 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop and we have we're gonna have a great time tonight Yes, whenever whenever you're listening because we've got the guys from the pro audio suite Robert Marshall Darren Robbo Robertson and Andrew Peters and George and these guys talk about high-tech stuff. So George you're gonna get to introduce them and And then we're gonna talk about that and then we want your questions Because each one of these guys will give us a 20-minute answer And then just turn into a two-part show the tech talk is a might all run into one big We'll just edit it. I think it will Into an episode of the pro audio suite. We're all in trouble. Yeah This time Robbo won't edit it Yeah, or me. Are we ready George? Are we ready? We're ready team these guys. It's time for voiceover body shop right now I Voiceover body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials calm the home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements the folks who bring you source connect JMC demos when quality matters The oh heroes calm become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training Voice actor websites calm where your voice actor website shouldn't be a pain in the butt Voiceover extra your daily resource for voiceover success and by world voices the industry Association of freelance voice talent And now here's your hosts Dan and George Well, hello there. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whidham and this is voiceover body shop or VO B S Wow, and I have a feeling we're gonna have a lot of that tonight Extra even helping Absolutely as they used to say in the Beverly Hillbillies anyway We've got the pro audio suite with us tonight And this is a podcast that you do on the weeks that we're not doing this That's right. That's right We had a little collision this week because of the timing of our having taken off a week for 4th of July So we just we slammed us all in together into because we were all we were all scheduled to be here anyway So we figured what the heck? This is a perfect time to have the rest of my my other family on the show And here they are. Why don't you introduce them? All right, great. Well From way across the pond Representing two of the most well-known well-famous cities of Australia. We have first Robbo who's coming in from Sydney. Hey Robbo. Good day. How are you? Great man, thanks for joining us and it's great to see you. You know when we do the pro audio suite It is audio only we don't even see each other when we produce it So this is actually kind of disconcerting a little a little unsettling. I had to get out of my pajamas this morning And then what's something on that? From further down the coast From a further down the coast we have Andrew Peters from the Melbourne area. Hi Andrew. How you going mate? He's the voice like a warm cup of coffee It's the remnants of COVID unfortunately. Yes the COVID cave. I succumbed to it, but I'm out Yeah, all right like so many others and last and completely least Robert Marshall from Source Elements Like not necessary is Robert Marshall Our pal Robert Marshall from Source Elements and he is also a studio owner and just quickly We'll get everybody to tell us a little bit, but Robbo is a producer. He produces our show produces television radio audio spots Andrew is a voice talent clearly and Robert Does stuff really everything at the Renaissance man we call him He probably paints as well Actually, I'm very bad at that Himself on I hear that's the only thing that I when I paint it ends up just all over my hand. It's really bad Don't make me use the gavel Yeah, what no, this is somebody found this in their attic and said hey, it looks like Dan Leonard I'm gonna see what I can find in my attic that looks like Actually two things I gotta say Dan two things one I've mentioned the Beverly Hill billies some episodes back and everyone sort of like What are you talking about? So I'm glad you actually obviously I'm out of my vintage and remembers the Beverly Hill billies Oh, and secondly, I don't know whether you ever saw I know they did an American version of a TV show called Till death I stood part. I think it was called all in the family. I mean back in the 70s, but the English one Stard a an actor called Warren Mitchell. He played a character called Alf garnet and I have to say if you Google Alf garnet It's Dan Leonard All right. So so so that's like the Dan Leonard on the shelf thing like don't yeah So guys I can get some order in this here. Tell us about the pro audio suite. How did you start it and What goes on? I'm getting a sense of what it's like. I had a prior life We were we were each guests on your show before Like separately, right? And then did we somehow end up all together and it was like you put your peanut butter in my chocolate Well, it was kind of weird because I remember we were Robert and I did a podcast called the voice of the Vio radio show and We used to get guests on and we had George as one guest We had Robert as another guest and then it was coming up for a Christmas and we thought well, let's do one for Christmas Why don't we get George and Robert? See, you know super, you know just for something different and we did And we did the show and then afterwards I called Robbo and said Do you know what that kind of works? I think Let's see if they're interested in coming and doing it permanently. So that's the short story of how it happened Oh, Robbo, but it's also but it's also the magic of the show. I reckon the magic of the show is I'm the sort of Robert as well, but sort of I'm more that the sort of producer side of things Robert while he's also a producer and audio engineer is also the sort of software techie sort of thing George with his obvious skills and AP Who spends his life in little rooms behind microphones? Well, you've got the entire gamut of the industry though, you know Both sides of the glass and like the like the tech support for both sides of the glass Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. That's an important thing now. I I'm not an audio geek And I mean from what I understand you guys get really into detail about stuff and how things are supposed to sound and stuff I can't define what an audio geek is How would you guys define it? Well, I can tell you what it isn't and that's me So we'll move over to somebody else. I would disagree with that completely Anybody who's spent as much coin in audio gear as you is an audio geek. Oh true. Good point. Yeah, okay I'll accept that Yeah, but I think the ultimate audio geek on our show would have to be I would give the award to to robert for sure Me okay. Yeah, I agree. Yeah No question. He can't answer pretty well robo eat your mic a little more gang you up. I want to hear you louder Am I uh, am I mining falling away in the background there? How's that? Yeah, I don't want you to get stepped on and just tromping all over. There we go But that's what I do anyway. I've always done that. There's something about Robo's mic right now that like no matter how close he gets to it He doesn't sound like he's super close to it. I'm kind of hearing that too to be honest with you But see that's the ntg for you just like bash the front of it Just go yeah That's me 35 years as an audio engineer is this thing working? Yeah, hello Didn't you used to love that, you know, don't please don't touch it. Yeah Let me toss this out there and and and and see what you know comes out the other end It's gonna be very dangerous Bs is what will come out the other end. That's why we're that's why we're v obs Each one of you tell me what you think are the keys to good audio For voiceover specifically and then you can talk about all the other weird crap that you guys talked about for me for for me for voiceover Uh, it needs to sound real. It needs to sound natural. I Greatest respect Been doing radio imaging for 35 years now and the greatest respect to all the radio images out there But I hear a lot of radio images who produce podcasts and stuff like that Which is a more natural form of audio and obviously very voice driven and they Use the same tricks and effects that they use on Voices on radio promo so they can press the living hell out of it They cue the living hell out of it and to me that's not natural to me on a radio promo. Absolutely. You need to do that There's a million reasons we could sit here forever and talk about why but for a podcast It's just people sitting having a chat. I want it to sound natural. I want it to sound easy to listen to I want it to sound as unaffected as I can Um and to me, that's the trick That's the biggest. Yeah, we were just talking about because the radio promo is designed to interrupt and get your attention And that's fine, but you don't want an hour of that Essentially, that would be fatiguing. Yeah, can you imagine a documentary sounding like that? Yes Yeah, yeah, Robert you do listen to Robert you're listening to that stuff all day because you're producing it It must be fatiguing. You must have to be careful not to run your cans too hot or your monitor's too hot I mean you're you're fluctuating the level and there's and what's funny with uh, you know listening and mixing for tv a lot is that Especially for advertising. There's a lot of time spent just on the small speakers And and and like, you know, so there's not a lot of volume there and But yeah, no, it's um, it's it's still like very in your face. It depends on exactly what spot you're working on and um, I'm not working on like car dealership spots all day. So I But I've certainly done a number of campaigns where it is just like borderline yelling at people What are you monitoring through robbo? What am I monitoring through? Yeah, when you're editing and mixing and doing all that I've got my um Can you see them up the back there? Yeah, my beautiful adam audio a7x is which uh, I Purchased just last year. In fact, then I have fallen in love with um, and uh, and also my austrian audio Uh, I was going to say a7x and now the name of them's gone out of my head high x65 x65. Thank you Yeah, no worries mate, but but andrew's native They're sort of they've they've become my bees. I've never mixed in headphones until I had them Um, and um, and we had we talked about this on an episode of the show recently I put them on the first time and I hated them. I took them straight off And and now and now they they might go to before anything gets mixed out of proto Throw them on and um and have a listen in that as well. So um, yeah Right and as a producer, of course, you're working with multiple tracks And you're really taking the stuff that you know Any voice actor is going to send you and you're adding all of the other elements I think a lot of people think well, do I have to do that as a voice actor? And no, you're the guy that's going to be doing all the all the hard work So what do you want when a voice actor sends you a file? What do you expect from them? Oh anybody who listens to our show you can answer this Deal with the room first like yeah first thing is not an echoey room First thing and then basically a decent type of mic probably a condenser But a high quality dynamic and make sure you're in front of the stupid mic close um You know and I'd say that's the beginning of it and then after that it gets into uh The equipment but honestly these days A lot of this equipment is all good and the price range is the price range for a You know a hundred dollar usb interface and the quality it gives is You is not as different as you would think for a thousand the difference between that and a thousand dollar interface for example So it's it's pretty inexcusable these days to have crappy gear. I think It's not like telling people it's like there's no microphone out there that's going to make you perform better You know you either yeah, is that true though? Is that true though dan? I I think there's a psychological thing I I think if someone if you go into a studio and someone puts a cheap Mic in front of you it's kind of like yeah, well, is that you really is that what i'm worth And if you if they put up a really, you know like a really good mic you go Thanks, buddy. I mean i've been into studios where the guy's running taken down a shotgun and put up You know he's u87 Because he wants me to be on the u87. I know it's because It's going to sound better anyway with my voice as opposed to the mic he had in there before Which could have been for somebody else, but psychologically you think oh, you know, thanks It could be a placebo about me and my voice and what might fit it well Yeah, correct a placebo effect is still in effect, right? Even if it's not something that's affecting the quality or the product or you're acting It's something I I think the opposite can happen I think the opposite can happen for example sage was working on a song forever and she Um, I just had her set up with like an mbox and an old mac pro one one one mac pro And a audio technica battery powered condenser. It wasn't was not awesome at all She gave her like really basic meant entry level mediocre Equipment to start with she was just writing she was just writing a song and it was like You know, she's recording in our living room the refrigerators right there like buzzing away It wasn't expected to be a good recording No slipping Robert. She should be on a train because that's what you would normally do Yeah, you're right. She's she's really actually upping the quality. I have to But she does these vocals on basically the scratch part of this song like, you know the scratch track and For the next three months. She's chasing that She's just like she likes that performance better and she's she we did it like four times at least Because it's like there's a certain relaxing like oh shitty Mike who cares. I'm just gonna kind of do this and you end up Not worrying about it so much that you end up doing a really kick-ass take Then when you try to think about it too much, you end up breaking it Yeah, rubber I was going to throw it back to you to to you Dan and you andry because There's there's a thing as an audio producer slash engineer slash mixer is Your brain your brain is wired that when things are louder Your brain will tell you they sound better even if they don't True. It's like it's like salt Audio salt So I guess the reverse question that you posed us Dan and andry would be when you're recording Are you conscious of how loud your headphones are? Do you notice a difference if you're monitoring lower as you are when you're when you've got them loud? I mean ap's deaf anyway. He probably didn't even hear me ask that question, but maybe Dan did And well when I'm recording unless I'm doing a remote session, I'm not wearing headphone I listen to myself in the environment in which I'm recording and That way I'm it's I'm not affected by it at all And I you know, it's I find it weird wearing headphones for this But because of the audio the way the audio is set up here on stream yard I've got to I got to wear the headphones But normally I just I just I just listen to myself as I am the way I normally hear myself And you know, there's people that say well, I've got to hear the mouth clicks And I got to hear this and I got to like well, it's it's like George's client Who's like who practically needs a foot pedal for his headphone volume We won't mention any names. Yeah, you're right. Just Sorry, David Kaye. Yeah But not mentioning any names. No, he's a friend of his you made a friend of David Kaye And it's like and and and definitely like some announcers depend depending on the style That you're, you know working in If you're aware of your mic technique and where you are then you need the headphones to really kind of Feel that feedback if you're playing with the proximity effect Yeah I know I know that when you're recording singers Often it helps to really compress their voice for them in their headphones So that you just kind of hear themselves. It's all in their face Yeah, so they have a different feed a headphone feed and yeah, which is separate. Yeah I see I can't I can't I can't work without headphones But I prefer not to Because if you I find it like if I'm gonna wear headphones some of the time Then I'm gonna wear headphones all the time Because if I keep changing things then I get confused as to what, you know, what it's sounding like or whatever so Headphones a hundred percent for me And what what do you use? Um I got the austrian audios I have um Hikes 55s in the booth because they're They're closed back and then I have 65s out here from just want to check and edit for whatever reason I rarely use headphones for an edit if I can't hear it through speakers and I don't worry too much And for things like this, I've just got some audio technica in ears, which I've got to say Great, they're fantastic, especially for like eliminating echo. It's a good trick when if you have those stick it when your ear plugs Well, the good thing is it's like if also if you're um out of the the studio you're traveling and you're recording in a hotel room Or you know, wherever It's actually really good to have in ears because it just cancels anything that's Via that. Yeah, I should use that next time. I'm on a train Yeah, you would frighten yourself because we know exactly what it sounds like Yeah, if you're yeah, if you're just joining us here on voiceover body shop, you're probably very confused Not as confused as we are then exactly It's spreading around our guests are the guys from the pro audio suite, uh, george You're tackling not a guest. I mean these are you george. What are you? You're confused now? Yeah I'm totally confused split personality. I was still wondering about five minutes ago We're doing the podcast right now because It's me. I keep reminding myself. We edit the podcast We don't edit this show. There's there's no razor blades. I'm trying very hard So if you haven't noticed, oh, they're all much less tiresome anything Anyway, uh, if any of you out there who are watching this very show at this very moment If you have a question for these guys who please save us Yes And I know jeff holman is hiding in there somewhere and we will get to those questions in our next segment but But we've got robert marshall and and and robo and andrew peters who are joining us from the pro audio suite and Again, you got a question. They'll be happy to answer them. Um okay, so Getting back to that sort of subject about you know good equipment and stuff like that I mean, I generally peach teach and preach teach and preach Keeping it super duper simple and That it's not going to be everything you do on the back end To make yourself sound like you as I like to say, you know, the idea of a home Voice-over studio specifically is not to make you sound great. It's to make you sound Like you as you exist in the environment in which you're recording and as you said earlier on robert It's like the environment means more than anything else And you know, no no echo no exterior noise those sorts of things What about some of the a lot of people use You know Somebody was like hey, I need help with my rx9. It won't install right and I'm like why are you using that? Well mouth clicks and I've got this and I've got that well to me everything is physical What do you guys think about all of this modern, you know filtering software that we have It's gonna start. Yeah, I don't use it good. Yeah. All right next question. Yeah, no rubber. I know rubber uses it Yeah, I mean something I don't use I'm just saying don't like Let let the end person mixing it deal with that and And there's no need to like start trying to process and hide stuff that will be figured out anyways Yeah, yeah, I think I I think I can see where you're going Dan and I think the answer That you're probably looking for and the one that we give on the show a lot is is really Make your room sound as good as you can You know find find the right room talk to guys like george get yourself set up Somewhere where it's going to be the best possible recording you can make and then as much as possible just leave it alone Um Guy, you know guys like me and robert. We'll we'll we've got your back We'll clean you up. You know, obviously, we're not going to send audio to our clients. It's not right and and look You know back even back in analog days and even the days before home studios We dealt with voiceover artists who had mouth clicks and all the rest of it. It's just a part of recording um So so, you know as long as you're not popping and you know hissing and and someone's mowing the lawn next door um Just just leave it leave it alone and and send it to us and let us deal with it We've we've talked about it at the most a high-pass filter. Maybe if it's set very low Like yeah, yeah 30 or 50 at the most Actually, that's really interesting You said about analog though robo because i'm just thinking in the days when we were recording on tape And the edit was done with a splice block and a china garoff or whatever you call it, you know, um What did you do about? Mouth clicks and things how did you did you cut them out? I can't remember because I was in every production cutting out mouth clicks We had a we had a compressor that was like a super fast high frequency compressor and it was it was originally made for um Taking out pops and vinyl essentially uh, okay, and but honestly the thing like like probably the worst plugins you can think of now it's like It kind of helped and if you used it too much it just made the whole situation worse and yeah, you know, it's like it could take out the really big stuff, but I mean now we're chasing down little like Like little tiny things that that aren't even like spikes above the waveform so I mean that and that seems to be an issue with a lot of people like as I was saying somebody's like I got to use rx9 because I take out all this stuff But when we talk to each other over a cup of coffee in our kitchen or something It's all there and the only reason that we hear it is because we're of course talking a little bit more in proximity To a microphone as opposed to being across a table where you're doing it. Um, but generally I don't know. I hear people they don't do mouth clicks It's only when they're doing it in voiceover for some reason and because I I tend to think that people over project they tend to over emphasize certain syllables and uh And that and that and that happens Actual vocal technique is far more important than all the other things as long as you've got the right environment And you're using your microphone right and your levels are right It really shouldn't matter unless you're really I mean, I I think that people are clicking away even when they're talking amongst each other So it's just that you're in a room when there's background noise and you're six feet away from them and All that so you're not picking up on the mouth clicks that they But I think someone who's and people have clicky days and not clicky days It depends on what you ate and how much you drank and it's like if you were how much you drank the night before too Well, I have a theory too is very well stress is a part of it Stress is a part of it But but robert and you guys that have recorded actors in legit studio, you know commercial studios Do you guys work though? Do you record the actors with the microphone this? close Traditionally like in the you know in the traditional sense you if you're in a good booth you have the freedom to Be a more away from the microphone and still have a very direct sound and then you get a more balanced Kind of frequency. It's not so bassy It's a little bit like you can almost have the same effect by just Staying just as close to the mic and putting it in omni and then You would have less proximity and it sounds more natural if Depending on the booth that they have but a lot of the trick is you get so close to it to avoid your room Yeah, so all of everybody with voiceover booths that are working in closets and All those little wood boxes. We know we all know so well Yeah, they they're forced to have to almost eat the mic because they're getting so much room resonance And it's slowly skewing and it's slowly skewing the aesthetic Yeah, well and the closer the mic is The more the mic is now sensitive to the mouth noise the mouth noise may always be there But the closer the the mouth noise is the same volume no matter how loud or soft you project, right? It's mechanical So it's like a it's like a harpsichord. You can't change the volume of that damn thing. It is That's the sound the volume it is because it's plucking strings, you know Like with the mouth noise. It's just mechanical. So now when you're closer to the mic Guess what gets louder? The mouth noise, you know, and and that's the challenge like It's harder to record a clean great sounding voiceover in a really small room With a really close mic. It just it is harder. Yeah It's interesting because we you're talking about like having a conversation in the kitchen having a bit of coffee You don't hear clicks and you don't hear anything. It's like walking into a room That's echoey. You don't necessarily unless it's like a you know a racquetball church Um, you don't hear the echo but as soon as you record something put headphones on you hear it It's there. There's a bizarre thing that happens with your brain that when it's live your brain is interpreting and it sees it And it cancels certain things out It's like the other thing that your brain can do amazingly well is if you're standing in a circle of four people And it's a party with a hundred people behind you, right? You can hear all four people and what and what's being said And then you just take a recording of that pretty much where you were and you play the recording back And then you can't figure out what the four people are saying as much the background always Seems way louder and your brain because you're not seeing the mouth move There's a million things that just make your brain Use filters it. Yeah There's a very clever there's a very well, there's a very embarrassing thing that i'm sure Every audio engineer who's ever walked to the planet will tell you that they've done is you'll sit there for 20 minutes EQing a voice or compressing a voice or adding a reverb And you'll go I know I'm gonna say my god, that's awesome. And then you'll look up and it's bypassed. Yeah. Yeah It's like you fell for your own producer's knob It's like it's like the knob on the desk like can you can you like do something with that? And you like turn a knob that's not connected anything like oh much better. Yeah Your brain will tell you your brain will be telling you my god. That's getting so much better It's your brain. Your brain is your biggest enemy when the audio the entire hi-fi stereo market has Has based the entire its entire economy on that basically just about Oh, yeah, oh audio file market. Yeah, the audio file market exactly. Yeah Yes, yeah, it's like paint your CDs green. Oh, I definitely hear that $1,000 power cables. I can tell you one of those Exactly exactly speaker cables with electrons that follow traffic directions Well, once again, we're talking with the guys from the pro audio suite If you have a question for them because I mean I got lots of questions I could talk all night which I've been known to do But if you've got a question throw it in the chat room or if you're watching on Facebook or you're watching on YouTube Because we do the show live because we want you guys talking to us and letting us know what what's on your mind and what you need to Make your voiceover practice better, especially from an audio point of view Anyway, we're going to take a quick break right now And we'll be right back with the guys in the pro audio suite right after these incredibly important messages Don't go away This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on the voiceover buddy show Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. 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It's j michael at jmc voiceover.com Now if they will stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show Inflated prices not at voiceover essentials dot com Despite the nationwide inflation rate of over eight percent voiceover essentials refuses to raise prices In fact, they refuse to even say the i-word Their inventory is large on all their products and they purchase them before the current economic conditions It's simply wrong to increase profit as many retailers are doing right now So harlin and company promised not to raise their prices during difficult times for everyone They'll stay the course steady and sure flat and firm solid and steadfast. Okay enough. You get the point Unfortunately, they're under the same inflationary pressures as everyone else And they'll need to restock in the not so distant future No doubt they'll be sticker shock for them and you So right now is the time to order that port-a-booth pro or vo 1a voiceover microphone and their vo 2.0 headphones fight inflation at voiceover essentials dot com Hey there, i'm david h laurance the 17th and with my company vio heroes and my team of coaches and my community of voiceover talent We guide voiceover actors along their journey And you may be watching v obs here, uh, and not nearly as far along as many of the other people who are watching You may not even have started yet And we actually specialize in helping you do just that so if you're watching all the stuff going on here on v obs And going i have no idea what they're talking about. I don't know, but i really want to do this I'd really like to help you Please go to vio heroes dot com slash start That's vio heroes dot com slash start and you can take our getting started in voiceover class Which tells you everything you need to get started as a voice talent And i'd love to hold your hand along the way and help you with that journey Again vio heroes dot com slash start That's vio heroes dot com slash start This is bill radner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv Hey, we're back Voiceover body shop. We're with the pro audio suite and again if you've got a question If these guys know the answer Whether it's the right one or not we'll But uh, if you've got a question throw it in the chat room Whether you're on facebook live or watching us on youtube or watching the smoke signals come over the top of the hill Uh, anyway, just put them in there and we can get those questions to these guys Uh, I I have one question I wanted to throw you guys Because this is something that comes up an awful lot when i'm talking to my clients and and helping them with their audio They're all like i want to sound warm Put it on a coat See that's that's usually what I tell them, you know, yes sometimes they're like, what do I do about the bird sounds outside? I said a shotgun You've been to italy, haven't you Anyway, when somebody says warm and we know that everybody hears differently and Certain sounds or you know people say I have a buzz and you listen. No, it's a hum. Um, like they'll say I have a hum No, it's a buzz What do people mean by warm and is that something that people should achieve? I do you want me to have a crack at this one? You got the warmest voice here It doesn't sound like you have to work too hard at it. Well, I think um, the key is uh, apart from the frog in the throat Excuse me I think uh, exactly Excuse me covered I think the warm thing is either you've either got it or you haven't I think I don't know maybe i'm wrong but uh Each voice has its own signature and some sound warmer than other voices, I guess but Um, if you've got the prerequisite to have a warm voice Stop projecting so much and cuddle into the microphone and get warm What does having a warm sounding voice mean? I don't know Well, it's another one of those. It's another one of those, you know, could mean anything sort of It implies a certain softness But still size like big and soft I would say but it's When we start using these words like for audio because they're all like touchy-feely words and yeah But if you ever had the one with the colors, I mean, I haven't heard it for a while but used to go like um Just you know when you can you just think it's kind of brown. Can you think brown? I've never heard like like make it sound more purple is like the the joke A little more blue and purple I've heard I mean bright and dark that makes sense, you know, if you're yeah It's just like up up the scale down the scale is all it is I mean you could it doesn't have to be bright and dark, but no do you have to take your pantone colors with you? And yeah, it's like oh Well, it's it's funny because you're talking about pantone colors, but really it's like all these different words they you know Se and edgy and boomy and and they all have different kind of spots in the frequency range Generally that people agree on and Probably pretty wide But certain words you would definitely at least agree are like say 1k and below and those would be like boomy and muffy or whatever it sounds like a Pro audio suite episode waiting to happen Yeah And talk for 45 minutes about That's the show though, that's the show Clearly to people do care about it because they keep hearing it. I want to sound this way. I want to sound that way I'm like well you sound the way you are I think yeah, I think that's right. I think you've got it. You've got to deal with your voice is what your voice is You know like how many times I hear voiceover artists making their own voiceover demos or something like that And and they obviously decide that they they want to sound a bit more warm or a bit more Thick or whatever term you want to put on it and all they do is they just they grab You know something down around 100 150 hertz and they just wind the hell out of it and and just put all this This this bottom end that's not really there into their voice and and stuff like that and it's just it's it's Coming back to what we were talking about before it's not natural No, it's not normally there. Don't don't try and make it there. Your voice is your voice It's it's stuck with it. Yeah, what yeah what you start with if it's Music or voiceover, it's like how do I sound this way or that way? It's like well sound that way That's the first thing and all the eq like It's all meant for subtle very refined changes and if you're using it for extreme stuff Then you're fixing something or trying to force it into a place that it doesn't want to be But ideally You know like you're doing this with your voice You are projecting in certain in a certain way or talking softly and that's all part of the sound of it And that's immediately we're warm or dark or whatever Comes from to start with and then I think a good example is um is Nancy Cartwright You know you think about her like like she couldn't play Bart if she sounded like Andrew Oh, no, it'd be a different kind of bar She could just like do that mid-rangey thing like I don't know It's it's it's just your voice is your voice and yes You can put your pushy voice to different places But you can still only push it to places that it's it's able to go Right. Um, yeah, you know, it's it's it's it's like accents to me. I always find that interesting I mean, I know that Matt Cowrick is is very good at accents. In fact, he's you know He's just a freak in that department, but sometimes, you know, people say why don't you? Why don't you do an American voice over and stuff like that? It's like, why would I? How many other American voiceovers are there so many? Why would I compete? It's ridiculous so Stick to your question if you got your top button done up. I Just noticed that's very formal of you I mean, it's a solo shirt. It's very English of me Would it be legit for a voice over throwback to my sort of skin and days or something? Shall we go for some gin and polo? Just don't ask Prince Andrew for god's sake Otherwise We got some questions from our our vast worldwide audience and I'm wondering if you guys want to Sure, George will answer the first question this part all night I reckon you should do it. Dan, you should actually get the just pull a question. I don't look at it And just pick a name of any of us and it will probably be the wrong question So that just print it write it backwards and then stick it on your forehead And then we'll answer the question and then you'll have to guess what the question was All right, George gets the first question and he can address it to whoever he wishes The first one in the audience from rob rider who's on youtube watching In from Cincinnati Um, I've been told that the normal noise floor in a quiet home Is about minus 70 db if a booth has a noise floor of minus 60 db Or better, why do we need room tone at all like for audiobooks? How about uh, robert you take this one? Oh god If if if the noise floor of a house is Lower than your booth. Why do you need room tone for um, I mean, I would call it booth tone You just because it's if if you're cutting everything and you and you edit like between one word and another word You're gonna hear the silence and your brain whoever the listener is will feel the absence of whatever it is in the background So you want to bridge that across with your edits even if you're cutting out breaths You might even just want some silence there because if not you'll feel that complete cliff down Um, anybody on headphones will especially notice this stuff because then it's not blending with Whatever room tone is existing with the speakers that they're listening in already So if you're on headphones, it's like now you're fighting against zero There's no place to hide you can hear your edits put some booth tone or some room tone in between things and it just makes Life way easier if not you have to have such an incredibly clean setup that um, it's really hard to achieve And you have to make no noises if you're move, you know Like in between words if you somehow move your arm and there's a sound and you have to get out of it Again, you're gonna hear these things be Cut in and out. Um, it sound gated and whatnot. So yeah, I mean a normal noise floor in a quiet room minus 70 b I I don't I don't I don't know where that spec comes from If you're living in a bunker, it's probably I mean if yeah, if you have a quiet home and and and and Urban suburban or or Whatever environment you could probably get that low The problem is a lot of us are in urban environments And we never get close to that level of a room tone and a quiet home And then people go inside a booth thinking it's going to be quieter And it might be all the way down to 150 hertz quieter, but from 150 or below It sometimes is louder because that room is a resonating chamber and now it makes everything Louder in those lower frequencies. So yeah, we're all fighting against different Battles in terms of room tone noise levels. Yeah, and and the other thing also to remember is is, you know, it Absolutely when the audio is raw You probably not going to notice it so much But once you start processing once you start e queuing and compressing and all that sort of stuff You actually are bringing that noise up a touch So it does become more noticeable and a compressor will just bring all your edits out. You'll that's totally yeah And you know, unless you you know, unless you you sort of you know Go in and do a whole bunch of heaps of heap of noise reduction and stuff Your brain will pick up as exactly as Robert's saying. Yeah, there's certainly we'll pick up silence. Yeah Yeah, you do want something just to fill those gaps. So um I usually I've actually got a file sitting there when I edit which is actually just The the noise of the booth Which I've captured and I just I just cut a piece and when I have to take something out like a breath or whatever I just drop it in That's how I do it. It's it's bizarre not to take this into a pro audio suite thing but Adding noise in a sense adds resolution to things Um, which is what's called dither But it can it gives a nice the easiest way to explain it is it gives a nice infinity for like For your voice to go or whatever it is that you're listening to for to fade away into So you can't tell when it went away and if if you don't have that then it's a lot harder to Kind of give us a voice over artist would also probably be horrified to know that one of the first things you reach for when you're processing voices These days is a bit of distortion Just to give it a bit of crack and crunch and and pop. So um, you know, it's um, it does have its place Now here's a question. Also, when you uh, if you've got your mic set If you've got a multi pattern microphone Depending on what pattern you select when you cut at the end of a word. I know this it's You get a click What pattern is that? We talked about this only a couple of weeks ago And any pattern that lets more low end through Basically because that click is going to mainly come from leaving a waveform. The low end tends to be more So susceptible to the cut happening when it's way at the bottom of the, you know, like the waveform moving up and down Relative to zero and so if you cut there on the bottom and the worst-case scenario is the next instant is a cut on the top Physically, there's no way sound instantly jumps up like that and you get a click So something that has a lot of low end um But I remember that I used to um, you know in our in our booth at at a studio I worked at we had a crt tv and One of the engineers just didn't care that that thing was on like kicking out like 14k constantly And he just didn't hear it didn't care about it. Whatever. Um, but the funny thing is like you would scrub And you'd scrub down you're like And then that super high frequency noise would come down into like some other audio frequency And it'd just be maddening when you're editing because it'd be like you'd go into scrub You like And you'd hear it constantly because it's like this 14k signal being Pit shifted as you scrub Well, we got a question here from linda graves Uh, who says and this this is one I ask all the time because it's like why are you doing this? What does a one a $1,000 interface like a universal apollo twin duo give you That the 150 to 200 dollar interfaces do aside from the fact that you can use all those plugins Um, you have less dollars to worry about Yeah Um, the the apollo's got a pretty decent preamp. Um, and so some of those like hundred dollar 150 dollar They're gonna have a preamp that doesn't quite give you as like they might go up to a good example Is like a road ai one it only goes up to like 50 decibels of boost Um, and so maybe if you're really soft spoken or doing some asmr or something You could use the extra gain before the mic preamp gets noisy There's a hell of a lot of internal routing and other capabilities that the apollo has for dealing with latency But in the end if all you need is a mic in and headphone out and you're trying to look for simplicity the most the apollo offers you I think is a Good mic preamp and a good headphone preamp Yeah Yeah, I actually like the um the ssl 2 which is uh the interface that I use like that one. Yeah, I've been hearing that Well, it's got plenty of gain. That was a thing because robert and I were doing We're actually shooting a video for source elements as it was And uh, I was using the ai one and my daughter was doing the voice And it just didn't have enough gain for what we were trying to achieve I mean we was cranked but we we got through it, but it it wasn't ideal and uh, so robert and I afterwards started talking about Getting another interface with more gain and we scoured around and um found the ssl 2 so I bought one and that I think that's got about 60 65 or 60 60 to 65 whatever it is. Yeah, the road I think has like 45 I think and I think some of the other like less expensive interfaces are like 50 and 55 the road was honestly especially low Um, it's not bad. It doesn't but the road doesn't seem to go into like crazy noise some of them that go up to Whatever 80 and 60 or whatever when when they do get up there. They're just Kicking a lot of noise anyways, so it's kind of useless range Yeah, interesting that road would put that out with only 50 db game because the roads generally are somewhat lower output But uh, I think the reason they did it with that because it was a kit and then it came with the You could buy the condenser as it came with the nt1 one Yeah, and the nt1 has a a huge amount of gain. It's incredibly quiet So I think is a pair with the ai1 on the nt1. It worked really well It's when you start sticking other things you put a dynamic mic on that like put an sm7 with the ai1 And you're in pain. You're in trouble Yeah George you got jeff holman's question I'll do that. I just wanted to there was a follow-up from rob. He said, oh, I'm sorry I got some of the stuff backwards actually meant that the noise level in my house Is actually louder than the noise level in my booth and I think what he's I think it's a semantical thing He's asking about room tone again and room tone is just a generic term for The sound of an open microphone in a space Right without you talking. Yeah, right. So every room has a different room tone because it's unique to that space That's what we're really referring to so Yeah, your booth might have a higher should have a lower your booth should have a lower room tone than your house It would hope yeah, otherwise you wasted a lot of money, but it doesn't yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, so that's that's definitely true Um jeff holman asks. He's our very own chat room mod What's your feeling on using pre processing to audio requested to be audio without processing? Like sending in an audition with high-pass filter activated on your revelator when you're not doing post processing Technically So yeah, we talked about I don't I don't call a high-pass filter. I'll pass that one off is not Processing like you're you're allowed to use a high-pass filter as long as it's not too high everything else Don't touch it. I think yeah I think we talked about this a couple episodes ago for me it comes down to for me it comes down to Do what you have to do And but do it for a reason so have a result in mind Don't blindly reach for a high-pass filter You know, if you don't know what it's going to do or why you need it Um, leave it alone. If there's nothing sonically that strikes you that makes you go, you know, this could be a little odd Don't don't do it Yeah, how about this for an answer? If you have a problem that you know about You have two choices And that is to just let the other engineer deal with it Or you try to get rid of it And the whole question is can you get rid of it better than the engineer? Can you get rid of it without tying their hands in any way that they might go? You know what? I just didn't care about that noise at all. I didn't care at all And now this processing has done something. It's cut the end of a breath off If it's a gate or something does something weird that maybe in some for some reason is needed But if you're absolutely sure that you can solve the problem for the engineer You are doing them a favor. You're saving them time great Um, the problem is that that's not guaranteed to be what they want And so the other aspect I would say is If you can do something with your voice that you cannot stand someone not doing for you If you don't trust them like just the opposite if you don't trust the engineer to you know Tweak it up and give a little bit of a brighter eq and compress it a little bit whatever If you if you're not sure they're going to do that and you can't stand the possibility of your voice going out without that Then Sure do your stuff And the weird thing is the awkward conversation you have to have with the engineer and whoever it is It's not really that awkward but like do you want processing or not? Do you like it like this or like that be really quick at being able to turn the stuff off? Um, if you're probably doing a session with me, I'm gonna like turn it off But there might be engineers out there that do prefer it or they do want to work quick or Classically you're recording with um say direct to a client and they're editing your voice Straight in a video editor and you just know that they're never going to give it to an audio person And they're just going to spit it out of the video machine Then you might want to get ahead of the game and try to process your voice for those things, but um Yeah, you have to be confident in the processing you're doing And then you have to be willing to have the conversation with somebody to say hey I'm doing this. Do you want it or not or you can just not do it? No one expects you to do it anyways and done I think there's the only issue I can see with that though is that we all have this weird perception of what we sound like And I guarantee if you know like if voice talent decides they're going to process their voice They're going to make it sound like some something they want it to sound like not what it should sound like And that that's an issue that um, you know once it's baked you can't unbake it. So correct my advice I would say Don't don't touch you can never go wrong with not touching it Yeah I mean the thing is if you're if you're if your room is fun like we talked about before if your booth Is good, you know and the the everything that comes out of there sounds Natural as we've talked about, you know sonically fine Then even if they do stick it in there or it's not perfect But you kind of go. Well, you know, it's better than me butchering it or whatever, you know So just leave that's the thing I think that's the thing and and I don't I really don't want to sound arrogant here, but But interestingly too late too late. Yes. I know exactly what an asshole that robo is And she was he head up his ass um, I I would suggest to you that, you know, I guess, you know Given 35 years here Robert however many years behind the console an audio engineer is gonna know What they want to do with your bad audio better than you You know what I mean, and oh, they're gonna want to do it their own way They're gonna go. Well, you know, I don't like this so I'm gonna process this way But if you give it to them and you've already had a hack of it you What you do is you push them into a corner of what they they're able to do to get the result they want So especially with compression and gating you you you can barely undo that stuff if at all Like totally how many how many guys like robo how many times have you listened to other audio engineers? And we're not going to name names, but you hear what they do and it's like That sounds like crap. What are they doing? I mean, that's the point though. They don't think it sounds like crap. You think it sounds like crap That's right and they may listen to my stuff and go well, that's rubbish too and that's that's not personal But but you know at least it's it's as an audio engineer They've been given the opportunity to make it crap if that's how they want it to sound if that's the sound they want to make it sound Um, it hasn't been you know It's not taken away at the beginning of the process because you've over compressed your voice or you've gated so hard You've cut stuff off and now all of a sudden I'm pushed into this corner where I've got to spend 45 minutes to an hour doing what I can to fix it for it for it and still not perfect result I mean like like a situation like this you're doing an ensemble record or it's supposed to be all this stuff recorded sort of in a in a group and One person gives you this super highly compressed Thing which doesn't sound very room-like and conversational So now you're like great. I got to make everyone sound similar I got to make them all sound like they're super compressed And then you're like Well, okay, it works and probably most people don't notice but you're you're thinking as an engineer like man If I had it differently, I would have treated these voices like that and it really would have sounded like they were all in a room And yeah, and you're just like well I had to take in a different direction because one person went there now I have to take everything there for example. Yeah. Yeah. Well gentlemen We we've reached the end of this particular hour But you're going to stick around and we're going to do tech talk for next week And if anybody's got a question for you that they are like, what are these guys talking about? We can We can we can get into that in our in our in our next hour. And anyway, uh, guys, thanks for being with us tonight Uh, it's a pleasure to meet all of you. I mean, I know most of you guys But it's always a pleasure to to talk with you and thanks for being with us. It's a pleasure to meet you guys, too I haven't seen anything You know what some of these guys look like Anyway, George and I'll be back to wrap things up right after this Beautiful. You're still watching vlbs In these modern times every business needs a website when you need a website for your voice acting business There's only one place to go like the name says voice actor websites.com Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept to Live online in a much shorter time when you contact voice actor websites.com Their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are They work with you to highlight what you do Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are And how your voice is the one for them plus voice actor websites.com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voice over career flourish Don't try it yourself. Go with the pros voice actor websites.com where your via website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what It's time. Yes, it is To do something I've never had to do before and that is to a commercial For source elements in front of the co-founder of source connect and source elements robert marshall Um, I don't know if he knows this but I make it up every single time and I do it twice Twice the session and here we go Source connect is an amazing tool for connecting your studio to others In the in the world of production and it's it's loved by so many producers for a couple reasons one It's been around a long time to a point where it's been I would I will say safely it's become a standard, right? It's become a standard staple of A voiceover recording production because it is just it's been around a long time Maybe later when we get in the tech talk later robert can go a little bit more into Source elements history and when and when source connect was developed, but it's been a while It's been a minute as the kids say um, so it's a it's a well established tool It also the producers are recording your audio Directly into their timeline in whatever DAW they're using 95 of the time Probably pro tools and so it works in the workflow It just flows into the way the producers work and it allows a very efficient way of working It also allows them to have a client or clients and many times with big commercials There's many clients all listening in either physically sitting in a studio Or all dialed in from another system And they're all listening to what you're doing in real time giving notes giving direction Listening to approval and all of this is happening real time because your audio goes right into the track That is the key and that's why it's such a hugely popular tool And why as a voice actor you probably should be at the very least Highly familiar with it if not owning a license and if you want to do that go to source elements Dot com they have a brand new website by the way to go check it out Get familiar and get yourself a trial license so you can start learning how to use it And you'll find out very quickly whether your studio is Ready for source connect when you start testing it We can help you if you're not so don't worry about that Dan and I and the team at source elements as well We'll love to give you a little bit of advice to get your studio up to par. But anyway, there you go Thank you source elements. Thank you robert and thank you rebecca For sponsoring us for so long. We really appreciate it and let's get back to The rest of the show right after this Yeah, hi, this is carlo zellers rocky the voice of rocko and you're watching voiceover body shop And we're back and uh, we're gonna rack it up for tech talk and we're gonna have the uh Pro audio suite guys with us should make your tech update rather interesting See what they think about some of the way exactly stuff that stuff that you find Anyway, uh next week on this very show we will have Tech talk number 82 believe it or don't it just goes on and on there's just so much to talk about tech never stops It just it just becomes the next tech Anyway, uh, let's see here. We have our donors of the week like jonathan grant Oh my gosh, uh, kisser for epperson sarah borges Phillips appear tom pinto Shelly avaleno george widham senior. That's right brian page patty gibbons rob rider gregg thomas A doctor voice ant land productions a uncle right Shawna pennington baird martha con Don griffith Trey moseley danna birds off and sandra manweller if you want to make a donation to the show to keep the Amazing technical quality that we have achieved Over the last 11 years If you go to our homepage, uh v obs dot tv There's a button that says donate now you can give us a buck you can give us a buck a month You can give us 10 bucks a month. You can be like some people who give us 500 bucks a month Well done. Yeah, thank you. I Thought that would be worth it. Anyway, uh, that's important also You can join our mailing list there and you'll get a An update of what we're going to be doing this week So you know that you have to tune in to catch that stuff Uh, we also need to thank our sponsors like harlin hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra sora salamence Vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com jmc demos and World voices dot org the industry association of freelance voice talent. Yes. I'm the president But i'm also a member Uh, and I got a slip in my little promotion. It's amazing how many people don't use this coupon code You guys are crazy leaving money with 20 off any service at george the dot tech That's a booked or booked service scheduled service or a webinar If you use v obs fan 2022 yeah 20 off. All right. Very good Uh, we need to thank jeff holman for doing a great job in the chat room getting those questions in there But he's not done yet. We still gotta do tech doc and Of course sumer lino for coming home in hot weather riding her bike back from the airport and doing the amazing stuff That she does is our technical director. So we thank her for that and of course lee pinney just for being lee pinney Anyway, that's gonna do it for this show and we're gonna re-racket for tech talk If you got questions put them in the chat room. Anyway, you know, this isn't an easy business There's so much you gotta know but As long as your audio sounds good. It is good. I'm dan lennard. I'm george widdum and this is voiceover body shop or v. O b See you in a bit