 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop, and we've got all of our favorite guys here. It is time for our somewhat annual Audio masters roundtable, and we've got cliff zelman and Jordan Reynolds and uncle Roy and Andrew Feliciano is going to be joining us too And we're gonna have a great time if you've got questions about home voiceover studio Technology or just general stuff in the voiceover biz these are the guys you want to ask Right George. We ready for this. Oh, yeah biz is what we're here to talk about and all Roy. All right I'm the senior member of the group Almost anyway voiceover body shop our audio masters round table 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 a 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 down with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional-sounding home VO studio and Each week they allow you into their world bringing you talks with the biggest names in the voice of our world today Letting you ask your questions and giving you the latest information to make the most of your voice over business Welcome to voiceover body shop Voiceover body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials comm home of Harlan Hogan signature products source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites dot com where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes dot com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training JMC 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 greetings there. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whidham and this is voiceover body shop or VO B. S All right, get Jeff in there. How's that button? There you go close enough Well, it's it's got it's almost Thanksgiving for crying out loud and for those of you watching this next Friday It already was and you're probably out shopping or something like that but tonight we're doing our audio masters round table and You know, there are a lot of guys out there that say, oh, I know about home studios Well, here are we've got four guys joining us tonight Who are the experts when it comes to audio more importantly the audio you send out and? They're the ones that'll say don't fucks with it But let's introduce our guests and let's get into the meat of the matter And if you have a question at any time Throw it in the chat room in either our of our Facebook chat or in YouTube We have access to both and Jeff Holman is Taking those questions down and I'm sure as we keep discussing things You'll probably have some questions too and comments and that's what we want to hear from all of you So let me introduce our panel starting first With Clif Selman cliff come on in here Hey guys, hi daddy from Dallas, Texas Hi Clif is director of talent development at ACM talent automotive division Yes, sir. It's going on two years We've had a lot of fun a lot of challenges as we all have an automotive was hit pretty hard But the floodgates are starting to open up. I woke up this morning to 15 of them 15 of them ladies and gentlemen But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah great to be here and haven't seen you guys in a long time. So yeah, I'm thrilled I'm sure you I'm joining us from yes from Bloomfield, New Jersey is the one and only your uncle Roy Yolkelson, Uncle Roy, how you doing today home of the VO bbq Every all our listeners are invited next October 8th and 9th It's gonna be a mob scene because the borders will be open and half of Canada will be here and Armin will be singing and Hugh Edwards will be playing drums. It's gonna be great and Dan and George can sleep in the attic like they did a couple of years ago Here we're all ready for Thanksgiving and there you have it. Yeah, Uncle Roy is a voiceover coach Producer of demos at killer demos and a home studio expert at at land productions and awake showed again showed again And an Emmy award-winning sound design, right? And I only have one voice arts award. So I I'm trying to catch Michael How much of those Emmy awards gone for on eBay these days, Uncle Roy? I know once I got Once I got Val Kelly's Mavo award. I said hey anybody want to buy a slightly used Emmy because I don't need it anymore. I got this That's that's a much better Yeah, that's not one of those one in a million shot doc things you want Oh, let's see here joining us from just across town is voice actor audio ninja celebrity impressionist and demo producer Jordan Reynolds Jordan welcome to the show Guys, how's it going? It's it's so long Yeah, you're just right you're just down the street for I know I know I know but it probably take me an hour to Get there anyway and a good old rush hour traffic, but yeah I am here on a camera okay, all right excited and Joining us also from from Burbank actually it's studio city from voice tracks west Is Andrew Feliciano Andrew welcome Hello everyone. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad to be here glad to be joining the crew Absolutely, uh, Andrew is the owner and general manager and I guess the receptionist at first tracks west Makes good coffee too. Yeah. Yes. All of that. Uh, yeah, I do I do it all Yeah, yeah, and yeah engineer been an engineer 20 years and uh, you know keep the wheels turning here voice I like your spritzen out, but that's really cool. Oh, isn't it good? Yeah, you out? Yeah, yeah, I went in I'm in I'm in my cell Aren't we all my colorful cell they gave you two colors. Uh, yes Absolutely. All right. Well, let's get into the meat of the matter here You're all experts on voiceover audio, which by the way Don't confuse it with recording music, which I find a lot of people are doing, you know And as we I'm sure as you're talking to a lot of our clients out there that are we're trying to help them Get their audio better. They're all stuck on. Well, I gotta have this piece of equipment I gotta have that piece of equipment because that's gonna make me read better. I don't quite get that Uh, but is there a let's go around the horn here. Is there any new tech? That that you're really thrilled about that could actually help your average voice actor. Let's Let's start with Andrew because you're new you get to go first Uh, yeah, I I wonder if this uh, I don't know. This is new tech and I haven't tried it yet. Um, I think I think George might be interested. That'll qualify as new then Yeah, yeah, this is yeah, this is new. Uh, um, I'm about to test a tiny Um air conditioning unit for for a booth we have here. It was it was aimed. It's called the zero breeze It's aimed at like camping or small rooms and things like that and uh, it's This big and it's a proper air conditioning unit for a small room And uh, we have a small booth here that that actors come use. That's kind of like a home studio booth and I'm gonna try cooling that booth with this uh, with this small ec unit. So More to come on that. I don't have results on it on on it yet But are you gonna pipe it or will it be sitting inside the booth? Outside the booth. Um, just to keep quiet So the the trick is can you sit it on top of the booth with some isolation and you won't hear it inside the booth? I'm not sure. Uh, so so that's where's the technology in this thing. Is it a swamp cooler? Is it using no, it's it's no it's uh, it's a it's a standard, um, Uh compressed uh compressor air conditioning unit. Um, yeah, and actually does I mean they they've actually said it's like Oh turn it around and use it as a heater. Um, you know and just uh You know just reverse the pipes of what you're putting into the you have to exhaust out out of a window or Yeah, so you yeah, there's three. There's the intake and then And then the cool air and then the hotter that it blows out. So Um, so it's kind of like a proper a property unit just really tiny Um, you know, I'm sure collectively we cannot express the importance of proper ventilation in a booth, you know We hear people, you know, they're sweating. I've been in for 10 minutes. I'm sweating. That's not a way to run a business Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's expensive. Um, so it would be a luxury item Um, it's about a thousand dollars. So it's certainly not you would be you're spending a lot of time in your booth And it'd be worth the money to do it Yeah, yeah, uh is um, and uh, you know, and then even if you you hook up your House ac, you know, so which I'm sure some people do and we have that here But then you're running like a giant, you know, huge btu's to cool a tiny little room. So anyway, that's that's a new piece of tech That's uh, you know, I'm kind of excited about right now. Yeah, we open the door to the booth to to cool it Oh, yeah, I mean you just got to keep doing this with your door. There we go. It's there. Anyway, uh Jordan, what's what's new on your radar for tech? Uh, honestly with everyone having to work from, I mean, there's already plenty of us who are fortunate enough to work from home Right that that when the pandemic hit as voice actors we Like if you built your career in a non-major market, you're like, oh, I have to have a home studio. So To make a living so you are we're ready to go there But there's a lot of local la voice actors who are not so much and they freaked out But what comes with home recording is environment, right? Like you have not only our acoustics and all that you have to deal with how does your voice sound in a space But the noise that gets into your space can vary. There's people living in apartments and then especially during quarantine Everyone is like in their house in the apartment. Everyone's making noise with their ac their fridge. So I Uh, I've been really digging through not everything but a lot of noise removal tools But what the biggest the thing I'm most excited about over the past two years is uh Noise live noise removal. So not just like, oh, let's let's remove the noise after I've recorded it But I can do it live now and I literally have it on right now on my mic I'm using the the uad plugin. This it's a horrible name. Uh c-suite c-vox Um, it's cedar What's that? I think it's from cedar c e d a r Oh, did they like buy the rights from me because I don't even see cedar written on this plugin Oh, it is he had tiny letters designed by cedar Yeah, you're right But anyway, so i'm running that live right now. So i have ac on that'd be good for a source connect session then Yeah, and but and it's got two simple knobs, but I have to say I haven't done an ab test yet, but I think it might be better than iceto Voice de noise like you can you can really push it hard without Getting as many artifacts of when you push voice de noise hard I love that plugin, but this one as a live plugin is just it's insane. Like it is incredibly transparent And there's also like remember the mic model, but there is a mic that actually has noise removal built into it I I I want to test it. I don't know how good it's for voiceover, but if anyone remembers the name of that mic Yeah, I have in the chat Excellent. All right, you got one george. How much is it shelf somewhere? How much is it? 300 bucks. Yeah 350 350 And Bruce it has one free it has bruce free noit de noiser in it Oh the mic, I don't know how much the mic is But the the plugin that i'm talking about from you have to have a uad apollo audio interface Otherwise, you cannot use it But you can either use it live like i'm using it now or run it as a plugin afterwards on your audio and Does it render or is it? Yeah, and you can actually render it and save it you run it in your console and live in your console like as a In you know as a live like you can use it as a plugin after the fact though That too. Yes. You have both options. Excellent. Yeah, cool Uncle Roy. Yeah, what's what's new on your radar with tech? No, I just wanted to comment on the Work, you know, we're not recording music Comment that george made before or dan You call sweet water They're not really in the voiceover business, but they are And maybe maybe they're growing to be or you go to a guitar center or you know banjo and porium whatever you guys call it And they want to sell you a microphone They want to sell you like a road nt1a because they have a lot left over because nobody wants them um So you have to be careful Yeah, my sweet water guy. He really knows Well, he doesn't he's not in the trenches like we are You know, some of us have been doing this for 45 years right cliff. Yeah, it is true brother That's right between the two of us we can hear in stereo. That's right. You're left here my right ear We're in great shape So just just be careful, you know, um, I do like the isotope plugins. I bought I bought rx9 just because not that nine is better than eight better six better than You know, um, it's as far as the standard one. I think it's the same as six seven eight I think they're all the same If I needed the advanced for film work Uh clothes rustling and and wind and it has other tools like that. So I like the rx I like the isotope products and they're having their black friday stuff now And what I don't like about I like waves, but they only give you one license. You have to juggle it Between the lock. Yeah, it was my lock or release it to the cloud pick it up on your other Isopope isotope. I've got it on five computers. They don't care like fab filters Yeah, yeah, as long as it's me So I like the isotope stuff. Yeah, like we all do. Oh, yeah Cliffy, what about you? Well, um two things Um And they're both hardware one of them is the ssl six which is an interface Um, it has the ssl High and low eq's it has the selectable bell So it's basically a graphic and you can kick in the bell to you know, uh affect the neighboring frequencies Um, it has a built-in g bus on the output. So that's very very cool. Um I love ssl products and it's kind of expensive. It's about 13 1400 bucks Um, I don't know how good it is for maybe podcasting But uh as far as just you know getting your stuff to sound great. Um, of course after your environment Um, I'm really excited about it and and to sit behind a little mini ssl I used to sit behind the 96 input ssl and and to have this little one. It's got the same colored knobs So it's it's very sexy. Uh, the second thing that I got excited about is the ua volt And one of the reasons I got excited about that is they have incorporated the old URI ure i uh 6 10 preamps And uh for those old guys We know that those 6 10 preamps are pretty hot. They sound really good It also has they have a version that has a built-in. Um, they call it the 76 But it's actually an emulation of the ure 11 76 My only question about it is it's got a preset 6 to 1 compression ratio So that means a little you know a little bit of gain you can get an awful lot of compression So you kind of got to be careful about that Um, but it also has a four selectable Attack times and release times to incredibly fast which could help with sibilants Or slow which could make your sibilants worse But who do you think would want a six to one compression ratio? I don't know No, I mean that's pretty hardcore when i'm doing Uh voiceover I never go more in two to one or three to one, you know, and I don't want to me as like hard self It's pretty hard and if you're really hitting that mic pre and you're really triggering that six to one It's good to set like this. Yeah, but you know, I think that you know, they know what they're doing So, you know, you'll find that that sweet spot And I think it it could be neat but that ssl. I mean I just might get one just could be like the msg of processing Yeah, just You just need a micro Otherwise you're running around the the chinese restaurant three and a half and it's gonna give you a headache. So yeah Does the ssl have the producer reject button like the big No, you can put it in I think you could just Yeah, the uh the producer defeat knob, you know when you think it's out means just that little extra hit that button That was the you know the quad speaker button that was long disconnected Now no now no now. Yes Oh, yeah, there we go. There we go now. We got the mix, but I really like those two I think I think eerie stuff's great, you know, and it's cheap. It's like 350 bucks Right, but save your receipt because it may be a little bit hardcore for the Just the every day Vio person to hit it too hard. I really want to hear what that's six to one Yeah, you know and and that's where I want to I want to gravitate to next here is that You know, we we're all getting audio from people Especially if you're producing and you're getting home studio audio What are the biggest mistakes or the biggest problems that each one of you are experiencing when somebody sends you some audio for production clit environment Number one was thank you. Thank you. I'm one mistake is you know We see all the mics that you're using. They're all great You know, we see that that was my dog by the way, not me We see You know all the Everything that they've got all the hardware and stuff, which is real easy to get you go to banjo and porium You lay down your credit card. You can have anything you want sweet water two years No interest you can have whatever you want, but really what I hear more than anything is Going on, you know that 200 300 ceiling fan no, just the Uh sympathetic frequencies within the booth or within their environment And you know, you start cutting that stuff out try to get a little transparency but I really think the biggest my biggest pet peeve is too low recording too low and And just pardon my french. We're all adults here. I'm going to say it a shitty environment You know, yeah, I think there's no question. I think people don't really understand What the environment is supposed to sound like Now a lot of the people who are just getting into voiceover have no experience at recording and they're like, well microphone record Oh, okay But that's not the way it is and then they go on youtube and it's like well Here's how you build a booth and here's you know get a You know all these panels and spend $10,000 and do this You know and then pray that you continue doing voiceover and one of the big misconceptions is when they're setting the recording level If they send in audio and you tell them well, your noise floor is too high And and the file looks like this and you have to raise your game. Yeah, but then the noise comes up Okay, it's the same, you know, it's called signal to noise ratio. The ratio doesn't change My so there's that low volume pet peeve The other pet peeve I'm so in love with my voice I wearing headphones and you can tell that I really I talking to a microphone for my I love it. I love it. Um, so when I hear audio uncle, right? What's that? That sounded pretty cool. Yeah, that's that's my $89. Uh killer b mic worker b worker b um But that sounds like the guy who did your intro And and you could just see the ends of every phrase was ramp up You know No offense to to whoever did that that was john bailey, by the way Yeah, well he was having fun doing that. That's why we had to do it Yeah on purpose, but when you send me a sample that sounds like that And you're wearing headphones that are too loud So you only speaking quiet or they're too low and you're shouting because you can't hear yourself in the headphones I said, so you're gonna yell at me now. You couldn't hear yourself in the headphone turn up your headphone Right everybody So we try to teach people proper mic technique here and then yeah And did you change? Hey george, did you change this to something just now we could do four inches instead? You're still you're still good with this, right? You're you're muted there george Well, because it's not saying anything. Oh, okay. No, I I've broken it down into there you go Yeah, so I've broken it down into thumbs up A fist for if you're in a small one and mahalo if you're in a larger room Right, so that that that seems to work for me. Yeah, andrew. What what? I mean, you you you run voice tracks west and I you know I'm sure you get lots of audio from people from the outside that you've got a mix into projects What are some of the really stupid things you see? Yeah, uh, they'll have most Yeah, most a lot of our stuff is is live, right? We'll do live sessions with people from home You know source connect or even now, you know, they're during the pandemic. It was, you know, you're they're doing a session and You know source connector even some of the other services would just get hammered And so, you know, some things move to where we were recording the zoom while they were recording Locally and then we would take notes and match it up later So we could get their their raw audio and not have to like deal with the dropouts You know even with like source connect now or something like that So related to that is then could we get room tone? And and so you get some room tone that Yeah, so a little room tone with some breathing in it, um or uh room tone plus Yeah, or uh, or this was a good one. Um, there was uh, um a room tone Don't let me do that. Make sure you leave the room Um because you know because of that and then uh, um, so so I kind of heard it, you know, uh, you know Got it after the fact, you know left the room closed the door. He's talking to his friend in the room Used the bathroom, uh heard the toilet flush Um, uh, so, uh, you know, just because the booths are you know, it kept stuff out But that you know, that sort of murmuring is sort of there And so that was also not quite roomed that there was enough in there to kind of make it work But um, uh, so and it's so just not realizing that you know room tone is sort of is really just Silence, you know just the sound of the room without you breathing And uh, and just kind of not realizing how much gets picked up, um, you know when you Are just sitting there or even just outside the booth Then it's uh, yeah, it can be kind of comical or when people send me a sample and they they I say room tone followed by a 30 second read in all in one file and they separate they send me room tone from a month ago that they You know and then they stick it on or they send me a separate here's my room tone I need it with the day you recorded it. I need the same Recording session. It's fair where I did a lot of done a lot of location recording and sitting there with the nagra And and you know, they're ready to rap and you stand up on your chair and you scream at the top of your lung One minute, you know one minute tone Everybody's just Listening, you know, but it's it's really really really important. Yeah one minute. Roy. Why can't oh, yeah One minute. Are you lucky? You know lucky already got one minute Maybe these are all union guys on the set. They better shut up. They know when you're saying jordan Uh, for those who may not know what can you explain to the audience why it's so important because for for voice actors that Like room tone to them might just be oh, it's my slate and some people just they have a slate file They put in all their auditions and when they're asked to do room tone They might think the same thing Can you explain to them why it's important to do a fresh room tone with that exact recording with every with every recording? If you're doing an audiobook You can't you can you can do it wrong But you want the room tone associated with the recording of that chapter if you're going to be pasting in room tone You don't want to hear a difference in level And you know, you're going to put a high pass filter if you're going to do a little bit of noise reduction it has the The sample that you put in of the noise for for the noise reduction has to be the sample that's going you want to take out The same room tone or the same noise that's under your dialogue That same day So you need that That room tone has to be the same day same time as that recording Yeah, you'd be amazed at how many times, you know people send me samples And again, yeah, they send room tone and i'm like just hit record Don't talk for 10 seconds Read something and then don't talk for 10 seconds. Yeah, exactly. And you can see noob. Well, that was edited Guys, we know we can see things that you don't understand And so don't try to fool us Because it doesn't really matter because it's what your audio is going to sound like there was a facebook post Somebody said just record be quiet record 20 seconds in your room and then play it back Really loud and can you hear? No, that's not how we I didn't address it. It was the stupidest comment Somebody wanted to post room tone and put it in their website to say this is an example of how quiet my room is I said why bother the person that's going to be listening. It's going to be probably louder Their system that they're listening. I was going to be louder than your room I guess that could be useful for an engineer like if you could download it. I don't know but yeah No, but it has but within within the sample. Otherwise, it's meaningless. Yeah Yeah, you need a signal and you need the noise. Yeah, yeah signal In the same recording Right and what a signal signal is your voice noise is everything that's not your voice So in case in case you were wondering once again, we're doing our Somewhat annual audio masters round table. We've got Andrew Felicia Ana, Jordan Reynolds, Cliff Zellman and Uncle Roy joining George and I Thanksgiving edition. Thanks. Yeah, that's right there. Everybody have a great time We'll get that chance to talk about that again too. Um So let Jordan did you had did you get in there and uh give us your your major mistake people make? Oh man, um Probably, I mean, I already agree with like its environment is is first and foremost Um, Mike distance, which you I love what you said, dan. You're like bigger room hang loose Small room fist and what was the other one one thumb if thumb thumbs up it's so yeah, I like a medium room Yeah, yeah I like that I like that a lot. Yeah, and that's that's the biggest thing is because um with more and more people recording from home than ever The hang loose distance, which you know it first of all it varies like, you know Like if you take a six foot four dude versus a five foot tall woman There this distance is going to be dramatically different So I've never loved this as like just do this because they might be up to here if they have very tiny hands But um, that makes a huge difference from either the this traditionally could be yeah about six to eight inches But just getting in that four to six inch range makes a world of a difference in so many recordings Um when I'm consulting with with with talent to make the studio sound better, but um The other thing that range Yeah in that four to six range you start moving proximity. It's it's it's almost impossible to match not only that the angle Because voiceover people think their job is to talk into a microphone But that's we have to have it off at like 30 to 45 degree angle So your plosives go this way and the mic finds you this way Yeah, I picked a peck of pickled peppers. I don't hear a plosive I don't I don't use a pop screen. I mean that's the other thing everybody uses pop screens Yeah, and the fact is is I tend to think that it's a psychological thing that it reminds people they're on a microphone And they're have to very poor have to talk louder So, you know, I like having it. So it's here. Yeah, and it's out of my field of vision and I forget that it's there It's like playing you don't play to the camera if you're doing a scene with other people unless you're doing a tide commercial So In the studio environment we we use the pop filter a little bit as a as a placement mechanism almost You know, well, we can play something kind of farther away if we think we we need to and use a disc Um, use a nylon disc, you know, we I mean traditionally we would use the double ones But we've been using metal the last couple of years But I mean just them down but yeah separate from the microphone separate from the microphone Yeah, yeah, or I mean it's like I mean essentially, you know, right this this guy right here So and and it depends on who the person is right if they're if they're a novice It's like a tool if they're a pro, you know, you could place the the mic anywhere and they and they place themselves, but But but yeah, anyway, so in the studio environment, that's you know, it can be useful for that Yeah Once again, if you've got a question throw it in one of the chat rooms that you may be associated with Whether you're watching on facebook or on youtube or you're catching the smoke signals coming over the top of the hill And ask your questions. We're gonna get into Some of your questions and there's some great ones already that I see and we're gonna take a quick break on our audio master's round table And we'll be right back after this Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great Ah that Thanksgiving dinner and now that you've slept off that meal It's time to go shopping for voiceover stuff at voiceover essentials.com They've cut the gimmicks and have put on sale just the products their customers love and buy the most Voiceover essentials.com guarantees. These are their best prices through the end of black Friday weekend Their portabooth pro 6.0 the premier desktop vocal booth The portabooth pro is the first portable vocal booth made for professional voice performers The portabooth plus the real carry-on vocal booth you can actually carry on Harlan Hogan signature series voice optimized headphones The studio monitoring headphones optimized for voice work now even better and the multicolor led voiceover recording sign Not just a stock on the air or recording sign. It's their exclusive voiceover recording sign Sign up for their mailing list at the bottom of every page and never miss a deal at voiceover essentials.com 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? This is virgin radio. Well, okay. We're not that innocent. There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working Dickies because I ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values A leader for california and a voice for america. It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smart phone But it's so much more. It's a the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs. What time is hockey practice? Check out this song It's the end of the road for red When hope is lost the i8 from bmw Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish Hey, it's j michael collins. Bet you think i'm gonna try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves, but I will give you my email It's j michael at jmc voiceover.com now if they will stop waxing this mustache for a minute. We'll get back to the show Hey there, it's david h laurence the 17th one of the things that I am most thankful for is a guy by the name of patrick tucker Who's that? 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It's a limited time offer do so soon and I hope that helps Yeah, hi, this is carlos ellis rocky the voice of rocco and you're watching voiceover body shop And we're back at v obs for our Thanksgiving week audio masters round table with uncle roy andrew jordan cliff and george and I Anyway, george you had a question you wanted to ask about that we wanted to talk about about a new computer You want to fire that one out there? Oh, yeah, um, this is always a discussion, but I just saw it come up today again So I thought I'd pose it here. Um, when you guys buy a new computer Do you go for broke? Do you max that sucker out? The most memory you can afford the most, you know storage everything To maximize its life over as long a period if possible Or do you find that you know nowadays just a little upgrade from the base model is really All you need and you're gonna be fine and again I'm gonna ask this question from the context of what a voice actor Would need to know versus a producer running 178 tracks of virtual instruments. Yeah Who wants to take that one on first? I will jump in I think any any mac As is right out of the box is going to be more than enough than you need Uh working two three four tracks As far as storage goes You know, uh working storage is good, but I mean good lord, you guys y'all can buy terabyte drives for 100 bucks now You know, so storage shouldn't really be that much of an issue Uh by a computer I try to get the best that I can afford But you know, I got no problem locking up nine terabytes in my system right now But uh, you know, I really think that any mac out of the box is is going to be fine for you Anybody else want to take take that one on? Well, I would say Um and most people know him a mostly a pc guy, although I do have my lovely macbook pro 2015 over here Running big sir great runs like a top 16 gigs of ram is enough Uh, but you need you need storage if you're going to save everything or if you're doing big projects like audio books or e-learning that That if you want to save the wave file and the mp3 it's going to eat up some space Uh, the new I think the new minimum would be 16 gigs of ram Eight used to be the minimum 16 if you can afford 32 Go for it. It's going to run so much smoother faster And you only want uh solid state drives ssd Um a terabyte is good 500 might be enough if you have been another external You know, if you have another terabyte Or a four terabyte, you know, they are pretty cheap now so But uh pc mac it really doesn't matter Yeah, but you're raised on Yep, yeah I mean, why why do we recommend max one? You know to me, it's always like you plug it in and it works It's easier. I I hate I hate to say it. Um, I love pcs. That's my preferred platform but um the troubleshooting I'm sure george can go on and on about this too. Uh the troubleshooting with pcs Uh is just it's unpredictable. It can be amazing Uh and uh and just work or it can be I don't know what's happening And and the max um Just seemed to work and I say that as a voice actor at home It only comes up if you're just recording Um, it's fine if but it comes up when you're doing zoom sky source connect recording Like different things at the same time than it's uh um Yeah, than that just max I I've found are just easier even though I myself will use a pc They recognize things instantly. I've got a yamaha agios Six that I use I plug it in no drivers nothing Comes up on my list of choices. There it is back knows it's there You know the software is in the in the unit itself. It tells them what the mac is and it works perfectly I wish apple would just quit reinventing and you know releasing new os now you got the m1 Okay, we're working through the you got to put rosetta to make rx work and all those workarounds Uh, why don't they test these things first? And you know in a in a blink of an eye, they're going to release the next version And what else are they going to take away or somebody told me they put back the ethernet uh port On on a new mac or something like that. So quit taking stuff away We need us speed ports. We need ethernet, but they want to sell you uh adapters. Yeah, that's their new business So the dongle company. Yeah Question for for for george because you probably work you've worked with more pc users than I have um Is it at least back in windows 7 and I think it's still in windows 10 Has it gotten any better and I wonder if windows 11 addresses it But for if you wanted to for example Have zoom use your your focus rights scarlet as your mic And then also record yourself in reaper at the same time It would not let you do that right or does it now without freaking out Be like no, you must pick one app at one time or max doesn't care you can record on five different things at the same time Yeah, the pc's still have that problem. Andrew's a better one. Yes. So it's so the problem really is that Um apple invested in this core audio thing, which is just how they do audio, right? And it's sort of it and that and it's sort of the master of all things audio Um pc's have their own kind of thing, but the pro audio version of that is this asio And asio is single channel. It's not multi. No, that's not no multi. What is it multi? Like the two things can use it at once. I'm not I'm not the word But and and so and so that really is the problem that you use sort of like the scarlet is a pro thing It's gonna you're gonna use asio or you're gonna use a piece of software that's asio And then nothing else can use that because of the asio does not support um multiple devices using um a driver and so either Asio needs to fix that which they should Or windows needs to fix it and build their own like, you know complete audio support System what about wdm drivers because that that's an alternative a lot. So it is except like pro tools can't use wdm You know pro sure Source connect can't use it. All right. Yeah source connect can't use it either So um, so that's so and yeah, so that's that's what for me. It's sort of it's like Can I make it work? Can Roy make it work? Um, can george or you yes like we can make it work multiple devices virtual audio devices and uh, you can but on the mac it's just sort of Just plug it in connect zoom skype twisted wave and pro tools all at the same time and go for it There is an app for the pc called. It's the funniest name ever voice meter banana Yeah, and that's great. That's that's a workaround. It's a very nice doing virtual Yes, virtual devices and it's like our work for that. Yeah, yeah that you can that that can work as well. Um, Yeah No, it's not i'm telling you any time there's a virtual sound driver layer between the actor and Their dawg it's a friggin disaster man. Yeah, it is But I suggest using it for like zoom and not source connect but like zoom or think because there's so many like as a voice actor that So many my sessions are like a lot of them are just zoom now They don't they do you're recording on your end What's that you're recording on your end. Yep. I record on my end I have a few clients who still dial me on my my phone patch, which is virtual I just have a skype phone number At the end of the day and then of course plenty people record me on source connect When was the last time anybody did an ip d t l session with me anybody anybody on this panel I have one client that that does it and it's like once or twice a year, but I don't I cancel my account It's a great product. But yeah, I thought it was a great product But I know a lot of talent who use it regularly. They're like, oh, I have all my clients. I'm like It's just all over them. There's also there's also a connection open And I think the only downside of that is not enough people have it and not enough clients have it Not enough studios have it but randy morris then We'll work with the studios and you know get them some Some free stuff free licenses for a while Let them spread the word and get let the voice over people Because You don't have to be hardwired. Nothing wrong with being hardwired to your router. You should be But it also works on wi-fi it works It doesn't need as much TLC And theoretically it's better quality the but I can jump in on sort of what open and zero According to randy go ahead and why it's great. Is it it's closer to source connect like the audio quality is closer to source connect But the the user at the other end doesn't need to have an account or have Have to have to purchase source connect like the the studio or the person wanting to hire them or use them can send them a link to sort of go into a session and so then it's like In quality of source connect but but without having to buy it versus source connect now where the quality is Or ipd tl where the quality is like, you know miles may vary Um, and uh, but it's very easy part of the initial Appeal was the very very very low latency that musicians can theoretically play together in real time at the same time It's just a theory though. Yeah It does not work categorically put put randy on your show and we'll see we have How many times have you had randy? He's a good he's a good guy. Yes. No, he's a good guy, but I mean there are inherent latencies and using internet There's a quality of service issue. You have no control over that and let's relive in a superconductor world You can do it on a land latency. You do it on land like if On the hall Hell yeah, man. Yeah two millisecond one millisecond latency all day but over the internet over switches and nodes and Hearing and all that crap it just it just doesn't work We had a client last week who was like well i'm talking to somebody in south yago chili And i'm here in la and there's a 10 second latency Okay, can you fix that? No, that's that's when we call robert marshall for its source connect and figure that stuff out Uh, here's a question. Paul stafano has a great question here, and I think this is something We'll make a very good discussion He says when a studio casting agent sends an audition. It says tlm 103 preferred or similar Are they really turning people away who don't use that model? I mean I I tend to find that what I know. Yeah, they want everybody to sound similar But every voice is different every room is different and I would imagine that most engineers can't really tell What microphone somebody using unless it really sucks? Um And that they can if it's close that you know they can you can generally match it Andrew I want to start with you on that because I know what we use over over at btw Yeah, yeah So my opinion is is specifically that it's it's not about the mic It's it communicates you've sort of invested in your um voiceover career That that's it's just that it could be anything and so of us me All of us here see tl 103 and it's like great. You're good You know your room may not be good, but at least that's one thing that you've sort of done And it could be other mics right that they will recognize and so I think the wording of it could just be better Right of that. They're calling that just that mic out. I think it's a little Uh, yeah, maybe a little silly but but but just what what it communicates of what you're Um what you've sort of invested in and you're it's like you've you've done this You're not sort of brand new And that may or may not matter obviously you can do other things right to kind of like research someone or you know See what they are but but I don't know. I feel like that's the intent Is to to communicate You know What someone has invested or where they're at as a voiceover talent I think it's kind of like a code word, you know if somebody replies a what's a 103 It's it's showing a Minimal amount of awareness. Yeah, you know and say hey You got to be as good as this or better Uh, what if what if the mic they actually do have is better than the 103? Then or better 103 or better What the hell is better? I yeah, I can give you In theory that was a loaded question Why don't it sound one at a time Jordan, what'd you say? No, I was just being I'm like, how do you define what is better? Audio at the end of the day, right? So that's that's all exactly right. Yeah, that's the point Yeah, and and that's I think that's the fascinating thing about it Like I said, every voice is different every room is different. So, you know, what does it really matter? The idea is not to sound fantastic if you're a good voice actor. You already sound fantastic It's capturing you as you exist and a better microphone is going to do that But a better microphone is also going to reveal all of the faults in your physical environment So, you know for when it comes to just basic voiceover, whether you're doing auditions or whether you're doing all this other stuff I think it's important that people as we said earlier on your environment is so much more important than the rest of it I think when the pandemic started and everybody it was more important for everybody's home studio to be, you know, broadcast quality Uh, the memo went out. Yeah Source connect and Neumann 103 and all this Um, I like a 102. It's almost half the price And I you know, some people send me a 103 and I said, yeah It's a good mic, but not everybody sounds great on it Could be their voice. Just it's not a good match or the environment so, um The memo came they heard. Yeah, they were told it's not that they can hear the difference They were told oh, and then you say 103 and raw and only raw tell them 100 raw Oh, and the and the new one which we can talk about is rms between minus 18 and minus 20 Oh Right, so they send me these tiny files I normalize it to minus 20. No, that's not what they mean We should have a whole class on root mean square. We could Like they said, what is rms root mean square? Yeah So far as I go Oh, I hated algebra average average Anyway, we got lots of room for more questions because we're gonna We're gonna carry on in the second hour with tech talk So if you have more questions throw them in the chat rooms And uh, jeff holman will get those to us Uh, phyllis fort asks What do you think about fake ethernet? Does it really work with source connect? What is she talking about fake? I've never heard of it Hmm. Maybe I've never ever ever heard it referred to that. I've heard power line ethernet adapters Ah, that's what she's referring to probably Uh, uh, you plug into your wall. Yeah, install them a lot Many many times. Yeah. Well, that's the ethernet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Uh, dave g asks from youtube, uh, sort of similar to what the the question that paul said asked about Says I got to throw this at the panel Does a voiceover really need an omen or a forty one six? I or four one six I mean if it sounds good, it is good, right george Uh, yeah, as long as you're getting paid to do that gig it must sound pretty good There's hundreds of microphones. I mean a luit is is fabulous. You know, I mean it doesn't have to be That's what i'm saying Of an omen or a four sixteen. I love a four sixteen myself And I love to record demos and spots on when the talent has four sixteen, but Here's an idea, right? Listen to a sample. I'm gonna run with this one Sell sleeves for your uh fill in the blank other condenser That's slide over and it's an omen year When you've been lying that you have a u 87 for the last 17 years And now they have to make you be on zoom Now you don't have to go buy a u 87 just put a put a sticky note on it. You wait. No Full mics slide it over your mxl 990 Notice is the difference Just you know, just tell them if it's a front address or the other side that that's a great idea for full mic You know, you've been well, I mean the time so so the ultimate phone mic is the and and separately you guys know this mic the towns and labs Sphere l 22 Joino Jordan likes this mic That's why they call it mic modeling because they're they're modeling. They're putting on their outfit Yeah, yeah, I bought one for a client last year because u 87s were just not in stock It was half the price and the client was happy and the rest is history Go on reverb and you'll find one Yeah Yeah, Andrew, you got any thoughts on that because we you know, I know you use the 416s over a td The uh voice tracks west and uh, but does it really matter? You know, I tend to think that people really over obsess about this. I gotta have this fantastic mic. What do you what do you think? Uh, yeah, you know, I I'm not honestly kind of what if I was saying it's like I don't really care Like it's you know, but but it's somewhat what it communicates Does it sound good like does it come across does it sound does it sound good? And that that ultimately is all that matters. Um, you know, some of the other things you think about with these mics is Are the tlm that that we have here? Um, I think voice tracks west bought it in 1990 And I just got it serviced. Um, like it was sound it was sounding a little dark to us and we went and got it cleaned and Um, and it sort of brightened it up. It's a little tlm 103 is a little dark anyway, but like it's brightened it up a little bit and um And that you know In mxl 990 or what's that one that uh, you know, that's like 100 bucks that you like george. Um Can you fix that? Can you repair? Maybe like can you take it to the repair guy and have him clean it? Is it worth it to have him for 50 bucks? Do that, um, you know, so there's some things there's features in these mics, right that that you get for spending the extra money Um, and and if that sounds good and works for you, that's great too. So Um, sometimes that's just like a decision, you know of like, you know Where you're at and what you want to spend and how long you want to have it and Yeah, I find that if you're talking to one of the the sales reps at one of the mail order places What we used to call mail order places Uh, don't tell them what you want the mic for Because they will try to sell you the most expensive thing and uh, it's it's usually They have no idea what they're talking about. They just want them. Oh, yeah, you need you need a u87 or you need this You know the the tlm 49 or whatever because we just happened to have them I mean in the sugar land catalog and that's them seven is good for ad r and voice over So Go figure Alrighty, uh, well, we're gonna take another break here and uh, we got lots more questions We're gonna fill in during tech talks. So stay tuned for that We'll be right back with a little bit more of our audio masters round table. Don't go away quite yet Lots to come This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying den and george on the voice of our buddy Shaw In these modern times every business needs a website when you need a website for your voice acting business There's only one place to go like the name says voice actor websites dot com Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept To live online in a much shorter time when you contact voice actor websites dot com Their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are They work with you to highlight what you do Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are And how your voice is the one for them plus voice actor websites dot com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish They'll try it yourself Go with the pros voice actor websites dot com where your via website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what? Well, it's time to talk about source source connect which we already have right I mean we've already been talking about source connect on the show tonight because Well, it comes up in practically every single conversation about recording voiceover from a home studio Because this is what the pros use plain and simple. There are other tools out there Some of them are being you know Taking getting some traction in the pro production world But the problem is is they just well they're 15 years behind source connect has been around a very very long time The technology has been adopted and adapted into the production workflow by producers the world around It's a plugin directly into their DAW into pro tools or whatever they happen to use It's a workflow thing everybody And that's why source connect is still and shall be for probably a while King when it comes to remote recording So you want to have it in your toolbox now. What does that mean? Do you have to buy it? Do you have to lease it you have to rent it? Really actually none of the above at first you really just want to get this system set up You want to get the account you want to get logged in you want to go through the process of getting it up and running There's lots of tutorials including on my own website at george d.tech and you can get yourself Oriented with it. So you understand how it works and what you need to do to make it work on your system Once you've done that you can activate it at any time So it's fine to say you have source connect even if you hasn't haven't actually activated your Your subscription yet and yes, it could be in a subscription Or you can do a buy out if you hate subscriptions But these are different ways you can work with it And as long as when that session comes you're ready to go You're confident you've practiced and you know how to work it You're off to the races and it's the bigger gigs the ones that pay the best They use source connect, right? Thank you source elements. Is that good enough commercial works for me? Let us know All right, you know how to find us. All right. Thanks. We'll be right back to talk more tech with our friends right after this You're still watching v. OBS And we are back. Well, we're gonna say goodbye for this segment. Anyway, uh Great guest. I mean this is this is really what people need to hear All of this this really important information And everybody over thanks their home studio. So it's good to have our good friends here to tell us what we actually need Uh, we've let's see next week on this particular show We will have It's going to be tech talk number 68 I believe and it's going to have all the same people that we have this week because we're just going to record that So if you're you're still here hang out and watch it live if you're watching this on thursday One, you're probably asleep after eating all that turkey and you're missing it all but Uh, but next week we'll have the second half of this as well Um, who are our donors this week? Oh, baby, listen to these names because you've heard them before and you'll hear them again. Thank you to all of them Uh, shana pennings and baird Oh, uh, yes icon productions that that's right. We alternate on the second show. Sorry. Yeah, that's it. Don Griffon. Yeah, uh, Steven Chandler Sondra man willer robert ledum In ant land ant land productions the guy who can't figure out how to cancel his membership Like my dad. Shh. Don't tell him that anyway. Also join our mailing list I think it's really important that if you get on there you get a notification. Hopefully when I remember Uh, what we're gonna be doing this week and uh, so you're reminded that you need to watch voice over body shop So keep doing that. We also need to thank our amazing sponsors like Harlan Hogan's voice over essentials voice over extra Source elements makers of source connect Vio heroes voice actor websites dot com and jmc demos Our big thanks to jeff holman for keeping it together in the chat room getting all those questions in We want more questions guys. We got more tech to come in tech talk So don't go away get those questions in right now if you're watching live And uh, so but thanks to jeff holman for doing a great job in the chat room, uh in facebook and on youtube Uh, sumer lino who's sitting there going what are all these guys talking about? Uh, getting she knows more than you think you think she knows I know and I don't know what I don't know so Anyway, and and lee penny simply for being lee penny. Well, you know When it comes down to your your home studio audio if it sounds good It is good I'm dan londard and i'm george wittem and this is voice over body shop or vo bs Yes, hey you're watching live don't go anywhere Have a great week everybody