 Hey, it's time for tech talk number 17 Ever you notice that How it kind of fits with the guests that we had on before the 17th thing. Yeah, we plan that of course. No, we didn't anyway Tech talk number 17. We got lots of cool stuff to talk about tonight with some cool travel speakers USB stuff what else we got we're gonna talk about what we might hear about from Apple tomorrow a little bit Okay, not a whole lot how to get a really really cheap one terabytes Solid-state drive all sorts of cool stuff after PC. Yeah, and we're going to discuss Those little noises that you either hear or don't hear and how to get rid of them All right, and your questions get them in the chat room right now So we can answer them here 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 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 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 voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials.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 heroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voice over training 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 Well, hello there, I'm Dan Leonard. I'm George Wittem and this is voiceover body shop or VO Bs Tech talk tech tech talk talk talk number 17 Fascinating week here at the voiceover body shop all sorts of cool things going on people having problems with their studios You know, how do I route this? We get lots of interesting questions from people in our professional practices as home studio engineers and consultants Yes, it inspires this show sometimes it does. We could talk hours on it. Yeah, I mean and that's generally what we do Is you and I get together? It's like, yeah, here's what I heard today. Yeah, and oh, did you see that discussion on Facebook? That thing in the groups. Oh my god. Yeah, what are people thinking? But anyway, we'd love your questions if you've got a question about home voiceover studio technology Throw it in the chat room right now and we will get to that question. We'll just a little bit and You can answer it to the best of our knowledge The Facebook chat is what's firing tonight. Yeah, you've just decided to ice us tonight We have no idea why but we are on Facebook live. Yes Which is where a lot of people watch us up is a darn good idea. I don't have everything in one basket Always have a backup kids. Yeah. Alrighty. So what's up with your tech update this week? Oh, man, this you know as usual is a grab bag of stuff a couple of show and telly things Okay, I'm a I used to be a headphone junkie But now I feel like I do have enough different headphones and I'm pretty happy with the headphones I have so I'm not buying as many of those now. I'm buying a little bit more Bluetooth speakers these days Maybe a year or so ago. I did actually bring one on to maybe two years ago It was a little cylinder cylindrical one. I liked it because it was not expensive sounded reasonably good. Well, I had it I Do dumb things I had it strapped onto the back of my bike went on a bike ride went down a very dirt bumpy road And it fell off at some point. It's gone. There's some rattlesnake who's playing with it Yeah, that's why I don't buy two hundred dollar use Bluetooth speakers I buy the forty dollar ones from Amazon But so it was time to time to get a new US Bluetooth speaker and It's cool when you find something has multiple functions and has come some interesting tricks and I did find something and The brand the brand all these things from China the branding. I don't know how they come up with names I don't know if they have this thing where they throw in Letters and it spits out random things I'll try saying it and go that sounds a name generator. Yeah. Yeah, so this is the ZAM coal Z a m k o l speakers That the model is the ZK to zero six These are kind of cool because they are they have a lot of functions. So one of them is they're just USB I mean, they're just Bluetooth speakers obviously But the tricks they have up their sleeve are numerous and the ones that matter the most to melt to us I'll focus on I mean they are waterproof That's almost a very important with voice over IP 7 our IP X where they say you can drop these in water literally They what what's cool about them is they it's a stereo Bluetooth speaker that Comes apart so it has this little strap you can take that off and now this thing Separates into two speakers. It literally is to us to Bluetooth. I keep saying USB There's two Bluetooth speakers. They can be used independently You could have one and give it to one kid and give it on one of the other kid Good idea. You could give one to your girlfriend and keep one and then when you see each other, honey We can do stereo Get together. Yes, there's all kinds of fun, but the sound quality is really Surprisingly decent. I mean they have really figured out how to make a good sounding and affordable Bluetooth speaker right now. I mean, it's really really impressed I mean, I can play something now. It doesn't really do any justice whatsoever to play something on Just play something good. Well, I can't guarantee I could do that We'll get flagged for playing it, but I do have this library of music What's this one? Let's try this one interesting mix There's no way you can tell but the the woofers on this thing are shaking I can feel the thing physically moving It's really quite amazing and Okay, so what's the big deal these out there sound quality I in my opinion is good enough that with voiceover that you could bring these as your one speaker for travel and just Have them in your bag when you get to your hotel room put them on your desk And you can edit to these speakers and get reasonably good Reproduction, right? You're not gonna expect amazing things in a hotel room But their sound quality is good enough that you could definitely edit with these, you know They have really good very compliant little rubber feet, so they won't transmit too much vibration to the car And when you want to plug them into a computer you don't have to use Bluetooth We have an auxiliary plug and it's a Y cable right so one goes to one speaker one goes to the other one goes to your device and then it also has a Corresponding charger that is also a Y cable, so you can charge both at the same time Well, these things are currently like sixty five to seventy dollars on Amazon I saw some youtubers say that when he bought them they were forty dollars Amazon Prices are crazy. They go up and down like the stock market There's something called honey have you heard or have you heard of honey you can stall a utility on your web browser and it monitors stuff You're looking at and honey will say hey by the way Amazon just discounted that thing twenty bucks go snag it Who comes up with this stuff Amazon plays with prices like it's incredible what they do with prices Yeah, anyway, those are cool Another thing is I'm looking to upgrade the the RAM or not the RAM but the storage in my MacBook Air and Love Apple products hate how they do they prior Proprietize that'll work. Yes Certain things in their computers So yes, you can go into a MacBook Air and really easily upgrade the the storage the SSD Yeah, not you're not the RAM bunch of screws not the RAM But a bunch of screws bottom pops off same with this MacBook Pro you have same deal Bunch of screws on the bottom get a pentalobe screwdriver do not even think about using any standard screwdriver and Pop it off and you'll see that there is an SSD inside and that SSD will look something like this It looks like a RAM chip it looks like a RAM chip and in this case This is what I bought to put into my MacBook Air. This is one terabyte. Wow Not a hundred gigabytes one terabyte of storage 1,000 gigabytes on this little card and These are very you know commonly available thing is that this is a very fast drive So it this is going to be as fast or faster of what's in it's not mechanical. It's just right and it is um So this is this is a this is an m.2 SATA SSD so We're getting a little geeky But these are things you look for when you look at something that's fast But then you can buy a little this the thing it's sitting in is a little USB adapter which lives Inside this metal sleeve. I kept it all on unscrewed and so you could see what it looks like But you can buy this little card with the USB cable and the thing for 20 bucks And now for roughly a hundred to hundred and ten bucks. You have a one terabyte USB 3.1 SBC drive which That means you have a really fast drive that you can do anything externally now that you would have normally had to do internally And it will run beautifully and you would edit and you don't have to carry the external drive like it's an egg Yeah, you can edit 4k video direct to this thing. It is Stinking fast and I've showed you guys the little One made by a sand disk that I like a lot This is half the price of that for the amount of storage again one terabyte for about a hundred bottle The next stage for me is to put this in my MacBook And again that the proprietary thing was talking about this pin. Is there a place to slide the slide it is Yes, this this will come out of this and you can put it inside the MacBook Well, but the little pins the the connector here on a Mac. They've rewired it. So it's different Guess what you can buy a $10 adapter, of course that will convert on Amazon Yeah, and now this part that would this would be like a three to four hundred dollar drive for a Mac is a hundred bucks Wow, I'm in the middle of the process of trying to make that work It's not exactly plug-and-play as I have found out I have the operating system on there, but when I boot the computer on it gives me a little flashing Folder which basically in Macworld means you ain't got no hard drive, man You're not booting up. So I got a little more work to do I'll let you guys know if I get if I figure out the secret sauce to make this work But anyway That is the one thing from Apple that I don't want to spend full price for for their SSDs are crazy crazy expensive. Absolutely Another thing is This is not really directly related, but it comes up so much that people have been talking about it 5g right If you have an AT&T phone, you may have already seen 5g show up on the very top, you know the little LTE symbol you may have seen something. It says 5g E on your eye on your existing iPhone or whatever it is from AT&T So 5g is this next generation of mobile data. We're all mostly using 4g at this point or LTE Or some flavor of that What 5g is is it's the next generation of this and it's Got some major pros and cons and they're very much at odds to each other So very quickly pros super duper duper fast There's this blogger named MK BHD or is that how you say his name may have bought did I set the right way to say it? Being checked on that. Okay good. Yeah, he's a very well-known youtuber and he's he went up to Connecticut found a neighborhood where there's 5g Bought a 5g capable phone and there's not many and tested it and on the street walking around He got 1.6 Gigabits a second on a mobile phone so speed not a problem. The problem is all this technology comes at a major cost One of them is its line of sight So he would walk down the street and he would turn the corner around the building and the speed would plummet To the like a blessed on a hundred mega second like immediately. Yeah, so think about how many antennas You'd have to have to know where they are. Okay, there's one over there So there's got to be a ton of antennas. That's one problem two Because of that because it is very fast. It also requires quite a bit of power So it drains your battery way faster. So you're gonna need a much bigger battery, which we don't have quite yet That's two and three this this is controversial But this is the thing that has people concerned is how about all the radiation? I was gonna say the RF the RF thrown out there asked it out into our brains and ears That's the kidneys we're waiting to see if it really is an issue But it's enough of an issue that there are some communities that are already like protesting against it to panga Where I happen to live is one of those there's there's little town hall meetings about no 5g well It's kind of silly to panga. There's literally entire sound sections of town that don't have Cell phone coverage period. So the whole idea We don't want 5g like dude didn't even have anything. You don't have any coverage at all, right? It's pretty funny. So anyway, don't worry about 5g for a long time It's gonna be something that's gonna be used for professional professional use, but for consumer grade It's completely overpriced very hard to find the phones are much much more expensive It's bleeding bleeding edge stuff right now. So if you do see 5g e-shape on your AT&T phone That's simply AT&T getting away with something. It's branding. It's BS. It doesn't actually mean anything You heard it here same dang thing you already had it's just them pulling a fast one They did it was 4g to they had 4g so it's it's not true Anyway, that's my little rant about 5g. Don't worry about it quite yet. Check in with us about a year or two I wasn't even thinking about it. I wasn't either. I mean, I'm I'm happy with mine for the most part In terms of speed. Yeah, I can do a YouTube video edit it on my phone of a mountain bike ride which I do almost every week and Upload it if I want to blow my data plan But and upload it while I'm out and about the 600 meg video and it's up and ready to go Yeah, I LTE I switched carriers a little while ago and you know, perhaps the coverage isn't great in certain areas Yeah, but the speed is there. Yeah, if I if I've got LTE and it's like what do I need? I just got the GPS has to work. It's very coverage dependent and it depends a lot on where you live I went from Verizon to Google Fi. Yeah pros and cons on that one, but Google Fi combines T-Mobile and Sprint Which is it can be good. Yeah, it can be good, but uh But for voiceover and sending files, we're sending MP3s. Come on. Yeah, what you got is probably fine I use mine in hotspot a lot to hotspot mode. Yeah, usually I really love that big lifesaver We once ran this show completely from a hotspot. Oh, we've done that more In fact, I think it was view Atlanta number two or one or remember when we were brought in to do the live stream Yes The early days and we live stream the entire opening event on a mobile phone I think it was Dan's mobile phone the bill was pretty horrendous, but well, no, I had unlimited I didn't we had a limited time. That's right. It didn't matter. It was pretty amazing Yeah, so one of the things I wanted to talk about yeah is Something I think a lot of people who are you know who have a home studio and the operative worm there word there is Home, right because a home is not the ideal place to record Unless of course you set it up proper. Yeah, generally. It's impossible to sound not by default. No, no It's impossible to sound proof your home It takes money knowledge Time a good contractor And the right materials to do that and you've got to know how to do it and it's got to be done, right? So it's not necessary because there are other ways to Make sure you don't get those external noises one is you live where you choose to live It was wisely on your location Yeah, don't don't live underneath the the flight path at LA X or Bob Hope or one of the you know Yeah, one of the other me know LaGuardia. Heck you can't hear anything there in Queens because LaGuardia It's in and out. Yeah Airplanes are a problem helicopters are a problem especially here in Los Angeles Constant feel the cavitation what I want to talk about are some of those other little noises that come from Inside the house. No those little ones those insidious sounds. Yes. What is that sound and and the way people describe them? Of course is always really weird But you know, is it a hiss? Is it a buzz? Is it a hum? Is it a this? It's like well one person's hiss is another person's hum Or buzz or buzz. Yeah, or a click or whatever a lot of times and We will look at it and when you can look at a waveform and you see that it is a Constant pattern that indicates that it is something mechanical. Yeah, usually it's an air conditioner I have gone through apartment buildings going where is that? Where is this air conditioner? We've gone down to apartments below. It's good. You turn off your ceiling fan. You'll do it I'm like, no, it's still there. Apartments are tough man. That whole gigantic building is Homing and resonating with all sorts of the machinery that's in the building, right? They're tough Yeah So trying to find that and trying to smell it out and it's like well turn your thermostat off when you're doing that Just remember to turn it back on when you're finished recording refrigerator refrigerator That's the one I wanted to really bring up now. I've my studio used to be in my for those of you in the northeast my basement a Basement I was right underneath the kitchen and I could hear the refrigerator and I'm like, what is it? Oh, I'm right below the refrigerator Yeah, what I did is I found some anti-vibration foam Mounted it on the floor put some very thin wood strips over it rolled the refrigerator back on top of it got rid of it How did you just sort how to what had any vibration foam like where do you find that is online look for anti-vibration foam? Does that come from a soundproofing? Yeah, there's it. Yeah, they've got it. There's a couple of different websites But if you you Google it or I vibration pads or right now it comes in different thicknesses and stuff I found this thin stuff and I still have a little bit of it left I was working on somebody's studio the other day We were building it and this person was freaking out because they had just moved into this apartment And apparently the refrigerator had not been turned on when she was first looking at it Sure, so when she's moving in and I'm setting up the studio. It's like the refrigerator was making this noise Now having lots of experience with the refrigerators. I'm like, okay, let's pull the refrigerator out And I would have just unplugged it and then well, I was gonna say mom plug your refrigerator Yeah, that's not the best solution not a smart idea But I noticed that the backing of the refrigerator had come loose right around where the compressor was down near the bottom Down to the bottom and unlike it's not the fan Embedding the compressor is loose or something and I look in there and I touch one of the Pipes that's in there. Yeah, and this high-pitched frequency Stopped took my finger off. I heard it touch it Had some of that anti-vibration foam that I bought for my refrigerator back in Buffalo seven or eight years ago He's in the trunk of my car. Yeah, put it inside some of those tubes Yeah Guys don't worry about your refrigerator. I went back in the studio. Couldn't hear it. That's a good trick So, yeah, try that on my girlfriend's place. My philosophy is always Don't use technology to fight these noises. That's a last resort. It really is you want to do everything you can Physically yeah to eliminate noise and you try to isolate yourself in a closet Find a quiet room. That's you know, not near a window those sorts of things, but there are noises in the house Find them be Sherlock Holmes and look around and find out where that noise is coming from and also remember That your microphone doesn't have a brain Our brains take some of these noises and filter them out if you're lucky. Yeah, well I'm really annoying like this refrigerator was really annoying. I would have driven me nuts after a while But your brain tunes it out as a monotonous tone Yeah, and you don't hear it, but your microphone does right and if your microphone does so does your hard drive and so does the engineer at the other end of whatever it is that you've sent them and That can be an issue that makes it all the other so if you have an issue with a sound Describe if you're sending it into one of us to like what's this noise or I'm in somebody's house Or their apartment or something I will look around and I will find that noise And I will find a way to get rid of the noise itself not go well What sort of sound thing all these people are looking at all of these different sound and noise reduction programs Yeah, which can degrade your audio significantly if you don't know how how you work them Yeah, so it's really really important to find the source better to Stop the cause as opposed to treating the symptoms as any good doctor will tell you absolutely So all right. Hey, if you've got questions for us throw them in the chat room right now We're gonna take a little break and we'll get to those questions and continue the discussion here on voiceover body shop tech talk number 17 Right now This is Bill Ratner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with Dan Leonard and George Whidham V obs dot TV Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice denouncer 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 cuz I ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values a leader for California and a voice for America It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smart phone, but it's so much more It's a the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs. What time is hockey practice check out this song It's the end of the road When hope is lost the I8 from BMW Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's J. Michael Collins. Bet you think I'm gonna try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves, but I will give you my email. It's J. Michael at JMC voiceover dot com Now if they will stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show This is the time of the show where we get to talk about one of our wonderful sponsors source elements Those are the creators of source connect that is a software that voice acting pros are being demanded to have in their home studios By the commercial studios of the world. How do I know this? Well, I've set up software for everybody on every platform and in every scenario you can imagine and This is the one that people are being requested to get it's a standalone application doesn't run on a Google Chrome browser, so you have a lot more stability involved and This software has been tried and true tested and proved the whole nine for well over ten years now So if you really want to be establishing a business and voiceover that works with the top studios in the world Top agents that kind of thing make sure you have source connect locked and loaded in your studio Absolutely important go get a 15-day free trial at source dash elements calm 15-day free trial You don't need an I lock little USB dongly thing to get set up with source connect standard right away So go give it a try and tell them we sent you. We'll be right back right after this Hey, it's time to talk about our good friend Harlan Hogan and voice over essentials and tonight voice over essentials Announces a promo code to get a discount on their porta booths like this one here now What with material labor and shipping cost increases not to mention tariffs and the straw that broke the camel's back a big hike in Storage cost they had to raise prices on the booths by just a little bit Just ten dollars on the porta booth plus and twenty dollars on the porta booth pro But our wonderful VOBS viewers can still get either of their booths for their original price for the next two weeks You should go to of course voice over essentials.com easy to get there at the bottom of our page just click the picture of Harlan there and put either of their booths in their shopping cart and Enter the promo code Booths 24 in the promo code field and click the submit promo code button That'll get you ten dollars off the plus and twenty dollars off for the pro get a porta booth now at the original price at voiceover essentials.com. Thanks a lot Harlan Before time began there was VOBS.tv watch or else Well, like it or not we're back After a another rousing discussion on tech stuff Yeah, but we've got questions from our vast audience out there They've been sending them in and if you love yeah, if you've got a question through it in the chat room right now and And during the week if you have a problem or a question or something like that Email us at the guys at VOBS dot TV and we will answer that question Because we'll have time to actually research it if we need to that's right and our first question comes from our very good friend out in the desert there Jack de Gaulle and Jack says Thomas Tyria Say his name, right the developer of Twisted Wave by the way Sent me an interesting reply to a glitch problem that I reported to him that I had with a big 28 hours finished hour. Oh boy audio book project He's using a studio project C1. It's a good moderately priced Mike a Focus ride scarlet solo generally a good piece of gear. He didn't say whether it's the gen one Gen two or gen three version. There are three versions a MacBook Air running Mojave, which looks like the latest version He had Twisted Waves buffer set to 1024 Milliseconds, I think that's what that measured in basically he had that set conservatively. It should be okay I shut the computer down each night. So what he's basically saying I'm doing everything, right everybody Have you run into this issue with focus, right? The glitchy sample I sent Thomas is attached No, I missed the attached part. Okay I've not had this glitch issue since early August. So it's happened before Yes, it has happened before apparently. This is not an isolated issue Did this come in by email because I'm yeah, I don't think he actually sent it to us I think he sent it to Thomas over at Twisted wave. Yeah, I don't think I have it. I did not see it Well, okay, so oftentimes the most completely hard to explain and randomized glitches in my experience almost always related to USB on some level It's not perfect It's not perfect and and the problem is is that we're asking a lot of this little USB cable We're asking to do a lot of stuff. It's carrying audio to the computer It's carrying audio from the computer and it's powering the device that's doing all this work all in this one little cable and Most of us with scarlet solos all these little inexpensive Interfaces they're bus powered meaning there. They don't have a power supply Power supply is the biggest deal about any piece of gear, especially audio related How good is the power supply the gear is only as good as that power supply if the power supply is Compromised if it's weak if it's not if it's dirty if the cable carrying the signal is not great any one of these reasons you get loss of functionality completely Which is actually not as bad because that's like okay if it stopped working great move on get something else But the worst ones are the random problems or the loss of The glitchiness the clickiness which I don't have the audio but I can guarantee what he's talking about has some clicking Clickiness and there's some static in it right you've heard this probably a lot It's dropouts. It's snap crackle pop. Yeah, and sometimes it's not in the recording Sometimes it's only when you're playing back right and the way you can tell which is it was a recording or playback is When you play it and it's in a different the clicks are in a different place each time and you don't see them in the waveform It's probably playback right But with usb stuff it's got you gotta be really careful if something comes with a Normally short usb cable like three feet long Scarlet solo Yeah, that's a little reason it's because they if well one they want to save money I guess say five cents on a longer cable. I don't know but two it's because that cable was proven to be reliable with that device and Changing that cable in any way. They're not gonna guarantee It's gonna be reliable and a lot of cases. We're trying to run these usb connections longer I'm dealing it with it right now. I have a client with a usb mixer, which are cool But sometimes the computer is 10 to 15 feet away now. We got to run usb a lot further He started having glitches because it was plugged in I think because it was plugged into a usb hub So I got him a usb extender that's powered So it's got a usb on each end. It uses cat six in between Oh to run the cable you can go 180 feet or so apparently and then there's a power supply that plugs into it to power the system Even with all of that the next day I tested it work Of course it worked beautifully always works great when the mechanics there right when you take the current and then It started glitching to him the next day and I was like did you Reboot the computer how often you reboot your computer and all that kind of stuff so What is this whole rant going towards? the problem with usb is It's old old technology from almost 20 years ago Maybe more that we've now kind of we're trying to adapt in a newer newer systems And there are newer flavors of usb the usb-c being the one I'm thinking of the most and there's massive improvements in the usb system So if you're shopping now for audio interfaces and you're concerned about these kinds of issues See if you can start finding usb interfaces with usb-c as the jack on the back The road AI one is one of those. I haven't seen too many people with them I have set up one of them, but it has that usb-c jack and with that jack comes a higher grade of cable and Also more power from the computer is delivered to the device So you probably will have a lot less issues or going to a usb interface that has its own power supply You know some of them have a wall wart that plugs in right the audience stuff does for example So, you know watch out for that. Yeah, I had a conversation with our good friend Anthony getting this morning bought himself a road Podcaster. Oh, he got the roadcaster the roadcaster. Yeah, I got it has replaced five Pieces of gear in his studio. Yeah, and he said is the video that you did on it That's sort of convinced him and he was we talked about it. He went out and bought one all of his outdoor gear You know the outboard gear he has or here. It's he doesn't need the headphone distribution amplifier anymore It's that's for headphone jacks. It has four headphone jacks You can use it as a phone patch because it's got Bluetooth in it and you're or you can plug your phone into it was designed for podcasting right but it could as he was saying it could be the sleeper panel for voice actors everywhere because it eliminates so many things and puts it all in one package Anthony is a more Anthony is more Well, he does he's producing as much as he is voiceover. So he's a little bit more definitely more techie Right then made me many of you, but I got to say my roadcaster it gets better over time because they continuously update the firmware We just did an episode of Pro Audio Suite this podcast I do and we just talked about the new update to the firmware that dropped like the day of the show that we taped and It was version 2 and they're like There you go. Here's 26 brand new features because you wanted them 26 features I Mean you see that in software, right? That's not so uncommon But for a piece of hardware physical gear to suddenly have 26 new functions Inside it is kind of mind-boggling. They got somebody somebody smart working for us. I'm a smart engineer This thing is like R2-D2. It is what everyone asks you to do really impressive. I keep waiting I have to say I'm the paranoid one with gear. I'm waiting for the other shooter drop I'm waiting for something to be unreliable about it so far so good We're six months in and every firmware update has been fine and worked and you know, it's been a great piece of gear Yeah, I've got I gotta get me one of those although it's I've got our our Ellen and Heath broadcast board Which does a good piece of gear. Yeah, it's solid for me. This thing is a It's I did the same thing. I got one and it replaced four pieces of gear in my studio and It's not flawless, but dang close and it's decluttered my desk dramatically. I'm really I've been really happy Yeah, I mean you could sell all the old stuff and pace for the the whole no gear, which yeah Watch it. I'll say one new feature. I won't get into it too much But okay, you know in that mixer There's a little indents button that when the mic turns on the speakers turn off right it's gonna mute but Mutes my mother muting as soon as you turn on a mic They just added that so now if you pot up guys slider for the mic or if you unmute the mic The monitors turn off if you have this feature turned on Only just like it right now. It's a broadcast board. I mean, it's I love it. It's fabulous Well before we get to our next question. Yeah, we need to remind our vast audience out there What you and I do if they haven't figured it out already Studio talking yeah, we'll make we'll make your studio Hum or not or not That would be a bad slogan. Yeah, it's like there's you know, that's an old thing for a nut bar. They're like it's not very good We will not make you see how we will find the hum and we will get rid of it That's right. That's what we do, but that's not all we do no no We take you from soup to nuts if you if you want to start a home studio You got to talk to one of us because if you go online We were talking about this earlier, you're gonna get all sorts of suggestions tech support can buy committee is bad idea Not a good idea the minefield talk to the guys that know how to do it because we've been doing it for Probably a combined almost 30 years. That's right Nobody has that much experience at it and If you need you want to design a studio you want to design a voiceover palace talk to George He does some amazing stuff if you want to learn the basics of How you set up a home studio and how to keep it simple where to put it in your house where to put it Yeah, bring me over to your house and I will sniff around and find the right place to put it in your house That's over at homes voiceover studio calm that is correct and I forgot to mention mine But I'm at George the tech dot com or George the dot tech So come find us right and hire us please and we will that's why we're here. It's the most important thing. That's right What's our next question voice man voice man ma and yeah, this was in the chat room somewhere between the last show and this show okay, and It must have been he was probably watching a previous episode. So he had a question. Mm-hmm So this may sound non-sequitur. I'm not sure but the question is if I put a split signal Through two channel strips. So he's got a one mic Split out and then two channel strips two different processors One using effects such as a high-pass filter compressor expander and The other one bypassing the effects and the two signals are combined. Why? What would be the latency between the two signals? All right first off Wow, why that says so why would you be doing that? That is really esoteric Okay, what would be lacy? Yeah, if you're using completely analog gear. Yeah Theoretically there should be no difference and then the with analog signal a travel travels at the speed of light Goes in comes out the other end the same speed as it whether it's going through You know ostensibly a wire this long and a wire this long so it'll get there quick Yeah, it's gonna get there real quick. There should be no noticeable audible difference But if one of those pieces of gear or both of them are digital whole different door story because that signal has to get sampled and Coated into digital do the magic that you have that thing doing to the audio and then decoded back to analog and goes And then move on on the other on the other side in that case There definitely is going to be some kind of latency introduced. I would never do what you're saying I would never take two signal chains then recombine them and record them both Well, you want to record two signal chains go for it put them on two separate tracks So you can do a little a B testing or I don't know why you do it Maybe you want to have a wet processed version and a dry version I don't know those reasons. Maybe you would do it, but definitely do not combine the two to back together Chances are if they're just two analog signals, they'll just be louder But if not phasing it's gonna sit could sound really weird. It could sound terrible. It's definitely not a good idea It sounds like A geeky solution to something that doesn't need to be geeky Yeah, because I mean we usually recommend not using all of this equipment Because it's not necessary. It's not the equipment that's going to get you work It's how you interpret copy and none of that stuff is going to change the way you perform copy I don't quite get that. Yeah, I don't I don't need I again at the top context of the question I think came from an older show, but there you go. There's our 10 cents. Don't do that um Jay Sawyer asked does the Apollo and the Apollo twin Work well as an interface with source connect. I don't see why not the Apollo and the Apollo twin I don't know what the first Apollo is referring to but Apollo is so the company is called universal audio. The product is called the Apollo and then in the product line There's the twin the twin solo the twin duo the naming convention is out of control But basically anything in the Apollo line Does work well as an audio interface with source connect I've set it up for a bunch of different people. There is one little weird thing With source connect and what's called the virtual channels So if you do end up going this route and you want to get into More esoteric ways of setting things up with the Apollo. Let me know I will walk you through What virtual channels are why you use them right how to get them to work with source connect and on and on and on But on the simplest level Absolutely, uh, it works great with source connect He didn't ask he didn't say whether he meant source connect standard or source connect now, right? caveat on windows Anybody using an Apollo on the windows version will have problems with chrome Oh Getting audio into chrome, which is what source connect now source connect now Yeah ipd to yell right uh bodago call anything that relies on chrome Um, you can't when you click, you know what he says, uh, it says please click the allow button in your browser Right permissions permissions are everything. Yes on windows that it that's where you that's where the buck stops You can't it can't get it to work. It just doesn't work. It's that mystery part is why won't it work? Why don't we're yeah, check the permission. Oh Now it works, but that's like a semi new problem It's a semi new problem It affects a very small number of people people are using windows 10 with an apollo and source connect now I I set up apollo presets for people all the time and I use source connect now for that To facilitate that and then we run into that problem. So I've run into it a few times, but no If apollo and source connect is a good match. Yeah Uh Question from tim kelly. Yeah using a gate with regard to noises on recording dbx I think it's a statement more than a question But he's saying that can you for him? He he I think what he's saying is he's using a dbx I'm gonna assume he means a 286 because that's the most common by far inexpensive channel strip dbx makes And it does have an expander Gate thing in it And it generally does it generally does work pretty well. You have to be really careful though with those front end Processors yeah If the noise level is high in your studio and you're using it as a workaround Every time it goes up and down it's going to become very apparent Every time he's and then the noise is going to drop away. It's going to be really obvious Going back to what we were talking about in the last segment about those strange noises that you have In where you live. Yeah Um I'm not a big fan of Of a front end noise. I'm not a big fan of anything front end Because once you put something on the front end It's there noise gates can really get you in trouble They really can get you in trouble. Oh, I and you know, and I love it when you know Even if i'm not using one in some engineers is using the noise gate I'm not using a noise gate. You're just being a you know, you're being a son of a gun because You know, I don't think your studio can be that quiet. That's right. That's right But that's the thing is you want to do everything you can physically again to get your audio Right and make sure that there aren't any extraneous noises It's a last resort to use a noise gate But again, if you've got some constant noise Find out what the noise is where it's coming from and get rid of it Here's what a noise gate is good for and i'm i'm gonna wrap an expander into the definition of what a noise gate is If your noise floor is let's say minus 45 It's reasonably quiet, but maybe there's a little hiss or there's a little A noise gate or expander is good at taking that noise floor and then increasing it or i'm sorry decreasing it So like if it's a minus 48 It's really good at making making go down to like minus 55 or minus 58 make you can drop it A percentage or a certain amount right and get pretty good results But if you use a front end one like in a 286 It's super dependent on the input level how loud you are How close you are to your mic how much gain you're using Unless you are super consistent on all that stuff This thing is either going to kick in when you don't want it to and chop off bits of words Or it's just not going to work at all and it's not going to do anything Right so and that that's the problem with these like i'll tell people like You can use this on the front end, but if you don't have your gain set right You're gonna have trouble and then you're gonna Even if you're not monitoring while you're recording, which i know a lot of you don't use headphones while you're recording because it Hinders your performance You'll have no idea that your expander was chopping off little bits of your performance now You'll sit down to go edit and go oh Man, i'm gonna take this p and an edit copy paste it over. I've done it It's not easy you gotta know what you're doing, but yeah, again Don't use front end processing all the front end processors were designed for live broadcast That's really what the end for rock bands and various live casting live yeah live casting We use an expander For the show because we got the air conditioning right now we do we're in southern california It's got to stay cool in here But i've also spent a tremendous amount of time tweaking tweaking. Yeah, i'm tweaking it constantly On my screen over here is my console and i'm messing with it Sometimes during the show to make sure it sounds good But that's because that's my job as the engineer to do that as a voice actor to try to have to think about that That's gonna ruin your performance. You can't you cannot be thinking about that while you're acting. Absolutely. It's not gonna happen Alrighty, anyway, tim did say it's the 286 s Oh, that is that is the most common one It's pretty cool. I mean for podcasting webcasting live casting great thing not for voice I would be really careful about using for voice over. Yeah. Yeah podcasting is a whole different thing Yeah, maybe we need to do a podcast on podcast We could we could do a whole special about like everybody else in podcasting Anyway, well, that's gonna do it for us right now. We're gonna we're gonna take a quick break and we'll wrap things up Right after this don't go away Hey guys, this is tom also known as the boys of spongebob square pants And you want to fill your ear holes and your eye holes with dan and george and the audio body shop Snails like it too Your dynamic voice over career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voice over industry has to offer that place is voice over extra dot com Whether you're just exploring a voice over 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 Voice over 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 audiobooks auditioning casting home studio setup and equipment Marketing performance techniques and much more. It's time to hit your one stop daily resource for voice over success Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voice over audition It's all here at voiceover extra dot com. That's voice over x t r a dot 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 a 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 voice actor websites dot com Like our name implies voice actor websites dot 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 voice over website going for as little as 700 dollars So if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options Go to voicehactor websites dot com where your vo website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what Hey there, it's david h. Lawrence the 17th and i'm very excited very happy to announce that as of today vio to gogo's sponsorship with voiceover body shop is over Longstanding relationship. Bye. Bye vio to gogo And the reason i'm happy and excited about it is that we're about to embark on a brand new sponsorship arrangement with voiceover body shop With the new name of our website and our company the name is now vio heroes dot com and there's a big reason for that I think that voiceover body shop and our company share a mission and that mission is not just to teach you how to do voiceover really well But to really help you become heroes to your clients your clients don't come to you just to do voiceover Your clients come to you to help them to save them to help them sell products and services to help them explain their company To help them narrate their audiobook There's a million reasons why they come to you and it's all about making their lives spectacular And that's what we're going to do at vio heroes dot com the new website is up I'd love to show it to you vio heroes dot com front page is basically a very modern clean look that tells you everything You need to succeed. It helps you meet our coaches What we do in three simple steps. We let you figure out if vio heroes is right for you We think it usually is if you're watching the show Um, we have the same classes, but they've been heroically updated for vio heroes dot com And again the look and feel is fantastic And the big thing that we wanted to do Is we wanted to get off facebook because people have been telling us we don't want to be on facebook So now pro connect, which is our discussion group is on vio heroes dot com When you want to talk about things with your Uh, your your fellow pros in the vio heroes curriculum You'll be able to do it right on the site log in get all of the stuff that you want the workouts the classes the discussion The labs the recordings Everything right there on one site clean awesome lovely And i'm very excited about our future now in a couple of weeks We're going to be launching officially with a great package great price lots of great bonuses Stand by for that. You'll hear about it on voiceover body shop in the meantime Stand by for more v obs. I'm david h laurence the 17th From vio heroes dot com Before time began there was v obs dot tv watch or else Well another rousing discussion on the world of voiceover technology I feel worn out like i've been talking a lot tonight. We have been You know, I mean there's a lot to discuss. It's amazing You know like a friend of mine who became a podiatrist I remember he was going to podiatry school. We graduated from high school He said you're gonna be a podiatrist. What is this? You wouldn't believe how many things can go wrong with people's feet I thought you're gonna say you wouldn't believe how many people have feet Well, that was part of it as well high percentage You know, it's like guess what? Everybody's got two at least most people most people that's true, you know, and sorry one-footed people. Yeah. Yeah, we're no-footed people Um, anyhow, not to make fun of people. I think I'm hungry. Yeah, that might that might be it. Anyway, um Let's see we've got to Talk about who are uh our donors of the week. We had donors donations from don griffith. Thank you don Yes icon Martha con Shawna pennington baird diana birdsall And we also had one from dwayne disalvo who also it's his boat showed us his booth there. Let's twist a little bit This is there's his boat. There it is. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. So if you want to do that, too Please send it in to the guys of v obs.tv Send a landscape photo of your studio As you can see it doesn't have to be some, you know showcase just a real Work-a-day voiceover booth, which is exactly what that is your blankets computer microphone and your voiceover shrine There you go. So that's we love to have those for the backdrop. Yeah, right And if you want to send yours in send it into The guys at v obs.tv, right? All righty So if you're looking for tech support dan and I do that as you guys know i'm available over at george The tech dot com or george the dot tech as it says on the screen Because I like those nerdy short domain names Dan likes longer more descriptive main names. It's it's right to the point home voiceover studio dot com Yes, check me out there Uh, let's see here, uh We do this show every other week Um, so probably you may be watching this on a recording But you're getting you're getting the really good version Um, so if you'd like to be here live every uh on a monday night Tell us hey, we're i'm gonna be in the greater los angeles area Uh, which keeps getting greater and greater and uh, tell us that you're getting you can be here and uh You'd like to be in the audience and we'll give you the secret handshake and let you in We'd like to see more people here because it's more fun doing the show with people. It is fun. Yeah, uh, also, um What's left we need to thank our sponsors. Yeah Like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voice over extra source elements vo heroes dot com Uh voice actor websites dot com and j michael collins demos. He makes great demos. He really does Uh, let's see you need to thank the dan and marcy lennard foundation for the betterment of live web casting and recorded web casting Um, sumer lino over here our amazing technical director the td She was on it tonight does a great job Skeleton crew tonight we handled it with just just the three of us I was doing chat room duty tonight That helps all right and lead penny for being lead penny. Hey lee. All right. Well, we know this is not an easy business It is a business by the way But your audio has got to be good because we know if it sounds right It is right If it sounds good, it's even better Gotta copyright that one Anyway, i'm dan liner of george woodham and this is voiceover body shop or vo BS tech talk tech talk. All right. We'll see you next time. See you guys another amazing guest