 Hey there, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number 14 8 to 9 I think I see 9 on my thing. I think it's tech talk number 49 It's getting up there. We've been doing tech talk now for two years now and You guys love it. We're here if you've got a question for us about your home voiceover studio or about equipment or About what's the best microphone for voiceover? Don't ask that one Yeah throw it in the chat room and We will get to that a little bit later on in the show because it's not this I can tell you that right now What is that? It's an AirPod Pro. Oh, okay. Yeah, okay Well, we'll be talking about that too and we've got all sorts of interesting stuff as far as You know George's tech update. You've got some cool things. I see in there and We're also going to talk about setting levels because I guess we haven't talked about it enough because It's a new time to talk about setting levels. All right. Absolutely. So anyway, stay tuned It's time for voiceover body shop tech talk now From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe, they bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice down with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio and Each week they allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials.com home of Harlan Hogan signature products source elements remote studio connections for everyone Voice actor websites.com where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes.com become a hero to your clients with a word winning voiceover training J. Michael Collins demos when Quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success and now Live to thrive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Greetings all I am Dan Leonard. I'm George with him and this is voiceover body shop or VO We're talking tech on VO BS tech talk anything to do with home voiceover studios or voiceover technology We're the guys to ask. I mean Where else are you gonna go? I mean we have been utterly obsessed with this topic for a very very long time. Yeah Yeah, you hear so much stuff every day and it's like We've tried to standardize it and make it simple for everybody yet. You guys Seem to want to make it more complicated. I don't quite get that, you know, we get these I'm gonna use this piece of equipment and I want to use this and it's like The secret to it is learning how to do it right up front and getting your environment right all these other things But how do you learn how to do that? Well, you could try all sorts of things until someone says, yeah, okay, your audio sounds right Or you could go to the guys that actually do this every day and know what it takes to make things sound, right? You know, it's not a trial and error thing There are some standard things that George and I know how to do that Make it easy for you. And I think that's probably what you and I do better than anybody else, you know That I've talked to we don't try to over complicate it. It's like here's how you use this Here's how you use that, you know, here's how we can improve the sound in the booth you're in I mean, it doesn't have to be sophisticated. I mean, we had will Lyman on last week and You know thinking oh, well, here's here's one of the top guys in the biz He's probably got a great booth and I he's in his closet That's right You know, I mean he treated it right and clearly it works It wasn't even using a really sophisticated microphone of sometimes You know, I mean he's doing front line on a blue snowball Yeah, yeah, but But if you really want to learn how to do it, right? Well, one you've come to the right place because you're watching voiceover body shop tech talk because we talk about all this stuff And clearly you guys like listening to us talk Otherwise we wouldn't keep doing it But if you'd like to work with us Individually if you really want to work with the pro Somebody who can really get you from not knowing what you're doing to maybe not necessarily knowing what you're doing But when you hit the button on record, it's gonna do it right anyway Everybody thinks you know what you're doing when they get a little right exactly Yeah, nobody needs to see how it's done. It's just as long as it sounds good It is good as we like to say but if they want to work with you George, how do they do that? Well, you can head over to George the dot tech that's my website for tech support and there's a new one coming Soon a new website coming soon It is in it is in the very early beta testing stages, but hopefully it'll be available for you guys to peruse soon enough But right now it's available to book services. You can send in files for a sound check You can have me tune your booth and give you acoustical design tips for your Closet or booth or whatever your space is and that's all at George the dot tech damn He has a cup you can send in specimens and yet through that over at that is over at home voice over studio comm and Go over there and you'll see all the services I offer I do full consultations with you or I will teach you from Nothing to actually being competent at recording because it's not as hard as you think Because we cut through all the BS and just make sure that you understand what it takes to do it right and make it sound good And as George was saying I do have the specimen collection cup if you've got your booths set up and you think you're recording great It's amazing some of the stuff I see that comes out of people's booths You for $25 I will give you a full analysis of your audio and offers some Suggestions on how to get it sounding as good as will lineman or as some of the other great voice over people out there because it's It's not the equipment. It's how you use it Right, right Mike placement Mike placement Mike placement Acoustics acoustics acoustics location location location and setting your levels properly, which we will talk about a little bit later But anyway, it's time for your tech update and an update from last week's update. That's right. Oh There's the update theme It's almost too long as it is and it's only 10 seconds Okay All right, well, we had a question about the annoyance of using headphones with cords And you know, we've taught plenty of times about maybe you don't need to wear headphones when you voice act But for a lot of folks having headphones on is still part of the game and so I looked into it I looked into it. How would you have wireless headphones that would still Sound as good as the ones that you're used to using and have none of the issues of a wireless headphone Now, you know, a lot of people are gonna if you start googling by the way, you're not gonna find studio or professional quality Wireless studio monitor headphones. They they literally don't exist. They nobody makes them. It's really interesting You can get Bluetooth that are pro quality You can go buy the Apple Bluetooth headphones But that doesn't make pro audio quality that you can use while recording the problem with all those Bluetooth based systems is there's a big latency Between when you speak and what you would actually hear back. Well, not huge But enough that would really screw up what you're monitoring in your headphones. It would throw you off big time So don't use Bluetooth in the studio now you can use it while you're editing, but even then it's not great So I started looking into it. Well live performers on stage. They use wireless IEMs in your monitor systems. They've been doing that for a long time But I also knew that those systems are really stinking expensive like just to getting the transmitter and the receiver The pro quality ones generally five six hundred dollars or more Then you have to put your headphones then you have to get headphones too, right? So but I did find the prices are coming down and there is a set that is a Wireless receiver system that is becoming reasonably priced now. There's a company called x vive xvi v e And it's the audio you for a wireless System it's around two hundred and thirty to ish dollars And it allows you to send audio wirelessly from your equipment It has an XLR jack so many of you may you need to use an adapter Cable to go to quarter inch or something else, but it will then allow you to send that audio wirelessly to a pack that you would wear on your belt probably and Have control over your headphone level and the audio quality is extremely high quality. It's Again, there's not really studio quality systems for this really But it is they all by all reports that I've read gonna give you quality That's really totally on par with what it would sound like if you were hardwired in Maybe a problem that very few people really have but it did come up. So I thought I would see what I could find Do you think you had ever used something like that Dan or I think I'm using it tonight, and I they weren't charged That's a problem like anything wireless now you have something else Exactly, there's a pain that you know to use wireless stuff, but yeah, I mean I don't like the only wireless stuff I probably use is my my mouse I Have a wireless tripod and I'd be I would be very happy to plug it in if they had a way to do that Right, I charge the batteries. Yeah, so yeah, it's Yeah, wireless is it doesn't really have a place Yeah, I think in the the workflow for your general voice actor unless of course it does I Mean I could think of another thing like if you're doing a lot a lot of like Commercial work that you're being remotely directed a lot of times what happens is they'll say, okay Let's get approval from the client and you're stuck Right waiting for that moment when they say oh, we're gonna do it again So in that case maybe having wireless headphones could be kind of nice you could wander out of the booth and You could you know let me know what's going on, but yeah, that would be the only case I can think of that would really be that helpful And I kind of been looking forward to what's coming in terms of microphone technology No, I've been pretty much figured out how to make a mic capsule and everything about 80 years ago That those aren't getting any better, right? That's we kind of figured that out but there's there are some modern technologies that are being boiled into microphones now and Some of these are almost becoming literally studios and a mic One that popped up on my radar today when I was looking online is the personas revelator and I can't in any way vouch for the sound quality and I will start off by saying I don't recommend buying mics from mixer companies There's also a Mackie Mackie's got like four USB mics Now that just came out of nowhere I'm not gonna go right out of the gate saying these are good mics, but I'm just talking more about the technology But the personas revelator Is like you're using a console that's inside the mic And so you can use the mic just as a USB mic or you can load their studio live Console and now you've got a full production console that's internal in the mic that allows you to have Loopback playbacks that allows you to mix other sources in it has a processing on the microphone Which it means compression and the EQ like everything you would do in a mixing console with a mic channel is Inside the mic now and it's a hundred eighty dollar microphone I Don't think it's gonna be an amazing sounding mic I can't imagine it's gonna be the quietest mic in the out there because you know what a lot of these USB mics is they're doing is they're trying to be everything every mic for everybody Right, that's what I that's the problem. I have with the Yeti right it has a switch that lets you switch all these different patterns Stereo and all these things. It's a little bit silly But that's what they're doing So they and they put a lot of capsules inside the mic that let you change to do this and you lose some quality When you have all those tiny little capsules inside there, so we'll see But this is what some of the news there's not a whole lots of noon to talk about but this is something that's coming Yeah, well primarily I mean if a company comes out with this stuff They're not thinking about us voiceover guys. Nope. They're they're thinking musicians. You're talking You know billy eilish in her bedroom with her brother Uh trying to figure out to get a particular sound for a particular song Or from a particular situation We're with voiceover. We're just trying to be ourselves in a in a quiet environment So why do we need all this other shit? Eilish is in a studio with her brother just to be clear No It's true though. It's true. It is true I'm thinking by now. They probably got something a little one step up. I'm guessing. I don't know Although i'm a huge huge fan of this fellow from london named jacob collier. Oh, yes, and he's still At 25 or whatever he is now doing grammy getting grammy's and grammy still working in the same bedroom in his parents house That's where he does all this stuff I love that charging him rent It's amazing. Um Now speaking of things that are thinking more about voiceover and the needs of voice actor And this is kind of a this is a crazy end around to solving a problem that we all know should be solved acoustically But anyway, the company towns and labs that makes the sphere l22 microphone that i've gotten to test out and did a little review of This microphone has some interesting tricks up its sleeve now the thing that gets it all the Gets very people excited about it as it can make your microphone now sound like a u67, you know an eight thousand dollar vintage mic Is built into your microphone because it emulates other microphones and we've known about that and it's really pretty impressive stuff But what they've done now is they've added this plugin called the isosphere And it's what it is. It's a sort of a plugin in a plugin. It's a module that loads when you're using their They're modeling software And what it does is this is the craziest thing They designed it to So that when you're using one of these It doesn't sound so crappy so It's just easier to not use one of those I know I know that that was the first thing I saw was the guy demoing I think it was on pro tools expert.com pro dash tools dash expert One of the Reviewers on there had a video where he was demonstrating This $1,500 mic shoved inside this ball of foam But he was doing it to demonstrate that yes This does serve a it does serve some purpose and that is it does Soak up some of the room reverb But it doesn't do it without a cost it definitely ruins the sound of the mic it changes it a lot So what this plugin does is it compensates for that? and so it will Re-queue and whatever it needs to do To bring back the original sound of what that mic should have sound like before you shoved it into an eyeball And I was like that is this most the most ridiculous thing I ever heard but then I saw That they have many different Products like this in they have a little drop-down menu And it's not just one of these it's literally the s e reflection filter x the sc on the x e reflection on filter pro the aston halo The chaotic eyeball with pop filter and without pop filter literally this is in a drop down menu Yeah, it's not amazing. So they they they compensated for the acoustical modifications that occur When using all of these products isovox It's in there. Yeah, it's a very generic foam ball generic foam balls at the bottom But they have vocal booth that's the last one and so That's sort of a generic one But it's just designed to soak up the reverb and the noise that comes from not being in a A really good studio. It's kind of ironic. It's like if you're in a vocal booth Why do you need a plugin to make it sound better? But that's what they call it and and then it has one knob just source distance So whatever however the or the algorithm works You get to give it an idea of how far away from you work the mic And then you just turn it on there's a youtube video you guys can Check it out. Just go on youtube type in isosphere one word buy towns and labs and check it out And you can hear the demo It's a very long video But there is actually a section where they actually record a voice actor In a large very untreated very untreated room and It is pretty good It it got rid of a lot of the room tone, which is fascinating. It's not using Rx, you know, it's not using algorithms to filth scrub out the noise. It's just focusing the microphones pickup pattern In on the voice and doing it in a really really effective way It's pretty interesting technology this to me is like What the future of these smart mics is going to be I think In a year or two from now, I think it'll be out of buy a $200 usb mic that just has this built in And eventually you won't need a whole lot of room acoustics at the end of the day though Still sounds like you're in a reverberant room. It doesn't get rid of all the reverb, but it does dramatically improve What would other be otherwise be a not usable voice over recording? So I don't know It's new. I wanted to talk about it Yeah, I mean they could send me one. I'll be happy to try it out Yeah, well, I mean we could get another l 22. I mean Maybe they'll come out with a junior version of that mic. That's a little bit more price point friendly But you know, it's like if you're using it to emulate an sm7b kind of a bad investment You're buying a $1500 mic to sound like a $400 mic But if you're trying to emulate a u67 It's a pretty fair price $1500 for for one of these microphones. So anyway, but who would do enough to try and emulate one of these microphones in order to do voice over because Like well, so you can say you have one or the I don't quite get that It's a yeah, it's such an edge case like I actually got one for uh, David k last fall Because he was starting to do a show and they wanted him to have a u87 This is the most insane thing he has in his studio a u67 But they're like, no, we want you to have a u87. I was just like, okay They're like, uh, that that Bentley you drive is too fancy. We'd really rather you just drive in Mercedes Um, it's kind of the weirdest question But anyway, we couldn't get him a u87 and uh, what it was and I think it was november They're just not in stock Because so many damn people are buying these mics for their home studio So we got him one of these towns and labs sphere l22s and set it up with a u87 model and the client and the studio was like Networks for us so Weirdest use case, but there you go Um, anyway, that's it for tech my my little tech news update. I suspect there should be a good bit more Because this week is nam Yeah, um, isn't it weird? I don't think I've missed a nam show Well since I've moved to la At least I've been at least 15 16 nam shows in a row So it's a bummer to miss that dan. You've been there with me a lot too and yeah, we've been to a bunch of those It's a bit overwhelming. I think it's overwhelming, but it's still a fun way to discover things And um, we're not going to be doing that this year So there's like a virtual nam and you know all the companies are doing press releases and stuff So there'll be some more stuff to talk about in a couple of weeks when we do our next tech talk I'll stay tuned and bring the best stuff. Yeah I want I want to check out more stuff just so I can say it doesn't make a difference I We've done the shootouts and we proved that it's not the interface It's the face that's facing the microphone and what comes out of it. I'm actually kind of glad I'm not one of those Um youtubers that I watch that I watch like, you know, Mike Delgaudio the booth chunky and Those guys it's a pain. I mean they get stuff sent to them all the damn time and their obligation is to Get a review of it done and get it up and post it and you know It's it's it takes a big chunk of your day And um, I'm glad I don't I'm not obligated to do that. I've done enough of those. There's a lot of great There's a guy named there's a guy this guy's podcast Or youtube channel. It's called pos podcast age That guy you watch one of his micro views. He does them formulaically identically every single time it's Very dry, but very informative. So there's other guys out there doing it So dan you want to talk about setting levels? again Yeah, um, I mean there are some basic rules around this And it still amazes me that people don't quite understand this now There are You know, this is one of those things where people can have an opinion about it because if you're recording at a high bit rate You can things can be under modulated a little bit 24 bit Yeah, or over modulated and it's going to give you lots of head room You can't still over mod. I mean you if you record in even 32 bit if you clip Your mic preamp Yeah, you've still you've clipped you've already, you know, there's there are several places to clip audio And distort the audio right but But as you were saying, I I rarely find people over modulating what I find just Way under modulating And why dan why do they do that? I don't know because we've only explained it to them about 500 times and But listen to me There are Specific things and we set up these parameters when when we were you know, we and we still are the world voices Organization by the way, you should join go to world dash voices dot org See what we're all about. We're the industry association of freelance voice talent and We're we're starting to make some differences out there But one of the things we did is we tried to set the standards for home studio voiceover audio, which nobody else did So you and I and uncle rory and cliff. I jovan riper was with us and jordan reynolds we Would the guys who know we're like It was amazing how fast we agreed on all this stuff You know for the most part clips like well No, I can always use this and I can make it and I can twist it and turn it upside down and make it like that But no it works best if you do it. That's the way you're saying But when it comes to setting levels You want to modulate that means get your You know the the the up the up and down At least to minus nine consistently And really try and peak between say minus six and minus four Now in audacity It doesn't really measure it. It's got its own little silly scale on to the left It says zero point one zero point two zero point three zero point four You want to modulate in audacity Your peaks not your peaks, but your modulation your average modulation should be you know always going up to about Oh point zero four or zero point four zero point five and then peaking between zero point six and zero point seven Those numbers don't mean anything because they don't correlate Yeah, use the meters use the use the view meters I think and really the best way to do that is to To look at the meter when you're you know when you set your levels It should always be in the green It should always be in the yellow With it sort of reaching into the orange and red Flashing in there just occasionally right if it's just in the green and not in the yellow you're under modulating Now uh sewer director. Can we can we go to my my uh my screen? She did it before you could even finish asking Oh, she's she rocks. Okay. Where is it? We know it's there. There it is. Okay, so Let me get so so I can actually see it A lot of times this is what it should look like You know and if it looks unfamiliar to you That's because you're not doing it right But a lot of times, you know when people send me audio at my specimen collection cup A lot of times it'll look like this. Yeah Uh and the problem with that is It's under modulated and that creates all sorts of problems, you know, and they'll say my agent says it's it's it's noisy Okay, we'll send me some audio and they'll send me this and I'll go Well, yeah, because if you if you normalize that and we can talk about normalizing in a second if you if you normalize that To say minus three And but that's your that was your original level. It doesn't only make your regular audio louder It makes all the noise in the background louder So Really you want to be setting your levels on your interface say on your your your two i2 which is right over here Not too far for me to reach Don't bring over the one we're using for the show. Oh wait a minute. We're not using it for the show We're not using that one for the show. We've got this guy here uh and You know you go back to me sue. Uh, we'll come back to that in a second, but If you if you look at it, you know with the input dial It should be A lot of bit. Well, I've got it set at 12 o'clock Well, no, you want it set much higher than that especially in a focus writer any one of these generic interfaces that are out there right now and go at least to 75 percent And and maybe a little bit more and that will get you back up to the proper levels That you need to be at you don't want to under modulate two or three o'clock is usually a pretty good starting point Yeah, you know all the clocks usually low unless you Are a theater actor in which case you need to learn to stop projecting so much That's the other thing but we've talked about that as well. Yeah people are like it's a microphone. I have to talk louder No, it's picking you up as you exist as you're having a conversation Uh, I don't know why there's so much misinformation out there about this Well, people also record levels low because they're like, well, I do it low because there's too much noise I'm like Well, if you're on a date, would you stand 12 feet from your date so they couldn't see that you weren't wearing makeup that night But that gets you through the date. I don't know. It's kind of like that Like so at some point you're gonna get closer and at some point with the audio They're gonna have to turn it up and when they do The noise will come up as well. So yeah, that's not a good work around. Yeah It's recording at higher bit rates can be helpful, but it's gonna make your life better if you just record with a solid Get yourself into the yellow yellow is okay. Everybody don't freak out And the only exception to this rule would be if you're working in the production and they tell you Something else whatever the producer says wins. So they say we went peaks at some weird number Just go, okay, and just do it. But that's unusual Right, but if your levels are set right and you say you're doing something remotely or you're sending those tracks in They're gonna go, oh, okay great They love it if you've got a good fat signal you're giving them Everything that they can use to make it sound the way they want to make it sound not our job To make it sound The way they're gonna finally use it Yeah, now when there's an engineer producing this thing that's their job Absolutely. They also don't the engineers don't don't like normalizing Um, even though it doesn't necessarily technically screw up the audio Um, they they I think they don't like it and I think the reason they don't like it is I think that's used wrong a lot of the time It's used as we were saying to just make up the level and then it gets noisy Or I think people use normalized to zero db a lot and that's not a good idea either The engineer doesn't get want to get a file whose wave is peaking at the very top of the scale They want audio that has some headroom. It makes it easier for them to produce with so Never normalized to zero for any jobs. Um, minus three is a pretty common Commonly accepted level But we'll do at the end of the day if you don't know what they want just ask and chances are they'll say don't do anything Just send it to us hit record and send it to us. All right, which what you've got is is fine Anyway, we've got lots of your questions that you've been sending in and we're going to get to those And extrapolate on those points to make your voiceover home studio audio the way it's supposed to be Right after these messages Yeah, hi, this is carlo zellers rocky the voice of brocco and you're watching voiceover body shop Hey, you and I know that recording from home can be Noisy you need to hear that noise and do all you can to minimize it So here are the harlin hogan voice optimized headphones version 2.0 to the rescue Good headphones for voiceover playback need to be truth tellers Giving you exactly what you recorded not colored or too bassy The h2 voice optimized headphones have incredibly flat response and give you that truth Other great features include the replaceable plug-in cord and the oh so soft nap a leather ear cups By the way, voiceover essentials has replacement cords and ear cups Both in stock and both ship free in the us Make sure you know exactly what you and your recording space sound like the harlin hogan voice optimized headphones Get them only from voiceover essentials dot com. I use them and so should you voiceover essentials dot com Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice to announce her guy on your new orientation training for snapchat, weren't you? We want you to come as you are be comfortable Okay, maybe not bathrobe comfortable Pants for the customer on aisle four, please In the camera Watch anywhere anytime on an unlimited number of devices sign in with your netflix account to watch instantly at netflix dot com The ice cream maker is a big risk that can have huge rewards Until you forget to turn it on Well, that's it guys time is up. Hey, it's jmc. Thanks for watching the voiceover body shop If you're demo ready or looking to get there check out jmc demos dot com and see a sample of our work Now let's get back to dan and george and this week's tech wisdom Hey time to talk about source connect. I'm assuming because the camera is on me now um source dash elements dot com is the place to sign up and get A source connect trial so you can be available to connect to studios all around the world Using the tool that many producers prefer to use Because it makes their workflow just better They can plug in a plug in that works directly with pro tools And it inserts your audio right into the timeline of their system while it's recording When the session's over they've got your audio. It's already in the timeline It's already synced up in a lot of cases It's already been approved by the client Because they're listening in on the phone patch or whatever they're doing And it's all done and that that's why they love this kind of workflow There's a lot of other tools out there But this one's been in common use in production studios for a long time I personally Have known and used it or set it up for folks for over over 12 years so it is definitely a A force to be reckoned with in the recording business and you want to be ready to use it When that call comes so if you want to get it set up you can get a trial Actually, you don't have to spend anything up front to get it tested and running Just go to source dash elements dot com To get your account set up and get yourself a trial You don't have to have an iLock usb dongle key thing anymore For source connect standards. So don't worry about that Get it up and running and and if you do need help with that I also supply support for that as well at george the dot tech slash sc So anyway, go give it a try and we thank source elements so much for supporting us On v obs another year. Thanks guys. I'll be right back Yep, this is v obs proven anybody can have a show these days And we're back You know, I don't know why my clock is at that time, uh jim. There's no particular time other than the battery ran out You know, I bought two of these clocks and I do like them because they have that minute hand that moves smoothly around Remember the ones in school You know where the mini hand doesn't tick it just moves smooth. It's like this Yeah, so I got these clocks that do that the problem is I found out over trial and error is that that kills the battery Way faster So the kind of tick tick ticks the battery lasts like 10 times longer These I got to put batteries in like every three freaking months So it sort of defeats the purpose of having an accurate. Thanks for pointing that out jim. Yeah Well, one of the things that george and I really like to do is answer your questions as a matter of fact I think that Between you and me that's probably the most favorite thing in our lives is answering people's questions um Because most of the time we have the answer Because we've answered so many other questions Uh, but the the bottom line here is is we got people sending these questions and you can send in your questions in the chat room Which jeff holman is uh watching carefully tonight. You've got a question for us Send it in there right now. Uh, but the first question is from jim wilson sort of talking about what we were talking about earlier When it comes to uh, the kaonika eyeball He says given that there wasn't much good to say about the kaonika eyeball foam mic cover Which it is not when it debuted Uh, I appreciate your thoughts regarding why most of the photos I see of shotgun mics have the foam covering still on them What's a good reason to leave it on in a recording environment when the wind isn't a factor Which if you're in a recording environment wind really shouldn't even be part of the equation Even the famous host of v obs. I think he means you has a foam cover on his road shotgun Your thoughts You'll notice he's not using it this evening Well, that's because I read this question and I thought that would be a silly to have it on after I got lambasted for having it up by mark cashman too um Yeah, you don't you don't need a pop screen with proper mic placement proper technique and a voiceover studio You don't need a windscreen You don't need a pop screen You don't need any of those things because if you use your proper mic technique, you're good The one reason I think I keep putting this thing back on Is it would just be rolling around on my desk and we get lost that's one reason to know Like I why I never take my glasses off because otherwise I'd lose it to This and this is this is something to think about I do use headphones all day long when I'm doing zoom sessions. I'm You know doing tech support all day talking into this microphone And I get the I sort of get that dj effect I Get so used to the way I sound when I'm right up on the mic That I'm always eating the damn mic because I want to hear the way that sounds in my headphones So and when I do that then the pops start slipping in there and that drives me nuts So then I put the windscreen back on And the windscreen does reduce a little bit of the plosives That also keeps me from eating the mic as much when it's sticking out like say about here Okay Sue we'll we'll hold for sue holding on a second. Oh Yep, everything's good sue Yeah, I can't hear her but Yes, we are Let me make sure work our stream is going Still looks like It's going on youtube and it's going on facebook Everything's still five by five sue Okay, worst-case scenario. We'll just roll out the show in this in this shot I think the world Okay, anyway, so anyway, so where was I so Okay So the windscreen is a no-no in most cases, but for me it sometimes is a helper Sometimes it helps me a little bit guide where I'm going to be on the mic And it does sometimes help reduce plosives from time to time But this is an entirely different deal than this The eyeball the whole idea behind this is it's trying to soak up some of the room ambience Around the microphone and get rid of it. So you have less reverb It does that okay As you saw earlier in my tech talk It definitely colors the sound and so it's it's enough of a problem that a company came out with a plugin to correct for the problem caused by having something around your microphone like this so It's a very different animal, but that's what the chaotic eyeballs for Yeah, I mean it makes a great volleyball, but to me that's about all it's really good for I mean Why take a $10,000 mic? That they've spent millions of dollars of acoustical research and how the sound goes through it and shove it in You know in a bagel And that's why they give away so many of them because They don't cost a lot to make I can guarantee it. Yeah, and they're not cheap to buy so Right. Uh, yeah, it's Yeah, the windscreen is a windscreen The chaotic eyeball is not a windscreen. It has a windscreen on it. It does have one. Yes But it to me that just makes people use bad mic technique, but then again, it was not designed for voiceover But it certainly has been marketed to voice. It was really for singers that want to eat them Eat the mic and get that really a close sound and That's that was for okay Jeff Holman's question. Jeff Jeff really wanted to ask this question. So I'll let you read his question He says my Sennheiser me 66 shotgun mic has a built-in low frequency roll-off filter at 100 hertz Um, I've read it is minus 10 db at 100 hertz Slash minus 20 db at 50 hertz Is that like a high-pass filter? Yes, it is What they're describing when they talk about minus 10 db minus 20 db Is this is how much this the the sound is reduced? At those different frequencies So they're saying at 100 hertz it reduces it by about minus 10 And at 50 hertz it reduces it by minus 20 That tells me that that's not a very suitable High pass or low cut for voiceover work Because that's going to take away 10 db At 100 hertz which is a lot of the bass of your voice. That's like the lowest end of your voice That's the basement kind of fundamental of your voice It's going to thin it out quite a bit. I think don't you think Dan? At 100 yeah, I usually will It really depends on the per individual because everybody's voice is different and I have found that Certainly on female voices. They rarely go down to 100 hertz Maybe 125 hertz Some guys voices who are just you just have that kind of a voice Yeah, you don't want to you don't want to really you know cut out too much below 80 And I know some of our our our engineer friends You know who talk about this are like, well, you know If you cut it out, you know at you know a little above 80 it might actually take out some resonance And my thoughts are no one's going to tell the difference And if you've got a rumble down there that's increasing your noise floor even though it's somewhat inaudible That's okay But Yeah, a hunt a roll off at 100 hertz. It really should probably be at 80 so You know, but then again, what is that's the the the 66 designed for? But there's only way to find out And that's to hear it. That's right. Is every voice is different That's right. And every room is different. So if you're in a boomy Very bottom-heavy small room Then that actually could work out in your favor to have a take away some of the low end so you don't know Yeah And I also found that, you know, a lot of people think that they're you know, they have a very reverberant room because You know, it sounds like they have, you know, a little bit of bass reflex When in reality, they're just eating the mic Mm-hmm. So don't do that Okay Next oh and how important is it to have a shock mount? Not really very important at all to be honest because you're not The shock mounts are really important for a hand holding a mic on a boom pole Because you'll get sound transmitted from your hand down the pole And you don't want to get that in the mic but the mic in your studio is firmly mounted and Uh, you know, you're not recording 20 Hertz you're not recording extremely low frequency stuff. So Technically, you don't really need a shock mount for the 416. It'll work fine with the clip I have found in pretty much most all cases. So I have as well Uh question from demigods music cue Great name Go for it. Looking at doing some basic room treatment and there's super cheap amazon foam. Yeah, there sure is Um or pretty pricey gik acoustic panels Can't seem to find anything mid-priced which has a good balance of price and performance any suggestions Yeah, they're definitely is I mean gik has some affordable stuff But they also have some really fancy ones with wood freight wood faces that do diffusion and all this kind of stuff um I think the most reasonably priced and I've been using their products for many many many years and have Always had good success are from a company called ats acoustics Um, I think they're bang for the buck extremely hard to beat. They're about 35 bucks for a two by two panel wrapped in fabric two inches thick and You know, you the thing if to remember is you get much more effectiveness out of a two by two Properly made panel that's lined with rock soul, uh, which is a much better material than the foam And so you don't need as the sheer volume of material that you do when you use foam The foam just isn't as effective per square foot. So When you really price it all out those panels buying a few of those properly made panels or making them yourself Actually end up being very similar in price. Sometimes even cheaper So, um, you know using the right things putting them in the right place made the right way Can save you money So Hope that helps all right Brad giffin asks Uh onward to tech talk george I've enjoyed your youtube videos that offer tips tricks and techniques about twisted wave A lot of great hidden gems, but instead of hunting and hopping from video to video george Do you offer for a single? Offer for sale a single comprehensive twisted wave course from soup to nuts so to speak checks in the mail brad I will I will that's on my my my list for this year is to start producing tutorial videos for sale As I've done in the past, um, and uh, that's what I want to do I want to have like a video that's pretty comprehensive that you'll learn everything That you want to know about twisted wave in one video So that is in the works brad. Thanks for asking asking and you know, definitely stay tuned Of course as soon as I launch them you guys will know here because I'll certainly plug them But uh, I'll have info at george d.tech when I do get to them um, the number one software requested by the way For this video production work is uh, w audition So i'm starting with the w audition because that was the most asked for actually do have a little survey on my website Which one do you want to learn first, you know, there's a whole thing you can fill out But twisted wave was a close second. So that would be the next one. I'll do so. Yeah, probably by mid Mid spring. I'll have all these videos in the queue So I hope you're patient If you need to help with those george, I am available. That would be fun. Yeah. Yeah, uh, let's see here Um, uh, great question from jim mcnicholas with a single word answer George was thinking of tossing a dbx 286 in line to treat the sound a tiny bit good idea No I think the only thing that's good for is the high pass filter It's kind of a silly thing to buy just for that one feature No, I don't really recommend it. It's a great thing for podcasters who are just trying to Get reasonably good loud audio with the least amount of noise possible But it's kind of a blunt instrument It's not the best quality audio you're going to get from a unit. It's No, not for voiceover It's really designed really as you were saying for podcasting although broadcasting long before podcasting was even a word It was designed for live broadcast. This is something that would be in a in a television studio or a radio studio uh to Keep a consistent level because we're always talking about keeping a consistent level and the 286, you know, it's got I think it's got a You know a noise gate on it and all this Expander yet. We're not big fans of channel strips in front end processing Because once you record it with something like that It's there forever You can't you can't be married to it. Yeah. Yeah, and and therefore I guess the question really comes down to you know, it says to to You know to treat the sound a tiny tiny bit treat it For what? Yeah, that would be the question. What are you trying to fix by adding that? That's really what that would More inform the opinion of whether it's useful for you what you need or not exactly Uh, let's see here question from brad geffen. Go for it Uh, can one make a case for purchasing an Apollo twin if one is simply providing raw voice for commercials? That you know, no processing um Why would I yeah, basically why would I use the Apollo twin if i'm not going to use the processing? I guess is the question It's a tough thing that that's a tough thing to justify in my mind. I mean when there's things like the ssl to usb audio interface, which is amazing There's new audience products out now the id for mark 2 which is Apparently really good. I'm hoping it is stands the test of time to be good But there's just so many other far less expensive but great sounding interfaces Okay, but you wanted to know if you have two microphones And you want to have a very seamless workflow that allows you to switch between them at any time And then have your software be able to hear either microphone without having to muck around a lot of settings Yes, as adobe the the Apollo twin makes that pretty easy If you know what you're doing It's not easy unless you know how to set it up to do that And that's not easy But once it is set up for you by someone like myself that sets these things up for folks It does make that kind of thing easy. So there are things that can do really well But for for the cost, it's a little bit persnickety. Uh, the interface is a little hard to learn It doesn't work well with zoom At all does weird stuff with zoom So, yeah, it's a real caveat-empty kind of situation Talk to me more offline about that bret Yeah, yeah, we got one more question here, but I'm gonna wait a week on it Because he's asking about About eq and all this stuff If it's really need more time to unpack that one, I think well, not only that but I want to hear it Yeah, we're always talking about you know, I need to hear stuff, you know, is it a buzzer? Is it a hum? Well, no, it's not actually a buzz or a hum. It's actually a rumble or George and I have had terminology for what things are and we know what each one of those things is and what usually causes them so We also know whistle What what it's supposed to supposed to sound like right Kahuru if you're watching Send us a sample. So we know exactly what you're talking about It has to do with he's applying some stuff and it's changing the sound Well, of course, it's going to change the sound, but let's give it a listen and then we'll move on from there Sure, sounds good. Those are all the questions we got this week and then we're all great ones and uh Done and done So we'll be right back after these messages to wind things up and tell you know tell you what's coming up next Right after this. You're watching v obs dot tv I don't know why it's crazy what they do here. I think I'm going to go somewhere else and have a cheese sandwich You hear a lot about audiobooks that it's an awful lot of work And not a lot of money And when I hear that I think to myself, man, I wish I could help that person understand That yeah, not everybody makes a ton of dough in audiobooks, but you won't do yourself any favors if you just Try things out see what sticks and you don't get proper training and put in A good system a good production flow I teach a course called the acx master class and we're about to launch our winter 2021 series We've got a series of three free videos about this very thing How much opportunity there is and sometimes how little money there is in return and how to fix that Go to acx masterclass.com. That's acx masterclass.com Watch the videos. We'll open up registration for the acx masterclass real soon And we'll give you a discount as well for watching vobs acx masterclass.com. Thanks 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 voice actor websites.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 voice actor websites.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 voice actor websites.com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voice over career flourish Don't try it yourself. Go with the pros voice actor websites.com where your vo website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what Yep, this is vobs proven anybody can have a show these days And we're back With mr. Woodham fixing audio is hard It can't it can't be Yeah, it's it's not it this system we're using and I you know when you hit play you have no control over the level It just is what it is. So we'll work it on that getting the levels matched again Okay, next week on this show Debbie Dairybury will be with us a little you know two-foot pile of dynamite It's a little taller than that a wonderful lady voice of jimmy newtron and a lot of other great Animation voices and a very marvelous musician So we'll talk to her about animation and character voices next week. So Make sure you're around for that. I know we have maryland wistner coming on in a couple of weeks She'll be with us. I believe march 1st And so I'm booking way ahead now I love it You know, I feel it's good. I'm doubling down. I'm getting all the good people. It's awesome Uh, anyway, who are our donors of the week? Well, we've got michael kerns christie burns graham spicer Sonia mobley michelle blinker christopher epherson sarah borges and philip appear I should by now have those names memorized because they've been subscribing and sending us a little bit of money every month For a really long time and now they get a crawler and they have a crawl It's cool. We love our technology. Don't we? Thank you, sue Um, but yeah, it's it's nice. It's nice to have you guys. Yeah, absolutely We need to thank our sponsors like harlin hogan's voiceover essentials dot com voiceover extra source elements who make source connect vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and jmc demos All righty. Uh, thanks to jeff holman for uh, monitoring the chat room tonight and relaying all those questions Yes Yeah, uh our technical director sue merlino who's just pulling her hair out. Yeah She's gonna show us her picture or she did Yeah, okay good I sue thanks for all the work you do and for your dedication to our show Which is or sure Uh, we really appreciate it and lee pennie for being lee pennie Anyway, that's gonna do it for us this week. If you got questions for us write to us at the guys at v obs dot tv Uh, if you want to work with george, you can go over to george v dot tech And if you want to work with me go on over to home voiceover studio dot com See how quick she picked up on that just throw them right in there. Seamless. Alrighty Uh, hey, look, we're here to help you with your home's voiceover studio and getting your audio sounding the way it's supposed to But look if it sounds good It is good That's gonna do it for us this week. I'm dan lennard and i'm george widham and this is voiceover body shop or v o b s tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk See you next week guys. Thanks for joining us