can keep all the apps I'm sure that's I'm sure that's what you're getting out there one Shut up Thanks so much for interrupting the show Um Well, what you want to do is just install a new user account or set up a new user account under your name And then once it's set up as an administer account erase the old account now when you erase the old account it'll wipe out All his personal information his apple id information But it the applications will remain behind But you can't change the apple id to an account um Let me think if you were to change the apple id to your apple id any software that's a tie to that the old apple id Like a licensed software something he bought from the app store like on my mac book that you you programmed Exactly. Some of those apps we installed years ago, right were installed under my apple id Um, you're gonna lose access to those apps anyway So it's pretty hard to fool the south for licensing gods If you don't have the license to run something And it's not your user account chances are you're not going to be able to run it So you're either gonna have to be stuck with the old apple id and just keep using his personal information Or commit and and move forward the apps will still be there But the next time you launch them they might say hi, who are you? So be ready for that. Yeah, here's a question. I had been waiting all week to answer From i want to see how you pronounce this name toning hoover rolls close enough Oh Oh, it's hoover. Oh, it's too. Let us know it's hoover. Okay. We'll just take that Is there any But let's get to the question because the question is one week that comes across a lot Especially from people who are sending in samples and stuff they say is there any benefit to recording voiceovers in stereo I saw a video in which the pro voiceover artist I forget who unfortunately fortunately actually You said it said you should record in mono, but process and deliver In stereo. Well, I would think that it depends on who you're sending it to Industry standard if you're sending in a file To an engineer who's going to take it and do all the processing because it's none of your business If you send that in in two track stereo one, it doesn't sound any different Right. The industry standard is always send it in one track mono because when they're taking it and they're throwing it in their multitracking and stuff They don't want to be messing with you know If it's uneven or if it's in the fact of the matter is you can't get stereo out of One microphone It's only one one sound. So you don't need there's no spatial awareness or differentiation around it It's one track an industry standard is mono. So deliver your files in mono because Stereo doesn't sound any better with one spot in one place. I never The same signal duplicated. So there's a left and a right and they're the same signal So, yeah, don't confuse the engineer. Don't send him something stereo when When because if you send it in stereo, then they're wondering wait, is there stereo Uh material in here is there stereo content? Is the voice going to be panning left and right? You know, it's No, don't do it The only reason to ever do it is if the client who's paying you says to do it and then you go You got it That would be the only reason ever to do it. Otherwise, no I think sometimes if you send us something in stereo or in two track it can get round filed before they get to the slate It could happen if I mean, I know when I receive one in stereo The first thing I do is delete The second channel So I don't even want to be thinking about it in stereo. So I'm on and went out in adobe auditions So yeah, I get an idea of really what's going on there because otherwise This is confusing. Yeah You only have one mouth this suit says Yeah, yeah Jeff holman asks Oh, you I'll let you ask this one answer this one Okay. Hey Jeff Arlux claims that their four inch thick foam panels are three times better at controlling the low end frequencies on the two inch ones And that by using a the thicker panels one may not need to use base traps are the thicker panels worth the extra price No, two inches are 30 dollars a piece Four inches are 50 dollars a piece directly from Arlux Yes Definitely Most of the booths that I hear whisper rooms closets everything that are just sort of wallpapered in two inch don't two inch thick foam Sound pretty lousy And it's not just the base frequencies. It's the mid base. It's the mid range The four inch panels have way better mid to low mid range absorption and so If you're going to go foam I would recommend definitely going with four inch thick foam It here's the thing though two inch thick Roxel or mineral wool I think works just as well as the four inch foam So when you start really comparing prices You're going to find that the panels wrapped in fabric that look way nicer are easier to install Have and are probably going to last a lot longer have almost the same exact performance as the four inch foam so The only reason to use four inch foam I think is because you're trying to work in difficult spots like where you got to cut it into Weird shapes and fit it around things, you know, that's where the foam is kind of nice But if you're just working with blank walls, I definitely recommend the the Roxel based Panels, I think you get better performance with less space Taken up So There's that all right Question here from and now here's a name Uh Sasha did go gul using All right formatting is funny. Somebody's really got to fix their job. Have a good time tonight, aren't we? Okay, all right Interesting question. He's he's just messing with us. He wants just a weird read funny made-up last name Sasha to gog Or the guh depending on uh, anyway Uh, she says i'm using the neat worker b Mike got a nice stack set up with eq that works for me Guess what Sasha? You don't work for you and you don't hire you I the only way we can tell is if we listen um Light compression d click and a bit of ds-in She's talking in a southern accent with the with the it's a guy says uh, so oh, okay Anyway, I send an audition between minus 12 and minus 6 db But sometimes it seems like it's a bit quiet for a finished version So many clients want finished products. I do normalized a minus 3 db too Just wondering if that could be considered an absolute final product ready to go to press Is there something else to add to my chain to get a final polished product? assuming they're not engineers Uh, everything you could possibly need to do to your audio is generally in your your workstation audio your digital audio workstation You know, yeah your twisted wave your adobe audition Uh, you know reaper Uh, they all have compression. Yeah, they all have compression. They all have eq They all have limiters The best thing to do is to let george and I hear it Uh, you know send it to one of us and we'll do an analysis for it uh, and Because I think what what we normally will do is Trying hear the raw sound of your studio And then bring it to where it needs to be If correction should be there, I think people are way overusing processing because they have it as opposed to understanding Why they should use it? Yeah, I mean just a little bit of the right things. It's kind of like seasoning a great tasting gourmet dish Um, you overdo any one thing and it ruins it. It dominates the the taste, you know too much salt for example So, um, you know, that's something I've been working on for a while is trying to find What little bits of this and little bits of that will give it that Final polished sound. I mean, that's what engineers spend years and years studying how to do after all, right? Right, so you can't expect they can't expect the actor to just have That secret sauce in their system, you know, that's something it takes years to to learn how to do Right. So if you sound good up front, they don't care Yeah, the engineers that the engineers They don't want the audio process the clients that don't hire engineers are now expecting you to make that judgment call And that's where things get a lot harder. So talk to one of us. We'll we'll steer in the right direction but I I'll I'll make processing if it's appropriate for the needs of that particular project and Based on the what the client actually wants and it's usually just little tiny things for correction not like major Expansion compression type things. Yeah audio book mastering is maybe the one I use the most radical processing Because the spec requirements are very extreme You know must be Average level exactly between these ranges and and all this so I use quite a lot more processing for that But a lot of other stuff very light light light processing. It shouldn't sound processed If it sounds processed, we're doing it wrong Yeah, all right. We got a question here that's uh, I I I guess You know a matter of opinion, but You go for it The one from Ron Ron Montgomery Have you looked at the antelope audio zen goes energy core yet? Synergy core it looks like a direct competitor to the Apollo twin at a better price in the review so far say it has better preamps according to whom To audio nerds Well, okay, here's my here's my two cents. I won't waste a lot of time on it It is very compelling looking. I would like to demo it, but I don't trust the company antelope audio unfortunately and the reason is because they are a very small company Out of bulgaria and when things break and go wrong You don't have a very easy Access to great rapid support to get things running and fixed The only place that fixes these happens to be here in burbank I happen to know the shop that repairs them And if something goes wrong, you're going to be waiting a couple of weeks for parts to be sent from bulgaria So for that reason, I'm very hesitant to recommend antelope audio stuff to home voiceover studios where they just have one interface And everything runs through that one interface in a big commercial studio You've got like 16 different preamps and whatever you can afford to have one thing that needs to be in the shop once in a while Not the end of the world But yeah, I They got to prove me wrong antelope needs to prove me wrong They need to show that their gear is way more reliable now, but i'm not sure that's true yet Alrighty a question from j. Horace black Says hey dan and george great to see you too in 2021 great to see you j Yesterday yesterday. I had an issue with my mac mini where all the video audio that I played was out of sync Okay, we've seen that happen sounded like everything was playing very fast or everyone had Everyone was taking a helium dose Had to do a reset nav ram and pram on my mac Does this mean my mac mini is going out soon? Or is this something that needs to be done from time to time mac mini works for this sounds more like An interface issue That does mean it sounds like a hardware thing. Yeah Yeah, I mean that happens with with my roadcaster every now and again That kind of sounded starts to get crumbly or it starts to silent like you like to say And you know what I do is you know like I always say when in do reboot I turn it off turn it back on Comes back on I think it's a digital mismatch that happens occasionally with playing back files, especially stuff from youtube and Yeah, I mean he was he was very careful not to give us all the information Yeah, so we can't really give him an accurate answer But uh, if you're trying to convince somebody who uh, is the budget master of your household that you need a new mac mini m1 Now's the time Go buy one Exactly you got my blessing You get one from professor north here Hey fred, uh, this is from fred north. Uh, I'll be moving shortly in my new studio will be uh an 11 by 13 room Nice size right size room typical nice size bedroom. Is there any advantage of placing my workstation in the middle of the room? Um, I'm using a 416 microphone mostly sometimes my tlm 103 The room will be well treated as my past room was um I don't know if there's any advantage other than I think the cool thing about being in the center of the room is You can sort of have your desk be in that executive power position You know for feng shui you're looking at you can look at the door You know and see people come in Isn't that the executive thing? It's like being on the bridge of the enterprise You know, you know, it's like the the desk is like so that the your back is to the wall You're looking out into the room, you know the oval office, etc, etc Um, I don't know that would be the only advantage. I can think of fred It's certainly more logistically challenging to hide all the cabling and not trip on stuff Um, I did do a studio for a guy named mike mccall 10 years ago Where because we were converting the room from scratch and we had pulled up the flooring We took the advantage took advantage of the fact that was happening Ran a conduit underneath the floor Um and ran the power and everything To the center of the room which was pretty cool. It was cool because we could do it and uh As a result It's a pretty neat space to being able to walk in and walk all the way around the desk and not trip on anything So, uh, but I don't think there's any true Functional acoustical sound improvement from doing it Alrighty one last question here from chelsea deno Greetings, I went to school for acting and I'm continuing to take voiceover webinars today But I haven't received valuable information on mike technique because they don't teach you that stuff But we do do you guys have any recommendations on where to start learning that aspect of the business? I greatly appreciate it. Yeah, george and I both have videos on mike technique and we say the same thing Mike technique is a very simple thing In voiceover, you got a studio condenser mike, you know one of these guys The idea is to have it upside down At eye level I get the bridge of your nose your copies underneath and by having it that way And your five to seven maybe even eight nine ten inches away depending on what your material you you're doing You can go peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers all day long and get no plosives You don't have that big black circle in front of you that reminds you that you're on a microphone, which PPPP no plosives here and you can see right. There's no pop screen on this mike That's right And you know and I haven't used a pop screen in years because you know the pictures all show people using pop screens Because they're right up close to the mike, but that's not how we talk to people You want the microphone to capture you as other people hear you Because that's how you make yourself sound like you Yeah, and even if you have to be closer to the mike because the ceiling is right here You're in a really small box and it doesn't sound good when you're too far away You're still not going to pop the mike because even if you get closer You're still going to position the mike like dan just showed you or you're going to speak slightly across it So that you're not going to have to worry about popping the mike You can feel confident That you're not going to pop the mike and one way you can control that is by putting the script where you need to look So when you have your mike in one position Your script in another position You should be comfortably looking at your script and essentially Eventually almost forget that the microphone is even there Exactly Is I like to tell you a lot of the actors that we've been working with You know I asked them if you're a screen actor. Do you play to the camera? I mean in some commercials yet or something like that, but mostly you play to the scene This is now a camera played to the scene not to the camera Good point the same thing goes with the microphone. You really do want to forget that the microphone is there and Get into the acting all right, well, we're not we're not doing a Uh saline de yawning. We're not saline de yawning the mike. You know her thing where she Takes the mike and when she belts she goes Like that and she pulls the mike way out and she does this Nope, not doing that all voice over not voice over Anyway, great questions guys Gotta love it people send us questions because that's what we thrive on All right. Well, george and i'll wrap things up right after these very important messages. 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Go with the pros voice actor websites dot com Where your via website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what And we're back To say goodbye, but first we have to uh We have to thank a lot because this show can't be done without Other people you think we just like you know just come in here and turn the switch and hey We're on you want to watch you you want to see what it looks like when we do the show with just two people Go back and watch E web episode number one and watch episode And see how rough that show was around the edges Yeah, I think you had to like glue that one together. I really did it was seven parts That was 10, you know, we're coming up on our 10th anniversary. That's right march 22nd. We'll be 10 years. We've been doing You know, I think of the stuff that we've learned in that in that time of what not to do I've probably forgotten half of what we learned. I know And now we're using another system and now I got all this equipment here and I'm like, what am I going to do with it all? You know Who are our donors this week and we love them all Yes, we've got trey moseley thomas pinto Shelly avaleno shondale Mr. George a woodham. That's my dad brian page rob rider I think it's rider It's raider You wrote raider. I swear it was rider. So I'm gonna say both ways and you can dub in the right one later rob rider rob raider patty gibbons stephanie southerland diner birdsall antland productions shana pennington baird martha con steven chandler Don griffith and diane merit. Whoo. That's a mouthful Yeah, but I'm pretty good at reading all those names because I read them almost every single week because they subscribe Right. Thank you. We need to thank our fabulous sponsors to like harlin hogan's voice over essentials voiceover extra Source elements makers of source connect voice over or vo heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and jmc demos Also, jeff holman for really messing us up tonight with his typos um We messed up a bunch of names and it just I hope we had fun. Well, I hope you're having fun at our expense, jeff Yes, and we were having a great time uh, sumer lino for Making it happen. She's our technical director and lee penny for being Well, that's gonna do it for us this week tech talk is what george and I love to do and we're happy to bring it to you Every other week and then we do an interview with another great voiceover star of the other week So stay tuned for that But really when it comes to your home voiceover studio You can think about all this stuff that you can add to it somebody was asking about it But the bottom line is If it sounds good It is good. I'm dan london. I'm george wittem and this is voiceover body shop or vo b s Tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk. See you next week everybody. Bye