 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop and tonight our guest is Byron Wagner Wave and 3d in 3d. We're gonna talk about all sorts of the the millions of cool things that he does, right? Okay, good. This is a seven part show it it will be and then of course We have some tech talk later if you've got questions for Byron Which you will be fascinated by and you'll have like all these questions throw them in the chat room Which is only on Facebook tonight So if you're in our home page and you're like where's the chat room go over to Facebook You'll find us there and you can put all your comments in Facebook and that will get your questions on this very show But throw them gently, please Depends. Okay, are we ready mr. Whittem? We're ready. Let's make it happen. All right. It's time for voiceover body shop right now From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe. They bring it to you now George Whittem the engineer to the VO stars a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional video studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master 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 Bringing you talks with the biggest names in the voice of a world today Letting you ask your questions and giving you the latest information to make the most of your voice over business Welcome to voice over body shop Voice over body shop is brought to you by voice over essentials calm 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 the heroes dot-com become a hero to your clients with a word winning voiceover training J. Michael Collins demos when quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success and now Live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Well, good evening depending on where you are. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whittem and this is voice over body shop or VO B. S. Oh Really? Yes, very well trained crowd tonight I Okay, yeah, we've got Byron Wagner with us tonight and people are like saying Who's Byron Wagner? Maybe a name they're not familiar with but if they knew all the stuff that he's responsible for He's the man behind the curtain ladies and gentlemen. Absolutely literally behind the curtain and We're gonna learn about all the stuff that he does You know in voiceover and technology and you're gonna have lots of questions for him because he's gonna be talking about stuff That you're gonna be fascinated the longer he talks the more questions you'll have that's right and the less we'll have So why don't we bring him on we should do that we should cut to the chase Yes, it is now time to bring in his high majesty lord and master of all that is digital Byron Wagner He's gonna come in very grace of great gracious and gracefully Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Good to have you here finally. You're not George. No, you're dad's George. Oh god. Okay. Thank you Anyway, welcome to the show now people Probably would like to know more about you because You're responsible for everybody's life right now from what I read in your bio It and my my head was spattered all over my living room floors. I'm going we're not gonna be reading it And you didn't sell tickets. I did not Well, there's people watching. Okay, where can they find your bio actually so they can read it on there It's actually hidden But if you do a search for my name with the minus sign and Cinderella you will find it And the reason you have to use the minus sign is because about four years ago with no prompting from me They invented a new anime character in Midnight Cinderella named Byron Wagner There were lots of pictures of Byron Wagner when I searched for that. Yeah, but then I found this Long stroll of a bio if they search my name. They'll find the s. Yes The cruel and unusual punishment the wonder of me. I mean, I mean, I thought I knew a lot about you, but then you were there When it all happened Well, I'd be responsible. Some of that has the added benefit of being true. Okay. Yes, some of it. All right So why don't why don't we start with the basics then? You're from Omaha, Nebraska originally where the men are men and the sheep are nervous. Yes. Yes outstanding Tell us a little bit about yourself and I never did anything professionally Until I was eight. I've got a very late start I started doing magic and ventriloquism for children's birthday parties and I charged 25 cents and all the ice cream and cake I could eat and unfortunately my priorities have not changed since then okay And from doing magic and ventriloquism. I got into doing theater and from theater I always loved technology and when I was very little kid my dad had a reel-to-reel mono Tape recorder and I will never forget the first tape recording of me that I'm aware of was when we watched The second live performance of Mary Matt Mary Martin is Peter Peter bad on on TV And I loved it and I they played the tape back and I could sing the songs along with the TV and He interviewed me and I actually have an interview me at age an interview me at age five or six on Tape recorder and so I thought technology was really cool. I love tape recorders and so when I had the chance in High school. I joined a junior achievement project and instead of whittling Coat hangers out of wood and selling stock in the company and then selling the product and so on I hooked up with the company that was based out of kfav radio station 50,000 watt clear channel In Omaha, and it was awesome because they had Sony C37 a microphones and real Ampex tape recorders and I could bring friends and cousins in late at night when nobody was there except the big 16-inch reels of automation Floating the machine and I could record stuff. Yeah, not that I would ever do that But that was a long time ago the statute of limitations is long run out and it was cool I'm already fired So so that was just amazing and I really enjoyed it and that kind of Set the tone so the next year when I was a senior in high school Everybody else had a car. I had a Robert 778 X Crossfield heads tape recorder reel to reel It could take ten and a half inch reels had an eight track recorder in the side Oh and cost as much as a car like you said everybody else had a car. That's right I took a line from the movie a Bear Ferris Billers day off Hey, it was not a Ferrari got a computer. That's not for being born. Yeah, no, no, that's I'm yeah So, so you would just go around recording stuff places. I didn't have a mic. Oh, I had a Did you have any friends with a mic by chance funny you mentioned that they had some PAs the rock bands and so on said a very Motley assortment of microphones. Yeah, and then I needed a console of some kind and that there's no no way in heck So I got some Midland as in Taiwanese knockoffs Japanese knockoff. Sorry of a sure M68 mono mixer, you know, like four microphones That's that's right And if you make two of them and one of them goes in the left channel and goes in the right channel You can do some stuff and you can even have another one for a center So you can split it between the two and have mono in the center channel Yeah, and so when I went to school to college Everybody else had a steamer trunk full of you know linens and clothes and so on I had two steamer trunks Full of my Robert 778. No, no, I didn't take it. I brought 12 pairs of underwear 12 was a lot January February March ago. It's an old joke And I so I had two steamer trunks two guitar cases six string and 12 string and a duffel bag And the duffel bag had the blankets and the sheets and some underwear and some clothes And that was a way back here Yeah, I had my dad's old navy Sheet metal collapsible like trunk. Yeah at Virginia Tech I put wheels on it and brought all my gear in with that. That was both fancy and huge and heavy It was a wrong time to find out that they only had a freight elevator. We weren't allowed to use Look at Haley's comment Sorry anyway, so so my stuff. Yeah, but that was skipping house get back a little bit Yeah, to make the long story longer my senior year in high school I hooked up with the junior achievement company that was doing television So I got to produce and direct a series of hour-long color specials that were played on Sunday midday on a commercial television station KMTV and So, you know, you got to rotate around. I was I sold ads. I was the director I was the producer and when it was my turn to direct my episode specifically. I got film footage I Did some social engineering with United on the phone I got some 16 millimeter footage so I could have some moving visuals to the local folk group doing leaving on a jet plane Right, right and could invert the colors and make it negative and very trippy and very psychedelic all that stuff and on the basis of that Two-inch high band quad Tape of the shows that I had done. I got a talent grant to a high university She's not getting a football scholarship because I had terrible grades Yeah, but I'd grade SATs and I had product and you apparently were a good grant writer Well, I was desperate. It was the only school. I was accepted to so you know, I needed to get in and I said, don't worry about it I said really they said, yeah, no if we want you here, you'll go to school here. I didn't argue with them Although I must tell you I don't have to but the other school that I was invited to attend was a place called Stevens College Outside of St. Louis and it was I knew was a mistake. It was a girl's school In fact the reputation was and still pretty much is It was the girl's school where each of the girls that went there boarded two horses Really? Do you do you get the picture? It's one of those schools. It was one of those schools I've never been there. They invited me to come down and one of the attendees father Was the guy who was running NBC and they had decided they want to get into media They knew about the stuff that I had done so of the first two times that they call and it was a mistake I didn't call him back. It was a girl's school. They said no, no, no. We're bringing in. I think it was like five guys Sue's laughing because she gets it. Okay. Hmm. Let's think the odds about 600 undergrad girls each with two horses and Five guys and they want to give me a scholarship to go there I thought about that long and hard and then I thought okay now If I go to Ohio University, I will be learning from the best and so on and if I go to this other school I Will greatly enjoy sharing what wisdom I have But I don't know that I'll really learn that much. Yeah, so I made one of the worst decisions about no I went to OU. Okay, and you know and and so when I got there It turns out they were the only school they had built an eight million dollar seven-story radio TV complex And everything else if you want to get into radio TV when I was going to school You went to J school like at Northwestern or maybe NYU and that was about it This is Ohio. You and oh you and Athens not oh state. So the difference was 45,000 undergrad versus 17 Okay, so So I got there was very jazzed and then I realized no if you want to get your degree relating to broadcast You got it. Basically go to J school. So I took the first series of courses and learned about Asahi Shimbun and All these foreign newspapers and things and I was a little impatient and I didn't want to learn about all that stuff So I changed my major to motion picture production and I learned about film and I did film sound and that kind of stuff Mm-hmm, and I ended up Building or helping build a multi-track 16 track recording studio in Chilicoppy, Ohio In what used to be a general store which during prohibition had been a speakeasy in the basement And they still had slot machines in the basement. They were all dust and they weren't being used anymore And actually that play still exists And turned into what's now a school for recording engineers? They've I mean the the founder unfortunately guy named Joe Waters passed away about three or four years ago, but he and his brother who was a carpenter had gone around and There's a little bit of a cargo cult kind of thing They visited all these great recording studios in Ohio and nearby and they came back and they converted what had been a general store If I remember correctly into a studio Except it sounded terrible and I didn't understand why and I went to visit it because I had a project. I needed to do a multi-track recording with a band and You had to figure out why yeah Well, what I noticed was they had these huge doors That were padded on the both sides and really thick in everything, but you could open them with one finger Oh, and I said why do you have like an inch and a half airspace gap around these big doors? And I said well the other places had like weather stripping and stuff They were too hard to open I Said oh Yeah, I said oh this could be a reason that you're getting Hundred cycle feedback every time you turn the control room monitors up past one and a half What if we fix that and they said do you know how to do that and I said well Let's do a bar to deal because I wanted I needed to record an album And so I that was kind of how I started getting into recording studio design and I you know And and it goes on there. You learn by doing yes, that's not unlike what I do That's a lot of like to get in there somewhere. Yeah, man You don't force it to use a bigger hammer. That's the answer. Yeah. Yeah, if they ask, do you know how to do this? Well, yes, yes, I do and actually There's another story that you might appreciate or not When I was at Ohio University, and I was at the film facility. I noticed that their Audio was basically non-existent. They had a nagra Yeah, they had a three and a four and they had a resolver so that you could move this stuff off the quarter-inch tape to the 16 millimeter mag stock But they didn't really have a mixing desk. They didn't have all this stuff. All right, and so I thought oh Okay, what they didn't have a budget. They had you know, they had some movie olas They even had a flatbed steamback, which is very state-of-the-art. Hmm, and I found out about this program that they had whereby Government surplus was available to state Institutions still is basically for free. You got like a budget and a credit card kind of thing Mm-hmm, and they said oh, yeah, there's this it was like Aladdin's Cave of Wonders There's this warehouse in Columbus and it has all this stuff. You want a Jeep like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark Yes, except it wasn't in boxes. It was all like out and so on so I said could I go look and see what they had and They had all of this stuff And it was mil specs. It was like huge and hammer tone gray and so on but so I brought back all this stuff and we had a much more Usable facility and so they let me do that. That's so great If you're wondering we're talking with Byron Wagner About some of the cool stuff that he's done and but let's let's move ahead in time here Now what year is all that going on? What are you in college was the early 70s? Seventy well my I graduated high school in 69 so college in 69 and 70 and then I left Wow, I'm a dropout It doesn't seem to have affected your Not much at all. Okay, good If you've got a question for Byron throw it in the Facebook chat. We please No, you can you can lob it You know, or you can do a fastball or a curveball, but you know because you love being thrown a curveball I do And I'm sure there'll be a few out there Throw it in there We'll be happy to ask Byron that question, but you're gonna have more questions after we get into this next step. So How did you get into voiceover and when did that start because you were also you also were acting too? Well, funny you should ask it wasn't funny at all. It was deliberate. I did my first voiceover when I was about nine or ten They needed a magician for the hands for Frito lay commercial because they you know, they used to put toys and stuff in Yeah, they had this magic trick of a mouse that you could make to seem to run over your hands That's right. Yeah, yeah, so they needed a magician and they wanted a kid And I happen to be both of those simultaneously and at the same time So I did that thing and then I found out that you could do and I was in junior theater And I was in and actually Omaha was a great theater town Omaha the Omaha playhouse. Okay Here comes the lead. So are you developing your pattern at 11 already? No, that was at eight On my recent trip to the orange. I found an ancient and mystical one. Yes, which would cause things to be Well, no, okay. This is this is a benefit potentially to voiceover actors There was one book in the Omaha Public Library branch that was closest to us Which I believe was the Benson branch that had anything about ventriloquism and I loved Particularly the recently late Paul Winschel Paul Winschel Jerry Mahoney Michael headsman I was also a fan of Danny O'Day, you know and far full talk but but I love Paul Winschel and I love been children the idea of entertaining people and I was the oldest of three children so My peers were kind of adults So if you could do something that could catch an adult's attention much, let's get praise from an adult Yeah, that was boy. That was the ticket. Yeah, and my father would travel occasionally and he would bring back things like Felt baseball pennants from where he'd been Sholo, Arizona with the hand of cards and stuff And he went to Chicago went to Marshall fields and he brought me back to magic tricks One was the classic red egg bag Which not surprisingly would cause eggs to appear and disappear. The other one was the penultimate finger chopper And I learned how to do those and I would go feel mercy. Let's see me chop my finger Yeah, people say no and I wouldn't listen and I would show them and they how'd you do that? Oh, it's a secret So people particularly adults liked me when I did magic And I love ventriloquism. So my mom took me to the library and I found this one book after find it some Sooner or later someday and it had a section on magic and a section on ventriloquism and at the beginning of the section on magic was a quote from I Think they quote they they ascribe the quote to Orson Welles but possibly from Houdini or maybe even Robert Houdin who I think the quote actually originates from and it's very simple It says a magician is merely an actor playing the part of the magician and It sounds simple, but the funny thing was is I didn't I was eight How do you pull off the mystic East? Patterns stuff when you're eight right little cognizance there So I didn't know how to be a magician. I didn't know what to do I didn't know how to do the tricks and then once I read that I was like oh I can do that Right, and once I gave myself permission It was easy and it turns out that a billion years later and a year You know in a in a Meisner workshop. I finally was able to get to the same point in terms of acting But so I ended up to your question Well, I don't want to be an adult isn't it? I would a lot harder to do to give yourself permission. I'm not an adult Well, then you have a big advantage So that's how I got into doing magic and ventriloquism and I and So the way I got into voiceover was I love to read I my I Learned to spell my first word My parents names are were Bob and Sylvia. My mom is 94 this are over the weekend Oh, and they would say my mother would say to my father Bob put away the CAND why? It was like took me about a day to figure out what that spelled So I I learned how to read a little bit before I went to kindergarten and so on so I love reading and I love performing and so on So I did a little bit of voiceover when I was like nine or ten For you know some local ads and then when I was in radio, man, I my summer job Having had the experience at KFAB through the junior achievement program. I got my FCC ticket I got a third class with a broadcast endorsement so that I could take transmitter reading so I could be left alone big mistake With the transmitter in the controls and the remote stuff. How old are you then? 15 Okay, you're precocious. Wah wah wah. Yeah, and so I got a board shift as a summer job. I had two summer jobs I worked at independent something no something machinery and supply And we delivered things like fire hydrants and gate valves And on the weekends, I had a job working at KB on which was an all-talk station was in a high-rise And all I had to really do were cue tapes and play them and Then discover they had a monitor speaker in the bathroom Sometimes the tapes would in short like a lot shorter, of course like five minutes into what was supposed to be a half hour Program that I run down to the toilet paper. Yes trailing. You've got the visual Grab a cart with a PSA shove it in the deck hit play Turn the fader up and figure what am I gonna do for 15 more minutes? The answer was let's play some music on an all-talk station, right? And that's what I did so that was and you know, it was everything short of the old joke about Then I would rip and read wire copy, you know, they had teletypes We had AP and UPI and the local stuff and so on and I would deliver the newscast So that was that was actually my first really legit actually getting paid Boy, so talk was to talk rip and rip and read is not easy Oh, no because you're you're like looking at these stories, you know, the Titanic has just sunk Just as an example boys and girls. You'll never guess what happened. Yeah, and you've got to like Do it in in a new style After not you because you always had to pre-read and you don't know what well If you can you don't even know what the end of the story is before you start reading That's right, and it's like you could say something like it only 20 people were killed Oh, jeez, right. I think I did that once or twice I have a great joke that I can't not tell okay, this elder wire here this elderly woman doorbell rings By the way, this is I now I have a collection of obsolete jokes that they will not make any sense to anyone soon And this is kind of one of them. It's aging almost dialing a phone by chance. No But but close. Okay, so the doorbell rings and the woman goes hobbles to the door. Yes Goes Western Union, ma'am. I have a telegram. She goes. Oh, I've always wanted a singing telegram He goes well, ma'am. This is not a singer. Oh, please. I've my whole life. I want to catch you because well, ma'am It's not they didn't pay for singing telegram and it's I'm a tiered. Just come on, please for once just Just do me a favor sing me the telegram. I was okay Da-da-da-da-da-da-da your sister Rose is dead Saw that coming out of left field. Oh Man, so voiceover. Yes. Yes. So you got into voiceover got into voice over and when did it bring you got the hell out of it, too Yeah But you're back in it now Apparently so yeah, what brought you out here to sunny, California Well, I was fast forward a few years Yeah, that's good. Remember the part about me Escorting people into the radio stations and making musical recordings. Of course. So I started hanging out at the local multi-track studios Just hanging out and just well, they would let me you know They they would I would introduce myself and I didn't was not packing heat at the time That was my second plan and they had one of them serious recorders had an eight track scully with Cell sync you couldn't overdub. It was awesome. I Haven't had an EMT 100 metal plate reverb chamber that sounded like you were in heaven Yeah, especially the crank the sucker up. Yeah, those things are awesome. Yeah, unbelievable so it was the professional recording studio in town and There was another place UPC universal promotions that had a four track Ampex and Let's just say that there is now a technique which is referred to as as I mentioned earlier social engineering I learned the power of my voice I learned that I could call Minnesota mining and manufacturing on the phone I had a brand new 16 track recorder Yeah, and they were late to the party because Ampex was there and scully was there and 3m had decided to take their Isolope transport which had been used for telemetry recording for NASA and Use it for audio. Hmm and I had a project that I wanted to do and and four tracks was not enough for me So I said yes, this is Byron Wagner and I'm at UPC and we're considering Which vendor to buy our 16 track social engineering is another word for lying. No, no, no, no misrepresent Just kind of misrepresenting the facts remember I said, you know, look at Taley's comment Yes, well, look, I I did not lie I simply said we are considering which vendors machine to use for our forthcoming album and you know right now The studio doesn't have a 16 track And we are the second largest studio in Omaha if you would like to verify this magic word ready memo loan I learned that from trade shows if you'd like to memo loan some gear to us I would be happy to include you in our evaluation And and they paid the freight 3m 16 track It's about double the size of your radio pretty big machine big machine big machine and we used it We hooked it up to the you know the four track console that they had and we used it And it was awesome. That's a lot and while I had the machine There was a brand new radio station going on the air k ios instruction for the Omaha schools and they had dug out well not really dug out they had converted the tile lined former Cafeteria that we had used as a reserve officer training corps rotc drill hall when I was there And they brought in a beautiful, you know Brand new Collins FM transmitter and they redid the rooms and they brought in you know serious pros that you know to build a radio station with Studios this is the days when governments actually threw money at things and Gave infrastructure to education. Yep. Yep, and they put us today were yeah So anyway, so they had this so it was public radio, right? and I thought to myself um You guys don't have any kind of a budget for what we would now call Radio imaging would you like some jingles? Would you like some bumpers now? You're going to play all kinds of stuff, right? classical both kinds of music country and western And pop and rock and everything So this is called ham and egging. I went to my friends who had various groups and I said, okay I will trade you Recording studio time if you do a jingle for kos. I'll record a song or two of yours, right? And we had classical musicians come in. We had an acapella choir We had rock and roll. We had country and western And I did this jingle package Of like 10 or 12 different genres and they put it on the air So then I got to say to people. Oh, yes, I produce music and I do want to hear what I've done Oh, just turn on kos every 15 minutes or so you'll hear one of the things that I did for them and so on social engineering That's right. And then we did send the machine back and they did eventually buy some machine from some manufacturer But we uh, we evaluated it very carefully And the rest is history. Yeah Well, we're gonna get into how you came to california and all the amazing things you've done since then But we're gonna take a break right now if you got a question for Byron Wagner Although you're probably totally mesmerized by his life story We'll be right back here on voiceover body shot This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on the voiceover body shop Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice denouncer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. Were you? This is virgin radio. Well, okay. We're not that innocent. There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working Dickies because 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 smart phone 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 rig This is your knee rig when hope is lost the i8 from vmw Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's j michael collins. I 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 jmc voiceover dot com Now if dan will stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show audiobook narration ACX audible rights holders and success as a narrator. That's what you want, right? How about a free class on how to make that happen even better? How about Three free classes on how to become a successful and happy audiobook narrator It's about to happen and all you need to do is let us know you're interested Go to acx masterclass.com to jump on the alert list for the upcoming 2020 training that they're offering Absolutely free. That's acx masterclass dot com The first class is friday january 17th, and they'll continue for the next week to be able to watch these classes Just let us know you're interested visit acx masterclass dot com. That's acx masterclass dot 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 voice actor websites dot com like our name implies voice actor websites dot com just does websites for voice actors We believe in creating fast mobile friendly responsive highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use You have full control no need to hire someone every time you want to make a change And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time You can get your voice over website going for as little as 700 dollars So if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options Go to voicehactor websites dot com where your vo website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what? This is bill ratner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham vobs.tv And we're back with Byron Wagner right here. There he is um So we were talking about how you came out to california you're doing jingles and all this stuff Quickly, how did you get out very simple? Okay by car? Boy my arms tired. Uh, no what happened was in those days. Well first I did I went to college for a couple years and then um I found out that I did not Need to be in college anymore in terms of um, let's just say avoiding post-avating being sent to vietnam my mom my mom my mom And see i'm a voice actor and uh at that point in time if I wanted to be a recording engineer record producer I had multiple choices. They were new york It's cold and expensive, but okay. Yeah um la kind of you know summer of love stuff happening right because of summer of love also san francisco there's a lot of recording going on there and If I wanted to do jingles I could go to dallas pepper tanner right or if I wanted to do commercials I could go to chicago craft and all the car companies out of detroit would go to chicago And if I was related to somebody I could go to nashville Would do country or west right And so everybody's related exactly and so actually I I was working at a radio station in krcb in oma exacting counsel blouse iowa cross the river from oma hot and I was eventually going to make it out there, but I started building a mobile unit I got an old from oma hall lace laundry via used car company a Laundry truck And I got plumbers led because they didn't have mass loads kind of like a bread truck right basically Yeah, this is the varied and nondescript box exactly just like what you and your dad did exactly and I took the shackles and restraints out of the back And I put in rock wool and mass and we used it although we didn't use it Very often to actually record from we basically ended up using it to drive up to someone's place and then take the cables out the back and yeah Right, but so often we'd actually move the recorder inside and anyway record high school musical And we ended up recording people who became very famous later hilly michaels peach and lee anyway In oma and I rapidly discovered the reason that there were no mobile units in oma hall Was because there was no market. There's no demand. There was no I missed that part But you're having a hell of a time. They won't come. No, but the great news was It had wheels. Yeah So when I was talking to a very good friend of mine a guy that I had recorded when he'd come around to our college You know you guy named Steve Gillette His wife was kind of in the background as Steve was calling me saying you should come out here I'm sure you get a job right away and And I owed some people for the truck that I've been building and so on I said, well, I'll get out the sooner later in the background His wife at the time yelled Yeah, you big chicken And I thought okay, wait a minute wait a minute I was planning on coming to LA for the aes show the audio engineer society show anyway. I was planning on flying out Instead I will drive out in the mobile unit And I'll see if I can get a job and I'll give myself a month You guys said I could stay with you until I get a job. You have no idea how long that's been I wish I had your social engineering skills 20 years I don't need everybody else But so so I I came out to california the aes show was over the weekend on monday I made a bunch of phone calls. I got through to four studios So I had set up four different interviews for the next day, which was tuesday The first place I went to they said wow, this is great But the guy you're supposed to meet with us in here. Can you come back tomorrow? Sure I went to the second place. He said you're just what we need except your way over qualified I love that one. It's like I just wanted job Maybe we could do like barter for studio time And the third place I got to was icantina's bollocks sound in anglewood And I walked in and I saw there's a much longer series of stories about seeing sure the console that they had and recognizing tangent Yeah, anyway, and I never got to the fourth Interview. Well, they said could you start right now? And I said well, you mean like this was a tuesday You mean like next month. They go no like now. I said you mean like tomorrow. They go like like sit down right here Right. Now they Brought me food They bought me underwear and socks for two kids. I didn't leave the building for three days It turns out they had an album commitment to united artists that they were a little behind on And it was one of those things were timing timing. That's it. That's it. And so that was my first official gig in la wow outstanding so Let's fast forward a little bit. Yeah, because you work with really long tape by the way Yeah, I'm an old guy. So yeah, there's a lot to cover. Yeah, I mean we can cover it another time. That's fine Uh, oh wait, that's that's my cue for ladies and gentlemen boys and girls a special for the v. OBS audience I'm involved with a secret project, which I'm not going to reveal to you now but you v. OBS-ers if that's the correct phrase They've been called words you get a sneak peek if you will send an email to v obs at Byron v o dot com like voice over v obs at Byron v o dot com saying What the hell are you talking about? I will send you an invitation to be a beta tester for an online facility That might be of interest if you do voice over or if you are interested in voice over And I will tell you this much further. There is no upsell because we can't charge you any money. So there And that's all I'm going to tell you I'll remind you about the url again at the end of the program in case you've forgotten But now George you're saying I'm good, George. Oh, sorry Yes, you have to have to your brain mix stuff again. Oh, yeah, check out this website This is really cool, especially if you're you're in voice over, uh, which is probably why you're here um You've got a lot of patents. You yeah, you you've You if if someone is like Had computers talking to each other. Yeah or exchanging Video or an audio and stuff like that recipes are porn primarily. Yeah, well, it's that's what it's used for now Oh, all right. That was not what was I'm sure when you were working wait, you're gonna get money Apparently somebody's making money Crap What are some of the things that you were I mean you I'm looking at this like wow you did this and that Tell them some of the things that you worked on it was an accident officer. I will never do it again Okay, I don't know about the isdm thing. Yeah, so I'll see if I can shorten this as much as possible We've got about 10 minutes here. Okay. Well, there is a person who shall remain nameless And when system seven came out on macintosh's disney Had a whole slew of max and it's particularly the animation division because there weren't any other machines They'd be like nineteen ninety Three four no 92 Because those are really the only ones you could do any animation on. Yep. So Uh, this person became incensed They had an it background and the it background meant that they had started off as a Being counter for lack of a better term um and System seven had this very interesting feature instead of having to go out and buy A fully loaded 286 Machine and then a copy of novel network for a couple of grand to set up a file server Yeah, max would do peer to peer Is it the bonjour thing? No, no, no or very early. We're talking twisted pair You know Apple talk over existing telephone. Oh, yeah, okay, which was great because novel and stuff needed Thick net or thin net because this is long before 10 days to lots of money lots of money and all of a sudden The networking that existed In the disney divisions went to crap because to completely and overly Characterized and stereotype things Women were sharing the things that women share and guys were sharing the things that guys share and all of a sudden they didn't need Papal blessing from the it department to have a login on the file server. They just turned it on Oh and the network Because everybody was always they were actually finally using it instead of just exec sending each other email with no enclosures So they were furious and they actually literally went to kupertino and tried to convince The people at apple to turn this stuff off Because they were it guys right they failed So they decided interesting timing with the story in the news lately about mac or uh secure data archiving on ios or the ability to keep your data secure So so anyway, sorry So the they decided they would do them here as long as possible They decided they would do the next best thing possible, which was get rid of all their macintoshes Which were over a thousand So there is a woman named policy and they were not cheap back then. Oh, no to the cheap There's a woman named paul subman lowery who was the head of the disney mac uses group mickey's mackers And mickey's mackers had a pipeline to Because of disney being a very big macintosh customer to apple and there was a woman at apple Whose job was to be liaison her name was nancy merc to four companies and if i remember right it was 20th century fox disney chinentech and Kaiser permanente, okay, and so she heard about this doom and gloom It's like they're going to make us get rid of all save us obi one You're our only hope so nancy asked around for somebody that had experience with macintosh And some kind of specialty at integrating technology and the arts for global companies And so they ended up with me and I said could I get some free equipment? I will come and do what you need me to do or whatever. So I went and I did some due diligence And um I'm gonna skip way ahead of the story. I made the worst mistake of my entire business career By offering to do something on spec in two weeks and then finding out they had spent Three years and two million dollars doing the same And remember the guy I was talking about it was the it guy. Yeah. Yeah, it was his thing We you talk about mortal enemies talk about step by step slowly I became so while I was there they said, you know what never mind about this problem And I had said, you know When I was doing my kind of tech due diligence and I plugged my mac portable 40 some pounds whatever more is like a battery 40 zones lit up in the chooser And the only place that had that many zones that I knew of outside of apple headquarters Was the savannah river nuclear plant because they had a bunch of macintosh Right. And so I was looking down at the zone names and you know team disney and what I'm said Ed yet, it's our edl And I said, oh, we had a decision list. This is like video editing. They go. No, no That's going to be your disneyland So no, you set up like a fake zone and they said no, no, we have a half a t1 line going across the atlantic Where they're building, you know, you're a disneyland. Oh, you're a dl was your disneyland Okay, and I said, but wait, I had just seen blake todd who was The head of international for disney character voices Sitting on the floor of his office with a cassette machine and a stack of dhl envelopes taking the cassettes out Sticking him the cassette machine rewinding them to zero zeroing the counter fast forwarding the number on the counter on the notes So I listened to the listening to the audition. Yeah. Yeah for beauty and the beast Okay, the Parisian colloquial as opposed to the kebek wa canadian colloquial french And then listening remembering that for 20 seconds while he ejected that cassette took the next cassette Rewind that at zero the counter fast forwarded and listened to the next sample trying to compare the two And I said, um You guys know you could spend 125 bucks on a feral on mac recorder And then you could like digitize the audio and you could send it as an enclosure in your email Because those thl things those are not cheap, right? They said no like 50 bucks a shot I said and it's not like domestic where it gets to the next day They said no three or five days, which means 50 chance of hitting on a weekend when customs is closed. So it's about a week I said, okay, and I thought that was the end of the deal But what had happened was I I knew that blake todd was you know staying in four star hotels and flying first class and not on disney's nickel But for the localizers the studios teletota in paris had been given a budget of if I remember correctly a million dollars to localize beauty and the beast For the french mark because they knew they'd get it all back right so I didn't think he'd be interested in this technology That I had stumbled across that was the beginnings of digital satellite radio Which is two guys Stephen and michael smith from belfast northern island who were beating their heads against the wall trying to get people to listen to this Algorithm this codec. They had developed So to jump way ahead basically what happened was I explained what was possible That he could actually be in real time at a session without having to fly to paris or tokyo or frankfurt or milan And I said, but you're not interested in that right? He says are you kidding me? He says you're telling me Rowland at work at 9 a.m. 9 a.m. Here at 6 p.m. France through a three-hour session in france Do a very nice lunch either at the commissariat team disney 1 p.m. Here 8 a.m. Tokyo to a session in tokyo for three hours and most importantly Do nine holes on my favorite course before it's sundown Dinner with my wife and sleep in my own bed Nudge nudge wait wait saying them are And he said are you fucking kidding me? cha-ching So there were other various interesting problems about creating the codec and making it all work and doing inverse multiplexing On switch 56 and isd n lines But we did all of that all involved The which a product The it was the original aptx apt right. It was the apt codec, which is still not widely but still Operational and maybe a few studios in europe a ton and you're because it's the best quality Um, this is competition to And then that began yes the telos and all of those and so on yeah, yeah, so Anyway, the funny thing was is I couldn't talk about it because it was all done under non-disclosure It was a very significant thing and the reason that was so important to disney was very interesting disney was not able to compete their competitors united artists universal mgm Warner brothers could go day and date simultaneous release in multiple territories yeah disney couldn't do that because they couldn't use subtitles because half their audience was Illiterate because they were five years old They had to dub everything which meant that it took them about three years to get around and do all this stuff So the bottom line was On the first movie that they use our system with They came back later and they said congratulations. You moved forward 300 million dollars in revenue by 18 months on one movie It was lion king Had it been medicine man or cabin boy the numbers Yeah, but it wasn't you picked the right movie Yeah, get that out on and so then the thing was we couldn't talk about it But AT&T and at the time gte pack bell were nuts about it because it was a really validating they had been trying to get Video conferencing off the ground with isdn and telework that that was like science fiction for 30 or 40 years Exactly, but we had something that actually worked. I said you got to come up and talk about it And I to this show called techspo And I said I can't because it's under india and they said well just come up and do kind of a chalk talk And I said no But I've got an idea and this leads into a story involving gramnash And a public demonstration of techspo and then basically bow weaver and don la fontaine Took two or three years to lobby the hell out of their agencies Yeah, they weren't they're not easy to get people to change. No and the ad agencies and all of a sudden It happened and don was able to get rid of his limo And was able to sit in his beautiful silk smoking jacket or whatever and use his home studio and do Sessions in new york early in the morning chicago a little bit later and then sessions out here And that's how the that's why the very first is the end codec and there's more history and there are rest is history And now so that's one is almost history. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we're full cycle flash board. I know questions answers misinformation anybody Nobody's what's your favorite alternative to is the end? I mean, you know, they all exist, but they do and I use them all yes um It's a little too early to pick a winner. There are five contenders. Yeah, some of them are free. Yeah, some of them cost money Yeah, um the good news is we're The long version the answer which I won't go into is that ipv6 should have been there 10 years ago And that pv6 is is a replacement for ipv4 Which is whatever which is what our current ip addresses are, you know, it's one ipv4 depends on the concept of the gift economy of the internet Which is best efforts. It's kind of like printing out a whole bunch of letters Throwing them at your mailman and figuring that some percentage of them will get through And then building on top of that the idea when if they don't get through he'll let me know so I can resend them So there's no guaranteed quality of service Which isdn has because when you make a call with isdn, it's a circuit switched network that exists as long as you've dialed the Call before and direct goes through switches, but it's there's nobody else on that wire and it just works So the answer to your question that I'm avoiding is I am using all of them And I it's shaking out a little bit now, but it will be very interesting to see What continues to happen in the ip the vip space. Yeah goes to isdn Yeah, because you can't you can't get isdn anymore in lots of places, right? It's too expensive. They don't want to support it Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're making it prohibitively expensive intentionally, yeah now briefly You've built a second choice. Yes, okay You've built a new studio here in Sherman Oaks. I did you did I did it's I imagine it's probably almost finished. I mean you've been working on it since I've moved out here That's an option finishing years. Yeah, well, yeah, it's been at least five years What is really this is this is a really high-tech? Yes studio and uh, we will do another whole Season of shows. There's there's one of the rooms. There's yeah, that's that's my room Okay, so that's Byron's person and by the way that are by my daughter We have the panels on the walls are interesting. They're they're why I found a company that uses the same Press that they used to press wood shavings into pallets shipping pallets shipping pallets and they make a ripple acoustic pattern back Wooden piece of stuff that is basically a diffuser. Yeah, but it's a tray. So if you load the front of it with rock wool It's a floor wax and a dessert topping It is a diffuser and an absorber and in fact the coolest part is okay boys and girls physics 101 Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection except you can't see me because she has the thought thing But I'm having a great time. Here we go. All right. I'll show you later But anyway, so it means that it's here we go angle of incidence 13 degrees angle of reflection the same thing So it means that sound that comes in for example from the front Has to go out through like three inches instead of an inch or so of the rock wool So it's not going anywhere. No, it doesn't get more bang for the buck your square footage outstanding. Yep Those are huge huge monitors. How big are those monitors? Uh, put them back up so I can measure them They're actually uh, the monitors on the sides are 55 inches and they're all 4k The monitor in the front is a photogrammetrically Calibrate able monitor for doing still and video work as well That's also 4k and then there's actually you can't really see it, but um, that's a little macbook Pro sitting at the center running all of this. Yes, that's right. No and no actually The monitors are set up. We have three main computers besides mine. There are two Trash can sell mac pros and a mac mini and the video outputs of any of the Outputs of the one or two per cpu are switchable through an hdmi matrix to any of the monitors And basically there are three major spaces if you want to put some photos back up There's my room which I use for voiceover and the art is really great. That's my daughter. Thank you very much This is the most important room in the studio. This is the bathroom. Sue is laughing quietly because her mic is turned down Um, I'm not kidding go now go back go back to that shot. I need to do a feature by feature The handle on the left is a shower The entire room is a wet room and that's why it's all tile floor to ceiling and ceiling And there's also if you kind of can't see it, but in the middle Down about a third of the picture is what looks suspiciously like a waterproof marine Yacht style hi-fi speaker. It's exactly what it looks like. There are two of those and we have 60 watts Arm as per channel into those speakers now when you're not using it as an acoustic echo chamber It's connected to an amazon echo dot So that you can sit on the throne and command The playing of it's cotton if you can be minor ride of the valkyries, you know, whatever you want has either inspiration or camouflage so something like You know alexa play benny goodman works great works great and it's also an echo chamber. Okay Oh Now we've done it Is it alexa or echo that you have to command it's alexa alexa stop for god's sake Please i'm begging you. I was yelling at mine. Is it me or are they getting harder of hearing? I was yelling at this morning Like literally yelling officer. I've never seen that man before in my life. Yes That was a visit so that bathroom is amazing Yes, go ahead and bring up there are some pictures of other pictures that people might want to see more of a studio Uh, they're under you'll find them there's that's not it, but that's okay. That's his story That's just that's a picture of me without facial hair to speak of it takes me a very long time to grow it And that's editing outside of my booth in my old place, which was literally one bedroom apartment. Okay, that's the That's that's the video studio. All right. So I thought well if i'm doing a recording studio It should be like a little insert stage so I can do vlogging. Is that how it's pronounced vlogging? Yes, I thought you're clearing your throat. Yeah, okay vlogging And uh, you know a little bit of post stuff or maybe adr or maybe, you know dubbing or things like that. So um The one thing that occurred to me having spent a long time in studios was you have to step over or trip over microphone cables and earphone cables and power cables and guitar cables and amplifier cables Because they're on the floor. I thought well, I'm putting in a lighting grid Why don't I and if you look up at the right hand corner of the picture highlighted by a conveniently placed light You will see grip clamps On the base of microphone stands So my microphone stands hang from the ceiling and you will also notice a plethora of cabling and stuff on the ceiling So you got a guitar cable that goes to a direct box. You got a microphone You want to plug it in you need power for something Um, I I was able to a lot of this is kind of sourced from surplus or secondhand places we counted and we have 532 ac outlets Within the studio proper, which is only 400 square feet But and we have ups is hooked into them permanently because I thought well, you know You want to let's so that was the live room and there's also seamless paper on electric let downs and so on And if you keep looking you might find another picture that is of The control room as we call it although the point Of building the studio the way that I wanted with george's help whether he's willing to admit it or not That's the control room So again, you know 55 inch 4k monitors and you'll see rx7 up on one screen and up on the left You'll see a bunch of um the outputs of the cameras in the different rooms um Each of the rooms is acoustically isolated from each other and the outside equally I see quarry You probably do quarry I've something like that. Yeah, you did a lot of the hand he did. Yes Yes, he did We had a lot of great help and anyway So the concept is that could be the mix down room or it could be an iso booth It could be voiceover. It could be I could you know from the live room if I bring in a folding table I have a fader port So I plug that in I lower the gen elects down to ear level and I had some mixing suite Oh, no, it's not. It's a classroom Only here in california folks Byron. It's a pleasure to have you on our show likewise And I'll it's not george stand. That's right. I wanted to correct you Thank you And I think you're allowed to stay longer if you want. Yeah, I will be happy to stay Okay, we'll stick around for tech talk, which is coming up next, but we're gonna take a break right now We're gonna have to do a show from your studio. We're going to do that That's my plan next couple of months and then you can get a real tour of this place Yep, it is it is amazing. All right, we'll be right back and wrap this up and they get ready for tech talk right after this Yeah, hi, this is Carlos. I was rocky the voice of rocko and you're watching voiceover body shop Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer that place is voiceover extra dot com Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level Stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls Voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed Learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books Auditioning casting home studio setup and equipment marketing performance techniques and much more It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voiceover audition It's all here at voiceover extra dot com. That's voice over x t r a dot com Hey, it's time to talk about voiceover essentials dot com and unlike congress voiceover Essentials keeps their word and their amazingly successful january 2020 sale on their voice optimized headphones positively ends at midnight january 31st central standard time only on voiceover essentials dot combo Free shipping in the continental u.s. By the way for current users of version one and two voiceover essentials now has replacement leather ear pads available and the replacement audio cords for version two That's over at voiceover essentials dot com go over to voiceover essentials dot com and get your harlan hogan voice optimized headphones Right now for 20 bucks off Hey everybody, it's time to talk about source elements You know who they are the creators of source connect that tool that you don't have what you don't have it You should have it It's that tool that allows you to connect your studio to other studios Around the world so they can record you from your booth It's a tool you should have because even if you're not being asked for it now You might be asked for it tomorrow or in a month or in a year You want to have it ready to go and know how to use it? It's really the air apparent to isdn technology And it is definitely what the pros are using you can go ahead and sign up for a 15 day free trial of source connect Over at source elements dot com Get it up and running get your iLock account in order There's a little video on there. I'll teach you how to do it by Yours truly and it'll help you get up and running so you can understand how it all works Then that day that you get the gig You can activate the license. It's a no-brainer. Give it a try Thanks for your support source elements, and we'll see you right after this break All right Well Byron certainly did have a lot to say and we have just a little time to say goodbye. All right Well, we'll take that and use it wisely. Okay, like uh like next week on this very show We'll have tech talk number 26 Which we're taping right after this right after this so if you got if you got questions ask them right now Absolutely, uh, who are our donors of the week? Oh looks like we got looks like we got some familiar names michelle blinker sarah borges Phillips appear trey moseley shelly avalino brine page patty gibbons and diana birdsall I've almost memorized those names Why because they subscribe and they send us money All the you know on a regular basis a monthly there's a little paypal thing and you can do a subscription Or if there's something particularly helpful you can just do a one-shot little right But you just in our homepage is click on the donate now button and set that up. Thank you Thanks everybody that does that right join our mailing list too because we'll find out what's going on in the show And you could have your booth on the show. This is this is johnny george's brand new booth Isn't this cool? It's pretty awesome. I have to say and it looks like we're actually in it Which is making him happier than anything you could possibly think of We uh, if you'd like to be in the audience email us at the guys at v obs dot tv And if you want to send us your booth, that's the other place to send it to but make sure you send it to us in Landscape this way Alrighty, uh, we need to thank our sponsors Yes, we do like uh harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voice over extra source elements voiceover heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and j michael collins demos And of course dan and marcie lennard foundation for the betterment of live and recorded webcasting Uh and podcasting I guess we're gonna add that on Uh our all into that umbrella. Yes our technical director is the amazing sumer lino who just followed along with us tonight like you wouldn't believe And of course leap any for being leap Thanks lee. Yeah, we are really appreciating you absolutely. All right. Well, we'll be uh We'll be setting up now for a tech talk. Don't go away. Ask your questions And that's gonna do it for us this week. I'm dan lennard and i'm george woodham And this is voiceover body shop or vio bs See you next time guys