 Hey there, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number 56 Six you don't have to use our hands anymore Yeah, wow big numbers no enemies Okay, yes tech talk 56 we've got all sorts of great stuff to talk about tonight You know the stuff that you we normally talk about but updates like what? Well, like should you buy a Mac mini or an iMac m1 yet? You know what kind of gear or should you be shopping for or not at some websites? And you know some new tech tech Gear that's been released acoustical stuff and glitches Glitches glitches. We got glitches or us glitches get stitches. That's right I remember that one Alrighty well stay tuned for all that get your questions into the chat room right now It's time for voiceover body shop tech talk right now from the outer reaches. They came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe. They bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional video studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you Create a professional sounding home VO studio and each week They allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest and VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials calm home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites.com where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes dot-com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training J. Michael Collins demos when Quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for the old success And now live to drive From their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California. Here are the guys Well, hello there, I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George the tech with him The tech with him. Yeah, and this is voice over body shop or VO Bs tech talk tech talk tech talk number 56 that's what it says at the bottom there. It's like being in a sushi bar Yeah, whatever I have lunch with Mark Cashman we go to this place and in In Santa Clara Santa Clarita and there's yeah called the Yamato and it's like yeah conveyor belt of those are fun Yeah fun and weird No, they do they do they're around they're out there Anyway, we're here to talk about your home voiceover studios and what you need to sound great and Everybody says well everybody says I have a great voice Yeah, well, it doesn't mean anything if you're talking into a radio shack Electret condenser microphone from you know in your bathroom Anyway, but we get lots of questions, you know, cuz George and I do this full-time You know, we are constantly working with home voiceover studios and making them sound the way they're supposed to sound like and There's a way it's supposed to sound like and most people don't even know what that is Fortunately for you George and I do because that's what we do we listen and we're like that's a little this a little that you know people will send us audio and generally if We you know if someone says they're having a problem, it's five seconds. We know what it is, you know, it's pretty much It's oh, it's always, you know, it's one of these or it's one of those. It's your refrigerator How many times I figured out it's the refrigerator refrigerator? It's it's the neighbor's washer dryer It's the mic is pointing the wrong direction. It's the Harley down the street, you know, it's things like that Yeah, mm-hmm So if you if you need help with your home studio if you got a problem or if you're totally perplexed and Trust me. We need a lot of perplexed perplexed people Who can probably say that better than I? Who are like, how do I do this and especially during the pandemic there, you know, everybody had to have home studio so we've been very very busy in the last, you know, 13 14 months and But you know something it's not that hard It's not rocket science But it helps to have a professional at your side with a virtually or or right there with you And now we're able to get out and then work with people again, which is nice Yeah, I like that again like like getting into people's homes And not that I just like getting into people's homes, you know, like, you know, five-minute photo or whatever name that movie Use a pocket knife sometimes I can Jimmy the oh, oh, you mean you're welcomed into their homes. Yes. Yes They actually See if I can fix this home voiceover And and now that we've totally turned them off on that if that you want to work with one of us All you have to do is contact us and we both have great websites where we talk about what we do and how we do it and Lots of other great resources and if you solve my website ain't that great. That's why I'm getting a new one made this year But it works as long as it works And that's the most important thing if they want you want to talk to George and see all the stuff He does where do they go? Now he can head over to George the dot tech and if that just has you confused head also to George the tech comm They both work and they both go to the same place where you can book my services or get a sound check Dan calls them sound checks. No, he doesn't he calls them specimens. That's right them in his cup over at There's a specimen collection cup at the bottom of the home page of home voiceover studio dot-com Yeah, click on that. It's a drop box, you know tell it You know when you drop off as a sample for anybody if George or I or anybody or you know Or if you're doing it on Facebook or something and you're like does anybody know what's wrong with my I hear a buzz I hear a hum or something like that unless people hear it and Get a good description of what it is that you're using, you know the microphone your computer Please stop describing your audio problems. Yeah Text like no, that's not about that's not a buzz. That's a hum You know, there's a big difference between those two But you know and if you can you can drop that stuff off, you know using the specimen collection cup and for $25 I will give you a very thorough analysis and this week again The cup is overflowing with a lot of people who apparently you want to make sure their audio is right and some of them are great Some you know, it's like they need a little bit of help And if you need some major help you can do a consultation with with me or with George if you want to work with him And we will teach you how to do it right. So again It's like a cassette recorder guys the computer stuff is all kind of like in the background distraction. Yeah, it's like hit You know play record stop You know the rest of just you know, it's your computer is acting like a cassette recorder. Remember those I know our audience demographics. They know what a cassette recorder is So anyway, so let's get into the meat of the matter and let's take a look at what's going on in the world of voiceover Tech, what's in your update this week Well, there's quite a few things so I'll try to get right to it First of all, I'll talk a little bit about Apple silicon because that's kind of the computer the computer of the year, honestly It definitely is Dan and I are both running them the M1 Mac Minis full-time in our studios So we're really as we sometimes call it dog-fooding the new computer. No, we're eating the dog food to make sure it Okay, yeah, we're gonna recommend it. You got to taste it first. So You know somebody has to do that, right? Somebody's got to taste the dog. There's dog food tasters You would do that But we are really testing them out and I would start give a quick update I Today I rebooted my computer right before the show because I hadn't in a couple of weeks and you know, that's a bad bad George bad But I think that's a good thing to show that it has been quite stable I don't yeah, I don't believe I rebooted the computer since the last show taping two two weeks ago So it is a it's been it's been overwhelmingly reliable. It's still running Barely warm like it's almost confusing Whether the computer is on I'm touching it. It's not even really warm touch mile Let's see what it's doing there is it feels like a refrigerator for quite a lot. It's freaking weird It is quite amazing. So if you want a computer that's quiet and unobtrusive and no drama The M1 Macs are great. So they released the new iMac in fun Flavorful colors like they used to like the gel colors that these total throwback. Yeah to the to those days when they had those colorful iMacs and they look pretty cool They basically look like a ginormous iPad on a stand With one major missing feature and that is you can't touch the screen Which drives me crazy Apple hasn't gone into the touch screen stuff. Have they own to me the only reason To buy the actual iMac M1 would be as if it actually was touch screen a bit Active and it's it's not I I used to think it was funny when people would reach over and touch their screens I find myself starting to do it from time to time I would not at my desktop because it's not as common, but on a laptop. It's like, oh, I can't do that I so I'm hoping that's coming Now for those that really want a touchscreen computer. They can buy the iPad I've had Pro or even just the basic iPad, which is still pretty good But they're still hampered by running Mac or not Mac OS, but Ios and So I won't be buying an iMac pro not iMac pro but an iPad pro for a long time until Really everything that we do on our desktops works and feels Pay basically the same on an iPad pro and you can get a fully pimped out iPad pro I mean loaded the list in this number for $2,400. Yes, you got an iPad for an iPad With two terabytes of memory of storage 16 gigabytes of memory in an iPad. It's crazy But it really really an iPad has become Inside guts wise the same as a MacBook Air. It's got the M1 chip It's got the same amount of storage the same amount of memory just inside an iPad Just can't do this all the things that you can do with it, you know what Apple they're devious They know that if we sell you a laptop you'll still want a touchscreen so you'll still want an iPad They still can sell you two devices So I in terms of the new M1 iMac if you just jones in for a new Mac and you really like that form factor There's nothing wrong. I can't see anything that would be wrong with the new iMac M1 I mean, it's the same guts as the M the mini and the MacBook Air I've been using for six months. It's been great if you're a pro tools user. No, don't buy it yet You can't use pro tools on the silicon Macs yet, but practically everything else works on it and So I would say it's a good it's a good value I I really prefer buying a Mac mini in a separate screen because when you have to throw that Mac mini out You're throwing out a little box this big You're not throwing out this 27 inch giant, you know ginormous thing 10 years from now in the yeah in the waste Well, hopefully 10 years. I mean sometimes they don't last that long Uh This is just a little this is a little PSA and I'm just is just for anybody at Sweetwater that happens to be listening Please stop recommending the sure SM7 B for voiceover to customers. Thank you. I Will keep saying that until you stop or until our listeners start telling you guys to stop Recommend until enough of us nag them to stop it is not the ideal voiceover Mike by any stretch of the mind is definitely not great great for singers, you know for singers great for being Joe Rogan on a podcast it's that's what it but you know, but it's not a great voiceover Mike for for many reasons Which you've heard us talk about We're gonna talk about acoustics quite a bit tonight, but One of the reasons why so many of us are getting acoustical foam that's really inadequate is we're getting all this foam that looks like Pyramids and waves and this thing and that thing and the problem is is You if you start with foam, that's two inches thick and then you basically carve away 50% of it It's now essentially as effective as foam. That's only one inch thick Think about that you've basically taken a two inch panel and then chopped out all this negative space it loses effectiveness and If you look at websites like oral exes site and you look at something called the NRC That's the noise reduction coefficient of a product. So you know how much it absorbs You will see that those wedgie ones and the pyramid ones and all that are nowhere near as good as the ones that are perfectly flat So if you're shot out there shopping for foam for your booth and you really want to use foam even though we've said or I've said a lot to Avoid foam go with the flat foam panels There's one the the oral ex brand is called son of flat But whatever it is go with flat panels because you're getting more density and more coverage in a smaller space Which is what you need in a small booth and it is amazing how much how much better those panels are Have you seen those Dan? They're just it didn't look like much. It's just a square. It's just lab with above beveled edge But it works a lot better. Speaking of acoustics as well Studio bricks. I was really had an interesting phone call with Guillermo the founder of studio bricks or zoom call where he showed me some new acoustical materials that they've actually are having manufactured in house and Apparently I'll be getting some to show you guys So this is still early. I don't have anything to show you but It's pretty darn cool, and it's not made of foam. In fact, it's about 50% PET I don't remember what PET stands for but that's like a recycled material Recycled out of like milk bottles. I believe it is. So it's like it's half recycled It's made out of a totally different material. It doesn't have any odor at all Which is really important for a lot of voice actors and it looks pretty cool, too So that's coming from studio bricks and it doesn't work. I think it's the most important thing does it work yet And in fact, this is one thing I said to Guillermo. He's like I said, I want to hear the studio bricks with a TLM 103 Doing a voiceover that doesn't need any fine tuning. I want it to sound great Literally out of the box and that's that's the goal and I think that's what they're heading With the stew bricks. In fact, he told me they are now hiring they have in staff And they've got about 50 people there. They've got someone now who's actually an audio engineer on the payroll Oh, that's good. That sounds obvious, right? Yeah, none of the other ones have a having an Acoustician who knows how to tune spaces on staff making booths if they do let me know but never that I've heard of so That's pretty cool Moving on quickly if you are wanting to dabble in podcasting and want to have the cool bells and whistles that we use like in a Roadcaster pro, but don't want to drop that kind of money or don't have the space There's a new thing. They just released called road connect now. You have to use it only with the road NT USB Mini mic, so that's the catch. It's a $99 USB mic But it's basically using some DSB inside the mic and tying into the software and making a virtual Roadcaster pro on your desktop So it does a lot of the same stuff. You can do you can do playbacks. You can do loopback You can record the show Everything and it's using the mic itself to handle some of that processing And what's cool is you can plug four of them into the same computer through like a USB hub and actually have a live show Mixed that way It's very clever. I mean, it's I mean, I don't know if it's totally relevant to our audience But if you're in podcasting or streaming, it was really cool to check out and it's an impressive piece of tech Adobe audition glitches. I guess Dan you've been hearing this you put this in here What do you think? What do you think's going on with the Adobe audition and glitches? Is it is it the newest newest version like the 2021? Yeah, I you know, I updated as soon as they you know They come out and yeah, well, I would too if I was on them one Mac I would I would want to have the absolute latest version to make sure it was gonna run well on my Brand-new Mac, right? Right. Yeah, and you know, I the interesting glitch is a lot of it is it's stuff disappearing Visually or audio visual things audio wise audio wise it always sounds fabulous. That's good. Well, that's the most important Yeah, mostly it has to do with the Uh The specter graph is well the spectrograph disappears Like you'll be recording something and you'll look at the playback and and it it'll be there and then it won't be it's like Where'd it go? Um, okay, so you save the file you come back in you open it again. Oh, it's back So there's obviously some there is a piece of code in there somewhere that's like You know if this then this Well, then the then the if is apparently happening in certain situations and then that happens, right, right from a total total algorithm Vocabulary But you know, I imagine they'll fix it. I I know that You know that the guys at at adobe are looking at that and they're Hopefully I installed it recently and um, I'm running it on my m1 mac and it is still an intel app So the newest translated up to date version is still running And what's called rosetta? So it's being converted from the intel uh processing languages to the new silicon processing languages and Something's getting lost in translation probably, huh? I mean, that's what i'm guessing But yeah, when I when I do get info on the app, it says application kind intel and so that uh So we might be waiting a little while this must have been in the hopper for too long before the silicon mac came out and Hey, they're gonna have to do either a major update or wait till next year Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm careful. I mean if there's something long that I have to do I will record it in twisted wave and then import it into uh Audition just to be safe. How's twist-of-wave been for you? Twist-of-wave is fabulous. Good. Not not an issue. It's it. I've never had an issue with twisted wave Yeah, I mean he's always doing little little tiny bug fixes and incremental updates and stuff It's like version 25.8 now or something. Yep But yeah, and if anything goes wrong with it, it's fixed so quickly and that's the beauty of working with these small boutique manufacturer coding people as opposed to a giant behemoth Adobe, you know, you get much more rapid support So anyway, that's my tech update and let's have our Our little discussion our weekly discussion. Well, this is based on a question we got from peter punts Who asks and this is something we talk about all the time. He says If I've learned learned anything from v obs and other sources. Well, don't go to those It's the top quality voice over audio hinges on a proper acoustics excellent Be a good condenser mic that suits the individual's voice Okay see a quality interface with good preamps and converters and d Proper use of the equipment to produce good clean audio, which is sort of a b and c Um, you know to me everything's about acoustics, but he goes on He says given that these ingredients can be achieved using fairly simple cost-effective setup Why do some talents invest so much more than they need? For instance, why does someone drop 800 dollars on an apollo twin? And what benefits do the twins plugins really bring for voiceover? What's the point of spending so much money to add so much extra flavor to vio audio? And that is an excellent question and probably the reason we do this show Somebody's been able to narrow it down to that that whole that whole thing You know, I mean, here's the way I look at it Ones and zeros or ones and zeros as far as I'm concerned What the real problems that exist I think with cheaper equipment is especially with preamps is the preamps may not be very good So if you're like buying a $50 interface, you're gonna get hissing you because you've got to generate a lot of Gain because you're not supposed to be talking so loud when you do it One brand starts with a and another one starts with b Not gonna call them out, but they're you know some cheapy cheapy ones out there that are Rather noisy, especially if that interface has a tube in it Yeah, yeah, dead tube. I mean, it's a gimmick. You know, I mean, I like tubes I like tubes because I got old radios and you know, I They're in there for a reason though. Yeah, but they're yeah, exactly. But they're not there for the best they had in 1940 1950 That's right. And it's fun learning about them. But yeah, uh, the fact of the matter is is digital technology is They've gotten it down. So everything is extremely user friendly And I think what happens is is people get into some of these Uh Higher end things like the apollo twin, which of course you have put on your hangout on facebook groups Well, yeah, I mean you can do that. It's fun. But you know, do it to meet old girlfriends Not you know, try and talk about voiceover equipment Uh, it's like you're gonna really run into, uh, constant upgrade spiral problems Exactly because you're gonna always want to try The newest Thing because you heard five other people say well, that's what I use. That's what I use Right, but they're not in your closet Yeah, I know I know some people who are very disciplined. They they know what they're using is what's making the money They know how to use it and it works Um, and they're not getting sucked into that upgrade spiral, you know, they're using Things that are just reliable for them and don't have a learning curve But yeah, it's why do people buy shiny objects? Why do people buy new cars? Why do people buy new car every three years or lease them or do you always have the latest thing? Everybody needs there's something to it for them that gets them Excited gets them wanting to recordy every day or it just gives them some leg up in their mind that it's gonna help them book um The the Apollo twin I can talk about for a second, but it's it's It's certainly not bad equipment the quality of it's quite good its feature set is exhaustive um but It's got a learning curve to it and a lot of the folks that end up buying them Only know how to get the very most basic functionality out of it And so they're really just using it like they would a scarlet mic goes in turn up mic For six hundred dollars less. Yes, and the the converters and preamp circuits If you put a really fine point on it, yes, they are a little bit better than what you're gonna get theoretically on a scarlet 2i 2 generation 3 But not that much different dan and I did a shootout a couple six eight months ago. Maybe actually maybe it was a year It was late last time more than that, huh? Yeah, and we did a whole usb interface shootout and you got to hear go check it out on google um type in v obs usb interface shootout And you get to hear a whole bunch of these um side by side where we test them and you'll hear how little difference It really really makes yeah, and so the processing plugins Who do they benefit? I guess people doing like affiliate stuff or stuff for radio things where they need just a very rapid turnaround They want to record it hear it the way the way it's going to sound on the air And print it and send it off. It's old school. It really is kind of old school To to do it that way that front end processing But some people just find that a way they prefer to work But most people like we dan and everybody else that I work with Process it in post When necessary why because you can control it there if you do it put it in the front end It's there forever. Yeah, you better be really consistent like if you're going to record front end processing You have to be really consistent about your performance and your mic gain settings Because that processing is going to do different things based on how loud or how soft you're performing That it's it's difficult to get that same level of consistency with front end processing unless you've got 10 to 20 years of Voiceover or even radio experience, right? I I find that a lot of times a lot of stuff gets recommended for a number of reasons one There's an intimidation factor in there. Let's face it. Most voiceover people are the nicest people around Yeah, I mean all my friends are voiceover people But there are a few slugs out there that are like well, I am an expert And I don't want people competing with me So they'll throw out stuff to throw people down a technological rabbit hole or they'll show pictures of their unbelievably beautifully appointed incredibly detailed expensive studios, you know, right that is Which is fine But it's not going to change the way you book your gigs in voiceover Unless of course, you're the one that built it. So I mean you want people to show off the stuff you do Oh, I love showing off the studios I designed for other people But uh, yeah, you're gonna see some amazing studios out there people are very proud of the work They've put into their studios and some people believe that you know The way it looks is the way you're gonna feel and that's the way you're gonna sound There's there's different reasons for all that but yeah You have to know what it is that gets your performance across and gets you the gig and 90 of the time what what Uh, you know, what transformer is in your preamp? Or what new old stock tube is in your mic? 99 of the time ain't gonna make a lick of difference Justine, right? Well, we we had Kevin Gershan on of last month and he was saying this is like, you know We're looking for interpretation and this is a top level cbs producer And he's like if someone does the read write and the mic is like We bring him in You know or we tell them to get that you know a certain type of microphone But most of the time if somebody is that good they generally are gonna sound good And you know as long as you stick to the basics that we talk about the acoustic soundproof You know not a lot of sound coming in Very little reflection Proper microphone technique proper distance proper orientation to the mic And setting your levels right and that's got that's got nothing that yeah, especially your fridge That's got nothing to do with all these plugins that say an Apollo twin has It's not the plugins that are gonna get you work. And if you think well, it's gonna make me sound really great You know now anybody can have a manly mic preamp with right to one compression But if you sound like this it's not gonna make a difference. It really doesn't Anyway, so that that's our rant on that but we say this every week and you know, we still see the stuff on facebook And you know, we end up mopping up Of course you and I don't always agree on these sorts of things But you're but your point that you say and is is is right There are people that are real high-end people that have to be You know, they're doing this stuff live that you know, and they're doing the Work in the air or it goes to air right quickly. It's got to be done a certain way But that's not what got them that job It's a small niche a few it is so do as we say And your life will be much better at least in your voice over life We want you to have a low stress Yeah, don't ask us for marital advice. That would be a bad idea Anyway, we've got lots of questions coming up from facebook and clubhouse So stay tuned. We'll answer those right after this You're still watching vobs Voice over essentials.com would like you to know that there's a lot of so-called experts out there Saying go to bedding and bath stores and buy a mattress topper and use the foam for your diy studio or portable setup And counterfeit offshore acoustic foam is flooding the web studio foam Although expensive is all about shaping your sound So you're recording sound the same as a professional audio studio the sound our clients expect to hear And will the memory foam have the memory of how you sound? Look, bed foam is great for keeping an old mattress alive and preventing bed sores But it doesn't cut it for acoustical treatment. The portabouth plus and pro use only oralex studio foam They have a limited inventory of both while shipping logistics of the new inventory is delayed With the country starting to travel again, the booths are selling fast So go on over to voiceover essentials.com and get yours now while the getting's good That's voiceover essentials.com for the portabouth pro and plus Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. Were you? Stick around you don't want to miss this So At target we want you to come as you are be comfortable. Okay, maybe not bathrobe comfortable Pants for the customer and aisle four, please Watch anywhere anytime on an unlimited number of devices Sign in with your netflix account to watch instantly at netflix.com The ice cream maker is a big risk that can have huge rewards Until you forget to turn it on Well, that's it guys Time is up. Hey, it's jmc. Thanks for watching the voiceover body shop If you're demo ready or looking to get there check out jmc demos.com and see a sample of our work Now let's get back to dan and george and this week's tech wisdom But not until I tell you about source elements source connect one more commercial for you guys Source connect is the tool for pros who want to Play with the pros like if you're a voice actor who wants to work with the top studios on the best paying gigs Source connect is one of the most commonly used tools for that which allows you your voiceover studio the sound of your voice Everything about your room Everything is sent down the wire off to a studio somewhere else and is being recorded in pro tools or whatever Doll that their engineer is using in real time when that session's over You say thanks very much. You wait 90 to 120 days for your check and you hang up That's it. That's the beauty of doing source connect gigs. They are They're really a great way to work and work in a collaborative atmosphere If you want to get set up head over to source dash elements.com And you can get yourself a 15 day free trial I would recommend if you're really serious about it to start a subscription And that way you'll get their help to get things dialed in that's part of the price It's kind of you can either pay me to do it or pay them It's kind of a balance and you might as well start your subscription up and And be ready to go their team of support is amazing Um, really they're really they've really had an incredible Buildup of support, which is wonderful. So anyway, that's it. We're going to come back and dive into questions There's a lot and we'll be right back. I think I heard the voice of a body shop I did I did hear the voice of a body shop little body shop And we are back with lots and lots of questions is why we do it. That's right. That's why we're here Anyway, let's get going on some of these Uh, I I like this first one. Let me do the first one. So tom well says I was in my attic and found my pulp audio speakers from college remember joe jackson and marshal krenshaw Yeah, a little after my college years, uh, but I remember them I wondered what I'd have to do to use one or both of them as a monitor First thing is how to connect one to the interface or pc These use good old-fashioned speaker wire with no plugs or connectors trs plugs anticipate Uh a ground wire, but the old stereos just have two wires Am I onto something or is this a fool's errand? PS headphones are still the choice my choice for listening to work But I was looking for a way to put those old pokes back into service Well, the thing about uh, old speakers is is they are not self powered They don't have their own little amplifiers in them. They require your old Morance stereo amp or whatever it was you were you maybe got a pulp audio receiver or something like that You need your receiver and you know your stereo amplifier to run those if you got a really good one You just run the the rca jacks off of your interface Into your stereo and then you know and use your dvr or whatever Setting you have on there and play them that way. Are they going to be as good as studio monitors? Did not sound quite the same way. They're not loud You know studio monitors aren't loud speakers. They are what we call near field monitors You know if you're two to three feet between them and they're angled towards you That's their sweet spot. So there's not going to be quite the same sweet spot on a pair of very loud speakers Uh, but you can use them, you know or and of course, they're great for listening to you know, joe jackson Yeah, I've got some um paradigm speakers on my shelf up here Um, they they would be considered definitely home speakers But they had one model which are up there in that big pile of speakers Called the mini monitor and I actually use them as studio monitors for quite a long time And they were really quite excellent some some Consumer speakers are good enough or accurate enough that you could use them For for monitoring, but uh, keep in mind that they're really made to make music sound exciting Uh, not to be dead honest. So That's that's a big deal. But yeah, you can you can use any old any old receiver power amplifier anything you can trust that's Uh and use them in in your studio with good success. Yeah Okay, you get the question from grace. Well, we have a clubhouse clubhouse question Nothing's cute. Uh, actually looks like we actually do is I see plr in there My plr Yes, hello. Hi there. How are you? Hi? Hi, babe? I don't Hi, so, um, you guys are a regular comedy act by the way. Thank you You've had your laughing pretty much good last half hour. We try we really do So I uh, so like about 10 days ago. I ran out panicked and got a An insignia port hub Um, which turned out to be kind of flimsy and it was expensive at Best Buy Yeah, that's that's the best buy house brand garbage. Yeah, I know exactly and I was so pissed I was like, okay, I will get it on amazon and a friend of mine um A mutual friend said that you told him years ago to get io gear 7 So I looked it up on amazon and it looks really cool kind of looks like a little spaceship. Um when it's on its On, you know, write it up. It'll stand on its edge like standing. Yeah, okay Yes, and he's had it for like 10 years, but they do not sell it anymore on amazon. So yeah, that's called technology And things don't tend to be available 10 years later Okay, but it looks really cool. Yeah, it is available, but it's it's used and so I was like, okay I need a good one. That's not flimsy. Um, I would never buy an ancient used piece of gear for a usb hub No, not in a million years. So yeah, what can you recommend and and for See because what I realized at four four ports. We're not going to do it So what what usb hub can you recommend that is good and is like separate? um These the the things these the brands there's certain brands that have been sticking around for years And there's some that kind of come and go on like amazon and stuff um I wish I could read the brand to the one I have right here I want to say mine's an anchor Anchor anchor hubs are are tend to be everything from anchor tends to be pretty darn good Like in terms of quality for the for the money a n k e r Um, I find them to be really good dan's holding Dan wants to sell you this one actually the one he's holding. Yeah, this is a pluggable Uh, this is a super duper hub. It's more than just a normal usb hub. It actually provides video outputs And other even ethernet. I would call that more of a docking station Because you get hub you get video outputs docking station. Yeah And so those are nice a docking station design are going to be more expensive But they're going to give you a lot more connectivity including ethernet And you can literally have a single cable going to your mac with everything plugged in And when you want to take your laptop with you You unplug and go which which computer is it you're plugging into? I have a mac look pro Which year? 2016 or 2016 so that's going to have usb c so um and definitely look for hubs that have usb c Compatibility because they're going to have faster performance overall So if you're going to plug a usb hub like a usb hard drive into it, uh, it'll perform better um usb c also has more power current so Okay, so there's one here that says um That anchor usb c hub power expand eight in one usb c adapter with 100 watts power delivery 4k 60 hertz Oh, yeah, so when it says power delivery, yeah, that means that that hub has enough power supply Capability that it will power your computer as well So you literally have a hub That with one single cable that plugs into your mac And so if you want to be able to quickly take your mac in and out of the studio and have a single point of connection That's the way to do it It's and so those those kind of crossover from hubs to what we would call docking stations because they give you Every type of connection known to man, but I bet it would probably work pretty well. I mean I definitely read the reviews I like to look in aggregate and I like to look and see Which people used it on an actual mac because many of them are going to be on windows and just make sure Right But uh, yeah anchor is uh, definitely a solid brand and so it's pluggable Okay, right. Okay, cool. I just wanted to make one comment. No, absolutely I just want to make one comment on who you were talking before about um Uh audition and I noticed because I had my my 10 year old Um my 10 year old iMac and I could not Uh upgrade to um, obviously, I couldn't I mean I couldn't even upgrade to mojave. Um, but um It what what I found with audition was that it would it would just kind of start kind of like clanking out it would say um I almost pretty much every time I would open it I would have to go and rearrange and and do my um rearrange the settings And I noticed with my iMac with my macbook pro Once I upgraded to big sir Um, I don't I don't have that problem anymore. It doesn't it doesn't do that now that doesn't solve the problem But I mean upgrading the system really made did wonders. So I just wanted to throw that out there Yeah, sometimes it does. I always say if an a pro don't fix it if it's broken Try updating it. Is it might fix it? Exactly you never know shout out to dan by the way because dan was the one who um Uh, basically said, you know, you can just use your macbook pro instead of getting a whole new thing for right now. So Thank you dan. You're welcome Thank you already. See you later. Thanks bill. All right question from grace newton When I press click to start monitoring in audacity my noise floor doesn't even Cause a flicker but when I normalize the track I can hear some So I have to then use noise reduction. Is that common? That's a good question. Yeah, probably not recording loud enough to start with and uh, you know, are you normalizing it and um Yeah, well, she says but when I normalize if you're normalizing your track and you know You're get a little tiny waveforms and you're trying to get it up to minus three You're going to get hissing Everything that's there is magnified The room tone the noise Your own voice when you normalize everything, it's louder So that noise may have been there to begin with but you just didn't notice because it was really really low right So make sure your levels are right. That was no item number number three On our list exactly make sure that your levels are correct. You want to be peaking, you know You know upwards between minus six and minus four and consistently modulating, you know to like minus nine or so Uh, people are like like minus 15. It's like it's a little low But I maybe we just need to explain the level thing a little bit better But we do that when we work with people. Yeah, exactly plus if you watch the last 175 shows you'll hear us mention it at least Yeah Um This one's from uh, let's see Pamela Urahar. You want to read that one? Sure. I a long and detailed post She uses a 2008 macbook pro Old An old computer l cappy tan was as high as I can go just sort of like what palar was just saying Planning to update at the next apple sale until then i've noticed my live sessions Zoom meeting to start fine, but disintegrate from clicks to robotic sounding Even then and then even pure static laptop mic and speaker work fine. I use an at 30 35 with the uh, Focus right scarlow third scarlet third gen when the problem happens in the past session You suggested contacting focus right since it since that it doesn't happen, of course um Yeah, you know as you get old as as as most we get older we don't function as well But as computers get older, you know a 2008 that's a 13 year old computer. That's like, you know driving a 1995 Volvo. Yeah, it's going to move forward and backwards, but it's It might be just yeah, and the cpu might not be keeping up Yeah, remember those things are running a lot of data and yeah, I mean if you were running software from 2008 It would have no problem But when you're running zoom and meet and all these chrome based tools You're running software from 2021 And uh the amount of hardware that they're expected for you to have to run correctly Is going to be much newer than 2008 So don't expect things to run perfectly well on a 2008 machine Again, if you went back in a time machine and if there was zoom in 2008 it would work flawlessly And I can trust me skype back in 2008 did work flawlessly Because I used it um, but yeah, it's just your computer is not keeping up with With modern software, especially chrome chrome Hammers your computer completely hammers it. Yeah Dave g has a question for you He says would george look down on someone using an ai1 as a primary interface or save it for the travel box It's a great little interface Why would anyone have you know, is is it going to make a difference? No, I'm not gonna look down on it. I don't know if it has unique I don't know if the preamp's in it or unique to the ones in the roadcaster pro, but Venture to guess they're probably the same Um Because they're developed by the same company And they sound fantastic Then we did we did a part of our it was part of our shootout. Did we have the a we did have the a Well, it's the first time I saw that and it works It works really good with the nt1 and nt1a and the other you know road mics But it worked great on on our mics too You wanna we're talking to you folks through the preamps that road makes right now So you'll be the judge. Yeah, this we're using roadcaster pros and this is their preamp This is they're not going to make 17 different kinds of preamps. Trust me. They're gonna have the same Circuit and the ai1 is they're gonna have an roadcaster pro And so you can hear what it sounds like. Yeah. Um, yeah, never would look down on that Uh John morse this one just slipped in there. Um, john morse says are you running pro tools on the m1? No, I am not because it is Not qualified to run on the m1 yet And I frankly don't really have the time energy or interest in Going through the hoops to hack it or try to make it work on my m1 You might be able to get to work if you transfer or migrate from another mac that has pro tools And migrate it to an m1 mac and you might be able to trick it into running, but You won't be able to install it Yeah, so that pro tools. Here's the thing. They spent an exorbitant amount of time Testing their stuff before they put it out to the wild Um, they know that their stuff's being used by pros in big time studios And they hammer on it and test it and they are very patient to release new things Um on new hardware it just takes them a really long time And well that that's how they can try to guarantee that it's going to work when you get it so It ain't ready yet and we don't know when I haven't heard anything no predictions All right, you get the next one from Ron Montgomery Because you have the answer Yeah, when are you guys going to produce your own voiceover booths that way you have it already tuned it? Perfect for the perfect out-of-the-box setup Well Well, I mean the closest that I could say to a voiceover booth that I've helped produce would be the tri booth That was something that me and rick washington did years ago Dan did his own idea based around using acoustical blankets called the studio suit So we've dabbled around it, but I'll tell you reduce producing an actual real retail product And getting it out there and I'll tell you from my experience doing the tri booth Is super time consuming and very costly and so That's mainly why we haven't done it. We just don't have the bandwidth. I mean, uh, that's I mean, Dan Would you would if you had the time? Would you release your own? Competitor to whisper room and all that kind of stuff. Would you bow? I'm a voice actor You know You know, I mean could could I sure do I want to know when I was making studio suit I did not want to be a manufacturer and what I had to go through to make that stuff was, you know, just ask my wife Why are you doing this? No, it it's very time consuming There are people that make this stuff and fabricate this stuff if you need a booth There there are ones that aren't quite as expensive But they work if you can reduce your your your interior noise by you know 10 15 db that may be all you need And uh, but I generally recommend if you have a walk-in closet Let's go there first Because that's going to be your best option. That's and that's going to save you six to 10 grand right there Which is a lot for coaching and lessons. So yeah, yeah All right, another question this one's coming in from Jay Horace black long time viewer of the show. He's listened. He's been listening and asking questions nice to see Nice to see again j. Um, he says, uh, hey guys. Great to hear and see you healthy. Yeah, we're doing we're hanging in there um He had a three-part question, but this looks like there's one that's really most interested in answer at having asked and answered Studio bricks panels if they passed your test Upon receiving will these work in any vo booth or just in studio bricks? Oh, no for sure they'll work in any booth because a studio brick is just a box And a whisper room is just a box And a vocal booth to go is just a box I mean anything that's made out of a wooden box Vocal booth comm is what I meant to say I miss spoke. Sorry. Um, any of these are just boxes lined with acoustical treatment Um, so it doesn't matter What box you put them in they're going to do essentially the same job So if they if they get them produced and they get them distributed in the u.s And they're cost competitive and they sound better than what's already available Um, I'm absolutely going to recommend them. I I'm looking forward to getting one to test out myself Uh, I sent my address to Guillermo and he said he's sending a sample. So well, it's dangerous. Can't wait to see it Can't wait to hear it. There's another question I do a lot of on-camera work where zoom callbacks happen a lot And some first round auditions are also zoom And I'm looking at the new iMac for the new improved webcam and from what I've heard And that's where it ends. I don't know what that means. But um, Would you buy a new iMac because of the webcam? No, I mean, I mean the webcam is going to be good, but this is also a 30 dollar webcam. That looks really good I'm using a 150 dollar webcam. That looks pretty good There's a lot of reasons to you know, not a I wouldn't say buying a iMac for a webcam Is a good reason, but it is the first mac Honestly, I think ever with a theoretically with a good webcam. So That is that is something. I mean there is something if you want the ultimate clean Workstation look without a bunch of stuff hanging off your screens like I do um Having a really nice webcam in the computer is uh, would be a nice. I think it's a 1080p Uh, hdr compatible or capable Camera with lots of brains in it kind of like, uh, a light iPhone camera You know, so but but but here's the thing You know an i you know an iphone has a great camera on an iphone does have a great camera And there are many ways now to connect that iphone to your mac this way. No, that well, that's me. So you know No, but there there are quite a few ways to connect the video right from your iphone to your mac um for doing live webcam live streams and uh, yeah, there's there's quite a few and uh, that is the best webcam You'll ever see is the one on your on your iphone It's really remarkable. So if you had an iphone and you're looking for a better webcam Give it a shot. Um, we've talked about this in the past. I don't remember the name of the software But there are software apps that run that then You plug the phone in with lightning into the mac and it becomes a web camera I like it goes out. Yeah, I shoot a lot of the commercials I do and some of the other things On my iphone they look fabulous. They're amazing. I mean, I'm watching some big-time youtubers now that are making You know 200 300 000 subscribers They shoot almost everything on iphone's It's just they're they're just that good Just crazy Good, I had to go I went and bought an iphone 12 pro max iphone 12 pro What i tone 12 12 from pro max. Yeah the max one for my go friend's sister And I was so sad that it was not for me I was really wanted to pull out of the box But I get to hold the nice box and look at it and oh, there's an iphone 12 pro max in here But uh, man, the camera quality is insanely good. Yeah, really good. Yeah Well, one of the things we're thinking about doing is having a voiceover body shop tech garage sale Because we got a lot of stuff. I mean We we no longer need this killer pc that we've been using we referred to as the beast Yeah, um, you know and it ran our entire show and everything and now we're doing using uh, uh Stream yard stream yard and it's it simplified things a whole lot But if you need a tv studio in a can Uh, or a a great pro tools pc I would never recommend a pc except this one because it was built for you know built for production Yeah, and it it'll do you know streaming and in pro tools camera inputs for camera and it didn't even break a sweat No, because it's liquid cooled. It's got a radiator in it. That was amazed when I saw that But uh, you know contact us up the guys at v obs dot tv if you're interested in that But we're also thinking uh, maybe we got a lot of other crap that's sitting around it was connected There's like a mile of cable that was connected to this thing. I took it all out over the weekend and it's like Wow, this thing has got to be about a mile long So a loom. Yeah, it could reach the moon. It's it's it's that much cable. But anyway, all right. We answered all the questions Thank you for asking them. All right. George and I will uh be right back and answer, uh Your questions about what's coming up next right after this because he wanted you're watching v obs dot tv I don't know why it's crazy what they do here. I think I'm going to go somewhere else and have a cheese sandwich Hey there, it's david h. Lawrence the 17th with vo heroes and you may be watching voiceover body shop v obs Because you're interested in becoming a voice talent and you looked around the internet you found that this was a great place to come And you're absolutely right Um, but you don't have any of the knowledge yet as to how to get started and I'd like to help you with that I've got a free course online. You can take it anytime you want It's called getting started in voiceover and it walks you through the equipment you need The business side of things the actual categories of voiceover work that you'll likely be pursuing And also the mindset that you need to have when you're getting started and moving into being successful At doing voiceover for a career. So if you're an actor or you're not an actor You want a side grade from another business you want to learn about voice over go to vo heroes dot com slash start That's vo heroes dot com slash start For the vo heroes getting started in voiceover class and i'll see you there In these modern times every business needs a website when you need a website for your voice acting business There's only one place to go like the name says voice actor websites dot com Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept to live online In a much shorter time when you contact voice actor websites dot com Their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are they work with you to highlight what you do Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are And how your voice is the one for them plus voice actor websites dot com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish Don't try it yourself go with the pros voice actor websites dot com where your via website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great And we're back to say goodbye Uh preparation is the key to making things work and when you're prepared You do a good show luck favors you It that's right. You know, it's like when the opportunity comes you're prepared for it So hopefully you enjoyed tonight's show and got lots of stuff out of it Uh, again, George and I will help you with your home studio if you want to work with george you go to George the tech and you want to work with dan you go to home voiceover studio dot com Alrighty, who are our donors this week? We got shelly avaleno tom pinto Natasha murcheva Jennifer dixon brine page george a widem my dad Rob rider patty gibbons greg thomas shawna painton baird uncle roi martha con Don griffith and steven chandler. Thank you all for making your little donations Or some big and some small you can do One time deal you can do a subscription Which most of these people are because we read their names Pretty much every single week and they click the donate now button right below the video on v obs Dot dot tv to do that right Alrighty, yeah next week on the show supposedly lory ellen's gonna be joining us fingers crossed Yeah, come on lory next. No, but next week. Let's talk about on the next live show. Yes on may 17th Which is next week because this is next week not last week Anyway, um We need to thank our sponsors wrong on my wall You can't hear our director. She's driving us nuts right now. Let's laugh. Yeah, they can be laugh She's got a fever everybody. Oh, this gentleman sue has a fever We'll alert the media. I'm gonna put her on the air next time. Yeah, really We need to thank our sponsors like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra Elements vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and mc demos. Thank you jmc Alrighty, well Another hour has gone by and hopefully you've gotten something out of it. I know I have I know george has and we know you're getting You know aside from getting information you're being entertained while we're while we're doing it So we learn stuff every dang week that we do the show. It's unbelievable How we've been doing it for 10 years because there's always something new And uh, you know, if you're not learning you're not breathing So anyway, uh Anyway, uh, we need to we see we thanked everybody we you know, we haven't thanked Our producers our producer like that's right. Uh, sue merlino doing our technical work Danny burnside on clubhouse and of course. Yeah, lee penny who I know is watching so Thanks for being lee penny. We appreciate that um Well, that's gonna do it for us this week, you know, we're here to help you out with your home voiceover studio And you know something It's not that hard if it sounds good It is good I'm dan lennard and i'm george widdum and this is voiceover body shop or vio b s Tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk See you next week guys. Have a good one later You