 Guess what? It's time for Tech Talk from VoiceOver Body Shop. Boy, we got a lot of stuff to show people tonight. Stuff from Nam. Yeah, we got Nam. We got Nam videos about the DPA microphones, as well as Aston microphones. Very cool. As my headphones fall off my head. We also answered tons of questions tonight from Rick McIver, Jay Horst Black, and we're talked. We covered everything from booth design. Should you put a window in there? We talked about what else? My gosh, there was so many questions. What kind of USB cable to use? How do you shop for mic prams on and on? A lot of good stuff. You don't want to miss this. VoiceOver Body Shop Tech Talk coming up right now. Two men, twin sons from different mothers with a passion for voiceover recording technology and the desire to make recording easy for voice actors everywhere. Together in one place, George Wittem, the home studio engineer to the stars, a Virginia tech grad with an unmatched knowledge of all the latest gear and technology in VoiceOver today. Dan Leonard, the home studio master, a voice actor with over 30 years experience in broadcasting and recording, and a no holds barred myth-busting attitude for teaching you how easy it is. Together, to bring you all the latest technology, today's VoiceOver superstars, and leading the discussion on how to make the most of your voiceover business. This is VoiceOver Body Shop. VoiceOver Body Shop is brought to you by voiceoveressentials.com, home of Harlan Hogan's signature products, source elements, remote connections made even easier, vo2gogo.com, everything you need to be a successful voiceover artist, J. Michael Collins' demos, award-winning demo production, voiceactorwebsites.com, where your voiceover website won't be a pain in the butt, and VoiceOver Extra, your daily resource for vo success. And now, live from their super secret multimedia studio in Sherman Oaks, California, here are George Wittem and Dan Leonard. You know what it's time for? It's not how do you do any time, it's tech talk time. We need a cheesy jingle, insert cheesy jingle. I'm working on it, working on it. Within a couple of weeks we'll have it. I need to get some more footage of you behind cabinets and things like that. All right, outstanding. So we went to NAMM, which stands for? The National Association of Music Merchants. Yeah, it's overwhelming. Yes, it's a very lame name for a very exciting show. I mean, it is, if anybody's familiar with CES, this is like the CES of the music business. So it's tons of gear and lots to look at, lots of people watching. But lots of that. Lots of music, bands to play here, celebrity performers, rock stars, you name it. It's busting at the seams. Yeah. Now, of course, it's the music industry and all of the stuff that we use in voiceover. Every last bit of it with maybe a tiny percentage of stuff is designed for making music. Yeah, there's occasional products like these headphones, you know, that that Harlan designed. But everything kind of started as supporting music. And now we're finding, carving out little niches in that world for the voiceover world. We found a couple of things. We found a couple of things. We used to think that is nothing new under the sun. And you go to NAMM and it's like, well, maybe there's something different that might be useful. It gets harder and harder. I mean, the more you go, the more you see the same stuff. Right. And the more you see people you know who you want to say hello to and before you know it, after 10 years, you can barely get around the place. So we work really hard to find new stuff. We found a couple of things. And we're going to highlight a couple of them tonight. Microphone stuff. Microphone stuff. And but the rest of them will, we're going to make sure that we talk about every week about this for a couple of weeks. But all the stuff will be available on YouTube. So you can see some of that. But one of the first places we went, the second day actually, was a company, DPA Microphones. Let's take a look at that one. And we're back at NAMM 2019 here in Anaheim. Last summer, I had the chance to work with DPA Microphones at Danish company. They make great microphones. And they've got some stuff that might be very interesting to the voiceover crowd. And we're talking with Gabriel, who's a rep with them, and talk to us a little bit about the the MMA program here with the app and how it can be used with voiceover. Sure. Be honored. So I'm Gabriel. It's a Danish professional audio DPA. So Daniel, thanks for coming over to chat. The MMA-A is actually a two-channel analog to digital converter that can record of sample rates up to 96 kilohertz at 24-bit. So very high resolution for the microphones. It comes with an app that you download to your iPhone. It gives you four presets. It gives you a mono, a stereo, or a dual mode. It gives you gain. It gives you high-pass filtering. And it gives you a lock. So you can actually set this up in, you know, before your next event and lock out the video engineers. Right. Because you can set your audio and lock it out and keep it nice and pristine. And then you can open a third-party app, whether it be a video recording or an audio recording app. Right. And they'll trust that your DPA microphones are going to come in pure into the third app. It will now take over as the audio engine for the iPhone. It's also a core device. So it can mount on your PC or your Mac. You can use it as an interface for your Pro Tools or any software-driven platform. Wow. It'll take any of our microphones. You could, it has a micro dock connector on here and the Thunderbolt connection to either USB or to the iPhone Thunderbolt. And you have two microphones. If you put one microphone in, it sums and it goes to both channels. If you put two microphone in, it senses that and it gives you the option for stereo or dual. Wow. Because sometimes in VO, you may want a natural sound and the voice sound. So you can do that or you can go two microphones as a stereo recording device for field nuts or something like that. Right. And with a filter, like if you've got a high-pass filter on there, if you're like in a closet in a hotel, you can get rid of any rumble or anything that's going on. Sure. It's going to bake right into the capsule. So if you're in front of a fan that's producing a letter on a cum, you can put these guys on and then you'll get rid of some of that 60-cycle or whatever that is getting into the recording so that your recording is more pure. Now in the studio world, if you're at home in your VO studio, you can hook this up to your iPhone or your computer or your software and you could use any of our microphones. You could use the the dedicated line, which is the larger capsules. The cardioids, the super cardioids, the omnis, doesn't matter. These are all modular so they just unscrew. And then there's an active cable that actually takes it down to a micro-dock connector. You can use the MMA or you can put a wireless adapter on here and go wireless into a sewer or a sun visor. But the end message here is that you can use this line of microphones, you can use the headsets, you can use the 4060s, the slims, basically any of our microphones, except maybe for the de facto, into your iPhone. That is super cool. And they are great sounding microphones. And the dynamic range is higher than any microphone that can fit in it. It's 114 Wow, that's amazing. I was just so impressed with what they sounded like. And then you add the convenience of this. This is really special. Gabriel, thanks so much for talking to us. So very welcome. Thank you. Bye, guys. We were just talking to Sue and she's like, I don't remember seeing them. I said you were there for one day. There was no way you would have caught every one of these vendors. I mean, there was a whole new hall that was the North Hall that was new last year and it's an entire huge building that if you don't know it's there, it's super easy. And that's where all the electronics was. There was a lot of pro audios there. Yeah, which is really what we did. So that, that rig, I could see it being really cool. I mean, I'm still wanting to try an ear set that's good enough for voiceover and have the ultimate super lightweight portable rig that you can use anywhere. Right. Well, the one we had last summer that they, you know, we used it here on the show actually for a couple of nights and it was clear as a bell. I mean, you know, it's just out here. You're not going to get any pops or anything like that. It's a really nice headset microphone. And I know you've always been searching for that. For one that's, yeah, for one that sounds as good as the condenser mics were used to, you've got to spend some, some, some pretty serious dough because. Yeah, these are cheap microphones. No, to make a capsule that that's that tiny. I mean, the tip of the mic is like the side, it's like two millimeters. Yeah. It's very difficult to make them, to make them and make them sound as quiet as these. That's a big thing. So these guys are the closest to doing that now. And, you know, I think the idea of doing long form work, e-learning or audio books or whatever, nothing in the way, just where you're not locked into a mic placement the whole time and just, just make yourself so much more comfortable. Yeah. Right. And the, and the app they have with the interface, it's a really nice little modular system. Like we said, it's not cheap. Were they, were they announcing prices? The app is free. The app's free, of course. Right. But the system. The system, you know, go online, check out DPA and see what they are. I mean, it's not super expensive, but about the same cost as you say for a 416 or a TLM103. But a little bit more versatile, which I thought was really cool. Yeah, it could be, yeah. Now you talked to the people at Aston Mikes. I did. Yeah. Aston is a relatively newcomer. They've been around a couple of years. They're kind of known for their odd, looks like galvanized, steel pipe microphone and their purple amphitheater looking reflection thing. Right. And the grills are kind of wavy. They make unique design. But this is, this one falls outside of what we're used to seeing. And I thought it was really innovative. So here's the Aston microphone stealth dynamic mic. Hey, everybody. It's George the Tech here at NAMM 2019, day two. And we're digging in here with Aston microphones and a little something different from them here to tell me about it's Cliff. How you doing, Cliff? I'm doing good. Hey, man. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Well, we, we are familiar with from your last couple of years, your origin mics have heard them. They're really interesting, great looking mics. They sound really nice. This is a totally different, you know, form factor. What's this? It is. What's unique about this mic? So this is our first dynamic mic from Aston. And there's a lot of features with this that's going to be very competitive to the SM7B. First of all, it's top addressed here and has a built in pop filter. The cool thing is that the capsule and the PCB is suspended by a server thing, hemspheres. So it keeps it afloat and you don't need any additional shock mount. Nice. That's handy. There's also a class a mic pre built in. So it will auto detect if you're running phantom power. So the cool thing is once that phantom power is running, you'll see that there's some purple LEDs here to indicate that the phantom power is on. Now, if you don't want those lights on, you could actually turn it off here. So button here. That's nice. You get the purple lights, but you can turn them off. Yeah, but so that's just to indicate that the phantom power is running. So it's dynamic. So of course, you don't need to use that phantom power, but it has that studio great quality, which is really remarkable. There's also a four step voice in it. So it's like having four different mics in one. You have a voice one and a voice two. So based off of your vocals, whether it's soprano or baritone, you may just want to mess with it and see what works best for you. There's also a guitar setting, which is really unique because it actually works for acoustic and for electric guitars. So it's pretty universal. And then we finally have a dark setting, which is similar to a ribbon mic has a nice rich deep tone to it. Great for a kick drum gives you kind of a John Bonham style approach, I'd say. Or in our world, when we do a lot of voiceover, it could give you that classic radio sound. Absolutely. And this is ideal for podcasting. It really is a universal product. Definitely. Well, it's something we might want to try out in the in the VO studio and see how relevant it is. We may be surprised by dynamic mic for the first time in a long time. Anyway, thanks, Cliff. Appreciate it. Thank you guys. Really appreciate it. So Cliff was one of the most professional presenters, wasn't he? He was very polished. Actually, he was. Most of the guys are pretty polished. But that's an interesting microphone to for people to think about. Remember what the price point was on that? He I refer to calls around 349. It was under 400. Right. That's a lot or a little, you know, it's all very relative. But you know, if you can get us two distinctly different voicings that could be useful for different things out of one mic, right? It's kind of a two for a more for more for one. It has four. Yeah, it's a four voice mic. So that voice thing is it's changing analog circuit inside the electronics of the mic. So normally a dynamic mic has no electronics. Right. Normally dynamic is the simplest microphone to there pretty much is up the side of a ribbon mic. And it's just the diaphragm and a couple of wires and a transformer. And yeah, sometimes the transformer and then the plug. And that's it. But this thing's way more going on. We call an active dynamic. Yeah, it's a dynamic. But then inside it is a preamp. Right. That's powered on phantom power. And then I'm probably just repeating what he said, but you know, it's just it provides you that ability to get different sounds out of out of a dynamic mic without having to know how to do that. Right. I mean, yes, I can go to my light. Yeah, it has a purple light. It has a purple light that lights up when you plug it in and the phantom power is on. But the fact that they actually made it so you could turn off the light, I thought that was pretty smart. I mean, not everybody's kind of want a bright purple light. I think the idea is that everybody wants that on the air light, which of course only we have. True. It's true. You'll also see they always had asked and they always have that that that reflection type thing that's designed to keep the microphone from picking up as much background noise. Not really a voiceover device. Yeah. And with that microphone, the whole idea probably even thinking about using a dynamic mic is to try to reduce the amount of background pickup. Right. But I'm wondering like a dynamic mic that is designed to be sensitive because it has a lot of gain. Will that inherently pick up less background noise than an equivalent condenser mic? Like if you have them, if they're the same level, that's what I'm curious about that. That's going to be an interesting test. And there's only one way to find out. We have to just put it up in the studio. That's right. And of course, it's also important because, you know, we saw a lot of microphones there. I mean, you know, there were, there were manufacturers I'd never seen before. Well, they saw. We heard some of them. You can't tell what the heck really you're hearing in a trade show. Right. Like the noise floor. Forget it. I mean, you're hearing the background of all. Yeah. But my voice sounded great on top of that. Yeah. You can't test a mic at this show. The only place you can really, really test a mic is where you're going to use it. And, you know, so it's kind of silly, you know, to go into a store and say, I like the way this sounds. It's like, it's not really what's important. You really have to try it in your own environment. I used to actually walk around these trade shows with a handheld recorder and plug it into the mic. And then I thought I was real clever because I was recording myself. It was kind of pointless. Fun exercise with pointless. Yeah. I just want to show you. Show us the camera. This is the coolest thing. At one point in the DPA video, the shot sort of like went off to the side. So I've been learning how to use this new camera. Let me put it in front of my gray shirt so you can see that it's so small that it almost disappears. I mean, I'll turn it off again and watch its little head. Looks like a character from Star Wars. It is. It's like a little chicken head. You should name it. It does need a name. It does need a name. This thing is called the DJI Osmo Pocket. And it's a, all the videos that you're going to see from Nam were shot with this little camera. I've seen that. Yeah. The picture quality is... It's all drone technology. Yeah. It's a gimbaled camera that will stay on spot. Yeah. I mean, DJI, which was a no name company five years ago, now makes a camera so good that they take it off the drone, put it on a little stick, and they sell it. And it's awesome. I mean, and the sound, here's the deal. The sound from the whole thing was those two handheld mics. Yeah. That was going to a Tascam DR-40 separate recorder. So we were doing this sort of old school style. It was quite the rig. Yeah. We had the audio going to my hip pack. When you watch them, when you watch the Sentron's Mike Port Pro video, there's a shot. You can see my purple and green hiking hip pack, complete with mud stain. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. But anyway, that's how we did it. I'm really, I'm really happy with how it turned out. It looked great. And, you know, we got some really good video. Anyway, we got lots of questions from our audience. We're going to get to those. So stay tuned for those here on VoiceOver Body Shop Tech Talk. We'll be right back. 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 watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity in dealing with too many options, go to voicehactorwebsites.com where your VO website shouldn't be a pain in the, you know what? What question do we get most often? Well, far and away, it's how do I even get started in voiceover? And we have a great answer to that question. Take VO to go goes free getting started in VO class. You heard right. It's free. And it's available online 24 seven at gettingstartedinvo.com. That's gettingstartedinvo.com. If you've been watching VOBS and thinking that you need to get in gear and start your own voiceover career, this is the class you should start with. You'll learn about the vocal skills you need, the storytelling skills you need, the equipment you need and the business skills you need. All in one single comprehensive online class taught by VO to go goes David H. Lawrence the 17th. This class won the Backstage Readers Choice Award four years in a row. And again, there's no charge. It's absolutely free. Want to take it? Sure you do. Go to gettingstartedinvo.com. That's getting started in VO.com. Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for Snapchat, were you? This is Virgin Radio. Well, okay, we're not that innocent. There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working. Dickies, because I ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values, a leader for California, and a voice for America. It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smartphone, but it's so much more. It's 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. Just you and me, Rick. When hope is lost. The I8 from BMW. Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's J. Michael Collins. Bet you think I'm going to try and sell you a demo now, 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. Hi, this is Bill Farmer and you are watching Voice Over Body Shop. It's great. Yes, and we are back here on Voice Over Body Shop Tech Talk. Important to note, the people need to understand what we do. Right, we don't just walk around shooting videos of cool gear. I would like to do that for a living. I wouldn't be so bad, but no, it's not how we make a living. No, one of the most important things you need to have as a voice actor today is a home voiceover. After you have the training. After you have the training with great people like Mark Cashman and some of the other great coaches we have. But you have to have a home studio in 2019 and 2020 and 2021. It's getting easier, but not everybody really understands all these specific particular little tiny things that you have to understand to have a home voiceover studio. And there aren't a whole lot of people that really understand it because they're all experts in one studio, their own. Right, or music studios or different kind of requirements or definitely different. You know, you can't just fix everything with a plug in these. We're getting there with plug ins. I know the eyes of top this and that, but you still can't fix the bad sounding booth. Sounds like you're in a hollow box. It's going to stay that way. Yeah, can't fix it in the mix. So if you need to learn how or you want to build a new studio for yourself or you really want to find the best spot in your house and set it up properly. So it's set it and forget it. And you just hit your record button and go. You got to talk to one of us guys, which is a really Eastern way of saying, one of us guys, use guys, use guys. Yes, you could talk to to me or you could talk to George. And if you want to talk to George and consult with him, where would they go? You can head over to georgethetech.com. Or if you like the shorter domains, you can go to georgethe.tech. I like that short domain, but I a lot of people are like George the tech dot com works. Anyway, you can there's a menu on there with a lot of different services. You can book me by a schedule time or you can do flat rate services like processing stacks or a sound check. And Dan calls his sound check something different over at his website, which is homevoiceoverstudio.com. Yeah, I have a specimen collection cup there. You click on that. It's a drop box. And you know, for 25 bucks, I will analyze your audio. You had a lot of that this week. Please audio only folks. Yes. Audio on yet. We've caused us some other problems. But if you want to, if you really want to see what your audio is sounding like or what it's supposed to sound like, whistle from the perspective of people who know what it's supposed to sound like. Thousands of raw audio studios, not demos, but real audio. The way it's supposed to come out. Check me out over at homevoiceoverstudio.com and set up a consultant or let me check your audio and let's get you sounding the way you're supposed to sound and not guessing at it. Because I think a lot of mistake a lot of people make is, is they're like, I sound great. When in reality, you don't hire you. So you're not doing this to please your own ears. Also, you don't know if them what you're monitoring yourself through is, is truly accurate or what is going to translate to the real world. Exactly. Sounds great to my speakers. Doesn't really matter. Right. Well, we got a couple of questions here. And the first one is from Rick McIver. Well, if he's McIver, he should know what he's already doing. It's no problem. That joke. I'm planning that all day. I have a question about booth design. In an effort to make my recording environment as quiet as possible, is it better to build a window in my booth and stick my monitor outside to reduce noise or keep the wall solid and put the monitor inside the booth? What is the isolation trade off of a window versus monitor noise inside the booth? That's interesting. Yes. Now, as someone who's written an actual white paper for the National Association of Broadcasters and presented it at the NAB, I'll let you take the first step. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Well, I mean, if windows are expensive, I was just talking to a client about this today. You know, these are kind of expensive. You know, he's like, I want to put windows all along this one wall. You know, I'm like, hey, he's like, is that going to be a problem? No. Sound wise, you can deal with just about anything. If you have the money, you can buy heavy enough glass. You can get rid of the noise of the, you know, the noise that comes through the glass. If you get the right glass, all this kind of stuff. But glass per square foot is way more expensive than wood or drywall. Especially double paying glass, which you're going to need for soundproofing. Yeah. So if, if you're not super claustrophobic, you can do away with the window inside the booth and just have a monitor inside the booth. Yeah. There's not a really, there's no concern anymore of noise from the monitor. Old monitors could have a whining noise or they might have had all the new monitors or LED backlight. There should be, unless something's wrong with the monitor, there should be totally silent. Right. And they're not glass. The surface of these things is soft. You touch it, it moves. And that actually absorbs a lot of the sound. So it doesn't reflect around quite the same way. It can still reflect high, high frequency a little bit. So you can just carefully angle it and you can fix that very easily. So no, I would, I would go with the no window monitor in the booth. If you want to get really clever, put a camera outside the booth. You can see what's going on. That's right. You know, I mean, if you spend a lot of time in your studio, I were in the booth. Yeah, I can see where you might want to get a little sunlight and stuff. If you're in there all day. Yeah, but not everybody's doing that. You're in there for 30 seconds at a time. Get in, get out, go outside, listen to birds, you know, that sort of thing. Brian Arons asks, a very strange tech problem happened in my studio the other day and I'm hoping you can help me solve it. The tip of my headphone jack or rather the one eighth to quarter inch jack adapter broke off in the headphone port of my Yamaha AGO 3 when I was removing the jack. And now that loose tip is stuck in there at such an angle, I can't, I can rattle it, but I can't get it out. I've tried fishing it out with bent paper clips, but had no luck as it is. It's physically preventing me from inserting a new headphone jack all the way into the port and is so preventing me from getting a solid connection, meaning I can usually only hear in one ear. So I'd like to get it out. Well, removing the back of the AGO 3 give me access to the space so I can get out, get it out. And if so, is it safe for someone like me, like him, to attempt who is careful but highly ignorant about how these machines actually work? Well, first off, Have you ever cracked yours open? I certainly have. But I'm someone. What did you find? What did I find? Actually, the same thing happened to me on my AGO 3. Is it serviceable? No, it's not because it's all solid state and what they use for the, the headphone connections, the jacks are these plastic modules that soldered into a PCV, right? So a green piece of plastic, that's the circuit board. So I took it apart thinking, well, maybe I could solder it. I mean, heck, I built a microphone. I should be able to say, I look, no, this is not happening. You know, most of these interfaces are fairly disposable. The problem with this price. Yeah. The problem he's having in the same problem I had was that the, when you've got a jack stuck in there, it turns off. Just connect to the other one. I was going to say, it's got another headphone jack, but You're still getting, it's still getting. It interrupts the signal to the other. Yeah, I was finally able to pull the one out, but you know, it was broken. There's a plastic thing on the end and I, because you walk away, you know, and it happens. You forget you're wearing headphones, which is why I don't like wearing headphones. Anyway, I was able to fish it out and I was able to get stereo back and just using the quarter inch phones out. It has two headphones outside. It does. It's got a mini jack, too. Right. It should be even more fragile. You're right. So taking it apart ain't going to help you. Yeah. At that price, having a spare is probably the way to go. I hate to say it. This stuff is not built to be serviceable. I got lots of spares. You know, I buy a new interface, like, well, I got a backup, you know, so it's people spend more for one vacuum tube than that whole thing costs. So, you know, it's just, it's all depends on what you're looking at. Why would you use a vacuum? Let me read off that way. That way I'm not off mic when I read. Oh, okay. There you go. Let's see here. The questions are, there we are. I'm J. Horace. I believe so. J. Horace Black says, Hey, Jay. I have universal audio Apollo duo, which is a very popular interface, a 416 and a 416 mic. So basic combination and everybody uses works well. George and Dan, are there any plugins that you would recommend that I get? Or should I just keep it simple? You've watched the show, right? You know what he's going to say. Are there any settings on the unit you would recommend? You don't, generally, you don't need to do any processing on the Apollo at all. If you're doing post processing, right? So if you're doing auditions and you want to get a little post processing, use what you already have set up in your DAW. Chances are you've already worked with Dan or I and had some processing set up. But if you hadn't, that's the way to go have a stack or rack made that gets you a sound for your auditions that you like. That's supposed to sound the way it's supposed to sound, not the way you like. The way you think it should sound. Right. And the thing is, if you do it on the duo, yeah, we can, I've set up plot processing for folks on the Apollo for many, many people, and I always do it with a disclaimer like now, now once this is set up on the Apollo, you're married to this thing because that is your sound now. And that processing chain that's in there is, you got to use it. If you go travel, guess what? You got to bring that thing with you wherever you go. It's part of your sound. So if you're going to do that, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons, which would probably be doing a lot of iptical sessions or ISDN and source connect where they, where you want to kind of already process the sound just the right amount for that kind of work. But no, I really wouldn't. I wouldn't. I mean, it comes with bundled with pretty much everything I would want. There's nothing you cannot do with that, but it's not designed for voiceover. Yeah, it's got a lot of stuff going. I mean, I've set up the API vision for folks with the expanders and blah, blah, blah. That one's useful, but you know, you don't need a lot of that stuff if you're already doing it in posts. And if you don't know what something does, don't use it. I mean, if you can't hear what it's doing or you don't know why that knob does that thing, unless you can hear the difference, you probably don't want to mess with it too much because you're going to get to make a mess out of it. Next question from Steve Hufford. Two questions. I have heard, have you heard anything about audition getting punch and roll? Now we had Durin Gleebs on here from Adobe a couple months ago. I think we asked him that, and he said, no. No, it's still not happening. There's, in multi-track mode, you can, there's a guy that, oh man, do you remember? Somebody wrote a script. Somebody wrote a script. What's that? Larry Hudson. Larry Hudson. Larry Hudson has a script. Stephen J. Cohen. Stephen J. Cohen. There's three, there's at least, those aren't the names I'm thinking of. There's another guy that wrote an actual plug-in that actually loads in, in audition. It's a little pop-up window that does, there's a lot of add-ons, but I don't think it's natively has it yet. Yeah. You know, I think some people need to understand that they don't have to use just one program because you can use something simple like ocean audio or audacity or something like it, just record the track and then import it into audition and then you can do your editing and all that stuff there, and that's a lot simpler. Don't just like, well, I love what people say. It's such a pain to try and move it from one program to another. Click. It's not, it's not, especially when trying to do that same thing in another program is much more difficult. In that case, audiobooks tends to be the workflow that people get the most, you know, taught up on and I say, record and whatever you want and edit and this other thing that works better. Right. Or like, Twisted Wave has got kick butt batch processing. So if you're doing e-learning, recording whatever you want, Pro Tools, Reaper, whatever, and then bring it into Twisted Wave. So don't be stuck on one program. Or vice versa. Let's see here. He says, second question, can RX6 or 7, which is made by Isotope, which is a sound cleaning device program, match background sounds and or voice to insert a new phrase into a previously recorded script. That's a little bit more sophisticated. Yeah. I mean, if you're trying to insert something into something else, it's really not rocket science, especially if you're doing multitracking, because you can take the original sound, copy it, general tone, add a room tone or something like that, and just deposit it in another, you know, in another track in the timeline. Yeah, that's what I would do. I would take some of the original room tone and lay it underneath the thing that you dub. Right. If you're trying to keep a consistent room tone, I mean, that that's just a truism for any kind of audio editing for voiceover, especially audio books where you're going to have a lot of edits, but you never want the room tone to change. Keep the room tone consistent that way. But an idea of the idea that a plugin could store the room tone and kind of automatically put it in, that's actually an interesting concept. Frankly, I don't know. It does a ton of stuff. Maybe the advanced version does it. I don't know. Well, we'll try that. Let's sit here. Carl G asks, in order to move my computer from the booth, I had to use a generic 3M USB cable to my 2i2, just like everybody else. I've just upgraded to an Audion ID 14, which I love, and wondering if there's a value to upgrading the cable within reason. So cables with digital audio, like USB, it works or it doesn't. Yeah. I mean, generally speaking, that's the case. So if it's working fine, then just keep using it. And if it's causing you trouble, then change it. I can tell you, USB is really persnickety over longer distances. So make sure, you know, if you have one good long cable and it's reliable for you, then stick with it. A 12 foot USB cable. Used to have one in my old studio. Yeah. So I mean, I think they sure mics came with a 12 or a 15 foot USB cable. Yeah. That's about as far as you can go without having to get some interesting gadgets to extend it. Right. With an active extender or this or that, you know, and it doesn't affect the sound. The only thing it will affect is its connectivity more than anything else. Things will blank out. Yeah. When it's in a long distance, the device can may not get enough power or something weird. Jamie Dawson asks, I, McDowell, yes, I need a new mic preamp setup. What's the best way to test it out? What's the best fit for me? What do you want it for? Yeah. I mean, what are you trying to do with that thing? Is it just a utility to boost the signal of your mic and is the interface you're already using not doing that well? Because like the ones built into the 2i2, the ID 14, the Apollo, the mixer face on and on the Steinbergs, all those mic preamps work perfectly fine. Like there is no production engineer who's going to listen to your audio and go, well, the preamps kind of fuzzy sounding. Unless something's technically wrong with your gear, they're not going to hear it. So in terms of shopping for mic preamps, I'm assuming you're asking because you're ready to buy a high-end mic preamp. And if you're buying cheap mic preamps, there's no point whatsoever. So get ready to start spending, honestly, at minimum $1,000. More than you're spending on your mic. Probably, yeah. Because if you're shopping for mic preamps, you're looking for something that different than what you already have built into the interface. What's already in the interface is clean gain with minimal distortion. Now you're looking for something that has something else, character, something to it, like a thickening or a distortion or tube distortion or something like that. They just want to hear you as you exist, not you with all this other stuff. And if you're going to... I mean, there are some guys, I mean, some of the promo guys who we can count on the fingers on one hand who need this stuff, who are doing stuff somewhat live because they're recording it directly to another studio. And they're like, okay, good to go. That's nobody. I mean... It's a very small niche. Yeah. Don't worry about that stuff until they ask you to start doing that. Don't worry about it. In the meantime, any good average interface like the 2i2, any of the focus rights or the audience or the the universals, the arrow and the... They all sound... They're just making ones and zeroes, guys. Boy, these are... If you're doing a mic preamp shootout, you're going to have to have a really good ear to hear the differences. The differences are subtle. They're very subtle to the layman or to someone who's a non-engineer. To an engineer, these are shades of mauve. I asked my analogy I always use. The differences are really subtle. Okay. We got two more questions here. Brian Jester asks again, weird I know, but I have a need to have a two mic setup locations running into the same computer. I have two focus rights. Is there a way to run both at the same time without unplugging one and then plugging the other in? Thanks, guys. Adobe Audition is my software. I need to have two mic setup locations. No, is he using like one with one microphone, like a solo or is he got a 2i2? In which case, you plug both mics in. He's got two mic locations. He's got two mics with their own interfaces. Each one has a focus, right? Going to the same computer. Well, in Adobe, you just tell it which of the two you're using. I don't know how Adobe will differentiate which is which since there's two and they have the same model. Maybe it says one in parentheses, two in parentheses or somehow Audition is going to differentiate that you have two of them. Right. You've got to go into the setup and into the audio midi in the hardware and say, this channel here, that channel there. Yeah, you get to choose which of the hardware is going to be, it's not that hard. It probably takes this as long to literally switch the two USB cables. Or just get a small mixer. Yeah, you could do it that way. I mean, if you don't want to buy anything else, then it's probably just as fast as switch the two cables. Honestly, otherwise you go into addition, you open to preferences, you go into hardware, you choose the sound, other sound driver for the, you know, it takes probably just as long to do it. Okay. Last question from Devox. Interested in getting off the Apple Microsoft treadmills today or in the near future, can you address using Linux for Vio? All you know it's for geek. Here's the thing. You know, we're not geeks. Well, maybe George is a geek, but you know, it's... I'm not a Linux geek, I can tell you that. Well, that's good. The thing... Linux. Linux. Right. I'm not that much of a geek that I know how to thank you. Yeah. The fact is, is that if you're an audio geek, that's got nothing to do with voiceover, because audio geeks don't hire voice talent. I mean, there might be a few, but they're certainly in the minority. Most of them are listening on a laptop speaker and they really don't know the difference. Doesn't mean that you buy lousy stuff or cheap stuff. You get good stuff, but the subtleties between some of these things is so minor that nobody can really tell the difference. So stop overthinking your home voiceover studio. Every time you're thinking about an alternative operating system outside of the two big ones is, you know, you're getting into territory of, are you going to support this yourself? And if you're not, who do you know who's going to support this system now that you've hacked together using some build of Linux from some guy, whatever, it's going to be tough. I mean, we used to run our Mac, we used to run our show on a Mac that was a hack and touch. Yeah. So it was running a Mac OS on a Windows PC that we had built. It was a disaster. And it worked fine until it didn't. And then getting support was a nightmare. Really? It sucked. It was terrible. But yes, you can run Audacity on Linux or Linux. Uh, there's a lot of audio hardware that will work on Linux. Um, it can't be anything fancy like the Apollo. Right. If it uses a custom driver thing like the Apollo, not going to happen. Yeah. If it's one of those plug and play devices, like a, you know, a USB headset or a USB mic, that'll probably work in Linux. Probably. So all right, you can start there and start dabbling, have fun. Super. Great questions, guys. That was great. That was fun. I like doing it this way. All right, we'll be right back after these. I'll have to take a moment here to ask you to listen to me and thank and buy products from one of our wonderful sponsors at Source Elements there, the creators of Source Connect. It's a tool you need at this point. If you're at that point in your career where, first of all, people are asking for Source Connect. Well, that's a no-brainer. But B, if you're trying to get the attention of an agent or jobs that require live real-time direction and live real-time recording, this is a tool you want to have in your tool belt. You can get a demo right now. I mean, you don't have to have a reason to have it today. You can at least get the demo going on. Go over to source-elements.com and get a 15-day free trial. Get it ready to go. Get the iLok thing going on so you can use the software. Don't have to buy a little iLok key to use Source Connect Standard. Once you have it up and running, you'll feel confident you know how it works. You'll know you'll be ready to go. And then when the day comes, you've got that gig. You can purchase the license online. You can pay for it outright, or you can do a monthly installment plan, which is actually a subscription. So when you do that, you get ongoing support throughout the entire time that you're paying for the subscription. So give it a try. Go over to source-elements.com and get the trial. If you have a chance to tell them that we sent you, we'd really appreciate it. Are you confused about how to set up and maintain a professional quality voiceover studio? No wonder. The information out there is mostly mythology. This is the best microphone to use. You'll have to have a preamp. You need a soundproof booth. This software is the best. Your audio must be broadcast quality. Consult with someone who knows the truth, someone who's been there in the trenches, doing voiceover for over 30 years, someone with unparalleled experience with voiceover studios, who's worked with hundreds of voice actors and designed hundreds of personal studios. He knows how to teach and cares about your success. In one of the harshest environments known to voiceover, your home. Dan Leonard, the home studio master. Separate myth from fact and get a handle on your personal voiceover studio. Contact the home studio master at homevoiceoverstudio.com. Hey, it's time to talk about Harlan Hogan's voiceoveressentials.com. And Harlan is about to do the second reorder of the multicolor LED voiceover recording with remote sign. It's a huge success. Everybody loves these things. And they're offering a discount to owners of the original fluorescent sign as replacement tubes, as you know, are kind of difficult to find. LEDs pretty much last forever. You want details on how to get that special discount? Write to terry at terry.lee at voiceoveressentials.com. That's terry.lee at voiceoveressentials.com. She'll give you all the details on how to get that. By the way, voiceover essential stocks replacement earpads now for the Harlan Hogan Signature Series. Voice optimized headphones versions one and two. It's got Napa leather and memory foam OEM pads. So go over to voiceoveressentials.com. Best place to go? Go to the bottom of our website page. It's right down there. Click on the picture of Harlan Hogan. And it will take you right there where you can order all of these stuff, especially the sign which everybody wants. There's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer. That place is voiceoveressentials.com. Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level. Stay in touch with market trends, coaching, products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls. Voiceover Extra has hundreds of articles, free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed. Learn from the most respected talents, coaches and industry insiders. When you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books, auditioning, casting, home studio setup and equipment, marketing, performance techniques and much more. It's time to hit your one stop daily resource for voiceover success. Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voiceover audition. It's all here at voiceoverextra.com. That's voiceoverxtra.com. Oh, I think I heard the voiceover body shot. I did. I did hear the voiceover body shot. Little body shot. And we're back. I love doing this show. Especially when we get that kind of engagement from the audience. Yeah. Makes it a lot more rewarding for us. It really does. Next week on this show, I'm not exactly sure who our guest is next week because we're not on next week. We do the tech talk again next week and then we have another live guest. We got a few people lined up. Lined up. In the queue, but we're getting them just confirmed. That's right. So stay tuned for that. Yeah. Well, we'll be letting you know about that. Who are our donors of the week? Let's go take a look. We have a lot of folks who donate on a regular basis using our YouTube link. It's right on the website and they can subscribe and send these in regularly. People like, well, Maria's is not a subscription. I can tell you by the amount that she sent today. Nice of you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Maria. She sent a donation. Andrew Kaufman. He's a subscriber. Sends a little bit every month. Rick McIver. Thanks, Rick. You know, I think he probably sent us a little bit of money because we answered his question. What a guy. You know, we appreciate it. Yeah, it's like a little tip. We think. Thank you. John Griffith. Martha Kahn. Hi, Martha. Saw her at NAM. By the way. Yes, we did. Martha, that was fun. Shayna Pennington-Baird. And I'm going to say it again because she's here. Shawna Pennington-Baird. Shawna. That name, man, has a pain in that. What's, are you waving? Oh, because our technical director is waving to herself. I think we've used up the oxygen in the room. Antland Productions, Andrew Kaufman. I already said his name. Joseph Valentinetti, Stephanie Sutherland, and Diana Bursall. All right. All names that we've seen many times before. We thank you for your ongoing support. Hey, show us your booths. Yeah, we want some new ones. Whose palace is this behind us today? Yeah, this is, this is Mike McCall. Did his studio maybe five or six years ago in the studio city area? It's, it is awesome. Almost as nice as this. The best thing about it is the booth, the desk, which you can't really tell from this, but the desk is like right in the middle of the room. You can walk entirely around it and never trip on a cable because everything comes up from the floor in the middle. That's the way it should be. This is the coolest space. But anyway, yeah, that's, but you guys should send in your photos. Send them in landscape and try to get them. Not portrait landscape. Enough lighting so we can see what's in the photo. We got a couple in there. Sometimes they're really dark, kind of hard to make out what's in the shot. And I know it's not easy when your studio is small to get an image that looks good. But keep trying. Well, we will use the ones that look good. Yeah, send them into theguys at vobs.tv. Also, we're on live Alternate Mondays now. So, you know. We do what we do, our live taping on the first Monday generally and then the third. Third Monday. And then we run our tech segment, the Tech Talk, on the other Monday. But if you come in live, you'll see both as we tape them together. Right, exactly. And if you want to be in our studio audience, like these fine people are tonight, let's have that audience cam shot again. You could be here. Same thing, right to theguys at vobs.tv. We need to, of course, thank our sponsors, like Harlan Hogan's VoiceOver Essentials. We also have on the tablet Mr. VoiceOver Extra. That's Source Elements. Of Vio2GoGo.com. And VoiceActorWebsites.com. And of course. J. Michael Collins, demos. Great guy. I should have memorized that by now. After a couple of years. We've had the same slew of sponsors for a while, which is very amazing. We also need to thank the Dan and Marcy Leonard Foundation for the betterment of live webcasting. Our producer, Catherine, I know, producer Catherine Curtin, Mike Merlino for doing great chat room. Thanks, Mike. He's getting a hang of that. We really like that. And of course our amazing technical director who's just got it together. She likes the wave to herself. Sue Merlino. We really appreciate that. And of course, Lee Penney simply for being Lee Penney. Well, that's going to do it for us this week. You know, this isn't an easy business and we're here to help you out. And what we really want to do is make you sound good because when you sound good. You is good. I think that's the way it goes. Anyway, this doesn't really matter. I'm Dan Leonard. I'm George Whidham. And this is VoiceOver. Body Shop. Or Vio. B. S. Have a great week, everybody.