 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk Tech talk tech talk tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. Tech talk. All right This is tech talk number one hundred and twelve I know there's a hundred and twelve sitting up there somewhere. Just there we go Just so in case you look at it and it's like okay We can always do a notion new show because Apple always has to release a new operating system to break everything There's always something to talk. Yeah, there's another two years of stuff right there Anyway, if you've got a question for us throw it in the chat room whether you're in facebook live or you're watching on youtube Or if you're watching on linkedin Now's a perfect time if you've got a question about your home voiceover studio some piece of equipment a problem You're having a thought or two about having a home voiceover studio throw it in the chat room right now We'll get to it So let's get ready. It's time for voiceover body shop tech talk Right now Voiceover body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials dot com the home of harlin hogan signature products Source elements the folks who bring you source connect Vio heroes dot com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training Voice actor dot com your voice over website ready in minutes voiceover extra your daily resource for voiceover success And by world voices the industry association of freelance voice talent And now here's your hosts dan and george Well, hello there, i'm dan lennard as it's and i'm george wittem as it says And this is voiceover tech body shop george Or vio v s v s tech talk tech talk talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk all right Tech talk lots to talk about tech and we've got lots of cool stuff But before we get into that we have to remind you something and that is that this is what george and i do now I've seen a lot of stories and articles and people putting stuff in on on facebook and linkedin and different discussion groups They seem to be parroting everything that you and i have been talking about for the past Well 12 years doing this show but before that before we even started doing this and we really that's I'm glad i would love to see people parroting what we're Talking about on this show because we've spent a long time making sure we're giving out the right info so right It's a it's a good thing Um, but you know maybe getting it right from the source is probably a better more reliable way to go It makes sense to me Uh, and this is what george and i do we help you with your home voiceover studio Talk about a niche market, uh, but you know we help with podcasters too and stuff like that But voiceover is our primary focus And how you get to sound the way you're supposed to sound or what i like to say what it's supposed to sound like which is soul So, uh, if you'd like to work with me all you got to do is go over to There it is. Oh home voiceover studio dot com And uh, you'll be able to find uh, what it is that i do and how i do it and my specimen collection cup Which is seems to be continuously flowing over with with all sorts of interesting samples And it's always fun to respond to people and tell them what their audio is like And if you want to work with george who has A staff of thousands, uh, at least it seems that way now you got a lot of people working with you You've got lots of backup Over at we do at over george the dot tech Yeah, i'm getting better at delegating things to other folks, uh as uh as i'm realizing i'm not the biggest expert in everything tech There are people who are specialists And we have them all working with us, which is wonderful So we've got the best talent in the tech world a voiceover and beyond Available for you at george the dot tech performer friendly techs And dan Yeah, what you doing over there at home? Studio home voiceover studio. I already told people about it. Oh, okay. You weren't paying attention I was i was multitasking. I was reading my notes for the next segment Okay, well since you're now totally up to date on what you were going to talk about it's time for george's weekly tech update What do we got this week? Oh boy. Well, first of all, we get it right out of the way apple sonoma is out. Don't install it What? yet Every year it's the same thing. Um, if you are jonesing to make it jonesing to make an upgrade Let's say you're on big sir Or you're on uh modere This might be a good time to go to ventura. That's fine I would recommend that before I I click on the very tempting upgrade button That's in your in your update window. Must push. Must push it so tempting, isn't it? Yeah, just don't do it quite yet. We haven't had chances to test it out I did hear that thomas at twisted wave did release an update patch to make sure he can support it and he has That's still not a good reason quite yet to just jump on to that And every year when the new os comes out, that means old computers become Unsupported or obsolete. I don't know the word. I think it's unsupported is what apple calls them So it turns out that folks on 2015 max It doesn't mean your computer will stop working It just means that your computer will not be able to get all the security updates And it won't be able to update to certain things like certain web browsers That are required to do certain things on the internet and unfortunately, that's the way tech goes Things do become outmoded after a while. So that 2015. Well, what do you do with a 2015 mac that still runs perfectly? Well, it could be as it could be like a server. It could be like a data server You could use it to keep, you know, a lot of videos online to view the network. Yeah You know, there's a lot you could do with it. You could give it to a school who needs a computer for teaching video editing Um, it doesn't need to be used for web browsing. So there are things you could do Um, but that is what happens now this next thing on a noise floor This is something that we talk about all the time and usually when we get a week of audio from somebody It's like what's the noise floor and there's so many different answers to How do you measure it? What is it? Yeah? So talk to us about this came up This got inspired from a specific facebook post and the post wasn't about hey, how do I measure noise floor? The post was what is a good noise floor? And I will never answer that question with a straight up number because It ain't that straight up. It's not that simple and well, here's why George the tech It's time that I did this it was time to do this 10 years ago and finally doing it And this is a little video Explaining what I believe and based on my compadres in this business believe Is the appropriate and accurate way to measure noise floor, right? How loud is the noise in your recording during the room tone of your files? So there's a couple reasons why this is not a straightforward answer, right? First of all, we're measuring dynamic range. We're not measuring just How loud the noise is right? I could take the file you see on the screen right now I could set the peak level of this file To minus 20 And when I check the noise floor by hitting play By the way, the number you want to look at is an rms level not peak level for noise I can get an rms of minus 85 Wow, that's fantastic, right But that's not telling the whole story because the peak of the audio file is still well below zero db So to really accurately measure this we have to first correct for those level variations And adjust our peak level by just simply normalizing the audio file to zero db Okay now we By the way, that's a little bit of the debated topic as to what to calibrate the peak level to I've heard some say do minus three But I think to be as honest as possible zero is the Maximum level you can have so that's why I said normalized to zero. By the way, that's normalized to zero peak somebody saw the video Normalized to zero db rms and wondered why it sounded kind of complete garbage Peak is what we're setting it to done is we've taken the peak level in this file Set it to its maximum level is zero And then if we measure the noise floor in this sample We'll get a more honest answer minus 65 minus 66 rms. Okay Now if the meters in your DAW don't show rms levels only peak You might need to use a different method now in twisted wave we have file Analyze Okay, now what animal the same thing featured is in adobe audition and it's called What do they call it analyze? No, it's not called analyze What's the adobe audition equivalent of this stand? Let's see. Let me go back in here Look that up while I play this analyze does is really really useful. First of all Obviously, it gives us a peak telling us zero db was the peak It gives us the loudness units full scale and by way this is integrated Which means it's measuring it over the average of the entire length of audio file It's giving us the average rms power, which is what is used by the audiobook industry To determine the correct levels for delivering files And it's giving us another useful number the minimum rms power Which essentially is giving us the average level of the quietest portions of this audio Which in this case is about minus 69 db Again a good number Now how long is that window? aka the rms window Well right now that's two 2,000 milliseconds or two seconds so over the course of two seconds of audio at any time That's the average that you're getting at the minimum Which is a pretty fair and honest way to measure a noise floor Does that mean at some other point in the file the noise floor doesn't go higher than that? It does it means somewhere else in this file. There may be an increase in noise floor So another issue with measuring noise floor is how big is the window of time? And this is something nobody ever asks or tells you to do When measuring your noise floor, right? I can pick a one millisecond moment in time Where my studio is incredibly quiet And give you an amazingly low number But that's not really a real world number, right? So an rms window of two seconds, I'd say a pretty fair way to go Longer is more fair, but honestly most systems don't let you measure longer than two full seconds. Okay Now next is the fact that there's two different levels in this audio file. You'll notice there's a lower level And there's a higher level So in the higher level, there's a higher energy level being projected into the mic In the lower level, there's a more of a conversational volume level being sent into the mic So which really is the correct noise floor? Well If you're doing high energy performances Then the noise floor would be be accurate to measure the noise floor during this selection here So it's the volume of the voice With the noise floor afterward Well, what about up until that point? Here The first half of the file Remember that normalizing part Well, yes, exactly. What if we normalized this so this section of audio is a peak of zero And we do another analysis on this selection Now what do we get? Now we get a minimum rms power noise floor level of minus Nearly 60 db, right? I'm hearing reports of the audio on the playback is bad. Is it Unintelligible or just really bad. It's just a little choppy that's all. Oh, it's choppy Ah fascinating more choppy. Yeah, no, it's yeah, but But when we when we release this we'll put this full video back in there So no one will see any of the good one in yeah. Yeah, I had no idea it was choppy Can't tell on this side. It sounds great So yeah, I don't want to keep playing a video that sounds choppy But the kind of the takeaway of this whole thing really is that Audio quality or noise floor Is a little bit more nuanced. There's more to it than meets the eye And another thing I didn't get to address is that Noise isn't noise. It's a noise. You can have a meter that shows minus 60 rms That where the noise is actually very prominent because it could be a buzz A hum a whistle, but that's still meters below minus 60 and be quite audible And vice versa. You can have a metering that looks at minor. It's at minus 40 and Looks pretty awful on the waveform because it's full of rumbling stuff But still to the ear sounds pretty good. It sounds pretty clean, right? So it's not as straightforward as as you would like it to be So when somebody throws these numbers around just take it with a grain of salt Remember that there is more to it than than what you might think um a couple more things that we can Jump on before we get to the rest of the show. I wanted to mention that There was a little This just came up as well USB audio interfaces with loop back There are a lot of them now and there's more coming every day including the new scarlet 2i 2 the gen 4 has loop back The thing is there's not loop back isn't loop back just like the room tone isn't room tone. It depends Loop back. There's really kind two kinds. There's one kind that is playing back the playback To a separate set of channels which they might call virtual channels That's great if you're producing a podcast or producing something where you want to record the return to separate tracks, okay Where that's not so useful is for voiceovers who want to do playback If that playback is on a separate set of channels Chances are the software you're using for your meeting isn't going to hear that audio because it's on separate channels Now interestingly zoom now lets you choose multiple channels So zoom would probably actually work. You could say use channel one my mic and channel three the playback, right? That's a workaround, but not every program is going to do that probably not google meet Probably not what's the other microsoft teams, you know things like this, right? So keep that in mind loop back is different the ones that have the right kind of loop back are the steinberg ur 12 The yamaha ag 0 3 and ag 0 6 those actually provide the kind of loop back that you want Actually, the roadcaster pro does as well and the coming in someday in the near future Or longer future the passport vo from sentrance also will have the right kind The wrong kind of loop back is in the 2i 2 the evo 3 Um the ssl 2 unfortunately because they're for different purposes um another quick thing When you're sending out this is a psa when you're sending out audio to another producer or an engineer to finish a project for you Let's say it's an audio book something really long form It's really really really important to make sure the audio you're providing Is good enough to work with what do i mean by that? You might record with the same mic the same booth everything's the same same same same you know how it sounds what can change your own voice If you if it's allergy season and you're on allergy meds and you know that that's messing with the sound of your voice And if you don't know you should know that Probably is um absolutely make sure that those files are checked and listened to if you don't trust yourself by somebody else at least Before you go and record an entire book You know 8 7 12 30 hours Do not record an entire book at once and send the files off record chapter by chapter Make sure someone's checking those files. I'll tell you not everything can be fixed in post There are certain things that just Can not be reliably fixed in post so don't be stuck in that position. Yeah, we had a good time with that this week Uh, you hear that amongst our our crowd and it's like well, should we do this? My thought was if it's throughout the entire thing You know if you can fix it in post fine Otherwise, it was a great rehearsal And try try it again, but it was a pretty prominent nasal squeak in there. It was quite squeaky nasally thing Yeah, yeah, we don't normally hear that stuff because when we're talking to other people They don't hear it either. It's just because you're close in conversation. Yeah Yeah, the mic uh when it's very close up. It's pointing into the nasal passage and now it's picking up Coming out of your Yeah, it's coming out of your nose. It's picking up all sorts of stuff coming out of your face I like to say it's all about this if the sound's coming out of your face Right. It's not just coming out of your mouth. It's coming out all over the place Um, last one real quick because I want to get the dance thing. Um, watch out for those ill-informed client requests This was a good one. I saw it today. I have a project requesting raw wave files recorded at bit rate 192 kilobits per second What uh the person who posted this said I do not however see a way to choose A kilobits per second for wave format I am only given the option of kilobits per second when I save it as nmp3 That's correct, right bit rate refers to How much data are you fitting into a certain amount of time kilobits per second? That's bit rate bit depth which when we talk about 16 bit 24 bit Is a whole different animal Probably what they maybe wanted is they conflated some other numbers. Maybe they want 192 kilobit No, they want maybe they want 192 kilo hertz Sample rate wave Which would be redoculous for a voice over. I mean, I feel like your hard drive in two seconds It's just like it's four times the file size and absolutely no improvement in fidelity whatsoever, so it's You're gonna have to you're gonna have to punt on that one if they don't know how to answer that question But beware bit rate is for mp3's bit depth 16 bit 24 24 bit Is for wave files. All right dan. Yeah, sometimes you wonder, you know, where people pick up information from I mean there's voice actors get stuff from everywhere and we hear on the telephone remember exactly exactly Everybody you know once that guy says well, it's this and you need source connect and the next guy's well You need sners kadoodle I'm not exactly sure where that came from but yeah, I know sninehouser microphone. What do you think you're sninehouser Yeah It's amazing how people want to show you how incredibly intelligent they are by throwing out lingo and terminology As opposed to what it is. They're trying to say So be careful with that In in my basic basics and it's sort of going back to what george was talking about with with loopback and stuff like that There are a lot of different interfaces out there You know and We generally try to recommend stuff that we think that somebody's going to be able to use properly Now george, we've officially sort of stopped recommending the apollo twin for a number of reasons because People buy it because they hear oh, I can do all this stuff with it And yeah that that's no door stop, isn't it? I mean a lot of people still have a studio built around it, but it I don't recommend it for most folks Yeah, I mean curve is ridiculous. It causes confusion It's not worth it for most people Right the idea being that what that what that particular unit does is it it allows your You know your computer to become a whole workstation with lots of different tracks and Adjusting things on the front end as you're recording and then you know on the way back out The thing is is 99% of the stuff that that thing does has nothing to do with voiceover So we don't recommend people use something that is more sophisticated than you're capable of learning you shouldn't have to spend a lot of time On a learning curve or something that isn't really all that necessary Uh now there are other audio engineers saying well, this is what I use So you should use it too because it's gonna sound great if you use what I use which Unfortunately is simply not true The more stuff you have or as my brother used to say the more stuff you have on a sailboat The more stuff that can go wrong Uh, and the same goes true with with an apollo twin, but you know when you're looking at Buying it an interface you don't have to go hog wild. What does it have to do? It takes the analog sound that your microphone is sending to it and it turns it into the ones and zeros That your computer understands. What's the difference between models? I think most of it has to do with the quality of the preamp inside the interface For example, what are they doing? Oh, it's over right here Somebody gave me this this week Uh because they said it doesn't work. Well, I plugged it right in and it just came back to life. No problem So chances are they weren't using it right This is all you really need If it's got a good preamp Most of the analog to digital converters in these things are all pretty good where you run into problems With an interface as if you buy a cheap one. It's like buying a cheap usb microphone It doesn't have a good preamp And you have to you need a because voiceover is a very conversational thing Uh, you know where we're just talking at the level that we talk to other people over a cup of coffee or something Preferably not in a noisy coffee shop. Perhaps in your in your kitchen uh While while a studio condenser mic is very sensitive You still have to have a lot of gain now. We're seeing with a lot of the manufacturers They've all added a little bit more gain and some of their later their later models like the the fifth generation Focus rights and some of the other ones audience makes a really nice interface and yamaha and uh What's the other one taking away game they're all adding more they're adding game, which is a good thing Here's the thing about gain though and why you need to think about it when Most of this stuff again is not designed for doing voiceover. It's designed for makin music And music is inherently louder than the conversational tone of our voice unless you're you know, uh What's her name the uh the singer the who's was racing. What oh, oh the opposite of it. Del. Yeah, the opposite of it. Del Oh, oh, um Sorry, we can't remember her name right now. Yeah, it'll it'll come to me in the middle of the night now have to edit it in You all know who i'm talking about great artist and her brother. Uh, anyway When you're singing or you're playing a loud instrument You don't need a lot of gain because the mic's gonna pick it up Because you're singing So you don't have to give that much gain if you're billy eilish. Thank you jack billy eilish. Thank you so much Sorry billy. Yeah, I know she watches the show and I I felt I felt crushed It was in there somewhere I'm taking memory supplements. It's getting better, but you know, uh, anyway, we're we're talking. Oh, we were talking about, uh Gain is all is gain everything gain gain is everything with one of these things because the digital The the analog to digital converters in these all do the same thing and they one doesn't necessarily do it better than another one But again, if you've got a good preamp and the ones that we usually recommend the focus rights audience Uh, yamaha steinberg um Not necessarily barringer because barringer is uh, is an interesting one Um Part of the euphoria is sometimes considered to be a good one for the money Yeah, um, but you know for the most part it's um It's not a crap shoot if you buy something like I always say about a microphone over 150 to 200 dollars That's going to be the case with uh, with your particular Uh interface, uh, oh also in the ssl2 from uh, um, you know from that particular manufacturer people like that one too What do you think on that before we go to break ssl is a great. I mean The problem with most of this gear is it's still designed for different use cases from voiceover So like you said the loopback functions are used for producing they're used for doing like multitrack production Where you're recording playback from the computer or an interviewer for a podcast, etc That's not what we need. Um, and so there there's things added in that seem helpful than they aren't They add features we don't need They add user interfaces that are Complexing to use complexing Yeah, too too complex to use too complex to use too complex I'm like or or things that seem simple because they have a single knob But actually are more difficult to use because they have only a single knob, right? So yeah, we're really picky about what we like because we just have seen what people have trouble with and We want you to have a user experience. That's reliable and easy right, so Don't go hog wild on an interface because of all the stuff it does Because most of the stuff that it does has very little to do with what you do Let it do its job and To me everything is physical, you know, I mean there's going to be you know different ideas about it and To me, it's like if you got a quiet room that's not reverberant You use your microphone right using proper mic technique. You'll notice there's never a plosive on this show because And I have no pop screen because and you hear me like I'm in the same room with you Use your mic right and set your levels right, which is now becoming a whole nother deal with some other technologies coming along That's all you're required to do And you don't want we don't talk to other people Through all these filters and all these plugins and all these things that we use There are purposes for them and you know reducing potentially some noise and stuff like that Like if you have a really bad nasal squirting sound in there Uh, hopefully you can get it out But you want to keep it as clean as possible So you want to have a nice interface that has a nice preamp in it But that's all you have to worry about you don't want stuff with a lot of extra stuff in there So don't don't listen to all these forums saying yeah, this is what I use just because somebody uses it doesn't mean you have to All right Well, we're gonna take a quick break here and we'll be right back with all of your questions Which you can still put into the chat room and uh, we will answer those questions when we come back So don't go away voice over body shop continues after this This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mandas and you're enjoying dan and george on the voice of our body shop So this week we asked our great sponsor harlan hogan at voiceover essentials dot com What do you want to tell your customers this week? Well harlan said how about a free vo baseball cap with their embroidered vo voice bubble on the front And their voice over essential slogan as heard on tv on the back It tells everybody what you do voice over essentials dot com vo baseball caps are 100 cotton chino twill Garment washed unstructured caps manufactured by style master and feature sewn eyelets Pre-curved visor and metal adjustable tri glide buckle with leather adjusting strap and guess what they'll send one to the first 25 viewers who email their voice over essentials customer service head terry lee at terry dot lee at voiceover essentials dot com To get your voice over essentials vo baseball cap Offer is only good in the continental u.s Well, let's talk about source elements the creators of source connect the software that voice actors use to be recorded remotely by the biggest best productions In the voice over world, which is totally true If you want to get online with that and start learning how to use it head over to source dash elements dot com And get your account set up. We definitely recommend starting off and you can start with a demo But here's the deal if you start with a subscription Then you're going to get the full support that they can provide to you They have a very high degree of support It's an award-winning support that they provide actually they want an award for it this year And for a good reason and you will get that support if you're a paying subscriber Another reason to be a subscriber versus a buying a one-time shot license Is it just happened to one of my clients? He lost his eye lock Well because he was on a subscription They were able to transfer that subscription over to the new eye lock It was no loss of license because it's a subscription. So that's another strong argument against the one time buy license Um, but anyway, that's source connect Recommend it check it out learn it love it and start making some money with it We hope you do and we'll be back with more questions right after this Well, hey there, it's david h. Lawrence with vo heroes and wouldn't it be cool If there was a very simple tool drag and drop tool that would guarantee That the audio you need to upload to acx or any other audiobook platform is perfectly set up in terms Of the tech standards the root mean square normalization the peak normalization the noise floor Guess what there is and I want you to have it absolutely free It's called audio cupcake and you can find it at audio cupcake.com I helped create this software It was built to my specs and my standards for when I do audiobooks And I know it's going to work for you now. It's only available for macintosh Because you windows users you have the ability to use other tools that work for you But in this case you edit your final raw what way file for a chapter You drop it onto audio cupcake and outcomes the 192k mono mp3 file you can upload immediately That's audio cupcake dot com audio cupcake dot com. I hope you love it This is bill radner and you're enjoying voice over body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv All right. Well, we got some great questions and looking through some of these questions They all seem to be geared towards me for some reason. I'm not exactly sure. It's usually your night. It's my night Okay, well, let's get into them. Um, you get the first one here. All right. This one's from Mo jalal. I'll go with mahalo I think that's a better way to say that actually mahalo spell with some zeros and characters opinions on sitting versus Standing voice over delivery. Well, if you guys watched the first half of the show of the last few months Did you notice that I sat for the first and then stood for the second? I don't know if you did but if you did if you did I did because you don't Oh, but I'm gonna think I'm gonna stand up for the rest of the reason I've been doing it The last couple of shows I do the I do the interview segment that we do the first week Seated and when I come in when we do the tech talk, I've been standing And I'm wondering if you guys have noticed any difference in my energy level My delivery or anything else. I'm curious was that my dan, uh, what are your opinions as an actual voiceover actor? You know, I it's it's changed over the years because now I'm old Uh, so sitting is is is he always a preferable thing to me I don't buy a lot of this stuff about, you know, you know standing and diaphragm support I can see where that is really important if you're doing gaming if you're doing, uh, promo stuff Where you really have to belt it out and stuff like that, but for the most part Look, I'm sitting here and and this is how I talk to people and This is the way my voice sounds whether I'm standing up or not and I Being conversational means relaxed standing Generally tends to make people talk a little bit louder because they're concentrating on Projecting and that's what they're doing when they're standing Uh, and if you if you're doing an audiobook or something like that It's you're gonna be you're gonna be very tired at the end. So it takes energy to stand up Save your energy to me. It's like sit You know or lean Just don't use a lot of the energy in your body to stand up straight and there's a halfway point Between sitting and saying that's leaning you can have a leaning stool. You can just have a tall bar stool and just Uh, you know put part of your weight on it. That's a good halfway point Yep, you know, but if you have to see it's got to be a comfortable seat My x chair here. It's very comfortable. That is a nice chair. Um, he had a part two We won't get into a lot of detail in this because you know, it's an extremely personal choice and Neither of us use both So the question is pros and cons of using logic pro versus adobe audition I will give my two cents logic doesn't have a great editing mode I don't like the editing mode and logic at all Whereas the waveform editing mode in adobe audition Works the way it's supposed to work like it works the way I want it to work That would be a really big difference in between the two for me Um, but that would be about it logic is cheap because you buy it once and you own it for life But there's so many things in logic that are not logical for a voice over So I just don't I just don't find I don't know I just never never feels right for me never felt right Yeah The thing about logic is is that it's it's the big brother to garage band Which is designed for exactly what it's called for garage bands. Uh, it's music production Yeah, it's it's a it's a multitrack program Editing in it is is very very complicated and not as accurate as what you can do in in uh adobe audition Which I use every day Logic doesn't have a spectrogram in a spectrogram It's uh Logic is made is really designed for making music Audition was really designed for doing voice over and adding voice over to video Right, so the workflow is there and it actually has several different workflows in it I mean if you go into adobe audition, you've got uh, you know edit audio to video radio production There you know, and there's a there's a oh, yeah There's a mix of spaces for simple editing You've got all of these different tools to work to create the right workflow for you Yeah, that's that's why I like adobe audition It was really along with twisted wave. It was really designed to do what we do as voice actors. So If you want to be a geek about it, if you're like, oh, I want to have all this stuff Find in dandy most of it has very little to do with voiceovers. We were saying earlier Justin Ramos has a question for me. He says, uh, how do you define signature sound? Is it the timber of your voice or just the way you read copy or something else? Thanks What is your signature sound your signature sound? From what I've learned over the many years I've been doing this is the one you get booked for So that's your signature sound Uh, there are certain styles of copy that, you know, only certain people can do Um You know, if I said, what's my signature sound? I'm like, well, it depends on what I'm doing, you know, if I'm doing If I'm doing a long format narration, there's my voice for doing that if I'm doing a commercial it's going to be a little bit different and If you've got some range You know, what is a signature sound? I think it's something that you don't have to concentrate on or think about It's once you've been working for a while And what are you getting hired for you can use that as your signature sound and the thing that you highlight in your demo But I think it's it's one of those pieces of terminology that you know, some agents or some other people throw out there to say Okay Signature sound discuss it doesn't necessarily mean anything. I mean, there's something specific they're talking about But I think that's strictly for commercial type reads where there's a You know a much smaller cadre of people doing it as opposed to all of the other Genres of work that are that are out there. So I wouldn't worry about that too much I think there's a signature sound occasionally with production Maybe you've been using the same mic for many years and you did use a processing Chain on your voice. So now it's kind of your voice is married to it And if you were to take that away, then you would sound more muffled and Rawl or something something that didn't sell you as well. So Sometimes you get married to your signature sound and you and you're required to have Extra gadgets and things that you didn't normally have to have there I go popping the mic So, yeah, watch out for getting hooked to a signature sound. Sometimes it can be a bit of an albatross Yeah, I mean sometimes, you know, you'll you'll you'll book a gig and the client will say Well, I like the way you did this on your demo. Can you do that? You know anything that's on your demo is a signature sound to you and what they want And a lot of times they'll say good like the third cut on your demo Like, okay, I'll go back and listen to the third cut like when they look oh, oh, okay that read, right You know, so that's and that's why in a demo and last week we had Robbo and Andrew on we were talking about demos Uh, you know, you've it's got to be Contrasting you've got to have slightly different styles to the read In order for people to say what you can do this I don't know about that, but you clearly can do it in this type of copy or this type of spot So, yeah, absolutely. You're welcome Justin. No problem. Yeah, uh, Keith Copeland This is regarding to the by the demo we did earlier showing Right How do you do this in audacity? Well, I guess what there actually is a tool that is very similar to those tools It's actually called the most bizarre name of all ACX check That is the closest thing um in analyze and the analyze menu of audacity you'll find acx check Um, let's see if what kind of a disaster I can create by trying to show you this Let's go here Now this is a great audio sample showing you The wrong way to set your levels. That's that's the actual level of the audio that was sent to me So let's take a look. Let's go to analyze acx check Boom, I'll see yeah, it doesn't show that because it's it's a window over top the windows So you don't get to see it because technology. Yay Um, let's see if we can try that one other different way. Let's go to present share screen I guess I have to do entire screen. Hey Well, sometimes that works. Well, let's move things around so you don't have to see the entire production Screen on my computer. Let's do this. Let's do that. Let's do that Bingo bingo and let's go to analyze acx check There we go That looks familiar So it's going to tell you things like passes acx. You don't care about any of that. All you care about is Um, certain values like peak level Look at the peak level of this file. It's minus 34.5. Not seeing it. That is dramatically low No, you're not seeing that now. I'm seeing it. So do you see it? Yes or no What in the blazes it's showing it on my screen in in the in the share window stopping sharing entire screen Take three Now do you see it? Uh, it's not showing up in the uh in the box there All right beats me dude. This is why we're going to go to a different production software At some point in the near future Because this stuff drives me crazy. But anyway acx check will show you a window that looks a lot like Those analyze tools and oh, that's right in dobio edition. It's called amplitude statistics In twisted wave, it's called analyze in audacity. It's called acx check And that's going to give you a very similar readout It's going to show you minimum noise or minimum volume in the file at your noise floor It's going to show you peak. It's going to show you average volume, right? So try acx check If you don't have it in your version audacity, it's probably an old version Or you didn't install the acx check free plug-in that you can get from audacity's website Moving on. All right Next question is from fiber jazz Does source connect just allow remote site the remote site to hear what i'm recording and give direction And then send the files or does the other studio actually do the recording or can it work the other way? Dan what brand of chair are you using? I got an x chair. Uh, it seems to be really quiet when you move. Isn't that something? uh Anyway a source connect you're the expert on source connect and then we'll go back to the other thing now uh, the source kind of And send the files So source connect is Got one main job and that is to connect your audio from your studio to the other studio So they hear you in real time Like you guys are hearing us tonight in real time. They're watching us live except source connect maintains the sound quality at a very high standard It allows for higher bit rates So it can do higher resolution audio. It will also replace dropouts in the audio Um that other systems cannot do it does a lot automatically So there is no Automatic recording and sending back of files. In fact, if you're being recorded on source connect, you don't have to Play back anything because there's somebody else who's doing that. That's the job of the engineer Who's running the source connect session? That's one of the beauties of being directed in in a source connect session You don't have to be the engineer You just get to be the actor somebody else is dealing with playback and shuffling files around comping together takes You know all this stuff. That's their job. They're getting paid to be the engineer So that's that's one reason why source connect sessions tend to have a higher budget Because they can afford and pay have have, you know, a proper production team Um, and it also means that you as the actor just get to be actor What a treat just just talk, you know, I mean, it's great The source connect is super you just turn it on You know Once it's all registered and all the the passwords are memorized and stuff you just go in there and You know two weeks ago. I was working with uh with robbo and andrew and we did it by source connect They were in australia And demo just came out sup sounding super because I just talked which is cool now back to my chair Uh once once upon a time mark cashman showed me his chair in his studio Which essentially converted into a chaise lounge So he could close the door and make it look like he was working when in reality He's just lying back. So I wanted something similar and incredibly comfortable. Uh, my back's not the greatest. So At that time of year, uh My birthday is in late december. My wife's birthday is early december and our anniversary is right after thanksgiving It's a really tough time of the year for gift giving so You know, we don't like to guess. I mean, I don't mind guessing but you know, it's like Uh, earrings this that the other thing My wife says, what do you want? I said, I would like a really good chair. Oh, look x chair. This is a really nice chair And as you can hear it makes no noise. It's really comfortable. It's really adjustable And it's not cheap So if you want a good chair, you're gonna have to spend for it Alrighty ellen conqueran asks Gain, do you mean the gain on my interface doesn't have to be turned up all the way before the lights starting Start turning orange and red Well, okay, we've said this one a million times Here's the key to using The vu meter especially on a focus, right? Um, because it's got that great halo meter around it Always in the green always in the yellow Getting into the orange may be flashing into the red Once in a while, that's that's the way we we gauge The right levels if it's into the orange, it's loud enough if it's just in the green It's not loud enough if you're in the green and the yellow That suffices just fine Uh, so but that may require you turning the gain up a significant amount to get it to that And the thing is is it has to be Those levels whether you're talking softly Or are you talking loud? So you want to have a setting for both Your Conversational voice and then a lower setting for when you're talking a little bit louder Excellent. Yeah Keith Copeland another question. So is the Apollo twin overkill Kind of a similar thing to the pro tools as being overkill as far as voiceover is concerned bingo And my favorite is the voice actor who insists on using pro tools And the Apollo twin Well, they're sort of built for each other There's so much overlapping of functionality when you have an Apollo and you have pro tools because of the ability to have auxiliary sands and different mixes and Real-time processing and all this kind of stuff Yeah, yeah, it gets crazy. But yeah, I would say it's very much a kin It's also a kin in terms of like needing to be compatible, right? You can do an upgrade to your system and all of a sudden things just don't work at all And then what do you do in water? Right. So um pro tools is very sensitive At least it always had been very sensitive to the version of os you're running um, and the Apollo twin Maybe a little bit less or so In in fact, actually I've got these are original Apollo twins. I have two of them in the desk here All both from clients These are these still work. Um, they're eight 10 10 years old, maybe um, they still work um But um, that's because they do keep them updated with software and drivers and firmware And I haven't seen any of their stuff go obsolete yet, which is pretty amazing Um, but uh, yes, it's always a problem. You got to be on the same versions You got to be up to date or not up to date and stay versions back to make sure that things still keep working It's uh, all that mess that's other reasons why we We really don't recommend Adding that complexity to your studio unless you have a really darn good reason to do it, right? I generally The way I generally refer to when people ask me, what should I have this? What about I need to have all the sophisticated stuff? You don't need the control room for a nuclear reactor To run a hamster running in a wheel Oh, yeah, here's another one. Okay, everybody's got an opinion, right? There's some very good producers out there I had a producer somebody that I know not This was not not without my knowledge Go to one of my client studios Go into a studio So I had the certain preamp and said, you know, it sounds great And go in there and mess with all the knobs on this preamp Oh He thought it sounded great, right? My client after the guy left not to be rude was like This did not sound great Sounded awful. So just one person's opinion on settings. No matter how big shot they are and own a studio and Produce and all the stuff still doesn't mean they know what the heck they're doing in your studio With your voice and your mic and your gear Don't let anybody touch your stuff. Yeah Every voice is different. Every room is different And it's nobody else's business as long as it sounds good coming out. That's all that matters Somebody's yeah, if you're booking Don't worry about it. You know Well, that was a bunch of good questions tonight makes for for an easy show producers. Yes Thank you very much for for adding to all that Anyway, if you've got a question for us, you can write to us at any time at The guys at v obs dot tv and that will you know, if if you write a question to us It gets first in the queue You don't have to like, you know, wait, you know If you're watching the show and you have a question you put it in the chat room Yeah, we'll get to it if you write to us It goes first in the queue because one will look at we get to read and go Hmm, how can we answer this might even get a little pre-thought? We might even do a video about it. You never know. Yeah, never know. So let's let's go that way Anyway, thank you for all your questions We got a few things to talk about after the break. So don't go away. We'll be right back With some important stuff. So, uh, here's some more important stuff This is ariana rattner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george wittem v obs dot tv Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead There's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer That place is voiceover extra dot 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 Blows auditioning 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 It's all here at voiceover extra dot com. That's voiceover x t r a dot com You know one thing's for sure you have to have a website if you're a voice actor It's your business card along with your demos and stuff like that So if you have to have a website, which you absolutely have to do and you don't have one yet Here's a real easy way to get yourself up and online Like that and that is to go to voice actor dot com voice actor dot com It's a subsidiary of voice actor websites dot com But they've made it even easier by having a website that is full of templates And the great thing about templates is they're just templates. They're like, okay, I can use all right this background Oh, wait, I can change the background. I can change the color scheme of this sort of this template I can put in all my information. It says, okay, what's your name? What's your contact information? It has a way to put your demos in there And you get it up and you get it up and running and on the internet Starting off for free Uh, so you can get at least get the idea of what your website should look like and then for 20 dollars a month you get your own url and That's what you put on your business card. Hey, you want to listen to my demos Here's my website or if somebody calls you and says like can I hear your demos? Just go to my website and there they are. What should you have in your in your website? Of course, perhaps your name not necessarily your picture unless you have a you don't have a voice for radio Uh, and your demos and your contact information. That's all you need But you want to have a pleasant background to it and all that stuff and it's easy to navigate That's the most important thing. So go over to voiceactor.com and get your website up and running Like that We are the world voices organization Also known as wovo. We're the not-for-profit industry association of freelance voice talent Voice over is a complex entrepreneurial business. Wovo is there to promote the professional nature of voice work to the public To those already established in their voiceover practice and to those who want to pursue voice over as a career Membership benefits include a supportive and creative community a profile and demos on voiceover.biz Our searchable directory of vetted professional voice talent our exclusive demo player for your personal website our mentoring program Business resources and our video library our annual wovo con conference a fun and educational weekend with other members With the chance to learn and network webinars and great speakers and weekly social chats with other members around the world If your world is voiceover make wovo part of it world voices organization. We speak for those who speak for a living Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great Take two. Alrighty Uh, thanks for joining us tonight next week on this very show. We've got this guy dr. Dialect Hey, j old chan will be joining us. He is a great coach uh, we're gonna talk about accents and the stuff that he teaches and Then in two weeks we've got another great Another great guy coming on it is Jeff It is jeff howell Who is hey right on he is a great promo director and coach and he's we're gonna talk about promo So we got lots of people coming up over before as as we roll downhill to the end of 2023 And the season where my wife and I have to keep getting each other gifts. Um, anyway So make sure you're on for that. Uh, and you're gonna hear some great stuff from them Uh, we have to of course plug what we do Uh, if you want to work with me about your home studio You go over to home voiceover studio dot com and have a riot Just looking at that site with the specimen collection cup and all that And if you want to work with george, you go over to george the dot tech and if you like deals go to george the dot tech slash vo vs And there are discounts on there right now discount code is uh v obs Is it get 10? I don't know if you go to the landing page. You'll you'll see the discount code There it is fans 10 Gets you 10 off any of the webinars content. We have a webinar coming up By the time you guys see this it would be tomorrow Um, I think on uh universal audio apollo the thing that we were just telling you don't get well I can't get y'all to stop buying these things sometimes. So i'm gonna teach you how to get the most out of it I'm doing an advanced adobe. I'm doing an advanced course on universal audio apollo Trying to get it to do anything voiceover people need it to do That's coming up and you can sign up at george the dot tech slash webinars And join in if you if you are one of those people that have invested and learned and want to know how to use it better All right, you get some stuff the other stuff piling up there, too, don't you? There's a few booths i'm i'm in charge of getting rid of for some companies Um, and if you're interested i've got two studio bricks pro booths pretty big ones And one vocal booth dot com diamond platinum series. That's the I think it's the five carrot model Um, if you were interested reach out. I haven't been putting these things on facebook and it drives me nuts I get a bunch of terrible fake ad fake offers to buy them and just I'll put them up somewhere in the next week or two But for now just email me george at george the dot tech if you're interested in the Booths that are all for sale. These are all in the los angeles area So you'll be in charge of disassembling loading them out and driving them or having them move to your location And then putting them together which is putting back together which is like working with lego Hmm Alrighty who are our donors of the week? We've got greg cooper greg newt grace newton. Sorry, grace. Yeah, thank you greg Uh christopher apperson Robert leadham stephen chandler kacy clack jonathan grant thomas pinto greg thomas A doctor voice ant land productions martha conne nine four nine designs sarah borges philips apir frying page rob rider shawna pennington bairdon griffith Trey moseley diana birdsall maria makas and sandra mandwiller You know you can donate to the show and help us maintain the magnificent technological Perfection that the show is every week and every dollar helps make it even better never never ever a glitch We'll figure that one out sooner or later. 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That's right Uh, I need to thank our sponsors like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements bio heroes dot com voice actor dot com and worldvoices.org the industry association Of freelance voice talent joined today because we got lots of cool stuff about to happen there Our thanks to uh our wonderful staff jeff holman Put up his imdb because that's part of how he gets paid to do this Slash jeff holman with two f's and one l and one m and one n that's right and put them in your next production And great work in the chat room tonight, especially taking votes and stuff like that last week Also Sumer lino for being our director and making it all happen from Wherever it is that she is at any one particular time But she can do it from wherever she is at any particular time and of course lee pennie for being lee pennie Well, that's going to do it for us this week. Thanks for your questions. Thanks for watching. Um, you know again Voiceovers a very difficult business. It's a lot of people out there who say they're voice actors Uh, but i've heard their audio and maybe they can act but their audio is not very good It's a lot of moving parts. It is. Yeah, you gotta gotta do everything right, but in the meantime We've just come to the conclusion if it sounds good. It is good I'm dan Leonard and i'm george widam and this is voiceover body shop or vo B s tech talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk great Anyway, have a great week everybody. We'll see you next time here on voiceover body shop Uh pj oljan next week. So we'll have a great time. Hey take care