Hey there, it's time for a voiceover body shop tech talk number 44 or 44 we're gonna we're gonna put it down as 44 We're losing track here at the voiceover body shop because we've just been doing so much It's important that we bring you guys fresh content every week, which is what we try to do. That's what really matters That's right. What's in a number? That's right and but we've got lots of tech stuff to talk about some really cool stuff like What have you gotten your tech update some stuff on zoom and new microphone came out dealing with zoom Not that much. Oh, alright. Sybilance is the big thing.  I don't know what this is about I'll bet Dan and George know put it in the chat room and and we'll make up something Anyway, all that coming up on voiceover body shop tech talk number and that's my dad's line. Oh, sorry 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 vio universe. They bring it to you now George widows the engineer to the vio stars A virginia tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain the professional vio studios of the biggest names in vio 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 vio studio And each week they allow you into their world Making the complex simple debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in vio tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voiceover body shop tech talk Voiceover body shop tech talk is brought to you by voiceover essentials dot com home of harlin hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone Voice actor websites dot com where your vio 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 vio success And now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in sherman oaks california Here are the guys Well, hello there. I'm dan Leonard and i'm george widdom and this is voiceover body shop or vio bs tech talk number tech talk now we need the echo 44 I know I can find that button somewhere. Let's try it again. We're three two one tech talk It works. Yeah, all right Sunday Sunday Sunday Oh Tech talk. Yeah, it is because this is what george and I really love to do and that is Talk tech and of course keeping it simple. We had bo waver on last week who we love because he has kept it so simple Well, I love bo because he's really gone He's really gone to the edge of the earth and back in terms of not just physically traveling But in terms of technology. Yeah, because I've known bo a long time when I first met him he had You know a pretty elaborate home setup and he's reduced and reduced and reduced and now it's just a mic a scar and a mac and twisted wave and that is Literally all he's using folks. That is it right because that's you can too Yeah, and really and that's what we're here for to teach you To keep it simple Because it's amazing how people obsess about certain things like I got to have this I've got to have that and I've got to Do this and I've got to do that Not necessarily Uh, and we're here to dispel those myths and we're here to teach you how to do it And if you want to learn how to do it right if you're you know new to voice over and you're you know You finally found our show and where have you been the last nine and a half years? um We got we got the information for you and george now Love to teach it if something's broken we'll fix it Because you know eat we notice today for instance you're using your microphones like these guys Exactly I don't know if you can really read that If you don't know where to point your microphone Yeah, that's that's our job to teach you how to do that, you know Or if by chance you're talking into the wrong microphone when you're like warming up for your show and uh I don't know who would possibly do that, but who recognized are you sure you have the right mic on? It's amazing. How many why do I sound so far away because you're talking into the laptops mic Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I actually did Pretty much exactly that you're you're allowed one a year I gotta put her a post-it note.  I just had a birthday. So give me a break. You don't know what old is Yeah, just a kid Anyway, if you'd like to work with one of us. Yes, we're this funny and we are this good Uh, if you'd like to work with george and have him teach you or fix your setup or find out what's going on in there And make it sound the way it's supposed to sound How would they do that? We can go over to george the dot tech the domain that actually works Uh, thanks to my friend brad newman Even another pet plug brad is awesome. Thank you George the dot tech is where all my uh my crazy website full of services and Tutorial videos and on and on there's a lot of resources over there including getting a sound check Which is maybe the most important thing you'll spend 25 dollars on Uh is a sound check Get your audio checked out and if uh, if you want a second opinion Get your sound checked by the other doctor And that's over at home voiceover studio dot com. Yeah, I've got my specimen collection cup for 25 dollars I will thoroughly analyze your audio and See if you've got it right, you know, because if it sounds good, it is good and a lot of times like You got a problem with this? Well, you know, I I'm trying to make it sound a certain way Well, you're not you shouldn't be trying to make it sound a certain way There's a way it's supposed to sound and if you do it right up front That's how you do it right, which is one of one of the things we do But send me a sample, uh use the specimen collection cup And I will certainly give you a very thorough analysis about how it should sound and how close you are And essentially what you can do to make it sound the way it's supposed to sound The way it's supposed to sound like whistle Anyway, so I I had an interesting one this week though Somebody wrote to me and said You know, we just remodeled our bathroom, which is right off of the You know my office where we're you know, and we're like and like they took the tub out of this bathroom And then they finished it and put a cabinet in there and I'm like, why didn't we put a studio in there? So can't we do it in the bathroom there? And I wrote this long pause and I'm like Well, here's the truth about that Anyway, we can talk about that, uh, I think I convinced them that perhaps it was not a good idea I mean it can be done But is it worth it? I don't know. Well, you still be able to use it as a bathroom Too many hard surfaces too many hard surfaces. So what's in your tech update this week looks like a lot of cool stuff Yeah, well, you know, they're it's funny. I normally this time of year I feel like I get an injection of new stuff going on because of aes Yeah, um aes show Or whatever form that it was guess it was kind of virtual this year. Yeah. Yeah, it was essentially spread out all over the whole month Which I get why they would do it because it's virtual anyway But it really took away the energy and the excitement of it. In fact, I I tried to find anything that I was That made me want to really be there whatever that means And there wasn't really that much. I mean a lot of what aes is talking about which is the audio engineering society They're talking about Really esoteric very high level audio engineering concepts Live streaming surround mixing etc etc when I go to aes trade show I'm there to just cherry pick cool little things like a cool new mic stand Dan and I did it one year. We were was that the new york of the la one That was that was the one at the le convention center, you know, and they're like, oh, you got you got to meet the professor the guy with the ribbon mics It was west duly west duly turn to do an interview right put that up guys. It's a good one west duly Um, yeah, it it was kind of a letdown. It wasn't because it just didn't have that same feel He couldn't walk the halls and discover things So anyway, um, but our friends at source elements they were there this year. They were presenting a a um A documentary they did a full like a 45 minute documentary About what it's about produce how to produce and then producing A commercial and doing it a hundred percent all remotely And it was a pretty big budget production. I mean scoring stage music The voice actor the whole thing it was really impressive Um, hopefully they'll release that documentary to the wild right now It's it was an exclusive only at aes, but it was It was pretty awesome But one thing I'll talk about is in terms of new gear again, not much that's been really exciting But sure did drop their mv7 they have a line of USB mics curiously just called m the mv series not sure why and someone there could tell me i'm sure But they released the mv7 and what makes it interesting really is that it's it's the sm7b's Cousin is well, it's kind of like the if you took a traditional condenser usb mic. They have one called the mv51 Which is actually a very good usb mic It actually really is we did a big usb mic shootout several years ago at wevo con Again, that's on youtube search for usb mic shootout Well, well might be in the name. I don't remember Anyway, they make they made a new Dynamic mic that's sort of the The offspring of an sm7b dynamic mic, which we tell you guys over and over Is not a good choice for voiceover It's very not sensitive It's great to record metallica's vocals, but not great recording A sensitive storytelling voice not what that mic was designed for But it's so popular because of podcasting and stuff So anyway, they took those two and made this thing called the s the sure sm7 And it's a usb large diaphragm dynamic mic and it looks a lot like an sm7b But it's like a smart sm7b So it has a software control panel lets you adjust functions in the microphone You can control the gain you can control the monitor mix between you and the other side Um, it's got some eq settings which harken back to the sm7b because daniel remember how on the back The mic it had these little controls. Yeah, it's like two little settings back there Yeah, it has a digital version of that now I'm not saying you want to use all these things But it is kind of nice to be able to engage a high pass filter And that's one of the settings that the mic has But I heard a sample of it. In fact a good friend, uh, a bow weavers randy brown recorded some samples with it And I'll have to say it sounded darn good. I mean I record I heard his voice in context with a rhoda nt1 And a 416 and did it sound exactly the same? No But it was not terribly different. It wasn't like this dynamic sounding mic It sounded pretty high fidelity and it also was very low noise. It was not noisy and hissy So I don't know Who's this mic for clearly podcasting and webcasting is really Who they built this mic for But if you want to try yet another usb mic Give it a shot. Maybe you'll find some Reason it's the next best thing since sliced bread for voiceover Maybe it's a great travel mic because it is a dynamic mic. So maybe it's going to be less susceptible to background noise For $250 It's worth the shot to play around with it. Oh, maybe I'll get one of these one of these days and try it out Yeah, that's the suret mv7 250 for a usb mic It's got to be a little better than say some of the other ones that you know that are considerably less cost It's a very similar price range to the apogee hype. Maybe it's a little bit cheaper And it's the same concept where there's some processing built in With which has varying reasons to use it or not using it use it, but it does have those features, right? What about the zoom in the Apollo? What the heck's going on with that? Yeah, so so folks who are used to the simplest the simple life, you know the easy the simple life of using the likes of the scarlet 2i 2 The steinberg the ago 3 even you know some of these audio interfaces there we can name a hundred them That they graduate to the Apollo because They hear about it from all these other voice acting colleagues. They hear it's the next best thing In fact, they're even hearing. I'm even hearing that Studios are saying we expect you to have something Of that price or that quality as the Apollo. So it's become Kind of a new bar of like whatever a new measure of quality like an omen mic So the problem is is it's not nearly as simple to operate and use day to day As something like a scarlet right and one of the things that makes it a nightmare for a lot of people Is its inability to want to play along properly with zoom? And it's It's one of those well whose fault is this really it's it Zoom's problem or is it universal audios fault? And at the end of the day It's just the problem of developing a tool With music production in mind Which has a tremendous amount of audio input and output channels and Tons of features and on the other side zoom Which design for anybody but music production people it was designed for grandma right and then Cramming those two worlds together and things don't get along the problem is is what zoom does it's weird And this I got it if you're if you're a windows zoom Apollo user, let me know put a note in the chat room or anything in the comments If that you if you have all this work and let me know I don't know if anybody does But i'm talking about mailing mac Um, it doesn't play back audio the way you expect it to it doesn't come back into the Apollo Where everybody else is sending audio back in so that throws you off It doesn't maybe you expect it to come out of your headphones. It doesn't it comes out of the speakers It just does weird things But also on the input side, which really weird with zoom is what they did with zoom is they said Well, we're gonna make zoom listen to every channel on your equipment on your interface And I think they did that to make sure To to ensure that no matter where somebody stupidly plugs their mic in Let's say they have a I don't know a four channel mixer a four channel Scarlet Four i six i eight. I don't know one of those more complicated ones if you plug the mic in a channel three It's still gonna be audible in zoom And that's the way they designed it and that's I get that but man when you have something like an Apollo The Apollo is sending audio out on multiple channels at the same time all the time It's sending it out on the direct channel for channel one for the mic It's sending it out sometimes on an aux channel if you have that set up for playback And it's sending it out on a monitor mix or a main mix and zoom's hearing all that at the same time And you get this funky weird Fazy sound out of your Apollo if you're on if you're on zoom if you're you're not gonna hear it But the person on the other end is gonna hear it It happens all the time. I'm connecting to people doing support on zoom And I don't even have to know they're on the Apollo as soon as they speak I hear that telltale sound and I know they're on the Apollo so This has been so frustrating and there are workarounds trust me. There are plenty But right now I've actually I've got a couple of my tech people that I network with regularly Tim Friedlander of sound box la who's an Apollo nut He's working on this with me as well as near and dear to our heart hat Merlino I reached out to him because He's a young brain that isn't so addled by all this stuff yet You know and the more I think about and dig into the how these things interact in the computer I get I get tired like it's literally exhausting. I mean imagine you guys. I can't imagine what you're dealing with But hat is like gag. He's like a sponge, you know, he's in his 20s Let me add it, you know And then tim he's like an Apollo nut and he so anyway, we're working on the ultimate free way To use this special plugin called black hole To make all these things work together without buying other software and without buying other cables and interfaces and workarounds So soon we'll have that we're going to produce a video and put it up and we'll have it on youtube and All you Apollo guys and gals can watch this and hopefully We'll have an end to this madness. You know where everything works the way it should So there are ways to do it's an app called loopback Um, which is a really powerful application. It's pretty impressive But it's a hundred dollar app and just to buy an app to fix one Problem with zoom just doesn't just doesn't make sense. So Black hole is sort of sound cloud for catalina. Do you remember sound cloud? No, not sound cloud sound flower Oh, yes, remember that thing? Oh, yeah, it was a routing software They are yeah, and it's been around forever, but they stopped updating it years ago And when catalina came out it pretty much blew up So this other developing team came out with black hole. It's a very similar idea And so that's what they're gonna that's what we're working on. So I say we They're pretty much doing all the thinking. Yeah, I know the things to do. Yeah, that's right So anyway, that's my update for for the week. So all right. I wanted to talk next about um Well, actually dan brought the idea of talking about sibilance. Yeah, because it's a good one We haven't really talked about that. No, because you know, I get a lot of you know emails from people and they say I sound sibilant And some people sound more sibilant than others. I mean like, yeah, should I get a different mic? You know, I I tend to think that sibilance is far more of a physical thing than it is That has anything to do with the microphone People like say, well, if you talk off axis, it will get rid of sibilance.  Sibilance is usually a An accentuated s or t sound In the upper range of over 10 kilohertz And sometimes a little lower than that lower. Yeah, you can get that you can have a sound. Yeah It's essentially an over modulation at that frequency And what causes that? Is it the sensitivity of the mic? Or is it something that perhaps that person the way that person talks? And you know, some people, well, I'm very sibilant. Well, yes, you are. Is there a microphone that's going to fix that? Probably not. No To me, generally it's a thing.  Well, it depends on the environment you're in if you're in a small booth You want to be a little bit closer But still you do not want to I find it's from people over projecting their voice Which is not something you should be doing. You should be, you know, being a As a voice actor forget the microphone is there and play to the copy and not try to get You know and over annunciate everything and that's generally what causes sibilance Um, you know, I'm your voice is an instrument. That's right. You have to learn how to play control it. Absolutely some instruments have qualities that you have to Change you have to you have to perform differently to adjust for that You know, so you have to learn that about your instrument And if it means you have to back off on the s's or how much air you or the how much projection you're putting out You can learn that Absolutely. Well and as as a professional voice actor It being incumbent upon you to train yourself to do that because There's not there are there technological fixes for it. I mean you can talk about that I mean, there's there's some great tools and in adobe audition that you know, you can like Narrow down, you know where that is Or actually one of the things i'll do if somebody sends me something and i'll like Is it worth fixing but you can like highlight where you see You know a hot frequency and then just spectral view. Yeah in the spectral view and just sort of lower the volume on it But it's better if it's not there in the first place What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, you know, there's some microphones that will amplify or essentially boost So the frequent disibulant range in fact a lot of In denser mics are kind of known for that because they're not designed to be Accurate they're not really designed to be flat. They're designed to sort of enhance the voice or make the voice sound Kind of pop up above the din of the other instruments, you know in a mix of music And so the microphones are designed to do that. Well, unfortunately that also will often boost Sibilance and a lot of the shotgun mics Especially the 416 some of the others they naturally have a pretty big boost in that range So if you already have a propensity for that problem, those mics are going to make it even worse um, yes, you can do technique you can do Rotate your Large diaphragm condenser mic more off axis and as you go more off axis You start losing the treble range That's really challenging to get right the sweet spot is small You do it too much now. It sounds like you're speaking through some wax paper or something You just lose all the top end, right? You know, so it's It's not my favorite thing DSers some companies invest a lot of r&d into the perfect ds-ing plugin I think the one in audition works fine. Like it's it's I put it on broadband mode Maybe 3 000 hertz is the width of the the width or whatever setting and I just slide it around until I find where that frequency that jumps out at me and then I Slide the threshold to look to the left until it's Smoothes it out, but you go too far and it sounds odd. Yeah, I'd be really careful with DSers. Yeah, so so essentially Learn to talk without the thing is this when we talk to people We don't sound sibilant to people unless you're like really have an annoying voice or something, uh, but uh Generally it if a microphone a microphone is going to pick you up as you exist So give it your best as far as how you normally talk And not try to over enunciate Really push your s's learn to relax your tongue and I find that usually relieves sibilants pretty good because I use a 416 I don't have any problems with sibilants So yeah, yeah, it's it varies from voice to voice There's just some mics that if you look at the frequency spectrum and it'll have like these little boosts in the upper frequencies Sometimes those little Heaks are exactly the wrong frequency for that voice. Yeah, all really jump out. Yeah also would be should be mentioned that People say I sound sibilant. My first question is What are you listening to the playback on right? I sound sibilant, right? So that is a very very important question to ask Yeah, uh, there are headphones out there that are notorious for making sibilants like exacerbating it like actually Uh That's are being exaggerating is maybe a better word. Well, a little above worse. Yes I I think that's what that means Is that a yogi bearer thing? Well, well, I don't know whatever that is But um, yeah, no, I mean I one of those is the sony mdr 7506 headphones. Those are notorious for being Right, so that's the first thing they usually ask somebody when they say they think they sound really sibilant I'll ask them. What are they monitoring on? Right and sometimes that will influence my you know my thought But I'm still going to be listening on the same headphones that I listen to The same, you know that I listen to people's voices on day after day after day I know these headphones. I know my ears and I know what should be there and what shouldn't be there. So Trust trust us like if you send your audio to dan or I and we tell you it's not sibilant It's not sibilant. It's not sibilant. If the client says you sound sibilant That's a different situation now you're trying to please a client And even if they're wrong, guess what the cost of customers always right And sometimes we got to you know, there's some extenuating circumstances. We may have to do some EQ Or muck around with a ds or but generally, you know, we we know what sibilant sounds like and we'll tell you if it's really there or not Right, yeah, and and the thing is is generally It's probably in your playback or your actual hearing if no one says anything about it in your book and work Then it's not really there Oh, you know, it's really sibilant is the playback on like laptop or iphone. Oh, yeah Oh, absolutely, you know those little tinny speakers really make sibilants jump out of you Which is where most auditions are being listened to one. Yeah, I played back on my macbook and it sounds sibilant like well Oh, yeah, that's not a surprise. Yeah So already be aware of that. Yeah, so that's our take on sibilants All right. Well, we got a lot of questions from our amazing audience out there. So we'll is the best part We will dive into those right after this Hello, welcome to voiceover body shop As a place where you can get your body shopped with voices. Come on. Look at dance head. So shiny Well, we may not be traveling a whole lot, but if you are and you got to be able to record on the road Here's the way to do it with a Harlan Hogan porta booth plus Easy to handle easy to get onto a plane. It fits right into a luggage rack. No problem And more importantly the porta booth plus is made with real oralex Not that fake stuff. You get it banjo and pourium This is specially made to make sure that your sound is just right when using the harlan hogan porta booth plus Where can you get one? Very easy.   Were you stick around? 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Let's get back to dan and george and this week's tech wisdom Hey everybody, it's that time of the show where we get to talk about our fantastic wonderful amazing sponsors source elements The creators of source connect at this point you have to know what source connect is My gosh, all the agents are nagging you to get it Um, even if you don't have an agent maybe consider having it ready to go So when you're asked for it You can say yes, and what does that mean you go to source dash elements dot com Get a 15 day free trial But you can even wait to activate your trial you can sign up get your account going Get your iLock account set up have all the pieces in Place and then wait to activate your 15 day free trial to make sure that it doesn't expire By the time you need it, but it gets better than that If you have had your 15 day free trial and you let it expire Don't worry. There's now two day passes So you can activate your source connect for just that gig And just basically pay for the time you actually need so you really can't go wrong There's no major commitments anymore No subscriptions if you don't want to go that route you do have that ability to just activate it and use it for a day or two So it's a no-brainer be ready to use source connect for that big gig that comes down the line which is happening more and more these days thanks to working remotely And sign up at source dash elements and if you have a chance to tell them when we sent you Would you do that? That'd be awesome. I'll be right back right after this Oh cut the speakers Now does it sound okay test one two I don't know something needs to be checked off there Oh One two, oh well that fixed it Okay, it's like the old days where I have to manually mute the speakers when we come back for the break. Okay, and There's the edit point right there. Okay Well, okay, we're back here voice over body shop tech talk number 44 Uh god, we've been doing this a long time, but we still have stuff to talk about because people have questions Because there's just so much to know and it comes down to real simple stuff So why don't we start uh start on those go for it? All right, right off the top here. We have a question from bod lead bob I'll lead them and filly There's lots of info to be found on av software for mac Everybody's list is a little different. I guess it depends on who you ask Is this a good idea not necessary? Paid free usual suspects, which ones? Yes, okay first. I had to remember what what he means by av so My brain goes to audio visual. Yeah, that's Yeah, but after I read the whole thing. I realized what he's talking about is antivirus So dan, I think at one time you ran an antivirus on your mac. Do you still do that?  You got your all this other stuff Malware bites. I think that's the one that I've heard more often than anything on the mac side is malware bites Right You know, that's what I've heard people like. Yeah, I mean it's not using it.  I mean nothing exactly Here's here's the here's my attitude on the whole thing. First of all anything that properly protects your computer This has to be constantly Monitoring it. Yeah, so that means it's putting a load on your system It's monitoring the incoming traffic coming into your network, which means it gets in the way of things sometimes And it just keeps your computer busier and there's just so many more opportunities for Problems to occur when your computer is being used to record anything real time audio video And so to me those they become more of a problem than a solution I'm more of into like keeping your system fully backed up And even having like a what's called a clone So like if you really can't afford to be down because of a virus You can boot the computer back up from a clone Another hard drive. That's an exact duplicate of your system It may not have the latest files on it, but it has everything you need to get back up and running I really think that's a better Solution than constantly looking out for every possible little threat That comes into your system. I know folks in windows. That's Dear regard. I mean, that's just windows systems are being attacked constantly right um back systems There are occasionally a viruses or two that come out or an exploit, but it's so rare In comparison, so I'm not a big fan. I don't I don't use it but malware bites. That's what I hear people like All right, well makes sense.  It will take care of you You know, one of the worst ways the most common way that people get infected that I'm aware of is through their email Yeah, and if you don't use a traditional email application like, um apple mail But you use cloud email like yahoo or gmail or hotmail You're way way way less likely to get Stung by a virus. Yeah, because it's you know that they're everything's still in a server in a cloud You'd have to then download an application From your email save the attachment and then run it And it's just far less likely you're gonna do it doesn't mean it can't happen, but Someone will feel less likely. Yeah, at least those guys know what they're doing and they're looking out for us Uh, Jeff Holman asks. Hey Jeff. Hey Jeff. I'm looking at buying a new mac. Excellent I do both voiceover and on-camera work. Is it more important to have a faster processing speed or more processing cores? Does the iteration of the processor matter an i5 versus an i7 versus an i9? Some say a new mac mini is being released next week and it may have a new arm Apple silicon chip processor instead of intel if they did and it had the new apple silicon chips instead of the intel Would you be tempted to hold off buying one? Like you hold off upgrading to a new operating system or application version until it's been vetted by you Uh, or hardware Or is it hardware is hardware not like that? I would tend to think that You know, it's gonna work and is it going to the possible Incompatibilities with some hardware, but generally not. What do you think?  I got my new mac. The other one's going on craigslist. Okay, it's bought. It's gone. Like don't do that Keep your other system online and running reliably as it hopefully is now um Maybe it's not and that's why you're looking to buy anyone but Um, definitely don't make that new machine the your production machine right away You got to get everything installed on it test it with all your software Make sure your hardware is working and compatible with it And that's one factor the other factor when that new mac mini with silicon comes out Um, it's going to have big sir. So it's going to have a new operating system as well as being a whole new system architecture A lot of variables a lot of variables. You're you're really still better off I know it's so exciting to get the new thing and you want to you're buying a new computer So why would you buy something last year or even last month? It's just not smart. It's just not a wise way to go for people that are using their computers for Production that just it's really more about the productivity and the reliability And less about the performance. Yeah in terms of cores versus speed The thing you're going to notice more is speed and not the number of cores Because the reason is most software is not written software has to be written to support multiple cores So most software isn't written for multiple cores It ignores the fact that you have six cores. It only uses one So you're not going to notice uh, uh, if it's like a six core machine and it's a two gigahertz clock You're better off getting a four core machine with a three gigahertz clock because that's what you're going to notice Day to day to day right but jeff does a lot of video work, too Which is a little bit more memory intensive video work. Yeah video work Will matter more because if you're using final cut Final cut on a mac is written to to juice squeeze every last bit of juice out of your mac And it will use every bit of memory and every core on that machine. So In that case the more core count will Will matter now again, it won't matter Most the time it'll only matter when the computer is rendering files. So if you do the stuff for a living and you're like Burn in time because you're waiting for your computer to spit out a video Then the more core faster machine's gonna matter But for a vast majority of you it won't really make a big difference to you You won't really notice a big difference in performance. Alrighty. All right. Why don't you take this one from j. Horace black Okay. Hey j you all know j's a fan of the show a long time um Hey guys great to see you. Uh, what's george? What's your opinion on the mic port pro 2? With the limiter for voice over and on camera use For a one-stop shop. I've been using the mic port Pro 2 with limiter on my on camera self tape submits With my iphone pro 11 max. That's a pretty awesome rig. Yeah Um, either my 416 or my my 875 shotgun mic Um, recently I've had to do a lot of uh, I've had a lot of actors that do both on camera And voiceover asked me which one I suggest And I've been suggesting the mic port pro 2 with a limiter and also have the hue lights all over my house connected to a google mini speaker So I just say hey google Turn on my studio lights and she does I and I also like uh save the specific color and she does it's fun I can't wait until the new apple home speaker comes out in a few weeks to replace the google mini Well jay is a total tech nerd. I love it. He loves the tech There's a lot to unpack in there, but I think the main gist of it is is the mic port pro 2 with limiter Good yes by all accounts. It's awesome Um, do you need the limiter most if you set your gain correctly you don't need the limiter And nowadays we record in 24 bit And we record with a lower gain setting. So we have a lot more headroom That's really what a lot of uh producers want. They don't want levels that are really really hot They want to have a lot of dynamic range and a lot of room So the limiter is less important than maybe it might have been but It is kind of nice if you're doing if you're trying to get something that sounds more finished And you want to record with higher levels that limiter is kind of cool Because it will give you a higher average rms level. You'll give you a higher recording level How an average so It depends on what you're doing and the purposes of doing it if I was using one I would have the limiter just on It's just a safety measure And it doesn't do anything to the quality of the audio it doesn't do a damn thing until the level gets very close To clipping so most of you even if it's on we'll never even know it's on It never can even notice it. So yes mic port pro 2 Great good product very clean very transparent Yes, and it is pretty much a one-stop shop use it with your iphone use it with your mac your pc voiceover Video whatever podcasting super versatile thing podcasting. Absolutely. Absolutely Uh mark banier. Hey guys. I have a very newbie question here How in the heck do I boost audio correctly? I recorded about minus 18 to minus 12 db, but I need to get it to acx standards and say minus 3.2 db I'm asking because I'm getting mixed answers about normalizing and that I should not use normalized Then there's the whole compression world and then the limiters I really want to nail down a process that produces a clean sound without fiddling too much with processes At the moment i'm using reaper set up for voiceover just like the great mike del gaudio Well, how do you get your audio right? I always say it's based on these three things Get your acoustics right keep audio from coming, you know sound from coming into the space you're recording in And prevent it from bouncing around It's a whole discipline right in there to proper microphone technique Don't don't talk too close to the mic. Don't talk directly into the diaphragm Learn proper mic technique And setting proper levels if you listen to what other people say about this Don't listen to them There's because you're getting so much different information from people It just shows that it doesn't really matter Except what we consider the standards for what is proper input now as you were saying because we Recording in 24 bit. We don't necessarily have to punch it quite as hard But you want to be modulating at least to Above minus 12 to minus 9 consistently and then peaking You know up to minus 6 between minus 6 and minus 4 and try not to go all the way to 3 And that's going to give you a nice clean signal all the way across If for any reason it's just more practical Exactly harder to monitor and hear the audio if it's recorded really low Exactly and then if you have to raise it up and normalize it to get it at the proper level You're going to start getting a lot of hissing and stuff like that So in order to not fiddle with it too much Do it right up front and forget about all these processes if you've got it sounding right Initially that's going to save you an awful lot of work and you go with the processes that acx gives you Not suggest. Yeah, I love the guys. They actually yeah, you got to process it to this and that But they don't really explain it very well And so if they would just give the settings that you should use and do that do that Don't make this stuff up for yourself And if you're trying to do it to satisfy your own ears just realize that you Don't hire you And so it's important that you try to get it right up front Let us georgia. I listen to what you're doing and if we think there's things you can do Physically to make it sound better. That's going to save you a lot of work on the back end Yeah, I mean here's the problem with the whole acx idea is that They're asking you to submit audio that has a certain spec Certain peak level certain average level That's not how it's recorded though. That's the mastered or the finished version of the audio And people get that confused all the time So the way you record it versus the way it's delivered for Meeting their requirements so they can put it on audible Are two totally different animals And there are very specific workflows and techniques. I have my own For for getting audio ready and it's called mastering how to master it. So it meets those standards That's nothing to do with how you record it, you know Like as everything Dan said is true if you're not getting great audio to start with the mastering is just going to make it sound way worse But there is a workflow. There's a process And depending on who teaches you how to do it, they're going to use different methods. My method definitely includes normalizing compression limiters the whole deal Um, I recommend that if you really are going to be producing audiobooks you have mastering Set up done for you. I do it as a service At georgia.tech you can get an audiobook mastering Process set up for you. I will set it up and teach you how to properly do this Um, but it's not about It's not about making it sound a certain way. It's about the quality being good to begin with And then making sure the audio meets those specific standards for acx. So anyway Talk about it a lot acx stuff and it's uh It's it's bewildering to many because it seems to be an entry point For a lot of people to the voiceover world Right as they come in through acx and it It's a great thing that they've made this available to publishers or authors really not publishers but authors um, and to to narrators and make them be able to meet each other, but The details. Oh boy that devil's really in the details with what's doing this Yeah, yeah, just saying you have to do stuff. It's not the same as knowing how to do it You know and it's a lot of work. It's and and it's and it's a learning curve You've got to learn what it's supposed to sound like and And when you're going off the course And so, uh, that's really important Uh, here's one for me. This is from from jeff holman He says I've I've read a lot of audiobook narrators like to work sitting down in front of the mic Dan you've done more than a few audiobooks. Yeah, I did about 40 titles Uh, do you ever sit when you work? How about for commercial voiceover work?   So, you know, I I don't think it makes a difference. It's knowing what your voice sounds like If you're sitting it doesn't sound strained. It's going to sound like you Uh, and if you're standing up, I mean I I could demonstrate this, you know Are you going to hear a difference if I if I if I'm standing up or something?  So that's the biggest thing, right? That's really it And but if you you stand up and you you back off the mic You know, again, it's it's just a matter of projection and If it's if it's a hard read if it's, you know car commercial come on down to you know That sort of thing yeah, you might want that support But if it's a subtle conversational type of read, you know, where you're just talking to somebody You know and you want to talk about hey, can we talk about you know that sort of thing? It's not a whisper It's an indoor voice Yeah, you could sit so it really depends on what the read is That's just the matching the energy. Yeah, right and matches the energy But it's also sometimes purely a practical choice. Exactly. Exactly. I have clients that have booths that don't sound very good when they stand up Exactly. Oh, it's amazing sit down. It's amazing how how you know the level Depending on where you are in the booth or something It will change it Mm-hmm, and it can sound much better when you sit down sometimes So you have to compromise once in a while, but that's a good question. Actually. Yeah, what's an excellent question? You get this next one more from nicholas clennants the last one. Okay Um, Nicholas asks if I have the option to record in my closet Or a more expansive guest room What would be better? Well, like I can answer this pretty clearly because right now I am essentially in a guest room I'm in the second bedroom of our two bedroom apartment It is minimally treated right now Um, unless I'm eating the mic as I am now if I relax just a little bit you very quickly Hear the room reverberate reverberating around me, but it's not bad It's not bad, but if I use good my technique I can compensate for that but The better your room's acoustics the better the more relaxed you can be at the microphone You can be a little further away. You can have some more room to move around like dan's room He's quite far from the mic because we have that whole room acoustically tuned really nicely And so dan has a lot more leeway. He can relax and move back from the mic. It still sounds really nice A closet the advantage really the only real advantage for a closet Is the ease of getting started right most people have clothing in their closet that absorbs the echo the more the better It's probably one of the quietest rooms and if not the quietest room because very few closets have windows They're usually on the inside of the house So there's a lot of practical reasons why a closet, but if you have a room that's larger and more importantly A quiet room that's larger. Good luck. I'm always going to pick the quiet the larger room I it's great to have space above you head room A room around the microphone because that allows you to be Further away from the mic more relaxed gesticulate act That's much harder to do in a really small space. So yeah, all things being equal I will always lean towards the bigger room There's just more logistics involved in and making that big room work Yeah, I find that it's you know, and we you and I both have clients in the tiny little places. We won't mention any names Uh, it's like it's not comfortable if you're like squoze into a place Yeah, so um You gotta be comfortable and you gotta be a record Productively too. So it's it can be a trade-off right people just need to learn to use their indoor voice because the louder you talk The more the acoustics of the room come into play. So I can hear it right now Exactly. I mean there's a little bit more room bounce when you do that. Exactly. So if you talk quietly It's not gonna sound like that and you're talking quietly into that 416 or that's or is that that's the The uh, the road mic you've got this one's the road the ntg5 the ntg5 Yeah, it's you know, if you talk normally in a conversational tone The acoustics of the room are not as critical. That's right. So that's right when I did the ad earlier You may have noticed the source elements that I was in salesman mode I was really projecting The room you'll hear the room is a lot more of a factor You'll hear the room reverberating around me soon noticed it too Yeah, but once once we get back into a conversation and we get up on the mic a little bit closer and Take away that high high energy. The room isn't as much of a factor. That's right. There's a lot of things to consider there I know that wasn't an easy an easy answer No, I just want you to realize you think about those things, right? It's it's all part of the discipline Uh and rose climb is asking you you guys can maybe do a mic technique special at any point We got videos on that. We got videos almost every show seems to be a mic technique Exactly comes up in the conversation, but uh Um, you know, you've got a you've got a youtube video on it. Yeah Yeah, and and the it hasn't changed, you know, it's still the same. Yeah, it's still pretty much the same. Yeah All right. Well, thanks for all those questions. If you've got a question for us write to us at the guys at v obs dot tv And get your question on here and you could have it answered by one of us Whether it's the right answer or not You know, try it and see I guess the only way to put it The guys at v obs dot which way do I go the the guys at v obs dot tv All right, we're gonna be right back to wrap this up right after these messages In a world of voices one place wasn't v o buzz weekly Voice over body shop the better one getting into v o is quite an accomplishment And accomplishing anything in the world of performance can be really tough Getting great information is tough getting the right advice and mentoring is tough Simply getting ahead is tough and the best way to get ahead is to simply Get started Let's make it simple to get started in voiceover. 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That's voice over x t r a dot com This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez and you're enjoying dan and george on The voice of our body shop And we're back. I think uh Next week on this very show. We have our good friend joe davis Coming back. Uh, it comes with the set comes to us every year usually after wobo con But we haven't not doing that this year because we ain't doing anything Uh, so he'll be joining us from his headquarters in orlando And we'll talk about voice actor websites Which is really gonna know about web development. He is the guy an seo and he really knows his stuff on that So be prepared for that. Uh, let's see Who are our donors this week? You might recognize these names because i've read them many times and uh, that's for a reason because they subscribe Shelly abaleno thomas pinto george a with them. That's my dad brian page patty gibbons diana berthall stephanie southerland antlion productions shana painton baird marty con And steven chanler. All right, that wouldn't only end might be a new name to me. It is Somebody who who has found us our audience has grown so exponentially over thank everybody over this this pandemic Uh, hopefully you'll stay on uh, okay. We need to thank, uh, of course our sponsors like harlin hogan's voice over essentials voice over extra source elements vio heroes dot com voice actor websites dot com and jmc demos Uh, also jeff holman for doing a great job in the chat room tonight. Thanks jeff. Yes, uh, sumer leno just Making it happen behind the desk here and getting our software working the way it's supposed to work most of the time and uh, and lee pennie for being lee pennie Well, you know, this isn't an easy business. There's a lot to learn, but less george and i like to say If it sounds good It is good, and that's all that really matters. I'm dan lennard. I'm george widdum and this is voice over buddy shop or vio BS tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk. We'll see you next week. Have a good one bye