 Hey, once again it is Monday night and it's time for voiceover body shop special show tonight because it's your chance to be on here if you're in the chat room or if you're on facebook or wherever it is we're going to post the link to get on zoom all you have to do is click on the link and follow the instructions and put on your camera and your mic and we'll do we'll be doing a fan round table plus we got other stuff to talk about tonight it's an important announcement and lots of tech questions we expect them yes and we want them and we crave them so give them let them at all that coming up right now on voiceover body shop two men twin sons from different mothers with a passion for voiceover recording technology and the desire to make recording easy for voice actors everywhere together in one place george wittem the home studio engineer to the stars a virginia tech grad with an unmatched knowledge of all the latest gear and technology in voiceover today dan lennard the home studio master a voice actor with over 30 years experience in broadcasting and recording and a no holds barred myth busting attitude for teaching you how easy it is together to bring you all the latest technology today's voiceover superstars and leading the discussion on how to make the most of your voiceover business this is voiceover body shop voiceover body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials.com home of harland hogan's signature products source elements remote connections made even easier vo to go go.com everything you need to be a successful voiceover artist j michael collins demos award-winning demo production voice actor websites.com where your voiceover website won't be a pain in the butt and voiceover extra your daily resource for vo success and now live from their super secret multimedia studio in sherman oaks california here are george wittem and dan lennard good evening i'm dan lennard and i'm george wittem and this is voiceover body shop or vo bs all right fan round table tonight and uh there's lots of people in our chat room and if you look in the chat room there is a link there there is and it says zoom us j88 blah blah blah blah if you click on that link it will take you to a zoom chat where you can have your camera on and your microphone but turn your microphone off or mute yourself when you come in and we will unmute you and what we want is your questions we want your comments we want your opinions on this show as long as you keep it friendly uh it's true this is this is not just about you know we want to answer tech questions but just just sort of a fireside chat about what vo bs is what it should be what it could be and you know maybe things we can do better so right it'll be fun just just an open an open conversation tonight very informal right now we do have to do the news and then we have a big big announcement that everybody needs to hear we do and and see well they'll they'll see us making the announcement they have to hear or something like that uh and uh by the way gotta show you something i picked up at the flea market this week i love picking up old radios at the flea market toy i found this guy it's a 1956 uh grand co fm receiver yeah with with somebody whoever had this put an antenna on it this is the early days of component sound system gear remember when you would buy just the tuner you'd buy this and there it goes it's kicking yeah i hear it floats in and out but it what it does work do you hear it out there just barely yeah yeah but the way this thing worked this before in the early days of radio well the early days of fm radio radios didn't have an fm receiver on them you had to buy a separate receiver that's the tuner there and uh there we go yeah i'll get you pulled down for a violation of copyright yeah really yeah hopefully not all right you get the idea yeah anyway but this was a receiver that you would put on your not necessarily your stereo probably your high for your old high-fives would it would have a a an auxiliary input into it and there was your fm radio i'll just push this antenna down the antenna whip is like from my radio control car days from the 80s we had that real long antenna yeah really if you're too ambitious you'd press down and break it right off right you're all done all righty well i figured i'd show that i love to show i mean yeah but the amazing thing was is i'm like where's the speaker oh it's just a receiver literally plug it into the stereo this morning and turn them up holy look at that we can listen to npr on this thing my fun weekend experience was going down to la joya and seeing my amazing talented friend daniel talamantes the accomplished soprano sing with uh with her husband actually kerry kerry is a baritone and they sang the messiah so there was the four of them doing you know they had the soprano alto tenor and baritone wow and then maybe 150 200 choir members wow it was really cool and a full orchestra it was not cheap to put those things on it was a awesome experience and you know they build it up so the soprano finally gets to come on stage after jesus is born and everybody's all excited and then she gets to sing and and she has experience singing at the met in new york the metron opera so her voice just was like a canon compared to everybody it was so powerful nothing is more amazing than professional opera singers the best of the best we were all blown away martha con was with us oh that's wonderful and she has sung a lot of these and she was impressed we were all blown away what a fun weekend already well let's get the show on the road it's now time for voice over money shop presents the vbs voice over extra news all the information you need for a successful voice over career and here is the voice over extra news for december 10th marketing trends 2019 well here we go again attempting to spot the trends for the year ahead where everybody's apparently headed and should you follow the herd well two new articles on voice over extra are both alarming and comforting in this regard let's start with the alarm voice actor and coach j michael collins takes a look at the entire voice over industry landscape and influenced by the release a few weeks ago of the red dead redemption two video game j michael sees our industry stuck in the early wild west days in that video game he says law and order is more theory than fact and those who don't keep their wits about them often find themselves in a pine box well the voice over industry is a bit less cutthroat he adds and we tend to support each other rather than fire our smith and wessons into our competitors backs the black hat guys are easier to spot on our biz too even so he says the evolution of the voice over business bears a lot of resemblance to a world where there are few maps fewer rules and a lot of fools gold from a union that's not addressing our concerns to an online casting free for all to gurus who range from being truly career shaping to peddling snake oil there's no one size fits all answer to how to get ahead or maybe there is well keep your wits about you j michael warrens stay ahead and if you see the entire industry moving in one way well maybe take a look at what's down an opposite road or at least off a side path and for now comfort some comfort at least from natasha marchivka as she has been looking at trends and with an eye toward what marketing gurus and advertisers are predicting for 2019 not surprisingly she says there will be increased spending on digital video advertising yet much of her research points to this conclusion for natasha she says everything i've cumulatively learned over the years still applies well for instance in marketing and all your business endeavors endeavors be professional be brief be remarkable diversify your revenue stream be authentic it's the foundation of your brand and your message and stay relevant so shall we sum up change is always in the air but you already know what to do check out the details in these articles now at voiceover extra dot com your daily resource for voice over success indeed yes indeed yes and now it's time for a big announcement after after much consternation and i believe that's the right word and george and i decided that you know we have been doing this show for almost eight years eight years in march almost every monday night give or take ten or so monday's a year right uh we've been doing this show it's not easy to do we work hard at it every week starting on friday night sometimes and we bring it to you here on monday night every monday night what we've decided to do in order to make our lives just a little bit easier lives and things that rhyme with lives right we won't say what uh we are going to change format a little bit and first off we're going to start doing the show every other week starting january seventh as a live show as a live show as a live show we're going to do a live show every every other monday night uh in the week following that in the empty week we're also going to send out uh different versions of the show the prior week where we'll send out just the interview and just the tech part right so there'll be much more tech which is the other format change we're going to make we're going to start doing a lot more tech at the top of the well at the the second half of the show right for those that are there live right for you'll see the interview first right with our guest with our guest and that's going to start an hour earlier at five p.m pacific right or six p.m mountain seven p.m central eight o'clock eastern eight o'clock prime time baby yeah so so that where guests gets to come in get their interview going and then beat the traffic out be free to leave and be home for dinner makes an easier night for the guest and we'll be able to get better guests we'll be having fewer so it's sort of a balance of quality quantity kind of thing i guess you could say yeah but it's it's going to really step things up i think but then you know after the guest is gone we're going to just focus on tech and we'll be able to talk tech freely for well we'll see for how long that's right we may extend that section of the show we'll see right which means we need your questions we that's right we want your participation we're going to need your questions to drive what it is we do because george and i can talk about just about anything yeah but if someone asks a question we can go on add in for an item for days or ad nauseam depending on ad nauseam on that plus another thing we want to do uh is we want to start offering you some really premium content uh and that is paid webinars uh the things that you want to know about real specific things that you know specific subjects that we teach and we do incredible webinars here uh in the voiceover body shop studio uh and we want we want your input on what you'd like to see and we'll have uh we'll have paid webinars that will you'll be able to get the recording of and you will be able to create your own library your voiceover body shop webinars yeah they're going to happen right here in house and uh we'll be able to keep a pretty constant schedule of content coming to you guys trying to do it once a month yeah that sounds that sounds about right yeah yeah so that's how we're going to survive into 2019 and i believe our first guest of 2019 is nobody important Tara Strong is scheduled to be with us and and and we have Larry Davis and we're going to really push to get the big people on here and that means some big time agents big time stars uh big time casting directors influencers you know social media experts and the people who can help you make your business your voiceover business succeed better yeah so that's the big announcement that's what we're planning so you're all going maybe not that big a deal to some but hopefully it allows us to bring you guys the the really quality content we really want to stay focused on quality for for 2019 right yeah okay one more little piece of housekeeping yes we want to do a fan round table tonight that's right that means we need your input and your participation we've been putting the zoom link in there how many people do we have in the zoom zoom right now we've got a good number actually we got one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen outstanding we got a good number you can go to gallery view and do the uh the brady bunch there for a little bit uh anyway we're gonna get to your questions and your comments and your thoughts right after these incredibly important messages wow this is vobs oh i think i heard the voice of a body shop i did i did hear the voice of a body shop little body shop hey look if you're on our mailing list george and i have now sent you to three lessons in the voiceover booking blueprint and david h laurence the 17th told us he's now going to put it back into storage but first he's got one more lesson for you it's about you moving forward and he's going to talk about two big elephants in the room and towards the end of the lesson he'll give you the details about his brand new vo to go go pro complete voiceover training and the registration for that opened up yesterday morning here's where you go https colin's forward slash forward slash vo to go go dot com forward slash 2019 forward slash r forward slash 31 yeah it's a lot to learn but you've it'll be uh recorded so you and we'll have it in the chat wait for also david just added a new kickstart bonus only for those who register in the first 48 hours it started yesterday and ends tomorrow morning tuesday at 9 a.m the bonus is an exclusive private afternoon online session designed to accelerate your voiceover success in voiceover and will be open to you only to you if you act quickly once again it's vo to go go dot com forward slash 2019 forward slash r forward slash 31 all right 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 seven hundred dollars so if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options go to voice actor websites dot com where your vo website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what and we're back here on voice over body shop doing it live to drive that's right because we're too lazy to edit this thing instead we have somebody else do it anyway okay we'd like to get you on zoom and if you have a question to ask write the question down in the chat room on the v obs dot tv chat vb lbs dot chat room that way we'll we'll know that you want to be heard that's right go to you and bring you on with your camera and your sound that's right so if you have a question and you want to ask it we want you to ask it on cam yeah so while you're doing that we have uh we have a quick question a Facebook question yeah that we're thrown in early john bedilla uh wrote to us he said is there a good tutorial for audacity 2.3.0 and further does the punch and roll feature mean what i hope it means for simplifying the streaming uh vo narration audiobook recording please help i think you both have done tutorials on audacity i know george did one on twisted waves so did i and i benefited from them uh i'm a somewhat long in the tooth the vo guy hoping to restart some semblance of a business having dropped out of sight for a couple of years though i realized the world has radically changed since i was a very busy freelance performer well gosh that you know as i as i told him when he first wrote to us it's like well you could always read the manual because boy there are a lot of details in there yeah but you've you've done a webinar on audacity i've done one on audacity you can get them over at voiceover extra yeah uh i'm kind of out today i'm kind of outdated on audacity's new new punch and roll perhaps that should be one of the first ones we do as a vobs webinar yeah i would think so uh but i i know there are a couple of people who teach classes and Larry Hudson teaches one in audacity and david h lauren severe to go goes big on audacity he's certainly for audio i always think if anybody would be jumping on the on the punch and roll method it would be david h lauren's because he has been teaching his own variation on punch and roll recording using what he calls his stair step method or something like that for a long time so i would imagine he's probably adapting it or at least learning how to use it so right um it's going to come we're just not on top of it quite yet it's just too new yeah um also ocean audio has punch and roll which works even easier than an audacity we've been using the we've been using the audacity or the uh ocean audio punch and roll function for quite a while with success so uh it's it's to come i would imagine it was done with a lot of the voice actors in mind because the there's an audacity facebook group and a lot of the features are coming out of that group the requests for features like the punch and roll right so yeah there's a there's a lot of weight i it is there punch and roll in in audacity i've certainly have version 2.3 2.3 yeah that's what he was okay i just came out with punch and roll that's the newest yeah try it and go out and play yeah all right are we ready to go to some questions and some comments and thoughts from our voluminous audience all across the fruited plane and various other places let's see what's in i think jdk has the first jdk and is jdk in there he is he is jdk all right i'm gonna start by oh he's already unmuted okay let me glue his camera so we can see it all right spotlighting jdk area is man of a thousand children thank you very much that is me and they just keep popping up i have a simple question for you and i know george has the answer because i know he uses one of these i have a yamaha ag03 and i repeatedly you know i turn it off when i'm not using it but it's solid state and i was wondering if i could just leave it on actually dan uses one or or did for a very long time right we're using the ag03 um it's now part of our audio chain it is it's part of the production system now uh do you turn it on or turn it off i mean i turn it i turn it off when i'm not using it but it's solid stake and i leave it on yes if it's solid state you know some guys never do that but it doesn't have tubes in it like like like this guy you know uh no you can just leave it on i left it on for like three years yeah i mean i never it's gonna it's gonna reboot every time the computer reboots right or every time you shut the computer off it will turn off because it's getting its power from the computer so unless you leave your computer on 24 seven all the time then it will not get restarted so but it doesn't harm it and it shouldn't hurt it either to leave it on all the time so i wouldn't worry about it okay that's my question thanks guys hey man thanks for chiming in yeah we appreciate it all right one down uh it worked yeah dave smith let's see dave smith is he in there dave's was through facebook so he's not in the actual video chat okay so we'll ask his yeah we'll do it anyway okay he says he says i also have an ag03 awesome it's popular we probably because we talked about it so much i got a great unit uh when being skype directed is there a way to use the loop back feature or do i have to go with the sound flower audio jack root well that's the whole point is that you can loop back using the loop back features is that little switch on there it says uh channel one two and then i can't remember what the second one is and then the bottom one it's loop and if you put it into loop there's a little dial that you turn the whatever is coming back from the computer on and you can you can play back stuff to whosoever listening and you can turn up the sound from them as well right and so no that's the that was the whole point of the ag03 and the ag06 is that you didn't need soundflower it did all the routing itself right it works for playback that's what it's good for it it doesn't mix minus and what that means is once loop back is on you're sending the skype caller to themselves so you only want to turn it on loop backs for just for when you want to do the playback as soon as you're done with the playback turn it back to dry one two or mix mode don't leave it on loop back because it could cause some weirdness in the skype feed but yeah that should that should do it for you all right all right let's what let's we need to see if somebody has questions they're like they're there why don't we just go to somebody random and see what they have to say well i mean we asked them to put it in the chat and jack's mount mining the chat so let's keep this pattern going with curt bonham who says coming to you from my newly built home studio wondering about power conditioners and how important it might be to have one and where in my chain to put it now curt is actually in the chat so i didn't have to read that out loud so now he gets to read it to us and i think he had a follow-up question as well so i'm gonna unmute him now and spotlight his video and there he is okay fire away curt hey guys answering your or ask the question in your own words yeah now that i've done it yeah well like i said i just got into my new studio and of course i want it to be as perfect as possible and sound as good as it possibly can so you know i don't know if i need it or not but i'm just wondering how important the power conditioner might be i hear a lot of talk about it and i'm also wondering if i was to get one where in my power chain when i put it because i have my computer so outside so curt cur will you do us a favor are you using a usb audio device for the uh well i'm using an interface is it usb this is the thing i'm wondering it just fell apart yeah it sounds absolutely horrendous oh weird yeah sounds perfect to me um you sound you sound good to you but to us it sounds very uh crunchy um so i was just asking if you could unplug it replug your like the usb interface let me do that let me do that it's amazing how this fixes things now watch this it's amazing let's see what happens that is as long as zoom re reconnects to the interface right zoom may go oh i'll use another input and then he'll all right double check the input on audio but anyway to answer the question because i think we got the idea yeah um a power conditioner i'll tell you they are all over the map in terms of price i mean some of them are like 50 bucks some of them are way over a thousand dollars i picked up one at a garage sale about five years ago yeah it's right over there yeah and it saved my tuchas last week how what did i do there was a power surge yeah and everything just went off i'm like oh no my power condition because i tried to turn the power conditioner back on and it wouldn't it wouldn't it would allow it to turn it was saying it was 130 volts oh there was an over yeah so you had an over voltage coming right it was an over voltage and it wouldn't start up yeah and so i had to go outside turn off the solar system turn off everything wow and then rebooted it and then it came back on really so contacted i contacted la dpw that's the power company here in la and said what happened and they're like every time we are fixing or doing some maintenance sometimes there'll be a power surge in a neighborhood and that's what you experienced okay so i think your question is duly duly answered a power conditioner is probably a good idea oh it's always a good idea i mean if at the very very least have a proper surge suppressor there's power strips out there they're not all going to be surge suppressors that has to have a joules rating to be a surge suppressor but the next step up is a power conditioner which does what dan's unit did which is protect your equipment from over voltage and the better ones have filtering to try to clean the power before it comes into your studio has a little broom in there yeah sweeps and the ones up from there have a voltage regulator that can take whatever voltage is coming in whether it's high or low and level it back out again and they get more and more fancy from there i at the very least surge of pressure for sure at that yeah very least yeah i mean not just a power bar but a power conditioner there and where do you put it in your chain you plug this plug into the wall and you plug everything else into that yeah it is the first thing in the chain now if you have a u of ups most ups is those are the the big battery backup systems that can be the that is also a power conditioner and surge suppressor right in most cases if it has something called avr i look for ones that have that feature i like my power ups is that avr and true sign so what that means is if the power is a little high or a little low it automatically corrects it that's an automatic voltage regulation if the power drops below the threshold then the inverter kicks on inside and starts running on the battery when it runs on battery though sometimes you get a really bad buzz and so if it has true sine wave technology true sign or pure sign that means this the power coming off the battery will be clean so a couple little buzz words to look for if you go shopping yeah mine's mine mine's an old monster that was you know from monster cable and it's designed for you know vcr cd you know all those things yeah but it's powering my computer and powers everything in here and thank god it saved me saved your butt it did nothing like a bad power surge well you know and i thought oh no my computer is gone no it just because it wouldn't reboot come on reboot reboot and like oh that's saying 130 129 it's cool yeah that display if it didn't have that display would have made it really hard to figure out right you wouldn't have known that the voltage coming in was out of whack which is why i have there you go so that's nothing to look for 50 bucks at a garage if you're looking for one look for one that has a display that shows the voltage on it another thing to look for they don't all have that that's right so i guess we can take a break right and queue up a few more yeah that's right but i like his blue microphone i do i do too is that working oh he has to he has to reset it i think zoom lost connection with his his audio that happens yeah we'll have to find out more about that mic after the break hurt because that's uh i think it's a sock i don't know what's going on with that mic it's pretty interesting i want to know more all right all right well we're going to take a break get your questions into the chat room we want to talk to you you watch the show all the time i bet you have a billion questions but we also want your comments your thoughts on the show what you'd like to see and you know you get your little soapbox to say what you want i guess anyway coming right up here on voiceover body shop don't go away 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 voiceover x t r a dot com and we're back here at voiceover body shop make sure you put your question in the chat room but george is now looking back at the chat room to see what questions are on there i know we got one from paul stafano yeah let's go let's throw to paul paul and now taking you to live to paul stafano studio you're on paul sorry i had to unmute how you doing guys doing great how are you i'm fantastic so i had this this tech tip i got from another engineer slash talent and i'm worried i might have conflated the information he gave me so the gist is that there's a way to use compression during on-board processing in place of a gate or expander and sort of mimic the effect that a gate would have but more subtly and i've been using it first on the apollo um the universal audio apollo i have and then also on the ago six and it seems to do what i wanted to do it it mimics the gate but it's not as harsh and it doesn't cut off the ends of phrases as as harshly as a gate as you would think yeah have you heard of this is this something that actually works or am i just uh imagining it i've never heard of a something that's just an actual compressor which takes a signal that comes in once it crosses a threshold reduces the volume i've never heard of a compressor doing that i've heard of an expander which is sort of the opposite of a compressor and there's also processing plugins that do both for example like in twisted wave uh the a u dynamics processor has both compression and expansion it's got both ends of the spectrum um it's got a pretty good too yeah it's got a preset that says noise gate yeah audition has a light gate medium gate you know heavy that's everything and but you know gating of course is once the signal drops below the threshold it just disappears it's like turning off a switch usually a bad thing we don't really never want to do that but a compressor that can behave like an expander gate i that's not something i'm familiar with so maybe the plug the plugin you're talking about has that feature built into it i don't know actually just using the onboard processing the tsp processing for the ago three slash ago six the um the amaha right which is only a compressor right only compressor as far as i know but it doesn't seem to do what i expected it to do and what do you expect it to do again uh like i said i'm using it to mimic the the function of an expander and i just turn up the the attack on and the release both to a really fast fast number yeah and and it does limit some of the background noise that i that i have issues with right well i'm fascinated i yeah that completely doesn't make any sense i know we'll have to play around with that and take i heard from another from another engineer and he was using it with the the manly boxbox plugin on the follow wow the same thing there uh but again i was only using the the compressor feature of that particular plugin and it does seem to do what he said it did i have to see like a i'd have to see like an on camera an on screencast showing i'll make a video yeah like a video of what's going on and then showing and seeing letting me hear the result to better understand it because it yeah it's it's it's kind of like saying i'm using a can of blue spray paint to paint my street red and if i do it just right it comes out red like i don't i don't understand even begin to understand how to do it so i'm curious all right maybe i'll create something to send it to you awesome that would be awesome man right yeah thanks yeah kurt bottom also was confused about the loopback feature okay he says i'm confused about what loopback is and now i know i have it on my new persona studio 26 oh okay yeah well i mean every piece of gear is going to use have a loopback feature that works differently from each other but essentially what it does is it allows you to play the audio from your computer from the main core audio right back out the other way right exactly so it's a pure loop and that's not always a you know if if you're recording in pro tools or some kind of multitrack system where it's monitoring what you're recording all the time that will create a horrendous feedback loop right because you're recording the pro tools output back to itself so if you do do that function make sure that your track is muted in your software that will prevent a horrible feedback loop so software like twisted wave or recording in in waveform mode in audition there is no monitor loop there's no there's no monitor system that's automatically engaged uh that's monitoring the input so you don't have to worry about that that problem happening yeah you know what you forgot to do yeah what's a source element spot you're darn right i'll have to catch it on the next break or should i just do it now like right in the ladies and gentlemen representing source elements mr. george wittem okay well this is the best way to do an ad i mean they're gonna love this because it's right in the middle of the show people won't think to skip it uh if you if you're if you are a voice actor or if you're a studio recording voice actors why don't you already have source connect you probably should have at least a working demo of source connect and this is a way to connect your studio to any voice actor or any studio as a voice actor on the internet and get super high quality high bandwidth audio with very low latency anywhere that you need to record it and this is really a tool that's become mainstream now in the world of voice acting and and studio production it's very commonly found these days and it's definitely taking over uh for uh the likes of isdn um it's very reliable and it's affordable you don't have to buy it up front you can get it as a monthly license rental now if you like and pay installments whatever works for you but if you do want to get it set up you can get a free trial right now over at source dash elements dot com sign up you do have to have an i-lock account but that's free you don't have to have an i-lock is usb key and if the whole i-lock thing is mystifying to you don't worry i actually produced a tutorial on how that thing works for source elements it's on the website thanks a lot for uh sponsoring the show source elements go check out source connect and tell them that we sent you we appreciate it all right so what else we have going on we have another question now all right and this one is from let me see if i remember who that was uh kendall cambell is kendall kendall kambal ken kambal is he in there he is there put or she in this case come twister let me put you up on camera let's see yeah do you have your camera connected kendall or do you want to go no cam tonight i'm going to go incognito tonight oh don't you can be audio tonight it's fine but you sound great you sound good you sound good thank you i have a little image there so you can yeah you can kind of guess what i look like hey so i am one of those odd ducks and i'm a pro tool user i use a logic pro doesn't have to be specified towards this but i have certain things that i want to keep my breath in but i don't want them to be as loud as they are because it just makes it sound more natural how do i lower the volume of said that little bit of that breath while not affecting the rest of the volume ah i got a great answer for that one depending on what kind of stuff are you doing like audio books or just all sorts of stuff all sorts of stuff you know just yeah really a smattering of different things all right well the the best way to get rid of breaths you remember you've got three options when it comes to dealing with breaths for before if you like you want to use software i tend to believe that first be careful with your breaths plan them out very very carefully so that you are uh you know will you read ahead like i can take a breath here i can take a breath there make sure you're in good physical condition and that you can read an entire sentence without taking a breath yeah random breaths are really hard to deal with yeah when they pop up in the middle of a phrase right sometimes a breath say in an audiobook might be something very dramatic and it actually needs to be in there but if you take a loud breath in the middle of a paragraph or something like that you could either just silence it which nobody recommends because then it you know if you've got any background noise or something there's nothing the best way to deal with that is to highlight the breath which looks like an egg on your uh on your uh your waveform and take it down 15 db it makes the breath sound far more natural and it doesn't cause any other problems you're not lowering the audio anywhere else you're simply lowering that one particular breath yeah you have to go through the entire copy to do that uh and twisted wave you could probably do it using a breath finder or the silence finder and stuff and then take all of those down 15 but you got it you really have to look at each individual breath because there are different volumes and in different places and so but highlighting it taking it down 15 db usually is a really effective way to do that and it doesn't involve anything really sophisticated yeah now because you're on pro tools there's some fun things you can do too you could lay you could lay on a track that's nothing but room tone so record 30 seconds of really good room tone make sure there's no random noises in there and what you're gonna do is you're gonna loop that now i don't know there's a probably a production person on pro tools that knows how to loop something very easily i think it might be pretty easy to do in pro tools but you need to have a really long piece of room tone longer than any chapter on your book and you can have that on a track so that room tone is just always there right now leaving your pro tools in shuffle not shuffle not shuffle but slip mode now you can go through and mute things you don't want and the nice thing is that when that mute occurs the room tone is still there because it's on another track so that's another another way you could do it it's kind of a interesting hack and people think wait a minute if i'm adding room tone behind my voice that has room tone isn't the room tone gonna get louder but it doesn't work out that way actually the that white noise just sort of masks the other white noise and it doesn't actually create worse room tone as a result so you'll have to experiment with how loud the room tone should be you don't have to listen to it and adjust the level but give that a shot i've heard of people saying that that works for them any roads to Rome thank you very much appreciate it yeah thanks for your question yeah you got another question you know put it in the channel right uh i know let's see here there was a question here from i know uh friend friend's voice was looking to get on here uh did you ask one earlier uh he no he says he has a question in the video chat not in the video but if you have a question we'll answer it no question just a comment on how helpful you are on the show i don't want to take up anyone else's time we got lots of time fred if you got a question get in there but we appreciate that i'm scrolling back through the through the chat room to see if there's any others that we missed along the way um which that was actually about how to join the show apparently there's a confusion about which is the zoom room i don't think there's more there's not more than one zoom room we posted the link a few times well dug dug is in there we haven't talked to dug in eons it's dug on and let's just throw it a dug yeah let's see if he's in there no dug you know it true to form dug wants to be behind the scenes hey oh i asked question uh is there any way i can get some help yeah go for it let us have it i actually did post this so this is a manly reference microphone and i don't know if you guys can help me or not but manly wants me to send this thing and the cable and power supply to them in california i've got a phase problem it's out of phase and it was fine it's good microphone 2,700 bucks now yeah uh yeah so uh you know i don't know how much you're going to charge me to repair this thing but i can tell you now i'm sure it's a lot what's wrong and so it's out of phase um so i have a sennheiser 416 shotgun microphone going into a manly box box everything's fine but when i hook up this guy now to it uh it's out of phase and sounds really hollow i don't know how much that charge me you know i don't know why it's like that but uh but it was fine it was fine and then it switched phase just it's out of phase very hollow now well that's bizarre um that's the thing when you buy boutique handmade equipment it's kind of like buying a high-end sports car you know it's it's they're the only one it actually it's put this way this is analog gear yeah you don't they don't they're not the only ones that could fix it but they're the ones that you know can fix it i mean there are mic shops all over town yeah i'm gonna send it into anybody else i mean i'm gonna send it to california but i didn't know if anybody here that's uh you know part of this uh uh session had any ideas or uh you know experiences that might be similar to where you know hey we know it's the mic or we know it's the cable you know uh because i at this point i don't know i changed the tube it never it didn't fix itself um you know i put another mic at the shotgun the sennheiser 416 going into the box box fine so i just don't get it it's a good mic it sounds so good listen that's the main reason everybody talks about that sennheiser 416 shotgun mic which is a good mic but i i cut i cut some imaging with it um over the weekend and then i went back and listened to some stuff up against this manly and it blows it out of the water so i need to get this fixed i just didn't know if you had any experience in regard to how much it might cost to get this thing fixed because it's christmas and i don't know what's been on yeah i have never heard of anything like that happening nor have i ever had ever had to have anything serviced by manly i've i've self-serviced one of their preamps where it was just a bad tube if it's more than a bad tube you know it's it's hard i can't possibly tell you what it's gonna cost but they're a good family owned company and i'm sure they take good care of their customers and uh you know and you've talked to the engineers there or talked to some of the service people that i did you know paul is their main engineer he's really great i'm friends with avana on facebook and you know they all you know i mean i think uh when i got into a conversation with avana about it she felt like she thought i think because she was trying to walk me through what to do is i think she thought i bought it and it was like that but it wasn't it was it was it was fine i think he even stumped avana because you know i've got to send this thing to california can't wait yeah i'm sorry to hear that that's that's a real bummer when especially when you decide that it's the mic for you and now you can't use it that is that is yeah i can tell you now the the difference between that and that 416 will blow you away when it goes to that box box i didn't realize it was that huge but it's that big guys really that was the don lafontaine mic yeah it was in a world yeah but a 416 is pretty good actually somebody asked me this morning um a good friend of ours thanks for your question yeah so we really appreciate that thank you um was talking about what would be a good road mic to have that's not a 416 but a shotgun mic and he said you had mentioned the at 875 r and while it's a good mic is it a 416 certainly not good for the money but it's good for much it's certainly that's a lot lighter it's a it's a lot cheaper i got a stunt mic yeah you're not so worried about it getting broken or lost or which makes it a great road like yeah so there are mics between the at 875 r and the 416 that maybe are a little bit more 416 like in fact one mic that we've been talking about on my podcast the pro audio suite is the road ntg3 no strike that road ntg4 not the three the three does not sound like a 416 but the road ntg4 does and when you turn on its high boost function it it sounds a lot like a 416 is about 300 bucks yeah so that's a nice alternative still cheaper than a 416 quite a bit another stunt mic i use a 416 in my studio and i had i had to do a project today uh that was to replace some slides on something from four years ago and now that would have been in my studio in buffalo and i'm like gosh but why did i use on that you really should write these things down doing the 416 yeah but i didn't see it here from this client for four years and i jumped into my my new booth here with the 416 could not tell the difference without any processing without anything god it sounds exactly the same so i must have used the 416 that's pretty amazing anyway we want your questions we got lots of time here and we got lots of bandwidth and we want you on zoom and we want to hear your questions so throw them in the chat room and jack will get it to us and we'll take a break right now and uh get more of your stuff and especially if you have any comments on the show we'd love to hear those too so we'll be right back here on 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 lenard 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 all right one of the people that's been with us since show one is harlin hogan and one of the great things he has is his signature series products the v1a microphone which i know a lot of people are using yeah and it's a great microphone at a great price proven tracker right and if you go over to voiceover essentials dot com you'll see that but you'll also see something that harlin is very proud of and you are wearing them now these are the new harlin hogan signature series headphones version 2.0 2.0 headphones i've been using the 1.0 headphones for well since they came out pretty much we've been using them in the studio here and these take that idea and just tweak it a bit you know they have the same general shape but he's improved some of the materials the headband is softer which trust me you wear a headphone for a few hours you appreciate it it's it's more comfortable to wear the ear pads are a little deeper and so they they don't press on my pinna this part of the ear that's that's your pinna this is a very sensitive part of the ear the headphones that press on that for me are uh not uh not fun to wear for a long time these i can wear for a long time and i've their their sound has changed a bit too so the first ones were very smooth and just had almost a flat dull sort of top end these he brought the top end back a bit more i'd say these sound a little bit more maybe more familiar to people that use the sony headphones or the audio technica headphones not as harsh as the sonys are bright um but kind of a nice goldilocks um i hope to compare them against some other favorites of mine uh in the future but yeah great cans yeah i i listen to them they clearly were a little louder a little higher output a little more a little more present yeah and you know but they're still really really flat yeah they're not they're not hyped they're not overly bright or overly boomy there's no color to it they're what it is what you sound like which is why they're designed the way they are they come with this nice bag yes and it also has a great feature if you happen to walk away still wearing your headphones it has this little thing oh crap pops out no problem it's just a sub mini plug and it floods right back into the headphone and that will save you you know because soldering those things is a pain in the butt yeah no i i i appreciate there are there are other headphones i have detachable cable but most of them the cord goes in and twists and locks in place so yeah they're detachable but you'll still damage something with this it will actually pop out but they chose to make it a very tight fit it's it's actually it doesn't slip in easily it really like listen it goes it makes a very solid click when you plug it in so outstanding nice job harling yeah good job on the revision i have to say all right and where do you get them voice over essentials dot com and the best place to get yourself there is after the show is over go down to the bottom of our homepage here and click on the picture of harlin hogan talking into his a vaunted uh porta booth pro and that will take you right there let him know that george and dan sent you there thanks harlin this is bill ratner and you're enjoying voice over body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv we are back at least i thought we were good crowd in zoom and they got lots of questions why is that okay take it again and take two and we're back here on voice over body shop and we see that we have a large crowd in the zoom room awesome along with our chance of flooding and we love getting those questions and so let's get back to those uh let's go to denis oberhofer denis are you there i'm unmuting his mic come in pittsburgh i am there you go hey how's it going tonight oh nice hat obviously someone in the northeast yeah bomber hat and in his backyard yes yeah i'm in my garage actually my my booth is a uh converted um uh sauna that i actually had in my garage nice which is also that is cool also i hope to show you my booth soon after i've completed my my revisions clearly turn the heat on in there get the sauna going to get warm yourself up a little bit i do actually in the rest of the garage it's quite cold it's also the only place my wife will let me smoke cigars so holy cow what's up today hi well i met you guys at uncle roy's barbecue which is awesome i'm eating you guys as well as the barbecue so thanks uncle roy and um yeah i actually have a couple of questions for you um number one is i finally picked up a uh 416 which was you know kind of on my dream list and figured i'd evaluate it and see how it sounds with my voice and um i'm loving i'm loving everything about it um and i've watched several times george your your edge studio's a bit on where to position microphones as this and includes the 416 and i'm finding that i actually have to get quite a bit of gain you can see where it is here i've positioned my hero four so that you can see more of my booth here um so you know i've got the six inches here and i'm at about three quarters gain which seems hot for a microphone like this um but what an interface are you using oh yes i'm sorry it's the scarlet 2i2 ah well there's a little bit of a null zone in there at three quarters you can take it up another half a notch or so and that will give you that that's really where the sweet spot is with that that preamp uh so if you take it up a little bit more you're not going to be over you're not going to be over driving the the preamp on it yeah i find it pretty i have a pretty common to go above three o'clock be three three and four o'clock is that where you are now no i'm at uh oh yes i i guess so i yeah i'm i'm at about three it's about right yeah you can take it up just a hair uh it just seemed pretty hot for it's nice it's not considering it starts at five o'clock yeah i mean most of these most of these uh mic preamps built into the interfaces they only have about 50 db 45 to 50 db of gain and to record voice over uh speaking voice you need 35 to 40 db of gain so that's going to be almost all the way up three quarters of the way so not unusual yeah okay good i yeah i was worried about that and it actually seems to be clipping a little bit now but that's probably because i'm excited to talk to you guys um my my second question if i may please um is uh oh and a quick shout out to mark scott and his 12 gifts of christmas if you guys haven't checked that out uh i think i saw that some of you guys have uh uh your names on there cool cool it's a really interesting and a bunch of guys people like uncle roye and others have donated gifts to that so i think that's the thing that folks should check out about just a quick tip um so my other question is about you can see my monitor here and i've got it set up in portrait mode um i've got we guys oh yeah look at that so it's um you know my only regret is that it's not a um uh touchscreen so you know that's that's next on my list yeah but uh set up i've set it up this way for a couple of reasons one is it'll allow me to get my my head up i'm still speaking toward the microphone without popping directly into it i think it's good positioning in in terms of where the copy should be and and allows me to manage my interface as well because it's got a lot of real estate um and i've angled it down a bit in an effort to try and by the way this is all roxell my interior treatments uh which it sounds pretty it sounds pretty good yeah it sounds pretty solid you know and we're getting some glitchiness tonight but i think that's a zoom thing and nothing else there's just some glitchiness uh yeah i don't think it's my chain my chain is pretty clean yeah so um i guess the the question is more of a theoretical one in terms of what do you do with monitors how reflective are they i would imagine a lot because it's just a big the glass um and you know is it better to tilt it down yeah tilt it up actually it interesting that you should mention that because if you really put your finger on the monitor you'll see that it's not glass it's plastic you see how it flexes a little bit because it does it's not like a mirror it's not like a hard piece of glass it actually absorbs a lot of the sound believe it or don't and i've and i've used a monitor in my studio for a long time i decided to go back to paper so i'm writing things down in my scripts again uh but having a monitor especially if you can't see and so i'm going to assume that you have a vision problem and you like having those big you know the big letters in front of you to read uh a monitor if it's too close to the mic yeah it might cause a little bit of a comb filter maybe yeah but i have never noticed that before uh and that the screens are not glass and yeah you can angle it a little away and just avoid the bank shot so you know draw imaginary line from your mouth to the screen back to the mic and just make sure that that screen isn't such a way that it wants to reflect the that sound right back at the mic that just requires turning it slightly or slightly one way to the left or the right maybe a little bit down but whatever i think that's clever there you must be on windows i am on windows yep yeah because i don't know if mac can can do you know if mac can run monitors in vertical portrait mode yeah i've never tried it but i should that's a pretty cool idea actually i like that yeah it's a cool use of that space big monitor in a small room yeah yeah and i've got the small monitor as well for the laptop and so you know it's multiple monitors so i can keep my my jaw down here um so yeah okay so i was i was mostly concerned with the reflection bank shot back into the mic especially you know you said we're not hearing it too much here at least no no yeah no i'm we're not having much base reflex or anything plug for you guys i'll be sending you a sample either in a specimen cup or otherwise uh i'll be sending it to one of you guys i won't tell you which one um before for evaluating my sound so awesome i love your services and i look forward to using them thanks for tuning thanks for tuning and thanks for appreciating it all right Fred north has a comment about hockey pucks having been a goalie i don't like this question already Fred are you there Fred there's Fred north we see him every week and on the chat room but now we see his face you're on well first of all shout out to sponsor uh let me a little shout to sponsors here yeah hey how are you nice mustache by the way nice to meet you who's there talking in the background i think Dennis is probably still his mic might still be open so i'll go ahead and mute his okay if there's anybody else no okay you're good to go well i'm a long time viewer i think we're getting loop back do you have your shows audio feeds all right don't all right Fred my booth is turn off turn off the audio that you're listening to on your on the uh there how's that that better now yes can you hear us now and do you hear us in real time on zoom he may not hear us on zoom that could be a problem yeah i got you okay awesome awesome all right so ask your question you got me now yes sir you got me now i think you might be listening to the show on youtube or facebook not on zoom okay my booth is seven feet by five and a half by seven and a half two by four wall construction has some vibration from below okay he's suffering from a major and uh george suggests is setting it on hockey pucks working great george oh good i'm glad it's working man thanks fred i think the problem is i left my stuff on upstairs i'm downstairs with my booth so i'm gonna get off here and i'll watch the rest i'm glad it works thanks fred have a good night cool cool and paul stavano has another thing about is there a booth fan that's quiet enough let's go back okay paul fire away man we're ready for you hey so yeah i have a question about booth fans i tried a few that i've built myself one from a computer fan one from a a duct uh inline duct fan and both are still really too loud to record with yeah is there something that you know of that you can actually either turn key solution that you buy off the shelf from a vendor or something you've built that you know works quite enough to run while you're recording yeah well you know the computer fan i mean it depends uh first off when we're talking about ventilation in your booth it's important to understand something and that is the the acronym cfm cubic feet per minute how what is the dimensions of your both i'm in a four by four whisper room all right four by four by four times seven six eleven so how many cubic feet is that mr engine four sixteen times seven is seven seventy about 120 ish cubic okay yeah most of these fans are rated at you know around a hundred cubic feet per minute if you set up the ventilation system correctly uh and you're moving changing the air in that booth every two minutes you're not causing yourself any problems so you don't need that much in draw you know from the fan to exhaust gas inside your your booth as you think it needs to be a slow fan right where are you getting the two minutes from uh because if you have if you have a fan that's 20 cubic inch or cubic foot booth and even a fan that does 60 cubic feet per minute then it takes two minutes to exchange the the air in the in the booth yeah and you know i mean you're you're the accumulation of co2 it's going to eliminate it if you've got if you're drawing cool air from your office or from wherever it's going to maintain the temperature in the cfm okay so the problem is most of the fans that you buy are designed for too many cfm and they're not designed to be totally silent and the only way to get a fan to be quiet is for it to be really big and really slow so like this is one that dan happened to have laying around this is a laptop cooler fan it's usb powered yeah it just lays underneath the laptop um when this thing's spinning actually let's see what it looks like i don't i venture to guess it doesn't spin all that fast it's not a very good one so you can hear it making some noise but oh it doesn't want to be vertical that's why yeah it's spinning i mean i don't know the speed but i'll tell you it it's not spinning very fast and let's see if you can hear it let me hold up to the mic it'll blow air on the mic but if it's a good one it's not vibrating or rattling like this one because it's so large it doesn't have to spin all that fast and because it's spinning slowly it makes less turbulence and it makes less noise and that's really what's causing the noise is not the fan itself yeah unless you've got a really loud fan and that is the movement of the air through the ducts yeah the velocity of the wind blowing through right it becomes audible and and what is the plenum that is drawing the air through like you know are you like isolating it with you know like is it going like this do you have something inside the the plenum that is deadening the noise as well yeah with the whisper room they you know they're not using an axiom about size of duct to cubic feet per minute the duct is on the small side it's i think it's four inches the vocal booth dot com platinum their high end one uses a six inch duct and then they have a fan and a huge silencer unit outside the booth those things combined make for a really quiet ventilation system i've been very impressed with what they're doing but yeah we have to find fans that we can slow down right or put a fan a large fan like that on a box just make a wood box and attach that i've actually done that now that i run mine it's not a whisper room brand fan i built it out of a some some dryer duct and i do have a box outside but the fan i'm using is spinning way too fast so like i said it's an inline duct fan that's just a rocket ship yeah that's probably the opposite of what you want you want a larger slower moving fan something that's maybe less than a thousand rpm you know maybe not not a very fast fan do a little shopping online i i've done some shopping for computer case fans and a little bit of research you'll actually see some websites that give you um a db ratings cfm zones zones zones ratings and things like that it's just it's the rating they put on bathroom fans yeah you can find some information essentially the same thing bathroom fans are a little louder because they really have to they have to move a lot of air but you don't need that much cubic displacement of air as you think you do a really small room yeah yeah i have especially a really small room 120 cubic feet right does that answer your question mr stefan it does thanks all right fantastic stuff all right j charles has a question let's get j in there all right and i turn on his camera j hey hello can you hear me we can indeed and we can see you we've had a good track record tonight so far with getting you guys on how you doing yeah very well and you guys very good okay two questions uh first plus one on the giant size monitors got a big 55 inch 4k one right here nice gotta be able to see gotta be able to see anything especially for me in my eyes question got a uh tlm 103 right here and the only time i sound clear and clean is when i'm straight on straight in front of it i see i keep seeing videos of people who have it off to the side what is the optimal procession for that well uh for the 103 all right now i can i can pull this mic down just a little bit just to give it a slight idea of how you're i know i'm making a lot of noise here the 103 how bad is it if i'm doing this you know okay good all right all right the 103 you really don't want to be talking too much off axis but you also don't necessarily want to be talking directly in the diaphragm and what you may think is clear may be what youth like as clear uh i george and i have been talking to people about microphone placement for a good long time and how that is far more vital to how well your mic sounds as opposed to the actual model now the 103 is a really great mic uh and one of the reasons this is extremely sensitive meaning that you can back off of it and increase the gain and it's going to pick you up pretty well my standard for yeah my standard for mic placement generally is the bottom of the mic at the bridge of your nose and five to seven inches away about like that and as you can hear it sounds like i'm in the same room with you this mic is going to pick you up like that this mic has a very similar capsule to a 103 actually it's more like a u 87 capsule and uh tell us more about your yeah space though yeah how high is the ceiling above you we've lost his audio sorry that's me okay it was his fault all right that was my fault uh yeah it's an old house uh uh incorporated floor uh not too high ceiling maybe eight to ten feet and uh there's a lot of there's a lot of equipment there's about three computers sitting right over here uh would you believe i get about a negative six to seven db noise floor that's pretty good because um i don't have this gain turned all the way up i just have it on the dbx2 86s uh using only the gate function on it because it's really good it's the best i've heard so far yeah i wonder if because there's a large large display not so far away from you i wonder if when the mic is sideways because it the 103 has a wide pickup pattern and i'm wondering if and it's more sideways you're getting a mixture of your sound off bouncing off that big screen with what's coming back uh what's with what's what's coming out of your mouth i that's just a total guess here we would have to hear what i feel like i'm missing is the high end yeah if you want to miss an high and one of them off axis that's true the reason that happens is because as you go more off axis from the mic you're attenuating the high end you're making the mic less bright in fact i'm talking into the side of the u 87 right now and it sounds fine it sounds okay but as i start rotating the mic toward me all of a sudden the back the top end comes back and now getting the brightness of the mic again so that's when you're turning the mic sideways that's what's going to happen but you can still have the mic close to your mouth but say have your mouth facing this way and the sound of your voice is going this way the plosives is going this way but the mic is still pointing generally toward the mouth and you should still get a pretty bright sound it's still not going to be quite as sizzly sharp as when you're directly directly on the mic so you may have to compensate a little bit uh with that but the end of the day put the mic where it sounds good um don't worry about what anybody else tells you put the mic where it sounds good in your studio with your voice and your setup you know because they're all going to be different do you have time for another question of course we do i think we got well i apologize if this opens up a can of worms or sends you too off on tangents that will rile the days you have your can opener i do as a matter of my can opener but i need you to talk me down there's been all sorts of rhetoric on the internet and which is obviously a great place for it uh as to which camp you're gonna fall in are you gonna be with the freelancers in the play the plays or the agencies and whoever is this case important i'm not in hollywood i'm not in new york city right i'm just fine doing corporate jobs i i'll i'll do it that's fine but uh you know if i keep hearing from articles blog posts podcasts i give you even think about doing joining this side or that side you're blackballed i read it from uh j michael this morning on one of his blogs i'm like wow i'm really now i'm you got me to block i don't know what to do all right being the the one of the two of us that's actually a professional voice actor um and having been on all the pay to plays at one time or another all the major ones if you're starting out and you're building your business where else are you going to get auditions from aside from doing all your own marketing which you should be doing anyway um there's one particular pay to play that many of us have a major problem with we won't mention any names but i do know that the other major one just went through a new they just redid their their format uh i heard some rumblings this morning about it's not exactly what they said it was then again people had to get used to the platform and to see how well it works uh i would say you know stick with one and the one that you know is honest and is not acting as a middleman and taking your money and double dipping and managing the jobs uh you want to be you want to be it to be a direct conduit between you and the and the client uh so you do all the negotiating and and that's that's the most important thing would you say it's good to have a platform that that i think to reiterate a platform that allows you direct communication with the client not a platform who puts up a wall right between the two of you right exactly that's a good way to maybe i that's a good way to explain that trim them out yeah uh are they all bad no are there ones that are good there are some that are very really do like and and take care of their customers i mean they're not there are social service organizations they're trying to make a buck as well but they also are very good at uh and making sure that you're represented properly at their site and uh you know do your homework find out what people are saying but if someone just poo poo's it all the way around then they really don't know what they're talking about and there was a there was a long thread on facebook the other day uh like who who does stuff from their home studio well like 95 percent of the people are doing it like 90 percent of the time right because someone had commented that those with home studios aren't doing real jobs well they only insulted the entire freelance market out there was that voice was said person from another country by chance no said person was somebody in hollywood okay yeah because i know somebody who only works in other studios and stuff like that i know in other some other countries there's maybe a there are there's a slower uptick or uptake of upset accepting professionally produced but home recorded stuff like they still uh my co-host on my podcast are from australia they said it's it's really they're they lag behind in the whole home studio thing looking at the home studios is still not totally pro right which i found bizarre and fascinating when you consider some of your clients who are yeah big-time voice actors like mine some of my clients are they're making money a lot of them making good money next to their pants and shoes and underwear yeah so price about yeah that's uh some people just have an attitude about it but the good people in this business support each other so aces wonderful thank you very much thanks jay the great work all righty thanks for joining us tonight well there's a few more people in the room that haven't asked questions should we just do a last two minute fly around free for all and say let's go around the horn here all right i'm gonna unmute everybody everybody's in there i'm gonna unmute your mic now james j charles melanie paul here we go so let's see unmute all all participates are unmuted even though it says they're muted that's haha who's in there paul we hear paul hello if you want to say hi say hello hello james where are you man i'm in new jersey jay z which exit yeah which exit i have never met uh dan live in person uh i have a processing question okay cool go for a mutual friend of ours is fond i'm doing a lot of audiobooks and a mutual friend of ours is big on uh serial compression and i'm using uh neutron advanced isotope neutron advanced with the uh track assist on it and what it does is it puts compression in series yeah but it seems to to do some funky things i'm just wondering if you guys had an opinion on that well if you don't understand what it does you may not want to use it because it creates so many unpredictable you know it there are many many production tricks out there and some of these tools are designed to condense a lot of tools into one thing which is sounds like this is one of those where it allows you to have more than one compressor and then i know the other people that use multi band compressors which is like a really crazy compressor eq hybrid right i'll tell you i those tools it's there for somebody else i i don't i use very traditional methods and get good results and i so i i personally don't use more than one compressor i do use two compressors actually let me correct myself i use a compressor and he's a limiter right so i'm using a compressor somewhere along the way and a limiter at the end so if you want to say that's two compressors that's the extent to which i would do it yeah now i'm using a limiter at the end to bring everything back up okay back yeah but two compressors are more in a row i've had one piece of gear that did that i had this thing called the rnc or the really nice compressor that's what it was stood for it was made by a company called fmr audio and internally inside the box in the magic of the circuitry it said it had two maybe even three compressors but the thing that i liked about it is you didn't know it was totally transparent it still had a couple simple knobs it didn't make it over complicated and it sounded great so anything that like this that has multiple compressors it all comes down to how it's programmed and how it's designed and who develops the presets if you plug these things in and it causes weird results maybe just don't use it i mean it's for another reason for another type of use right than what you're using it for you know but i don't have personal experience with that yeah and i and i don't believe a lot of heavy processing especially not up front that anything any processing that you can do all your software can do it in post and do it not destructively so you know well there's comment this running debate on the especially like the acx um um facebook page about uh people not meeting spec and having their files kicked back so they have to sort to redo it and reprocess it and and make sure that they're meeting spec especially the rms spec uh a lot of people are trying to put it too high and make it hit that negative 3db top which is just a target it's not actually um where it needs to be but a lot of people are missing the rms spec because they don't understand it and an acx doesn't do a really good job of explaining how to do it give you the what but not the and but that's what i do for a living by the way yeah you can send me your audio and i will send you back a scheme a process a learning a tutorial to take whatever it is that you use your doll whatever it is and a repeatable easy to use system to learn how to master audiobooks to spec chapter by chapter using your own tools i've done it on just about every doll that's out there and you know it's it's really understanding how to use the limiter and using the right limiter for the job it's not that hard i mean i love reaper yeah i mean i can do it with i can do it with reaper um but it's learning how to use the problem with reapers it's got too many dang tools it's overwhelmed with huge amounts of options it's it's insane every time i load it on somebody's system which compressor should i don't which compressor i don't know let me try no not that one no not that one there's too many tools it just it kind of overwhelms you with options down for voiceover so it's you know 99% that stuff you don't need no it's totally absolutely true and that's even before waves has their sale and you buy everything in the cart yeah a bunch of freebies set death by $29 plugins yeah don't do that yeah any furia yeah yeah who's that i do have the apollo twin duo usb yeah uh what you you highly recommended um george yeah yeah and uh one of the videos that's floating around on youtube is a way to use parallel compression for voiceover it's the best i've ever sounded on that thing oh now we're talking about a whole another thing which is parallel compression yeah that's different now that's mixing a flat signal with the compressed signal and combining the two to get a certain sound again tools that are designed by engineers for engineers that know how to make these things work i'm an engineer but i've never learned or really made use of parallel compression doesn't mean it's not going to work for you and maybe it sounds freaking amazing i just know the ways i've been doing things work it gets people acx approved all the time and i haven't made use of some of those things so yeah and if you just want to record raw you can everything that's in the apollo can be used inside of your door as a vst plugin absolutely that is true every plugin can be used in post on that as well so a lot of options out there available to you guys yeah we've actually had somebody in our studio eddie furia has been with us yeah i wonder if he has a question do you think he's got a question i don't think they've answered everything sorry we answered everything everything wow man we're just good at what we do you guys are fine all right all right who else is in the zoom room and then we gotta we gotta call it a night but i think we can call it unless unless tammy wants to say hi that's the only one left that we i don't think that we've heard from yet i knew tammy tammy say hi now come on she is okay i have her mic down i'm sorry go ahead tammy does that help yeah that works yeah how are you doing yeah mic came loose thanks for joining us no i didn't have a question i was just taking notes on everybody else's questions but i will definitely next time well it's great well i mean whatever however you get something from the show tonight whether you're just listening or participating thanks for joining us tonight being here live with us thank you all righty who else is in there i think that i ran through the list yeah all right all right well thank you all for your calls it's been it has been and uh and and again we're you know we're we're gonna change things up here starting january 7th uh so uh stay tuned for you know more details on that it's over the next week or so so anyway we're gonna take a quick break and then we're going to call it a night right after this well hello there i bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat were you this is virgin radio well okay we're not that innocent there's genes for wearing and there's genes for working dickies because i ain't here to look pretty she's a champion of progressive values a leader for california and a voice for america it's smart it's a phone it's a 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 rig when hope is lost the i8 from bmw who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish hey it's j michael collins bet you think i'm gonna try and sell you a demo now uh i think they speak for themselves but i will give you my email it's j michael at jmcvoiceover.com now if dan will stop waxing this mustache for a minute we'll get back to the show all right well that was fun it was fun i was really happy how that all worked out in the end actually yeah worked out real smoothly a little crackles here and there but it was great to see everybody in their home studio it was and asking those questions uh next week on this show you're gonna be in seattle i am going up to visit my kid who now lives up in the area and uh i'll be staying with some friends actually the friends i'm staying with her husband is on the windows development team yeah so i'm gonna try to get some questions good internet about the audio about the audio side of windows while i'm there but anyway yeah we're gonna we're gonna do the show from the voiceover meetup that's up there at the seattle voiceover academy all right so that's thanks to um uh shanna shanna pennington baird one of the contributors of the show that was uh that she's part of that so that's going to be a lot of fun all right and then it's holiday time yes you know christmas eve and new year's eve both fall on monday this year so you know we're taking the rest of the year off after next week and preparing for our new format starting january 7th when terror strong is scheduled to be with us and that'll be fun she'll be right here in the studio hopefully not with all her dogs or anything and then on january 21st larry davis uh man larry davis dude is unbelievably talented you've heard his voice in the past on our old bumpers we used to run on the show yeah super great guy yes uh we'd like to thank our donors of the week people like we've got donors we've got donors we've got lots and lots of donors that's that tab in my browser somehow got closed and now i don't have my donors low okay well you know we were to pull them up before we end the show tonight okay all righty uh hey show us your booths if this is not a booth this is california right now uh as i said find a picture of palm trees and snow that's california after a couple of a couple of heavy rainstorms it snows up in the mountains here so we're going to show that off uh send them in make sure they are in landscape not portrait uh and show us what your booth looks like uh that's you know what we're here for we want to see how you guys are doing it uh if you want to work with george how do they do that get over to george the tech dot com or george the dot tech and all my services are available for you right over there all right and if you'd like to work with me you look it's great having choices uh go over to home voiceover studio dot com and see all the fun stuff i do and of course drop off your audio for 25 bucks i will analyze your audio in my specimen collection cup i do have to get a plug in for a podcast that i'm actually appearing on as a guest which is uh called the go get it podcast um it's a a new one that's a motivational one uh produced by cori disson and it's kind of fun to be on his show because i met cori before i even knew what voiceover was back in philadelphia wow he knew me from the way back days of like the late 90s so um so fun to be knowing that he's still in the voiceover world doing a podcast and getting to be on his show so go find the go get it podcast on itunes and you know all those podcasts singing the jigs right all right hey if you want to be in our studio like any furia is yay where's the audience cam does it still work do i have to reboot it and see here in his in his areas yeah and it's on his sleeping seven-year-old son who's with us he got something for us and we're greatly appreciative eddie yeah we really appreciate it all right thank you um i got the donors oh go for it i got well of course tracy h reynolds okay hey tracy um going down the list here uh andrew kaufman and christie burns yeah christie uh eric erigoni another lovely name of oft week after week uh tracy h reynolds going back um and now i've already looped again have i looped that quickly yeah i have so um so many folks who are doing little extra ways to support a show through our donations link on the website right you can do a one-off or you can do a subscription for as low as a buck a month if you want it's really helpful all right well we need to thank our sponsors as well like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials and was looking the right spot voiceover extra source elements v o to go go voice actor websites dot com and j michael colin's colin's demos and of course we need to thank the dan and marcy lennard foundation for the betterment of live webcasting uh our producer kathryn curidan and after she's been working really hard getting us together for 2019 i know uh jack daniel for chat room duty tonight uh and of course our amazing technical director who was basically sharpest attack sumer leno following whatever we throw at her already and of course leapinny for being leapinny yep where is leap have fun with those rc toys yeah all right well happy holidays everybody and uh we'll see you next week george will be in seattle i'll be here and we'll help you with your home voiceover studios here on voiceover body shop i'm dan lennard and i'm george wittem and this is voiceover body shop or vio bs have a great week everybody