 Hey, it's time for a voiceover body shop tech talk number forty three Forty-three that right okay. Yes. We do that every week and I'm like I got this I could barely bend my fingers Yeah, okay, so especially we'll rely on mine If you've got tech questions about your home voiceover studio whether it be software or equipment or how you use it because I think That's a little more important Throw them in the chat room right now on Facebook or if you're watching on YouTube Because we'd love to answer your questions about your home voiceover studio. That's why we're here So but we've also got your tech update and you've got some really cool stuff to talk about tonight like Well, I thought I may be chat a little bit about well how impressed I was with Vio North's production Yeah, that was really well done. I waited it remotely new interface that's been pretty exciting lately a lot of us been talking about and Avoiding Apollo on Windows Maybe a smart case for using LED LED a smart light bulbs And a couple of little things cool all that and your questions and a discussion on Rx8 and other fixing programs on voiceover body shop tech talk number forty three coming up right now From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the Vio universe. They bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the Vio stars a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional Vio studios of the biggest names in Vio today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home Vio 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 Vio tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voiceover body shop Tech talk Voiceover body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials comm home of Harlan Hogan signature products source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites comm where your Vio website isn't a pain in the butt Vio heroes comm 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 Vio success and Now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Well, hey there. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Wittem and this is voiceover body shop or Vio BES Tech talk Tech talk Talk talk talk talk talk. Yes every week Mr. Wittem and I are here to discuss what goes on in behind Inside your booth and inside your computer because without a good place to record and without a computer You're just talking to yourself. I Guess yes, that's right Really the way it works Everybody came here to get that piece of important information just in case you in case you were wondering But you know, it's important to let you know that one of the reasons we do voiceover body shop is to help you guys Understand that there's a lot to it But don't overthink it because George and I have been thinking about this for when did you start really working with people in home studios? I think it was an earnest for my own business was about 2005 the same here when people suddenly had to have home studios. Yeah, and because they could So you're looking at 15 years for me in 15 years. There's 30 years combined experience combined professional experience professional experience at how to do this properly and We like to come on here and say look, it's time for you to really understand this Where the guys you got to come to you've got to talk to professionals because you can go on Facebook and a lot of you were watching on Facebook right now But if you go into some of the tech columns or you know and the The billboards and the whatever whatever the chat rooms all that stuff You are gonna get so much misinformation and conflicting information and and we love it when somebody will say to us Well so and so said this and it's not you Well a lot of times they just say literally somebody told me. Yeah, somebody or I heard that or any one of those versions You know, we only get that like six or seven times a day each and but really Go with the guys that actually know what's going on inside your home studio because every home studio is different every voice is different every room is different and every studio really needs to be Individually crafted to work for you and That's because we know What it's supposed to sound limit what it's supposed to sound like so whistled Oh, let me whistle and there's a way it's supposed to sound we know what it is and if we say it's good Yeah, it probably is all right. So if you want to work with us You can work with either one of us if you want to work with George Where do they go? They go to my website is working Thanks to a guy. I'm gonna mention a little bit George the dot tech You can go to George the tech comms. Well if that confuses you Both of them work and there's all sorts of services on there. You can look through my service menu, which is quite long If you look on there and you start glazing over send us a message will to point in the right direction so what service you might want to check out and Dan, you know, we do a sound check but Dan. Well, he has his Specimen cup. That's true. If you go to where you find the specimen cup Well, you got a home voice over studio comm there it is right there and If you scroll to the bottom of the page, there's a specimen collection cup the home studio masters specimen collection cup Click on that. It's a dropbox. Send me an mp3 of your raw Audio see people like well, I want to show you all the processing I do and I'm like now I don't want to hear the processing you doing, you know, I mean I might want to hear it and then I'll go stop using that Which is something we'll talk about a little bit later in the show But that's what the engineer is gonna tell you when you send you audio with processing on it Like don't do that. Yeah, just because you have something doesn't mean you should use it Especially if you don't know how or what it's supposed to sound like but for $25. I'll analyze your audio and we'll see if it's up to snuff if it's almost snuffy if that such a concept exists and And if you need to make some improvements how we can do that and we can arrange that as well So go over to home voice over studio comm But right now it's time to get into the meat of what you and I talk about every week Which is shop Which people love to hear and they all listen in and I mean I mean 2,500 people watched tech talk last week Amazing. So we know you're listening. We know you're watching Must be a reason and let's get into that. So what's your tech update for this week? Mr. Whitton? Well, first, I just want to mention last week or so. There was the via north conference Yeah, I was a part of it this year and it was a hundred percent virtual this year as pretty much of everything is in life And they did it all over zoom and I have to say they made a really impressive use of not only the technology But just they ran it really really well I was just I was impressed and I what was interesting is they had already booked a hotel Which I think they were probably committed to and rather than just say well, it's let's just all work from home They still had their hotel location. They still had their staff there Masked and socially distanced and they ran all the zoom Breakouts for all the different things that were going on and sometimes there were four Different classes going on at the same time or talks and they managed all of it from that hotel And it was just it was seamlessly run. It was really impressive. I gotta take my hat off to Tanya and Durvala that that run that conference just brilliant. Yeah zoom really works great for breakouts You know, oh, we would have like a social hour. We had a happy hour hundred plus people in one zoom room, right? Useless Not gonna be people that way. Yeah, no, but she would do she would have a randomized breakout and then Five of us would just appear in a little room and we had a moment to chat and get to know each other And it was super cool. Yeah, bravo In terms of gear, I don't have one in my hot little hands gotta work on that You guys have heard us talk about of many different audio interfaces and we really do believe all in all the quality of audio interfaces available these days has pretty much Essentially peaked. I mean they they all sound really good So why another one? Well, there's this company called solid-state logic Maybe you know of them as SSL Maybe maybe you've seen one of their mixing consoles in one of the venerable top-end studios in the world Some giant huge desk with a million buttons and switches and lights Anyway, they decided we needed to throw our hat into the ring and sell an audio interface that competes with all the other Companies and that same kind of vein so a desktop unit That is Affordable but sounds great and so there is now the SSL to and You know what where I've been recommending this a lot is folks that stumbled into buying an Apollo Who are on Windows? What's where I get into the why you should still avoid using Apollo on Windows? So whatever every time I start an Apollo Setup on Windows and I'm on zoom and they're on zoom The first thing I do is screw everything up by going into their Adobe audition settings And it always seems to be Adobe and change the sound driver to the correct one, which is always Should be ASIO the second you do it Zooms audio goes away and now we can't communicate and that happens every dang time And it's a big pain in the neck and that's kind of the theme of the theme of using the Apollo on Windows Frankly using Windows for a lot of audio stuff, but it just is really a pain in the neck It's the drivers aren't that great. It's overly complex and has features that most of you just don't need So if you're looking for something that yeah, I've got some money here I don't want to buy just another focus right scarlet Then check out the SSL to because it's it's a great piece of hardware. It's built. Well looks professional It's USB C which means that it's gonna have a very reliable and fast connection It also means it's powered over the USB cable. So if you're using it portably, you don't have to carry a a wall wart and Lastly it sounds really good as you would expect it to And so I this has been one I've now just even today because that's why this came up I had someone who had just bought their Apollo. I said, you know what? This is gonna be a I gotta be honest is gonna be a relatively painless or painful Relationship for the foreseeable future. Go return the Apollo. Go get the SSL to And it makes it an easy sale because the Apollo at 500 makes the SS tell SSL to seem like a massive bargain At like two hundred and thirty dollars us and it does the same thing It does the same thing like the again the bells and whistles of the Apollo get in your way like crazy Yeah, and if this year if you're like getting into voiceover, you do not need more distractions more trouble shooting and more features You need reliable and good sounding. Yeah, I mean, you know a lot of engineers when somebody says so What's a good interface? They said well the Apollo twins a good interface They just failed to follow up with but if you're just starting out in voiceover and know nothing about audio production Maybe it's not the one for you But that one apparently gets lost in a lot of the conversation kind of the new pro tools Yeah, I mean it's apples and oranges because Apollo is not a pro tools. It's an audio interface But it is like that thing where it's like you just get pro tools. Everybody says use pro tools Yeah, that's what that's what I use. I use pro tools. Well, I'm a professional No, do not buy it just because somebody that's happens to have one or whatever says to buy one Yeah, but you know, anyway, that's my point on that. So moving on led smart bulbs I bought some they were super super cheap. These are the ones that like change color and yeah two of them for $17 and this the thing that kind of blows my mind. These are these are Wi-Fi smart divide These are Wi-Fi devices. They're actually they actually are set up over your Wi-Fi network and they talk to your router Now what are they saying though? I'll say caveat be careful with these things These are what you call IOT devices internet of things and they're sometimes notorious for being hacked and Turning into tiny little servers in your network. So be careful. This is a computer Inside a wall light bulb. That's what these things are They're probably most famous made made made famous by Phillips. They have the hue light bulbs No, this is just a very inexpensive hue light bulb. Why am I talking about one of these? Well a little while ago I thought of the idea now now Harlan Hogan has there the on-the-air sign, which is cool It's got lights. It's got a remote. It's great However, if you wanted to have 17 of those signs or it was save a big house And you want to tell everybody in the house? Hey, I'm recording STF you man. I'm recording Dad's making money You can buy a couple boxes of these and Change out one light bulb in each of the kids rooms in the kitchen and wherever else you need it Change out one of them with one of these and Now you can through the app change every one of those light bulbs at a tap of a app screen on your phone or Whatever to us a certain color So you can just have them all turn blue. That's what my buddy Rick Wasserman does I would probably use red because I think of red as recording Whatever it is you can change a whole bunch of light bulbs in the house to red boy That's that's that's one way to really tick off the rest of your family You may want to change the actual lights in the ceiling just saying you could if you wanted to but Some people have I've given the idea. They're like, maybe I'll just get a dedicated little lamp with this light bulb It like maybe a better idea. Anyway, yeah, that's what that's why I got them I'm gonna experiment with them a little bit myself Yeah, I wanted to give a quick plug and a huge hug virtually to Brad Newman of upper level CRM now he is developing a CRM, but also is a domain host and a web host and I had a major problem with my website George the tech The server was working at Squarespace, but the domain stopped talking to the server it took a week of Futsing around never really got it working and I was pulling my hair out people could not find my website It was bad scene and then I remembered Brad Newman and he in like an in very little notice time Had that domain fixed had both of my domains working correctly Not a workaround, but working the way designed working correctly and a whole bunch of other stuff I threw in his lap. Oh, since you could do this. Can you do that? His answer was just yes. Yes. Yes And he fixed a lot of stuff very quickly So a huge plug to Brad Newman at Brad Brad at upper level CRM calm Amazing resource for people with web issues or wanting a solid web host For your website. Thank you, Brad. Just thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good guy Good guy. He's super knowledgeable a little hyper, but knowledgeable The ultimate internet router question mark, don't you hate those YouTube dumb nails that always ended in a question mark? Well, this is I mean, I honestly don't know if it's the ultimate internet router because I haven't plugged it in yet And we'll find out next week then won't but if I'm on the internet show and that must mean it's working This is a Synology Router now Synology is known really for their disc stations They make these Seriously awesome hard drives that for your network where you can have one two five or more hard disks connected to your network You could use it to serve your entire fan tire families music collection movie collection back up all your data I don't know be like a video game server. Who knows it can it can do a lot of stuff This is a router that takes over the duty of the router that you're renting from your internet provider Which is what that's why I bought it. I don't want to rent it from them That also acts as a server. So it has a hard drive port in the back I don't think this is that unusual anymore. I think a lot of the routers do this But the thing about the Synology is it really is at it really works like a real actual server so the software on this thing that are the firmware is extremely well done very well thought out it really powerful and It's just a pretty remarkable piece of gear It also has another interesting feature and you'll notice that has the WAN port you're familiar with that's your that's the one that goes to your modem And over here, which you probably can't see The first LAN port says when to Wow, what does that mean? That means you can have two modems Oh, if you can get them to do it now This is the part part you could have a spectrum cable modem and you could have a DSL modem and DSL is pretty cheap these days. Why the heck would you do that? Why would you with a router like this? You can have a failsafe so if your cable modem goes down They're known for doing this sometimes It will fail over to your DSL modem or you can even get a 4g hot spot like an LTE hot spot and have that be connected as a failsafe So you really have an incredibly reliable network if you have something like this So I'm looking forward to giving it a try and hooking it up $200 competitive with all the other really high-end routers that are out there, but should be pretty cool Yeah, now we've got a Synology in our studio here. We do actually. Yes We have the little brother to this one and this time I went for the big brother and this is the called the RT 2600 AC So if you're looking for the model that's that went down and what it's called and it looks like a face crab like all the other ones Anyway, lastly if you're using zoom if you're I think this is a Mac thing only but Windows people Please answer this in the chat or in the comments below There's a zoom mode called music mode and I'm using it tonight So if you think my audio sounds more high-fi than usual, let me know if you notice Because I'm using it right now. It means that your zoom audio connection should have no audio Companding compression noise reduction any of that garbage. I was gonna comment that you sound like Johnny Mathis. It's Well, it should be high high quality and so I'm experimenting with that tonight Maybe give that a try on your next zoom session and see how it works out well for you But that's music mode. You have to turn it on in advanced audio settings and then turn put your Computer in original sound mode a little bit of digging around you'll find it, but give it a shot anyway I've talked long enough. Let's talk about Fixing programs. Yeah fix your stuff fix your sound. Yeah now here's the thing because you know You when I get emails all the time all day You know people are sending the audio specimens and they're like well I've got this and I've got RX 7 or I got RX 8 from from isotope Which are great programs? But it seems to me that people are you know, they hear that this is a great program to try and fix their audio and They're fixing anyway. I mean if it needs fixing. I mean my philosophy is always do whatever you can physically to get your sound right that means getting a sound tidy room as possible and Making sure that the reverberation in the room is is really is really dead and And that you're using proper microphone technique. So if you do all those things, right? You really shouldn't have to fix it now a lot of people say well I use it to get rid of mouth clicks. Well, if you got mouth clicks that generally has more to do with microphone technique then it does with You know anything else. I mean like well you can use Granny Smith apples You're my favorite thing alcohol if you'd you have that sort of one here one there Remember the idea of your home voiceover studio and we see this all the time is not to make you sound great It's to make you sound like you and when we talk to other people, you know We see all the specs saying Conversational or like the guy next door you'd want to have a beer with That means talking naturally and you know if you got a little bit of spittle in there, that's gonna be there If you're trying to take if it's like constant Well, you know, then then we need to look at your microphone technique or we need to look at You know why it is that that's happening and try and solve it physically so you're not relying on technology Now what is our x8? It's you know, it's got a real advanced sweet Spectrogram and a suite of tools, but what was it really designed for it really was not designed for voiceover and I think people are probably abusing it and Probably more ruining their audio than helping it. What did you what experiences have you had with it? Well, I mean I'm getting a lot of clients who who bought it because it was on a deal or was recommended to them Because everybody else is using it and so what it tends to happen is people use use a tool because they bought it And so they feel like well, I should use it on everything And then they end up throwing it into a template or a rack or a stack or it becomes part of their Production sequence is always there and I'm like, you know what you know you don't realize how much that thing that tool is actually Reducing the sound quality and it's in the process and I hate to tell you that RX 7 and RX 8 You know, I haven't heard anything that makes the RX 8 magic about it doesn't sound better I don't think there's any algorithms in RX 8 or noise reduction or the mouth be clicking That are improving over over our RX 7. So if you already have RX 7, you're probably fine There's new features in RX 8 new tools in the suite But nothing that really seems to matter or voice actors But yeah, I mean I understand some people that it's just they have to turn out a lot of audio They've tried what they think they've tried everything and they fall back on mouth be clicking and for some people It is a massive time saver, but yet do not make it like well This is just part of my signal chain like a mic preamp. Oh, no No, no, no know when it's time to use it and make sure it's been set up correctly because it can really degrade sound quality and Yeah, it can be pretty bad sometimes. Yeah, I mean I'm always hearing, you know I mean and you know, I see this in specs all the time. It's like no announcers or They'll say you've got to have you know a broadcast quality studio. Well, we know USB mics Yeah, no USB mic stuff like that can RX 8 or some other types of programs. Can they fix that? You know, it's like trying to take an eraser on a chalkboard and being Really accurate around the letters trying to see you just see the letters Yeah, and and you know a good analogy Yeah, I mean it if you've got to do that look for the physical every time I work with somebody and we solve the physical problems It increases your workflow in your time, you know, you're recording to getting it out ratio much faster Because there's less to correct and if you rely on this technology to do all this stuff then really you're you're I call it intellectual dishonesty because it's not really you because we don't talk to other people Conversationally with all these processes going on, you know, so why do that? You want to sound as natural as possible? I believe that what isotope really wants with that program and what it was really designed for was Prefixing vinyl records. I think that you're maybe digitizing People having to edit a video and the audio that was provided out with the video production is Way second rate which happens a lot. Can you fix this audio for me? I can fix it because I know how How many times do we get that who the heck recorded this? It's If it can rescue an interview for a video, but it right voiceover is supposed to be a nice clean dry sound and Rx7 is really like, you know mixing some stuff into it that you really don't want to use and I'm sure there are guys out There there's like, oh no, I use it all the time. It's great fine Just because you got something doesn't mean you got to use it if you've been using it for like six months Yeah, just one day just turn it off or disable it in your production for whatever it is and listen to the audio without it You might be surprised. Yeah, that's all I'm gonna say. Yeah. Absolutely. All right Well, we got lots of questions from our awesome amazing audience out there If you've got a question throw it the Facebook chat room Jeff Holman is sitting in there just going Oh, there's one and copying it down making sure that we get it and then we answer it here on voiceover body shop So stay tuned for that coming up your questions In a world of voices one place wasn't VO buzz weekly voiceover body shop the better one 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 calm Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept to live Online in a much shorter time when you contact voice actor websites Com their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are They work with you to highlight what you do then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get Big picture of who you are and how your voice is the one for them plus voice actor websites calm has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish. Don't try it yourself Go with the pros voice actor websites calm where your via website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what? Hey everybody, it's that time of the show where we get to talk about our fantastic wonderful amazing sponsors source elements The creators of source connect at this point you have to know what source connect is my gosh All the agents are nagging you to get it Even if you don't have an agent maybe consider having it ready to go So when you're asked for it you can say yes, and what does that mean you go to source dash elements calm Get a 15-day free trial But you can even wait to activate your trial You can sign up get your account going Get your iLock account set up have all the pieces in Place and then wait to activate your 15-day free trial to make sure that it doesn't expire by the time you need it But it gets better than that if you have had your 15-day free trial and you let it expire Don't worry. There's now two-day passes. 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It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voice over success Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voice over audition It's all here at voice over extra comm. That's voice over x t r a comm This is the Latin Lover narrator from Jane the Virgin Anthony Mendez, and you're enjoying Den and George on the voice of her Body shop and we're back here on voice over body shop tech talk number 43 now Here's something. I'll bet you guys don't realize that generally, you know people send in these questions. We answered these off the cuff It's not like we prepped for them. I mean these were not here 20 about an hour ago. There was no question. So I haven't I haven't seen these and you haven't seen these You know, they've been sitting in a in a mayonnaise jar out of my porch here Sealed up so we can't read them. So let's get to those questions right now All right. Well the first one is from our very own chat mod which you know as the as our moderator He gets priority. He gets priority, of course In order to from Jeff Holman that is in order to connect a focus right scarlet solo to the new MacBook Pro Which has only Thunderbolt inputs actually their USB C Slash Thunderbolt ports Thunderbolt 3 ports USB to Thunderbolt a converter adapter thing has to be used In fact every device will need one including monitors Ethernet External hard drives blah blah blah wired mice and keyboards. Have you noticed any problems with these connectors and convergers? Well, yeah, I'm finding out Some of them are gonna be really crap, right and that's the problem and none of them. They all have one thing in common None of them are made by Apple Which to me is insane. I mean Apple is the a dongle company. They make tons of money selling Adapters for this and that and expensive cables. Why the hell doesn't Apple make their own? Hub USB C hub. I have no freaking idea. They just so we're end up buying them from other companies And so I I go on Amazon and I search and sort by customer review And you know, hope I get some brand funky brand off off the web that isn't garbage I did put one on my own George the tech site. I have a section called home video studio now comm which is all for Gear gears that gear stuff that I've recommended and I put one on there. It's like 40 ish dollars And I bought one seems to be fine You know, but anytime you have a hub, it's it's a weak link. So you just you just have to Maybe buy two because it that if that thing is running your whole studio everything literally goes through that one cable it's a pretty important link and At 40 bucks by two. Yeah, I've got an i5 on mine. It has a bunch of you know adapter, you know, and it's got You know, it's one USB C plug and it goes into my Mac mini and you know, I've had no problems with it You know, it wasn't cheap, but it was I think it was like about 40 bucks something like that. That's pretty cheap I have a Thunderbolt 3 Dock or hub plugged into my Mac mini. That was $300. So they're a lot more expensive And it doesn't even provide a USB price. Well, it doesn't even provide any USB C ports It has USB 3 ports and it has one extra Thunderbolt port It's actually a little disappointing on the port side of things. I I mean on this back mini I have Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapters plugged into it Yeah, I have a Thunderbolt 3 dock also plugged into it and then I have a USB C or what is it a USB? I'm losing track a USB 3 hub Also plugged in it's insane all the crap I have to plug in to get all the stuff I want to have hooked up. It's it's berserk, but Just buy two of them. Have a spare. There you go. You don't want your suit to go down All right Jim McNicholas has a question for you. I don't know why he's not asking me either But maybe because I don't know about these guys says I'm torn between Two four sixteen substitutes as I don't have a thousand dollars The deity s mic to or the synchro mic D2. Are you familiar with those particular products? Yep, a couple more very inexpensive Chinese made Shotgun mics, and they're both decent mics I Would ask it where your budget really is because if your budget if you can push your budget closer to 500 I think I'm on the ultimate five hundred dollar shotgun mic, and that's the road NTG five That's what I'm speaking into now, and it is fan Freakin tastic I end of story awesome. Hey five hundred dollars if you can't quite push your budget to five hundred dollars I would still stick with some of the much better Branded products from like road that are gonna have really good warranties and a long track record the road NTG four I also have Like there's one right here looks a lot like a 416 obviously Pretty dang good not quite as incredibly sizzly and amazing as the NTG five but also really good But yeah, those other ones, you know They're good, but they're not great I've heard them a lot, and they're a little bit noisy and kind of dull and flat sounding They definitely definitely do not sound like a 416 at all and to my ears So if you're trying to buy one to step in as a 416 and sound like a 416 Yeah, they don't really sound like 416 state. They don't the the road NTG five is Pretty dang close to a 416 really close so or Go get a used 416 you can get a 25 year old 416 Sounds probably 400 bucks something like that You have to shut the battery in that one though. Some of them took batteries some of them You need a p48 to t12 t a power adapter Doesn't matter a good quality Professional Mike like a Sennheiser made in Germany that thing's gonna last for many many many years And you'll at that same price area three to four hundred dollar range if you look hard enough You're gonna have a real Sennheiser 416 or even a 415 which was its predecessor. So yeah, I'd still pick one of those over one of those other ones Yeah, I mean those those things were built to be you know the hammer nails because you know for for roadies and road You use the field. Yeah, I mean it was made for field recording and you know now I use a 416 because I can But that was after many years of you know, I had the TLM 103 and I had a bunch of other mics You know, I tried the the the baby bottle for a while But I stuck with the 416 why? Because it's it's the pickup pattern on it that just seems to be right for voiceover because it's there for really picking up The human voice from a conversational distance not from from close proximity And I think that's really why the 416 works so well and why you see it in all these studios Can you approximate that with with you know with knockoffs of it or? Something that is marketed to be like a 416. There's nothing like a 416 as far as I'm concerned You know, yeah, plus I mean nowadays if they literally are asking you what mic you have because that's happening a lot now Yeah Sometimes you just have to have the real freaking thing right they just want to see the brand And it just it doesn't make any sense to me as if it sounds good. It is good Sometimes they want to see the brand name Mike. You just have to have that thing because that's what they want. That's right. Yeah Nicholas go for it. Ah, I recently upgraded my thirty five dollar USB mic Congratulations Were you working with that thirty five dollar good for you. Yeah to a road NT one with a road AT1 I think that's actually the a I want yeah, I want yeah, I have one of those two we tested that great It was great. Um, it's great And in my first chance to mix my levels had zero idea what I was doing not a good thing It was too low. So he's saying mix my levels. I'm not sure what that means Setting your using audacity I used the amplify effect and I ended up with zero Headroom meaning I guess he brought the levels up past clipping Yeah, my question is what's the difference between amplify and normalization and how much headroom should I leave when using? Both of these effects if any then you want to talk about the difference between amplify and normalization amplify is Taking the level of the entire file and and raising it up as much as you want normalization is Setting it the hottest peak to a specific level, which you know standard is always minus three The thing is is you should never rely on those tools to get the proper level Usually if you're not getting a hot enough level It's because something is choking it how many times George is it because somebody has a mic or a an Interface with a 10 DB pad on it Yeah, that happens. I mean I I see it all the time and I'm like why is that happen? Oh, you got a 10 DB pad and they're always like you were right. Yeah, you were choking the signal and The idea is is if you can set the levels right and using an interface For voiceover now remember if you're singing you're using a lot more of what we call SPL sound pressure levels because you're singing and projecting and projecting and you The interface and the preamp doesn't need to apply as much gain But when you're talking voice over and you're talking Conversationally, you've got a the interface the preamp interface slides interface has to have more drive to it to get those levels Still with any one of the the interfaces that we see you should be able to get enough gain Especially with you know an AI one which we thought was sure tons of gain on it and with an and the road mikes had Traditionally have lower output, but very little self-noise So you can really crank these things and get the levels that you want from it I think people are just not accustomed to never having had this kind of equipment They're not accustomed to how far the game should be actually turned up to right so they may start at like just sort of 12 o'clock right halfway, and it's really low So don't be afraid to push the game right turn it up until you get those those better levels You should be peaking at least minus 6 dB. Yeah on your meter and consistently to you know At least minus 9 and then really as you were saying peaking to minus 6 or once in a while minus 6 and minus 4 But you know use the meter because it's gonna give you green and yellow and red and you always want to be in the green And you want to be consistently in the yellow with an occasional flash of red if you're not seeing that Then you're not loud enough Yeah All right Leachy I'm 35 years old. I'm a 35 year old man I gotta read that one. I never mind. What the hell is that in there? Okay. Yeah for you on crack Maybe just want to make us laugh anyway Would an Ari 20 might be better for some this was from Jeff. Yeah, he's on crack What are you 20 Mike be better for someone with excessive mouth noise than a large diaphragm condenser or a 416? And would it pick up less ambient noise like a dog barking in traffic? Well It's a good mic actually If you're on the radio Yeah It's a good mic actually just recently somebody sent me a sample recorded with an Ari 20 And I expected it to be noisy and hissy and it wasn't and I was rather surprised I think it was plugged right into a scarlet and it was clean and I was rather shocked so What I still choose it over other mics the thing is gain is gain whether the mic is sensitive or whether the mic is weak Once you turn up the gain to pick up the level of volume of audio The noise floor is gonna come up, too And the only way an Ari 20 is gonna be more directional or pick up less noise is if you eat the microphone Right, and if you really get up on the Ari 20, it's definitely gonna reject a lot more background noise But so will your condenser mic right? So I don't know. I don't think you're gonna. It's an instant mouth noise Fixing tool because it will be a little bit less Yeah, and really it does it does seem to need a little more gain, which is why our friend Roger cloud Loves the Ari 20s, you know for podcasters because he's sold a lot of cloud lifters for those, you know It's an additional a little amplification in the Ari 20 It really is designed to be a very close mic, but we don't talk to people an inch from their eardrum So it doesn't sound wholly natural and we're trying to sound as natural as possible So, you know 416 might be better to keep Exterior noise out than saying Ari 20, you know, yeah, it could be yeah. Yeah Jay Horace black. Oh wait wait say no Nicholas Clemens has an interesting question I want to quickly should the mic be Inverted or not so like I guess he's talking about one of these guys like a large diaphragm like the way I have side Address this right here, right? Yeah We like inverted because that means the mic can be elevated out of the view of your script So it doesn't You know obstruct your view right and when it's like this when it's down below you get more plosives It sounds muddier And it's in the way. It's physically in your face. It's in the way So that's why we we like this inverted position. We talk about Yeah, I had nausea. Yeah, it really it you know, it's a visual thing You know when I'm talking to people. It's there's a number of factors to it number one it should be at you know at at eye level because by the way, that's the same level as your ears and So you're talking very naturally to somebody this thing is designed to hear like in here So if you've got it upside down like this and you're talking underneath it You know people don't understand that the pickup pattern is not a flat plane It's literally a hemisphere That surrounds the front of the mic So you can talk underneath it you can talk to the side of it you can talk to this side You can talk into the middle and it will still pick you up properly as long as you're to rock talking directly in the direction of the Mike a lot of people like to talk about being slightly off access and stuff like that to prevent most mouth noise But the reason I like doing it this way is because it's hearing me the way other people hear me. I Can go Peter Piper picked a peck of pickle peppers and there's no plosives So you don't have this big black screen in front of you that reminds you but you're on a microphone And god we hear that all the time Like yeah, you're pushing it a little bit much and the more louder you talk the more the acoustics of the room come into play So that's why you know, I mean you can have the mic any way you want I mean you could literally have it sideways as long as you're talking underneath it And it's not blocking your view of the copy Here's another way I explain it to people because you and I have probably been working with a lot of actors lately You know people who are just getting into voiceover. They've been doing it for a while But they don't do studio work. They're not studio actors, right? Right or they or they're they're the actors that had done a lot of studio work and now trying to get into voiceover I asked them the same question when you're doing a scene. Do you play to the scene or do you play to the camera? Oh, I played to the scene same thing in voiceover Forget the microphone is there get it out of your field of vision But it's still picking you up the way it's supposed to and you've got your copy right here You're more into your acting and lesson to being on a microphone That's why I like having it upset. We spent a lot of time on this because it is so damn important everybody It's basic basic basic so important. Yeah, man We're running on time. Should we try to fly through all these? Yeah, let's let's let's let's we already talked about the 416 and Let's see here. Here's one from Chile From Nicky flow. Hey from Chile guys. What's the main difference of using USB mic and one with all the extra complication? Well, okay, that's an easy one go for it Well, I mean most of the USB mics they they they they short you on at least some feature like they don't have a Proper gain control or they don't have a good way to control your monitoring or They don't have a very good preamp. So the noise they're a little bit noisier. That's a common problem and The ones that I've used that are really good don't have a gain control and that's inconvenient They most every one of them fall miss of some feature or another The Yeti is pretty well known and that does pretty much have all those features But it's a tank. It is a beast. It is a heavy monstrous microphone and so therefore not so convenient to use so every one of them has some little annoyance that makes them not work as like a professional mic and You know, that's that's my main issue. But can you record in book gigs and get paid using a USB mic? Yeah, just not a thirty five dollar would maybe not a thirty five dollar one But you know, there's some three two to three hundred dollar ones out there that are rather usable. Yeah, so yeah Yeah, it's just you USB mics tend to be a lot noisier and stuff and those extra complications are still in that mic anyway because you like the Yeti has its own Volume, you know level control on it, you know, otherwise you're relying on the computer to do it Not the most efficient way to get your proper levels and I'll go back to the thing I said earlier that the clients these days are more and more becoming more picky about what equipment you're using I don't know if that matters across the board. I don't know if it's all markets and all countries But you know, it doesn't speak to your professionalism if your only mic is a USB mic Unfortunately, right? So it'd be like a photographer showing up with an iPhone knowing that an iPhone can take a damn good photo But you're getting paid as a photographer. You should probably show up with a better camera Kind of an analogy that might work there. Okay. We got time for like two more of these questions and these are interesting ones This one from Rob Rader. I have a ten-year-old Mac book and Mac Pro that has been upgraded with a solid-state drive and 32 gigs Think that I did I talked for a living and 32 gigabytes of RAM as my main studio recorder that works great Holy cow ten years old and it'll run 32 gigs of RAM. That's amazing It is but because of some Mac apps I need to upgrade my two-year-old Mac book heir to Catalina Okay, it's on a kind of irrelevant to the actual question with so I was the school or carrier lunch, right? Will my old original epigee one work with it if I upgrade? I don't see why not The original Apigee one will it work if it's been upgraded to Catalina. That's a great question for Apigee Head over to Apigee's website and they will have that information just around the corner from you now and said ability guide Yeah, yeah, check out the app compatibility guy I guess I you know if you've got a you've got an Apigee one, you know, I think it's in a drawer You know grab it and check it out next week. We'll see if you know, it still works with Catalina. You're giving me homework What I'm giving you homework. You're giving me homework going and you've got to read chapter 2 and answer questions 1 through 5 I So miss being a social studies teacher Let's get one last one in what do you think yeah, let's go for it Mark Boyer says hey guys I have a very newbie question here. Okay. How in the heck do I boost audio correctly? I record it about minus 18 to minus 12 DB peaks I'm assuming but I need to get it to ACX standards to say minus 3.2 DB peak I'm assuming I'm asking this because I'm getting mixed answers about normalizing and that I should not use normalize and then there's the whole Compression thing and then limiters I really want to nail down a process that process includes clean sound without fiddling around too much at the moment I'm using Reaper which I have set up for voiceover. Just like Mike Delgadio recommend yeah, so You're I'm gonna give a really short answer Dan, and it's a plug. I hate to say it That's okay hire me and I will set you up the proper workflow to achieve that stuff in Reaper. I have a specific Sequence of way to do it. I have I set everything in that effects chain with all those mysterious functions for you In other words, I make the sausage You cook it That's what that's the point You want to go learn and make sausage? That's a whole different thing. We're gonna go make a sausage do that Yeah, I'll make it for you. You cook it. That's what I do at George the tech comm look at the audio book mastering Service and that's honestly We don't even have the time in the scope to go over what you have to learn how to do that Out that would be a whole like two hours show right there, right? And it's a lot. Yeah, we've been doing this though I mean, we know how we know what it's supposed to sound like and I mean, I'll make sure it doesn't just meet the spec That's not hard. I mean, it's not hard to destroy the audio so it fits the spec I'll make sure it still sounds really good and also It's the spec so and I say keep it clean and then therefore, you know, you normalize it really shouldn't do anything So yeah, and that's part of the workflow, but that's again, it's a workflow, right? It's a process. Yeah, okay Well, lots of great questions there. That was awesome off the cuff See, we know the answers except for the one about epigee, but we have to got to go do your homework now And I'll be expecting a three-page report Yeah, right at first I got to find that thing you understand my office right now the wall that the closet is full of boxes that say office bookshelf attached to the box Because the bookshelf is on the floor because the feet are right here But I'm missing one of the feet with the springs and the thing and the So I can't unpack everything once I can find everything and unpack everything I'm happy to do a test with my ten-year-old Apogee one already and with that That concludes this section of voiceover body shop tech talk number 43 George and I will be right back to wrap things up right after these incredibly important messages don't go away Hello, welcome to voiceover body shop. It's a place. We can get your body shopped with voices Look at Dan's head so shiny Well, hello there. 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Thanks for watching the voiceover body shop If you're demo ready or looking to get there check out JMC demos comm and see a sample of our work Now let's get back to Dan and George and this week's tech wisdom You know I used to live in Buffalo, New York But now I'm in sunny Southern California But no matter where you are when you need equipment strictly for voiceover There's only one place to go and that's voiceover essentials calm and right now is the time to get with Harlan Hogan Signature series V01 a voiceover microphone They also have the fabulous sentrance mic port pro 2 with limiter in stock In fact, it's the only version they sell now a limiter is a must have especially when recording oneself with no engineer to ride game for you By the way, it's the most amazing limiter. They've encountered. It's impossible to detect and it's incredibly quiet And they've upgraded the port-a-booth pro quick script LED light now It has two goosenecks all the better to read your script Go on over to voiceover essentials right now to get these great voiceover essential products Getting into VO is quite an accomplishment and Accomplishing anything in the world of performance can be really tough Getting great information is tough getting the right advice and mentoring is tough Simply getting ahead is tough and the best way to get ahead is to simply get started Let's make it simple to get started in voiceover The best way is with VO heroes free online course getting started in voiceover You'll learn everything you need to know to create a successful satisfying and profitable voiceover career The link is really simple. Here it is VO heroes comm forward slash Start again, that's VO heroes comm forward slash start get ahead in voiceover simply by Getting started go to VO heroes comm forward slash start Yeah, hi, this is Carlos. I was rocking the voice of Rocco, and you're watching voiceover body shop our finally spent if you're a voice actor because Hopefully we gave you the information you needed off the cuff but we know there are people out there that really appreciate this and they do so by donating to our cause here and making sure that our technology is up to date and Who are those people this week? Yeah, we've got donations from Michael Kearns Graham Spicer Larry Hudson Sarah Borges a Philip superior Trey speaks for you and Ant-Land productions and you've probably heard me say those names countless times because they're I believe they're all subscribers Yeah, and they just sent a little bit of money automatically on PayPal every month and Keeps their name right on the show Pretty smart idea. I'd say can't be do it for the name call out and do it just to show your support Whatever the case is so um, you don't have to subscribe either You can just do a single donation for one thing right you found something was really helpful And if I don't know if you didn't find something helpful tonight, then you weren't listening Yeah, or you know it all that's true We also need to thank our sponsors like Harlan Hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements Voheroes comm voice actor websites comm and jmc demos already Thanks to Jeff Holman doing great job in the chat room tonight. I think he's he's starting to get it down To where we get lots of that one crazy question. Yeah, I'd like to know where that was from Did we get hacked? I know some of somebody, you know, why did that end up in there? I want to see if we were paying attention and Hat Merlino was doing our tech tonight the son of Superlino and did a great job Courses at the whole thing up for me. He's like Yep, it makes makes it easy, but that Pat thanks a whole lot for doing what you do And and Lee penny for being Lee penny. Well, hopefully we filled your ears enough with enough tech for one week Next week. We got another great guest. I got a couple of people lined up. This is gonna be fabulous. So Let's take it home. I'm Dan Leonard I'm George Whidham and this is voiceover body shot or VO B. S. Hey, remember if it sounds good, it is good All right, we'll see you next time guys 43 is in the can whoa