 along with the way you wrote these questions but I will I will be able to ad-lib around them all right now we're live I'll do the best I can okay just speak your mind kiddo what did you think of uh I'm not sure that you really want me to do that Dan but all right what do you think of uh what was your experience with world of con you know I thought it was I thought it was fantastic I really I really got a lot out of it myself had you done it before I'd never done it before no no it was my first time and my only experience with conferences was during the pandemic I I presented virtually at the Atlanta but uh that was a really really different animal than actually actually going you know but no I it was a real pleasure because there were certain people I had known before you know who I'd met at other events things like that and then um it was just it was just so nice to have a number of people who I'd maybe just casually seen once who I taught in a workshop for example more people that happen to graciously come up to me and say I know who you are and I was like that's lovely thank you I don't know who you are and then they're like no I've read your I read your stuff a lot online you know and I'm like oh great get used to it because you're about to get the vobs bump well god gosh darn I'm gonna get a lot more people on the street reckon I'm just so excited I have a sliver of fame you know where occasionally people do come up to me and I'm just like you know are you a process server what is it you know I hi it's great to meet you and and you are because I'm at a loss here you I don't know you know who I am but okay I mean I knew who you were before before you you showed up at WoWoCon and uh okay but how how because I would see your name and voice over extra and stuff like that okay okay that's fair you know John was very John was very generous John Florian is very generous in in publishing and republishing things I've written for quite some time yeah quite some time he also sponsors the show of course he called me yesterday as it was driving back from my mom's and he's you know we're like driving past Universal Studios and through all that Hollywood stuff and he's like I think you have a typo on your promo with with Hugh Klitsky tomorrow and I'm like what what do you mean I had I had transposed the I and the L in your name oh so I immediately when I got home I fixed that not an uncommon mistake you know it was just a typo I you know my my fleet little fingers don't work as well as they used to people have replaced the vowel in my name with other vowels you know in my first name you know that was emblazoned on an elementary school poetry magazine as I recall where suddenly I was high Klitsky and I was just sort of like you can imagine you know elementary school kids you know in the 70s were just all about that you know for a while you know very exciting to them who he's high it's like a Yiddish name you know High Silverman I wouldn't know I wouldn't know I'm an Episcopalian white boy from New Jersey I got nothing what and and there's no Jews around you there I mean imagine imagine that imagine that no that's why I moved to New York the food got better and people got more interesting you know all Jersey though which which you know Jersey which exit which exit yeah yeah believe it or not that's like not a that's not a joke that's a real thing you know 125 off the Parkway 8a off the turnpike but you got to go in a little is that a helpful answer yeah yeah okay you know what you're talking about because my aunt and uncle were in Villas near Kate May is a very different part of New Jersey very different from Central absolutely I went to I went to school in Southern New Jersey it's a completely different world and nor the New Jersey basically North Jersey is oriented towards New York City and South Jersey is oriented towards Philly right so it's really really different or just oriented towards anything but either of those right right in Central Jersey it's sort of somewhere in between but generally more oriented towards New York South Jersey is more akin to like rural Maryland yeah or rural Delaware it it can have a very very very strong rural element to it for sure yeah yeah different world down there yeah love visiting there though show easy okay East Philadelphia that's another name of a neighborhood of Jersey my friends I've been know people that live just over the bridge so they like to say they're from East Philly East Philly okay okay since there is no East Philly mm-hmm there's a river so exactly that's right exactly so okay so we're gonna talk about yeah hey Mike Derner I know you're watching thank you thank you this is a very nice little Mike flag that he got me because oh oh cool yeah yeah I think that's great it is it's it's more traditional and it goes so well with all the old radios that I've got yeah so I don't need to have an advertisement for road microphones in frame so there we go okay well I mean I can put the road arm here but yeah they get enough free freaking promotion as it is I know I actually know of a fellow by the name of h y h y r u m a j v voice actor okay all right good all right good uh let's see here so yeah we're so you know I've got my thoughts about demos so sure we can we can probably play on that a little bit too if you'd like yeah yeah I mean I'm how important are they they're clearly important when presenting oneself sure absolutely very very important right but what's going to book the job is how you do on an audition and you've got to be able to faithfully reproduce that when you know when you get hired for a gig and you know they'll say hey can you do it like you did on cut number four on your demo that's like let me go back and listen to see what the hell I did there sure so and they want you to be able to do that you know you know people come to me to produce their demos very rarely for their first one it's usually their second one or maybe even their third one sometimes it's a product of having studied with me where there's been an evolution and then they want to be able to showcase that or they're in a very different place now maybe they've perhaps they've aged perhaps they've developed some uh my new skill and then they just want somebody to be able to capture that and and reflect it but I'm always I it's fascinating because sometimes it's like you know looking at an early headshot of yourself where it's like maybe you looked good but the photo was bad or or maybe you didn't look good and the photo is great but everybody has to update their materials and go through process once they've been exposed to more ideas once they grow in measurable demonstrative ways and people like to talk to me about that probably because I take the time to really listen to really understand what they want that demo to do right yeah and that's and that's the way it should be and that's not what we're getting from a lot of places these days you know there's so many demo mills out there and you know a demo in a day and it's like you know it takes a couple of weeks to get it right and then several different sessions yeah I mean I I always ask about the process that they went through before and then I was naive and felt like everybody should do it the way I do it but no they don't and I'm just like so how did you do it what was it like you know and you hear the stories and some of them are just obviously people that have just been taken advantage of sometimes but sometimes there's this air of dissatisfaction where they're just like I wish they had done this I wish they had you know done why like sometimes I've heard stories about people replicating music from other people's demos I've heard stories of people replicating scripts from other people's demos and just things like that where I'm just like and I'm not going to tell tales out of school but when I've heard that I've just always been like hmm but then producers producer in any capacity is a slippery term isn't it where a producer has a skill set and they work with people based on their strengths and then they subcontract the rest but the question is what is the primary your point person really doing with you right I student yeah we're down to a minute here so we're gonna start up in less than a minute yes sir all right none of that wisdom is going to be in this in the show well it's it's it's now permanently imbibed on Facebook until okay it's all right until you delete it yeah yeah and feel free to repeat that so I'll do the best I can god knows I don't know that I can well I mean so far you've been able to bring up uh what are the biggest complaints voice actors get once they realize they recorded a crap demo two years later right because they didn't know any better that's why they come to you to do the second demo right yeah yeah I don't okay here we go we are ready from two okay go and five four three hey it's time for voice over body shop how's everybody doing out there uh we have a great guest tonight it is voice actors we all have to have demos and people complain about their demos or they love their demos and there's so many guys producing angles so many people producing demos we figured why don't we have somebody who knows a lot about making demos on the show and so our guest tonight is Hugh Klitsky say hello Hugh hello Hugh uh very good it's two weeks in a row Deb there when did that last time perhaps I need to rephrase the question could be because you know she and I like know each other so it's like hmm maybe that's why maybe that's why so are we already out there if you got a question throw it in the chat room because Jeff Holman who I he's like out of the frame right now but he's he's here and he will be taking your questions and relaying those to us are we ready mr. Woodham ready to go all right voice over body shop right now voice over body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials.com the home of Harlan Hogan signature products source elements the folks who bring you source connect the oh heroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voice over training voiceactor.com your voice over website ready in minutes voice over extra your daily resource for voice over success and by world voices the industry association of freelance voice talent and now here's your hosts Dan and George well hello there I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Woodham and this is voice over body shop or VO BS so got a gift this week Mike Derner sent us this wonderful mic flag because really nice everybody was tired of the one I print that or something no it's done a 3d printer somebody is doing these with 3d printers and you know the people like me who collect old microphones it's like well you got to get the flags so very cool and it looks a lot better than the one the paper one that was printed out like four or five years ago and kept trying to find different ways to stick on the mic and thanks Mike it's cool yeah but you know as soon as I as soon as we're done I can just take it off and oh that's even that's great yeah you know as long as it doesn't interfere with the diaphragm at all do I sound okay with this stuff high enough yeah if anything it makes me sound better and look more professional anyway tonight we got a great guest we're going to talk about demos and demos are of course very very important so why don't we introduce our guest and that way we can get into a discussion of this Hugh Klitsky is a voiceover coach director and producer in New York City he teaches the conversational read self-direction the commercial read and directs auditions as he says amongst other things Hugh has directed booking auditions for commercials animation adr politicals podcasts narration games audiobooks promos affiliates trailers e-learning and industrials which is just about everything let's welcome to voiceover body shop Hugh Klitsky welcome hi guys how are you doing tonight good thanks all right that was a long introduction but then again you have a lot of stuff that you do and directing it so tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this not-so-business it was purely by accident I was well back in the day I was I was a something of an odd low point in my life I was selling cell phones at Radio Shack and was casting about I was a I did my graduate and undergraduate work in music composition and I had worked with some filmmakers who in grad school who knew that I was looking for something to do all my freelance work all my music work had dried up and I had to turn to as a friend of mine put it an alternate an alternative lifestyle you know to support myself at the time and I wound up scoring an independent film for a fellow who had absolutely no budget and I said to him okay I get it you have no money all your friends got to do it and the interesting thing though the acting was really good but the film was it was a art film and it was kind of odd and that's an important part of the story and I said to the guy I don't know if you can help me with this but don't work for free but if people can't afford to pay me they barter with me they do me favors and what I want more in the universe than anything right now is a better job than my day job because my day job sucks and he looked at me and he said okay what about my old day job I said I don't know what you did he was the voice over casting director at the agency and turned out that the talent in his film were all signed actors who came in and did his film for him as a favor and I interviewed on a friday at nine in the morning I got a call three o'clock in the afternoon I got hired and to my surprise I said wow that's great thanks that sounds fantastic you know what am I going to do and you like because I didn't know anything about it I didn't know anything about the work I didn't know about anything that was going on but I was trained on site you know they had another agent who had trained all of the people that did the job after him and most of those folks lasted for about a year maybe a year and a half in the position and I stayed for almost 15 years wow well you're gonna you're gonna learn a thing or two over that period of time so and you were there for 15 years almost yeah yeah um okay it was less than that but it sounds good if you round that number up right you know nearly 15 nearly 15 years you know it just sounds good that sounds like my broadcasting career yeah I was in it for 15 years they paid me for 12 of them but you know um so now you're you're not you're producing demos but I'm not really known for that yeah I'm a coach primarily yeah but I knew that when we had talked about my being on here we just discussed the idea of you know maybe I could talk about demos and I said sure I could talk about demos because I do produce them I don't feel like I produced a whole lot of them but people come to me with very very specific ideas and very very specific questions I rarely produce anyone's first demo I usually produce their second maybe even their third often students of mine who have coached with me they'll say do you and I say yes and then that becomes part of our that after working with me for a while and they they've changed develop their skill set in a different way they then trust me to show that off to the very best of my ability because I understand them yeah I mean you can so much more effectively coach somebody or direct somebody and produce a very convincing demo when you're coaching them and you know all the strength and weaknesses and having gone through I think many people probably did go through that first demo and it was done on on a probably on a shoestring budget maybe very very quickly or maybe they spent a lot of money on it but it was still done very quickly or the script was generic or maybe the script was 10 years old which somebody recently told me on the side a very prominent demo producer did their first demo he found out years later that he shouldn't have a 10-year-old commercial script on his demo right but yeah it's the things that people learn and so when they get to do that second time with you they really they're gonna get a much much better product and they're gonna appreciate the skills you bring to the table the thing that troubles me most sometimes is is not just the direction but more the casting I find that the fit of the right content to the individual is so important but at the same time I also know that I'm speaking from my own experience because casting was essential in the agency world and so I was constantly around the thinking and the questions and the ideas of what's the difference between this person being able to perform something versus somebody who's the right fit for something that fits the request and then to try to synthesize that into with a demo is very very important and I don't think that can really be underestimated because I hear demos and again I'm speaking from my experience what's in what I value when I listen and I'm sitting there going that content doesn't match they would never be cast for this why is that on their demo you know it just doesn't it doesn't fit and then I'm not paying even even really paying attention to the read to the production to anything else and that's a very very fine line because people want to be aspirational with their demo they want to be able to say this is what I'm capable of doing this is what I want I want to be able to show that off but if it's not a good fit for you in the first place then already you're you're you're losing yeah well what are the good elements of a demo uh yeah I mean I mean there's the the basic stuff your name uh and and you don't even slate them anymore it's just you know what what is it that that you should have in a demo I think they should be slated but I think they should be slated by somebody who's not you I think they should be slated by somebody who's of the opposite gender as you was also as well because I think it's I think there's a psychological benefit to having somebody set you up means statistically it's proven that people that are have other people speak on their behalf they earn more money and I think that when somebody of the opposite gender slates your name they're like oh this person has somebody else that believes in them right then prefer a pro yeah then they can what do you call it they'll listen in a different way you know it's it's very subtle what goes into a good demo I think a demo has to actually I think it don't needs to be a little entertaining believe it or not I think you actually have to like listening to it and that's kind of difficult to capture I think that you have to you have to hold people's attention in the right way at from the very very beginning and then you have to conclude very very well at the end perhaps even having the beginning of a spot upfront and the end of a spot at the end I think demos have to have variety I think that demos have to be they have to show certain kinds of skills they have to show that you can interpret copy well they have to show that you can tell story they have to be a strong representation of the artist that you are right now and then in turn your skill set has to be able to back that up so as we were talking before on the beginning you know Dan was saying how yeah I want you to do it like you did on the fourth cut of your demo well then the the talent that they're trying to remember what the fourth cut was you know and that can be very very now you're showing your age but I'm but I'm of that age too you know I am old enough to have cut tape but not a lot of it not a lot but yeah I am old enough to have cut tape it's it has to have it has to have variety it has to show knowledge of marketplace it has to show where your voice is likely to be sold then if you and if you have an interest or strength that you have knowledge base for example I'm producing a demo now this person has a background in broadcast journalism focus on finance and she when she um auditions for things she gets lots of likes in whichever of the the pay for sites she's on specifically around finance so I'm immediately like yep we got to have that for sure there has to be a finance spot on your demo but she's never really thought about pharma so I think that she needs to have a disclaimer for example a black box warning for example on her demo because that's also important and those two are kind of like cousins in a way just in certain parts of the read just a little bit I can I can hear that that black box fair balance warnings black box warnings fair balance warnings have to put over information clearly and responsibly and I can hear that in in the business reads in certain spots maybe for like Sunday morning business shows if they're in there for those specific kind of investment portfolios to be able to command and hold attention but perhaps still temper that with a bit of warmth or a bit of approachability so that's why I mean where they have cousins they're elements of the reads that have certain similarities what is the what is the black I'm I think I know what the black box won't when you are sure it's sometimes in in the pharma universe it's sometimes called the black box warning where you have to have the in a pharmaceutical ad you have the good stuff up front then you have the warning a disclaimer in the middle in the middle side effects and all that and then they reprise the good stuff at the end right but under FDA guidelines you're supposed to present them identically all the way across that's not policed very heavily unless somebody complains dead set in the old days you could just squeeze it at the very end it could be very very high speed and that's no longer the case no longer no longer the case yeah no longer the case at all but they'll frequently cast two different people they'll frequently cast a voice up front that'll do the you have this problem with this you know emotional not too emotional then they have the disclaimer in the middle the the warning and frequently they're of two different genders and then at the end that other voice comes back and i'm certain there are reasons i'm not exactly sure why but it's such a pattern that there must be a reason that works for the pharmaceutical company's benefit for sure yeah if you're just joining us our guest is Hugh Klitsky and we're talking about the elements of your demos which you all have to have out there if you've got a question for you about demos and that sort of thing throw it in the chat room Jeff Holman's back there writing everything down and relaying it to us and we really appreciate his taking the time to do that for us um all right so when you produce demos what is the process like for you how do you do it there's a lot of talking there's a lot of conversation you know there's a whole lot of really understanding you know i want to hear the demo that they had before i want to understand what their experience was like with that i want to understand what they want to accomplish with a new demo i want to know why they wanted a new demo now so just simply that the stuff is dated is it just simply that the stuff is um they've learned how to read conversationally you know better for 2023 as opposed to what was going on in 2019 and once i divine those reasons just in talking it out then i'll sit there and really pay attention i'll have them read for me to really understand what they gravitate towards what they're good at what they're not good at and i'm also willing to at moments to say have you thought about this have you thought about that and i'm listening very objectively and very abstractly to their voices trying to say okay what about for example i produced a few elements for somebody's uh demo not a full demo but just a few pieces because he wanted to show himself as being more than just a big voiced guy and i said okay what would you like to be able to show that your current material doesn't and he had lots of cars and he had lots of really big huge aggressive masculine things he said i would love to have a whiskey spot and i'm like yep you absolutely could have a whiskey spot 100% because he was that was important to him he really wanted that but then because of his age i suggested maybe you want health care because it would be perhaps you being warm and supportive toward a family member an older family member perhaps but the but the context of the read the content in the read would have to express those ideas of support and caring and trust for my family and yours as a as a subtext in the ideas and then i said to him what about this and i put a polo black spot in front of him and he never thought about that before he never had thought about that and now that that leads his uh his player where it's just a very simple straightforward masculine read and the my my post guy you know emailed me back and he said his demo was an absolute pleasure to mix and i'm like then we did it right because suddenly he was doing sexy grandpa for the first time in his life you know just reading polo black but it's really you know again i think casting is super important from there you can have read and from there you can then have post and to think about the demo as an object all the way through with variety with with just that hint of entertainment value in those 90 seconds or those 75 seconds that it's something that you want to listen to because that's just going to help this is going to help your cause yeah but also just to make sure that everything is strongly and specifically in their wheelhouse also being willing to take them just outside of it in order to make them feel great about the about presenting themselves do you produce entire spots like a like you were producing a whole commercial i'll and then lift the the gold out of each spot how do you do that i do i i do that but i've certainly seen producers that don't and a student of mine once said will you coach me on material for a demo that you're not going to produce which i said absolutely of course i would and i was very surprised when she came to me with pieces of commercials and i didn't question it but i said okay and we worked the material together and everything and i heard the end result and it was great it was probably one of the best demos i've heard in quite some time where i felt it captured her it was energetic it was empathetic all these things and i was like that guy is definitely thinking about the demo object in a different way than me he had all that mapped out in his imagination before giving it to the talent me i sit there and i'm sitting there taking pieces of things and reorganizing and understanding, routineing of this piece to that piece to the next piece to the other piece because that's the way that makes sense to me it's a little bit of my music background it's a little bit of my theater background where i'm sitting there understanding the routineing of things the organizing of things fast to slow to intimate to authoritative to communicative but i have to feel all that out this producer he had all that mapped out in his imagination and i'm just like good for you man you and you nailed it fantastic it's completely different ways of thinking and i think it's important for talent to understand the way a producer works before you pay them anything because then you can understand does this make sense for the way that i would feel most comfortable do i think that that process could bring the best out of me yeah it's it's a lot like home voiceover studios actually because is it every voice is different every room is different george and i are always like everything has to be custom designed for that specific person for their lifestyle how they live in their house that sort of thing and clearly physical size yeah well there's that too and uh you know i so you what you're doing is good educational stuff you're getting people to show what's what individually they're like and you're working with their individuality to make the demo because how many demos do we hear where it's okay of course the same read all the way through i'm like there's no contrast that sort of thing uh or there's it's it sounds like they're putting on something that they're really not and to me it's always important to be intellectually honest with your demos i am capable of doing this and will you be able to reproduce this if you get hired for a gig great yeah once once again if you've got a question for you about doing your demo or getting demos done or any questions about demos throw it in the chat room right now we'll get to it in our next segment so uh how do you choose the scripts i mean when you're i mean you're interviewing people you're you're asking them all these questions that's it i mean that that's it you know really more than anything else it's a fine balance between the things that they're interested in things where they've succeeded perhaps are you booking this do you have that on your current demo no okay let's do that you know let's find a good example of that whatever it is is it mom you know or are you booking you know teen or are you booking young mom versus older mom right because the decisions that in the in the casting again think about it right a young mom is maybe is preoccupied with different things and making different decisions than a slightly older mom for example you know they're on there an older mom might be on their second car for example while a young mom may be thinking about okay i've got to get rid of the the car that hubby and i had and we're trading it in for our first family van family van or whatever you know and then how do we feel about that you know and how can we talk about that and how can the emotional subtext resonate around that content how can can that actor relate to those ideas in genuine specific and as dan has said correctly repeatable ways i mean how many talent have explicitly said i saw the script i understood it right away and i got the job that's because they're speaking from the content of their own experience and then being able to project that into the content of a script right sometimes yeah exactly it's acting but it's acting in a void there's there are so now we're started to wander off into voiceover training and conversation more but that's okay i do right get into yeah is that okay so yeah that's a bit that's a bit more around how do does an actor make a voice actor make decisions when there's a lot of information that a on-screen actor or on-stage actor would have and they have to fill in the blank set with their imagination right so yeah i mean let's talk a little bit about the conversational read uh sure i i you know i you talk to so many people you know who coach and you know are in the business and it's like what is the conversational even conversational itself has become something of an anathema right conversational has practically become a synonym for um announcer practically you know and it was the first i had heard it at at wovo where suddenly it's like i don't want to hear that conversation and read i want to hear an authentic read and i'm sitting there listening and i'm going okay and at times i've heard that read described as real i've heard that times as described as genuine i've heard that described as authentic i've heard it described as the real person read off the street but i do think that there's a real trend to to doing less but better and the better doesn't go away but and that's that's not my phrase that's dita rams dita rams was i think i'm saying that right god he was a designer he did a lot of design for brawn he was a german designer very strong in minimalism and he said and one of his ethos was less but better and when i saw that i said to myself yes that's a great way to try to talk about genuine authentic conversational quote unquote reads yes you are doing less however the subtext has to be stronger it has to be even more specific now than ever that if you give multiple takes maybe you need three different points of view on it rather than just pausing or just making new melodies out of it that's not conversational it never has been that way in the past i might have advised people saying once you make a strong set of decisions play those decisions three times in a row and that would be enough variety i'm starting to question that i'm starting to say to myself now okay maybe now make three different choices and play three different choices and make them strong choices but still be willing to make three different choices to really reveal different subtests right that just made me think of something was anybody ever recorded in a demo or had any demo two cuts that are the exact same script but read and or produced in totally different ways nothing i'm aware of but i don't have an audition with like an a and a b read that would never end up on a demo right not that i'm aware of but at the same time if somebody was willing to go outside of the box that way and go for it i think that could be interesting i don't want to start a trend here or anything but i think that's a i think that's a very very interesting notion i think that could be really uniquely different read i mean they have to really be saying different things i think that well with their subtext for example i think i think that if they were completely produced completely differently i think that might mask the the changes in the read people might be a little bit more dazzled by the difference in production but at the same time a different production could highlight different parts of a different approach right it's an interest it's an interesting question it's a very very interesting question and if somebody did it i think that they would have to do it really really well but also i think it would have to be understood for what it is and i think yeah have somebody putting that out and then having somebody else understand what they were doing to be able to appreciate it might be a hurdle a little too high to jump yeah well let's let's talk about self-direction for a little bit because self-direction is possibly i mean as a as a as a voice actor with a home studio self-direction is possibly the hardest skill that most people have to pick up because we're not directed a lot of times i mean if it's a if it's a big commercial with an agency or something there's always going to be you know conferencing on that and you know three guys listening at the same time but when you're auditioning how do you how do you what are some of the keys to good self-direction so that you know when your audition goes out there you've made you've made choices what are the right choices or not sometimes the wrong choice is what's going to get their attention when when you send out an audition like that well the first thing i say is that when you do multiple takes the first thing i advise people to do is to listen to them in the reverse order that they record because that affords just a hint more objectivity there's something about taking the time to experience it take three first and take two and then take one that gives you a chance to just be able to get a bit of more of a 10 000 foot view for a moment because the goal should really be objectivity if at all possible and when i say objectivity to not judge yourself just be able to listen to yourself inquisitively and attentively but somewhat dispassionately to be able to say okay what did i do because from there you can begin to adjust right if you hit some a word too hard for example you stress the point you have to be careful not to kid yourself oh is somebody gonna miss that no they're gonna hear it they're gonna hear it but don't judge yourself because that's the thing that you did you need to recognize that you did it and then to say okay perhaps you say to yourself all right i hear that on this next take that's not going to be a problem because i understand i did that before right and that's one way to another way to really begin to start to give yourself permission to improve by saying this is what i've done listen to things with your eyes shut is very very good because it's the only people i think that really follow along with the script that closely are the writers you know in general and they're not the decision makers more often than not you know maybe they are maybe they're not i don't know but again just that bit a little more objectivity to listen with the eyes shut to really understand it and this sounds silly but i tell people too when you're listening don't smush up your face don't sit there and just go no i'm not judging i'm not judging get a little get a little zen just a little just a little because it'll it'll help you to it'll help you to hear it'll help you to hear and then be able to go yeah that was fast so how do now i'm gonna slow that down and when you begin the self-direct do one thing just one where it's like this time i'm going to go slower and then understand yes that the next take it's going to happen you and allow yourself to go slower and then see how that affects things i'm not going to hit that that brand as hard right and now see how that affects everything that goes on all right our guest once again if you're just wondering is Hugh Klitski and we're talking about getting your demos right and if you've got a question now would be a fabulous time to throw it in the chat room and we will get to those questions right after the break which we're going to take right now so don't go away we'll be right back here on voiceover body shop this is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony meadows and you're enjoying dan and george on the voiceover body shop have you noticed the specific demands of clients regarding our home vio studios are they at a professional level to record for broadcast and what does that mean to me it means it doesn't sound bad i've seen several now demanding cardioid condenser microphones some are great and cheap ones not so great so how do you choose it's like standing in the checkout line at the supermarket deciding which candy or mince you want to buy so which is right for you make it easy on yourself and get the harlan hogan signature series vio 1a the first and only mic designed for voiceover performers buy a voiceover performer the vio 1a faithfully captures deep tones without sounding bassy and has a silky smooth top end that's never harsh a perfect sound palette for both male and female voiceover performers get the complete kit with my cable and shock mount now go to voiceover essentials.com where you'll see all their great products made just for us voiceover people well i'd like to tell you guys about our sponsor source elements the creators of source connect and source nexus and a lot of other tools and if you haven't been to the site lately i recommend you head over there because they've had a whole site redesign they have a lot more useful educational content to help you feel oriented with what their tools are what they're capable of doing and it's a really good idea to get acquainted if you don't know what source connect is it's a tool used to connect studios to studios around the world that includes yours and if you want to be available for the big gigs and possibly remotely producing your next demo because a lot of demo producers also use source connect you might want to get ready so head over there get yourself set up with a subscription so they can get you on boarded help you get set up and all that will be included in the cost of your subscription when you do that so source-elements.com get started today i don't think there's a feeling quite like that moment when something you've auditioned for becomes something you get booked on especially when it comes to audiobooks you audition for an audiobook on acx or in some other form or fashion and then somebody says hey we like what you did we want you to be our narrator if that isn't a feeling that you've had lately because either you haven't figured out how to do audiobooks or because the efforts that you put toward audiobooks just don't seem to be working i've got a solution for you let's start with some free videos and then if you want registering for the acx masterclass i'm david h laurence 17th along with dano day i teach that class and you can get to those free videos and to registration if you'd like at acxmasterclass.com slash join that's acxmasterclass.com slash join i'd love to help you get there this is bill radner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv and we're back with hu klitsky once again if you have a question throw it in the chat room and we got a bunch of questions for you from our worldwide audience that is tuning in specifically to hear you tonight you so let's move to those i'm excited i'll do i'll do my best okay george you get mr rumeros question all right frank asked so what's the current trend on length of demos you meant you alluded to it earlier but um are we getting to short demo singularity he said to short demo singularity i i think that i think the i think players are really interesting i at first i kind of again coming from the agency world i just kind of at first turned turned my nose up to them but i thought to myself i realized from a very practical sense so when it goes to your site they can pick bing bing bing go through and hear them one by one and pick what they want it's really interesting and it's really really compelling i think overall it's important to have a full demo object though it's you know traditionally 60 seconds sometimes it can go longer i don't think you need to be slavish to that but 75 seconds is okay i wouldn't go past i wouldn't go to 90 i would probably hang around 60 67 seconds somewhere around in there but you've it's gotta hold the retention if you're gonna do it for that long yeah yeah which is no easy feat yeah for sure yeah kate on youtube asks do you need to build a portfolio or is it case by case i guess when you're working with somebody um you know the type of type yeah i'm not exactly sure i'm not sure what a portfolio is exactly not quite sure i i think with the demo you're different types of reads that you would do you know not just strictly commercial but but you need to have a commercial demo and a narration demo and and these various other things uh but i think what she means is do you look and see well you need to have this kind of a demo and then maybe you should try doing one like that uh that sort of thing yeah i'm not i've never really been a fan of what's sometimes called the hybrid demo because i think that's a little confusing i think people people will always take the path of the least resistance where it's i want to hear what i hear and then i want to hear the commercials i want to hear them do narration i want to hear them do audio books and that's so i wouldn't or i want to hear them do promos there was a trend for a little while of blending promo and commercial together i never understood that quite because those are two really really different things but then promo readers starting to started to have to do more commercials so then it was like a promo demo with some commercial elements in in it like brought to you by ninda the old school that way had become a trend coming back and then agents had to go in and negotiate saying no no no that's a commercial you need to pay like that's a commercial but it's a but it's in the context of the demo of a promo no no no so something like that maybe should go on a promo demo that little bit of commercial segment for example yeah and i've and i've differentiated my demos and you're strictly commercial strictly announcer i'm like i need an announcer demo because that's what i get hired for and you know you have to know who you are and your market in order to do those different things some people have commercial announcer and some people have commercial conversation right i've seen that i think that's fine something the chat room said what if it says what if it says conversational but not a announcer are we talking about straight asians of what if an announcer is there's like over the top announcer there's well what they're saying they just said the phrase conversational but not announcers so that means it's conversational right right i guess that was tying into the whole point of that conversational is the new announcer yeah i mean that's but there are reasons why too i think because it's yeah it it's so difficult to describe but if you hear it it's like you can you can hear that the way the pause is used in an announcer way but the read and the phrasing is conversation so that can happen a lot in broadcast television or in podcasts so it's like the net result is this kind of a hybrid thing but since the pandemic has ended there's the trend towards less and less and and speaking in the natural tessitura in the natural register not pushed in any way at all to make things as if you are speaking to somebody who's so close you could reach out and put your hand on their floor that physically close to you actually speaking of trends one of the things that i do which some find controversial for some reason but i make processing presets for people's auditions and so one of the things that we that i'm doing is i'm making judgment calls about ecu for example the balance of low end to high end you know and tilting that back and forth right or at some of both right and um have you found there's any kind of trend in terms of what's booking in terms of ecu because i am hearing that brighter and less warm and less brighter and brighter is more of the trend but i don't know if you've heard of a trend that way i have not heard of a trend that way and because so much of what i do is focused on the read i'm smart enough to let that live with guys like you yeah about ecu and about home studio setup and about presets and all of that kind of thing i can press record i can press stop i can edit and then i'm smart enough to stop talking where i'm just sort of like no i'm gonna go farm this out to my post guy because that's his thing yeah you know i can make music choices i can edit the music i can understand the relationship between where i want the music to exist next to the uh to the narration yeah and i can add sound design and i can make those choices and understand where all those things go aesthetically and then i stop and i press that that thing called export and i send it to other people with the other skill set to mix and master and clean up and do all of the posts on that right that way yeah because that's not my that's not my strength that's not my strength as a producer uh a jb voice actor who's listening and watching on youtube is it okay not to use a brand name in your demo seems sort of self-defeating wouldn't it i there were a couple of interesting theories around that um somebody said to me once you know you know you know it's like you play a demo for somebody for five people you're going to get five different opinions right and there were very interesting opinions around that some people felt like you didn't need the brand name because the brand was the most important thing was the read i thought that was interesting other people said if you don't put the brand in there they're gonna get confused to know what the hell you're talking about but if you put the brand in there that might confuse them more because they may think oh they've booked this therefore i can't use them for this or they may have non-compete which means they may not be able to go out for this so all of those thoughts and those thinking suddenly you can give yourself a massive headache just trying to second guess every possible negative opinion so i'm always of the mind where and sometimes now they don't even have the brand name in the finished spot how many car commercials have we seen where it's a wonderfully written script they don't even name the car it's just on the screen as a logo at the end some moments i've sat there and said say the name of the car just put it in there it's gonna button it all nicely just do it why because the script seems to need it that's why and then i go back and i listen to it and i'm like yep good i'm glad we have that or no no no it's more about them get the get the name out of there i don't want that right you have to make all of these aesthetic decisions all of these choices and somebody made a mistake and somebody got punished for it and suddenly somebody thinks that's gospel and the only way to do it and that's just not the way the world works that sometimes people never get caught and sometimes people do get caught and sometimes an agency complains when they hear their stuff used and other times they don't complain it's very very all over the place and there are no hard and fast rules but you can sit there and you need to pay strong attention to the things that can show you off to the very best of your ability if you're a if you're a ballerina and you're exquisite at dancing ballanchine you should with or without permission you should do that because you have that skill set and if balance and if the estate complains maybe then you have to adjust but you're not pretending to be a ballanchine trained dancer because the man has been dead for a very long time it's now you know with his estate you understand what i'm saying there are all kinds of reasons why to do things and to not do things you have to make sure that this that the choices that are made on your behalf serve you first right uh yeah question from debbie urwin because she's here uh which man would you like to introduce me on my demo sexy grandpa uh joking aside well that's a creative choice too not all male voices are the same and if that's the first thing a person is hearing you know especially if you're a new you see yeah male slave for a female uh voice actor what's the question deb what who would you want on the front of her demo of her demo yeah what what sexy grandpa just whatever you need to have on her i i i could see hers you know being you know a a samalia kind of a girl i could see that you know okay you know just go just go right straight up and down famous that way or maybe maybe you know i could see her with a cowboy though so maybe like you know kcos or something like that little kevin costner up front you know you know bringing some bringing some of the cap the california cowboy real that he can that he does you know but kind of hey might might trend a little bit too just a little too young you know she did say which sexy grandpa should be on the front of her demo so yeah i would say either you go for the class the vintage or you go for the classic right mm-hmm you've got the question from jeff ciarto all right he says uh i find the times i end up reading too much into the script and extremely critical of what i've done much to my detriment um it's his thoughts and then says i wasn't conversational oh the thoughts in his head are things like i wasn't conversational or i'm too much announcer um i guess he wants to know how to get that out of his head i guess hard for me to answer that without actually talking to the person but i would suggest that if they could get just a little bit of distance just a touch even if it's recording it stopping not listening back standing up going away but then really going away you know go do half of half the dishes or something you know and then and then come back and listen again just with trying to just let yourself understand that you got to get a little bit of space just a little bit of space yeah i like your idea of closing your rise while you're listening back and you know and asking yourself the question did i make myself clear in what i was saying but or did i just sound like i was reading a bunch of words that i really communicate it and if you close your i mean i usually have to close my eyes when listening to people anyway because they're going so fast and you have visual stimulation and sometimes i can't follow both at once so just really focusing in on your voice is is really important um when i directed a lot when i directed all those auditions i would close my eyes all the time but then i began to realize that as a coach i had to temper that because when i was directing an audition i didn't care how you got there all i cared was how was that you did get there so i'm giving you a direction note i don't care how you get there get there and then i want to hear it but when i'm coaching someone it's very different because i have to balance being objective and understanding what they're doing with understanding how they're doing it and then being able to correct their how so i i've had to temper some of my own process as i've moved from purely directing to coaching with some direction it's it's very different it's kind of like when we we listen to audio and we want the audio raw and we know the producers want the audio raw but we do know that some people are still going to be doing some processing and is that wrong because is it better that they everything they do be technically pure or is it better what they do sound technically good right and so we fight that little battle i think i do anyway fight that little battle at times so it's feel it ties in a little bit to what we do from a technical standpoint yeah Mike Derner who provided us with this lovely mic flag asks what should never go in a demo the offbeat for its own sake the the the thing i wanted to include just because i liked it that everything has to have a purpose right oh i just threw in this i just threw in this old spot because i booked it and i liked it no it sounds like an old spot it just is an old spot oh this was the thing i i was known for right no you're looking to address marketplace right now you know things like that things that just sound wildly out of out of production character just so different where it's jarring where suddenly i'm not listening to you read i'm listening to the audio quality of that thing right all righty well huge thanks so much for being with us tonight and and give imparting this information to us if they want to get a hold of you and if they want some coaching on it where would they go i would imagine it's okay so it's it's that i don't know which way to go so my own side is a disaster but it's a disaster in process so i direct everybody to vo now.co and if you go there you'll find the coaching and classes page and you can book a free consultation and yes it's just click on it we have a conversation we set up a time they usually are about 30 minutes usually they run longer and then we can talk about you usually i give people scripts up front so they have something they can read for me i can critique you a little bit and then to really try to understand what it is that you're looking for and how i might be able to help so vo now.co go to the classes in coaching hit on the one of the photo that looks like me you know as opposed to the beautiful photo of deb Irwin who's there too and you know set up a free consultation with me and i'd love to talk with you all righty well thanks for being with us tonight we really appreciate your time and uh parting your wisdom and it's just great to see you again too great to see you too all right great to meet you george thanks all right well we'll be right back and wrap things up and re-racket for tech talk right after these important messages so don't go away you're still watching vobs your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer that place is voiceover extra.com whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books auditioning home studio setup and equipment marketing performance techniques and much more it's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports it's all here at voiceover extra.com that's voiceoverxtra.com well here's something i don't normally do i just hit the timer 60 seconds to talk about voiceactor.com what is voiceactor.com it is a place to get if you if you're just starting out in voiceover you have to have a website no matter where you are once you get your demos and we've been talking about demos the whole night you've got to get them on a website what do you need on a website you need your name your demos and your contact information and you're not going to dazzle people with artistic expression so much with your website so what they do at voiceactor.com is they have templated websites where you can go in insert your information easily maybe change the color of the backgrounds a little bit add your own pictures but you can literally be online in half an hour to 45 minutes as opposed to six months so go over on over to voiceactor.com and get your website set up now we are the world voices organization also known as wovo we're the not-for-profit industry association of freelance voice talent voiceover is a complex entrepreneurial business wovo is there to promote the professional nature of voice work to the public to those already established in their voiceover practice and to those who want to pursue voiceover as a career membership benefits include a supportive and creative community a profile and demos on voiceover.biz our searchable directory of vetted professional voice talent our exclusive demo player for your personal website our mentoring program business resources and our video library our annual WovoCon conference a fun and educational weekend with other members with the chance to learn and network webinars and great speakers and weekly social chats with other members around the world if your world is voiceover make wovo part of it world voices organization we speak for those who speak for a living yeah hi this is carlos ellis rocky the voice of brocco and you're watching voiceover body shop yes you are and uh next week on this very show we will have tech talk number 105 unless of course you are watching the show live right at this moment you could just stay with us and we will get into tech talk and you can ask your questions in real time and george and i will answer them in real time whether the right answers or not so i just put mine into chat gpt oh okay read back whatever comes out because you've written so much already it's going to just regurgitate everything you've already written anyway it would just convincingly lie about the facts for you that's why you're here after all right yes anyway i thanks to Hugh Kalitski for joining us tonight because imparting all that very important wisdom about demos because it's a really important piece of our our business uh let's see uh you still have a coupon for uh people who will go over to george the tech we still give you guys 10 off i don't see it used very often which is fine bizarre but v obs fan 10 still gets you 10 off any services bookings at george the tech right and you can find me over at homevoiceoverstudio.com where yeah that's where i do my thing with helping you with your home studio when i'm not doing voiceover work for all my major clients all over the world which is fun stuff uh speaking of people all over the world who are our donors of the week while we start off with grace newton christopher epperson robert ledham steven chandler kasey clack jonathan grant tom pinto greg thomas a doctor voice antlion productions martha con nine four nine designs sarah borges philips appear brian page patty gibbons rob rider shawna pennington baird don griffith tray mosley uh diana birdsall there she is maria makas and sandra man willer thanks everybody that's how we keep this show technically perfect because you guys are contributing and we really really appreciate it also join our mailing list if you go to our website or if you're watching from our website right right now go down there where it says join our our mailing list and that way you'll get a notice of what's coming up this week and reminding you real close to when we do it so we're like oh i should do this now so join the mailing list uh a big thank you to our amazing sponsors harlan hogan's voice over essentials voice over extra source elements vio heroes dot com voice actor dot com and world voices dot org world dash voices dot org where i am the president and you will join now uh thanks to jeff holman for getting all those questions for us in the chat room we really appreciate that and sumer lino for directing the show tonight making it technically perfect no mistakes tonight at all anyway uh that's going to do it for us this week we're going to re-rack it and set for tech talk come on stick around ask your questions listen to george and i talk about home voice over studios because no one knows more about them than we do uh so guess what this is not an easy business that's why we're here to give you the information on all of these different things that run together in our business all the things you gotta know and along with the technical stuff so it's not easy to get everything right but we have discovered that if it sounds good it is good i'm tan Leonard and i'm george wittem and this is voice over body shop or vio bs stay tuned for tech talk all righty i could see jeff was waiting in the wings to say his bs words but we have to add him to the stream so you know we we saved that for tech talk jeff so okay i solved solve scenario he was just waiting he gets his chance in a minute why am i still here because you had left we told you we could kick you out but you know you can just all right all right i just can't get enough of you guys thanks for sticking around to the end yeah we appreciate it thanks for having me fellas all right take care our pleasure have a good night all righty time for some tech talk and boy we got let's see if we got some questions coming up you know if you've got a question for us throw it in the chat room right now because we want to be able to answer your questions because that's why we're here and unless you ask them we can't answer them you know what i'm gonna do something different what i'm gonna stand up for the second for this part legs bothering you it's gonna change the energy oh okay i just was an excuse to show off my electric lift desk of course that's the only reason i'm doing this well i i can i can show off mine too and then have it go up and no actually the camera's not on the desk anymore so that's right it's on the wall right yeah it's attached to a boom and move it anyhow okay we'll take it up to 605 and then we'll we'll hit it on to tech talk again if you got a question throw it in the chat room no matter if you're on facebook or if you're on youtube or perhaps on linkedin love to have you there too because we're broadcasting at all these things okay so i stand because i can i'm grateful that i can and i will sit because i can sit but i am about 99 percent back from my surgery yeah that's great the shoulders are working the next working my feet are working which is the most important thing they go one foot in front of the other when you walk right they don't you know cross over each other you know you hit a you know a bump in the sidewalk you don't i don't do a face plant anymore you know which is making the dog really happy because you know anytime i would fall it's like we're gonna keep walking anyway all right okay 605 are we ready for some tech talk we're ready all right four three hey it's time for voice over body shop tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk thank you very much he's been waiting all week to do that yes if you gotta go and by the way this is tech talk number 105 105 tech talks yeah baby that is 105 hours of more voice over home studio tech than you'll ever get anywhere else because we've been doing it longer than anybody else which means we know more than everybody else so listen to us anyway put your questions in the chat room get ready because we got some great stuff for you tonight you've got lots of cool stuff i'm going to talk about kids and tech so if you got kids keep them in the room it's time for voice over body shop tech talk right now voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials dot com the home of harlin hogan signature products source elements the folks who bring you source connect the oh heroes dot com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voice over training voice actor dot com your voice over website ready in minutes voice over extra your daily resource for voice over success and by world voices the industry association of freelance voice talent and now here's your hosts dan and george and if you're wondering i'm dan lennard oh sorry i'm just jamming out over here i'm george the tech this is voice over body shop or vo b s tech talk tech talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk all right oh that was perfect well now we're getting into good foley stuff here this is just fabulous oh man we can have all these giant color flashing buttons we got to press them once in a while that's right you know i i've got and i got f dr can't go wrong with that never mind it's bjork bjork icelandic music sucks if you've ever listened to it she's the weirdest artists have ever seen sell out in minutes i wanted to see her years ago it was and she's the best that they have an iceland you know so she's amazing fascinating actually i like her stuff but she's an amazing girl yeah and of course everyone remembers the swan outfit that you never forget the swan or any of her outfits really i can't remember what a word show that was for but it doesn't really matter and tv maybe i don't know yeah might have been might have been for the academy awards anyway we got lots of tech to talk about tonight and uh we'd love to have your questions and that's why you're here so put them in the chat room so jeff holman can feel useful and make sure that we get those questions uh so video let's start off because nobody else has no i added the video because i wanted to queue it up instead it immediately played it without having a chance right because we have to yeah we have to do what we refer to as plug a palooza because remember everybody has to have a home voiceover studio if they're a voice actor if they're an accountant perhaps it's not so important just having sharp pencils and stuff but if you're a voice actor you have to have a home voiceover studio it is a completely unique environment and as we always say every voice is different every room is different and you need someone who understands how to make you sound like you and not like a bunch of other people unless you're doing characters in a lot of cases now even the gear is different absolutely if very we're very picky about what microphones we want you to use well i think maybe we're more picky about what microphones we don't want you to use but uh that's true it's definitely unique gear that we want you to look at too right i mean we've been finding all sorts of cool stuff and you know george and i are not easily impressed i mean i mean you're constantly sampling things you're you're constantly buying things too but uh try to do as little as possible i uh yeah you have a bad case of i bought a new bluetooth speaker oh i did buy a new bluetooth speaker what was wrong with the old bluetooth speaker it was stolen but that's another story okay that that has nothing to do with i have to have as many bluetooth speakers as possibly you know he with the most bluetooth speakers wins anyway he with the most bluetooth devices on their iphone that they can connect to wins maybe that's it yeah how many just come how many bluetooth devices do you have in your bluetooth devices list probably half of those don't exist but yeah i i think i just have some headphones and various other things but you know but then again i'm very old school i don't want to do what all the kids are doing and have all that stuff and and you're under 50 so you still count as a kid i'm a bluetooth addict it's right it is true anyway uh so anyway if you need help with your home voiceover studio and want to get the help you need in creating it to fit your lifestyle to fit your what type of work you're doing you can work with one of us because we've done it all i'm a professional voice actor george has been working with voice actors for over 15 years and getting their studios down we know what you need if you want to work with george where did you go you go over to george the tech uh that is our home for performer friendly techs that's our new brand over here at george the tech we support all sorts of different producer creator actors and musicians with their studios and design build tech support train or just listen you know the sound check is really really important and that's absolutely if you don't know what to do if you've already gone to our first timer thing filled out the little form and said here's my issues the next thing you should do is get a sound check and dan he doesn't call the sound checks will you call it over at your website oh i'm at the homevoiceoverstudio.com you know sometimes i'm starting to you know second guess myself on this but i have the specimen collection cup oh you just happen to have one too uh where you can click on that and you can deposit your sample of audio and uh i will analyze it for you i will give you my thorough uh rundown of what's right about it what you could improve uh if it's like way off base and you need some more help we can arrange that but most of the time it's like your volume's a little low maybe there's a little too much background noise here's how you can fix that and that's important we will tell you what exactly we'll tell you that if it's right as is we will tell you that absolutely we're not going to try to sell you things you don't need so right yeah also also mentioned that you know i'm on georgia's staff and you know if you call 911 on on his thing i got one this week did you really yes oh no why does it sound so distant and when that happens there are two reasons one the mike i don't know and the other one is you haven't set your interface right and you're probably out of uh it was the the had the interface because he had done it before he says why is it sound distant because you're talking on the laptops mike not on your own mike and usually that's because you're on a pc and the pc will say well i like that interface better than this one or i just i don't think that interface is gonna work so i'm gonna make sure that it's the laptop microphone doing it the worst thing is when you plug a something into the microphone jack of the pc right and some other software thinks that is actually what you want to use and it switches away from the mike you know the usb interface that you were using right to the microphone jack because it's so smart that when you plug in a microphone well obviously you want to use that 10 cent microphone you just plugged into the microphone jack for a voiceover so yeah that that is it doesn't matter what you run that is still a problem for the ages right which mike are you actually recording into right so if it sounds distant chances are it's one of those two things and you know i'm thinking well it could be that could be that i'm like oh wait a second mac or pc mac okay that's the thing no mike you cannot use someone else's specimen to pass an audio test no because i know what you sound like anyway it's time for your update and you have a video for us so tell us what's going on uh you know zoom marches on they update it constantly and i'd heard about a new version well i went to download the new version which as of this video is five point one four point ten and i was excited because in the release notes which are long like the amount of stuff that they add or fix is mind-boggling one of the things was persistent um channel selections now this doesn't mean anything to you if you've never bothered to set your channels in zoom and most of you probably don't need to because if you're using a standard two channel audio interface keeping it simple it's not a big deal however many of you don't listen and you still use these and i appreciate it because you have to pay me to set them up for you which is always nice and he's holding up an apollo twin folks in case you're listening to the podcast and zoom correct thanks for reminding me to our podcast um the apollo twin is much more complicated it looks like it's just two channels because it has two jacks on the back for mics but it's really a more like 10 right that's how these things work so you can set which channel you're recording in or sending into zoom which can be useful unless of course zoom forgets that setting for you every stinking time well they supposedly fix that and here's was my experience in trying that out video because nobody else has george the tech okay well zoom has updated their software once again i don't have my zoom set up to install the latest updates i like to wait until it's had bug fixes and then allow those updates to install and even then i do it manually right i am very careful about how i use my zoom i use it every day it's part of how i run my business it's how i provide tech support it's crucial so i don't let it auto update so i finally decided to try out version 5.14 point blah blah blah well what is the latest version truly at this moment the version i'm running here is 5.14.10 so theoretically means there's been 10 patches to version 5.14 since it came out now what is different in this version let's take a look it's all about sound here of course and that's what we care about here at george the tech let's take a look at our settings and go to audio and let's see what's new here ah live performance audio it's a beta so i guess i did install something with beta in it but it's recommended for multiple instruments or voices in different locations now all the details they will give you is what you see when you mouse over the little question mark reduces audio lag during live performances when musicians are on separate zoom clients well of course they're going to be on separate zoom clients right requires high speed internet or call quality will be significantly reduced well that's what we'd expect anyway right if the internet goes bad we want the quality to degrade so we can stay connected okay that's fine so that's live performance audio does it give you any more information than that not that i can see if i click on advanced nothing more to read here just the usual echo cancellation algorithm which is either auto or aggressive that's all you get now let's take a look at what happened to our original sound for musicians and are these related well we don't know because all you get is a radio button that chooses between these two it's a toggle so when you're in live performance audio is it also in high fidelity music mode don't know is it using echo cancellation don't know is it stereo don't know so there you go this is the way zoom rolls out audio features one of the things that zoom said what's going to be a part of this new version is the ability to persistently store your channel assignments so anyway it's been using zoom and taking advantage of the channel assignment feature knows how frustrating it's been that you could not have your channel assignments persistent meaning every time you would join a zoom session or even change audio input settings you would have to change your channel assignments it says here that persistent audio channel selection is one of the new features however i go into zoom i look where the channel selection feature existed and it was right here right above audio profile and it's gone it's no longer there so here i am hoping to have the channel selection feature available and persistent and not only that it's just plain gone i don't see it anywhere certainly it's not going to be in the general menu that would be plain silly it's not in the video menu that would also be really it'd be silly for it to be anywhere other than audio so did they hide it somewhere else let's look at microphone and choose our input channel chat that's my input channel from my roadcaster pro 2 there's no other channel selection capable there let's try our mute microphone input menu area and see if it's somewhere buried in there just the testing things are there audio settings just takes us back here so anyway this was supposed to be a tutorial and how to use zoom properly and then yet with this version 5.1.4.10 i can't choose channels that let alone have those channel selections be persistent anybody has any comments please leave them below if i'm crazy tell me if i'm missing it and if you want to yell at zoom in chorus with me we know how to get a hold of them through the folks at office hours dot global because zoom comes and guests representatives of zoom come and guests on there all the time and we have probably a pretty good chance of getting somebody's attention so let me know anyway this is just a slight rant slash tutorial or something i don't even know what this video is anyway george the tech come find me at george the tech and my whole tech team where we provide performance friendly techs take care one gets the impression that perhaps zoom is trying to pay attention to what everybody's asking for but they don't really know what it is they're asking for yeah they heard they're supposed to wear running shoes but they didn't know they go on the feet or something i don't know what it is they just they just keep missing certain aspects to their technologies i i mean i'm really glad that it's evolving and we do rely on it so heavily and for so much but it's frustrating when an update removes things you're just like where did it go yeah so i mean it is i i do like that zoom has um there's a setting where you can say do not install every update install a i think they call it delayed schedule i really like that because if that new update pushes out and there's an unknown bug that just hits everybody you're kind of immune because well you stayed home that week you didn't go to school you didn't get sick right so you didn't run the new version so that's uh not a bad idea to stick off the stick on the older versions um so i i'm using you guys already saw me talk about this mic quite a bit this is the earthworks ethos mic and you know somebody's saying i think it was mic uh mic megonical actually said hey you don't need the pop screen it sounds fine without it right so i'll take it off and it's fine but i'm still not because i'm using it down below like this i'm still a little bit prone to close so yeah there's one when they're bad they're bad right so i was looking at the windscreen the other day i stuck my finger in there and i was like wait a minute there's something more to this windscreen and i pulled out this little guy more foam so this is a this is a multi-layered pop felt pop solution really right on the outside is a windscreen now this is probably the least useful thing in fact if i was to put this on without this little guy pop pop pop less it not as bad right but pop pop still get some explosives right this little strange foam thing is really the key to the things pop filtering this thing is really what's doing it like pop pop pop pop pop pop this little little dude ad right here is it well i've seen a pop screen for large diaphragm mics that is basically a little holder that just holds a big disc made out of this stuff whatever this stuff is and so what they've done is they've integrated it into their pop screen which i thought was extremely clever and so what you're looking at here is you're looking at the foamy thing thinking that's really the doing the heavy lifting but it's actually what's inside the count so that thought that was a cool little discovery i would share that with you guys if you're using that particular microphone if you use that special trick but i bet with a little bit of research you could probably find this stuff cut a little block of it out and shove it into your own whatever microphones windscreen is and get the same uh same effect out of it i know you're not supposed to pop the mic that's right mic placement means you're not going to pop the mic peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers yeah that's right and uh having the mic this is the whole point is also having the mic from below and pointing up is the best way to accidentally pop your mic so we don't recommend this placement for for voiceover but we do it on camera a lot for various reasons um now microphone related but absolutely completely new technology that just popped up on my radar through a colleague at office hours global is this piece of uh i would call it science fiction okay show us show you this the everything microphone it is a new microphone from a company called conos and it's called the everything microphone because it is a microphone array and inside this black non-microphone looking thing which by the way did you notice the did you notice the plug on the bottom yeah it's an ethernet oh i was gonna say that's that's a net cable okay it's a net cable right so it goes it the mic connects to its brain or the controller box via uh it's an ethernet cable cat six or whatever and then you put the microphone wherever you need it well what this thing is doing among other things is this is a it's not even a sound field microphone unless that's what they call it it's actually i'll read it to you a compact 80 element high fidelity high sensitivity array with adjustable directivity and optional real-time noise filtering to capture the clearest sound at a distance even in the most challenging sonic conditions that's what this thing supposedly does that's pretty specific so inside that little black metal two box thing there are 80 capsules 80 count i'm 80 and so this thing this brain allows you to change the pickup pattern of the microphone by twisting this little knob so it the three main beam the three main pickup patterns are narrow which is more like a hypercardioid you have mid beam which would be like a standard cardioid maybe and wide beam wide beam is the most unique really because it's really picking up only what's in front and nothing what's behind it but then you also notice there's there's a yellow and a there's a blue and a yellow the blue is the front of the microphone what you're picking up the yellow is the rear of the microphone so you can actually choose to record the rear as well and balance how much of the ambient background sound there is in the microphone now would you do this in a voiceover booth i don't think so but it's an interesting idea for sound designers and it has three microphone jacks which is pretty bizarre because you can choose to record the front side of the pattern the rear side of the pattern and then the pattern that you've chosen essentially which is the combination i think that's what the pattern that is that you're selecting actually i actually have no idea i don't really know what that means but it was a nice image of pac-man on there exactly it's an interesting one now i thought it interesting that in the product description they talk about noise reduction and the only reason i would think that they would build that in is to a feature that's accessible directly within their i don't know if it's in the hardware or something is because it needs it and what i've known from microphones is the smaller the capsules the higher the self-noise if you take 80 capsules and combine them all together yikes there's going to be some noise it's going to have a hiss for sure so you know i think the noise reduction that they talk about is being more of a tool to deal with environmental noise is really more a tool to deal with the mic's own self-noise but we'll see because as far as i know this is not fully available yet it says where to buy um because i was gonna ask price point on this price point if you had to ask is the price point maybe it doesn't say it is well it does say that it is available from a few dealers including true audio and this is really a tool that's very clearly um looking to the live location production sound market you need a mic that gets rid of background noise yeah they see these guys so they're slated as a dealer but you can't buy it yet you can't find conos on their site but it looks really fascinating where is it relevant to voiceover don't know yet but if it means i can put a mic up in a very substandard situation with noise and other issues maybe you've always wanted to have a room with glass on two sides of your booth i don't know and you're trying to steer the pickup right at the voice and ignore everything else this could be kind of the next level of being able to do something like that i don't know it's new crazy gear costs probably three to five grand as far as i can as far as might be my best possible guess but uh if it does what it says on the tin and it's less than a thousand bucks well maybe we'll talk about it some more on the show kind of reminiscent of that a k g mic that was square and long that we would use in radio but yeah exactly the number or wait was that the sennheiser 441 maybe it was the same kind of look like a it was almost square in the cross section yeah yeah that was a really actually a really good mic it was it's a really good mic i don't know if they still make it but if you find one in a yard sale for ten bucks definitely pick it up yeah all right that's my tech update dan you're going to talk about kids and vio tech yeah uh i've been dealing with a lot of parents lately no who apparently are not voice actors but their kids are voice actors there's one right around the corner i'm walking down the street the phone rings george is like this guy's around the corner from you so i walk down there with michika and like knock on the door he goes service with a smile he was shocked he was shocked yeah i mean he watches the show a lot and yeah that was great yeah but it wasn't him it's a son who's doing stuff for for animation air in the time that was a name yeah yeah yeah and the uh you know a lot of a lot of animation and gaming companies are they're hiring kids because they want authentic voices well if you don't know anything about recording and your kids think they do they neither of you probably do and uh and i and i keep finding that out no matter who i talk to uh and i'm going into a lot of people's closets and they're like okay get your kid in here let's see how high tall he is here's how you record and the parents is trying to learn how to record when in reality the kids should know how to record because by the time they're older and are still professional voice actors it'll be second nature to them and you know and i you know i i try to teach it to people but if they're if they're a parent that has no idea what they're doing you're really you're really behind the eight ball on this uh you know kids don't seem to understand recording properly they think you're just supposed to talk into the microphone and that's that's how you do that or they don't understand acoustics or all the things that you and i talk about all the time george just totally lost on parents the kids they're even more lost than the parents so if you've got a kid that is starting in voiceover and his book and work how many times do i hear you know my my son wanted to do it we did a demo we did an audition and he booked the first job give him a big head that's the part i'm really concerned about with my own daughter right i'm like you're gonna go through coaching until martha says you are ready no we're not we're not gonna take any shortcuts because that is a concern right but at least you know how to record uh i figure she's picked up something here or there but for the most part if you've got a kid and you're trying to get a voiceover studio contact us you know i like working with people with kids because i got them too they're not really kids anymore but you know they i've taught them how to record do you think do you recommend would you recommend anything differently to a parent who's getting stuff to record a kid versus an actor just recording themselves uh yeah maybe a lower mic stand that sort of thing you know and it because really i mean you know mic height is really important i have to teach them this is proper mic technique don't defy that as long as you keep things the way you're supposed to it shouldn't be a problem and and of course i think engineers realize okay it's a kid they're looking for the performance not the recording but you want to have it as clean as possible so sure it's something else that if you don't know perhaps you need to contact one of us or if you have a friend who has a kid in voiceover tell them to talk to us anyway we got a bunch of questions tonight which we love more than life itself well maybe not that much uh so stay tuned for that we'll get to those questions right after these important messages so don't go away here on voiceover body shop we'll be right back this is ariana rattner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george wittem v obs dot tv have you noticed the specific demands of clients regarding our home vo studios are they at a professional level to record for broadcast and what does that mean to me it means it doesn't sound bad i've seen several now demanding cardioid condenser microphones some are great and cheap one's not so great so how do you choose it's like standing in the checkout line at the supermarket deciding which candy or mince you want to buy so which is right for you make it easy on yourself and get the harlan hogan signature series vo1a the first and only mic designed for voiceover performers buy a voiceover performer the vo1a faithfully captures deep tones without sounding bassy and has a silky smooth top end that's never harsh a perfect sound palette for both male and female voiceover performers get the complete kit with my cable and shock mount now go to voiceover essentials.com where you'll see all their great products made just for us voiceover people source elements now's your chance did you send me anything to read today nope i'm going to make it up for you again so let's do it source dash elements.com voodoo company uh they have those of the grindstone the last few years to create a new version of source connect that completely rethinks the way the software operates the workflow and everything and it's coming this year probably but in the meantime you want to get in early get in now if you sign up for a subscription you can get established as a source connect available or source connect accessible voiceover actor which opens you up to another echelon of voiceover work it really does it also puts you in a big searchable database of voiceover studios that have source connect and talent who have voiceover uh capable source connect studios in fact you can you can actually in the system designate whether you're just talent or talent and an engineer or talent and studio and make yourself available in the database as well so there's just a lot of ways that source connect can be helpful and we recommend you get set up get started sign up get yourself your subscription why subscription because you'll get ongoing support you'll get help to get it started and all that's going to be covered under that subscription cost so we feel these days that's the way to go if you want to get started source dash elements dot com and now let's get to those questions right after this i don't think there's a feeling quite like that moment when something you've auditioned for becomes something you get booked on especially when it comes to audiobooks you audition for an audiobook on acx or in some other form or fashion and then somebody says hey we like what you did we want you to be our narrator if that isn't a feeling that you've had lately because either you haven't figured out how to do audiobooks or because the efforts that you put toward audiobooks just don't seem to be working i've got a solution for you let's start with some free videos and then if you want registering for the acx masterclass i'm david h laurence the 17th along with dano day i teach that class and you can get to those free videos and to registration if you'd like at acxmasterclass.com slash join that's acxmasterclass.com slash join i'd love to help you get there hi this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop it's great and we're back and we have a pile of questions to get through so uh sure do yeah and of course the the the thing about all these questions is we have an answer for them and especially with this first question from eve florin uh what's the best way to deal with sibilance i bought a waves plugin but honestly don't quite understand if it's making it better or even more fundamentally what the split on this plugin really means if you're a fan of waves plugins is the sibilance plugin the one that you suggest running across the whole track or just selectively how does one decide if it's actually necessary i notice that i can suppress t sounds too well uh we have opinions about that uh i'm not a big fan of dsing and all these other things they have a place i'm to me everything is physical if you want to suppress sibilance don't press your tongue so hard against your teeth or the roof of your mouth learn to relax you know people say well i have a very sibilant voice if you're talking to them in their kitchen you don't hear any sibilance the only reason you'd hear sibilance is improper mic technique or you're not relaxing your your tongue enough but if you can't do that there's always waves explain how to put it in there well i want to even complicate the answer even more and that is who is determining that it sounds sibilant exactly is the client thinking it sounds sibilant or do you think it sounds sibilant or did you never have any issues with sibilance until some random person it's always somebody it's always somebody i'd love to know who somebody is it's this hand somebody told me i sound sibilant right that it gets into your head and then you think you must be sibilant um all it takes is one person with the wrong kind of headphones listening to it back on terrible speakers to have the impression that you're sibilant to make you think you're sibilant the only people that will determine whether you truly are sibilant are audio engineers that work with voice over people all day people like us uh we will help you figure out what it's supposed to sound like whistle and we'll let you know if you really truly are sibilant and then if you are truly sibilant and the things that dan just mentioned to you aren't available to you or just for some reason not working out for you we will deal will be much better able able to find you a solution that works for you waves plugins are fantastic of course they have a huge variety of them and they have several different dsr plugins um we actually had a waves series of webinars at george the tech in which um michael pierce and adams who's from waves came and taught the software and he actually did compare and contrast the different sibilants tools and the one called sibilants is the newest of their suites so theoretically it's the best sounding doesn't mean it's the easiest to use not necessarily um so i would definitely recommend getting some time with uh with one of us anybody on our team that knows waves plugins i know i've used a lot of them but a lot of it comes down to what you're hearing and i think you asked the one most important question how does one decide if it's actually necessary you have to know what you sound like with confidence you got to ask us yeah you really have to know how you should sound in comparison to others in context you need to know that and that's very hard to know on your own unless you've been doing this for a really long time so um yeah so i hope that helps but don't always go immediately to the fanciest plugin you can find right if it doesn't sound sibilant on your end chances are it's not you know and there's people left listening on laptop speakers and stuff any speaker that can't get the entire frequency of the human voice it's going to over modulate the high end sometimes and you're gonna it's going to sound sibilant but it's not going to sound sibilant wherever it is that you're sending it to and if it is generally an engineer will probably clean it up anyway so and i've never heard a lot of people being really sibilant on auditions so i don't worry about that one okay question from mike dirner uh for p2p auditions hate to play how much compression any q should be should we be using um two oh no there's two questions okay so that's question one you want to start with that one yeah sure how much should you use if you record it right up front not a whole lot you got to remember that most processing is for minor corrections uh perhaps in your room you know you might have a a node somewhere or something that you just needs a tiny little bit of adjustment some people use these plugins and all these processes and compression and eq eq i the only time i would ever use eq is probably to set it as a high pass filter to get rid of low end rumbles and stuff like that uh perhaps if somebody is not recording it right and there's too much high end yeah you can back that off a little bit maybe go on a road nt1a that's notoriously a bit bright right exactly high end you might calm it down a little bit right if you don't know how to use it don't and let somebody who knows how to do it set it up for you if indeed it actually needs to be done as we said in the last question it might be how you're listening to playback and when you send a file out it's going to sound different to the person you send it to than what you are actually listening on so it's everybody talks about it but you've got to understand what it does how it does it and when you're supposed to use it uh you know some people oh you got to put compression on your auditions because you got to be louder than everybody else well not if you're doing a very intimate quiet commercial so yeah if it's like if it's like a soft read yeah but it sounds it's at this volume and it's like extremely it's like whoa whoa it has to fit it has to be appropriate exactly um yeah eq and compression it's it's just like seasoning and a food you just need to know how much just a pinch and it's usually less than you think right and i look at all the eq settings i've done for people in past we're doing you know someone's like i've been using the same stack that you made for me eight years ago should i get a new one i get that one a lot probably uh let me take a look and sometimes i look at the eq curve i set up for them eight years ago and it's got like 8db of boost at 16k and then it's got all these and i'm like yeah let's refresh that because a i'm better than i was eight years ago b trends have changed c you're probably in a different room or space than you were eight years ago so yeah there's just a lot of reasons to revisit it um the other one was about zoom and i'm going to tell you right now if zoom's working for you in the version you're running just keep it there if you don't run 5.13.11 you're good to go don't worry about it unless we are of some kind of exploit that will hack your computer through zoom probably no reason to update zoom unless there's a mandatory update because of some feature that you're being told to use so uh yeah i was on 5.13 point blah blah blah whatever it was until today and i decided to finally update it to try this new feature that didn't exist so oh okay you saw my video that was my experience good to know all right jeff holman since he happens to be here he can actually ask his own question nice fire away well you gotta unmute your mic first though oh maybe i can unmute his mic nope you can try all right come on now unmute mic mute mic there you go holy crap all right you're there oh my gosh so i'm getting my cotton batting from ats tomorrow george um and i'm guessing that i can just nail it to the wall or is there maybe a better way to put it up uh um i don't you you probably could nail it to the wall with just a couple of nails it'll just sort of hang there but it might kind of droop a little bit so you might want to put it on a backer of some kind and that could be carved that could literally be cardboard or it could be some foam board or it could be some kind of cheap you know veneer plywood or material you find at home depot um and then i and then i would just use spray adhesive so like 3m super 77 is a popular spray adhesive um that way you're now making you're basically making acoustical panels that can be taken down or moved um versus attaching them directly to the wall um but however you do it the last thing i would i would definitely not use spray adhesive and spray it right to the wall because if you have to take it down later you're gonna hate you look you're gonna hate that so okay never yeah i would attach it to something first so it has something rigid to uh i would i would i would attach it to something that's rigid i think that would be the easiest way to handle it and then you can just if you're let's say they're like two by four pieces of cardboard i don't know then you just all you need to hang that is like a picture nail picture hanging nail so okay that's what i would do thanks a lot okay have fun with a new setup when you're giving us a play by play over time as to how it's evolving so show us and share us next time when you have it all done all right cool all right that's jeff holman who monitors our chat room we really appreciate that yeah pa mella asks i'm a bit overwhelmed by the poor reviews and apple's m2 slowing things down some saying worse than the m1 is this true are we better getting a three-year-old chip instead of the m2 looking to upgrade to a non-laptop and disappointed by june's wwdc release um i want to see facts yeah i don't want to see what everybody says well i haven't seen i have not i mean i'm a tech nerd and i watch a tremendous amount of tech reviews of new gear and everything and i have that's not something that's been on my radar so either i just missed that one story or that one story is the anomaly so just like somebody saying you're sibilant if the other 90 people said you're not throw out the one strange one so i don't know how many reviews there are saying the similar thing but i haven't i'm not aware of i'm i actually have actually you just reminded me of a story i didn't say i didn't do the top of the show do the perfect opportunity so i have a mac book air m1 the original when it came right out right when it came out and i've been using it for two and a half years and it's been overwhelming overwhelmingly great um so and i've been keeping it on Monterey so i did not upgrade to Ventura because you guys know if anybody watches this regularly we don't like i don't like anyway having to worry about updates rolling out over time when i have a system that's already running i don't want to get the new version of Ventura tomorrow and find out something new is wrong so that's why i don't run the newest version but okay long story short because this could get really out of hand quickly i was using the mac book on my laptop on my lap that's how i always use it i never use it plugged into anything only thing i plug it into on a regular basis is a headphone headset plugged into the headphone jack that's about it right and i'm just working away and it just black screen dead off i'm like holy crap nice i have not seen this happen on this brand new mac before okay and you know normally i'm pretty zen about tech like you know things reboot things crash whatever right i'm like i don't know so i start googling around a little bit about spontaneous crashes it gave me a one line crash log when it restarted you know your computer restarts and says you want to send a crash report to apple usually you should do that anyway i clicked on it and it shows the classroom crash report and it's a single line of information saying basically basically saying uh your computer just crashed uh for some reason it's kind of like what it said and i was like this is not very not good this is not helpful and it's not good and i did a little more research and found out there's a little bit of users out there on the m1 mac book air who have had some spontaneous reboots that don't have a solution from apple per se aka they don't have like a thing saying here's how to remedy this problem uh kind of thing so i uh did what i thought was the same thing to do and uh i bought another one but i didn't buy another m1 i bought an m2 so i have a mac book air not the 15 inch the big one the new flashy one the the 13 inch mac book air m2 coming um it's supposed to be here the end of next week i think and uh i'm gonna retire my m1 mac book air so i i have no idea what to say other than that just your story reminded me of my story and the point is is like sometimes the troubleshooting process is so laborious that you cut bait and you just move on to a different piece of gear which sounds crazy but with tech like this computers that are so new it's such a new architecture and you can't swap out componentry it's all in there you can't do anything sometimes you might find that the the journey of troubleshooting the up up you know install this upgrade that and all the residual things that happen as a result takes so much more time and just starting from a clean slate with a new machine can make sense anyway that i'm hoping that's my experience and this one doesn't have the same problem apparently the issues were m1 specific nobody with m2s seemed to be reporting the same problem knock on wood hopefully the new m2 is is trouble is trouble free i don't know if anybody else has had that happen to them but what was what was supposed to be the improvement with the m2 i mean i like my m1 it does some weird stuff every now and again i've had you know programs that just suddenly right where did it go not often but but what was the m2 chip brought well yeah it's certainly our performance i mean there's a performance improvement that's the only the whole point of releasing a new chip is usually performance related um they there's an architecture in the m2 chip that has a few maybe one feature that's around machine learning that's kind of i think unique from the m1 maybe but generally your day to day the things that you do with your computer for the most part you will not probably notice any difference if you went from an intel to an m2 it would be a ginormous improvement if you went from an m1 to an m2 it would be a minute very small improvement in performance so yeah i don't think you're going to notice anything big um at all so yeah nothing nothing to be really concerned about this stuff that was released in june was overwhelmingly overwhelmingly targeted to pros and when i mean pros i don't mean pro voiceover actors i mean pros that do heavy heavy graphics we're video yeah heavy-duty multiple channels or tracks of 8k video footage and photogrammetry which is look it up photogrammetry it's like it's very very computer intensive stuff it's not what we do it's not what we do at all so honestly if you have any any reticence to buy a new machine just go apple go to apple scroll to the bottom go to the clearance section uh and buy a refurb macbook air m1 or go to maxsales.com that's other world computing you know they sell like hubs and memory upgrades but they also have a really good inventory of refurbished used max so you can save a couple hundred bucks there you're not going to save a ton of money on an m1 because they're still so new yeah um but uh yeah i mean try it out i i have not heard that exact thing yet at palmless so if you have a link to put in the comments that's the reference to what you're describing i would love to look at it please put it in there somebody asked me this week because they're they're talking about getting a new microphone or a new computer a new computer yeah i'm getting old my brain is just not focusing in on what i'm talking about computer excuse me and they uh they're like i want to get a mac studio and i'm like why uh well because you know i i want to have enough power to do voice over it is like that's not what you get a mac studio for mac studio the it's a three thousand dollar computer and it's you know it's mac operating system and has a lot of power it can take a large thing but it's got nothing to do with voice over guys keep in mind the branding of the pro right studio this is these are just names it doesn't mean anything just because you're a pro at voice over doesn't mean you need a brand something that literally says the word pro in it and vice versa you know so right and now one with a mac i mean if you've got a 2011 yeah maybe it's time to move up because you know when you can't upgrade it anymore then it's time to move on but that takes a while 10 years when you hit 10 years you're you're gonna get into frustration where your browser can't be upgraded right and when your browser can't be upgraded your day-to-day life on the internet becomes more irritating right so yeah but but if you have a computer that lasts for 10 years how many pcs would you have bought over that period of time so my dad is watching this show will be like i found the same windows pc for 13 years and it's still great speaking for you dad okay but uh yeah no in general in general for sure windows i think mac users tend to use their computers longer unless you have a really custom built high-end pc that was purpose built then maybe you might that might run a little as long or longer right so if the more the better you spec the computer begin with the higher the spec the more memory the more storage generally the longer that thing is going to stay relevant into the future so if you're going to spend if you're going to decide be let's say between a mac mini but with upgraded memory and storage versus a very base model upper level computer i would get the upgraded cheaper computer if all things are equal but i think even the cheapest studio has more memory than the highest grade mac mini if memory serves because i think the studio comes with 32 gigs of memory or something like that that's a lot yeah it's it's still stupendously overkill i i produce tons of content every day with my m1 mac mini and it's absolutely great but extremely reliable so mike's mike donor says he has a 2010 windows 7 windows 7 pc um you know and it still does run and a good computer with good parts will run for very very many years long past the software compatibility with modern web and security standards end of right end of subject all right and pretty much the end of the show if you've got a question for us you can write to us at the guys at v obs dot tv and you know sometimes yeah well we'll answer your questions as long as it's not you know too detailed uh you know we can always help you professionally if it's something you know something terribly wrong you can contact us to to fix that or you know troubleshoot the issue we actually have a service on george the tech called answers so if you really are like i have this question and i really want to get a good answer um yeah there's a service for that we charge 50 bucks for that and you can choose who you want to get your answer from and uh you can you can answer your questions ask your questions there and uh because getting the right information is very very efficient yep it's worth 50 bucks well thank you for all your questions and for tuning in tonight you you know as i used to say on card talk you've wasted another perfectly good yes uh listening to us ramble on about home voiceover studio tech and uh but the fact of the matter we've been doing this for 12 years so clearly we must be saying something right anyway uh we'll be right back to wrap things up and uh tell you what's coming up right after these messages this is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying den and george on the voice of our body shop your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer that place is voiceover extra dot com whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books auditioning home studio setup and equipment marketing performance techniques and much more it's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports it's all here at voiceover extra dot com that's voiceover x t r a dot com all right maybe some of you know my son is an animator he's uh he's trying to get a job in hollywood but he produces his own stuff and he does his own character voices and he's done dubbing and a lot of other stuff he's starting out in his voiceover career he needed a website so what did we do we went over to a great site to get a website it's called voice actor dot com voice actor dot com what can you do there they have templated websites specifically for voice over you know you can change the the background you can add pictures your demos your name your contact information it's all there and you can do it in less than half an hour george and i approved it because we did it for both our kids and they're up in their their their sites are up and running so go over to voice actor dot com and get your voiceover studio and voiceover head website done now we are the world voices organization also known as woevo we're the not-for-profit industry association of freelance voice talent voiceover is a complex entrepreneurial business woevo is there to promote the professional nature of voice work to the public to those already established in their voiceover practice and to those who want to pursue voice over as a career membership benefits include a supportive and creative community a profile and demos on voiceover dot biz our searchable directory a vetted professional voice talent our exclusive demo player for your personal website our mentoring program business resources and our video library our annual woevo con conference a fun and educational weekend with other members with the chance to learn and network webinars and great speakers and weekly social chats with other members around the world if your world is voice over make woevo part of it world voices organization we speak for those who speak for a living yeah hi this is carlo zellers rocky the voice of rocko and you're watching voiceover body shop all righty uh thanks for tuning in tonight and submitting your questions and listening in and getting the information that you can't get anywhere else uh next week on this very show we won't be here uh i have to go to buffalo for a wedding i'm not excited about going back to buffalo but i gotta go well the weather's gonna be nice it's gonna it is the best time of year to go back to buffalo and uh you know so i i have cousins i want to see some friends but i will not be back so it's the week of fourth of july you guys aren't gonna be watching anyway but guess what there are so many more voice over body shop episodes out there that perhaps you've missed somewhere along the line you can watch them anytime you want so why don't we do that um but when we'll return on july 10th with another great guest a number of people have uh talked to me and we're gonna set it up and you're gonna have another great guest like we had uh uh Hugh Klitzke last week and debber when the week before that and all of the great people who are in the voiceover business uh who impart their expertise to you anyway uh we have donors people who have donated some significant cash to make sure that we can run this show technically perfectly and those people would be grace newton oh grace we love hearing hearing that name all the time uh christopher epperson robert leadham steven chandler kasey clack jonathan grant tom pinto greg thomas a doctor voice ant land productions martha con 949 designs sarah borges philips appear and brian page along with adi gibbons rob rider shana pennington baird don griffith tray moseley diana birdsall maria makas and sandra man willer thank you so much for your support we really appreciate it if you want to donate to the show because we're giving you what you need there's a donate now button on our on our website for you obs dot tv if you're watching there right now if you're on facebook go over there now and press it anyway uh let's see home voiceover studio dot com you need help with your home voiceover studio that's where you'll find me most of the time it seems like i've never leave my studio and i'm answering a lot of questions uh go to home voiceover studio dot com and you know and submit a demo or of your audio in my specimen collection cup george you're over at george the dot tech and you got a discount still got the v o b s fan 10 coupon code just use that on anything you book or purchase services uh webinars everything at george the dot tech which is the home for performer friendly texts all right uh we need to thank our amazing sponsors too like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements vio heroes dot com voice actor dot com and world dash voices dot org the industry association of freelance voice talent joined today we got lots of great stuff going on uh thanks to jeff holman for yeoman work in the chat room and sumer lino for getting it done stop that forgetting it done technically making sure that the right pictures are on at the right time and that's really important uh so anyway we're here to help you with your home voiceover studio and your home voiceover career it's a not an easy business it's so hard to get everything right it takes time and patience and training and getting the right information from the right people which would be mr. woodham and myself so anyway we've just discovered when it comes to your audio if it sounds good it is good i'm dan lennard and i'm george woodham and this is voiceover body shop or vio bs bs tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk anyway we'll see you next week guys or in two weeks bye