 Hey, it's time for a special edition of voiceover body shop tech talk and we're gonna do a interface Shoot out we've been wanting to do this for a while right George Yeah, we really have this is a big thing to put together because you got to first gather all these things and fortunately between Dan and I We got a lot of interfaces. We've gathered over the years Dan has them spread out all over the floor. So hopefully you see a picture of that later There's a lot of gear here. So we're we're ranging Basically spanning a decade, right? Probably more than that some of the stuff. I've had for a while. Yeah So if you want to see what they sound like Stay tuned coming up on voice over body shop tech talk From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe, they bring it to you now George Whidham the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you Create a professional sounding home VO studio and each week they allow you into their world Making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials.com home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites.com where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voice over training J. Michael Collins demos when Quality matters and voice over extra your daily resource for VO success And now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Well, hi there, I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whidham and this is voice over body shop or VO BS Tech talk tech talk special edition Well, all the adobe after effects graphics, yeah, we'll throw those in there anyway You know, we're off for a week So we thought what a great time to actually do an interface shootout because we've got so many of these things and I had most of them But then George had a few more so I had to get in the car bring him some falafel and drive all the way To Japan again and make sure that we had enough interfaces to do we've got like nine or ten here I think yeah, let's I'll just read down the wave files. I don't remind me what we have Okay, that'll help starting at the top of the list. This is a no particular order The newest thing in this test for sure would be the Audient EVO 4. We have a road AI one a Scarlet 2i 2 generation generation 2 and an Apigee one and I believe that is literally the first gen one right the old yes Sounds great on the Audient ID 14 the sentence mic port pro 2 An avid mbox 3 mini which used to be mine, and it's gotta be 10 years old the mic port pro One or the original gen it there's the there's the avid a focus right solo gen one a Sentence mixer face are for an Apollo twin mark one. That's the silver one a Steinberg you are 12 and Actually, I think that's it that rounds out the list It's a heck of it's a heck of an array of stuff. So Where do we start should we you did this cool mix and match file? Where we get to hear all of them intercut and then we have samples of all of them Where should we start well? I say we go through each one of them But first I think we need to tell people if they're fairly new to watching our show What it is that George and I do which is You know we help people with their home voiceover studios and the fact that so many people Now need to have a home voiceover studio because you can't go into the big professional studios That everybody needs help and boy if we've been getting lots of interesting emails and requests and files from people Everybody's just like well, I just heard from this person that you know Foam is just for decoration that you should really use fiberglass, and it's like oh come on now said someone is FOS and you know if you're gonna ask us we know the answers because George and I have been doing this For a combined at least 30 years So you're talking to people who have worked with the top people in the business we have built literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of home voiceover studios and This is what we do we don't we're not specialists in one studio our own Especially mine since I'm actually a voice actor and George works with all the top voice actors And and I work with all a lot of the top voice actors and Their their audio should sound fabulous But people get confused as to what they're supposed to use and they get recommended tools that don't work Well for them or are so so complicated They don't even know what's going on under the hood and why the audio doesn't sound the way they think it should so right That's our job is to sort all that out right so if people want to work with you George with you George With you George, I'm the Judean. I you're the you're George How do they work with you? You can head over to George the tech. That's the website where all my services are located I've got on-demand stuff where you can schedule one-on-one sessions Or there's like a self-service list of options in there like getting a sound check or having your two You're like a tutorial or a stack for your auditions and Dan You're also providing services on your website. Oh, yeah, we just go over to home voiceover studio comm and Check out what I do and we're always offering some new stuff There's lots of videos there But I talk about what it is you need to do for a home studio and what you're using it for and if you already have one built and You're recording and you want to hear what your audio. I mean, you know what it sounds like But you may not really understand what it sounds like I've got my specimen collection cup and all you do is click on that follow the instructions send me a file according to my instructions means follow the instructions follow the instructions and For $25 I will give you a very thorough analysis of what is going on in your studio if it sounds good It is good if it doesn't we'll tell you why and if you need a little bit more help We can set that up with the consultation But let's get into The meat of the matter here on voiceover body shop tech talk interface shoot out shoot out shoot out Should have some fun with that. Anyway Let's let's start off with the what what's the first file you've got there in oh, yeah Just looking again at the list that I have in front of me the first file I have is the the evo for which is one that we both looked at I did a review on this and So this is our first close really close listen to this thing to see what it sounds like so Dan Also, tell everybody About the parameters that you are following to make sure that these this test was you know as accurate as we could do So you're you were using what Mike? Well, I'm using a Sennheiser 460. Well better yet. Why don't I just roll this video of the rules? Okay Here's the rules. I have got my 416 30 degrees towards my chest 7 to 8 inches away. I measured this is 7 to 8 inches. I'm going to be using different interfaces I'm going to change them between each copy and We'll read this standard script Companies can no longer afford to be reactive Across all industries Organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible as Systems age predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up-to-date Today new technologies have become available Allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys All right, let's take a listen to this evo for sample Companies can no longer afford to be reactive across all industries Organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible as Systems age predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up-to-date Today new technologies have become available allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys And then you have a second sample. Is there anything different between the two or is it? No, no, no That's just an alternative. So we'll go with that one. Okay your thoughts Sounds good and I think you're gonna hear that a lot tonight when you hear these things sort of in a vacuum or kind of alone You know, we're listening to them one after another soloed like this You're gonna find it very hard to differentiate between them as to what sounds better So I'll play each of these samples down the line And then what I might do is kind of more rapidly switch between them or just play your mix and match sample where You've intercut between a whole bunch of different interfaces and just made a cut of The way they all sound next to each other. So do that a little later on. Yeah. Yeah, so that yeah the evo for I liked it You know, it's you know compared to the ID 14, which we'll hear a little bit later It's a totally different generation of an audience interface and you know, it's simple I mean here it is. You're actually listening to me on it right now because that's what I'm using to record And It's it's kind of cool and it's it's it's a good clean sounding Interface so I like the game like the knob on it the way the game Once you learn how it all works. Yeah, it's kind of cool And it also has a feature on it where you can set the set a level that's an automatic level setting Which I think is probably a really cool thing to have, you know what to do sets it at minus 10 peak or something I'm not sure what it does. Yeah. Yeah All right, so that's the evo for we'll jump on to the next thing in the list again arbitrary order This is the road AI one. So another pretty modern new design came out in the last couple of years and Let's see what that sounds like Companies can no longer report to be reactive Across all industries Organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible As systems age predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date Today new technologies have become available Allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys. I Think that one sounds great like a Little bit better than the evo for I mean it's subtle But there's just something about the detail like the top-end detail. It's just something about it just seems a little bit crisper But anyway, yeah, I mean I'm 63 years old I've listened to much rock music but telling you truth. They sounded pretty much the same to me Yeah, they're really close. Yeah, I mean it in is is that going to be a big difference though Is that something that is going to make the difference between you booking a job and not booking a job? Well, we'll play that mix and match later and you're gonna hear when you intercut these together how subtle it is It's it's again playing them by themselves. It's harder to tell Let's jump now back a little bit in generation to a focus right to a two gen two. So this is a couple of years old and Let's see how this stacks up and again all of these look like their peak levels are pretty well matched Oh, they are trust me. We're in good shape there Companies can no longer afford to be reactive across all industries Organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible as Systems age predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date Today new technologies have become available Allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys Sounds good And if it sounds good, it is good You're probably not gonna hear us say this sounds bad tonight. I can guarantee it We've already heard all these and there's not a bad one in the bunch. They're just shades of mauve I like to go Not a shade of chartreuse, but a shade of mauve And so that was the gen two scarlet That's it's obviously one of the most common most popular interfaces on the planet Yeah, I it really comes down to the fact that they all do essentially the same thing They turn our analog audio from our microphones To the ones and zeros That our computers understand it can turn into a graphic representation of a waveform and a spectrograph and all the other things that we do So it's really important that people understand that Is there a huge difference in these Clearly clearly there's something and it probably has more to do with the preamps in them Than in the actual You know analog to digital converters inside the the units but we can talk about that Have you basically have two main components in these things doing the job the preamp circuit and the converter the analog the digital chip And honestly, there's only a couple companies that make these parts So in many cases they they may have exactly The same parts in terms of the preamp or and or the chip and the converter So, you know, anyway take that now at the apogee they're kind of known for their converters This is what they've always been known for so Let's listen to the apogee one. This is the original apogee one This thing's got to be at least 10 years old It's a little black one with the funky cable on it right and I've got a good story after we do this one so Companies can no longer afford to be reactive Across all industries organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible As systems age predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date Today new technologies have become available allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys It sounds great. I mean it sounds as good as anything else that we've heard so far If not the best it has that same Detail that I was talking about that very top-end detail That just sounds really really clean nice like the road Um, here's the thing the apogee one. I have a love hate great sound But I don't like their driver software maestro panel thing. It's confusing They have a funky breakout cable. That's proprietary. I've never been a big fan of the design But to sound quality it speaks for itself Yeah, and the thing is I didn't I didn't use the maestro on that. I was just plugged down You need it and roll you generally don't need it Then my sort of thing is only for people that really got to hear themselves on their headphones Right, and then you then you need that for that, but it's yeah, I've always found them to be a little fiddly Yeah, nothing like an actual knob on the front of the unit to turn the gain up and down You know, yeah, and it's a very functional knob too big silver knob push it in it It allows you to change inputs and things like that about this had to have been Probably 10 or 11 years ago. Let's see with probably at the second voice conference at the the century city plaza hotel in Probably 2010 So yeah, at least at least 10 years ago I got to meet the President or vice president of apogee, which is they're in Santa Monica So they you're like, I'll just go over there and check it out And and I was listening to it. I'm like, I have one of these and I really like it. He goes Do you use a pre-app with it? I said and at the time I had I have a I still have it sitting on a shelf a personas Eureka, which was great The reason I used it is because it was a It had a a spittiff digital output that we could use as an optical input into a mac And uh, he's like We need that for Go naked I'm like, excuse me. Uh, it's go naked with it. It's like Just go direct into the apogee From your mic because you saying trust the pre-app trust the pre-app in the in the apogee because we've we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on research on these things and it'll sound great and So and I did one of the biggest projects I ever did Using an apogee one, which was an entire English translation of the old testament, uh, which was about a six month operation and Use that one and it was flawless the whole way through There was nothing it was just dry as a bone and went right into that and the apogee one was great you know easy to settle level with it and Easy to travel with if you're one of those people that obsesses about moving about with your interface And uh, so it was it was a nice unit It it dates way back. I mean I was looking online while you were talking about trying to figure out when it came out The the generation after that one the next one came out in 2009 Yeah, so that gives you this thing has been out for well over 10 maybe 12 plus years. So yeah, yeah I mean telling you they I've been saying this all along that we've pretty much nailed The the interface ad converter sound quality problem already. Like we did that a long time ago So anything coming out is just variations on a theme with different branding different prices Different knobs, but right the sound quality is there. Yeah, and I'd still be using it Except I gave it away to somebody And I went well I want to try this one I was using two i2s and I'm using a bunch of other things and you know And of course, this is all proving that does it really matter Right. So anyway, but also the the the the the amount of gain that thing has without any hissing or any White noise or anything. It's just a really really clean little preamp for just a little tiny thing Yeah, it does have a lot of gain. Yeah. Yeah, so now jumping back to audience This is the id 14 which has been a pretty well respected unit for quite some time. Let's see how this one sounds Companies can no longer afford to be reactive across all industries Organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible As systems age predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date Today new technologies have become available allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys It sounds good. It sounds good We've had a lot of good sounding interfaces, but it doesn't sound great Do you think it's it sounds I mean it doesn't have that Something that the apogee did on the top end. It's it's I guess it's you want to say muddy, but it's not really money It just doesn't quite have I keep using this detail or articulate. It's basically the top top end of the frequency range There's just something not quite there. I think it'd be interesting to hear back back against its suitor the or the newer Suitor is maybe not the right word, but it's kind of the next gen audience thing the evo evo for We've referred to evo for us and we know that so let's listen to it right back to back So here's the evo for companies can no longer afford to be reactive Across all industries organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible Now back to the id 14 companies can no longer afford to be reactive That's interesting the evo four is a little darker. Even then the id 14 Yeah, so they're they are they definitely have a different sound from each other. Yeah All right, so moving on. What's the next one on the hip parade? Yeah, the next one. It says it is the mppo 2 so that must be the mic port for two Had an issue with this one, but let's let's hear it. All right. There we go Companies can no longer afford to be reactive Across all industries organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible As systems age predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date Today new technologies have become available allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys Good sounds really good. It was actually pretty crisp Uh crisp detail. Yeah. Yeah, all right. Tell me about the issues you had well getting dirty and working Well, I was I was working with it and I started doing another take and it just crapped out on me I was like, no, there's not let's not, you know, we don't we don't recognize it anymore. Stop it You know, and I like I tried to get it to go again try you know, I'm plugged it plugged back in and it stopped working on me So that was that was one of the initial takes because I did a couple of takes, you know, the first takes we did Uh, I was sort of varying the read a little bit and it changed a lot of things So I tried to do the read as consistently as possible, which is why it doesn't sound like You know, you know, some really professional voice. It's as close to apples to apples to apples as you can Exactly. It's really consistent. Yeah, I did did the battery die because that's the quirk about that thing It has a matter it was plugged in. Okay. I had I had it plugged in and then it just suddenly just lost We've seen that before We we were doing a a mic shoot out at woeville con a couple of years ago using a A mixer a Behringer mixer and it just died on us. I'm like now what Fortunately, we had a backup Which is what we do. Let's jump to its much older brother sibling the centrance mic port pro Okay, kind of was like the one that started it all in terms of ultra portable high quality Interfaces these things are definitely way north of 10 years old now. Yeah, here we go Companies can no longer afford to be reactive Across all industries organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible As systems age predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date Today new technologies have become available allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability Journeys, they're really similar sounding right. I mean They're pretty much identical So anyway, centrance, you know, they said that they designed a new preamp and everything for it But fortunately they didn't mess with the sonics. It sounds fantastic Right So if you like the extra flexibility of the mic port pro 2 the extra features it has the Battery for plugging into an iPad Um Probably the way to go. I don't even know are they still selling the mic port pro first I don't I do not I do not know Probably not, right? Probably not, right? Yeah. Yeah now. What's good? All right, I figured maybe it's time to go to the mixer face Since we're on the centrance products. So we'll see if we're on the centrance chain. Yeah, let's go to the mixer phase So the mixer phase came out Uh before the mic port pro 2 it's kind of like the mic port pro doubled sick two of them Uh stereo. So let's take a listen to that one Um Companies can no longer afford to be reactive across all industries Organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible As systems age predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up-to-date Today new technologies have become available allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys Essentially the same Yeah, you would expect. Yeah, actually to me sounded a little bit more transparent. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. Yeah, they're all they all compare very, very favorably or similarly between all the Sentrons, which, you know, it's good. That's actually a good sign because that means that Michael Goodman, the designer of these, is listening to them and making sure that that sound quality carries on from product to product generation to generation. Absolutely. So now we're going to jump back in time and we skipped over. We're going to go back to the Avid M-Box 3 mini. Okay. This thing is gotta be 10 years old at least. So this is kind of an older generation. Now granted, they had a couple different versions before this. This is the 3. Here's the original. The original M-Box signed by signed by Melissa Disney. And the reason it's not in the test is because it's 32-bit and none of our computers can even support it. There's no functioning drivers that will work on it. So we couldn't test it. But anyway, here we go. M-Box 3. Companies can no longer afford to be reactive. Across all industries, organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible. As systems age, predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date. Today, new technologies have become available, allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys. No complaints there. Sounds fantastic. Sounds really good. Sounds great. Yeah. Interesting to note that, you know, I picked that particular copy so I could do that one last sentence on one breath. It's amazing how many times people, you know, they, they, they try it because they're trying to project too much. They tend to take a breath in the middle of a sentence like, well, how do I edit out the breaths? How about not taking one? Right. So if you can do an entire lengthy sentence in one breath, that's going to save you a lot of time and a lot of editing time. So I figured I just throw that in there for, for an example. Yeah, that's a very good point. So now we're going to go back to the Focusrite Scarlett Solo Gen 1. So going back. Right. But before we do that, we're going to take a break because, oh, it's break time. It's break time. So go grab a soda or whatever it is, your favorite beverage and listen to these incredible messages from our incredibly important sponsors. We'll be right back here on Voice over Body Shop, Tech Talk Interface. Shoot out, shoot out, shoot out. This is the Latin lover narrator from Jane the Virgin, Anthony Mendes. And you're enjoying Dan and George on the Voice over Body Shop. 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 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 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, 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. I know what you've likely heard is that voicing, editing, and mastering audiobooks is grueling. It takes forever and it's hard to do. The tech you need is incredibly finicky. But what if I told you it doesn't have to be that way? The hundreds and hundreds of graduates of the ACX Masterclass know that it doesn't have to be a slog to produce an audiobook. If you have the right training, the right tools, and the right mindset, it can be with David H. Lawrence, the 17th, who is your trainer and tool whisperer for the ACX Masterclass describes as a lovely, satisfying, and profitable part of your voice over practice. With audiobooks being the lowest hanging fruit of the voice over world, the ACX Masterclass will show you exactly how you can make that happen. And right now, if you go to ACXMasterclass.com, you'll find a free mini course with three full video lessons that will bring into laser focus just how easy making audiobook narration a part of your voice over career can be. That's ACXMasterclass.com. Hey everybody, it's time to talk about Source Connect. That's that software you've probably heard about created by Source Elements. And it's used for connecting your studio to other studios and producers and engineers all around the world. And now, especially at home, a lot of studio engineers are now recording sessions live. And not just what you might normally think of as Source Connect sessions like big commercial gigs, but they're doing even audiobooks. They're doing animation, all sorts of different projects are being recorded over Source Connect. It's a software you run on your computer. It's an application. It runs on Mac or Windows. And in order to use it, there's a little bit of a process to get it set up. If you head over to georgev.tech slash sc, you can get some free tutorial information over there to get you up and running a little bit faster that I've put together. But get a trial license of Source Connect now, not Source Connect now. And that's why I said that it's a play on words, Source Connect standard. Source Connect standard is the tool that's being used by the pros. So if you want to get that up and running, head over to source-elements.com, get a 15 day free trial, get your iLock set up and get it going so that you're ready. And you can tell your agent and you can tell your clients, I am Source Connect ready, I'm ready to go. And that's what you should do. You should be ready, be ready and make sure you have Source Connect. We'll be right back. Yeah. Hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky, the voice of Rocco, and you're watching Voice Over Body Shop. We're back. We are. And we're doing an interface shoot out here on Voice Over Body Shop. And, uh, yeah, I'm going to have to do a film of all the stuff. I'll show this in a second. Here's a video of all the garbage that's been going on here. I mean, we've not really been in this. I'm the only one that's been in the studio for the last couple of weeks since we were all on quarantine lockdown here. And we've been doing the show remotely. As you see, we're sort of doing it remotely this way today, this week. And, uh, silly. It only has to look nice in the frame of the camera. See, it looks fabulous. I could be in Carnegie Hall here for all you know, it looks great. But anyway, all right. So what's next on the hit parade here? Uh, we got the Focusrite Scarlett Solo Jennifer. Jennifer one. Jennifer one. It's the Focusrite Scarlett Gen one, the original Scarlett solo. Companies can no longer afford to be reactive. Across all industries, organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible. As systems age, predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date. Today, new technologies have become available, allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys. You know, it sounds fantastic. I got no complaints about the gen one. And that's, you know, the first gen. That's a Focusrite Solo. Hundred bucks. Yeah. I mean, now we used to use that on the show. That was our monitor here when, when I sue our director is using that for the output for her headphones. And then it lost a channel in the headphone section. If you pushed on the dial, it would get it, but she's not going to spend the time directing the show holding that button in. So it got retired, but it still records. It still records just great. Yeah. So here's now we're going to really mix it up. So we're going to go from that $100 interface to the most expensive by far interface in the whole test. This is now the Apollo twin mark one. So I don't have a twin mark two on hand or the arrow and the new stuff. This is the mark one. It came out maybe four or five years ago. So here we go with the mark one Apollo companies can no longer afford to be reactive. Across all industries, organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible. As systems age, predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date. Today, new technologies have become available, allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys. I mean, as you would expect, it sounds great. It's it's in the same class sound wise as the all the best stuff in the test. But here's the question that is an $800 interface versus 150 for some of these other ones or 200 or so. Is it worth that $600 more to get that sound quality? Really, what is the difference between the Apollo twin and all these other guys? And that has a lot more to do with features that it allows you to for stuff the stuff that I personally object to, which is bells and whistles and front end processing, because when you record stuff on the front end, it's there forever. That's right. And if you really don't understand what it is that you are doing and trust me, I've gotten a lot of samples in the last couple of days and weeks of people like, I don't really know what I'm doing. You know, sort of the old doctor hurts when I do that. Well, don't do that for crying out loud. You're recording oftentimes in your home and the noise floor of your home ain't all that great most of the time. If you're lucky enough to have an actual separate home studio building like Dan, then that's a different story. And that's why Dan did this shoot out. He's got a really, really quiet space. I don't. But if you don't have an amazingly quiet space, the differences in the noise floor or little subtle things, never going to hear them. The problems you're going to hear are far more likely going to be caused by bad mic placement, bad acoustics, noise from the environment, noise from the microphone, all these other things. So yeah, these these differences, that's why they're so subtle. They really don't make a big difference. Right. What the Apollo Twin has, and what most of the universal products have, is the ability to throw plug-ins in and really adjust the sound for what it was designed for, which is recording music. Performances. And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. If you're on microphone singing, you're throwing on a lot of what they like to call SPL, sound pressure levels. A good studio condenser mic is going to be able to handle that if you pot it down and you're going to get the right modulation and it's going to catch you really, really well. Voiceover is a lot more subtle because in reality, we're just trying to talk like, as I tell a lot of people, like you're sitting in the theater with your spouse or significant other or whoever. And when you're in the theater before the curtain goes up, I mean, you're hearing people. Primarily, you're using your indoor voice because you don't turn to your spouse or friend or significant other and go, I think I left my keys in the car. And if you do do that, you better go have your hearing checked. Exactly. So it's like, you know, it's more like, I think I left my keys in the car. And that's the read that you're hearing a lot of that casting directors are looking for. So if you're, you're trying to record and capture you as you exist. And when you add all of these plugins and all this stuff and somebody sent me a screenshot of all they're using, I'm like, Oh my God, what are you doing? People are creating these control rooms for nuclear reactors to control that hamster running in a wheel. And it's like, don't you don't need this stuff. You're trying to sound as natural as possible. Now, the Apollo twin sounds great, nice, crisp, transparent and all that stuff. But so do these other guys. So what what the big difference in cost there is really the ability to add all this other stuff that's none of your business. Well, the other problem, I mean, I know our scenarios that it's helpful and I have set up processing for people that do a lot of radio or TV affiliate things, things where they have to turn stuff around really, really quick, right, it has to sound ready for error right out of the system. That's a whole different story in a very unique niche. Most everybody else, the audio needs to be clean and as it's recorded with nothing added. The thing is the other thing that comes along with these much more complicated units like the Apollo is the support ongoingly for updates, bug fixes, weird glitches with the hardware and software, the firmware, all those things add so many more variables. And trust me, I've been dealing a lot lately with universal audio, Apollo's not being so let's should we say consistent. There's been quite a few problems with them lately. So long story short, stick with the simple stuff. And speaking of simple stuff, this is the simplest one and probably in this test or tied for simplest. This is the Steinberg you are 12. Here we go. Companies can no longer afford to be reactive. Across all industries, organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible. As systems age, predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date. Today, new technologies have become available, allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys. We just went from $800 to $100, sometimes $79 on Amazon, depending on when you look. If you look hard enough, yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Give me your impressions of that. It still sounds great. I mean, I'm when it's very hard to tell the differences when you're hearing them, you know, we're playing something talking playing something else talking. So in doing so, it's harder to hear those little subtle differences until you really back to back play them. But I'm that Steinberg, which not only does it functionally function fine, it also has this loopback thing, which most of this other gear doesn't have. And if it does have it, like the Apollo, it's so frustratingly complicated to set it up that unless you pay me to set it up, you'll probably never figure out how to do it. The Apollo, I mean, the Steinberg has it built in. It's just a little checkbox in the driver. It's just an amazingly good value, great sound quality. Now, you know, we're using a great, great microphone with all this gear. So some of the, yeah, same mic, some of your lower, lower quality or lower output microphones say like, for example, like a dynamic microphone, the differences between these might become a little more apparent, especially how much gain they're able to put out. So it does depend on a lot on the kind of mic you're using. But we're using the Sennheiser 416 because it's one of the most common voiceover mics in the biz. It's one that most everybody is familiar with. And it sounds great. Yeah. So should we play the mix and match? Well, I was going to say with the UR 12 to me. And again, I mentioned history, but it seemed just a hair darker than say, say the Apollo twin, which sounded pretty good. But it sounded great. Yeah. So I go back to the shades of mauve. You know what the shades of mauve thing came from? I mean, I don't even know what the color mauve is, but in the movie Lost in Translation, the lead character is sitting in his office, his wife FedEx him, or in his hotel room, the wife FedEx him a box of carpet swatches for the office that they are remodeling. And it's a box full of probably like garnet colored fabric. Yeah. And she's like, which one do you like the most? And he's looking at all these samples and they're almost all exactly the same. And he's like, I don't know, honey, pick one. That's kind of how it is with this stuff. The color shade, the tonal difference from one to next is really subtle. This is mauve, this color right here on this flower here. So if you're wondering, great movie with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, by the way. So a real breakout movie for both of them, actually, not that Bill Murray needed a breakout movie, but no, but it really set him in a different category. It really did. He's like, well, he's actually like a legitimate actor. It's actually kind of cool. So yeah, also, but I was also going to comment on the Apollo twin earlier that it was not easy to set up the software for that. A huge download, isn't it? It's like, I get my name address, my name of my first born, and, you know, log in and create the account. But I got it working. So who cares? Yeah, no, it's a huge, huge download just to install that thing. Yeah. So it's a big it's a big deal. Yeah. So so tell me about your mix and match file because this I think is maybe the most interesting thing of all. Well, I did a bunch of these, but this is this is the last one I did is mix and match number four. The thing about this was is I didn't get when we were exchanging these files this week, it's like, okay, well, this one's this one, this one, this last one, I didn't give you that. It's like, we don't know what each one of these is or where I did an edit to put it together. So play the file. This is this is I call this mix and match. This is the same script using a lot of different interfaces. You tell me if I submitted this as an audition, would an engineer be able to tell? All right, let's play this one. This is also a great demo of how good good editing sounds. It doesn't sound edited. God, I hope so. Take a listen. Companies can no longer afford to be reactive. Across all industries, organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible. As systems age, predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date. Today, new technologies have become available, allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys. Oh, that was interesting. That was eight different interfaces. Eight, eight different interfaces. We all know how well I count. That was that was cool. Play it, play it again. All right. And I do now that I'm hearing them intercut right on top of each other. Now I'm starting to hear some subtle differences from one to the next. Companies can no longer afford to be reactive. Across all industries, organizations rely on the uptime of their equipment to be as productive and reliable as possible. As systems age, predictive maintenance efforts need to be kept up to date. Today, new technologies have become available, allowing organizations to become more proactive than ever before in their reliability journeys. Companies can. I was doing a hand jester to see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it kind of sees that better or worse, you know, going back. The last phrase was definitely different from the rest. And I will say that was the ID 14. That was the last. There's something it has this thickness to it, almost like compression. Fascinating. That is really interesting. It definitely sounded different from the others. I'm not going to say it's good or bad. It's just different. It just has a different sound. Right. So what is it that makes the difference between these interfaces? You know, I'm not an electrician. I am not an electronic genius. I didn't go to Virginia Tech. But what is it that makes? What is the difference between, say, this guy and this guy? I mean, what is it that they do that would make those differences? Well, I was supposed to be at Virginia Tech to study electrical engineering and supposed to learn all about circuit design. Sorry, didn't mean to but about halfway through, I lost my mind, couldn't stand it and went to music. But I did train my ear and listen to a lot of stuff. I um, so yeah, I mean, I mentioned a little earlier. The differences are the chips inside and what they choose to use for preamps and for the AD converters. And if you do a little googling online for AD converter chips or whatever, you'll see there's probably only like two or three companies that actually make them. So there's very little variation that it's going to be out there between all these units, especially when you're comparing them at the lower price range, you know, Steinberg and Focusrite and Avid, all these $200 and less interfaces very likely are going to use the same parts because they are not going to spend tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars developing their own chip on a hundred dollar interface. So that's where things are going to be more similar. And then as you go up in price, it's more likely the company might actually develop some of their own componentry. But again, it's the AD converters are mostly going to be developed by one or two companies, maybe three, the preamps maybe are what vary the most. And so you do hear slightly different shades, colors, shades of mauve from one to the next, like in the middle, this one sample sounded a little bit slightly thinner and maybe band past. So it didn't have as much low or high end. Another part had not as much high end, you know, you hear these little things, but you really can only tell when you intercut them like this. Right, exactly. So the thing, the question I think this all begs is is one of these interfaces going to cost you a job versus one that's going to get you a job. To me, the whole idea of this entire exercise was to say, I didn't think so. Voice acting comes down to your ability to read your way out of a paper bag. And there are an awful lot of people out there that we know here in Los Angeles and some in New York that, you know, they're well-known voice actors, and they'll be driving along and they might be pulling into a McDonald's or something. And if they are, then, you know, that's their problem. But and they'll check their email. Oh, I've got to do this audition. They will pull over to a corner, take out their iPhone, record an audition on their iPhone and send it out and then get back in the drive-through line. And they book work with this stuff. It's, you know, it's, you know, when you're producing, when you're doing a live remote with somebody or you are actually creating content for somebody, one, they don't watch your futzen with it a whole lot. But they're far more, when it comes to auditions, they are far more looking to see your ability to interpret copy and sound like you're not reading it. And that's got nothing to do with the microphone and the environment and things like that. You don't, what you don't want, and this is what George and I emphasize all the time, is you don't want anything else to be a distraction from your actual voice, which is why you don't want to add a lot of processing to it. You don't want to, you know, use noise gating and all these other things. You want to have the right environment. So your job is to use that computer the way it should be, which is like a cassette recorder, hit record, do your thing, hit stop, and edit, but don't have to do a lot of processing. Now, so yeah, I, you know, I want to be clear, you know, the context of this whole thing is for voice actors, right? Some of you guys are going to see this and you're going to be engineers, you're going to have really good ears. And you might give us a hard time saying, it does matter, quality matters, you know, this is a race to the bottom. You know what, if that's your job as an engineer to have the best gear in the business, because you're selling your time as an engineer, you're selling your studio. Okay, fine. You know, that's that people pay you to have those ears and pay you to have the best equipment. That's a whole different situation. So don't get deeply confused. The context of this is really which interfaces work best for voiceover and clearly from this test, they all work fine. They all do the job and we're talking 10 plus years of time span between all of them. And they all still sound pretty good. So, you know, they're just different design philosophies, different features, different manufacturers, you know, involved. And man, there's another 20 of these things out there that we didn't test. It's because we just don't have them slash we don't have the time. Right. But this is, I think, enough of a pool that I think we've proven our point that they all sound so similar that it just doesn't really matter. Right. Now we know you guys are going to go, oh no, I heard that difference. And you're going to send us the files. They are going into the VOBS vault and staying there and I'm throwing away the key. So don't bug us. Don't bug us. All right. Well, that's the Mike shoot out. We'll be right back to wrap all this up with a few final comments right after these messages. This is Anthony Mendez. You're watching VoiceOver Body Shop. 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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 VEO website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what. And we're back to wrap things up here on VoiceOver Body Shop Tech Talk. That was fascinating. Just to listen to them, you know, and the interesting thing is is, you know, I'm listening to it on my equipment. I got a pair of Yamaha H5s. I've got my Harlan Hogan Signature Series headphones. And interestingly, playing it back through your system, it sounded just a little bit different. But they all sounded clean and crisp. So if you have to know your monitoring, whatever that monitoring is, you need to be very, very familiar with it. So it's whatever you pay for your speakers or your headphones or whatever it is, whatever it's how familiar familiar are you with them. And I've been using this one and then the Pire pair that I bought before them for over 20 years. I just know the way they sound. So I'm listening to on a consistent basis and I'm listening to this in comparison to thousands of other files. So that's my frame of reference. I'm not using studio monitors. I have a pair of massive Mackey HR824s right next to me, giant behemoth speakers. I'm not using them for this kind of critical listening. No, you got to really, it does take headphones to listen to those and for editing and stuff. But in a good small home studio, it's good to have a good pair of studio monitors. So I think maybe I just need to adjust the trims on these a little bit because everything sounds a little bit muddy to me. But then again, so does my wife on occasion. So and apparently the dog too. Come here. Whatever, whatever. Anyway, next week on this very show, we return live next Monday night with Carolyn Casey. And you know, you know her, you've talked with her. She's a producer, a commercial producer. And what are some of the other things she does? Many year, yeah, many year veteran, I believe she said 30 years of voice production producing, but also she is a voice actor. So kind of interesting. She's going to have perspectives on both sides of the glass, as we say. So that's going to be really interesting. All right, that's next Monday night here on VoiceOver Body Shop. Thanks to all our donors who continue to contribute. If you need to donate to us, you do, which by the way you do, on our homepage, vobs.tv and click on donate now and you know, give us a buck, give us 20 bucks, give us 500. It doesn't matter. It all helps. It keeps the technology flowing here and keeps the show on track every week. We try to give you guys fresh content every single week. So make sure you're here every week. You know, we also like to thank our sponsors. You know, let's see if we can remember them without the script in front of us, like Harlan Hogan's VoiceOver Essentials. I'm like a voice actor. If I don't have it in front of me, I can't. Okay. All right, so I'll go with VoiceOver Heroes, voiceactorwebsites.com, JMCDemos, VoiceOver X, Source Elements. VoiceOver Extra. VoiceOver Extra. I think that's all. I think that's all of them. Thanks guys. We can't do it without you guys either and we really appreciate it. Well, I hope we proved something tonight. I know I think we did, but we'd love your comments on this and as you're watching this on Facebook, give us your thoughts on it. We want to hear what you have to say. So that's going to do it for us this week, next week with Carolyn Casey and more tech talk coming up over the next couple of weeks. So eventually they're going to get a lot, let us out of our houses. So, you know, got it. We're getting our has met suits out. We're going to get in there, but that's going to do it for us. Thanks for listening and for watching. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Whittem. And this is VoiceOver Body Shop or VOBS. Tech talk. Tech talk.