 Hey, it's time for a voiceover body shop tech talk number 58 There it is Graphics, you know expensive that graphic was really Your donations went all to that one graphic. It's Let's see that again. There it is. Trust me folks in Clubhouse anything impressive It's just a flashing number 58. Yeah, anyway, well, we got lots of cool stuff to talk about tonight you know, you've got some stuff with with Mac hardware and Some other things dealing with Mac and something else that you'll probably find along the way Also, we're gonna talk about you know, one of the things we get we get involved with is people saying, you know it sounded like this and now it sounds like that and we had to deal with something something like that this week and So that's there, but mostly we'd love your questions. So send them in in Facebook and YouTube or On Clubhouse, we'd love to hear from you on Clubhouse and so let's rack it up Let's roll time for voiceover body shop tech talk 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 Whitton the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio and Each week they allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voiceover body shop Tech talk Voiceover body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials calm home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites calm where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes calm become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training J. Michael Collins demos when Quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success And now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Well, hello there, I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whitton and this is voiceover body shop or VO B s Tech talk Tech talk tech talk tech talk. Can you hear you again, Jeff? He's been gone for a little bit Anyway, we're here to talk about your home voiceover studio And because you know, there's a lot of information out there. It's basically BS I guess that's one way to put it And George and I are here to to ease the mythology out of you, you know what people will say Oh, I use this use that everybody's an expert in one studio their own except for Myself and George good because we just that's what we do. That's what we do. We work with everybody We've heard it all in aggregate. We've learned more than I think anybody at this point just I'm I probably That I've learned. Yeah, that's the problem You know you sometimes forget certain things that all of my own clients will say oh, and then this works remember how that oh Yeah, okay. Thanks for reminding me. It's been a while. Exactly Exactly a Well, anyway, but that's that's what George and I do we we help people with their home voiceover studios and You know and that can cover a whole lot of things, you know Whether you've got a technical issue whether you've got you have no idea what on earth you're doing We we saw a lot of that during the pandemic where you know people were you know They're professional voice actors and then suddenly they had to do it from home And there was an awful lot of intimidation out there So they would consult with us and we got them It's like usually like just think of it as a cassette recorder intimidation navigation Exactly, that's what we're doing. So if you want to learn it right you can work with us and If you want to work with George Who's a great teacher and knows a whole lot of stuff and is really good at presenting the really complex and making it a little less complex Where would they go? Can't always count on that, but I'll try You can head over to george of the tech or george of the tech comm and My services are over there Someday soon. Oh, please We're gonna have a new website with a whole new fresh design and a new look and a new navigation and a new booking system And a new ticket tracking system and on and on and I'm really excited about it, but it's not here yet So the old site is still Functional FUNK Functional So come over there and you can book services there send me questions. You can get an answer Let's say you got a couple of questions and you're like, I know that George is kind of busy How can I get his attention? You can get an answer service and just pay for me to answer a bunch of questions in an email Now we get my undivided attention so you might not know about that give it a shot and Dan does a lot of the same stuff in his own special kind of way over at his site and that is Why can't we hear you Dan? I'm muted take two. Okay, and Dan's gonna be heard over at homevoiceoverstudio.com You adjust the mic you turn it off. So I'm not bothering everybody and it's like, oh, yeah I got to turn it back on don't have technology. I know yeah when you're doing voiceover and you're recording stuff What why is there no voice? Oh? Happens to everybody. Oh, yeah, I wish there was like a really cool nifty on the air or record tally light That was just sort of universal like you could just it's a red light You put it on your monitor or whatever that, you know, whatever thing you look at the most maybe your computer and If no audio is flowing It would start Reminding you turn on your mic. Wouldn't that be cool? There it is. I'm thinking I'm thinking like something tally like tally light I'm thinking like a box that monitors the audio flowing between the mic and Your software or something like that and it would just know if there's no audio coming through it Be like hey, your mic is off zoom does that doesn't it like if you if you say you're muted. Yeah, it'll say you're muted like Oh, yeah, right do that. We should go do that across the board, right? Absolutely anyway, if you want to work with me go over to homeboysoverstudio.com and We'll I'll teach you from soup to nuts how to do this It's not all that hard but if you don't know what you don't know you need somebody who does know what they know and I can teach you that sort of thing Also, if you've got audio if you've got a studio set up if you got all the equipment that everybody else said you Gotta get this mic and you got to get that and you got to get this and you got to get that And then you got to set up your studio and you're gonna be a closet You got to spend $6,000 on a on a booth or what if you got your studio set up Whether big and impressive or you know in a corner somewhere You can send me your audio via my specimen collection cup and I will give it a listen And I will give it a thorough analysis because George and I will tell you we can listen to something for five seconds And we know what's going on in your studio a lot of it is acoustic Most of it is physical But unless we hear it, we don't know so go on over to home voiceover studio calm and check that out Also, I've got a I've got a series of webinars coming up on voice over extra So go on over to voice over extra and check those out three-part series on that's one two three-part series how to do a home voiceover studio on construction on Recording and editing and then another one on processing and Real soups and nuts thing. It's yeah, it's gonna be over two weeks and you know, I'm not gonna sleep They're gonna slip me meals under the door, but we're gonna get all that information out You'll be able to ask all the questions you want and and get my explanation about all that stuff works Anyway, now that we're by the time yeah by the time this one airs, which is on the Next Monday next on the 10th or yeah Tomorrow day after this is when I do my adobe audition So you can still sign up and if you miss the deadline or if you just can't be there alive You can get the recording of the webinar later And I know that's true for Dan's too by the way guys don't forget you these are recorded all these web I always get the record or recorded you can always got watch them later and Mine is on the 15th on adobe audition So if you want to sign up for that ever go to georgia the dot-tech, right? Okay enough plugs Right, let's get on the 15th also, but it's in the evening. Yours is in the afternoon boom boom You can do a double header and have a that's full day of learning You will know what's going on that and then we're doing one on the 17th and then the following week on the 24th So we're nice. Yes. Anyway, what's up in your tech update for this week? Honestly, I was really disappointed. I really expected there to be some really new cool things from Apple in terms of hardware Okay announced today today was the worldwide developer conference Keynote, so this is when Apple comes out and says hey Developers here's all the things you should know about when you're writing your next software for Apple products mobile devices the desktop etc And sometimes they use that opportunity to announce new hardware that tends to be on the pro side of things So it was a lot of rumors saying expect a new MacBook Pro 14 inch and a new 16 inch That wouldn't that didn't happen. So at least that not that I'm aware of I did a little research quickly and didn't see anything So nothing new on the hardware side of things So we're gonna have to probably wait till I think it's autumn When they would do a hardware announcement, but you know, it's Apple They kind of hold all the cards so they could do it at any time. We'll see what happens So then it's not much note There's not new in the hardware the new software the new Mac OS that's coming after Big Sur Which many of you are still not using which is totally fine. Believe me Is gonna be called Monterey It's just moving a little further up the coast I guess that's right, you know They could just hit from they just go from state park or national park to beach who knows but Monterey's next and I didn't see anything game changing as usually as the case. There's in our world where we want a computer that's stable reliable Pain-free and oftentimes the latest way to synchronize files and move seamlessly between devices isn't always all that relevant but There is a thing that's gonna allow your mouse to work across Multiple devices. So what I understand that means is you could have an iPad that's doing iPad type stuff Sitting next to your MacBook and the same mouse pointer could be moving seamlessly between them So now you're actually Operating a mouse on an iPad. I bet a lot of you didn't know you could do that Did you know you could use a mouse on an iPad Dan? I did not know that I think it came out maybe a year or so ago But this is something that's worked forever on Android, but is you know, it's funny Android people they love to poke fun at Apple because Apple tends to adapt to new technologies After it's been already in use on the Android platform for sometimes years But anyway, yes, you can do that You can get a new iPad Pro and put it up on a little stand with a keyboard and a trackpad And it will feel and operate Like a MacBook The problem is it's like an expensive MacBook. The iPad Pros aren't cheap. What are they a thousand plus dollars? 1200 yeah, yeah, then you buy the keyboard and tray the keyboard stand they have for which is another couple hundred dollars Before you know it you have a fifteen hundred dollar iPad And really honestly a MacBook Air M1 for around a thousand I think blows it away in terms of functionality For studio use now if you're an artist and you do a lot of graphic work Okay, the screen on the iPad Pro is unbelievably good But that is really a such a niche and for voiceover to me the MacBook will win hands-down Time after time when you're comparing dollars to donuts, which one should you buy a Mac is far more useful because of the operating system. It's a real OS There's a file manager, you know, there's all these tools that are for the productivity that just are falling behind So we'll have to see what comes out with iOS 15 There was a lot of stuff around iOS 15 announced today So you could go to Apple comm and watch the WWDC Announcement and see if there's anything that really peaks your interest If you see the the announcements and see something it's like Okay, this actually would be pretty amazing for my voiceover business Leave in the comments below. I'd love I'd love to know um System let's talk about system updates. We talk about this, you know from time to time But what I'm finding is if you are using and so here's some rules of thumb I always say if it ain't broke don't fix it etc etc The thing is if you have a brand new Mac the latest generation Okay, so that assumes you probably have a silicon based Mac the m1 series um There's some best practices to keep aware of so I'm normally one that says when when you're in a stable state of your system Leave it there, right? The problem is if you're on a new Mac the latest version You are not in a stable state yet. Okay There are constantly updates being pushed out from apple And thereby the developers of all the software you use and then the drivers from the companies that make the hardware use All that stuff's ever ever changing. Okay, it is not going to be stable completely honestly Until the end of big sir So when monoray comes out usually in october Big sir will be fully baked. That's what I always like to say. It's fully baked now And at that point it's now a locked down system. So When you get to that stage you can count on Big sir being the same way it was the day before and the day after it's not going to change on you There's not going to be a new update to completely upset everything But there will be security updates and those continue onward. So That's why running high sierra or even sierra Which is what eight years old? Oh, yeah, it's been around Even if you're running these old systems apple does still keep their security updates I think up to date for up to 10 years. I believe is right. So, um You don't have to worry about being on the newest os to stay secure So as long as you're doing security updates, you're fine And I've never heard of a security update breaking a system like making a sound driver go crazy or whatever I have I have any I've never experienced that I have not so On the flip side of that, um in the windows world I've been having clients coming to me saying i'm getting glitching in their audio and stuff And I mean once you have a window system dialed in of course it works fine, but the problem is you can't Shut down the updates on a windows system. So it will continuously push out system updates that you cannot disable permanently And um, they they call it patch Tuesdays So watch out on a thursday or wednesday morning. Um, definitely Uh, you might even leave your computer off the day before or the night just to make sure it doesn't push a new update and surprise you Because that can happen on windows systems. So please be careful about that. You still can't Yeah, I I've noticed that, you know With working with the m1 certain programs won't work and then you'll see an update and you do it and suddenly Everything starts working. We're still yeah, we're still in this state of new things all the time coming out like There is no official A universal audio apollo support on the m1 It works and they actually do have a step-by-step guide on how to make it work Which I find interesting. It's like it does work. Well, we don't want to support it But here's how you do it, but we don't support it. It's like What it's crazy. Um, but You know, there's a lot of that going on right now So, um, just be aware if you're going to buy a new mac do realize that you're a front you're you're Forging new trails or blazing new trails so to speak you're if you're a pioneer Um, and things go weird like tonight my camera froze Uh, when we were doing the last episode and uh, I had to unplug it So that stuff's just gonna happen now I don't have many complaints about apple. I mean I've been an apple user for You know close to 20 years now And uh, finally, you know, I was I was I was cleaning off at my old mac mini and I you know something it wouldn't load Take it over to the you know, we tried everything online. Nothing worked Took it over to the genius bar over at the Sherman oaks, uh apple store dropped it off They I get a message Call me back. We you know, we have something to tell you I thought they don't answer the phone there I'm apparently they don't answer the phone at The apple store is it goes directly to apple and then the people from apple can't get a hold of the store either So i'm like, I have to go actually over to the mall to the apple store Stand in line and say What was that? And they'll say, you know I feel like we have to we have to it's a major repair on this and i'm like, yeah You know, it's a three-year-old mac, but we could possibly go wrong with it So they're they're waiting for the part and then a week and a half goes by and I get another message same thing Call me back. I call it. Let's go to apple. They have to call them I can't get the answer. I gotta get in the car drive over to the mall. Fortunately, it's five minutes from here And and finally, you know and the person's like, well, I'll talk to the person and then suddenly my phone rings Oh, yes, we have an update for you Thanks I figure a company that's got stock value the way apple does they can afford to have some people answering the phone But no Yeah, so it's the one time in all the years. It's like, what is going on over there? Yeah, yeah, I I went to buy a phone for my girlfriend's sister Over in iran So I went and bought a new I went to just I wanted to just go up and buy a product, right? You have to make a good luck You have to make an appointment to buy a product Um, which I thought was fascinating. They're like, well go to the app buy the product on the app We'll have it ready for you by the end of the day But actually it only takes about a half hour. So hang around And then come in in a half an hour and then we can give you the product. I'm like, oh come on guys Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, listen, I know a lot of this is pandemic related and it's going to become Normalized, hopefully. Um, another little thing I popped in here is about usb mics And I talked about one a couple weeks ago and there's always new technology on the horizon with usb mics and Certainly we've talked about how uh, they can be used to incredibly good effect quality wise and here's some reason That you might be a little bit embarrassed by your usb mic In a session if you're being live directed So you're on source connector iptl or whatever it is and they start telling you to mess with your gain knob What is it going to sound like to the studio producers the directors the cast Whoever is on that zoom or that session when they say can you adjust your gain and they hear on the other end? Sure, just a minute As you adjust the controls that are physically on your microphone Not very professional So, um, my point is that you can buy a really good sounding let's say Apigee hype mic 300 something bucks right for this great mic and it has that problem or you can get an audio technica 2035 or a harlin hogan vo1a and a hundred dollar usb interface For almost the same money sometimes even cheaper depending on what mic you get And you don't have any of those embarrassing problems. So um, another problem with usb mics that tend to plague folks is length of cable you can't very likely have like your usb mic Let's say in your walk-in closet Or some other part of your room and then your computer outside because of a computer fan making noise And easily and reliably run usb over long distances I'm not saying it doesn't work and many of you are going to comment Well, I'm doing it and it works fine But I can tell you oftentimes those longer usb cable runs are problematic. So you want to Definitely avoid them whenever you possibly can All right, Dan, what's this discussion about why would things sound different? I'm guessing somebody asked you this question or Well, we we had a deal with this this week you and I uh Client of mind is like so and so said my sound I sound like I have a bucket over my head Right, you know, and I I I you know, I I built this guy's original studio and you know it Well, it's and I and I know it. Well, he's made a few changes to it and Why would something sound different, you know From a troubleshooting point of view There's a lot of things you would ask like changing mics Change is are you using a different mic? He was using a 416 and a tlm103 Which are two mics that sound very very different Um In a different technique, which is actually what what what we decided was the actual problem But if you know you go into your studio and someone says to you, why does it sound different? It's like, well, are you talking to the mic the same way? Is if you're in your closet, did you take something to the cleaners? That's one of my favorite things All right You know that's winter and all the Sweaters and comforters that were on the shelf. They're they're now back in there and it's you know, suddenly it sounds a lot more echoey, you know And uh, you know, so things changed I generally find unless you're using a pc Uh, that you know the settings aren't going to change on you You know the the computer is not going to say, you know, I like this setting better and just change something over although generally sometimes If you're talking to the wrong side of the mic and we get that one an awful lot So, you know, that's what it sounds like It's like why does it sound so muffled because you're not talking so if it sounds boomy and diffuse and echoey You're probably talking to the wrong side of the mic. Yeah Uh, not so hard with it's that you can't do that with a 416 unless you have you're talking Yeah, that is but then you're not going to hear anything difficult If there's a little rest or a shotgun mic is that if you'd have to be a Well, I'm not going to say it you'd have to be really out of there out there to uh, is this a flute? Is this is this the right way to do it? I mean, no, yeah You got to talk into the right side of the mic Uh, but what eventually we decided was wrong with this person's audio and it really was not that bad I think the person who was complaining was exaggerating a little bit Because there was a difference between what his 416 sounded like and his tlm103 sounded like Right and the the contrast in the two made it sound Different did it sound worse that it sound unacceptable To me it was like, you know as he went through the read a little bit further i'm like You know, it sounds like he's on a tlm103 and A little bit of bass reflex, but nothing serious and this guy has it's a really nice booth So, you know george has just discovered that in a small booth I mean, we're always talking about You know the old hang 10 thing a low ceiling with a low ceiling Did he have a relatively low ceiling like how much space, you know, he's a tall guy So it was probably a little bit low Uh, but you know We've come to the conclusion that if you you keep it to a fist like three to five inches about that distance in a smaller booth That gen if you're talking in a normal conversational tone, it's it's going to sound fine And once we got a change it worked great it changes that Ratio that a distance between you the mic and you and the Closest hard surface Which if you're tall in a small space is the ceiling And you know, you could add more acoustic treatment to the ceiling Sometimes that's not always viable because you might not just physically have the room You know, you might end up having so much up there. It's hitting your head Another thing you can do is you can also If you're really desperate to to tune out that sound and you're having trouble try I'm not going to say sitting because that's going to really change your body posture But leaning might be a good idea. You might check out some of those high stools That you can lean against so you'll still have an upright body and hopefully a mostly Unsquished compressed diaphragm and you can sort of lean And now just that dropping your head four to six inches could be all that it takes to really Get a better sound. So that's another thing you can experiment. So in the end It was just at the end of the day mic placement, huh? It was my technique. Absolutely I mean, he sounds great on no matter what he was doing, but right by back, you know By getting a little closer to the mic and you know and adjusting his you know His input gain to adjust for being a little bit closer to the mic It wasn't that close that you were getting proximity effect, but it sounded It sounded more like the 416 Which is actually, you know pretty good if you did between those two mics So I find that they found those two mics sound really different when you're at a distance Right when you're working them in their like sweet spot and of course that depends on your space But when you're working them in that sweet spot, they start to sound a lot more similar Have you found that to be the case? I certainly have, you know, I mean, you know, I I have a 416 in my booth when I you know When I'm you know, this is just my this is my you know My workspace working like right, but you know, it sounds as good as it does in the booth That may be a little bit different I mean I could go in there and you could hear the difference and go Yeah, but it sounds like you and that's the most important thing because as we always say The idea of your home voiceover studio is not to make you sound great If you're a good voice actor, you already sound great. The idea is to make it sound Like you Yeah, and on that point we're going to take a commercial break and we're going to answer your questions Which should start flowing in here any second now they are on clubhouse on facebook on youtube And wherever else people are listening or watching the show We're going to get to those in just a minute So stay tuned we'll be right back here on voiceover body shop tech talk Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great And now a word from amazon prime and voiceover essentials dot com amazon.com is celebrating small businesses again this prime day like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials Congratulations voiceover essentials your successful small business will be included in our prime day promotion saving your amazon prime customers money Here's how prime members in the us get a $10 credit to use on prime day when they spend $10 or more on select voiceover essentials products from june 7th 2021 the june 20th 21 prime store card holders in the us earned up to 10 percent back on select voiceover essentials purchases from june 7th to june 20th Of course, you must be a prime member to take advantage of this offer These select voiceover essentials products earn you a $10 credit on any eligible product on prime day Not just ours like the harlan hogan portabouth pro and portabouth plus the harlan hogan via 1a signature microphone The harlan hogan stopwatch and the multicolor led recording sign Don't miss these great prime day specials at voiceover essentials dot com Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat Stick around you don't want to miss this Power 1039 at target. We want you to come as you are be comfortable. Okay, maybe not bathrobe comfortable Pants for the customer and aisle floor, please Watch anywhere anytime on an unlimited number of devices Sign in with your netflix account to watch instantly at netflix.com the ice cream maker is a big risk that can have huge reward Until you forget to turn it on Well, that's it guys Time is up. Hey, it's jmc. Thanks for watching the voiceover body shop If you're demo ready or looking to get there check out jmc demos dot com and see a sample of our work Now let's get back to dan and george and this week's tech wisdom Before that additional tech wisdom We're going to be sharing with you in just a minute because we have a ton of questions I do have to share a little bit about source elements Source connect is one of their biggest products by far It's the one that they've built their whole company on And it's still the one that is the most relevant of all of the tools in the toolbox that source Elements has and they have a lot of them. Trust me That you probably want to know about now source connect Four's earliest beta is coming out soon for beta testing So there is a light at the end of that tunnel of the next version of source connect But for now the foreseeable future you're going to be using source connect 3.9 Or if you're on windows 3.8 To connect to studios all around the world And one thing I want to mention that I haven't talked about for a while But is a really valuable feature is this thing called q manager So something you don't even realize is happening and you can be on source connect standard and use this You don't need pro as the actor This is a misconception a studio has to have pro But you as talent can be on the standard version There is a feature called q manager and what it's doing is it's constantly recording Everything you're doing in the software sort of behind the scenes So whether using pro tools or any doll it could be Twisted wave or you don't even have to be running a doll as long as q manager is running in your logged in The session is being recorded internally and backed up and what that means is if something goes wrong Let's say there's a glitch a sudden drop in the signal from the internet wobbling or whatever it is That's the internet does the audio can automatically be filled back in In the timeline in pro tools. So the the track that you are in that session Who knows how many tracks there are if there's a little drop in the signal Source connect and pro tools talk to each other and it says hey, by the way, we lost some audio Can you reach out to the computer of the actor on the other side? Pull that little section of audio that fell out Send it to us in the background and fill it back in automatically. Thanks. That would be great It just does that automatically. It's really amazing And beyond that if the studio session wants full quality uncompressed raw wave file audio That also is built in so at the end of the session they can have the entire session Resent to them in wave format And it fills in the timeline. It is amazing amazing stuff and it's so underutilized I just wanted to make sure I could talk about and remind folks that that feature exists Anyway, source connect go get demo get it up and running Be ready to go when those big sessions come a knock in the ones that often use source connect And let's get out of here and go back and answer some questions. Thanks source elements. We'll be right back I think I heard the voice of a body shop. I did. I did hear the voice of a body shop little body shop And we are back here voice over a body shop and yes, uh, this is a nestly mug by the way Okay Jeff was asking me is that a nestly or nescafé mug from the 80s? I have no idea how old it is because I got it at a yard sale But that is Indeed what it is. Good call my friend Alrighty Okay, we got lots of questions here. Let's start. Do we have anything on clubhouse? Oh, sure. Yeah, I had uh, let's see the first one I see on clubhouse. That's cute is from Alan Alan you're up, sir Good evening guys. Good evening. Hi. I just wanted to say great show allison was amazing know a lot of her work and uh and Getting onto the tech side you guys were talking about computers earlier I was having the big the big fan problem with my macbook pro and So I I dumped it and I got an m12. It's a mac 12 And I picked picked it up for like 600 bucks. It's uh, 2018 And it's been flawless. It's phenomenal. No ports on it. So I had to get the tower So I have the tower with the hdmi and the audio and it's got everything I need on that And it runs pretty much everything in my say the towers that like a dock that plugs into it And it gives you all the other connections. Yeah Yeah, because it has the usbc coming out of the out of the macbook Right and so you plug into that and now you have all your ports. So I've got a 12 port Tower that I plug you plug everything into from my mic my condenser my I mean everything plugs Does that also charge your macbook for you as well? Because you have to hardwire that so there's a A power outlet so this one has power Right. So yeah, I have to keep my eyes on but yeah, it it keeps everything Everything on it runs both of my monitors on the wall as well as the monitor on the macbook. So yeah, works great Brilliant brilliant. Do you have a question or do you just want to give us that cool tip? Just just wanted to give a cool tip. Awesome. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. All right, Ellen. Take care Alrighty All right, we got the question from Jeff Our very George Yeah, George you mentioned in the last few shows how flat oralex foam panels without the accordion light groups are better at their job than the ones with Why then do we see the accordion ones in most professional studios? Do we? Yeah, I see all sorts. I see perimital. I see all sorts of stuff in studio I think you see the uh corrugated accordion pyramid wavy ones, uh I don't have a strong answer for that But they have been distributed with many many many prefabricated studios vocal booth dot com whisper room Uh, and so I think they're just it's it's momentum. It's like people see them and that's what they're familiar with um, I also think there's a bit of skull duggery going on because the other ones that are you know Wave patterns and pyramids and stuff. They can sell you a more expensive piece of foam Uh with less material. So I'm maybe theoretically it's cheaper for them to manufacture it that way I mean, it doesn't make sense because it's more complicated to cut those patterns But um, I don't really know I I I know I know acoustically what the idea of it is is that it does allow for a little bit more Of uh a liveliness to occur so it makes it work more like a diffuser and an absorber Um, and but that's not what we really want in a small voiceover booth We want to absorb we want to absorb as much energy as possible So um a flat panel that has as much You know even density across the board that covers as much space as you possibly can Almost always is going to win. That's why Dan years ago had his studio suit blankets Um, they're very large coverage devices that have no You know pyramids or waves They were just a huge flat panels and they worked beautifully now There's vocal booth to go blankets and there's other you know, there's tons of these blanket type materials And they work great. Um, they still work awesome. Um, so we we don't really care about that Extra design queue with the the corrugation. In fact, it ends up being Worse per square foot. So, uh, yeah, if you are going to go foam get the get the flat panels that don't have all those Waves Yeah, good. Okay. We got a question here from gerrard maguire Uh, why don't you read that one? I can't do it in that accent and I won't even try He says a video game auditions say they want no processing no with an e that's how you know, it's important But would like the average rms Average level to be around minus 18 db So with using loudmax to adjust the rms be noticeable To their tech person. I am so glad that you asked this question This spec makes me freaking nuts When's the last time you've recorded anything raw and not processed and have the rms of that file actually be minus 18 Never happens Like maybe if you're doing like a like a commercial with like a very standard Single dynamic range voice, you know, where you're just projecting the same way the whole time Maybe you'll get minus 18 db average like that is Incredibly rare the problem with this spec is it's confusing It's misspoken. So in this case what you're saying is a is a misspoken Uh interpretation Of what it is. They actually want so I did just not good at expressing it They're not a good at expressing it because it's like a game of telephone How many times have we talked about telephone right where you people are just passing what they heard is the thing You're supposed to say to the next guy down the line It's tech telephone So they're they're telling you these things, but that's not what they're they're not talking about the average volume of your recording being minus 18 No, no, no They're talking about the average peak levels in the recording Being around minus 18 And the thing is I don't know how to I don't know how to measure that I don't I could be totally missing something here Maybe there's a simple analyzing thing in audition or something that will do that But I don't know how to do that. I like really thinking my mind is They want to make sure that a lot of the time the recording levels Don't go into the yellow very far Uh, what is yellow between minus 12 and minus 6 right? Yeah, something like that. Yeah minus 18 would be 6 below the yellow If you record with levels peaking at minus 18 That's super low like that wave is going to be like tiny So it's a very confusing request. Um, and at the end of the day, my opinion is this just Just record with best practices Just just if it's in the yellow Let it mellow If you're in the red, you're almost dead. So just back off the gain a little bit And honestly, you're going to be fine. I think it's something that's been over thought Miscommunicated and obviously is confusing folks. So that's my opinion Do you then again that is that is really video games that are asking that weird speck? Have you seen it anywhere down like you never see that I you know, I see it in specks that people send to me saying, you know, the client is asking for this And the client's asking for that and exactly You know, it sounds like they don't understand what they're talking about because like you say it's been passed down from place to place to place And you know, you know from the engineer to the creative director to the producer to The agent who's the worst person that trying to figure out what they're talking about Yeah, they're just regurgitating what they've been given or some version of it Or what some intern copied and pasted and maybe mistyped or misheard on the phone Right, uh Exactly. All righty, uh one from grace newton on youtube. Congrats on tech talk 58 Well, we'll just keep doing it. Uh, will you please recommend microphones that have a built-in plosive reducing feature? I want to ditch my pop filter as advised by marcashan and and by me Well, it's not the microphone grace. Uh, it's It's mic technique. You'll notice that I can say peter piper picked a peck of pickle peppers all day long And we're not getting any plosives It's all technique if you've got it in eye level your copy is down here You're hearing me directly in front of the mic But the mic is at ear level where other people hear you and that's the way it's supposed to sound for the most part I mean you can you can use proximity effect or if you're going to be whispering You can get close to the mic But you talk a little bit off axis so you can go peter piper picked a peck of pickle peppers and you won't get that It's all technique pop screens are to prevent you from spitting on expensive microphones as far as I'm concerned Or for you know for singers who have to work the mic really really close for a lot of subtle stuff In normal Billie Eilish kind of sound How does she get away with that she uses a really good microphone, that's why happens to use a tlm 103. That's right And so it's all technique race Don't worry about a microphone that's going to prevent that because that's not what microphones do microphones pick up what they get And if you talk directly into the diaphragm you're going to get plosives Just like that and honestly Any mic that has enough pop screen or pop filtering built into the microphone to then stop 100 of your plosives Doesn't sound very good It takes away some of the articulation of the mic It doesn't sound as clear and clean As it would be without it. So right um, there are some very pop very expensive pop filters out there and some of them are very good But it's still not a substitute even with that really good pop screen You will still pop that mic if you don't use it correctly All right, let's go back to clubhouse pilar is there. Hey pilar Well, hello there. Hi Hi there. I um, I have a Mac backbook pro 2016 and um Lately it has been sounding the this so what I use when I'm editing is I use I use my headphones But obviously sometimes I want to just listen with the internal Um the internal speakers and they have this crackly sound Like inside the system, it's starting to break down. May I play it for you real quick? Just so you can hear it george and dan sure. We may be able to hear another clubhouse. Sure. Give it a shot Let me see if you can hear this Oof yeah, uh, that's really bad. Yeah, I would say don't use those It just happened it like literally like from one day to the next and it's just gotten slowly worse But if you plug your headphones into the headphone jack, that sounds it sounds perfectly normal, right? Exactly. Yeah Well, I think that answers the question right there. I think they might have gotten quote unquote blown Yeah, um playing it too loud and uh, yeah I I've never I don't know if I've ever heard a macbook pro have speakers that sound quite like that I've been really impressed. I would I really wouldn't use them except for just a quickie playback just because I don't have Something else better plugged in but I even my macbook air Which the speakers are literally inside the keyboard, you know, there's the sound comes through Sounds a lot better than that. So yeah, I I think something mechanically Uh has failed. Um or the amplifier that drives those speakers Is going bad itself and again, I I haven't heard that before and being a 2016 Is means you're intern internal. Yeah, you were in 2016. There's no chance of you Probably getting that fixed unless it is literally a separate a separate, um Component inside there like if it's a separate little board that's the amplifier that can be replaced I find it a long shot, but it'd be worth asking apple about getting it repaired. What are you holding dan? Oh, this this is actually a speaker from an alexa That died on me for some reason, but this is pretty much what you're gonna find in your in your average laptop or a tinier than that Yeah, it's holding up something that's the size of about a quarter or maybe a half dollar Around and they sound fabulous, but the the thing is is that you know things break, you know You play something too loud It can't handle certain frequencies as well as it used to and that's probably what the crackling is So yeah, I think it might be the amplifier not the speakers themselves But it's interesting that that the headphones still sound perfectly normal Which thank goodness, you know, I'm glad that there's the case Um, but you know for your case use case. I would probably grab a uh like a 40 dollar anchor Sound uh speaker bluetooth speaker I have I actually have iloud microphones. Yeah, she's she's got the iloud speakers Oh, yeah, iloud's awesome. Yeah, but when you're talking portability those are still A little bit more bulky, you know So if you really are having trouble because of portability and you want something more portable An anchor sound a bluetooth speaker. I think they're called soundcore 2 Um, they have an aux an aux jacks you can plug them right into the headphone jack and That'd be a backup plan for you and a lot of money and something's still pop portable. So dang that stinks Anchor a n k e r Yeah, that's how they spell a n k e r. I have one my girlfriend's got one we got one for her dad I've been really impressed with that The low distortion the speakers have you know the sound coming out of the speaker Has really low distortion. It sounds very natural and it's incredible. How good a 40 dollar You know usb speaker or i'm sorry bluetooth speaker Sounds nowadays. They've gotten much better. That one's really impressed me Yeah, okay. Well, thanks guys. I appreciate sure I love the news. Okay, all right Alton Hoover asks I think this is one for you. Are people thinking the wave foam Is like an anechoic surface I guess lots of jargon there So anechoic means doesn't echo Um, there I think they're wishing it was doing that People wish that there that piece of foam wasn't reflecting any sound and creating an anechoic surface, but it's not So, um, that must be why you know I don't think most people know even what anechoic is or has even seen an anechoic space Let alone actually have been inside one Um, there's actually anechoic challenges. I I don't know if there's any on youtube I think I've heard that there might be But uh, it's where someone goes into an actual anechoic chamber and sees how long they can survive Or like how long they can stand being inside them because of the incredible Low noise basically all your own breathing and your heartbeat and that is it That's all you could hear if people go crazy inside these things. So Yeah, I guess my guess halton. Yeah, okay. J. Horace black asks George, uh, does source connect work well with the m1 neck? I had noticed any problems. I I we we tested it early on it was one of the many applications that I Like as soon as I got my macbook I uh, my macbook m1. I immediately just started installing Everything on it that I know that that we use normally, you know, I everything short of pro tools I installed on it And everything I tried on it with worked including source connect So, uh, I have no reason to believe it should be any less stable than any other Mac at this point, but again everything that's new and bleeding edge has to be vetted and tested Uh in the real world and you need to give it some time to make sure that You can trust it, you know, because Again, I during our show my webcam will freeze. I is it the webcam or is it my m1 mac mini? I don't know because it's not, you know, there's not a lot of people that have them So I can't I can't reach out for support yet to too easily. So you're just gonna have to be prepared for having Some time to test and have a backup plan if something doesn't quite work. Yeah, but it should be fine All right, let's go back to clubhouse and joseph has a question go for it Hey, joseph. I'll mute your mic bottom right hand corner Thanks, danny. Oh, hey, what's going on? Hey? What's up, um, yeah, actually I'm I'm brand new to the whole voiceover thing I'm I'm trying to get everything started and everything. Um, I've had Some what recording equipment for quite a long time, but I never really learned how to use it quite as well as I should have um, but You know, now I know as far as voiceover goes everything has to be completely silent and you know, it's it's very critical and you know Very cut throat. I guess you could say as far as what they what they want and what they you know, what What the clients demand as far as that? Um, I was just wondering, you know, I have um I just had bought a new microphone a lot in ls 208 front, you know Front address condenser mic um, as well as I have a focus right for i4 third generation Okay, q bass q bass 10.5 pro Um, you're a musician aren't you joseph? Yeah I hope so because you got the other wrong advice if that's uh Yeah Yeah, uh 2014 uh mac mini and I just wanted to make sure you know because uh as far as the noise floor goes and everything How are the focus right for i4s for that? I mean clean as a whistle. Yeah They're great. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's not because I'm Go ahead. The the thing is is the focus right pre is not going to give you any hissing or any noise or anything It's a very very quiet thing Um, the microphone can be the problem. Yeah, I of course using a lot and a lot and is also very quiet Yeah, yeah, I I just googled it. I that mic is so unusual that I've never heard of it and that's it's pretty hard to stump us but I uh, I just typed it in and it is a Noise rejecting large diaphragm condenser microphone So when you look at the picture of it, it kind of looks like a normal side address microphone like this one But it's not in the top. It's an end address. Yeah, our front address, right? So yeah, it's a unique design. Um And uh, yeah, I have absolutely zero experience with it. It might sound Amazing. It could be the next it mic. I don't know. How did you find out about it? Um, you know actually Originally, I was going to try and get the short sm7b, which is actually 200 cheaper than this microphone Yeah, and you know, I guess more widely obviously more widely known um, but Uh, when I talked to sweetwater No, never talked to sweetwater And they were like no go for this go for this one. It's a really good You know, and I'm like, all right Maybe these guys are just trying to push off a product to me that they're not selling Right, so I went over to the zounds and they actually said the same thing They said honestly, they said latin makes great microphones And this is this is one of the you know, this is a great microphone for the price and everything So I said, all right, you know, I'll pull the trigger on it and I'll try it out Yeah, sweetwater has return policy. Yeah, you know for 600 dollars. Hopefully it doesn't suck You know shouldn't um, there's a lot of mics for half that that sound really good. So, yeah, hopefully it's really good It exactly exactly and that's my thing too, you know, I just want to make sure I have I'm one of those people I guess that I go out and I buy things and buy things and buy things and then I never end up doing anything with it Yeah, you know So but I I definitely want to get started This voice over. I mean, you know, I'm a correction officer I I I could retire in eight years and I'm like, you know what I said, I have no plans What to do after this so in eight years? So if I could get into something like this And you know, it's still something in hey in the industry type thing look up a voice actor named chris fries He's been on our show. So if you go on youtube typing chris fries via bs You can hear an interview of a guy who is a great success story and was a correctional officer. That's right Worked in the prison. That's right. Really? Yes. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Joe Thanks for your question. Thank you guys. Thank you guys. All right All right Real quick just to be yeah, yeah Jim McNicholas have either one of them any for one of us notice that some mics sound better in figure eight sound than cardioid using austrian's audio OC 818 and the figure eight really sounds full Well, you've talked about this using omni using figure eight and You know, it's Yes It's under a million times I did a review on the OC 818 and talked about it quite extensively on that You go on youtube look at towards the tech you the OC 818 you'll find a whole Very comprehensive test and review of that mic will read experiment with that. So Yes, Jim, it is a secret weapon of any mic with figure eight. It can be A real improvement in some Studios not always but in some it's awesome. Yeah All right last one last question. Well, it's sort of a commercial What's your opinion of source connect now and it's usefulness and popularity with voice seekers? I'm finding that Most of the specs I see it says the paid version of source connect And I want to use source connect now at least if you're really talking to another studio Yeah, but Yeah, it works great. They're they're not compatible with each other. They never will be Source connect now is perfectly fine tool. It's just not it doesn't have the pro features that pro studios Really want to have it's really a very high quality foam patch Yeah, that's what source connect now is, you know, I mean, I'm not saying you can't record over it I'm done podcasts recorded over many times and but it's still Not up to par In terms of quality consistently Over an entire two hour say session that you're going to have over source connect It doesn't it can't maintain the same consistent quality. It varies a little bit and that's just because of the Technology that it's based on so that's why it's free. That's right. That was good. And that's why it's free All right, lots of great questions there. All right Yeah George and I are going to wrap things up right after these messages. So don't go away quite just yet This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on the voice of our buddy Shaw Well, hey there hero, it's david h laurence the 17th and along with dan oday I teach the class called the acx master class and this is where we help voice talent and actors build a successful career narrating audiobooks via acx for audible and itunes and all the other outlets We'd love to have you our new class is starting in about a week If you want to jump in registration is open right now And if you act fast within the first couple of days, we'll pay the first 300 dollars of your tuition Now registration closes on friday at 9 p.m. Pacific. So you have to act fast. We'd love to have you in class I'd love to hold your hand along the way and help you be successful. Go to acx masterclass.com That's acx masterclass.com after the week of free videos It's time to put the pedal to the metal acx masterclass.com. I'll see you in class 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 They'll 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 Yeah, hi, this is carlo zellers rocky the voice of rocko and you're watching voiceover body shop And we're back To say goodbye. Anyway, uh Boy lots of great questions there some other interesting questions, too People they try to make things so complicated. It's not necessary. I happen to know brian from around the way I don't know brian personally, but it was nice to get the chat with him, but he has a sound and a signal chain that's so uh Desired i've had people ask me numerous times You know that sound that brian lee gets how does he do that? What is he using? I want to get that same sound so He just let the cat out of the bag folks. He just told you what gear he uses Now it's now it's up to you to figure out how to actually set it up and as you can see or afford it I will not be uh recommending a signal chain like that in a home studio ever because it is too freaking Complicated, I mean I can ever I can replicate what he's doing with an apollo pretty pretty well, but it still Doesn't work out of the box. It still requires some backward thinking some creative thinking and some rewiring Virtually to get it to just do stuff. So um keep that in mind folks Already there you go or donors of the week Donors of the week include uh grace newton philips appear trey moseley shelly avalino tom penton and kasha murcheva Mr. George witem. That's my dad brine page patty gibbons rob rider greg thomas stanner bird soul Aunt land productions shana pannington baird martha con air friend don griffith steven chandler and robert ledum and that's I read those names Many weeks in a row because they subscribe from the donations link down below on v obs dot tv Great all righty. Hey, you want to help with your home studio? You can go to george d.tech or Home v home voice over studio dot com. That's dan's place. That's right So check us out. I'd like to thank our sponsors harland hogan's voice over essentials voice over extra source elements heroes voice Dot com voice actor websites dot com and jmc demos when quality matters. Alrighty. Well Uh Not sure who's going to be our next guest, but it's going to be somebody fabulous next week And unless we're getting all the way to memorial day in which case No, not memorial day to the fourth of july So in which case we won't be here for a while because i'm going to iceland. I want to see fire and ice So we'll be probably won't be back until july 25th or so There may be after that and then we get into holidays and we get all that stuff. It's going to be Got a hit and miss for a couple of months this year. It's kind of feel like we're rolling down a coaster I know after last year Yeah, you're gonna do Um, okay. Well, we need to thank our sponsors. We've done that. We need to thank jeff holman for Monitoring the chat room tonight. Danny Gertzine doing a great job in clubhouse and hat merlino was our engineer tonight Great job there and lee penny for it simply being lee penny Um, that's it for us tonight guys, you know But it really comes down to the simple fact of when it comes to your home voiceover studio If it sounds good It is good I'm dan Leonard and i'm george widdum and this is voiceover body shop or vo b s tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk talk tech talk Bye