 Hey, welcome to voiceover body shop tech talk number 32 It's 32 this time. It is 32. I have counted. We've lost count. We've done so many of these we've lost count But you guys love tech talks, so we want to make sure you get the best of tech talk And we got a lot of cool stuff to talk about tonight like George. What do you got? Oh? we're gonna talk about remote recording Rarely because obviously what a lot of you are being thrust into doing and there's a lot of Confusion and misconceptions about this Maybe something about birds Maybe something about birds. Oh, I got a great answer for that So stay tuned if you got questions throw them in the Facebook chat room Jeff Holman's on chat room duty And we'll get to your questions right here on voiceover body shop tech talk coming right now 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 Wittem 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 voiceover 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 voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success and Now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Hi there, I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George winner and this is voiceover body shop or VO B. S. Tech talk Well, there's an old Chinese proverb that says may you live in interesting times and if these aren't them You know, this is this is know what is this has been the wildest thing I mean most people are like we're gonna get my next job gonna come from how magnet you and I No, we have been demand Because you guys are like I gotta have a home studio even people who have home studios And they had no idea whether they are sounded good or not now Now they're calling ten years. We've been telling people you gotta have a home studio You gotta be able to record remotely and now Suddenly the studios are doing suddenly it's their idea So, yep, it's funny. We're well, you know, it's it's just so the the business of voiceover What's it wasn't a Corvo a long time ago Dave Kovace a it said there is no voiceover industry Well, yeah, it's a him it always seemed like well when you say industry me mean smokestacks Most of that's coming out of our ears right now Yeah I mean there's a there's a television industry and a radio industry and an internet industry But there's the voiceover has incredible number of you call them verticals, you know all these different Areas of voiceover and they all work differently and they all have different demands on the voice actor and Surprisingly, we didn't I mean, I don't even think I realized how many voiceover actors We're still getting away with all these years not actually having a professional home studio I'm just nothing really more than an apogee mic in the closet, right? So now they're getting caught with their pants down and there's a bit of a panic So we're trying to allay that panic and get as many people who are actually interested in getting this problem fixed as possible Yeah, health is spending a lot of time being a therapist and saying that you know and telling people I don't know where you heard that from but Anyway, so what if you need help with your home studio and that like I like to say that's all of you now Uh, there's a couple places you can go one is you can watch this show because we give you a lot of information and help you out But two if you'd like to work with us individually George and I do this professionally. I'm a voice actor. George is an engineer You know, I've played an engineer on tv, but that doesn't really count But I do enjoy working with people and George loves working with people Helping them get their home voiceover studio Sounding it the way it's supposed to sound like whistle And uh, there's there's no secret sauce to it Every room is different every voice is different and George and I know what it's supposed to sound like and how to get Your sound the way it's supposed to sound which of course we will Talk about and elucidate more as the show goes on But George if they want to work with you and and of course who wouldn't Where do they go? You can head over to george the dot tech. That's the website for my old tech all my tech support Um, if you're looking for products related to voiceover Um, obviously first you should visit our sponsor on our show voiceover essentials But if you need another source, um, I've got a page on there called home vo studio now That has a whole bunch of gear you can check out that are things that I've been recommending to a lot of folks But also you can order order on-demand support or self-service support depending on what you need Even just send in a sound check or on dan's website. He calls it specimen cup Yes, the specimen yeah the specimen collection cup you scroll down to the bottom of home voiceover studio dot com And boy that thing has been filling up. There have been lots of people saying how does it sound? and it's like Well, here's how I you know, here's how I judge the quality of your audio and There's the three things that I like to talk about and we'll get into it If it sounds fine if it's a little minor adjustments We can deal with that if you really don't know anything about a home voiceover studio I can teach you from soup to nuts and Get you from You know being out of the closet and into your closet and recording like a pro in pretty short order So I go over to home voiceover studio dot com so much for the commercial part of that What's on your What's in your tech update this week? Well, you know something that's been coming up with my voice actor clients is they're being asked occasionally to do some pretty advanced engineering slight of hand like Yeah, you know like in my summits. I just came up with the title of this segment called Who's job is it anyway? I think it's copyrighted It's getting ridiculous Sometimes what the voice actor has been asked to do and I've had clients in the past occasionally. You've taken on extra duties Be above and beyond the call of duty, you know You know such as being able to have Two people on a phone call at the same time Or one person on ISDN And another person on a phone patch on in your studio And what I've had to remind people is just because you can or you have the technical acumen To do it doesn't mean that you should if you're doing a session that's being remote recorded over technologies Such as ISDN Source connect IPD TL session link pro whatever the case is if there's a studio engineer who's been hired To run the production make sure the takes are being recorded Log the takes all that kind of stuff That is their job their job is part of that is to make sure all the communications Between yourself And the client and if there's a producer someone else somewhere else the producer Or you know sometimes there's even more people involved in a production of a voiceover It's their job to handle all those All those duties being the traffic cop of audio the mix minuses Between source connect and the mix minuses between zoom and source connect and what does that actually mean? And making all of that work seamlessly That is not your job as a voiceover actor to have to worry about that so If you get asked that question Definitely let them know that no worries will make sure the engineer will set that up for you Don't take that on yourself. So I just want don't don't freak out if that comes up It's completely Not your job now if you're self recording It's not a source connect But it's a zoom or skype type session or a foam patch as we traditionally used to call them Then that's a different story. So now you are wearing the engineering hat On top of everything else and sometimes even the producing hat And so now it's something may just be you and the and the talents Sorry, you're the talent. It may be just be you and the client The actual end user who is going to be using your content Oftentimes will be the case if you're doing paid-a-play type work Then that's a different situation. And yes, you will have to facilitate that in those cases And in which case now because we've gotten pretty custom using zoom That's not such a big deal anymore. Anybody can start a zoom call Send out that contacts information and get them into the call So don't overthink it. Don't freak out Let them know that if it's source connect you're paying for that studio and that engineer's expertise Let them hook it up This also tangentially works off that a little bit But now people are being asked to especially people that have been accustomed to going into studios to work to picture Now they may have to work to picture at home Dan have you had to deal with anybody you thrust into this world of having to work to video or picture? I well, I've done a little bit myself Uh, some people have talked to me about you know that they're gonna have to do that Of course, they've got some cool technology now where there's some companies are using like video karaoke To try and to help people with the when they're dubbing stuff And there's a lot of dubbing work going on here in la a lot of really tell me about the video karaoke thing And I had I let let's kind of make this a back and forth because I know what I've been you know asked to check on or Figure out, but I haven't heard that use yet Yeah, as a problem-solving device. Yeah. No, there's there's a program that I a couple of producers You know have used and I've and I've worked with them Where it's they're giving you a section of video or film or whatever it is and the words are synced to the actor And they scroll across the bottom of the screen. So you read it as it's going on and Therefore it's easily synced And so that working to picture it makes it makes it a whole lot easier Instead of cool. Is this a is this done through a website? Uh, I don't think it's a website. I think it's an actual software platform I don't know the exact name of it, but I know several producers and companies Some post companies that are doing a lot of dubbing work are using this now So that now would be that great time to be using that all over the place and making it easier for all of us to be dubbing films from home Yeah, I mean There's a couple of challenges involved if you're going to work what we all we call in the in the audio engineering side of things sync Working in sync as opposed to recording wild Just to you know to explain some terminology recording wild means you hit record or the engineer on source connect Whatever hits record and you just go There you just read the script on on your own timing whereas working in sync Sometimes also working to picture means that the timing of your read is completely dependent on what you're seeing on on a playback of a video And that's a whole different thing. So now to do that kind of work Obviously, you have to have a monitor in your booth Okay, so if you've been working without a video display in your booth all this time That's no longer going to be possible if you're asked to do this kind of work So you have to have a keyboard monitor and mouse connected to the computer that you record with um Its chances are if you're using a mac book or any kind of a laptop in your booth To just record audio That's probably not going to be viable doing work to picture for the technical reason that If you haven't heard your fan yet, you're gonna now. Yeah, if you're running something like that It's going to start really taking the resources. Yeah, if you're working to picture your computer is going to be working a lot harder to do that It's it the video side of things puts a lot more of a load So now that computer fan is going to be cooking Um, I hear it a lot now because when I'm helping people over zoom and doing remote desktop and we're testing systems out I started hearing that computer fan going like crazy And they'll you know voice actors will say well, I don't normally hear the fan I'm like well if you're going to have to do zoom on this uh session You're going to hear the fan So be ready for that you may have to relocate a computer that normally is quite enough out of that space So a can a separate keyboard monitor and mouse is the solution to that 200 bucks grand total to buy keyboard monitor and mouse that'll work on windows or max Not an expensive endeavor Um, you just need a little creativity and running the cables and such but it's it's totally doable But be ready for that you may have to do that to deal with that issue Yeah, um to dan. Yeah earlier on you mentioned something about A problem with birds. Yeah, I I had a question from a client who Was emailing me back and forth and it was really going back and forth and it was like one question at a time And then he's like, okay. I recorded something Uh, and but I could hear birds outside in the background. How do I fix that? You know, everybody's like oh, that's hard to fix. Yeah, it's like oh everybody thinks you can fix that stuff in post So my immediate answer and every time I tell this story to somebody they all come up with the same thing I did I said well first double pane windows and second a shotgun Um, and and now about a half hour later I get an email back from him and he says oh you mean for the birds because he thought I was talking about a sanitizer 416 So anyway Yes, I'm sorry. No even even the super directional sanitizer 416. It'll pick up a bird Yeah, no, I mean they use nature films for picking up birds for crying out loud Okay, well, you don't necessarily have to shoot the birds just the loud sound We'll quiet them down for a little while if you if the worst-case scenario You could even get us. I don't even know if you could get one. No gun stores are still considered essential They are essential businesses. You can go get Even a target or walmart you can get a starter pistol and a starter pistol for starting a foot race or something And uh, you know, I know it's kind of loud and maybe your neighbors aren't going to like it so much Don't do this in an urban area, but if you're out in the verbs or way out in the country You can fire a starter pistol to quiet down those damn birds and it might work for a little while Um, thank god for the second amendment for crying out loud get rid of those birds Don't shoot at him. Just make a loud noise. That'll do it yelling also helps too. I Yeah, exactly. Um lastly a little show and tell so Headphones Dan Dan's using an eye in-ear monitor tonight so he can be a little more less obtrusive with headphones Um, we talked about you know ways to take direction in the booth Um, now I typically am an over-the-ear headphone guy I've tried a couple in-ear style headphones over the years nothing ever really You know sways me going to full headphone or going away from headphone But as of lately there's been a huge onslaught of extremely scarily inexpensive In-ear professional style in your monitors such as these I'll hold this up So you've you've seen every pop artist on television or live with these in their ears, right? Now typically these things are quite expensive. Um, if they're made by the big manufacturers like ultimate ears And sure things like that You're going to spend way north of a hundred dollars sometimes 500 plus dollars For a professional pair of these and one of the things that makes these so incredibly expensive at the high end Is actually what's going on inside this thing? No, it is not a single driver inside like you might expect in this case this has count them six drivers There are six different six drivers Yes, think of your Think of your stereo speakers from of your the old days where there was a whole bunch of different speaker cones You know, some of them are for bass mid-range treble three-way four-way speakers This is like a six-way speaker in your ear. So um 60 dollars by the way, I bought these for 60 dollars There's six drivers in each side. So they call them the 12 hybrid why is it a hybrid because there's two kinds of drivers in here dynamic and um What's the other kind? Not linear actuator. It's another word for them. We'll draw on a blank But anyway, I've been trying these out this particular pair. I'm going to read out the name is the kin boofy k-i-n-b-o-o-f-i Ken boofy maybe k-z z-s-x In-ear headphone monitors Um, if you want to find these on amazon and give them a try. Yeah, make sure you spell it right though I I am the jury is out on these things first of all They are unbelievably revealing if there's any flaws in your system If your headphone amplifier has any hiss If your audio from your microphone or your voice has any mouth noise or sibilance These things magnify all of that stuff in a dramatic way So they might drive you slowly insane because they have so much detail But for just listening to music, um They're pretty darn remarkable. I find them to be really bright mid range in the mid range area. Um That's just my hearing I I'm really sensitive in that upper mid range range of what two to four k or whatever it is And these are very sensitive in that area. So these are not for everybody But if you've lost hearing in that range or you're used to the really bright headphones like the sonys You might find these to be quite remarkable So something just to try out if you want to get away from over the ear headphones and want to try something lighter And really really sensitive and detailed Give those a try interesting All right, I've never you know, I use earbuds. I hardly ever use headphones at all You know unless I'm listening to something really carefully Yeah, so I got an interesting subject that we can cover here because I I had to give someone A lecture on facebook over the weekend and not a nasty lecture, but a you know a socratic lecture asking lots of questions about this But it starts off really If you've been watching any of these homes, you know, you know music stars at home videos One of the things we're seeing Is some really bad microphones It's like, you know, lady gaga gets on there or andrio boccelli gets on there They got a good microphone and they sound fabulous Sam smith comes on and he's got a pair of airpods in his ears and he sounds like me So, uh Guys, I mean for crying out loud your professional musicians. You should really have a good microphone That being as it may the question came to me this week about Well, I'm a singer what microphone should I get everybody's getting these the sm7b is the sure sm7b Which is a you know a legendary broadcast microphone for radio studios and But and you're seeing and you're seeing them in in a lot of these home videos now Uh, you know one person has it everybody's gotta own it. It's the hot mic to have joe rogan Thank joe rogan for that. Yeah, really, but he's doing a podcast for crying out loud, right? But so I had to explain to to this person that okay, if you're a singer And you've got an epigy mic, which is what this person had Singing is not voice acting singing is a completely different dynamic If you've got it and yet generally it's the microphone you have that's going to be just fine So why you know if we go through the you know the sweet water catalog Why is it like page after page after page of all these beautiful microphones that no one's ever going to see? and you know, it's uh The thing is if you're singing and you are projecting you are loud and you turn the game down And therefore it's going to pick you up Just fine no matter where you are the acoustics of the room are not going to be as critical because You're going to be singing it's probably going to be mixed with other things And the ambiance of your voice can be adjusted In the mix of that so therefore it's not quite as critical what microphone you have unless of course you have a really crappy one like sam smith and uh, so It doesn't really matter what mic you have you can have an sm7b that legendary broadcast mic Or an re 20 or 320 one of you one of the other Broadcast mics what were originally developed as bass drum mics. So go figure You have to sing very close to those you have to be a little bit closer And in singing you can get away with that which is why you use a dynamic but not necessarily Say an sm 58 or 57 which is a stage mic Uh, so I generally will recommend to people if they're singers and voice actors You might want a different mic, but you can make That same mic work for you in either genre, but the usage is different as we always say All of this stuff every last bit of the equipment we use with a few minor little exceptions was all designed for recording music And that we are just adapting these wonderful instruments for our own purposes And so we need to learn different things about mic proximity. I've been talking to a lot of people about Well controlling your levels Good voice actors guys who really know their know their stuff, you know guys like rob paulson and marisa lamarch And and and and joe sypria guys. We know who are the big time guys. They understand especially the animation guys How to use a mic's proximity? Properly if you're going to yell you don't yell in somebody's ear you turn and you go i will kill you And you don't have to worry about you know adjusting your volume you learn What the proper distance from the mic is depending on the loudness of your voice and seeing that most most voiceover is very conversational People need to learn that they've got to give it a lot of gain and that's why they need a good quiet microphone and a good quiet interface To do voiceover. It's not quite as critical With music, you know, if you're doing demos or if you're sending tracks somewhere because everybody's sending each other tracks right now Uh Your thoughts on that mr. Woodham No, well, I mean Yeah, it does it certainly has a lot to do with the singing style of the singer too like um The name billy eilish comes to mind her thing is like she's very quiet Yeah, her thing is like, um, it's almost like the asmr of pop singing um No asmr look it up google it But I mean she does sing uh very softly sometimes so for her like a very sensitive Uh microphone is going to be really critical Whereas if you're um, you know the singer of metallica And I know he's known for singing until like an sm7b You want a microphone that isn't incredibly sensitive one that can handle incredibly loud volume Whereas voice acting has some relation to that where you can be, you know, maybe doing character voices or animation But we tend to work the mic a lot differently than Studio singing because we we tend to put a lot more space between us and the mic um You know it's singing. It's like you want the mic to Sort of really Dramatically and sometimes subways really enhance The way that you sound and in voiceover It's not as much about enhancing the way you sound as more sort of honestly capturing Your performance in the way you sound Um, you know, we don't like make love to the microphone and look right at it and speak right into it generally Because we're trying to get something that's more Natural the way someone would listen to us speak to us right in any kind of conversational context. So Yeah, there's some definite differences there between when you're how you're going to shop for mics and what likes to To look for I Can you buy a studio condenser mic that works well for singing and voiceover? Yeah, of course a lot of it is just at the end of the day mic technique Absolutely, you know, yeah, I came up with a good one another another saying which is piling up right now and that is A lot of people try and fall in love with the microphone And we of course find that in the voiceover business But the real key here is let the microphone Fall in love with you because you're the one that you're trying to sell You don't sing to a microphone. You're singing to other people You got to learn how to be a performer as a voice actor and Not rely on the technology, you know, but George and I handle that stuff We know what we're talking about But learn how you know different mic proximity works with different microphones But you can probably get away with one microphone if it's the right microphone for you Anyway, we got a ton of questions from people and we're going to get to all of those And enlighten you on all these incredible things that we know about voiceover technology right after these incredible and important messages on voiceover body shop tech talk This is Arianna Ratner and you're listening to voiceover body shop v obs.tv Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice denouncer 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 smart phone, 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 red This is your name right when hope is lost the i8 from bmw Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish Hey, it's j michael collins. I bet you think i'm gonna try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves, but I will give you my email. It's j michael at jmc voiceover dot com Now if dan will stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show It's now time to talk about harlan hogan's voiceover essentials dot com now today amazon incorporated shipped its last porta booth pro from their inventory And as you know the demand for many goods and services needed for those working from home has exceeded supplies And both their plus and pro recording booths are no exception Now you may have also experienced long shipping times even for audio equipment. That's an amazon's inventory Now voiceover essentials dot com the manufacturers of the porta booth plus and the porta booth pro And harlan hogan's signature series audio gear is shipping now And they have ample inventory of everything voiceover talent Podcasters and broadcasters need to produce professional sounding audio from home and on the road So if you're in need of home vo studio gear and now that's Everybody go on over to voiceover essentials dot com and see all the great stuff. They have that shipping Now Well, it's that time when we talk about source elements the creators of source connect Well, if you guys have been paying attention and I know you have because you're watching the show But maybe you've skipped this ad or maybe you've heard this ad and gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah source connect I don't need it. Nobody ever asked me to use that Guess what? You at this point if you don't have source connect or at least a working Demo that you know works and you've run through this the process of setting it up and testing You're not ready to be working the top level voiceover work today because pretty much all the studio producers Any of the major commercial outfits? Certainly if we already know promo and things like that Are pretty much all being done now via source connect So you need to be ready and get yourself set up with a demo In fact head over to george the dot tech slash C I've made a page on there to answer a lot of people's questions about source connect There's some tutorial videos some Checklists on what you need to have to be ready to do source connect sessions where you're being Asked to record and be directed live with another studio All sorts of resources over there But go check it out because source connect is is inevitable If you're doing commercial voiceover work any of the higher budget work Chances are you're going to be doing it on source connect So head over there get set up with a free trial Or just get the license going because you know you need it You can even subscribe monthly if you like And uh tell them we sent you Anyway, we'll be right back to answer all those tech questions Right after this This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on the voiceover body shop And we are back here on voiceover body shop tech talk Uh, and we got a lot of questions here tonight and uh Let's see if we can cover them all if a lot of them are it seems a lot are like What do you recommend type of questions? So you may not get quite the answer you want But we're certainly going to give you the answer we want to give you Anyway starting off with the jeff holman We know jeff he runs the chat room So he gets the first question and he made it bold and huge Yes, so he wants to make sure that we we catch this one Uh, what do you think a studio one digital audio workstation? A lot of audiobook narrators seem to like it George You know what I know a lot of different Dawes to different degrees of you know proficiency um This is one I don't know very well yet Um part of it was because early on when it was coming out initially I never could get the sound drivers to work with the software And so I would just keep running into a brick wall after brick wall And eventually I would just change you know change direction and go back to something else Now we're going I think they're on versions Sound studio and by the way, this is made by personas. I think they're up to version four now and so it's it's definitely gotten extremely popular among a certain set of of Audio professionals some of those are audiobook narrators and a lot of it has to do over one particular uh audio expert that is Loves and really knows studio one and that's guy named don barns um He's uh also known as red barns or red barns audio or something like that He he is got it dialed at this point when somebody asks me If they know anything about if I know anything about source studio one or they say I use studio one There's a 95 chance. They've probably met don or worked with don or in his facebook group It's it is a great tool when it's taught to you by the by an expert And it's set up for you by an expert in the same way that he's a real guru on the studio one That's how I kind of am with the universal audio Apollo In the wrong hands or when it's not set up correctly It might as well just be using a steinberg to I You are 22 or a focus right or a mega simple Yeah, I mean because these things can get you in a lot of trouble And I feel the same way about studio one. It is a very powerful production software like Cubase new endo Pro tools reaper Need I go on so um, yeah, if it works well for you great It's not something that I'm going to quickly get behind using Um, it needs to be trained and set up correctly for that purpose. So There you go. Yeah, I you know, I I hear the same thing a lot of people talking about studio one and you're absolutely right You have to know how to use it. It's not something you're going to learn overnight It's if you've had some experience in a multitrack recording studio It helps a whole lot because these does are designed to emulate These multitrack studios with lots of processing and all that stuff Most of which most voice actors Have no need for You know, like I like to say it's like getting a control room for a nuclear actor to control a hamster running in a wheel You know, it's it really is overkill for that sort of thing that said It has lots of versatility and it's it's cool. And usually it comes as a free add-on when you buy something from personas Um, that's for sure. Yeah, so you know Check it out what George and I really look at when we when we evaluate these types of products is Does it help the voice actors? Workflow because essentially they all sound the same They're one doesn't take the ones and zeros from your microphone and treat it any differently than any other piece of software It's just translating it into that computer language That allows us to get a graphic representation of what our audio is doing It's just that these more sophisticated programs allow you to do lots of other things that were primarily designed for doing music But they apparently if if look if you're doing audiobooks and it helps you with your workflow Fabulous All right. How about a gerard maguire gerard maguire? Yes living down there in Sedona question about rx voice d noise What are the ideal settings? Well, it depends doesn't it? Yeah, I know is that one of the ultimate depends question So to me the ideal settings are when they're set so that you can't tell you're using them exactly So if if you use denoising tools and it sounds like You did something to the audio Sounds like there's something funny going on. You didn't do it. I'm not set right. That's right You do have to set these by ear for sure Um, but I always start with the sensitivity as low as you can get away with You know once you get above 10 or 12 The senate that you know that the the artifacts that are caused by Using a denoising tool start to really get in the way You know, I think of this tool as a restoration tool That's for a group post producer who's stuck with sub par audio And all they can do to right to restore it and make it usable is to process Scrub the noise out the best they can but I don't think it should be part of someone's normal production workflow Especially if they've got their studio set up correctly Especially if they're using processing at dialing correctly using things such as downward expanders high pass filters even possibly a Dehumming filter, you know a notch filter or parametric eq to get rid of the 120 Hertz home In your home, you know those things can all go a very long way to Cleaning up the audio without having any real negative artifacts. Yeah, I always lean on those things first Yeah, and I find that you know and my philosophy is always do everything you can physically in your studio To get the sound right up front Uh, you know, I mean so like like we were talking about proper mic technique proper acoustics setting your levels properly If you can control all of those physical elements, you really shouldn't you be using all these different noise things that said You know we get emails from people. I got a noisy neighbor I got birds Yeah, these these voice to noise tools really only help with Sounds that are consistent like a drone, right a droning home or droning air conditioner Or a white noise that's consistent But they can't handle impulse noises like a chirp of a bird or a slam of a door Or anything like that. They just can't They don't remove it. That's right. So, um, don't use these things compulsorily, you know Make sure they're you're being used to really fix a problem when they need to be fixed Uh, people say can you just throw that into my processing stack? Yeah, no, I I'm no I won't because It's not being used. Don't just throw it on everything you're doing You need to know when to use it and how much, you know, because it's really Uh, it's it's definitely going to be audible by a professional Audio engineer. They're going to know you're using it. You're fussed with it. Don't fuss with it All right, we got it. I get I've been waiting to ask this one because this is from our good friend jack de golly It was out there in the desert doing whatever it is He does out there and he says uh a colleague in the uk is asking me about a spec from a client That includes one parameter neither of us has heard of CBR We mean the motorcycle? No, no, no It's the quote the spec is the file should be finished proofed edited mastered audio 320 kilobytes cbr Have one second of room tone at the head and two at the tail Measure around 20 db rms peak of greater than 3b or less than 3b So what is cbr and do you know of an app that measures cbr? Now I literally go first of all, I just googled the entire phrase. I figured you would see if that phrase Was anywhere on you know, that could come up in the google day. I already googled it too So I go when he asked but so now i'm gonna now i'm gonna just just check out cbr It's it's it has to do with recording cds primarily It's a cbr. Oh constant bit rate. Yes Yeah, that's one of those settings that it's so How do I put it? We've always done it in cbr like from the date from day one. I've never ever seen anybody use vbr So I guess it became a foregone conclusion But I guess it's not because certain softwares Leave it on by default and guess what that certain software is audacity When you first save an mp3, I believe it's an audacity. The default setting is Some kind of like preset called high quality or right right something out and and and and in that setting is using variable bit rate Here's a quick little google answer cbr stands for constant bit rate and is an encoding method that keeps the bit rate the same When audio data is encoded by a codec A fixed value is used like 128 256 Or 320 kilobits per second in general the higher the bit rate the better the quality of the audio Now with variable bit rate it uses all sorts of little tricks To try to maintain the quality while the bit rate varies Then letting you squeeze the the file down even smaller But it's highly not it's not something that's become An accepted practice at all and voiceover and somebody mentioning it is even More bizarre it's it is it is rare, but I guess they're mentioning it because enough people have been doing it wrong That it needed to be addressed That's right So it's so funny like I knew what cbr was but out of context in here It just didn't really uh click what he meant. Well, he did say it was a client in the uk Well, there you go. They yeah, that's you know, it doesn't make it wrong It's just that means it's something that they bring up far more often right 320 kilobits per second It should say mp3 Cbr, you know, then it would have been like, oh, that's so obvious But um, that's a very high bit rate. I mean honestly, you can't hear the difference between uh, like a 192 Kilobit mono mp3 mono being important interestingly it does not say Mono, yeah All those specs don't say mono. It makes a different folks It does make a difference. Yeah 100 a night 192 kilobit per second mono file Sounds audibly better than a stereo one Absolutely. Um, so yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, and then then he asks he says I've heard the plug in loudmax Which I believe Gerard asked about last week Uh, won't work with os catalina. Is there a 64 bit equivalent? It's so funny like there's all these I've heard questions Yes, well, we've heard a lot of those. I've heard no nowhere that was heard, but it's not correct It's not correct. Um, if you go to uh, the loud the the website for thomas mund The guy the genius that came up with the loudmax Limiter yep, um, he has downloads on there for 32 bits pc 64 bit pc And on the max side of things there are plugins for uh audio units and bst for mac os in 32 bit And 64 bit in fact one download is both versions in one download So yes, it is definitely 64 bit compatible Now I don't know about there being an issue specifically With catalina Um, you know, it has to be 64 bit to work on catalina But there may be an issue with catalina not allowing the plugin to run That's a different story and I have to admit I have not tried Uh loudmax on my Current machine my newest mac mini which does actually have catalina on it. Yeah Well, there's probably probably a permissions thing I mean, we've been seeing that as well that you've got to Get permission you've got to go in like they used like you were saying like they used to do in windows like no Which you know, what's your password you got to get in here? Uh, but you've got to go in and you've got to set permissions for it to accept the sound and all this kind of stuff so honestly, I've almost completely stopped using loudmax because if you use the the au peak limiter And then what I do is I'll use peak limiter and then after that in my stack or my processing I'll just have a level control to bring it back down to minus three That seems to Handle it it does essentially the same thing as loudmax. It just controls the peaks And then you reset it so the peaks are at minus three Um either by normalizing or if you're using a stack You can use another processor that just lets you change gain But that seems to do it for me and I no longer deal with loudmax Nothing wrong with loudmax, but it's a little more difficult to install than it should be Um, in fact, I did a youtube video about it years ago. How to install Installing loudmax on twisted weird because it's not obvious how to install it. So Um, anyway, give it a shot. Let us know if you've tried it on catalena I haven't yet. Um, maybe if I have a moment, I'll do so. Yeah, and there's another one called, uh cupcake Audio cupcake audio cupcake, which is uh, you know, our our friend david h. Lawrence has been talking about Uh, that's a lot more sophisticated. Yeah. Yeah way more sophisticated now This isn't now sacks man has a couple of interesting questions here Because there's no right answer Which is the case with a lot of stuff and he says with the $500 savings Would you recommend the road ntg 5 over the mkh 416 the vaunted Sennheiser 416 Oh, everybody wants the poor man's 416 Of course. Yeah There's been a lot of poor man's 416s out there. Um Anywhere from a couple hundred bucks up to you know more This is one of the first ones that really does to me do what a 416 does only better Um, I I've used it. I've demoed it. I've recommended it Um, we did a big shootout comparison on the pro audio suite podcast comparing it directly And at the end of the day, um in blind taste tests Like the pepsi challenge Uh, the four of us on our show all picked the ntg 5 over the mkh 416 interesting. We just preferred the way it sounded Um So it has all the positive attributes of the 416 with less of the negatives It's a lot less expensive It doesn't weigh as much which doesn't really matter for for voiceover, but certainly For someone on a boom pole. They care Um, it's uh got better off axis response Meaning that when you start to speak a little bit too off axis on a 416 Sound the sound gets weird. It doesn't sound It doesn't sound right. It sounds odd. Um, but this mic still sounds okay. Um It's very very sensitive. It doesn't need a lot of gain So you can plug it into any old interface So it has a lot of advantages, I think. Um, So I would say give it a shot. It's it's uh It's something, you know, the 416 is is it's just one of those venerable mics That just about every studio or voice actor at some point has used to our thought about buying um And it's it's an old design And they've keep come out with new ones sanitizer has but they're even more expensive So if you're price sensitive, I would recommend checking out the road. Yeah. Now. He also asks Since we were talking about this earlier When moving from an sm7b, which you never should have been using in the first place for voiceover Would you recommend the nt want the road nt1 or ntg5 is being more the most versatile? Boy, you have lots of choices. You're a sax man. The sm7b would probably actually be a really good sax mic, right? so maybe you're using it for sax um, but um nt1 or the ntg5 So, uh, the most versatile That's not I can't it's like apples and oranges, you know the ntg5 is a shotgun mic So it's extremely good portably Really great to take with you works well for rejecting background noise and things like that But the nt1 is like a very very affordable No, I'm in for lack of a better word. It's a studio. It works great studio condenser mic Yeah, you can work it like a condensed like a like a large diaphragm condenser mic can be used So if you're one that wants to work the mic You really want to be able to play around the proximity effect Work really close to the mic. You might want to go with the nt1 But if you want something that's really consistent in a lot of environments Then the ntg5 is probably a better mic. So it does depend. Yeah, absolutely Now katie lee asks a good question here because i've been answering this one all week and i've been getting the same Question from a lot of people says is there a high-pass filter for twisted wave? Which I have to use now because of katalina Well, it's it's a simple matter of eq A high-pass clear about the question. Yeah She doesn't need to use a high-pass filter because because she's using katalina What she's saying is she has to use twisted wave now Because she thinks she can't use audacity because she's on katalina. All right Well, yeah twisted wave has a high-pass filter I mean, it's got a couple of them actually but the simplest high-pass filter. It's it's not rocket science It's not alchemy. Well, maybe a little bit of alchemy. It's literally called high-pass. Right. It means letting the high frequency uh The high frequencies pass through and be audible while the low frequencies are cut out the human voice exists essentially between You know 75 and maybe 16 16 kilohertz You know unless, you know, you have a really high voice or a really low voice Uh, the range of human hearing is 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz Which is why you see most microphones have that response the most headphones have that type of a response the thing is If a high-pass filter is going to reduce or cut out everything below 80 hertz Which is generally below Everybody's voice Therefore easy to remove it using a high-pass filter if you've got a rumble or something and all you do is you cut off everything below 65 75 hertz Take a little bit of a notch at 80 hertz and that's a high-pass filter using eq and it It's miraculous So yeah, it's in twisted wave. It's in the graphic equalizer And I believe there is also a high-pass filter preset in twisted wave if I'm correct By the way, I'm using uh, like I have many Dawes on my computer because of all the support we do I'm running audacity on catalina for what it's worth. Well be that way It works Just because the first hit on google says mac os 10.15 catalina does not support audacity 2.3.2 Doesn't mean that's the only answer Just because it's the first one. There you go. It actually there are you can make it work There's a Information online about the work around to make this work. Yes, it's a little maybe a little geeky, but it can be done so um Yeah, it's not it's not plug-and-play quite yet, but it is workable. Yep And bob leadham a wonderful donor to this show Says what considerations are there in a bedroom recording when choosing between an nt1 versus an ntg5 Well again, it's the same answer Yeah, how noisy is the bedroom or you know? They both if you use it, right? It's gonna sound okay Yeah, you're gonna get a rate Maybe you're gonna get away with a little bit more ambient background noise with the road ntg5 Then you would with the nt1 Um the ntg5 won't be quite as base sensitive So it won't pick up as much rumble Where the nt1 will pick up all the rumble because it's flat super flat down to the to the basement um So yeah, there's some considerations there. I mean the ntg5 may be a little easier to get away with um But you do have to learn how to work in a shotgun mic. It's a it's definitely a different mic technique and it doesn't really give you the versatility of A certainly a multi pattern mic We didn't even talk about that but Like the nt the road nt2, right? It's a switchable paddle pattern mic and this vanguard v4 is switchable pattern. So not only do you get the cardioid, but you get the Very rarely used um me probably rarely ever used in a home studio Or but you also get the interesting figure eight, right? Which is actually what i'm using tonight and that gives a mic a lot more um A lot more versatility if you're looking for something. It's a versatile mic, right? Right, and that's a great that v4 is a great mic because it doesn't come with a big extra power unit It's it is what it is and you plug it in and it does what it does Katie Lee says oops. I met a hard limiter. Oh Not a limit not a high-pass filter a hard limiter. I swear. I haven't been drinking Well, katie, I wish you said you were because I would have made it a little easier Um, yes, there is also a hard limiter and twisted wave Yeah, it happens to be called if you go into effects effects stacks I'm sorry effects audio units flat list apple And it's called it's a it's a compressor a u peak limiter peak limiter There you go. So peak limiter is a hard limiter So yes, there is one built-in just as I just a few moments ago. I was talking about comparison comparison to Loudmax, but yes, there is one built-in. Yeah, so here's the thing twisted wave has everything you could possibly need to do voiceover And yeah, you know, it's all there and you just have to learn how to use all those individual things But you know going for external, uh, you know rack mounted channel strips and Lots of plugins and stuff. You don't need it. It's all there in twisted wave It's all there in almost every software. It's just built in you just got to learn how to use it. Yeah, anyway Wow, that's a great questions. We love questions. Thanks everyone. Yeah, so anyway, but George and I just love answering these because we could talk forever on this stuff and usually do Once we finish doing this show Anyway, thanks for your questions If you have a question for us, you of course can write to us at the guys at v obs dot tv Uh, or you can you know, if you watch the show live, you can of course write Write it into the chat room too, but we like getting these questions in advance So we can like as we were doing tonight googling and saying what the heck is he talking about? Uh, just to make sure Anyway, uh Those are all your questions for tonight. We'll have more coming up and we'll be right back to uh sweep our way Into this next week of whatever's going to happen with this coronavirus thing right after this This is bill ratner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer that place is voiceover extra dot 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 voiceover extra dot com. That's voice over x t r a dot com As a voice talent, you have to have a website But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you and when they finally do they break or don't look right on mobile devices They're not built for marketing and seo. They're expensive You have limited or no control and it takes forever to get one built and go live So what's the best way to get you online in no time? Go to voice actor websites dot com like our name implies voice actor websites dot com just does websites for voice actors We believe in creating fast mobile friendly responsive highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use You have full control. No need to hire someone every time you want to make a change and our upfront pricing means You know exactly what your costs are ahead of time You can get your voice over website going for as little as 700 dollars So if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options Go to voicehactor websites dot com where your via website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what? Well, hey there hero. We interrupt the award-winning shenanigans of voiceover body shop for this public service announcement 1.5 billion That's how many students there are in the world primary secondary college university 1.5 billion And that's how many were sent home several weeks ago along with the 90 million teachers and professors who teach them And as they left those teachers and professors were all told by their principals and deans Hey, keep teaching your classes from home. Okay, you know how to do that What that facebook live thing and that youtube and that zoom thing you don't have to do that Don't you sure everybody does except Many of those teachers don't even know where to start What camera to use what microphone to use how to set up lights how to use zoom And what makes online classes different from in-person classes But I do I know how to do that I've been doing that for years and I thought well, maybe I can help so I spent day and night for the past few weeks putting together a course on how teachers can do all that and I figured You know what? I'll sell it for 49 bucks. Anybody can afford 49 bucks, right? But then At the last minute I decided to do something different I decided to set aside the money and give it away for free So now through may 6th any teacher can have the course forever for free And I've got a favor to ask of you If you're a teacher Or if you know a teacher or two and with 90 million in the world who doesn't know a teacher or two Would you let them know about this? The course is available at teachyourcourseonline.com and I'm going to ask dan and george To make that link available on the v obs website and maybe Mention at a time or two on the air in and the notices that they sent out. Would you guys do that for me? Okay, great. The course again is at teachyourcourseonline.com Help me help teachers be heroes at home as well as in the classroom That's teachyourcourseonline.com Thank you very much You're watching v obs.tv. I don't know why it's crazy what they do here I think I'm going to go somewhere else and have a cheese sandwich And we are back one more time here on voiceover body shop. Thanks for all your questions guys great questions We get them all week most of the lot with a lot of the ones we get on, you know an email or like what? Uh this week it was a little these were good questions. Send them into us Uh next week on this very show. We'll have another guest Stay tuned for that and then the following week. It'll be tech talk number. Which number george 33 33 very good. Yay Got it, right. Okay. Who are our donors of the week? michelle blinker Robert ledum. Thanks robert sarah borges phillips appear cherry mosley tom tento Natasha mershuka my dad Happy birthday dad his birthday was last week patty gibbons diana birdsall Mike gordon and dwayne desalvo. Thank you everybody. We really appreciate it. We certainly do Hey, you know, we're using the news set because we're all over the place So we figured we'd be really cool and use the news set Uh, but we'd love to see your home studio. So if you've got a A picture of your home studio taken in landscape Not portrait We'd love to have it on our show so we could be george when george and i get back together, which could be years Uh, we will be in your studio and that's really cool and you can send it to the guys at v obs Dot tv We need to thank our sponsors like harlan hogan's voice over essentials Voice over extra you got it source elements Vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com And jmc demos all righty and the dan and marcy lennard foundation for the betterment of live and of course recorded Webcasting jeff holman for a great job in the chat room tonight and sumer lino for getting it done from all the way from burbank Even though where i'm where i am you are you are she is where she is and she's getting it done And of course lee pennie for being lee pennie. There she is. Hi, sue. We love you. Alrighty That's gonna do it for us this week Uh, you got questions send them into us. This is not an easy business You gotta have the tech down Along with the great acting ability you have and we're here to answer your questions on that and of course help you professionally Uh, that's doing it for this week. I'm dan lettered And i'm george widdom and this is voice over body shop or vio bs tech talk See you next time guys