 Hey, it's time for a voiceover body shop tech talk number four zero That right. Yeah four zero. That's right. Can't make Roman numerals with your hands, but you know, I gave up on that a while Is there a zero in in Roman numerals there is not That's a good question. No, there is not Who knew anyway, we got lots of great stuff to talk about if you've got a Technical question for George your eye throw it in the chat room right now Before or forever hold your piece and we'll get to it in just a little bit but we got lots to talk about tonight about some microphones and interfaces and a couple of interesting conversations about Do you have a production studio or do you have a voiceover studio or whatever? Right. That's right. All right. Does it mean to be a voiceover in? 2020 and beyond is COVID. All right all that coming up right now on voiceover body shop tech talk 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 Whidham the engineer to the VO stars a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain the professional video studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you Create a professional sounding home VO studio and each week they allow you into their world Making the complex simple debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest 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 a word-winning voiceover 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 Greetings everybody out there in voiceover land. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whitton and this is voiceover body shop or VO BS Tech talk talk tech talk tech talk Yeah, people love tech talk. There's just something about it. You guys tune in you listen You ask great questions and you can ask us questions Before the show you can write to us at the guys at VO BS dot TV and we can You know Sue is now trying to get that there it is right there the guys at VO BS dot TV. All right No, that's the guys at VO BS dot com. It's VO BS dot TV V Yeah, you might want to fix that we'll throw that on there again. You can write to VO BS dot com, but God only knows where that's gonna go Anyway Even though it may not seem like it sometimes George and I are the experts on home voiceover studios And if it if you don't really understand what it's about now You come in here every week and you listen in and you're like boy They guys these guys really know what they're talking about because you could throw us any question in George and I could riff on it for hours and have So But the thing is is a voiceover studio home voiceover studio is a very unique environment to you every voice is different every room is different and I keep trying to get this across to people that You know, you could read. Well, this is a great mic or this is that Your voice is very very different and every room is very very different and how you sound the way How do you make it sound the way it's supposed to sound? requires The knowledge and the ears of those of us that know what it's supposed to sound like whistle and If you want to work with people who actually know it Here's to and because we've probably built more home more voiceover studios than anybody like how many you think you've built your Built or consulted on both It's I mean, it's it's it's way north of us than a thousand Wow this point. I mean, I I don't know I really don't know. Yeah, I mean and this year. I mean, I've been I've been really busy because everybody's got to have home studio It's the thing is is when you've been doing this a long time While you may have been an expert to start with because we have done so many We've seen it all we've seen every situation. We hear everything We know, you know, if you're under a shelf if you're in a pillow fort if you're in a large bathroom We can generally tell after listening to it after about five seconds and we generally know how to fix it But we have to hear your individual studio and get it sounding the way it's supposed to sound So you sound like you the idea is not to sound great Whatever that means the idea is to sound like you and if you're a good voice actor You should already sound great So if you want to work right if you want to work with a great pro that knows what they're talking about You could talk with George and you find him at George the tech all my tech support stuff is there. There's a Maybe a little bewildering number of options So of course you can always call the answering service or leave a message or write us a con You know contact us and we'll help direct you that there's Things you can schedule one-on-ones you can send files and we'll send things back like you know a sound check Yeah, and Dan does sound checks, but you gave him a different name. Yeah, I have a yeah I've got my specimen collection cup over. Yes, home voice over studio dot com Which you'll see right there home voice over studio dot com you scroll the bottom of page specimen collection cup is there a click on that It's a drop box. Okay. It's a humorous drop box But I will listen to your audio and I will give you a thorough analysis of what I'm hearing Does it need adjusting does it sound fabulous? You know, I'm doing a couple of those a day and anybody that's gotten one for me knows that I'm very thorough in In my analysis and if you need a lot more help if you really are starting from zero I love getting people up and running and it's always fun after an hour and a half of just teaching people the Basics of what they need they go. Oh I don't have to do this. I don't have to do that. I just had to sound like me and that's not that hard So check us out And work with us because that's why we're here and that's why we bring you the show every week to remind you that We're here Anyway in your tech update this week. You got some cool stuff about microphones and other stuff So some relevant take it away So, you know first of all, let's talk about let me just move some things around here because I think there's a more logical Way to mention all this stuff. I was just talking about some new gear go for it and We'll fly in pictures of these things later for people because there's a lot of visual fix it in post Yeah, fix it in post, but um, well for one thing there is another new universal audio Apollo and another solo This one replaces the arrow and Based on what I've seen the real difference is that it comes now in silver Not the charcoal gray space gray, whatever so they've gone back to the old color because it's the new color And as opposed and they have a what they decided to do is to make a usb edition Not as well as the Thunderbolt 3 a version so they really they really are trying to Come up with good solutions for Windows users Waiting hoping that their sound drivers are getting better with time But there is a usb version and the usb version has to be plugged in with power To power it properly whereas the Thunderbolt version you get a lot of current a lot of power comes through a Thunderbolt cable So that runs right off the cable so otherwise they're pretty much the same as the old arrow Just now that there's one that works with Windows so the good news is that if you are in the market for an Apollo and you want the least expensive But still modern version you can grab an arrow now. I've seen it I believe for around four hundred and twenty dollars range instead of the usual five hundred so that's become cheaper That's a nice thing Few new pieces of gear is a lot of stuff here So I'm gonna kind of move through this relatively quickly because a lot of these things I haven't well actually all of these things I'm gonna mention. I haven't seen yet in person. Some of them are Coming soon some of them are already on the market, but just things I found that looked kind of interesting Aston micro astro microphones Aston microphones. They've come out with some interesting designs. Their industrial design is unique But what they've come out with now is beyond just industrial industrial design what they've come up with is what they're calling their Element that's the model active moving coil microphone So it sounds like a dynamic Mike and it's a dynamic Mike But it's active Meaning it has a preamp and needs fan and power and And that what they're saying is that it's sort of the what they consider the best of all worlds the best of a dynamic Mike a condenser Mike and Essentially a ribbon Mike and one Mike or 200 bucks Who knows if this is going to be the next amazing thing that everybody has to have Or if it's just another decent sounding Mike and at a decent price point. We don't know but it's just unique. It's interesting unique Industrial design as they always do and we'll see it's it's kind of early to tell I don't usually talk about things that aren't out yet, but and what the heck I thought it'd be fun to tease a few things Can't wait to drum. Yeah, me too Persona's new audio box now. I'm not one that's been really big on the personas audio box series I think I had a bad taste on my mouth from the older generations of products being noisy and things But they seem to have figured that out now with the 96 series stuff the high resolution And so they have a new one their 25th anniversary Audio box 96. It's only 99 bucks and I think it's the cheapest what I consider decent interface That has a mix knob Why does that matter if you look at the other things in that price point the scarlet solo and others even the scarlet 2i 2 Which is quite a bit more expensive Those don't have a mix knob for monitoring And so if you're doing a lot of Directed sessions of which we are these days on zoom and Skype and source connect on and on It's really nice to be able to just kind of quickly adjust the blend between yourself and the other side and Normally with those other devices you only have an on-off switch for monitoring and now you with the mix control You can control it for 99 dollars. I don't know too many others Out there of a good quality that have that feature. So that's kind of cool. We'll see how that turns out Dan have you had good experiences with any personas audio boxes? I had the old firewire edition. Oh, yeah, which I remember plugging in once wrong or something and smoke started to come out of it There's had this firework jacks If you were if you were working quickly and not paying close enough You could shove them in upside-down. It was actually possible. Yeah, it's a disaster and I'm like well That's that's fried and then so I I went out and got something else and then I took it off the shelf once and Plugged it into a firewire port that I had on another computer son of a gun. It was still alive That's amazing. I guess is why it's called fire wire Unfortunately didn't start a fire, but you know, I mean I used it for a while It was okay, you know, I generally find that if it's got a good preamp in it all You know that the analog the digital converters and these guys are all pretty much the same and there's there's you're not There's not going to be a loss of quality The only the real quality in these units is what's in the preamp and their preamps were okay Yeah personas has been making preamps for a really long time and at those price points the sound AD converters and preamp chips that are in those things are only produced by a couple of companies So it's probably going to sound very similar to what else is in the same price range Now I just noticed that there's a whole lot of color features happening these days Not that it's anything new to have or an orange boy's over. Yeah, right, but I just thought it was funny that there's an audio Technica AT 2020 V Which is a chrome plated? 2020 It's a shiny shiny AT 2020 and yes, there is also the USB version So for $200 you can buy a chrome plated USB 2020 plus Microphone and yet it's still only 16-bit recording So I know that doesn't matter for many people's voice over work like audio books But if you're doing anything for games, I know games are really sticklers about 24 bits So ain't gonna cut it. Yeah, and people don't want USB mics anyway, right now The AT 2020 is not a true large diaphragm condenser mic. It's more like an electric Denser mic essentially a smallish Condenser Not large. Yes. Gotta look inside the grill You'll see there's a little a little round disc inside not what you would think of as large so But it's one that sometimes surprises me how good it can sound not always but sometimes if you use it, right? Yeah The Audio Technica ATH M50x, which was one of the one of my favorite headphones is a PB version the purple black edition So it's in this like awesome to me awesome Metallic purple finish and if anybody knows me I have at least two different bikes Maybe three at this point that have lots of purple parts So that made me a little bit too excited and then embarrassed when I thought I was making fun of the chrome mic I want to get purple Anyway, you can get them in purple now. I've seen those things in maroon or a blue red Red and gold actually a blue black white come in a lot of colors now I just thought because we're all on camera a lot more now and headphones are becoming more of a fashion statement So I guess that's what's going on there And taking the color thing to the logical conclusion the extreme Manly has a of all things you would never think of getting in crazy colors ate their massive passive stereo to be cute This is a six thousand dollar piece of equipment Clearly only gonna be used by mastering engineers very high-end studios. It's done in what they call the pride edition And every strip if you can imagine a whole bunch of rows Well, you don't have to imagine because we'll have a picture of it Isn't a different rainbow color. So the whole unit across the front is a rainbow I believe Yvonne of Manly is herself in the lgbtq community. So that makes a lot of sense But pretty cool. Just it's neat to see That happening. I mean for her. That's a brave thing to do to try to sell something. That's of that price point It's not a hundred dollar mic really to six thousand dollar piece of equipment Yeah, and to give it depth that splash of color. It's it's pretty bold. It's cool Do you think that might be perhaps a And something that has led from the The pandemic and the fact that we've got a lot of artists who are doing their stuff as you were saying We have a lot of people are on camera, but we're seeing a lot of singers do stuff on camera You know using their microphones badly, but the microphone will look That's on there. I think so. I think audio technical the timing of that release is, you know, no coincidence You know the last six months would be seeing tons and tons of artists equipment and microphones on camera in a way We never did before And so Yvonne is like, hey, this is something I can do. I don't know the background on it I don't know if there's any Charity involved. I really don't know but she's obviously saying hey If you have this new studio, it shows you support LEL GBT Q Is T belong in there? Yes T Q Community so that's pretty sweet. Yeah. Now this next thing this is something you and I talk about all the time Oh, man, this is really a very big topic. It shouldn't even be here But I'll bring it up anyway. It's because it says a whole nother discussion really but You know we Dan you're not you're not an acoustician. You didn't go to college and get a master's in acoustics and learn the math of acoustics, right? I was told there would be no math. Yeah Same kind same here I'm in a lot. I'm an engineering for Virginia Tech Engineering Department dropout. Okay. I Have a music degree. So I've always when I'm doing studios. It's always been done by First of all year second of all lots and lots of Experienced research experimentation, et cetera, but there are other other ways to go, you know And there are acousticians who have either through studying getting degrees Whatever the case have learned the math have have are using the numbers using the math to Crunch the numbers and figure out mathematically. What is the best thing to do in your studio? It's two different Approaches and it doesn't mean that they're both not valid and but I've just been experimenting with working with engineer an Acoustician recently and I realized that you know, we I had the client on the phone and him and the Acoustician and I was acting as sort of the translator because it was so over the head of of the the actor whose studio we're designing and You know the other end the the guy that knows the numbers and knows his stuff That it was just kind of like adding this huge new set of variables to a project and I was loving it I mean, I was soaking it up like a sponge. I'm gone. Whoa. That's pretty amazing and Cool and everything but at the end of the day You have to decide how far you want to go in that direction because it can end up invest you can end up investing a lot more time and possibly money in Going that route But guess the good thing about it though is that when you work with an Acoustician, they have the numbers To sort of back up their claims, you know, if they have the right models and the right math Chances are they'll be able to at least tell you what to expect in terms of the performance And I'm talking mainly about soundproofing that magic STC So that might be valuable to you if you're doing bigger top money projects If you're working in your own home in a small studio, you may not need to go that route But just so you know if you want something that's more than just taking Dan in my word that we think that this Solution's kind of work for you. There are people out there that do know the math Right and let me know if you ever want to talk to one I can refer you Yeah, but is that necessary in your closet, you know, I mean generally I mean you and I will walk into a closet or walk into a booth and We know what it's supposed to sound like Around the mic because that's how we position ourselves and one Mike and we'll hear a note in one spot Right and and you record it people send us samples were like Are you under a shelf? It's one of my favorites. Yeah, you know, those sorts of things I Think for knowing the way it's supposed to sound I would always go by my ear and and you know me I'll go into somebody's house and I literally as I say I got to sniff around You know, okay, where where is the node here? Okay? Where is the sweet spot because it like I say every room's different and it's like, okay Where's your mic position? Perhaps we need to move it a little bit over here Now it may be Calculations our brains are doing those calculations all this algebra and and stuff. Actually, it's probably more What's the other stuff? What's the last math class I took a college and failed out differential equations. Yeah, our brains are doing that I mean, I mean that site hearing and it's doing all these calculations We just don't know it So but we know what it's supposed to sound like and it's like maybe it's you know I maybe you know, you're getting too much of a comb filter over here or something like that If you know what those things are, you know, how to adjust for them So but if they guys want to do the math they can do the math. Yeah, exactly There's people that know how to do that stuff. They're called acousticians. That's right The another thing I was gonna mention is the use case for remote controlled mic pram. What the heck is That that's something else for your app. Yeah, that's really any interface really at this point that has Software that works alongside it that also allows you to adjust the game There's a few out there that don't have that capability like the audience series They've decided to and for a good reason they decided to put a lot of money and energy engineering into their game pot The gain knob and it's a physical control Others and we mentioned the Apollo earlier and also I think the RME brand of things like the baby face They have a few others that are really expensive They allow you to adjust the game from your screen and there's actually, you know what I almost forgot The most obvious one of all the Apollo are the Apigee Apigee, right they've got the maestro software the Apigee one not a big fan of the software all the time But I will say being able to set your preemptive into precise number 43 27 whatever it is. It's kind of handy It makes it very easy to go back and repeat a setting when you have to pick up a job Or if you know, you're doing a game you can type that number in boom set the game Walk into your studio and you know what it's going to be it's repeatable and Beyond that if you happen to have a control surface in your in your booth whether it be an iPad remote controlling your computer Or if you have a keyboard and mouse You can now control that from inside the booth and the most important thing and we did talk about this last time You're not extending very expensive thunderbolt cables, which is extremely expensive to extend or Sometimes very unreliably are able to extend USB You don't want to extend USB if you can avoid it. It's very unreliable But you extend your microphone cable and your headphone cable no problem So now you can adjust your gain as needed from your booth and you're controlling it remotely essentially so There's a case even if you're not going to use all the plugins use all the bells and whistles When the Apollo arrow now is getting into a more reasonable ballpark price range It might not be a bad idea. And lastly if you're gonna be trained on using certain tools and software And you go through a training course to learn these tools Don't assume that because you learned to use them and you were given the tools to use It means that you must use them. It doesn't work that way Because you buy a set of tools and one of them happens to be an impact wrench It doesn't mean you need to use the impact wrench on every project, you know the thing is this You don't go into your bathroom and stall a soap dish with an impact wrench So folks when you learn these tools, it's great. It's nice to have some knowledge It's nice to have the tools when you need them, but it's very important if you don't learn When to use them you may end up using them all the time When you don't need to be or even shouldn't be and actually making the audio come out worse So please be very selective about when you use them And if you've learned how to use them and didn't learn when to use them Ask the person who trained you what's appropriate how to learn to how to use or when to use the tools That's probably one of those things that just comes with experience Absolutely. Yeah, so be careful. Don't don't overuse processing. Don't overuse RX. Don't overuse those tools. They can Accumulatively add on layers and layers of sludge to the audio before you know, it doesn't sound so good when it's all done Yeah, keep it clean. Keep it simple. Yeah, I think there's way too much discussion out there about look what I can do My audio great who cares most engineers don't want your thoughts on whether get it right up front That's what George and I do we help you get it right up front Yeah, so I mean I kind of did dovetails into a little bit of a discussion I mean because well, we've already been discussing it and that is This is a reality that we're in now of your owning a voiceover Production studio You're not just an actor with a booth anymore. You're oftentimes taking control of the audio from Microphone to delivery to what goes to the client to what even ends up on YouTube television, whatever and As a result of having to learn all that it can be overwhelming. I Worked with a client last week who was getting some really good training on some very very complicated software and it was a overwhelming Internets complexity and you know, I realized that she just didn't realize the scope of what she was entering You know the Pandora's box She had opened and I think that that reality settled on her and it was it was overwhelming and intimidating and I felt bad because I wanted to Do what at this I didn't want to lie to her, you know So it's kind of like laying it on like, you know, this is what you're ahead for this is what you have ahead of you These are some of the things you're gonna need to learn Well, blah blah, but at the same time it was like that sort of that reality check. Yeah, and you know You guys are many of you if you're entering this field, especially during COVID It's not just about getting the audition in clean. It's about now turning in Producible or releasable audio quality that professional quality Okay, I'll say it broadcast quality. Some of you are doing stuff for broadcast not many Um direct to broadcast. Yeah. Yeah so, you know We know that it's that's a lot and so just Pick your tools and your knowledge wisely Do a little research talk to other people using the same tools find out what it is that they've liked because You might be sold on on a way to learn something that might be again totally valid, but It might not be the right tool set for you It might be too elaborate. It might have too much going on too much of a learning curve and you might be able to just buy Sort of follow the dots or you know paint by number get something that works But you have no clue what you just did. Yeah, and so we really want to watch out for that. I mean Dan What's What are you telling people now who are being thrust into having studios and are hearing about Unbelievable amounts of number of hats they have and complexity. Well. Yeah, I mean my philosophy is always Do everything you can physically to get your studio sounding, right? The idea of actually having to do production, which means a number of different it could be multi-tracking adding music I mean, it's very rare that I'm asked to do that even though. That's what I did professionally for 15 years So there's a product. Yeah, ironically. Yeah, you know, and it's like when I get to do it It's fabulous because I get to do that stuff for the most part. They're looking for dry audio and To learn how to do all this other stuff because people think well if I learn how to do this they're gonna hire me for my production skills Hardly the what it is I think it's a matter of when the opportunity comes and you've got to do something like that That's when you talk to somebody who actually knows how to do it to help you and teach you step-by-step do this do that and here's how you get away with that and You know fake it until you make it If you do it wrong, it's gonna sound really bad. It really does take a couple of years to really master What is it supposed to sound like and how do you balance your voice with music and sound effects and all these other things? It's it's it's an art form and you don't learn how to do art By taking you know a single sketch class, you know There's a lot of different, you know things to do and it takes time to understand. Oh, it should sound like this Oh, this needs to be like that It's it, you know, and if you've worked with video you understand what I mean There are certain things you've got to do and just to say, you know Well, I know I've got all the script and I can do it Having the stuff means diddly squat if you don't know how to use it. It's not the equipment that does it It's the actual knowledge of how it does it when you're supposed to you use it and then how you use it Yeah, so that's my take on that unless I went a little long on that But I mean we only talk to people about this every day and they're all like, what if I get this? What if I get this? Well, I could I could use one of these Yeah, I guess I get that people I mean there's deals with RX 7 all the time And so every time there's a deal people say hey, it's only 30 29 dollars great And then you'll buy it and they come to me and they say we make me a stack and oh, I have RX 7 now Are you gonna include that in your stack? I'm like No, I mean if unless there's an absolutely good reason I'm not gonna put just because you have that tool Doesn't mean I'm gonna use it I'm gonna use the tools that are necessary to achieve the result and I will never throw something in there Just because you bought it So yeah, that's that's not the way I operate Exactly just because you got it doesn't mean you got to use it. Yeah. Yeah Anyway, we got a ton of questions from our vast Worldwide audience your advice look at the chat. It's flying. I know oh now you're asking all these questions What we're gonna get to as many of them as we can right after these incredibly important messages You know to put it mildly this year has been Challenging some voiceover talent have struggled others have thrived Now if you're like me you've worked from home since long before this virus showed up But have you managed to truly master your home-based voiceover workflow? Are you easily slipping in front of the mic and efficiently turning out great work? Or are you struggling to get all your tools and systems running smoothly? Well, help is on the way There's going to be a great new free VO heroes course starting Saturday, August 29th Called mastering home-based voiceover and David H. Lawrence the 17th is going to teach it to you live online You can get access to it and a reminder when it kicks off by going to voheroes.com forward slash 2020 that's voheroes.com forward slash 2020 no matter where you are in your VO journey the free mastering home-based voiceover course will help you hone and refine your home-based workflow and help you move from struggling to thriving go to voheroes.com forward slash 2020 that's voheroes.com forward slash 2020 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 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 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 comm and see a sample of our work Now let's get back to Dan and George and this week's tech wisdom Well, it's time to talk about source elements That's right source elements the creators of source connect and so many other tools Uh, it's it is really the tool that has taken over the remote recording Technology world. I mean especially since kovat. Uh, I produced a video on how to use this thing Back in march because I was getting so many questions How last time I checked it had 16,000 views on youtube Which I never would have predicted that ever in a million years because it's An industry tool, you know, it's something we use in voiceover But that shows you there's a heck of a lot of interest in it because This is what the agents are telling people they need to have Productions producers are asking for it and for a good reason. It's been around longer in terms of pretty much Really all the tools that work over the internet for streaming your voice over audio to another studio I think it's been around pretty much the longest and for that reason It's in a lot of studios. It's really become a standard It's taken over for istn pretty much. So if you want to be ready to go Here's what you're gonna do. You don't have to pull out your credit card yet You can really just get a demo you can go to source dash elements dot com Get a 15 day trial And you can be up and running It's that simple you can be up and running and running and have source connect operating on your system And then you can tell people that you have Source connect working Now you don't want to get to the point where it's just working You want to make sure it's properly set up and to do that check out that youtube video. I mentioned It's at george the tech dot com slash s c I've got a lot of information on there. Make sure you really understand how to make it work So when you need it you're going to be ready But it's an amazing piece of technology and source connect 4 is an alpha very excited I'll be testing it soon And I'll have information to share as soon as I do so stay tuned for that. Anyway, we appreciate your support Let's get back to the show a lot. We've got a lot of questions. Come on. Let's go wrap it up And we're back Yes, we are we are We really are now you're missing it george because I have a new air conditioner in here I'm missing the air conditioning that I don't hear. Yeah, it's quiet. It's quiet. It's cool in here and awesome You know, congratulations. Oh, yeah, I mean deal. Yeah, it's amazing how how air conditioning always craps out when it's 110 degrees Of course, so, uh, it was it. What was the old commercial? It's humping and it's a pumping until Tragically it humps its little guts out It's funny. My car would always die when I had to foot to the floor for five miles. It's just kind of funny how that works Anyway, very comfortable in here now So when people can come wreck back to the studio, it will be comfortable in here and it won't rain on them on the couch Awesome. Yeah, which will be really cool. Anyway, we got a ton of questions tonight And we're happy to answer them because you've asked them So, uh, the first one is from the acx narrator facebook group A private name someone being anonymous Well, it's a private group and I didn't I didn't ask so I just thought I would keep an anonymous go for it But um, um saying uh, the person said they got a tlm 103, but oh mg It picks up everything You know, it sure does doesn't it? My booth is solid. It's not perfect, but it's solid and my last mic didn't have any Issue with picking up outside noise like this one is Yeah, um, so my question is for issues like this. Should I get a different mic? Um, what mic should I get or would I put a better interface help somehow? I'm using a scarlet 2i2 So I think this is another one of these people that's falls victim to their agent or somebody casting saying We prefer that you have a large diaphragm condenser like the Neumann tlm 103 And then they have no idea what it means to have a mic. That's so unbelievably sensitive And uh, it's it can be a real problem. Yeah, I mean they recommend these mics and then completely forget about The acoustics of the room the acoustics and with the tlm 103 then sound noise the noise level the self noise Or not the self noise with the noise floor, right? Yeah, not on the tlm 103 very quiet mic It's a quiet sensitive mic and thereby also it's it's also extremely Uh, it has a very wide frequency range So it goes way into the basement below 20 hertz And way above 20 kilohertz and it hears everything a lot of stuff that you don't want it to hear Right, so keep that in mind in here. Yeah. Yeah, not all noise is not all noise is Unusable like if it's just rumble your mic is hearing and I guarantee This mic's hearing more rumble than your old one more low end That's not a big deal that can be fixed with a high pass filter. So don't Be too concerned, but I wouldn't just go throw the mic away or sell it quite yet Talk to an engineer talk to dan and I about is this the mic right mic for you Getting this tech support by committee is not gonna get you the right answers. Leave me Yeah, that's more that's more of a physical space question than it is a microphone question Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so Uh, Jeff Holman asks you guys have talked a lot about proper mic technique with a large diaphragm condenser mic But what about a shotgun mic like the sennheiser 416 or the road ntg 5 What's the angle distance placement of the mic relative to the mouth? Well, if you're watching the show Let this be testament. This is the right way to do it So I've got a center. I actually have a road ntg 4 Um, you know what in at the end of the day? I find that the technique is almost exactly the same Um rules the principles Yeah, the principles are basically the same. Um You don't want to be in the pop zone You want to have it roughly three to six inches away if you can be sometimes further away. That's great 45 degree angle Yeah, I mean in this case oftentimes I have it right down the center, but because I'm on camera that would look pretty dumb So it's off to the side, but even though it's off to the side I have it pointing right at my mouth or maybe The chin Don't point at your nose. You don't want nasal sounds Um, and uh, you'll get reasonably accurate sound very accurate sound. So Um, yeah, I think it's a very similar technique I think to remember with shotgun mics is the capsule with the with a large diaphragm mic The capsule is I don't know if you can see it on camera probably not not the way the light's hitting it But it's right inside. It's it's right where that center line is right and with a shotgun mic the capsule is way back here So when you think you're right on top of the mic, you're never really eating it the way you might think you are because you're Still that far away from the capsule. So It does behave a little bit differently than a large diaphragm mic, but you start with that same principle I think you get really good results. Yeah, I mean I I I mean I use a 416 in the booth and that's the way I have it and you know, there's never any plosives People forget what why is it that the 416 is so popular because it was designed to pick up human voices talking And you know from a human distance So, you know, again the same rules will always apply. You're talking to somebody else Not to a microphone And that's one of the great things about the 416 or the ntg5 or any shotgun mic Is that because you it doesn't have to be right in your field of vision And you forget the mic is there and you get to be you there's a big psychological factor to this So that's why I recommend, you know, the same techniques, you know Five to seven inches depending on the size of the room, you know this say way or a fist or whatever But you don't talk directly into the diaphragm unless you're like doing promo work in which case unless you're doing promo work But you're still gonna pop the mic. That's right, you know, or you get a pop filter for it But you know, I find seeing a windscreen on something where it's nowhere near the person. I'm like are you recording outside? You know, unless a santa anna is coming through I wouldn't worry about it too much You're not yes. I had mine on my mic for a long time. It's a weird crutch I don't know why I did it, but you definitely don't need it. It looks cool technique It looks really professional, but nobody cares how the sausage is made. They only care about what it sounds like Right You get the next question Okay Our buddy thomas mason asks How much space do you need to not have a u 87? Sound like it's trapped in a box. Don't record in a box So I have heard a u 87 sound good in a smallish booth like a four by six um Getting it exactly right in the right place in the room. Is it very critical? Tuning the room is correct is very critical I think you can get away with a space that small if you have the room tuned correctly Um, the one particular studio that really stood out They they were using g i k acoustics Uh products and they were using some diffusers And that's something I haven't had time or the inclination yet to really spend time experimenting with this diffusers But basically on either side of the the two short walls. Well the long walls which are the closest to you On either side of the mic. There was a diffuser So whatever reflections would come off those walls was sort of more scattered than it was directed back at the mic In that case it sounded really good I also found that just putting the mic in figure eight mode Takes care of a lot of sins Because then the microphone Doesn't hear the it's let's assume you have the mic again sort of straight up and down or Like this The mic doesn't hear what's above it or below it or on either side of it So if you have a room that has less than perfect acoustics The mic's going to hear less of it. It's still going to hear what's behind it But then you just focus a lot of the treatment on the wall behind the mic, you know big bass trap things like that But you can get away with a less than ideal room When the mic's in figure eight that's been my experience after experimenting and having people try this So, um, but I don't know how much space exactly I definitely wouldn't shove it in a three and a half by three and a half whisper room No, definitely wouldn't recommend that. Yeah, I mean, what do you need a u87 for anyway? Unless you really like having a great mic, but you have a great mic A u87 is not designed to be in a small booth like that It's designed to be in an acoustically sterile and neutral environment that is very expensive That's where you put a three thousand dollar microphone not in a phone box Or it's used for a concert concert recording concert halls Exactly drum over it drum far distance microphone placement If you look in some recording magazines, you'll see people describe. Well, I've got a pair of u87s 10 feet from the drums things like that those mics excel at that But I think they're used so commonly in voiceover. They just became a utility mic They didn't know what mic maybe to use per se But they knew this was one of the most expensive respected mics in the studio. So if they put that one up You know a difference their boss isn't gonna chew them out. Why'd you use such a crap mic? You know on the celebrity guy Use the three thousand. You know bring out the most expensive machine And then when it goes See if you get that reference Okay more j hars black. Yeah, this one I guess wants for me to um The small round circle pop screen thing that you sometimes have on your 416 I don't have a 416 And I don't have a round pop screen thing. Is this maybe what he's talking about? This is my only little round pop screen thing. Oh, yeah, that the remember that the hook studio one. Yeah, yes Uh, he says where can we get those? Is this what I'm looking for and he sent me a link And I'm clicking on it and I'm looking at it and it is loading And does he still make these see I got mine too The hook studio he's not I don't think he's making this exact one And still because it was made for the apogee mic specifically it was and unfortunately It was for the old original apogee mic and they've changed the design now So it doesn't really work on the new ones. Yeah, does it really work as a pop screen though? I mean it does actually work pretty well Peter Piper picked a pack of pickle pep Well, you know what it's good for it's a good spit guard. Yeah, because it's really what they're for It keeps spit off your mic Anyway, he showed me one that's for an re 20 or an re 320 It's sort of like a ring that goes around the mic and it has a disc in front of it um That's not the one that's uh, that's for an re 20, but Look for the hook studios and weirdly I think he only sells them on ebay I'm pretty sure about that. So look on ebay for the hook studios Pop screens and you'll find you'll probably find the one you're looking for I think that's what might be what you're referring to Fun with 3d printers. Yes Okay next Ah the john hardy gear. Well, we were just discussing this earlier about uh You know, there's a lot of edicts coming down about you got to have this mic and you got to have that and and again these guys these these engineers who are sending out these specs to voice actors Don't talk about acoustics So all of the you know, something that's going to make a good mic extremely sensitive Doesn't do you any good If you're in a marginally good closet You know, so we we we haven't we don't get to As if you as you as you probably know from watching the show Um, we do talk about a lot of gear, but we don't get to gear slutty um meaning Why should we don't Compare our shades of mauve all that much on the show We're not going to be probably comparing John hardy to grace design to avalon, etc And analyzing these preamp colors because we know that in our in the context of our world That is like sixth or seventh on the list in terms of influencing the sound quality is so far down the list Yeah John hardy's preamp extremely well regarded my friend beweaver used to use one Now he has a scarlet solo. I think I'm not kidding. Yeah, and he uses twisted wave I mean he has reducted and reducted and reducted his studio over the years. I mean, it's you think it's hilarious He used to have the most pretty well elaborate setup. It's literally a 416 into a scarlet Which is that's the way it should be and that's but a john hardy is a fantastic preamp If you to have a thousand dollars and you just want that one cool piece of gear that you've always been Go for it man. It's simple. It's the nice thing about it turn it on as a gain knob That's what's nice about it. Yeah, it's not a crazy channel strip of the million controls, but yeah Of course, it means nothing if you can't perform your way out of a paper bag Yeah, I don't have any I know in the context of what he might be talking about It's a different situation But if you're gonna have a studio for commercial use and you want to have seven preamps that might be one of them Yeah, I think we got oh, I know run out time real fast. Yeah, we got time for maybe one or two questions. Yeah. Yeah adam Durgeman who's joining us from the uk. So he's up really late Um, I have been curious about the apollo solo for pc. However, the driver inconsistencies Are making me shy away well aside from the price tag too. Well, I think the answer is don't question there Yeah, I mean watch our episode I go to youtube type in v obs usb interface shootout Every time someone says which interface to get I just send them that video It just shows you how little the differences are from a hundred dollars to seven hundred dollars And that you know, you can as I just got done saying Use something as simple and easy as a scarlet and get completely high quality pro Voice over recordings. So don't obsess about it. Yeah, I think that's the problem is we find and you know And george and I talk to people every day because that's our job Um to talk to them about their home voiceover studios and we're constantly getting this flow of what about this piece of equipment? What about that piece of equipment? It's like, you know, we have experience with all of them if something has Problems with you know, technologically wise and it's going to be more of a problem than a benefit We're usually they say, you know, that one's going to be a problem. Keep it super duper simple Um, yep, which is why you know bow weaver uses a 416 into a And he still sounds like bow weaver. It doesn't you know, it it's We're finding that if the more stuff you have the more clouded it actually is going to create your audience Many times somebody wrote to me today and said they're using a manly preamp And it's like, wow, that looks really cool. But he's feeding it into a 4i 4 as a scarlet 4i from like Take it out of the chain for a second. It may sound a whole heck of a lot cleaner do an ab convert Yeah, do an ab comparison and and when you're going to use a preamp at that price point that quality everything else needs to be cons Consummit in terms of quality, right? The ad converters everything your room noise your room tone Everything otherwise what a waste of money. Yeah. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah, you walk into somebody's studio You unplug everything and you plug it in, you know, all right now talk into it God that sounds great. Adam Gurdjieman has another question here. Okay. I'm not I don't I'm sorry. I just feel like it's one we've answered so many times adam and I I don't I mean I'm we like to answer your questions, but It answers itself practically you're saying well, I got this then I added this but then the noise got worse He was asking saying yeah, I have an audio and id4 and I'm it's weird that I have to turn the gain up on the preamp So high. Yeah Because guys if it sounds good, it is good Like if you've got a good mic plugged into the audio and id4 and you're getting good noise levels The the distortion is low Everything sounds great Don't add stuff just because you think the knob is in a weird spot Doesn't matter the audio and id4 does have a weird gain control We've talked about it before that. Yeah, you have to have it at the last 15 to 10 10% of its gain range and we understand that's a little odd Yeah, but adding more gear to take away the clarity and the accuracy of the preamp Makes doesn't make sense. So don't add a fed head. Don't add any boosters, cobblifters anything Exactly just keep it clean. Yeah, keep it clean. Yeah. Well for some reason you've decided to spend another hour with us And listen to George and I ramble on about home voiceover studio stuff But apparently you love it because we love it We do we do we do I get a big boost every time this part of the show comes up and I I really enjoy it So yeah, me too. Hopefully you guys found something useful from tonight. It's the only time we get a chance to talk because you're We're sequestered away. Anyway, we'll be right back to wrap things up right after these Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great Hey, you know, it's not often we get to hang out in the voiceover body shop office Home of the voiceover body shop broadcast museum and time wasting hobby museum Anyway, we're here to talk about harlan hogan and voiceover essentials Right now the harlan hogan voice optimize headphones together with the wonderful led full color voiceover recording sign Are on special right now at 20 bucks off No promo code required. Just put both items in your voiceover essential shopping cart The headphones They're specially designed for voiceover with a nice flat response that allows you to hear you as you exist And the led voiceover recording sign is the perfect way to keep everyone around you quiet while you ply your craft That's 20 bucks off when you buy both No promo code required. Just put both items in your voiceover essential shopping cart Go over to voiceover essentials right now and see all the great stuff. 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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 voiceover 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 voice actor 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 This is anthony menders. You're watching voiceover body shop Well, it's that time of the show when we get to say goodbye Now it's time to say goodbye to all our family and thank them Uh, especially uh, our donors of the week who are Oh, I get to I get a second take on this name now. This is here we go. Okay First my dad george wittem Uh, second of all natasha mochevka thomas pinto Trey moseley philips appear paul pape. Hey paul pape paul christopher epperson. Hi, um, michelle blinker antlamp productions and graham spicer. All right. Thank you for those donations. Yes, we of course, we've been here in the marvelous Vobs central studio here where you can see all the vo staff The vobs staff is up there. You know, there's jiff holman right there And and sus over here somewhere We want to go back to social distance with masks on. Yeah We can't wait till this is over so we can go back to showing people's studios And then george and i can be in other people's studios, which we think is is really good So send them to us and we're starting to accumulate a few so we can we can have a few Uh, we do need to thank our amazing sponsors though, uh, like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements Vo heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and jmc demos And of course jeff holman doing a great job getting all those questions to us from the chat rooms uh sumer lino getting it done behind the board and uh She does a great job every week and that's why she's here And lee penny for being lee penny Well, I think we're going to take a couple of weeks off Because we've only put together a show every week Since this whole thing started you guys get fresh content But i'm gonna pick two good shows a great interview and a really good tech talk for the week after that And then we'll return live With some fresh content a little bit later in september. We'll all be fresh Yes, we'll get past the jewish holidays, which can just totally throw things into k Any refreshment and uh, yeah, so we can concentrate and you know and get things better, but we appreciate you and all your all your views and all your emails and all your questions and uh You know yes, we do this thing is gonna end sooner or later And we're all going to get together again We get the chance to hug and shake hands and not just bump elbows and talk to each other from six feet and Yeah, anyway, but i'm looking forward to it. It's important to note that you know Your audio is very important to us and to you, but mostly Mostly if it sounds good It is good and that's the bottom line kiddos Anyway, i'm dan lennard and i'm george wittem and this is voiceover body shop or vio BS Have a great week. Have a great september. We'll see you a little bit later. See you In september have a good one