 Hey there, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number 37 37 wait here. I'll add to there. Yeah, okay. Yeah Maybe we just just have a little countdown meter right here, you know, yeah, yeah Yeah, that'll do it. Oh man We got stuff to talk about tonight that is stuff that you guys just need to know You know, sometimes we get a little geeky here But this looks like we have got Basic voiceover tech stuff that we're gonna cover tonight, right basic and advanced and a little bit about Which computer to get and some new gear that I've seen pop up on the radar that maybe you would be interesting to talk about all that good stuff and and that noise what is that noise a little fun thing we had go on this week anyway So all that and more plus your questions throw them in the chat room right now in Facebook And we'll answer them here on voiceover body shop tech talk coming up 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 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 voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over 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 VOheroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voice over training J. Michael Collins demos when quality matters and voice over 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 welcome back to voice over body shop tech talk number 37 You know, I think we'll never run out of stuff to talk about My I mean you and I get together. We we never run out of stuff to talk about anyway, but But everybody wants to listen to us for some reason It's been that way for like 10 years. Hopefully we hopefully we've gained their trust I would hope so, you know because because we've been doing this voice over home studio stuff for so You know, maybe we didn't know everything when we started Did you know everything when you started working with Donald LaFontaine and all that stuff? No heck no man. I was I was scared. I was pretty damn nervous that I was gonna be found out You know the imposter syndrome problem. Yeah, really, but you know, we've been doing this a long time So we know home voice over studios like nobody else because George and I have built more than anybody else combined We've been pretty focused. Yeah, I mean, it's you learn, you know week after week and time after time and client after client What's everybody's different? Every voice is different. Every room is different There are some basics that we you know, we try to get across the people, but still it comes down to What's your situation? What's your voice? What and how do we make you sound like you? So That's if you really want to get it right up front You got to work with the guys that know it better than anybody else and I'll start and say well Mr. Wittem certainly does and you know, I've been doing it long enough. I know I can do it so why don't you work with us and If you'd like some professional help and get the right information the proper information For you and the right advice and not like do this does that this and the other thing Somebody who knows what it's supposed to sound like getting it there work with one of us For instance, if you would like to work with mr. Wittem, all you have to do is go over to a Very short domain George the dot tech. There it is, right? Yes, it ends in dot tech. That's it Head over there and you'll be able to browse through and find a Large array of resources free resources such as what Sean Daly mentioned last week I have added that to my free Royce's free resources articles link. There's a lot of stuff on there But if you want to hire me starting with a soundcheck for 25 bucks just Get a completely objective listen to what you're recording down to Designing a studio from the ground up and everything in between. That's where you head George the dot tech Dan also provides tech support. I do hire on his website over at home voice over studio dot com Yes, and I love to teach this stuff. I like to get people to Understand the basics instead of reaching. Well, what about this? What about that? There's a lot of mythology out there There's a lot of silliness out there and a lot of people who are experts at one studio their own and They don't know the stuff that you and I know about how it's supposed to what it's supposed to sound like You know, there's a way it's supposed to sound and it's not like on the radio It's supposed you're supposed to sound like you. How do you achieve that? We know the way to do that and I love teaching that and if you've got a studio set up And you want me to give it a listen like George I've got my specimen collection cup over at home voice over studio.com just scroll down to the bottom of the page $25 I will do a very thorough analysis of your audio if I think you need a lot of help We can set up something else and we can do a consult But a lot of times it's like, you know, it's Sean the same last week. I hear your refrigerator behind you We get a lot of that you'd be surprised what we hear that you don't hear because you're in the environment So you hear that thing all the time right and just you just did your brain tunes it out Yeah, we'll hear it. Yeah, cuz we're gonna hear with the mic ears and the mic here is everything It's there. It has does not have a brain. No, no anyway, here's it all Yeah, here's something I want to throw out to you because and and to everybody who's listening Don't play engineer roulette With voiceover, you know, sometimes someone will email me and we'll say well I worked with so-and-so and I wanted to get your opinion and then they go to a third person You know and then you suddenly fear from them and you know, and then they don't realize we all know each other We all talk It's like did you get that question? stick with somebody or Stick with the committee and go with the because you're gonna get the same information from this different, you know I mean, we're gonna agree on 80 to 90 percent and it's gonna be that last 10 percent That you're gonna get conflicting information on and you're gonna start going crazy because you're gonna try to figure out Which is the right 10 percent information that's just it's too much Just follow something that you know is trusted in the business That's all take their advice listen and then as you get better at what you do You can start absorbing other information and start being able to assimilate that because then you'll know enough To be able to better take advantage of new information, right? So that's that's called learning It's taking different things and assimilating them and you create synthesis Mm-hmm. That's learning. I have a master's degree in education and that's what they taught me Synthesis is a good word for that. I like it. That's because it's taking that and creativity is synthesis Anyway, what's in your? That's the sis, okay What's in your tech update this week lots of cool stuff it looks like yeah Well, I Didn't this is in no particular order. Just just right before the show I started thinking looking and just thinking what what I've dealt with and what's coming up on my plate for the last couple of weeks so First thing I started well my daughter is time. She is time for her to get a laptop and Naturally because I use Mac. I'm gonna recommend Mac to her She's 11. She doesn't need anything super advanced, but I didn't want to get her something on the low end Like I didn't want to get her a Chromebook You know, you can get away with a Chromebook for a lot of things In fact, you can even run twisted wave because they have a web version, but it's so limited in other ways, so Well, it's been a good couple of months So I figured by myself a new computer and not her me so I'm ordering. I've ordered a new a new Mac and a MacBook the question for really came down to is which one I'm price sensitive. I'm not gonna buy the loaded $3,000 Macbook Pro just not so I've classically only owned Macbook airs They've always been fine for what I've needed at this time instead of just getting the new 2020 Macbook air Which by all accounts is a good computer I did a little bit of searching and comparison shopping and reading and well a lot of YouTube videos too And I found out that for the money When you compare feature for feature and overall performance and all the factors that I could think of that mattered to me The best MacBook for the buck was actually a MacBook Pro which surprised the heck out of me I was able to find a 2019 MacBook Pro For a thousand bucks on eBay that's in perfect condition And based on what I saw because I do enough video editing on my laptop that it matters The even that even the this is the very very base model MacBook Pro 13 inch cheapest one they make It's still outperformed almost every I think even the highest end MacBook Air and so when you compare those two computers and what you're getting like the loaded MacBook air was a lot more expensive And so it just didn't make sense even though the MacBook Air was maybe just a Hair lighter weight. It wasn't that big of a difference that the line between those two machines is very much blurred and so this time I went for the MacBook Pro and it's coming this week and It supposedly has better thermals. In other words, it can cool itself better It's a quad core processor, which again, if you're doing a lot of video editing, you'll appreciate Over just the dual core MacBook Air. So anyway, the new MacBook Pro 13 inch even the new new one, which I think is $1,300 May be better deal in the end for you depending on what you need to do So consider that don't it's not such a super clear line anymore Between those two machines so MacBook Pro you might want to consider it even though You don't necessarily need the bigger beefier machine. It's a dang good deal Okay, so I'll let you know when I get it and of course, I'll talk about my experience with it So guess what now it gets the MacBook Air and it's a step my my 2014 MacBook Air is still a pretty dang good computer I still edit lots of video on it. It still works great. It's still good machine Max max just go are ever ready bunnies. They just keep going and going Yeah, I didn't even handle the nice tumble across a concrete cafe floor one time when it was under my arm carrying it just you know Held it in my hand, but holding it on my side and as I walked out my sleeve caught the door handle So I'm walking this way The my sleeve stops here and the laptop just it's physics kids. Yeah, mr. Ding ding ding ding mean old mr. Gravity. Yeah, and it just bent the heck out of the corners But it still works great All right, so this is the thing that came up in the last couple weeks I'm starting to realize people don't have equipment backups in their studio and Okay, maybe it didn't matter so much in the before times Before COVID maybe you could just go to the studio if something was wrong or you could go to your buddy's house and get that recording done That's not happening right now. Everybody you gotta have backup gear And so I'm just saying I'm not gonna go on and on about this just have backups Doesn't have to be you know necessarily a second for 16 Unless you can afford it, but you know just have reliable but affordable You know backup equipment you gotta be able to add a moment's notice swap out an interface Swap out a cable, although less more rare to have a bad my cable in the middle of your day But still you should be able to swap out the interface swap out a mic whatever and get back to work It's it's crucial and you're not gonna get replacement gear right now quickly. It ain't happening It's and I'm now I'm to the point now where you know when I'm shopping for equipment for a client I'm buying what's available and you know fortunately a lot of what's available is still good But it's not always my first or even second choice, but it's there backup. I mean, you know Yeah, you've got friends that might have some extra stuff You can always borrow their stuff and have it for backup because it's yeah, but it's not It's not four months ago where you could go Amazon Prime next day delivery new interface boom Not that easy these kids need to do that these days. So have some backups. All right Now let's talk about audio processing in real time So I've had requests to be able to set up processing so that people could be have their audio somewhat processed when they're doing live recording sessions live in this context meaning via things like source connect and IPDTL etc and here's the thing about this. This is a sore Subject I've discussed it and we've debated about it. I think the last pro audio suite we just did with Jeff Berlin It goes way in the weeds. I mean it is geeky as heck Because Jeff is he's an engineering genius mad genius, but we talk about it a lot, but the bottom line is Engineers do not like it when you process your audio when it's going to an engineer and they're going to be working on the production They hate it but at the same time some of you are Getting away with less than optimal studios. You're in closets. You're in a blanket fort It's not super quiet. Your refrigerator is on Your kids are home. There's noises in the background and sometimes there's hums like a hum where we set up an EQ Whose job it is to notch out 60 Hertz and 120 Hertz so that that hum goes away But that's all being done normally in post So you may need to set up real-time processing and that's not going to happen in some of the simpler Software is like twisted wave You may have to upgrade or get an additional program like Reaper to do this Unfortunately Reaper is very inexpensive, but it's also a little intimidating So that's something you might want to consider So if you're relying on processing to get away with a good sounding studio because we're a lot of people are trying to get away with it right now You might need to keep that in mind because when they hear your studio They're gonna evaluate it on the raw audio and that raw audio has to be devoid of those hums and That little bit of rumble and things that we were fixing later or fixing in post with EQ So something to keep in mind Dan. I mean You're lucky you do have a pretty quiet space. Yeah, it's tuned. Well acoustically the noise floor is low But I mean, what are you telling your clients that are running into this problem? I mean, it's must have well with me. It's an and you and I have discussed this so many times. It's always a matter of physical noise and What you try to do with your studio is create a physical space that it has minimal Sonic invasion, you know that course and Sonic Trent, you know sound transmission through walls So isolate yourself as good as you can and make sure your acoustics are good But if you've got you know, I mean if you're in a house things are gonna or an apartment Which is where we see a lot of these problems Usually it's from air conditioning compressors and stuff like that like if you know, I was working with somebody who's on the fourth floor of a high-rise condo and They're right underneath the air conditioning compressor. You always know, don't you? Yeah, like I hear the sample I'm like, are you an apartment building? Exactly, you know and or there you know, they're on the middle floor and you hear water rushing by And stuff like that from from upper floors You know, you it's always a matter of Trying to find the physical way to get rid of the noise That's always first choice. It's using even a different microphone sometimes. That's right. Exactly 416 is great for that and yeah, which is why people use it But the more sensitive the mic the more it's gonna pick up That's why you don't go with a you know a ten thousand dollar Gaffle microphone. It's you know, it doesn't make any sense in your closet unless your closet is in Fort Knox You know, right back, but I it to me it's always do what is you can physically and sometimes that means not living where you live or Finding some other place, but you know, you trying to clean it up with technology if you don't Understand what it's supposed to sound like on the other side so that any processing you do is completely seamless You really need you need really need our our assistance with that Yeah, and you can't use like a noise reduction tool like an audacity You can't use that real-time, right? You could you cannot be done if you get away with what you get away with by Analyzing the room tone and then applying a noise filter tool using audacity or something like that But that's how you get away with it and you get booked on a session. That's live directed on source connect Yeah, it's not gonna be pretty that's right. So keep that in mind. Yeah, the reflexion filter I used to have one of all of those mudflaps and all those things that go around behind your microphone the semi circle Pointless they're not for voiceover. They're not for voiceover. They're for music production. They're for isolate partially Isolating sound from one instrument to another. Maybe you might have a couple of horns in one room And you want the bleed to be controlled Or you have a room that's pretty lively for music and now you want to read reduce some of the reverb That's all these things do they do definitely do not make a instant voiceover studio Not by a long shot and every time I see one in a closet booth or any kind of a studio That's already been Treated with clothing and everything else the first thing I do is can you just take that out of there and Almost every time it sounds better very rarely does it not and they're almost always thrilled when I can tell them They can get rid of it Yeah, even if they just paid 200 bucks for it They're still happy to take it out because now you don't have this freaking thing behind the mic that's Creating it making it harder to work the mic. Where do you put the copy? Yeah, those things don't work I find that they you know, and I know Bo Weaver likes to talk about this It sucks the energy out of your voice and sometimes it sounds it will a lot of times It sounds worse. I can tell you yeah, it really makes you know, it's like, okay So there's you know, there's no reflection But you know this sometimes you got to have a little bit of liveliness because I know bow actually has a brick wall in one of his His booths, you know, there's supposed to be a little not slap back, but it you don't want to sound like You know, you're in a totally Tube that is like totally sealed right. Yeah. Yeah, no and they they only work To slightly a change the acoustical property, they won't make it super dead Unless you're already starting with something. That's pretty dead anyway. So it's not you know It's a little funny thing. I think this is one of the worst product names I've seen in a while KRK rocket G rocket eight monitors and the new G4. I guess fourth gen Yeah, they have a white edition. They're calling them the white noise Edition, I don't know what you think about microphone microphones or speakers the last thing you want to be associated with your speakers is white noise Or any kind of noise for that matter So okay, okay bad name choice really bad So, um more things couple little quickies When you're buying interfaces, you'll probably see if especially on Amazon You'll see the scarlet 2i2 and then you'll see the scarlet 2i2 bundled with a microphone and it's only like $50 more or something So, I mean in most cases those bundled microphones that are from the same brand as the interface Almost always are not good. They tend to be noisy They're not great quality mics and it's kind of logical I mean you're buying a microphone branded by the same company makes the interface Which is a company that does not make microphones, right? So all they're doing is buying some really cheap Chinese mic and Just putting their branding and their name on it so that they can offer it to the complete newbie home Not voice over no musician, right? And I think that's the issue or yeah because it's for musicians And if you you know you have a mic that's kind of amateur Yeah, if you've got a noisy mic I mean you if you're playing a trumpet into it or you're using a heavy vocal you can you can pop the Interface down and you hear it make it away with it. Yeah. Yeah, so that's why they're doing it But yeah voice over it's a lot more critical Exactly and last thing before we get into the more noise discussion If you want to dabble with the figure 8 mics because I've talked about them quite a bit and you know They tend to be on the expensive side Samson always surprises us with very affordable Products that are hit and miss sometimes I have to admit but it just came out with a mic that's multi-pattern USB it's called the samson satellite desktop USB slash iOS broadcast microphone and it's a multi-pattern mic So for a hundred bucks you have this little cute USB mic that has switchable patterns And so now you can you can dabble with figure 8 For that price, I think it's around a hundred bucks It's could be something fun to experiment with I'm not saying this is a great voice over Mike And I haven't tried it yet But at that kind of a price point it's kind of interesting to have a mic with switchable patterns It gives you this different thing to experiment with and you might find that It's worth trying out because I found that figure 8 is helping a lot of people Deal with less than ideal sounding small booths. Hmm. So it's just something that piqued my interest I might snag one because it just it's cool Yeah, I like things that are a hundred dollars and less that are still useful So we'll see if this one is falls into that category. Yeah, well something like that would probably be very good for for podcasting and It's definitely a podcasting product, right? See them sure the people that make this stuff realize that there are a lot more people doing podcasts than there are doing voiceover and That's and that and that's and that's where the the money in the development is going is into Oh, okay now it's consumer level podcasting stuff because everybody can have a podcast and as I like to say not everybody Should have a podcast but at least you have the the stuff to do it with exactly. So so this week Yes, no, there was We you got something from a client and we won't mention any names, but no somebody's a respected actor Yeah, so it's a big time respect television jobs, right and they sent you some audio and what did they say? Well, I mean there was a there was a sound of like a According to her there was like a high-pitched whistle or a buzz or some kind of artifact that was being heard on certain words and You know, of course, I listen to the audio I was listening all my usual good studio headphones that I always carry with me my backpack and I just it just wasn't reading to me I wasn't catching what she was referring to and then she sent me another sample where she'd edited just the words She thought had that thing on it and again, it was one of those things where it was if it was there. It was so miniscule It wasn't like reading to me. I like it wasn't like something where I'm thinking any engineer would take the audio and then go bad This is garbage. I just wasn't there. So I shared it with a few trusted friends. Basically the Wovo Audio standards committee. Yeah, the audio standards committee exactly You know, I don't usually like to waste anybody's time with that kind of thing I rarely ever do that but just once in a while So I did I sent it to all y'all. Should I name names? Sure. I sent it to Cliff. Yeah, Uncle Roy and Jordan Reynolds and yourself. Yep, and Everybody weighed in on the audio and everybody had a little bit slightly different thing to say somebody's maybe heard a little distortion Somebody of course heard some sibilants. There was a little bit of sibilants Just a little bit, but you know, but the thing is when somebody I didn't send the audio saying can you hear this thing? I didn't want anybody to be like thrown off. I didn't want anybody like to have to like I just wanted to say listen to this audio take it for its face value What do you hear that could be different or better? And everybody had a little bit something different to say which I thought was Fascinating now in the end what I asked her to do is to send the file to the actual studio The one that was going to be recording her the next day and I said let them hear it Make sure they are happy at the end of the day. Like if you hear something doesn't mean you're wrong But you don't hire you and you're not the one that's recording the session And if the engineer in the studio is happy with what they're getting Count you know just count your blessings and do the job and collect the paycheck Yeah, but it doesn't mean ignore it. It means there could be something going on that Just isn't reading well. I mean You know that was that was a challenging one. That's why I wanted to send it to more than one person Because I just wasn't I frankly just wasn't trusting myself at the time. Yeah Well, you know, I gave it a listen and I'm like, I don't hear anything I mean, you know, I know this person's voice, you know I thought they were perhaps a little too close to the mic or more than anything else Uh, but it you know, it sounded okay. The acoustics were good Did it get it? Was it crunchy? Was it this that or the other thing? It sounded like that person's voice And I mean those things are all I look for Yeah, I mean, you know, there was comments about levels. There was comments about proximity All things that you know when you're in the middle of a source connect session That they're gonna get a level from you and the the engineer at the other end's gonna say, hey, can you get a little bit closer? Can you get a little further away? Right. Can you you know, you're popping the mic? Can you just angle, you know, they're gonna can you give us more level? We need a little bit more. Now we're clipping turn it The engineer's gonna tell you all that stuff, you know Um, as long as the audio is clean, even if it's a little sibilant, don't worry about it The engineer is gonna process it eq it. They're gonna tune it in Right So, you know, it's it's difficult because if once you hear something and it's in your ears and in your head It's really hard to unhear it and I understand the frustration of that But you know, if you send it to someone like me, I'm really gonna listen to it through trusted source to playback devices And if it's if it's a problem, you're gonna know I'm gonna let you know my hearing isn't like maybe the hearing of a 20 year old But maybe better. It's still pretty good. It's still pretty good. I do have a check listen to today So anyway, yeah, I I don't know if this falls into the sounds good if it is good If it sounds good, it is good because if it doesn't sound good to you, you might think it's not good So this is sort of like the inverse of that. I don't know, but um I don't even know what the point is of this but just Send it to the client send it to the studio send it to the engineer let them be the ones to say This is gonna work for us, you know, because Everybody is gonna have an opinion and when you send it to five engineers like I did All listening in these incredibly well-tuned studios with great monitors They're listening to it under a magnifying glass and they're gonna pick out the littlest thing Yeah, so I was careful not to tell her everything everybody was hearing. I didn't want her to have a complex No, no, I was like audio really is fine. Yeah, I mean the the bottom one was it's like Well, this is totally acceptable audio and you know, I I know you talked to somebody like cliff He's like, oh, I can work with that. I can just use this and use that and it's like I can work with that But I hear this and this and this right exactly But but it's all these problems right the thing is is if you're getting hired If you book the gig on the audition from the audio you had Right forget about it. You know unless you're doing something different And you know things generally if you're if it's the same settings the same microphone the same booth Nothing's gonna change You know and you know unless you change headphones or something like that But you know my immediate thoughts on that are always like well, what are they listening to it on? You know, oh, yeah, I mean we covered all that, you know, I said try different headphones play it back in a different place Right, so that's it made it made it challenging. You know because when you hear that thing that bugs you You can't unhear it. Yeah, I had a buzz in here the other day And I'm like, why the hell is it coming from, you know, I'd go in the booth I couldn't hear it in the booth and come back out in the studio. I'm here What is it? You know, was it the subwoofer? No, wasn't the subwoofer and I still haven't found it I think I think I think it's just the and then it went away. I'm like, oh no. Yeah All right, you know, it's you know, maybe my brain is just starting to really deteriorate like the rest of my body and But I'm like, you know how I am with sound. It's like, okay, is it in here? I'm gonna sniff it out. I'm gonna figure out what it is That's right But uh, it doesn't matter because I go in the booth and it wasn't in there, you know, just helicopters. It's not in the recording Yeah, that's right. Anyway, we got lots of great questions. We do have lots of questions And then I just saw five more pop up. All right, so let's get to them right after these messages on voiceover body shop tech talk Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great 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 breaker 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.com like our name implies voice actor websites.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 So if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options Go to voicehactor websites.com where your via website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what 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 voiceover extra.com Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level Stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls Voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed Learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions Bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books Auditioning 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 voiceover extra.com. That's voice over x t r a dot com It's source elements time. Yes, that's right source elements one of our wonderful sponsors source connect is their flagship product that voice actors Primarily need these days to stay connected to their clients studios All around the world or right down the street Because even if you're in la chances are you're going to be recording with a studio in la or a producer who's working from his home In la and connecting to them with something like source connect or source connect I mean source connect is really the it's kind of a standalone tool that doesn't really completely Have a replacement right now. There are many softwares that run or solutions that will allow you to do the same on chrome Or on a web browser But this is a dedicated app that is fine tuned for professional audio recording The audio quality is consistent from beginning to end never waivers Never warbles only thing that may ever happen Is there might be a dropout when there's just too much loss of data The signal might drop and then come back That's the internet it's gonna happen, but i'm telling you the audio quality never changes throughout the session never Fades in or fades out and it also never loses sync It stays Sample rate locks synced the entire time. So if you're doing anything that's going to be To picture let's say you're doing a dr. You have to do looping or you have to do Uh Not anime is that the word you're basically dubbing a voice over another voice matching lip flap Any of that stuff music Sync has to be perfect the whole time and source connect and can do that Anyway, you should probably have it ready to go in your studio go to source elements Get a 15 day free trial or just get just don't mess around just get the subscription Just get it going Learn how to set it up get it up and running. So you're confident that it's working A hundred percent before that big session that big opportunity comes your way It's totally totally worth it. It's a write-off and it's really again on a monthly subscription. It's quite reasonable Source elements. Thanks for your support. We appreciate it and uh, we'll be right back to answer a ton of questions This is Anthony Menda. You're watching voice over body shop Hey, hey. Oh, hey, and we're back. You're on voice over body shop tech talk Boy people have lots of questions for us and that's what we love. We love answering questions First one's a long question with a short answer with a guy with a really interesting name And you get to read that. Okay moose. Where war woda where what yeah moose. We know who you Uh, this is very woda I like very woda where we won't I think you're probably right Anyway, he says i'm on my second focus right scarlet octopree Bottom line my ua apollo has two xlr inputs in the towns and labs sphere takes up both of them So I need another mic input for my 416 Okay, jumping ahead the focus right scarlet octopree is crap As is the second one is starting to do the same thing as the first static in the channel So I post it on on on gear slots gear slots. Thank you about other light pipe enabled mic prees Uh, a fellow gear slutter said they heard good things about the arturia audio fuse eight pre Now I read on sound on sound review of it and was pretty interesting mostly the gain and levels on the unit From the review Yes, we're getting into it here to put it another way an input signal that just reaches zero dbfs with the Eight pre at full gain will peak around minus 12 dbfs on the quantum and minus 23 dbfs on the clarit Which is the focus right one, uh, it sounds like a unit that makes no sense for a vo person Duh Anyway, looking at their interfaces. There's some interesting stuff. They're like this Discrete prees bluetooth connectivity and more and a competitive price point I wanted to know if either of you dudes had any experience with arturia Whoa, that's a big helicopter Is that coming what that means? There's not a fire That's no, that's here. Oh That is here my friend Oh, yeah, that's that's just my air conditioning No, that's not he's had a big chopper flying over and I have my window. I have my door open So yeah now I look at something like this. This is a rack mounted eight channel interface Why would you need something like that for a voice over? Well, I mean, okay, so he's using an l 22 microphone, which says a lot That means you're you're definitely not afraid to spend some money and you like some pretty geeky gear, right? It's also redundant to have a 416 because you have The towns and labs sphere l 22 which sounds has a 416 model. So okay that aside The arturia stuff I've seen it at trade shows at nam and stuff And they're they're really interesting because they seem to pack as many functions to per square inch as Humanly possible into their device. They have like a small desktop one. That's square ish Which has more controls and more functions than anybody has here has anybody right has any right to have And and so I look at and go that is awesome And also it could be a massive train wreck And I just had there hasn't been enough of them being used in our field and voice over To have any for me to formulate an opinion any opinion long term Like is it going to work day after day? How well is it made? How's the drivers? Because at the end of the day it's sound quality. We've what we've done We did the usb interface shootout So we know that sound quality of mic preamps and all these is almost the same right So it just comes down to quality of a long-term reliability and that is something It's definitely not been proven with the arteria stuff yet. It's just not very new or not very old It's not been around that long. So Yeah, I don't know it's it's I mean that's high-end stuff. I mean that stuff is designed for musicians And You know if you've got a bunch of different mics just get a good mixer You know, I mean that's you could you're only recording one thing at a time Right, exactly. You can just turn one on turn the one off or plug one in and The other one multiple pre's multiple channels of ad converters, et cetera, et cetera That's a geeky question that makes a lot of people's eyes roll to the back of their hand. Ah, yes I'm always it. Yeah, it's always nice to open up with one of those. Yeah, but you gotta Yeah, you you got a letter from somebody this week. Um, yeah, he's this is from Michael Kerns He says, uh, I hope all's well with you and yours. I love your review of the l 22 speaking of that mic And the latest one on the vanguard v4, which was um It's a great mic. Um, I never have paid that much attention to the kinds of plugins that I use such as VST vst 3 vst 3 i a u a u i Et cetera I use reaper on mac. Um, is there any particular type of plugin I need to use? They all seem to work So doing what it's almost like he asked it's like he literally answered the question. They all work Um, so what are you worried about? Um, well, I mean the native plugin format for went for a mac system is a u That's audio units So that's going to be the one i'm always going to pick first if they give me multiple versions that I can actually uncheck Not install the others I'll usually just install a u Um, so that's my first choice But it doesn't it doesn't matter. The thing is like some plugins they install all of the versions Like rx. I think when you install rx, it's going to install a u vst Aax, that's what pro tools uses. It's going to install all of them. So, um, Whatever ends up showing up in your doll and working You're good. I don't overthink it too much, you know, but a u is the native mac format So that's what I usually will use right, you know, and and and the course the the operative question is Why would you use that plugin? You know having the plugin doesn't make your audio at home Yeah, that's it doesn't make your audio better because you bought it or you have it It's knowing how to use it and that really does take Years of experience and understanding of what it's supposed to sound like and how you're bending the noise So if you're like a real geek about plugins and stuff like that Play with them, but don't make them interfere with your voice over career Yeah, I get people that send me an audio sample to make them a processing stack for auditions And they say well, I have the ozone and I have waves this and the l2 and the blah blah blah And then I send them back something that has three or four probably built-in plugins that came with Twisted wave or audition, you know, I didn't use any weird third-party stuff and they're like, well, it sounds great It's just because I know how to use the tools gotta know what you know how to use those tools Absolutely um Jeff Our very own Jeff Holman Which is the reason yeah What's this is the reason he likes doing this for us because he gets to ask all the questions That's right. And he didn't he can get his ass last week. So he gets to you get a check. You got a check Um, he says can I use the sennheiser? 41 6 that's the way I like to say that now or any xlr connected mic As an external mic for recording video on an iphone 6s plus Through it's 3.5 millimeter headphone jack Or on the current iphone model So yes and no, I mean yes, you definitely can but no not without um A several different components. Yeah, you need phantom power um That really is the main thing you need phantom power. So you have to the mic has to be powered And then with the right cables and adapters you could go from xlr to An eighth inch mini then to a splitter that will adapt that from a headphone jack to a trrs adapter Isn't that what the irig used to do? Yeah, actually the icay rig the also the um The task cam i xz. I think it was called right just a little white simple little box that plugs into a phone headphone jack That did that actually for like 40 or 50 bucks. So yeah, the irig the task cam Are they that clean is the sound quality going to be that great? No, if you're using the headphone jack on a 6s or iphone it's the the ad converters the preamps are Decent, but you know, whatever clean or low noise that mic has you're going to lose it. It's going to be noisy so You then you also about asked about the current iphone model Now that's a whole different story because now you don't have a headphone jack anymore Right, you have either one of these little doodads Just happen to be right in front of me with one that goes from lightning to eighth inch This little thing looks like a simple adapter, right? That's it's all that looks like it's just nothing but an adapter, right? Yeah, but what's actually going on here? This is a sound card This is a usb audio interface really it's inside here So this thing has to take digital from the phone, right? Invert it to analog Send it out here so you can hear it And these this is a headset jack. So it takes the microphone sends it back in preamplifies it digitizes and sends it back into the phone all in this little 30 cable That's what's going on inside. This is an interface People have no idea So yes, you could use one of these but I would get a proper Audio interface that's designed to use to be work work with an iphone like the The sentrance mic port pro or the thank you the mic port pro 2 Absolutely, like if you're using a thousand dollar sanitizer 416 Use a really good preamp. Yeah using digital interface that will go digital Lightning port into the iphone That way you're going to maintain all of the sound quality of the source So Very important. Yeah, um also. Oh, sorry. Did you have something else? No, no, no, no, you're you hit it right on the head there. Okay And and he says how how far can I be? From a boom mic like a 416 and still have it pick up my voice properly That actually is a good question. So I mean I I feel that Very much depends on the environment right so if you are outside in a field Not that you're going to be But your yet centers are 416 could be 10 feet away It could be quite a bit out. It could be way far away way over your head or as long as the background noise is quiet There's no acoustics. I mean outside. There's no acoustics because that's what that mic was actually designed for Right and so it's not going to hear much else except you and it can be pretty far away once you add enough gain Where that falls apart now is once you're going inside and once you're going into a small space Right when you're in a really small space a whisper room or any kind of small booth That goes out the window. You have to be up pretty damn close to the mic. I mean Six inches is about as far as you can get away with before it starts to sound Boxy yeah or to be yeah, yeah, well, of course the farther away you are from the mic The louder you have to talk and the louder you talk the more the acoustics at the room come into play Okay, well, I'm on a shotgun mic. It's not a 416, but it's a road ntg4 It's a decent stand in force 416 and let's see. Let's see how far it can get back So obviously I just cranked my gain up all the way I am about a foot and a half away. You're starting to hear the room reflection now, right? Right A little bit, right? It's not bad It's not bad, but it's there and now the thing about this room is it's got a huge amount of space on my On the right side and behind the mic right and a big rack of clothing because now my studio doubles as My closet sounds weird, but it's true So I can get away with that, right? Um, but yeah, it's still I'm still hearing some of those reflections. I can't really get Much more than about this far away before it starts to sound a little less focused So yeah, you can't get too far away not inside a not inside a home or inside a booth Right I think I uh overdid that one. All right moving on It's for you dan. Okay. Yeah rich brendan says the mic bump dan lennard. That's me by the way Um, the mic above your head. Is that the one you're using? Yeah, I think so uh so far away But sounds so close. What mic is that? Ah, this is such a great follow-up question after what we just talked about This is a harlin hogan vo 1a And I mean you got to remember that george and I Work very hard to make the audio on this show outstanding Uh one because we do it as a podcast but also because the show's about audio Uh and yeah harlin's one of our sponsors and yeah, he sent us this mic and yeah, I like this mic because Like any good standard studio condenser mic. It's going to pick you up From the if you're if you're facing it right if you're using it right It's going to pick you up no matter what and I mean unless I really turn far away It's still gonna sound good but george is also sitting there writing levels over there in topanga canyon and uh Making sure that I that I sound good But this mic I'm not I don't touch a damn thing because I have a lot of processing on that microphone Okay, and that's why it sounds so good, but it's still it's not the processing. I mean the processing is helping Yeah, it's the room kids Oh, yeah You have no idea how much stuff is acoustically treating that room Dent studio has a vaulted ceiling Yep, there's not a flat ceiling above And then it's covered in acoustical clouds huge acoustic panels That break up reflection that would normally be bouncing off that ceiling And it's because of all that work. He's done to the room and then behind him That green screen behind it is a massive Sound absorption panel one-year-old studio suits, right? It's it was the largest pace of studio suit I've actually cut it down. It was too big before but Reaction there's a huge amount of tuning in that room acoustically to So that is why you can get away with such a decent a distant placement Whether it's a condenser Cardioid or even a shotgun mic The room acoustics do do still matter. Yeah, and that's why we can get away with it But yeah, there's some processing using compression that way dan can get a little further a little bit back Right and it still sounds relatively even in the levels, right, but I can yell in here And it just it just disappeared barely hear the room. Yeah, it just dies away. Yeah, I'm I'm very proud of this room It works really well. I think putting the big couch and help too. Yeah Absolutely. No, we did a lot of work to tune that room. Yes Nathan Carlson Yes, go for it as long as the gear and recording space all stay the same How often do you recommend refreshing your processing stacks? um The adult voices change enough that it's worth it periodically It was certainly helpful for my kids Any guidelines you can share? Yeah I yeah, so the processing that you might be doing on your voice a little bit of eq a little bit of this a little bit of that um Yeah, the the voice quality does it change over time? I mean Well, okay kids, we know their voices change they deepen, you know, there are changes there I don't know this is a better question for you dan. I mean, you've been a voice actor for a long time Have you felt like you've changed the way you do? anything to your voice technically either microphone choices or q or anything I I've I've been I've stayed very consistent with the microphones I've been using over the past few years, you know, I've got a 416 I've got my my custom 47 That you know that I built from our friends at mic parts.com um And you know and then you know, we've got the harlan hogan vo1a Which we've had as a standard mic here on the set at voiceover body shop since we started here pretty much and You know, I trust these mics but I'm of the opinion that It's not the microphone and it's never the microphone if you've got good microphones You trust that equipment. It's not the microphone. It's how you use it And if my voice is changing somewhat I I can you know while I change the processing Not really because then I'm not being honest with myself and to my clients because what they want is the sound of my voice as I exist not As something else because if my voice is changing then perhaps the genre of material will change You know as I go from middle-aged guy to grandpa You know, it's the mic still gonna pick me up the same way It's not really I to me. It's not relevant and I think people obsess and Overthink this stuff thinking well, my voice has changed now. I need to change the No, the mic still picking you up the same way It's just your voice has changed. You're not going to change it back with technology to something else that it was before So forget about it What do you think? Yeah I think I just talked myself out of a sale, but that's okay. I'm sorry because of being on no being honest here I mean if it ain't you know, I don't think you're gonna have to do any changes to your processing, Nathan The only thing that might change would be me like as the engineer I might listen to it a second time two three years ago later and go Well, now I think I would probably take a little Maybe a two db away at 600 hertz Or something like that, you know, because maybe my tastes or my skill or my ears have changed But no, that's not likely that your voice has changed enough that would Garner require any change of your processing. So yeah, you don't worry about you are you and that's what you're selling And and your voice is unique as it is. So don't don't fuss with it too much, you know, I mean, there are certain I mean, you you've got your uh Your stacks that you you work with people, but those are for minor little corrections In a room really for auditions. Yeah You know and 90 percent of the time just to make it a little bit louder But when you're working with somebody else and you're sending them files They're the end user and they're the ones that make the final determination Uh gem gem torrez asks a question, please Well, you've come to the right place. I have an mxl 990 and a scarlet 2i2 I ordered a mono price xlr cable and they sent me a pig hog tour grade mic cable How much do I need to worry about cables and yeah How much do I feel like calling the cable horse pony brand? Anyway, do I need to worry much about the brands of cables also any recommendations for usb screen As a second screen option for a macbook Thanks, my gentlemen My cables, okay, you don't buy crap cables. I mean, I've done it, but okay, so I mean mono price is surprisingly good for what it is it's They're they're really bang good bang for the buck cables pig hog I here's I Don't know that brand at all It's I used to have a brand of cables. I think they were called roadhog So I guess that's where that that ripoff name came from I mean as long as the connectors are good the solder joints are good And when you plug it in this the mic is clean. There's no buzz You're fine. I mean The the tour grade mic cables usually have very thick heavy Insulation they have a very they feel really beefy in your hand because they're designed to be rolled over by trucks and carts and Trampled on and all that kind of stuff in your studio. They're plugged in and left in one place year after year after year So you don't want a crappy cable of bad connections, but as long as you plug it in and it sounds fine and there's no noise You're all right. Why they switch brands on you and that sounds like an amazon Trick. Yeah, that sounds like to me You're not gonna suffer from those. Those are probably great cables You're probably all right and to wrap not big cable snob. Yeah and to wrap things up here Thomas Machin says and which essentially covers everything we've just been talking about says other than the prestige Of expensive industry standard Of which there is no such thing gear and software isn't at all about the end product Why is there so much gear snobbery? Because like we always say we end we end every show saying the same thing if it sounds good, it is good um Exactly gear snobbery comes there's gear snobbery like there's mountain bike snobbery because i'm a big-time mountain biker And I have bikes that range from probably worth 200 dollars to four thousand dollars They're all freaking fun to ride they're all awesome And gear is the same way there is cheap gear that works well and there's really expensive gear that works well There's really expensive gear that doesn't work that well Or is it pain in the neck to deal with in terms of maintenance? So It's just it's just the way people are man. They get egos They they invest a ton of money in their equipment and they get mad when Somebody comes along with gear that costs one tenth what they spent and they're making more money and voice over than they are You know people have fragile egos and they want to You know yeah, it's I think it's all measure things Right exactly exactly But the thing is is it's not the equipment you don't buy crappy equipment You don't buy really expensive stuff you use the stuff that you can afford And you learn how to use it properly and that's what makes you sound Like you and of course when we listen to it and go yeah, that sounds like you And that's the bottom line And that's where we're going to finish there you go this tech talk Anyway, oh and by the way, yeah, there's what there's something else here. What did I ever miss? Because I could literally reach it without leaving the room Here is a usb monitor. Oh Not very big. Oh actually wait a minute. Is this one usb? Oh wait, it's not usb never mind never mind. Oh, I pulled this one out because it's a touchscreen It's HDMI, but it's a touchscreen monitor. You can actually touchscreen your your mac with it. That's amazing. Um I've dabbled with usb monitors gem and um um Most of them have been kind of gimmicky and Not perfect, but there are a couple get stick to big brand names like asus Um, but my favorite thing is the ipad with the luna display adapter. Ah, got it luna display dot com Type it in go look at it Read about it. That's my favorite second screen for a mac solution. So anyway, all right. All right. Well, I missed that one I'm glad you meant you brought that up. All right We got a couple more messages here and we'll be right back to wrap things up for another week of tech talk You're watching v obs dot tv. I don't know why it's crazy what they do here I think i'm gonna go somewhere else and have a cheese sandwich Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. Were you stick around? You don't want to miss this Power 1039 at target. We want you to come as you are be comfortable. Okay. Maybe not bathrobe comfortable Pants for the customer on aisle four, please Nuevo mexico necesita un cambio la representante michelle lujan grisham ha luchado por nuestro estado en la cámara de representantes Watch anywhere anytime on an unlimited number of devices Sign in with your netflix account to watch instantly at netflix.com the ice cream maker is a big risk that can have huge reward Until you forget to turn it on. Well, that's it guys Time is up. Hey, it's jmc. Thanks for watching the voiceover body shop If you're demo ready or looking to get there check out jmc demos dot com and see a sample of our work Now let's get back to dan and george and this week's tech wisdom What question do we get most often? Far and away, it's how do I even get started in voiceover? And we have a great answer to that question take the vo heroes dot com Free getting started in vo course you heard right It's free and it's available online 24 7 at getting started in vo dot com That's getting started in vo dot com If you've been watching v obs and thinking that you need to get in gear and start your own voiceover career This is the course you should start with You'll learn about the vocal skills you need the storytelling skills you need the equipment you need the business skills You need and the mindset you need to have all in one single comprehensive online course taught by vo heroes david h. Lawrence the 17th This course won the backstage readers choice award four years in a row and again, there's no charge. It's absolutely free Want to take it? Of course you do getting started in vo dot com. That's getting started in vo dot com So our good friend Harlan Hogan is on vacation in Maine. Isn't it gorgeous? Anyway, he wanted me to tell you that he hasn't missed doing any work while he's on vacation hanging out on somebody's yacht Because he's got he has poured a booth with him. This is a great unit It makes it easy for you to travel on the road and it's easy to take apart and put together All you have to do is zip it up or unzip it in this particular case And it all just folds up into a nice neat carrying case The port-a-booth plus Plus the port-a-booth pro which you see right here the port-a-booth pro the bigger model is 369 99 The plus 199 99 and the bag is on sale for 49 95 But you can get it in a combo for 248 95 go over to voiceover essentials dot com right now And get your port-a-booth plus or pro This is ariana rattner and you're listening to voiceover body shop v obs dot tv Well, that was fun I mean it's always is it's fun talking with you george and but this is our stuff and it's just fun To go over all of these things and tell people don't overthink this stuff. It's not it's not rocket science It's not a black art It's just voice over Well, maybe a little bit. Well, I mean there's certain things There's some things we know But you know it It's not that hard. Yeah, but don't get too don't get too sucked into the Tech vortex tech upgrade vortex. Yeah questionable Purchase of the way. That's a great one. Uh, anyway, uh, who are our donors this week because without you guys We wouldn't do this Yeah, we've got some very familiar names this week as we do almost every week. Thanks to the subscribers such as uncle roy of ant land productions graham spicer christie berns michael currents mike gordon harlow rodriguez martha con lee penny And don griffith Lee doesn't even work in voiceover anymore. He still donates to the show, right? But he watches the show Thanks, lee. Yeah, we see him all the time here Uh, we also need to thank our amazing sponsors like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials Uh, voiceover extra source elements Vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com And jmc demos. All right Thanks to jeff holman doing a great job in the chat room tonight. All those questions are right there Sue marlino for just getting it done From her garage in burbank Tenacious she gets it done. She is and lee penny for just being lee penny and for being a donor, but that's another thing Um, that's gonna do it for us this week. Thanks for tuning in and or clicking in or whatever you call it when you're on the internet You know, we're old. What can we say? The thing is we're here to help We want to make sure your audio is right because if all of your audio is good It makes everybody else look good because a rising tide floats all boats Yeah, that's true. Yeah, but the bottom line is if it sounds good It is good. All right. That's gonna do it for us. I'm dan lennard And i'm george widdum and this is voiceover Body shop or vo b s Tech talk tech talk tech talk. We'll see you next week with another great guest. Take care guys