Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop and we have we're gonna have a great time tonight Yes, whenever whenever you're listening because we've got the guys from the pro audio suite Robert Marshall Darren Robbo Robertson and Andrew Peters and George and these guys talk about high-tech stuff. So George you're gonna get to introduce them and And then we're gonna talk about that and then we want your questions Because each one of these guys will give us a 20-minute answer And then just turn into a two-part show the tech talk is a might all run into one big We'll just edit it. I think it will Into an episode of the pro audio suite. We're all in trouble. Yeah This time Robbo won't edit it Yeah, or me. Are we ready George? Are we ready? We're ready team these guys. It's time for voiceover body shop right now I Voiceover body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials calm the home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements the folks who bring you source connect JMC demos when quality matters The oh heroes calm become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training Voice actor websites calm where your voice actor website shouldn't be a pain in the butt Voiceover extra your daily resource for voiceover success and by world voices the industry Association of freelance voice talent And now here's your hosts Dan and George Well, hello there. I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whidham and this is voiceover body shop or VO B S Wow, and I have a feeling we're gonna have a lot of that tonight Extra even helping Absolutely as they used to say in the Beverly Hillbillies anyway We've got the pro audio suite with us tonight And this is a podcast that you do on the weeks that we're not doing this That's right. That's right We had a little collision this week because of the timing of our having taken off a week for 4th of July So we just we slammed us all in together into because we were all we were all scheduled to be here anyway So we figured what the heck? This is a perfect time to have the rest of my my other family on the show And here they are. Why don't you introduce them? All right, great. Well From way across the pond Representing two of the most well-known well-famous cities of Australia. We have first Robbo who's coming in from Sydney. Hey Robbo. Good day. How are you? Great man, thanks for joining us and it's great to see you. You know when we do the pro audio suite It is audio only we don't even see each other when we produce it So this is actually kind of disconcerting a little a little unsettling. I had to get out of my pajamas this morning And then what's something on that? From further down the coast From a further down the coast we have Andrew Peters from the Melbourne area. Hi Andrew. How you going mate? He's the voice like a warm cup of coffee It's the remnants of COVID unfortunately. Yes the COVID cave. I succumbed to it, but I'm out Yeah, all right like so many others and last and completely least Robert Marshall from Source Elements Like not necessary is Robert Marshall Our pal Robert Marshall from Source Elements and he is also a studio owner and just quickly We'll get everybody to tell us a little bit, but Robbo is a producer. He produces our show produces television radio audio spots Andrew is a voice talent clearly and Robert Does stuff really everything at the Renaissance man we call him He probably paints as well Actually, I'm very bad at that Himself on I hear that's the only thing that I when I paint it ends up just all over my hand. It's really bad Don't make me use the gavel Yeah, what no, this is somebody found this in their attic and said hey, it looks like Dan Leonard I'm gonna see what I can find in my attic that looks like Actually two things I gotta say Dan two things one I've mentioned the Beverly Hill billies some episodes back and everyone sort of like What are you talking about? So I'm glad you actually obviously I'm out of my vintage and remembers the Beverly Hill billies Oh, and secondly, I don't know whether you ever saw I know they did an American version of a TV show called Till death I stood part. I think it was called all in the family. I mean back in the 70s, but the English one Stard a an actor called Warren Mitchell. He played a character called Alf garnet and I have to say if you Google Alf garnet It's Dan Leonard All right. So so so that's like the Dan Leonard on the shelf thing like don't yeah So guys I can get some order in this here. Tell us about the pro audio suite. How did you start it and What goes on? I'm getting a sense of what it's like. I had a prior life We were we were each guests on your show before Like separately, right? And then did we somehow end up all together and it was like you put your peanut butter in my chocolate Well, it was kind of weird because I remember we were Robert and I did a podcast called the voice of the Vio radio show and We used to get guests on and we had George as one guest We had Robert as another guest and then it was coming up for a Christmas and we thought well, let's do one for Christmas Why don't we get George and Robert? See, you know super, you know just for something different and we did And we did the show and then afterwards I called Robbo and said Do you know what that kind of works? I think Let's see if they're interested in coming and doing it permanently. So that's the short story of how it happened Oh, Robbo, but it's also but it's also the magic of the show. I reckon the magic of the show is I'm the sort of Robert as well, but sort of I'm more that the sort of producer side of things Robert while he's also a producer and audio engineer is also the sort of software techie sort of thing George with his obvious skills and AP Who spends his life in little rooms behind microphones? Well, you've got the entire gamut of the industry though, you know Both sides of the glass and like the like the tech support for both sides of the glass Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. That's an important thing now. I I'm not an audio geek And I mean from what I understand you guys get really into detail about stuff and how things are supposed to sound and stuff I can't define what an audio geek is How would you guys define it? Well, I can tell you what it isn't and that's me So we'll move over to somebody else. I would disagree with that completely Anybody who's spent as much coin in audio gear as you is an audio geek. Oh true. Good point. Yeah, okay I'll accept that Yeah, but I think the ultimate audio geek on our show would have to be I would give the award to to robert for sure Me okay. Yeah, I agree. Yeah No question.  I want to hear you louder Am I uh, am I mining falling away in the background there? How's that? Yeah, I don't want you to get stepped on and just tromping all over. There we go But that's what I do anyway. I've always done that. There's something about Robo's mic right now that like no matter how close he gets to it He doesn't sound like he's super close to it. I'm kind of hearing that too to be honest with you But see that's the ntg for you just like bash the front of it Just go yeah That's me 35 years as an audio engineer is this thing working? Yeah, hello Didn't you used to love that, you know, don't please don't touch it. Yeah Let me toss this out there and and and and see what you know comes out the other end It's gonna be very dangerous Bs is what will come out the other end. That's why we're that's why we're v obs Each one of you tell me what you think are the keys to good audio For voiceover specifically and then you can talk about all the other weird crap that you guys talked about for me for for me for voiceover Uh, it needs to sound real. It needs to sound natural. I Greatest respect Been doing radio imaging for 35 years now and the greatest respect to all the radio images out there But I hear a lot of radio images who produce podcasts and stuff like that Which is a more natural form of audio and obviously very voice driven and they Use the same tricks and effects that they use on Voices on radio promo so they can press the living hell out of it They cue the living hell out of it and to me that's not natural to me on a radio promo. Absolutely. You need to do that There's a million reasons we could sit here forever and talk about why but for a podcast It's just people sitting having a chat. I want it to sound natural. I want it to sound easy to listen to I want it to sound as unaffected as I can Um and to me, that's the trick That's the biggest. Yeah, we were just talking about because the radio promo is designed to interrupt and get your attention And that's fine, but you don't want an hour of that Essentially, that would be fatiguing. Yeah, can you imagine a documentary sounding like that? Yes Yeah, yeah, Robert you do listen to Robert you're listening to that stuff all day because you're producing it It must be fatiguing.  There's a lot of time spent just on the small speakers And and and like, you know, so there's not a lot of volume there and But yeah, no, it's um, it's it's still like very in your face. It depends on exactly what spot you're working on and um, I'm not working on like car dealership spots all day. So I But I've certainly done a number of campaigns where it is just like borderline yelling at people What are you monitoring through robbo? What am I monitoring through? Yeah, when you're editing and mixing and doing all that I've got my um Can you see them up the back there? Yeah, my beautiful adam audio a7x is which uh, I Purchased just last year. In fact, then I have fallen in love with um, and uh, and also my austrian audio Uh, I was going to say a7x and now the name of them's gone out of my head high x65 x65. Thank you Yeah, no worries mate, but but andrew's native They're sort of they've they've become my bees. I've never mixed in headphones until I had them Um, and um, and we had we talked about this on an episode of the show recently I put them on the first time and I hated them. I took them straight off And and now and now they they might go to before anything gets mixed out of proto Throw them on and um and have a listen in that as well. So um, yeah Right and as a producer, of course, you're working with multiple tracks And you're really taking the stuff that you know Any voice actor is going to send you and you're adding all of the other elements I think a lot of people think well, do I have to do that as a voice actor? And no, you're the guy that's going to be doing all the all the hard work So what do you want when a voice actor sends you a file? What do you expect from them? Oh anybody who listens to our show you can answer this Deal with the room first like yeah first thing is not an echoey room First thing and then basically a decent type of mic probably a condenser But a high quality dynamic and make sure you're in front of the stupid mic close um You know and I'd say that's the beginning of it and then after that it gets into uh The equipment but honestly these days A lot of this equipment is all good and the price range is the price range for a You know a hundred dollar usb interface and the quality it gives is You is not as different as you would think for a thousand the difference between that and a thousand dollar interface for example So it's it's pretty inexcusable these days to have crappy gear. I think It's not like telling people it's like there's no microphone out there that's going to make you perform better You know you either yeah, is that true though? Is that true though dan?   I know it's because It's going to sound better anyway with my voice as opposed to the mic he had in there before Which could have been for somebody else, but psychologically you think oh, you know, thanks It could be a placebo about me and my voice and what might fit it well Yeah, correct a placebo effect is still in effect, right? Even if it's not something that's affecting the quality or the product or you're acting It's something I I think the opposite can happen I think the opposite can happen for example sage was working on a song forever and she Um, I just had her set up with like an mbox and an old mac pro one one one mac pro And a audio technica battery powered condenser. It wasn't was not awesome at all She gave her like really basic meant entry level mediocre Equipment to start with she was just writing she was just writing a song and it was like You know, she's recording in our living room the refrigerators right there like buzzing away It wasn't expected to be a good recording No slipping Robert. She should be on a train because that's what you would normally do Yeah, you're right. She's she's really actually upping the quality. I have to But she does these vocals on basically the scratch part of this song like, you know the scratch track and For the next three months.   It's like it's like salt Audio salt So I guess the reverse question that you posed us Dan and andry would be when you're recording Are you conscious of how loud your headphones are? Do you notice a difference if you're monitoring lower as you are when you're when you've got them loud? I mean ap's deaf anyway. He probably didn't even hear me ask that question, but maybe Dan did And well when I'm recording unless I'm doing a remote session, I'm not wearing headphone I listen to myself in the environment in which I'm recording and That way I'm it's I'm not affected by it at all And I you know, it's I find it weird wearing headphones for this But because of the audio the way the audio is set up here on stream yard I've got to I got to wear the headphones But normally I just I just I just listen to myself as I am the way I normally hear myself And you know, there's people that say well, I've got to hear the mouth clicks And I got to hear this and I got to like well, it's it's like George's client Who's like who practically needs a foot pedal for his headphone volume We won't mention any names. Yeah, you're right. Just Sorry, David Kaye. Yeah But not mentioning any names. No, he's a friend of his you made a friend of David Kaye And it's like and and and definitely like some announcers depend depending on the style That you're, you know working in If you're aware of your mic technique and where you are then you need the headphones to really kind of Feel that feedback if you're playing with the proximity effect Yeah I know I know that when you're recording singers Often it helps to really compress their voice for them in their headphones So that you just kind of hear themselves. It's all in their face Yeah, so they have a different feed a headphone feed and yeah, which is separate. Yeah I see I can't I can't I can't work without headphones But I prefer not to Because if you I find it like if I'm gonna wear headphones some of the time Then I'm gonna wear headphones all the time Because if I keep changing things then I get confused as to what, you know, what it's sounding like or whatever so Headphones a hundred percent for me And what what do you use? Um I got the austrian audios I have um Hikes 55s in the booth because they're They're closed back and then I have 65s out here from just want to check and edit for whatever reason I rarely use headphones for an edit if I can't hear it through speakers and I don't worry too much And for things like this, I've just got some audio technica in ears, which I've got to say Great, they're fantastic, especially for like eliminating echo. It's a good trick when if you have those stick it when your ear plugs Well, the good thing is it's like if also if you're um out of the the studio you're traveling and you're recording in a hotel room Or you know, wherever It's actually really good to have in ears because it just cancels anything that's Via that. Yeah, I should use that next time.  I mean these are you george. What are you? You're confused now? Yeah I'm totally confused split personality. I was still wondering about five minutes ago We're doing the podcast right now because It's me. I keep reminding myself. We edit the podcast We don't edit this show. There's there's no razor blades. I'm trying very hard So if you haven't noticed, oh, they're all much less tiresome anything Anyway, uh, if any of you out there who are watching this very show at this very moment If you have a question for these guys who please save us Yes And I know jeff holman is hiding in there somewhere and we will get to those questions in our next segment but But we've got robert marshall and and and robo and andrew peters who are joining us from the pro audio suite and Again, you got a question. They'll be happy to answer them. Um okay, so Getting back to that sort of subject about you know good equipment and stuff like that I mean, I generally peach teach and preach teach and preach Keeping it super duper simple and That it's not going to be everything you do on the back end To make yourself sound like you as I like to say, you know, the idea of a home Voice-over studio specifically is not to make you sound great. It's to make you sound Like you as you exist in the environment in which you're recording and as you said earlier on robert It's like the environment means more than anything else And you know, no no echo no exterior noise those sorts of things What about some of the a lot of people use You know Somebody was like hey, I need help with my rx9. It won't install right and I'm like why are you using that? Well mouth clicks and I've got this and I've got that well to me everything is physical What do you guys think about all of this modern, you know filtering software that we have It's gonna start. Yeah, I don't use it good. Yeah. All right next question. Yeah, no rubber. I know rubber uses it Yeah, I mean something I don't use I'm just saying don't like Let let the end person mixing it deal with that and And there's no need to like start trying to process and hide stuff that will be figured out anyways Yeah, yeah, I think I I think I can see where you're going Dan and I think the answer That you're probably looking for and the one that we give on the show a lot is is really Make your room sound as good as you can You know find find the right room talk to guys like george get yourself set up Somewhere where it's going to be the best possible recording you can make and then as much as possible just leave it alone Um Guy, you know guys like me and robert. We'll we'll we've got your back We'll clean you up. You know, obviously, we're not going to send audio to our clients. It's not right and and look You know back even back in analog days and even the days before home studios We dealt with voiceover artists who had mouth clicks and all the rest of it. It's just a part of recording um So so, you know as long as you're not popping and you know hissing and and someone's mowing the lawn next door um Just just leave it leave it alone and and send it to us and let us deal with it We've we've talked about it at the most a high-pass filter. Maybe if it's set very low Like yeah, yeah 30 or 50 at the most Actually, that's really interesting You said about analog though robo because i'm just thinking in the days when we were recording on tape And the edit was done with a splice block and a china garoff or whatever you call it, you know, um What did you do about? Mouth clicks and things how did you did you cut them out? I can't remember because I was in every production cutting out mouth clicks We had a we had a compressor that was like a super fast high frequency compressor and it was it was originally made for um Taking out pops and vinyl essentially uh, okay, and but honestly the thing like like probably the worst plugins you can think of now it's like It kind of helped and if you used it too much it just made the whole situation worse and yeah, you know, it's like it could take out the really big stuff, but I mean now we're chasing down little like Like little tiny things that that aren't even like spikes above the waveform so I mean that and that seems to be an issue with a lot of people like as I was saying somebody's like I got to use rx9 because I take out all this stuff But when we talk to each other over a cup of coffee in our kitchen or something It's all there and the only reason that we hear it is because we're of course talking a little bit more in proximity To a microphone as opposed to being across a table where you're doing it. Um, but generally I don't know. I hear people they don't do mouth clicks It's only when they're doing it in voiceover for some reason and because I I tend to think that people over project they tend to over emphasize certain syllables and uh And that and that and that happens Actual vocal technique is far more important than all the other things as long as you've got the right environment And you're using your microphone right and your levels are right It really shouldn't matter unless you're really I mean, I I think that people are clicking away even when they're talking amongst each other So it's just that you're in a room when there's background noise and you're six feet away from them and All that so you're not picking up on the mouth clicks that they But I think someone who's and people have clicky days and not clicky days It depends on what you ate and how much you drank and it's like if you were how much you drank the night before too Well, I have a theory too is very well stress is a part of it Stress is a part of it But but robert and you guys that have recorded actors in legit studio, you know commercial studios Do you guys work though? Do you record the actors with the microphone this? close Traditionally like in the you know in the traditional sense you if you're in a good booth you have the freedom to Be a more away from the microphone and still have a very direct sound and then you get a more balanced Kind of frequency. It's not so bassy It's a little bit like you can almost have the same effect by just Staying just as close to the mic and putting it in omni and then You would have less proximity and it sounds more natural if Depending on the booth that they have but a lot of the trick is you get so close to it to avoid your room Yeah, so all of everybody with voiceover booths that are working in closets and All those little wood boxes. We know we all know so well Yeah, they they're forced to have to almost eat the mic because they're getting so much room resonance And it's slowly skewing and it's slowly skewing the aesthetic Yeah, well and the closer the mic is The more the mic is now sensitive to the mouth noise the mouth noise may always be there But the closer the the mouth noise is the same volume no matter how loud or soft you project, right? It's mechanical So it's like a it's like a harpsichord.  It is That's the sound the volume it is because it's plucking strings, you know Like with the mouth noise. It's just mechanical. So now when you're closer to the mic Guess what gets louder?  It just it is harder. Yeah It's interesting because we you're talking about like having a conversation in the kitchen having a bit of coffee You don't hear clicks and you don't hear anything. It's like walking into a room That's echoey. You don't necessarily unless it's like a you know a racquetball church Um, you don't hear the echo but as soon as you record something put headphones on you hear it It's there.  You can hear all four people and what and what's being said And then you just take a recording of that pretty much where you were and you play the recording back And then you can't figure out what the four people are saying as much the background always Seems way louder and your brain because you're not seeing the mouth move There's a million things that just make your brain Use filters it. Yeah There's a very clever there's a very well, there's a very embarrassing thing that i'm sure Every audio engineer who's ever walked to the planet will tell you that they've done is you'll sit there for 20 minutes EQing a voice or compressing a voice or adding a reverb And you'll go I know I'm gonna say my god, that's awesome. And then you'll look up and it's bypassed. Yeah. Yeah It's like you fell for your own producer's knob It's like it's like the knob on the desk like can you can you like do something with that? And you like turn a knob that's not connected anything like oh much better.  That's getting so much better It's your brain.  Yeah, the audio file market exactly. Yeah Yes, yeah, it's like paint your CDs green. Oh, I definitely hear that $1,000 power cables. I can tell you one of those Exactly exactly speaker cables with electrons that follow traffic directions Well, once again, we're talking with the guys from the pro audio suite If you have a question for them because I mean I got lots of questions I could talk all night which I've been known to do But if you've got a question throw it in the chat room or if you're watching on Facebook or you're watching on YouTube Because we do the show live because we want you guys talking to us and letting us know what what's on your mind and what you need to Make your voiceover practice better, especially from an audio point of view Anyway, we're going to take a quick break right now And we'll be right back with the guys in the pro audio suite right after these incredibly important messages Don't go away This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on the voiceover buddy show Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. 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It's j michael at jmc voiceover.com Now if they will stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show Inflated prices not at voiceover essentials dot com Despite the nationwide inflation rate of over eight percent voiceover essentials refuses to raise prices In fact, they refuse to even say the i-word Their inventory is large on all their products and they purchase them before the current economic conditions It's simply wrong to increase profit as many retailers are doing right now So harlin and company promised not to raise their prices during difficult times for everyone They'll stay the course steady and sure flat and firm solid and steadfast. Okay enough. You get the point Unfortunately, they're under the same inflationary pressures as everyone else And they'll need to restock in the not so distant future No doubt they'll be sticker shock for them and you So right now is the time to order that port-a-booth pro or vo 1a voiceover microphone and their vo 2.0 headphones fight inflation at voiceover essentials dot com Hey there, i'm david h laurance the 17th and with my company vio heroes and my team of coaches and my community of voiceover talent We guide voiceover actors along their journey And you may be watching v obs here, uh, and not nearly as far along as many of the other people who are watching You may not even have started yet And we actually specialize in helping you do just that so if you're watching all the stuff going on here on v obs And going i have no idea what they're talking about. I don't know, but i really want to do this I'd really like to help you Please go to vio heroes dot com slash start That's vio heroes dot com slash start and you can take our getting started in voiceover class Which tells you everything you need to get started as a voice talent And i'd love to hold your hand along the way and help you with that journey Again vio heroes dot com slash start That's vio heroes dot com slash start This is bill radner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv Hey, we're back Voiceover body shop. We're with the pro audio suite and again if you've got a question If these guys know the answer Whether it's the right one or not we'll But uh, if you've got a question throw it in the chat room Whether you're on facebook live or watching us on youtube or watching the smoke signals come over the top of the hill Uh, anyway, just put them in there and we can get those questions to these guys Uh, I I have one question I wanted to throw you guys Because this is something that comes up an awful lot when i'm talking to my clients and and helping them with their audio They're all like i want to sound warm Put it on a coat See that's that's usually what I tell them, you know, yes sometimes they're like, what do I do about the bird sounds outside? I said a shotgun You've been to italy, haven't you Anyway, when somebody says warm and we know that everybody hears differently and Certain sounds or you know people say I have a buzz and you listen. No, it's a hum. Um, like they'll say I have a hum No, it's a buzz What do people mean by warm and is that something that people should achieve? I do you want me to have a crack at this one? You got the warmest voice here It doesn't sound like you have to work too hard at it. Well, I think um, the key is uh, apart from the frog in the throat Excuse me I think uh, exactly Excuse me covered I think the warm thing is either you've either got it or you haven't I think I don't know maybe i'm wrong but uh Each voice has its own signature and some sound warmer than other voices, I guess but Um, if you've got the prerequisite to have a warm voice Stop projecting so much and cuddle into the microphone and get warm What does having a warm sounding voice mean? I don't know Well, it's another one of those. It's another one of those, you know, could mean anything sort of It implies a certain softness But still size like big and soft I would say but it's When we start using these words like for audio because they're all like touchy-feely words and yeah But if you ever had the one with the colors, I mean, I haven't heard it for a while but used to go like um Just you know when you can you just think it's kind of brown. Can you think brown?  And yeah, it's like oh Well, it's it's funny because you're talking about pantone colors, but really it's like all these different words they you know Se and edgy and boomy and and they all have different kind of spots in the frequency range Generally that people agree on and Probably pretty wide But certain words you would definitely at least agree are like say 1k and below and those would be like boomy and muffy or whatever it sounds like a Pro audio suite episode waiting to happen Yeah And talk for 45 minutes about That's the show though, that's the show Clearly to people do care about it because they keep hearing it. I want to sound this way. I want to sound that way I'm like well you sound the way you are I think yeah, I think that's right. I think you've got it. You've got to deal with your voice is what your voice is You know like how many times I hear voiceover artists making their own voiceover demos or something like that And and they obviously decide that they they want to sound a bit more warm or a bit more Thick or whatever term you want to put on it and all they do is they just they grab You know something down around 100 150 hertz and they just wind the hell out of it and and just put all this This this bottom end that's not really there into their voice and and stuff like that and it's just it's it's Coming back to what we were talking about before it's not natural No, it's not normally there. Don't don't try and make it there. Your voice is your voice It's it's stuck with it. Yeah, what yeah what you start with if it's Music or voiceover, it's like how do I sound this way or that way? It's like well sound that way That's the first thing and all the eq like It's all meant for subtle very refined changes and if you're using it for extreme stuff Then you're fixing something or trying to force it into a place that it doesn't want to be But ideally You know like you're doing this with your voice You are projecting in certain in a certain way or talking softly and that's all part of the sound of it And that's immediately we're warm or dark or whatever Comes from to start with and then I think a good example is um is Nancy Cartwright You know you think about her like like she couldn't play Bart if she sounded like Andrew Oh, no, it'd be a different kind of bar She could just like do that mid-rangey thing like I don't know It's it's it's just your voice is your voice and yes You can put your pushy voice to different places But you can still only push it to places that it's it's able to go Right.  I always find that interesting I mean, I know that Matt Cowrick is is very good at accents.  Why don't you do an American voice over and stuff like that? It's like, why would I? How many other American voiceovers are there so many? Why would I compete?  I Just noticed that's very formal of you I mean, it's a solo shirt. It's very English of me Would it be legit for a voice over throwback to my sort of skin and days or something? Shall we go for some gin and polo? Just don't ask Prince Andrew for god's sake Otherwise We got some questions from our our vast worldwide audience and I'm wondering if you guys want to Sure, George will answer the first question this part all night I reckon you should do it. Dan, you should actually get the just pull a question. I don't look at it And just pick a name of any of us and it will probably be the wrong question So that just print it write it backwards and then stick it on your forehead And then we'll answer the question and then you'll have to guess what the question was All right, George gets the first question and he can address it to whoever he wishes The first one in the audience from rob rider who's on youtube watching In from Cincinnati Um, I've been told that the normal noise floor in a quiet home Is about minus 70 db if a booth has a noise floor of minus 60 db Or better, why do we need room tone at all like for audiobooks? How about uh, robert you take this one? Oh god If if if the noise floor of a house is Lower than your booth. Why do you need room tone for um, I mean, I would call it booth tone You just because it's if if you're cutting everything and you and you edit like between one word and another word You're gonna hear the silence and your brain whoever the listener is will feel the absence of whatever it is in the background So you want to bridge that across with your edits even if you're cutting out breaths You might even just want some silence there because if not you'll feel that complete cliff down Um, anybody on headphones will especially notice this stuff because then it's not blending with Whatever room tone is existing with the speakers that they're listening in already So if you're on headphones, it's like now you're fighting against zero There's no place to hide you can hear your edits put some booth tone or some room tone in between things and it just makes Life way easier if not you have to have such an incredibly clean setup that um, it's really hard to achieve And you have to make no noises if you're move, you know Like in between words if you somehow move your arm and there's a sound and you have to get out of it Again, you're gonna hear these things be Cut in and out. Um, it sound gated and whatnot. So yeah, I mean a normal noise floor in a quiet room minus 70 b I I don't I don't I don't know where that spec comes from If you're living in a bunker, it's probably I mean if yeah, if you have a quiet home and and and and Urban suburban or or Whatever environment you could probably get that low The problem is a lot of us are in urban environments And we never get close to that level of a room tone and a quiet home And then people go inside a booth thinking it's going to be quieter And it might be all the way down to 150 hertz quieter, but from 150 or below It sometimes is louder because that room is a resonating chamber and now it makes everything Louder in those lower frequencies. So yeah, we're all fighting against different Battles in terms of room tone noise levels. Yeah, and and the other thing also to remember is is, you know, it Absolutely when the audio is raw You probably not going to notice it so much But once you start processing once you start e queuing and compressing and all that sort of stuff You actually are bringing that noise up a touch So it does become more noticeable and a compressor will just bring all your edits out.  Yeah, there's certainly we'll pick up silence. Yeah Yeah, you do want something just to fill those gaps. So um I usually I've actually got a file sitting there when I edit which is actually just The the noise of the booth Which I've captured and I just I just cut a piece and when I have to take something out like a breath or whatever I just drop it in That's how I do it. It's it's bizarre not to take this into a pro audio suite thing but Adding noise in a sense adds resolution to things Um, which is what's called dither But it can it gives a nice the easiest way to explain it is it gives a nice infinity for like For your voice to go or whatever it is that you're listening to for to fade away into So you can't tell when it went away and if if you don't have that then it's a lot harder to Kind of give us a voice over artist would also probably be horrified to know that one of the first things you reach for when you're processing voices These days is a bit of distortion Just to give it a bit of crack and crunch and and pop.  Also, when you uh, if you've got your mic set If you've got a multi pattern microphone Depending on what pattern you select when you cut at the end of a word. I know this it's You get a click What pattern is that? We talked about this only a couple of weeks ago And any pattern that lets more low end through Basically because that click is going to mainly come from leaving a waveform. The low end tends to be more So susceptible to the cut happening when it's way at the bottom of the, you know, like the waveform moving up and down Relative to zero and so if you cut there on the bottom and the worst-case scenario is the next instant is a cut on the top Physically, there's no way sound instantly jumps up like that and you get a click So something that has a lot of low end um But I remember that I used to um, you know in our in our booth at at a studio I worked at we had a crt tv and One of the engineers just didn't care that that thing was on like kicking out like 14k constantly And he just didn't hear it didn't care about it. Whatever. Um, but the funny thing is like you would scrub And you'd scrub down you're like And then that super high frequency noise would come down into like some other audio frequency And it'd just be maddening when you're editing because it'd be like you'd go into scrub You like And you'd hear it constantly because it's like this 14k signal being Pit shifted as you scrub Well, we got a question here from linda graves Uh, who says and this this is one I ask all the time because it's like why are you doing this? What does a one a $1,000 interface like a universal apollo twin duo give you That the 150 to 200 dollar interfaces do aside from the fact that you can use all those plugins Um, you have less dollars to worry about Yeah Um, the the apollo's got a pretty decent preamp. Um, and so some of those like hundred dollar 150 dollar They're gonna have a preamp that doesn't quite give you as like they might go up to a good example Is like a road ai one it only goes up to like 50 decibels of boost Um, and so maybe if you're really soft spoken or doing some asmr or something You could use the extra gain before the mic preamp gets noisy There's a hell of a lot of internal routing and other capabilities that the apollo has for dealing with latency But in the end if all you need is a mic in and headphone out and you're trying to look for simplicity the most the apollo offers you I think is a Good mic preamp and a good headphone preamp Yeah Yeah, I actually like the um the ssl 2 which is uh the interface that I use like that one. Yeah, I've been hearing that Well, it's got plenty of gain. That was a thing because robert and I were doing We're actually shooting a video for source elements as it was And uh, I was using the ai one and my daughter was doing the voice And it just didn't have enough gain for what we were trying to achieve I mean we was cranked but we we got through it, but it it wasn't ideal and uh, so robert and I afterwards started talking about Getting another interface with more gain and we scoured around and um found the ssl 2 so I bought one and that I think that's got about 60 65 or 60 60 to 65 whatever it is. Yeah, the road I think has like 45 I think and I think some of the other like less expensive interfaces are like 50 and 55 the road was honestly especially low Um, it's not bad. It doesn't but the road doesn't seem to go into like crazy noise some of them that go up to Whatever 80 and 60 or whatever when when they do get up there. They're just Kicking a lot of noise anyways, so it's kind of useless range Yeah, interesting that road would put that out with only 50 db game because the roads generally are somewhat lower output But uh, I think the reason they did it with that because it was a kit and then it came with the You could buy the condenser as it came with the nt1 one Yeah, and the nt1 has a a huge amount of gain. It's incredibly quiet So I think is a pair with the ai1 on the nt1. It worked really well It's when you start sticking other things you put a dynamic mic on that like put an sm7 with the ai1 And you're in pain. You're in trouble Yeah George you got jeff holman's question I'll do that. I just wanted to there was a follow-up from rob. He said, oh, I'm sorry I got some of the stuff backwards actually meant that the noise level in my house Is actually louder than the noise level in my booth and I think what he's I think it's a semantical thing He's asking about room tone again and room tone is just a generic term for The sound of an open microphone in a space Right without you talking. Yeah, right. So every room has a different room tone because it's unique to that space That's what we're really referring to so Yeah, your booth might have a higher should have a lower your booth should have a lower room tone than your house It would hope yeah, otherwise you wasted a lot of money, but it doesn't yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, so that's that's definitely true Um jeff holman asks. He's our very own chat room mod What's your feeling on using pre processing to audio requested to be audio without processing? Like sending in an audition with high-pass filter activated on your revelator when you're not doing post processing Technically So yeah, we talked about I don't I don't call a high-pass filter. I'll pass that one off is not Processing like you're you're allowed to use a high-pass filter as long as it's not too high everything else Don't touch it. I think yeah I think we talked about this a couple episodes ago for me it comes down to for me it comes down to Do what you have to do And but do it for a reason so have a result in mind Don't blindly reach for a high-pass filter You know, if you don't know what it's going to do or why you need it Um, leave it alone. If there's nothing sonically that strikes you that makes you go, you know, this could be a little odd Don't don't do it Yeah, how about this for an answer? If you have a problem that you know about You have two choices And that is to just let the other engineer deal with it Or you try to get rid of it And the whole question is can you get rid of it better than the engineer? Can you get rid of it without tying their hands in any way that they might go? You know what? I just didn't care about that noise at all. I didn't care at all And now this processing has done something. It's cut the end of a breath off If it's a gate or something does something weird that maybe in some for some reason is needed But if you're absolutely sure that you can solve the problem for the engineer You are doing them a favor. You're saving them time great Um, the problem is that that's not guaranteed to be what they want And so the other aspect I would say is If you can do something with your voice that you cannot stand someone not doing for you If you don't trust them like just the opposite if you don't trust the engineer to you know Tweak it up and give a little bit of a brighter eq and compress it a little bit whatever If you if you're not sure they're going to do that and you can't stand the possibility of your voice going out without that Then Sure do your stuff And the weird thing is the awkward conversation you have to have with the engineer and whoever it is It's not really that awkward but like do you want processing or not? Do you like it like this or like that be really quick at being able to turn the stuff off? Um, if you're probably doing a session with me, I'm gonna like turn it off But there might be engineers out there that do prefer it or they do want to work quick or Classically you're recording with um say direct to a client and they're editing your voice Straight in a video editor and you just know that they're never going to give it to an audio person And they're just going to spit it out of the video machine Then you might want to get ahead of the game and try to process your voice for those things, but um Yeah, you have to be confident in the processing you're doing And then you have to be willing to have the conversation with somebody to say hey I'm doing this. Do you want it or not or you can just not do it? No one expects you to do it anyways and done I think there's the only issue I can see with that though is that we all have this weird perception of what we sound like And I guarantee if you know like if voice talent decides they're going to process their voice They're going to make it sound like some something they want it to sound like not what it should sound like And that that's an issue that um, you know once it's baked you can't unbake it. So correct my advice I would say Don't don't touch you can never go wrong with not touching it Yeah I mean the thing is if you're if you're if your room is fun like we talked about before if your booth Is good, you know and the the everything that comes out of there sounds Natural as we've talked about, you know sonically fine Then even if they do stick it in there or it's not perfect But you kind of go. Well, you know, it's better than me butchering it or whatever, you know So just leave that's the thing I think that's the thing and and I don't I really don't want to sound arrogant here, but But interestingly too late too late. Yes.  Well, you know, I don't like this so I'm gonna process this way But if you give it to them and you've already had a hack of it you What you do is you push them into a corner of what they they're able to do to get the result they want So especially with compression and gating you you you can barely undo that stuff if at all Like totally how many how many guys like robo how many times have you listened to other audio engineers?  What are they doing? I mean, that's the point though.  You think it sounds like crap That's right and they may listen to my stuff and go well, that's rubbish too and that's that's not personal But but you know at least it's it's as an audio engineer They've been given the opportunity to make it crap if that's how they want it to sound if that's the sound they want to make it sound Um, it hasn't been you know It's not taken away at the beginning of the process because you've over compressed your voice or you've gated so hard You've cut stuff off and now all of a sudden I'm pushed into this corner where I've got to spend 45 minutes to an hour doing what I can to fix it for it for it and still not perfect result I mean like like a situation like this you're doing an ensemble record or it's supposed to be all this stuff recorded sort of in a in a group and One person gives you this super highly compressed Thing which doesn't sound very room-like and conversational So now you're like great. I got to make everyone sound similar I got to make them all sound like they're super compressed And then you're like Well, okay, it works and probably most people don't notice but you're you're thinking as an engineer like man If I had it differently, I would have treated these voices like that and it really would have sounded like they were all in a room And yeah, and you're just like well I had to take in a different direction because one person went there now I have to take everything there for example. Yeah. Yeah. Well gentlemen We we've reached the end of this particular hour But you're going to stick around and we're going to do tech talk for next week And if anybody's got a question for you that they are like, what are these guys talking about? We can We can we can get into that in our in our in our next hour. And anyway, uh, guys, thanks for being with us tonight Uh, it's a pleasure to meet all of you. I mean, I know most of you guys But it's always a pleasure to to talk with you and thanks for being with us. It's a pleasure to meet you guys, too I haven't seen anything You know what some of these guys look like Anyway, George and I'll be back to wrap things up right after this Beautiful. You're still watching vlbs In these modern times every business needs a website when you need a website for your voice acting business There's only one place to go like the name says voice actor websites.com Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept to Live online in a much shorter time when you contact voice actor websites.com Their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are They work with you to highlight what you do Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are And how your voice is the one for them plus voice actor websites.com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voice over career flourish Don't try it yourself.  Yes, it is To do something I've never had to do before and that is to a commercial For source elements in front of the co-founder of source connect and source elements robert marshall Um, I don't know if he knows this but I make it up every single time and I do it twice Twice the session and here we go Source connect is an amazing tool for connecting your studio to others In the in the world of production and it's it's loved by so many producers for a couple reasons one It's been around a long time to a point where it's been I would I will say safely it's become a standard, right? It's become a standard staple of A voiceover recording production because it is just it's been around a long time Maybe later when we get in the tech talk later robert can go a little bit more into Source elements history and when and when source connect was developed, but it's been a while It's been a minute as the kids say um, so it's a it's a well established tool It also the producers are recording your audio Directly into their timeline in whatever DAW they're using 95 of the time Probably pro tools and so it works in the workflow It just flows into the way the producers work and it allows a very efficient way of working It also allows them to have a client or clients and many times with big commercials There's many clients all listening in either physically sitting in a studio Or all dialed in from another system And they're all listening to what you're doing in real time giving notes giving direction Listening to approval and all of this is happening real time because your audio goes right into the track That is the key and that's why it's such a hugely popular tool And why as a voice actor you probably should be at the very least Highly familiar with it if not owning a license and if you want to do that go to source elements Dot com they have a brand new website by the way to go check it out Get familiar and get yourself a trial license so you can start learning how to use it And you'll find out very quickly whether your studio is Ready for source connect when you start testing it We can help you if you're not so don't worry about that Dan and I and the team at source elements as well We'll love to give you a little bit of advice to get your studio up to par. But anyway, there you go Thank you source elements. Thank you robert and thank you rebecca For sponsoring us for so long. We really appreciate it and let's get back to The rest of the show right after this Yeah, hi, this is carlo zellers rocky the voice of rocko and you're watching voiceover body shop And we're back and uh, we're gonna rack it up for tech talk and we're gonna have the uh Pro audio suite guys with us should make your tech update rather interesting See what they think about some of the way exactly stuff that stuff that you find Anyway, uh next week on this very show we will have Tech talk number 82 believe it or don't it just goes on and on there's just so much to talk about tech never stops It just it just becomes the next tech Anyway, uh, let's see here. We have our donors of the week like jonathan grant Oh my gosh, uh, kisser for epperson sarah borges Phillips appear tom pinto Shelly avaleno george widham senior. That's right brian page patty gibbons rob rider gregg thomas A doctor voice ant land productions a uncle right Shawna pennington baird martha con Don griffith Trey moseley danna birds off and sandra manweller if you want to make a donation to the show to keep the Amazing technical quality that we have achieved Over the last 11 years If you go to our homepage, uh v obs dot tv There's a button that says donate now you can give us a buck you can give us a buck a month You can give us 10 bucks a month. You can be like some people who give us 500 bucks a month Well done. Yeah, thank you. I Thought that would be worth it. Anyway, uh, that's important also You can join our mailing list there and you'll get a An update of what we're going to be doing this week So you know that you have to tune in to catch that stuff Uh, we also need to thank our sponsors like harlin hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra sora salamence Vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com jmc demos and World voices dot org the industry association of freelance voice talent. Yes. I'm the president But i'm also a member Uh, and I got a slip in my little promotion. It's amazing how many people don't use this coupon code You guys are crazy leaving money with 20 off any service at george the dot tech That's a booked or booked service scheduled service or a webinar If you use v obs fan 2022 yeah 20 off. All right. Very good Uh, we need to thank jeff holman for doing a great job in the chat room getting those questions in there But he's not done yet. We still gotta do tech doc and Of course sumer lino for coming home in hot weather riding her bike back from the airport and doing the amazing stuff That she does is our technical director. So we thank her for that and of course lee pinney just for being lee pinney Anyway, that's gonna do it for this show and we're gonna re-racket for tech talk If you got questions put them in the chat room. Anyway, you know, this isn't an easy business There's so much you gotta know but As long as your audio sounds good. It is good. I'm dan lennard. I'm george widdum and this is voiceover body shop or v. O b See you in a bit


Hey everyone, welcome back to Airman Vision. Today I'm going to be talking about creating your job list for the Air Force. So this process has changed over time. You used to select jobs when you were at MEPs. Currently in 2021, the way the process works is you go to MEPs and once you swear in, you get a list of jobs that you are qualified for and all of that depends on how you did at MEPs and if you pass your vision and hearing and certain medical things, you may get some jobs disqualified if you like didn't get a high enough score on certain things. So basically, once you pass MEPs, you swear in, you get your job list and you sign your contract at MEPs. But then after MEPs, you'll go to your recruiter's office. Today's the day I am going to turn in my job list to my recruiter. And your recruiter will talk to you about the different jobs that you qualified for to help you create that list. But honestly, I suggest making a list of jobs beforehand. Don't wait until you find out everything that you're qualified for. I would go ahead and look over all the Air Force jobs and make a list before you go. And then you can match up what you qualify for versus the jobs that you're interested in on your list. And if you want to know how to make a list ahead of time, I actually made a video. So for me, I am joining out of Huntsville, Alabama and my MEPs location is in Nashville, Tennessee. And day two of MEPs is the day that you swear in after you pass. And it was a really long day. I have my video of MEPs day one and MEPs day two if you guys haven't seen those. And I literally go step by step of what the entire day was like if you want to go check those out. After MEPs was over, you wait until the shuttle takes you back unless you drove yourself. Regardless, you might have some distance in between your recruiter's office and where MEPs was. So I had a two-hour ride back home. I was supposed to meet with my recruiter that day. Texted him and told him you can just go ahead home because we're not going to be getting back until late. I had MEPs the other day. I swore in and it was on a Friday. That was the weekend. Now today's Monday. So meeting back with my recruiter to turn my list in. So let's go in here and get it done. I just went into his office. He printed out the list of jobs that I qualify for. But I actually got that list at MEPs as well. I had already set up a list of jobs that I wanted to have. And then after I had the list of jobs that I qualified for, I matched everything up to make sure the jobs that I wanted were on the list that I qualified for. So I had my list of eight jobs ready to go. Feeling real confident about it all. I'm like, let's go. This is it. This is the job that won. And then just in case anything happened that I wasn't able to get one of those, I made a list of secondary jobs that I was going to fill into those spaces. So that's kind of what ended up happening. You nervous? No. My recruiter would have like talked to me more about all the jobs, but I had actually done my own research before, so I didn't need to. He just was like, okay, what do you want for your number one? Administration is number one. And then he just filled it in number two. And I had to do a list of eight jobs and one index or aptitude area. And then those categories are admin, general, electrical and mechanical. So everything's going good. I'm filling out my list the exact way that I want it to be. And then we got to the job paralegal. So that one, we can't actually list down that one. You have to do it. That's something I saw online and I said that might be the case, but I didn't know so I still was going to listen until I found out. Which I'm actually kind of confused about because I have had a few people comment on videos here on Airman Division saying that they're getting ready to go to basic training and they're joining as paralegal. You did qualify for India. I know that's when you mentioned before.  So that's all. I mean, you qualify for a ton of good jobs. I had an empty slot now and I needed to fill it. But thankfully I had like three or four jobs on my secondary list that I was going to be like, you know, if something happens, I can't put one. I'm just going to put one of those secondary jobs on there. All right, I locked in my job list. I'll explain later what happened with some of the jobs. I freaked out a little bit, but I finally made it official. But then when it actually came time for it, I started freaking out a little bit. I'm like, I don't know if I want to put one of these jobs down. I don't know. What should I do? And I had a really high ASVAP score and my recruiter is like, Oh, you should do a job like this or like this because like you have a high ASVAP score for it. And I'm just like, I don't know what to do because I made my list. So this wouldn't happen. I don't know. Under pressure. I'm like, so basic training should be a fun experience. You guys, I think it's going to go great. But then in instances like this where I'm like, what is the right decision to make? We'll see. It'll be funny. Better being told what to do instead of what do you want to do? That's him boy. What do you want? Yeah. Instead of like choosing it for myself on the spot, I'm like, what is the right decision? I ended up not even using one of the secondary jobs that I put. My recruiter was suggesting me to do Intel jobs, which I had looked into those and I just decided like that's not a job that I wanted to do. But those are jobs that you can get with a higher ASVAP score. So that's why my recruiter was suggesting them to me. And since I had such a high score, he allowed me to put a second medical job on my list as long as the commander approved it. So this is the final list that I turned into my recruiter. These are the jobs that I am weighing on and the admin index area. And yeah, I can't wait to find out what I get. A lot of the jobs that I have on my list don't require like a crazy high ASVAP score, which is why my recruiter was suggesting some of the other jobs. I just like to work with people and I think these would be good jobs for me.  And it's one of the jobs that I want. And you said earlier, you don't really care for high pressure situations. Yeah. And so like being in an Intel job where it's like, you need to get this information out. Now someone's like depends on it. It's like. Yeah. It's like I would be smart enough for Intel, but like on the outside, I would be like freaking out. It's like I have the knowledge, but not the composure that I need for it. But like I mentioned earlier, even though I did this and I still freaked out, research ahead of time, make your list ahead of time, have your secondary list just in case there might be something that you don't qualify for or there might be something like me where it wouldn't allow me to put it on my list. So best of luck. I just want to share my job list with you guys and how everything went. And I'm excited to find out what I get. I got my Air Force t-shirt. I'm excited. All right. So we're good to go. You gave me a swag bag. If you are in Huntsville, Alabama, this is the guy to talk to. This is my recruiter, Sergeant Brandon Wheat. And then back here we have Sergeant Dustin Davidson. So if you guys are interested in joining the Air Force, come and check them out also in the description below you guys can follow them on their social media. So if you guys have any questions, you can reach out to them there.


I want to ask you about how creativity or art has influenced you in your life. We actors and writers use our lives as materials for different projects and pieces. We use somebody else's dialogue, but we use our life to relate back to certain things. And that's how we make it, because it's all about emotion, really. It's not an intellectual thing, and that actually gets in the way of creativity. So everything in the arts would be from the heart. I mean, first of all, it's pretty universal. I went to Jordan recently, it was kind of a cultural exchange, and I talked to their actors, and I talked to writers, which was very interesting, too. And we had some other American writers with us, and so I sat in on their things as well. I had some input on writing. It was certainly something we learned about, and we judge a lot. So it was kind of nice being able to do that with them. And it's very interesting that all that's pretty universal.  In some ways, it's all the same. Do you remember a time in your life where you were tested as a human? Were you tested your limits? I've been through some awful divorces. I remember doing a boxing movie. That was like four or five-month commitment, and I was in incredible shape. It was an unbelievable shape. And that was fun, and that was nice. But I have to admit, I was a little crazy by the end of it, getting a little obsessed.


What's up internet? I'm a big fan of wired and they have a series where they interview famous people in their wired autocomplete interview where people answer questions asked about them from the internet. So hindi naman ako sikat, feeling sikat lang and inisip ko na may YouTube channel naman tayo, let's answer some questions. So this is hardware sugars wired but not officially wired autocomplete interview. Sir, is your PC activated? It is and I bought my windows key from cdkeyoffer.com Pang 5 minutes nagsiziki ka na para sa windows mo. Maraming na kaming na tulungan. Dati, sadong di purta ko. But now, I'm from a log of my life. Dati, ikin resen walang purta sang life ko. But now, I'm a world-class Zumba instructor. So web developer ako and content creator for a YouTube channel and ngayon ganun pa rin ako pero activated na yung windows ko. Kaya ako naghanap ka ng legit, mura at original software. Check out cdkeyoffer.com First question, who is hardware sugar owner? What wrong gamar? Basically two brothers, Anton and Rafael, you've seen us in a lot of the videos. We wanted to put up a PC shop that would be a pleasure to go to. Hindi yung masakit yung ulamo, dealing with customer service, hindi yung nainis ka having to go to the shop. So we're just really two guys who like computers a lot and who are really annoyed with the existing shops in the country. What is Anton's job? Bum! Basically, everybody does something for hardware sugar and I appear on camera occasionally to boost marketing. I draw salary from the shop but most of the hard work is really done by the people of camera, our amazing techs, our amazing staff. So really my job is just to read scripts of camera and look like it is spontaneous. Is hardware sugar a PC store? I actually don't know. These questions are all new to me beforehand. The thing is na supposedly ito yung mga sinasearch ng internet and we got some from our Discord members. For sure, yes, definitely our shop is in Makati, on ChinoRoses, yes, we are a full service PC store. Please come on over. Is hardware sugar legit? Short answer, yes, long answer. Ikaw lang makasabi noon. Do your own research. Look at sub online, look at the reviews, look how long we've been in business. Because I can tell you that we're legit but why should you trust me? Why should you listen to me? Ikaw dapat magsabi noon. If I were a scammer, siyempre sasabihin ko sayo legit ako. Kung legit ako, siyempre sasabihin ko rin na legit ako. Either way, the answer would be the same. So ikaw lang talaga makasabi. Do your own research if hardware sugar is legit. Pero spoiler alert, yes. What is hardware sugar name from? Again, wrong grammar, whoever is searching for us online. Hardware sugar's name comes from, I wanted it to be, unang gusto kong masaya.  PC, feel in the blank. Quest, feel in the blank. I mean, not to, di ko naman inaano yung ibang shops but they all sound so boring. So I wanted something na reflecting something fun and a treat. So yung sugar, masama para sayo. You put sugar in chocolate, you put sugar in desserts, but sugar is really nice to have. You know, you're feeling bad at the end of a long day, you have a chocolate cake, ang sarap niya. That's the kind of feeling I wanted when you buy from us.  But you deserve it, give yourself a treat. At the same time, I needed to put something na connected naman sa computer para lang di naman sobrang layo nung sugar. Kaya naging hardware, PC hardware and sugar. Because yes, it's bad for you, but it's also a treat that you should indulge in from time to time. Let yourself live a little. What is hardware sugar? History. We were around five years old, and we started in a very small shop sa Buendia.  Like, pwede kong we've done videos in it before, I can stretch out my arms tatama from one wall to another. And then we moved to a bigger place, and then now we're in our biggest place yet dito sa Cina Roses. We started because we wanted a shop that was friendly, that would get us the parts that we wanted, that would do things differently. Ang daming mga sales practices na ayon namin. You're spending so much money buying PC hardware. Dapat masaya yung experience. And that's really where the root of the shop came from. Yung as with most businesses, it came from the fact that we thought we could do better. There's a lot of room for improvement in general. Para sa amin, and also other PC stores in the country. What is hardware sugar? Vision. To be honest, I find mission-vision statement so corny. I hate it. It's so corporate. You have all these big corporations. Our mission and our vision. Tapos yung argument doon, you need to have a vision to know where you're going. But I really think it's BS. Yung andami mga highfaluting things sa sinasabi. Yung sa amin ng talaga, fun, cool parts for cool people, no BS warranty. I mean, we distill what we want in these very short, actionable, easy-to-grasp concepts. If, you know, cool parts for cool people sounds very flippant, but actually it's not. And we do prefer na when you come to us, your mind is open to suggestions about your PC. But also na sometimes, kahit with our best efforts, may masisira na component, may aberya sa build, and we just roll with it. That's the kind of customer that we like to be honest. That who is upfront with what he needs and we're upfront with what we can provide. And if usually, it's a very smooth experience, but if something happens, don't worry, we will be there for you and hopefully you can bear with us sometimes when some bumps on the road come along the way. Cool parts for cool people, no BS warranty. Is hardware sugar legit na naman to? Palagin nalang legit. Ah, yass, a scam. So I used to teach English. These are basically the same statement. Is hardware sugar a scam? Is hardware sugar legit? Again, and I'll just say the same answer, I will tell you that we are not, but you shouldn't trust me. I am some stranger on YouTube. The best person who can answer this is you, the viewer, the one asking the question, best to do your own research. And in typical wired fashion, we will toss that and hand the next one over. Is hardware sugar legit scam? Hiring. We are currently not, but please do send us your resume to hardwaresugargmail.com. We keep everyone's resume on file because we are always open to new people if we need them. In fact, a lot of our staff were just kind of like walk-ins or they submitted their resumes just through the email. Does hardware sugar repair PCs? Yes, we do. We have diagnostic services, so we can let you know if there is a part that is faulty, actually repair the part if it's a hardware problem. We don't have board experience to actually solder or fix GPUs or motherboards or the actual hardware. But if it's a software problem, yes, we can try to fix it and save by formatting windows. But bottom line, we can definitely let you know what is wrong with your computer. Does hardware sugar repair laptops? Same banana. We can do diagnostic services although we're a bit limited for that. What we do for laptops is we can upgrade the storage and the RAM and we can clean them. But diagnostic wise, if it's software, we might be able to help but if it's hardware, medya mahirap na yun. We have more flexibility for our desktops because we have a lot of spare parts. We can swap them out to do trial and error which part is broken for desktops. Hirap kasi sa laptops a lot of the innards yung log nya medyo proprietary. You just can't swap it out willy-nilly. Does hardware sugar on our warranty? Really, somebody asks this ba? To be honest, we are the only, we are the easiest PC shop to get warranty from. Yung no BS talaga yun. We don't ask for the original packaging. 90% of the time we don't even ask for your receipt because we can look it up in our own records and even if it's past the one year shop warranty, we will still help you try to claim on the manufacturer's warranty. If you don't believe me we have a lot of documented cases on our Facebook I'll leave the link in the description below na kung sa namin kung likwento yung ibang warranty stories namin and I can say with a straight face that we've helped a lot of people hassle para sa shop it's a lot easier to say ah lampas na no shop warranty wala ka namin pa kaisayo but we're not like that no BS warranty and it's backed up by the stories we share on our Facebook. Thus hardware sugar build custom PCs actually we only build custom PCs kung yung definition mo ng custom PC wala kaming set na build so a lot of other shops they have these like build alpha build epsilon parang ganyan na ready made na siya kami lahat nung PCs namin custom build the customer has to tell us what they're looking for magsuggest kami or if the customer has something in mind and then we will find the hardware that matches that gusto nung customer 3070 maghanag kami na 3070 will suggest CPU et cetera so it's really very parang kung sa damit hindi siya ready to wear custom made talaga siya because we always ask our customers what do you need the PC for and marami na beses we ask the customers what do you need the PC for they'll be like oh I want to spend 80,000 I just need it for basic surfing conting word processing Excel parang ganon kami pa magsasabi keep your money save your money we can do that build perfectly fine for 35K 40K 30K if you let us know what you need we can tailor the hardware and the budget to what you really need para di ka rin mag overspend personal question what is Anton's I actually do not usually advertise I think it's the first time I'll mention it on camera we have done when we reached 60,000 subscribers we did have a video sort of like this but I was reacting to mean comments and then I was drinking live while I was doing the video I have mentioned before my academic background and things like that I am a lawyer I used to teach English now I teach marketing all of those things but I have never mentioned my school expressly although some people have guessed it in chat and I am very amused when people correctly guessed anong school ko let me just say that my brother is from Lasal let me just say that I am not from Lasal and you wouldn't catch me dead in Lasal so that is one very sure clue kung anong school ko and I graduated grade school, high school college and Juris Doctor J.D. from there that school na kaaway ni Lasal oh shoot the helpful staff I just pointed out that I was an idiot and there was a hidden question and what is Anton's PC you have seen me build my PC we did a video on it link somewhere here or other the CPU is second hand from the shop the GPU is also second hand so that's a 3700X CPU and a 3080 GPU both of them second hand from the shop because I'm cheap AF and if I can save as much as possible kahit dun sa personal rig ko I will and everything is housed in the very nice thermal take core P3 I don't even have the glass on in the front of the P3 I just keep it you know naked that's how I like my computer and does hardware sugar build budget PCs yes we do I mentioned that just let us know what you need and we can set the hardware to your budget and we've done a wide range of builds ang hirap din kasi what is budget for someone can be not budget for someone else so it's hard to you know give a range but we have done all sorts of builds for all sorts of people and just PM us or look at what we have on our site we can definitely fix you up with something and now it's time for the bonus round with completely unknown questions actually medyo kinaban ako this bonus round might be exclusive just to YouTube members so if you want to check out the rest of the video please do think of signing up were there any other ideas to what the store name could have been besides hardware sugar no I can't think of any alternatives that came close to hardware sugar I think that's also because of our graphics designer who is now our video editor very early on they came up with a very attractive logo sila ni Rocky na baka pa rang candy inside a monitor and I think that really crystallized the kind of effect na I wanted yun nga it's a treat might be a little expensive it might be a little bad for you especially after your spouse or your partner finds out just how much you spent on that graphics card but it's something that you should indulge in treat yourself so no I don't think there were any other serious contenders for that wow parang nubila na toa what can you say about comments that you day you that your store isn't worth it because your items have significantly higher prices compared to ay secret pala yun compared to others compared to others it is so difficult hats off to the other people doing wired auto complete interviews what do I say basically the question is asking but ang overpricing nyo and my answer to that is actually we are not if you compare our prices to other stores and it's super easy to compare our prices to other stores because we ourselves compare them in a monthly YouTube video every month we do a video called price watch where we look at the prices of GPUs and CPUs in the country we don't say what shops we compare the prices to but these are the biggest shops in the country and from there you can easily that data is accessible to anybody online we're very transparent about it so from there you can look how much the average price is for that component versus how much we are selling it for usually it is around the same price sometimes even cheaper that being said of course there are price differences because we are one shop yung volume nung goods namin di kami makakompet dun sa ibang malaking PC stores as you know the more goods that you buy mas malaki yung discount since small shop kami we can't avail of the bulk discount a lot of the time so there will be instances where yung prices nung big stores mas malaki and that's just the way the game works we just really can't afford it because the bigger stores are getting discounts hopefully in the future if we get bigger we can match those prices but it's an interesting thing about online pricing since we are a PC shop I do have access to all the price lists of the different suppliers of the different brands when I go online yung iba mas mura pa kaisa sa supplier list yung iba I can go to a PC shop and we have done this to be honest like for my own personal needs I will go to a different PC shop not from our suppliers kasi mas mura pa yung PC shop na yod I have no idea how they do it kung gray market sila meaning that they import directly from outside not from the authorized distributors here whether they just want to sell it at a loss kasi for vat purposes or whatever there's some other commercial interest or purpose behind it I have no idea but as someone who has access to supplier price lists I am often very surprised when I see the prices of other stores talo pa nila talo pa yung retail price talo pa yung retail price yung supplier price I have no idea how they do it and just last about being OP I think also in a way it's a little bit of a misconception because of the way that we market ourselves we like saying that we are usually focused on enthusiast builds we the way that we present our channel I've seen comments na hindi pang masa I don't quite know what that means I guess that's the fault of the host that's my fault although I try to be on the channel and in the shop as welcoming and accommodating to everyone as possible but I have seen those comments na hindi pang masa yung hardware sugar I think that kind of perception bleeds into the perception about the prices but if you look at it from a dispassionate data perspective sometimes the prices are good sometimes the prices are not and we are completely okay if you go elsewhere if you find that the price is cheaper elsewhere and if kung habul mo lang yung pinakamura for sure may mas mura sa amin but for sure walang makakatalo sa nobis warranty namin and 98% of the time 99% of the time walang makakatalo sa customer service namin sometimes 1% of the time yes we do make mistakes but we do try to correct them as much as possible and to learn from them and that's what you get when you buy from us here at hardware sugar next question how big can we expect from you very big will you oh you mean the shop will you play will will you plan to have SM branches in the future I think the question goes into our expansion plans I don't think we will have in I would like to have in the malls yes I don't know if SM would be the way to go but actually our expansion plans are we want to cover first Luzon but strategically probably the next branch will be somewhere in far view I mean fair view far view so it's far view then Bulacan or then Las Pinas area so we kind of cover the northern part na edging to the fringe of Metro Manila and then same with the south medyo fringe in Metro Manila so those are the two sites that I probably want to get but I also want to get sana like a mid QC branch and then the beauty of hardware sugar is that we can be in places na hindi masyadong sikat so we don't need to be in the malls because we do get a lot of publicity from the channel and from the facebook page so it's nice that customers do feel that worth it naman to visit them kahit hindi sa mall but what we do need is a place with good parking we've learned that in our second branch and here in our third branch yung third branch namin current branch daming parking especially during weekends so that's something that we really have to take into consideration moving to the future so SM branches may be a long time from now but definitely not in the medium term planning sugar piece and with that thank you so much for watching this was a bit longer actually than I anticipated yeah but thank you for watching the channel thank you for buying from the shop a lot of the questions dealt with will hardware sugar expand if we can because we have a lot of loyal customers and we have money in the bank yes we will pa minsan may nagtatanong kumikilala ba kaming computer shop na trusted yung hindi kalolo ko hin actually meron kami full service pc store ang hardware sugar nagbabenta kami ng pc components nagbabenta rin kami ng fully assembled rigs we clean computers kasama na rin yung excellent cable management namin and CPU cooler repasting sa cleaning we also clean and repaste gpus na sa makati yung physical store namin and you can also buy from our site www.hwsugar.ph na 100% palaging up to date yung inventory kung instock yung item sa amin available yung sa site we also ship nationwide thanks for watching and maybe one of these days maghita tayo sa shop


Uh, hello? Hello? Is this mic on? Wait a sec, there's no mic. Oh. Oh yeah. Patchman usually just does this telepathically, huh? Ahem. Let me start over and introduce myself properly. I am Sheepatch. Some of you spirit science veterans may remember me when I was much younger in some of the much earlier episodes and parables, but it's been a hot minute since I've been here, and man am I excited to be back. We do operate in a universe of duality after all, and I'm here to bring the podium some feminine instead of just masculine energy all the time. To put things simply, sometimes Patchman gets the edge to go on adventures or relax for a bit. The poor guy does tend to work himself to death sometimes. And so when certain topics or episodes resonate well with a feminine energy, he'll call me up in the good ol' astral plane and out present the wisdom in his stead. I hope you snazzy souls are as excited as I am, and in advance I'd like to thank you all for welcoming me here. And with that out of the way, let's take a deep dive into today's topic. Eastern Buddhist principles of aesthetics reveal a minimalist sense of beauty that appreciates and even elevates natural difference, simplicity, and understatement. You know what? You're pretty beautiful.   And even if you're going through a tough time at the minute, like most of us are, let's be real. Just know that everyone here at Spirit Science is super proud of you, even if all you did was get out of bed today. And boy, what a day it's going to be because we're going to get real wholesome. And to celebrate my arrival today is the grand launch of our all-new Almanac of the New Age. Stay ahead of the game and grab your copy of the 2022 Cosmic Forecast with a special launch offer. And now, let's dive into today's special presentation. We don't often think about what exactly it is that makes something or someone attractive. Since for the majority of us living in the Western world, our particular notions of attractiveness and aesthetics have almost become ingrained in our culture. When we see someone hot, we have a whole host of reactions internally, usually before we even interact with them, that lets us know we find that person attractive. But why? What is it that dictates attractiveness? It can't be completely objective since everyone likes different things and has different tastes in partners. And yet you can always say someone is conventionally attractive. And if the rising popularity of plastic surgery is anything to go by, there is definitely an idealized version of Western beauty. In short, like pretty much the rest of Western society, our ideals of beauty were heavily influenced by the Greco-Roman philosophers of antiquity, who prized notions of ratio, proportions, and symmetry at the highest ideals of nature and the perfection of beauty. To the Greeks, geometry was an almost divine science. Such ideas were so strongly a part of Greek and Roman thought that it was even embodied in their architecture. You only have to look at the perfect geometry and ratios at the Parthenon or the Eurektheon and Athens to see the idea manifest itself best. But having filtered through to us today, even though we don't have all those lovely temples and shrines in the streets, press F in the comments for that, rip, the notions of symmetry, ratio, and proportion remain just as important to us, except now they're applied to people. Typically, if you were to ask, what makes a guy look like an absolute snack, the likely answers would probably be a chiseled jawline and slash or washboard abs. Sometimes you might get the whole upside down Dorito chest shape thing thrown in two if you're talking about body shape. For girls, it's usually the hourglass figure, which again is pretty much defined by having certain things in conventionally nice proportions or ratios in comparison to other things. Then people get even more picky at their extra vein and will split hairs over things like no shape or cheekbone symmetry. And for the love of all that is holy, don't even get a girl started on the whole thick meme these days. But humans aren't buildings. And even though we have been culturally conditioned to like symmetry, it's kind of a big lie. According to the CPT theorem in physics, there is a fundamental symmetry between particles and antiparticles in our universe. In fact, there shouldn't even be any difference between our universe and one where all particles are exchanged with antiparticles or vice versa. If the universe was also reversed in time and space. But here's the thing. Antimatter is crazy rare. It costs like 62.5 million dollars a gram just to make. There must be a difference of balance in the universe, because the theory says that equal quantities of matter and antimatter should have been produced during the Big Bang. And when particles and antiparticles meet, they annihilate each other. But nowadays, we almost only observe particles. So in order for our universe to even exist, there must be an imbalance in nature. In other words, the universe is not perfect. It's not equal or symmetrical. But in that imperfection is true perfection. Otherwise, we couldn't exist. So if you're worried about getting a symmetrical thigh gap, don't sweat it. Even the universe doesn't have one. And look how beautiful it is. There's also an argument that genetics play a factor. Biologically, our monkey brain is smart enough to realize that conventionally strong features are a result of good genetics, which make for better breeding opportunities and increase the quality of our gene pool. But then again, it isn't 10,000 BC anymore either. But if symmetry isn't the only thing that can dictate beauty, how can we reconcile this in perfection? Especially if advances in cosmetic surgery and social media are effectively democratizing physical beauty in people.  If you're broke, download all the deep fake photo editing apps you can so we can all be envious of your body that doesn't exist and is impossible to obtain. And while you're at it, caption your pics with inspirational body positivity quotes for that extra sprinkle of irony on top. If you're wealthy, go Google the nearest plastic surgeon. Honestly, the growing popularity of plastic surgery is really disheartening for me. Western culture claims to celebrate diversity in beauty and body types, especially in more left-leaning environments. But the fact that nose jobs and liposuction are becoming increasingly affordable, it just shows that this whole freedom of body thing is just a profitable, sick illusion. Even Barbie, who has gone through her fair share of body type changes in an effort to appear more inclusive, still, at its heart, places bodily symmetry and fetishized feminine cuteness as markers of personal identity. Beauty, especially for women, is made out to be unrealistic examples of youth, perfect skin, and unfortunately hypersexualized hourglass tropes. And even the elective surgical community enforces these ideals by pushing and complying with them when people come through the door because it's, you guessed it, a good profit. But medical professionals aren't really to blame, since they are just as much influenced by culture as we are. The blame really lies with us, with our awareness and consumerism and the popularity of influencers on social media that display unrealistic lifestyles in the marketing companies that push that agenda. Without buying into notions of the other, or exoticism though, the answer to redefining our relationship with beauty and ourselves may come from traditional Japanese aesthetics like Wabi Sabi and Kintsugi. At the heart of Zen Buddhist and Eastern philosophies lies concepts like se, which means purity, and fukinse, meaning irregularity or asymmetry. And by valuing or appreciating mono no aware, the beauty and transience in impermanence, we may be able to free ourselves from that attachment we have to our bodily image. Calling Wabi Sabi a philosophy would be way too simplistic. It is a worldview and perspective of Japanese aesthetics that underpins much of Japan's cultural norms on what is even considered tasteful or beautiful, and is a cornerstone of daily life. Originally, Wabi and Sabi were separate ideas, and neither really translated into English very well. Wabi originally referred to the loneliness that comes from living in nature, away from society. And Sabi meant something like chill, or withered. But around the 14th century in the Kamakura period, the meaning changed and began taking on more positive definitions as newer schools of Buddhism integrated with Japanese culture and taught the idea of the three marks of existence. Wabi came to refer to the idea of rustic simplicity, freshness, or quietness, and could be applied to both natural and human made objects to denote a kind of understated elegance or grace. It can also be used to refer to the quirks and anomalies that arise from the process of making something, which are seen to add uniqueness and elegance to a finished object. Sabi, on the other hand, came to mean the beauty or serenity that comes with age, or more literally, the withering of the self, when the life of a person or object in its impermanence becomes apparent in its wear and tear, or any visible signs of aging. When the concept comes together, Wabi Sabi recognizes and appreciates the beauty of aging and imperfection that makes things unique. Within it, imperfections are not defects or things to be covered up, but things to be embraced as markers of experience. Above all, it acknowledges the transient nature of our life and values the freedom that comes from being authentic.  For us as people, on a relatable level, this encompasses stuff like stretch marks and blemishes and basically encourages you to see your body as a means of expressing your individuality. You are not your body, but you can use it to express the you inside, and every mark, blemish, and freckle that you have is unique to you. No one else has a stretch mark in the exact same place, and equally, no one has the same experiences as you either. Wabi Sabi teaches us to own our individual journey and find meaning in the marks we get from it. It's kind of similar to the French idea of Joli-laid, which prides the distinct beauty that you see in someone when their charisma triumphs over their nervousness and demeanor. Now, this isn't to say that Wabi Sabi is about letting yourself go as you age, but rather it revalues the authenticity and humility that comes from a mature respect for incompleteness and impermanence. In a nutshell, Wabi Sabi appreciates the truth in whatever way it comes, and truth always has an unselfconscious beauty that transcends human ideas like good or bad or beauty and ugliness. Following its adoption by Japanese nobility, the perception of this truth through Wabi Sabi was honored as one of the first steps to Satori, Zen Enlightenment, and even in modern Japanese, Wabi Sabi is often translated as wisdom and natural simplicity. To a Zen Buddhist student, Wabi Sabi is a type of training where you can learn to find the most basic, natural objects interesting, fascinating, and even beautiful. Wabi Sabi can change your perception of the world in such a way that a chip or crack in a vase makes it more interesting and gives the object greater meditative value. Similarly, materials at age like wood, paper, and fabric become more interesting and valuable to contemplation as they exhibit changes that can be observed over time. If any of you watching by chance are musicians, just think about how much nicer and warmer a vintage warring guitar sounds after it's been played for 30 years, or even how much richer an emotional and old piano sounds compared to an electric keyboard, the certain melancholy beauty in impermanence and imperfection and contemplating its nature is the essence of Wabi Sabi. Going deeper, within Wabi Sabi we also find the tradition of Kintsugi. This is the name of the process whereby a potter fills a crack and a cup with gold inlay and it's absolutely gorgeous. Kintsugi is the focused aspect of Wabi Sabi in the means of taking action when something is broken or has been damaged. Importantly though, we shouldn't realize it is not simply a means of repairing the old pot or the old self, but rather transforming it into something stronger, more beautiful, valued, and appreciated through having been broken and visibly mended. When a pot is repaired after being cracked, that break becomes part of its history and shapes its nature and instead of trying to cover it up, Kintsugi aims to highlight and enhance it in an effort to acknowledge and even celebrate the beauty in what was once broken but has now been strengthened. When something is broken, the wounds and cracks that result from it live on through visible or in this case people, sometimes invisible scars, but in contrast to the western view of scars as something to be subconscious of, Kintsugi treats the cuts as stories of healing and learning. While it doesn't celebrate the wound itself, every cut communicates an aspect of the object's journey. In people, we can see our wounds and traumas as such stories in our life's history and by acknowledging them and reading our own journey through the scars it leaves on us, we can begin to move from brokenness to recovery and eventually even happiness in something reminiscent of Hemingway. The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at broken places. In terms of philosophy, the repair of a broken pot with gold inlay can be understood as a visual representation of how virtues like generosity and kindness are the veins of gold of humanity that also help us to reframe and heal from physical, mental, emotional and spiritual traumas. Rather hilariously, according to Japanese folklore, the invention of Kintsugi occurred when the Japanese Shogun sent a damaged Chinese T-bowl back to China for repairs in the late 15th century. When it returned, repaired with ugly metal staples, it prompted Japanese craftsmen to look for a more aesthetic means of repair that incorporated the whole journey the pot had been on. I'm sure there's a maiden China joke in there somewhere. So remember, things are not perfect and we shouldn't try to pretend that they are. Yet in that imperfection lies a beautiful truth of our existence that is perfect and true. Both Wabi-Sabi and Kintsugi pose us to contemplate the transience of life and indifference in the universe, exemplifying the idea that sometimes we have to be broken in order to release the light inside of us. Life is crazy. There's no two ways about that, especially when you go through things that change you and many times even scar you and you just have to keep going internally wondering how people can go by you so when changed by it all.  Till next time, toodles!