 Hey, it's time for Tech Talk here on VoiceOver Body Shop. And boy, do we have a lot of stuff to cover tonight. I love talking tech. And we've got tech to show you. We've got some equipment demos. Looking at the Mikeport Pro 2. Yes, the 2. The 2. And we've got lots of great questions from you folks. So stay tuned. Tech Talk coming up 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 Wittem, 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 VoiceOverEssentials.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, hi there, I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Wittem. And this is VoiceOver Body Shop, or VOBS Tech Talk. I think it's 20 or 21. Take a word for it. It's more than 19. It's more than 19. We've been doing it and we're like cruising on towards the end of the year here with lots of cool tech. And of course, we love getting your questions. You can throw them in the chat room if you're watching us live right now. If you have a specific home VoiceOver Studio question, we've had a few mailed in and you can mail them in also at theguys at VOBS.tv. Yeah, we love it. We love your questions. And no question is too basic or dumb or whatever. Just throw it at us. We're always happy to answer. Even if it's geeky. And geeky. We'll unpack the geeky one sometimes. Right, occasionally. But we'll see what we get tonight. Anyway, getting to your update because boy, you've got lots of stuff that we can talk about. The first one has to do with using an older Mac and getting it upgraded to a more recent OS, I guess. Well, yeah. So, you know, we've already beat the drum about the Catalina. Dan has actually taken, you know, he's taken one for the team in running Catalina on his MacBook Pro, which he doesn't use in his studio. This is his sort of- This is my run-around laptop. Yeah. And, well, before I get further, Dan. Yes. Like Catalina and he gotchas so far. It seems to be playing games with my passwords. Oh no. It's like, that's my password. Now wait a second. Using the key, what do they call it? The key chain? Well, the key chain thing? Is the key chain. I've got it on my Google passwords. I've got LastPass. It's like, I forget. What do you mean you forgot my password? So like every time you go to one of those fields, it's like- It can't find the password? Right, and then I have to go back and- It's saved somewhere. Go back to the website. Right, and it's like, well, would you save it now? Okay, I'll save it now. Oh, okay. So, and then I can get back into all my important programs, but yeah. But for the most part, you know, it seems to be running okay. All right, you're going in there. It says Catalina. It says 10.1, 10.15, yeah. So there hasn't even been a .1 update yet. So this is still like right out of the package. So yeah, expected few things to be a little scary. Right, but everything else seems to be working. That's good. I didn't lose any of my other presets and stuff like that. Okay, so it's functioning for you in your use case. So far, sort of. So what I'm saying is don't upgrade to Catalina yet, but let's say here's an example actually, one of our good friends, Rebecca, oh, super amazing, high energy, love to be bouncing hair. Rebecca Davis. Rebecca Davis. She posted recently about that she has an iPhone, she has a Mac, the Mac's on High Sierra, and for some reason there's not, the iTunes isn't syncing. And they're telling her, everybody is telling her, well, that's cause you're not on Catalina. That's all, and that's the problem is Apple support. They're always gonna tell you, you have to be on the newest version for things to work. And it's just not true. Not true. So what can you do? If so, let's say your two versions back or three versions back, what should you do when things stop talking, right? So you don't have to go all the way to Catalina. You can fall one OS version short and land on Mojave. You can do that. The problem is there's only like kind of two ways to do that. One way is to literally go into the Apple store, get an appointment at the help desk from one of the geniuses, tell them what your case, state your case, plead your case as to why you cannot install Catalina. And it shouldn't be that hard to convince them. Just tell them you're an audio producer and they'll go, okay, I got it. And then they'll give you or they will install for you Mojave on your machine for you. That's one way. Way number two is there's still ways to download the older versions, but they're hard to find. They're not in any way obvious on the website. So I found an article and I found an article online and I emailed the link to us. See if I can find it real quick. Here it is. It was an article on Macworld. So if you go to Macworld and search for download old OSX. I found an article there. That's where I found it. And it's a really good article and it goes through like OS. It goes all the way back to like Snow Leopard. Like really old versions. And it says here's how you get Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard, you can still buy on a CD. And they will mail you a CD and you install it from the desk. Remember that? And some of the newer ones. If you have a disk drive to install it with. Some of the newer ones, they were on, they were downloads, but you still had to purchase them. They're still available for purchase. But everything from like 10.9 or I think it was Mavericks or some or LCAP, I'm losing track. There's so many of them. There's a certain point where they became free. And they would just show up in the App Store. So if you get an OS, a new version comes out. Here's a little trick. You can go to the App Store, start, you can download the new version as though you're going to install it, but not actually install it. In doing so, that now is in your App Store account. It says that you own the version, even if it's free. And you can install it at any point you want in the future. Okay, so that's something. But that's something you would have to have prepared to do in advance. So if you haven't done that, which you probably didn't. Then go to this article on Macworld. Again, do a little Google search for download old OSX Macworld. You'll find this article and explains for every version what you have to do. Some of them, it's just a link. You click the link they provide and it goes to a link that's no longer indexed on their website, but it's still there. And then it takes you to the App Store and then boom, there you go, Mojave. So you can install upgrades that are not the current version this way. This is a workaround. So this may patch some issues for you. And a wonderful tour of California. Exactly, you'll learn a lot about our state parks. But yeah, it's a good workaround. Your chances are it's gonna solve your problem. Very little chance that installing Mojave now is gonna give you any problems with your equipment or your software because all of the companies at this point have, if they're gonna ever support Mojave, they've done it by now. So if you install Mojave today, you're probably gonna have no issues at all unless you have some really old stuff. I'm not gonna put Catalina on my production computer just yet. Give that a little while. Until you walk in here and say, now you can do it. I'm gonna keep paying attention. Basically what I do is I'm on the forums for Twisted Wave, which are all Mac people obviously, and I see the posts. And until people start telling me more than one random guy who says, Catalina's fine for me, until I start seeing more and more people saying it's working great, it's working fine. You know, I'm not gonna recommend it yet, so. Okay. But this is a little workaround to deal with that little issue. Okay, great. Now, another thing. Well, did you put UA Apollo Twin or did I do that? No, I put that out there. Okay, should you do that next? Just a little, well, we can just discuss that one last. After, I'll go do the last one. Show and tell. We've been talking about the Mike Port Pro 2 for a while from C Entrance that's spelled for those wondering how the heck you spell that, C-E-N-R-N-T-R-A-N-C-E. So, centrance.com. These guys have been around for at least 10 years making audio interfaces. The first one that kind of was just made a splash, I'd say for what we do was the original Mike Port Pro. Right. Being something really compact, USB powered, good quality preamp, you know, all the things that you need to get a good quality audio recording shrunk down really small. That was the Mike Port Pro and they made it for many, many years. Well, finally they decided to improve on that design and as you know, we've talked about it and finally have this little guy and I have to lift up my laptop because it has a rather short USB cord. But here it is, this is the Mike Port Pro 2. Some of you may be familiar with the mixer face. It's a very similar manufacturing method. The chassis is very similar. Same thickness, same knobs, pretty much everything's the same but it's just half as many inputs. One input instead of two. So the Mike Port Pro 2, we've talked about it before. I won't bore you by going through specs. There's no point. It's got a lot of features too. It's got a good preamp with plenty of gain for any condenser mic. I wouldn't say it's enough gain for like a SM7B but almost nothing does have enough gain for one of those things. It's got one thing that sets it apart from the original Mike Port is it has a blend control. Oops, sorry about that. Is that how that works? Well, yeah, now I'm now a PA system. It has a blend control to blend between input and output for monitoring. So if you're on a Skype or Zoom or something and you're being directed and they're blowing you out of your headphones they're too loud, you can bias it away from them and more towards you. And then it has the monitor output. Then it's got a bunch of little switches hidden around on the unit. And what's kind of neat is that all the switches are some may call it a pain. Some may find this useful. I think it's a good feature. Pretty much all the switches except the power button are recessed switches. So they're in little tiny holes and they give you a little tool which I've taped to the back of the unit. They give you a little tool which is essentially a bent paperclip but a fancy one. A finely manufactured bent paperclip. A bent paperclip. I think it's the same tool you would use to get the SIM out of your phone. They include that to make it easier to flip these little switches. And what switches are there? You've got a Hi-Z which basically none of you care about. That's for plugging in instruments. It has a high pass filter. That is something you probably will care about because it will help your TLM 103 not be such a seismograph. Especially here in California. Oh my gosh. And then a few, and on the other side we've got phantom power. We have the power button because it's internally powered with a battery. So it'll run with iPhones and everything else. And then this unit is the L version. I think they just call it the L or plus L. And that means limiter. So this has an additional switch on the back that turns on a limiter. It has an interesting side, it has two features involved. Not just a limiter. You were playing with this earlier and so you're going to demonstrate to us exactly how it works. So. Yeah, so I think, Sue, you may have my screen still on my twisted radar. There it is, okay. So normally if you just, you know, in your typical recording scenario, you would just open up a mono file and twisted wave, hit record, blah, blah, blah, record away. Blah, blah, blah. You're fine. It's like a normal recording. There's nothing special other than it's good sound quality and good sound quality. Perfectly modulated I might add. Yes, thank you. But you can turn on the limiter. And what does that do? Well, most of you probably don't care or need a limiter. The limiter really is there as a safety net. So if you're running the gain a little bit higher than you should, and you get that perfect take, and this is probably more relevant for people doing auditions for games and animation. Hey, Kirill! Yeah, with lots of outbursts, this limiter will catch those outbursts and prevent the audio from clipping really badly, which is pretty cool. That's pretty straightforward. In fact, if I turn it on and I have to, I have it off now. So I'm going to turn it on real quick with my paper clip here. Limiter on. And now let's try pushing it to the maximum input level. So I'm going to go get that guy. I'm going to beat him. I'm going to rip his arms limb from limb. Like that. Something like that. Obviously the levels are getting right up there to the edge of clipping. But they're stopping at zero. But they're being smoothed out and rolled off right at zero. And when you look at the waveform, it looks like it could be clipping. But when you play it back... So I'm going to go get that guy. I'm going to beat him. I'm going to rip his arms limb from limb. Like that. Perfect. I don't know what that came across over the speakers and the sound system. It might have been a little bit hot. Sorry about that. But it never actually overloaded or distorted or clipped. So that's a nice feature. But another weird little thing that it does is it'll do a split track. And people in video production might be more familiar with this because this is a technique they've been using for years. And that is what they'll do is they'll split the microphone to two inputs on a camera. And on channel two, they'll run it much, much lower. And that is a safety measure. Well, this thing does that. So when limiter mode is turned on, it only does this when limiter mode is turned on, it will output a second channel, basically channel two. And to make use of it, you have to record in stereo, which is weird at first. So when you make a new file and twisted wave or anything else, it has to be stereo or two channels. But the right channel will be 12 dB quieter than the right channel. So the right channel here that I recorded earlier peaks at minus 10.23. And the one above it, which has the limiter engaged probably peaks at zero. Yeah, peaks right at 0.00. That's what the limiter is doing. So I have a safety track. And so what that's for, if, let's say the limiter, it may, let's say you're so over the top that even the track with the limiter sounds a little crunchy. Not so good. You can salvage the take because you'll have another copy of the audio at a lower level. So is this valid for most voice actors? Probably not. You've probably by now learned how to set your levels and you've learned these techniques. I would hope so. But if you're recording somebody else or if you're engineering somebody live, you're doing a live interview or situations where you have no control. Maybe you can't get a second take. You're not going to get a second chance. This is a way to say to cover your butt. So it's cool that it's built in. It comes in the L version. The basic version doesn't have that. Many of you may not need it. You might want to save a little bit of money, but it does it. So it's a really clever device that works with any desktop, laptop or at this point, as far as I know, iPhone and Android. I haven't plugged it in my Android phone yet, but it's a standard audio device that it should be detectable by any system. So no driver needed. Exactly. Now, a limiter, like you were saying, is probably something that most voice actors would not need. Except in specific situations. It's a somewhat call it a safety net. Others might call it cheating. I'm always in favor of proper mic technique, because if I want to yell, I can always turn away from the mic and it's gonna sound good because we don't yell in people's ears unless we really want to yell in people's ears. And so it's important to understand the proximity and not rely on the technology to do that. But it's a nice little thing to have. It's a nice thing to have. I mean, is it worth the extra, I think 50 or maybe it's even $30? If you, for your own use, maybe not, but if you ever use it for anything else, recording other people, you may find that really a nice feature. So then you go. Anywho, I haven't been able to do like a really like geeky sound quality test yet, but I can tell you from those that have done so, and I know a few who have, it bats up there with all the best. I mean, it sounds as good as just about any other standalone interface that's out there at almost any price. Right. And it probably has, sometimes the phantom power on the old mic port pros sometimes wasn't enough for a really good microphone, but I'm, this one has, this one has the, it's the real deal. Well, yeah, because it's internally powered, it will always make sure, the nice thing about that is it will always make sure it has the right amount of power. So it's always gonna have the right amount for phantom. It's always gonna have plenty of juice for the headphone amp, plenty of juice for the preamp. It'll always have the power it needs. You don't have to worry about a computer having a weak USB port. So that's actually kind of, it's only downside, and this is a nitpicky thing, but it has two jacks on the back for just unplug it completely because we're done demonstrating. It has two power jacks or two USB jacks. One is a signal jack and one is a charge jack. It does not charge from the signal jack. So if you're using this unit and you haven't charged it, and it runs out on you during a session, Dead'sville, it will not run the unit. It doesn't run itself from its signal. And that's a pro in a con. It's good because it means it's getting a pure power supply from the battery. It's a clean power supply. It's a good thing for that reason. It's a bad thing if you didn't charge it. And here's a workaround though. If you have two USB micro cables, it uses a standard micro USB, you can plug the other one into the computer. Literally have two of them plugged in. So it's being charged and run off the computer. So there's workarounds. Where anyway, it feels solid. It's well made. Comes with a cute little. Almost demonstrating that. Test how well it's made. Has a nice little sleeve, a very snug little dust cover sleeve. Has the USB cable. And this is the user manual. This is it. And you know why? Because we don't read these things. They don't read the manual. So he's like, you know what? I'm gonna make it a four by six postage card, post card size and put everything you need on that card. And pretty much it's all there. So good to know. And what's that retail for now? I think it's two 49 and two 79, depending on which version you get. Yeah. So as a total interface that would work for you and it is portable, it would probably work really well. This thing's quality is good enough to be your everyday interface. Absolutely. You don't mind something this small. And if you don't want it to be falling on the table, it's got a quarter 20 thread on the back, which means that's the size that every camera tripod has. So you could have a little mount, a wall mount or anything that you screw this to in your studio and have it permanently mounted or temporarily when you want to take it with you. So, nice to know. I think Michael Goodman over at Sentrance, I think he thought of just about everything in this unit. Well, he had plenty of time to think about it. He did. He spent a long time designing the mixer face and then took what he learned from that and put that into this. Yeah. Nice unit. Nice unit. Now, one other thing I want to talk about is the Universal Audio Apollo Twin. Everybody's just gotta have an Apollo Twin because that's gonna make me a better voice actor. Every week, somebody's telling me, I'm thinking of getting one of these. Should I get one? And what's it gonna do for me? So, what do you have to say about that? Well, the thing is is the great thing about the Apollo Twin is that it's great if you're a musician or a recording engineer, recording lots of tracks, and producer. And you're a producer. As voice actors, your job is to record as clean as possible with as little anything else added to it as possible. We always like to preach. The only processing you should do really is for minor room correction. Now, there are other guys who are like, oh, no, I'll make you sound great. And we're gonna use this plugin and that plugin. And the Apollo Twin is great because you get access to all these plugins. But if you don't know what they do or how they do them and you don't wanna spend 20 years learning how they do what they do and how to do them, don't use them. In which case, you probably don't need a universal audio Apollo Twin. All you need is the- Micboard Pro. Micboard Pro. It's a little cheaper and just as versatile if not more so. Way cheaper, way more portable. And way more universal too. Yeah, I mean, and for someone taking that, and these people will take their twin around with them when they travel and stuff. The twin is this weird thing. It's like, it's modern tech. Right. With a sort of an old idea baked into it. Right. And that old idea is we used to, we've been spending years telling you guys not to run a bunch of front-end processing. Not using a compressor and a gate and an EQ or some crazy channel strip and putting all this junk on the signal. This thing basically allows you to do this. The deal is with this, and here's where I, here's who is it for, I guess, in a voice over world. I guess who it's for is people that do a lot of real-time sessions where they're doing Source Connect, IBDTL, they're being recorded by the studio on the other end, and they wanna come off in the best possible light to that session. So that means they're gonna do a few little things under the direction of a trained audio engineer like myself, hopefully. And tune this thing to sound, the best it can sound in the situation that you're in without sounding like you're doing anything to the audience. Right. That's the key, like, and that's a very delicate thing. It's like, it's like good makeup. You go to the grocery store. So can you explain that to us? I don't know. I can't wait for you to do it. Explain good, you know it when you see it because you don't even know they're wearing it. Like, great makeup to me is the kind that just, you don't even realize that it's being worn. Right. It's just great. Excellent, excellent. And other people, they have that layer of makeup on where they just couldn't stop. And, you know, it's thicker and thicker. Tried too hard. It's too much, too many colors. It's too this, too that. That to me is what can happen when you overdo the processing. And it doesn't sell you very well, folks. And the engineer on the other end is not gonna like hearing it either. Right. It's actually better off turning everything off. Right. In that case. In which case you're spending a lot of money for stuff that you're turning off. It's true. Go figure. It's true, it's true. Alrighty. Well, we got a ton of your questions this week which we are thrilled to have. And we'll get to those and discuss all the important stuff with VoiceOverTech on Tech Talk right after these. This is Bill Ratner and you're enjoying VoiceOver Body Shop with Dan Leonard and George Whidham. VOBS.TV. Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice 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 Rick. This is your knee, Rick. 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 J.Michael at jmcvoiceover.com. Now if they will stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show. Hey there. VoiceOver Essentials has put together two bundle deals featuring some of their most popular products at special pricing. No matter your budget, you can't go wrong. Whichever one you choose. And now get interest-free credit for six months when you check out with PayPal. First, there's the plus bundle. Save a hundred bucks and free shipping. You get a port-a-booth plus. The VO1A microphone. The MicPort Pro 2 mobile preamp and interface with limiter. The voice-optimized headphones. Adjustable desktop microphone stand. And the VoxPOP filter. But separately, you'd pay $986.89. But the bundle price is a hundred bucks less. $886.89. Now the Pro bundle, you'll save $150 with free shipping. You get the port-a-booth Pro. The VO1A microphone. The mixer face portable mixer and mobile recording interface. The Harlan Hogan voice-optimized headphones. The adjustable desktop microphone stand. The VoxPOP filter. The voice-over recording sign. All that. But separately, you'd pay $1276.84. But the bundle price is $150 off. At $1,126.84. Go over to voiceoveressentials.com and pick up these great bundles and get yourself a port-a-booth Plus or Pro with all these other great additions. Thanks, Harlan. Well, it's time, isn't it? Yes, it's time for Source Elements. Spot for Source Connect, their amazing software package that allows you to connect your studio to other studios around the world, which if you are watching our show at this point, you've probably heard us talk about before. But that's because it's a tool you gotta have in your toolbox. But the beauty of it is, if you're smart about it, it ain't gonna cost you a dime until you actually need it. It won't cost you a dime until it's time. Yes, that's right. You can get a demo of Source Connect. You can go to source-elements.com and sign up for your account there. And then get your iLok setup. There's actually a video on Source Elements of yours truly explaining what the heck all this means. So go watch that. See the video on how the iLok works and all that. Get your iLok account set up, that's free. Don't need to buy a USB dongle from iLok or for iLok, so that doesn't cost you anything. Get all that thing up and running and installed and be ready, so have it going. And that way, when that client comes to you saying, gotta have Source Connect or that agent you wanna get says gotta have Source Connect, whatever it is, you're gonna be ready. And at that time, you can activate it for a monthly subscription or you can buy the license outright. But it is a standalone application. It doesn't care what version of Chrome is running. It doesn't get broken when Chrome updates at random, which it broke a bunch of stuff in the last couple of weeks and it was a pain. This is a standalone application immune to all that stuff. It'll run on Windows, it'll run on Mac. And you gotta give it a try. Source Connect standard over at source-elements.com is what you need as a voice actor. Go give it a try. I'll be right back to answer a lot of questions right here on Tech Talk. Before time began, there was VOBS.tv, watch or else. You know, it's important to mention to people that this is what we do for a living. Yeah, I mean, maybe not what we're doing right here. This is kind of more for fun. Yeah, but we like you people to know that this is what we do, that home studios are a very, very specific and unique environment that only a couple of people on God's green earth actually understand what they're talking about. Cause you could go talk to some studio engineer and he's gonna think, well, you gotta have this mic and you gotta have this and this processing because that's what I use and I've been using for the last 25 years in my $250,000 studio that was custom built to do. You're in your closet or somewhere different from that $250,000, a half a million dollar studio on the hill somewhere in Hollywood or New York or Dallas or one of those places. It's a unique environment and every studio has to be pretty much custom designed for your voice and the place you're in. And so what George and I do is we consult with you and show you the best place to put your studio. If you've already got one, how to make it sound better, mostly through physical means because while we talk about a lot of geeky equipment and stuff, it's cool to talk about, it's fun, but most of what we wanna teach you is keep it simple and here's how you do it. So if you wanna talk to somebody who really knows how to do that, one of us two guys, for example, Mr. Whittem here, if you wanna talk to him, where would they go? You can head on over to georgev.tech. That's my website where I, you can book me by the half hour. You can have me come to your studio. If I happen to be in your town and you can also just get a sound check, which is really the place to start. Get a lot of emails, people saying, I got a million things to do. Where should I start? Start with a sound check. Let's see where your sound quality starts. But head on over there and there's all those services. Dan, you also use the web. I do. And how do they find you over there on the web? That new internet thing, yeah. Go on over to homevoiceoverstudio.com where I can teach you from soup to nuts how to get it done. If you have no idea what's going on out there, email me, contact me, and we can set up a consult and I can teach you how to get it to sound the way it's supposed to sound like. Whistle. And it's important that you talk to somebody who actually knows what it's supposed to sound like because you may have an idea what it's supposed to sound like, but that's not what perhaps everybody else wants it to sound like. Because you may like the way you sound, but you don't hire you. So it's good to talk to somebody like George Rai who can hear your audio and determine if it's what it's supposed to sound like. And if it doesn't, how we can fix that and how to clean it up and make sure that you sound as professional as possible and let your voice acting talent get you work as opposed to the great gear you have because it doesn't matter what microphone you have, it's not gonna change the way you read copy. Yeah, we'll do it on your budget. Absolutely. But based on your needs and your skill level where you're at in your career, we're not gonna have a beginner go out and spend $10,000. Just not gonna happen. That's right. Alrighty. Well, we got a ton of questions here. So let's get right into them. Starting with Mark Shoalmayer who says who's just trying to get started in the voice over world. All right. Just the kind of guy we wanna talk to. Since I'm starting out with audacity for my recording software, but need to know where to go to find background music for my audio recordings, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. You have an awesome website and provide lots of valuable information. Well, the reason we provide that information is so you'll contact us. But when it comes to background music, just type in royalty free music and you'll find all sorts of stuff. And chances are you're not gonna run into copyright issues if you're just doing demos and things like that. It's very useful, it's simply for demonstration purposes. Absolutely, but the bottom line is while it's good to learn how to use that and how to do some multitracking and stuff, the thing is, is you're hardly ever going to be asked to do that. No, if you're creating your own demos, yeah, you can probably do that and that's the way you might get started. But for the most part, you don't really need to learn the multitracking stuff. That's not our job. If you heard the agent we interviewed, see Lisa, she'll know if you produced your own demo more than likely. Which usually will indicate round filing rather quick. Unless you just happen to be someone that comes from production and you understand all the tools and know how to make all that work, chances are if you're asking that question, you're probably not at that point where you should be producing your own demo. Exactly. Do it for fun, do it for training practice. Don't put that on your website for your demo. It's probably not gonna sell you in the best light. But anyway, it's out there. You can find royalty free music. Yeah, just type it in. Or buy out music. Buy out music, yeah, you can buy it. Some software comes with its own music. You know Adobe Audition has a whole bunch of files you can use and stuff. But you gotta learn how to use it. I have a, I can never remember the name even though I'm a paid subscriber. I'm checking my. Makes it hard to find them. On my tabs, on my phone's web browser because I leave a tab open so I can remember. It's called Epidemic. Epidemic Sound has a huge library you can browse by genre, style. It's actually really pretty cool. So that's one way to find music. Next question from Noel Hunter. I'll let you read this one and then of course we're gonna have the same answer to this, so. Go for it. She says I've been experiencing a background static that I can hear only after downloading files to another site. It cannot be heard when I am not speaking. I remember, I removed background noise. Any ideas? Oh, I also have also tried switching cables with no change. Well, I gotta say I'm a little unclear about this. Like, it's happening only during playback? In which case it may just be a playback issue. It's what you're playing it on. Yeah, it's what you're playing it on. Also. I can only hear it after downloading files to another site. So does that mean you're playing it back on another computer? I'm not clear. It could be a bitrate thing. It could be how she's doubt, perhaps she's saving it at the wrong bitrate. Oh, she could be recording it as a wave, then saving it as a low quality MP3, then listening to the playback of that and that sounds lousy. That's right. That could be it. Double check your settings when you're exporting MP3s. And more importantly, if you ask a question like that, we need details to hear it. And sound and audio. Yeah, it's amazing. I got this buzzing, you listen to it. Well, that's not a buzzing, that's a hum. Yeah. Well, but it sounds like a buzz to me. I mean, it's a difference between those things. George and I know what those different sounds mean and what they are and people have different definitions for them. A rumble, a buzz, a hum. A crunchiness. I love that one. That's brittleness. One of my favorites. All right, Tom Machen, whose birthday it was today. Okay, happy birthday. We'll answer all your questions. Maybe most of them. We love you, Tom. Okay, go for it. I'll see you here. I'll let you take number one. All right. Happy birthday, Tom. Should gain staging be done in very small steps or larger chunks? So that's the first. Explain gain staging for starters. I guess, and then he says that there are preferred methods such as through EQ, compressor, or some other plugins. No. Well, it's kind of a, that was, I gotta say, Tom, is that sort of a, do you walk to school or carry a lunch question? And chew gum at the same time? Because you're asking about, let me just unpack it. So first number one, should gain staging be done in very small steps or larger chunks? To me, what gain staging is, is when you've got more than one thing or more than one place to adjust gain, you have to get all of these different things set correctly. Like, you know, that's to me, gain staging. So, so basically, let's say you have a mic preamp and then you plug that into a mixer and it has a preamp and then the mixer has a level and then the mixer has a main out. And then that goes to a Scarlet, which has another gain control. You've got one, two, three, four, five, at least. Maybe I'm losing, it could be more than that depending on the preamp. So in terms of gain staging, I always think of like the, I think of it this way, the signal needs to be pushed from the front, the front end, that's the mic. You don't want to pull it from the other end. So what I mean is you don't want to have low gain at the preamp, but the mic, and then make up a lot of gain later. That adds analog noise to it. It tends to add noise and maybe distortion as well. So, but yes, it is done in small increments, not large chunks, but other than that, that's the best way I can describe it. Yeah, so preferred methods through EQ compressor or some other plugins. I'm not really sure how that relates specifically to gain staging. So like maybe you need to answer that or ask that another way, send us an email about that. Part two. Is DaVue coming back into Vogue for the show? We used it tonight. Actually, we did. We just forgot to run the promo for it. The DaVue thing, but yeah, we did a DaVue tonight. So maybe we'll do some more of those. As we have things to demonstrate, we'll make use of that more. So, thanks for asking. Which is better to use for your gear? TRS or XLR and why? So TRS, XLR are both buzzwords generally for balanced audio connections. But the same thing, essentially. Essentially the same thing, just different physical connections. XLR tends to be better, XLR tends to be better, handle a lot more abuse and not get as, the contacts tend to not get as scratchy as easily. They're smaller. Yeah, they're smaller and the pins make a lot more contact. You know, when you look inside an XLR and then you look at the male and the female, that sleeve, the pin slides in and makes contact all the way around the pin. With a TRS or any quarter inch jack, it's only making contact at a tiny point where a little metal tab touches a little the edge of your jack. It's a very tiny point of contact. So those tend to get scratchy and dirty more often. And the springiness of the arm can vary. Yeah, some of them are very, they don't feel very solid and others are not, whereas XLRs, most of them have a locking mechanism. If you look, let's put it this way, if you look at the best live sound consoles and everything, whereas cheaper music consoles will have a lot of quarter inch jacks, the really pro ones are XLR across the board. And they're really huge as a result. It takes a lot of room to have all the necessary XLR jacks, but they do it because they last longer, they're built better. A lot of units have a dual TRS and XLR combo jack. In fact, this Mikeport Pro has one of those little combo jacks. The XLR has a center hole in the middle. So this is two for one. It's XLR and TRS in the center. That's very common these days, you'll see that. Alrighty. And the final question, the geekiest of all for Mr. Machen, is there an industry standard for the order of plug-in processing for mastering audio? Rules where not to put the compressor or the EQ? Well, we just went over a pile of people's heads. Yeah. There's no, there's not really an industry standard. That's why mastering experts are experts because they've spent years honing a specific method of doing what they do. And sometimes they have many different plugins going on, but generally, I'll just quickly say, here's what I do. I do high pass filter. DSer, compressor, expander. Sometimes I change the order of those three. Equalizer and then limiter. That's the order that I usually do it in. Sometimes there's another EQ, sometimes there's an EQ before the compressor. When do I do that? It just depends. Depends on, you're going to listen to it and go, this particular setting doesn't work for this and I want to achieve this sound so you might take something out of the chain. But I will, guaranteed, always have a high pass filter first and then I will have the noise gate after the high pass filter, always. The gate is always going to be after that and the limiter is always going to be at the end. For me, that's the way I do things. I've heard of people putting a limiter at the beginning and one at the end. I've heard of all manner of ways of doing it. That's just the way I tend to do it. So there you go. Not an industry standard, just one guy's way of doing it. But you are the industry. I am the industry. Sure. Okay, whatever. Moving on. All right, JD Sutter asks, I have a client on Mac. I'm a Windows guy. Okay. We won't hold it against you. But who wants to record short announcer type voiceover spots with a USB mic and use QuickTime? Will QuickTime only record from the USB input or will also pick up system sounds? I guess it's a matter of, is there a way to mix that stuff? No. I don't think so unless, who knows, maybe Catalina, they added a check box, record system sound. I'm not aware of that existing in the Mac. I think in Windows, there used to be a sound driver setting where you could say record what you hear and then it would actually record the playback from the computer. But that's not something to build into QuickTime that I'm aware of. So you need some other software if that's really what you're gonna do. That's one little extra handy thing that things like ScreenFlow does. Yes. While it's totally overkill for what you're describing. Do you record from this source, from this source? ScreenFlow can capture audio from your microphone, your webcam, playback from the computer, like anything you can imagine, all at the same time and capture it all in separate tracks. So it could be worth spending the 100 something dollars for that. There might be cheaper ways to do it than that. Somebody might chime in in the chat room. Yeah. If you have a better way of doing this that's cheaper, put it in the comments below. Maybe there's a better way to do it. But no, it's just gonna capture one input, whatever that is, USB mic, built-in mic, whatever. Right. So yeah. You really need to have a mixer in order to get various different inputs into that type of thing. So a USB mic's not gonna cut it. Right. And we're talking about announcer type voiceover spots. I can't imagine why you need to record the output of the computer anyway. Right. You're recording a voiceover. Oh, okay. Maybe, oh, maybe you were concerned that it would record the system sound at the same time. That's a good point, Sue says. And if that's the case, don't worry, it will not record the system sound. Well, we could have saved five minutes right there with that. Thanks. Thanks for chiming in with that. All right, last question. Okay. Do you have an opinion on Sweetwater's creation station? It should be optimized for music and have free basic tech support. Yes, I do. Oh, good, because I have no idea what it is. I mean, I remember them talking to us about it at NAMM. When we were looking at their, what was that unit they had? The Spirit or the, I don't remember. Yeah, the unit that was like a self-contained recording studio. We went into their trailer and talked to them about it. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was the isotope, wasn't it? Oh, that was isotope. Right. So, the creation station, I get their catalog, but I don't know what it is. Creation station is a PC. Nevermind. That's all it is. It's just a PC. It's just a PC, but you know, it's one that they have custom-spec the parts. Here's my take on that. As long as you're gonna have Apple, or Apple, sorry, have Apple in the brain, as long as you're gonna have Sweetwater's support for the life of that computer, for anything that you need that comes up, then maybe it's not a bad investment. You're gonna spend a pretty good chunk of money on one of those. Like, honestly, you could buy the $1,000 Mac Mini and get something that's completely suitable for voiceover or even full-on multi-track production and be just fine. But if you're really looking for something that has more power behind it, and it's on a Windows platform, then a creation station maybe isn't a bad idea, I always think about the support. So if they're gonna give you basic free support for the life of the computer and answer questions when you need them, it could be a pretty good solid way to go. I always lean against, I always kind of, I'd never recommend custom-built PCs because whoever built it is the one who's gonna have to support it, generally. And so if that person's not gonna give you a support plan or a contract or it's physically your neighbor or somebody nearby, when something goes wrong with it, you're on Google, you're online, you're asking your friends, what do I do, what do I do? And when you buy something that is built by Dell or HP or maybe in this case, creation station, you do have support companies that at least can help you with some of the basic Windows stuff that could go wrong. Yeah, you would think that Sweetwater would have that type of support with something like that. I would think so, I would think so. I would also check to see what software they're familiar with. A lot of times, like a Sweetwater, they may only have experience with Pro Tools and a few other of the biggest brand name recording softwares. They may not know anything about Audacity and some of the other more esoteric softwares that are out there. So it depends on how much they'll be able to actually support you after you buy it. Exactly. Now, we won't mention the fact that we have a custom-built PC that runs this particular TV show. We absolutely do. We absolutely do. But it has been trouble-free from the get-go. It's been pretty rock solid. There's been a learning curve to get everything running and we know the woman that bought it or built it for us and we can contact her occasionally if something goes wrong. But nothing has. But really, it's been really darn rock solid. So a machine that has the right parts spec'd and assembled the right way and done correctly, as long as it should run for years and years. This system, as it stands, as long as we don't constantly update it, should run for years. We'll see how it goes. And that's why the show is trouble-free, most of the time. Anyway, we love getting your questions. If you have a question for us and you want us to address it on Tech Talk or when we have a guest, you can write to us at theguysatvobs.tv. There it is, right there, right underneath, George. We love getting your questions. If it's a sound question, I got a problem and it sounds like this, we really would like to hear what it is, as we talked about earlier. So make sure we like hearing the audio sound. We gotta go back to bad audio of the week. We used to have you, that was the time. Eight years ago, we used to do bad audio of the week. I actually found the file in an old hard drive of all the bad audio of the week. Yeah, it was cool. It was educational. Yeah, and in December, we're hoping to do some stuff with demos and demo producers. So can't wait to do that, too, something we've been talking about. And if there's a subject you'd like us to talk about or a guest you'd like to have on the show, give us a, drop us a line, digitally, of course, at theguysatvobs.tv. All right, well, George and I are gonna wrap things up on this week's amazing tech talk right after this. Before time began, there was V-O-B-S.tv. Watch or else. Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead. Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer. That place is voiceoverextra.com. Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level, stay in touch with market trends, coaching, products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls. Voiceoverextra has hundreds of articles, free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed. Learn from the most respected talents, coaches and industry insiders. When you join the online sessions, bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books, auditioning, casting, home studio setup and equipment, marketing, performance techniques and much more. It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success. Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voiceover audition. It's all here at voiceoverextra.com. That's voiceoverextra.com. What question do we get most often? Far and away it's, how do I even get started in voiceover? And we have a great answer to that question. Take the Voheros.com, free Getting Started in Voh course. You heard right, it's free and it's available online 24-7 at Getting Started in Voh.com. That's Getting Started in Voh.com. If you've been watching VOBS and thinking that you need to get in gear and start your own voiceover career, this is the course you should start with. You'll learn about the vocal skills you need, the storytelling skills you need, the equipment you need, the business skills you need and the mindset you need to have all in one single comprehensive online course taught by Voheros David H. Lawrence the 17th. This course won the Backstage Readers Choice Award four years in a row and again, there's no charge. It's absolutely free. Wanna take it? Of course you do. Getting Started in Voh.com. That's Getting Started in Voh.com. As a voice talent, you have to have a website but what a hassle getting someone to do it for you and when they finally do, they break or don't look right on mobile devices. They're not built for marketing and SEO. They're expensive. You have limited or no control and it takes forever to get one built and go live. So what's the best way to get you online in no time? Go to voiceactorwebsites.com. Like our name implies, voiceactorwebsites.com just does websites for voice actors. We believe in creating fast, mobile friendly, responsive, highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use. You have full control. No need to hire someone every time you wanna make a change and our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time. You can get your voice over website going for as little as $700. So if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options, go to voiceactorwebsites.com where your Voh 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 her buddy, Shaw. Well, another amazing hour of VO tech talk. Again, there's still so much we can talk about. I know. It never ends. It never ends. We love hearing from you. So write to us again with your questions at the guys at VOBS.tv. We're gonna be doing some not so fresh shows over the next couple of weeks because. Fresh but poignant replays. We're gonna pick the best of the best from 2019 to replay over the next couple of weeks, the best interview and the best tech talk. Excellent. So tell us which one you'd like to hear. Of course, if you haven't heard it, you wouldn't know. So I'll pick it for you. Anyway, but the wife and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. So we're gonna go to Eastern Europe. That's a romantic spot. And that's how you stay married for another 25 years, my friend. God help us all. It would be great. It'd be 130 years old. Anyway, who are our donors of the week? The names that you've heard before, and maybe one you haven't, we've got Don Griffith, Martha Kahn, Ant-Land Productions, Diana Birdsall, Patty Gibbons, George Wittem Sr., that's George A. Wittem, my dad. And Pavi Lustig, or maybe it's Pafi. Pafi. They say, in Deutschland, in Australia. In Austria. Do not say Germany, he is Austrian. Yeah, Austrian. Pafi Lustig, thank you very, very much. We appreciate your support. His English was excellent, by the way. Oh man. Anyway, hey, we want you to show us your booths. This is Jack Daniel's booth. Not Jack Daniel's in Tennessee, but our good friend Jack Daniel, who has a wonderful studio. I mean, it's, he's got, it's a, I think it's a whisper room and, you know, expensive microphones and an Avalon I think he's got a Gretch Ken. Yeah. Gretch Ken booth. If I, some, I think that's all. You're right, it is a, it is a Gretch Ken booth. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And a beautiful apartment, so it just looks like a really professional studio. Good job, Jack. I like that it's, I've been there. It's like right in the middle of this, you know, it's, it's a centerpiece. Yeah. In a split level apartment and it just like overlooks everything. He's got his priorities straight. Well, he's a good-looking guy with a good-looking apartment. Let's give him that. Jack, come visit us one of these days. We miss you. Anyway, what else? You want help with your home voiceover studio? You can talk to George at georgethe.tech or georgethetech.com, whichever you prefer. And Dan's also available on his place on the web. Homevoiceoverstudio.com. Want to hear from you guys. Send us your audio. Use the specimen collection cup so I can hear what's going on with your audio. Let's see here. We're on every other Monday except maybe next week it'll be a little different. You never know what's going to happen. You want to be in our studio? You can write to us at the guys at vobs.tv and be here like all the people that are here tonight. I think since we went to five o'clock, we're not getting quite the crowd in here that we, whether it's Sue, yeah. There's a bag there, my radios and stuff. This is like a broadcast museum, you guys. It is a broadcast museum. Gotta come check it out. Anyway, let's see. We need to thank our sponsors, of course, like Harlan Hogan's VoiceOver Essentials. VoiceOver Extra. Saurus Elements. Vio-heroes.com. VoiceActorWebsites.com. And J. Michael Collins' demos. Alrighty, also the Dan and Marcy Leonard Foundation for the betterment of live and recorded webcasting. And of course, our one and only Sue Merlino who does a bang up job as our technical director and making it look like we actually know what we're doing. And Mike too, her son was helping out with the chat room earlier tonight. Absolutely, so. Well, you know, VoiceOver's not an easy business. The technology should be easy and that's why we're here and we bring it to you every week and we love getting your questions. And, but we want to let you know one thing and that is if it sounds good. It is good. I'm Dan Leonard. I'm George Widow. And this is VoiceOver. Body Shop. Video BS Tech Talk. See you next time guys. Good night.