 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number six It adds up after a while doesn't it and we got lots of cool stuff to talk about this week Like new noise reduction. Yeah, it was free noise reduction Punch and roll and twisted wave say it isn't so it's true punch little demonstration for you guys talking about zoom and how cool it is for doing coaching and support ceiling clouds and The cool little mixer called the roadcaster you might be interested in as well as project management tools from Same page IO and your questions. We got some great questions today. So Stay tuned voiceover body shop tech talk number six coming up 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 Whitton the engineer to the VO stars a Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a Professional sounding home VO studio and each week they allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voiceover body shop Tech talk Voiceover body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials calm 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 The OT go-go.com Everything you need to be a successful voiceover artist J. Michael Collins demos when Quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success And now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys And it's now time For tech talk. I'm Dan Leonard. I'm George Whitton and this is voiceover body shop or VO BDS But lots of BS to talk about because we got tons of tech This is the part where I get to shine right and if you and I don't have to make up that I have an actual Vested interest in what they guess is talking about good boy now in my bailiwick. Absolutely and again if you've got if you're watching It's live Make sure that you ask any questions you might have throw them in the chatroom and we will answer those questions a little bit later On in the show, but let's go to our tech update. There is a pile of stuff here on the platter of tech knowledge there is so I Have been Gathering news stories and just life experiences, you know as we go along and finding lots of interesting things The first thing I got on the list tonight is Maybe I'll just do this little out of order because first I want to show you twisted throw me totally I think twist-a-wave is really the I Think that's the one because I want to show you twisted wave and I want to show you a plug-in So we're gonna do that all on doll view here in just a minute But twist-a-wave has finally joined or is in the process of joining the world of software that has punch and roll Or roll and punch roll and punch why they call it punch or auto punch or punch in punch in one of the many ways of describing What this thing is You know, we've been using workarounds for twisted waves lack of this feature for a really long time As of the time you guys see the show it may be available in out in the wild. It's still In beta testing phase. I got a beta version Directly from the developer Thomas and he sent us a link So I actually have it installed and the beauty of it is it well, it just looks like twist-a-wave Is that working tonight, Sue? Can you show us the twisted wave window? And there it is. So, yeah, it's it's just twisted wave They just he added a few features and I just thought it was funny It took him so long to do it But you know what Thomas has got a queue of features So he he finally decided this was the one that needed to be up next so the way it works as well It's just in twisted wave if I go into my preferences There's a new preference under editing called pre-roll. Oh, so you can set this pre-roll Exactly how long you want it like some software. It's basically one two or three seconds. Some use like Reaper use bars So it's one two three or four beats in a bar because it's for music here You can if you want two point five seconds. Well type in two point five seconds pre-roll Then you can basically choose a punch-in point and that's what it's gonna record from so the key here. I think is The key is using keys not trying to use the keyboard I'm trying to use your mouse You want to have a keyboard shortcut set up and the one that it comes with out of the box is going to be It's under audio and it's a normally command r's record and then shift command r's punch in I've made it pee So if you want to find a punch in point, here's what I have recorded Let me see if I have it potted up here. Hey now one two three four five punch in test So right when I say punch in test, I'm gonna replace that so that's my punch in point and I'm just gonna hit P Hey now one two three four five punch in point We did not rehearse that hey now one two three four five punch in point That's a bad punch. Well, you can see I mean we can do it again drop dead simple. Let's do that one again Let's this time Dan will do the punch in hey now one two three four five punch in point There you go Hey now one two three four five punch in point So it's the beauty of it is that is the sheer simplicity of it You know twisted waves not a multi-track doll, right? You're not gonna be able to take the punch in point and Change the crossfade and do lots of fooling around. This is pretty straightforward stuff But for most of voice actors, that's what they need they need something easy to use and it does crossfade the punch punch point So you're not gonna have like a click when the punch that's one of the great things about twisted waves It has that that crossover point and it's easy to edit if you need to go back and edit you can't yeah It's easy to to find that spot and make sure it's nice and smooth But this is a huge jump forward for twisted a lot of people been waiting for this when I posted that this was coming On the twisted wave group on Facebook. I got a ton of excited people So a lot of folks have been using ocean audio or some other tool as just that function function How many voice actors are using punch in I wonder if you you guys are punching users? Comment down below in the in the YouTube chat or the comments or something Let us know how many of you are big time into punch in recording. I mean mainly it's void Audio book audio book stuff because it's very long narration. I'm sorry. Maybe some of you other Some of you have found some clever ways of using punch in I don't know while I'm in twisted waves now I can show you a noise reduction plug and I stumbled on There's a lot of them, of course We always talk about eyes of taupe and some of the others this one was a little bit different First of all, it's really affordable, which is really refreshing. It's um, it's called Bruce free Which I believe is Swedish for noise free and the whole idea here is that Well, it's nice because this is a standalone plug-in that does just one job You don't have to buy a suite of plug-ins you can just buy Bruce free install it and away you go and let me show you what it looks like so I'll go back Over here to twisted way. You don't have to pronounce it, right? No, you don't Your Swedish is I've already installed it now. It's a plug-in. So it's not an application This is a plug-in. So once you install it you run the installer You have to restart your software to get it to load if I go into effects Audio units, it's going to show up under Clev grand. That's the maker and it's Bruce free And let me see if I can bring it into the window where you can see it. There we go But of course mine's running in trial mode right now because I just installed it a second ago But the way it works is you simply and this may not be unusual to a lot of you that you say it audacity You select your noise profile, which is the room tone. You click the ear for learn While it's playing. This is it's a little bit weird. You click play You can loop it if you want and then hold down learn now. It's listening to that room tone Now it's created a profile of that room tone and it's ready to go so you can apply this now to the whole recording and It's built-in algorithm is pretty darn good. I've played with it on a few things I haven't had a mess around but you can get in there under the hood and play with some of these other things What they what they call edge? high-pass filter The high-end and the blend of the unprocessed to the process you can get in there and change a lot But generally I found that you don't have to it It just kind of does a nice job on its own and it's a nice noise. It's basically extremely complicated noise gate Ah, it's not Mathematically algorithmically trying to subtract the noise as you guys know if you do too much of that It sounds funky, right? It takes it leaves digital Remnants resin. Yeah resin. Yeah digital resin. Yeah, at least junky. It's found sounds funky And this one I found minimally sounds funky only if you do it really heavy-handed, but right and it doesn't take away all the noise either So it doesn't sound that weird. It's not like a gate that completely Removes all noise. That's not good either right still leaves a residual amount of noise. It sounds that's a slightly more precise Noise-gating yeah, it's basically like apparently from the way to describe it a whole bunch of gates all very precisely set up So it's now pretty clever. It's I think it's about 60 us And they have an iOS version for 15 bucks Which you can run on iPhone and iPad So that could be a game changer for people just having to bang out an audition and can't get a clean enough recording in their hotel room So cool pretty cool stuff. All right, what else we got else we got we'll fly through the rest of these but Another thing I'm excited about is zoom again. We love zoom. We love zoom Dan We'd use it that we use it for meetings It's zoom is no longer a secret when we first started using it three or four years ago It was definitely new to get on the block now you get off the airplane in Denver and there's a huge banner saying zoom zoom conference We were early adopted. It's huge So what they've added is a couple things that help for people that do what I do and Dan does and that's support So not only can we share your screen and see what you're showing us, but we can now take over the mouse So if we're trying to actually well, no, it's here and let me show you this setting You need to change we can demonstrate it for you live on your computer That's you know and for like you said for what we do when we're talking to people about you know about getting their stuff set up properly Yeah, you can't beat that. It's hugely useful. I mean we've found multiple tools for doing this remote thing It's not new but the fact that it's built into a platform that you guys probably almost all have used at some point Taking a webinar or right to you know doing a meeting. It's built in so that's cool. It also has a waiting room So now I can send out one Link to everybody from my appointment Everybody has the same link, but if they call in early or if I'm running late They're just sitting in a waiting room and it tells them that you're on hold and then when I'm ready for my session I just admit and they're in and I can even type to them when they're waiting like sorry I'm just a minute behind or it doesn't make the receptionist is talking to them. Yeah, exactly Laura's the the receptionist. Yeah, he'll be with you moment. Yes. No, it's very I mean how would this apply to voice actors? I don't know, but I think a tool like this could end up being really cool for people that take a lot of Direction, you know, it'd be really sweet. Yeah, absolutely. There's a long patch replacement. So that's I'm really psyched about that Moving down the list now. Here's something ceiling clouds This was so funny because my lovely assistant rebels been working with me for well over 10 years We were talking about cloud and she assumed we were talking about the internet cloud, right? And turned out we were actually talking about ceiling cloud acoustic cloud now Dan's studio here Highly equipped with clouds. So what are clouds? These are panels that suspend from the ceiling Usually they are not flush against the ceiling but suspended from it down a bit But I just got to put one up in Scott Rommel's studio in his booth We custom-built it was a big project because it's almost as big as the whole ceiling Big as the room. It's not huge. It's just it's awkward getting something into a room That's the same size as the room. Oh, yeah, you got us like slide it through the door And yeah, I need to take everything out of the room to get in there But Scott's been happily recording in the space for a long time But we put that in there and he just just he was immediately noticed the difference in terms of the way it focuses the sound But it also allows you to work the mic further away, which I think is really nice That's one thing we get to do here our mic. I mean my mic is oh Man, it's almost two feet eight 20 inches away from you right now. Yeah, it's a cubit an arm's length in my knuckle It's pretty far and it still sounds pretty present and focused And the problem is most people can't do that in their booths They so if you can get a cloud, which is really a very large bass trap that's suspended above you Off the ceiling if you have the clearance for it It's amazing the improvement it can make you know instead of having to be this far away from the mic Or even this far away from the mic Now you can be this far or this far or even this far and still get a focused sound That's what I've done. Yeah, and the reason that I installed these You know aside from being able to record in here and do our show in here and make sure that everything is Sounding a lot like the room is not that reflective anymore. It was important for playback on studio monitors Yeah, very very important that when you are listening to playback on studio monitors That you're not playing back into a reflective surface because it will come back behind you And you might be hearing what sounds like an echo that doesn't really exist within your recording So, you know, this place was really designed for the playback, you know And if you're mixing something, you know, certainly guys who are mixing music or spots or something that it's really essential I was talking to somebody today and they're like, well, how do I treat the ceiling? Well, it's a big room very similar This one is build some clouds. They're not hard to build yourself. I mean something simple I mean these are made out of two by twos. Yeah, if you keep it simple Don't try to make one that's the size of your entire floor plan of your room We're just you're gonna make rain to get it up in a couple smaller sections that you hang separately, right? You know, but you know, you you you make a frame you put Fabric of whatever color you want Staple it in put rock soul or oral X or what other other types of insulation and then what I did is I covered up the back with With a weed blanket. Oh really, you know something a weed preventer those those things. Oh, yeah Yeah, I let in and it holds it in it keeps it separate, you know, the rock soul from everything California dance a weed blanket can mean just about anything Not probably what I was thinking when you first okay weed preventative You know material Yeah, so anyway, it's it's a brilliant way to do it. Just just be careful if you remember your your Acoustic materials now suspended and it's hanging down against the front of it So it can sometimes pillow and get Slack so it doesn't affect the sound. Yeah, you stuff that doesn't too floppy. So I think it's a little bit more stiff inside Man, what else what I got? Let's do one more and then we can move on and get to the questions and other other stuff but Do any of you guys do project management like it would be on just email you but like are you tired of email threads that get broken Someone didn't get CC'd they're like what wait what happened and then oh he forgot to reply to all, you know All that kind of stuff. Well, I mean, I'm I'm I'm a bit of a productivity junkie and I've been looking for something That's better because from do studio designs. There's sometimes five eight people and working with contractors and all that kind Yeah, sometimes and I've been trying to find something. Well, I did stumble on one. It's called Same page.io So it's basically it's free for many people's usage, you know, you for more complex stuff It costs I think seven dollars a month. It's not expensive But the thing I liked about it is the learning curve It is really easy to learn how to use it was not intimidating and I got it up and running like a day or two And I'm already managing a couple studio build projects on it And so if if you're having to do some bigger projects something it requires multiple people Maybe even producing an audiobook that could be a good This could be a good way to have you the author and other people involved editors all on the same page Good on this thing. Yeah, I mean, it's it has file exchanging. You can Exchange files you can do all sorts of things in this environment. It's kind of like Google Docs Reimagined with better integration of all of them to design more specifically for a workflow Yeah, you can probably customize you can have milestones, you know due dates tasks This is almost done that kind of thing. So it might be useful to you guys interesting interesting Well, if you haven't noticed George and I spend most of our time thinking about home studios You know, somebody's got to do it And the fact is is there not a lot of people out there that really understand the uniqueness of a home voiceover studio Remember these things didn't exist 20 years ago. I mean, there are a few guys there They're probably using real-to-real machines and or ADATs And they were disc jockeys and they'd go home and they'd have their studio at home and stuff voiceover today is predicated on the fact that we can record ourselves and you've got to have the right environment and the skills To be able to record at home and try to not sound like it's recorded at home That's right And you know, and that's a problem because there are lawnmowers and leaf blowers and jets and helicopters and all sorts of things and so you need help you need to learn how to do it and If you're don't necessarily want to learn it so much or how to do how to create your studio There's only two places you can go you can go to George You can go to me and we all know the same stuff So it's up to you to decide not that we're it's a voting contest What's your fingers to the walk and check out our websites. I'm over at George the tech comm You can see the offerings I have there I've got a drop-down menu with different services some of it's booked by the time and some of it's by the service Depending on what it is that you want to do if you don't know what you need to do You can ask or just start off with booking a half-hour phone Consult and we'll cover a tremendous amount of ground in a half-hour But Dan is available at his place and that's over at home voiceover studio calm Yeah, I'm a full-time voice actor, but I also work with people in their home studios I understand what you're going through and what it is you need to know to work with your workflow And perhaps you're starting from zero. You're really you've never really recorded on your own before maybe you did on a cassette recorder 30 years ago It's essentially the same thing just a little bit more sophisticated. I can teach you from soup to nuts how to get it We're sounding the way it's supposed to sound and All you got to do is go over to home voiceover studio calm and Contact me be happy to talk to you. We can set up a consult. Also. I have my My specimen collection cup where you can submit your audio. Let's see what you're studying you the studio you've built Let's see what it sounds like. Let's see if we can get it sounding the way it's supposed to sound Anyway, we've got lots of questions from you guys, so we'll be right back after these messages and give you our take on those questions Hey everybody, it's the time of the show where we get to talk about one of our wonderful long-time sponsors source elements the creators of source connect Visdin all kinds of interesting products visiting something I haven't talked about for a little while So why not tonight? Visdin is virtual ISDN. So what the heck is that? Is that a bridge? Not really no Visdin is you got your ISDN codec box. By the way, these things are dirt cheap right now in eBay $200 maybe you still want to use that thing and plug it into your have ISDN lines But you can't get them the phone company won't offer them or they're gouging you on prices You can get a visit in service from source elements And this is going to allow you to make use of your ISDN equipment still receive and make ISDN calls Like always it's an any argument ending technology that all of the studios that still use ISDN And yes trailer houses and there's a lot of companies that do will allow you to make connections and it works and sounds exactly Like ISDN It's a fantastic system if you want to give it a try should give a call or or check in over at source-elements.com And while you're there Definitely if you don't have it already get a source connect demo a 15-day free trial of source connect They're flagship software that every voice actor should probably have these days if you're actually getting hired for voiceover work So thanks again for source elements and we'll be right back here with our tech talk segment We got a lot to talk about so we'll be right back 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 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 rent When hope is lost the I8 from BMW Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's Jay Michael Collins bet you think I'm gonna try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves, but I will give you my email. It's Jay Michael at JMC voiceover dot com Now if they will stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show The Sentrance mixer face saved a session for Harlan Hogan last week now Who's on a little okay? nine days in the Bahamas spring break sailing trip and one of his very good political clients had five TV commercials to record for a focus group now It was a new client for them and the client insisted that they be conferenced in on a phone patch remember those to help direct The client generally lets him do this kind of work Undirected well with the mixer face second input channel Harlan brought the Skype audio into his headphones and the phone patch Perfectly and so simply by design the second channel audio is not recorded How about that? That's quite an accomplishment for a unit that was really built with us voice actors in mind by Sentrance and one of the best places to get one of these is at voice over essentials Com where you can get almost anything made for us voice actors with quick shipping and Harlan's legendary customer service Voice over essentials calm go there right after watching this. Thanks, Harlan. Hi This is Bill Farmer and you are watching voice over body shop. It's great And we are back Tech talk here on voice over body shop and Yeah, we'd love to get your questions again throw them in the chat room if you've got a home voiceover studio question You've come to the right place because we're the guys that know the answers I mean you can go to forums people throw questions out to forums. I saw some Really outrageous answers that somebody suggested. I won't mention any names because he probably doesn't watch our show Uh Somebody was like it can twisted wave be a a multi-track recorder and this person piped in oh I've been using audition 1.5 for the past 20 years and it still works great on my computer, which is probably a Radio Shack TRS 80 You know, I mean, that's just silly I mean, you know, some people drive a 25 year old car out of a point of pride I guess I mean, you know if you if you got what you got and it works and gets you there It's good, you know more power to you But once that card breaks, you're gonna be the one fixing it and that's how it is using old software, right? There's no support. So absolutely no support for 1.5 support online You know, we call it tech support by committee is a real crapshoot. Yeah, and don't crowd crowdsource your studio Crowdsource your studio often doesn't work out that great. I mean, that's why we're here. Yeah, um, I was just Took a little detour today so I could go to my mailbox in Santa Monica and pick up the thing that Been trying to get to my house for quite a while now who shipped to my house when I was out of town Signature required liens to say it went back and I had to get it again. This is the This is gonna be something that's gonna get a full review at the pro audio suite the podcast I'm on but I wanted to show at least a few little teasers and that is the Procaster or actually the roadcaster pro I mean a lot of lights there. It's very hard to get the Blair out of it They're the roadcaster Pro is gonna be a Interesting device. So what's the what's the deal with this thing? It's a podcasting device essentially it is I mean, it's it's it has the potential of being a really cool voiceover tool But it's kind of more than what you need In a lot of ways because it's multi-track. I mean, it's multi mic I should say not multi-track right multi-track is going to come by the way. It's not multi-track yet But it has four mic inputs. So This is really for someone that's doing more Podcasting or webcasting than anything else. You've got several sources and you want to you need them to do them in real time Yeah, and it really works like a like a radio console But it's got a few extra tricks up its sleeves like you have programmable on this side You have programmable sound bites you can load in car machine like a car Maybe you put in one of these is like a Beep like a tone right maybe one of these is like your slate recorded in somebody else's voice Damn, I hear that a slate recorded in a female voice for male talent can sometimes be effective You know, there's a lot of things you could do with those but anyway, this is the pro caster I think one of the I keep on the pro caster. They have a road caster. This is the road caster pro I think one thing that's clever is the user manual. I'm holding it the user manual is three cards They're a cute card size This one basically has almost nothing on it Basically, it's telling you to go download the driver driver, you know and then plug it into your computer That's the whole picture. That's the second page of the manual then we have This page of the manual which is everything that's on the front panel and it's all in multiple languages So when you see a lot of options here, it's because it's in a lot of languages So one shows the front panel and what it does this side shows the rear panel and what it does That's all it has on it and then this one is the Basics of how to plug everything in and what it does manual. So this is page one and page two well steps It's as close to like Ikea assembly instructions for a mixer that I've ever seen so clearly this thing was designed to be a targeting talent and hosts and Podcasters not technical people and we're gonna try it out and see Is this thing gonna be a boon for voiceover or just another gadget with features? You don't need right so we're gonna find out. I mean, we both, you know We're both into podcasting and listening to podcast sure. I mean you listen to because you're in the car a lot Yeah, you listen to a lot of podcasts Podcasting I think what a lot of people don't get about podcasting is that it's essentially radio production And if you've never done it, it's a total mystery to you But something like this really is recreating essentially a broadcast board with pre-programmed sounds in it Different mics now that you can then mix in real time So if you go to a break you've got your jingle and you press the green button you do that You know it used it was a little more difficult in the old analog days, but now this is doing it completely digital Yeah, and it creates podcasting, which is essentially Those programs that you would hear at six o'clock in the morning on Saturday morning Right exactly and another thing is like this is you know the idea here with a with a product like this is You know if you have your standard Mackie mixer type of thing, it's got a hundred knobs on it This thing hides all those fun functions So the stuff you need to add your fingertips is there and everything else is not right So when you're doing a something live if you have to think about too many steps Chances are you're gonna kind of screw it up and I do it almost every week I've already screwed up to my cues tonight. So believe me. It's gonna happen In fact, if this thing was out when we built this whole system, this would probably would have bought this This is probably what we would have got Because I don't have a physical surface here to control. It's a screen. It's not as easy So this is having a physical control surface is really nice. So Bottom line is does it sound good? And is it reliable you're gonna times kind of times gonna tell we're gonna do At least one pro audio suite on it. So just stay tuned over at pro audio suite on Facebook and see if you Catch us over there and see what you think of the product based on what we think Anyways What else is going on? I think we do have at least one question coming in here Yeah, one from Gary Lewis and the playboys Right Gary. Um, this one's about audacity and by the way, I did play around with audacity three. It's two point three mm-hmm point One I believe is one features it and yeah, it's it's it's something that's coming in its own It's becoming it's just getting better and better On audacity, I am getting clicks or snaps Rarely, but it's still a pain. Yeah anytime you have any click or a break in your audio. It's a pain It's almost impossible to edit it out any ideas in audacity in audacity. Um, there's a couple of ways you can do it I mean they have a click remover. There is a click filter in it Not one of my favorite tools. Yeah Uh The best way if it's in the middle of a word you're screwed I mean, it's you know, it and if it's doing it my philosophy is Fix the problem. We need to figure out what's going on Why is that happening? Not how do you clean it up afterwards? Yeah, because if you can fix the problem Then you're gonna save a heck of a lot of time going back and taking like one of the usually a click like that is indicative of a dropout The digital drop it's a break in the stream of audio right from your interface to the computer And at some point and if you're looking at the waveform and you zoom in It's represented by a peak a straight line down And then starting back up and you know and that sort of thing and it sounds like a click usually It's usually a missed sample. Yeah, and it goes snap And it'll show up as a white line in a You know in a spectrograph of where you can really see it And if you're really unlucky it happens and like huge chunks and it sounds like Yeah Like that in which case you've got a loose cable or something along those lines But uh, you know The thing is is when you when when somebody asks a question like that it always helps To hear it to hear it. How many times do we see this at a question that gets asked in a forum? It's like i'm getting this i'm getting this hum And then they send you the audio and it's like no, it's not a hum. It's It's a steady mechanical sound right or it's the air conditioner or it's Something else that's going on and people everybody perceives things very differently. So We're the guys that need to actually hear it because usually In a second or two, we're like, oh, it's yeah here and load it into an editor like twisted wave and look at the waveform And see what it's doing also what software a version you're on what os. Are you on mac or windows? What version? Um, what audio interface you're using, you know on and on there's a lot of details we we'd need to know um, I can say this like Something that's basically eliminated those problems from my recording life almost 100 without fail Is no longer having any hard drives in the recording chain anymore Everything is solid state The internal can drive on a macbook air or a macbook pro or all all the new max from the last three four years macbooks anyway No more spinning hard drives You know when you have a spinning hard drive that there's a little head in there So there's a thing spinning this way ahead going this way And sometimes that head has to move from here to here to write the audio And if your buffer settings are wrong That's another thing to check. Um, if your buffer settings are too low That means it's not storing enough audio in memory And the hard drive can't get to the next place to write data And you get a certain kind of dropout. I don't know if that's the problem he's having But definitely start by making sure you've eliminated that from the system Nowadays, uh, ssd drives are very affordable. Yep. You don't need a humongous 1 terabyte ssd You just need something large enough to keep all your working projects I call it a scratch drive It's the place where everything goes that you're working on and then when you're done move it somewhere else move it to a big cheap 4 terabyte hard drive For you know, safekeeping or one of those it was portable, uh, flash drives It's got 200, you know, it's got a terabyte on it. Yeah, I mean, I showed you guys the portable flash drive I have a sand sand disk on the extreme It's so fast now. It's now where I keep my iMovie projects I'm using iMovie a lot more these days and with iMovie they don't make it obvious, but you can move your Actually, you can do this with pretty much all the Apple apps photos Um itunes and iMovie you can move that project to another drive So I moved the iMovie file which gets huge Basically every time you start a project every single element ends up in your iMovie project. So I moved it to the extreme ssd 100 I think it was 80 dollars for half a terabyte and uh flawless Never skips a beat works beautifully. So I just have to remember before I launch iMovie plug this thing in And I'm off to the races. So it's worked out really well Okay, we got a question from David Davis. And by the way, Gary, um, put a comment in the youtube Let us know that the advice we gave you helped or if not put more details And maybe one of us can follow up or somebody else will chime in Um, David Davis this one just popped in I use a two i2 in my booth Um, but most of my editing is outside the booth, which is nice to be out of way I do it if you've got two rooms, it's nice to not be stuck in the booth all day Um, what would be the best way to control the volume to my monitor studio monitors at the editing station? So the two i2 is in the booth his speakers are outside the booth They're probably plugged into the two i2, right? So he's got wires going from one room to the other My guess would be an external mixer Monitor out on the two i2 To a mixer and then out to the monitors. Yay or nay. That seems to be a little bit Pludged together as you might say, but I mean the mixer is not necessary. You can get he's got a two one two He's got a two i2. It's just physically in the wrong place You know, he has in the booth because he wants to probably be able to adjust as my gain, right? But you can get a monitor volume knob Like literally a box that has one job Well, there's this one on there's the big silver one on the two i2, right? But that's in the booth, right? And he's at an editing station Outside the oh, right. So how does he control? So there's two ways I can think one is to get a monitor volume knob Yes, they do exist Under a hundred dollars Probably, you know a good one's going to cost almost as much as the scarlet But a good volume knob is going to be expensive because they want to make sure it doesn't screw with the audio It's got to be passive, right? No, no power plug anything. It should just be a clean volume control That goes between the scarlet and your speakers. That's one way Another way would be to have speakers that have their own volume knob on them, right? Um, a bunch of them have like a volume knob on one speaker Um, but the better quality ones don't have that generally. So I say my yamaha h5s here have a volume control on each On each yes, but they're on the back, right? Right. So that's a little less convenient, but So and then another way that I've done it for other people is oftentimes the computer is outside the booth So I just plug the speakers right into the headphone jack of the computer and then set the playback to that, right? Yeah, if it works great sometimes maybe it's not the cleanest sounding, but it can solve that problem I've always taken the philosophy of having the interface at my desk and so I set my levels and forget it and most of the times when I'm working with volume issues One, I know what I'm going to be reading like this morning. I was I was working at my desk and I knew In order to be do a like an announcer voice for a soccer thing Turn the volume way down And and record in my booth where my 2i2 is not You use mic technique because I know if I get close to a mic I'm going to get more proximity effect But if I need to shout and we don't want to over modulate you back off and turn away because we don't shout into people's ears Unless we're really pissed at them And that that works. I mean, if you have a well-tuned room that works great If you have a lousy tuned room, it it starts to sound real boothy real fast, right? He says he has krk rocket fives, which of course do have a volume control in the back. Yeah, they do um Yeah, another thing In terms of dan like says his 2i2 is outside Experience right like you're gonna see a script. Oh, it's that right and you're gonna go over your 2i2 And you're gonna set the gain you're gonna walk into the booth. I believe and set it and forget it You're you're gonna learn where the gain should be for the majority of the styles of reads that you do Within a couple of weeks to a couple months and you're gonna just have you're gonna know exactly just walk in You're probably not gonna muck with it too much, you know, um, but that yeah experience will be your friend there You'll just know You know, sometimes I'll have like two settings. I literally will mark I'll get a little wax pencil and for somebody and say here's your video game and animation read And here's your conversational read give them a little bit of headroom. Yes. Yeah, so here and then nowadays for the millennials here is your asmr setting For when you're doing asmr Or your automobile read How many of you guys have to do asmr stuff? Have you do you know what that is? Have you done it? I've heard of it I can't remember exactly what it is go on youtube and google asmr ikea They did an entire 25 something minute long commercial online In asmr I'm not gonna even explain it. Just i'm telling you just watch it so you can under it is the weirdest thing It stands for autonomic sensory meridian response Good night everybody I think that's it But basically it's things that give people a chill that you know makes them feel shivery There's a lot of people that for some it's whispering or it's it's the clinking Of fingernails on things Eating with your mouth open. I mean there are videos where people eat with their mouth open. It's Even it is a weird place Anyway, if anyone's doing asmr, let us know how that's going. Well, that's a like that's more tech That I think that most people can handle in a week Uh, that's a lot of information and we really appreciate you got to the questions We got through the questions We've talked about all sorts of stuff and we love getting your questions if you've got a Home studio question for us you can write to us anytime at the guys at v obs dot tv real simple and You know, we check our email every now and again like at least every other week Uh and when we talk about that on the show Yes, and uh, if you want to have your question on the show write to us there And we'll make sure that you get on here on tech talk and of course if uh, you know, we know a guest that's coming on You know, you can write that question as well because our guests are well known and you're gonna know what they're gonna You know what you're gonna want to ask them. So anyway, so that's tech talk for this week and uh We'll be right back after some of these messages and we'll wrap it all up into a nice tight little ball. Be right back 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 audiobooks 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 What question do we get most often? Well far and away. It's how do I even get started in voiceover? And we have a great answer to that question. Take vo to go goes free Getting started in vo class. You heard right. It's free and it's available online 24 7 at Getting started in vo dot com. That's getting started in vo dot com if you've been watching vo BS And thinking that you need to get in gear and start your own voiceover career This is the class you should start with You'll learn about the vocal skills you need the storytelling skills you need the equipment you need and the business skills you need All in one single comprehensive online class taught by vo to go goes David h. Lawrence the 17th This class won the backstage readers choice award four years in a row and again, there's no charge It's absolutely free Want to take it? Sure you do Go to getting started in vo dot com. That's getting started in vo dot com Hi, this is cat kresada and this is voiceover body shop Are you confused about how to set up and maintain a professional quality voiceover studio? No wonder the information out there is mostly Mythology This is the best microphone to use. You'll have to have a preamp. You need a soundproof booth This software is the best your audio must be Broadcast quality Consult with someone who knows the truth someone who's been there in the trenches doing voiceover for over 30 years Someone with unparalleled experience with voiceover studios Who's worked with hundreds of voice actors and designed hundreds of personal studios? He knows how to teach and cares about your success In one of the harshest environments known to voiceover your home Dan Leonard the home studio master Separate myth from fact and get a handle on your personal voiceover studio Contact the home studio master at home voiceover studio dot com Okay, we're back To say goodbye, but don't go yet because there's still stuff we got to tell you that's really important For example in two weeks our guest is going to be Eric shepherd Oh, baby who happens to be my agent a man with an opinion. Yes, uh, he definitely got some opinions Uh, good night to ask an agent. Yes anything. Yes, and how appropriate that it's on april fool's day So that'll that'll be fun to have eric here fool an agent. Yes here on the show Stump the agent. It's like a daily thing anyway Uh, let's see here, um We need to thank our donors of the week and who are they? Well, you've nicely listed them here for me, which is very nice. It only took me six years to figure out how to do that I appreciate that. Um, we've got philips appear um, michelle blanker ant land productions. That's uncle roy. Uh, gary bungarts andrew kaufman And christy burns some of the names and these are names you've probably heard because i've read them Many times because most of these are subscribers. They send, uh, money on a recurring schedule using paypal And it's very kind that they do that. Thank you. And we appreciate your support There's a donate now button right here on our homepage and uh, we'd love if you can give us some support It allows us to maintain this Magnificent technical feat that we do every other week here to uh, bring you the show So I know we mentioned it last time But did you know that when we had that amazing studio To use in portland that incredible space that was because of karen o'brien. Yes, thanks karen A major contribution to the show. We really appreciated that. Yeah Hey We need to see your booths now. This is a picture you took It is this is a super bloom. This is the band The park that's been banned you cannot go there now because it became so popular Like elsen or like near lake elsen or it's called a walker canyon. This became so popular You now can't even go visit it. So you have to look at this picture on our on our show to see what it looks like But this is the super bloom. Uh, I saw it on thursday last week Um, the super bloom is in california is this massive blooming of poppies and some other What are the purple ones called lupin lupin lupin? Yeah, they uh, just go for miles It's kind of mind boggling. But if you want to see them, you just kind of travel north as they go north So do you you can go see them other parts of the state? So it's like the wizard of Oz they're going through the field of poppies. Yes Something with poison. I believe it is instagram that ruined this place because That's where my girlfriend heard about it And I think many others did as well and unfortunately became so crowded they had to close it down But please we want your booths. It's more fun to see your space So send them in to the guys at v obs dot tv Put booth in the subject and we'll throw it on the wall make sure it's in landscape format not instagram story format Not vertical, please, but my phone doesn't work like that try turning it just was it's pretty pretty simple thing Uh, let's see here. Uh, we're live here every other week now We do the whole show and then we split it up So you guys can don't have to digest and you want an hour and a half of stuff you get 45 minutes of A great interview and you get 45 minutes of more tech than you can possibly handle in 45 minutes Uh for your home voiceover studio So make sure you join us for that and if you want to be in the audience All you got to do is write to us again at the guys at v obs dot tv Make sure that you're you know what week you're coming because we're now in alternate weeks We'll be back on again april 1st and then april 8 15 15, thank you. Uh, so Math has never been one of my my fortes maths Um, and uh Again, you got a question write to us at the guys at v obs dot tv. Let's thank our amazing sponsors like uh, harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra Source elements v o to go go voice actor websites dot com and j michael collin's demos All right, we also need to thank the dan and marcia lennard foundation for the betterment of webcasting Uh, also our producer catherine curidan who got us mad in here, uh this week, which was great. Um, mike marlino for his Ace work in the chat room tonight. Thanks mike. We like having him around We like having his mom around too because sumer lino is our technical director and she does a bang-up job of that every week I think we got her worked in just right Please don't leave us. That's right. Uh, and of course, we'd like to thank lee penny simply for being lee penny Well, that's gonna do it for us here on voiceover body shop You know is not an easy business We're here to help you with your home voiceover studio because When it sounds right It is good Something like that. I'm dan lennard and i'm george wittem and this is voiceover body shop or vio bs Have a great week everybody. Bye now