 Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number 30 for Whoo How do you like that 34 we got lots to talk about tonight? You've got some cool stuff in your tech update like I'm gonna talk about what peering means Okay In relation to source connect and any time things don't seem to work well on your computer on the internet But everything seems fine Talk about that and also mentioned my new one of my new favorite gadgets the Luna display adapter I've heard the heck it is and what do you do with it heard a lot about that? Yeah, we're also going to talk about what's that? Hissing sound that you hear It sounds like a far off waterfall And we got lots of great questions that you guys have been sending in so stay tuned It's now time for voiceover body shop tech talk from The outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe. They bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice out with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio and Each week they allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials.com home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites.com Where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VOheroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voice over training J. Michael Collins demos when quality matters and voice over extra your daily resource for VO success And now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Well, good evening or afternoon or whatever time you're watching this. I'm Dan Leonard And i'm george wittem and this is voice over body shop or VO BS s s talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk Anyway, well here we are Tech talk number 34 We have been isolated from each other for an awful long time And that has brought on all sorts of interesting things Uh, we are you as busy as I am I as a matter of fact, I don't think anybody could possibly be as busy as you When I came to visit you it's like and I'm I'm off for an hour for lunch and that's it And then yeah, I have to make myself take lunch and even when I book out an hour for lunch I usually only have a half hour because I go too long on the last call And then I have all these emails that came in in the last hour during the last call that I'm answering Before I know it I get 15 20 minutes tops for lunch. So I learned I can make a tuna sandwich From scratch and eat it in 20 minutes. Yeah, that's where the kids were busy Uh, because everybody has to have a home studio these days Yeah, they're all they're calling us because we're the guys who know There's a lot of people out there and say, you know, I can tell you a lot about how to do this And there's other things George and I have been doing this a long time Which is why we come to you every week saying, you know, we've been doing this a long time And uh We know what it takes to create a home voiceover studio It's not as sophisticated and complicated as a lot of people make it out to be It's not having racks and equipment and a 32 track board and guitars on the wall and windows and All that stuff that people see when they walk into a studio and say, well, that must be how you make Voiceover and it's really got very little to do with it And we understand that most importantly though and George and I totally agree on this We usually agree on almost everything, but It's all about acoustics. It's all about where you record You can you don't want to have a cheap microphone, but you want to have a good microphone And but if you have a good microphone the better microphone you have the better the environment in which you are recording in better be They should be proportionally good Yeah, that's that's a good way to put it But we're seeing all these specs coming down from you know from from agencies saying well, you should have a tlm 103 and a u8 or a u87 and this and never a discussion of the environment in which you record But I would think George that that's really what you and I do the most is we walk into people's homes when we can And say where's the best place to record? Where's the quietest place? What's going to be the easiest? to acoustically adjust and uh, that's that's an important thing and We want you guys to know if you really want professional help with this to really understand it and learn it from the bottom up So it's not a something that's going to bother you You should work with one of us because we're good at it if they want to work with you, george What do they do and where do they go and how do they get a hold of you? You gotta head over to george the dot tech. That's my website and all the services are over there You can book services by the half hour or we can work Virtually where you send me your audio and I send back The results of whatever we're doing be it a sound check Or a customized stack or what have you I also do a lot of universal audio Apollo setups and I have a service based around that specific thing So if you have any of those kinds of questions, you can find me at george the dot tech But dan does a lot of the same stuff as a one hit someone on that which is home voiceover studio dot com Uh and see all the things that I do very similar stuff to george I'm also a voice actor. So I really know where you're coming from and what's involved in Creating a a studio that fits your lifestyle And that's really important because it's a home studio and uh, I like to come in and you know, we do it by zoom right now Which is working just fine looking at different places and people's homes or apartments and Finding what's going to be the best place acoustically for you to record because the equipment Is not the big difference You know, like I said, you don't want lousy equipment. You don't want cheap low consumer stuff You want stuff that's going to be professional grade but Unless you have the space to record in It really doesn't really matter, you know, although You know, I was having a discussion with it with a personal friend of ours today And he we're talking about this thing that you got to have a tlm 103 And we're like, well, I got a tlm one. You know, if they ask, you know, if an agent asks, do you have a tlm? Yeah, I got a tlm 103 You know, and they'll and they'll you'll do a session and they'll present to yeah, it was You know, you may not have used it and it's like, well, yeah, I got one. It's just sitting in a box in the closet though uh, so I I don't understand why they keep throwing out all this these these high end specs And don't discuss the fact that you need an acoustically neutral and sterile environment in which to use these high end equipment What do you think? Yeah, and you and you need a preamp. I see that one too. Yeah, you need a preamp and you need to have These are myths, by the way, and you need to have a a professional DAW Right twisted wave won't cut it. You know, that's another one Yeah, it's like you gotta have one of these big things. It's like now Box is still sitting here from last week when we were doing the interface thing I'll collect that one of these Well, we gotta have lunch and I'll bring it back to you Well, anyway, but we've been busy little beavers in the last couple of weeks and we really appreciate your business and But we try to give you as much information as we can to make it a little bit easier for you and support you and that sort of thing So what's in your tech update this week? Tech update. Okay. Well, um, one of the biggies that just came up today because it personally Interrupted by getting work done with a client is dealing with internet connection issues We've already done everything right So you're doing source connect You're doing all the things that we've told you to do for setting up source connect from not using wi-fi Having a hard line connection, you know, ethernet connection from your Computer to your router either via just a long cable Or using some power line ethernet adapters You have port mapped your ports You've done all those things to ensure good connectivity. You've even checked to see how fast is your internet connection today Well, yes, we actually did all these things today during the session I was getting on fiber 300 megabits up and down My client was on a spectrum getting 350 down 20 megabits up, which is very typical for cable Everything seemed copacetic yet During our connection very often mid-sentence or randomly His connection on source connect would just poof disappear It would cut out dropout left and right now at the same time We're on zoom and so whenever that would happen I would just reconnect on zoom or I would just turn on our mics and zoom Audio was there Everything was working. I could see his screen. We were remote desktop. We knew everything was working on the internet We knew his connection was solid and yet Source connect was having dropouts. So who's the first person I blamed? Of course It was source connect. So I texted my friend Robert at source elements It's kind of nice to know people in high places when you're getting support, right? And he wanted to immediately call me and dispel the myth that the problem was source connect So here's what the issue was and it's something called peering So when you're using source connect standard Your computer and the computer of the studio on the other end or the other user Are making about as direct of a connection between each other as possible Of course, you're going through the internet. So it's going through multiple switches and Data networks and things on the internet as it travels between the two of you But essentially it's a direct connection. It's peer to peer Whereas if you were using something like that works on chrome, for example, like source connect now That's going through a centralized server. So there's a lot more That can go wrong there. So source connect you're actually peer to peer However, your isp the company providing you your source your internet connection They have something to do with this as well. So they have what's called peering agreements With companies that make software That stream services such as netflix and things like that And so sometimes these peering agreements mean They're going to deprecate other person other software and other systems connectivity So they're basically giving because of deals they've made with netflix and sony And disney and apple they're giving them as much bandwidth as possible through their peering agreements and then Other services like source connect who trust me don't have sway like those companies do get the shaft And so their connections can suffer So that is something that can happen when using source connect And so fortunately there is a system that I found out that i've known about for a while But haven't had to use it really called source stream And so when that's enabled by both users Now that connection is going through different pipes through the internet And in doing so that can work around These problems and so that was a real revelation to me. I mean, dan I've been doing this a long time. You know that we've tried all sorts of systems. We've tested everything and still These surprises peep crop up so So, you know when things go wrong and it's very easy to assume It's got to be the software or the service that you're using on your computer or their computer That's directly at fault But there's a lot more going on behind the scenes from between you The backbone of the internet and the rest of the signal chain that can get in the way We don't have any idea what's going on between here and there It's just it blows you talk to internet engineers and you're like, huh? Yeah, and there's services you can pay for That will basically trace or track all your data your packets how they get to a to z and It's it's kind of mind boggling. I've never really made use of it because it just 99% of the time it doesn't affect me and what I do and everything's fine so That just thought that was interesting something for you guys just to know When you hear that term peering or that there are other possible issues that can cause your zoom connection Your skype anything where you're communicating real time to fail even watching netflix um You might drop your wi-fi connection and then all of a sudden connect to Your macbook using your hotspot on your mobile phone and now netflix streams beautifully And you're wondering why so that's the why that's the reason why it's called peering and look out for that All right, something maybe a little more interesting. Hopefully and this is The ability to use your ipad as a screen for your laptop your macbook or your Macbook pro or even your mac mini and there's a technology called luna display That does this now a lot of you techie people are going wait a minute I've been using splash top or i'm using that new thing from apple called sidecar to do the same thing Why would I buy a gadget to do what I can already do with software? Well, the thing is about luna display is they actually it is a piece of hardware It's it's actually kind of comical when you see this thing This is it This is the luna display adapter this tiny little thing Plugs into the graphic output your display output on your mac They make two versions. They have the mini display a port adapter, which all the older max use Including this macbook air And they have the new version which is usbc Which all the new 2016 and newer? Macs pretty much all now have and so you have to buy the right one for your computer But once you buy this little $50 gadget Now you can install their software on your laptop And install the lot software on an ipad And the two systems shake each other's hands And now the ipad Becomes a screen for your macbook So I thought I would just if I can do it without too much distress and frustration I thought I would see if I could demonstrate this briefly for you guys So i'm just going to open up my mac. I have the luna display software installed I'm launching it. It's telling me on the screen plug in your unit luna display I already had mine plugged in so it didn't detect it. So i'm going to now unplug it and plug it back in And now plugging that back in it should initialize the driver and the software Okay, well, nothing's happening. So let's see what happens next Since nothing's changing on that screen if it changes sometime during this broadcast, I'll let you know Let's see how it works But what I'm going to do is I'm going to load the luna display app on the ipad The other side of the chain and see if when I do this it initiates the driver. So what's happening here is The software is creating this private network connection between your ipad and your your mac And so by doing so it has lower latency Of the display how long it takes for the video signal to get from your computer to the ipad Then if you were using For example The old school way of doing it over software using splash top or something like that So now that i've done that i'm going to it says i'm in wi-fi home mode And i'm going to do that i'm going to do that I'm going to try to be initializing this of course, you know testing things live on a show is when they don't tend to work And this would be no exception right now And it's not working Great podcast. It's great for the podcast. You guys to see this. Oh, it's amazing. Look at that Let me let me explain why i'm going through all these motions, right? Why the heck do you care? Why would you want to put the screen of your macbook or your mac mini or whatever on your ipad? What is the point of doing that? The whole idea here is like You guys have had this issue where your macbook is somewhere near your mic You're in your booth or your closet and your macbook is sitting on a shelf And the thing's fan is whirring away Because guess what now we're doing zoom now we're doing video chat We're trying to record while all the stuff's going on and the fan is going berserk I'm hearing it all the time because i'm doing support and i'm hearing your fans go crazy trust me Not the fans that you want to go crazy the fan in your computer So this is a great workaround for that. You load the software. I haven't rebooted my mac in several days I'm sure that has something to do with it, but you load the software Put your mac away from the mic move your macbook out of the closet out of the booth get it out of there And load this on your on your ipad and now the ipad screen is the screen to your mac And that's pretty cool because you can see what's going on on the mac You can and but not only that can you see it you can control it You can have your twisted wave or whatever your doll is and you can reach up and tap record on the screen And then when you want to read your script For finger swipe and switch to your script now. This is google photo But anyway, you get the idea you can very rapidly for finger swiping swiping Lee switch between the lunar display screen, which is your laptop And your script and move back and forth very very quickly and seamlessly And so this is a this is a really clever Workaround for this. I think it's worth 50 bucks. Most people have an ipad It has to be relatively recent not super ancient Um, I actually went and bought one on ebay just to test it out. This is an ipad air First generation the very first one that came out maybe five six years ago You get paid 150 bucks shipped for it and it runs lunar display fine. Now. Here's this funny I started using this thing so much That I realized I like having an ipad And it's actually a little bit slow So I bought another one It just came today. You're keeping ebay in business my friend Yeah, so this ipad is going to be passed on to somebody who really needs it. That's you fee fee I don't know if you're watching but I know she'd like to have a better an ipad that that works So it's going to be repurposed, but I got a new ipad and this is the very base model ipad now It's not the air the pro anything. It's the absolute base model um, I got this on amazon for 279 with prime shipping and um, I haven't even unwrapped it yet, but when I do I'll be testing it out put it through its paces But it's funny now that I have the ipad to play with I find I want to use it a lot more often It's pretty it's pretty great. I don't hold the phone On your on your hands while you're trying to video chat with your family and Watch content while you're on the in bed or something So I have a new I have a new one, but anyway luna display pretty slick little device cool. Um I've been using a lot of time here, but the last thing is I just wanted before we go on to hissing Using zoom It's a really good idea Especially if you're a windows user If you have to do zoom during your voiceover recording session run it on a separate thing Whether it's a phone Or tablet whatever you have it's available that doesn't have a fan or whatever run zoom on that Because that fan is going to come on on your laptop and it's going to ruin a take Or zoom is going to take over your audio hardware steal the driver on the windows side Away from your da or your software and cause havoc So run zoom on its own device And use your studio mac or pc for recording just use your phone That should do it. Yeah, most people have a mobile phone these days that can run zoom without issue Trust me. It's probably going to be the way to go Make it a lot less stressful for you and your clients. So anyway, a little ps safe about using zoom. Yeah, all right That's enough for me. That's everybody's got to use zoom. I mean you and I were using zoom seven eight years ago And then and then suddenly it was like this amazing revel there's zoom Yeah, and we're not using zoom because everybody's using it We're using zoom because we've been using it a long time and we have found it to be rock solid reliable And even now when they've had like a some kind of 10 fold increase in users over the last four months Still works great. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, it's it's a great tool for us Of course, there was the time I wasn't why one of the reasons we went to zoom is that skype would cut out on us all the time And then there was the day I lost you and we were doing the show and you just brought me up on your phone One of our one of our greatest moments favorite. I'll take that. It's not an outtake. That's right. It's actually it actually happened That was fun. What to go find that one. We know it's around somewhere I was I was going through old hard drives and putting them all on this 8 terabyte drive I have because I can fit everything I've ever done on a computer on this one hard drive And I came and I came across a number of videos that then I will point out to you one of these days Anyway, I wanted to talk about something that I keep hearing From clients and I you know people send me audio for my specimen collection cup And one of the things I keep hearing is this sound I that sound no, sorry about that. I haven't already started my Mac. I have I hear that sound every day, but Uh, I I hear this sound of a far off waterfall Because I find that is the perfect description of what it actually sounds like which is this hissing of It's what we call white and pink noise And people are like, where's that coming from? I I don't hear it here anywhere. I only hear It comes from I don't know why I'm using this old Heavy interface because I guess it's with the you know handy and it looks cool. It and it looks cool I try it. I keep trying to get this thing to work. It's it's dead You know, it'll pass a signal, but it won't pass it over usb. Anyway This is usually caused by Not enough gain or well putting in too much gain Into your microphone to get a decent level because you're either too far Or you've got a lousy microphone And you know, I it happens mostly with usb mics because usb mics have I I think the issue with a lot of usb mics Is that they don't really have true 48 volt phantom power for the capsules that they have and when there's not enough Energy directed to the capsule uh to the plates on there It's not as strong and you get this analog hissing sound. It's not real loud. It's very much in the background But the way to really avoid it and I talk about this all the time You know, we we we like this the phrase signal to noise ratio Which with stereo equipment if you remember the days of stereo equipment Uh signal to noise ratio meant what the noise that the equipment itself makes versus the sound of the music that you're trying to listen to And it should be a very very very low thing with voiceover. I use this phrase to say signal is your voice Noise is everything that's not your voice And this analog hissing seems to be a real problem, especially people who are using usb mics And the theory about that too about the usb mic being noisy. Yeah, well, I'm sure there's there's a lot of reasons I'll let you I'll let you throw that out there in a second But yeah, it when you're trying to get a good level and you know As long as you can get your peaks above minus nine up to like minus six You'll be fine. It's when you have these little tiny ones That you know when you try to normalize it, you're gonna get that that hissing sound So always make sure you you find the right distance with your mic to get the optimum level without cranking Your interface like past 75 80 percent And some interfaces can do it the newer ones certainly can But some of the older ones not quite as powerful But we did talk about this last week on on our our interface shootout which people loved You know, it was it was great. But anyway, what was your what was your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think a lot of the usb mics out there don't have a gain control in the preamp. So It is what it is preamp at a at a preset gain They kind of guess where should it be? 47 db 36 6 db whatever and so the the preamp gain is set And so all you're left to do is hope it's about right for for the type of voiceover you're doing If it's too hot all you can really do is digitally Turn down the mic preamp and when I mean that I mean you're going into your software Like a system preferences sound input and literally turning down a little slider But that's actually digitally just reducing the mic level not actually reducing the gain On the preamp in most cases. So and then vice versa can happen. It may just not be enough gain And so you're recording something and the levels are coming in, you know peaking at like minus 17 or minus 20 And you're not getting enough signal And so you have to normalize and so that noise floor comes up So that that is a weakness for a lot of usb mics So the ones that have a proper gain control like the apogee mic Where you can really control the level on the preamp. They tend to be a lot cleaner Has been my finding. Yeah, I I think that's absolutely true Still I it comes down to using proper mic technique You know, you don't want to over project and if you talk more conversationally You still have to drive the gain in these things even you want a good interface Although the newer interfaces the ones we were testing last week They were all really clean Which was really great They I mean they were all from they were they ranged from like Good or really good to amazing but none of them were bad Yes, I mean none of them were really bad and by any stretch of the imagination. They would they were all Plenty clean for recording a condenser microphone. So right and and we've come to the conclusion when the people say broadcast quality They just mean it doesn't sound Bad Right, it means we can throw this into a pro tools mix and use this for that commercial going on the radio or tv Right, so that's what they mean. Yeah, we just wish they'd stop using that and say professional quality audio Right. Anyway, we got lots of questions from you guys and we really appreciate them. So stay tuned We'll be right back with your questions here on voiceover body shop tech talk Hey, it's time to talk about voice over essentials dot com You know harlan has some great stuff over at voiceover essentials Like the vo1a microphone But you know if you want to hear your audio as you recorded it It's best to have a great set of headphones and harlan offers the harlan hogan signature series voice optimized headphones These are flat response headphones not for listening to pink floyd or whatever you want to listen to These have a nice flat response That give you what you record it Plus they're incredibly comfortable You can wear them for a really long time while you're editing an audiobook or some long format narration It's got leather pads a really flexible headband And if you happen to forget you're plugged in This thing just pops right out and then it pops right back in so you don't blow out another chord Go over to voiceover essentials dot com for your harlan hogan signature series voice optimized headphones voiceover essentials dot com It's that time of the show where we thank our wonderful sponsors source elements the creators of Source connect and so much other stuff If you haven't gone to source dash elements dot com lately and looked at their products list You've probably boggle your mind. They have so many different products They even have a new one that's specifically targeting People that are doing a dr looping or working to picture From home Which they just launched it's that new. I don't even I haven't even had a chance to try it yet They these guys are pumping out tools left and right But the one you're probably being asked to use from source elements by and large is going to be source connect Still source connect standard or source connect pro now source connect standards the version that you guys as voice actors Probably is the one you're going to want to get a hold of and you can get a driver Get the software from them by just simply going to the website source dash elements dot com And getting a trial now if you want if you're like following step by step instructions And you're like watching a video on how to do something before you do it I would definitely recommend you check out some resources. I've put together over on my website george the tech slash C to kind of get yourself your bearings when using source connect because there's a setup process involved But once it's up and running and you've got it going it is rock solid reliable stuff Um, it is just the tool that's being used by pro studios and producers all over the world really So get it up get it in your studio get it working Just get that trial going so you know you have it and you know how to use it And when they say hey, do you have source connect? You can say yes Anyway, this has been george the tech for v obs and we'll be right back after this for some more tech talk content Yeah, hi, this is carlos. I was rocking the voice of rocko and you're watching voice over body shop And we're back here on voice over body shop tech talk number 34 134 no 34. Yeah, no we're 34 34 34 34. Yeah It feels like a lot more because we've been doing these shows for so long But we started our new number counting Counting system for the tech talk right beginning of 2019 It's like halfway through 2020 already for crying out loud. Jeez. Where is the time going? Anyway, I know we got a lot of questions today. So let's let's Bang through these here. We first one is from alan kane. He says we appreciate we I appreciate you guys Well, that's why we're here When we are on can you give your opinion of the need to do a land specifically for source connect? george, that's your department Yeah Well, okay, so here I use a dumb analogy for needing to use a land with source connect and that is the seatbelt analogy You don't need to wear a seatbelt to drive a car You can drive a car perfectly fine without one You can drive a car for months and months without wearing a seatbelt Without a single incident But it's that one time Where you get ran into or you hit something or that seatbelt very very well save your life Well, that is ethernet For a source connect So you could be using wi-fi and it can be working beautifully And work fine with no issues But someday that wi-fi connection is going to get stomped on by Something interfering with your network and you don't know what it's going to be Your neighbor moves in and has some crazy high powered router Something is going on to cause interference in the wi-fi universe And that causes source connect unreliability So ethernet eliminates that going hardwired eliminates that variable And it's become so important that studios are even telling their They're fledgling or their talent that have home studios now That I want to use source connect. They're actually mandating it. You need to be hardwired Before we have this booking happen. So that's that's what that's about. I hope that makes sense Yeah, I love hearing from people saying my routers on the other side of the house Well You get two options you either run a super long ethernet cable what you can do what you can do Or well, there's three options. That's one two power line ethernet adapters google it trust me or three Call your phone company and say I need another router in my office Um or your cable company I think can do that cable company. Absolutely. Yeah, so there's a couple options to work around that problem Good to know good to know Dominic Carlos asks For the steinberg you are 12's loopback feature it captures audio from skype zoom, etc So you can have an independent waiver mp3 file of the call. I'm curious. What more the loopback feature does Well, the loopback feature is it's really cool for a number of reasons if you're doing remote sessions One of the things you can do is you can As he said you can take a file you've recorded and play it back To the client directly over, you know over your connection over zoom or or whatever Uh, it really is designed to I think they came up with this mostly for Streaming radio stations or something like that and that's you know, that's one use is you know, you can play music, you know I've I always like to play girl from epanema coming through for some reason and if when things go quiet, it's like But it allows you to play audio from your computer Back out into your program line. That's either going over zoom skype or somewhere else Yeah, it doesn't do and what what the ur12 does not do is what you're asking dominik So you're asking does it capture the audio from zoom or skype? To a separate file now that you can listen to later. No, it doesn't do that What does do that? And this is what's confusing about loopback is the evo 4 So the evo 4 actually does have a different kind of loopback You can actually capture the audio coming back from the other end To two separate tracks. So you do have a separate audio recording of the zoom call But that's a different loopback for a complete different purpose. So if you want to produce podcasts The evo 4 is fantastic for that totally awesome. Yeah, but if you're a voice actor wanting to play back something you've recorded Steinberg's loopback feature is better is the one you want to use. Yeah, so um, yeah, yeah I found I've been I've been playing with my roadcaster Which will do that total separation. It'll take like four different zoom tracks And separate them which i'm still trying to figure out how to do So if you've got like four guests on on a podcast, you can they all will be recorded on an individual track And there's software. There's software you can do that with too Uh, but great unit, you know, I'm I'm actually quite pleased with it. Um, let's see here Oh, he also asks you mentioned the original mbox that is 32 bit in the last tech talk We did indeed Which made me wonder what is the appropriate bit size to record at and what is bit rate Lots of questions, but we'll so so there's different kinds of bits that we're talking about there's um There's bit depth Which is what you're thinking of when you think of 16 bit versus 24 bit recording audio, right or 32 bit float There's bit rate which is related to mp3. So like 192 kilobits per second. That's bit rate But there's also the bit of the os and the driver. So the actual bit depth of the operating system of 32 bits is has been Retired for quite a long time. So I I don't know. I don't know which generation of mac it was dan was it I don't know yosemite. There was quite a few versions back It went from being a 32 bit os To a 64 bit os and when that happened if they it's a company that makes that can that hardware Chud decides not to have a driver update Then that hardware becomes obsolete And uh, that might be one of those pieces. I'm not sure But these old mbox which I keep right here within Arms reach because it's just fun to look at Am I frozen? Yeah, I am frozen aren't I? You are we can hear you you rosen Let's just unplug my camera Nope I didn't fix it either And it's back and it's back You're working it is working And it's back fascinating. All right. Well, I'm using one of our old crazy fire cameras from the studio so that could explain that It's probably overheating But the old inbox that's the one we're refraining to or refraining to referring to The the hardware firmware everything about it is made for these older os's So that's what they're referring to when they mean 32 bit versus 64 bit But what I'm not going to answer your question. What should you record? Forever I used to say 60 16 bit bit depth was completely fine That's the bit that that cds are recorded at after all and they sound great Um, but I've changed my tune the last couple years after hearing robert from source elements Pontificate on this subject on one of my pro audio suite shows Um, and when he said that with 24 bit it does allow you to record at a lower peak level And so I've been telling folks to record at 24 bit Because it does allow you to have more headroom You can give yourself a bit more peak headroom and not have to be recording From minus six to minus four peak all the time You can actually record with a little bit more space minus 10 minus 15 And if you normalize it, it won't be as noisy Yeah, it won't it won't create more noise from what's called aliasing If you're noising if you're recording background is noisy if you have a bad mic You noisy background when you normalize it that noise is coming up. Trust me but The same file recorded the 16 16 bit with a peak level at like minus 20 for example And one recorded in 24 bit The one that was recorded in 24 bit when normalized will sound cleaner. It will have less Hiss theoretically. So anyway I say 24 bit I say 24 bit too. I found that You know, you can you can push it a little bit harder And it's very hard to distort unless you're really screaming into the mic So, yeah, it gives you a lot of headroom, which is really cool So I I've more headroom. Yeah, I've been a 24 bit for a couple of years now I'm like, why would you do 16 bit almost everything supports 24 bit natively on in the hardware side of things Your software may still say 32 bit float audacity for some weird geeky reason defaults to 32 bit Float and most people don't even know never even look So that's what they're recording at even if their hardware doesn't support it Um, but yeah, it's completely a waste of hard drive space at that point. But yeah All right. Um, you also mentioned the headphones you listen to Uh, are there any differences between video game headphones and the cans that most Voiceovers use just curious if there may be different features one offer over the others Well, most of the video game headphones have a heads a mic boom, right also Right definitely not needed at all for voiceover work. I don't know any mic boom headset That is voiceover production pro production quality yet So that would be something you don't need or differentiates them. Otherwise the game headphones tend to have crazier designs with colorful plastic And lights and other things to make them look cool when you're doing your yeah, so if you're into that, yeah But at the end of the day if it's a headphone that's comfortable and they sound good to you And you can wear them for the length of a session They're gonna work fine. So I wouldn't really worry whether it's a pro or game headphone It's something that you're familiar with. It's comfortable. That sounds good to you I think that's probably what matters the most. So all right Uh, Riley Wilson asks thanks for the show You're welcome Um, I am again using an older epigy duet fire wire with a thunderbolt adapter into my late 2013 iMac And it seems to work well with my babe blue baby bottle mic Okay, good Thank you. Good night everybody. Consider yourself lucky I had a recent focus right scarlet two i4 That created lots of pops and clicks that I seem to have less with the duet How do the onboard converters with this older unit compare with some of the newer units? Well, thanks Listen to our last tech talk. Yeah, really it's we compare hundred dollar new units Uh hundred dollar old units 300 dollar old things 700 dollar new things You're gonna hear how little it actually matters. It really Doesn't matter hardly at all her voice over right Because we're not working at the edges of the sound spectrum the very highest frequencies the very lowest the very widest dynamic range We're not pushing the converters of our hardware To any real limits here, right? So It whatever works and is stable and reliable to you Is fine if somebody it came to me with those two setups and asked me which one to use I would immediately say the two i4 But in your case you found that to be not a reliable solution and using the duet Use what sounds good. We'll use it's reliable Right because it's not going to make a big difference at the end of the day Yeah, we've been hearing that a lot lately you clicks and pops and stuff like that from some of the focus right I've never experienced it generally I I think it's probably more because it's a 2013 mac With probably not a without a solid state drive or something it might be probably not You know probably not on that one. Yeah, but of course he's saying he's he's using an adapter from It's from fire wire to thunderbolt like yeah, it's it's new enough to not have a fire wire port right So he needs to have an adapter. Thank you and thunderbolt is fire wire backward compatible and all that stuff Um, but um, yeah for whatever reason for his setup. That's the most reliable I found that fire wire just got so unreliable for My client base and people I work with that it just became just too buggy and I had the exact Reverse problem from what he was having with a lot of people So I kind of abandoned fire wire for a lot of people was a shame because there was some really good Equipment out there that used fire wire, right Uh, michael k. I know this is a similar question Just a little twist different at the end here interesting. Okay. Yeah I have a duet two into my iMac the preamps and the converters are said to be The best pristine sound So that page he's known for that's right. They're great at it. I also have a focus right solo I'm losing clarity and vocal quality when I use the phone or am I using losing folk Clarity and vocal quality when I use the focus right Probably not we did not hear any significant Difference that would some engineer would say no, we'll hire this guy because he's got this interface and no It doesn't happen guys go back and listen to our last show. I mean we you can jump between we don't have the duet two in that Particular test, but we have its cousin the less less expensive. Uh, the one you won't yeah very closely related and You can go between the focus right scarlet solo jennif. I think it's a gent I keep saying jen two or jaren one. Maybe it was even the jen one might have been Yeah, it was the old and you can go between them and hear how how darn similar they really are. They're incredibly similar, um ain't gonna ain't gonna make your your bookings change in any way, but uh Now the baringer 1204 i'm assuming you mean the usb one Yes, that's likely gonna be a little bit less clean. Yeah simply because there's a lot more crud in the signal faders and pots and buttons and multiple channels And a mix bus and all that stuff and it's not designed for voiceover It's designed for a live band in a pa system Not really for recording. I mean they they put the usb port in a mixer like that because it's kind of a nice accessory Well, you can record your set Get a copy of the set. Yeah, and that's I I think that's why they did that now. Can you use it for voiceover? You need to read podcasting. It's probably really great for five use them for podcasting. I've actually used a a baringer 1204. Yeah, and uh It works But it's a little noisier than say, you know, some of the higher and uh Uh interfaces we view. Yeah, it's noisier than I would say the scarlet solo arguably. Yeah. Yeah, uh Take bright and see Okay, bride and see I was browsing the internet today and I saw someone say that uh, what happened? Oh, you're just reacting to me. I'm like, oh, it was reading ahead. It's like I was on the internet. Uh, oh I was on the internet. Oh, exactly Oh, and I saw someone someone. I always love this someone Say that beveled foam squares and are useless for sound treatment and they are just for looks He stated that you should only use fiberglass insulation that is four inches thick What are your thoughts? Thanks. Feel free to use us on the show and we are um Okay, so if you're going to compare four inch thick fiberglass If you're talking about compressed fiberglass like the owens corning OC 703 stuff. Yeah, I mean that's comparing apples to oranges honestly Um, two inch thick acoustical foam is okay Not very effective Especially for what it costs sometimes and if you buy the really cheap stuff It's practically acoustically useless That means the sound goes right through it as though it's not even there Um, so yes, the four inch thick insulation is going to be better But do you need four inch thick acoustic fiberglass in your booth? Probably not that's probably overkill to wallpaper a booth with that stuff Yeah, unless you're constantly make a bass. Yeah, I mean unless you're you're always doing like ninja voices for games or something like that Yeah, if you're yelling screaming in your booth, you might need that extra control If you're gonna even make a bass trap The four inch thick fiberglass is definitely going to be far far better And so at least maybe in a small booth having one wall or one panel made with that four inch thick stuff It's going to be beneficial But you don't need that for everything Um So yeah, so the foam squares helpful To a degree But mostly it's designed mostly. It looks interesting Mostly it's just easy to glue up, but it doesn't really acoustically work all that great It's not that good. Yeah. All right Uh, let's see here. Jeff Holman asks. Hi, Jeff. We know Jeff our chat room. Yeah I'm having a problem doing pickups on my audiobook I recorded with the gain too low then normalized in my editing when I try to insert a pickup now with the gain at a normal level The inserted recordings sound different from the original That's right Uh more tinny like a tin can less bassy less full. What might cause that? Um, that's that's when you go back and you re-record Uh, I find that a lot of people are like they're sending me files in their levels. They don't understand Getting their levels straight and and monitoring that before they start recording It's like, I'll just go turn my microphone But check those things, you know photographers take a Here I just happen to have one handy, you know, they they check the focal length on the camera to the object and stuff like that Double check your your input levels record something quickly and say, okay, that's good And don't like like, okay, I'm gonna record an entire chapter for 45 minutes and then find oh the level's too low You're when you you change you would change the dynamic range. It's gonna make changes. What do you think? Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna guess when he says less bassy I don't know what love levels never affect bass, right? What affects bass is proximity So I'm guessing based on that that your mic proximity or your placement is not dead-on consistent That's possible. So just like dan said camera operators check focus. They set their focal length literally on the distance to the lens from the actor You might need to do the same thing and use a ruler Or some object that you can use as a Maybe you always use the same pen And use that as a gauge but always be the same distance from the microphone because I really feel Based on what again what you're describing here that it's it's that is the the true issue here Eight inches is exactly this So I now know that stretch down a lot of eight inches Which is hurting the tendonitis in my overmoused finger It might be seven inches in a couple of years as you can't do that as far anymore Get it out there Yeah, so I would say I would I would be really careful about your Proximity your mic placement where you're working the mic when you do those pickups If it's not dead-on consistent, it's not gonna that's gonna cause you more trouble than anything else. No question No question. Yeah. All right. I don't quite get this last one about the peering issue and net neutrality Oh, what does this peering issue have to do with net neutrality? I don't know nothing which is why we didn't mention net neutrality net neutrality is like you know Big companies paying other big companies for preferential treatment, right? That's the net or net neutrality or the lack of net neutrality, right? Um but uh As in terms of what does that actually relate how the two relate to each other it's a bit of a stretch That's probably a google search answer that I would I mean, I'm literally googling it right now to see if Of course you're really helpful right now Net neutrality how service providers peering changes could impact your business, right? It's stuff out there to read but I it's definitely not something I'm I'm knowledgeable about so all right But we know everything else and we appreciate all your questions here on voiceover body shop tech talk That's going to do it for us for another week. But uh, we still got a little bit to cover in just a second. So don't go away. We'll be Right back This is bill ratner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv You know you want to narrate audiobooks You know that the acx masterclass is the best way to learn how to be profitable and successful at narrating audiobooks But you may not know that this is registration week for the acx masterclass David h. Lawrence the 17th and dano day only hold the acx masterclass once or twice a year And this is registration week And here's one more thing you might not know If you register before tuesday night june 2nd at 9 p.m They'll pay the first 300 dollars of your tuition fee instead of it being 1995 dollars It's just 16 95 But you have to act fast Visit acx masterclass dot com. That's acx masterclass dot com for the very best audiobook narration and production training Just 1695 if you act before tuesday at 9 p.m. Pacific go to acx masterclass dot com Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer that place is voiceover extra dot com Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level Stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls Voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed Learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions Bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books Auditioning casting home studio setup and equipment marketing performance techniques and much more It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voiceover audition It's all here at voiceover extra dot com. That's voice over x t r a dot com As a voice talent, you have to have a website But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you and when they finally do a breaker 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 voiceover website going for as little as 700 dollars So if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options Go to voice actor websites dot com where your vo website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what You are watching v obs dot tv. I don't know why it's crazy what they do here I think i'm gonna go somewhere else and have a cheese sandwich All right, and we are back here on voiceover body shop for a another for another minute or two anyway Uh, who are the donors that we have the last couple of weeks We definitely have those in spades Dwayne de salvo bryan roush antlion productions michelle blinker christopher epperson philips appear trey speaks for you trey mosley Dominic carlos voice presentations limited. Ooh a corporation. Mr. George widdum my dad. Thanks dad patty gibbons stephanie southerland Mike gordon shanna pennington baird martha con. Hi martha don griffith and lee pinney aka 949 design. Thank you lee pinney Uh, yeah, you know we're we're We're on our new set while we're doing this all virtually because it just looks so damn cool Um, yeah, but we'll we'll be getting back to looking at your booths pretty soon So send those to us now. Uh, you know, take a picture of your booth in landscape not in portrait Uh, and we will uh Well, george and i'll sit in there when we george and i could finally get together do the phone this way Yeah, that'll be a big help. Uh, so send those to the guys at v o b s dot tv And maybe we'll do something with it We need to thank our amazing sponsors who have been very supportive of us during these incredibly weird times Uh, like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra Soros elements v o heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com And j m c demos. All right. Also the dan and marcy lennart foundation for live and recorded web and podcasting uh jeff holman on On chat room duty Sumer leno just kicking butt doing it remotely from her home in burbank How we've done this is beyond our own imagination. Who knew that we would have to do it this way? Although we did have a little practice I guess but she's doing a great job and lee penny for being lee penny Thanks, lee. Uh, that's gonna do it for us this week You know, we're here to answer your questions george and i are here to help you professionally with your home studios and uh So get a hold of us. You know how to do it and uh, but the bottom line really is If it sounds good It is good That's gonna do it for us this week guys. We'll see you next week here on voiceover body shop. Have a great night Take care everybody. Stay safe. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face