 Hey, it's time for tech talk number 14 God, just rambling on we got lots of cool stuff to talk about with Mac and a few other things and computers, what else? Ventilation yes, we're gonna talk about Studio ventilation and fun with boxes Anyway all that and your questions that you've been asking on the email on On voice over body shop tech talk right now From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe. They bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a Professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio and Each week they allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials dot com home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites dot com where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt VO to go go dot com Everything you need to be a successful voice over artist 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 Hi there, I'm Dan Leonard. I'm George Whitton and this is voice over what shop or VO BS tech talk Yes, we're gonna talk tech Yes, lots of fascinating things I've been learning all sorts of cool stuff in the last few weeks because I started futzing around with old radios and And It's not the same technology that we use today because everything is solid state and very digital and radios are very very analog but I'm learning about what the tubes did and The capacitors and the resistors and it's actually kind of cool got the old 1942 Zenith that we dragged into the studio here now hooked up to Alexa who will now play anything It's like, you know Alexa Play Benny Goodman, you know, and suddenly we get Benny Goodman in here She's looking at a play music that's sort of period to the radio though. That's right exactly Your lady Gaga coming out of that old low five mono speaker. It's kind of odd. Yeah, but it's great to hear But it's if we were talking about this last time on tech talk that you know, it's analog stuff And but if you can understand the basics it helps a whole lot when you come to understanding how your own audio is supposed to work So, you know pick up a hobby like that, but your voice over audio shouldn't be a hobby. It's a profession So here's a weird thing bridging the analog the digital gap. Did you know that? Do you have any vehicles with HD radio in them? I think mine does because it'll say like it'll have a little HD badge sometimes. Yeah, what's crazy is it's sending the Analog FM signal and the digital HD signal together on the same frequency at the same time Right, the real signal is sort of modulated somewhere that it's not audible I don't really quite understand all of it but it's they have to actually process the audio for the FM band and the digital band all at the same time back at the station and Then get them to be in sync with each other So when your radio loses that HD signal and it gets weak and then it flips to FM That the two are in sync with each other. There's actually really freaking complicated And they have to do that Yeah, and the thing is is if you're listening to it on an analog radio and an HD radio, they're not in sync They're not exactly on it might be half a second off But we digress into Utter utter nonsense right now. This is tech talk. So we can we can actually we can get down a little bit And speaking of geeking out, what do you got in your update this week? Not a whole lot. Um, you know, it's dog days this summer. So people aren't really uh, there's not a lot of new developments going on in technology But one thing that did come up. Thanks to the pro tools expert website. That's pro dash tools dash expert dot com It's a place I like to jump to occasionally for news in the pro audio world Of course, there are a lot about pro tools But a lot of what they talked about is relevant to a lot of other things There's just a little bit of a warning about the newest mac os catalina and you'll hear me say it once again When it comes out soon probably the next month or two Don't jump on it, especially this one and here's why If you have any older software on your mac that is 32 bit It is going to just stop working It sometimes that's things that may be more obvious and sometimes not so obvious those not so obvious things are usually audio plugins So if you've got some old plugins that you bought a version, thank you You bought a version and uh, you know, you've had it for years and you haven't bothered upgrading it Because why buy a new version if it works? Those are the ones that are going to catch you off guard and i'm just not going to work anymore After you upgrade to catalina So fortunately this when well one company Made an app for finding those apps on your machine that need to be Removed or updated and it's called go 64 Meaning go 64 bit It's at stclairsoft.com Slash go 64 That's st. Clair st CLAir S o f t dot com They have a checker app It's free and it will scan your whole mac and look for old things that are not going to work on catalina I found this interesting because I figured by now 32 bit stuff was definitely not going to be supported. I thought it was history But it has been supported all the way through mojave So apples just decided to draw a line in the sand and say In order for us to move forward and have faster machines that Run better and do more things we have to eventually stop support of this old stuff. So that's what's happening. Yeah Catalina. Yeah, we we see this a lot though, you know, some when things getting compatible and someone will you know We'll we'll write to us about some troubleshooting issue. It's like this thing stopped working or uh, this this particular device doesn't work on there anymore and Usually it's Because it's a pc And and usually it needs an updated driver or something like that It's when things like this happen you really have to be aware of it and Make sure that you keep your drivers updated, especially if you're on on a pc But try to keep up to date on what's going to make sure that your professional equipment is going to continue to work Yeah, just be ready for the upgrade spiral. I tend to call it when you Upgrade one thing it becomes a chase to find all the other things that also need to be upgraded and that That oftentimes can be related to changing your mac os or windows version That can sometimes trigger this spiral The upgrade spiral or upgrading a piece of key hardware like going to a new audio interface or something like that So just be aware of that and don't jump in with both feet If you have if you have literally a single computer that you do with everything Or use for everything not a good idea be very cautious But if you have another computer that's a secondary machine Maybe it's just a desktop for or a laptop for for just day-to-day use for business, you know non production Then maybe you can dabble in experiment with these new systems. Just keep that in mind Yeah, we we get asked a lot about but when you know, when do I when should I get a new laptop or and what Which one should I get and you and I generally say well get a mac um What what do you think is if someone's going to buy a laptop and you know They don't have to be sophisticated in doing voiceover work and not video editing and things along those lines What do you think is a is a good combination of stuff to look for? Whether it's mac or a pc the the commonalities are going to be for sure absolutely A solid state drive SSD If there's any one thing that has made all of our computers dramatically faster And especially on the long term I'm running a 2011 mac mini at home with an ssd drive and it still runs really well It's not super fast on some certain video apps and high Heavy-duty things but for day-to-day use it does everything really well and thanks to the solid state drive That means there's no hard drive inside spinning with spinning platters That's 1960s technology and solid state drives are Far far faster and more responsive. They boot faster. They launch apps faster So no matter what make sure it has a solid state drive. I would definitely avoid the um Uh what they call the I want to call it virtual hard drive. That's not what it's called Uh Can you remember what's the name of the drive on the mac that combines? Oh a fusion drive a fusion Those seem like a really great idea. I mean they they uh the idea being that things that are Need that you access normally or regularly or all the time or in the ssd everything else is in the hard drive In reality, it just doesn't perform that great And if something goes wrong with that fusion drive, it's very difficult To troubleshoot or fix that thing and and you basically Have to move a different direction. So when you buy say an iMac my biggest problem with those is that's the default setting Default option is a fusion. So definitely upgrade whatever you get to an ssd. Um, then from there It's eight gigs of ram. I would say today is Then is the minimum 16 is definitely way, you know, really nice to have and then um from there, you know, it's Any cpu that's at least seventh or eighth generation until Uh, it's going to be fine even an i3 Is going to be fine. I like an i5 Quad or the new mac mini's for example have a six core i5 for about thousand dollars I love those. Um Windows computers they share all all the same basic components, you know So whether you're on mac or windows, it should definitely share a lot of those Features in common and also keep in mind with any new mac and Increasingly now most a lot of new windows laptops. There's no more usba ports anymore on these computers Yeah, that's a bit of a problem That's this plug right here the one you have a thousand of these in your drawer They don't have this plug anymore. They all have usb c But if you just get yourself a usb c hub You can get back all the jack's plugs adapters Ethernet memory card readers all the ports that you're used to having You can get in one little adapter for maybe 60 bucks. Yeah, it's not that big a deal It's just you gotta buy one more thing to get all those ports back right, you know And keep your and and when the mothership calls to update your computer make sure it updates You know for updates for that that particular os You know if now with apple going to this new system. Uh, what's it called? It's called catalina catalina Yeah, it's just just it's just hopping on the ferry and going across to catalina apparently not There's sharks in them their waters. Yes Shark week which was on the tv in my mom's house today most of the day There literally are some great whites in In candle next to catalina between la catalina. Yeah, but yeah, just be careful Just just tread lightly and uh take a step back and ask one of us for advice before you You leap to something new absolutely Well, it's time to discuss something that is yeah, we were we had paul struck word on uh last week and he was talking about how His booth doesn't have any ventilation And ventilation now I used to sell solar heating So I learned a tremendous amount about heating ventilate, you know heating ventilation and air conditioning h vac If you're ever wondering what h vac stands for right and When you're when you're dealing with your booth now if you're in a closet or something like that It's not that critical unless you totally seal the room Because you know, there are air gaps and as long as there's air gaps There will be air exchange And it's not that much of a big deal But if you're in a really hermetically sealed booth It becomes an issue and you've got to be able to Have some sort of way of moving the air around if you do a lot of long format stuff if you're doing there for 30 seconds it's Right. It's it's If you're opening that door every 15 minutes like apparently tends to happen here in this office Without my intervention Um, when you open that door you do exchange the air very rapidly. I mean you're going to get air exchange very quickly But i'll tell you the more technology you have in your booth like i'm sure is the case for paul He's got everything in there is computer monitor mouse keyboard. Everything is there. He can sit in that booth for hours That is not a good situation to be in if you don't have ventilation and It's very easy to just kind of get in the flow and forget. Oh, I forgot. I haven't opened the door in a while And at the end of the day, it's the carbon dioxide that's going to get you not the lack of lack of oxygen It's that carbon dioxide poisoning and uh, you just start feeling That's that thing where the people say the air is stale in here or you start feeling a little Loss of focus or a headache on you headache a headache if you start getting a headache it's It's getting bad. So we need ventilation. So dan you've you've solved this problem numerous ways some of them very simple low-tech solutions Um, and I think you got one of those examples. So yeah, I actually always an example of a low-tech affordable di way System well, you know, I it's gone through a couple of you know iterations and generations and stuff like that, but this is a normal cardboard box And what I've done is Well, I actually actually built this box out of a lot of scrap cardboard because I had another one that was the same size That I got from my mother's house Uh, and then I couldn't you know, and then I like I only need one and I decided maybe I should build two Uh a well-known voice actor here in in hollywood has a studio that I that I assisted in building And I built the ventilation system too small and and and it was It was choking off the air and there wasn't enough air getting in So what I was was it the air getting in or the air getting out It was there were no it was a number of things. It was well now i'm blocking out your view here. Uh, it was uh It was a matter of the the airflow through this baffle which i'm going to explain in a second Was too narrow and it was choking off the air And so it had a very powerful fan had a turbo fan in it and then it uh It was drawing out the air the whole thing was a the intake was passive Because this the the the booth itself is airtight. So if you're drawing air out At at a high rate like say 100 cubic feet per minute and the thing is less than 100 cubic feet big You're going to be exchanging the air in there every minute or two, which is more than enough Yeah, but some people like to have like the feel of cool air on them And they want air conditioning and they want they want, you know, the constant temperature to be constant And if somebody larger is in there or somebody who sweats a lot or somebody who's Gives off a lot of body heat because body heat animation, maybe. Oh, yeah, absolutely Well, you're really moving around it can get pretty hot in the booth pretty quick So if you're able to replace the air in there quickly uh But the problem with moving air quickly Is that you need a lot of what we call cfm? Cubic feet per minute. What is the rating of the fan that is drawing the air out? And how fast can it replace pull the air in from somewhere else? So you have to have at least Two vents in the booth one that's drawing the air out and one that's allowing fresh air to come in And it's why absolutely it's supply and return So what I what I've been doing is I take these boxes Because one of the one of the things that happens when you're drawing air in and pulling it out Is there is noise Not so much from the fan But it's the sound of air movement and that's what you have to deal with So I've I've come up with these these boxes. You you'll see these things, you know Some people call it a da box What it is is it's an intake of air And it goes in here and then there are baffles in here There's one here and there's one here So the air goes in and around and then out To the exhaust over here So, I mean if if I if I talk into this thing, you'll hear that my voice doesn't come through very well Now it doesn't come out the other end really at all exactly meaning that I built this thing, right? There is Foam in here This is a great diy project because uh, you know, sometimes I used back in buffalo when I did it in my studio there I lined the entire thing with orelex Which made erics mick of the orelex very happy Uh, but when I found in here We had some old cushions and there was some very light foam in there along with the heavier foam And I'm like, I'll bet this stuff absorbs really fast and really well and and and takes the sound of the air flow out Because it's not a hard surface that it's Going around so this thing is actually it has this white stuff in here it was a lot cheaper and apparent Apparently it works really well because if it's if my voice is muffled well That means it's going to make sure that the air is the sound of the air is not going to be It's the sound of the air flowing through that makes the noise that we hear, you know, that becomes that low resonance Uh, that you're here with a fan The whooshing yeah, the whooshing of the air see when you're making ventilation You have a couple things you're trying to stop you're trying to stop that Wishing sound right that's that high velocity air whooshing through But you're also trying to stop just noise From outside the room from making its way through that pipe and out the other side So this thing is helping with both of those, you know in one solution Right. So yeah, I you go ahead white stuff inside. Is that that fiber fill that you find in pillows? That's exactly what it is Yeah, that's what they use in speaker cabinets, too. Actually, exactly. Yeah, so, uh, we have a question from the audience Where do you put that? Well, that's the next part of this This goes on the outside of the booth this, you know that you have an intake that goes To this part here and that goes to a an insulated ventilated tube that goes to the vent So and then one end the there's one on the intake and there's one on the exhaust And you put the fan on the exhaust part have separated from here by a couple of feet or maybe far away So the fan is far away from the booth and you know, I I generally install these in attics Uh, and then, you know, and then have the air either exhausted back into the room Or to the outside but never into the attic because if you exhausted into the attic, that's when you get mold So when you go to sell your house and there's suddenly all this green stuff growing on the ceiling Not a good idea. So if you can, yes, exactly So if you can hook it up to say a bathroom ventilation or to the eve or to an actual external exhaust That's a really good idea And I've built two of these because there there's a lot of airflow in these and then I can separate them out And it it gets rid of the noise really easy, but uh Every everyone has to be custom designed and custom placed You know, sometimes people don't want all these tubes hanging out of their booth If you've got a closet and you own the house and you want to build something like this That'll you know, it this is something you would you would put in the attic And you would have two of them one for the exhaust and one for the one for the intake and you can have a fan on either end Uh, you know, because sometimes the draw isn't enough to draw in enough cool air from the room So that's that's an interesting way to take that but there's another factor involved here And that has to do with thermal dynamics that nobody ever thinks about But because you and I do this we think about this What happens to warm air It rises it is so if you've got a vent in taking To the booth from the ceiling It's just taking in more warm air If you so whereas the cool air the cool air is at the bottom So when the air conditioning is on The cool air will sink to the bottom of the room. So you want to have the vent lower for the intake and higher for the exhaust And I know there's several booth builders who forget that one And people complain It's funny you said that and what question just came in from fred north saying he says I have my input vent the supply um at the top of my booth Because I like the cool air flowing down on me and the exhaust is near the floor But I'd be more efficient the other way around. Oh, absolutely three foot by five inch wood box with baffles and four feet of four inch hose with a fan on each one You know what fred I mean efficiency is one thing if it's if it's doing the job you want it to do and you're staying cool And it's giving the oxygen flow that it's efficient enough Would it be more efficient? Based on what dan just explained obviously the hot air is going to rise. So you draw it from the top and you look Probably would be more efficient the other way around, but If it's working for you, you know, go for it. Yeah, I mean we were talking about this a couple weeks ago Because you have this idea of hooking in the uh the intake to an air conditioning system Yeah, I've got to build that soon actually we're doing that soon Yeah, but the air conditioning always has to be on or you're just going to be drawing warm air from an attic or something like that. So You know, I mean, but it will work. I mean people are people are people they have their their their things And if they want cool air blowing on them, that's one way to accomplish that I guess Yeah, we we have to have a uh a y Oh like a t and a valve so like when the air conditioning is not blowing cool air We'll shut off the supply from the air conditioning and you'll start drawing air from the from the room instead He's not getting Choked off or worse hot air right when the heat is on because the heat might be on which you may not want that in the booth No, not in a small booth simple thing. All right, so that is our discussion on ventilation folks Take it or leave it if you got more questions on this Well, we can answer that make sure you're right to us at the guys at the obs But we got lots of questions from our amazing audience out there So let's take a break and we'll get to those right after those Hello there, I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice to announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat For 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 ring Just you and me Rick when hope is lost the i8 from bmw Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's j michael collins. I 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 jmc voiceover dot com Now if dan will stop waxing this mustache for a minute. We'll get back to the show Voiceover essentials dot com just put their vo1a microphone on sale for a limited time $20 off the regular price of $299 Now here are some of the most recent quotes they've gotten on the vo1a from the war room studio We've been saying the vo1a is a really great quality mic for the dollar Since 2011 we've been using it in our broadcast studio for eight years and we're still it still hasn't let us down They just work and sound good. This is a great mic From monsoor reyes Thanks for this finally a harlan hogan vo1a review based on my cans. That is a great sounding mic For michael collin, I recently bought the vo1a and love it too amazing mic for the money Here's another one. Hey, it's my mic I own the vo1a and I've gotten hundreds of jobs over the years with it I'm adding a 416 soon. But honestly, I think there'll always be a place for the vo1a in my arsenal I can't tell you how many compliments I've received from top industry pros over the years regarding the sound Also, take whatever you want from the vo1a's web page. And here's the address right here Mention that there are over 50 additional quotes from delighted customers at the bottom of the page Hmm including one for me and of course mention it's the voice over microphone Okay, now you can unmute it Hey, that's me. It's time to talk about source elements There's those clever creators of source connect and source connect is the tool you're probably going to be seeing more often from more agents and Voice over clients at the highest level than any other technology. So you want to be ready to go When that happens and the best way to do that is just to go over to source-elements.com Sign up for a 15 day free trial get your iLock account all set up Don't bother buying an iLock key. You don't really need that right now Just get it up and running go through the little a few hoops to get it up and running and running smoothly And that way the day comes you get that gig You can start your license. You can then pay for it on a monthly or you can just buy it outright And own it. It's up to you that source connect the best way and the most professional way to connect your studio To other studios around the world as a voice actor We'll be right back with more tech talk here in just a second This is bill radner and you're enjoying voice over body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv and we're back here on voice over body shop and uh Interesting discussion about ventilation. We've got lots of great questions coming up from people who send them in If you've got a question for us again, you can throw it in the chat room At uh, you know, there's the chat room in facebook There's the chat room that we have uh accompanying our our regular web page at v obs dot tv We like to hear from you but you can also write to us at the guys and v obs dot tv And that makes it easy because then i'm like i get the questions and we're like well, we'll just ask the questions And we'll get to that in a second, but there's one thing that george and i This is the most important thing about this show and that is utter complete shameless promotion That's why we're here Doing voice over body shop, especially tech talk because one you guys love hearing all this tech stuff But we're also here to let you know That we're here to help you professionally with your home voiceover studio It's a unique environment There are very specific rules that that you really have to adhere to and it's got to sound a certain way And there's only two human beings on the face of this planet, even though we're not from this planet Uh, who uh Who know more about how this all works and what it's supposed to sound like and that is mr. Woodham and myself I say humbly and george if they want to talk to you and get some of your services, where do they go? You can head on over to george the dot tech or george the tech.com. They both work amazingly technology ain't a great You can find all my different services over there. You can schedule me You can send me sound for sound checks. You can have me design a whole studio and you can even bring me out There's a bring george out option in the service page To get me booked to any place in the world with the help of your friends to divide up the costs So check that out. It's a new thing i'm started offering and dan How do they get a hold of you? Well, they just yeah home voiceover studio Dot com it's over here. There we go. Uh, yeah Go over there read about what you know how I teach you and how I consult and how i'll start if you've never built a Home studio before you're probably terribly intimidated by it I'll I'll take that boulder off your shoulders and and help you Make it sound easy because it actually is easy. It's just that every studio is unique And we have to really look at what your situation is where you want to record your sound Do you want a booth? Do you have a closet? You know, where is it? You're going to do it? We'll find the best place and I'll sniff it out as I like to say and Literally, I will go through someone's house Going okay, and and like talking and sounds bouncing off the people who will work with me. They'll say it's actually what he did And I'll find the best place for you to record and we'll make it sound proper And uh, and that's really important because again, it's got to sound the way it's supposed to sound and uh so Talk to us. We're the guys that can make that happen. Go over to homeboysoverstudio.com and I've got my uh My specimen collection cup there if you've got audio if you built a studio and you want to hear if you're Getting your sound right you can click on that and that will take you to a dropbox where you can give me some raw audio Follow the instructions to a tee on how I want that audio sent and uh, I'll get right back to you Hopefully I usually do But I also do house calls. I got to go to glendale tomorrow Help somebody with their with their booth. So that's gonna be close down It's just get on the 101 boom if you're in the greater la area I can I can you know bring my wrench and I can you know help you out if you got a problem also Uh, give us a buzz as well. So is that the 101 east or the 101 south east? It's actually the 101 south, but it goes to the one for 34 east, right Exactly At an additional note about his ventilation we mentioned earlier So it's bringing the cold air in and pushing it out from the roof of the booth But its source for that is from the floor outside So he has it ducting and sucking the air from way down below At the floor level So that's where the cool air is outside. That's where he's bringing it in and then forcing it into the top A little bit more complicated, but again, it's doing what he wants it to do. Yes. All right. Well, thanks for letting us know friend Appreciate that We have a question Sent into us from jane irola had a couple of questions She goes I have a small space in a trailer for a sound studio. We've heard that one before The noise floor seems okay Would a porta booth be a good idea for a small space the porta booth becomes the permanent sound studio Uh Well, it can be uh I I think for traveling the the porta booth, which you can get at voiceover essentials dot com uh Is it's it's it's great for on the road and I think in a small thing like a trailer it might actually be kind of effective What do you think? I think it would help I mean, uh, those booths are really good when you use them in conjunction with some other practical things So in a small space like a trailer If you've got uh, some drapery hanging up between the front and the back or you have at least something else in there that's soft The porta booth will work really well with that. Um Being aware that you know, you're still gonna have to park that trailer in a quiet location Um, you're not going to want to be parked near a freeway or in a crowded k away campground with tons of families running around That worked that well But if you're in a quiet location it could it could actually work out Pretty well, um, and you know, it's a it's a minor commitment compared to what some people do in their trailers Yeah, we've we've we've known people that yeah, who is it that's the travels around and she lives in her trailer and she's doing voice over We had on uh Forgive me for not is it was it a kendra? Something like that. Yeah, it was a while ago, but you know her name and she's been on the show But yeah, yeah fast. Yeah. Also taking a she's taking an audacity course the takeaway is if you reach a noise floor of at least 46 on the scale Low scale you get the noise floor below 59 by applying noise reduction twice I have heard various opinions and this methods usefulness. What is your opinion? Well, we have opinions about that Yeah, that's from greg's son. That's not from jane. No, that's no that was that was actually from jane Oh, okay. It's a thanks. Okay. Got it. Thanks jane. Um The problem with these rules of thumb is they're all completely dependent on the kind of noise And the frequency content of that noise Is it rumble? Is it broadband? Is it a hum or a buzz? That you can't just go by numbers and just Expect to get a great result. Yeah, it just doesn't work I've seen noise floors at minus 20 minus 33 That's all rumble And by using a high-fast filter, I can drop it to minus 60 Um, you know, so it just depends noise reduction is really A band aid It really is the last thing I want to do is apply any kind of noise reduction Algorithm to my audio unless it's unless I have no other choice Doing it twice Again, is it being a is it being applied properly To what degree? Um, you know, I don't I won't give advice on something I haven't heard yet So I really I really can't say that that method is is a surefire solution. Yeah, I'm not also not saying it's I'm not saying it's wrong either right. Well, it depends. You know, who is the end user and how much do they care about That sound I I have found especially with something like audacity If you use their noise Reduction strategies or the filters that they have in there You've got to be extremely precise and you have to know How to be able to remove that sound without it Distorting your audio or leaving digital artifacts and those sorts of things and and that's a real skill And that's something you learn over time My philosophy is generally do everything you can Physically to get rid of that noise and as you were saying if you do have noise, what is that noise? what frequency is it at and work Try and find the source of the noise and eliminate it as opposed to relying on noise reduction strategies And we've talked about this before and the fact is is these things were not designed for single track mono voice over tracks They were designed for more complicated tracks where you know an interview in a loud environment or Somewhere where you know someone is talking when there's noise in the back You've got to be able to Remove that but you're recording in an incredibly quiet space Why apply a sledgehammer? To really what you really need is just a little bit of sandpaper So, uh, it's yeah, I mean don't just don't just you know arbitrarily or compulsorily compulsor Rarely I think I made up by default. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, don't just add everything and don't just you know Boy noise reduction. It's It's not the right fix for every kind of noise noise is not noise. It's not noise. Right. Yeah. I mean it's As you said, you know with a low a low rumble It may be inaudible But it might be rumbling at minus 30 and just by getting it. I mean it's but it's there And some engineer is going to see it if he's not looking at a spectrogram of it He's got there's there's a lot of background noise there But it's easy to remove because it's below The vol it's below the frequency of your actual voice So by just totally tuning that out it'll you can get rid of that All right, this is from greg sutton. Hey fellows love the show. Keep up the great work I currently have a scarlet solo first gen And apart from driver issues here and there must be on windows It's worked perfectly fine for me the past few years. However, I'm looking to upgrade to Mike upgrade to two mic inputs and a bit more functionality for future projects I'm okay with investing in something longer term at this point and I've heard amazing things about audience and the universal audio apollo Or should I just simply get the gen 3? Two i2 and call it a day. I currently use a del xv s or windows 10 reaper And a vo1a the harlan holig and mike actually which has been amazing by the way But i'm also purchasing a 416 to add to the arsenal. Thanks Yeah I haven't heard the gen 3 yet, but if it's no one focused right each one gets better Yeah, and the gen 3 has this air mode on the preamp which again haven't played with but It's based on venerable very well-respected technology um So why would you spend more than a gen 3 2 i2 and by the audience or the uad apollo Or the ua apollo it just it comes down to features And bells and whistles, you know the audience has A few more the well depending on which audience you're talking about the id 20 id 22 i'm thinking of for the 44 There's more complicated signal routing for doing little extras and Loops and all this other crazy stuff The gen 3 i2 i2 has a loopback feature in it now. So right not going to miss that feature that much for doing playbacks to the client um The apollo whole another can of worms in terms of functionality Really complex A lot of horsepower Is it doesn't matter to most voice actors? No because you're going to do all that processing in your software anyway When you're doing an audition or something. So you don't need all that front end processing. So I would say You're going to be served fine with the gen 3 2 i2 really Be surprised if you weren't. Yeah, I mean it's I mean we know they make great products There have been little compatibility issues here and there But usually they're easy to solve once you understand what you know, what's causing it sometimes always comes down to os updates Yeah, it usually is Yeah, uh, you know, I you know, I like the 2 i2. I've been you know, I've been used I'm on a second gen now and I'm going to get a third gen probably Uh third gen's worth it just for that loopback thing alone. Yeah, of course these red boxes are going to start piling up in here but You know because we we use this we use the first gen. Well, that's a second two second gens we've got in here but uh, you know An interface is an interface is an interface and as you said it comes down to features If you're not competent or really understand what something does Don't use it and you don't need it because essentially you're using two tin cans and a string and the string is your interface And you don't want, you know You don't want to be paying cats cats cradle with it in the middle. How's that for a metaphor? Oh my god. Well, yeah, and if you do get an apollo, you're gonna have to get advice or help with some from somebody I've set them up for a ton of people it is uh A little heavy lifting to get it doing what you want it to do once it's doing it It does it, but it's it's not not easy to set up. Yeah, so try gen 3 and report back Yeah, exactly. And if it sucks for you, then well, then we'll we'll know we're gen 3 and then Go to georgedetect.com in the morning right or our home voice service studio dot cap The lovely and talented debbie erwin has a question for us She says howdy just arrived and so it so happens I'm in the market for a new setup for my studio bricks booth in the country So mac mini is the recommendation Always for my just arrived somewhere said it. I don't know where she arrived But apparently she's in the some someplace up in the cat skills to escape the heat of the city very smart, you know um yeah, uh Dan and I are clearly fans of mac mini as we've both been using them over the years for a very long time um I like I like that the computer Brain and the display are two separate things. I know it's old-fashioned, but um If the screen goes crazy no biggie buy another $150 screen plug it in If the computer goes down or dies or you upgrade if you got a real fancy screen Plug in your new computer You know, it's it's much easier to fix them um, and As I've said a thousand times any mac that you buy that's been made in the last five six years is going to be perfectly adequate for voice over mac mini Comes by default with the all-important solid state drive. That's the only way you can get it now The 2018 mac mini that so you can't screw that up even the 799 base model is Freaking great. It's fast. It's smooth. It's quiet. So and that's all you need Right and you can you can you don't have to get an expensive screen for it either I mean the regular flat screen will work fine with it. So that's cool And and then she debit goes on to ask just any current deals out there on the forks on a 416 The sennheiser 416. I need to buy a second one to match my new york city setup Ah, so she's not really moving. She's got a country home. She has a country home Okay, we'll get into matches more than just the mic as you probably know, but having the same mic certainly helps If the two booths are totally different sizes or different environments, you know, that's a little more tricky to get them to match Um in terms of second a second mic of a second 416 There, uh, I know just josep rianos had these coupon code deals and stuff like sw from time to time Go googling around asking around poking around facebook with your friends See what they know But I don't have any current hot lines to a deal on a 416 If you find one for under $800 from a reputable retailer then that's a killer deal If you find one for under $800 on ebay of probably run away There's a lot of a lot of counterfeits of that microphone. Yeah Not by a surprisingly inexpensive 416. Uh, that's new. I I have a surprisingly simple suggestion for for miss erwin It comes in a really nice case The 416 was designed to be a road warrior It is a heavy-duty microphone. It comes in that really nice case that totally protects it It is your microphone your voice. It is what your you know the setup you have in new york Is going to be this if you have the same mic Upstate and the exact same mic. You're going to be doing yourself a lot of favors I know you don't like to travel with a mic But a 416 is a lot easier to travel with than say an omen tlm 103 Or a tlm 49, uh, you know something really expensive It's a thousand dollar mic, but it travels really well It was really built to to hammer nails and still sound fabulous. So I would say until you can find that deal You know it goes in the suitcase with everything else My close proximity at a very good price would be the ntg4 that's made by road. Yeah, uh, not exact clone But pretty similar based on tests I've done on our show I another show the pro audio suite podcast that I host we did a shoot out Of the 416 against these other mics and the ntg4 did well actually the road nt1 sounded crazy similar to the 416 We were shocked and that's under 300 dollars. So you can at least have a stunt mic If you're uh, you know need a backup if you're worried about something getting lost to damage in transit So absolutely All righty. Well, who said we can't fill an hour with this geeky stuff. Holy cow. We sure did. He's always still Well, what are you gonna do? All right, well, we're gonna wrap things up right after these important messages Hey guys, this is tom also known as the voice of spongebob square pants And you want to fill your ear holes and your eye holes with dan and george and the audio body shop Snails like it too Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer that place is voiceover extra dot com Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level Stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls Voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed Learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information On topics like audio books Auditioning casting home studio setup and equipment marketing performance techniques and much more It's time to hit your one-stop daily resource for voiceover success Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voiceover audition It's all here at voiceover extra dot com. That's voice over x t r a dot com As a voice talent you have to have a website But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you and when they finally do they break or don't look right on mobile devices They're not built for market for the last decade or so The name vio to gogo has become synonymous with up to the moment expert award-winning training and voiceover performance business building and mindset But it's also been a name that requires some explanations Sometimes a repeat calling out the numeral two Well, it's time for a change. It's time for a simpler more direct and easy to spell name for their company and their training One that embodies the mission they have to train voiceover talent in the art The commerce the science and the mindset of voiceover To help make vio to go go clients superheroes to their clients Within the next few weeks, they'll say goodbye to vio to go go dot com And they'll say hello to something new and deep and intelligent And fun the new name will represent all the familiar knowledge and content David and his team have been giving you for the last 12 years Plus a whole lot more and it'll be a lot easier to spell and to type into your browser Stay tuned Before time began there was v obs dot tv watch or else And we are back to say goodbye, but don't go anywhere quite yet because we've got a few things to tell you like Next week. We'll have a special guest Who that special guest is it'll be a surprise It's always a surprise got a lot of great people coming up though Uh people are lining up. They're like they're lining outside our door because they want to be on our show Anyway, who are our donors of the week? Donors of the week we had coming across the bow ryan lealic tom pinto trey moseley pearl hewitt George widham senior. That's my dad. This is the office Uh patty gibbons diana birdsall and uncle roiz ant land productions. Thanks to all of you who donated Absolutely and show us your booths guys. I mean we had a resort to using you know George senior's office here tonight. So uh, you know, it's uh But you know We tried to match it up. It didn't quite work that way, but anyway, it's basically impossible We tried we tried to match the backdrops What are you what are you gonna do? We're uh, yeah, send into us either Portrait or not portrait landscape either not portrait or not portrait only landscape and that's and that's how you'll do that Um and send them to the guys at v obs dot tv Uh, again, if you want to work with george, where do you go? George the tech dot com and dan's over at Home voiceover studio dot com That's where we'll find us. Uh, hey, you know, we're here every We you know, we're here all the time. It seems like we never leave the booth But uh, you'll you know, we're watching tech talk next week We'll have a we'll have another live guest and then we'll have tech talk 15 Boy, it's amazing. Time is just rambling on and if you want to be in our studio like the lovely mrs. Leonard is right now Yes, show show show mrs. Leonard no no no we we have to show her in this never mind. Okay If you want to be in the audience All you have to do is right again right to us at the guys at v obs dot tv If you happen to be in the greater los angeles area Uh, and we'd be glad to have you here because it's fun to watch the show live Again, the guys at v obs dot tv. Well We need to thank our amazing sponsors. Uh, harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements v o to go go for the time being voice actor websites dot com and Collins demos. Yes, also the dan and marcie lennard foundation for the betterment of live webcasting And of course our technical director who did a magnificent job once again the sue merlino And uh, and of course lee pennie for being lee pennie Anyway, lastly my wooden family for letting me for putting up with you show and take over the office for the evening And for all and actually for all my relatives who got off the wife fight tonight to make sure I would have my libel Thank you everybody. Alrighty. Well, that's gonna do it for us, you know Not an easy business voiceover But you got to have a home studio and if you have a home studio It's got to sound the way it's supposed to sound and that's why we're here at voiceover body shop to make sure That you get it sounding right Anyway, that's gonna do it for us. I'm dan lennard I'm george wittem and somebody's Come in here. Ella and say your name I'm dan lennard george wittem and There you go, right and this is voiceover body shop or vio b All right, we'll see you next time guys. Thanks for coming