 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number 77 Believe it or don't I can't wait till we get to a hundred, you know then then we're gonna You know balloons are gonna fly off and it's gonna be really something If you've got a question for George or I or both of us for about your home voiceover studio because that's what our shows About throw it in the chat room right now Jeff Holman is in there patiently waiting for your questions and ready to really them to us Plus we got lots of cool stuff from George who's been You've been on the internet Trying to dig deep into finding all the right internet in the last two weeks of Crazy requests and whatever I find on the socials and just trying to curate the best stuff Alrighty all that and a discussion on why is it supposed to be mono? I'm voiceover body shop tech talk right now from the outer reaches. They came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe. They bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional video studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio and Each week they allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voiceover body shop Tech talk voiceover body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials calm home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites calm where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes calm become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training Jay Michael Collins demos when Quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success And now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Well, hello there. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Wittem and this is voiceover body shop or VO BBS Tech talk Tech talk Tech talk it is time for tech talk where we talk about voiceover tech because if it wasn't for the tech we wouldn't be able to do any of this stuff No, we wouldn't we wouldn't have wanted to do this. So either that's true Well, yeah, and you know, I mean 30 years ago I mean there were a couple of guys that had home studios and they had before they had dates They had real-to-real recorders and if they were doing like promos or imaging for stations they had to put it on a reel and tape it up and put it in a You know in an envelope and send it on overnight on FedEx or something and you know now It's like hit record save MP3 But there's a little bit more in between there and getting it right is Not that easy if you're not that experienced at it If you've never done any recording before but you're a great voice actor and you've always gone into the studio and now You know because of the pandemic where people were forced to be at home, which George and I didn't mind at all because You know, that's what we do is we help people build home voiceover studios And they're not as sophisticated as one might think and they're not as hard as one might think But it takes somebody who knows what they're doing to explain it to you so that you get it Right so that you hit record and have to do as little as possible To get that audition or that job out to your client And that's what we do because hey, we know how or as we as like tell my kids Why did I do that because I can Anyway if you want to work with George who's you know the top of the business the guy just knows his stuff And he's learned an awful lot from me. Where do you go? We learn a lot from each other I know if you want to work with George, where do you go to get ahold of it? Oh, you head on over to George the dot tech. That's my home on the web. That's my business name and my address And I'm at the at George the tech all over the socials And I can do sound checks to studio designs If you're in LA sometimes I might even pop by your studio and do some hands-on Which has been come become a lot more popular as of late with the lifting of the pandemic So it's been great to serve you guys and I'm gonna continue doing it and I love doing it But Dan being here in LA He's been known to show up in your studio as well as well as working remotely and you can find him over at Home voiceover studio calm. Yeah, you know something I love doing house calls And that was one of the when I when we moved here to LA set almost six and a half years ago Almost seven years if you can believe that The front the best thing about it was I was able to go into people's homes, you know look around But also help them set up their home voiceover studio love sniffing around what's the best place To put a home voiceover studio in here. Yeah, you got a walk-in closet. You've got you know an extra spare bedroom Let's look at the possibilities. Let's see where it is. You can set that up and You know taking it from there asking lots of questions and just getting it So all you got to do is hit record and be a voice actor and that's really the key to having a great home voiceover studio Also, if you already set one up and you want to know what it sounds like George has you know, he listens to your audio as do I and on my website You will find if you scroll to the bottom of the page for the time being until it gets up to the top of the page Is my specimen collection cup and you click on that? It's a drop box for $25. I will analyze your audio And as anyone that's ever worked with me doing that, they will tell you it's totally worth it because you see what you're doing wrong You see what you're doing right and that's What we're about so make sure That You're here and you take avail yourselves of our talents Anyway, so what's in your tech update? This week Back at you Don't hit your mics folks Well rather the gate A new software plug-in has been making a splash lately from waves and it's called clarity VX and clarity VX is a Let's just say they want to take some of the wind out of the sails of isotope Rx They are using new technology that they call a neural network to essentially learn What is your voice and extract it out of the noise around you? And it's pretty interesting how it does it it's basically listening analyzing learning your voice like yeah, literally learning your voice and Pulling it out of the background and they give you it's very simple interface It just has a knob for the amount and then two different possible settings and depending on the severity of the noise There's like a more aggressive and a less aggressive type of processing or as they call it a neural network Clarity VX if you want to try it looks like right now on their website. They've been playing with the prices It was 29 bucks for a while went to full price for a while now with some coupon codes and other things It's back down to 29 bucks So this is probably a good time to grab it and try it out What would you use it for? This would be for people that are recording really in very poor Situations, they are trying to get away with it. They're recording in a car off of a busy road They're in a hotel room or they're home with the family and they've got to get this thing recorded a tool like this Will do some pretty amazing stuff to remove background noise. Does it do it completely free of artifacts? it depends depends on the severity of the noise and It can sometimes cause some little things so I have my Preferences I still I know you guys have heard me talk about Bert on the noisier That's still my favorite when the noise is more of a drone or more of a consistent background noise But clarity can deal with random background noise like I've never seen before and if if you're banging your head against the wall Or you're working in something like a tri-booth something very portable and not soundproof And you've got to pull off that session It could be the difference between pulling it off and not and just something to check out and see what you think waves clarity vx plug-in An update on Monterey on Mac OS Pretty much everything seems to be copacetic at this point now I'm only running it on my MacBook Air, so I'm not plugging in a ton of peripherals and devices into it But I have been dealing with a lot of folks with Monterey Macs and at this point it seems everything's working Apollo stuff All the plug-in suites some of them you still have to run your your software like twisted wave or whatever Edition you may have to run it in what's called Rosetta mode, which is still a compatibility mode But I haven't found that to be a hindrance at all it the computers now with these new processors are so fast That even when it's emulating an older Intel Mac it still does things very quickly So you don't even know what's doing you really don't it is seamless you see it install that Rosetta thing one time the very first time you launch a program that needs it and that's the last thing you've ever heard of it It's it's seamless So yeah, it's I would still wait if you if you're just wanting to upgrade because you're you're impatient. I get it I would still wait if you have two Macs installed on the one that isn't your mission critical studio computer in my situation the studio music the computer I'm using right now is my Mac mini and it's running big sir And it will stay on big sir until whatever the next thing after Monterey comes out I like to be one full generation behind So that's what I like to do and I recommend it for a lot of folks who are not up for trouble shooting So you're like leading from behind Another topic that came up on the social webs is The concept of recording with a safety track now There's a lot of ways to do this and that can be the basic which is just Literally splitting a microphone to two channels. Let's say you have a two-channel audio interface Using the right cable and the right tools believe me. You don't want to use the wrong kind of cable here You could actually damage your mic But you can split that mic into two channels and in one channel record with that one at a much lower gain If you're gonna use this technology this this this method You're gonna end up with two tracks one at a higher level and one at a lower level And the pro of that technique is you really are recording at two different microphone gains But you have to be careful with fan and power Remember that your audio interface is outputting power if you use the wrong kind of cable or splitter You could cause damage to your equipment. So you do need to be careful with that But there's other ways to do it and the thing is I've tried everything But I have to say is it worth it because as a voice actor Are you going to want to deal with the post of it and going? Okay? I've got two tracks. Which one should I use? Oh, should I take the two of them and comp them together in other words combining them and making them into one? Do you want to deal with the post the post on that? You know, you're gonna have to talk to your clients and who you're working with if you're doing video game work It could be worthwhile. It could be To do this because you'll have that safety margin no matter what hopefully that you won't clip But it always starts no matter how you do it no matter how clever your equipment is it always starts with proper gain settings So you still are gonna have to do that part, right? I find if you set your gain at a conservative level I know in video games. They say peaks around minus 18. You'll see this one a lot Yeah, that seems really low But when you're doing very dynamic character voices and stuff you'll have the headroom and with 24-bit recording You'll still maintain the sound quality that they expect 24-bit recording is pretty much the norm now for recording video game voices as it is Another thing is the minus 6 DB problem This doesn't come up every day or even every week, but I see this Yeah, I see it. It seems to happen more on audacity Than anything else and the reason is I think because audacity doesn't support ASIO Sound drivers meaning that audacity doesn't get to communicate Directly with the hardware it has to pass through the windows sound driver mixer system, right? Well recently had a client and I've seen this happen before and found problem fixes in the past But in this case I couldn't find one She reached out to focus, right because I said hey, it's their hardware. They wrote the drivers they're gonna know and The problem was no matter what she did whenever the audio got to about minus six. It was just cut off It was like it was clipping they told her After a lot of back and forth she said and trying this and trying that There the fix was Just reduce your gain so you don't ever go above minus six. That was the fix So what am I saying here? Who's to blame? Is it focus, right? Is it Microsoft? Why is that even acceptable that a company would actually provide you a workaround to fix their own sound drivers? I find that fascinating and I'll leave it at that I just don't know what's going on there. And is it gonna get better over time with windows I only hope so for everybody that still Wants to use windows to record audio. It's just blows my mind. So you're saying that you know in windows It's over mod. It's it. It's not a peak limiter. It's just it's just not letting things go over minus six And it's over modulating if you're good too loud or yeah, if it hits minus six and you just keep adding gain It's just acts. I wouldn't say it's a limiter because it gets crunchy and distorted But once you try to get anything above it clearly is just new that that's it. You're you're maxed out Speaking of Mac as we always do The Apple Mac studio and I was gonna ask if anybody in the chat or anybody Watching now or if you're watching you in replay What's been your experience with the new Mac studio? I do not have one. I don't expect to have one for the foreseeable future I did a little search to see what's the deal with the noise level because it does have some pretty impressive fans and The video I just watched the the guy had it sitting on his desk in front of him with a SPL meter about a Foot away as though it would be if you were in front of it on your desk He was getting about 30 decibels, which is not silent That is definitely not quiet enough that you could have that inside a booth For sure not Could you put it on a maybe a cart underneath a desk or maybe on a shelf in a closet or certainly outside your booth? Yes in your backyard might be a good place. Yeah, well, you know, it's it's not that noisy It's certainly quiet for considering the power of the machine But the bottom line is the more powerful the computer you buy The more powerful the cooling has to be and so you're always going to be finding that that is it's a rule You can't break now apples are geniuses at designing quiet cooling systems. They've gotten better over the years But I was reading comments on this video of users saying. Yeah, you know the noise that it makes it's kind of annoying It's not of dull It's more like a it's more of a Little bit of a grading wine so Keep that in mind if you're really excited to get one And if you do have one chime in and let us know what it's been your experience with the the fan noise At the end of the day the Mac mini M1 is really all you need From almost anything because no matter whether you get the mega mega ultra $6,000 studio with all these cores and blah blah blah or you buy the bottom of the line Mac Mac mini for 600 Most of what you do web browsing a lot of the software you run is using One core one CPU core and it won't make any difference to you which computer you won't even notice So that thing is really designed for for video editors and absolutely, you know people who have to you know photo editors and yeah the Massive file sizes and you know for screens to do it with yeah It's really really overkill. It's exciting But it's really over really overkill last thing real quick. It's just a little gripe Why can't isotope rx editors? Software convert a file from stereo to mono as part of a batch Processing that's just an open Just an open complaint if you know how to do this without going out of the batch Let me know because some folks are recording and mixing down their audio man Not using the best software garage band Logic and some of these just always put out stereo files and That's not always a good thing and that leads me into Dan's discussion of the week which happens to be why mono why mono? Why is mono? Why do we care about mono? So Because why when we talk to people? You know and you're talking you know and say this is the other person and you're you you're talking in a natural way as a voice act Like you should be You're not talking in stereo. Yes, people have two ears And they may perceive you from different directions, but the microphone is only hearing you from one direction It's not it's not, you know, what's it called binaural? You know, there's there's that my microphone beside at at NAMM a few years ago And they they're still making it where it's a binaural Microphone that will capture you from two different directions. Yeah, well, you know, I'm a head I mean head with microphones in the ears. Yeah, I mean I can see where that might be necessary You know if you're doing virtual reality things and stuff like that, but standard in the industry Is one track mono and how many times, you know, do I do I go into? Let me see if I have this set up here somewhere. I know I do There it is I changed that I just want to share my screen Share screen Share the window boom boom And there it is The thing is is, you know, a lot of times I will get A file for somebody who will submit something in my specimen collection cup and it comes in Like this which leads me to think one of two things one, they're using garage band or two They're using logic because as you were saying it doesn't mix down into mono Uh, so because they're designed for music everybody. That's right. You know, I mean Standard in the industry if you you know, I I always like to tell people if you send in You know a two track file like this Chances are it's going to get round filed before they even listen to the slate Because they're going to see that well, they're using garage band or something along those lines Or they don't understand that it's supposed to be in one track mono so now in in uh You know adobe audition It's not a big deal because I just get take the file and I go up to favorites and I'm like convert to mono and that's what it does you know, it's pretty simple and uh Get that out of there. So That's the way it's supposed to be and that's the way I want to hear it because I don't want us to look at both and say Uh, okay. Yeah, this is the way to see two tracks. Then you have to as an engineer go Well, okay, is there stereo content? Is there's something different between these two tracks and then You think of it differently after that, right? So the trick is to always record in mono one So you can see that what your modulation is like and you're not like looking at two tracks But two This is the way that the microphone picks us up. There's no need to have it in two track And you know, how many times is it george? Have you and I heard but I thought stereo sounded better Which that or what if it's mono? Why don't I why don't I only hear it in one ear? Well, if you recorded only on the left track, it's only on the left track. Yes, right But when you're setting up your your uh, your interface You know and you look at and you're setting it up in in your os and you're setting it up in your software Make sure that channel one the left side is Says mono and every time you go into Your settings when you start a new file It should stay one track mono and all the software will do that except for Apparently garage band and logic. Are there any other other any other platforms where you've seen that happen? I used to know a work around a garage band. It wasn't logical, but it worked And I can't do it anymore. So whatever the current versions are I can't logic There is ways to do it. You know, it's a little bit again It's not it's not designed to do it. So you have to jimmy it to do it But there's a way but um another another technical reason why you shouldn't do stereo files is if you can press them into an mp3 Let's say you have a 128 kilobit per second mp3 right a mono one Those sound great mono 128 sounds great. You take the stereo file and pack it into that same Package 128 kilobits per second cuts it the quality. Yeah, the quality is audibly Degraded it actually sounds worse and it's it's not that subtle So, um, this is another very good reason to make sure you're always working in mono Yeah, so do that Um We got a lot of questions coming up if you've got a question Throw it in the chat room whether you're on facebook Whether you're on youtube whether you're you know, if you're watching on our our website You can get access to the chat room there as well Just go into youtube and relay the question to us and we're going to answer it in the next segment So, uh, have you got any anything big coming up, george? I mean you've got your your office hours and a bunch of other things What have you been up to to help your clients out? Well, i'm working on adding more educational content I want to have ways that we can Help people technically without having it always to be a one-on-one And I love one-on-ones, but I can't clone myself God knows i've tried no It's it's impossible So I want to make sure uh, there's more ways I can help folks and more affordable ways And I found the best way to do that is through more educational content So if you stay tuned, uh, george d.tech, you'll see I'm adding more, uh, what I would call not only webinars, which then are recorded and available to rent But I'll be adding more modules and that's going to be just Shorter more concise videos on specific topics like specifically how to use all the different eqs in twisted wave And there's like six of them So I'll go right into that In detail, um, and that kind of stuff. So stay tuned for that and uh, that's that's our primary goal right now Yeah, and and on uh, may 6th Uh, I'm going to be doing a webinar Free for world voices org members. Oh, excellent because everybody's like, how do I achieve the standards at wovo? Well, well george and I and and a few other people that you may know Wrote those standards because we nobody had actually established what your modern Voigt digital recording voice over tracks are supposed to sound like and Different from the old analog days So we totally rewrote those and these are the standards that we would like people to adhere to And if you go for studio approval or if you just want to make sure that your studio is sounding right How do you achieve those standards? So I'm going to be doing a webinar on that on May Third actually may third Tuesday may third. Got it. Yes, and uh, you know, and so if you're a member of wovo It's free So if you're not how do you sign up for it? Well, we're figuring that out. Maybe you should just join Stay tuned. But most importantly. Yes. Stay tuned and join world dash World dash voices dot voices or work. Absolutely. That's the industry association of freelance voice talent of which I am currently the president and chief executive officer of And in benevolent dictator Uh, anyway, we're going to take a break and we're going to get to your questions You can throw them in the chat room right now We want your questions in the next half hour so we can answer them and enlighten you On how to get your audio sounding what it's supposed to sound like Which is whistle All right, we'll be right back after these messages Don't go away Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voice over body shop. It's great The harlan hogan v o 1a microphone Now perhaps you didn't know this but almost all of the equipment we use in voice over was designed for making music The v o 1a is the only microphone specifically designed and tuned for voice over and you're hearing me on it right now Now, obviously the v o 1a is very popular at voiceover essentials dot com and harlan has been running low until now Harlan placed an order for a new supply of v o 1a's from mxl quite a while ago Now manufacturing them wasn't an issue but getting them to the us was between covet and shipping constraints and of course skyrocketing costs Well, happy day voice over people mxl informed harlan that his order had arrived in long beach And was going through required quality control testing of each mic today And by the way, although it's difficult harlan is keeping the price the same despite inflation and logistics costs So if you've wanted one now's the time to order your harlan hogan signature series v o 1a voice over mic today Go to voiceover essentials dot com Hmm Hey, it's me. It's my turn to say Thank you source elements the creators of source connect and to let all of you know that source connect is still The reigning king when it comes to software that connects your studio to other studios around the world Allowing the studio to record you remotely in real time Um, well, I know a lot of the work voice actors do is self record or directed over zoom and different types of remote access Uh conferencing softwares, but this is a different thing. This is recording you From afar they're hearing your microphone in their studio. They're capturing your they're your audio Exactly the way the microphone hears and recording you real time and this is A very efficient way to work It most closely emulates the way it would be if you really were in the studio being recorded and It's this is why it's so so popular among producers. They love the workflow They love the just being having the session essentially Locked at the end of your session already edited and ready to go This is just this is the way the big jobs tend to like to work So if you want to be available for those jobs and you want to feel like you're You know doing that kind of work and prepared for it You should sign up and get a free trial at the very least at least be familiar with it And what it requires to use it. So head over to source dash elements.com And if you need help, they're really great with support and I do it as well If you need support, you can always visit us visit visit us over at george d.tech Okay, time for tech questions right after this Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. Were you? This is virgin radio. Well, okay. We're not that innocent There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working Dickies because I 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 dan will stop waxing this mustache for a minute. We'll get back to the show Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great Hey, we're back here at voiceover body shop tech talk George and I are here to answer your questions And if you got one throw it in the chat room, we still have a little room for a couple more But we're starting to fill up. I love how bill farmer reminds you to fix your mustache before come back from the break That's right. It's important You know, and I always do before the show. I should have seen what it looked like before It's not singling for a left turn as you know, it is not the pandemic was not good on this mustache It was like why bothers? Nobody's gonna see me, but now I can go out in public and you know people. Hey, I know you Anyway, uh, let's see here. Let's start off with the one and only j. Horace black's question. Go for it Jay's question was actually about the tri booth. He was here earlier when we did that last week What's the conditions that need to be existing to have? And to use a tri booth could this be used as a permanent solution in a home studio if the space is quiet enough Uh, and then there's a second part. I'll answer in a second about the filter But yeah, it does require a quiet. This is a 40 pound product If anybody knows anything about soundproofing or has ever had a soundproof space And I put that in air quotes because soundproofing is almost impossible to do completely Anybody knows that it requires incredibly heavy dense structure something in the order of five seven eight hundred even a thousand pounds or more To to get rid of the majority of the noise that's going to come in So the tri booth does not do that. Um, you do need quiet So that is something you're always going to have to consider when using anything portable That truly is portable like put in a bag carry over your shoulder portable It's always going to need quiet no matter who makes it um And then a filter is just a preset or a stack or a rack or an effects chain Or whatever the thing is you use that I that I build some very subtle Settings to make sure that your mic sounds the best it can sound In the tri booth the tri booth does a very good job But it's still going to be different likely than your home studio Or it may have something with your mic that Could color things slightly that could Benefit from a little bit of a tweak Sometimes I'll notch out a little at 300 hertz or something like that Just depending on your situation just just a little bit. Yeah, it's all supposed to be just a tad just a touch Um, and that's what a filter is So thanks for asking jay you're We appreciate it Um, jeff holman asks So when you do a video game audition You stay the same distance from the mic But just change the game when you do the shouting parts. Is that right? Sort of because getting too far from the mic while working it can reveal the shortcomings of your booth more Right Right the louder you talk The more the acoustics of the room you're working you're working in become Obvious what these acoustics? Yeah, bees. Well, you're you're in your apartment there Mine's way more lively than yours. Your your whole space is pretty well treated. Yeah, well, it's and that's the way that's the way it should be uh, but you know it's This really goes down to What are my important points about good audio for voiceover and that is microphone technique There's a couple of different ways you can approach this Depending on of course the microphone you have and and what access you have to your gain control One is Yeah, you can back off the mic now jeff was saying it's like well does that affect, you know, you can hear the acoustics of the room Generally if you're shouting at somebody You're going to hear the acoustics of the room anyway If you're doing the voice of somebody who's in some ancient archway You know taking out some ninjas or some roman soldiers or something like that You can yell And you know and if it's nice and quiet and you don't have a lot of reverberation Of course the engineer on the other end can add anything they want to it Um, but if you back off the mic You can yell and it's not going to over modulate as much or You can pot your mic down a whole lot so you don't over modulate It's nice having the sliders on this just pull it back a little bit. Um So yeah, you can you can change the game One of the tricks that I like to tell people and I use occasionally myself when doing a video game is record The soft stuff first where you're not yelling and record the loud stuff second Why soft first because if you do the loud stuff you might actually burn your voice out a little bit It's a little harder to do the soft stuff Uh, mic proximity is really really important When you're you know, when especially when you're you're doing different volumes of stuff So you can either turn the game down Move off the mic a little bit more and talk a little bit louder and it's you're still going to hear you clear as about Some microphones have and some uh interfaces have A 10 or 20 db pad on them If you know how to access that And not have to change the levels you can always kick off 10 db off of that and yell into The mic that way you just don't want to yell really really close to the mic because we don't yell at people That close to their ears. You want to be able to sound as natural as possible So that's you know, it's it's not a one answer quite, you know answer Uh, there's it depends on your situation with the acoustics of the room you're working in are And how much access you have to your interface, you know, sometimes it's like, you know, I always think You know set your levels Go hit record and go in your booth and go do that or if you have the interface in the booth You can turn it down or you can do what we used to do in what we call on radio writing the gain Knowing that you've got two different settings on your input gain One for conversational and one for yelling and if you know, you're gonna yell Just turn the game down And then when you're back remember to turn it back up That's that's that's not easy like if that's that's not so bad if you're doing radio But it's harder when you're acting because right it's tough to split your brain into those two tasks Which is why we tell people to do it that way because we want you to concentrate on being a voice actor and not being an engineer right exactly Questions from bc. Yes a couple of them here. Um, um first one is I have a road ntg 5 So do I uh, can you tell us about how you place your shotgun? Like this This is pretty much how I do it Um, maybe if I bring the camera around somewhat to the side for more of a profile. Whoops Maybe that would help to get a different perspective Right, but I'm about this far away. Maybe I get this far away sometimes like this But that's the placement. I know this isn't helping you guys listening on the podcast But sometimes there are visual elements to the show, but um, yeah, I like a relatively close placement because um, because I am not in a great acoustically Treated room and I am not in a very very quiet space either So I do tend to be pretty darn close to the mic But with this kind of a placement You won't pop it and that's that really makes it a lot more um Possible it makes it possible to be this close and still get that intimate sound. So yeah Now I use a 416 in my booth Because it just sounds good Uh, but my thing has always been you know, I always have the mic You know, this is you know a studio condenser mic But those same rules apply as far as I'm concerned. You want it, you know The diaphragm at about the height of the bridge of your nose And you can be depending on the size of the room you're in here. We've broken it down into three things it's either If you're in a small room just a fist if you're in a slightly, you know, regular size four by four booth or something like that It's thumbs up Thumbs up like that distance And if you're in a much larger room, george and I like to get to a, you know, mahalo. It's that one Uh, with a with a 416 or an ntg 5 Uh, it should be at about a 45 degree angle as george is showing you there And but the diaphragm should be at about the height of the bridge of your nose and you're copy down and underneath the same way it is with this particular mic here and That just works really really well If you've got it out of the range of you breathing on it You don't get plosives. Uh, you'll notice that neither of us are using pop screens I haven't used a pop screen in years because The reality is is that pop screens really are and do they prevent plosives? If you're singing and you're really blasting it really close Yeah, it can do that voiceover is not You're not supposed to be that intimate with the mic unless you're whispering So if you can be here, this is at the same height as your ears And you're talking underneath and you can go Peter Piper picked a peck of pickle peppers Uh, you know, you know until you reach Pluto and you're still not gonna you're still not gonna have A plosive and that big black screen just tends to remind people but they're on a microphone And that's when they start talking about her and don't Over-project The louder you talk the more the acoustics of the room come into play The ntg 5 and the 416 are great because they have a very narrow pickup pattern And can eliminate some noise that comes in from the side Yep more so than a large diaphragm Cardioid condenser mic mic is that more information than anybody wanted Well, you know what it's asked because they still need to hear it. Um Number two is I saw a site for a custom mogami cables Um, what a right angle connector be good Um, yeah, if it fits your setup if you want to have the connector make a right angle out of the microphone And it looks cleaner to you Go for it. It's not hurting anything to do. Nobody needs to see how the sausage is made. Yeah It's not gonna make any difference. That's fine. Um, can you hear a tonal difference between the mogami 2534 versus 2549 No, no, no human being that I know could hear the difference between two different mic cables Me my dog, but maybe Um, and then number three is would you get a longer xlr and just coil up the excess or better to get pretty much the Right length cable. Um, I would definitely tend to try to get the right length cable The longer the cable is the more chance that it could possibly pick up Some kind of noise or interference, especially if it's coiled up Uh on the floor, it's very it's not typical if it's a quality cable like a mogami cable It won't matter that much a cable can be 100 or more feet without any loss of audible Quality loss so as long as it's a balanced microphone cable But I I like cleaner wiring with a lot less excess. So I tend to choose shorter cables Yeah, I you know, and that's the thing with you know, I'm the same way. It's like Unless the mic has to be far away You know, what's it? You know, it shouldn't be any more than 10 feet away. And if it's like, you know on a You know a reticulated arm How far does it have to go? You know You know six feet 10 feet, you know, if you've got a 10 foot cable You're not gonna have all that much excess so no and six to 10 feet is fine Right 25 feet probably too long for most home studios unless you're you're literally in your closet down the hall And that's where you have your mic, right? And we've done that Even though it's like, you know, just tell people don't trip over it You know, it's going up the stairs and down the hall in a closet and but it still works That's why a balanced cable is so fantastic because it can run for 100 miles and you're not going to have any single loss Yeah, they work. They do that job very well. Yeah Grace newton I just got twisted wave and i'm getting familiar with it. Good for you Uh, can I run rx8 elements with it? Yes, absolutely. It's a use it as a plugin, right? Yeah, you can you can run it as a plugin or you can run it as its own thing Um, and unfortunately rx and isotope does not recognize twisted wave as a as a software that they support Uh, neither does waves But it certainly does and we have hundreds of people using it. So yes, yes, you can. Yeah Uh, part two you get that because you're the source connect guy. Oh, okay I'm looking into getting source connect. Uh, is mapping required with a macbook air m1 Have anything to do with it. Yeah, it's Port mapping is not anything to do with the computer itself It has more to do with the router you use And the software you use so in this case source connect Standard which is the version that you would be using does still Require port mapping to have the most reliable possible Connection they give it as an open gateway an open port. They call it port mapping An open hole in the network that's specifically opened up just for source connect on that computer But everything else inside the side of email web browsing Skype zoom and maybe a few other things all the other little ports or openings in your network Are closed and kept closed and that's what keeps your network secure So, um, some routers will just negotiate and say well All right, I'll let it I'll let it slide. I'll let you through other routers are like I don't know anything and they just let everything through and then some routers go No, you shall not pass and then no thing comes through. So it totally depends on your router and your network Not really the computer that you're using Yeah, I think that's one of the most intimidating things about source connect is is the port mapping But they do it for free if you if you have a subscription or a one-time license They will Handhold you through that they will remote in and set it up for you As part of the purchase costs their support has really Really matured especially the last couple of years. So don't worry so much about it all right You get the one from erin anthony. All right erin says does wave clarity rx work with audacity I believe it should I mean it's it's a standard vst plugin or au if you're on mac and I have not tried it with audacity, but For free you can demo it and find out for yourself and report back So let us know How what you find if you've been able to Use it with audacity All right. Yeah, audacity. I mean it it has a lot of It it does an awful lot for not paying anything for it does it's pretty amazing Uh, let's see here alicia hurley who's watching on youtube. She says i'm still using mojave on my studio mac. Should I upgrade? This is a This is a loaded question. Okay, so now you've been on mojave for a while Um Mojave is interesting. It's one of the last os is from apple that supported 30 I think it's 32 bit applications. So You may still be running old software. Let's say microsoft office 2004 maybe People tend to never upgrade office ever because it just works Um, if you're running older versions of office When you upgrade They're gone. You're gonna have to upgrade them immediately So there's gonna be software that you may be upgrading right away if you do upgrade from mojave If it it also depends on the computer how old it is Um, etc. There's a lot of things to consider And if you want to know all those answers, I would recommend that you have a consultation with Me or dan we'll go through every software and hardware you're using and make sure that there's we'll take all the questions off Out of out of there so that you're not going to be Concerned that an upgrade is going to break anything Um, I would go if I was going to upgrade to anything right now And all the conditions were right. I would say big sir would be the os that I would upgrade to Um from mojave But be aware that you may break some old apps because Anything 32 bit is no longer going to run Once you move past mojave. Yeah, I've never had an issue with that We're probably not using microsoft office. I've darn right. I'm not my wife is and she's like It's lost my outlook. It's that I can't my there's 5000 emails that I can't find I told you to get a mac. I told you not to use this, but that's office Well, you can run office in the cloud So like if you're really frustrated and you don't want to run the app or install it You can run it completely in the cloud called office 365. You can also get um It's called open office completely free Yeah, um, also if you're on a mac you have pages, which is word You have keynote, which is um PowerPoint, uh, you have numbers, which is uh, you know, um Sorry, uh Sex essentially So there are tools that can take the place of of word, but uh This is probably one of the most common questions and things that I deal with is that dealing with microsoft office Uh more than anything else Get a mac Just solve so many problems. Yeah. Sorry. I mean, yeah, it's it's it's when we're on these old versions of of software that are legacy You know, again 2004 version of office 2009 version of office 2013 version of office It ain't gonna run on a modern 64 bit mac Yeah, I got time for one more question here. I didn't get to go to vio Atlanta By choice But you did and morris scott asked george. Yeah, what is the sound panel that you had at vio, atlanta? I think it's uh, I think it's right here. Okay Showing towel. I like showing towel. That's why I have stuff all over the place. Oh that thing Here it is at the last minute when I packed I uh, I had a little space in my suitcase because I had a full-size suitcase I was gonna say you had a lot of space in your suitcase And I just uh, I stuffed it in one half of the suitcase just kind of Curved it around the inside of this it fit in there fine Um, this is it. This is a this is a prototype product from studio bricks I I don't know when they're shipping Um yet they're the only thing the only place you're gonna see these right now is inside A studio brick booth. Um the newest most current ones. They're shipping they're called the eco line Or eco model all use these now And um, I like them because they are Not toxic in any way. There's no smell They're not it doesn't hurt your skin if you touch it. You don't need to wear gloves It's not foam. So it doesn't have that foamy feel It has better sound absorption acoustic absorption than foam of the same thickness It's got a lot of pros I'd say um, and you can It's not that easy to cut but you can cut it into smaller segments to fit into Weird spaces. So I'm hoping when they release it they release them in like a Like a four by four grid, you know four by four small pieces to make it easier to Um fit it into a lot of like weird little spots like treating a closet or a little tiny linen closet And you want to fill in all the shelves, you know, I felt that would be ideal for that Outstanding. Well, believe it or not, that's all the question And uh, it's pretty amazing. I actually have to deal with the studio bricks tomorrow Somebody apparently built it in their little gaps and stuff So I know they didn't level it they didn't I said you got it He's the floor level got to have a level floor So I'm heading over there tomorrow with a my big rubber mallet and we're gonna get that thing straightened out and Soundproof as fun Yeah, I know it's gonna bring a few hockey pucks and things like that It's got leveling feet You just need a wrench that you can reach Hopefully reach enough of the feet with your with your wrench to To level the thing so i'm bringing my level because that's gonna be because that's what it is If it's not level you're gonna have you're gonna have those gaps. Yeah. So anyway Alrighty, uh, again, if you've got any questions for us, uh, you can always write to us at the guys At vbs.tv kind of gives you a little bit of warning. So Um, any time you can write to us at any time and when we do, uh, tech talk If you write it in it gets gets to the the front of the queue And you get you know, so you can like hear the answer and then you can go But then you'll miss the rest of the other great questions on the show So it's really important that you know, you hang out for the whole time But if something occurs to you in the middle of the week and like Oh, you know, I should ask doing in george that you write to us at the guys at vbs.tv and we will get it on Well, we can't say on the air anymore because on the stream on the stream We have to change all the nomenclature about all this it's you know, because we're not Broadcasting well, but we are broadcasting, but we're stream casting stream casting narrow casting You know, well with with us a little bit more narrow than some other things Anyway, thanks for all your questions But george and I'll be right back after these really important messages and give you more information That you need to help you with your career. So don't go away. We'll be right back Before time began there was v obs dot tv watch or else Hey there i'm david h laurance the 17th and With my company vio heroes and my team of coaches and my community of voiceover talent We guide voiceover Actors along their journey and you may be watching v obs here And not nearly as far along as many of the other people who are watching you may not even have Started yet And we actually specialize in helping you do just that so if you're watching all the stuff going on here on v obs and going I have no idea what they're talking about. I don't know but I really want to do this I'd really like to help you Please go to vio heroes dot com slash start That's vio heroes dot com slash start and you can take our getting started in voiceover class Which tells you everything you need to get started as a voice talent And I'd love to hold your hand along the way and help you with that journey Again vio heroes dot com slash start That's vio heroes dot com slash start In these modern times 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 Don't try it yourself go with the pros voice actor websites dot com Where your vio website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what? This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on the voice of her buddy Shaw All right here. We're back to say goodbye because we still have a couple of minutes here, but we're gonna use them wisely Uh next week on this very show. We will have another great guest I'm talking to a couple of people that might be really interesting And then I think in june when I come back from my vacation We will get back in the studio And I can look up people's nostrils and and ask them questions and you know, it'll be great Anyway, our donors of the week are jonathan grant christopher epperson sarah borges philips appear tom pinto Shelly avaleno george wittem george's dad. That's right brian page patty gibbons rob rider Greg thomas a dr. Voice. That's uh, dr. Carlson. I believe in Carlson Uh, antlamp productions are good buddy uncle roy shawna painton baird martha con don griffith Tramos lee diana birdsall and sandra man willer Uh, once again, you need help with your home studio You come to the right place gotta just talk to one of us if you want to work with me You can go to home voiceover studio dot com and i'll be happy to speak with you And maybe we can set up a consult or you can talk to george over at George the dot tech and I finally got an offering a coupon code So if you book a service with any of us, uh, that's a booked service or a webinar service doesn't work for a lot of the other non offline services, but You can use a coupon code at checkout and for 10 off you use the code v obs fan 2022 So that would give you 10 off your service and actually I think I have it set up to use multiple times so you can use it On the next one if you want to so anyway, cool. You're going on group on You going on? No, I've never done a group on I'm kind of scared to do a group on to be honest I always hear like stories of like an avalanche of like orders coming and you're like, oh my god, I can't handle it Yeah, yeah, and mostly it's for the stuff on group on it's all for liposuction or something like that That's what I want discount liposuction. They have liposuction and cupcakes cupcakes They feed into each other perfectly Absolutely, uh, we need to thank our amazing sponsors who have been with us over the years and help us get this show On every week like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements Vio heroes dot com voice actor websites.com and jmc demo Uh special thank yous of course to other people who help make this show happen Jeff holman in the chat room our amazing technical director who works all day And then every other monday comes into and and and just makes it perfect here sumer lino our technical director And of course lee penny for just being lee penny Uh, that's gonna do it for us this week and thanks for joining us and you know This is not an easy business voiceover is very it has so many different parts to it But if your audio is good, that's what's most important and the bottom line is if it sounds good It is good. I'm dan lennard and i'm george wittem and this is voiceover body shop or vio b s tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk We'll see you next week guys. Have a good later