Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number 73 73 I always think a ham radio because I'd remember my dad saying 73s when he was signing off from a conversation That was his set that over that was no, that's that's the ham. I amateur radio speak for see you later Yeah, 73s. No, like ten four or see ya upside. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Alrighty We got lots of cool stuff to talk about tonight You've got churcher always looking at all this stuff and then reporting it back to us You report the stuff of the week in tech We're gonna get to that again if you've got questions throw them in the chat room right now If you got a problem with your home studio or a question about equipment or just general stuff about what makes your audio good We'll be happy to answer might be some ranting. Oh and yes, this is going to be an official rant episode Yeah, stay tuned for that. It's voiceover body shop tech talk coming up right now From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe. They bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional video studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you Create a professional sounding home VO studio and each week They allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest and VO tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop Tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials calm home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites calm where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt Vio heroes dot com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training J. Michael Collins demos when quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success and Now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio In Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Well, hello there by the way, I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whidham and this is voice over body shop or VO Bs tech talk tech tech talk tech talk Talk talk talk talk Thank you Jeff. All righty. Well, of course you keep seeing that picture of the Hollywood sign supposedly they've You know after the Super Bowl they made it something about, you know, congratulations rams or something I don't know how they did that But do you have to put on special glasses to see it? Maybe that's what it is Of course, I remember when they legalized pot in California and someone changed Hollywood to Holly weed That was amazing That was quite impressive. They got to do that. I don't know. Yeah Anyway, we're here to talk about your home voiceover studio because that's what allows us to be professional voice actors at home and we want to be able to sound as good as we can But how do you do that? You know, it's amazing how often people say I want to get started in voiceover and how to do it people are so intimidated by the technology and if you take the time and speak to someone who actually knows how simple it is like say George Or I which is why by the way we do this program in the first place It's it's a great opportunity to learn it right and that's what George and I do We probably don't think about it that much, but we're teachers. We are instructors We tell you what the best equipment to get is for you and we'll be talking about that a little bit more later on But we will show you how easy it is and it's always a relief At the end of our sessions with people who are just starting out and they all go Oh That's what that is Look, we've been doing this a long time We know how to do it and we know how to get you up and running very very quickly That's what George and I do. We are professional home studio consultants George works with all the big talent in town. I get to work with a few of the big talent every now and again, but We know how it's done and if you want to work with us and you want to learn how to do it right You can contact us. For example, if you want to talk to mr. Whitham you go to George the tech it's over here See how it's every time I go the wrong way um George the tech is my home on the web for Booking time with uh me and my support team Tim Friedlander as well is available if I'm not he can take over and take on Bookings dan is available on our hotline for tech support if you have an emergency We actually have a hotline phone number We're trying to find many different ways to support you whether it's uh, just need a sound check Have a tech emergency or need to design a studio, you know That's we're just trying to serve you that way and the best way we possibly can um, and that's where we are george the tech and Dan has his brand of support over on his little place on the web and that's uh down there Home home voiceover studio dot com. Yes, which is going to have a whole new look very shortly Um, you're beating me to it, but I'm going to have one by the end of this year Mark my words Yes, we've moved the specimen collection cop cup to the top So when you get to my website and you want to submit some audio to me, you just click on that. It's a drop box Uh, follow the instructions carefully a lot of people like yeah, so don't listen to my audio and you know And they've done all sorts of processing and all this stuff and I'm like no, I want it raw I want to hear the raw sound of your studio and uh, you know without any processing What is it? What are the acoustics like? You know, how are you using your microphone? Do I hear Sibilance or do I hear? pops, uh, you know plosives and uh Are your levels right is amazing. Nobody understands levels even though we try to tell them that every week Levels are are actually pretty simple. Uh, when you break it down Uh, but if you go over to home voiceover studio dot com $25 I will analyze your audio if I think you got some major problems. We can talk about it But generally it's like any raise your luck and put a little bit Uh, or are you under a shelf? I get that one a lot Uh, so but we we will get you where you need to be So if you're not getting voice work, it won't be because of your audio I guess that's the simplest way to put it Anyway, here on voiceover body shop. We like to talk tech and we always start it off with George's weekly or by by monthly Tech update what's going on out there and the internet stuff with all sorts of gear Well, I'll save the rants for later, but starting off. We'll get into it. Yeah Some new tech and some interesting stuff. I've come across in the last couple weeks um Conversation comes up often with us that use the max because Yes, they are cute. They are tiny and cuddly and very sexy and quiet and all amazing Pixie dust sprinkled little machines except they're very low on ports Really low on ports, especially the macbook air But even the mac mini has uh, the new one is coming this year and we understand it's going to have more ports but in the meantime If you have a mac mini of any of the of the current generation the m1 mac minis Which dan and I both have great computer very powerful very low on ports And this uh product from owc other world computing a k a also known as mac sales.com Is called the mini stack stx. Uh jim edgar mentioned it in one of the facebook groups and Here's here's the pros and the cons the quickie pros Four it has four ports on the back one would be plugged into your mac and the other three Are available to plug into other stuff and those are usb 4 And thunderbolt four ports they do both in it. So they're extremely extremely fast So anything you plug into those ports are going to give you the same exact speed As though you were plugged into the computer. So that's great Um, but its other little magic trick is that inside the unit and it's about the shape It's designed to be the shape of a mac mini just sitting underneath of one Inside it stores two different drives that you can add in or you can buy with it pre-installed It'll hold a 2.5 inch drive, which is a typical laptop size drive and that could be a hard drive or solid state Or and it can hold a and I can never remember the name of this thing It can hold an nvme PCie storage device And those are the ones that look really more like a memory card like a RAND chip and that's actually the kind of storage that's inside of your Your your modern mac or pc computers and they are extremely extremely fast in terms of how they Read and write so You basically inside this little box you can have an extremely high high performance Drive for video and audio production Whether whatever level that you do and then you can have a secondary drive Which is just really where your media will live after you're finished where you export everything You know all your documents things like that. This is a definitely a power user kind of project or product It's probably more Hardcore than maybe most video audio audiobook people or narrators might need But it is a pretty impressive thing, but there's a catch And it does have a fan And I guess in order to have the yeah to have the ventilation to keep those drives inside there cool It it it does actually have a fan I haven't heard it yet. I haven't used it I did read the reviews one person in the reviews mentioned the fan was a little distracting which I'm a little concerned about so if you have if you're like me and you have your mac mini Right in front of you like I do This may not be a great solution. Um, owc does have a ton of other thunderbolt docks That are fanless. I have their their original thunderbolt three dock here and it's completely fanless So just so you know, there's other products out there that will soup up Your mac mini hopefully reducing your number of outboard docks and hubs to a minimum I haven't seemed to be able to get away without having an external thunderbolt dock And as well as at least a four port hub usb hub to give me enough ports to do everything At least in my in my setup where I've got a little bit more going on maybe than than average my Another little thing is my my I'm always looking for cool gadgets That will make your daily life easier, especially if you do a lot of live directed sessions Or zoom rooms or anything where it's live and you want to have a really good way to control your mic And whirlwind makes the mic mute ppd and it looks it's a box. It looks like this Right. I have it plugged in right now. So I can't Hold it upright. It's the cords are short This is the mic mute ppd by whirlwind But it's not because it's been modified The this one would belong to a client and they had it long enough that the original Toggle switch, you know click click just a normal toggle it failed that actually eventually failed So I thought, you know, it'd be fun to modify one of these and make it do one more thing than it normally does So my my awesome dad I sent it to him He replaced the switch with a foot switch. He happened to have laying around. So yeah, you can just push it It works But when you turn it back on it makes a little bit of a loud click, right You can hear the Sound it makes, right? Just use it under your foot. Yeah, it's a foot switch. You can throw the floor But here's the bonus it has contact closures aka fancy for Just a switch So it'll switch anything that you plug through it now my dad said the switch is rated to two amps So you don't want to switch really powerful things But if you wanted to just make a simple 12 volt led sign Oh, some kind of light bulb or something that you want to trigger outside the studio You could just easily hook that up with just a normal power supply Splice the wire into this thing and boom You can have a light turn on and off at the press of a foot switch every time your mic comes on and off Cool I can't believe I had to have my dad make this. I'm some I'm kind of shocked It doesn't exist in the real world But it's such a simple thing and it and hey it works, but dad I promise I will actually hook something up to it Uh, I haven't gotten a chance to to plug an actual sign into it um Another couple little things Graham Spicer Recently told me very recently like yesterday Mentioned in an email about hindenburg narrators studio danif. Have you heard of hindenburg the audio software people use it for podcasting It was originally designed for podcasting. So yeah for reporter I think it was like for reporters and doing field reporting then podcasting Well, they they've branched in the narrator production like really like Literally audiobook production and they have an addition now Designed completely around audiobook production And it automates like a lot of stuff We were talking last time about to jody about what do you dare automate? This thing takes it to another level. Um, I again, I've only just heard about it. I'm curious about it's You know when you're leaving so much of the processing and the post and everything completely up to Software to make decisions. I get nervous as an engineer I'm a little bit of a control freak, but if it does what it says on the tin as they say in england If it really does it's it's uh, it could be a massive Time saver for audiobook narrators and you guys know that do your own audiobook production. You know, you're not getting paid By the hour to engineer. So um again A jury's still out. I haven't demoed it but based on what I've read It's quite an impressive tool set for for what it is. And hindenburg has a lot of flavors Right, they're not just one app. They have a lot of different versions So check out the uh, it's called narrator studio From hindenburg. Give that a look now dan You got the mic. I was I was I was kind of gushing about a couple weeks ago the The road video might go to I know we weren't able to do a really good demo of it So at some point maybe you can get them Some audio. I'm actually Oh, it's on now. It is on now All right, what do you it may not work on the way? Well, what are my impressions? Well, it sounds fine It's got actually got a little light on it sort of like the the halo meter on a on us on a focus, right? So you can tell if you're over modulating it's designed to be attached to a camera or an iphone and The problem with it is now as you can hear it sounds fine. It sounds like it's got compression. Does it have a compressor? I it might But now a little app that has there's a little app But I don't necessarily think that there's anything compressing about interesting. It sounds compressed. That's yeah, but you know If I back off this is really what it's going to sound like when you know, you're talking on a camera It sounds really good from yeah from like six eight inches away. Yeah, which is really what it's designed for So it's sort of like a 416. Only it's not a thousand bucks. It's this big It's not it's not very big at all and you know, I can and it comes, you know with a with a clown nose too, so Um, but you know, could it be used as a as a as a voiceover mic? I don't know It sounds exactly the same as this one sort of Uh, but you know, it's there it works But it doesn't come with the right adapter to work with an iphone because it's not the the usb-c that comes out of it is Goes into an iphone lightning connector, but it's not a lightning Charging cable. It's a lightning accessory cable. It's wired just a little bit differently So to use it with your your iphone, uh, it It's there's another 20 30 bucks that you got to spend. Yeah, one of those guys So that's you know, that's and it could be powered by usb-c Or by a tr s You know cable, you know, right? Yeah, like one of these guys. Yeah, it's a it's a two for one It's you get the video mic feature of the tr s cable that plugs into your camera And you get the usb feature to plug into a laptop pc or our phone To for it's a two for one. Um, but yeah, it's interesting I know it's got software that controls it that you actually set the gain with It may even have an auto gain mode that i'm not aware of it sounds like maybe that's It's an auto gain mode. I'm not sure it has to sound like it sounds like it's compressing a little bit But it sounds clear. I mean the audio quality coming off is pretty good I'm curious to hear it in some spots. Maybe you do a maybe do one of your spots coming up on on that I'll try that. Yeah. Yeah. I was able to switch back Yay I'm glad that happened. That would have been some major editing Yeah, so the road video might go to Dan's got one if you want to know more about it And just keep in mind if you're buying it for the purpose of being like a usb mic that you throw in your Car your bag or whatever you're gonna have to buy some more cables to actually use it that way as a usb mic Right and that leads me to granting rant ranting about more things. Let's have some quick rants here. It's quicky Well, yeah, we'll keep it moving. Um, first of all A client of mine, unfortunately wasn't Well, it wasn't a client before she made this decision. Uh, she bought an apigee symphony desktop and um Apigee, I don't know what it is you guys. Dear your gear is second to none in terms of quality of hardware build ad conversion preamps are great Software's good. It's getting better all the time But firmware and drivers and stability. It's just another thing and I The the hoops she had to jump through just to get it functioning So we could work together and just get it set up was pretty painful for her Um, the support she received was clearly, you know, it was clearly targeted to engineers um, and Again, she was recommended this gear by none other than salespeople at banjo emporium. Oh not by Me and not by anybody in voiceover and by the time she realized she had been recommended the wrong thing It was no longer in the return policy time period. So she was essentially stuck with it so I You know, I I shouldn't bash something that has a has a function that actors That product producers and musicians would find useful But for what that thing costs They should have rolled out the red carpet in terms of support It was a it she waited a long time to hear from them And and it was just a very painful process. So Um, I'm I'm still the only apigee thing I'm really behind right now and even then I'm kind of me is the apigee mic. Otherwise Uh, I just won't recommend apigee hardware. It's just too Too finicky and too complex for what it is. Um, another thing that's kind of let me down Uh, well, not really me but one of my clients as I hate to say it the personas revelator io 24 Uh, I'm using it here and it's still working well for me. I recommended it to somebody He bought it as a replacement for his app his, um universal audio apollo solo So he started with something really good but really complicated and he went to this and the sound quality was a decided drop in quality like You guys know we have compared many usb interfaces even including the apollo and found all of them to be shades of Maw of different from each other like barely noticeable You know some of them more so but very small subtle list of this was like Whoa something is something's not right. This thing sounded bad and personas They uh, didn't really they we sent them the audio samples. We said here's one with the solo. Here's one with yours And they kind of denied that anything was really wrong. They're like, no, I think I think it's we think it's fine so I mean fortunately my client was able to return it to the retailer and get it and I believe he actually is Even after that getting another one Because honestly that's the problem is it there's nothing else that does exactly what it does in the way it does it but buyer beware buying a very affordable gear That does a lot of stuff You know something might give and that could be quality control. So I'm just saying Beware I I'm I'm frustrated But this is just how this is the way it goes and that also goes for microphones and road Of road road of all companies. I love I love their products again another innovative company. It makes really cool stuff Really great prices Right in australia I've been using the road ntg 5 for over a year And mine has started Showing some signs of problems and what that is it it can sometimes start to clip And distort Well before you're actually reaching the clipping point in your Preamp, um, it's hard to describe what it sounds like but you're just like talking into it. It's going It's like why is it crunchy? um So that started happening with my road ntg 5 now I wouldn't have thought much of it But a year ago when these things came out or maybe a little bit before I had recommended it to quite a few people because I was really amazed by it and More than one probably three that I'd heard of personally Had the same exact problem So what does that mean? I don't know if it's a design thing or I don't know if it was a batch thing It may have been a batch of these that were made that had that issue But it's frustrating. It's disappointing. They are going to make it right and I know in fact that road is going to There's just no questions asked. They're going to replace it And so I have to give them huge props for their support Um and wanting to make it right Now full disclosure that could be the relationship. I have with road. I've demoed their gear I've had them send me gear My podcast of pro audio suite is supported by road So they might be giving me extra special treatment. I don't know But then nonetheless, they are sending me another one, which I'll be swapping out in the meantime I'm using the ntg 4 Which is a good backup mic. It just needs about 10 to 12 db more gain To to get a good signal out of it. It's interesting. That's not nearly as sensitive And I use a little more processing on it to get the sound that I was kind of accustomed to from the ntg 5, but it's It's working and it's always good. It's always important to have backup gear So keep that in mind. Anyway end of ramp. Dan, did you have a mini rant about rx 7? Let's keep the rant thing going. Yeah, we're just a couple minutes before the break here All right, I got it. I got something from a client this morning Uh, she's like, what's wrong with my audio? It would you know, it sounds hissy and then it fades out After words And I'm like, well, it sounds like adaptive noise reduction. Are you using any of that? And why is it hissy because she's using a good microphone and a good interface and it's like And she had and she had a booth a good a good booth And I'm like it just shouldn't sound that way and then I thought about I'm like you're using Something you shouldn't be using Chances are she was recording too low normalizing and getting a lot of hiss and then to get rid of the hiss she was using rx 8 To try and remove it The fact of the matter is there's a lot of professionals out there. Oh man, you got to have this rx 8. It's great It's it does all this great stuff. None of it has and it's on sale for valentine's day last week The fact of the matter is it's not designed for voiceover There's so much stuff that is marketed to voice actors that's got nothing to do with it rx 7 and 8 and the these isotope nothing against isotope great company But this stuff is designed to clean up the audio on old records And all recordings. Yes, exactly and it's a video editor's fixing tool to deal with cruddy audio that they've been sent Right, which is a lot. Um, but for voiceover for a clean dry audio in your booth with a good microphone There is absolutely no reason to be cleaning that up and twisting the waves and stretching it and doing all the things that it does Stop recommending rx 8 to people Because I don't need it. Yeah, but the worst thing is is people exactly It's they're recommending it because they use it for all their work Having it doesn't mean it's going to make you sound better because if you don't know how to use it It's going to make you sound like my client did this morning Yeah, exactly. It's exactly. Yeah, that's adaptive noise reduction tools You need to you know, those tools can still cause more damage than they are helping you You have to be really Careful the only thing I find the isotope rx is editor the rx editor has tools in it that make audiobook production or mastering Automated that that is something that I find helpful whether you use the mouth the clickers and all that stuff or not There is some helpful tools in there if you have a w audition You don't need it. You know, I mean it's already I can do everything in adobe audition That's good. You know, but it's I'd say rx is a good complement to the Twisted wave or audacity if you really have nightmare mouth noise or you're doing a lot of Mastering right anyway, but other than that now, you know, you got to learn how to use it There's guys teaching classes on it and remember somebody who's teaching a class on it has the experience In their studio Yeah, their audio and you've got to be able to know your own voice and your own sound before you start using something Anyway enough ranting for now. We got lots of questions to get to Let's take a break and we'll get to your questions right after these very important announcements. So don't go away Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great Now at voiceover essentials It's the legend reimagined the mic port pro 3.0 brings incredible new features all in the handheld Self-powered package the mic port pro has always been known for like a new mic preamp with 65 db of crystal clear gain usb cjacks and a stunning headphone amplifier with a super convenient gain switch You've no doubt heard of or recorded with the mic port pro the mic port pro breakthrough audio interface connected any studio quality microphone to a micro digital interface this newest iteration of the legendary usb mic port pro turns your phone tablet laptop or desktop Into a professional recording studio smaller the most microphones It's feature rich easy to use and travel friendly and right now voiceover essentials is paying the shipping in the continental us And they're including one of their ever popular vo caps for a limited time get it now at voiceover essentials dot com Hey That's me and that means it's time for me to talk about source elements the creators of source connect The original tool to supplant or sorry supplant or replace so istn Back in the day when I started working with source elements to Actually not working with them as much as just working with their stuff It was designed as a way to create a backup for istn It was the tool that tons of the busiest voice actors the ones that we say where the golden handcuffs We're using because allowed them to now do istn type sessions From anywhere in fact many of them were employing things like bridges to connect from source connect to istn And that was the norm right that was happening everywhere. Well, I'll tell you istn clung on for life until Really the pandemic and that was the death now for istn and that's main reason really Was because the studios that actually support using it their doors were closed the engineers They were at home in their bedrooms just like you guys Recording you and so source connect obviously took over. I know there's a lot of tools out there that do similar things There's a lot of innovation in this space But it's established itself as a standard It works as a plugin directly into pro tools There's a lot of things it's got this thing called q-manager that allows auto replacing of audio There's a lot of things that really adds to its value to productions And that's why you probably want to know about it So head over to source dash elements calm and get a 15 day free trial over there and make sure you're Aware of it. Make sure you know how it works and make sure you know That your studio is up to par as well to be able to make use of a tool like this your studio's got to sound good All right, let's get on to the questions right after this break Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. Were you? This is virgin radio. Well, okay. We're not that innocent There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working Dickies because i'm here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values A leader for california and a voice for america. It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smart phone But it's so much more. It's a the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs. What time is hockey practice? Check out this song. It's the end of the road for red When hope is lost the i8 from bmw Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's j michael collins.  I think they speak for themselves, but I will give you my email It's j michael at jmc voiceover.com now if dan will stop waxing this mustache for a minute. We'll get back to the show This is ariana rattner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widdum v obs dot tv And we're back Time for a lightning round. We got a lot of questions tonight. Gotta love sweet love the questions You know, I haven't even looked at them yet. So i'm gonna i'm going in cold right now Meet me too. All right, so let's start off our our of course our chat room monitor. Jeff holman has a question Does the zoom feature called touch up my appearance? Make for lower quality i'm audio wise does it smooth things out to the point of taking out video detail So the feed of your face looks less clear. I haven't used it I I mean I think I never use it if you Well, I've tried it. I've just turned it on and turn it off. You'll see The the the change of the appearance immediately if you turn it on and turn it off like it's it's real time So all you have to do is turn it on and what you see is what you get and see what happens See what happens That was weird your camera went out of focus. No, I was doing that deliberately Oh Yeah, no, I uh Jeff, you don't need it. You're an actor man. Yeah, you got an actor face Tim Branson Says hey guys, have you had a chance to check out audience upgrade to their id 14? Which is called the mark id 14 mark 2 thoughts Yeah, a couple years ago. Did you ever get one in studio to review dan? I didn't yeah No, they they sent me one and I wrote a review, you know, primarily they wanted to what's how does it work for podcasting? So I had to talk about that The audience stuff is pretty good. Um, it you know, they're they're british audio engineers So they're you know, they're sound quality not a problem not not a problem It had we found out it had a little bit of You had a really crank it though for voiceover unless you're doing the game is yeah It it has a weird Once you get like over 75 80 percent. That's where all the heavy gain is But you know, they're great. They're great little units. We know a lot of people that use them But you know, they do the same thing they turn the analog audio into the ones and zeros our computers understand They all do it pretty much the same way. It has a little bit more to do with the uh, you know the The preamps that are in them, but they're all pretty good So the 14 mark 2 and the 4 mark 2 has more Fancy mixing monitoring loopback features at them. So yes, if you need those loopback tools Those will be more useful to you. Um, I gotta admit uh for me and my clients and just overall The company while their products are great designs. The sound quality is awesome Kind of in the same range vein a little bit of with apogee there with stability Is an issue a long time stability is a bit of a problem on some products that I've dealt with I'm hoping the up mark twos are a whole new design Ground up that is more stable and more reliable long term Still juries out if you're watching the show and you've got an id 14 mark 2 Or the id 4 mark 2 and you use it and love it and you've had no problems Or if you've had problems, let us know In the in the chat, you know, because we we'd love to I'd love to know I just when I recommend gear it's I want to make sure it's gonna solve as many people's problems as possible Alrighty, uh professor larry hudson. That's what I call Don't ask me why says george. I need to utilize two mics at one time and have loopback So you can hear you know what you can play back stuff I'm still using the old macchi 1202 and it's time to upgrade you think Are you still hot for the personas revelator 24? I will call you too. I'm about to buy a new mini Should I wait sounds like two questions? It is two questions, but he says he'll call you about the first one But oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I'm ranting about the revelator a few minutes ago, but I did have yeah Well, you heard my rant. Okay, but Um, I just I actually did a video on vimeo pro Um, uh, which I actually don't even think I've linked on my website yet. Shame on me I did a video Walking you through how to set up a revelator i o 24 To do really everything a voiceover could ever need Um with martha con actually she was like she was the guinea pig So I would check that out because that video really goes into a lot of depth It's a video that's a pay-per-view like a rental you can go and rent it for a year And watch it as much as you want But it really goes into the nuts and bolts of how to set up all of its mix minuses and And how the driver works and how the fat channel works, etc. I you know again beware of buying Consumery pursumer gear it's not Quality isn't always going to be where it should be if they had like a pro version of it that was higher quality everything I would recommend it. That's just not how personas kind of rolls They're very much price point company make it cheap if we can But it's it's pretty neat in terms of the new mac mini. I don't know. Did I wait? I didn't I'm happy I'm really happy with my mac mini m1 2020. I guess it's a 2020 model. It's fantastic. Um, So no, I don't know if you should wait Uh, because then you might just decide you didn't need the new thing And you've just deprived yourself of the thing you already needed. So Go get one. Yeah, just go get one Get 16 gigs of ram though. Yeah, I always yeah, always get you know the maximum Yeah, the extra ram, yeah, of course, of course, you can't add chips in the new max. Nope They've hardwired everything everything's hardwired. You with a with a dock like I mentioned earlier if you if you are Okay, frugal Like me and you get the 512 storage or the I think I actually have the 256 Uh gig storage No big deal with one of those docks. You can add in a 1 2 3 4 terabyte Superfast drive later and get all that storage back for A lot cheaper than Apple sells it for so you have options Uh, j. Horace black Have you had a chance to review the universal audio volt one and the ua volt two yet? I know people who have them I think uh Who was it the mention he likes it? Um Peter bishop mentioned it Peter bishop did okay. Yeah, uh, and somebody else uses it on the road. I think it was um, Dave Dave, Dave, and always mentioned that he likes it. Yeah, he likes taking it on the road It's I guess it's a real simple version of uh, you know the uh, the arrow and the uh, and the and the apollo twin Yeah, I don't know how much you don't can't do plugins with it Yeah, it doesn't have all the crazy bells and whistles and the console but that's probably a big pro to be honest Like if it has the quality of the converters and the preamps of the solo the $500 apollo solo But the simple operation of a scarlet That could be compelling So yeah, I haven't tried it yet. I I'm still kind of hooked on the ssl two as my favorite mid-priced Really nice well-designed interface. I'm really loving that one. But yeah, one of these days. I'm sure I'll get one across my desk Yeah, I wanted I wanted to try the ssl two myself the volt the volt Or is it the bolt? No, it's a volt. Yeah, it's a volt. Yeah, the bolt is a car Um, but there's also a car that's in a volt car. That's right. My friend had one I was driving it over the weekend. The bolt is awesome. Yeah. Oh, the electric cars are cool. Yeah Um, let's see here Grace mitten question for me Uh, were we to submit audio to your specimen collection cup for analysis? Do you need to know what equipment we're using our booths set up in dimensions, etc? For the most part. Yeah, I mean I I it'll say what what microphone are you using? What uh interface are you using? What computer what software and how are you physically set up? You know, are you in a closet? Are you in a booth? Are you in your living room?  Which, you know, very popular here in l.a. Um Yeah, I will ask I will ask you give me as much detailed information as possible Yeah, uh, the reason that we we do the specimen collection cup The reason we need to hear it is people say I got this I got a You know a hissing sound or I got this or I got that Everybody hears differently and everybody describes things very very different Uh, we see this on facebook all the time people say I got I got a a buzz And and of course we immediately say can we hear it? Because it's the sound that we hear that tells us what the problem is And uh, so yeah Tell me everything you can about your setup so I can make an honest analysis Sometimes someone will say well, yeah, I'm using a you know an xl mic mate Like well, there's your problem right there That's oh boy. Yeah, I I have one still sitting in a drawer here just in case you know i'm bringing around You plug it in just to prove that okay. The problem is with your interface Yeah, yeah, it's just a tester to make sure the mic actually works right It was an early attempt to make an interface that it was not It had not too hissy very hissy and incredibly hissy Yeah Okay, you get the shelly erin kohen karen kohen Um, hi guys. Are you aware of any d s-ser that can be applied while you are recording? So real time I guess as recording Um instead of in post um, well In my in my experience you can really use any d s-ser plugin real time Uh While you're recording if you have the right dawg you have to have multi-track Multi-track dawg so it could be done. You could rig it up in audition. You could rig it up in reaper Studio one pro tools logic, but you do need those multi-track dawgs to actually do that Um, so yes. Yes and no it just depends on your Your setup, but that's a dynamic processor and they have extremely extremely fast low latency How you know they how they react to the audio? So they can be used real time as opposed to like dan was talking about earlier those noise reduction tools that Kind of have a delay where they have to analyze the audio as it goes through then figure out what to do and then Apply a filter those cannot be used Uh real time Yeah, you know and and generally and of course people some people say i'm really sibilant I've only seen that a couple of times where somebody is really sibilant to me. It's always a physical thing um And essentially what I guess sibilance is although i'm sure Byron Wagner will tell me no you're wrong Uh, is that it sibilance is an over modulation of a higher frequency Uh, which is why it it sounds the way it does Um, it's an automata pia Yeah, that's it sibilance Yes, like Bang, is that the right use of that word on automata pia? Yes, it's it's the sound It's the talking the sound describing the sound that something has like crunch. Yeah, or you know It's like Batman, um, yeah, you know, um What were we talking about? I lost my train of thought there using processing. Oh, yeah, yeah I'm not a big fan of upfront processing. Yeah, I mean either everything to me everything is is physical You want to improve your vocal technique? Uh, you don't want to over modulate. You don't want to over emphasize any sibilant types of Sounds right, you know, there's no sibilance there. It's just the sound of an s But if you push the s Too hard You can get some sibilance, but you know some people just the way their mouths are again They might be a little bit more sibilant. Can you fix that? In in a front end processor. I don't recommend it, but some people do and if it works for you Who am I to say? Danny Henkla, how you doing Danny? Hey, Danny or Danny. I said Danny Henkla. No, no Danny. Danny. Sorry, Danny Um, he mentioned, um, oh, we were oh, there was a conversation about docs because I mentioned one earlier for Thunderbolt He mentioned one that's not fanned and he's using himself and it's made by Kensington And it is the model people. Yes the model sd 5700 t It's a Thunderbolt 4 docking station It can support up to two 4k displays It can charge up to 90 watts of power out of its usb to your your mac or windows Um, it looks like a beast and it's got ethernet. It's got three usb No four usba ports Uh, it's got a memory card reader Uh, four Thunderbolt or three Thunderbolt ports. It's wow. It's that's a heck of a package It's pretty awesome. It ain't cheap either, but I'm telling you these good brand new Thunderbolt technology Docs are not cheap. They're gonna be 300 dollars usually or more Um, and this one's around around that. So thanks for the recommendation, Denny Yeah, Carl Jolet says he uses an inline cough blocks to interrupt his mic output. Love it Obviously a radio guy That sounds like a radio thing for sure. I think of yeah a cough button, isn't that it's all that's a radio broadcast term for sure Yeah cough buttons Of course, we got those on you know on the on the road podcaster here or a broadcaster. I just Is it right off and like There we go Yeah, I mean I can do it on my thing, but I still have to use a I have to have I have an iPad over here and I could tap a button But there's a lot less of a chance that I would hit it at the right time instead of having a Push button switch that can really it that's the there's something satisfying about that Uh, you get the last question from Dave G Uh from Dave, um, oh, sorry about your gear acquisition syndrome. Lenny Lenny I'm just gonna call you Lee penny. Sorry, Lee Um My Dave G says my id 14 one mark one first generation Crapped out. Um, it took six months to get fixed. It was a horrible service Center in los angeles audience was no help. They passed the buck But my mark two is awesome. So Hopefully that's the case that the mark twos. I have a better Power supply. I think it's power supplies that was plaguing the the first generation Stuff. Hopefully they've they solved that problem and then and they're awesome. So That's good to know Dave. Sorry about your bad experience the first time round Yeah, well, hopefully we're not giving you gear acquisition syndrome or gas Uh, we try to keep it simple now. We talk about some of this stuff But you'll notice that we don't talk about a really high-end equipment No, we don't and the fact of the matter is is you don't need high-end equipment Uh, what one of my favorite expressions is if you're gonna buy a Ferrari, you have to have a nice garage for it Uh, you know, people are like, I want to have a u87.  She does it exactly the way we say She got a 416 into an interface into her computer And a good environment if your environment is right That's the most important thing. Uh, and how you use your microphone and if you set your levels right Otherwise all this gear is you know distracting.  Uh, gosh, I've been pushing harder and harder Uh, I've been pushing harder and harder about not wearing headphones and I dance like duh But man because I'm just telling people like if you are in any way making a judgment call on a sound problem Whether it's a mouth click Or a passing car You are not in the act. You're not in that role at that moment You have switched roles from acting to engineering And then that's it just stop like stop the session not the session, but just stop the take because you are no longer in it Um, I I really feel strongly you really have to limit your time wearing headphones recording voice over It is just too darn distracting and you can't do both engineering and acting You can think you're doing it But you can't do both This is what matters not all the bells and whistles and the flashing lights and yeah The more gadgetry it's going on that you have to be concerned about working Let alone whether it's been pre fab pre configured and tweaked within an inch of its life by me It doesn't matter if you have any concern whether it's actually working or not Or what to do if something doesn't work It's not work. It's not serving you So keep it simple. Alrighty Thank you for your questions. We love them. And of course, you can send the questions to us anytime All you have to do is go into your email program and write to us at The guys at v obs dot tv if you got a question if you send it there Guaranteed it'll be first in line No, when we do our next tech dot So it'll be waiting for us. That's right. Okay. We'll take a quick break. We'll wrap things up for this week right after these messages Before time began there was v obs dot tv watch or else Hey, it's david h. Lawrence the 17th and we talk a lot in this business about moving forward with our career getting more information We often don't talk about simply Getting started It can be one of the most immovable objects In in our life getting out of our own way and just simply taking the first step And if you're watching this podcast voiceover body shop For some tips on how to get started in voiceover or to change something about your voiceover career or to increase your knowledge in a certain area Check out vio heroes comms getting started in voiceover If you go to vio heroes comm slash start you'll get all the information Uh, it's really cheap And I give you a lot to get started in the business But you might also learn something if you've been in the voiceover business for a while vio heroes comm slash start That's vio heroes comm slash start 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 dot 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 dot 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 dot com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish They'll try it yourself go with the pros voice actor websites dot com For your vio website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what This is bill radner, and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv And we're back got a little bit of time to say good boy so we could talk slower Anyway, um Let's see. Where are we here? Ah Next week on this very show We have another great guest. I got a lot of great people line. We've been nice planning Did you see my list and I saw your list and by the way, who was first on that list? It was jerry krangel. She was awesome. She was thrilled to be with us. Yeah, which was great Um, but we got a few others that i've been in touch with and people want to be on our show They want to be seen they want to be heard and they got great stuff to offer So make sure that you uh you tune in next week when we present somebody else really good Uh, let's see here. We need to thank our donors of the week like rob raider patty gibbons greg tomas Shana panes and baird. I always let you say her name. Yes icon productions. That's martha con don griffith steven chandler, thanks so much sondra manwheeler robert ledham antland productions uncle roy shelly avaleno thomas pinto brian page george a widham my dad nathan carlson graham spicer and uh lea pennie thanks because he wants his name to be mentioned He wants it mentioned at least four times the show possible You've got office hours, don't you? Oh, yeah office hours. That's uh for anybody. That's a client of george the tech um You can access my private clubhouse room And uh, i'm on there twice a week generally. It's 10 30 a.m. Monday's and 4 p.m fridays just 30 minutes just answering technical stuff and uh It's just an extra service we provide at george the dot tech and dan you're over there at home voiceover studio dot com Yes, home voiceover studio dot com got the uh, you know the specimen collection cup got all sorts of stuff I can't wait for the new website, but we're gonna it's we're gonna really upgrade what we're doing You know after 15 years, maybe it's time to do that But then again a whole lot hasn't changed just a little bit of tech I'm also going to start doing more videos again. It's been a while So I think it's time to update some of the tips of the week that I did seven eight years ago Yeah, I mean some of that stuff ever is evergreen and some of it is ready for updates. So yeah There's a lot of it was tonight glitch-free A little bit of echo on my voice when I talk louder That's say it's right there Yeah, I guess must be getting a lot of bleed from these headphones. I know it must be what it is Yeah, you know, we're all going deaf. What can I say and of course headphones? Oh my gosh. I'm so embarrassed Okay, now tell me now if the echo goes away Uh test one two Yep, that's what it was Okay, I am so embarrassed actually my headphones don't bleed The problem is they don't bleed at all and I couldn't hear that my monitor speakers were still on at a low volume Oops Oops Did the whole show that way That mattered Okay, well, okay Pay no attention to what just went on George actually knows what he's doing Oh my gosh, we we need to thank our amazing sponsors. You start this time Okay, where are we harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements Vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and jmc Demo yes Our thanks to jeff holman great job in the chat room tonight getting all our questions out to us our amazing Technical director. I can't wait till we can all get back together in the studio Maybe one more time remotely, but you know, not the mask mandates come down in la. I think we should probably I think we can start. Yeah when we do our next show on february 28th. If you want to listen then watch live Sumer lino. Thanks so much for all the work you do and Lee penny for being lee penny. I think that's five times get mentioned today Anyway, well, that's gonna do it for us this week. Uh, thanks for all your questions. Thanks for your business Thank you for trusting us with your home studio audio, but it really comes down to one thing You can get all this equipment you can do all this stuff But if it sounds good, it is good I'm dan lennard. I'm george wittem and this is voiceover body shop or vio B Tech talk Tech talk Well now the echo is gone. Okay Have a great week everybody. Can we start over again? So stick around


Hey there, Chad Bonds, you're here for High University Libraries. Guess what? We got a new website, and sometimes change is a little bit hard to get used to, particularly when you're actually used to some of the old ways of doing things. This video shows you some of the main ways you can use the front page of our new website to find information very, very quickly and very, very efficiently. We try to make it as easy as possible to get the information you need as fast and as efficiently as possible. So this video kind of highlights some of the main ways you can use our search functions on our new website to find information quickly. So here you go. So on our new website, we've tried to make the ability to search really easy to do. And the first thing it defaults to is this thing called Articles Plus. This allows you to search for articles on your topic, as well as books, movies, magazines, newspapers, and things like that. Matter of fact, this actually will search about almost all of the library's content, so getting close to like 80 to 9% of the content. So if we just go in and say, let's search for Marketing and Latino and Consumers. And do a search here. It's going to go and search Articles Plus for us and find articles, books, movies, newspapers, things like that on our topic here. So we can see that we've done a search for Marketing and Latino Consumers. And we can go in a limit by type of content if we want to. We just want to find journal articles. We can do that, limit by date, things like that. So you can kind of see the kind of content we get here. So we have 7,709 results there. So you can actually go in, if you want to find more than one search box, you can just click on Advanced Search, and that gives you other options to search there as well, as well as limiting by language, date, things like that. So that's how you would just basically use Articles Plus there. If you find that Articles Plus simply gives you way too much information, you just want to find books or videos on your topic. You can go to Alice, the online catalog there. Do a keyword search for your topic. Do a search there, and this will find books and videos on your topic in the Alice catalog, basically books available in our library or at one of our regional campuses there. You can also use the Alice search box there to search by title. In this case, we're looking for a journal title or also called a periodical title. So we'll do this search here to look for the Harvard Business Review and use a periodical title to give us more relevant information. Do this search there, we'll find the titles. Clicking on the title, we'll continue to get deeper into the Alice catalog, where we'll see what formats the Harvard Business Review is available in. If we scroll down to the bottom, we'll see we also have it available electronically online there. And this link will take us to the publication in Business Source Complete. If you find your search a little bit complicated and you've got too much stuff to squeeze in this one search box here, you can actually click on Advanced Search. And this will give you more search boxes to choose from, as well as different fields that you can actually choose to search in, in the Alice Advanced Search menu. If you're looking for a specific database by name, and for example, your instructor or friend or professor told you to use a particular database called, for example, Passport GMED, you can actually go to databases. And then just type in the first part of the title. So we'll just search for passport, and there is the resource there. If we click on Passport GMED there, it'll actually link us directly to the database. If we're off campus, we'll be asked to authenticate where there are high university ID and password before we're permitted to enter. Here you find more information about the database and what it entails, what subject it belongs to. And also, what high university campus have access to this database. If you don't know the name of their database, do you want to use and just need a list of good resources to consult? If you click on databases here and then click on Browse by Subject, it'll give you several options to look for. So here we can go under Subject here, and let's say you're looking for business databases, we click on Business. And it'll still give us the range of business databases we have available to use. Clicking on the About the Resource link will show you more information about the database, whereas clicking directly on this link here will take you directly in the database once you authenticate with your high university ID and password if you're on campus. Also on the About Resource page here, this link here will also take you directly into the database as well. If your instructor or professor has told you that he or she has placed something on course reserves or library reserves or e-reserves or online reserves, simply click on the Course Reserves tab there. And you can search by course or by instructor. So if I'm in a nursing course, I can type in NRSE, do a search here and find, for example, Nursing 4510, and find the instructor here and find the publications that are available to me that my professor has placed on reserve. If you find you need more help and more guidance in doing research, we have these nice subject and course guides right here. So if you need help on a nursing topic, you can actually type in Nursing. Click on the Search button there and find all sorts of guides to help you with nursing research. If you want to browse all available guides in a particular area, you can actually click on Subject and Course Guides and click Browse by Subject. So if you're looking for basically all the things on English or engineering, you can click on Engineering. And there's all the guides available to you for engineering. So a great way to get some, hold some really good instructional content to help you with the research process. The library website itself also has a very robust search feature. If you want to go up here and say, for example, you're looking for information about study rooms, you can actually search for study room and see all the possibilities that could occur there. How do I reserve a study room? We'll actually take you to a nice video that actually demonstrates how to book a room in the library. If you're looking for a particular staff person, you can simply just go up here and search for them by name. So in this case, we'll search for Chad. Find Chad Boninger there, we'll get some biographical information, subject areas that Chad covers, in addition to contact information, and links to subject and course guides or websites that might be relevant. You can also chat directly with the librarian directly from this page by clicking the chat box. And you'll see there's a way to contact Chad right there with the chat box that way. So good way to get in touch with your librarian is simply just search for them by name in the library site search box. This video has covered the basics of using the homepage of the library's brand new website. We'd love to hear from you. So if you have some input that you'd like to give to us, look for the feedback link on the library website. Or if you need help doing some research in particular, look for the need help link. We'll be glad to help you anyway we can. Take care and have a great day.


Hawaii moving forward, and the show is dedicated to transportation issues. When we say transportation, it's kind of a very generic term. So I'd like to kind of define that a little bit further. Transportation many times means mobility. And as we all know here in the state of Hawaii, specifically here in Honolulu, mobility seems to be quite an issue. And we'd like to address that. We'd like to see where we're currently at with our mobility issues. We'd like to see where we can move forward to the future. So without further ado, I'd like to talk a little bit about what I've done in the past as it pertains to transportation issues. For 17 years, I was a transportation traffic reduction manager in the city of Seattle. And spent a great part of my life trying to make the city of Seattle a livable city. And I'm sure that everyone who might be watching this show or will watch it in the future, I'm thinking that that's an interest to them as well. The lifeblood of our cities are really mandated about mobility. How do we get into work? How we get into door shopping? How do we get out of work? How do we get out of our parking lots? And I think the city of Honolulu has a lot of work to do in the future. And I'm thinking that when people think of social issues for whatever reason, transportation and traffic seems to rate very, very high because it impacts our lives. Things seen and things unseen, how we're impacted by traffic and waiting in traffic. So how do we define traffic? Well, basically it's people trying to move and we're trying to go to work. We're trying to go to school. We're trying to do our shopping. We're trying to run errands. And unfortunately traffic is at a time when we're all trying to do that at the same time. A lot of times we have to go to businesses that are open certain hours. We have to go to work that requires us to be at work at a certain time. So we're all trying to do the same things at the same time. And traffic congestion simply means it's waiting in line. We're waiting in line to get down the road. And that's the most frustrating part of traffic. I moved to Hawaii here about nine years ago and city of Seattle is very much like Honolulu. We have from topography standpoint, we have water and then we have this land strip and then we have mountains. So based on topography, it's very, very difficult to build your way out of a traffic problem. And so the two cities in many ways are very similar from that standpoint. Probably about 8.1% of peak hour commuters are taking about 60 minutes in traffic to get to their point of destination. And it's as high as 75 minutes or longer. And we know that by studies that when people take more than 75 minutes to get into the workplace every morning, day in and day out, we find that people try to make changes to their lives. They either relocate from where they live closer into the workplace or they try to alter their hours and trying to see if the employer will allow them to flex their hours. The problem is if you can't afford to move or you can't afford to move into a location closer to the work site or you have a work schedule that's non-flexible. So from our life standpoint, it can be very, very frustrating day in and day out that you have no alternatives to be waiting in line to be stuck in traffic. Things here in Hawaii are very challenging. Our roadways are limited. So unlike other cities in the mainland in the United States, there may be alternative roads to get you to your place of destination. And unfortunately, there's just not a lot of arterial parallel roads that take the pressure off of H1, H2, or H3. We have very short on-ramps, I've noticed. And a lot of times because of short on-ramps to the freeway, that traffic will back up into the neighborhoods and cause further congestion issues for the neighborhood. We have a lot of construction projects going on. I think I saw recently that the Hawaii Department of Transportation may have as many as 800 projects going on around the state. And I don't think you have to live very far to see if you live in the Pearl City area to what extent those traffic projects are, excuse me, those construction projects are taking effect. We also have out by the Cam Highway is always blocked. We have signal synchronization issues. There are projects that are trying to line up those signals so that they work in unison, but there's so many other places that need that kind of assistance from the Department of Transportation. We have 15 major condos being built, a lot of them in Kaka'aka area. And I can only imagine with all the cranes and all the cement trucks and all the workers that have to show up to the site just how tough it is to get in and out of that area and there's more coming. We have approximately 30,000 students and staff when school is in session trying to get to the University of Hawaii, Manoa. They're coming from everywhere, east, west, town. Everyone's trying to get into the University of Hawaii. And then if you add on the private schools, that number goes way up from 30,000. So it could even be 35 or even higher. So when we look at transportation, when we look at traffic congestion, there's a quote from a transportation secretary about a decade ago and his name was Sid Morrison. And he was the Washington State Secretary of Transportation and he said something I think applies whether it be in Seattle, whether it be in Honolulu, New York, Los Angeles, or the University. This quote is very poignant so allow me to read it for a second here. There is no silver bullet solution to the region's transportation woes. The best ammunition is instead silver buckshot. We need a scattergun of solutions attacking the problems with rail, bus, ferries, concrete and technology from smart cars to smart roads, from HOV lanes to hot lanes, to telecommuting and rideshare and vans and bikes. So I think what is most appropriate is there is no silver magic bullet. And unfortunately I think some of the agencies might think that what they do in this state might be the answer to our traffic congestion issues. I'm not saying that's the case but I've seen it in play elsewhere. For example, the rail, a lot of people think that that's going to really move a lot of people in and out of the, from the west to town. And that is going to really be a silver bullet approach to our transportation problems. Here's the bus organization thinks the same. Here's an example of why a silver buckshot approach is more important than a silver bullet approach. Let's say the Department of Transportation presumed that they could build their way out of our traffic congestion. And they thought all we need to do is add more roads. And by the way, I don't think the DOT believes that for one minute. In other states, they do believe that we can build ourselves out of this congestion issue. So let's just hypothetically pretend that H1 had suddenly overnight a brand new three-lane, four-lane parallel H1 right next to it. So all the traffic that was on the first H1 or the primary H1, you would see them go to the other H1. The traffic would be reduced. The problem stands that word gets out. If there's a new access and there's decreased time in commuting that the word gets out to everybody. So for those people who never took H1 to begin with and they took an alternative route. And for those people who said, well, you know, the worst time to go in H1 is between seven and nine in the morning to go to town. I'll just wait. I'll just hold off going into work or I'll hold off on running my errands until later in the morning. So there's a second segment of folks. And then there's the other folks that say, I just, you know, I just can't do it. I can't afford to have a car in the first place. Maybe I'll just, you know, I'm taking transit or transit actually seems to work best for me. So those are the three segments of people that weren't using that H1 to begin with. The problem is when the word gets out, people go, oh, there's more capacity on the roadway. You can get into town much faster than you could before. So now I'm going to get on that road with everybody else. And it doesn't take long for the second H1 now to fill up as bad as the first H1. You know, it may take a year, it may take two years, but sooner or later, the increased roadway eventually is going to fill up as bad as the original road that was enhanced. So this kind of goes to the point of, is it more roads? Because a lot of people think more roads. If they just built more roads, we would have less traffic. Or a concept which I did for 17 years, which is called transportation demand management. And, excuse me, and what that is is, well, first off, transportation demand management is more or less an academia terminology. I like the word vehicle illumination. And I think that's more descriptive of what you're trying to do. You're trying to, from the destination point where people are coming in, you're trying to persuade people that are coming to that point of destination, be it an employer, be it to the University of Hawaii, wherever. You're trying to convince them that maybe if you leave the car home once a week, twice a week, be great if they could do it five days a week. But start off maybe even with one time a week. And if you can convince people that coming in by a carpool, or coming in by a vanpool, or transit, eventually rail, that would give you that one trip, that one car that did not get on the H1. That would give you that opportunity where you didn't have to expand your capacity, but rather you got the demand or you reduced that one car. And from a cost standpoint of the use of the taxpayer's dollars, the reduction of that one car through persuasion is a lot less expensive than trying to add concrete and rebar. So the buckshot approach is a good one. We just shouldn't focus on any one methodology of trying to reduce our congestion. Looking at Honolulu, USA Today ranks Honolulu number six worst traffic in the United States. TomTom lists, let's see, they list LA as number one, San Francisco is number two, Honolulu is number three, New York, and then Seattle following. So that's that's quite a statement. I believe that no matter what you do, going back to the days where you would take far less to get into town, I'm not saying those days are over. But when I look at population growth, be it in any city, what maybe the best you can hope for or try to attempt is to keep traffic from getting any worse. And that leads me to our population growth here for Hawaii in the next years to come. So currently right now, Honolulu County has 976,000 residents. Kauai has 71,000, Maui 168,000 and Hawaii County at 202,000. So totaling about 1.4 million in 2015. The hard part to to digest here is that if you look at population growth projections, and just I'm just going to talk about Honolulu County right now, we are looking at an increase of about 67,000 people by the year 2020. We're looking at 94,000 people addition added to the to the area by 2025. And if I fast forward to 2040, we're looking probably a projected growth of an additional 153,000 people or 1 million, 1.2 million, basically. And so what I'd like to do is take a break right here and we'll be right back. I'm Tim Appachelle. This is Hawaii moving forward. Thank you so much.  Think tech Hawaii dot com. Watch the show be there. I'll put it the full way. Please join us at Think Tech Hawaii. My program is Asia in Review. My next program is on November 17th, Thursday, 11am. This is Johnson Choi, your host. Aloha, everyone. I'm Maria Mera, and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show Viva Hawaii on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 3pm. We are here to talk about news, issues and events local and around the world. Join me, Aloha. Aloha! Hey, Jackal. University of Hawaii football team under Rolovitch is going to kick butt this season. In case you didn't understand me, University of Hawaii football team is going to kick butt under Rolovitch this season. So be sure to follow us on Think Tech Hawaii and Yobachi Top. I'll be at every game. And remember, Aloha! Welcome back. I'm Tim Appachelle. This is Hawaii moving forward. I'd like to talk about where we go from here. What are the goals of this program? I would like to have a very informative discussion with guests that will be appearing here shortly. Specifically, we want to look at the existing problems here that face Hawaii residents. We want to look at how the impact of traffic adversely affects people that live and work and shop and renaissance every day, how it impacts their lives. I'd like to look at businesses. How has traffic congestion impacted adversely what they're trying to do? How are they trying to get their employees to work? Are their employees coming to work stressed out? Are goods and services being clogged up and not getting from one point to another? And what is the cost impact to that kind of congestion to the businesses? I'd also like to look at potential solutions. Again, we're not going to go down the road where a silver bullet approach is going to work. So what are all the pellets of the silver buckshot that's going to all come together and hopefully make a meaningful difference in how we live and how we get to work and how we shop in here in Hawaii? We want to also look at the explicit cost of traffic, as I said, not only to the businesses but to the state as a whole. We want to talk to the experts. We want to talk to those folks that are in the current discussions of how rail is going to work and how bus is going to interact with it, how other pieces of that silver buckshot are going to play in. I've talked to one person that said he's having discussions with the rail people about bikes and how do we get bikes onto the rails so that when the rail ends, they can take their bike off and use that for further mobility. We want to see all the pieces fit together. For an example, let's assume that the rail now is online and it's going to its second stop and so it's full of commuters and they all get off and they're now at station number two and then what? Now what do I do? Because my employer is still five miles down the road and so yes, the rail got me to this point but now how do I get to my employer? So is it going to be bus? Will there be enough bus routes to come to that rail station and serve it and get you reasonably close to your employer? How many bus routes would that take? How many service hours would that take? Is there a road capacity for now a mainstream load of buses to serve those rail stations? Or is there a buckshot approach? So we want to explore that as well. Some of the excerpts that we had coming on the show, not this next week but the next week after that, I believe that's up to the November 28th, we have the Department of Transportation Services Deputy Director and we would like to talk to him about, you know, bus. How is the bus going to be part of the solution here? We want to talk about what is called speed and reliability. It's great if you have a schedule in front of you but if the bus is clogged down and it's not making to its destination point, is that schedule really that valuable? So we want to talk about speed and reliability and how to improve that. We want to talk about transit and ridership numbers. Are there opportunities to increase ridership? We want to talk about service hours. Are there enough service hours? What kind of budget would be required to put more service on the road? We know what it feels like when service hours are being cut but how best to apply new service hours? And when the rail does come through, how does that free up service hours for the bus to serve new communities or add frequency improvements to existing communities? We want to interact with rail. We want to see how again, connectivity will take place, not with just bus but what about van pools? What about having car pools also utilize some of these stations? We would definitely want to talk to heart. We want to talk to the rail people. That's one of my main agendas. I'd like to see how things are going with the construction issues, where we're at with that. It's been in the paper a lot. We'd like to talk to them about the increase of budget. I guess it's 4.68 billion. 2 would a lot of people are very upset about is 8.6 billion. That's a lot of money. As a side note, the city of Seattle just passed a $53 billion rail edition package. So as much as I fell off the chair with between a $4 billion and a $6 billion, I feel sorry for my former Seattleite friends that are now going to be paying for $53 billion worth of transportation packages. If the rail does stop at Middle Street, exactly how is that going to be served? Again, I made the case that if a rail station is at point A, then my employer lives five, my employer lives, my employer works five miles down the road, how am I going to get there? So if service truly stops at Middle Street, how is it going to be served that people can find and obtain that mobility to get them to their ultimate destination? We look at planning beyond Middle Street. What if more money is obtained? What would that look like if it's going to Alamoana Center? What would it look like if rail service was going to University of Hawaii in Manoa? We will also talk to, again, those particles of the Silver Buckshot. We want to talk to the biking community. I think they have a huge role on how we get out of our, how to ease our traffic congestion, but there's things that have to be done. Right now, in Kakaako and South Street, they're proposing new bike lanes, and I want to talk about safety of bike lanes, so people will get used to the idea that maybe it is safe to get on a bike, because right now a lot of people won't get on a bike because they don't feel safe or secure. I'd like to talk to them about what a project called Safe Streets and how well that's being utilized. I also want to talk about vanpool and how that could be another addition to our transportation issues. Vanpools can carry anywhere from 8 to 20 people, and so if you have enough vanpools on the road, that can make a real dent in some of the congestion issues. It's not easy to form a vanpool, but maybe there could be policies that are developed that make it easier to get a vanpool on the road to begin with. Typically you have to start with 8 people, but maybe if there's some incentives, and I'm not saying who would supply those incentives, but maybe you start a vanpool with 5 people, and then you graduate to 6, 7, and 8, so that getting a vanpool on the road is the first step, and it's always the hardest step. I'd like to talk to the State Department of Transportation. We'd like to know what they're going to do about all their current projects and how that impacting traffic, and then talk about future projects. A classic example was the addition, not the addition, but was just the realignment of H1 and opening up the HOV lane without any major construction. I think that was a really great thing, and it's moving more people who are taking the option of transit or vanpool or carpool, and it's opening up those lanes. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about what is called ATDM. It's called Action Traffic and Demand Management. Basically, it's high technology that looks at intersections, and these intersections have the ability to count cars, either going through the intersection or cars that are on the side streets. And through this technology, what was normally maybe a 45-second or a 90-second or a red light now can be short-circuited and turn green because it's based on traffic flow and traffic counts. So that's a fascinating topic that I think I would love to see more of. I don't know to what extent it is or isn't being utilized here in the city. I want to talk to the traffic division of the city and county, talk about smart streets, talk about their work with the vanpool. I understand the vanpool is being merged with Enterprise. So how well has that worked in the past and how well can it work in the future? I'd like to talk about this thing called the legislature, the fact that the legislature has a big role in addressing our transportation issues. For example, a lot of people don't realize, but the federal government says that if you are willing to pay for a transit pass or a vanpool pass, that $255 of that each and every month, depending on what it costs, if you don't go over $255, that money is tax-free, IRS exempt. And a lot of employers do have programs for you to sign up for, and it will come right off your gross pay and it's pre-tax dollars that are set aside in the count to be reimbursed for your transit passes or your vanpool passes. So that's an example of how government can come up with policies that help us out. I'd like to talk about transportation benefits above and beyond that. There's one concept that I've already briefly talked about is transportation demand management. Well, in some states they've actually passed, the legislature have passed laws that put a requirement on employers to actually address all the employees that are coming into the work site. One in Washington state was called Commute Trip Reduction. And basically what it was is that if you were an employer that employed over 100 people, you had to come up with some sort of plan that your employees could take advantage of, whether it was a subsidy for a bus or subsidy for a vanpool or just a preferential carpool spot for you. It was an idea that the employer now is involved with trying to assist the state and assist the city with some of the transportation issues. I don't think Hawaii is ready for that, but if the traffic gets to a point where it's just stifling economic growth and deterring tourists from coming into the state, it might be something that we might ask the employer community, if not on a regulatory basis, maybe on a voluntary basis to try to help out. And I think employers are actually doing that now too. I know the city county has on their website those employers that are stepping up to the plate and they are buying transit passes. Now, to what extent and to what degree they're buying them, I'm not quite certain, but that's a worthwhile discussion. We'd also like to talk about parking management with the city. We know that electric vehicles are given preferential spots. How about vanpool? Maybe they are, and I just haven't noticed it, but if they are, that's great. If not, then maybe it's time for vanpools to get free parking in the central business corridor of Honolulu. We'd like to talk about what employers could do. Could they, again, provide subsidies? Could they provide compressed work weeks and flex time so that people can alter their schedule? So there are a lot of things that this show, I hope we have time to address. And it's my hope that we can basically explore not the silver bullet approach, but we can explore that silver buckshot approach. And it's my hope that as each week goes by, our ridership goes up in the city, but our viewership also increases. So with that, I would like to say thank you for watching the show. We hope you come back again. And if you have any ideas for what you'd like to see on the show, I'm going to give you my e-mail address. It's my last name's Appichella. A-P-I-C-E-L-L-A, 58 at gmail.com. And with that, I'm Tim Appichella. This is Hawaii Moving Forward. Thank you very much.


Russia's GPS jamming testing NATO ahead of potential war. Russia is disrupting satellite systems in the Baltic region in preparation for conflict with NATO. An Estonian military commander has said, as the head of a GPS security group called for the Alliance to act to protect the system used by airlines, smartphones and weapons systems. This is according to Newsweek. The publication says that in January, jamming was detected in eastern and southeastern parts of NATO's newest member Finland amid reports from an open-source intelligence researcher that a Baltic jammer in Kaliningrad, Russia's Baltic Sea enclave, was responsible. The Russian Defence Ministry has previously confirmed its electronic warfare units in Kaliningrad, which borders NATO members Poland and Lithuania, had conducted exercises to disrupt radio and satellite signals. On various days throughout January, GPS disruptions have been recorded in northern Poland, southern Sweden, Estonia and Latvia. So far there is no proof Moscow was involved in the disruptions in January, but Russia has been accused of jamming GPS signals in northern Europe and its electronic warfare capabilities are used to disrupt drones and missiles in Ukraine during its full-scale invasion. Martin Haerem, commander of the Estonian Defence Forces, told Bloomberg, Someone is causing it and we think it's Russia, and that Moscow is learning and testing jamming capabilities ahead of risks of a future potential conflict with NATO. He said that Moscow had shown its electronic warfare capabilities elsewhere, not just in Ukraine and the Baltic countries, adding that Russia is definitely quite strong in this. Dana Gawad, President of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, which advocates for GPS security, wrote in an op-ed for breaking defence, Such jamming presents a risk to thousands of commercial aircraft. As international pressure has so far failed to halt the interference, it's time for NATO to act proportionally, he added.


I'm reminded of that famous line from Kulhad Luke, what we have here is a failure to communicate. What we have here in Congress is a failure to legislate. A failure to exert congressional authority. What we have here is a failure to use our leverage. What we have here is a failure to use the power of the purse. Voters across America are unhappy, and rightly so. We were told that when we took over Congress, when Republicans were elected to Congress, that things would be different. That if voters put us in charge, we would write the ship. We would stop the deficits. And here we are with another continuing resolution. What is a continuing resolution? It is a continuation of the deficit spending of the past. It is a continuation of the waste. It is a continuation of the duplication. What is a continuing resolution? It is a steaming pile of the same old, same old. Let me be clear, a continuing resolution is not a good thing. It is more of the status quo. It is a warmed-over version of yesterday's failures. It is an abdication of congressional authority. It is an abdication of congressional power. Let us at least be honest. With a continuing resolution, no waste will be cut. No spending will be cut. No regulations will be stopped. And the debt will continue to mount. We are told that we cannot win, that we need 60 votes to defund anything, but perhaps there is an alternate future where courage steps up and saves the day. All spending is set to expire automatically. This is the perfect time to turn the tables, to tell the other side that they will need 60 votes to affirmatively spend any money. You see, it doesn't have to be 60 votes to stop things. All spending will expire, and only those programs for which we can get 60 votes should go forward. What would that mean? That would mean an elimination of waste, an elimination of duplication, an elimination of bad things that we spend money on. If we had the courage, we could use the Senate's supermajority rules to stop wasteful spending. If we had the courage, we could force the other side to come up with 60 votes to fund things like Planned Parenthood. The budget is loaded with nonsense and waste. Some will say our job is to govern, to preside, but to preside over what? To preside over a mountain of new debt, to be the same as the other side? To continue to add debt after debt? Our debt will consume us if we continue to preside over the status quo. It is as if we're on the Titanic and just simply reshuffling the chairs. A continuing resolution continues the spending of wasteful money. I can go on and on about what we're wasting money on. I'll tell you of a few. We spent $300,000 last year studying whether or not Japanese quail are more sexually promiscuous on cocaine. I think we could pull the audience and save money. These things should never have money spent on, but if you do a continuing resolution, it will continue. We spent several hundred thousand dollars studying whether or not we can relieve stress in Vietnamese villagers by having them watch American television reruns. I don't know about you, but I don't want one penny of taxpayer dollars going to this ridiculous stuff. If we continue, if we pass a continuing resolution, no reform will occur. We spent $800,000 in the last couple years developing a televised cricket league for Afghanistan. $800,000. Do you know how many people have a television in Afghanistan? One in 10,000 people, and I don't care if they've all got TVs. It's ridiculous that our money, which we don't even have, we have to borrow it from China to send it to Afghanistan. If you pass a continuing resolution, you're agreeing to continue this nonsense. We spent $150,000 last year on yoga classes for federal employees, so not only do we pay them nearly one and a half times as much as the private sector employees, we give them yoga classes. If you pass a continuing resolution, this goes on and on. Nothing will change. The status quo will continue, and we will continue to spend ourselves into oblivion. We spent $250,000 last year inviting 24 kids from Pakistan to go to space camp in Alabama. We borrow money from China to send it to Pakistan. It's crazy, it's ridiculous, and it should stop. We have the power to stop it. Congress has the power to spend money or not spend money, and yet we roll down and we just say, we roll over and we say, it must continue, we don't have the votes to stop it. Nonsense. The other side doesn't have the vote to continue the spending if we would stand up and challenge them. We spent a half a million dollars last year or the year before developing a menu for when we colonized Mars. We sent a bunch of college students to Hawaii to study this. $5,000 a piece, we paid them.  For the menu for Mars, pizza. This is where your money is going. I could go on hundreds and hundreds of programs. If we do not exert the power of the purse, this continues. We should attach to all of the spending bills, all 12 individual spending bills, not glommed together. We should attach hundreds of instructions, thousands of instructions. Some of the media have said, well, those would be riders on appropriation bills. Exactly. That's the power of the purse. If you object to the president writing regulations without our authority, Congress should defund the regulations. Congress should instruct him on Obamacare, what we object to. Congress should instruct him that we don't want money spent on Planned Parenthood. Hundreds and hundreds of instructions should be written into every bill and passed and sent to them. Would we win all of these battles? Do we have the power to win every battle and defund everything we want? No. But you know what we start out with? Our negotiating position right now is we start out with we defund nothing. Why don't we start out with a negotiating position that we defund everything that's objectionable, all the wasteful spending, all the duplicative spending. Let's defund it all. And if there has to be a negotiation, let's start from defunding it all and see where we get. But it would take courage because you would have to let spending expire. If you're not willing to let the spending expire and start anew, you have no leverage. The power of the purse is only there if you have courage.   No I don't. I just want to exert the power of the purse, and that means spending must expire. But I'm all for renewing the spending, but let's only renew the spending that makes sense. We have the power of the purse if we choose to exert it. Look at the mountain of debt. Look at the debt that continues to be added up. We have not been doing our job. The way we are supposed to spend money in Congress is 12 individual appropriation bills. They've passed out a committee. Why aren't they presented on the floor? The Democrats have filibustered the only one presented. Let's present every one of them and let the public know, let everyone in America know that it's Democrats filibustering the spending bills. It's Democrats who desire to shut down government. It's Democrats who desire not to have any restrictions on where the money spent. It's the Democrats who are saying we don't want to end wasteful spending. We don't want to end any spending. We don't want any controls over spending. We want to continue the status quo, but we should not be complicit with them. We have allowed this to go on for too long. It threatens the very heart of the Republic. It threatens our very foundations to continue to borrow a million dollars a minute. It's time that we stood up. It's time that we took a stand and said, enough's enough. When's the last time we did it in the appropriate fashion? When is the last time Congress passed each of the individual appropriation bills with instructions on how to spend the money? 2005, a decade ago. It's been a decade. In the last decade, we've added nearly $10 trillion in new debt. It's time to take a stand. I, for one, have had enough. I've had enough. I'm not going to vote for a continuing resolution. A continuing resolution is simply a continuation of the mounting debt. I, for one, will not do it. A continuing resolution is retreat. It is announcing your defeat in advance. What we should do is take a stand. We should say to the other side, in the Senate, it requires a supermajority. What does that mean? 60 votes to pass spending. What would happen? You would have spending that is controversial, like Planned Parenthood would fall away. They can ask for private donations. Good luck on that. You wouldn't find things being funded that are controversial. What would happen is there would no longer be funding for wasteful and duplicative projects. You know that we, we'd listed these a couple years ago. And I think we had $7 billion worth of just duplication. Did we fix it? No. Every year the president, even this president, puts forward 10, 15, 20 billion dollars with the programs that could be eliminated. Do they ever get eliminated? No, because Congress is dysfunctional and we continue to pass a continuing resolution, which means we do nothing to exert the power of the purse. Congress is a shadow of what it once was. Madison said that we would have co-equal branches and that we would pit ambition against ambition. We no longer do that. Congress is a withering shadow. It's a shadow of what it once was. Congress has no power, exerts no power, and we walk and we live in the shadow of a presidency that is growing larger and larger and larger. The president's not afraid. He says he's got his pen and his phone. So he is writing and creating law. One of our founding fathers, one of our philosophers they looked to was Montesquieu. And Montesquieu said, when the executive begins to legislate, a form of tyranny will ensue. That's what we've got now. We have executive tyranny. It's not just this president though. It's been going on for a while. Probably for a hundred years we've been allowing more and more power to accumulate the hands of the presidency. What we need is a bipartisan taking back of that power. We need Congress to stand up on its own two feet and say, enough's enough. We are reclaiming the power of the purse and we are going to do whatever is necessary to get rid of the wasteful spending, the duplicative spending, the offensive spending. And we are going to do what the American people want and that is to spend only what comes in. But I will tell you, I for one will oppose this continuing resolution and I recommend that everybody in America call their congressman and say, we're tired of the mounting debt. We want you to stand up. We want you to stand up and say, enough's enough. Let the funding expire and make the other side come up with 60 votes to spend the money. It's time we took a stand. I hope we will. Thank you, Mr. President.