 Alright, it's time for tech talk number 14. They're starting to add up. Is it really 14? It is. I thought it was 14 last time. Am I losing my track? It was 13 last time. Okay, see I'm always thinking we're ahead. That's all right. I mean it might be 15, but we'll figure that out later. Anyway, we got lots of lots of great stuff to talk about in your tech update. We're going to talk a little bit about how do you pick the best place to record? Because that's what we do. People say, I don't know how to do this. You buy the mic, now whether you put the thing. That's right, and that's actually more important than a lot of other things. It is. So, you got a question? Throw it in the chat room right now, and it's now time for tech talk on VOBS. 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 Widow, the engineer to the VO stars, a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build, set up and maintain the professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today. And you, Dan Leonard, the voiceover home studio master, a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio. And each week, they allow you into their world, making the complex, simple, debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio, answering your questions, showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it. Welcome to VoiceOver Body Shop Tech Talk. VoiceOver Body Shop Tech Talk is brought to you by voiceoveressentials.com, home of Harlan Hogan signature products, source elements, remote studio connections for everyone, voiceactorwebsites.com, where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt. VOtogogo.com, everything you need to be a successful voiceover artist, 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. Like a deer in the headlights, we're here for VoiceOver Body Shop Tech Talk number 14. And of course, we invite your questions because that's what we do. That is the engine, the fuel for the engine that runs the show. That's right. Your questions. Because you ask us a question, we can answer it. And otherwise, we're like, well, what can we talk about? And then it triggers like more ideas and more thoughts and goes and goes. And which is why you guys all watch and listen to this show because this is what we love to do. Anyway, so we've got your tech update. We're going to talk about finding the right place to record. We got a couple of questions from the audience. We'd like more. Put them in the chat room right now. If you got a problem with your studio, you got a question about an interface or a microphone. Do not ask what's the best microphone for VoiceOver. Don't bother. I will reach through the internet and grab you by the throat. And your voiceover career. You can ask this stuff on Facebook or on vobs.tv. We got chat rooms going both places. All right. Makes it a lot easier. You have all sorts of choices. Anyway, so what's up in your tech update for this week? Something more about Mac OS? Well, I know. I'm boring all you Windows people. I'm sorry because your systems are all flawless. So you don't need. Yeah, right. Now, what's coming up in Catalina? So every year is this time of year. The new OSes are coming. They're coming every year. They come in the fall and Catalina is the new Mac OS. So one things I mentioned. I think it was two shows ago. I mentioned that we need to look out for 32 bit applications. So if you have 32 bit apps that you may not even know are 32 bit. There's a 32 bit checker. I mentioned it while on the show last two shows ago or two, one episode ago. You can check that out. But also you have to look out for security. So just like every system, your phone, everything else with Mac is certainly very big on security. And so when you have any application, it goes through a huge series of checks to make sure the app is totally legit. Doesn't have loopholes in it. No loopholes, malware, nothing. I mean, they're very, very locked down. So a lot of you are already familiar with how, you know, you'll install an app and then it'll say, this app hasn't been certified or isn't trusted yet because it wasn't downloaded from the Apple store or something like that. And then you have to go to system, preferences, security, and then click open anyway, and you're in. That doesn't happen that often, but occasionally you might have some older oddball app that you use, or just some very new, very small time application that just won't load. And it used to be, you could just click open anyway, you're on, you're on your way. But now in Catalina, they're taking even away that little extra step. So they're really like apples, really telling all the developers, listen, if you don't get it together and make sure your app is signed correctly with us and all the security measures are in place, we're just not going to let you run it. So there still is a way in, but it requires now going into the terminal. So now to run those kind of apps, you have to feel almost like you're a hacker to get in there and run those, those odd old, or possibly fringe applications that maybe you shouldn't be running in the first place. So are we finding that there are more ways into Mac systems? It used to be, you know, we would get, you know, Apple computers because they were hard to hack and nobody, and nobody was writing malware and spyware and all that stuff for them anyway. Yeah, I mean, the Macs, the Macs file system, it's inherently pretty secure because it's based on Unix. And so every single file has a permission, read, write, or delete. And that has historically caused some problems with Macs, you have to run this repission, permissions repair thing. But yeah, because of that, it is a lot more secure. I think another reason why anecdotally that Macs just are generally more trouble free, I should say, is that, well, all of the world's banking and governments don't run on Mac OS, they're on Windows. So if you're going to take down a computer, it's probably going to be yeah, it's not generally Mac. But still, Apple is really big on security. They want to be more secure and more private, when others maybe aren't. So they're always trying to stay one step ahead. So it may start to feel like if it isn't already, that you have to jump through a lot of darn hoops every time you install something. Right. But that's just a necessity. I mean, and my I'm on an Android phone, and I had to just sort of reset it recently. So it reset all the app permissions. Now, every time I go to take a picture, every time I go to record a piece of audio or send a photo, it asks me, Hey, are you giving permission to this device to access the stuff? But it's for a good reason. The only problem with all of these asking questions things is, do you remember on Windows, I would say, Hey, you downloaded this from the internet. Do you want to open this? Apple does it too. Yeah. What are you going to say? No. No, you're going to say yes. I bought it at a bodega around the corner. You're going to say yes every damn time. So it becomes just, you know, compulsory. Yes, yes, yes. You're not even going to notice if there's a problem anyway, because you're just going to click, click and yes. But anyway, they're trying to keep us safe. So watch out for these new little loop, loop holes, you might have to jump through when you have a new system in a different world. Something that's more relevant to more of us. We talk a lot about acoustics, right? And we will more. Yeah, we love talking about acoustics, because we know it's probably the most extensively important thing in a studio. Excuse me while I try to clear out. Stay hydrated. What's going on in my throat right now. So room acoustics can be really esoteric and kind of hard to understand. And I just stumbled on a video by a guy named John Calder of Acoustic Geometry, an acoustics design website and firm. And I believe we have this queued up to see, but this is a little clever visualization actually of how sound bounces around the room. I thought it looked kind of cool. I thought maybe you might have some benefit in checking it out. So, Pat. Hi, I'm John Calder of Acoustic Geometry. Let's talk about acoustics, which is basically how sound works in rooms. It may seem complicated, so let's make it simpler. Most rooms have flat walls and flat ceilings, and sound bounces off of these. So how does that affect the sound? I'll use these two Nerf guns to demonstrate. I've got this one aimed, so this disc goes directly to the ear that represents direct sound. I've got this one aimed, so that disc bounces off the wall and it represents reflected sound. I'll shoot them both at the same time. Reflected sound arrives at our ears later than direct sound, even though it started out at the same time, because it's traveling farther. And this wall is only one flat surface. There are at least six in the average room, and that's a lot of reflected sound. But why is reflected sound bad? I'll demonstrate using these two identical patterns. The blue pattern represents direct sound waves, and the red pattern represents reflected sound waves. They start out together, but when I move the red one backwards, like a delayed sound reflection, it creates destructive interference patterns which changes the original sound wave. Here's the problem. Original sound waves are distorted by strong, later arriving reflections. Also, sound travels really fast, about 1130 feet per second. A sound wave will bounce back and forth between these two walls about 60 times in one second. Sound travels so fast, it fills a room almost instantly, and this is only one bounce angle. Every room has thousands. How can we make our room sound better? Remember our nerf guns? I'll shoot these at the same time, again representing a sound wave bouncing off a wall. Both discs bounce together in the same direction, which means the reflected sound is at full strength. Now let's use the first of our two acoustical tools, an absorber, to reduce the strength of sound bounces. To a sound wave, an absorber looks a little like a hole in the wall, so some of the energy doesn't come back. An absorber works by reducing the strength of reflected sound that would otherwise cause more destructive interference. But if we use only absorbers in a room, it makes it sound dull and unnatural. Historically, humans don't like overly absorbent rooms. So, let's use the second of our two acoustical tools, the curved surface diffuser. It also reduces the strength of sound bounces. A diffuser works by scattering the sound reflections in different directions, smoothing out destructive interferences throughout the room. Room acoustics are greatly improved, using a combination of absorption and diffusion. It's all about reducing those flat surface reflections. Use a combination of absorbers and diffusers, and your room will sound a lot more natural. Thanks for watching. So do you use one of these? No. Okay, so you just don't click? Well, I do, but my philosophy is always fix it physically. If you're making mouth clicks, stop making mouth clicks. It's a lot easier to try and stop the mouth clicks than it is to try and fuss with your audio and do something perhaps that's not going to benefit you. How do you stop the ones that happen right before a phrase, like when you open your mouth or something? Be relaxed, keep yourself hydrated. Yes, don't eat chocolate before you work, or a taco. Things like that, you want your mouth to be ready to go when you record, so drink up, don't over enunciate consonants and things like that, and that will ease those mouth clicks. Some people are a little clickier than others, but no matter what, there isn't a microphone out there that's going to prevent you from doing mouth clicks. I love that question. Is there a mic that doesn't pick up mouth clicks? Yeah, it's called a megaphone into a disk. Any mic that is good enough and sensitive enough to pick up your full range of your voice with detail is going to pick up mouth clicks, for sure. So get rid of the mouth clicks. So there are tools we always talk about and people in all these different forms, of course, talk about these de-clicker plugins. IZotope RX7 is by far the most well-known, most popular, but what's kind of funny is I ran into a situation last week and I'll keep it anonymous, but I had a major voice actor on one hand saying, I'd love to use this mouth de-clicking tool, I hear it's amazing. On the other hand, I had this pretty well-respected demo producer saying, I use this mouth de-clicker from IZotope. It's fantastic. And he loads the default setting, you know, no tweaking, messing with the settings, just load default settings and it works for him. Big time voiceover guy over here says, I do the same thing and I'm hearing losses of certain consonants. I'm hearing the loss of occasional P on the end of a word or a T and it's not working for him. What gives? Well, this is the toughest thing with all of these tools. Like, as a voice actor, especially with 25, 30 years under your belt, as this particular one does, you hear the every little tiny detail of your own voice because you know it so intimately. And if you're good at what you do, you're going to notice every single syllable, every vowel, every consonant, every word attack is going to be noticed to you because that just comes with the territory. As a producer who's listening to that same, maybe that same voice track, but hearing it more in a mix, their job is to get it to fit in the mix, get it into the flow, make it fit in time. They're listening to probably, I don't know, 10 other factors beyond what you're hearing of your own voice. So they might get you, they might get that track and they might, there might be missing T consonants or end of words, but when they get it, it's in the context of a mix and it disappears. So whose advice is the right one here? Like, who do you go by, right? Like, if I think at the end of the day, voice actors get really too hung up on the detail sometimes. And I'm not saying it's not right to care what you sound like and all those things are important, but... You know, I think... Don't get too hung up on it. Yeah, the problem is, I think people look at it and it may be the answer is somewhat counterintuitive, because the idea with your home voiceover studio is not to sound great. If you're a good voice actor, you already sound great. The idea is just try not to sound bad. And, you know, and if you can prevent the bad and just do what you do best, that's really all that's required of you. You know, we had Randy Thomas on earlier, you know, in our show last week and she was talking about how she's not using her Avalon anymore and her manly breath, because it's not necessary. You don't have to pump up your voice. The idea is not to sound great. The idea is to sound like you. And some piece sometimes people say, well, I don't like the way I sound. Well, if you or I listen to it and go, it's fine. You got to remember, you don't hire you. The idea is not to satisfy your ears. The idea is to do the particular read properly and not sound bad, because most guys listening to auditions are listening to them on their laptops or their iPhone or their Samsung or whatever it is they're listening on. And it's not as critical. I mean, it's critical, but you don't want to sound bad. So I think the idea is to try and learn what bad is. And I think people don't know what bad is bad. You want to sound bad. You want to sound intelligible. Right. You want to make sure that that person hears what you're saying. It's clear and easy to understand what it is that you're saying. Right. And a lot of it sometimes has to do with your monitoring. Like if you're doing everything in headphones, and you guys know, I talk a lot about using headphones for editing because you hear details, but that's the problem. The headphones like sometimes magnify right the smallest mouth click details and make and make you go crazy hearing your own mouth noise. Yeah, some of the chatter we mentioned a good tip tip. Let's see. Sonny says, keep your mouth open when finishing a statement. This reduces mouth clicks tremendously. So yeah, I can say that for a fact when I make my tutorial videos or my YouTube videos because I don't do voiceover. The biggest thing I have to edit is the sound of me just simply opening my mouth again to speak. I get that for the off the lip roof of my mouth. And I have to edit those out all the time. So yeah, that's a good, that's a good tip. Really simple to do, but it just takes practice. Yeah. So don't get so hung up on all the details. If it's a 30 second commercial, it's going to have pay a quarter of a million dollars. Yes, the details really matter. But if it's an audition, you know, auditions, narrations, interpret the copyright. Somebody contacted me this week, somebody who's studio I set up, she goes, it's starting to sound hollow. And I mean, this was a setup in a closet. And I'm, did you change anything? Have you taken something to the cleaners? Is it further from the mic? Yeah, because it's been getting weird. And I, she sends me some audio. I listen to it like, sounds fine, except for the jet taking off because she lives at the bottom of the runway at Santa Monica Airport. I can hear that, but I'm like, oh, that doesn't sound hollow at all. Sounds great. Trust yourself. Trust the sound. Trust what we tell you because we know. Yeah. And if you're listening back on, if you're using your own studio monitor speakers as your reference for what you sound like, that you can't necessarily trust either because those speakers are resonating and echoing in that room, and thereby changing the way you actually do sound. So get a third party, get a, get a, get a neutral third party's opinion on what you're sending out, because it's not necessarily always what you're hearing. Right. Which takes us now to our next subjective discussion, which sort of, you know, doubles back on the video we were watching on room acoustics. How do you choose the right room to record it? I know there's a lot of you out there that are like, you're training, you're working with a coach, maybe you bought a microphone, but you don't know where to set up. And I get these calls a lot and I go out and I'm like, where's the best place to record? So I will, you know, well, where would you like to record? What would be comfortable for you? What's going to fit your lifestyle best? Do you have a closet? Yeah. Do you have a walk-in closet? What size of a place are we talking about? Is this a one bedroom apartment, or is this a three bedroom house, right? Or a five bedroom house with, with all walk-in closets. Right. You know, and, you know, I had example, I was working with somebody in Glendale this week and, you know, the house is the big house. I guess it was a former embassy for some country or something. Anyway, it, you know, had a lot of bathrooms, but it also had a bunch of smaller walk-in closets. And he goes, well, how about this one? And I go in there and I'm like, well, this would be perfect except that I can hear the attic fans. She goes, oh, I got the perfect answer. Let's go to the other side. Let me go in there. There's an identical closet on the other side, except that it's more sealed up and I can't hear the attic fans. And you close the door, it made a perfect thing. I mean, and once we'd get the equipment in there and set it up, which took me about 10 minutes, it sounded great, you know, and he can close the door and, well, fortunately, Glendale is not a really noisy place where he was living. But, you know, if you live in a quiet neighborhood, that helps a lot. But if you can isolate yourself in a closet, especially a good size walk-in closet with a lot of clothes in it, man, you just saved yourself about six grand, you know, because that makes it really easy. Yeah, I just worked with somebody as well who, she was already in a walk-in closet and she was ready to buy a booth simply because she thought, you know, she was not getting the best sound out of her closet. I mean, we simply, I'd simply recommended that she moved her microphone out from the little shelf it was sitting on. It was sitting like in a wooden cubby, you know, with some foam in it. I said, get it out of there, get it up on a stand, put it in the middle of that room or towards the clothing. And it was like night and day. And I was like, there you go. I just saved you several thousand dollars on a booth that, guess what? You would have to tune that anyway, acoustically, because it wouldn't have sounded good at all. That's right. You and I both know a lot of people making really good money next to their underwear. Yeah. You know, I mean, and their shoes and socks and various other things. Closets the best place. Now, sometimes there's a difference in closets. A lot of times you'll find there is the 18 inch deep closet with the sliding door. That can be a problem. It's hard to work with. Right. It depends on the room that it's in. You know, is there a lot of, you know, beds or you have lots of curtains and stuff. If there's echo coming from the room, that's a problem. Sometimes, sometimes no. Yeah. So, but, you know, I know we know people who are really squoze into some pretty small spaces. We won't mention any names. But, you know, I mean, you can use those, but you can also take a short closet and extend it out using a PVC booth. Yeah, open up the closet door. I mean, those sliding closet doors don't stop a whole lot of real sound from outside anyway. Like, just be real. The difference between being in that closet and being outside the closet probably not a big dramatic difference. So, open up the door. Right. Hang a drape over it. Hang a curtain. Make an extension over the end of the closet with some, like Dan said, PVC. Or take a folding Japanese privacy screen, wherever those things are called. Get one of those. Throw a big heavy blanket over it. You know? Moving blanket. Harbour freight. You're cheap there. Just get a bunch of those. They're fabulous. Yeah. A couple layers of those and you're good to go. So, yeah. So, finding somewhere quiet, clearly very, very, that's number one. Right. Are we not picking up as much room as noise as possible? Two is acoustics because acoustics are the easiest to fix of the two. Right. Between stopping noise and getting a sound that sounds clear and focused, that's generally easier. Right. And, you know, and if you or I go over somebody's place, I mean, maybe you do, but I don't use all those hefty equations. No. The acousticians use, you know. It's like, what does it sound like? That would take so much time. It would, all it would do is just, like, come up with some saying, okay, now you need 2.7 square meters of block. It's like, no. I mean, I've been in so many small spaces and rooms of different sizes and everything. What does it sound like? Yeah. And the louder you talk, the more the acoustics of the room come into play. So, if you talk conversationally, it's amazing how when you just talk normally, how the, you know, if you're in a marginal room, perhaps it could work. You can get away with a lot when you're not really projecting. Right. And if you're doing audio, you know, if you're doing video games or something like that, you're gonna, I am going to kill you. Yeah. Turn away from the mic. We don't yell into people's ears. It's, it's all relative. There's no hefty, you know, rules about these sorts of things. And with you and I, it's like, if it sounds good, it is good. Right. Yeah. And on that note, we're going to take a break and we'll be right back to answer your questions here on Voice Over Body Shop Tech Talk right after this. Oh, I think I heard the voice over Body Shop. I did. I did hear the voice over Body Shop. Be a little Body Shop. Alrighty. Well, you're probably wondering why Ari is here with me because Harlan Hogan, our wonderful sponsor at Voice Over Essentials, would like to remind us that he's having his dog days of summer sale. So we're using Ari here as a little bit of a prop to tell you about his dog days of summer prop. Cutest prop. I know he's, he's, he's nice and cuddly. And anyway, but here's what's going to go on over at Voice Over Essentials. If you buy anything over there, and that means, you know, the Harlan Hogan VO1A mic or the Harlan Hogan Signature Series microphone or some of the other great stuff that he offers, the Porta Booth Plus and the Porta Booth Pro, if you buy any one of those items during the dog days of summer promotion, you will get a free ABS. Now, what is an ABS? It doesn't stand for automatic braking service or system. It stands for the adjustable boom, strap, strap, strap, stop, stop, whatever. It's great. If you've got a boom microphone, which you should, if you're hanging your microphone properly, sometimes you can get a little bit heavy and you want to be able to make sure that your boom stand doesn't fall over. So during the dog days of summer sale, if you buy anything, you get the adjustable boom stop. And that will allow you to save your expensive microphone and of course having it fall in your foot, which can also be a problem. But go over to Voice Over Essentials right now during their dog days of summer sale, buy anything there and get a free ABS strap, free and free delivery, of course, over at Voice Over Essentials. Best way to go over there is to go to the bottom of our homepage, where you'll see the icon of Harlan talking into his venerable Porta Booth Pro and click on that. It will take you right there and you'll be able to look at all the great stuff he has. Buy it all, get a free ABS. Thanks, Harlan. Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice to announcer guy on your new orientation training for Snapchat, weren't you? This is Virgin Radio. Well, okay, we're not that innocent. There's jeans for wearing and there's jeans for working. Dickies, because I ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values, a leader for California and a voice for America. It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smartphone, but it's so much more. It's a, the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs. What time is hockey practice? Check out this song. It's the end of the road for Rick. It's just you and me, Rick. When hope is lost. The I-8 from BMW. Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's J. Michael Collins. Bet you think I'm gonna try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves. But I will give you my email. It's jmichaelatjmcvoiceover.com. Now, if Dan will stop waxing his mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show. Hey, everybody. This is our segment where we get to mention source elements. Creators with Source Connect. It won't take a lot of your time, but I just want to remind you that as a voice actor, you need to have the best tools and the tools that allow you to connect to all the studios in the world. And they pretty much at this point all have Source Connect. This is the tool that allows your audio in your studio to be connected to theirs, high quality real-time, very low latency, and a reliable connection. And this is really the tool for the pros. And you can get a trial right now. Go to source-elements.com and get a 15-day free trial. You don't have to have a little iLock dongley thing to do it either. For Source Connect standard, it will just register to your computer. So go get it running, get it up and running, get familiar with it, test it out, see what it does, understand it, and that day the job comes, you'll be ready to go. Head over to source-elements.com, get a 15-day free trial of Source Connect standard and tell them we sent you. We'll be right back. Alright, and we're back. And if you haven't figured it out by now, George and I do something that almost nobody else on the face of the planet does. And that is, home voiceover studios. Home voiceover studios. Yeah, some bigger studios too. But home voiceover studios. A unique environment that really did not exist 15, 20 years ago. So we've been doing it since people started doing it. So we're the guys that really know how to do it right. And you know, if you need help, if you really don't understand how to set up a studio, if you're having a problem with your studio, if you don't know if you're having a problem with your studio, we're the guys to go to. And if you want to have help from George, where would they go? Head over to GeorgetheTech.com and that question about, you don't know if you have a problem. That's why I have a sound check service, drop your file into me, and I'll take a listen and I'll tell you why maybe you're not booking or I'll tell you, actually you're doing great. You're not booking because you need more coaching or something else. I'll never judge your voice acting, but trust me, if we'll let you know, if it's really audio that's getting in the way or not, and what things you need to look for. So Dan does a similar thing over at his website too. And that is homevoiceoverstudio.com. Yes, don't ask me how I got that particular name, but it was available. So you beat me to it. That's right. Home voiceoverstudio.com and go there, read about how I do what I do. And I too also have an audio analysis service. You scroll down to the bottom of the page where you find the specimen collection cup, click on that, and that will take you right to a drop box, follow the instructions to AT, and I will get back to you and let you know what's going on with your audio. If it's great, I'll tell you. If you need help, I'll tell you. So that's what we do. And if you need help, where are the guys to go to? So we got questions from our voluminous audience out there in all over the world. They're watching, at least in New York and various other places. So what's the first question we have tonight? Let's dig in. The first one I see at the top of the list is from our old pal, Paul Stefano. It was definitely one of the sluttiest gear sluts I know. Cannot stop buying gear. He has gas. He has gas. Gear acquisition syndrome. He says I recently bought a neat killer bee. Editor's note. I looked up killer bee and I couldn't find a neat killer bee microphone. I did find a neat King bee microphone. So I think that might be what Paul is talking about. That said, he says I couldn't resist the fire sale as they have shut down production of these mics. And it sounds great. But I'm wondering, is it stupid to buy a mic you know, is no longer being manufactured? Not necessarily. I mean, I wouldn't buy a $3,000 mic that you're never going to be able to get fixed or get parts for. I think that would be a bad idea. But a microphone that is sort of a curiosity. It's kind of an oddball. It's kind of quirky. Didn't cost you a lot of money. Hopefully it was 100. I mean, I'm looking at them online for a hundred bucks. So probably you paid less. Doesn't sound good. Does it sound good? I mean, you're saying it does. I think maybe that was one of the mics that we had in that shootout at one point. Yeah, it was satisfying. Yeah, we tested it against at least eight or nine other mics and it held its own. I mean, it was average sounding at the time. We didn't say it was one of the best, certainly not one of the worst. We thought it was fine. So I'm seeing it on B&H for a hundred bucks. Originally maybe a $300 mic. So it's a pretty good deal right now if you find one. But I don't think it's stupid to buy a mic that's not being manufactured. Not when it's a disposable mic. Not something that's very expensive. And on sale. Right. Yeah. No, what the heck. Have fun. I mean, this is one of the fun things about the hobby is demoing, trying mics, seeing what works, what doesn't. If you find out that this is the final mic for Paul Stefano that you never need to buy another mic because you finally found the Holy Grail. Well, you might want to buy a couple more and keep them as backups because you aren't going to get these fixed easily if they break. Good point. Oh, yes. Jonathan Arara asks, I'm interested in the Rode NTG4 as a travel alternative to the 416. Is the NTG4 plus worth the extra money just before the built-in battery pack? Oh, well. Oh, the NTG4 plus has a battery. Okay. Yeah, I didn't know who knew. No, probably not because if you're going to be recording voiceover professionally, you're going to have that microphone plugged into a pro audio interface with phantom power. Right. So it's going to get phantom power. So I don't think having the battery power on board is important at all. If you're wanting to moonlight as a videographer or do YouTube videos or something like that, and you want to now start using this mic as a boom mic or something that you're going to hook to a camera and then plug into your DSLR, then you need the battery. You get a DSLR or a handy cams don't provide phantom power, usually not the cheaper ones. And then you would need the battery power. But no, you really don't need it for voiceover. Right. And that is a good stunt mic for a 416, actually, the NTG4. Right. But the 416 itself is built as a road warrior. It is. I mean, if you're going on the road, I mean, it comes and it's a very secure case. You just travel with it. It'll take a beating and, you know, if you're afraid someone's going to steal it, well. Yeah, it's another thing. But someone can steal it out of your studio too. So it really doesn't matter. If you're using a mic in the studio, you want to sound essentially the same wherever you are, because it's got such a narrow pickup pattern, it generally is going to capture you the same way, depending on the acoustic situation you put yourself in. And, you know, you're not going to go record out in somebody's backyard. So we did put up that mic against. We did put the NTG4 up against the 416 on the Pro Audio Suite. It's another podcast that I do. And we did find that if you turn on the high boost, because that mic has a low cut and a high boost. So if you turn on the low cut and turn on the high boost, we found that with least the voice actor we were testing it on, it sounded a heck of a lot like a 416. Not identical. There was just something a little bit nicer about the 416. But if having two mics of $1,000 price range is dear for you, then this could be a nice backup for, I think, about 300 bucks. All right. And we have one more 416 question. 416. I'm starting to see a pattern here. What do we got here? Maurice A. Scott says, I have a microphone question. I have a 416 and a Rode PSA1 boom arm attached to my desk. That's like your typical angle poise radio station mic boom. And we talk a lot about how they are not the best hooked to desks. They pick up vibration. Got to watch for that. Is there a way to attach my 416 and wait to it so that it so I can adjust it and it stays in place? Or is there another boom arm that you would recommend that works well with the 416? Okay. So, okay, I think what he's saying is that the 416 is not a very heavy mic. No. And the PSA1 is, it has springs inside it, and it's probably too light. And you can't get the microphone, the springs are too strong. So you can't get the mic to stay put. Well, it's going like this. Well, you can take out one of the springs. Some of them you can, you can, these are internally strong. Okay, you can tighten it up a little bit more. Yeah, it should. I can't remember if the Rode has little tighteners or not. If it has, it has a big, big thing in the one major joint, I think. If it, yeah, if it has that tighten it down, there is, I think that might be the one that you can't adjust. Well, you might just have a bad combination there. I mean, between the PSA1 and the 416. There's, there were also complaints about the new blue mic boom. We mentioned that it was, think it's called the compass. Yeah, yeah. About the springs being too strong, and the mic wanting to float up and out of the, you know, start floating on you. I was at a client's house not too long ago, and there was a little metal weight that was clamped to the mic arm to counterweight it, to keep it, to keep the arm from doing this. If I only knew where those were made or who made them, I would recommend it to you. Duck tape and a brick. Yeah. I mean, if you find like a nice small, some, maybe even some ledge, here you go. Go to the, go to the tackle shop in the fishing store. Get some, get some sinkers. Yeah, get some sinkers. Get a few lead weights that have little hooks and keep hooking them on to the end of the mic arm until the thing stops floating. A couple dollars with a lead shot, lead weight. That would do it. A sock full of quarters. Yeah. No, I don't have a better answer for that. I mean, that's, those, those arms were, you know, they were designed to hold heavy mics like U-88, U-87s, and blue Yeti's and stuff that were, you know, more than a pound or two, and the 416 is like half a pound. So that's going to happen. So give those things a try and let us know if any of those crazy ideas for you actually work. We want to know. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, that takes us to the end of another Tech Talk segment. That's a wrap. I know. You guys, I love the questions we get from you guys. Lots of people are watching all week long. And if you've got a question for us, throw it into the chat room when we're doing the show live or send us an email at to theguysatvobs.tv. Yes. And we will answer that. Please do. All right. Well, we'll be right back and wrap things up right after this. As a voice talent, you have to have a website. But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you. And when they finally do, they break or don't look right on mobile devices. They're not built for marketing and SEO. They're expensive. You have limited or no control and it takes forever to get one built and go live. So what's the best way to get you online in no time? Go to voiceactorwebsites.com. Like our name implies, voiceactorwebsites.com just does websites for voice actors. We believe in creating fast, mobile friendly, responsive, highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use. You have full control. No need to hire someone every time you want to make a change. And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time. You can get your voice over website going for as little as $700. So if you want your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options, go to voiceactorwebsites.com where your VO website shouldn't be a pain in the, you know what. For the last decade or so, the name VO to go go has become synonymous with up to the moment expert award-winning training in voiceover performance, business building and mindset. But it's also been a name that requires some explanations. Sometimes a repeat calling out the numeral two. Well, it's time for a change. It's time for a simpler, more direct and easy to spell name for their company and their training. One that embodies the mission they have to train voiceover talent in the art, the commerce, the science and the mindset of voiceover to help make VO to go go clients superheroes to their clients. Within the next few weeks, they'll say goodbye to VO to go go.com and they'll say hello to something new and deep and intelligent and fun. The new name will represent all the familiar knowledge and content David and his team have been giving you for the last 12 years, plus a whole lot more, and it'll be a lot easier to spell and to type into your browser. Stay tuned. And we're back on voiceover body shop tech talk. Lots of cool stuff that we talk about. Just throw us a subject and we just roll with it. I love it. That's what we do and we love getting questions from you guys. Next week on this very show, we have a very special guest. Do you like to do accents or you do Russian accent or you do dialect? That's the thing. We have one of the top coaches in the business. She's now living in the LA area. So she's going to drop by Eliza Jane Schneider. She's a great teacher and it's and she that's her thing dialects dialects. Really good at dialects. So if you want to learn about dialects, dialects dialects. They strive. Stare out the exterminate. Dialects dialects. Got it. That's next week. Okay. Who are our donors of the week? There's the week are Graham Spicer, Joseph Harrison, Christie Burns and Dwayne DeSalvo. And if you've heard those names before, that's because they're probably subscribers and you can do the same thing. We'll read your name at the end of the show. And as our thanks to you and if there's something that you learned on the show that was really helpful, send us a little donation. Just a one time is fine or you can subscribe. It's not a problem for like a month if you want. Whatever makes you feel good makes us feel good. We really appreciate it. So also we want to see your studios. I mean we hear from all you guys. There's thousands of you out there because we know there's over a thousand people watching the show every week. So it's got to be a thousand different home studios out there or at least planned home studios. We'd like to see them and we'd like to see them behind us as our set. How'd you like to have Dan and George in your studio? Exactly. So send us your picture of your home studio in landscape, not portrait, and we'll have it behind us. So we'll be sitting in your studio hopefully without you in it. Yeah, it is awkward if you're in the frame. It's very hard to frame around you. It's kind of odd looking. Yeah. So yeah, but just the wide shot so we can see the great work that you've done. Also, we're live alternate Mondays. We'd love to have you here in our studio. Oh, and to send the picture and send it to the guys at VOBS.tv, which is the email for anything we ask you. Really? Yeah. I mean if you want to be here live, that's the same email. Send it in. Say you want to be in the audience. We'd love to have you. You can join Ella on the sofa. She's going to be here I think in two weeks as well. I think she'll still be here. Yeah. So we love to have you. There's the beautiful sofa. We've got lots of space. It's comfy. You can look at the radios. It's a fun place to be. Yeah. All right. And we also need to thank our sponsors because without them we wouldn't be here. Yeah. Well, we might be here. We'd just be, you know, pinging out of our own pocket, which would be counterproductive. Harlan Hogan's Voice Over Essentials. Voice Over Extra. Soros Elements. Vio Tagogo. Voice Actor Websites.com. And J. Michael Collins' demos who are still helping support the show after quite a run we've had with them. And it's fantastic. Eight and a half years we've been doing this show. Thank you. Longer than eight and a half years. All right. Well, summer is not even close to winding down here in Southern California. No, we got at least two solid months of summer left. All right. Well, I can deal with it. It hasn't been that hot, but it's been nice. But anyway, we also need to thank the Dan and Marcy Leonard Foundation for the betterment of live webcasting and recorded webcasting as well. And of course our technical director tonight. Hats Merlino. Hats Merlino. His mom wasn't here. So he filled in and did a bang-up job. Yeah. You know, so we really appreciate it. That was great. And Hats brother and Mike was also working the chat room. All right. Fantastic. Well, that's going to do it for us this week. Again, Liza Jane Schneider next week. If you've got any comments, questions, email us. The guys at VOBS.tv, especially if you've got a home studio tech question about microphones or acoustics or, you know, how to get your kids to shut up, all sorts of things. We're experts in that. Trust us. Relationship questions, even. Yeah. Marital advice. And trust me, in voiceover, you knew that kind of stuff. Anyway, I'm Dan Leonard. I'm George Woodham. And this is VoiceOver.