Those headphones, you have to unscrew like a little adapter and then plug them in. Oh, I should get that. Yeah, you have to do. Those headphones just on the screws. OK. I mean, it doesn't matter which headphones you use. The white ones look better on camera anyway. So yeah. OK. So this I could plug into the laptop. Yeah. But the little white earbuds look better on camera. Yeah, you're fine. You're fine. OK. If you like the Princess Leia look, you can wear a big headphone. That's true. Totally up to you. What's your if you're cosplaying as Princess Leia like I do every week? Just put on your big headphone. I honestly didn't even know this came off of here. Like this is why I have George. I hire George for everything. I didn't even know this was a thing. What? That is crazy. All right. So we are in the pre-show live stream now. We are actually live, but we're not. We haven't started this show yet. OK. Our audience is filing in. Yeah. Well, Jeff is saying no video or audio, but that was better. That was a minute ago. A minute ago. All right. Let me put this back on. And so the stream is good. Let me just update the web page now that I have the YouTube link. And we'll be ready in two or three minutes. Yeah. Let me go full screen now. OK. All right. Everybody's hearing us. Everybody is seeing us. Thanks for a jump through the hoops for us. Thanks for having me and guiding me through it. No, we appreciate it. That's it's what we do. Anyway, OK, it's just a delicate balance of user friendliness and a sound quality. Right. We try to find the perfect intersection. Sometimes we do sometimes give up, but we didn't give up. As we like, as we like to say every week, it's Apollo 13. But see now, people who saw the movie understand that. But if people who were there who remember it happening, you go. All right, I'm just updating the site right now with the new links. And then we are almost ready to go. All right. OK. So, yeah, I've got a bunch of questions for you here. All hardballs. That's that's how. No, no, these these are these are just kidding. Yeah, these these are lobbed softballs. It's more like T-ball, actually. The show is about shameless promotion, as we always remind everybody. Yeah, so feel free to talk about anything you can that's not under NDA. Cool. Yeah, I have a whole list of things. I'm like, I should talk about these. Yeah, it's great to go because you don't want to talk about the things that's going to get you in trouble. Yeah, I went over that. I was like, OK, yeah, but we can talk about Red Fall and Red Redemption and all that stuff. Yes, OK. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. All right, cool. All right, so audio is good. Video is good. The website is this is that working now. That's good. Let me get my Facebook. So I can pin Jaff's post. I can do that later. OK, I think we're ready. All right, I see five o'clock on the big dial. Even though it's digital, what we're going to do is we're going to we're going to do a cold open. We're just going to say hi. We're going to introduce you. Wave or say hello. And then we're going to do our video intro. That's like a three minute pre-record. And then you're going to look at Sue at the very bottom. I don't think you see Sue. Do you see her now? Not right now. Oh, you can. OK, all right. So then trust us and with their fingers, you know, and then just listen to us and we'll cue you and then just follow along. And then when we go to commercial breaks, you will not be able to hear us. OK, when there's videos playing back. So our communication is a private chat. Yeah. OK, so if you want to say anything, I have to run out for a sec. Or I can't hear you guys are, oh, my God, the house is on fire. Whatever, just type it in the private chat and we'll know what's going on. And then when and then when the show is actually over and we say goodbye, you can just go jam because then we don't have a way to talk to you until the show is over. OK, cool. And is this a link that I can just send to my boyfriend upstairs because he wants to watch? Oh, absolutely. Can watch it there or just on the OBS dot TV. The OBS dot TV. Yeah, I have the website updated. So if he goes to the OBS dot TV, you will see it with our with our delay. It would be like a 10 second delay. OK, perfect. Yeah. So that's a hand. OK. Fine. I think we're ready. All right. Let's do this. Watch for Sue. Here we go. Five, four, three, two. Hey, it's time for VoiceOver Body Shop. And tonight we have a lovely guest, a woman who is just moving up in the voiceover ranks, Novin Crumby. Hi, Novin. Hi, guys. We got lots of questions for. And if you've got a question for Novin, throw it in the chat room. Jeff Holman is in there and we're going to ask her all those questions. And we're going to have the funnest hour you could possibly have. Are you ready, Mr. Wittem? I am set. Let's do this. It's time for VoiceOver Body Shop 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 Vio universe, they bring it to you now. George Wittem, 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 down with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home Vio Studio and each week they allow you into their world, bringing you talks with the biggest names in the voice over world today, letting you ask your questions and giving you the latest information to make the most of your voice over business. Welcome to VoiceOver Body Shop. VoiceOver Body Shop is brought to you by VoiceOverEssentials.com, home of Harlan Hogan signature products, source elements, remote studio connections for everyone.  VioHeroes.com, become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training. JMC 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 Wittem. And this is VoiceOver Body Shop or Vio BS. All righty, another week, another Vio BS fresh content for you folks every week. That's why we're here to make sure that you get the best information to help you with your voice over business. And yes, it is a business, kids. It's a an entrepreneurial business. You're the one responsible for finding work.  And we want to show you how to get it done. And one of the ways we do that is by talking to some of the people that have done all the hard work that have paid their dues, made it happen. And so we have somebody like that tonight. Let's introduce our guest. Novin Crumby is a multifaceted actor who is currently best known for bringing a range of characters to life through the power of her voice. She's widely recognized as the voice of E Network. That's E with an exclamation point and has announced the People's Choice Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, stuff like that. And the characters she creates can be heard across action video games like Red Fall and the BAFTA award winning game Red Dead Redemption 2. What about one? An animated children's series, including Rainbow High and LOL Surprise House of Surprises. Her voiceover work also extends into documentaries, books and commercials. And she's appeared in TV, film and theater productions. Let's welcome to VoiceOver Body Shop Novin Crumby. Hi there. Hi guys. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's a thrill to have you on.  You're doing an awful lot of stuff. And we kept you busy to open up the show, too. Had your running and getting your mic and adjusting settings and on and on. But thanks for being here. Of course. Thank you. Yeah. So, you know, as I said, you're very busy.  She's like really hot right now and she's doing everything. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What was your path to voiceover? So originally when I was younger, you know how your parents kind of try you in different things or like, oh, let's try them in this sport or modeling or whatever they want to do. And I ended up doing community theater and absolutely loving it. Went to school for musical theater for four years, never thought about voiceover. Didn't really know what voiceover was. But throughout that time, people are like, oh, you have a great voice. You should really try voiceover and and check that out. So after I graduated, I got into voiceover classes, took that for a year, found out it was a talent that I didn't know I had and got an agent the year after and just been working in the industry since. And it's been about seven years now, which is crazy. So now I love voiceover. I love voicing shows and animation and award shows. It's it's been a surreal ride. It's been awesome. Yeah. So you got an agent after a year. Yeah. Yeah. I took classes with Jeff Howell. Shout out Jeff Howell. Amazing. And he's the one who really noticed my talent and decided to share it with his friend. He's the voice of Atlas Talent Agency and they loved me. And I've been with them ever since. That's great. Yeah. No, Jeff said a great coach and certainly a prominent person out there in the promo world. And so if he noticed you were good, you're good. Yeah. There are coaches that are good to work with because of who they know and and what they do. Not only are they great coaches, but they connect you with great people. Jeff is definitely one of them. Absolutely. Awesome. Yeah. Now I read you worked at Disney as a dancer. Is that true? Yes. Yes. What was that like? Oh, my gosh, it was amazing. Anyone who knows me knows I love Disney, Disney everything. So my whole dream was to just work at Disney before acting, before voiceover, all that kind of stuff. And I auditioned for Disneyland a couple of times, finally got in. And I had been a dancer in the parades for about two and a half years, so the summer parades, the Christmas parades, Phantasmic, that's out now. But unfortunately, COVID happened and Disney kind of shut down for a year. And then my life got busy with voiceover, so I'm not mad about it. But Disneyland was so fun, so surreal. And I really want to go back. I just I want to retire there. Really? I would not just go back there. What distance did you cover when you were marching and dancing? What was the distance that you had to go? From the front of the park, the entrance to literally the very back where it's a small world is. Yeah, like the whole park. So working there, it's a workout, honestly. You don't need to go work out on your own. They will work you out for you. And I was in shape then. And then COVID happened. But yeah, I definitely want to go back. Yeah. No, no, I hear if you're if you work at Disney, you're not an employee.  Yes. Did you ever run into Kiff? Who was Kiff? Kiff was always playing a cop in the I think the New Orleans area. He was a cop there all the time. I didn't feel that. I wasn't sure. It's not that small of a world. Right. But, you know, but it is a small world after a lot of people there.  But how did I take it that, as you said, your voiceover work really picked up during during during COVID? How did that go? Yeah, it actually went the complete opposite for me. And I know how people, you know, kind of lost their jobs and how to kind of find a different direction in life. Voiceover somehow was fantastic for me. I kept getting more bookings, more auditions, more jobs. And I was very grateful and thankful for all of that, because that's definitely not how I expected it to be. I was the voice of E. So I was still doing E every single day. That didn't stop because I recorded all of that at home. And all of the bookings that I had, normally you would go out and record it in a studio, but that's when everyone wanted people to have their own studio professional setup. So of course, contacted George and I got a home professional studio set up and that was right before COVID had happened. So I was good to go throughout all of COVID. So I got really lucky there. Yeah, you did. If you know, if you were ready before it happened, yeah, we'd only been warning people for 10 years. You probably should have one. Luck favors are prepared. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But when you were doing stuff all across the spectrum, I mean, documentaries and narration and... Yeah. I got contacted by Netflix and I did some audio descriptions for them. So for people who might not know, audio description is basically you're describing what's happening in the scene for the hearing impaired and did that for a few of their documentaries. One of them is called Crack and talks about the Crack in the U.S. and all of that. And Deaths of 2021, Death of 2020. I have rum spring of that actually came out as well on Netflix. So I did a lot of audio descriptions there. Got some video games, which have finally come out now. Some are still under NDA. So it's been... It'll take years, right? It's what? Yeah. It'll take years sometimes. Years. Years they do. Books my first McDonald's radio ad to and I've been wanting to get McDonald's. And ever since then, they kind of just keep using me for stuff. And I'm like, this is great. I love this. What is it about McDonald's? It's such an iconic commercial, right? It seems like the get in terms of commercials. Yes.  I don't know why it's interesting. It's like the name brand you want that like on your website. You want that on your resume. And I was like, all right, bucket list checked off. Got that. Remember when we had Roger Leo party on? He was telling us all about how to do the McDonald's read. Right, right. It's just such a thing. It's such a thing. I got to do the ba-da-ba-ba-ba and I was like, all right. Yeah. Dennis Cox doing it. It's like, ba-da-ba-ba-ba. It's like, yeah. He does that kind of a... He sounds like a jazz man. Yeah, I do hear that. Doesn't sound Scottish at all.   How did you pursue and land those jobs? I actually got my first one was the MTV Video Music Awards, the VMAs in 2017. And I got that from doing an audition with my agency. And the thing is when I've done the auditions, I never really get hung up on them. I kind of just do them and send it off and kind of forget about them. And then I ended up, I remember I was at the beach by myself just enjoying the day and I got the call. From my agency saying, you booked the MTV VMAs, you're going to be the live announcer for it. And that just like was so amazing. And when I actually did the show, I was like, okay, so this is another side of voiceover I'm learning. I really, really liked this a lot. And because I did that, I got the People's Choice Awards after that. And since that was with E at the time, and I signed with E contractually, I ended up doing the People's Choice Awards every year after that. And then from then, I was able to get the SAG Awards in February, MTV Movie and TV Awards recently. And I feel like my love in voiceover is award shows. I really love live announcing. I love the thrill, I love the challenge. Some of my friends are like, that's too nerve-wracking for me, I could never do it. I would rather do other video games and stuff. But I'm like, I love the thrill. I love live stuff. Yeah, live is a lot more fun because it's like, what's gonna happen? And then you just do it, you get into it. I mean, I've done sports broadcasting and stuff like that. And it's really tight. It's like, okay, this is coming up and you've got so many notes. What did it involve doing these types of award shows? What sort of things did you have to learn? Definitely people's names. And how to pronounce them. Yes, some of them are difficult because of course they're not always American so it's not easy for me to pronounce. So I had to go on YouTube and do a lot of research. They also gave me phonetics of how to pronounce it. But the most important thing is you want to find them saying their own name because that's how it's correct. Don't see someone else saying their name. So that was a lot of digging. So definitely had to look into that. I also learned eating specific things and not eating specific things on the day of show. So I stay away from milk, I stay away from mac and cheese or ranch dressing with salad. It's just like straight dry food and lots of water. But yeah, just trying to stay healthy and knowing what I'm saying, practicing it, getting the timing right and just letting it flow right off my tongue. Right, and of course you're working with a director and somebody who is probably directing specifically what you're doing and then the show's director. Who were you working with? So for different shows it was different people. Lately it's been Amanda who's worked with me on the MTV Movie and TV Awards and we've worked on People's Choice as well. And so she's in the room with me and so she's listening to the director and the producer and everyone queuing everything and counting down. And I'm listening to that too but it's also like I have another set of ears listening in case I happen to miss a cue or something happens and we have to change the script or something which has happened last minute. But we have another set of ears with me and yeah, it's just a double check and to make sure everything's perfect the way it's supposed to be for the show. How do you train for that though? I mean, the first show you do is, I mean, how do you practice? How do you prepare to do something of that nature? Is there classes for that? I never took classes for that which is the crazy thing. When I trained with Jeff Howell it was just classes for a year. We did promo, we did some animation and stuff but I never really learned live announcing. So I feel like that's something that naturally comes to me and it's something that I enjoy doing. So from the first show that I did the MTV VMAs I kind of just picked it up and I would watch a word show so I would listen and hear how they do it and I kind of just picked it up and just really loved it. Yeah, it's fascinating. A lot of people, if you came out of radio you understand doing the stuff live because it's like, oh, Mike Sun, you're talking. But interesting now that most of the people doing those types of things are women now and it used to be it was always guys and then Randy Thomas was like one of the first people to do the Academy Awards. But now it seems to be all women. You guys are taking over. I know, it's crazy, it's amazing. And I've met Randy and I've looked up to her and I'm just like, man, I wanna do what she does. I wanna announce these awards show.  Award shows is my favorite. Yeah, and I'm sure it pays pretty good too because you gotta be skilled at it. Oh yeah, yeah. If you're just joining us, where have you been? But we're talking with Novin Krumby who is a voice actor and she does everything. We're just talking about doing live award shows and a little bit more about what she does. If you have a question for Novin, throw it in our chat room, whether you're on Facebook Live or you're on YouTube or you're watching through Smoke Signals, just throw it in there, Jeff. Jeff Holman is in there taking notes for us and we will get those questions to her in our next segment. So if you got something she says, like I wanna know a little bit more about that, throw it in the chat room and we'll talk about that. Well, I had a quick ego about the live. Go for it. Do you have an understudy that also is there just in case something happens to you? Is that how they do that? I've never had one unless they just never told me. But what they do actually is we prerecord everything. So the show is half prerecorded and half live technically, but we'll still record the live portion just in case something happens to me, COVID or I get sick or whatever happens last minute. But they do prerecord the live stuff just to be safe, but I'm still saying all of that live regardless. Very good. Now let's talk a little bit about gaming voices because this is something a lot of people wanna do games. Not easy work. No. And nice work if you can get it, but then once you get it, there's a lot to it, isn't there? Hang on, hang on. Yeah, I mean, you've no red falls, very popular. Red Dead Redemption was very, very popular. Not that I play these, I'm just too old for this stuff. Kids do that. But I'm familiar with all these things. How do you land gigs like that? I mean, are your agents out there looking like, you know, specifically in different categories of stuff and they're like, oh, no, we need to be really good for this. And how did you land those particular gigs? Cause those are really good ones. Thank you. Yeah, so in the beginning from what I've seen, it's just they would send me auditions that they think that I would be right for and that I fit and that I'd be good for. Over the years now I can kind of tell that they are picking specific auditions that they think I would definitely be good for. When it comes to those video games auditions, it's definitely the part that you fit. What voice ranges can I do? What ages can I do? The ethnicity that I can do as well. So it definitely comes down to that. Also what I've noticed is, the funny thing is when I took classes and I learned stuff in those classes, I never learned how to scream or choke on blood. Like Friday the 13th, which I have right here, never learned how to choke on blood, never learned how to like get my throat slit and just die. So that's something I definitely learned while I was recording. I was like, cool, Jeff, never learned that, but thank you. And how do you do that? Well, what's your method for that?  So that I had to kind of take easy and they would take the sessions easy, but yeah, I've just been very lucky to get these types of video games. Like I said, like you said, Red Fall, Friday the 13th, I have Creed over here. Yeah, Ozaria, The Sinking City, a lot of video games. So I've been really lucky to get these things. Yeah, I don't know, these like multiple day jobs or do you go in and just kick it all out in an afternoon? They're multiple days, especially the vocally stressful ones. Red Fall was multiple days. Friday the 13th was multiple days. Red Dead Redemption 2, that was one day. Yeah, that one wasn't super vocally stressful, but the ones where I am screaming and running for my dear life, that one has to be spread out over a few days. Yeah. Are these all done at home though? Now they are. Red Fall has always been in studio because we also did facial motion capture for that. So that was in studio. We did that a few times. Red Dead was in studio. Friday the 13th was in studio as well. Yeah, The Sinking City was in studio. Now I'm thinking a lot of these are in studio so I go out for them. The ones at home is like McDonald's or a little promo or stuff like that or animation I do at home as well. But yeah, video games, now I'm thinking about it is all go in studio. Yeah, because you've got to work with the director there. Yes. And they're real picky about audio. Yeah, they're real picky. Yeah, that's like, yeah. And I have to be physical too. So I kind of like that video games like that are in studio where I have the space to kind of expand instead of just sitting in the booth. So that would be a little different. Once again, we're talking with Novin Crumby about gaming and, you know, gaming voices and doing live award shows and all the other stuff she does. We'll talk a little bit about that. But again, if you've got a question, throw it in the chat room and we'll get to that in just a little bit.  How do you prepare for the characters in this and what type of outlines do they give you? So the outlines that they give me is of course what the character looks like, who they are, their age, range, their background, the scene that they're in. So for example, Vanessa Jones in Friday the 13th one of the camp counselors.  She's trying to get out of Crystal Lake. And so finding all these things and it's just like a lot of heavy breathing. And it's, if you've ever played the game, it's dark and it's sometimes rainy and it's just spooky. So of course you're trying to be quiet and there's a lot of heavy breathing. It's just, I kind of put myself in that space, how they would feel. And I would be terrified for my life. So I would be quiet too, but also like, oh my God, I gotta get out of here. Like just freaking, internally freaking out, pretty much. And then getting slashed. Just like screaming, just like running away. Then yeah, and then she's sassy towards Jason too. So it's like, yeah, she's going through a lot. Now you were saying you had to do mocap for this. What does that involve? And some people have seen pictures of it and stuff. Was that a whole new experience for you? And what did you have to do for that? That definitely was. I hadn't done mocap before that. I believe I did it for, I did it for Red Dead Redemption 2 as well. I don't think I did it for Friday, but I definitely did it for Red Fall. And that was definitely interesting.  And then you have this giant like, crane thing and a camera which is really up in your face like that. So no personal space whatsoever. It's a bright light. And the guy who's putting it on has a little mini iPad. So what he sees is literally this. So it's just like, it's all like high definition as well. So it's like, you can't do anything about it. You can't wear makeup. It's just like, you see pimples and everything. So great. But it was definitely all up in your face and kind of interesting. But after a while you kind of just, I kind of forget that it's there because I'm so into the character and doing what I need to do. Besides when I accidentally hit the camera like on the mic, I'm like, oh right, sorry. Let's redo that take. So the mocap was always constrained to being in front of a mic or you had, were you more physical? Were you moving around the room ever or was it always constrained to being like in front of one fixed position? In between that. So I wasn't super constrained but I wasn't also moving around the room. It was kind of just in that space where I was. I couldn't move my hands and my arms and stuff but not move my head too much where it's off mic and you can't really hear me while I still have the camera in front of me. But I was still able to move around and do what I need to do to kind of get in character. If for example, like for Friday 13th, if I'm running or even Red Fall when I'm running, it's kind of like running in place and kind of just looking around with your eyes but not moving too much. So I was still able to get in character and do what I needed to do. Yeah. Wow. It's fun stuff. You know, I mean. Sounds fun. Yeah, it's acting now. And of course you've also done on-screen work. Yes, I've done some on-screen, I've done some commercials when I was growing up as well and some here. When I was younger I did the Science Center of Connecticut because I'm originally from Connecticut so I did a lot of commercials there and I did a Ford commercial when I was here and then if some of you may or may not have known I was also on the Ellen DeGeneres show where she gave me some gifts and she gave me a car so that was like an incredible amount of screen time I've ever had, which has been crazy. So I was in two episodes of the Ellen DeGeneres show and then on her Game of Games show as well. So I call her Auntie Ellen. Oh, so you like fell through the thing there? Yeah, yeah I did. That was crazy. Once again, we're talking with Novin Crumby. You got a question. Now it's a great time to ask it because we're gonna get to those in just a minute. George, you had something you wanted to ask her about LinkedIn? Yeah, well, I mean, obviously Novin, we worked together so I knew of you but the reason I really, you got my attention was your posts on LinkedIn and you are working LinkedIn in a way that most of the, and I'm connected with thousands and thousands of people on there. You are working LinkedIn on a level that I have not really am seeing happening and I'm wondering, and first of all, good for you. Thank you. It just shows what dynamic work you're doing and it's exciting to watch. I love the thing you just posted. I guess it was today, where you were lip syncing your own read to the spot. Yep. Which was really cool. Thank you. Yeah, and so it's all really impressive but is that worth it? Is that, are you getting the ROI from all that that you put into LinkedIn? Is it getting you clients? I wouldn't say right now it's getting me clients. I'm definitely getting a lot of messages and interaction on the posts and comments. Not clients necessarily. I did get, I forget what company it is, but it's another top voiceover agency that messaged me. I don't think I should say who, but messaged me and was like, hey, I'm who you repped by. If you ever wanna come over to us, we'd love to have you. And I'm like, thank you. I love Atlas, but thank you for now. But I've noticed at least people are getting out there and seeing me, which is kind of good and seeing what I'm doing. And I'm inspiring other people, which is great and definitely trying to go on their profiles and inspire them and see their work and kind of encourage them as well. But I kind of just know like anything that you have, you wanna put it out there, you wanna share it with people and you never know who could see it. Yep, that's true. Like in radio, you never know who's listening. So be careful what you say. I've known some people that said stuff that perhaps they shouldn't have said and then found themselves out of a job. Yeah, we like to talk about how voiceover is an entrepreneurial business. Now, clearly you have agents and you have people looking for work for you. Do you do your own forward marketing? George was just talking about using LinkedIn. How else do you get yourself out there? So besides LinkedIn, I do other social media websites. So I do post the work that I do. Everything you see on LinkedIn is definitely posted on Twitter. It's definitely posted on Facebook and Instagram as well. So I do share it on all platforms out there. I recently signed with a publicist. So that has been great and they have been helping me to get more out there and to kind of get my name known in magazines and get on red carpets and getting more interviews. So they've definitely helped when it comes to the next step of advancing your career. When do you know it's time to do that stuff? How did you know it's time? Were you getting recommended by those around you? It's time to do this? It was actually by a friend who recommended me to that publishing agency. And then my boyfriend, he's actually in the music industry and he was like, I see all the work you're doing. You're killing it. You need to get out there. You should be on the red carpet. You should be in this magazine. You should be interviewed everywhere. So he actually was like, this is the next step we need to do. And he's the one who's really guided me and helped me into that. Cause I never knew that was the next step. I didn't know that was a thing. I knew people had publicists, but I thought it was like, oh, you need to get bigger in order to get that. I didn't really know how to do that. So I really give him all the credit when it comes to guiding me and encouraging me and supporting me and getting me are more out there. So all thanks to him. So I'm still learning when it comes to this business. So yeah. Businesses are different, but the skill sets are similar. Exactly. Yeah. He's like, you have the resume. You have everything. Now we just need to get you out there. So I was like, all right, let's do this. I'm ready. Yeah. Have you done any modeling too? I did modeling when I was younger. I did. Yeah, I did runway modeling when I was younger and I haven't done it since then. I did John Casablanca School of Modeling and I got some print ads. But I haven't done modeling since then. The only modeling really is me wearing all my Disney stuff down Main Street in Disneyland. It's the only modeling I do. That's about it. Alrighty, once again, we're talking with Novene Crumbie and we're learning a lot about all the different stuff she does. Again, if you've got a question, throw it in the chat room. We're going to get to it in just a couple of minutes, but right now we're going to take a break and we'll be right back with Novene Crumbie here on VoiceOver Body Shop. Don't go away. Well, hello there. I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voice denouncer guy on your new orientation training for Snapchat, were you? This is Virgin Radio. Well, okay, we're not that innocent. There's jeans for wearing and there's jeans for working.  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 smartphone. 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. This is your neighborhood. When hope is lost. The I-8 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 jmichael at jmcoysover.com. Now, if they don't stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show. It's travel time. And whether you're relaxing on a beach, sweltering in a car, or waiting for your Group 9 to board that already delayed airplane, nothing calms one down like a good read. Why not read the best real-life story entirely about voiceover from Harlan Hogan, celebrating his 46 years as a card-carrying SAG-AFT member, reflecting the quantum change that has occurred in the way voiceovers are recorded and cast in recent years. This updated second edition describes the advantages and disadvantages of auditioning and recording from home studios for clients around the world. There's useful advice after every chapter dealing with Harlan's journey from terminally shy kid to voiceover legend, new and expanded session stories from the trenches, how to make professional recordings at home and on the road, how to create demos and auditions that win jobs, how to market yourself, all about agents, unions, and fees. Voiceover tales and techniques of a voice actor, autographed, and it makes a great present at 1995, only at voiceoveressentials.com. I want you to imagine somebody puts out a call for an audiobook narrator and you verse through those doors. I'm David H. Lawrence, the 17th.  So if you want to work with ACX and Audible and all of the other big publishers and big producers, I'd love to hold your hand along the way and do it at a really great cost. The ACX Masterclass Home Study Edition is open for registration as we speak. Go to acxmasterclass.com slash join. That's acxmasterclass.com slash join. We start this Monday, so don't wait. This is the Latin Lover narrator from Jane the Virgin Anthony Mendez and you're enjoying Dan and George on the Voice Over Body Shop. And we're back with Novene Crumby having a wonderful talk with her, learning about all the cool stuff that she does, which sounds like just about everything. But we got a lot of questions here from our vast worldwide audience that is fascinated by what you're all about and why don't we start with some of those? George, you're up. From the top. Jay Horace Black in our YouTube chat. He says, hi, Novene, congrats on all the success. First question, what kind of setup or mic? I knew he always asked about the gear. I never have to do it because Jay does, thanks, Jay. What kind of setup or mic did Jane, did George set up for you? Well, there was one that I set up for you and then I think you may have evolved since then, but tell us what's been your tech journey a little bit. Well, hi, Jay, thank you for the question. So of course, George has helped me. So I do have, for my interface, it's a Zi-10. For my microphone, it is a Sennheiser, Sennheiser MKH416, so the shotgun mic. And this one actually was specifically requested when I became the voice of the e-network. So this is the one that they wanted. So this is the only one that I've always ever had. It took all the guesswork out of it. It was just like this. Yeah, they were like, we want this one. I was like, okay, cool, sounds good. So I got that one. Currently I am in a closet that I've turned into a voiceover booth. So George's helped me to get, they're like little pads, square pads that you can buy on Amazon. And I just have those all around me in my little studio. So that kind of helps the sound to kind of stay in, but not to, like. Boxy sounding or super dead. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So that's basically what I have. And then I use Audacity as whatever cordon. You're keeping it simple. It's been good for everything, yeah. All the clients have been completely fine with that. They've never really asked about that. Audacity gets better and better. The only time I have trouble with Audacity is if there's any trouble with it. Like if there's anything buggy, which doesn't happen that often, but you can't really email the developer because it's all volunteers. Yeah, yeah. Open-Score is, yeah. Generally it's very, it's very reliable. And so you're in a closet still. You were in a closet before, you're in a new closet now. Yeah. It's a little bit more spacious. Exactly. You have a little bit more room to move. The other one was pretty small. Yeah, this one's a lot better. And the other one I kind of shared with my actual clothes in the closet. So it was kind of like a half studio, half closet, but this one is just a closet all on its own. It feels a lot more like a studio. Excellent. And his second part is about your SAG Award work. Jay says, did you do live-announce from home or on set for that? Thank you again, Jay. So for all award shows, they're all done on set, I guess you could say. So the MTV VMAs was at the forum. The SAG Awards was at the Barker Hanger. I'm always there on set and they have a booth basically, like a room that they've turned into a booth for me to do all the live-announcing. So like I had mentioned earlier, the half of it is prerecorded. So like the package is like best hip-hop video. Da-da-da, Justin Bieber and Moe. Like that kind of stuff is all prerecorded. But the coming up next and after the break and please welcome, that's all live and that's all there. So I'm seeing all the celebrities come in. I'm seeing the craziness happening and setting up the show. I'm there for all the rehearsals. So yeah, we're definitely there for that. So not at home. Do you get to dress really nice for that? I do, yeah, I get to walk the red carpet. I got to walk the red carpet for the MTV Movie and TV Awards, which I did last month. So I got to walk the red carpet, do some interviews. I had pictures taking of me. I was like, wow, thanks guys. And then I showed up in US Magazine, E-News, US Weekly, like all of that. And I was like, all right, cool, this is cool, thank you. So that was really awesome. And post that everywhere. Oh yeah, yeah, that is literally everywhere. I was like, guys, look. All right, Marco Pelleas asks, well, you sort of asked this already since you're working from home, could you quickly tell us about your home studio setup? Well, George and you just talked about that.  Your energy is intoxicating. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Marco, for the question. Yes, Interfaces at I-10, microphone is Sennheiser MKH 416. We just call it a 416. Yeah, okay, perfect, I'm like, I don't know. No one even knows what an MKH really stands for anyway. I've just learned what they are. I don't actually know what MKH stands for now, but anybody in this business, 416, or if you're, as we joke around on my other show, we say we call it the 41-6, just cause we wanna be weird. I like that. Cause half the co-hosts are from Australia, so we like to mix that. I'm gonna do that. But yeah, it's the 416. It's the 416. For people that don't know what the ZI-10 is, that's an audio face slash mixer that has USB that plugs into the computer. So it's got a little bit more capability, the loopback functionality, and it's made by Allen and Heath for those who are going, what the heck is ZI-10? It's Z-I-10, of course it's a cute play on words of Jedi. That's why they call it Z-I-10. So that's the Z. In case you were wondering. I just learned something too, so. No, that's good to know. You get the one from Luke Spry. Luke Spry says, hi, Nuvine. What advice do you have for the upcoming voice over artists looking for their big break and how do you manage your work-life balance? We always want to know that question, so. But start with, would you have a little nugget of advice for the someone who wants to be the next you? I mean, I'm only gonna be me. You are just gonna be the best version of yourself. So the way it works for me, it sounds like I should give you this magical answer, but honestly, it really is just classes. Take classes and there you learn the foundations of voiceover, you learn the terminology, you learn the different aspects of voiceover, how video games is different from awards show, which is different from promos and different from documentaries. It's all different, so voiceover classes really, really do help. And like we were talking about before, be on social media, be in those rooms in those classes and talk to people who are in those classes, like clubhouse. There's a lot of classes on clubhouse where people are just doing podcasts and interviews. You can always learn from people. So kind of just absorbing yourself with everything that has to do with voiceover. And you kind of just learn along the way as well too. I didn't really have any way that I kind of like snuck in there, but it's kind of like the saying where preparation meets opportunity and it kind of just works out like that. But you have to want it and you have to be dedicated to it. It can't just be kind of like, oh, I guess I'll kind of try it. You have to really want it and it'll show up for you. Yeah. As I like to say, it's got to be in your gallbladder. Yeah. You want to do it. Have you had the chance to work with any of your idols or favorite people that you've listened to over the years and you've actually been in the studio with them? Not really. Actually, I kind of met friends through doing all these different projects where I kind of been fans of them as well. One of my good friends, Zeno Robinson, he's actually one of the voices on Friday the 13th as well. We've done other projects together too, which has been crazy because we didn't know that until we got into studio. And he is just booking, his last booking was Dragon Ball Z.  My friend Gabe Kunda, we haven't been able to work together yet but I definitely want to give him a shout out. He is just killing the game. He's one of those deep voice, deep voiceover trailer guys that you hear. He does all the Disney plus stuff. He's killing it as well. But I'm still waiting for the day that I can actually work with. See, the thing is with voiceover, it's like you kind of do work with some of the voiceover people, you kind of don't. Randy Thomas would be so cool to work with if we announced something together. But usually it's like one or the other or if it's both, you're like not in the studio together if it's an award show. But animation, Tara Strong, if I said that right, Tara, Tara Strong. I would love to work with her. That would be amazing. I'm still learning all the big people in the voiceover industry, but I would love to just be graced by their presence in this new world. I'll put in a good word for you. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Of course, I have the Tara Strong Memorial Chair. You have your original booth chair, yeah. Sitting and sitting in my booth. It's like, it's magic. It's been blessed. Once again, we're talking with Novi and Crumby. And again, if you've got a question for her, you can still got some time to throw it in the chat room. We'll get it to her. Play the Voice Real Kids VO Family. Oh, I know who that is. And now I understand the question. She asks, if you had a magic wand to improve the voiceover industry, what would you change? Oh, boy. Be careful what you say and don't mention any names, but go for it. To improve the voiceover industry. One thing or, okay, I kind of have two. Pick an industry, because we know that the voiceover industry is really many different industries. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so something that I would change. Oh, gosh, there's, I have like three things. Okay, one thing I would definitely, yes, the number one I would say is trying to find out how to word this without really, okay, I'll go with this instead. One thing that I would change is be easy on the last minute turnaround voiceover auditions, like the ASAP ones. Sometimes I'll be out running errands or I'll be out at the beach and we're like, hey, we need this in two hours, go quick now. And I'm like rushing home or if I can't make it home in time, I have to do it in the car, but it's like, if you ever do voiceover auditions in the car, you hear, you know, that you hear every single sound on the road in the garage, everything. But you don't do it while you're moving. No, no, no, no, you're definitely parked somewhere or you just go in a garage, find the quietest spot, but the ASAP turnaround one hour, two hour turnaround auditions are just, oh my gosh, your day just goes from relaxed into like stressful. So I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to get this in. And especially if it's a project that you've been wanting to do, like McDonald's or if it's like Barbie or some audition that you've always wanted to do. And it's like a turnaround audition, like hey, they didn't find what they wanted, then they really want to just like have you audition real quick, let's do it. And I'm like, oh, okay. Okay, I can be home in like two hours, like I'm just telling them to hold on, I'm gonna get this. And it's just like, that's really stressful. So I wish they were more kind of cognizant of the timing when they kind of just throw that stuff out there and kind of give us a break a little bit, but. We do the best we can, honestly. It's like, I don't know if they forgot that. Life happens too? Yeah, well, they know life happens, but I think five, 10 years ago, it wasn't all that, the sound quality audition didn't matter that much. Like it really didn't matter that much, not for those big commercials. They know you're doing it in a studio, right? But that's changed a lot since the pandemic. And a lot of this stuff is being recorded in your home studio. Yeah. So you're not handcuffed to the home studio.  And like when those commercial auditions come up, like the expectation is that they're gonna sound like pretty close to the real thing. And so yeah, you can't necessarily do that in a car. Even if you have an Apogee mic in the glove box or another 416 in the back with a, and then you pull over the side of the road and then, yeah, you can pull off like a promo real fast that's gonna be on the air and gone in 10 seconds and no one's gonna hear it again with mixed with music. You can't do that with commercials.  I, the agent in question, I know a lot of your fellow compadres that are blessed as being Atlas talent and I hear that one a lot. So let's just put it, leave it at that. Is there something else that you feel is a good- Yeah, there was two and three there. There was two and three, we wanna hear them. Well, the other one was, let me, I'm trying to pick which one, I'm just gonna, okay. So the other one really was, this has kind of happened a little bit more since COVID had happened and the whole Black Lives Matter thing had happened and there's more inclusion of the ethnicities for certain characters when it comes to animation because after all of that had happened, that's when I kind of found out, which I didn't know, that there are animation characters out there who are Black or of color and that are not voiced by people who are Black or of color. So that's something that I've noticed that's kind of been turning around and they are hiring and there are sometimes requesting people who are of color for these certain characters, which I really do appreciate that now and it just makes us feel more included and it's more authentic and more real. And I think that should be how it is like across the board when it comes to characters who are different cultures other than Caucasian. Did they ask for it in a certain way? They say, we're looking for actors who, whose own culture, how do they carefully ask it? Did they say, their own cultural background reflects that of the character? How do they go about requesting that? Because it's such a sensitive topic. Yeah, they say we're specifically looking for, they're also African-American voiceover actors or actors or they'll try to phrase it in that way. So you kind of just know that this is all they want or they say only seeking African-American voiceover actors for this role or if it's like female or male types, of course.  I wouldn't get like Indian or Asian or anything like that but they'll just kind of voice it just one line straight like that. This is all we're looking for. Are you getting any roles that are auditions that are non-binary? Do you actually hear that as a casting? I've gotten two auditions like that and they were both for animation and sometimes when it comes to that, I'm just like, I don't, I'm like what kind of voice should I do then or? Right, I know, I was just throwing that out there. Yeah, so I kind of just like, all right, I'll just do what I think the character would sound like but I guess that's when it's the one they're not specifically looking for a male or a female. So I'm like, well, I'm just gonna do what I think it looks like. Because that's huge on camera, that is huge. Like I'm seeing commercials left and right. They're casting people who are like, sort of gender fluid, non-binary, not really clear. Like that's, so I was wondering about the spitball in there to see if that was anything showing up on a script, because right, what does it sound like to be non-binary, right? What does that mean? Yeah, that's a tough one. I try to sound, because I've had auditions where I have to sound like a little boy or a teenage male and I'm like, I can try to make my voice go deep but also try not to sound like a female. So there's that fine line of trying to figure it out. That's kind of another challenge for voiceover people. How does it sound to not sound male or female but like a person? Absolutely, got one last question here from Jim McNicholess on YouTube. He says, what tool do you use to post to all social media at once? Oh, that's a tough one. Yeah, for me, I know there are tools that people use in apps, but I don't do them. I don't do it. You go through each one individually. I have to, because I'm a very specific person and I have to have everything neat and perfect in the way it's formatted, but it's just when I do that for Instagram, then it posts to Facebook and it doesn't look the same. It's like weird and the font things off. So I just, usually what I do is when I post something, I draft it from the night before. So you can draft an Instagram, you can draft in Twitter, you can draft in LinkedIn and Facebook. So I draft all of them the night before the way I want it to look. And then the very next day when I want to post it, I just go through it, double check it, post, double check, post, and just go through. Yeah, that's the way I found it gets done the fastest that way. Otherwise, you know, you're shocked on blasting it out there. Yeah, and they do all of unique formatting and they do have character count things and you can't put a link in a Facebook post because it won't show up. I mean, it won't show up in an Instagram post because you can't have a link in an Instagram post, but you can have a link in an Instagram story and they're all different. It's just no shortcut for doing it. You have to do it manually. Twitter kind of does the same thing. It's a little weird. So I figure out a way around that. Twitter and LinkedIn are the closest to being similar, I think. Sort of. Well, maybe Facebook pages in LinkedIn. I don't know. They're all different. Yeah, everyone's on everything. Let's all just be on one platform then. Everyone's on everything. I tried so hard to pry myself off Facebook, but that's where the conversation's happening. You know, the groups, the groups are where it's at. Well, Novene, it has been a super duper pleasure having you with us tonight. Thank you so much. Been looking forward to this.  By the way, we got, somebody wrote in, MKH stands for Manfred Hibbing, who is the designer for Sennheiser. In case you were wondering. There you go, because there's an MK8. Learn something new. MK8. Right. MK8. So the H must mean some other German term that determines that kind of a microphone. Interesting. Learning a lot of things. There you go. Now that we know. Whoever found that, thank you. We appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Anything that we should be looking forward to right now that you can tell us about real quickly? Yeah. So definitely Red Falls coming out early 2023. So keep an eye out for that. I'm also doing another video game with Bethesda. Probably kind of sort of get that away maybe. But that's going to be coming out soon. So keep an eye out for that. Can't say the name of the show of the video game, but that I have Rainbow High, which is a big animation show on YouTube and Netflix. So they have new episodes every other week. That's a very popular show. And I will also be moderating a panel at Comic-Con this year. So this will be my first time. I'm excited to be there. I'll be moderating the third annual Hollywood Game Changers, a conversation with the women behind popular film and TV projects. So women from hair and makeup departments or producers or directors or VFX artists. Like it'll be that. So I'm really excited to do that. So that'll be on July 21st at Comic-Con. Well, there's your chance to bump into Tara Strong. Yeah. Yes, I know, right? And she'll know who you are by then, which is always kind of cool. That would be cool. That would be cool. That would be really cool. Novin, thanks so much for being with us and good luck with all the other stuff. And we look forward to meeting you in person one of these days when we can all get back in our studio here. That'd be awesome. Thank you guys so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. Alrighty, take care. All right, we'll be right back and tie everything up into a nice tiny little knot right after this. Don't go away. This is Bill Ratner and you're enjoying Voice Over Body Shop with Dan Leonard and George Widdem. V-O-B-S dot TV. 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, voiceactorwebsites.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 voiceactorwebsites.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, voiceactorwebsites.com has other great resources like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish.  Well, it's time to thank our longtime sponsors of V-O-B-S Source Elements and tell you a little bit about one of the things that makes Source Elements Source Connect a pro for some and maybe a con for others. And this is something called the iLock. Here's one right here. This is the latest edition of the iLock. See how small it is? This is what allows that license to be portable. And a lot of you are used to not using one of these, right, and I've said it on the ads. Many times, no, you don't need an iLock, don't worry. But a lot of people are finding out this is really the best tool for them because they have more than one computer. They've got their travel computer and they have their home studio computer. Or you may have a vacation home or a family home where you go and record all the time and you don't wanna have to go through the process of moving licenses back and forth. Source Connect supports the iLock USB key. That's how you bring your license from studio to studio. You bring your key. Now, if you're gonna be doing this, this is what I recommend. Put it on a lanyard, make it big and hard to lose and attach a tracker to it. This is a tile, but whatever you get, attach something to this because your Source Connect license is now living in this little USB key.  So it's really valuable. Whatever the value of the license is on the key is what it costs. So this is just, I wanted to just have a little tip. You guys have heard me talk about Source Connect a thousand times.  You can get a test license. You can subscribe to it. You can buy it. There's a million ways to do it. But anyway, I just wanted to share a little PSA about what the iLock actually is and why it's a benefit to you if you're on Source Connect. Anyway, we'll be right back to wrap this up right after this. You're still watching VLBS? I love that. Yes, you are. That was way too short. I can tell you from running the show last week, that one's a pain in the neck because it's butt.  The fact that Sue gets his back in after the world's shortest, Howard Cogan Bumper is pretty impressive. Yeah. Well, you know, she's watching the actual time problem. The three seconds on that one. Anyway. Irving was great. She was fabulous. Thank you for recommending her. You know, here's the thing about her. She's fun to work with and that's why they hire her.  Talon is so important. Talon gets you in the door and your personality keeps you there because they want to work with you time and time again. Absolutely. Alrighty. Next week on this very show, if you tune in, well, we won't be here live, but we do have Tech Talk 81, which we're about to do. And if you've got a question for us for Tech Talk, if you've got something about your home voiceover studio, throw that in the chat room now too, because that's what makes our show work is the questions you have. And we enjoy that more than anything else. One of the other things we enjoy is that people actually donate to our show to make sure that we maintain the technical magnificence that we have every week on this show. And who are our donors of the work? You get the work or are we? The workers that keep our week going. Thank you. Great for going, thank you. Jonathan Grant. Christopher Epperson. Sarah Borges. Phillip Sapir. Thomas Pinto. Shelly Avellino. George A. Whidham, that's my dad. Happy Father's Day, dad. Yeah, Brian Page. Patty Gibbons. Rob Ryder. Greg Thomas. A Doctor Voice. Antland Productions. Shana Pennington-Baird. Martha Kahn. Don Griffith. Trey Mosley. Diana Birdzall. And Sandra Manweller. All righty, you know, it's great. And if you go to our website, vobs.tv, there is a button that says Donate Now. You can give us a buck. You can give us 10. You can be like some people give us a lot more, which we really appreciate. And then we get to say their name every week on this show. All you gotta do is subscribe for a buck and we're gonna say your name. And chances are that name recognition will get you somewhere in just a matter of time. It may take a month, it might take five years, but eventually some... I know I heard that name somewhere. I just wanna mention, we're gonna do another appearance on Jody Crangle's clubhouse. That's the first time I've heard of him. I almost forgot about it. But it showed up on my account and I was like, wait a minute, is that happening? Yes, it is. She confirmed today, we're gonna have the George the Tech team, whoever can make it, Dan, hopefully you can be there. I'll be there. To just talk tech on Jody's clubhouse. So that's on clubhouse. So just search for Jody Crangle on there and join in. She calls it the power of sound. That's the name of her clubhouse, which is in support of her podcast, the power of sound. So it's sort of a companion. Anyway, we'll be there, again, June 29th, 11 a.m. Pacific time. All right, you still got your coupon code there? Yeah, it still works and people still occasionally use it. 20% off, folks.  Go for it. Huge discount. I'm putting it out there. It's amazing how few people actually use it. Yes, it works for any on-demand time bookings with any of us and it works on any of the webinars. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention Twisted Wave Advanced is coming up next week. That's on the 28th at 3 p.m. Pacific time. You can sign up at george.tech slash webinars. If that's interesting to you and yes, that coupon code works. So hope to see you there. Super duper. Alrighty. You can also join our mailing list. Go again to vobs.tv and click on that because we got over 800 people on our mailing list and they know who's gonna be on the show before anybody else does and it reminds them to make sure that they get in there to watch because we like having a live audience for this show so we can be a little bit more interactive. We need to thank our sponsors as well like Harlan Hogan's Voice Over Essentials. Voice Over Extra. Sora Salamance. VioHeroes.com. VoiceActorWebsites.com. And JMCDemos. Thank you to JMC. Jeff Holman, great job in the chat room tonight getting all those questions through and Sumerlino for getting it done. We missed her last week, but George and I were fighting over the switcher but we like having Sue making it a lot easier for us. He's so sane. Absolutely. And of course, Lee Penny for just being Lee Penny. Anyway, we're gonna re-rack it now for Tech Talk. Tell your friends if they've got questions for us get them in the chat room right now because we'll get to those in the next half hour or so. But we're gonna carry on here and do that. But that's all for this particular edition of Voice Over Body Shop. Not an easy business, but we're here to help you out and we could bring you all the best information and the best guests here on Voice Over Body Shop. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Whidham. And this is Voice Over Body Shop or V-O-B-S. Stay tuned for Tech Talk if you're watching live. If not, oh well. See you in a bit. So every time we get to the part where we say V-O-B-S together or JMC demos together, I'm always trying this experiment. I always jump. I try to jump ahead of you to see if it then lines up. But Sue, what do you hear on your end when I jump ahead of Dan?  Okay. So I should just time it to be, I should just say it right along with Dan. Is that what you're saying? Okay. I will try something else. I'm always messing around like I'll say it in front of Dan and that way when he says it, no, it doesn't work that way. Alrighty. Okay, let's get into the meat of the matter and the stuff that you and I love the most, which is tech. I had a hard time finding things, but I found a couple of things. All right, good. To talk about tech news wise and one thing that's rather disgusting, which I will not. Now you're not the ear thing. You're going to talk about the ear. I'm going to talk about the ear thing. I'm not going to show the video I shot with the ear thing today. Thank you very much. But I have a video on my phone of what the inside of my ear looks like. In case anybody was wondering. Okay, that's all I'm going to, that's all I'm going to say. All right, let's roll over for tech talk here. Hey, guess what? You've tuned in to voiceover body shop tech talk, number 81, 81, where is that? There it is, 81. All right. In case you were wondering about that. Yeah, it's another voiceover body shop tech talk. We just keep rolling with these. I've been going through all of the, all the promo things I've been doing for that. It's like, God, they just keep adding up. Tech never stops. No, there's an industry based around selling tech. We'll have to keep talking about it. Most of the time, we're probably going to be telling you not to buy things. Yeah, I think it's mostly what we do most of the time. Anyway, if you've got a question for us on your home voiceover studio tech, anything at all, we will be happy to answer it. Throw it in the chat room. I know that Jeff Holman is still in there taking all your questions down and we will get to those in just a little bit. What do you got in your update this week? Well, I'll start off with something that none of you will probably buy unless you just had a heck of a good year. And that is, I'll start with a Neve 88M. So this is a USB audio interface and here's the thing. It's $1,245. So think of something that looks a heck of a lot like and works a lot like a Scarlett 2i2, right? Only it's $1,000 more. And multiply the price by 10. And you got the Neve 88M. Now, I'm short selling it a little bit because of course the price is on another scale that we're not accustomed to. Well, we'll talk about it. But it is a really, really high, high quality audio interface that they want to basically say, look, we know the SSL2 is out there. We know that you're getting by with Scarlett 2i2s and everything, but we want you to have a Neve preamp in your studio. So they wanted to make it accessible. And so they've shoved two of their 88 series, 88RS series console preamps into this box. So it just looks like a, you know, like I said, it looks like a Scarlett, right? It looks like just a two channel interface, but the quality of the preamps, the quality of the functional switches and pots and knobs and all the things inside the box are of console, like big, big console quality. I don't know, I don't really know who it's for because I think if you're going to spend this much money, you probably already have several outboard preamps at this point and Avalon, something, I don't know. Don't need it. And now we don't have to talk about it because we still have to do the intro to the show. We do. We do. Did I get that excited that I went right into the news? Absolutely. It's time for Voice of Her Body Shop Tech Talk right now. From the outer reaches, they came, bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio. And together from the center of the VO universe, they bring it to you now. George Whidham, the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build, set up and maintain the professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today. And you, Dan Leonard, the voiceover home studio master, a professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio. And each week they allow you into their world, making the complex, simple, debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio, answering your questions, showing you the latest and greatest in VO tech and having a dandy time doing it. Welcome to Voice Over Body Shop Tech Talk. Voice Over Body Shop Tech Talk is brought to you by voiceoveressentials.com, home of Harlan Hogan signature products, source elements, remote studio connections for everyone, voiceactorwebsites.com, where your VO website isn't a pain in the butt. VOheroes.com, become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training. J. Michael Collins demos when quality matters and Voice Over Extra, your daily resource for VO success. And now, live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California, here are the guys. Well, hello there. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Whidham. And this is Voice Over Body Shop or VO B.S. See, now that was nice together. Tech Talk. No, but see if I jump it just a little bit. You hear it at the same time, see? That's my trick. It works just fine, all righty. Yes, so now we don't have to even talk about the never thing because you just rambled on about that. Totally forgot where we were. No, no, I got more to say. Anyway, we're here to help you out with your home Voice Over Studio because, you know, 20 years ago we had a home Voice Over Studio 10 years ago. A lot of people had them. Boy, the pandemic changed all that and now everybody has to have one. Despite the fact that we were telling you you needed to have one 10, 15 years ago. Of course, if you just got into Voice Over, you didn't know that, but now you do. And you should have one. Anyway, if you got any questions for us, throw it in the chat room. We will be able to answer those in our next segment, but we got lots to cover here. But, you know, it's important to remind you. Why did George and I even do this? Why do we do Voice Over Body Shop tech talk? It's to remind you that, you know, there's not a lot of guys out there that really understand it. Now, if you're on Facebook or LinkedIn or some of these places and everybody has their little section, yes, I'm an expert on home Voice Over studios. Nobody's been doing it as long as we have. We have seen it evolve from, you know, all right, I won't go from reel to reel, but we've seen it evolve from dat to people, you know, the mailing out. FedExing's dat tapes around. Yeah, FedExing dat tapes. And, you know, to the internet age where we can send MP3, you don't realize, MP3s made what we do possible. I know we got a question a little later on about formats and all that kind of stuff, but if you don't understand it when you're getting started and people get really intimidated by it because I think it's computer stuff. It's a cassette recorder, guys. It's actually much simpler than that. Our job. We're going to stumble into a forum where they get so much disparate information and suggestions that it's, they're just completely overwhelmed. We just want to cut through the noise. That's what we're, that's why we're here. Yeah, and we try to do it not too noisy. So if you've got a problem with your home studio or if you need to learn how to build one properly or need someone to build it for you, that's what George and I do. And you can't do any better than the two of us. And I don't say that to toot my own horn, except that that's why we're here. I'm tooting your horn. You can toot mine. I'll toot your horn. That's right. You toot and then that. We get off the hook that way. That's right, exactly. Thank you very much. If you want to work with George, all you have to do is go over to GeorgeD.Tech is my place on the web. And I too have a new website coming. Mine will probably be coming in the fall, but it's a huge rebuild after having the same website for 12 years, but we'll have a lot of, hopefully easier to use content, easier to find, better organized, et cetera, as that site rolls out. And you can get a sound check. That's what Dan does as well. My sound check is called sound check, but Dan's is called a specimen collection cup and his is over at homevoiceoverstudio.com. And now it's on the top of the page. So when you go to homevoiceoverstudio.com, it's right there. And for $25, I will analyze your audio. If your studio is set up and you got your mic and you got your interface and you've set up in your closet or wherever it is that you're recording, and you want to make sure that it is up to snuff, that it sounds what it's supposed to sound like, go over to homevoiceoverstudio.com. See, it's actually right there on the top of the page. Which way do I point? Yeah, that's right that way. Bump the mic while you're at it. There it is, there it is. Yeah, I am so proud of this new website. All your questions can be answered there. You can contact me there. You can send, you know, your audio and I will be thrilled to analyze your audio and talk to anybody that's done that with me. I'm very thorough. Making sure that you sound the way you're supposed to sound. And that's really important. Anyway, let's get into your tech update this week, even though you seem to have drifted into it already. But yeah, you'll notice that on the promo from last week that we had Novi and Crumby, what was behind us, it was the Neve 88M USB interface that was, I'm like, that's $1245? Yes, that is an expensive interface. $1245 USB interface. And it pretty much does what you think it does. It has two microphones that go in. It's got a volume controller for headphones. It's got one for speakers. That's pretty much it. That might remind you of another little cute red box that many of you have in your studio. So what are you getting for an extra $1,200? What are you getting? Well, you're getting the spirit of Rupert Neve, who's probably rolling around in his grave right now as he watches his Mike Preamp's end up in a USB interface. I seriously doubt that this was something that they could have ever released until he passed on, got in a rest in peace. But he's one of the most renowned Mike Preamp designers in the history of audio recording. And you're getting his legacy in a little box. It also has USB interface, of course, I said that, but it can be a standalone Mike Preamp as well. So if you don't want to record through the USB, it has in and outs on the back so it can act as just a normal standalone Mike Preamp as well. It also has ADAT inputs on the back. So what does that mean? That means it just gives you some expandability. So that means now if you need to branch out into more elaborate production, you can plug in eight channels of Preamps and turn it into a 10 channel interface. So it's overkill, I know, but this is what people ask about all the time. Have you heard about the new Neve? You know, I'm sure it sounds incredible if it's built as well as it should be at this price point, it should last for many, many years. And again, because it can be just powered by USB, but you don't have to use the computer, even if the digital interface technology evolves beyond this thing in 20 years, it will still be a usable Mike Preamp. You'll still have a Neve Preamp. So, you know, there's something to that. Moving right along, the next thing on my queue, let me scroll around here. Oh, this is just a little sidebar thing. My assistant was noticing that uploading to Google Drive or Dropbox, the usual ways that we might transfer files around was really slow for her. And I expected that because she's on a cable modem, so her upload speed is throttled, like 20 megabits per second. But then she sent me a WeTransfer link out of the blue and I was like, oh, why WeTransfer? She said, I don't know why and I don't know how, but the files were able to upload to the WeTransfer site much faster for her. Now, I don't know if this was a coincidence. I don't know if it was timing. I don't know what happened, what magic was, but anyway, if you find that sending files over these other methods is really slow for you, I guess give WeTransfer a try. Maybe that will make a difference to you because I don't know, again, it doesn't make any sense. Your upload speeds are limited by your internet bandwidth at your studio, but for whatever reason, she said it was much faster.  Another thing that came down the pipeline after all the hub-a-balloo, hub-a-balloo, hub-a-balloo? Hullaballoo. Hullaballoo. Hullaballoo of Nam music trade show. As a lot of companies started releasing new products, but these products are becoming more and more web-streaming, live-casting, or what they're generically now calling content creator friendly. And this is one of those things. This is the frameworks, didn't expect that to get bigger when I clicked on the X, expected it to get smaller. And I'm trying to shrink it and it ain't happening. I'll click, oh, that's not an X, that's a get bigger button. There we go. The frameworks content creation desk mount stand says coming soon. Looks pretty nifty. If you are doing more and more and more stuff where you're being directed on camera, well, it's got a built-in light. If you want to have your phone at eye level because maybe you read script from it, or you use your phone as your webcam, because many of us know the best webcam you own is actually your phone, it's got a place for that. It's also got a place for a tablet computer or this looks like you could also hold a script, an actual printed script or a book. I think it's pretty freaking cool, myself. I think it's a great looking design. And I use Gator frameworks products and I have their mic arm right here and it's built really, really well. Here's the business end of it. So you can see it can hold scripts, it can hold displays, it can hold all kinds of stuff. And it reminds me I have a dentist appointment this week. It's a bit like that, except probably the dentist version would be $11,000. Yeah, there is that. Right? So anyway, I think it's a cool, I love rigs like this and 170 bucks is shockingly affordable for the amount of features that thing comes with. So that's something neat that I've seen coming down the pipe. Another thing is I was just told today that by Jeff Cohen, who's a regular in my, I have a clubhouse for clients of George the tech, specifically George, that's how I say my name. And Jeff is a regular in there and he mentioned today about recording into iPhone and iPad is easier if you're using Apigee Meta recorder. My problem with recording with iPads and iPhone stand is most of the apps, at least Twisted Wave doesn't have a clear delineation of what you're actually recording. Is it recording the USB thing you plugged in, the USB mic you plugged in or is it recording from the mic on the computer? And it seems like until you hit record and play it back, you don't know. But Meta recorder actually does have a prompt. It's telling you which input you're recording from which if you wanna rely on recording to an iPhone or iPad might be a really helpful thing for you. So if you mainly just wanna have a great way to capture audio, you're not concerned with doing a lot of editing. Maybe you're just gonna drop box it to your desktop for editing later or something. Meta recorder looks pretty cool. It has a cool trick up at Sleeve too. You can record on four phones or four iOS devices and it keeps track of I guess some kind of time code. So all those files will be in lock sync later automatically when it comes time to edit. So I thought that was a pretty cool thing. Obviously it's for video production people but it's a cool thing nonetheless if that was worth mentioning. Thanks again, Jeff for mentioning that. And lastly, and I will not go into gross detail. It's not too much detail. I just got one of these. This is, if I, it's too much light. I need a product camera so you can, how about that? There we go. This little thing, which doesn't look like much at all is a marvel of technology. This is called the ear cleaner with camera. This is basically an endoscope that you can use yourself at home. No, it is not for going internally. It's just for your ears. Although, I guess it could go in other openings. Don't even go there. But it is amazing because of fear for a few things. One, the camera on it is razor sharp, crisp like a macro 1080p camera, right?  It is very small. It is quite amazing. It has a light. So obviously you can see where the sun don't shine and it does it really well. And it has a little scoop on the end. Let's you extract things that you find, which I did today. Let me tell you. And what did you find in your ear canal? I found more than I bargained for, but you really might want to consider this. Now you gotta be really, really careful because you are literally sticking a metal object into your ear canal. You have to be super careful, but I was blown away with how well it worked. It's even wireless. You don't even have to have a core. It's Wi-Fi video from this to your mobile phone.  And it is the craziest thing. And to top it all off, $22 Amazon Prime. How is that even possible? I don't even understand it's crazy. Anyway, that's all I gotta say. I'm not gonna show the video that the app captured of my ear cleaning today, but just trust me. Do it yourself and entertain yourself endlessly. And anybody else who finds extracting things from the human body entertaining. And I know there's a lot of you out there who enjoy this and find it very satisfying. So nothing more exciting than watching a gallbladder operation. It's kind of like doing, it is the closest any of you are gonna come to operating on your own body. It is very, very interesting. All right. And on that note, you're gonna talk a little bit about acoustics. I'll try to talk a little bit about it. You know, seeing as we're talking about ears. You said determining, that is a challenge. How do you measure or determine what sounds good acoustically? Measure, who measures?  I really, honestly I don't. Okay, good to hear that. I use my ears. Yeah, that's what our ears are for. The fact of the matter is, is George and I know what it's supposed to sound like as we were talking about at the top of the show. When I go into somebody's closet or they're like, can you help me set up? And I go in there, I like to say, I sniff around. You know, I did a lot of home visits the last couple of weeks and was building, you know, one person had a great walk-in closet but it was totally bare. There's no shelves. It's just, and it was kind of an odd shape. It was a blank canvas. It was a, yes, exactly. And, you know, they had a lot of not the prime type of, you know, acoustical foam. It was, you know, the cheap stuff. And I looked at it and I'm like, all right. And I will, what I will do is I will talk and I will move in a bunch of different directions and I will listen to what the reflection is.  We set up all the things that I know basically should work and then I listen again.  There is, there's something that doesn't sound quite right. And you look and see where are those things? Do you put a base trap there? Do you just put some more foam up in that spot? The thing that I find that generally it will affect the acoustics more than anything else aside from getting the foam on the walls and stuff like that or moving blankets or some of the higher quality stuff is the ceiling. And a lot of people don't get that.  And that has to be treated. One of the things that I will do, and George does this as well, is we create what's called a cloud. Something that lowers the acoustical size of the room and the height of the ceiling without moving the ceiling. And I've been building more and more of these clouds. They're really easy to do. But what you do is you create a frame that will fit inside the closet or in the room you're in. And then you lower it until you find that you have a nice neutral sound. And what is a neutral sound? A neutral sound is one without any echo. All you hear is your voice and not anything revolving around. No echo, no boomy muddiness sound. Exactly. Exactly. Sound. Right. And it's still a matter of turning and turning your head and going, what does it sound like over here? And what does it sound like over here? Here's another one. What does it sound like when you stand up? And what does it sound like when you sit down? And as you stand up, does that change anything? And by doing all those things, you find the sweet spot in your particular room for how it's supposed to be set up. And even after I'll hang a cloud, it's still like, all right, where am I going to turn? And where does it, you know, and you just find this sweet spot where there's nothing coming either way? No measurements, it's all done with your ears and what's between your ears, which is your brain. It takes a little bit of experience and that's why it's important to work with somebody who actually knows what it's supposed to sound like, which would be me or Mr. Wittem who's over there. Now, Sue could change these and I'd be pointing in the right direction. Is he over there? Yeah, he's over there. Yeah, you're over there. See, now if I just use my left hand and point to the lot. So, when you're working with somebody, yeah, it's we generally use our ears and don't have, you know, we're not acousticians. Is that, did I say that right? I think so. Acoustic. Acousticians. I've actually met acousticians. I think it's actually just acoustician. Okay, whatever. I've created an entire new ology here. That's okay. I love it.  No, I guess I've tuned enough of these small spaces that I have some kind of formulaic, I wouldn't say formulas, but I just have systems that work. But the hard part about the ceiling, if you're doing it yourself, is it can be a little more difficult than just putting things on the wall, right?  So, you know, some of the companies do include or do have an additional ceiling mounting kit. And that's what you wanna look for. Like ATS Acoustics, for example, has an accessory ceiling mounting hardware kit. And yes, you could go to the hardware store, you could gather all these bits and you could do it or you could just get a kit that has everything in it that you need and will probably make it easier for you. Like allowing you to help you level it, change the height of it, et cetera. I just find using very long zip ties, it works very well. I just run a big long zip tie loop and hang the panel from that and that lets you fine tune the angle and stuff. And I don't find I'm hanging a cloud down more than maybe six to 12 inches from the ceiling, rarely more. If you have a high ceiling and you're sitting down, you can make it lower. Like Dan said, you can make it pretty low. But the biggest problem we have was low ceilings. When people are in a, have normally low ceiling space, like a whisper room, really anything that has that low ceiling, that's our biggest challenge. We need to get you away from that ceiling and sitting down or even leaning on a stool or something like that might be the best thing. But Dan nailed it when he said, there are sweet spots in there. I'm amazed how good a booth can sound if the mic ends up in that sweet spot. But no, that's the tricky part, finding that. But if it works out for your mic placement, boy, it really can sound amazing. Yeah, and then when I'm working with people and doing audio analysis, I'm like, what direction are you facing? Is there noise coming from a certain direction? In which, like a motorcycle going by. If the noise is coming from behind you, your mic is here, remember, it only picks up from one side, try turning the mic towards the noise. And that can get rid of it. I mean, there's all sorts of little tricks and stuff like that. And those are the things that we can help you with. If you don't understand them, we're happy to consult with you and make sure that it sounds what it's supposed to sound like. Anyway, we're gonna take a quick break right here and get to your questions, of which are starting to pile up here, which is great. If you've got a question, throw them in the chat room. Jeff Holman is still in there writing down all your questions and relaying them to us so we can answer them here on Voiceover Body Shop. So don't go away, we'll be right back after these important messages. Yeah, hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky, the voice broker and you're watching Voiceover Body Shop. It's travel time. And whether you're relaxing on a beach, sweltering in a car, or waiting for your group nine to board that already delayed airplane, nothing calms one down like a good read. Why not read the best real life story entirely about voiceover from Harlan Hogan, celebrating his 46 years as a card-carrying SAG AFTRA member, reflecting the quantum change that has occurred in the way voiceovers are recorded and cast in recent years. This updated second edition describes the advantages and disadvantages of auditioning and recording from home studios for clients around the world. There's useful advice after every chapter, dealing with Harlan's journey from terminally shy kid to voiceover legend, new and expanded session stories from the trenches, how to make professional recordings at home and on the road, how to create demos and auditions that win jobs, how to market yourself, all about agents, unions and fees. Voiceover, tales and techniques of a voice actor, autographed and it makes a great present at 1995, only at voiceoveressentials.com. Hey everybody, it's time for our spot with Source Elements, the creators of Source Connect. I'll tell you, the pandemic has come and, well, it keeps going. It's not gone. Oh, let's not fool ourselves. And this is really a critical tool for being able to catch those really the big, not the low hanging fruit of the business, the high tree of the voiceover business, the best work. It really, a lot of it is being done on Source Connect. And now it feels like there's a connection between agents and Source Connect in a way because they're the ones that tend to be telling folks, listen, the casting, one Source Connect, the production one Source Connect, so get Source Connect. So if you're not working at the agent level, Source Connect for you might be something that you want to aspire to, or even at least sign up and get a 15 day free trial and practice with it. Learn how to use it, understand it's the idiosyncrasies of setting it up, and be ready, add it to your skill set of things that you know how to do. You may not need it today. You may not need it any year, but when you do, you're gonna be really glad you're familiar with it because it is the number one way that studios like to record voice actors from afar. It works for their workflow. It fits into the production. It just makes everything work the way they like to work. So check it out. Head over to Source-Elements.com and tell them we sent you. We appreciate it. All right, let's get to those tech questions right after this. 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 jeans for wearing and there's jeans for working.  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 smartphone, 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. Ah, this is your neighborhood. When hope is lost. The I-8 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 jmichael at jmcoysover.com. Now if they don't stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show. This is Ariana Ratner and you're enjoying VoiceOver Body Shop with Dan Leonard and George Wittem, vobs.tv. And we're back with tons of questions about home voiceover studios, which is what we talk about. Anyway, just adjusting my volume just a little bit, making sure it sounds the way it's supposed to sound like. Anyway, let's get started here with Ali Hurley, voiceover alchemist. Does that mean she changes everything into gold? Well, if she turns her wallet into gold-doing voiceover, then power to you. All right, well, you were talking about this, you take it. She says, I have an iLock access online. Can I still get a portable one and can I have both? Ooh, I could do a show on iLock. There are so many weird things about iLock. So here's the thing with iLock. They have three places that the license can be stored, right? One is the computer itself. Two is the iLock key, which looks like one of these. Here's the newest addition of it. It's very small and sleek. This is an iLock key. It looks exactly like a USB thumb drive. It essentially is. It just has an encrypted layer that makes it secure that you cannot copy and move the iLock license without their software, right? What the whole point of it is, is to make the license transportable between systems, but very, very secure for the vendor so that source elements isn't having their license stolen, duplicated and spread around the internet. Believe me, this happens a lot to a lot of companies. So that's the point of it. Now, so I said you could put it on your Mac, you can put it on the iLock. The third way is there's an iLock cloud now. And the thing is, not every application or plugin supports the cloud storage, unfortunately. Source Connect does not yet support the cloud version. So you can only really choose to have it in one of two places, either the iLock or the computer itself. And you cannot have it in both at the same time. That's the thing. You can't just make a dupe of your license, a duplicate and have it in both because now you'd be able to give the license to somebody else. So that's how it works. It only can be in one place at any one time. And unfortunately, the cloud method is not one of them yet. I'm sure it will be, but it isn't yet. Works for me. I mean, I just type it in and it turns on or I don't even need my iLock anymore. Yeah, it's licensed to your computer. Right, that's exactly how it works. Moving it to another computer. It's not that hard. I've had to do it for folks. If you know how to do it, it's easy. If you know how. I've had to ask you a five or six times how to do it. It takes like two minutes, but if you haven't done it once in five years, you go, oh my God, how am I gonna do this? Now it's not that bad. There's a thing called iLock Manager. It's automatically installed on your computer when you install Source Connect. You don't even know you have it, but it's there. There's a little quirky user interface. Once you understand it, it makes a lot of sense and it lets you move the license from one computer to your license storage area. And then another computer, you can go grab it and put it back on the other computer. It's, I know, it's annoying, but that's how iLock works. All right. Another one, is this a follow-up? Can I have both? I was told not to stick. Oh, here's another question from Ali on a different topic altogether. Yeah. You wanna read that one? Yeah, sure. I was told not to stick your foam directly on the walls to allow a bit of space between the foam and the wall. Maybe put a thin piece of wood strip on the wall first and stick foam on the wood. Well, that's one way. I mean, sticking it on the wall is annoying if you have to ever take it down again. Yeah, I mean, and here's, there's a variable here. Do you rent or do you own? And putting foam on the wall. Now, there's a number of things you can do.  That's why you would use wood or cardboard. Or cardboard. Foam core or something as a backer, yeah. Exactly.  And that way you can hang them on the wall non-destructively, as we like to say. Little nails or... Yeah, with nails or a thumbtack or those 3M command strips. Command strips. Which are really great. You get the really heavy-duty ones though. Because those you can, you know, they're hooked down with Velcro.  And it gives you the ability to move the panels around a little bit to make sure that you can, you know, acoustically set and tune the room the way it's supposed to be. So yeah, you don't glue them right to the wall. How many times, George, if we walked into some place where it's like, well, I gotta move the foam and then it's like, you glued it to the wall? Yeah, that's what they tell you to do. They tell you to buy spray glue or this foam tack adhesive that's like liquid nails or something. And when you take the foam down, what you get is like these squiggles on the wall where the glue is with foam that peels off. The back of the foam has got big hairs in it. It is a mess. Yeah, I learned that lesson a long time ago. So that's the reason why we say to put it on something wood or whatever it is first. You know, when I first read the question, I was thinking, wait, why would you? It's the acoustical reason for doing that. Oh, no, it's not an acoustical thing. It's just a practical, asthmatic thing. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you know, foam core works great. Cardboard, you buy a new TV, save the cardboard or refrigerator.  And this reminds me one time somebody ordered one of those Aurel-X acoustic foam packages. You know, it just came in a big cardboard box. Cox, right. They don't compress their foam, right? They like their foam to be intact. And then the box turned into the backer. It was enough cardboard that once I cut it, no bunch of pieces. It's great. It was included with the box. So there you go. That was value added. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, really, it comes in that big box. Why didn't anybody think of that? Anyway, next question from Play the Voice Real Kids VO family. Why does some clients want wave files, a different sampling rate and resolution bit? How big of a difference does it really make? I think that's more of a question of who's on the other end. And, you know, if the different bit rates, the different bit rates and stuff generally has to do with whether they're doing video or audio and stuff like that. Because in video generally they like 48K for doing that. For the sample rate, yeah. Video is 48K, typically. 44.1 kilohertz is other audio medium. That's right. It came from CDs back in the 80s. That's where the sample rate numbers came from. CDs were 44.1. Dats and video was 48. And I don't know the reasoning why they went two different ways. But I think it's a geeky thing. Oh, it sounds better. I don't know anybody out there that can tell the difference unless you're going down to 8,000 or something like that. Yeah, really low sample rates or really low bit depth. So like if we would do everything at 16-bit, right? Now we're encouraging you to go to 24-bit. But 8-bit, you will notice an audible difference immediately. You'll notice there's a lot more noise in the audio. Or you'll sound like you're on the phone. Yeah, it sounds pretty. It sounds like the crappy samples of music instruments from the 80s. It doesn't sound good. So yeah, higher than that though, higher than 24-bit, 48K is really unusual. And I think that's really going to be for like video game producers who are particularly picky people. Particularly picky people. And they really want very high, high, high bit rates and high sample rates because they're hung up on numbers. Right. I can't hear the frigging.  Especially on a single track mono voice. Yeah, with a voice. Right. And it's far more dependent on the acoustical signature of the room you're in and your levels than anything else. Yeah, if you're recording a concert piano, OK. Oh, yeah. Or if you're recording a drum kit, OK. Huge ranges of frequencies and volumes. But yeah, it's overkill. And if you're recording, you know, Yasha Haifetz, who I don't even know if he's still alive playing violin. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's you want to get all. Yeah, all every little bit you can. So does it make a difference? Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah, 16 bit, 44-1, you can get away with it. We prefer 24 bit, 44-1 or 48 kilohertz pretty much across the board these days. If you leave your settings at that and record absolutely everything at that setting, no worries. You can always resample or resave or convert to anything else from there. And no one's going to know that you started with a different sample rate. So don't worry about converting or saving it as another version. They're not going to tell. Yeah. Now, this is an interesting question from Jonathan Grant, who's joining us on YouTube. Hey, Jonathan. Says, I'm finding that my 416, not his MKH 416. His 416 is very sibilant. It's not the mic and it's driving me nuts. Yeah, that's kind of the mic. Yeah. Okay. When adjusting, sorry, you finished. Okay. Well, we'll discuss. When adjusting placement, I find myself either off mic or increasing gain due to distance, which opens me up to some room ring. Okay. Well, we got a couple of different things going on in there. You've got an acoustical issue if you've got a ring and it also means that you're probably over projecting a little bit. And, you know, the louder you talk, the more the acoustics of the room come into play. Yeah, you can really hear the room now, can't you? Yeah. Yeah. But not when you're at the proper distance from the mic and you're using your indoor voice. I find that sibilants, you know, it's just me and George may have a slightly different take on this. Sibilants tends to be from over projecting and over using all of the elements of your mouth. If you if you relax and now there are some people that are sibilant. Yeah, maybe they just had the shape of their tongue is just a little bit different from everybody else. I mean, everything's different on everybody. So some people can be a little bit sibilant. Is it the 416 that makes you sibilant?  That's what it does. And if you're sibilant, yeah, it's going to pick it up. Well, adjusting the mic direction changed that a whole lot. I've never found that. But George and I agree on how a 416 should be placed. Your turn. Go. Well, this is not a 416, but it's a stand in for one. It's a load in. It's a visual aid. Yeah, visual aid. So I'll do it from the side. If you if you're speaking with the mic pretty much right down the barrel just slightly off so that you don't pop it. This is where you're going to get the most sibilants. You're going to get the most everything, right?  If you start doing this and bringing it up at a higher angle, it will still clear clearly pick up your voice. But now the mic isn't pointing inside the mechanism. You know, the when the when the when the when it's pointing into your mouth, it's picking up the mechanism of your voice, the jaw movement, all the mouth smacks and clicks and and likely the sibilants, too. So starting to rotate the mic upward, you're going to get less and less of the pickup of all those things. But yeah, it's a it's a bright mic. You know, it's meant to pick up voice clearly over background noise and cut so that that voice can be heard. And so when you compare it to, say, a U 87 or more of the flat studio mics, it definitely will sound seem noticeably more sibilant. But the mic isn't sibilant. You are. And that's just that we all are we all are to a degree. And it takes practice to tune the sibilants out of your performance. But it can be done. And yeah, great voice actors. Yeah. Great voice actors know how to control that and prevent it from becoming overbearing. Yeah. Now he says, interestingly, I don't have the same issue with the TLM 103 to totally different mic. And the 103 tends to be a little warmer, a little bit. A little smoother at the top end, although I find it to be sibilant on other voices. So it really has to do with where the bumps and the frequency response of the mic are now. Right. So the 103 maybe has brightness at the top end and the 416 more at the upper mid range. And I just happen to have my 416. Oh, no way. Yes. Yeah, look at that. So you see how the 416 has a pretty broad wide boosts at the top end. If you have any sibilant issues anywhere in that range, then that mic is going to add 3 to 5 dB more of that. Chances are there's something in that range you don't want to be louder. So thanks. That's really cool to have, because the diagram on their site is really tiny. Every time I look at it, it's like so tiny. So I have no idea why I shoved that in my desk there. But that's handy. Oh, I can show that. Yeah.  I mean, in some circumstances, they can sound really similar based on where it's placed, a room acoustics. And other times, as you're finding out, they sound very, very different. Right. And one's a large diaphragm condenser. And the other one's a small diaphragm condenser. So the 416 is a totally unique beast. It really is. Yeah. This is the closest to a mean, I would say, a knockoff of it in terms of sound quality. It's an RF designed mic, RF capsules technology. RF, meaning that it uses radio frequency to modulate the sound waves. I don't know all the techniques, but this uses the same technology here. So this is a pretty similar mic, but it's also 78 grams. It weighs almost nothing. It's kind of bizarre. But anyway, that if you're going to hold a mic on a boom pole, 16 feet long, you want a light mic anyway, moving along. Of course, it's not that heavy either. No. Ron M. George did an Adobe Audition Primer last year. Now he's done Twisted Wave, Advanced Guide to Recording External Trash. I think something got into the message that wasn't supposed to be there, but I like it. Yeah. Recording to External Trash, got it? OK. OK. When will George do an Advanced Guide for Adobe Audition? Already been done. In fact, Dan, you were the guest on it. Yeah. Dan and I guessed it. Dan guested on that with me last year. And it's on the same site. If you go to George, the dot tech slash webinars, scroll down and you'll see it in the Adobe section. We did an advanced one. Yeah, no. And we enjoy doing them.  You know, they take preparation and it's teaching a class and doing them on Zoom is, you know, or however we do them. Is it helps to be interactive with the audience and stuff like that. But these are all, you know, we do these webinars on on different, you know, dots to show you that they all sound the same. It's it's the workflow more than anything else with most of these packages in these platforms. You know, and we find that Adobe Audition was designed for doing what we do, which is voiceover. It's why it's called they originally was called sound booth. And then they mixed it together with with audition, which was made for music. But, you know, with the spectrogram and all the stuff in there, it really is a wonderful tool for doing voiceover.  And people say, well, Pro Tools is, you know, the industry standard of which we're not talking about the same industry. If you're a recording engineer doing a lot of multitrack recording. Yeah, Pro Tools is fabulous for that. If you're doing one track, what do you need? Ten thousand tracks and all the other stuff that it does. It's not going to change the way you sound. It really isn't. And people are like, well, I'm buying the most expensive one with all the most expensive stuff. Therefore, it's going to be better. I can tell you that also doesn't work out for computers. Now, I mean, yeah, really, the new Macs are all pretty quiet. But I remember people buying these supercharged high end video editing monster Mac pros, Mac book pros, etc. And the fans were making noise like crazy. Trying to keep these things cool down. PCs, too. These gamer PCs. Oh, I bought a gamer computer. It should be amazing for recording voiceover. High end overkill processing, GPU, etc. etc. Ain't going to make a better recording when the fans can't keep it cool. Exactly. Remember, we had the beast here. We had a PC running the show for a while. It had a liquid cooling system. I'm like, that's right. You know, of course, it had a little neon light in it so you can see all the neon or LED by the way. Yeah, I think it a LED or something. It looks like a gamer's PC. Yeah, it was like a Frankenstein's lab in there. Yeah, the stuff moving around. Yeah. Let's see here. Grace Newton, you get this one. Oh, man. My mic has been getting a buzz. Yeah. But only when the power supply to my MacBook Air M1 is plugged into the AC outlet. Well, any ideas? Well, it sounds like you've got some pretty dirty power at your place. I don't know what else is plugged in. That's the other thing is, do you have anything else plugged into your Mac through USB or otherwise that would also be eventually plugged into the wall? So if there's multiple ways that power is interconnected to it, that can cause it. But if you literally have nothing plugged in except your interface to USB and your power to the wall and now you get buzz, you've got some pretty dirty power in your home and you might if I'm plugging the power while you record is is irritating to you might need to get a power conditioner. Those the ones that are actually true power conditioners that actually have all the filtering and everything inside, they're generally going to be two hundred dollars minimum and up just to surge suppressor power strips and stuff. Don't cut it. You're going to need something with power conditioning. So that may be helpful to you. But there may be something on that circuit like a refrigerator or something that's making noise on that power circuit. I might also suggest because I had this one last week, someone was like, I got a buzz in my mic. I'm like, change to the USB cable. I hadn't thought of that. It's like, I got to do this and I tried that. I'm like, have you changed the cable? How did that work out? I solved the problem. Awesome. There you go. Like, boom, start with the cheap stuff. While I was having lunch, I'm like, change the USB cable. Oh, OK. I love it. I mean, sometimes the cheapest thing is the is the fix. So Dan was a good pose, a good point.  Magic boxes. Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. Do I need a new interface? Well, let's let you know. What's the algorithm of what's the troubleshoot on this? OK, what what goes into what try this? OK, let's is it the microphone unplug the mic? Plug in another microphone. You still getting the buzz? OK.  That's not that that's not a test that's going to be helpful to you, Grace. That's only going to tell you that your electrician wired the outlet correctly. Yeah, or that's not going to tell you much about spurious noise, RFI junk on the electrical wiring itself. That's not going to help you there. So yeah, a lot of that has to do with the insulation on a cable and stuff like that. And that's why I was thinking, well, maybe the USB cable is gone. You know, I mean, if you look at the USB cable, you power your phone in your car with it's amazing how that gets twisted and burned out really quick. So it could be something, something like that. She also says she got a Mac hyperdrive dock that I got at the same time as my MacBook. Well, a lot of these docs have power delivery. It's called so they says on the package PD. So if it has that, your charger for your MacBook doesn't plug into your MacBook. It plugs into the dock. So it goes power into dock, dock into Mac. If you didn't try that, try that also and see if that stops the noise or makes it worse. So really good luck. Sorry, Grace, that's frustrating. Yeah. OK. Douglas voice guy. Great to see you again. Which USB interfaces allow you to bypass their internal preamps using another preamp between the mic and the interface? Well, see now my question is why? You know, I think that in a I think George, you'll probably agree with me. The reason that, you know, what's the difference between interfaces is generally the preamp in it. And we find that even, you know, for one hundred and fifty bucks, you use a, you know, a scarlet, you know, by Focusrite or anything, the Yamaha's or the seeing the brains that Steinberg, thank you. Their preamps are fine. They're quiet. They have lots of gain. The new ones, every generation seems to have a whole lot more game to them. Was it the new the vocaster? Yeah, the vocaster. Audit makes one that they had like 70 dB a gain, right? Of quiet gain. I mean, that if that's anything that we've seen change over the last five, six years, that's one of the things.  You know, but why would you do that? But do they do that? And generally, because I just happen to have a two I to sit in here. So I keep all this handy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that and a few other ones, they've all gone into a big box now. But to if how do you bypass that you can't the thing is on the scarlet, you can't truly bypass the preamp. It looks like you can because there's a quarter inch jack. Yeah. So it looks like a line in, but it's still passing through that circuit and it will work. And it will work fine. You just have to ask yourself, is the preamp you're plugging into the scarlet adding anything that the scarlet would take away? Like, is it doing something magical to the sound that would be lost by going into the scarlet? Probably not. And are you going to hear the difference when you use that magic box that you're plugging in? I just it just depends what you're doing with it. To answer your question in a more direct way, yes, they do exist. And, yes, they tend to be much more expensive because they're specially specialty tools. You know, all these scarlets that are printed in batches of 10,000 or however many they make are marketed to songwriters and everybody is a songwriter, right? They're made for voiceover and podcasters. Everybody's doing this stuff. So they're selling by the bushel. But somebody that wants something that unique and specific is much, much less, much, much fewer people are buying them. So they're just so few of them out there. Like the Apollo, for example, has a way to bypass or disable the preamps completely. The Apigee stuff. I mean, he wants a better existing preamp. So like an Avalon, you know, an Avalon. It's not going to change the way you read copy. As Bo Weaver used to say, it looks really cool in the rack. Do you know what Bo Weaver records is all of his work through now, by the way, guys, a 416 plug directly into a Scarlet 2I2. It is true. We have video and audio proof of him doing it. But an Avalon looks really cool and it's got really big knobs on it and it lights up and I get it.  It's the point of Avalon preamps is not to add distortion or coloration, by the way, they're designed to be accurate. And that's what the preamp and the focus rights designed to do. So it's not going to sound all that different, if at all. Really isn't. We've done shootouts and comparisons and on and on. It's such a it's it's such there. There are 50 different ways to make a bigger sound difference than the preamp. One of those is how far away from the mic are you speaking at that particular moment? Exactly. How are you more off axis? How how are you tilting your head? What's the humidity? This stuff all likely has more of an effect on the sound as your dog growling in the preamp. That's your dog growling at you. There's a million things in your home and your studio and your environment that have an influence over the sound more likely audible than the preamp. So anyway, sorry to burst your bubble. But that's kind of what we've discovered having done this for for a long, long time. Right. All righty. OK, well, that's going to do it for all your questions this week. The ones we have time for. Anyway, thanks for for all your questions. If you have a question for us, by the way, you can write to us at the guys at the OBS dot TV. And with that, we can do the you get priority. If you write in during the week with a question, it goes number one in the queue. Always always. So but we also appreciate people watching the show live and giving us those questions. Anyway, thank you for all your questions. That will do it for that particular section. And we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back to wrap everything up. And I can let Mishka in the in the room right after this. Hi, this is Bill Farmer, and you are watching VoiceOver Body Shop. It's great. Hey, there, I'm David H. Lawrence, the 17th. And with my company, Vio Heroes and my team of coaches and my community of voiceover talent, we guide voiceover actors along their journey. And you may be watching V.O.B.S. here and not nearly as far along as many of the other people who are watching. You may not even have started yet. And we actually specialize in helping you do just that. So if you're watching all the stuff going on here on V.O.B.S. and going, I have no idea what they're talking about. I don't know, but I really want to do this. I'd really like to help you. Please go to VioHeroes.com slash start. That's VioHeroes.com slash start. And you can take our Getting Started and VoiceOver class, which tells you everything you need to get started as a voice talent. And I'd love to hold your hand along the way and help you with that journey. Again, VioHeroes.com slash start. That's VioHeroes.com 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, voiceactorwebsites.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 voiceactorwebsites.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, voiceactorwebsites.com has other great resources like their practice script library and other resources to help your voiceover career flourish.  Before time began, there was vobs.tv. Watch or else. Alrighty. Yeah, I let Mishki in. She's been very clingy lately. She was like crawling into my pockets yesterday. I'm not quite sure what it, because it was Father's Day. She's like, oh, Daddy, I love you so much. Anyway, next week on the show, it's going to be the 4th of July. So I think we're just going to run this one for two weeks. So you get lots of chances to watch this. Go back and review. That's right. We've got, this is number 81. You can watch all 81 VOVS tech talks. That's what I mean. Review the content. There's a lot. There's a lot there. It just goes on. Cripes, we've been doing this 11 years. You know, you can see the change in technology. You can see my mustache get grayer. It's pretty amazing. Anyway, who are our donors this week? We have Robert Liedem. Steven Chandler. Casey Clack. Sorry, Jonathan. You're watching the show and I said your name wrong. Jonathan Grant. Jonathan Grant. Tom Pinto. Shelley Avellino. Patty Gibbons. Greg Thomas. A duck tour voice. Ant-Land Productions. Uncle Roy. And Martha Kahn, who I know is out there watching and asking lots of questions tonight as well. Hey, go on over to HomevoiceoverStudio.com and check out the new website. I mean, it's the same address. It's just, you know, it's been updated and actually works now. Not that it wasn't working before, but now you can find the specimen collection cup at the top. If you want to go work with George, you go over to GeorgeThe.Tech and check out the webinars page that's slash webinars. We've got the Twisted Wave advanced coming up in just a couple of days, June 28th. Actually, that's tomorrow if you're watching this played back almost out of time to catch that one. And we do have a 20% off coupon code for any bookings and webinars VOBSFan 2022. You can apply at the time of your order. Alrighty. We need to thank our sponsors as well, like Mishka and Harlan Hogan's VoiceOver Essentials. VoiceOver Extra. Source Elements. VOHeroes.com. VoiceActoraWebsites.com and JMCDemos. Let's see if they, maybe that was synced up. Who knows? Anyway, our thanks to Jeff Holman for doing a yeoman's job in the chat rooms tonight and getting us all those questions. We had lots of them. We love getting them. Sue Merlino from her office in Burbank, directing us from remote next time we, next time after the 4th of July break, I think we're going to be back in the studio. Stranger things to add. I'm not positive anymore. June 11th? I think, or no, July 11th, I think. July 11th? I think we're going to get together and we'll make a party out of it. And we got to remind a guest who promised us once we went back in the studio, he would come. So anyway. Wait, will there be mixed nuts? If you want them. Okay. Okay. All right.  It'll be mixed nuts anyway. And of course, we need to thank Lee Penney for just being Lee Penney. That's going to do it for us this week. Running, yeah, maybe four or five minutes over. All right, Sue. But that's fine. Look, this is a very difficult business. Aside from being an entrepreneur and being a great voice actor, you got to have the technology down. And that's why we're here to help make sure that your technology is really good and that your ears are nice and clean. Anyway, that's going to do it for us this week. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Whidham. And this is VoiceOver. Body Shop. Or VO. B-S. And remember, if it sounds good, it is good. And this is Tech Talk. Tech Talk. Tech Talk. Tech Talk. Tech Talk. We've been doing this too long. No, we haven't. We'll continue doing it. Have a great week, everybody. Later.