 Okay, let's see. Hey, everybody. Hey, what is going on out there? We're talking about how to do multiple cameras. You ever get a plastic thing from China that has the most bizarre chemical smell? That's this thing right here. I don't buy a lot of stuff from China. What's that? It's like a, it's like a, it's the world's cheapest mic stand. It's literally all plastic. It came with, it came with something I bought, like a really cheap accessory. But the smell of it is bizarre. It smells like fertilizer. Like the chemical part, not the poop part, but just like, it's that smell of walking into a hardware store and you smell the fertilizer. That's kind of what it smells like. Maybe it's made from fentanyl. Yeah, it's made from some weird, really cheap Chinese plastic that is clearly not food safe. I'll tell you that. Which few plastics are except BPA. It's not BPA free. I'll tell you that. I think they added chemicals for smell as new car smell building, building, built right in. Let's see. Let me make sure I've done the proper embedding because I just did a minute ago. Yep. The feed is embedded on our website. Oh, there it is. That's working. Private chat works. I'm getting one here. Well, that's the private chat. So there's already 12 people watching this show. So. All right. The notification. You guys are diehards. We love you. Yeah, I love that people show up early and hang out and yeah, watch us do what we're doing right now. Which is not that interesting. But I mean, the old days, they would watch us panicking. Sorry, it's not as entertaining as it used to be. I mean, we're still just as entertaining. Yeah, just we don't have all the panicked troubleshooting stuff that I think people secretly enjoyed watching. Yeah, play the voice real kids VO family. First time you're coaching with Martha Con. Who loves you guys? Well, we've got Martha coming on in two weeks to talk about getting your kids on. Absolutely. She's doing great with that service. Good. That service. Yeah. Maybe we need to do one on podcasting because it's such a bigger market. We do it just for them. Just for the market. Well, I mean, I know a lot of people are doing podcasting if that if that's something people wants to want to hear us talk about they need to tell us. Yeah. You guys let us know if you want us to do a whole segment on podcasting or something. Well, because podcasting is even easier. Or harder if you over if you don't know what you're doing. I mean, that's, you know, it's pretty simple. But yeah, it's a matter of, you know, podcasting to me. Now I came out of broadcasting. So podcasting to me is public affairs programming. Right. You know, you know, you start the tape, you push the cart with the intro. And oh, there's Lee. How you doing, Lee? And then, you know, you do the interview with the guest. And then you roll the outro and you take the 12 inch reel. Yeah, this goes on on Sunday morning at 530. Yeah, yeah, that's I mean, that's all it is. I mean, you know, of course, if you don't know how to record, and you don't know how to edit, and if you don't know how to interview, it can be a bit of a challenge. Yeah, there's a lot of inherent skills that you absorb from a radio from being on radio for so many years. Ailee. Let's see here. We're just waiting for David K to rejoin us. We're on in five minutes. Yeah, so you know, in the chat, if there's, you know, if there's any guests that you'd like to see. Are your phone is enough? Yeah, do we still have our phones on stun? Do we still have our survey link on our site? Or do we take it off? I think we do. I think we must have taken it down. It's not I don't see it right now. But yeah, if there's anybody know to the guys at VOBS, if you were right, like, you know, I'd really love to have you guys talk about X or have a certain guest on. We always want to we always love suggestions. Right? Maybe we can put the survey link up again. Get that up. It's like every year it's nice to get fresh input, right? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're going to be marking our 11th year of doing this show with our next tech talk, which will be next week. But if you stick around, you can hang out for that. And, you know, we don't want to get stale. I mean, I mean, at least we give you guys fresh content every week. There's always something new that we want to have on and that's right. You know, and when it comes to tech, you know, somehow for the last 11 years, we seem to come up with something every week. So exactly. I'm trying this new feature in Manicam. Yeah, you run the Manicam app on your mobile phone. And your mobile phone becomes another camera. Of course, the audio doubled. Not hearing double audio unless you turned it off. Check, check. You don't hear that? Check, check. Check. Well, we do that. There's David K. Oh, there we go. Yes, there's my handheld camera. I can see how the sausage is made. I'm going to turn it sideways. Yeah, auto rotates. All right. Cool. There's my workstation. There's the pile of audio interfaces I'm playing with. There's the console for the revelator that I'm complaining about that I can't get to have my spare hitting here, you know, sitting here, just in case of an emergency. We all have multiple interfaces at all times. Yeah. Anyway, David, so I figured, you know, we can talk a little bit about your career, a little bit about, you know, screen acting. Just a little bit about Megatron. You talk about the recent stuff is, it's those Eternals and, you know, Marvel Marvel stuff. Yeah. But that's a that's probably more relevant. Whatever, whatever, whatever, man, I don't care, whatever. Yeah, I need to establish credibility, you know, whatever. I don't know what I'm doing. All right. And then, you know, and then we of course, you know, people, anybody wants to ask a question, David, you can throw it in our chat room, no matter where you are, whether you're on Facebook, or you're on YouTube, or not if you're watching the replay because that doesn't help. We haven't figured out time shifting quite yet. Yeah, that's, you know, we're working on it. I've got this machine in the backyard and crank it up every now and again. Can I go back and try that again? How many auditions do we wish we had a time machine go back? Why didn't I do it that way? Okay. Anyway, so and then we'll see what people have to ask. And we'll be on in approximately 60 seconds. All right, we'll do a cold open with the three of us and then we'll come out. Yeah, it was a cold open. I need to turn the air conditioning off. And let's see who the I wonder if somebody does it for attention. I see an angry icon. So like if you're looking up in the stream yard, there's a live viewer's icon shows how many live viewers and then there's an angry and then there's a laugh. You know, Max Goldberg is angry. Why are you angry, Max? Max Goldberg? Why are you angry? Somebody give us an angry an angry icon on the on Facebook this week. And I'm like, I wrote to her. I'm like, did we do something wrong? She goes, no, I think I just clicked the wrong. Oh, she was clicking the smiley face and that could be angry. I could click, miss click. Yeah, as long as they don't send us the poop icon. I mean, unless we deserve it. Unless we deserve it. Okay. All right, Sue is now getting attention. Okay, it is five o'clock. Alright, two, four, three, two. Hey, it's time for voice over body shop once again. And we've got a great show tonight. Because we got a prime guest, not that every guest isn't prime. But this guy was Optimus Prime. No, he was Megatron. And yeah, I'm sorry, you both both. I don't even stand corrected. I'm right. David K is with us tonight. David wave. Hi, say hi. How are you? We're good. We're good. We're gonna talk about all sorts of cool stuff. If you got a question for him, throw it in our chat room, whether on Facebook or on YouTube. And we'll get to those questions in just a little bit. So stay tuned. George, you're ready to roll. I'm ready to go. It's time for voice over body shop right now. From the outer reaches, they came bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio. And together, from the center of the Vio universe, they bring it to you. Now, George Widom, the engineer to the Vio stars, a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build, set up and maintain the professional Vio studios of the biggest names in Vio today. And you, Dan Leonard, the voiceover home studio master, a professional voice down with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home Vio studio. And each week, they allow you into their world, bringing you talks with the biggest names in the voice over world today, letting you ask your questions and giving you the latest information to make the most of your voice over business. Welcome to voice over body shop. Voice over body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials.com, home of Harlin Hogan signature products, source elements, remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites.com where your Vio website isn't a pain in the butt. Vio heroes.com become a hero to your clients with award winning voice over training, JMC demos when quality matters and voice over extra your daily resource for Vio success. And now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California. Here are the guys. Well, hello there. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Whitton. And this is voice over body shop or Vio. Oh, you know, it's, it's like time to roll that the intro ends and suddenly it's like showtime. We're always exciting. It's always fun to hard parts remembering where to look. Yeah, looking at around this thing right here. Yeah, exactly. That's that's the important part. But we have some cool stuff to talk about tonight. And you know, we have a great guest. And it's beautiful weather here in Southern California, except that it's allergy season because all the citrus is in bloom. So it's pretty brutal if you have allergies here. I know I'm like, Oh, do I have COVID doing you know, and George and I find out I'm taking a COVID test and it's like totally negative. Okay, good. I'll be doing mine later. Oh, okay, good on the air. And I want the yeah, and I want the results because we were all in here yesterday. Anyway, it's time to introduce our guest. He has a heart out at 545. So we want to make sure we have a full amount of time with them too. It's right. David K was the voice of Megatron and Beast Wars, Beast machines Armada, and Energon and Ergon, but I don't watch that. And Cybertron as well as Optimus Prime and Transformers animated. David was also cast in some of the first of hundreds of animated shows and video games. So he's been on doing this a while. He's like, at the, you know, the foundation of all this. So so many in fact, he's now become the main focus of his career and he's never looked back. Animation is great. Let's welcome back to voice over body shop. Our good friend David K. Hey, good. Good to see you. Thank you for the single clap. That's pretty much my life. Sort of like a golf clap. Yeah, that's it. I don't have your headphones too. There's a clapping sound in your headphones. I don't wear this normally. I have to scoot off to a thing and that I that I really don't want to go to but I paid for it. So I gotta go. Otherwise, it'd be in my pajamas. Well, welcome back to the show. We haven't had you out in a long time, you know, but graciously you've joined us again. And now you've had a great career. But you know, you're from my old neck of the woods. You're from Peterborough, Ontario, home of the Peterborough Beats just north of the Buddha. You're just north of the well, it's it's like northeast of Toronto, you know, as they say, but well, you were in Buffalo. So how was that in relation to I grew up on? I grew up on Buffalo television. I grew up with Commander Tom, I grew up you know, Promo the robot. I give those cartoons. I mean, all of it. Captain Kangaroo, I watched, you know, WKBWTV Eyewitness News there of Weinstein. I grew up on it. You know, it was I didn't watch Canadian television. I want to be part of that. You know, I love Buffalo TV and the personalities. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. And that was the cool thing there was everybody had to rotate their antenna one way or the other. If I wanted to watch a hockey game on Hockey Night in Canada and listen to, you know, Bill Hewitt or Foster Hewitt. Hello, Canada. You know, I would have to do that. Yeah, that's right. What was Canada broadcast like at that time that made American broadcaster Buffalo so intriguing? What was it like? Well, I was going to going to school for radio broadcasting and communications across the border from Agdensburg, New York. And we used to, you know, and we used to listen to the WPXY, I think, all those stations up, you know, and it just sounded bigger. And I found out later that they use level devils and compression and and it just sounded like, why does it sound so cool and big and important? And then I would go to work when I was 17 or 18 years old and it sounded like like coming out of a tin box. And I got in trouble one night because Eddie, Eddie, Eddie Compton, the crompton, Eddie Crompton, the engineer was this guy and guy love he was he had a temper like it and I was like the third or fourth day on the night of the job Saturday overnight weekends. And I was didn't know what I was doing and I was horrible. And and I said, screw this, I was talking to my buddy in the phone and I actually there's there's a equalizer EQ and a transmitter and I was in the studio and I started bumping up the base. Don't touch that stuff. And at two in the morning, I'm sitting there and this, you know, rocking out of the AM signal and I don't know what and the doors like two AM Wham! And it's Eddie, don't you ever touch that. No, you don't. And I was like, holy shit, you know, like a kid, I'm like a kid and this adult coming to scream at me two in the morning. And so I didn't touch the, I just drove me nuts. Why can't we sound big when poor? So I didn't know the technicality of it all. I just wanted to sound better. Yeah, I had like even the back then I had an ear like I did. I knew that, you know, something sucked and I didn't like it. How come how come they sound good? And so that drove me nuts. And so from a very young age and the fact that I couldn't order anything from the back of a comic book and get it to my house in Canada. I remember when I first moved to Burbank and I said, Hey, you know what? I can order wine. I can order gimmicks and jokes in the back of comic books and I can get them in my house for like five dollars, you know, whatever it was. And all the radio stations sounded really cool. So anyway, that was just my goofy thing. You know, it's cool to hear from your perspective from Canada. Yeah, I mean, look, the radio was great and CFTR in Toronto had great, you know, Tom Records Landecker was on there and, you know, there's some amazing personalities in Toronto. And we all know the talent in Canada is amazing. Yeah. Vancouver radio was here. Vancouver radio was incredible with the Fox and, you know, LG in the morning zoo and I played a part of that and that was a riot. And so it was the basis that Danny, you and I talked is the basis, the foundation, the greatest memories of of my life were from things of radio, the ski team or the goofy stuff, the trouble music and all those radio stories, all the things that was the greatest moments of my life came from that business, you know. Yeah, it was fine. It was when you were young didn't have a lot of responsibilities and, you know, you sometimes you could get this the station van and driver on town in that was always great. Yeah, parked in front of your house. Yeah, the road pig, we called it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so how did you transist from there into doing strictly voiceover? You've also done some screen acting, too. Yeah, it was well, it was it was Vancouver. Like, I mean, I was in Brockville, we call it Brock Vegas. And I worked the morning show there and, you know, Peter Barrow, the CKPT, the worst call-out is in the world. It doesn't exist anymore, I don't think. You know, when I out west to I worked in London, BX 93 in country had no idea what country music was, but they hired me for the afternoon drive and had a great experience there for a little while in the early 80s and ended up in Vancouver or mid 80s ended up in Vancouver in 89. And as part of the morning, I think I would have to do mid days or I can't remember what I did. I did all the day parts, but I ended up on the morning zoo as part of the team I started doing comedy and songs and Frederick Carrick, your cowboy dick, howdy boys and girls and play a little song, you know, and develop these things. And it was so much fun and the energy was great. But getting up in the morning really early at like four o'clock to get to work was just that's not me. And I remember being sitting there. There's four or five of us and the zoo master, you know, Dean, Dean Hill and Bob and everybody. And and it was the music. The first song would play. And I'm sitting there trying to wake up and he says, okay, Dave, what do we got? What do we got? I'm like, Oh my God, I just want to go back to I have nothing. That's mornings. Yeah. So but I I loved it. And the transition came when down the road and radio started to kind of be sold off, you know, the corporate thing starting to happen. And it started to be less fun and more corporate tea and and and the writing was on the wall. And I started at that time. I had a friend who was an agent and he started sending me out on stuff on camera. And then I got my first animation audition. You know, I was a big fan of comic books and cartoons as a kid anyway. So they my agents, hey, do you do you do voices? And I said, you know, yeah, sure, I didn't know what he's talking about. So when I got this audition for you, it's, it's for G.I. Joe. And I think G.I. Joe, I had those dolls. I watched the show. And so I went in and I did this. And I really didn't really didn't know what I was doing. And it was just a quick follow me toward the danger. It was, yo, Joe, and I just, I don't know. And somehow they called me back. And I read for a few parts, but I ended up getting cast as the as General Hawk. And from that moment on, being in the studio like it's a radio play, it was all all all at that time, my heroes in V.O. and Vancouver, I knew that these are the cartoon people, you know, it was a very small, tight knit group. And the fact that I got in there was that it was a miracle that somebody liked what I did. And from that moment on, I would go back to the I remember doing doing the show at LG. And I would literally the monkeys were on MTV. And I was like, when we had the that system where you just the computer would take over. And I would literally, you know, boom, but don LG 73. Boom. And I said, I just sit there and watch TV. And I was like, I had no interest in being there. And I was like, I didn't want it. And so they called me into the office one day. I'm paraphrasing. But, you know, this is 93, I'm really 94. And Chris Chris Pandoff says, you know, you don't really want to be here, do you? And I said, you know, I'm not really. So, so he said, you know, let's, you know, listen, you know, blah, blah, blah, yaddy, yaddy, yaddy. And it's been a great, you know, so, so why don't we just, you know, say, listen, this two weeks, and we'll, and I know you're busy and doing stuff because I was starting to get commercials, starting to get things. I was really, really focusing on, okay, I want to do this for the rest of my life. And I remember that night, I went, okay, we're done. Two weeks, we're out. And I went home, poor Maria, I think she was pregnant at the time. And I was down, I had had a studio in my house as well, because I was beginning to do affiliate work at that time on the mid 90s. And websites were just beginning to take off and had reel to reels and trying to make FedEx and that. And I finished my day. And I said, you know, I got a bottle of three quarters of bottle of Glenn Libet and you know, I'm going to celebrate. It's just the beginning of something special. And I got, and in two in the morning again, two AM seems to be a thing. I had finished the entire bottle in my studio and I somehow made it upstairs. And I remember, oh, I think I was sick and Maria was like, what's going on? Like, you know, and I woke up the next morning thinking, I'm an alcoholic, what the hell have I done? I'm all my God. So I called my best friend, Greg, I said, I know what's going on, man. I think I'd finish the body. I said, well, I think I'm an alcoholic. He says, do you do this all the time? I said, no, the first time I've done it. And he laughed. You're not an alcoholic. He said, get dressed, I'll pick you up or go to the tomahawk for a greasy breakfast, this amazing breakfast place in North Vancouver. And that was it. That was basically the umbilical cord was cut. And it's like, all right, now I'm on my own. This is it. It's all up to me. And I much preferred that because I love sports and things and situations where the pressure is just on me. It's not about it's any it's like it's up to me to do this. And then and then the baby happened. I go, okay, now I have a real purpose. And then the flame I'll call the blue pilot light is on and it's ready to roll and it's always on. It still is it's always on it's never never never goes off. And that's sort of when that happened. And I did all I can. I started doing theater and I started getting auditions and I got a couple parts. I was horrible actor on camera, but you know, X files and a few things and had a fairly happy something. But the voiceover stuff started to really happen. And then, you know, I'm going on here, Dan, but this is kind of I was going to jump in here and interrupt any second. Yeah, please just stop me. But that's just that's sort of how it transitioned from radio out into the, you know, what I just love doing more than anything in the world. Yeah, clearly. You know, just want to remind everybody, if you've got a question for David Kay, we're gonna get into a few more interesting things here. Throw it in the chat room. I know Jeff Holman is hiding in there somewhere and taking down your questions and we'll get to the him and those questions in our next segment. So you were able to do a little bit of screen acting, too. Do you think that helped you a little bit more with your voice acting or vice versa? No, I was horrible on camera. I said, sometimes I see myself in happy Gomer. I'm like, Oh my God, why what possess them ever to put me? But it was the theater and it was the improv and it was all that stuff that started to get me out of my head. And I always, you know, and fast forward to that, you know, I mean, I do the trailers and promos and then there's there's animation and then there's commercials and then there's a radio and TV film. There's all these different sort of things like in a Swiss army knife were a certain skill, you know, get pop it up and the thing comes up and it's time to do that. I learned that from from from improv and theater and and was my point. I was going to make some some brilliant masterful point. And I've forgotten it. I'll remember it. But it was something I said, Oh yes, everything you do everything has to has to be a living breathing soul has the character has to has to exist. You know, it has to it has to have a heart and a soul and a laugh and a breath. And so the more truth you can bring to anything you do the more human you can even a promo is it's thinking of who you're talking to. And that's Dan. It's the old radio thing where, you know, envisioning who it is is listening and you know, I still see that. I still see exactly who I'm trying to communicate to it's a very clear picture. And and and then it helps me, you know, bring the truth to the character. And it's a and I play it's like a game to me to try and to get to that point because I was never satisfied with okay, good mediocre. Oh, that's fine. I can hated that word. Oh, that's fine. I want to make how do we how do we make it excellent and great. How do I get to that point? So that's been my lifelong thing. And you never get there. It's it's like, it's a continual, you know, it's it's a it's you work at it. And I love the challenge and every day is different. So yeah, well, you've had some great parts. I mean, you know, you, well, we won't talk about this very long, but you got this role of Megatron and Optimus Prime with the transfer. That was quite a quite a franchise for a while, wasn't that I had no idea what we're getting into. But we just did I just did a convention this weekend and Birdbank and this, you know, there's thousands of people that still to this day, I'm still being paid for this damn cartoon. And I was we did it in 94. The coolest. See, here's another thing. And that's it's awesome. I really didn't know. But for me as a kid, a 12 year old boy, I got cast this past year in Eternals is Air Shem. The thing now I remember as a 12 year old reading that comic and it was a little known Jack Kirby comic. And so for me personally, seeing that in the movie theater, like the hair on the back of my company, I think, oh my God, because this is my this year I'm in my 50s. And I'm like, this is I'm a child. It's my childhood. This is how the hell did this happen? You know, I don't know. I just don't ever grow up just to be to be to get up every morning and go, hey, it's a new day. What that and to be a new soul every day is important in this business, too. Because no question. Right. Yeah. My wife's the same way. It's like, I'm going to grow up when you grow up. Never. We're doing it, George. What's the same problem? You know, Dan, what's the oh my gosh, I've drawn a blank here. I took a class with her when she's brilliant. She teaches trailer, you know, Maurice Maurice. Maurice Tobias. So she's the one person who called me out because I took a class with my buddy with Howie. Howie Howie Howie took a weekend workshop before he moved to Los Angeles. I was down here and said, OK, I'll take you out of a workshop. And it was promo and OK, I got to brush up and do some stuff. And she gave me some copy and thinking, OK, you know, you know, tonight and it's an all new elf, you know, whatever. I don't know what I did. And then I thought, oh, you know, that's all is all right. And then she's standing there behind the glass looking at me and she's staring and staring in the silence. I thought, oh, she's going to say that, hey, that's a pretty good read. I guess you know what you're doing. But she doesn't do that. No, no, she's not, you know, yeah, it's a little that I know. But she said, she said, you bore easily, don't you? I'm thinking, oh, my God. And I stopped. I said, oh, shit. I said that. But here's what that meant. It meant that she said, you have to make sure that every time you read that copy, because you do this day in and day out all the time. You're all that it has to be fresh and new every time. Can't call it in. You cannot do, you know, you can't just you have to be like as if you're seeing it for the first time because you're not saying yourself. Yes, you don't know what we're going to say to each other from one second to the next. It has to be the same with that. It has to be brand new. And I went, oh, my God, that was the best money I ever that moment was she nailed me. She hit she. That's it. And and and she's and I think she's I love her and I haven't seen her forever. But that moment went, oh, yes, of course. You know, yeah, of course, she told me my mustache has nothing to do with voiceover. Well, your mustache has nothing to do with voice. So it's exactly what she said. But she she is a great coach. I mean, she's, you know, she really understands the psychology of it. And so she. Oh, my God, she ever she's just like she dug in there with a spoon away. There's you. Terry, Terry Briscoe says here, were there any effects on the Megatron voice? No, that was just I was I'm kind of like my optimist prime character in T.F. Animated like I'm naive and doing the best I can with the situation. I really at that time, when at the first audition for Megatron, I went in and I had all the stuff and I went, oh, I don't know. And Doug Parker says, all right, what do you got? And I went, yes, I did this thing and they they called me back. And then I was sitting into the callback room and finally it hit me. Hey, what if I have Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery and a lizard that what if they had a baby and like, how would that how in that work? And I, yeah, yes, excellent. And sort of put a bit of a list on it. And they and that's the scenes in further episodes. They did some stuff with the voice, but that was just how that happened, you know. Yeah, well, we can talk a little bit about your tech. So you said you what are you working on right now? I mean, you said you talked about the internals. I mean, I know you're a busy guy. It sounds like 24 hours a day. You're sitting in that room. Well, you can you can tell us about this. Yeah, I haven't signed an NDA for a year. Yeah, there's there's a couple of well, yeah, again, those are those are great. They're primetime shows and and they're very funny irreverent. They're kind of I can't tell you. But my God, they're they it's so cathartic to be able to laugh these days. The let's see, kind of, I don't know, there's a couple of video games that just coming out. There's a lot of trailers. The current trailer campaign I'm working on is the this new Harry Potter movie, The Fantastic Beasts. And it's a it's a bit of it's sort of a character read. They had me at the beginning it was very sort of fanciful wizard like a read, but they wanted that pull that back and make it more of a traditional trailer, but still have a bit of, you know, ride that wizard a little bit, you know, and and when did trailers trailers? I mean, I've worked with David. I work with you and so many other actors and I hear them some of them like I'm still trying to crack this trailer thing, you know, years and years and years. I'm still trying. I'm finally getting it's a bit it's been 10 years, 10 10 years of just scratching a lot of stuff, maybe more, maybe 10 to 15 years. And but now is like it's kind of like an audition, but not. Yeah, they want now. Now, now's the point now where they're asking. They're asking more and more. Can you get David on this? Can David and can we have David and so it just takes a long time. And it's my favorite thing in the world, Dan, as well, to George's to do trailer. I love is a kid. I was enamored by the voice that used to come on in the movie theater coming this April. That's not, you know, a brand new monsters and those guys that did that. And Don was a friend of mine and a mentor and and I just thought it's a pinnacle. And it's it's it you have this is a way to do it. And there's a way. Sell it, but don't sell it. You know, I always says my thing, but just trying to find the read because I'm kind of one of those these cats is I'm all over the place. And and Ashton, who I just adore is that the read is just like, oh, my God, and Howard Parker and you hear them, I'm kind of like all over the map. And so I have to really be trying to hone in on something, whatever style it is. I'm trying to explain myself. I I can't sound like I'm putting on a voice. You know what I mean? And I think the first that there was the Clint Eastwood movie, Richard about the bomb, you know, the in Atlanta, the Olympics, the bomb went off. Richard Richard. What was his name? What was the movie? I can't remember. But I talking about if I did the Warner Brothers. Not Casey. Richard So-and-so. And I started just talking like this. I just started getting close to the mic and, you know, a Warner Brothers picture, you know, Clint Eastwood. And I just I didn't do anything. And they hired me and they wanted to put me on a Ben Affleck movie. And I went, oh, there's something I can hang my head. There's because it's just me. It's just me doing nothing. And then it took me so many years to just to not do anything. And that's what they hired me for. Me doing nothing. Like Seinfeld. It's exactly. I'm doing nothing. That's all I know. You know, what I have to do? I just do nothing and they pay me perfect. It took me like 25 years to just do nothing. And it's just developing a style. The Harry Potter thing is this April. It's more, I don't know. It's more of a character, but it has to. I don't really know. Again, at the beginning, I told you, I really don't know what I'm doing. Sort of. I talk and hope something happens. How's that? Richard Jewel. Thank you, Daryl. Richard Jewel. Yeah, Richard Jewel. That's all it did say. Richard Jewel in Theater's Fry. You know, it was all I needed to do. And they went, yeah, we like that. I go, damn. OK, so. Yeah, it's hard to. It's hard to sort of just sort of think of like what I'm doing technically. But I enjoy the hunt, the process and and and the. And that to try and, like I said, to try and create something that's that's believable and has a heart and a soul and and and. It's it's I don't think about anything else, except that it's like when I ski or I'm in the gym, I think about one thing only. And it's just that when I have a clear mind, I can kind of, you know, if I'm trying too hard, I can tell if I'm trying to, you know, trying to the read too hard. I'm trying. No, I need to just stop and come back and just do nothing. Richard Jewel. That's it. So I don't know. Is that makes sense? I mean, it does a little bit. Well, yeah, I mean, we totally understand it. It's you've just got to let go and I can be you. Yeah, that's yeah. Basically, yes, be you. For many years, I was just trying to be other people. We're talking with David K. We're talking about his career and talking about what it takes to make it in this business. And if you've got a question, all you got to do is throw it in any of the chat rooms that we've got. And we'll get to that in our next segment. So we'll be right back with David K. On Voice of Her Body Shop. Don't go away. This is the Latin lover narrator from Jane the Virgin, Anthony Mendez, and you're enjoying Dan and George on the Voice of Her Body Shop. Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for Snapchat, were you? This is Virgin Radio. Well, okay, we're not that innocent. There's jeans for wearing and there's jeans for working. Dickies, cause I ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values, a leader for California, and a voice for America. It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smartphone, but it's so much more. It's a, the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs. What time is hockey practice? Check out this song. It's the end of the road for rent. This is your neighborhood. When hope is lost. The I-8 from BMW. Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's J. Michael Collins. Bet you think I'm gonna try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves. But I will give you my email. It's jmichael at jmcvoiceover.com. Now if Dan will stop waxing his mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show. VoiceoverEssentials.com has the ultimate answer for Mike's safety. Look, your Mike is the most valuable part of your audio chain. So protect it from boom, stand, disaster. It's the ABS, the adjustable boom stop. It's simple, ingenious, and infinitely adjustable. The padded non-slip pouch fits almost any size boom arm. It has a unique double loop webbing system for an unlimited angle of the downstrap. It works with tripod and solid round bases. A strong articulated strap keeps your boom where you want it without weights, sandbags, or a knuckle-busting tightening of the boom clutch. The light gray webbing lets you mark and repeat stand settings for just the right spot for you or anyone else who uses your microphone, saving time and guesswork. This is the simple solution that simply works. You'll kick yourself or not having thought of it. Lock it in place with our ABS, the adjustable boom stop. Get it now at voiceoveressentials.com. I don't think there's a feeling quite like that moment when something you've auditioned for becomes something you get booked on, especially when it comes to audiobooks. You audition for an audiobook on ACX or in some other form or fashion and then somebody says, hey, we like what you did. We want you to be our narrator. If that isn't a feeling that you've had lately because either you haven't figured out how to do audiobooks or because the efforts that you've put toward audiobooks just don't seem to be working, I've got a solution for you. Let's start with some free videos and then if you want registering for the ACX Masterclass. I'm David H. Lawrence, the 17th. Along with Dan O'Day, I teach that class and you can get to those free videos and to registration if you'd like at acxmasterclass.com slash join. That's acxmasterclass.com slash join. I'd love to help you get there. This is Bill Ratner and you're enjoying Voiceover Body Shop with Dan Leonard and George Widdem. And we're back with David K. Got to get David to do a couple of trailers for us or a couple of promo lines for us when we get the chance. When I come and fix your radio again. Yeah, that's right. Anyway, so let's talk a little bit about tech. And again, if you've got a question out there for David K, throw it in the chat room talking about anything that you might want to ask him about the stuff that he does. So George, this is sort of your department. David, what do you have in there? You've got a really expensive microphone and you're in a new place and tell us about what technically you're using in there. Technically, gosh, thank God for George, by the way. We'll let him explain it then. Yeah, I was using years ago, you use 67s. I just fell in love with them. The residents and they were a microphone that used for baritone sacks, basically. But a lot of the animation shows were out earlier when I was in Vancouver was the U87s were there, sometimes the TLMs. This mic is a Paluso P67 because we're having trouble with the U67s and the fact that the mic would be at Charlie Bowles is half the time being fixed. They're wonderful sounding. They're just delightful mics, I just love them. But they're problematic in the fact that tubes and things in George, you know, and you get a little fizzing and fuzzing and things happen, you're like, oh my God, so we try to find a mic that is closely possible, emulate and be that sound. There's a sound that I like to hear that roll off or that. And I'm a professional, so I said, I want the best tools and so let's find the best mic. And I just love these, it's made here. Is it Connecticut, George? Made in the... I think it's Virginia, actually. Virginia? Yeah. And they just, I just, my God, I love these things. I have one in the place in Kelowna that, you know, this one here, but if I'm on the road, I use the standard Sennheiser shotgun. Because I use that in the car. I use that in the car, I use that in the tri-booth. But I take this as much as possible with me if I'm gonna be somewhere a longer period of time. Because I go from like, you know, quietly to screaming, and things have to, it has to handle all that stuff. And I don't want to have any issues. And with that, so the Apollo Twin here, that George has set up, and we're going through Alan and Heath, right, George? Yeah, it's not running the way a lot of people would think. It's not going mic, twin, Apollo Twin mixer. It's actually going straight from the mic into the mixer directly in the channel one. And we're using the built-in compressor on the Alan and Heath. And it's an amazing compressor. It's just a slight compression and a lot of video games and a lot of animation that, you know, I just, I'll just take it off. Take the gain out, just turn it off entirely. Yeah, and it's just, but it gives it just a little bit. You know, I don't use too much at all. That was my thing to use. Clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. And so we're using the Apollo for a while. It might still be, but I can't remember, but we're using this as the interface, but we're also using it as the expander. We're using it to just drop down the noise floor a little bit, because there's this fan in that rack that's in there that was always- Oh, there's no fan in here anymore. Oh, we unplugged it. We unplugged the fan. Because we don't need it. There's stuff in here. We really don't need it. Stuff in here we don't even need and don't even use. I had like the LA-3A. Well, in Cologne, in Canada, we have the, there's a bit of a fan. There's a noise sort of that comes from the building or whatever. And so we had to put that gate in. And not too many people. There's very, very few people ever even here, they can sort of hear. But it's just, it's a comfort level too. And I'm very, very particular about how I feel in here. Because I need, this needs to be a creative space. I don't want anything that I don't feel like, No, I don't, what's that? I'll move things on my desk. Because I just don't, it needs to be a certain way. I'm kind of nuts like that. But I'm doing it for, you know, 30, 35, you're going up 40, whatever it is. And that's just the way I am, I'm an idiot. Yeah, you've got this thing where George was showing me where you have a volume control for your headphones that you play with constantly. Guess where that, I don't usually, animation, it's off. Everything's off, I don't, but I usually, one ear's off because I need to hear the natural sound and I need to sort of monitor some characters and some things I need to hear. And it's an old radio thing, Dan. It's like, it was the pots. I needed to have a lot. I ride the level because when you're in radio, you know, you turn the music up and 75 degrees down, oh, how about, how about, how about, how about. And you're moving the dial off and you can hear the roll off and it just sounds kind of trying to hit the post. It's an old habit. And sometimes they use it. Sometimes they don't, but it needs to be there because it's my little, what do you call it? An idiot's synchrocy, George? An idiot's synchrocy. It sounds like it's like a, it's like a. A blanket? Yeah, it's like a line is blanking. It's a line is blanking. Security blanket. Security blanket. It's part of your technique. It's just, it's a, it's a proprietary technique. You don't know. However, however it happens, there's a couple of questions here. Terry Bristus, had you ever done a trailer for the production you were actually in? Yes, Eternals. I did the UK trailers for, for the Eternals and I was in the movie, which is weird. Who else has a optic inner? Oh yeah, fiber optic. Do we have fiber optic here? Right, George? Yeah. I think so. Just bad cell coverage, I might note. Yeah, cell coverage out fine. It sucks. I'm trying to get to your house and you get, you give me the wrong address. I'm like, what? What? Yeah, I did give you the wrong address. It all doesn't work. I don't know what's going on. We got a question here from Play the Voice. It goes, what's the best way to stand out in auditions in a good way? Which I think is a great question for you because you were talking about, you know, you started auditioning and you started to book. What is it that you think that you're doing that that gets you there? Oh, gosh, it's, it's a, it is that the realism, I guess that, but that didn't come to later till I really sort of became a NIST, my one of my great agents would say, DK, you gotta connect it more. Connect it more. And I go, why don't you connect it? And then years later I go, oh, right. Connect like grounded. Like it's a human soul, heart, you know, real, real, okay. I don't know. It's a feel when you see some copy, when you see a character or you see a commercial, it's just the believability of it. I don't know. It's, gosh, I wish I had an answer because if it's written well, I love when a piece of copy is written well. We all, we've all had those piece of copy that you just like, it's like the clogs in the wheel just don't, that it's not working. It's horrible. And then when a copy is written well, you're like, wow, this is fun. You can kind of dig into it. It's being able to, I don't know. I'm trying to, an example of NFL Fox Sports, they have amazing writers and the NFL guys do, they write some amazing copy and it's, and even NASCAR and so they're just great writers over there, that team. And it's storytelling, it's base. And to be able to tell a story and to picture you telling a story too in a personal way, it's sort of to try and find a placement like The Princess Bride. Remember The Princess Bride? And then the narrator was Peter, what's his name? Peter Faulk, you know, and he had that thing. And so I would say, listen to Peter Faulk. Even if it doesn't even relevant to what you're doing, listen to how he's telling a story. It just, there's a quality to his voice. There's a little heart, you know, it's something about the way he tells a story that's so believable. And if you can bring that to whatever you're doing. What's Princess Bride? Yeah. Isn't that him and that? Yeah. He's the grandfather. He's the grandfather. Let me tell you the whole story. And if you listen to it. I'm just curious about this. Yeah. Just curious. Tell a story, like, you know, be intimate with the microphone. Like really, you know, learn to be intimate with this thing. It's your friend. And try and really, I don't know, be as much truth as you can bring to anything you do. Not just read the copy, but dig into it. I don't know how to explain that. It just sort of took me so damn long to figure it. It's like, you know, it took me so long to get good at skiing and to get good at tennis and squajing. And I forgot the blood, sweat, and tears it took just to get to the point where I'm, you know, that they still hire me. I don't know. I'm not much help. This, I was gonna say, this is not helpful. You're not a coach. This is not helpful. I'm a horrible coach. That's why they don't have me to these voiceover things, is I don't know how to, how do I explain this? It just oozes out of you. It's a show about nothing. No, I, here's an exercise I do, and I taught a couple of times, and it's an acting teacher gave me this exercise. She's brilliant, Shay Hampton, back in Vancouver. She used to give us cold reads, and there used to be a scene in the two axes that are crossing each other, and we'd stare at each other. And that's uncomfortable to do. We'd stare at each other, you just look at them. You look at, you're right in the eyes. It's tough to do, to connect. That's the connection. If you can sit there, and then when you kind of both feel like you're ready, maybe one starts to laugh a bit, and they're like, that's a true emotion. So at that point, you turn the copy over and you start. And if you're in the middle of a life, you're like, how did you, why did you do that to me? And so, oh my God, there's a real moment. And then so the person turns over his and delivers their line. And, because, again, we don't know what we're gonna say to each other. Like Marisa Tobias said, you know, you bore easily. You gotta make it for, every time you do it, it's gotta be different. It's gotta be the first time you've ever seen and the first conversation you've ever had. If you can bring that into anything you do, that's a freshness and a, that's how, what's the word again? See, I'm shy of words. I'm not very good at words. I should find a career that- Doesn't use words? Yeah, that sort of defeats the purpose, though. Or somebody else writes them for you, maybe? Perhaps, is that what you're looking for? Yeah, I guess. I, somebody says, Terry, to do a script analysis. No, you know what? And this is gonna, this is gonna shock you. No, and here's the reason I don't. It used to drive me nuts. I'd go in, when I, when we were doing, we used to go in person and do auditions. We used to, somebody in the room going, walking around the corner and I go, oh, shut up, stop talking. And I have to go out of the room. I'm hearing these people nattering. Sometimes it's good just like the cold read. To look, start, roll the mic, roll the file and start talking and see if anything happens. You see if anything, sometimes magic happens because it's the first time you're seeing it. You don't have chance to kind of mark it and do it up. Now, some people mark it and do it, that's their thing. My thing is I wanna get into it right away and see if anything happens. If it doesn't, okay, let's, let's work on it. Let's, let's dig in. Let's see what other, you know, voice quality or, maybe, you know, if I, if I rough my voice up a bit and, you know, do a little older, maybe add a little age to it and, you know, be a storyteller and sort of, you know, here's my grandfather and I'm gonna tell, you know, I got a surprise for you kids and Christmas morning, you know, whatever, try and add layers to it. But I would suggest just, just read it and see if anything happens. That's how I do it. I don't, a lot of times, George, you see me work. Oh Christ, I gotta get this done. Boom. And that's only because I've been doing it for 40 years. But that's how I do it, you know. There's one last question, I know you gotta go. Daryl asks this, Daryl, Daryl's, Daryl's went kind of a long way around to ask you basically this, just the last part. What do you do to keep your voice great? Like getting to, to deal with mouth clicks and do you use anything that you take or do you have a regimen to keep your voice tuned and not have mouth noise and all the other. This is gonna be boring, but yeah, I always have a glass of water in here. First thing in the morning, three glasses of water before I even, you know, hit the floor. Because I work out all the time and I was sweating all the time, so I'm dehydrating myself all the time. I'm studying wine, so that's even an extra hydration. I do a gallon a day. I do a gallon of water a day every day and that is really important and that'll get rid of the mouth clicks and that'll keep you, if you ever notice you do the three glass of water in the morning, you start to, your nose starts to run because you're getting, you're, you're hydrating. It's really important to be high in this, in our dry climate out here, good Lord, you know, and especially now, but and I also, I use alcohol, which is a nasal rinse every night before bed. The little thing fit down the thing. There it is. I am so such a fan of that. And so that, keeping it, I mean literally silly stuff like, you know, keeping your teeth clean and then doing the mouthwash and doing the alcohol and drink a ton of water. It's so important. That's why there's all those water bottles in there when you go into the studio. That's a reason for that. But yeah, that's how I keep it. Those are good tips and ones that I should probably do. And also very good right before you go to the urologist as well. David, I know you got, you got to get rolling on. I'm so sorry. I hope I, no, you've been great. It's some little thing of wisdom of, I don't know, I'm never sure. If you get one good thing out of a show, then it's, that's golden, so anyway. Thanks for being with us. And we look forward to whatever it is that you're doing next. And we'll talk to you again real soon. See you Thursday, David. Yeah, I'm supposed to be on Thursday. If I don't have COVID, I'll see you Thursday. Everything is broken. You have to come and fix it. Alrighty, David Kay, everybody. We'll be right back to wrap things up and rack it up for Tech Talk right after these messages. Bye. See ya. You're still watching VOBS? In these modern times, every business needs a website. When you need a website for your voice acting business, there's only one place to go. Like the name says, voiceactorwebsites.com. Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept to live online in a much shorter time. When you contact voiceactorwebsites.com, their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are. They work with you to highlight what you do. Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are and how your voice is the one for them. Plus, voiceactorwebsites.com has other great resources like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish. Don't try it yourself, go with the pros. Voiceactorwebsites.com, where your VO website shouldn't be a pain in the, you know what? It's time to thank Source Elements because they keep sending us money to talk about Source Connect. We appreciate that. And Source Connect is a tool of the pros. It's really the one that is still requested by the biggest budget gigs out there. It's the one that the studio producers like to use because the audio comes right into the track in Pro Tools. They can immediately play it back for the client. The mix is being done during the session. That's what they like. And that kind of workflow is a key to why Source Connect is so popular. It's also so great because it maintains super high quality audio consistently. Now, occasionally you can have dropouts in Source Connect, it does happen. But that's okay, it also has its own built-in backup audio called QManager. Now, it just does it automatically. If as long as QManager is logged in and the producer's on Source Connect Pro, he can get that audio. And it is a remarkable function of being able to automatically restore missed audio or dropped audio due to internet issues. It's just all built in. And as an actor, you don't have to worry about how that works. It's just, it's all being done on the backend by the server and by the producer. Really great stuff. Anyway, get it on your system if you wanna be available for the big jobs. It's just a tool you have to have, but you also have to have the studio to go with it. Everything, it's a complete package. You have to have all of those elements working. So, go get a demo, go to Source Elements, get their 15-day trial so you can start learning how to use it. Talk to Dan and I, make sure your studio sounds the way it needs to sound so you're ready to go and start being a pro. I can't say it any other way. It's just, it's one of those things. Yeah, does every job need it? No, but it really shows up on your resume, your website, whatever, as saying, I'm really taking this stuff seriously. I know I wanna do those big gigs and I'm here for you. Anyway, Source Connect, thanks again, Source Elements. And we'll be back to wrap it up in a second. Yeah, hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky, the voice of Rocco and you're watching Voice of a Body Shop. Wow. Now, see, that was, he thinks he's not saying anything, but he was, David Kay was demonstrating to us for 45 minutes what it is he does. You know, it's very flow of thought and it's a very, it's a cool way to approach the business, I guess. It's also really cool that he has a space that he can be on the show in his actual performance space. In front of his actual microphone, you can see that's exactly where he is when he does this thing. He's got to turn on his light panel. He has an LED panel in there, but it was still fine. Yeah, no, it was always a pleasure. A good example of mic technique, if you're watching the video, which we'll talk about in Tech Talk next week, but it's important to understand, this guy is very, very, it's like a paintbrush and you've got to learn how to use it. And when do you talk close to it and when do you back off and that sort of thing? Andrew Peters does a podcast with me. He's like, I want to make a pop screen with an ear on it because I think of that thing like an ear. Right, microphone is an ear. Like it changes the way I think about how I dress the microphone. Absolutely. You know, do you always talk into somebody's ear all the time? I mean, like, no, you don't always talk into an ear. You know? Anyway, next week on this very show, you should be here and stick around if you're watching live and you can participate live and we'd love to have your questions. We're going to have Tech Talk, number 75, which will actually mark the 11th year of George and I actually doing this. Believe it or don't. So that's going to be interesting. We've got lots of cool stuff to talk about on that. Who are our donors of the week? I think we have some familiar names. It's great. They usually are and we appreciate it. Yeah, and all these folks are subscribers. So these names we read all the time and first on the list here is Philip Sapir. Tom Pinto. Shelly Abilino. George Whittem. Your dad. Brian Page. Patty Gibbons. Rob Ryder. Greg Thomas. Thanks, Greg. A Doctor Voice. Aunt Land Productions. Shawna Pennington-Baird. Martha Kahn, who will be with us in two weeks. Awesome. Don Griffith. Trey Mosley. A. Trey. Diana Birdsall. And Sandra Mann-Willer. If you want to donate to the show, if you feel you're getting value out of this, it's like public television or public radio. Over there somewhere. There's a donate button there on the website if you're watching over there. Join up in a dollar a month, 10 dollars a month. You can send us 100, and we won't complain, but it's not absolutely necessary. We've got to start coming up with gifts for our donors again. Maybe a handbag. Anybody need any more tote bags by chance? Toe bags. Yikes. Or another coffee cup. That's right. Now you've got office hours. I happened to stick my nose in there yesterday because a clubhouse pops up on my phone. Oh, George is doing something. Oh yeah, yeah. I didn't say anything, but you know. Yeah, office hours. Yeah, I only do it twice a week for a half an hour at a time. So it's really a office half hours. But it's for anybody who's ever booked a service with me from anything at all, you're a client, and you're welcome to join. It's a private clubhouse room. You can just go on there and request to join it. And if you're a client, I'll let you in. And we just, it's pretty free form. Just talking a little bit like we do on the show, but it's really more about getting through tech questions really quickly. Sometimes people have things that are pressing that the timing works out great and I can answer them. This morning I was answering questions for Lori Allen about her computer and what the new one she should buy is and all this kind of stuff. So yeah, the new thing that we're doing. Cool. Well, we need to thank our sponsors as well because without them, this would just be a blank page. Anyway, it would be a dial tone. It damn. Remember dial tones? Wait, it's two tones, right? It's two tones that make a dial tone, right? A higher and a lower one? Right. You do the higher one. I'll do a lower one. That's not quite right. That doesn't sound anywhere near correct. Anyway, we need to thank our sponsors like Harlan Hogan's VoiceOver Essentials. VoiceOver Extra. SourceElementsVioHeroes.com VoiceActorWebSites.com And JMCDemos. All right. Thanks to Jeff Holman for holding the fort down in the chat room and getting those questions. It's all a commercial for a show on HBO Max called Minx. Oh, that's right. He's on another one. It was just an ad popped. I don't even have HBO Max, but I saw the ad and it was like one of those ads where they show the different characters and like, there he is. That's cool. Our thanks to Sue Merlino, our amazing technical director who just switches the shots and does all the things and she does it from her desk in Burbank. Not even here. We'll get together soon. Yes. And Lee Penny, who we know is watching out there just for being Lee Penny. Well, we're going to rack it up for Tech Talk and we got lots of cool stuff to cover. If you have a question about VoiceOver Studio Technology, you know, microphones and all the equipment that we use that, you know, most of it that we probably shouldn't be using, throw those in the chat room and we will get to those questions because that's one of the things that drives our show and we really appreciate it. Well, that's going to do it for this week, little shorter than usual, but David Kaye had to go running off and we appreciate him joining us. But Tech Talk next and that's going to do it for VoiceOver Body Shop this week. Not an easy business. There's a lot to learn and you got to find out who you are. But when it comes to your audio, if it sounds good. Oh, it is good. That's right. I'm Dan Luddard. I'm George Woodham. And this is VoiceOver Body Shop or VOBS. All right. We'll be right back with Tech Talk. But thanks for watching. And that's how it's done. Alrighty. Hey, don't go anywhere if you're watching live because now it's time for Tech Talk and we've got a lot of cool stuff. If you've got a tech question, throw it in the chat room right now and we will get to it in the second segment of our show and George, you got a lot of stuff to talk about and we'll get to those in just a couple of minutes and so we can stretch here for a minute and then get ready to celebrate 11 years of doing this for crying out loud. Yes. How do we do this? There was so much more I wanted to cover with David last time. It was too bad he had to go. What were some of the things you wanted to talk to him about? He has a button on his desk. It looks like an easy button. Remember the easy button from Staples? Right. That was easy. Right. He has it set up to say all these little quotes from Transformers, like Optimus Prime quotes. Right, right, right, right. One of them is just he hit the button and goes, yes, like that. Lex hearing his own voice, does he, huh? Well, people like it. They, you know, he goes to those Comic-Con type things. He takes those things and people snatch them up. Oh, that's cool. It's hilarious. All right. Well, we can start a little early or we can wait another minute or two. And so, you know, we like to keep it on the clock so, you know, we don't go over. Yet every single week we tend to go over by one or two minutes because, you know, people start piling in questions in the last 10 minutes. If you got a question now. I'm actually always gonna give you a little extra. Just, you know, I mean, a little added value. And if you're not satisfied, you can have your money back. So, but we appreciate you joining us. I'm hungry for the devil girl from Mars to be my Venus. I will be talking about the microphone. I'm using S. Okay. Well, that's cool. You know, I've got my microphone here, which, you know, what is it all about with microphones? All right. Why don't we roll here? It's 5.58 now. And I'll just subtract two minutes from the clock like we used to do it. Or we'll end on time. Or we'll end on time. That would be bizarre. I know my wife appreciates that. Okay. And there's the countdown. Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk. And we are celebrating 11 years of voiceover body shop. Now we started at East West Audio Body Shop. But when I came out here to California, we changed it to VOBS. And we can't believe we've been doing this for 11 years. But one of the reasons we've been able to do it for 11 years is because we talk tech. And you guys can't seem to get enough of this stuff because we keep giving us new stuff to talk about. And now we have some great stuff. What do you got tonight for us, George? Well, first I want to give credit because where it's due, the name change, VOBS. Yes. And from comedian Chris Eward. Look him up. He does the laugh factory. He's in Canada. That was his, that was his, she's like the middle of the night he emailed me. How about VOBS, voiceover body shop? I was like, yes. That's it. So he deserves credit for that. Yeah. We're going to talk about the new Mac that just came out that, you know, we're a little out of sync on the news cycle with that. So by now you guys have probably heard about it, but my take on it, a new noise suppressor plugin and some updates on gear that I've had to get warranty repaired or updated or whatever. So, and a little tip for your business. If you want to have a little bit more sophisticated phone system without buying phones, this is a way to do it. You got a pile of them sitting behind the curtain over here of old landline phones. And we're also going to talk about limiters and sort of about compressors, which is something that a lot of people ask about. All this. We won't limit the knowledge too much. Where's my, you know, it's on here. If I keep forgetting to hit the drum roll or the rim shot. Anyway, voiceover, body shop, tech talk. You got a question. Throw it in now. Great time. If you got a question about your home voiceover studio because it's time for voiceover, body shop, tech talk right now. From the outer reaches, they came bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voiceover audio. And together, from the center of the VO universe, they bring it to you now. George Widom, the engineer to the VO stars, a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build, set up, and maintain the professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today. And you, Dan Leonard, the voiceover home studio master, a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio. And each week, they allow you into their world, making the complex simple, debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio, answering your questions, showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech, and having a dandy time doing it. Welcome to voiceover body shop, tech talk. Voiceover 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, voiceactorwebsites.com, where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt. VOheroes.com, become a hero to your clients with award 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. Well, hello there. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Whittem. And this is voiceover body shop or VO. V. S. Tech talk, tech talk, tech talk, tech talk. 11 years we've been doing this, Jorge. And it's unbelievable. It's been worth it. Oh, everybody knows who we are for Crane Out Loud. It's different. Technology in voiceover is just really, really hard for a lot of people. And we were talking about this before the show that people go to coaches and they learn how to be a voice actor or something. Nobody teaches them how to do the recording stuff. Despite the fact that that's how it is, we can do what we can do from our home studios. Now more than ever. Exactly. There's more and more demands on you as voice actors to know the engineering side. That's right. But it's not really engineering, you know. It's the important stuff is to know the basics. And if you can get away with the basics, you know, that we talk about all the time about acoustics and mic technique and setting your levels properly, which we'll get into a little bit tonight. That's really the key to having your audio sound, what it's supposed to sound like, whistle. And there's a way it's supposed to sound. And when George and I get stuff and we listen to your audio, let's take five seconds and we know what's going on in your studio. We know the acoustics in there. We know your mic technique. We know your levels because we look at them and go, where's my loop? I can take a look at the waveforms in there. And we're here to teach you about it. And we do it professionally. We give you lots of tips here on the show. And, you know, and that's important. We answer your questions. But if you're really trying to learn it from the ground up, or if you're an established professional and you're doing well and you say you have a technical crisis, something's not working. Or if you just want to learn a little bit more, you're looking at the two guys that can do this. You know, we do it professionally. We're easy to get a hold of. Well, at least I'm easy to get a hold of, you know. You're at everywhere these days, but you've got a system for making sure that people are covered if they've got a technical emergency. And if they want to work with you, tell them a little bit about what you do and where they go. They go over to... georged.tech. And that's our home on the web. It's kind of a messy website. We're working on it. We are in the process of literally at this moment designing a entirely new interface for the site to make it easier to book services and find what you need. But the key thing on there is really consulting and support. That is where most of you need to start. Just get a 30 minute session with me. We're gonna cover huge amounts of ground in 30 minutes and get you off on the right foot no matter what your needs are. But if you have more specific needs than that, from just a sound check to designing a studio, your dream studio, or should I build a studio or should I buy an ISO booth pre-fabric? We have those conversations every week and that's all part of the deal over at georged.tech. And well, Dan does a lot of that stuff too. And he does it over at homevoiceoverstudio.com. Oh, there it is. Okay, good, yeah. I'm a full-time voice actor. My approach is from the perspective of being a voice actor. The engineering I try to keep simple because you really don't want to be an audio engineer. There are a lot of people out there that are, oh, we'll call them audio geeks. And they're like, oh man, I got this thing and I got this mic and I got this. Which has nothing to do with voiceover. Is one mic better than another? Some mics might be more sensitive. There's all those sorts of things. But what I do is I teach the basics. If you really don't understand it, if you're like flailing in the dark or are intimidated by it, you can talk to me and I will talk you through it to where as when I'm done with you after an hour or hour and a half, you're gonna go, oh, well that was easy. Now I understand it, now I'm not intimidated by it. And that makes me very happy as a teacher to get people to understand that. Plus, if you want to have your audio analyzed, you got your setup, you got your mic, you have your interface, you have your booth, your closet, your backyard, wherever it is you're recording. And you can send that to me on the specimen collection cup, which you'll find currently at the bottom of my homepage. Within a couple of weeks, it will be at the top of my homepage. And for $25, I will give you a very thorough analysis of what your audio sounds like, what you probably need to do to get it sounding better and what sounds right. Amazing how many times the acoustics are right, but the levels are all off and there's a lot of background noise and things like that. And I will teach you how to address those mostly from a physical point of view as opposed to let's add this technology to it to try and clean that up, which we generally don't recommend. Always best to get it right up front, which saves you a lot of time on the back end. So check those things out, I'll be happy to hear from you. Anyway, we got time for all sorts of stuff. We're gonna get to your questions in just a little bit, but George has all this stuff that he has been compiling all week because he's had nothing better to do except find stuff on the internet. What do you got this week? Well, by now, whether you want to or not, you know there is a new Mac. And just a little bigger than the mini. A lot of you are Windows users. We know that and we know we have a lot of discussions on the pros and cons of one over the other. And there's never been more reasons to not use Windows for audio production because why is there glitches and clicks and pops? Why does my audio never go above minus 60B? I can't make it louder on and on. All these things that plague Windows systems because they just weren't designed for audio production. The drivers are convoluted. There's multiple versions. There's inconsistencies from one thing to the next. There's updates that come every Tuesday morning without being able to stop them. There's just so many things that are just moving targets. Well, I mean, is if the Mac M1 systems that Dan and I are now using, and a lot of you guys are now, if those weren't powerful enough and amazing enough, well, they said, hold my beer over at Apple. And he came out with... Or hold my Apple. He'll hold my Apple. They came out with this thing. It is a big, fat, chunky Mac mini. Geez. As Leo LaPorte calls it, the fat boy. It's basically... It's so clearly just... It's a Mac mini that's been stretched vertically. And the reason they stretched it vertically was really mainly not to jam more chips in there. It was for cooling. Because really the top half of this case is huge cooling fans that run counterclockwise. Like it's like two blades of a drone. They spin opposite directions to reduce turbulence. And watch the keynote if you haven't already. It's very impressive. Just skip ahead. Skip past the iPhone SE and all that boring stuff. Go right to this thing. It's about 35 minutes in. And see what's inside. It's really impressive. But they do things that Windows people just nod their head like, oh, you finally put an SD card on the front. Yeah, we've had that for years on our Windows computers. We've had ports. Well, okay, it's back to the Mac mini. They have it finally. An SD card on the front. Two USB-C ports on the front. Glad to know that. Yeah, but it's... Put it behind there and get it in there. Yeah, it's... Oh, here we go. I was wondering how it was spinning around. There we go. On the back, there's a couple more ports from the Mac minis that we currently are using. Dan and I and some of you, it has two additional USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4. Ports. So it's got a couple more ports. And lovely that they didn't take away the HDMI port. I thought for sure that port was gonna be gone, but no, it's still there. And it's still the main way to plug in your screen. And it still has a power supply inside. So on top of everything else, it doesn't require an external power lump like the old OG Mac mini. Do you remember those? They had a big power supply. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's built in. It has that weird Mickey Mouse-looking plug that's becoming more and more common, thankfully. It has a proper headphone jack. And I know most of you don't need it because you've got an audio interface, but the headphone jack on it is, they literally said this during the keynote can drive high impedance headphones. The fact that they actually said that was pretty impressive. So it's got a lot going for it. Now, the main thing that is really making it sell is the horsepower. And the analogy I have for it is like, anybody that likes Tesla knows how the original Tesla Model S was quick, right? That was the M1. This is now the ludicrous mode and the plaid mode max because it is redonkulously fast, extremely powerful. They launched a brand new chip in this one called the M1 Ultra where they tie two M1 Pro chips together or max chips and make this double, I mean, it is outrageously powerful. So who is this computer for? It is for video producers. It is for power, hungry applications that do tons of video. Maybe if you're like a music producer and you use a ton of plug-ins and native instruments and samples and that's who this is for. For everybody else, it's bragging rights purely. I got one of these. It is purely bragging rights, I'm telling you. This thing has more power than anybody in voiceover could ever need. It starts at two grand. That's a reasonable price for a super powerful computer. At half the price, the M1 Mini is perfectly suited for what we're doing. You're watching us up. You're watching this whole thing over. We're using it. So anyway, that's the new Mac Studio. The display looks really impressive too. The studio display, again, it's the cost of a decent computer, just the display. So I'm not running out and buying it. I'm just not. But again, bragging rights, it's got a 12 megapixel camera. It has this mode called onstage. So like if you wanna move around, it digitally recrops and follows you on frame. It does some slick stuff, but it's kind of over the kill, overkill. Anyway, that's- In contrast to that. In contrast to that, yeah. Windows. Windows, well, I don't need to rub it in. I don't need to rub salt in the wound. But I've definitely been converting Windows users to Mac more lately than ever. And I think at this point, if you're still on Windows, it's because you're a hobbyist that loves PC. You love customization. You love troubleshooting. You love trying to figure out how to get the most performance. You're a hot rodder, right? Windows, I think Windows users are hot rodders. They're not gonna go buy Tesla, Model S, Plaid. They're gonna buy 58 Chevy Bel Air and hot rod it. That's to me what a Windows computer is. Now you can buy one pre-hot rod it. You can, and you can do this with cars. You can go to a hot rod shop and walk out of there with $150,000, you know, 67 Camaro. And that's how I feel like Windows are. It's once they're super hot-rodded, dialed in and optimized. And there's, I found a 30 minute video on just optimizing Windows for audio. You do all that right. And it will probably work pretty well for you until the next update comes that you don't know is coming. But that's the thing about Windows. And people are like, oh, what a gaming computer. And it's supposed to be this and that. It's I9, six-chord. I'm like, it doesn't matter. If everything doesn't work together like a well-oiled machine, you're gonna have problems. What I said recently online was like Windows is cheaper, but there's a hidden cost of saving money and going with Windows for a voiceover studio. There just is. And that's all that other stuff that you have to deal with the overhead. Anyway, moving on, I don't think it's ever gonna get better, but if it does, I'll let you guys know. As soon as somebody says, Windows, Microsoft, change something that makes sound drivers now work the way they're supposed to. It's just easy. It's like, okay, I'll be there. When pigs fly. I'll be there. It might be Windows 12 or whatever it is. I don't know, but it ain't Windows 11. In the plugin side of things, our friend, Jim Edgar, is a great voiceover technologist of his own right. He did a little quick video about a new waves plugin called Clarity VX. And I think it's big as selling point because they wanna take some thunder away from Isotope in this area. It's a voice denoiser at a very low price. So with Isotope, if you want all their suite of plugins, you gotta buy a suite of plugins. You gotta buy a whole package. With this, you can buy just this one plugin called Clarity VX, the basic model. And it's right now, it's only $29. So it's a very affordable noise reduction plugin. I will say this though, if you've never had a waves plugin before, there's a learning curve of just getting it installed. Like you have to install a plugin manager. Now, Isotope has the same. They have a plugin manager too. You have to install that first and you have to get the licensing going. There's a bunch of steps to get it up onto your system. But it is a very simple interface in terms of noise reduction. It literally is just a single knob that you turn. And that is kind of nice, the simplicity factor. Jim found it to be very comparable. He thought it sounded better for certain things. I saw some discussions. Some people thought the Isotope RX voiced in noise. Actually it was better in some ways. They're just different. And if you're gonna really, if you're really curious, give it a try. Get a demo and see if it's worth it to you. I still like Bertam DeNoiser. Not Bertram, but Bertam, V-E-R-T-O-M. That's still my favorite noise reduction tool. It's not quite as simple one knob operation. It does have six sliders that you have to monkey around with a little bit. But I think it sounds amazing and it's free. I mean, you can pay for it, believe me, you should. But you can install it for free. There's no licensed manager thing. There's just, you can just download it, install it and use it very quickly. And I love that about Bertam DeNoiser. It sounds great. What they call shareware. Yeah, it is kind of like shareware. I also call it Honorware, like Reaper, you know? Everybody knows it Reaper. There's probably a lot of you out there. Don't, you won't admit it, but you probably launch Reaper and then wait for it to count down in five seconds and then you start using it. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like that. It is, it's like a shareware. Yeah, moving on. So Revelator, personas Revelator. Another week of Revelator. I was so excited because they finally released an update that was gonna fix my problem with my pan slightly to the left thing that was weird. I installed it, I was all excited. Then today we're getting ready for the show. And I'm like, hey, can you guys hear that when I play that back? Can you hear it when I play the VOBS Tech Talk voiceover intro? Everybody's like, nope. And I look over at the console and I realize a whole section of the control unit, the software control. This, and I have it running on my iPad here. Wow, the color is bizarre. It's all purple. That's not what it looks like. This camera is crappy. A whole section of the control panel is gone. There used to be a button right here that said stream and it's gone. And there used to be four mixes here. Main, mix A, mix B, mix C. And now there's only three mixes, not four. I have no idea why that disappeared. I have no idea what happened to my stream setting. But the bottom line is it sort of crippled the Revelator. It doesn't do everything it's supposed to do. It doesn't do what I loved about it. Prisonis, what's going on, you guys? It's killing me. It's a glitch. Maybe you just got to re-download it again. I'm running it on, I'm running it on my iPad. I'm running it on my desktop system. I followed the instructions from the support ticket I had opened because of the complaint and they're like, install this. I don't know, guys. So it's not all still happy, happy, happy in Revelator land. So I'm not going to be giving it a glaringly happy review. I love what it's been doing for me, but at the end of the day, if you have to do what we do here on, which is do live shows and stream and have multiple sources of audio, the roadcaster, which Dan's got in his studio is still kicking butt. So, sure do, yeah. The Rode NTG5 is back. That's the microphone I'm using tonight, which I'll switch cameras so you can see my microphone. It's back. This is the Rode NTG5. It's been replaced under warranty. I had some, the dreaded sort of clipping issue and it's gone now because they sent me a new one. I know it's new because I sent them one in just an envelope padded and wrapped in bubble wrap and they sent me back a retail box. So I have doubles of everything, the shotgun, the big pistol grip, all the accessories, I have doubles of everything, which is nice, thanks Rode, it's nice to have spares. Anyway, but the NTG5 is back. I really hope whatever the bad batch of capacitors or whatever the component was that was failing and a lot of people's mics, hopefully that's been resolved now. It must have needed a new tube. Yeah, there's no tube in this tube. But yeah, whatever it was, I hope it never comes back. But I'm back on my NTG5. It's a great sounding mic. The NTG4 Plus was working just fine in its stead, but this just has a little extra something, something that I really like. Sounds great. Last thing before I wrap up my tech update, and this is off-tucket topic from Pure Audio Tech, but if you wanna kind of like come off with a little bit more of a professional front end in terms of your business and accept more maybe phone calls to far as the way for people to reach you and interface with you, you may not wanna have two cell phones, first of all, right? So maybe you've used Google Voice to have a separate business line and separate business from pleasure, but Google Voice has a lot of limitations too. And so I've recently started using Open Phone and it's a virtual business phone. And so you can create, you can port your existing number into it, which is what I did, or just make a new number. And it gives you a lot of customization, including actually a phone menu. So now if you call my business phone number 424-226-8528, it will ring this new system and you can press one to be patched into my phone. You can press two to go off to customer service and it rings my assistance phone. You can, you know, I have a phone tree or what do you call it, an IVR, whatever they call that. And it's not expensive. And it's real. Virtual centric system. Yeah, it's not expensive. It's very easy to set up and it works really, really well. So you can have auto responders for a text message, letting people know, hey, I'm here, but right now I'm in the booth. So I can't get back to you, just give me a minute. You know, it's a really great service. So I'm very happy with it so far. If anybody is looking at something a little bit beyond the same phone number for everything or even Google Voice. It rings and only two or three people call me. So what do I get? Yes. Actually, if you call that number and you press nine, that dispatches to the 911 tech support dispatcher. And that's what we can get you to. You might even talk to Dan Leonard because he's one of the on call texts that might get your phone call. So it's great to have a flexible ways to be reached and come off as a pro instead of, you know, maybe just a guy with a phone. If that's something you're into. Well, you know, if you're a voice actor and you answer the phone, it's like, hello. Oh, you have a great voice. You basically, yeah, you basically get the gig the second you answer the phone. When you have a great voice actor voice, yeah. It doesn't hurt. Dan, let's talk about compressor limiter and what the heck they're for. Well, yeah. When should you use them or when you shouldn't? Well, I got a call from our good friend, Debbie Dairyberry this week, one of the top people in animation. And she was saying that, you know, she had been recommending a, you know, a certain interface that we're no longer recommending. And I wrote to her and I said, hey, and if you don't know what you're doing, don't tell people to get that one. You know, get a get a focus, write to it or a solo or something. She goes, well, sometimes if people are using that in animation, they have to ride the game with that. They, you know, and because they have to talk, wow, they have to talk soft, you know, and by writing the game, I mean, you know, literally having your hand on the game dial and turning it down when you're talking loud and turning it back up when you're more conversational. So there is a device, sometimes it's analog, sometimes it's, you know, in digital programming called a limiter. And sometimes, and I'm like, well, you know, you could use, you know, a limiter on an interface. You know, there's one that has a compressor on it, which sort of does the same thing. So what's really the difference between a compressor and a limiter? Basically, and then George and I will demonstrate for you. A limiter is something that you set a threshold that the volume of your voice will not go above. So you don't over modulate. And when you over modulate, the audio will break up and somebody gets an over modulated file on the other side. They're gonna go, this is over modulated. You can't fix over modulation. If you do it, it's dead. You know, there are some programs, oh, we can fix that and make it usable now. Declipping or de-clicking. De-clipping. De-clipping, de-clipping, right. And, you know, you don't wanna go there. And you don't want an engineer. Oh, crap, now I gotta do the de-clipper on this. You wanna get it right up front. So one way to do it, and for somebody who perhaps is doing animation or gaming where you have to go through loud voices and soft voices, you know, I used to say, look, do the loud stuff first, do the soft stuff second, or vice versa. So you don't burn out your voice with the soft stuff. You know, or use proper mic technique. We had David K. on last week and he was demonstrating for us, just him talking to us how you know if you're gonna yell at somebody, you don't do it right on mic because you don't yell in somebody's ear. But if you're, you know, talking conversationally, you know, like this, the way you normally would over a cup of coffee, you know, you have to turn the gain up to get the proper level. But if you have to shift between them constantly, a limiter will, if set at, and where is a good place to set a limiter? If I use one, it's probably like minus three or minus two, something like that. So it doesn't go up near zero and it doesn't clip no matter what. It automatically reduces your volume so it doesn't clip. Now, how is that different from a compressor? Because a lot of people say, you gotta put compression on there. What does a compressor do? A compressor makes the loud stuff softer and the soft stuff louder so everything is even, which is why it's called a compressor. And George, what are we gonna use to demonstrate exactly what that means? I was gonna show a compressor here. I have loaded on TwistedWeave. Let me see if I can share this. What's weird is when I click away from TwistedWeave, the compressor window hides itself. Yeah, because you have to actually highlight that when you share. Oh, that's the trick, huh? Yeah. I gotta click on the word and the plug in, go to share. Yeah, when I click share, it just disappears again. Dang it. All right, I'll just share the whole screen. There you go. And then I don't know if we can crop in if we can show it or not, but there we go. That works. Okay, now you can see it. Yeah. So here's a compressor. This one's from a company called Melda Productions, which was shown this suite of plugins recently and they're very affordable slash free, more sort of freeware, which is nice. So a compressor has more controls than a limiter. A limiter typically just has a threshold and maybe an output setting. So the threshold, the lower you set it, the more the compressor, before the limiter kicks in, the ceiling is how loud it's allowed to go. That's sort of like the normalizer, right? Right. Can't go above minus three, minus two, but a compressor has a lot more controls. You've got, one of the main ones that's very different is a ratio control. So a ratio control controls how much the level is gonna go down or it's gonna get reduced, right? Once it passes the threshold. With a limiter, that ratio is very, very high. So when the level crosses that point, the threshold point, it just is stopped like a brick wall. Sometimes we call it. They call it a brick wall limiter. A brick wall limiter, right. But with a compressor, you have the control over how much the audio is gonna be reduced by. So a compressor can be a lot more subtle and it's a result, a little bit more transparent. But you use them differently and I tend to use a compressor before the limiter. I tend to use the limiter as the very last output setting. Maybe it's like the last line of defense if you wanna call it that. But so that's the main difference. The tool set looks a lot simpler when you're using a limiter. Let me load a limiter in here. Let's see what we have. Perhaps the basic AU one. Yeah, the AU one is so, so simple. It doesn't even have any meters. Here's the audio unit peak limiter. This comes on every Mac. And it's got an attack and release time which I usually set where they're at because they're fine. And really you have one knob that you worry about and that's the pre-gain. So if you don't wanna change or increase the gain in any way, you just leave that at zero. And so now you have a limiter. It will prevent levels from going above zero and you're done. But if you wanna add more level beyond that, so you wanna build up or make up loss of level because of your other processing, then you can add more gain called pre-gain and it will increase the level of everything all at once. Which takes a little bit of experience to know how much to increase it or reduce it based on any particular file. So you have to base it on what exactly you're doing because everybody wants to do it. Yeah, too much of that. And you'll end up with something that looks like that. And while it's not technically clipping, that's gonna come across as like really overbearing and sometimes almost distorted sounding to the listener. So you gotta be careful with how much limiter you put on stuff and make it, it needs to sound good. At the end of the day. And these are all plugins for post. Doing it up front is a little bit different which we can talk about. Oh yeah, well let's talk about that too because that was kind of the impetus for this, right? Some, a few select interfaces out there have that function on the input side. Right. Yeah, we know the mic port pro two has it which is something that Debbie is testing because she wants to go on vacation and like I need a limiter because I don't wanna have to ride the gain. So, we share that one. I know there's a compressor on the Yamaha series. Well, the Yamaha AG03 and the AG06, that's a DSP limiter or a DSP compressor on there. So I suggested a couple of those and then there's the Roland Rubik's 24 that we were looking at that is built in so you can do it from the front end. Yeah, and having it in the hardware can be nice because of a reliability factor. Like I was saying earlier, the revelator, it has that too but it's software driven or firmware driven and if the firmware update doesn't work the right way. Well, you get what you got to do. You're hosed. And if you have something that's hardware-based like I reviewed this a couple of weeks ago, the portcaster, it's all in here. All the controls are in here. All the routing is in here. Even the limiter is a little switch on the front that you can turn on. Yeah, yeah. Tim Freedlander has mentioned here. Thanks for watching, Tim, that the Scarlet 2i2 is being blacklisted by some New York City studios. Yeah, I talked to him about this last week and he mentioned it. He's like, I recommend a lot of the same stuff you do but I've stopped recommending the Scarlet 2i2 because he's had some instability issues with some of the Scarlets but mainly because there's literally studios and I don't have names here, guys. Can't call anybody out here but apparently there's a few studios that are like, oh, you have a Scarlet 2i2, not next. And that doesn't mean you have to buy an Apollo. No. It just means they have a prejudice, if you wanna call it that, against the 2i2. Right. Now here's the thing. You don't get something just as cheap as a 2i2. It just can't be that. Tell them you have an Apollo for crying out loud. If they're hearing you on the other end, they don't know. I mean, it's like, tell me, ah, sure, I'm using this and that and they're like, they don't know the difference. It's, I think it's, you know, what they hear, what they read and all that. Anyway, we got lots of questions to attend to here. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll be back with your questions and the answers to those questions right after this on VoiceOver Body Shop. So don't go away. We'll be right back. This is Ariana Ratner and you're enjoying VoiceOver Body Shop with Dan Leonard and George Whidham. Vobs.tv. VoiceOverEssentials.com has the ultimate answer for mic safety. Look, your mic is the most valuable part of your audio chain so protect it from boom, stand, disaster. It's the ABS, the adjustable boom stop. It's simple, ingenious, and infinitely adjustable. The padded non-slip pouch fits almost any size boom arm. It has a unique double loop webbing system for an unlimited angle of the downstrap. It works with tripod and solid round bases. A strong articulated strap keeps your boom where you want it without weights, sandbags, or knuckle-busting tightening of the boom clutch. The light gray webbing lets you mark and repeat stand settings for just the right spot for you or anyone else who uses your microphone, saving time and guesswork. This is the simple solution that simply works. You'll kick yourself or not having thought of it. Lock it in place with our ABS, the adjustable boom stop. Get it now at VoiceOverEssentials.com. During the break, I thought I was going to be clever and switch audio interfaces, but no, that didn't work out that way. I couldn't get Chrome to re-detect my backup interface. So if you're hearing clicks and pops from me, I apologize. It's the revelator personas gods mad at me for bad-mouthing their product earlier in the show, apparently. Anyway, I'm taking thunder away from our beautiful, wonderful, lovely sponsors, Source Elements, the creators of Source Connect. And Source Connect is a tool for professionals from the top to the bottom of the production, from the producer engineer side to the actor side. It allows the actor to interface directly into the session as though they're right there standing in the studio and bring that audio straight into the timeline of Pro Tools. That's really what most of the studios are recording you on because that's the tools they like. And going right into their timeline so that that means on the fly, they can punch you in, they can replace something, they can edit you, they can listen to you back with whatever else is in the production. They can throw together an approval mix for the commercial clients who are often listening in on the session and they can do that all on the fly because all your audio is being fed right into their system. So this is why it is preferred by so many engineers. You know, there's a lot of tools out there. Some of them are cheaper. Some of them are even free. But this one is just, it's just so well-established and it's so heavily relied upon by the top jobs out there. So maybe you should probably have it in your arsenal. If you wanna get a 15-day free trial, head over to source-elements.com. And if you wanna learn more about what it does and how it works, head over to georgev.tech.sc, my page on Source Connect. You can watch a video on how it works and get support if you need it. Anyway, thanks so much for the support, Source Elements. Let's get on to the tech questions right after this. Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big-voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for Snapchat, were you? This is Virgin Radio. Well, okay, we're not that innocent. There's jeans for wearing and there's jeans for working. Dickies, cause I ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values, a leader for California, and a voice for America. It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smartphone. But it's so much more. It's a, the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs. What time is hockey practice? Check out this song. It's the end of the road, Perrin. This is your neighborhood. When hope is lost. The I8 from BMW. Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's J. Michael Collins. Bet you think I'm gonna try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves. But I will give you my email. It's jmichael at jmcoysover.com. Now, if they don't stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show. Hi, this is Bill Farmer and you are watching VoiceOver Body Shop. It's great. Well, you know what they say about storage? The more storage you build, the more stuff you shove in it. Well, we have more time today. We still shoved more stuff in. So we're running a little behind, but we got lots of questions and we want to get to your questions. How am I sounding now, guys? You sound fabulous. There was a few clicks and bobs in there. No, no, no, well, when it turned on, yeah. Anyway. Well, now I'm on the pork caster instead of the revelator. Ah, okay. So hopefully the clicks and bobs are a thing of the past. We'll find out. Yeah, yeah, turn your game up just a little bit. Alrighty, hungry for the devil girl from Mars to be my Venus YouTube. George is using a road NTG5 there. Yes, you are. It's fixed. Okay, play the voice real kids, VO family. That's quite a name. We picked up a 20 year old 416 last week. Yeah, I think people have learned that if they change their YouTube name, we get to slip in a plug for their YouTube channel. Oh, real kids, VO family on YouTube. Anyway, she says I picked up a 20 year old 416 last week from a TV producer. How long do they last if well cared for? Well, there's always that joke about you can hammer nails with those things. They'll last longer than you would imagine. I mean, they're worth your pain for it. Darren, well, better. Yeah, no, they're made to last. Yeah, and those were designed to be road warriors because they are video mics for road crews that go out and shoot stuff. So it's probably just fine. The only way to find out is to record something on it. Let us listen and go, oh, sounds fine. Yeah, I would be more worried about buying one on a major discount that's new in the box. Those are the ones to avoid because believe it or not, there actually are counterfeit Sennheiser 416s. So I would be better off. I feel a lot better buying a $500 one that's 20 years old than a $500 one that's brand new. So just keep that in mind. Yeah, now Jeff Holman has a great question here because we were just talking about this. He says, Dan, do you ride the game when you do video game auditions that have some normal volume lines and some yelling lines? We were just talking about this. Or do you back away from your mic and use mic technique? When I do video game auditions, I sound so quiet because they ask for them to be at a minus 18 level and only the yelling lines sound good. That's because he's using one level for all the different stuff. And now I'm hearing an echo from your headphones. Yeah, no, I use my technique. But I also know that if I'm going to be doing things that are louder and softer, I might do the loud stuff first and then the soft stuff stack under vice versa versus especially with video game auditions. But if I'm going to yell, like, I will kill you. I mean, come on, you just back off the mic. You don't yell in somebody's ear. And they're still gonna hear you. These mics will pick up anything if you're at the right time. But we were just talking about limiters and some people like to use a limiter because they want to be consistent from the mic, even though our voices come to people from different directions and different distances. And I think it's important that you practice that using different mic technique, but work with what works best for you. That's usually the best answer to that. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the engineers are telling actors, you know, when they say, and I'm not even sure what they mean by be at minus 18 level. I mean, does that mean the loudest? Would it be nice if they explained that to you? Is that, yeah, does that mean the loudest you're allowed to go is minus 18? Because that is really low. Yeah, I think what it is they want is minus 18 so that, you know, so you don't over modulate when you're loud and turn the game down, you know. I mean, you know, even though apparently they've been blacklisted, you know, on the two high two or on the solo, if you look at the game dial here, I have a line that says, you know, yelling and one that says conversational. I just know where they are. You don't need like 17 different incremental settings. You really only need one for extreme high level and one for most everything else and you're gonna be fine. So yeah, I mean, riding game during a session is not easy. So splitting it into two different passes, loud stuff and everything else. It seems like a very reasonable way to get around that problem. Right. And you've gotta find the sweet spot for you for your yelling and for your conversational stuff. Question from Matt Davis. George. What do you guys think of the AT 2020? It depends. I've heard them sound okay and I've heard them be a little bit noisy. I've heard them sound a little bit sibilant and crispy. I've, you know, it's not blanket no good by any means. It's certainly gotten some good recordings from people over the years and I still know a few people that use it. That's their day-to-day daily driver mic. I think the 2035 for a little bit more money is a much better mic. They've upgraded essentially everything about that mic. For only $50 more, it is by far a better value. High-pass filter built in, it has a shock mount. It's a bigger capsule. It's quieter. It's about everything you can think of is better at only 50% more price. I think it's the way to go. Yeah, and those AT mics are, those are heavy duty too. They build them, you know, blink. Yeah. This 3035, which hasn't even made me more. It's been hanging around my studio since I was a live recording engineer and it still works without a no problem. My first voiceover mic too. Terry Briscoe asks, okay guys, I've been asking you both about USB mics for a while now and I want to let you know I have finally switched over to XLR as of yesterday. Now, I do have a question. I'm in the middle of an audio book. Should I keep using the mic I started with or go with the new equipment? Congrats on the 11th year anniversary by the way. That's a real simple answer. Keep the same mic. You cannot change anything on the second half of a book and certainly not in the middle of a chapter. They're going to sound a little different. They may both sound good, but they're going to sound different and it's going to be noticeable to the listener. What do you think? Yeah, definitely never change anything about your studio mid audio block. Unless you like to make the engineer that's doing your mastering hate you or you're gonna hate yourself that's trying to make sure everything matches. Don't do it. If the mic was good enough to start the book, it's good enough to finish the book. Yeah, they hired you. So... Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I mean, USB mics aren't categorically bad. They don't categorically sound bad. They have limitations that we've talked about many times. So don't worry about it. Be excited to use that new mic. We get it, but be patient. Use it on something else, not on that currently in production book. Yeah. You get the next question from BC. BC, loving the show. Thanks. Each time I want to record, I assemble my booth with various partial walls of acoustic foam and bass traps. So he's got a build-on-demand booth. All right. That's quite on demand, build-on-demand. Any way to get a consistent sound or is this mission impossible? It's not mission impossible, but why would you want to have a nearly impossible mission every time you've recorded voiceover? That sounds difficult. I get it if you're using a multi-use space and or you're dealing with family or maybe you're building it in the closet of your walking closet and you can't be in the way. There's a lot of reasons why someone might want to do attempt booths like that, but it is really difficult to get it right every time. It can be done, though, as long as you put everything in the same place, put the mic in the same spot, stand the same distance and you do that time and time again, you can certainly get consistent sound. Yeah. Yeah, it's, yeah. But having something that you got to keep putting up and taking down and putting up, you really want to try and create as much of a permanent space that is consistent so you don't have to go through that kind of stuff. Well, man, consistency is so important. Like, if you're really taking this seriously as a business, that's one of the things that will get you more bookings is if every time you send them audio, they can count on it being the same and consistent. That's what's going to bring them back over and over. Wow, this guy's great. Everything is always the same level and sounds the same and we can drop it in something that's two years old is going to sound the same now. They love that, you know. That is really what that's gold when you can achieve that. I see there's a second part about noise coming in through exterior windows. How do you stop the noise? Dan, do you have a magic solution that doesn't cost a ton of money? It stops. Well, I mean, somebody once asked. Yeah, somebody once asked, I got a flock of birds that keeps coming by here. How do I keep that from making noise? I said, you got a shotgun? There'll be a loud noise and then no bird noise at all. Is it Reagan or DC Dulles? One of those airports does that. They have these cannons at the end of the runway to scare the birds away. Yeah, no, there's window plugs. There's all sorts of different things. I know, George, you were looking at something that seals the window and stuff like that. Indo windows, if you have the money and the patience to get them. Indowindows.com, those are pretty awesome. If you don't want to damage your windows, if you're renting, they're a really nice option. But yeah, they'll take weeks, maybe months to get one of those, because they're, I guess they're just under such massive demand. Yeah, now this next question from Terry Truett, who's also on YouTube. And I have some distinct thoughts on this. It goes, what's your thought on the waves? See one gate. You know, no, what's a gate? A gate, and we were talking about compressors and limiters and stuff like that. A gate, essentially, if you've got background noise when it reaches a certain level below a certain level or above a certain level, a threshold, it will reduce the volume by a certain ratio. The thing is, is if you're going to use a gate, and I know people that are using them, they have to be set right, and you can't have a loud noise floor and then try to hope, have a gate, you know, save you, exactly. Because if you've got a loud background noise, even if it's really fast, if you got fast attack on it, it's still gonna go, you know how I'm like, and you will hear that you've got background noise. You'll hear it, yeah, you'll hear it come up, and when you start talking, the gate opens, and that noise is loud enough it's gonna be quite audible behind your voice. So it's not a fix-all. I've never used the waves stuff, the waves plugins extensively. I don't like all these third-party plugins that require licenses and have these invasive, I just, I'm not into that stuff, but wave stuff is renowned. I mean, obviously engineers use this stuff constantly. I just don't have, I have no experience. I won't say I know anything about it. I've never used the C1 gate. So as long as it's got a ratio, it's probably okay. If it doesn't have a ratio control or a range control, don't use it, because it's probably just cutting out your room tone, and that's really bad. Yeah, you know, to me, physical, try and isolate yourself better, do not rely on technology to fix these things for you. That's why you find a closet with a lot of noise in it, or a booth, because if you try to do it with technology, you gotta know how to use the technology. Having the technology is not gonna help you. Yeah, the input gain is also really critical with the gate. If you vary your input gain, it screws up the gate, and then it doesn't do what it's supposed to do either. So they're really touchy for recording. Yeah, question from Grace Newton, which I actually have the answer to. What does one typically mount their road arms to? Or, you know, your retriculated arm, you know, this guy. And she says, you know, mine's currently mounted to the desk where my Mac and interface are, but last tech talk, George said that's not advisable because of bumps and stuff like that. You'll notice when I bump my desk, it doesn't do anything to the mic because my mic is bolted to the wall with the special hyal, you know. Yeah, the wall mount bracket. I have a wall mount. Yeah, it's connected to the wall, so it's not connected to my desk. And you can get those depending on what arm you have and you can get those adapters, right? Yeah, if you can't find the hyal for a while, it seemed to be out of stock. There is some company on Amazon selling a wall mount bracket for your typical road hyal and many other brand mic arms. So yeah, get it off the desk. Mine is on my desk on a hutch. I think because I have a high pass filter on my interface, you're not getting too much. I'm also using this fancy isolator shock mount thing on my mic that's helping a little bit, but it's definitely not advisable. Getting it off your desk and on the wall and if there's no wall nearby, a stand that stands separately from the desk is probably your best bet. Alrighty, two quick questions. One from Patricia Andre. This seems to be a topic tonight. Says, what's the best way to set the twisted wave for voiceover so we can edit the loud portions after with twisted wave? I use Apollo solo and sometimes I'm a newbie. I don't know what to do after I normalize with minus 3 dB, et cetera. But then some loud portions are still loud. It's the same thing. Nobody, she's not writing the game. And the soft stuff is soft and the loud stuff is too loud. And you've either got to adjust it, use a limiter or a compressor. So. Or change the way you actually perform those different parts so the loud stuff isn't so loud. Right. You can back off the mic. Yeah, there's such thing as a theater loud versus really being loud, not theater loud. What's the word for it? There's like a projection and... You can sound like you're louder without getting six times louder. That's right, absolutely. There's techniques there. You can back, again, back away from the mic. You can, there's a lot of things you can do. But the end of the day, human voice and performance is dynamic. So there's going to be very wide ranges in dynamics with certain types of voice work, especially of course character based stuff. And with that is that's just part of natural, the natural performance dynamic. Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it too much. But if you want a special processing setup that will be transparent to the listener and doesn't distract, we can help you with that. That's something I do is make a setup that will control it for you. But you mainly don't need to worry about it because engineers are going to deal with all that dynamic stuff later. Just get it clean without the clipping. And then she finishes his mouth clicks. What's the holy grail to prevent them? Alcohol. Yeah, David Kay last week, he gave his regimen, which is extreme hydration. He said, I drink three glasses of water and my nose starts to run. That's how I know I'm hydrated. That's what he said. I'm going to try that tomorrow morning. Last question from TJ Metzicapo, voiceover. Hey, Dan and George, I'm using a Rode NT1 and an Audion ID4 with Mogami gold cables. For some reason, though, the audio is super low and has a lot of interference hiss. What can I do to fix this? I'm betting he doesn't have it on as the input. There's so much we don't know in this question. That's right. I mean, I can't even begin. We don't know what kind of computer it is. We don't know how it's plugged in. We don't know what OS it is. We don't know. Send us a sample. There's too much we don't know. We got to hear it. Yeah, I mean, we'll know for sure if it's not the NT1 that's actually being recorded. But that's a tell-tale sign. If you hit record, start talking, turn the gain up and down, and the level doesn't change. One iota, guaranteed you're not recording through the ID4. You're probably recording through the built-in mic of your computer, so. Or with the ID4, you got to turn it up pretty high because the Audion stuff has a ratio at the end of the scale that is a little bit more incremental or a little more dynamic gives you more gain at the end. So you might want to try that. Yeah, there's also a very small chance at the microphone or there's actually an actual equipment failure. You know, that is possible. So, but we can roll that out. Yeah, we want to hear it, then we'll be able to tell you. Well, believe it or not, another hour has gone by. 11 years has gone by, but we're still doing it. We're going to take a quick break. It's been fun. I know, it's still fun every other Monday, so we appreciate it. But we'll be right back to clean things up and sweep things out of here and right after these messages, so don't go away. Before time began, there was VOBS.TV. Watch or else. I don't think there's a feeling quite like that moment when something you've auditioned for becomes something you get booked on, especially when it comes to audio books. You audition for an audio book on ACX or in some other form or fashion, and then somebody says, hey, we like what you did. We want you to be our narrator. If that isn't a feeling that you've had lately because either you haven't figured out how to do audio books or because the efforts that you've put toward audio books just don't seem to be working, I've got a solution for you. Let's start with some free videos and then if you want, registering for the ACX Masterclass. I'm David H. Lawrence, the 17th. Along with Dan O'Day, I teach that class and you can get to those free videos and to registration if you'd like at acxmasterclass.com slash join. That's acxmasterclass.com slash join. I'd love to help you get there. In these modern times, every business needs a website. When you need a website for your voice acting business, there's only one place to go. Like the name says, voiceactorwebsites.com. Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept to live online in a much shorter time. When you contact voiceactorwebsites.com, their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are. They work with you to highlight what you do. Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are and how your voice is the one for them. Plus voiceactorwebsites.com has other great resources like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish. Don't try it yourself, go with the pros. Voiceactorwebsites.com where your Vio website shouldn't be a pain in the, you know what. This is the Latin lover narrator from Jane the Virgin, Anthony Mendez. And you're enjoying Dan and George on The Voice of Our Body Shop. All right, to the next 11 years. We're princes among men, that's really nice, Rich. Thank you, thank you, buddy. What was that? You said we're princes among men. Okay, I don't know how to take that. Thank you. Yeah, okay. Just say thank you. Thank you, thank you, Richard. Next week on this very show, we have the lovely and talented Martha Kahn will be joining us and talking about getting your kids into voiceover. Yeah, have them pay the rent for crying out loud. You know, they're running around. Hey, get in here. She teaches kids how to do voiceover. And I think that's a fun thing to do. We have to help them, you know, pay for their college. Especially for- Don't stray, yeah. Our donors of the week, we got plenty of them like Philip Sapir. Thomas Pinto. Shelley Avellino. George A. Woodham, my dad. Brian Page. Patty Gibbons. Rob Ryder. Greg Thomas. A Dr. Voice. I believe that's Dr. Nathan Carlson. Antland Productions. Uncle Roy. Yeah, Shannon Pennington-Baird. Martha Kahn. Martha Kahn, yeah. Yay, Don Griffith. Trey Mosley. Diana Birdsall. Hey, Diana. And Sandra Manwiller. Hey, again, if you need help with your home voiceover studio, you can go to my place, my website, which is homevoiceoverstudio.com. Or over to George's Place over at GeorgeThe.Tech. And if you want to see my latest Isotope RX webinar that's been recorded last week, just go to GeorgeThe.Tech slash webinars where you can find that and review it and learn what the heck that thing does. My dad watched it, actually. He's like, I had no clue what I was watching, but now I do. I'm like, look, that was the point. Well, that's good to know. But we need to thank, of course, our sponsors like Harlan Hogan's Voiceover Essentials. Voiceover Extra. Source Elements. VoHeroes.com. VoiceActorWebsites.com. And JMCDemos. Alrighty. Well, thanks for joining us this week, guys. You know, we love having the live audience. You know, people actually, you know, giving us the questions in real time. And that makes us, you know, it's what George and I do. So anyway, and then we appreciate all that stuff. And we appreciate your participation in our show. And here's to another 11 years, Mr. Hogan. Stranger things could happen. I know. I can't, I'm looking forward to it. I don't know if my wife is, but I'm looking forward to it. Alright, thanks to Jeff Holman and for doing the chat room, Sumer Lino for getting it done in the director's chair and Lee Penny for just being Lee Penny, which he continues to be. That's going to do it for us this week. We're here to help you with your audio and the bottom line is if it sounds good. It is good. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Whidham. And this is voiceover. Body shop or V.O. B.S. Tech talk, tech talk, tech talk, tech talk, tech talk. We'll see you next week. Bye bye. Thanks.