 Hey, it is time for Tech Talk number 13. Lucky 13 that is. I guess that means we're halfway through the year. That sounds about right. Yeah, every other week we get it on there. We've got lots and lots of great voiceover tech stuff to talk about tonight. You've got stuff on Focusrite and all kinds of cool things. Oh, you don't want to miss this. And we're going to talk about how you overthink things. Plus your questions on VoiceOver Body Shop Tech Talk right now. From the outer reaches, they came, bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voiceover audio. And together, from the center of the VO universe, they bring it to you now. George Widom, the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build, set up and maintain the professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today. And you, Dan Leonard, the voiceover home studio master, a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio. And each week, they allow you into their world, making the complex simple debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio answering your questions, showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it. Welcome to VoiceOver Body Shop Tech Talk. VoiceOver Body Shop Tech Talk is brought to you by VoiceOverEssentials.com, 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 to go go.com, everything you need to be a successful voiceover artist, J. Michael Collins demos, when quality matters, and voiceover extra, your daily resource for VO success. And now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California. Here are the guys. Yes, we're here for Tech Talk. This is my favorite thing to do in the whole world is talk shop with you. I know that's why we started this thing in the beginning. I know. Way back, way back when eight years ago. And you're watching by the thousands, which is great. Just a huge audience out there and listening on our podcast edition. So we've got stuff to talk about with Focusrite and stuff about your Thunderbolt cables and USB and MacBooks and whisper rooms and something about a cassette deck and stuff like that. And your questions. Let's start it off. What do you got for us tonight in your tech update? All right. Well, I, this is really a no particular word, but the Focusrite Scarlet Solo has been one we've been recommending forever, right? All the Scarlet stuff, the solo, the two I do. And it's been around long enough now that they have a third generation of this product now. What could they have possibly done to make it better? Well, it's kind of funny because I was trying to figure that out. Well, the first thing that's obvious was what they took away. Okay. They took away the headphone volume control. And I was like, why the heck did they do that? Well, I think they took the headphone volume away because they added another feature and that's called Air. And Air is their own proprietary circuit and their mic preamps that it's one of those mystical things that make a Focusrite Preamp from days of yore sound like a Focusrite Preamp. I can't begin to describe what this does, but it's something that just sounds a little bit sweeter than the normal direct sound. It's called Air. There's a button right on the front. This used to be only something that was reserved to the higher end Thunderbolt stuff. Right. The Claret stuff. So they trickled it all the way down to the solo. Red and stuff like that. Yeah. Now I wanted to see if it had more gain. We're always looking to see for mic preamps. Do they have more gain? I went to the specs for Focusrite's website. Nowhere on there did it mention anything about the gain. So I actually went to the chat, chat support. And by the way, all manufacturers that have a chat support, you're awesome. I love you. Thank you for adding this. So many companies have. It's fantastic. And so many answered and said, actually, there is 6 dB more gain in this new one. It's now 56 dB of gain over six. And I said, you guys don't even have that on your website. He's like, well, I'm going to tell marketing because we should. But the new solo does have 6 dB more gain. So I would say the solo is perfect if you're not trying to run studio monitors or if you do have studio monitors that they have their own volume knob on them because the headphones have the same volume knob as the monitors. That's kind of a downer. But really that trade off might be worth it if you're looking for these new features. So about 109 bucks. The new Scarlett Solo. Check it out. Yeah. Now recently, I was doing a studio happened to be for Scott Romo. Well, we're doing the first major change to his studio. Oh, man, I hope I don't screw it up because he's been successful for a long time. So y'all sound good. I'm a little nervous, cancel our hairbrush. Oh boy. But anyway, we're kind of upgrading the studio but leaving the original signal chain there to make sure that there's no changes to the things people really want. But one of the things that was a challenge is I wanted to put one of those Apollo's in the booth. The booth is in a separate area which has a conduit that snakes through the wall around the corner, around the back of another cabinet. It's not easy to get things through there. So we had to be able to get Thunderbolt from his iMac on the other side of the room to the booth. It's about 15 feet when you run a string all the way around. But guess what Thunderbolt don't go 15 feet. It does not go 15 feet. Well, there's a company called Corning and I think it's the same as the Corning Glass because they do optical cable and they came out with a Thunderbolt 2 optical cable. So it looks like a regular sonable cable. But in between the two connectors, it's a thinner fiber optic cord. And you pay dearly for one of these. The cheapest, shortest one is 18 feet for $200. Okay. So if you need it, it's going to cost you. But it works. And they make them up to like crazy, crazy lengths. I think the longest one's 200 feet. So this is a problem solver if you've got some really weird studio stuff. Right. But if you're planning, keep them close. Yeah. I mean, if you have the ability to keep everything closer, do so. But this is a problem solver. Unfortunately, in our case, it did work. So we have the iMac in this corner way over here and in the studio way over here, we have that cable and then a Belkin Thunderbolt dock. Right. And then plugged into that is everything in the studio. The Apollo, the HD monitor and 4K, the USB mouse and keyboard, all in the booth, all plugged into the dock and it works. So it's a problem solver. Now the Thunderbolt may not be as popular as the other one it came out with recently. And that's a USB three optical cable. That's probably even more useful for most people. Now you can have a long USB run that's reliable. USB is typically crap over 15 feet. But this is an optical USB cable. They're not quite as expensive as the Thunderbolt, you had about half. So I think like an 18 foot one is maybe $100 is supposed to $200. But if you're looking for something reliable, this is probably going to be it. And it's cool. Now keep in mind with optical cables, it doesn't carry power. Typically, if you just plug USB into your Scarlett, the Scarlett's powered from the cable. That's not the case of power supply for your mic. Exactly. You have to have like a Thunderbolt or a USB hub plugged into the wall on the other end. So the perfect case would be Mac or PC over here, optical cable over here hub with all your USB junk plugged into it in your studio. Right. And everything going into that. And that hub has its own power. So anyway, a couple interesting cables you can buy to go solve weird problems. By the way, so the universal audio Apollo, you know, I'm a fan and talk about a lot. They have a version for Windows they have for quite a while. They have a USB version and they have a Thunderbolt three version called the arrow and Thunderbolt three is technically Windows compatible. It's been terrible. So if you're on Windows 10, stay away from the Thunderbolt three stuff. And most cases from what I'm seeing in our, I started a Facebook group for for universal audio Apollo a couple years ago. I'm not seeing good things, but the USB version has been working pretty well. It still doesn't work with Chrome. So if you have Apollo with Chrome on Windows 10 does not work well, you can't use it with Source Connect now and IPTEL. You have to do work around. Now here's something really weird. I had a client who had that same thing. Yeah. And we were doing a session and I'm like, wait a minute, how are you connecting me on Source Connect now? It shouldn't be working. He says, Oh, I'm on Windows seven. So he has like a what an eight year old operating system that works. So anybody using the Apollo and you exist on running Windows, you might want to stick around with Windows seven at least for a little longer. Found that was really interesting. That's fascinating. Apple came out with some new equipment. They did. They don't do like major updates. They don't really like do fanfare. It just shows up on the website. Unless it's something completely new. Yeah. Like the Mac Pro we talked about a while ago that was a, you know, whoa, look at this thing. The new Mac mini when it came out, that was a cool deal. They just did a refresh of the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro. They're identical to the prior one in terms of physical design. They look the same as far as I can tell. They do have a few new features like the MacBook Air has a, that might be new, I believe the touch ID. So if you have a MacBook Air, now you can have the little touch ID to log in for people like security. It has a new cool new Retina display, USB-C and T it's Thunderbolt three ports, which I believe it did before for 1100 bucks. That's where it starts. And it starts with an i5 processor. I think before is an i3. It's a little bit more powerful for just $200 more. Now you're talking about the MacBook Pro. So it's got more capability, more processor upgrade possibilities, more powerful graphics. You can get more RAM into it. It'll handle more RAM. I think the MacBook Air Max is out at eight gigabytes. Don't quote me on that, but at the 30, the MacBook Pro is 32. Which one should you buy? If you want the lightest possible laptop, that's still a real Mac. The MacBook Air is probably still going to be it. If you want something that's got a bit more balls to it, sorry to use a terrible phrase, but a lot more power and more upgradeability in the long run and more memory. If you're doing a lot more video production, then I would definitely go towards the MacBook Pro. And it's only about a $200 difference for the base models. So most of you are probably going to be happy with the Air. All MacBooks have no USB ports anymore. It's all USB-C. Boy, is that caused problems with it? Where do I plug it in? Yeah, long live the dongle. Apple, the dongle company. That's basically what they become. In a whole other world, whisper rooms, summertime, anytime you have a booth in a hot space, ventilation and keeping it cool is a challenge. Client of mind just recently moved from a pretty well-controlled room to an apartment with a very high ceiling and a big open space. And the unit is right in the middle and it's the upstairs apartment and it gets warm in there. It can. So it just turned out that there happened to be an air conditioning duct three feet above the booth or two feet on the wall right there. So we're coming up with a way to just bring AC into the booth through this vent. So basically, we're going to be building it in the next week. So I'll have to let you know how it turns out. Dan, you've definitely done this with like printer boxes, things like built. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be complicated. No. I mean, you have to understand the theory of what goes on with creating a baffle. So the sound of the air is not there. Right. In this case, we didn't have to go too far because the whisper room already had all of these baffles. Right. Three different baffles, but we want to make something that looks nice. So we're just using, we're using a melamine, which is like the stuff that like shelving is made of. It's a white compressed fiber stuff. Yeah. And it's got a white coating on it. So you don't have to paint it. We're just going to chop this thing down, make a box, but we're not going to completely remove the original vent. We're going to move the vent to the outside of the box. So the air can still pass right on through when the booth isn't being used. So the room will still get the airflow, but when he is using the booth, the fan will pull the air through the booth. When the air conditioning is on. Right. Now, this is the thing. When, when it's winter, and it does get actually cold in Culver City, that's the challenge. So we actually have that a valve. Yeah. Because the last thing he's going to want is heat. Right. Being pumped into his whisper room. You put a damper in. Yeah. We're putting in a damper valve, a butterfly valve between this whole thing and the booth. So it's become an interesting thing because it has to have a T and all this stuff. It's a little more complicated than we thought, but I'll report back and let you know how it worked out. HVAC, fun stuff. Yeah. A couple of little more quickie things. I was just shopping for tape decks lately or cassette decks. Remember those? Believe it or not, there seems to still be a market for that. Had to replace a Nakamichi cassette deck for Scott Rommel. His old one was just dead, dead, too expensive to fix to be worth it. But believe it or not, there are cassette decks on eBay right now made by Nakamichi, one that's known as the dragon worth about 3000 bucks. A cassette deck. A cassette deck for like what we would consider definitely inferior audio technology. But nevertheless, there is a cassette. One of the things that this deck does, it's actually unique. Remember auto reverse? Sure do. The tape gets to the end and then it goes click click and it reverses and keeps going. What Nakamichi did was like, well, we don't, we don't want to reverse the direction of the tape because we have three heads and they're even recording a play. And rather than turn the head around and screw up the azimuth and nerdy nerdy talk talk stuff, they physically turn the tape. So there's like a turn table, the tape goes boom, boom, boom. It goes back in. One of the reasons why these decks, when they came out in the 80s, was a thousand bucks. Anyway, I thought that was pretty entertaining to watch when I found a video of that on YouTube. And lastly, if you're looking to buy a home studio, there's one online for sale right now. It's called sonictemple.com. Go check it out. Might be one you're looking for. If you're looking to invest about $5 million and relocating to the upper parts of Northern California, that is, but I found this thing online. David K told me about it. Check out sonictemple.com and see what a destination recording studio looks like. These are the kind of studios that exist because there was an era where bands would actually fly and travel to a place and stay there for a month and record albums. I don't think it happens that much anymore, to be honest. I think the bands build their own studios nowadays. But anyway, check it out. If you want to see some real studio porn, it's pretty freaking awesome. I'll bet it probably sounds great, but it's way up the coast. That's like almost Oregon. It's crazy far. Yeah, it's gotta be, it's gotta be a three hour drive from any airport. So yeah, if you need a studio, there you go. Check out sonictemple. Yeah. But we like the mattresses. We do. We do. This is like a nice medium between that and the sonic temple. Yeah. This is an isobooth with, you know, properly designed acoustic tracks. Sounds good. And Joe's a good guy. He's just a Josie's studio behind us and it's a beauty. He's been on our show. He has been on our show. Yeah. Very successful. By the way, before I end my soap boxing, I had this thing called Bring George Out. And if you want to go check it out, go to georgedetect.com. That's reverse that. And if you want to check that out, I'm traveling a bit in the next few months and that's a way you can get me to come to your house or your city when I'm traveling. I'm heading to Philly, New York in a couple of weeks, Toronto and Florida in September, Portland and Seattle in October. So a little bit of traveling going on. You can grab me while I'm on the road. So check out BGO. It's the George World Domination Tour. George. Alrighty. Okay. Well, overthinking. Should we go do that after the break? We'll do that after the break. And then we have a couple of questions that have been sent into our wonderful mailbox. And if you've got a question, throw it in the chat room right now. We'll be happy to answer it here on this week's Tech Talk number 13. We'll be right back after these. Hey, everybody, this is the time of the show. We're going to thank our wonderful sponsor, Source Elements, the creators of Source Connect, which is the premium way to connect your studio to other studios around the world with low latency and sample rate lock sync. Everything you send and stream over Source Connect will absolutely reach the other studio at the same time every time with no shifts in latency or anything weird going on with time stretching and things like this. This is an issue that happens with a lot of the other systems that work on web browsers. Source Connect is its own standalone application. It's rock solid. It's proven. And again, it's going to be requested by the top studios around the world. So if you want to play at that level and be ready to work with those big jobs that are using these studios, have Source Connect in your arsenal. Go get a 15-day free trial at Source-Elements.com. Get your iLock going. Get everything ready to go. And then when that session comes in, you can say, I've got Source Connect. You can buy your license, activate it, and you're ready to go. Tell them we sent you and we appreciate the support from Source Elements. Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big-voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for Snapchat, were you? This is Virgin Radio. Well, okay. We're not that innocent. There's jeans for wearing and there's jeans for working. Dickies. Cause I ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values, a leader for California, and a voice for America. It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smartphone. But it's so much more. It's a, the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs. What time is hockey practice? Check out this song. It's the end of the road for Rick. Just your name, Rick. When hope is lost. It's the I-8 from BMW. Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's J. Michael Collins. Bet you think I'm going to try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves. But I will give you my email. It's jmichael at jmcvoiceover.com. Now, if Dan will stop waxing his mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show. You know, every Monday I have to talk to Harlan Hogan, which is a pleasure because he's like, here's what I want you to talk tonight on your show tonight. So he wanted to mention, interestingly, the the voiceover resource guide, which appears in several cities, but here in LA, it's put out by Dave Sebastian Williams and his wife, Terry, and it lists everything that you could possibly need in the voiceover world, including you and me and our show and all that kind of stuff. And usually you go into a studio or one of the casting lounges and it's sitting there. That's right. And you should probably subscribe to it. And voiceover resource guide is really cool, you know, and which is why I advertised in there. Ask this voiceover essential stuff. Come Harlan Hogan's company, because he knows that you guys read it and he knows that you guys need the stuff that he has like the portabouth. Portabouth, we've shown it on the show many times. You know, it just packs up. You can put all your stuff into it and, you know, your computer, your microphone, your cables and you unfold it and suddenly you've got a voiceover studio wherever you are. If you're in the Antarctic, you could use that. I doubt you'd have internet, but at least you'd sound good doing it. But he's got the pro and the plus and they're great for when you're on the road. And, you know, sometimes some people are real obsessive about recording on the road. If you've got to have something good there, a portabouth pro or a portabouth plus is probably the thing you should have. And the place you can get it is voiceoveressentials.com. And it being summer and people doing lots of traveling, it's a good time to have one. And if you don't have one, go buy one now at voiceoveressentials.com. All you got to do if you want to see what one, which one would work best for you is go to the bottom of our homepage here where you're watching this very show and click on the icon of Harlan Hogan. And it will take you right to voiceoveressentials.com. And you'll see the demonstration of the portabouth plus and the portabouth pro and why they are perfect for you. So go over there right now and buy that and everything else he has on that page. Harlan will be most appreciative. Anyway, thanks for being our sponsor for seven and a half years, Harlan. We'll be right back with Chris Adgerly. So stay tuned. This is Bill Ratner and you're enjoying Voice Over Body Shop with Dan Leonard and George Wittem, vobs.tv. And we're back. You're on Voice Over Body Shop Tech Talk. You know, now we'll talk about this thing in a second. But you know, it's important if you need help with your home studio or you know nothing about how to set up a home studio. You need to talk to people that know what they're talking about. And that would be us. And if you want to work with George, who's very accomplished at building Home Voice Over Studios for the big boys. And if you want one that's like for the big boys or something simple. And the big girls. And the big girls. Well, we'll use it generically. The big boys. The big guys. The people who are important. Where do they go? Everybody that needs that kind of stuff or just wants to get their audio listened to because I do the soundcheck thing. You can have her to georgethe.tech. And if that melts your brain, it's georgethetech.com. And there's the drop down menu with all sorts of services you can check through. You can also schedule support on them on demand support. You can have me set up processing for you dial in your Apollo UAD console presets. All that kind of stuff. You can find all that stuff on the website. And Dan is available for doing a lot of the same kind of stuff over at homevoiceoverstudio.com. I can, you know, if you really don't know, if you're like, what do I do? Good place to start. Good place to start. I'll get you set up and running in a short period of time so you can get auditioning. And then make sure that it sounds right. And that's really what's important. Which leads me into our point of discussion this evening. Now this guy. There's a hole in there. There is a hole. And I'll show you that way. I find that people ask these questions. Hey, I want this. I want all this tuning. I want all this, all these processes so I can clean up my audio. Well, I have a tendency to think, not even a tendency. I know because I work with a lot of these people. Everybody who's really starting out at this and they come from some other area, like they were podiatrists or something. And they want to be in voiceover. And I'm like, why would you want to go into voiceover if you were a podiatrist? They don't want to smell feet anymore. I mean, that could be it. Cut off another wart. I don't need that. Uh, you overthink it. You think it's far more complicated than it really is. Especially if they stumble into some of the forums. Yeah, yeah. They'll go into many, many groups on Facebook. It's fun. Yeah, it's kind of cool. But you got an accordion. This is not an accordion. I am not going to play an accordion. I'm going to use this as a metaphor for what is I want to talk about when people are overthinking things. This, well, this is, you know, yesterday I was at the legendary Rose Bowl flea market. Oh, yeah. And I was looking for a radio. I was looking for a Zenith trans Oceanic. A portable radio. A portable radio. It has a handle. Yeah. And what did I come across? I came across a Zenith H500. You found what you were looking for. Exactly. At a really good price. And, uh, and, you know, it, does it work? It works a little bit. It's got to be fixed up. Because any smells? It does not smell. Oh, it does not. But here's the cool thing about this. And you're all wondering, why is Dan showing us this? You're going to pull this thing out a little harder. There we go. This is what it looks like on the inside. Okay. Now I do this as a hobby so I can learn a little bit more about electronics and stuff. It does diff. It has diff odor. I love this. It does. Nothing's burning in there though. No, it is. But taking these things apart and, and putting in new capacitors and really making this thing sound like new, not easy to do. But for my own enjoyment. That's a tube. That's a tube, man. Also, those are newer tubes. I've got older tubes that are sitting in the desk over there. But this is, uh, to me, this is a hobby. This is something I do. Right. But you can't take your voice over audio and make that a hobby. It's your profession. You want it done right. Stop thinking about all of these filters and things that you can do to improve your audio. My philosophy is don't overthink it. Put your thought into getting your acoustics right, your mic technique right, and setting your levels properly. Yeah. And because there's no secret sauce, it's going to make you sound better than you already do if you're a good voice actor. Now, are there minor little corrections you can do to a room? That's what you do with your stacks. I mean, once you become a pro and, you know, really start making a living at this, then you can really start to whittle away at the differences and the, make the optimizations, you know, but we just want to make sure right out of the gate you're sounding good. Right. So we, we talk about acoustics, making sure the room you're recording in is right and that you're using your microphone properly there. Stop overthinking this stuff and thinking, well, I could just record in my bathroom and I can take all these filters and make it sound better. Not going to happen. You know, it's, you've got it. This is, there's a way to do it and talk to George and I will help you learn it properly. Watch the show. People that want to talk to us. We have questions. Ask questions. Yes. We have a few. Good. Start it off. John Mobley. Yeah, John Mobley in Chicago. Chicago. Yeah. I'm just starting to get a small home studio going. Congratulations. Yeah. My budget is $500 or under. What am I looking for in a laptop? The budget is just for the computer. Thanks for that extra bit of info because that would be definitely tough to do the whole thing, including computer. So, I love you already got a microphone and an interface. Right. Well, I mean, if you've watched the show for more than one episode, you know, Dan and I are a little biased towards Apple and I'm always going to tell people to go search for a nice used Apple computer because they maintain their value. They maintain support. Basically the computer, you can pretty much always call Apple and at least get questions answered and get support. This is the official, you know, VOBS Mac computer refurbished. Yeah. And this machine actually ran the show. This was the computer for the show for some time. But yeah, you can get these refurbished. They'll still have a warranty, that kind of thing. And that definitely readily available for under $500, like a MacBook Air that's three or four years old, a Mac mini. Definitely. Probably didn't want to know about a Mac, I'm assuming, because he would have said a Mac. If you're looking for a laptop, if you're looking for a Windows machine, just make sure it's not a gaming machine. Right. Gaming laptops have huge power supply, huge powerful graphics processors and CPUs and what that translates into is noise. That stuff all needs to be cool. That has to be a really strong fan. So gaming computers tend to be generally, especially older ones that are under $500 are going to be really noisy. You just need USB and enough RAM and a good processor. I would say you should be easily able to find a used laptop for under $500 with eight gigs of RAM, 128 gigabyte SSD. Definitely, definitely when a solid-state drive. Absolutely. It's a humongous performance improvement to have that. At least two USB ports. Core i5 processor, although I've seen i3 ones that are okay, but really an i5 dual-core is probably what you're looking for. I don't know, I haven't shopped for a Windows laptop in the $500 range, but you can get a lot for $500 on the Windows side of things. We just did, because Jacob made it a new computer. My son who... What'd you get? It is a... And did you get it new or used? We got it new. You bought it on eBay, but it was not refurbished, but it had everything you wanted until we realized it had no HDMI out on it. It has something else. But it did have a mini DVI, and you plug that in and use it. An HDMI converter, and he's happy as a clan. And it's a lot lighter, and that's going to be his road computer. Do you remember how much it cost? It was about $500? About $500? So a machine for a kid that's doing animation, and needs something with a decent amount of power, $500. Absolutely. There you go, so. All right. We got a question from Chris Rees, who is joining us from the United Kingdom. Lovely. Yes, now it's a fairly lengthy question, so listen, I mean, I've been listening to the show as a podcast for a while, and I wanted to pass on my sincere gratitude for all the invaluable advice you give us. A listener. Absolutely. I've recently managed to get my hands on a used Sennheiser MKH416 via a television company here in the UK. I've been able to verify its legitimacy, and I'm very happy with the price I got for it. Nice. But it's an older one. It says, the issue is it's an older mic from about 2004, 2005, and runs on T-Power. I was going to thought he was going to say 1985 or 1975. I would have, too. It's not too bad. It's not that old. But T-Power, rather than the standard Phantom 48 volts. Right. It's my understanding with the 416, the technology has largely remained unchanged since the 70s, and I'm not anticipating any issues on that side. That said, my home studio, like most studios, run through a preamp that is phantom powered. I was able to buy an inline converter that allows it to convert to phantom power, and it sounds great for now. Before purchasing the converter, I went down the message board rabbit hole a little bit. We all know how painful that can be. And I'm just wondering if any pitfalls I should watch out for in the future when dealing with 48 volt to 12 volt T adapters and any potential impact it could have on what I'm hoping will be my forever mic. Thank you in advance and keep up the great work, Chris Rees. I forget forever mic is, that's a tall order. Yeah. But so do you know anything about T-Power? I just know that it was sort of used in the film sound for a video field. Right. It's a 12 volt converter. Yeah, it runs on 12 volts. I believe it was invented because having a portable system that could run on 48 volts was not practical. Plug it into your cigarette light. Those old days, you'd have to have a whole bunch of batteries to get 40 volts. Now we have technology that lets you get 48 volts off of a USB plug. So things have changed. But anyway, yeah, I have never heard of somebody having more problems with a Sennheiser 416 that has a T-Power adapter than any other 416. So my, the short answer to this long question is I don't see any potential impact. Unless that converter was shoddily made with cruddy components, you should have no problem. The big one that's in the U.S. here is called PSC. They make all these problem solving products in film production. And that's the one that I've used. And I've never had any problems. But you should not expect to have any issues with the properly designed adapters. So I wouldn't worry about it. Question from Ryan L. All right. I have a basic audio interface, but I'm getting close to maxing on the gain. So he's turning it. The gain is almost as far as it'll go to get level. Yeah, and I'm probably getting more his. Would adding a good mic preamp help? So I'm thinking like my mic, and then a preamp box here, then going line level into the audio interface. Or should I swap the interface for a better one, like the Apollo? The one that he has already, AI is, oh the one he has now is a UR-22 Mark II. So he's using a pretty decent one. The Steinberg is a pretty good piece of gear. Additional information, it's a cardioid mic. Or a condenser mic. Right. Well, he said cardioid not dynamic, which is sort of like saying do you walk to school or carry your lunch? Right. Doesn't make sense. But it's a cardioid, he's made me meaning it's a condenser mic. I mean, this question's familiar. I wonder if you asked it online somewhere, but I typically with a condenser mic for voiceover, you only need about 45 to 50 dB of gain. Right. For any normal situation, unless you're doing ASMR videos, if you don't know what this are, Google it. But unless you're doing that, you should have enough gain. So I'm wondering if something's up with your mic, which you conspicuously left out of the question. Like perhaps he's got the 10 dB pad on it. Yeah, we don't know anything about the mic. We don't know how it's positioned, how far away, how loud he delivers his audio. Is there something wrong with the mic? But it's unless something's wrong with the Steinberg, you should be getting plenty of gain already. You really should. Adding a preamp into the chain. Yes, it could help, but it could also be another source of noise. Noise, because they're analog. Yeah, you have more stuff in the line, more than go wrong. Depending on the interface, sometimes the line level input isn't really a line level input. It's actually just a padded down mic preamp. So again, more sources of noise. I would kind of get to the bottom of why the signal is so weak, considering you're using a condenser. I'm assuming a condenser onto this Steinberg. Something's choking it. Yeah, there's something up. There's something we don't know. There's some missing piece of information. So probably need more information to really answer that properly, but you should be okay. There is something called a cloud lifter. Maybe it's made by SE that is a cloud lifter thing that boosts the signal, but also that allows the phantom power in. Right. Because most of those are for dynamic only. Right. There is something that does that. It will boost the mic output, but I still do be a sister. Let's find out. Maybe the mic is something. I think we need to know more. We need to know more there, Ryan. Okay. Thanks, though. DVox has an interesting question. In a rental apartment, what's the best way to block outside traffic noise? I love how the shortest questions have the longest answers on this show. The answer is move. You live where you choose to live. You live where you choose to live. That always echoes in my brain when I'm dealing with somebody's noisy look. You live in the landing path of LAX? What do you want? It's expensive to rent a quiet house, and it's cheaper to rent one in a noisy area, but then you've got to build something to stop the sound. Yeah. Well, let's start with the most basic stuff. First start with the weakest point, usually the windows, right? Right. Check out a company called Indos. So it's Windows without the W. Indos. They have these retrofit windows kits. So it's like glass or Lexan or some other heavy material. Double pane. It's custom made for the size of your window. So you send them a measurement of your window frame. Right. And then they send this thing to you, and then you press it into the opening of your window, and it creates an airtight seal, and now you have another piece of glass between you and the outside world. And that does a lot, actually. That's probably the biggest leak. I always liken it to a dam. When you're trying to plug a huge leaky dam, you start with the biggest leak first, right? Probably the window. I mean, it almost always is the windows. That's where you're going to start. From there, once you've figured out that's the main source of noise, then everything else from here gets more expensive very quickly. Like it's coming through the walls. Is it coming to the ceiling? Where else is there noise coming in? And then how do you stop those sources? It's without knowing all the details about that space and the noise sources and how loud they are and what frequencies the noise are and all that. It's really hard to give you a lot more advice than that. But start with the obvious thing. Plug that window. And if putting an Indo thing is just too pricey, DIY. Just make your own. Get some MDFs, some heavy wood. Put a rubber piece of trim on it or something. And shove it into the window. Make an airtight seal. It could help. It's amazing how a window actually can amplify distance sound. Yeah, yeah. Because it stops some sound, but it actually resonates and amplifies the other self. I do live near Ohio. Well, it's about two blocks down. Well, I can hear it. Well, I'm next to a picture window. We'll move away from it. The mic is because the window is both a microphone and a speaker. Right. So amplifying the sound. And also getting the microphone not facing the window. So, you know, remember, it's a cardioid mic. Yeah, get the deadest sound of the mic. Right. If the sound is coming from this way and you're talking that way, then that's going to help alleviate it, especially with a really directional mic, like say a 416 or something like that. Right, right. So. A couple simple things you can try. Yes. Fred North. This rhymes with orange. Well, you know, Fred. Yes, a tech comment. Last summer, George suggested putting my booth on hockey pucks due to the rumble of the AC in the basement below me. It helped, but it improved more when we switched to heat. It returned again this spring changing to AC. I learned that the AC fan blows harder than the heat. HVAC people changed my fan speed to heat, and now the AC rumble is gone. Hockey pucks and a slower speed fan. Geez, I would love to know how much the hockey pucks actually did help. I mean, that would be fascinating for me to know. You know, you read these things online, and you hear, say this, and you experiment with that, but it would be awesome, Fred, if you could somehow come up with like a, here's what it sounded like before the pucks, here's what it sounded like after, to see if it actually did anything. Right. But that's, it's interesting. I didn't know you could tell the, I didn't know that you could change the fan speed to heat mode while it's running air conditioning. I didn't know that. And that's, hey, learned something today. I, you know, thank you. And I found that when I, when you, and you learn how to change the fan speed, which is like, take the wire. Is it a wire jumper thing? It's a jumper thing. You change to a, unscrew this thing, and then you move it over. Once I improved the fan speed on a fan back in Buffalo, it made a huge difference in, you know, being able to heat and cool the house. But if you're at a high speed, you're going to have higher vibration. And that's probably what's causing it. Yeah. I mean, if any fan, if you can find a speed control for it and slow it down, you're going to be in good shape. Like if the fan for your whisper room tends to be too noisy, tends to run too fast. If you can find a speed control that can slow that fan down, you might be able to get it to a speed where it's still effective, but not so audible. So. Absolutely. Could be a cheap fix. Yeah. And knowing about hockey pucks, because I played goalie until I was about 40, you know, I know what's written on the net. You know, you know, made in Czechoslovakia, you know, now the Czech Republic or Slovakia, depending on how you look at it. But yeah, I was like, I knew what those things look like and they're hard. I don't know how much cushion they actually give. They're very dense. Very dense. Yeah, you know, and they can take your teeth out. Which is why I have some crooked teeth. And then the last question, I guess it's from somebody familiar who was talking about this. I guess your dad has one of these. Apparently. A trans Oceanic? Yes. My mom says my dad's got one too. So somewhere in my dad's house of stuff, he's got quite a few collectibles and interesting gadgets. He's got one of these. Well, I'll have to touch base with them. I'm coming back to visit in about two and a half weeks, July 23rd, flying back to Philly. My mom's turning 70. Woo. We're going to have a big party and I'll play with my dad's Oceanic radio. See if it works. See what smells it makes when you turn it on. That's not that bad. Anyway, thanks for your questions. If you've got a question for us any time, write to us at theguysatvobs.tv. And we'll be happy to answer that question like we just did in our Tech Talk segment tonight. That's right. Thank you guys. Thanks for the questions. These had this fascinating antenna on it. You know, these little thumb screws. I hope I don't lose them. We'll be right back. Yeah. Yeah. But it was called the your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead. Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer. That place is voiceoverextra.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, casting, 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 and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voiceover audition. It's all here at voiceoverextra.com. That's voiceoverxtra.com. As a voice talent, you have to have a website. But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you. And when they finally do, they break or don't look right on mobile devices. They're not built for marketing and SEO. They're expensive. You have limited or no control. And it takes forever to get one built and go live. So what's the best way to get you online in no time? Go to voiceactorwebsites.com. Like our name implies, voiceactorwebsites.com just does websites for voice actors. We believe in creating fast, mobile-friendly, responsive, highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use. You have full control. No need to hire someone every time you want to make a change. And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time. You can get your voiceover website going for as little as $700. So if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity in dealing with too many options, go to voiceactorwebsites.com where your VO website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what. Imagine mandatory retirement at age 57 and Jay Rodney Turner wasted no time when he got that news. He decided what the next act in life was going to be for him. Voiceover. Unfortunately for him, he chose the one form of acting, voice acting for which the demand far exceeds the number of available performers. Audio book narration. He worked hard and smart and Jay Rodney Turner's name is now on the cover of over 100 of those audio books for sale right now on Audible, which he produced in just the last four years or so. Want to know a secret? Here it is for free. David H. Lawrence the 17th has just released the first episode of a free video training series devoted to audiobooks and it tells just how Jay Rodney Turner did it. In vivid detail, visit vo2gogo.com forward slash vobs to see it. If the idea of getting paid to tell stories appeals to you or if you're already doing audiobooks but aren't having the success you know you're capable of achieving, this video is a must-see. Check out the video here. Visit vo2gogo.com forward slash vobs. That's vo2gogo.com forward slash vobs. Hey guys, this is Tom, also known as the boys of SpongeBob SquarePants and you want to fill your ear holes and your eye holes with Dan and George and the audio body shop. Hey. Can entertain ourselves somehow. I know, those long pregnant paws there well. Yes, anyway. Next week after we'll have another guest on and I know there's a couple of people we have lined up that will be fast. We've got a bunch of people in the queue who are just saying, jockeying for position. That's right. Who wants to be on here more? That's what we want to do. Who are our donors of this particular week? This particular week, we had a few come in from CoolPrintUSA, Michelle Blanker. Hi, Michelle. Antland Productions. Hey, Uncle Roy. Brian Rash. Christy Burns and Abraham Edwards or Abram Edwards. Sorry about that. Yeah. And he spells it differently. That's really how he spells it. That's how I double check the spelling. That's how he spells his name. E-D-E-W-A-R-D-S. Edward, yes. Alrighty. Hey. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Show us your booths. This is Joe Zeja's booth. Joe Zeja. Yeah. Nice big one here. You know, this one was a really plet... This one was cool because he really knew what he wanted. He had a pretty short timeline to do it in. And it just worked out that my builder Corey was available. And it's one of those projects where the client was very collaborative with us and helped it move along. That's the way it should be. Joe was a sh... Absolute pleasure to work with. I mean, because he knew it was important too. He knew what he wanted. He knew it was important. He didn't get hung up on some of the little things. He knew that we could fix things later if they weren't perfect. Yeah. And it came out beautifully. Good example of somebody a pioneer coming out to LA to be a voice actor. That's right. And succeeding at it. You know. He... He must have taken some... A lot of the right advice and really listened to us because his career has done really well. Yeah. So as you can see, George can build these sorts of things. And if you want a... You want a big expensive one like this or something simpler or you want to just understand your audio or you need it fixed, you go to talk to George at... I'm over at GeorgeTheTech.com or GeorgeThe.Tech. There's a website with a lot of different options. Maybe sometimes too many so you can always drop me a line. Contact me if you're not sure what service to purchase. So we've got a lot on there. Dan, you're over on that other website called... Homevoiceoverstudio.com. So aptly named. If you don't know what to do. If you're like, oh, I'm a voice actor but I'm scared of this having a home studio stuff. I'm scared. Don't do it. Just contact me. We'll talk you through it. I can consult with you. If you've got an existing studio you're not sure it's not sounding right. You can send a sample of your audio to me at the Legendary Specimen Collection Cup. I've had a lot of those come in lately and everybody's saying, how do I sweeten my sound? Work on your delivery. Mostly sweeten your acting first. Yeah, it's really because there's no microphones, no piece of equipment. There's no dialing in all sorts of things that's going to make you sound like somebody's better than you already are. Right. Concentrate on your acting. But we can make sure that if there are some problems we can fix it. Because I think it's important that when you're doing, when you're thinking about your home studio audio, the idea is not to make it sound great. It's to make sure it doesn't sound bad. And there's a lot of things can make it bad. You take away the bad. All of a sudden you sound like you, which is what you're supposed to be doing. Let's see here. Hey, you know, if you want to be in our studio, it's quiet here tonight. Yeah, we have some space. We do. We can easily accommodate a good number of you. Five or five, six, seven good friends. It's great having a live audience here. If you're in the greater Los Angeles area, or you're visiting or whatever, and you're going to be around tonight on a Monday night when we're taping the show, join us. Write to us again at TheGuys at vobs.tv and tell us when you're going to be in town or when you'd like to come and, you know, from whatever part of the greater Los Angeles County area. You can watch what Sue does over her shoulder. And we got crickets over in the corner. And so just write to us and tell us you'd like to be in the audience. You know, bring a couple of friends with you. It's great. I love the energy of having a live audience. Me too. Especially when they laugh, because when you say something funny and you hear nothing, it's like, was it funny? The tree falls in the forest. Exactly. We need to thank our amazing sponsors, like Harlan Hogan's Voice Over Essentials. Voice Over Extra. Source Elements. Video to go-go. VoiceActorWebsites.com. And J. Michael Collins-Demos. And of course, Dan and Marcy Leonard Foundation for the betterment of live webcasting. Mike Merlino. Where is Mike? You know. Sometimes in the chat room. Sometimes not. That is mom always here doing technical directing. Sue Merlino. Boom. Fabulous. She's nailing it. And Lee Penny. Simply for being Lee Penny. Come visit us, Lee, please. Amazing, man. Come, we'll do lunch. Anyway, that's going to do it for us this week. We're so glad that so many of you are tuning in and watching the show and sending us your questions because George and I just totally get off on this stuff. This is the meaning of our lives is to get this to you. And getting the good questions and helping you guys out is really what we're all about. And it's good to do with my good buddy, George, and bring it to you every couple of weeks. Anyway. Because, you know, if it sounds good. It is good. All right. I'm Dan Leonard. I'm George Whitham. And this is Voice Over. Body Shop. Or VOBS. Tech Talk. We'll see you next time.