Episodes
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In this special episode of The Pro Audio Suite, join hosts Robbo, Andrew, and George as they dive deep into the latest advancements in remote collaboration technology with Source Connect Four. Joined by special guests Rebecca, Ross, and Vincent from Source Elements, the team discusses the game-changing features and improvements that make Source Connect Four a must-have tool for audio professionals.
The episode kicks off with introductions and sets the stage for an in-depth discussion on Source Connect Four. Celebrating the recent accolades and advancements in remote collaboration with Source Connect Four, the team explores the groundbreaking features, including the Auto Restore/Replace function, which has been improved and made more user-friendly. They also delve into the future integrations with Nexus and other platforms, promising further enhancements for audio professionals.
Discover how Remote Overdub Sync revolutionizes the overdub process, ensuring seamless synchronization in remote recording sessions. Exciting news for iOS users! Learn about the upcoming iOS compatibility for Source Connect Four.
Wrapping up with congratulations and gratitude, the team reflects on the insightful discussion and looks forward to the future of remote collaboration in the audio industry.
Tune in and stay ahead of the game with Source Connect Four, the ultimate solution for remote audio production!
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
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Summary
In this podcast, the Source Elements team celebrates their success and discusses the latest updates to Source Connect 4, including support for Dolby Atmos, improved user interface, and the Restore Replace feature. The software has been redesigned to simplify remote connections and enhance the user experience. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of remote recording technology, making it a necessity in the audio industry. The podcast also explores the potential integration of Source-Connect and Nexus, as well as the benefits of Source-Connect's remote overdub sync system. Finally, the host expresses gratitude to various individuals as the show concludes.#SourceConnect4
#DolbyAtmos
#RemoteCollaborationloading
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) Source Elements Wins NAB Best in Show(00:01:40) Source Connect 4: Dolby Atmos Support
(00:05:52) Source Connect 4: Improved User Experience
(00:08:36) Recorded Files in Pro Tools
(00:10:08) Port Forwarding Simplified in Source Connect 4
(00:11:10) COVID's Impact on Remote Recording Technology
(00:16:11) Streamlining Remote Audio Engineering
(00:20:03) The Future of Source-Connect and Nexus
(00:22:27) Remote Overdub Sync in Source-Connect
(00:24:27) Farewell and Gratitude
Transcript
: Y'all ready? Beat history.
: Get started.
: Welcome.
: Hi. Hi, hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite. These guys are professional. They're motivated.
: Thanks to Tribooth, the best vocal booth for home or on the rote voice recording and austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements and someone audio post Chicago, Darren Robbo Robertson from voodoo radio imaging, Sydney tech to the Vo stars, George the tech Wittem from LA and me, Andrew Peters. Voice over talent and home studio line up learner.
: Here we go.
: And welcome to another pro audio suite. Thanks to tributh. Don't forget the code Tripap 200 to get $200 off your tributh. And austrian audio making passion heard. Just imagine a New Zealander, an American, a Canadian, an Australian and a half Englishman walk into a podcast. It's just happened. We have, apart from Robert Marshall, we have Rebecca Wilson, we have Ross and we have Vincent from source elements.
: Ooh, here we are.
: Wonderful.
: An Argentine too.
: Can you talk from our laughter who is here?
: Yeah.
: And welcome to the party in Las Vegas, by the sounds of it.
: Now, we should say the award winning team.
: Yeah, I was going to say there's a bit of a party going on because there's a new trophy in the cupboard. By the sounds of things, there is best in show.
: We're holding it up right now. It's brilliant. Shining blue and it says, nab. Best in show. And it's gonna go under Robert's trophy case.
: Exactly. I don't have a trophy case, but I have a trophy shelf.
: Trophy shelf, yeah.
: So, Phyllis, in best in show for.
: Remote collaboration, remote production. Yes.
: This is the new baby source connect four. Yeah.
: Yes, it does. Atmos, amongst other many cool things, source Connect used to do and more than it does now.
: So go and fill us in on the atmos thing because that's a massive leap forward.
: Yeah. It allows you to have all sort of the raw atmos stream, so not just a rendered mix going across a remote connection, so someone can listen, but instead it gives you the flexibility to send what's called the bed. Then all the objects, these are all separate audio channels, as many as it will be, as many as 128 and the time code. And then most importantly, the metadata that steers all these objects around so that whatever the receiver has, as Atmos does, is it just conforms it. It renders it specifically for their speaker setup. So you could have a stage mixing a film with, say, 20 speakers and a director reviewing that mix in real time over source connect with, say, twelve speakers or even ten speakers. And maybe another person's connected at the same time and they just have headphones. So they're getting it as binaural.
: It takes a lot of the thinking out of the equation, right? You just let the renderer on the remote side deal with the translation. So just lets the host, or the mix host, if you will, put one stream up and have it divvy out to everyone accordingly.
: So everybody's end basically decides what it's. What it wants to hear.
: Exactly.
: Yeah.
: Right.
: Well, no, they'll hear the same thing. They'll just experience it in spatialization differently.
: It'll be optimized for their speaker set up because it'll be coming out of a renderer directly on their side and.
: The spatialization would be compatible from what you hear in binaural or 5.1. It's what someone's hearing in nine 1.6. But just with that lesser detail, I.
: Guess the end goal is sort of like listening parity, which is almost impossible to achieve because everyone's going to have different speakers and configurations. But this is the most optimized version to get closest to that.
: It's not like we're dropping like, you know, one of the voice channels so you only hear one side of the conversation.
: It's the purpose that Atmos was made for so that there'd be one deliverable and then whatever your speaker set up. The person with the really nice speaker setup doesn't have to compromise for the person with the really simple speaker setup.
: And the other way around.
: And the other way around. The other person with a simple setup is not sort of burdened, in a sense, by having something that they can't play because of someone who has a really fancy system. So Atmos is like a deliverable that lets you play back anything from stereo all the way up to, you know, huge speakers arrays and 15 and 20 speakers even at home.
: I think I have kind of an alternate kind of take on this which is basically like a bit of a tangent from that, that angle of it, but it's basically like these. Getting into a really tuned listening environment is a really expensive moment. You only get so many hours in there and the ability that now you could be working on a laptop in headphones through the Dolby Atmos renderer and building a mix towards your big mix session where you're going to actually sit in that room. That's kind of like what I think is at stake. And what's really exciting about this is you could be working on 5.1 before when you were working like in a stereo setting is you weren't able to know that it was going to translate. Exactly. This is kind of, or even at.
: All, you kind of use tools like I had the, the waves thing that lets you take five one and make it binaural and you'd kind of have an idea.
: I think most engineers I know would say they do their best work when like they, the client leaves and they get to work on something by themselves in a bit. So now the ability that you could be working towards this grand big spatial mix in a laptop setting and then transmit that to a listening environment that you can get into or physically get there, that's the real exciting prospect.
: It kind of feels like equity, really like true equity.
: Let's bring it back into more of the realm of our listeners, I guess. And AP and I have been having a bit of a play around with source connect four. Thanks very much to you guys. And the biggest step forward I see is firstly the GUI. You know, it looks so much more SmIc, so much more professional, so much more user friendly. But in terms of operation wise, the biggest step forward is the old queue manager, which now becomes restore replace. In source connect four we were like.
: You know, we've spent 20 years honing technology and then we thought now we need to hone the user experience. It's really an internal focus for all of us.
: Now the queue manager so often was just, people never read the manual. It didn't, it didn't work automatically enough. And then people would just go, what is this thing? I don't know. Shut it down, let's get on with our session. It wasn't something that they thought to ask for because they never had anything like it before.
: It's weird, I've done so many sessions where I've said, are you using Q manager? And I get the answer, no. What's that?
: Yeah, we just have one extra step to go, which is to be reading your session file automatically, your pro tools or logic or other session file, whatever we can. And then you honestly wouldn't have to do anything. And you've got restore happening all the time without needing to configure anything.
: For me, the other awesome one would be for it to work even after I've shut down source connect because there's so many times that you shut it down and you go, oh, I shouldn't have done that, should I?
: But you know, well we have reconnection logic built in now or like a new method where you know, if somebody does shut down, you still got work to do, you can bring it back up and it'll reconnect and it will restart. But we also, you know, if you shut the program down, then it can't do it anymore. That's the same.
: But as far as, like, uploading the data maybe ahead of time or right away so you don't have to wait for the talent or worry if the talent shuts their system down.
: This is maybe the most important thing about source page four. We've redesigned it from scratch, completely rewritten every line of code so that we can add these features that we know everybody wants. So the plan was the very first version on the first day. It's pretty much feature to feature for source connect three because we just need to get it out.
: Right?
: Yeah.
: With doggy connection.
: Okay. All right. Some more extra cool stuff.
: There's a lot of cool stuff to.
: Get you to want to upgrade, but then what you're talking about, like, hey, let's upload, you know, the whole session to the cloud so that the engineer can get it later on. All of that stuff can come now because with built hooks into all of this technology.
: Sure. Well, let's pick through a few of them. AP and I were talking, we were looking at that restore replace page. AP noted the recorded files area and was wondering if that was sort of a hybrid of the old source connect now where you could actually record directly to the cloud. Is that the case, or is that actually looking at my. Well, in my case, my pro tools folder going, these are the files you've recorded so far.
: Exactly. Those are the files that you've recorded in Pro tools. What I would originally say the Qmanager or the auto restore. Auto replace system recognizes as ones that it knows what they are and who they were connected to. And if there's any audio to fix or replace, restore or replace that it can do it. So those are your recorded files. And then the other one you might see in there is the uploads, which are files that maybe someone else recorded that you are uploading data to, to either restore someone else's file or replace data in someone else's file.
: Okay. Because I think AP, you sort of liked the idea of recording in the cloud, didn't you?
: Yeah, that's one of those features you're.
: Technically recording there, and we can make that recording more available. It's actually, I think source connect three had that, but it had some flaws to it. But exporting the connection, if it's not there already, will be there.
: AP has been playing with twisted wave too much. That's the problem I've been playing.
: Yeah, indeed. Just going to ask about port forwarding. How does that change? Or has it changed in source connect four?
: I got this one. How does that change? No more port forwarding is necessary.
: Yeah. Nice.
: Basically.
: We find a way through your connection path and make it work. You don't have to go into your router and figure out anything complicated. You don't have to call us in a panic. You decided to take a vacation, and then you get called for a job. But nothing like that. It's just gonna work.
: So source stream is available. Mac and windows. And port forwarding, especially in the pro version, is available if you want to use it. It does kind of. It's the ideal path for the connection, if it's available. And if you can lay out the red carpet for source connect, it appreciates it, but it's no longer required.
: Only very strict networks and, you know, corporate environments.
: Yeah.
: My question is directed at you, Rebecca, and I'm wondering what hand COVID played in the development of source connect four, the one we're seeing now.
: You know, it's still a complicated thing to process. What happened to the world in 2020? We all changed. It was a one of major cultural shift for them, us as humans. And so, of course, that can only be reflected in technology. And the main thing that changed, I would say, for us, is that we realized we kind of know what we're doing with the Internet, which was really nice to find out. It was really, you know, it wasn't a pleasant situation at all, but it was nice to know that we were able to help. That was really satisfying. If you could have called anything in that situation satisfying. And then it said to us, hey, I think that we have an idea what's gonna be needed the next 1020 years, because we've already been doing it 20 years. You know, Robert and I, the team are all young spring chickens, and.
: And I have a cane.
: We've still got some ideas left. I don't know, maybe just a certain insight that we have from doing this so long. It was like, now the world's ready for us.
: I think what happened in the pandemic is a. All the doubters went, oh, remote really does work. And for us, what we realize is that remote is no longer just like the talent's remote or the client's remote, but remote is everybody's remote, and they all have different roles. And how to put those roles together in the most cohesive way became more what SourceConnect four was about compared to what we thought source connect four was going to be prior to the pandemic.
: If you think about source Connect, like source Connect pre COVID was something that was nice to have, and then when COVID hit, it was something you had to have, and that changed the whole game.
: I thought, well, Andrew, honestly, you and I, you know, we're from the South Pacific, from Australasia. I wouldn't say that source connect was a nice to have. It was kind of a, you know, whether it was source to nature or something else, we had to have something or how on earth we were going to work internationally because plane tickets are expensive and, you know.
: Yeah, that's.
: I think.
: I think so, yeah. But I'm thinking from my point of view, like, as a voice talent, working with studios like you, historically, you just drive it. I go to Melbourne or Sydney or whatever it was for a job. And, you know, you managed to convince people that, you know, you can actually connect with to my studio if I work with someone in Sydney or wherever. But it was kind of a luxury, really. And people would just use local talent, pull up in their car park and go into their booth. But once COVID hit, it was not like that at all. It was a different game.
: I think, especially here in Australia, there was a massive resistance to home studios, to the point where owners of studios would refuse to work with remote voice actors because they figured they were trying to steal their work. So. But COVID sort of put a whole new perspective on that, I guess, really, didn't it?
: Yeah, and there were people. There were people that were actually literally coming out and black banning talent for having a home set up.
: Yeah, that guy's got a home studio. He's stealing my work.
: Prior to, like, up to. Prior to the pandemic, or did that subside at some point?
: Yeah, I think it was. Look, it was. It was softening, but it was still there.
: I think what the pandemic did is kind of shift the focus from the studio to the operator to the engineers at those studios. Right. So I definitely spoke to a lot of people in those places that said they got more work because they were able to do so much of it remotely.
: Well, I know that's a fact for a lot of studios where they were able to, like, have engineers at home and at the studios, or just because clients weren't in, they were able to do just more work. Like, yeah, everybody could be put to work. All you needed was more licenses of whatever it was that you were using, like. Like pro Tools and Source connect and whatnot.
: Yeah.
: The irony of this whole thing. When COVID hit, all of a sudden studios were calling me because they had to get out of their commercial studios and set up at home and asking if I could do tests with them to make sure their source connect was working.
: Wow.
: Right. Or weren't some talent going to your place just to do sessions? Because they were, you know, they couldn't go all the way to the studio, but somehow they could give you COVID.
: Exactly.
: I don't know how the rules were, but I seem to remember you were hosting some talent at your place.
: Yeah, there was a few that came here because they got out of the city and they were living sort of coastal, so they couldn't get in there anyway. And I was asked if people could come here that were living locally, and of course I obliged.
: The amount of tech that was pushed on to pretty much every operator in a remote setting was, I think, probably one of the humbling parts of the pandemic. Right. Because, you know, it was, it was once you have every role get remote, then all of a sudden, like, I know a lot of audio engineers that know nothing about networks. Yeah. You know, like, it's like literally everyone has kind of thrown this wrench of technology and different roles now I got to be it as well as engineering. Well, that's what support was here for.
: Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking like literally a big part of like source connect helping in pandemic was just a huge heavy load of tech support. And it wasn't just getting talent on boarded, but it was almost teaching a lot of people like how to work remotely or how to like not just do a remote ISDN, like to freaking have everybody be remote and lots of people routing. Yes.
: So you know, all that's kind of, I think that's what source connect four represents. I think a lot of the learning of that is how to streamline exist, make the UI, make it make sense for you so you don't really need to think too much. The getting rid of the eye lock and the port forwarding requirements. I don't know if we talked about ilock, that's the thing. We've experienced that probably in huge volumes right at the start of the pandemic.
: What's this?
: What is this Iloc thing?
: I need something physical and I can't.
: Go out and get it.
: You didn't need it physical at the time. Another account? Is it going to cost me anything? No, it's a free account and you know, you can't verify or you can't easily set somebody up because there's just more email verifications for new accounts that are created and God forbid the account that you created in source elements, that same account name is not available in Ilog. So now you have two different account names to remember and like two different passwords and.
: Yeah, and people are losing their passwords because they use one thing for one account, one thing for another account.
: So that's gone.
: No more eyelock.
: Wow, you heard it here first.
: You heard it here, folks. That's right. Exactly.
: Breaking news.
: Bravo did say that he would like the UI to be bigger.
: Bigger, small.
: Can't see shit.
: Smaller the GUI.
: Oh, smaller the GUI.
: It would be nice to be able to scale it like I want to see. I love the size of it as it is for now, but even when you've hit that little four corner box and it squashes down to the sort of send and receive meters and then the menu underneath, for me, it still takes up a lot of space on my screen.
: And you can make it smaller. Yeah, you can grab the corner and push it in.
: We're in the final mile of quality of life improvements. A lot of the stuff that, you know, those sort of smaller bits are just, they're gonna get done in the next couple months and.
: Absolutely, I mean, you've embarked on a massive job. But that was one of the observations that I sort of, I did say to rob, but is I wanna see it big when I'm setting up the session and when I'm getting everybody connected. But once everybody's connected, I've got three screens in front of me, I've got my edit on one, my mix on another, and then my third is dedicated to picture for video. Source connect plugins, meters, all the rest of it to keep them out of the way. So the less space that can take up for me, because I really only need to glance up and see if it's metering. If someone says they can't hear something.
: Can I throw in a future feature that I don't think is a spoiler because I really wanted. Yep, we plan to separate the UI from the engine and you could run it from like another screen or an iPad. And to me that's the sweet spot there, especially for, you know, people who are running, you know, big installations. They can walk away and, you know, oh, source Kinect five is not working and they can look on their phone. Oh yeah, oh, it's working now.
: Right.
: Why should they have to go back.
: To the machine room and what about integration with Nexus?
: I think you're going to definitely see Nexus and source connect integration and just further integration across the whole product line going towards that platform.
: I think because I was telling Robert on a previous episode, it wasn't all that long ago, I had a session where I had a voice talent up in Brisbane somewhere. I had a creative sitting in the airport and two guys in the agency here in Sydney, and then the client was also online from, like, Perth in Western Australia or something like that. And there was another talent in Adelaide and it was this massive session. And if you could have seen my poor old thirst screen with meters and everything else going and all the rest of it, it becomes a logistical nightmare trying to remember where you've put everything and who's on what. So combining that all together would be quite impressive.
: Can't say exactly what you might see, but I think sort of connect and nexus are surely more communication.
: Well, that's actually a really good advancement that you've reminded me that you've, you've put into four. Here is the fact that all your connections appear in the one place. I think that's, that's amazing.
: And they cross connect for you.
: Yeah.
: So they all hear each other without you having to do a thing.
: Right.
: You can pull multiple outputs, everyone record on everyone on a separate track, and.
: You can even give them different inputs.
: Right.
: Right. You can send them different things, but they will all send to each other.
: Yeah.
: Can I make it so that person doesn't send to that person?
: That's the plan for sure. We want to have a more project based style where you could decide what role is everyone playing? What do they hear? What do you hear?
: What do you want them to hear? Who hears what? You can make everyone hear each other in a round circle and you could really play the game of like, tell this story to the next person and when it gets back to you. That is not the story I told.
: Yeah, well, it's. I mean, the way you've set it up now, it's almost a well and truly upsized source connect now, right?
: I'd agree. In a simple sense, it is like source connect three and source connect now. Sort of merging together and becoming each one, giving the best of what they used to do so you get the benefits. Yeah.
: The autorestore replace being like, now you actually truly have an acquisition system that's like, bit accurate, right?
: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
: Never mind the browser, you're not going to get that there.
: We know where every sample and frame is.
: Speaking of frames, we have a system called remote Overdub sync which instead of remote transport sync where you are to deal with latency on a project. If someone is singing or doing ADR, going back to ISDN, the original method is to send timecode into sync. Two timelines on either side. So one chases the other networks, but there's a lot of setup on either side. So the remote overdub sync ideas that you can send to the talent whatever they need to hear and whatever they need to see and they perform if it's ADR and they sing and that performance gets back to you and you record it. And while you're recording it using the remote over dub sync system, you hear it in sync and when you hit stop in your daw, you see the waveform and then a moment later, a couple of seconds later, you see that waveform jump back in time to be where it should have been had there been no latency between you. So you can overdub, really just connect and overdub. You don't have to tell people to load up this timeline and click this button to synchronize.
: No more comments of that doesn't look right to me from the back of the room. When you're recording with the talent, are.
: You thinking or is it going to happen for iOS by any chance?
: Oh yeah.
: Yes.
: I'm a big icad fan. I really love mine. I use it mostly as a music score player to play piano and I would love to use source connect on it and it's definitely happening.
: AP is only asking you because he's trying to create the world's smallest voiceover roadkit. It's a purely selfish motivation.
: I get it.
: He just needs to use a trrs cable. And like, if Andrew just needs to talk to me about how to make things.
: Uh huh. Absolutely. You would have the world's smallest road case. Indeed.
: That's not the only thing that I've got the smallest of, but that's another story for another day. Thank you guys. Thank you Rebecca. Thank you Ross. Thank you Vincent. And of course Robert.
: Congratulations. Congrats.
: Thank you.
: Thanks Andrew. Thanks, Jorge.
: Well, that was fun.
: Is it over?
#ProAudioSuite #SourceConnectFour #RemoteRecording #AudioProduction #Podcasting #AudioEngineering #Podcasters #VoiceOver #PodcastProduction #AudioTech
: The pro audio suite with thanks to Tribu and austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging from George the tech Wittem. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our website, thepro audiosuite.com.
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Join us for a special live broadcast from the bustling floors of NAB 2024 in Las Vegas! This episode dives deep into the latest trends and technologies shaking up the audio industry. Weâre bringing you the inside scoop straight from the heart of the action, featuring:
Exclusive Interviews: Robert opens the bag in whats in SourceConnect four, which is set to revolutionize how we handle Atmos and multi-channel audio streaming. Product Spotlights: Discover cutting-edge products like the new vocal booths that promise unparalleled sound isolation, even on noisy show floors as their VP of Marketing Freddie Gateley joins us for a chat. Tech Insights: Learn about the tech that's driving audio innovation, including the latest in virtual set technology that could change film and TV production forever. Live Demos: Experience the power of Austrian Audioâs OC 707 microphone, designed to deliver exceptional sound clarity, even in challenging environments.Whether you're an audio professional or a tech enthusiast, this episode is packed with insights that you won't want to miss!
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, itâs an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners.https://georgethe.tech/tpas
If you haven't filled out our survey on what you'd like to hear on the show, you can do it here:
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Join our Facebook page here:
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For everything else (including joining our mailing list for exclusive previews and other goodies), check out our website
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
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Summary
In this podcast, George and Robert explore the latest audio technology and trends from the NAB show, including the launch of SourceConnect four, which enables end-to-end Atmos audio streaming. They also discuss the impressive soundproofing capabilities of their trade show booth and the advantages of prefabricated booths over custom-built studios with guest Freddie Galey. The hosts delve into the logistics and costs of shipping vocal booths internationally and highlight Vocal Booth's diverse market applications. Additionally, they share their experience using the Austrian Audio OC 707 microphone for recording on the road and discuss the advancements in virtual production technology showcased at the expo. The conversation also touches on the extravagance of Las Vegas and the use of wireless technology to record podcasts in a crowded convention setting.#AudioTech
#VocalBooths
#NABShow2023loading
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) NAB Highlights with George and Robert(00:00:57) Streaming Atmos Audio with SourceConnect Four
(00:04:35) Soundproofing Magic at the Trade Show
(00:05:57) The Value of Prefab Booths
(00:11:26) Shipping Vocal Booths to Australia
(00:15:12) Vocal Booths: From Testing to Pets
(00:19:00) Building Recording Booths for Any Space
(00:22:12) Recording on the Road with Austrian Audio
(00:24:17) Virtual Production Advancements at NAB Show
(00:28:53) The Excess of Las Vegas
(00:29:55) Wireless Tech Powering Podcasts at Convention
(00:32:24) Wrapping Up and Staying Connected
Transcript
: Y'all ready? Beat history. Get started.
: Welcome.
: Hi. Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the pro audio suite.
: These guys are professional.
: They're motivated.
: Thanks to Tribooth, the best vocal booth for home or on the rote. Voice recording and austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements. And someone audio post Chicago, Darren Robbo Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney Tech to the Vo stars, George the tech Wittem from LA, and me, Andrew Peters. Voice over talent and home studio line up.
: Learner. Here we go.
: And welcome to another pro audio suite. Thanks to tributh, it's your freedom. The golden handcuffs. And don't forget the code TripaP 200 to get $200 off yours. And austrian audio making passion heard. Now, lots of things are being heard at NAB as we cross live to George and Robert.
: Yeah. We are here at NAB 2024. Hello, everyone. We're in Vegas, baby.
: What happens in Vegas instead of.
: Well, not today.
: Yeah. I hope the sales keep on going outside of Vegas.
: That's right. But we don't want the money to stay in Vegas. We want it to go with us. We're all here to make money. That's the bottom line, we have to admit.
: It's true. It's very true, actually. We want to show our stuff. That's what we really want to do. And then if it makes money, very.
: Gordon Gekko of you, I must say.
: Yeah, exactly. Very few people leave Vegas.
: I'd be buying everybody and dismantling their companies if I was Gordon Gekko, wouldn't I?
: Yeah, something like that.
: Yeah. Greedy's good. I'm not in on that name, but I'll google it later.
: It's that movie where he's like the Wall street guy, and he just buys other companies and destroys them. And all the union people are like, no. And he's like, fuck you, capitalism.
: Yeah. So we're. I'm here because of vocal booth. Vocal booth.com. We've done a little story about them already and what I've done with them. But we're here. I'm here because I wanted to hang out with them and meet all of their customers and help them make.
: Then it might be the right decision.
: And Robert is, of course, here with source elements, and he's helping to promote the launch of SourceConnect four, which is doing some very impressive stuff.
: Yeah, we got nominated for our best in show award. Specifically, we made source connect four. The upper end version is going to be able to stream Atmos end to end. And that actually doesn't sound like that impressive because it's possible to stream multi channel audio right now. But the difference is source connect four will be able to stream all the bed, all those channels, all the objects which could be up to like hundreds and 128. And the metadata for all those objects so that the receiving side can render that locally for their system on the fly. And then you can do that for up to five connections simultaneously. So you could have a director monitoring an Atmos mix and the stage could be on a 25 speaker system. The director could have a twelve speaker system. The producer could log in from another location and just receive on binaural and maybe the writer logs in and they're at home and they only have five. One. And all those things can be rendered locally for each system so the stage doesn't have to dumb down or render down to the common denominator. Yeah, that was great.
: Mind bending stuff.
: I think we need to add a caveat to that though. You can do all that unless you're on the australian NBN.
: Well if you have Andrew's Internet then all you can do is half a channel.
: That's right. South of Melbourne. Not so great. Sydney. No problem.
: It seems that way, doesn't it?
: Yeah.
: But seriously though, is that dependent on your connection?
: Well yeah, if you're streaming 128 channels of audio we figure on the realistic side you need at least five megs upload. But really each person and it can add up quite a bit. So we're really talking about people with really good pipes. But the intended audio audience for a product like that tends to be mix stage for a feature film. They're sitting on top of a ton of bandwidth. And then on the home side, most people's download, I mean you can get a gig download without even thinking about it.
: Yeah.
: So yeah, it'll take your average podcasters.
: Not going to use it, let's be honest.
: Of course.
: Or you just need George's cell phone that can get a gig from.
: Yeah, we can get on 5g here. I can get 1.2 gigabit download.
: Wow, wow, wow.
: Inside a building.
: I'm moving to the states, so I'm done.
: I think the towers are in the building.
: Yeah, no, there are definitely microcells inside this building. So it's. Anyway, to try to paint the picture. We are in the middle of the heart of the central hall. It's about as central as this show kind of gets. The main stage is about 150ft in front of us, right down the hall, which has tremendous sound levels. There's music playing. There's presenters. It's all kinds of stuff going on and yet we can get away with recording in this noisy environment until, uh oh.
: Bing bong.
: Hello, we have a guest. Until that door opens, you can hear the noise.
: I think we should do that again.
: Yeah, yeah, let's hear that again.
: Before and after without all the talking.
: Over. Take two. Take two.
: Silence.
: Open the door.
: Wow.
: And then close the door.
: That's crazy. That's insane.
: It is really good at a show floor because I've been to plenty of booth demonstrations at shows and it's really a hard, like, this is, this is as bad as it gets. You know, if you were doing a sports thing and who knows what's going on outside. Maybe not NASCAR racing, maybe not Formula one, but who knows, like a football game, you could probably get away with quite a bit with some stuff like this. Especially if it's, you know, off, you know, place in the right place.
: Yeah.
: Well, we've got another folk, another folk here. Yeah. Freddie Galey, which we've spoken to before. You betcha. How you doing, Fred?
: I'm doing awesome.
: He's the reason we're all, at least I'm here. And this is the reason why we have this booth here.
: That's why we have the booth.
: How many years of nab for you now?
: This would be. Oh, when was my first one? In 2012? 2013?
: I think so. So that was after we teamed up because guy was the first one that we.
: Yeah, we were. I just, you know what? My Calvin, our owner, just sent me a photo like a couple days ago and he happened to be the one that we were down there and I said, source elements here is 2015.
: Wow.
: Yeah, it's not been a while.
: And.
: I've been coming to these spottily over the years, but I'm so glad that I came to this one because the, the quality of the, of the people that attend nab are top notch. I mean, these folks are not just creatives, but they're like education directors, station directors, managers, just incredible high level people here and they understand the value of this thing. The first thing I'm always impressed by is when you tell them what this, this is a big booth we're in, what, eight by ten?
: Yeah, this one's an eight by ten platinum plus. Or a double wall with an extra layer of mass loaded vinyl.
: Yeah. And you know, if we were at a music convention, you might tell them the price and a sticker shock might roll over their face, but not at a show like this, because people understand the value of what this thing does.
: What's something like this? Like 15,000? Yeah.
: So the basic one of this one would go out as seen here at an eight by ten. And the platinum double wall, including all the shipping be 23,000 shipped.
: And the shipping is like two, three.
: Grand on the chunk of it.
: It's pretty stiff, but we pay for the shipping, so that's your out the door price.
: That's what I love. These guys price everything shipped in the US, which really takes away any of the mystification of what stuff credit really.
: Costs and, like, parts and materials and someone to build it. You're spending that much money, at least, and then double it for the frustration.
: I've done a lot of custom studio designs and builds with contractors, and it's excruciating.
: Yeah, excruciating.
: Like, I. One of the things I get hard to do so often is, should I build or buy? And the build argument is so strong now more than ever, because construction's so damn expensive. It's very frustrating to deal with contractors. Not that they're bad people.
: They don't understand the details of, like, I even did it now, and my contractor, I said, put these little rubber pads underneath the floor, blah, blah, blah. Do not screw the new subfloor to the old floor. What did they do?
: Yes.
: Thousand screws in it. By the time I got home from work, it's like, it's done now. My floor is coupled, and I didn't want it coupled.
: You can spend gobs of money way more than this thing for something this size, and then have one mistake. One screw goes through his timber, short out the build, and it's ruined.
: You ruin the whole.
: That's a couple. Yeah, yeah.
: One of the things, too, that I've had clients and stuff in the past is they've called us. They were already pretty well down the road with somebody, and then they were like, I'm just gonna see about having some. A prefab. And we came in, they're like, oh, you guys are a third the cost, and you can have it here this month. Yeah, game on. Let's go. And then that was the other big thing for them, too, is they were like, hey, I'm not modifying my real estate, so this is not going to be something I have to try and resell. This pool house with a recording studio in. It's like we just take it each.
: Part of the art, right?
: You have to include that cost, which is once you want to sell it, you've now modified some basement room to something that people don't want, and then you got to put it back, and that'll cost you at least half as much to undo it all.
: Yep. I know. Watching Joe Cipriano's custom built studio I designed 15 years ago essentially be dismantled and destroyed because the people that bought the house don't need it was rather heartbreaking.
: If there's one way to devalue your property, build a studio.
: Unless you're very lucky.
: Yeah. Unless you actually find you're just lowering the pool of people that want to buy your house on resale. Seriously. I had a real estate agent, and I was talking about building my studio and this and that, and I was like, definitely do not get rid of that bathroom. But all in all, I was like, you're devaluing your property by building this huge studio in it. It's like, well, I'm not moving in my case, but if you don't know or you're building, you know, buying an investment house and you might be planning on selling it, building a studio in there will cost you at least as much as a prefab booth. It will cost you more to get rid of it, and you will be frustrated by the whole process, and it will take you longer.
: It's a serious commitment. Yeah.
: What's even wild, too, is that recently, schools have been getting into that, too. I had one school that built an entire second story out of an acoustic floor just to be able to put our booths in on top of that so that they didn't have to later demo all the sheetrock and all the studs and everything. They're like, let's just put 17 big booths up here, make it look like it's all one structure, wood veneered, and wire all the h vac and everything into it. But later, we can just get rid of it.
: Do you know one of the best tricks I've seen? You buy a booth, and then you just build the simplest wall in front of the booth, and the whole thing looks like it's built into the house, and it's only been one wall with one stud and one layer of drywall, and it looks like Joe Cipriano's place, practically.
: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
: So, gents, down there in Australia.
: Yes.
: What do you guys have in mind? What do you want to know?
: I actually have a quick question about the booth you're in, because every Aussie and every Englishman is asking, yeah, it's great. 23 grand in the states. But if I want one down here, what's shipping going to cost me, and I'm Bhop.
: Funny you brought that up.
: 50,000, 100,000 australian. What's the conversion rate is off.
: It fluctuates.
: We've been seeing NAB is very international. So there are Qatar people from Qatar, Dubai, Europe. And you guys, did you ship something overseas not too long ago?
: Well, even just thinking about Australia is just this last year we did University of Sydney down there and we did. I mean, containers full down there and they did a whole room full of booths and stuff. So logistics are the big thing down there. So if it's something going to Sydney or going to a port city, that's not too big of a deal. We have really good air options, we have really good freight options for the ocean options as well. And if we do a full container down there, it's really easy. We can even get that dropped off at the place and then it's almost like having a trailer.
: So we're talking group orders. Maybe get together and do a group order or something, then fill a container.
: Yeah, exactly. You know, we can always use somebody consolidating stuff over there.
: So the shipping, the 23,000 for this booth shipped, that's continuous us states or is that. Yep.
: That's going to be anywhere where we don't have to cross borders. Because then once we do get into, like, Canada, of course, we've got all the tariffs and fees and stuff that has to go in there and somebody has to be grabbing it on the other side. It's usually. It's funny how it's really not sometimes that much more. Sometimes it's like an extra $150 on our freight side to get it over there, but on. And that's if they're taking care of all the tariffs and all the import duties. We can do that. We can act as brokers for people too, though, and make it pretty easy. But again, it just depends on the level of.
: It's a really world market now. I mean, we are doing build outs in the US where the windows and doors come from, China. This is not unusual. This is all happening right now. So things moving between continents is not nearly. Now, I know there was a little problem besides missiles. Yeah. ICB vocal booth. Intercontinental ballistic vocal booth.
: I'm sorry, it just crossed my mind. I don't know what.
: Filters. Filters, yeah. So, yeah, no, it's not unheard of. Would you buy maybe a little one off, four by four? I don't know. It depends on. Because you're sharing a container when you're doing like, one booth. Yeah.
: And we do international crates, and so we can get it priced out just for a crate. The hard thing is that that is even a fluctuating market. So we've seen, all of a sudden it'd be dirt cheap, like, where we can get something down there for $1,200 shipping, but then we'll see it, like, just absolutely spike. Like, of course, we saw weird things during the whole COVID pandemic, like ships that were just sitting out there with stuff rotting on it. So it was just astronomically up and down, so you never really knew. But we do really quick turnarounds on quotes, so that's something that it's all up front, like, you know, order the boot and then find out how much shipping's gonna be once you guys, when somebody's happy with the way that the quote is, they're ready to go ahead and move to the next level. We're on the phone with our logistics.
: Guys and we got it done.
: So AP's just texted me, he'll take a container load, please.
: Right.
: Right away.
: When you're all done with the container, you can just line it with double wall and make a booth out of the container.
: Maybe we should line it with other things to pay for it.
: Yes.
: There you go.
: Exactly. I think this just became evidence.
: Hello, ASIO, if you're listening. Yes.
: Yeah. So what's your biggest market? Is it people like myself, like a voice over talent? Or is it more studios, as in, you know, commercial studios?
: I'm guessing it's broadcasters and production companies.
: Yeah, it's funny. Our biggest market, probably. I mean, if we wanted to talk just dollar wise, it's going to be education and corporate, even testing. So those are the biggest ones that are getting really big boosts. So some of these will be 16 by 32ft and nine or 10ft tall. Some companies, like Medtronics or Philips, respiratronics or something, they'll be doing really big production stuff and want to move all their testing stuff inside because they're in a bigger factory. And so this is something that they can pop up right in a factory, bolt to the floor in there, and have a whole way of stuff coming in and out.
: Bolt it to the floor. You're gonna couple it and then you're gonna get all those vibrations through the.
: Yeah.
: And so again, what they're all about is they don't need an anechoic chamber, but what they need to do is have all that equipment out there and bring it down to a level that's good enough for their testing inside. And so even inside of that big booth will be other booths.
: Oh, wow.
: Yeah. So it's a big crazy thing. But again, to bring a level down to another level and to another level also, we've been doing a whole lot of stuff with Apple and Amazon and stuff too, and their testing departments. And that's just one of the most consistent things that we have.
: And then what stuff do they need?
: A big thing that we designed for them is custom testing enclosures. And so this will be stuff to test all of their small. I don't know what my NDA can let me say, but you all know.
: What Apple devices, that they all know.
: What Apple branded devices about the size of an iPad or the size of generally portable things. Portable. So a lot of stuff in the testing facilities where they'll want to stack up like maybe 15 or 20 of these and have run localizations on all of those and not have them talk to each other. So they don't need like an insane level of isolation, but enough to where they're just not straight talking to each other or maybe even like speaker arrays or weird things on the inside and then even up to that. So, like, booths that are this size that they can go in and then have stuff kind of bounce around even. We do a lot of stuff like in the broadcasting world and stuff like the Nielsen Corporation that the Nielsen ratings and stuff too, where they build living room sets inside of our booth. So they have big 16 by 32 sets.
: Wow.
: And they're all dressed out and they have robotics arms and stuff, but they can build all those living room sets, put all their listening devices in there and then run all the tests around. And they have, like, I can't remember, they run like 32 of their own little tv stations in the back. And so they can broadcast to their own little closed circuit. Not closed circuit, but just a very small power thing and then test how this works across all of their tv stations and what it sounds like in this living room and what sounds like in that living room and if this thing is working and stuff. So again, that's the crazy thing about vocal booth, is that we never know who's gonna call and stuff. So we do get the people that, you know. Yeah, I'm unfortunate.
: I rarely say no.
: It sounds like, you know, yeah, we pretty much say no to very little.
: Do parents ever call and they just wanna put their kids in the booth, actually.
: Okay. So recently I did get a call and somebody wanted one for. They wanted one of our ant boxes that would perfectly fit a dog crate. And so they could put their dog in there because the dog had anxiety issues and he could be put in there. And we have ventilation and everything. And that crate slid right in there. And the dog could sleep in a nice, very quiet environment when they went to work. And then we had later one that somebody bought a three carat diamond for their parrot. So that thing was driving people crazy and the neighbors crazy when they go to work. And so they both. And I don't know. I mean, you don't ask questions.
: Polly's got a booth.
: We just don't say no.
: Back to this. Back to the dog crate one, though. It's school holidays here, so I'll take four of those, please.
: Absolutely.
: And they stack nicely.
: Yeah, yeah. Nice one.
: What, the children or the boots?
: The serial killer. Did the serial killer want an environment to do his thing in?
: A less eating Las Vegas hotel food for too many days in a row.
: Haven't had that customer yet.
: There was somebody who wanted their entire bedroom put in one.
: Oh, wow.
: What were they getting up to in there then, I wonder?
: I don't think.
: I didn't ask, but I don't think it was all about what kind of sound was coming from the inside, but from the outside, so that's okay. They actually, it was one of the writers on Jimmy Fallon's show. And they were like, I get done writing after the last show is done and we get too busy and I might not get home until 08:00 in the morning and done writing, and then I'm in Manhattan and this is a nightmare stuff. So sent a booth, and from our booths, they can all be built from the inside out. They have nice ventilation and everything. So he just built it right into his bedroom and then threw all the bedroom set and everything aside.
: That's very interesting. Your boots can be built from the inside out. You can put the floor in a corner and you're not screwed. You can put it in the corner. You don't have to, like, build it in the middle of the room and then shove it in the corner.
: That's huge.
: I have built enough booths that that's a big deal. Like, I didn't even realize that. That's really.
: That's huge.
: Yeah, we put all the stuff on the inside because so many places you want to maximize your, you know, your. Maximize your space. And so some people will even call, they just have an alcove like that. That's a big thing with corporations stuff, too. They're like, we've been given the area where the printer used to be. And that's our recording studio now. And so, yeah, no problem. As long as you get there from the front, build all the sides, and even with really short ceilings, we can build it right up to within, like, two inches of the ceiling and then slide light in, you know, the ceiling panels so that you don't have to go up and above and lay them down and then put that final wall in there. And that's a.
: That's a really big deal. I mean, building booths is, you know, building your own built in booth is really frustrating, but it's still a task. It was.
: It.
: I mean, it's gonna, like. I'm sure you guys can put this thing together in, what, like, 2 hours or something, but if your first time on this, you're gonna spend the day building this thing.
: Yeah.
: At least the day. How good you are with instructions and how far it is you have to bring the panels or whatever. It just depends on the people and.
: How it's like going to Ikea.
: I was just there yesterday.
: Very heavy Ikea, insulated with Romo.
: Okay.
: So funny enough, Ikea has actually become one of our clients, as last time. And we just sent him one of those little wrenches.
: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
: We seem to have lost our Allen key.
: Yeah, that's right.
: Well, you've got a few leftovers, like.
: Yeah, yeah.
: What do I do with my missed.
: Yeah, yeah, totally.
: On that wall.
: You guys don't mind, I've got. I've got some clients and stuff to see out here, too, but it's great talking to you guys down there. And always a pleasure. So, Freddie, thank you for letting us enjoy.
: Cheers.
: Love having these guys around, and it's been fun.
: Thanks, Freddie. Cheers, man.
: Thanks.
: Cheers.
: Now listen to the door. Here we go.
: Let's hear it again.
: Seriously, it's good.
: That's very good.
: It is good.
: That mic is doing good, too. From the distance, it's picking him up really clearly. It's hard to tell how it really is when you're the speaker.
: Yes.
: But when you turn it on him, it's good.
: For most of you are probably only hearing the show. This is really an audio show today, and we are using the austrian audio OC 707. I promised I would make this my on the road mic.
: It's a tighter polar pattern than the. Than the OC eight, I think. Right?
: I think so. Like, I'm. So we're. Right now, Robert and I are equidistantly across from the mic, and it's still getting both of us. But it's a little more diffuse. Right? It's not as focused.
: It's got a good presence. Like, that's even more presence. I hear that. And that's just rotating the mic, like, 30 degrees or something.
: So very cool. It's definitely not. It's not a wide cardioid. It's a more narrow, maybe almost hyper.
: I think it might be hyper. I don't know, but it's. I think it's doing well.
: Yeah. Well, it's weird, because in this booth, we have other mics. We have some earthwork ethoses, and we have some other gear. But I opted just to go single mic handheld, which sounds old school and weird, but the nice thing about that is I can essentially engineer this. So I'm controlling and mixing manually. This is an old school thing, but I'm literally mixing the three of us. And because we have one mic, we don't worry about fading and crosstalk. We can get away from the glass. That's. This booth has a lot of glass because it's all about showing off. And, yeah, it's working out really well.
: It's funny you should talk about mics, though, because the file I sent to you, that was done in the back of the car with the austrian audio, Cc eight, I sent to one of the engineers at big radio network here. And he said, what mic is it, and where do you record? I told him, CC eight with the mic four pro in the back of my car. And his reply was, nuts. Absolutely nuts. He couldn't believe it.
: Right?
: Yeah.
: So from now on, you're doing all your sessions from your car?
: That's right.
: Yeah, exactly.
: Exactly.
: Well, I gotta say. So I don't know how much time you've had to really see the joint. I've only walked one lap of the central hall briefly, because, honestly, I've had so much to do here, I've not had a chance.
: I mean, I walked one row down, so just the aisle. We got a pretty good boot spot. So we're on, like, a main aisle, but I just got to go all the way down and back. And I did see one thing that was really impressive. So do you know what a video wall is?
: Yeah.
: Like an led screen. It bolts together and is modular.
: Not quite. More like, okay. You used to shoot stuff on green screen. Why shoot on green screen when we already have the whole background shot?
: Oh, yes.
: So now they have this thing. It's a $4,000 box, which is like. This is like million dollar shit. And now it's like $4,000 box. You can build the whole environment virtually. Or if you go through a bigger process, you can shoot it all from multiple angles. It'll stitch together. Then you shoot it with an iPhone or some camera that has the same thing that you use for VR. So wherever you move the camera, the video behind you moves in the exact same way. So you get the same angle. And all the parallax. Not only that, the thing controls all the lights that you set up around it. So if you turn it to a place where you say, this is dark, the lights will go down and.
: Whoa.
: Yeah, well, this is million dollar stuff. Like, I don't know exactly how much the real deal stuff is, but this is like $4,000, I think.
: I remember seeing it here the last four, five, six years ago, and it was extremely, like, science fiction and extremely expensive, and it's. Now it's accessible. So what do they call it? Virtual sets, right.
: Well, it's more than a virtual set, but yes, it's a virtual set, but now it's. I thought they call it a video wall or something, and it just negates the need for. Because a virtual set, you're sitting there just looking at a green screen. But on this thing, the actors, like, running around doing this thing, and they look behind, and if there's a character, they can make eye contact with the screen. They can act and feel it much more than pretending that they're talking to a green screen and imagining what's there. They can focus their eyes in the right places.
: Right? Yeah.
: Well, there's a couple of guys I know here who set up a thing called Dreamscreen, which you can google, and that's the same thing. But they've got massive sets with the whole back of the set is giant video wall. And they've shot a lot of films there. In fact, they were up for Metropolis, the remake of Metropolis, the Fritz Lang film.
: Yeah, it's.
: Oh, wow.
: Except bring your own screen.
: Yeah.
: But they said it will work with projectors, so you can stitch together multiple projectors and fill a, you know, who knows how big of a wall.
: Well, they did a. They did a big thing here. One of the first things they did was a series called fires. It was all about the bushfires drama. And they, of course, could actually, you know, have the. Have the fires actually happening with the actors on set, on the screens. So the actor, even though they had, like, the, you know, the car there was on fire or whatever, they had blah, blah, blah. But they had the screens in the background so the actor felt like they were actually in the middle of a bushfire.
: Whoa.
: Wow.
: Yeah. This is the kind of thing you see at nab. It's all the traditional stuff, like mics, camera booms. Um, but you're seeing way more of this virtual type production. There's. There are apparently 150 different classes here on AI stuff alone, because there's a huge amount of education that comes along with it. We're just. We're just here for the expo. You know, we're here to sell. But there's a huge education component.
: I mean, that's. That's the problem with being an exhibitor, is that you can't do it. You can't see all this stuff. It's like, it takes an nab. You can probably do in a. It'll take you at least two days or three days to really see everything.
: And your feet are gonna kill you.
: Yeah. CES is insane. You'll just shoot yourself when you're done. But as an exhibitor, you get to stand on your feet all day. But you only get to see your own stuff because.
: Yeah, so. So I haven't seen anything too revolutionary. There's another company here that does soundproof windows, which I've known these guys forever called, literally soundproof windows. And they have an entire Conex shipping style container that they've converted into a quiet space so they can show off all their doors and windows. And it is damn impressive. As quiet as it is in here, takes it down another ten to 15 decibels.
: That's. That's like a whole other level.
: That's, you know, that's probably a hundred thousand plus install.
: Yeah. You're not shipping that to a residential place, and you're not building that on your own in a day.
: This thing's on a. This thing's on a flatbed truck. It's trailered in, and they've used it in am show and stuff like that. You know, so it's. I'm staying a whole extra day tomorrow just so I can start seeing things that I haven't been able to see. Yeah.
: Because if you lose weight. No, it's impossible to lose weight here. That's my problem, actually.
: You know, a six dollar order of onion rings at the Westgate is enough to feed like a starving family.
: Yeah. And they don't even talk about the buffets.
: I ate a $30 omelet this morning because that's. It was a buffet. And all I wanted was a damn. Yeah, that's Vegas.
: Right.
: Well, let me tell you. I mean, we just had the Sydney Royal Easter show here, which is like our big carnival of the year, I guess in Sydney, a cup of lemonade was dollar 18.
: What? Oh, my gosh.
: Yeah. $18 for a cup of lemonade?
: Oh, my gosh.
: That's ridiculous.
: Well, the other thing I want to mention is that, you know, again, we've been talking about source elements and their new product. We're using Nexus right now as our communications portal. So we're all communicating real time over Nexus, and we're using source Connect 3.9 because that's the version we have currently installed. Third four just dropped, but we're using that. And the amazing thing is, we're doing all that on my laptop, which is running on a battery I don't even have plugged in. We're using a mic port pro, which is also running on batteries. And we're using a hotspot on a phone connecting all this via wireless to a mobile, you know, a mobile data connection. And we're doing all which.
: That is mind blowing because I've been to so many of these conventions where usually you have to come in with three separate cell phone connections and you do what's called bonding them into one. When you get 100,000 people here with their cell phones, the towers just bog down to a crawl and you have to brute force it with three parallel connections. You're just doing it like a pedestrian turn on my hotspot.
: Yeah, yeah. If you're on Verizon here, you're in good shape. If you're on t mobile, you're pretty well screwed, because Verizon, which I should.
: Mention the source elements booth, is using a Verizon connection, which they were very gracious to provide us with. And we hooked up and it was a gig. And I was like, gigabit.
: Yeah.
: Gigabit connections on wireless.
: Wow.
: So we've been just leveraging all this technology to do shows from here. We've been recording from this booth. I've done. This is my fourth podcast since I've gotten here, and it's just incredible we can pull off these days. And, you know, and by the way.
: Everyone, I like to point out that this, in a show floor that's really loud, is much better than most of the audio I give.
: Yes, indeed.
: This is a true fact. Actually, talking about the amount of bandwidth you've got there. I'm just looking at my hamster, and he's giving me the hairy eyeball saying, give me a break. I'm puffed out.
: Yeah.
: Yeah. So it's been great, guys. So I'm watching a ton of people outside the booth that are, like, circling. They want to come in and they're.
: Going to start huffing and puffing and.
: Like, they're being tutting and rolling their eyes. Is that what's going on?
: We'll put a. Yeah, no, no, no. There's just people that want to come in, so.
: And I need to go huff and huff.
: You do HR puff and stuff.
: Exactly.
: That's right.
: All right, we're out.
: Yes.
: Well, that was fun. Is it over?
: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribers and austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the Tech Wittem. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say, g'day. Drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com. -
Missing episodes?
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This week on "The Pro Audio Suite," we're exploring the art of on-the-go recording with AP's road trip setup. Sponsored by Tribooth and Austrian Audio, we delve into how to maintain professional audio quality without the confines of a studio. AP unveils his compact kit, perfect for any travel scenario, including a detailed walkthrough of each component â from the pencil mic nestled in an Austrian Audio headphone bag to the Micport Pro's seamless integration with the iPhone 15. We also dive into mobile recording hacks, the convenience of twisted wave links for file sharing, and even find humour in the legacy of outdated iPhones. Plus, don't miss the unique insights into recording from the backseat of a car and the surprising acoustics it offers. Tune in for a journey through sound, technology, and a few unexpected detours.
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, itâs an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners.https://georgethe.tech/tpas
If you haven't filled out our survey on what you'd like to hear on the show, you can do it here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZWT5BTD
Join our Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/proaudiopodcast
And the FB Group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/357898255543203
For everything else (including joining our mailing list for exclusive previews and other goodies), check out our website
https://www.theproaudiosuite.com/
âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
#ProAudioSuite #MobileRecording #AudioOnTheGo #RoadTripRecording #ProfessionalSound #TechTalk #AudioEngineering
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This week, the Pro Audio Suite team dives into the sophisticated world of C-suite noise reduction. Discover the secrets to maintaining crystal-clear sound in any professional setting. Plus, we're toying with the idea of a live show featuring you, our beloved listeners. Fancy Andrew making a house call on his Vespa for a special episode? Let us know! Tune in for an episode packed with expert insights, laughter, and maybe, just maybe, a live audience next time.
This week on The Pro Audio Suite, we tackle the intricate world of recording on the go. With the ever-increasing demand for mobility in voiceover work, we dissect the use of shotgun mics in less-than-ideal environments, the golden rule of getting your setup right from the start, and the tempting but perilous path of "fixing it in the mix".
Our conversation veers into the high stakes of recording from the road, dubbed the black belt of audio recording, where knowing your tools inside out is paramount. We scrutinize the effects of overusing plugins like Isotope, Waves Clarity, and Acorn's latest offerings, especially the trade-offs between noise reduction and the dreaded d-reverb, and their impact on audio fidelity.
Moreover, we explore practical strategies for minimizing room reverb without sacrificing the room's aesthetics, leveraging the latest AI and machine learning technologies for a cleaner sound, and the importance of recording a clean, unprocessed track as a safety net.
Join us as we ensure you're equipped to record high-quality audio, no matter where you are.
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, itâs an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners.https://georgethe.tech/tpas
If you haven't filled out our survey on what you'd like to hear on the show, you can do it here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZWT5BTD
Join our Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/proaudiopodcast
And the FB Group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/357898255543203
For everything else (including joining our mailing list for exclusive previews and other goodies), check out our website
https://www.theproaudiosuite.com/
âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Turn it
Ecamm Live Recording on 2024-04-01 at 16.24.59I'll see if we were live.
PAS_S7_EP 12 & 13_C SUITE AND ROAD CASE_APR_2024_FOR EDITYeah.
Ecamm Live Recording on 2024-04-01 at 16.24.59Guys, by the way, as our fans of the show, we love you. If you think having us do a live stream where some of you can join us live. Is a value to you? Would you let us know in the comments? Let us know in the comments. That's all I'm going to say. And secondarily, any promises like Andrew to visit personally, let us know in the comments.
Andrew can come and do the show from your place. Yeah, exactly. And he'll show up on a Vespa. Yeah, exactly. Even better.
-
This week's Pro Audio Suite episode is a deep dive into Austrian Audio's treasure chest, featuring the OC707, OC818 studio set, CC8, and OC7. Discover the groundbreaking features of these mics and why they might just revolutionize your audio work. Robbo, AP, and Robert share their firsthand experiences, from studio recording and on-the-road versatility to voiceover excellence. It's an unboxing and testing session filled with expert analysis, fun, and a whole lot of audio geekery. Don't miss out on this sonic adventure.
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, itâs an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners.https://georgethe.tech/tpas
If you haven't filled out our survey on what you'd like to hear on the show, you can do it here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZWT5BTD
Join our Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/proaudiopodcast
And the FB Group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/357898255543203
For everything else (including joining our mailing list for exclusive previews and other goodies), check out our website
https://www.theproaudiosuite.com/
âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
[00:00:00] And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite thanks to Tribooth. You can see it in the background. Don't forget the code TRIPAP to get 200 off your purchase. Uh, Today we're going to do an unboxing right after this. So, George, you've got yourself a new microphone from Austrian audio Of course, one of our sponsors. Yes, it's Christmas early, extremely early in this case, [00:01:00] because I asked for this microphone a while ago and I wasn't sure if they'd send it to me because it is absolutely not. In the category of podcasting or voiceover. So I didn't think they were going to send it to me, but, they did because maybe they see what I see. And this is what I've got today to show you. And that's the You OC, not yet. OC 707. So this microphone has a lot in common with other mics. You guys are going to see from our unboxings. But this one kind of, to me, is like, I feel like, we should have done this last in a way, because I feel like it's the best of all the others, but all of us are going to tell us why their mic is the best, I think, right? So, OC707 is a small capsule condenser microphone. much like the pencil mic that we're going to see and the mic that, Robert's using. But it's just in the way that it's packaged. It's packaged as a handheld, right? So, why a handheld [00:02:00] vocal mic for voiceover or podcasting? Well, here's my, here was my thought. So, wouldn't it be nice to have a mic with a good internal pop filter? One. it's always there and it's always with you. Two, That's the unboxing part. Two, wouldn't it be nice if the mic had a decent amount of shock mounting internally, so the capsule wouldn't pick up rumble and stuff from wherever it's mounted? Yeah, sounds good, right? Well, that's the whole idea of a high quality handheld studio. Well, it's not studio. It's a live. It's just a handheld yeah. Mm-Hmm. mic, right? This is the whole idea of a mic like this. You're getting the quality of the capsule from their smaller diaphragm mics, but housed in a handheld form factor. So it can handle some handholding, meaning it will not pick up vibration. So if you mounted this to a mic arm or stuck it on a table or clamped it to a bed post or whatever it is you [00:03:00] need to put the mic, you're not going to get much rumble or low frequency noise, right? Another cool thing about the design of this mic, look at that crazy head basket. It actually it's like suspended it's it's sort of similar to my mic here where they have the capsule there, But the back of it accessible. I think that's part of their, um, a name for that tech. Yeah, they do have a name for that design, that design aspect, which I can't recall, But the idea is they're trying to make sure that there's no coloration that occurs because of the capsule being enclosed in any way at the rear. So that's the, the idea that this should give you the best off axis response, it should give you the smoothest off axis response. So before I go further and plug it in. Um, the only feature it has, really, if you call it that, is a switch. It does, uh, technology, Open Acoustics Technology. yeah, and does have a switch. The switch does engage a 120 hertz roll [00:04:00] off at the bottom end. What the slope is, I don't know. It's, I'm guessing it's probably as gentle, like a 6 dB per octave slope. But that is what you get on this mic. So without further ado, I'm going to plug it in, and it made a nice pop. I don't know if you guys heard the pop, did you? Even with the gain all the way down? So I'm going to go ahead and pot this up and let's see if you guys are catching it on your end. One, two, three. Yes, it's definitely coming up. yeah, And we'll pot down our other one. The OC 18. So now I'm on the OC 707. And, uh, tonally, it's very smooth, with what sounds to me like a little bit of a mid range, like, mid range, like, eh, eh, somewhere in the, hank, honk. there's like a little bit of a bump in the honk frequency. And that's, they did say that's by design, they actually said it has a little bit of a fuzz. forwardness at the two to three K range because they feel it [00:05:00] does help bring a vocal, um, out of the, you know, out of the mud, especially for live. guitars going on underneath you, that's gonna help. Yep. Absolutely. So, so if I was going to use this as a stand in for, uh, any of our other mics, my tendency would probably be to smooth that frequency out just to my ears and kind of put a little dip to smooth out that little bit of bump. But other than that, You're probably talking about like what 2 DB DB or so. And that's, what's crazy. You don't think two DB is that big a deal, but it's amazing when you hear, we are so tuned to hear our own voice or really human voice through a microphone. Right. And it's just, we've heard it so much. So there's any anomaly in, you know, in the frequencies, you pick it out really quick, right? But if it was a bass guitar and you added two DB of a certain frequency, it wouldn't be so dreadfully obvious. So, That's always interesting with mics. But anyway, that's the O. C. and whole. have the two mics set up so you can pot between the two, like go from the [00:06:00] 818 to the OC 707? I can do that. It'd be interesting to get like an equal distance and just kind of play around with that. Before you do that, how does it handle off axis stuff? Like if you're a bit off axis, does it get a bit lost? Yeah, we can try that. So, so I'm I'm gripping it, like, kind of like death grip singer grip and you're not hearing any. OK, if I really squeeze it, there's a little, if I move my thumb around, go. Yeah. the amount of handholding you get. But. If you hold it the proper way, as Steve Jobs would say, the correct way to hold the phone, um, by the, by the fingers like this, you get very, very minimal, um, I'm not using any high pass filters. This is right off the mic. So, so in terms of off axis, if I start speaking mic across the microphone now, and now I'm speaking at it at about, now I'm about 90 degrees. Yeah. right? One. And Definitely loses the low end and yeah, and there's the [00:07:00] rear rejection Notice the rear rejection is The rear rejection. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, in your face, because we 2. Yeah, it has an amazing rear rejection. A bit for it to sort of sound off axis. yeah, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. 1, 2, 1, then all of a sudden the low end really plummeted and it kind of retained some of the high end for a bit as it so very smooth off axis. And what does that mean to you as a voiceover actor or whatever, podcaster? It means that you can move around the microphone quite a bit. If it's mounted on a stand, for example, and you want to voice act. And you can move around the microphone a fair deal. And the only thing that's going to vary much at all is the volume, right? So as you get further closer, Yeah. it doesn't sound funky as you go off axis. So, All, all in all, I got to say, I'm extremely impressed. doesn't seem huge. Am I wrong about that? You know, if I get in deep, you know, those are, that's where you can really get that proximity effect [00:08:00] Mm And then back out to about, Yeah. Okay. So, so It is there. It is about this far away. 1, 2, 3, 4. So yeah. Excellent sounding handheld mic. Now the sound, the, the, um, the self noise on the mic on paper is not all that impressive at 19, I think it's 19. db um, self noise. I can't hear it But in, in reality, it's like you, yeah. if you have a heater on, if you have anything running in your environment, a fan, a ventilator, Anything you are not going to notice that it would take an absolutely extremely quiet studio. And for reference, the Sennheiser 416 is 16. So it's only 3 DB, theoretically 3 DB noisier and it's just not noticeable in any normal environment. So There you go. sometimes it's about just the sound of the noise. because if the sound of the noise is smooth, even if it's louder, Yes. than like some actual like kind Or, well, I mean, yeah, the tone of the noise, of whatever the white noise [00:09:00] tone is, and it's not very clean. So, there you go. back on the OC818 now, but that's, um, that's the OC707. do like, just kind of put them in the same place and do a quick, like Sure. B. Sure, I will do that. So, we're on the OC818, and they're very much close in alignment right now, and then we will cross crossfade over to the OC707, so you can hear there's a difference in the mid range. end and definitely more high end Right. sure. forward, less warm, less low end, crossfade back to the Seven. uh, the, uh, now we're on the OC818. yes. So yeah, round. of like, absolute purity of tone, the OC818 wins hands down. But if you want to travel and have something super robust for road use that you don't have to worry so much about, and if you want to throw in a nightclub gig while you're out on the road, Bit of karaoke. this is, this is a good choice. All right. [00:10:00] Yeah. That's a very cool mic very It is a nice mic. I do. I think it's basically the same as this bike, And you're going to explain to us why Uh, because it's the same capsule and the head basket looks very similar, but not, I have a feeling this head basket's a little bit bigger probably this one has a little bit more, tighter polar pattern if anything, possibly, but that's hard to know. Um, to show the mic clip. capsule. Sorry. I forgot to show my, my clip. too, which they give you the proper thumbscrew to set the position and lock it so it doesn't move on you. yeah, Anyway, sorry. sorry. Robert. Um, but yeah, I I think it's similar head basket, same, capsule, probably very similar electronics that like it's whatever the headbasket does and whatever else they do to voice it slightly differently. I don't think it's even in the voicing as much as it is in the polar pattern. Cause this is a little bit more of an instrument mic. So I'd expect it to [00:11:00] have maybe a higher degree of, um, You know, like a tighter polar pattern, maybe if Mm hmm. it for drums and things on stage. Um, but really convenient. I mean, I, I sent you guys the unboxing video. So we needed to see that, but it is really convenient in the sense that, um, kind of works in this similar way that a, in an SM seven or other mics work on a boom arm, so it's kind of not in the way in the same way that other mics are on the boom, It kind of nicely, gets in the right spot and doesn't cloud your view of other things. And it has this little pivot to it, which is pretty convenient, the full range of motion is from straight ahead yeah, almost full range. It, when, when you try to go. like, it That's the limit. back up. uh, so it's, Right. that'll limit some positionings, Yeah. but it is like front and back. [00:12:00] Okay. I did honestly wish it wouldn't have, um, just ran into Collided to the body of the mic, Yeah. Yeah. But besides that, I mean, It's It sounds great. I, I, I like the voicing of it. whole line. Yeah, I, I, mm hmm. the, the dynamic version and George, I don't, I think I seen those files, but so here's a dynamic one, which really just looking at it, the only The main thing you notice a difference is just. The darker color. It's kind of an interesting dynamic mic because it gives you these, um, filters and pads, it's active. So a dynamic mic that needs phantom power, and it seems to, um, maybe make it easier on the mic preamp. Um, it hmm. I would say in there with other kind of uh, Hotter Dynamic mics in like the kind of 421 type range where they kind of border a little bit more on kind of sounding condenser ish. Here's your two samples. It's only 11. It's a short sample. Here we [00:13:00] go. Guess which is which. So the second one sounds like the dynamic. Mm hmm. Yeah. And, and, and, yeah, what are the switches on there again? Give me a, rundown of the controls. Yeah. and then a, Um, high pass, a 3 position high pass filter. Three position. Oh, cool. Yeah, off being one of them, but here, let me, let me get you the, hmm. I would say that it'd be 60 and 120 It's probably going to be the same as yours, Yeah. so, I was curious. a 60 or is it 80? 80 and 120 on the Oh, mm hmm. And then the uh, the pad is like I said, 10 DB, if it's a gradual slope, I had a, [00:14:00] at, um, at, um, cutters. We had my labs that had a 400 high pass filter, you 87 I think of 300 or something like that. They're very high. Yeah, but there it's a They're a long slope. super, super gradual. Yeah. it's gradual. Now, that's interesting. So, yeah, I'm wondering if the slopes are set differently on the, on that instrument mic versus the, the pencil mic, you know, it's, they're all using the same basic guts, just in different configurations, They're all in know, same capsule. you know, color pattern a little bit by the acoustics around it, maybe, electronics, that might change the noise. Mm the noise hmm. So, you know, Andrew's mic, I would say, it to also Probably because that basket is so open probably have a more wider, polar pattern, Maybe And little bit more open sound, I would think for what Andrew has, just because it doesn't have the pop filter I mean he does have that, He's a little foam ball on there, but on [00:15:00] it much, yeah. andrew, what's, what, what are your impressions of the, uh, of the, is it CC eight, right? yeah, the CC8, which you also have. I do. I have two. I, like them. you, uh I put this through its paces. Okay, that, that is one of the problems. I'll go to the, Let me He popped it on purpose. of the problems. Is He, no, he was making a point. Yeah, exactly. I was Wizard is never late. He always arrives when he means to, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. I, I've put this through a lot of tests. I've compared it with the 41. 6. I put it up against the NTG5. Um, I've done It in the Tri booth. I've done it in the Porter booth. I've done it in my booth, used it everywhere. Um, I think Robert, actually, I sent a file to Robert, uh, last week and Robert's response was listening to the NTG5, the 41. 6 and the. CC8, that, the CC8 moves a bit closer to the 41. 6 than the NTG5, thought so. [00:16:00] I think it's, that's what I'm hearing as well. It didn't quite have that, has a little bit more truth in the mid range. It doesn't have that, like kind of. yeah, 416, like thing. that I know it's, like what people like, but it's also technically what makes it so real. exactly. But this one, if you look at the frequency response, it's actually, is, very flat. Yes. and it's got a couple of tiny bumps in the top end to give it a little bit of cut, but it's a very flat mic. I know from other people who have played around with this mic, it takes EQ beautifully. You can really thrash it and it won't let go. So that that's a really good thing and just shows the quality of the microphone. On the downside of the mic, As we've already heard, it does tend to pop, unfortunately, So you've got to be very, very, careful when you're using this thing that you don't sort of pop continually. Um, I wanted to try this because I just [00:17:00] like the form factor of it when you're traveling, that it could be a really good, mic to chuck in a bag use when you're on the road because it is. Small, it's pretty Speaking of road, who makes that shock mount you're using with the mic? Wow. Road, road. So it does, it does not come with any kind of shock mounting of its own. it No, it just comes with a normal mic clip, Right. Same, same, same one is probably, maybe, I think it's probably the same mic clip that I have. Right. probably, let Yeah. in my And so that's the, that's the trade off. Right. So mic clips are interesting because when you first get them and you're trying to put that mic in there, you're like, man, I don't want to snap this mic clip, But the plastic is really strong and it feels like you're putting a lot of pressure in, but not the easiest, like, those things are exactly smaller than the mics and you gotta like, well, the Sennheiser my clip was the same way. I remember the four 16 people. I would just think like, is this going to fit? But that's what, [00:18:00] that's why it doesn't fall out. Yeah. so really. that's what you get is the clip Yeah. and then the foaming that that's all that comes with So do you think if you were to travel with it, you would actually bother to bring along the bigger shock mount for it? Or would you just use the clip? I'll just use the clip? Yeah, because I'm not touching anything, nothing, True. fine. The only other downside was because of having one of these, because I'm trying to make the road case as small as possible, and Right. really attractive. Like if I get a, you know, the old NTG5, You can plug it straight in. in. World's most badass USB mic. Uh That's what you end up with. But this one is too big. it doesn't Okay. The chassis is too thick. Yeah, it's too uh huh. What you might be able to get is a, uh, what would you need? a, um, female to female or male to female, uh, adapter. Like a little Barrel. yeah. It's an extender. They call it a [00:19:00] barrel extender? Yeah, And I bet you that would get you plugged straight in there without a Yeah. would. yeah, Which is essentially the world's shortest mic cable. Off to Yes. what it is. Peters or you could just get your Dremel tool and start filing off and thinning out the back of that OC eight. worth it. Oh, so worth it. Yeah, that'll work. Making it a perm, a permanent attachment to the mic port pro and just like the, well, these work. together. That's the, I guess you could try to widen that channel in the mic port pro, which, which, which is going to be Andrew. I don't think he's going to machine the tail end of his mic. go neither. Yeah. Is you agreed. just pull it apart. Just solder it in, you know, Yeah, there you go. Like, there you go yeah, yeah. But anyway, I, I, I, I really like it. I think it's, um, me, the, the sound of it is, is really good. Um, of you on it, to be honest. I, It sounds great on that. sounds the way a small diaphragm condenser should sound, which is really clean, and really [00:20:00] articulate, and just dead, dead accurate, Yeah, lack of a better word. use like small diaphragm condensers like that on stage for opera singers, Mm hmm. In fact, that's an extremely common use case. You'll often see the ships where they have the little head Yeah. this very skinny long pole. Yeah. that goes down to a floor. stock is like 400. Yes. Yes, it is. expensive mic cable, technically. But yeah. they don't use, uh, they don't use you know when money is no object. They're not using large diaphragm mics. They're using I think the Beatles used up on, uh, the Yeah, on the let it be. Yeah. I Yes. the Beatles ones weren't they? they were using the AKGs. I'm sure. AKG version of that with the, Yeah, yeah, it was Well, you know, Austrian Audio is still a young company. They're not trying to, you know, they're there. You can tell that they're carefully rolling out iterations of the mics. You know, they could eventually make a remote capsule version of [00:21:00] this mic where the capsule is on a cable, you know, and it runs down a long cable and, you know, for extremely small, you know, when you're trying to get the capsule in really tight spaces, or if you want to mount it to a violin or the body of an instrument or whatever, you know, so there's a much more they could do. much about, their capsules and they're, and they're less about, you know, like, I, wonder if they would, I don't see them doing it, but like Would they do a tube mic? Mm hmm. I don't Who knows? in their in their thought process. Like, know, we're just trying to provide very They seem to be looking forward. need a tube for that. You Yeah, they seem to be kind of looking forward and not looking so much backward like traditional design. interested in color for the sake of color. Right. They're like you, you do your color, we'll give you truth. Which I dig that. Yeah. Maybe, Maybe, they will do a C12. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? They got the [00:22:00] capsule. Robbo, did you get anything new yet? Or is this all about us today? Nah, I got a new toy too, but I mean, you've kind of seen it before, but I thought I'd unbox it anyway. Because it's All right. and this is literally, uh, can I say, this is literally an unboxing. I, I was spoiled. Firstly, can I say, hello to the Aster. Mm. Mm hello to the arsehole who stole my, um, my Hi X 65s while I was at my parents place looking after my mum. uh, they kindly replaced my, uh, my 65s hmm. and gave me a pair of. The 55s. Ooh. that inch in a quarter inch? sound Oh, do they? Okay Yeah, But what I, what they did give me was this, let's look at that. yes Now this, this. literally is an [00:23:00] unboxing, I have to say, because I haven't had a chance to get to it, but it up. And yeah, like you say, use it to tie your cables down and stuff. No, I think I threw that away. Yeah, What were you thinking? I don't know Oh, look in its own little road case and everything. How's that? yeah, yeah, You know when they're, you know when they, uh, they're, in a different price category, when they give you a case, a road case. yeah, Yeah, I know. It's very Mm hmm. um, so yeah, so look, this will probably, to be fair, this will probably be making the trip with me when I have to go into an agency client, who shall not be named, of mine, who doesn't believe in investing in microphones, so this will probably be handy because it will probably be coming with me. [00:24:00] Don't get it stolen from your car. Yeah, it won't be staying in my car by itself. Don't worry. Yeah, yeah, there we go. Certificate of quality. Can everyone oh look at that? yep. So that? was, uh, Oh, this year 30th of the 4th, not individually listened to and signed off. Yeah. And then polar pilot handbook sticker. there we yeah, that's cool Some drugs, cool. um, The cable that goes in the back of it for The The mystery magic weird cable. Yeah. Now, uh, uh, we were talking about these before, we started We didn't, we didn't like them, basically. made the point that it doesn't swivel, which Yes, I hadn't thought about having seen you guys using, yours, but you're right, the fact that it doesn't swivel, You can't, you can't do no, but you can't, You can't do this trick, right? can't rotate the mic in the basket, right? So if that's something you want to do, you [00:25:00] can't do it with that clip. I'm using ironically or interestingly, I'm using the original 414, yeah. 414 clip, yeah, is completely compatible, interestingly enough. So if you have one of those laying around, can use it. and, honestly, those, uh, Austrian audio clips are not cheap. No, I'm, I'm No. I think they're like a hundred bucks. yeah. But, um, a nice clip, it's just like, it doesn't let you rotate, and that's the Right. It's well made, it just, yeah, has that one lack of flexibility. So, I recommend You get the, Triad Orbit It makes a super awesome pivoting ball head mount. Okay. That makes it extremely easy to quickly rotate a mic. Well, it's a ball head, so really, any direction. Um, but, give you, I suppose, Do I, I sound any different, by the way? How do I You sound warmer, Robert. Do I I change my mic? Yeah. Uh in defense of Austrian audio, I think I know why that [00:26:00] shock mount is the way it is. Because if you look at the OC818 and look at the back where you've got, you you can either put a, you know, the Bluetooth dongle or the second Hang on. Here we go. Yes. If it was completely around, you wouldn't be able to put it in there. Cause I can't use the Rycote on the 818 for that Ah, you That is true. There is a little, Yeah. Okay. mind my goofy little pop screen, but there is a little opening in the back right here. that's, that's the reason Right there. give you that same mic clip for the 18 and the other, I was going to other, it to be able to rotate it, you do have, I mean, it's not a shock mount, but you do have option, I guess, yeah. it, Yes, absolutely. I mean, the bottom line is, that, that is Have we done a lot of tests of shockmount to not to shockmount or not to shockmount like in a context of voiceover? don't think there's almost any situation where you'd know if you're using the shockmount or not. Unless you bump into [00:27:00] something. a voice act, if you were voice acting and you were one of those um, and you, let me turn, get off that. If you're one of those people that sort of, you know, threw your hands around and did the whole, ah, you know, blah, blah, blah. And you accidentally. You know, I mean, yeah, okay, It's not Oh, yeah. but if you bumped it or kicked it with your toe or something, it might Yeah, I mean, even with a shock mount, if I bump the arm, Yeah. well, it's hitting the booth too, but yeah, if I bump the arm, you're definitely going to hear it even with a shock mount. So, Hmm. Yeah. but, um, it's nice that they give you, they give you the clip. You have. the option. You have the option. So I'm really excited about that. I'll, Oh man, are you kidding me? Austrian audio has hooked us up. I would like to say. Yeah. uh, firstly, I know they're sponsors and I know we've just scored all this, but firstly, awesome gear, seriously. my, I was, when my headphones were stolen from my car, was [00:28:00] devastated because I'd never used headphones to mix until they sent me those a while ago. And I've fallen in love with them like it was, Yeah. C monitor. I sort of, I mix on my main monitors and then mix down in the crappy little computer speaker that I use. And then I was putting the 65s on and, and they just become a part of my workflow. And when they went, I was devastated. So, um, So, so the fact that, uh, the fact that they've come back and by the way, if you're in Wyong, New South Wales, and some guy's trying to sell you a pair of Austrian audios in the pub, voodoo sound. com. au just drop me a line. Uh, my wife's uncle is actually a bikey. He's a hell's angel. So I'll Oh, he'll take care of you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. He'll get that for you. yeah, yeah. Yeah. I love it. with an Austrian audio mic, Yeah, the before And after interview. you very much. Hey, you know what? I totally forgot, Andrew. I forgot to [00:29:00] play your your CC eight test clip. Should I play that real quick? Oh yeah, Let's So this is, what is this, Five different, a few different takes strung together. There's uh, the first one is the NTG5, second one is the CC8, and the third one is the 41. 6. Oh, cool. Okay. So now we can hear it in context with two other venerable mics. Here we go. Oh, all in the Which booth? Your Steer Home booth. He can do the, same thing Got it. Here you go. Air Arabia City Checkin has landed at City Dagger in Dubai. Drop off bags and get your pass. Visit air arabia com for City Check Dagger in Dubai. Get your pass. Visit air arabia com for detail. Arabia's City Check-in has been at City Center Shi Duga in Dubai. Well, that was interesting because they [00:30:00] all did sound different. NTG5 was hyped. It definitely is Hyped What was the last one? What was the final one? 6. Wow, the, the NTG5 is like the 7506s of microphones. It's like, just like low end, high end, like You know, I, I guess they did that because they wanted to sound totally different from the NTG3. not that it doesn't sound nice, but it is not, it's, I don't think it's flat, No, no, it's not flat. The CC8 is the flat mic. This is this, this is flattest and one right here, right? Yeah, Yeah, that's, that's what a flat, proper, accurate microphone sounds like. the others are not that like, edgy kind of like lost some low end And it definitely had that edginess that yeah, It works on commercials i don't think you're doing your next album with it Let me hear something. you know it just has that like [00:31:00] little snarl to it that I, yeah, yeah, the like the 416. I I, no but no but you can see how it. would slice through a mix more than the other one like yeah, yeah, sure. But I guess, I mean, I, I, I, I, until I've got this sucker, I've been on the NTG5. maybe it's because I've got used to it, but I just listened to that then and went, wow, that's Right. Right. it's compared to the ntg5 it's very thin. Yeah, that's incredible. comcom I mean, I liked hearing the CC 8 in the, in the, in the, context of those two shotgun mics. Cause it just brings draws attention to the fact that those shotgun mics are not accurate. They're not flat. They have a very distinct tone and that tone can be a detriment or it can be exactly what the client wanted. So Yeah. can get lucky and a lot of people are used to that sound. I mean, we're programmed to hear that [00:32:00] 416, 416, um, on human voice. So we've gotten very used to that EQ curve, you know. Hmm. So we're just out of interest, out of the three mics in that shootout, Which one did you prefer? Which one did you find more pleasing? And which one do you think would be perfect for chucking in a road case and taking with you? well, I mean, I'm not mixing it so I could use any of them. Um, my, just straight out of the mic sound, which just sounds the most commercial ready to go on the air, probably the Road, is my opinion. I would agree. wow. I would agree. Can I just say, No. ago, I would have said 416 any day of the week, but I'm hearing that now, it's changed my mind. I think the road has a lot of low end that once you're done mixing, you're going to pitch it. And mean, you're going to cut that out anyway? Yeah. it though, in the first place. No, I know it's just the 416 gives you that just like [00:33:00] push the fader up and you're done kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. mix and it's not really, when you isolate it, you're like, eugh. But if I take this it just like, Kind of pokes through and it's just does that thing that I think that's what people are going for because I don't think you can accuse the 416 of many things like it is not accurate and it is not pretty sounding Right. it just has this like, it's going to sit in a commercial sounding mix where you want that voice to be heard, going to get heard with less effort than the other mics, little, for you voiceover for you specifically, Andrew, I would go NTG5 for your shotgun. And I would say the 818 for your large diaphragm. They'd be my two picks. Okay. I've, I just want to do one last experiment with this microphone because I we know it's flat. But [00:34:00] if I hit the 4k button on the SSL, has given it more of a, uh, Crunch. Mm hmm. It is like instant 416. almost. Yeah, it's given it that top bump for sure. It's just emphasizing what is there and pulling it that's right. what I'm hearing. Yep. Yeah, interesting. that does something similar from, um, who does it slate digital Mm hmm. air, Mm hmm. you've talked about that one a lot. my. go to for that sort of thing. Absolutely. Just winding it in so it goes, if anyone cares, it goes, on the voice bus and it goes on the final mix bus For Oh, wow. That's where I use it. Mm say, I would say the the CC 8 is the most flexible. if it was a sound and you didn't know, like, you're going to do a hi hat or a voice or this or that, I yeah, CC 8's got the most natural soundstage more of a [00:35:00] desert island mic. Yeah. You could use that CC 8 on literally any instrument. And you'd be fine with Just a little EQ Just call me Human human voice included. I mean, Yep. yeah. yeah. Just gotta be very careful of plosives, Mm hmm discovered. Don't blow yourself up Indeed. I will try not to. Uh, well that winds up another one. Don't forget, Tribooth. They're our sponsor. T R I P A P 200 to get 200 off yours. Just like that one. [00:36:00]
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This week on The Pro Audio Suite, we tackle the intricate world of recording on the go. With the ever-increasing demand for mobility in voiceover work, we dissect the use of shotgun mics in less-than-ideal environments, the golden rule of getting your setup right from the start, and the tempting but perilous path of "fixing it in the mix".
Our conversation veers into the high stakes of recording from the road, dubbed the black belt of audio recording, where knowing your tools inside out is paramount. We scrutinize the effects of overusing plugins like Isotope, Waves Clarity, and Acorn's latest offerings, especially the trade-offs between noise reduction and the dreaded d-reverb, and their impact on audio fidelity.
Moreover, we explore practical strategies for minimizing room reverb without sacrificing the room's aesthetics, leveraging the latest AI and machine learning technologies for a cleaner sound, and the importance of recording a clean, unprocessed track as a safety net.
Join us as we ensure you're equipped to record high-quality audio, no matter where you are.
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, itâs an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners.https://georgethe.tech/tpas
If you haven't filled out our survey on what you'd like to hear on the show, you can do it here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZWT5BTD
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
And don't forget that code trip to 100 for $200 discount on your tribooth and Austrian audio making passion heard. Now, a different kind of microphone is the shotgun, which is kind of handy if you're in a not-so-perfect situation. But a lot of people are recording and doing voiceovers from places that they probably shouldn't. So do you fix it in the mix or do you get your shit together in the beginning?
: Got to get your shit together in the beginning. Don't think there's any question, really.
: Well, do you want to tell your client that you're not where you should be or do you want to try to hide it? Or do you want to just fess up to it? Because I think that hide it well, then obviously you're going to get really good at whatever it is. Isotope and waves clarity. And there's some new stuff from acorn, I think.
Speaker C: Yeah, that's why I call recording from the road like the black belt of audio recording, because you really have to know all the tools and all the techniques to pull it off and have it still sound as close as possible to a studio recording. It's not easy unless you have a lot of experience.
: If you work any of those things too hard and you're going to hear it, that's the thing. You can hire the best audio engineer in the world, but if you stand in the middle of a bathroom with an open microphone, there's only so much he can clean up before you start hearing the whole it's lost a bit of fidelity thing.
: Well, only the voiceover bodysuit is designed for that.
: Yes, well, that's the thing exactly. I mean, think once the passport Vo is out, that's the next project is the pro audio suite.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker C: Every plugin that has to do some kind of an algorithm or a digital filter to the audio to remove something causes an artifact at some point, even.
: On a subtle level, it takes a little bit of life and reality away to it, and it approaches more of what is probably eventually going to be known as like an AI sort of sound.
Speaker C: It could be. Yeah, I mean, I'm already used to rx ten voice. Denoise. I know what it sounds like. I'm immediately always turning it down. Someone's like, I use this plugin and I'm like, twelve DB of reduction is too much, man.
: You can always tell when people choke down on the signal too much. And what happens is they start listening to their own stuff and they don't always reference back to the original to see how much you've improved it, because you can overdo it for sure.
: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker C: People apply this stuff blindly. They don't really have a critical ear. And of course, it's harder to even have a critical ear when you're traveling again. Henceforth, the black belt reference. It's a lot harder to get that same sound consistently when you're on the move. True.
: But the thing that does that's noise reduction. But the thing for me that does more damage is d reverb. D reverb is so destructive. Like, just let's call it a quarter turn for whatever you're on. And I reckon you start hearing it.
: And which one is that in particular? Because there's the wavelength, but I don't.
: Know of any that will deal with serious room reverb and do it cleanly.
Speaker C: No, this is the way all these plugins are, guys. The more in your mind you're thinking, I really need this plugin, the worse it's going to sound.
: Yeah, true. And then you run them together, run some noise reduction and dereverb and see what happens. That's just like death.
Speaker C: It's awful sandy grain. And you have to run them in the right sequence, too. If you got to run multiple reduction tools, they have to be running the right way, the right sequence. Agreed. It's not up. There's a television personality here in the States named David Pogue, and we set up his home studio with what was the minimal, I think, treatment you could get away with. Right. It's a decent sized home office, high ceiling. I didn't want it to look like a studio know stuff covering everything. So we did what we could to still have it look like a nice space to be in. In the end, it still had some reverb. And so when I showed him how to use clarity VXD reverb, he was thrilled because we had already dealt with 95% of the reverb. Right. It was already really good, but there was still a tail. You still had some room tail that was there. So then when he used the clarity VX to reverb it sounded amazing, and he was thrilled. And he's like, I use it on everything. I use it on everything now that I do. And that's because we did our due diligence to get as rid of as much of it as possible. And that's how all these plugins that modify the original audio using algorithms and AI, that's how they all have to work. Now, the AI stuff is a whole different kind of a ballgame. So the ability to do it with less artifacts is definitely becoming a thing. That's why I think the clarity VXD reverb is so good because it's based on machine learning. But you still can't have a room with a reverb tail of two or 3 seconds and just make it sound like a dead studio.
: No, I've heard people try, though. That's the thing. Yeah, I've heard people try not happen. Yeah. Just crazy.
: It's funny. Obviously, we all look at social media and you see posts from voice talent in their so called booth, or their part of the room where they record. And that was the thing that I was looking at the other day, and I saw one and thought, God, how the hell does that work? Or are they just getting away with it? I don't know. But then that was why I thought, well, I might as well just set up out here. And I mean, this is not ideal by any means. The only thing I've got really in front of me is a couple of those oralx gobo kind of panels. But I've got a hard desk, I'm on a concrete floor. My actual, all my outboard gear and everything in screens are to my left. And there's no treatment in this room at all.
: Yeah, I mean, you're lucky in the beginning, though, that you were in such a quiet location to begin with. I know the rooms because the right.
: Mic and the right placement, you can get away with the acoustics, you can do a lot, but noise, you're immediately having to use tools that are going to leave their impression on it. I would say that whoever is doing this, until you are so confident with it, figure out how to also record a clean, unprocessed track while you're doing.
: The session, at least.
: Yeah, as clean as you possibly can before you start dialing in noise reduction and dereverbs and stuff.
Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah.
: Just somehow capture it both processed if you need to deliver it processed, but capture onto your hard drive just your microphone.
: Yeah.
Speaker C: That's what's so cool about this little tula mic. Remember, I did the appearance a few weeks ago from my folks house. A little cute green. I'm holding it. Now, that thing can record through the Bruce free noise reduction algorithm and dry simultaneously to its internal memory or through the USB. So you get both the dry and the noise reduction version of everything you do.
: Wow.
Speaker C: Which is awesome.
: That's cool.
Speaker C: That makes it something I would feel way more comfortable using in the field. Not that it's an amazing mic. I would probably pick a better mic, but still, the idea that was thought of is really brilliant.
: I think Michael's going to have that next week with the Portcaster AI. Isn't it going to have the Deverb and the denoise knob?
Speaker C: I don't know. Is this a scoop? I hadn't heard about that yet. It needs to go in a little.
: Baggie, but yes, it's a scoop.
: Wow.
Speaker C: Okay.
: No, I don't think we're getting the AI chip on our interface, but yeah.
Speaker C: No, we're going purest. The passport po is purest.
: It is. And so it should be. Yeah. So anyway, what's the wash up on this one? Just make sure that you have the best space possible, which we always say.
: And then get as close to perfection as you can. And then use it with some restraint, I guess is the word.
: And consider capturing an unprocessed version just in case.
: And yes, I know, I know that Us audio engineers get this stuff and slap reverb all over it, but it's different.
: That's right. But I've already got reverb on it for you. You don't have to worry about that, bitchambo. Yeah, exactly. And don't use Robert's setup for your voiceovers, whatever you do, for God's sake.
: And on that note, thanks for joining us this week. It's been a great show.
: Thank you, Mr. Letterman.
: Yes, and thank you, road.
: It only took us three years to find these glowing buttons.
: Well, that was fun.
Speaker B: Is it over?
Speaker A: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribut and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say, g'day. Drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com. -
This week on the Pro Audio Suite, we've taken a deep dive into the evolving landscape of voiceover auditions, with a particular focus on a new directive from the MEAA suggesting auditions be conducted solely via phone. We debate the potential impacts, from audio quality to AI protections, and whether this levels the playing field or sets the stage for mediocrity.
Our journey didn't stop there; we ventured into discussions about the surprisingly good quality of smartphone mics, particularly the iPhone, and pondered if the consumer really notices or cares about audio fidelity. The conversation naturally flowed into the realms of audio tech history, reminiscing about anti-piracy measures in CDs and the quirky side of recording hacks.
Join us as we explore these topics and more, including:
The concept of the "mequalizer" in voiceovers. Potential implications of recording auditions on smartphones for AI training. A look back at anti-piracy efforts, from tape biases to digital watermarking. The fun and frustration of navigating tech limitations with creative hacks.A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, itâs an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners.https://georgethe.tech/tpas
If you haven't filled out our survey on what you'd like to hear on the show, you can do it here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZWT5BTD
Join our Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/proaudiopodcast
And the FB Group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/357898255543203
For everything else (including joining our mailing list for exclusive previews and other goodies), check out our website
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
And don't forget the code trip a P 200. That will get you $200 off your triboof. And of course, austrian audio making passion heard. An email came via our union here in Australia, the MEAA, talking about voiceover auditions. And they want talent to do auditions only on a phone. I can kind of see why they're thinking of that, but the issue I've got is that phones are not that bad. Speaker A: There's too many roadcasters in this conversation. : We got to move away from the default bank in China. Speaker A: So what is the reason, Andrew, did they say? Is it because they think that the crappy quality is going to, well, supposed crappy quality would be my opinion. Going to make people think twice about just using it? : That is correct. It's going to be MP3 from your telephone purposely made bad. : But is it really? Speaker A: I mean we've talked about this on the show before. I mean the iPhone in a micro. Sorry, the microphone in an iPhone is spectacularly good. So what's the point? : Or is it more that the consumer doesn't care anyways? : Meant to be an equalizer so everybody sounds equally mediocre. : The me equalizer is that the Joe. : Meek mediocre, the meequalizer will inherit the voiceover industry. : Or you were saying so that they purposely don't use the audition for the job. : Correct. : Yeah, it's like protection. : I guess it makes sense. I mean, I know in the states people love it when they get their auditions lifted and they don't have to record it again. : Yeah, it happens all the time. : Or you record them anyways and you still use the audition. : Oh, that happens too. So that's fascinating. So did you get a direct answer as to why? Or is it just a mandate don't ask questions? : It kind of came via my agent who's forwarded it from the union. There's also a disclaimer form as well to protect you so that you have to read a disclaimer on your audition saying that my voice cannot be used for AI and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's all about AI, but it's kind of like the more I thought about the iPhone thing, particularly iPhone and an iPhone 15, you can get away with using that actually for broadcast, really? : If it's done correctly. Yeah. If you record in a quiet, well tuned environment, you're going to have a very good sounding iPhone recording. Speaker A: Yeah. : A well placed iPhone will sound better than a poorly placed U 87. Speaker A: Absolutely. There you go. Well, so maybe that. Maybe the directive should have been stand on your local street corner and record on your phone. Maybe that should have. : Or just ask Robert. Speaker A: Just listen to the pro audio suite, any episode, just check out Robert and you'll get a good idea of what to do. : You should run the Hoover or the vacuum cleaner while you're doing an. Speaker A: Or you could record in, my know, kids screaming toilets, know all the fun stuff. : There you go. Speaker A: That's right. : Or toilets screaming. Speaker A: Yes. And kids. : Yeah, that's fascinating to me. So what medium are you recording with just to the voice memo app on. : Your phone, I'm assuming. So I used the phone once to muck around with when I bought a rode microphone that plugged into your phone. : Right. : I think I use garageband from memory. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I never record on the phone anyway. But if this is the new directive, I don't really know whether it's going to achieve much because. All right, so someone's not going to use it for the real job, so you're not going to get it stolen. They can still use it for AI. Because if you're training a robot, then doesn't matter what it sounds like. Really? : Good enough to train an AI bot. Speaker A: Yeah. : And then again, the other thing is, of course, send in an audition that sounds like shit. You don't want the person at the other end to go, oh, God, their studio is awful, I won't be using them. Speaker A: Well, this is the thing. Are they going to be told that you're auditioning on your phone or are they just going to get your audition expecting that you're going to be in your booth, in your home? : Well, I don't know. And the other thing is, of course it's a directive here. But I mean, what if I'm auditioning for another country? : Why don't they just take all the auditions and run it through a plugin that makes it sound like crap? : Boy, you could do that as well. : Yeah. Just give it a 4K low pass, be done with it. Speaker A: Yeah. : So just real sounds like a telephone. Speaker A: Yeah. : How about this. Okay, I got it ready. When they post it, they just put a little watermarker in there that goes voice jungle. : Do you remember? This is probably a long, long time ago. But there was a point at one stage they were worried about records being bootlegged and they used to put something. There was some kind of weird frequency. When you tried to record, dub something across, it would have had this weird frequency through it. Speaker A: Oh, really? : Yeah. I think on tapes they tried to do something that would mess with the bias of a tape. : The bias. : You couldn't make a dub of it. And then later in CDs, you found that with the. Remind me of the code spitiff had the Src. There was a setting when you'd master a CD, it would only allow one digital generation to be made and the second digital generation could not be copied. Src or something. What was that called? : Yeah, I don't remember, but yeah, I. Speaker A: Know what you're talking about. : It's a sample bit, like, people would call it sample bit, I think. Speaker A: Yeah. : When you master a CD, you can actually enable a bit that will prevent that disk from being copied. Yeah, I remember that in my recording in like, wavelab or whatever I was using to master or burn the master, you could say, do not make this disk copyable. : And then if you had a professional dat machine, it wouldn't give a crap and it would copy it anyways. Speaker A: Yeah. : Was that connected via AES or via SPDif? : SPDIF or AES, I believe. Well, definitely. No, no. Spdif because Sp Diff carried more metadata than AES, I believe. I don't know that if it was carried over AES, because SPDIF was the. : Consumer protocol and AES was the pro correct protocol. : And then there was another change to it, because then after that, when recordable CDs came out, the music industry wanted its royalties for all the music that was going to get bootlegged. So they made special, more expensive recordable CDs. So that then when you bought a consumer CD recorder, you had to buy these more expensive CDs, like Phillips came out with the 870, and it was a cheap CD recorder, but you could only use these expensive discs. But then everyone figured out that all you had to do was you bought one expensive disc and you put it in the machine and you primed it for record. And then you waited and you just grabbed your fingernails underneath the CD tray and you pulled it out and you switched the disc with a cheap disc and you pushed it in without triggering the closed motor so it didn't notice. Start its cycle up again. Speaker A: Wow. : That's a hack. : And then you could just record on cheap discs and you didn't have to have an expensive recorder, because if not, you were buying like, an HHB or like, a $1,000 CD recorder instead of a $300. Speaker A: Wow. Well, there you go. Wow. Wish I had known that hack all those years ago, but there you go. : And then the other thing that you don't remember on the CD was the pre emphasis bit. That would raise the high end. Right? That's what preemphasis did. It raised the high end a little bit extra. Speaker A: Yeah. : I don't remember why, but I do. : Remember that it had that to compensate for shitty playback systems. : I don't know, because there's the RIA EQ curve on phonographs. : It was almost like. It's like that was pre emphasis. De emphasis. Yeah, scums. That's what they called it. Scms. Serial copy management system. Yeah, they would call it scum because they hated it. That was annoying. : Well, I mean, based on that scum, why don't we have a scum in our daw? So we just hit that when we record. So it sounds great, but no one. Speaker A: Sends it out on CD. Send it. : People are talking about things like this, like trying to find a way to be able to track the media from even where it all goes. So, for instance, if you have a sound effects library, the sound effects can be seen inside of the mix that they are, and then somehow the person gets royalties. I don't know. It's a pretty hard problem to solve. Seems like there's a thousand ways to get around it and only one way to make sure it works. Right? Speaker A: This phone thing, going back to that just for a second, because it's just occurred to me, does it sort of smack of desperation to you that this sort of clutching its straws of sort of like, well, this is the best we can do? Does it feel to you like it does to me that maybe they're just getting desperate with this whole thing? : To me, it smacks of. I didn't know there was that big of a problem with pilfering auditions, that this is necessary. : Yeah, I'm shocked. I mean, I would never have thought of this as a solution, but I would have thought of another way to do it. But this is a super. It's a thing that anybody can do because everybody has a smartphone at this point, and it doesn't fix the fidelity problem necessarily, because you can still record really great sounding files, even more so. : You can now up res stuff. I'm sure this is going to hit for audio, but someone brought me a SD. It was DVD, but it might as well have been a VHs. It just looked like shit compared to all the video that we're used to, right. And took it to AI and it made it look like proper HD. It just interpolated everything, all the missing bits. It just like. I know it would have been here. Here's the nose hair. Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. I suppose you sort of got to be. These sort of unions and stuff have to be seen to be doing something, but I don't know that they're really doing anything. : I can't see it making any difference. I mean, you've just got to be really careful about who you audition for. They've just got to be trustworthy and they've got to be a signatory of a union so they don't break the law, otherwise they lose their membership to the union. I mean, I can't think of any other way of doing it. There's got to be some kind of way of punishing. But if someone wants to do it, they'll do it anyway. Yeah. : Is it that there's too many desperate voice actors, just desperate to find any kind of work and they just don't care. They just want to get any opportunity to work. So they set themselves up to be. : Ripped off and then next thing you know, they take a gig where they're just, like, reading the dictionary and all of a sudden their voice is cloned, or it's part of a clone that you don't know it's in, and they've just been part of a. Because this is like a big data war is really what it boils down to. And how do you protect your data when your data is just, like, coming off of you like light? Speaker A: Well, I mean, when you think about how many auditions people do every day, how much sort of unused voiceover is actually floating around out there, there must be craploads of it. : So much. Well, did I tell you what we want to do with the echo servers? We don't really want to do this, by the way, so don't worry. But we just thought it'd be funny if we ever just took a recording of all the junk that gets set into echo. Speaker A: Imagine what people check. Yeah. This fucking piece of shit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. : God damn it. Speaker A: Why does my mic sound like shit? What's going on? Yeah, all that rubbish. Yeah, that'd be hilarious. You could do a rap song out of it or something. Just sound. : There's like a lot of material there. Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. The source elements. Twelve inch or something. : Echo roulette. Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. Echo roulette. : Echo blue. Speaker A: You could have fun with that. You could actually tell people. You could sort of have a competition. The person who leaves us the best line for our remix wins a twelve month subscription to Nexus or something. There you go. : That would be a really fun one. I mean, right now it's like we don't run the queue manager because it would just fill up in an hour and then the computer would explode. : Yeah. Speaker A: Interesting. There you go. It's funny, isn't it? I mean, AP and I were talking about subjects we were going to talk about today and I was flicking back through our catalog of shows just looking for ideas and it goes back as far as like 2020. We were talking about AI back then. It's been an overriding sort of shadow over the industry for so long, hasn't it? : But in the last two years it has gotten. Speaker A: It's gotten worse. But you can go back to 2020 and we were talking about it then. It's just been this big black cloud hanging over the industry for so long, hasn't it? It's just weird. : Don't worry, there won't be any industry anymore. So it's all, well, God. Speaker A: Oh, that's reassuring. It's crazy, isn't it? Thanks to George's influence, I've been delving into AI a little bit and, man, some of the stuff just images even conjure me up this image and bang, there it is. It's just crazy. : Thing is, I recognize all those images that you post as being AI generated. Speaker A: I'm sure you do. : It has a very distinct style. It's a signature to it, if you know, you know, I guess is what I'm saying. Most people could care less, but yeah. : It'S a slippery slope that we're sliding on down into the depths of God knows where. No work. Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. : Of the slurp. Speaker A: Yeah. Well, who knows? : Yeah. Splash. Speaker A: Well, that was fun. Speaker C: Is it over? Speaker B: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribooth and austrian audio recorded using source connect, edited by and repeaters and mixed by Voodoo Radio imaging with tech support from George the tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com.
#ProAudioSuite #VoiceOverTips #AudioEngineering #SmartphoneAuditions #AITechnology -
We delve into the legacy of Bob Heil, a titan in the pro audio industry whose influence reverberates through the echoes of rock and roll history. From his early days wielding the organ to revolutionizing live sound with his groundbreaking work alongside legends like The Who and Grateful Dead, Heil's journey is one of innovation, passion, and an indelible mark on music technology. Weâre treated to an exclusive clip from a memorable interview, uncovering the story behind the iconic talk box and its role in Peter Framptonâs electrifying performances. Alongside reflections from our hosts and the fond recollections of interactions with Heil, this episode serves as a tribute to a man whose work amplified the soul of music.
Celebrating the Legacy of Bob Heil: A Look Back at the remarkable career of an audio industry pioneer, from his beginnings as an organ player to his revolutionary contributions to pro audio and live sound.
Exclusive Insights: Featuring a clip from a 2017 interview with Bob Heil at the NAMM show, shedding light on his history, innovations, and the creation of the iconic talk box.
The Birth of Rock and Roll Sound: How Bob Heil's innovative sound systems changed the game for artists like The Who and Grateful Dead, setting new standards for live music performances.
Remembering a Legend: Personal anecdotes and reflections on Bob Heilâs impact, his approach to sound engineering, and his legacy within the music and audio production communities.
Tribute to a Visionary: Acknowledging Heil's vast contributions, from his early work with organs and sound systems to his influence on modern podcasting and amateur radio.
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Summary
In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, sponsored by Tribooth and Austrian Audio, the team pays homage to the late Bob Heil, a revered figure in the pro audio industry. Hosted by Robert Marshall, Andrew Peters, George "the tech" Wittam, and Darren Robertson, they reflect on Heil's influential career, from his beginnings playing the organ to revolutionizing the sound systems for rock and roll, particularly for the legendary rock opera "Quadrophenia."Heil, also a dedicated ham radio operator and a friend of Joe Walsh, leaves behind a remarkable legacy. His prowess is exemplified by his creation of the PR 40 microphone, considered the gold standard in podcast mics due to its distinctive tone.
The episode concludes with a remembrance of Bob Heil's innovation, good-natured enthusiasm, and his considerable contributions to pro-audio technology.
#RockAndRollLegacy #ProAudioInnovators #PR40MicMagic
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction - Tribooth Sponsorship(00:04:34) Bob's Ham Radio and Microphone Endeavors
(00:10:02) Evolution of Microphone Brightness
(00:10:55) Pro Audio Suite Recording Setup
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready? Be history.
Speaker B: Get started.
Speaker A: Welcome.
Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.
Speaker C: These guys are professional. They're motivated.
Speaker A: Thanks to Tribooth, the best vocal booth for home or on the road. Voice recordings and austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements and someone audio post Chicago, Darren. Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney, to the Vo stars, George the tech Wittam from LA, and me, Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home studio guy.
Speaker B: Here we go.
Speaker A: And don't forget the code.
: Trip a P 200. That will get you $200 off your triboof. And austrian audio making passion heard. Unfortunately, someone won't be heard anymore, which is a sad loss to the industry is Bob Heil, who's had an illustrious career kicking off playing the mighty organ and then becoming a pro audio guy. And George, you had the privilege of catching up with him on numerous occasions, I'm gathering.
Speaker C: Yeah, I think more than once. There's just one particular interview from the NAm music trade show here in Anaheim from 2017, where I had a good, long interview, I mean, pretty long for a trade show interview. It was like nine minutes. And he really got a lot into his history. And at the time, I think I was remembering. Let's get onto the topic at hand, you know what I mean? He was giving me a lot of his backstory. And now I look back and I'm like, sure. I'm glad I had that chance. And to really hear it straight from him. I'm sure he's told those stories a thousand times. Right. But it was really cool hearing it from him. I mean, he literally created the sound system and envisioned the sound for quadrophenia.
: Oh, really?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: In fact, I have a clip here I can play from that interview where he talks about the birth of what he called the birth of rock and roll sound. I think that's what he called it. Here, take a listen.
: Just go into the Internet, put in the night. Rock and roll sound was born. It's a true story. It really was the first night. And it was with the Grateful Dead. It's quite a story. They wrote the song trucking about it because they're selling all the gear. Yeah, well, their soundman got confiscated the night before because he wasn't supposed to be out of the state of California. We won't get into that. You can go figure it all out. But they come to St. Louis with no pa, ironically. To where? The Fox theater.
Speaker C: The perfect place.
: Well, there again, the stage manager calls you. You still have all those speakers? And I said, yeah, talk to this guy, handed the telephone to Garcia. And then we hit the front page of billboard because we went on tour with them out of there. And at that time, nobody had ever played through anything like that. I didn't know that. I'm like, this is pretty good, right? Because I had a longevity board that I had gotten and recording board. I had Macintosh amps. It was a big hi fi. That's what I looked and listened. It was beautiful. It wasn't just a loud pa. It was a beautiful sounding pa. That's new.
Speaker C: That was new then.
: Well, because of the pipe work. And I learned to listen. I had to voice and tune that as at the age of 15, we started in harmonically. Nobody realizes about the harmonics that are so important. I learned that as a young kid, and it's carried through everything I do. But then I was on the road. We hit the front page of billboard and everybody was calling us. One of them was the who. We ended up with them for six years. And from there it was humble pie. Jay Giles, on and on and on. But then they took Frampton out. He was a star of humble pie. They took him out as a solo act. And his little gal penny was married in my home when they were 18. She called me shortly after. She said, I need a Christmas present for Peter. And I sent her a talk box. You can write the rest of Peter Frampton's history, and it's well defined. You go to our website.
: Wow. Yeah, I remember the talk box. Frampton comes alive. And that came out. It was like such a feature, and it was so weird. Like, you'd never heard anything like it before. What a story, though.
Speaker C: Yeah. I'd love to get into his brain as to how he actually even came up with that idea. I'm thinking he was hanging a lot with the Grateful Dead when he came.
: Up with that idea. I think I know what you're getting at.
Speaker C: There was some serious psychotropic stuff activity going on there. But, yeah, I mean, the fact that he started. I didn't get that part of the interview, but he started as an organist, so that's a very high level of musicianship required to play an organ. And then he would set up the organs. He would tune the organs.
: He was aware of the organs sound. And those organs have just to know how the PA sounds, because the organ's a big sound. You're aware of loud instruments.
Speaker C: Yeah, with a lot of sources. Every pipe, every thousands of pipes. So, yeah, what an incredible background he had. And the. Then, you know, he's out there selling mics at know, which is. That's one of the neatest reasons to get to go to a nam show, is you did get to know a, you know, and you got to talk to him and interact with, you know, Wes Dooley from AEA microphones. Grew up repairing RCA microphones.
: He's a trip. Wes Dooley is great.
Speaker C: Totally.
: Just another booth at Nam.
Speaker C: Actually, a living historian. Right. And you get to talk to these folks face to face. It's amazing. But, yeah. I met Bob's daughter, who still works for Heil and still goes out to trade shows and does the beat, and she was very nice, and there's just a heck of a legacy there. So he will be missed for sure. And he was a huge ham radio operator. Amateur radio, as they call, playing organ.
: Over the ham radio station like he has his own station. That was just like organ playing, I think, or something.
Speaker C: Yeah, it was over.
: He was also friends because he's actually from. Well, he died in Illinois.
Speaker C: Yeah, he's from St. Louis.
: Right. But he was friends with Thomas Holman.
Speaker C: Wait a minute.
: Thomas Holman started, did the THX protocol.
Speaker C: Oh, he's the th and thx, yeah. Oh, wow.
: And Thomas Holman ended up, I believe, over with connections to Skywalker Sound and another audio luminary or whatever.
Speaker C: So cool. And then Bob also picked up, they picked up Bob to be a host on a podcast called this week in Tech Twit TV, which was the show that influenced me to start my own show 1512 years ago. And he did his own show over there about ham radio. And they did it for quite a long time, actually, until they had to end the show. But they still have his rig that he had built for that show. It's still at the Twitch studios in one corner of the know, a memory of really cool.
Speaker B: Really, really cool.
: The quirkiest thing, I thought, with Bob was his friendship with Joe Walsh, who was also a ham radio.
: Didn't Joe Walsh also use the talk box a bit?
Speaker B: Did he?
Speaker C: He did. He said later in that interview that Joe Walsh really kind of had it mastered. He really clearly, in hearing his interviews and reading his interviews, how he had an extremely. He was extremely tight with Joe. They were best buddies, and they spent a lot of time talking ham amateur radio together.
: Did they go driving in Joe's maserati?
Speaker C: Probably. And it was actually Joe who was experimenting with using the mics that Bob had made for doing amateur radio because.
: For doing studio work.
Speaker C: Yeah. Bob hated the crappy mics. That amateur radio operators were stuck using. So he made a better mic. And then Joe was like, yo, plug this thing into your studio console. And Bob's like, I never would have thought of that. He's like, I'm telling you, it sounds better than an SM 57 or a 58. And he's like, yeah, you're right, it does. And a brand of microphones was born from there. His most well known podcast mic, the one that's kind of the gold standard, is called the PR 40. And it has a distinct tone to it. It has a distinct voice.
: Is it kind of big sounding?
Speaker C: It's big, and it has a lot of cut, like mid range.
: It's like a combo of like an SM seven and a 416 or something.
Speaker C: Kind of almost. It doesn't have the top end of a 416, but it definitely has more of a cut. So if you ever listen to Leo Laporte on this week in tech, or any of the shows that Leo does, you'll hear the distinct sound of that mic. It's not a flat or a hi fi mic, it's a broadcast mic.
: But it's a dynamic sounding mic.
Speaker C: Yes, it's a dynamic mic, and its voicing is designed for being heard. Let's just put it that way.
: Yes.
Speaker C: The PR 30 and the PR 20, to me, sound a little bit smoother. I like the voicing of them better, personally. But the bottom line is Bob tuned his mics by ear. And he said that specifically later in the interview. I wasn't curious about response curves and all this stuff. I would just go by what I thought sounded right. So those mics are tuned by Bob's ear. And the guy had a good ear, but probably by the time he got into his fifty s, sixty s, seventy s, didn't hear everything.
: Did all the mics as he made them throughout the years just get brighter and brighter?
Speaker B: It's a good question.
Speaker C: It's a good question. I mean, I'm sure he wasn't the only one that put his ears on the mics after quite a while. Joking, but yeah, no, it's true. The sound systems I listened to growing up that were often not eqed well, unfortunately, were often helmed by a gentleman of an older generation. Yeah, I was like, no, too much two k and 4k. My ears are bleeding.
: You're accelerating their progression towards mixing.
Speaker B: Like you.
Speaker C: Anyway, rest in peace, Bob, thank you for all your innovation and your good natured enthusiasm. Enthusiasm towards audio, and we really appreciate it.
: Absolutely.
Speaker B: Yeah. Well, that was fun. Is it over?
#BobHeilLegacy #ProAudioSuite #AudioInnovation #RockAndRollSound #TalkBoxMagic #AustrianAudio #TriBooth #ProAudioLegends #SoundEngineering #MusicHistory
Speaker A: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribut and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio imaging with tech support from George the tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say good day, drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com. -
In this week's episode of The Pro Audio Suite, we dive deep into the latest advancements in audio technology that are set to transform the voiceover and podcasting industries. Join us as we discuss the new features of Source Nexus, the differences between its free and paid versions, and how these innovations can significantly improve your recording workflow. Whether you're a seasoned voiceover artist, a budding podcaster, or somewhere in between, this episode is packed with invaluable insights and tips to enhance your audio production game.
Key Highlights:
Exclusive Discount on TriBooth: Kickstart your episode with a special offer on TriBooth, using the code 'TRIPAP200' for a $200 discount.
Introducing Source Nexus: Discover the benefits of the latest Source Nexus release, a game-changer for podcasters and voiceover artists looking to streamline their recording and playback processes.
Free vs. Paid Versions: Learn about the major differences between Source Nexus's free and paid versions, including the unique features and capabilities of each.
Enhanced Connectivity and Quality: Understand how Source Nexus can revolutionize remote recording sessions, offering high-quality connections and simplifying the playback of recordings without the need for extensive technical knowledge.
Future Innovations: Get a sneak peek into what's next for Source Nexus, including new features designed to make voiceover booths resemble professional radio studios.
Navigating Internet Challenges: Gain insights into overcoming common internet connectivity issues that can impact your recording quality, especially for artists based in remote locations.
The Evolution of Voiceover Sessions: Reflect on how the voiceover industry has evolved over the years and the increasing demands on voice talent to also be audio engineers.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone involved in the audio production industry, providing practical advice, expert opinions, and a look into the future of voiceover and podcasting technologies.
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, itâs an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners.https://georgethe.tech/tpas
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
#ProAudioSuite #SourceNexus #AudioEngineering #VoiceoverTips #PodcastingLife #AudioInnovation #NexusRevolution #SoundQuality #RecordingStudio #AudioProduction
Summary
In this episode of the podcast, the focus is on the benefits of the New Source Nexus for podcasting and voiceover work. The host reminds listeners of a discount offer for TriBooth, urging them to use the promo code "TripAP200" for $200 off. The guest, Robert, explains how New Source Nexus is particularly advantageous for voice talents who work with clients that do not record them directly but rather use applications like Zoom. He emphasizes that Nexus simplifies the playback process, integrating with various recording applications to handle routing and mix-minus setups, making it user-friendly with its built-in mixer. Nexus is lauded for enhancing recording capabilities, especially for interviews and group conversations, as evidenced by its use during the podcast itself.Additionally, the episode touches upon the growing demands on voiceover actors, with Andrew Keen pointing out the limitations of expecting high-quality performances when continuously adding more responsibilities. He speculates that voiceover booths could evolve to resemble radio studios, given the expanding skill set required of voice talents.
Listeners are advised that the benefits Robert mentions apply to both the free and paid versions of New Source Nexus, though the paid version offers additional plugins that facilitate easier routing for professional needs.
#TriboothDiscount #SourceNexusPodcasting #VoiceoverTechSolutions
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Nexus Benefits for Podcasters(00:06:18) Evolution of Voiceover Booths
Transcript
Speaker A: And if you want to get a discount on your tribooth, don't forget the code. Trip a p 200 and that will get you $200 off. So use the code now. Something new was actually released a few weeks back. Now the new source nexus. My question for you, Robert, how will it benefit someone like myself or someone who does podcasts using Nexus?
Speaker B: I think for talent yourself, the first case would be something like where you have clients that are not recording you directly. Sort of the here's a zoom link, and then we're going to have you record everything and send files to you later. Yes, your clients are hearing you over whatever Zoom can do, and then they're asking you to play back. And it's not easy to set that up. So Nexus for a voice talent would make it very easy for them to play back whatever they're recording into. If it's a DAW like Pro Tools or audition or reaper, or if it's even just some desktop application like Twisted wave, it can do all the routing and the mix minus set up so that you can playback without having to sort of understand as much what you're doing. In a sense, it has the mixer built into it. It's very straight ahead. So that's the first use case podcasting we've got recording. I mean, we're using it right now, but we're improving those features and those are going to accelerate. And certainly just a platform for someone who wants to connect and record an interview or a group conversation. It works out great. Obviously. Here we are.
Speaker A: Is this the free one or is this the paid one that you would need?
Speaker B: You could do it with both technically, but with the free one you're a bit on your own. With the paid one, you get a set of plugins that really makes the routing easy. The paid one, which is $12 a month or it's $132 a year, that one provides all the tools and is where it would be most easily done. But the free one does provide you high quality connection to five people, and everyone hears you in very high quality, and if you want, you can hear them in very high quality, but the routing is a little bit more up to you at that point and not having plugins to help you or applications to help you with the audio routing. So you're more just plugging your microphone in and your headphones out. And if you want to integrate other applications or go through a DAW record through a set of plugins, things like that, then it makes it easier to have the plugins. And especially when it comes back to playing back. So you not only have your microphone feeding into it, but also playback from whatever you're recording. That's where those setups are easier with plugins or external software.
Speaker A: My question is actually what is the major differences between the free one and the paid one? If I pay for it, what do I get?
Speaker B: The paid one? You get the Nexus plugin set, which is Nexus review, which is a plugin that makes it very easy to put on a master fader. Or it's also a standalone application so that you can set up a playback to whatever connection you have and source. Nexus Gateway is the meeting room that you have. It's chrome based and unlike something like Zoom, it has a separate high quality audio broadcast. So you have a client room that has echo cancellation on it and people can have speakers open and a more comfortable environment. But then you as the talent, you can be on headphones sending your audio out in high quality to the participants and whoever they are. So this is a situation where they're not recording you directly because in that case you would be on source connect being recorded by an engineer who's pulling playback and edits in real time. What happens to you, Andrew, is as you've said, you've got stuck doing playback for people and crap, which I've set up for this.
Speaker A: I must admit I have sort of put my foot down on that one and basically say before we start, I'm not supplying playback and I'm sure that's going to come and bite me at some point. But the other question is, you know what my Internet's like here for some peculiar reason it's pretty crap. I mean the speeds are fine.
Speaker B: It's crap.
Speaker A: Yeah. So how taxing on bandwidth is Nexus going to be, particularly the paid one.
Speaker B: Gives you video as well. The free one doesn't have video. So if you choose to use video it's definitely going to tax it more in your case. I don't know what's wrong. You just live in a black hole of Internet. I think it particularly has to do with the peering. Within Australia you have really good speed. But if you do a speed test and you change your server to someplace in Chicago or close to there, then you'll see the true speed that you have from Australia to that distance, not some server that's down the street from be.
Speaker A: I don't know whether it's the modem, I have no idea. It is kind of weird.
Speaker B: I think it might be the peering. That's what I'm trying to say. Who's your Internet service provider, Telstra. Telstra. And when they get traffic that's destined for the United States, they got to put it onto some pipe, and probably ultimately it's a pipe that they don't own. So they're renting out and paying for a chunk of it. Then once they get to America, they have to know ingress into that network. So at some point they're paying somebody. And actually, the reality is, at many points, they're paying people, and the whole public Internet works off of best effort. And really it's least effort that all these companies, it's like if it's at t across the entire connection, they're going to make sure it goes great. When at T has to traffic other traffic from Verizon, at T does it at best effort, which is not to say that they thwart it, but they prioritize their own traffic. So suffice to say there's many peers that go across, and each time, each one of those has to pass the traffic. And if they're doing it slowly, it can make for a rough connection. And if you go international, you're definitely going to run into more peers than if you're just connecting to someone down the street who also has Telstra.
Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. But it is slightly frustrating, I have to say. Things don't connect properly. So now you're going to be adding stuff to Nexus. So what's in the pipeline that you can talk about?
Speaker B: Well, we already have shown whatever the right way to say that is at the National association of Music Makers Conference, or NAMM, and we showed an overdub feature which basically allowed a talent to load up an audio file, and then they could perform against it in time, and that whole performance would go out so that the other side could control it, so they could say, hey, let's play and record, and then you just see a takes list. So in a sense, in a voiceover kind of context, you wouldn't always have something to read along with, although you could, you could read along with the music. If they have the music from the spot that you're recording and you want to read the music, you could easily hit play, do a take, and you'd have a takes recorder that you can all play back and they can play back, too. So now, Andrew, they don't even have to ask you for a playback. They can just hit play for themselves on a list of takes. Essentially, it would just provide you a way to organize and kind of deal with those sessions where they don't want to hire an audio engineer and it's still not going to be like someone's going to be cutting things in real time. Here's take three, plus take five. No, but at least you can hear them and they're labeled and they can be downloaded.
Speaker A: I can almost see that voiceover booths are going to turn into, like, radio studios.
Speaker B: It can. I mean, more and more talent are being forced to be engineers in certain situations, and the clients want to make it as simple as connecting in on Zoom. But the problem with Zoom is, well, if you're going to have it work well and easily for everyone, there's going to be echo cancellation on it and it's not going to sound good and someone has to record the takes and it's all like ad hoc. Try to put it together, come up with something that works, complain when it doesn't all work together because there's not a cohesive workflow to it. It uses so many different things.
Speaker C: Yeah, there's way too many things voiced on the shoulders of voiceover actors. It's really annoying. I mean, there are so many things that need to be done for a session to go smoothly. And as soon as you heap another thing on top of the shoulder, on the shoulders of the voice talent, their performance is going to suffer. And that's just science. That's just how the brain works. You cannot keep adding more to someone's plate and expect the same quality of performance.
Speaker B: Not having someone deal with the aspect of the session that you need taken care of. If you try to avoid it, it's going to come up later. If you have someone record takes and then dump them in an engineer's lap, it's going to take that engineer as much time as having been there for the session to organize all that stuff. No matter how organized you give it to them, it's still going to take them time to import it. If you've not taken good notes, they're listening to all of it over again, basically, yeah.
Speaker A: If you take the clock back even 15 years ago, maybe even less, maybe ten years ago, depending on which market you're working in, how sessions have completely changed. I mean, if someone has said 15 years ago, when you're standing in a booth in a professional studio with an engineer setting everything up for you, that you'll be doing all this in the future, you'd be like, you got to be nuts. I'm not doing it. And now all of a sudden, it's like, if you don't do it, you don't work.
Speaker B: Unfortunately, a little bit of that happened early when voice talent began saying, oh, I have a home studio, so call me because I don't cost the fee of taking me to a local studio and paying for the studio. And so voice talent tried to use it as a marketing angle against each other early on, and they never charged for their facilities and they should have.
Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's true, but that horse is well and truly left the stable.
Speaker B: Well, they're depriving themselves of your input if they're going to expect to record it and give you a bunch of takes and then for you to go straight to the final edit because they already listened to it. That's them. They listen to it, not you. So you don't have any perspective. Be like, hey, what about take three? I actually think that one would really work. And if they want that input, you're listening to all of it over again. And there's the rub. It never doesn't happen. You're just skipping the step or you're going to pay for it.
Speaker C: And I'm just excited to see what comes because now there's a new platform built here, essentially infinite extensibility within the limits of whatever the current technology is. There's just so much more that can be done with Nexus now, and there's so many tools that we're going to be asking for as well as looking forward to using. So hang on to your hats. We're looking to see where Nexus goes next, and we're really glad to see that you've been able to bring it to the world. And congratulations.
Speaker B: Thank you.
Speaker A: Well done, Robert. -
Summary: This week on The Pro Audio Suite, we dive deep into the heart of Podfest with George 'The Tech' Whittam's firsthand account of 'suitcasing' and the power of networking without a booth. Discover the fascinating world of podcasting - from grassroots communities to the cutting edge of AI and chatbot technologies. Learn how every conversation could turn into a collaboration, and how the future of content creation might just be a chatbot away.
Hosts:
Robert Marshall, Source Elements & Audio Post Chicago Darren 'Robbo' Robertson, Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney George 'The Tech' Whittam, LA's go-to audio engineer Andrew Peters, Voiceover Talent & Home Studio ExpertSpecial Thanks to Our Sponsors:
Tribooth - the ultimate vocal booth for recordings at home or on the road Austrian Audio - crafting passion into every audio experienceFeatured Topics:
Networking Without a Booth: George's adventures at Podfest, including the art of 'suitcasing' and leveraging community awards and events for networking. Podfest Insights: An overview of the Podfest community, ranging from solopreneurs to niche content creators, and the invaluable role of networking apps like Hoova in fostering connections. AI and Podcasting: A deep dive into the use of AI and chatbots in content creation, including practical tips for leveraging these technologies to streamline content creation and even author a book. The Future of Content and AI: Exploring the intersection of AI, content creation, and the ethical considerations of content ownership and creation. Listener Engagement: Inviting listeners to join the conversation on our Facebook group, suggest topics, or simply say hello.Episode Conclusion: Wrapping up with a look forward to the evolving role of AI in the audio and podcasting industry, and a reminder to subscribe and engage with The Pro Audio Suite community.
#ProAudioSuiteTips #SuitcasingStrategy #PodcastCommunityInsights
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, itâs an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners.https://georgethe.tech/tpas
If you haven't filled out our survey on what you'd like to hear on the show, you can do it here:
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Join our Facebook page here:
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction(00:00:43) Recap of Podfest Attendance
(00:05:51) Networking at Podcast Conferences
(00:09:20) Corporate Presence at Podcast Movement vs. Podfest
(00:15:19) Legal Challenges with Chatbots
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready? Be history.
Speaker B: Get started.
Speaker C: Welcome.
Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.
: These guys are professional. They're motivated.
Speaker C: Thanks to Tribooth, the best vocal booth for home or on the road. Voice recording and austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements and someone audio post Chicago, Darren. Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney. To the Vo stars, George the tech Wittam from LA and me, Andrew Peters. Voiceover talent and home studio guy.
Speaker B: Learn up, learner. Here we go.
: And don't forget the code. Trip a P. That will get you $200 off your triboof. Now, George, you've been whizzing around the country like crazy. You went to Podfest. What were you actually doing at Podfest?
: I was suitcasing. That's what we call it in the.
Speaker A: Business, dealing people's suitcase.
: Suitcasing.
: Suitcasing is when you show up in an event that you didn't sponsor and you start schmoozing and handing out cards and selling your wares.
Speaker B: Yeah.
: You don't have a booth, basically.
: You don't have a booth. Yes. Thanks to Jody Krangle. Thanks, Jody. Jody's was a sponsor this year. She actually got an award. She got a community award from the Podfest event, which was really cool. They also had an award show there. Every community needs an award. So they have their own awards event there. They call them life, I guess they call them like lifetime achievement award type awards. And Dr. Drew was there giving out the awards. He's a famous. He's a tv personality. He's been on numerous shows over the years.
: He's kind of shilling stuff a little bit, isn't he? He's even like diet fed stuff.
: So here's the deal. The podcasting community is an interesting one, right? So it's a mixture of a lot of solopreneurs. Right. Which is why I'm there. I'm a solopreneur. Then you've got a lot of people that have something to say that would not fly on traditional media. Right? Yeah. So extremists own whatever thing it is because it's your podcast. You can say whatever the heck you want. So you have a lot of people. I could saw a lot of people that were wearing don't tread on me shirts.
: Yeah. Like survival. Buy all this food and stockpile it. And here's how to live in a hole for 80 days during the apocalypse.
: So there was a represented. Some people on that community were represented. Then you had a lot of people that are women. Every interest group you can imagine there's somebody at the podcast Podfest because they want to. Either they have a podcast, they want to start, they want to learn about it, or they have one and they want to promote it, or they just want to get better at what they do and more efficient. So that's why they come. And I was spending my time bouncing between the expo hall and some of the different talks that were there, and there were many panels. So what's cool about this conference, which I think sets it apart from every other conference I've ever been to, is they use an app called Hoova, spelled like hoova Hova. And the Hoova app is a community app that lets you know exactly who's at the event, you know exactly who they are. You have their contact info, you can exchange info. It's kind of like the Namshow app on the phone. Did you use the Namshow app?
Speaker B: Yeah.
: I was going to say, this sounds just like the Namshow app, which was kind of annoying.
: Yeah. Just not as crappy. Although the Namshow app got better, but it was terrible for a long time. But so now you have a way to contact every single person at the event. And so I'm looking at the app right now, and it says the total number of attendees was 1869.
: Wow, that's pretty good.
: That's not bad.
: That's good.
: Yeah. So definitely bigger than Vo Atlanta. They would like to be that big, I'm sure. In fact, J. Michael Collins from Vo Atlanta was there actually at Podfest with a booth.
: But what kind of price? I mean, what kind of price? Vo Atlanta is really expensive to attend. So when you're talking about 700 people being at that show, you're still talking about a lot of coin. Was this one, like $100 a ticket, or was this $700 a ticket?
: They do the thing, which a lot of conferences do, which is having a lot of different tiers. So you can start at, like, 200, and you can go up to $1,000. So the $1,000 ticket is a vip, and that's actually the ticket that I had, because Jody, as a sponsor, actually got a companion ticket, and she offered it to me, which was extremely kind. So I went as a vip, which was cool, because I could go to every single happy hour and all the special things where they give out, they have or d'oeuvres, and you can schmooze and stuff. And that was really valuable, because while I was in line for one of these, waiting in line for a drink, I met a voice actor. Sorry. I met a podcaster who runs a show about the chemical industry. And here I'm thinking, okay, that could be the end of the conversation.
: Yes.
: But I didn't let the conversation end. And instead I kind of dug in and said, and I came at it from an absolutely entrepreneurial mindset of like, okay, everybody has a need. Every industry has a need. Is there a need in that space that I can fill? Right. So by the time we got to the front of the line to get our drinks, I had already figured out a niche that I wanted to fill. She said, I'd like to have you on my show. I'd like to share this with my community. Let's work on maybe a package for the people that listen to my show. It was like all this came out of just standing in line.
: Let me make sure I understand this. She's got a show about chemical engineering.
: Chemical industry. Like, she does a show where the audience are people working in the chemical industry.
: And you are co marketing with her.
: Now, if she replies to my email, yes. Okay. So this is the thing. I also realize you go to these shows, these people come. It is an absolute, like schmoozegasm, right? You're meeting hundreds of people, making tons of connections, talking about amazing ideas. And then after that event, it is up to you. You really have to follow up. So one guy, he has a calendly link on his website. So he's like, hey, let's chat. So I immediately made a point with him. And I'll be talking with him as soon as he gets over.
: Yes.
: Yeah. Because that's the other thing that these conferences are for. I mean, that's certainly what I got from freaking Nam.
: Yeah, I got my Covid by hanging out in Venice Beach a little more. Got it over. Got over a couple of weeks ago. So as soon as he's off of his thing, I'm going to be talking about his studio that we are going to build in Dallas. So that turned into another gig, hopefully. He seemed very keen. So for me, on a, b to b level business to business, I had made some really great contacts. And then on a b to c level business to what consumer? I handed out my card to a lot of people. And it was really nice because the vendors that I did know there, which was BSW and sentrance and yellow tech, all know me, or you have great relationships. And they were all willing to keep my cards at their table and I would just circulate the room and every time I stood near the table, someone would walk up and say, what is all this would. And they would often mention me and say, george is the guy that can help you. So it was extremely valuable for me to be there to network and connect with folks. And whether it turns into a true ROI, who knows? You just never know until the deposit comes. But I did make some really good, valuable connections there. I also hopefully endeared them to the point where they will involve me in the production of the show next year so that they will not have super loud PA systems blaring in a very large echoey room, to the point where you can't hear the person presenting or you can't talk to your vendor that you're trying to talk to because the sound system is blasting.
: It's funny because podcasting is all about audio, but at the same time it kind of has this such a broad demographic because everyone is really like, I just want to have the podcast done. I'm not really about the process of podcasting. I just want it to be good.
: Oh, yeah. And there's a lot of networks and producers at these events that want you to sign on with them that will get you ad dollars and do all the marketing for you. And there was quite a few of those companies there, too. But for me it was just learning about the community, who's doing it, who's producing it, how do they do it, what are the issues that they're having in producing it? And what was cool with the Hoover app is I was able to immediately, when there was an issue with the sound and it was too loud, I was able to immediately post something in there and get the attention of one of the organizers who within probably 2030 minutes was asking me, where are you? Let's talk. That's pretty awesome. I really love that. When I was at podcast movement, that was not happening. That was not going to get through to somebody.
: How big is podcast movement compared to this one?
: Physically? It's a bigger space. It was a larger space, more vendors, but I'd think in the actual turnout it probably wasn't all that bigger. But podcast movement attracts more corporate entities. So you had I heart podcasts from iHeart media and iHeartRadio. You had Amazon. You had all these very big brands know there to represent their podcast interests and hopefully find their new big hit show. So that was a very different thing. They were not doing that at Podfest.
: So with these big companies that you're talking about, but they were looking for podcasts to put on their platforms. Is that correct?
: At podcast movement? Yeah, they're there to schmooze with their big sellers, their big shows. They had what you would expect. They had beautiful sets with couches, and they spent some big time money, big.
: Dime to be there.
: And Podfest wasn't like that at all. Podfest felt a lot more like a voiceover convention with a smaller expo hall. And as Jodie told me before, it's much more grassroots and more friendly.
: They both have like an educational thing.
: Tons and tons of education. Like the one gentleman I'm going to work with named Larry Roberts. He had a 30 minutes thing on how to write your next book using Chat GPT, and it was an absolute paint by numbers. This is exactly how I did mine. Just do it like this and you can have a 200 page bound book in about a week, right? I mean, literally.
Speaker B: Wow.
: So I'm like, dude, I want that PDF. And he said, here, scan this QR code, download the pDf, right? So I'm going to use that because I have been gathering my own knowledge with my own custom language model to create my own chat bot. So now I actually have all the content that I would need to make a book. And that's the thing that's kept me from wanting to do a book, because the research and the time to compose a book is eternity in the pre Chat GPT AI era. But now I can very quickly outline a book and write the chapters with the help of a Chat GPT. And the beauty of it is it's my own knowledge I'm not scraping from anybody else. So that was a really cool revelation. So there was a lot to learn there.
: I wonder if we could sort of ingest our podcasts that we've been doing for the last five years, of course, and then write a book from that.
: Absolutely.
: Interesting.
: Yeah, I mean, it is frighteningly simple to do it. I mean, it is crazy easy. I could do it in two days. It just really is bizarrely simple. But you want it to be good, so there's going to be more time involved. You want to read the entire book, right? You want to make sure everything that's being written isn't garbage and you have to make sure it's factual, so there's time involved, but still, yeah, it wouldn't be that hard because we have, what, six or seven years worth of content on YouTube. Yeah, all that content is easily scrapable. You create a sitemap from all that content and you load the sitemap into a chat bot utility and you're done. I mean, that's how easy it is to build a chatbot from any content.
: But where are you getting your initial chat bot from? Like, where's the infant AI Robert that I can go put on the server and start freaking feeding it?
: Like Fargois, oh, what's the service I'm using for that? Wouldn't you like to know?
Speaker A: We would like to know because we'd like to write a book, but yeah.
: I'll do a book.
: But for my, I think if I.
: Was going to do a book, it'd be a coloring in.
Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Dot to dot.
: For my custom chat TPT, I'm using a thing called custom GPT. That's actually what I'm using as a service to build my chat bot. And it's extremely user friendly and they have all the right tools. You have to be a little bit savvy, but you don't have to be knowledgeable about code. You don't have to be knowledgeable about a lot of things because they have a lot of good content on there and how to do it. You have to learn how to write a Persona. Your Persona is literally, how is your chat bot going to talk to people? Is it going to be mean and abusive? You can make it do that if you want. You can have it be abusive and angry. You can have it be overly effusive. You can have it be friendly. You can have it be way too verbose. You can tell it exactly how you want it to behave. So I've been working on my Persona to make sure my chat bot is friendly but still gives very direct information and at the end always plugs my business. That's how it works.
: You should give it a brief, like most of the voiceover briefs that we get, nonsensical sort of garbage that is impossible to understand.
Speaker A: Voice tone should be a little more purple than blue.
: Yeah, it'd be interesting just to make this thing follow you around. Like if you just videotaped every day and this thing ingested one day behind what you were, and then it just, whatever, this conversation here, all of it.
: It'S just like, oh, yeah, no. By the way, there is a little device that you can slap onto your iPhone and it just lives on the back of the phone like a little barnacle. And it does that. It records every single phone conversation and then does a Chat GPT transcription of it.
Speaker A: For what purpose, George?
: It's the ultimate note taking device. I mean, literally every phone call you make is recorded and converted into notes and, you know, it has a mic, so it'll record what's in the room, but it'll also record what's coming out of the. Like. We're all going to have a Persona copy of ourselves. And when we die, that's going to live on in some form or another.
Speaker A: Google.
: That's going to be normal.
Speaker A: That's what that is. That's already exists. You see the crap that it gets thrown at me, that tana and I have talked about in the kitchen?
Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
Speaker A: Listening. It's just crazy.
: Absolutely.
: Yeah.
: I'll tell you the story. This is a really wacko story. This goes back to the 80s. Mick Fleetwood was in Australia, and he came in to do an interview, and he was sitting there with a little cassette recorder, recording everything. And after we'd done the interview, I said, were you just getting a copy of the interview? He said, no, I record everything. Every conversation he has.
Speaker A: Everything.
: So he was an archivist or a librarian type person?
Speaker B: Yeah.
: No, but when he gets home, he said, when I get home, I'd like to sit in the house and listen back to all the cassettes.
Speaker A: He's got time for that.
: And I'm like, fleetwood, I suppose, but I think there were a few things they did in the 70s. It's obviously come back to haunt him, I reckon.
Speaker A: I reckon.
: Absolutely.
: Either that he was just very proud of himself and just really wanted to hear what he had to say.
: It was so bizarre.
: Yeah. In the same way, I'll watch our show occasionally or listen to the show. It's just a different experience to hear back what you were saying on the show, and I might pick up something you said that I didn't notice. You might edit and listen, and it's a different format than the way we did it, but at this point, I'm looking at, and I know we've gone off topic from Podfest to AI again, because this is the way the show goes, but it's like, I want to make sure I have my ip in my chat bot before somebody else does. I can't stop somebody from taking all my YouTube videos and putting it in their chat bot, but at least I can have mine and have it in my.
Speaker B: I think you should be able to.
: Stop somebody from taking all your YouTube videos and putting it in their chat.
: Well, I could go into YouTube tomorrow and just say, these are all unlisted and they're gone.
: No, I know that. But even though you have your stuff up there on a platform where it's basically monetized, and that's one thing that you should be allowed to do, having someone ingest it. It's like, still your ownership. They can ingest it, but they can't turn around a commercial chat bot.
Speaker A: Well, I can.
: Well, yeah, this is why New York Times is suing chat GBT, right? That's literally how the year started out. That news story came out and I was, hmm, I can't afford to sue anybody. That's never going to happen. But the least I could do is at least have my chat bot and at least put it out there before somebody else does and market it. I figured that's the best that I can do. I can't stop anybody from stealing my content. There's unscrupulous people in the voiceover world who would do that for sure. People that are just trying to make a buck and have content on their website. And people do it all the time anyway, just not to the scale of a chat bot. But that's going to be the thing of 2024 is making.
: So what there's going to be, at some point, there's going to be lawyers or just like, for instance, we had a film, a commercial, and the producer was telling us that Ford sued the company. And it was like, why? Well, it turns out it wasn't really Ford. So essentially what they got sued for is the commercial had a cop in it and the cop was sitting in it. Crown Victoria. Because that's like your cliche cop car, right? So next thing you know, Ford gets a letter from some lawyer that just says, I can get you $200,000 signed here, Ford Ce, not CEO, some lower, who knows who signs it. Next thing you know, the lawyer now has Ford behind him and he goes and sues the director or the production company of the car for not getting a license to use their likeness of a car because it's so associated with police, and they extract $200,000 out of them.
Speaker B: Wow.
: So same thing. Some lawyer, some company is going to be there and they're just going to go through and be like, oh, crap. I can tell where this chat Bot has been trained, going to reach out to all the people that trained it.
: We're also going to be replacing the lawyers with AI with a chat bot.
: Yeah, it'll be a chat bot. That's exactly right. There's going to be a chat bot that's going to go see where other chat bots were trained, and then when it catches them, it's going to go send a letter of cease and desist, and you're going to be like, untrain your chat bot, which I don't even know if you can do.
: Oh yeah, yes you can. I can go into mine at any time and just say, take that out of the database and it's gone. I can put an entire YouTube channel in my thing and go, I've done it. I put a whole YouTube channel in my chat bot. I didn't like some of the answers it was giving and I just took it back out.
: Okay, so, so basically you'll get a cease and desist letter like that. Like remove this content from your chat bot.
: That's probably what's going to happen. So you listen to the show and we will dribble on into AI land.
: With no matter what the topic is.
: That'S where we're all going.
: Yes, it is true.
: The next stop is the outro.
Speaker B: Well, that was fun. Is it over?
Speaker C: The pro audio suite with thanks to Triboof and austrian audio recorded using SourceConnect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our website.
: The pro audio suite.com. Close. -
This week, Robbo, Robert, George, and AP dive headfirst into the digital abyss of archiving audio sessions. It's a showdown of practices, preferences, and pure paranoia that none of us want to miss.
We're slicing through the magnetic tape of mystery to answer the burning question: To archive or not to archive? That is the question. Especially for voice actors like AP - is digital hoarding a necessary evil, or just a fast track to a cluttered hard drive? We're peeling back the layers on why every beep, click, and voiceover session might just be worth its weight in digital gold.
Robbo, with his trusty naming convention stolen from his days at Foxtel, shares his vault-like approach to keeping every sonic snippet since Voodoo Sound's inception. That's right, folks - for a mere $25, Robbo will keep your audio safe from the digital gremlins, guaranteeing that not even a rogue magnet could erase your audio masterpiece.
Then there's Robert, with his tech fortress of JBODs and RAID arrays, ensuring not even a single byte goes awry. It's like Fort Knox for soundwaves over there, proving once and for all that redundancy isn't just a good idea; it's the law in the land of post-production.
But wait, there's a twist! Robbo shares a cautionary tale that's straight out of an audio engineer's nightmare - precious recordings lost to the abyss of DAT tape oblivion. A horror story to chill the bones of any audio professional, reminding us all of the fragility of our digital (and not-so-digital) creations.
As for AP? He's the wild card, questioning the very fabric of our digital hoarding habits. But when push comes to shove, even AP can't deny the siren call of a well-placed backup, especially when clients come knocking for that one session from yesteryear.
We also get a deep dive into the eccentricities of backup strategies, from George's cloud-based safety nets to the analog nostalgia of reel-to-reel tapes. It's a journey through time, technology, and the occasional Rod Stewart office painting gig - because, why not?
So, gear up for an episode that's part backup seminar, part group therapy for data hoarders. We're dissecting the digital, analog, and everything in between to keep your audio safe, sound, and ready to resurface at a moment's notice.
Don't miss this electrifying episode of The Pro Audio Suite, where the backups are plentiful, and the stories are even better. Who's backing up this podcast, you ask? Well, let's just hope someone hit record.
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Summary
In the latest episode of the pro audio suite, we dive into the world of audio archiving and discuss the various approaches and philosophies toward preserving our work. We're joined by industry professionals including Robert Marshall from source elements and Darren 'Robbo' Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, as well as George 'the tech' Wittam and Andrew Peters, who share their personal strategies and experiences with archiving voiceover projects.The conversation opens with a discussion about the importance of having a naming convention for files, with insights on the methods adopted from professional entities like Foxtel. Listeners will learn the value of archiving everything, as shared by Robbo, including the practice of charging a backup fee to clients to cover the costs of maintaining archives.
George introduces his once-a-year protocol of transferring data to an archive hard drive, emphasizing how affordable data storage has become. However, he also highlights the importance of staying current with technology to avoid the obsolescence of media, sharing anecdotes about DA 88 tapes and the need to keep track of archival materials.
The episode touches on practical voiceover tips, like not necessitating a workstation at home and utilizing a laptop as a backup plan for voiceover recording. We also cover the worst-case scenarios such as dealing with corrupted audio and the advantages of modern backup solutions.
The discussion moves on to cloud storage, specifically iCloud, and its benefits for voice actors who might otherwise become digital hoarders. The team debates the challenges of booting up from an external drive on modern Mac systems like the M1 or M2, offering insights into the workaround solutions which may require additional purchases.
Listeners are reminded of the great offers from our sponsors, such as Tribooth for the perfect home or on-the-go vocal booth and Austrian Audio's commitment to making passion heard.
The episode comes to a close emphasizing the professional edge of the podcast, all thanks to the contributions of Triboof and Austrian Audio, and the craftsmanship deployed using Source Connect, with post-production by Andrew Peters and mixing by Voodoo Radio Imaging. The audience is invited to subscribe to the show and participate in the conversation via the podcast's Facebook group.
#VoiceOverTechTips #TriBoothTales #ArchivingAudioArt
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction: Tributh Vocal Booth(00:00:42) Archiving Discussion with Robbo
(00:07:34) Talent Experiences with Archiving
(00:13:17) Digital Media Frailties
(00:18:48) Tape Transfers Before Auctions
(00:21:27) Backup Plans in Voiceover Work
(00:27:39) Importance of Redundancy
(00:31:04) Apple Silicon Booting Limitations
(00:35:25) Podcast Credits & Reminder to Subscribe
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready? Be history.
Speaker B: Get started.
Speaker C: Welcome.
Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite. These guys are professional. They're motivated.
Speaker C: Thanks to tributh, the best vocal booth for home or on the road. Voice recording and austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements and someone audio post Chicago, Darren. Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney. To the Vo stars, George the tech Wittam from LA, and me, Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home studio guy.
Speaker B: Learn up, learner. Here we go.
: And don't forget the code. Trip a p 200 and that will get you $200 off your tribooth. Now, Robbo and I were having a bit of a chat the other day about archiving, which is something I strangely do, and I don't know why I do it, but I do. But there are different reasons for archiving, and mine is obviously completely different to Robert's. And of course, it's completely different from Robo's. So how much do you archive and how far back do your archives go?
Speaker A: Well, as I said in the conversation yesterday, I actually archive everything. I could pretty much pull out any session I've done since voodoo sound existed, which is fast approaching 20 years. But I do charge a backup fee to my clients, so they pay $25 for the privilege. And, look, to be fair, whether they pay it or not, I do archive it, but it's a built in cost covering for me to be able to go and buy a couple of hard drives every year. But I reckon if you're going to do it, the most important thing for me anyway, is having some sort of naming convention. So I actually pinched mine off Foxtel when I used to freelance there. The channels had a three letter prefix. So I give all my clients or podcasts a three letter prefix, and then I use an underscore, and then it'll be what the thing is, whether it's a program or imaging component or whatever, and then the name of it, and then the month, and then an underscore, and the date the day of that month, and then an underscore in the year, and then usually. Sometimes after that, if it's a revision, I'll do underscore r two, r three, r four. And then each year is on its own hard drive or hard drives. So if I need to go back and find something, I've just got an external hard drive player, shall we call it? I can't think of what you call them, but you just plug your hard drive in and it turns up on your Mac, and I can just go through and find what I need. But, yeah, I've got clients that are sort of expecting me to do that. As you and I were talking about yesterday, I don't know whether maybe voiceover artists are expected to or not, but as I said, I kind of thought it would be nice to be able to.
: I do it only on occasions if there's any chance that they're going to come back and want to do a revision or they're going to lose something, particularly if it's a massive session or something, that I've actually done the edit myself. I'll keep it, because you can bet your life that they're the ones who are going to come back and say, have you still got that thing? Because we've lost it.
Speaker A: Yes.
: It's like, no, I haven't, actually. So I keep all those things, but I was keeping day to day stuff and it was like, what's the point? It's like that stuff's already been on the air and it's off the air, it's gone. So why am I storing that for other people? But, yeah. Interesting. What about you, Robert?
: I have a couple perspectives on this, I guess, from just sort of a mix operation point of view. What we have is what you call, it's a JBOD, just a bunch of drives is what it stands for. And it's controlled with the raid controller. So there's eight drives in this one, and it's not that big, actually. It's only, what is it? Like maybe two terabytes or something? And across all eight drives are all of our jobs that are sort of current, essentially. And the way the JBOD works is that it's an array. And so you can literally lose any one of those eight drives can just completely go to crap and we won't lose any data. You just slide a drive back in there and it heals.
Speaker B: A raid five or a raid six.
: Raid six, actually.
Speaker B: Right.
: So you can lose two out of the eight, I believe, is what we are. And we've had it over the last ten years. When we bought it, we just bought a whole stack of the same hard drives. And we've only had to use like two in the last ten years. So that's like kind of our live job. And then what we do, we would have all of our live jobs on that drive. And then if we ran out of space, we would peel out whatever, we would just go for the jobs that aren't active. So some of these jobs that we have were on that drive and have never been. They just keep on coming back, essentially. So they're always on the active drive. Meanwhile, the people that come in and do one thing and then they're gone, you never see them again. They get moved off, and then we would make two copies of that. And what we've been doing now is like, I'll go home with one and Sean will go home with the other. But however it goes, they're just basically on dead drives, or they're not spinning anymore, they're just sitting on a shelf so we can access those and then what we have. So last for a backup of the main drive. Ray, if the building was to burn down, I was using time machine and then taking a drive home every now and then. But we started using backblaze, which is just a really good service. It's like cheap for the year, and it just backs up. As long as the drive is spinning, they don't charge you. I think by the size, it just has to be an active drive. So that's our off site backup. And then we just have a database, which is really just a spreadsheet where a job comes in. We have like a naming convention, and we name it by the job name and then a job number, and there's a database that has basically every time that job was ever touched. So to us, these are all like a bunch of little rolling snowballs that get bigger and bigger and bigger and jobs come back and they get added to, or they just never go away. And they're always on the active drive. And that's how we do the post operation, the music operation. When I'mixing a band, I just have like a hard drive that sticks around with me for a while and then eventually it gets put on a shelf. And I have a lot of these drives that are sort of just dated. And I've used source zip a lot back in the day when I was low on hard drive space. But the problem is some of these drives are 40 pin ide drives, and I keep around a one firewire case that has a 40 pin. Like I can plug in any one of these hard drives. And then others are SATA. And those are really easy with the USB slots or the USB docking for the SATA drives, but it's looser. I just basically go by date and the client will say, hey, I did something with you, and I'll just go rummaging through my hard drives and hopefully find one from that date. Every now and then you may do two hard drives in a year, but those are my two systems. One is very stringent and good. And the other one is loose.
: So George, do you know any other talent who know archive their sessions?
Speaker B: I think the vast majority barely are functional on a computer that I work with. So they have extremely minimal protocol.
: I know a lot of talent that don't even make a backup to be honest.
Speaker B: Yeah. As far as they're concerned, once they got paid they could care less, it's gone. Some people are more data processing type people like me and they like to keep everything they've recorded. So what I would tell people, which almost never comes up, but my protocol is I have an archive hard drive that I will dump things onto about once a year. So I'm basically clearing space off of my local drive, cloud drives. I use Dropbox, Google Drive and iCloud. So stuff's in different places for different reasons. My business is on Google Drive, right. So every single client folder is on Google Drive at all times. And there's something around a terabyte or so there. And that's not that much because I'm not doing multi track productions or in most cases any video. Right. It's just small numbers of files. But my client media folder is on disk anyway because it's bigger than what's on my disk. But what's on disk is about 250gb and there's roughly 32,000 items in that folder.
: Wow.
Speaker B: And then it's funny, I just have 26 folders, ABCD and so forth. And the biggest folder is the letter C. So statistically there are more people by the name of C and I go by first names, right? So first names with c are the most common. Then s, then j, then a, then D, then m. It's kind of funny, I have all these weird statistics about names because I have 4000 clients. So it's really interesting to see some of the names that are so common.
: I've got stuff. This is how stupid it is. I think I'm actually an order. I've got files here. Like I keep a folder for each client and then every session gets put into the folder, right? I look at some of them and even looking at the folder go, God, I haven't worked with those guys for years. And then you open the folder and look at the date of the sessions. It's like that was like 15 years ago. What the hell am I keeping that for?
Speaker B: It's amazing, right? Well, data is cheap. It's really cheap to store data. I mean it's never been cheaper, so it's kind of like there's no harm in doing it you just have to eventually clear house. You're eventually going to fill your cloud drive or your local drive. So you have to have some kind of protocol to then move things.
: You eventually have to take it into your own domain and not have it up on the cloud.
Speaker B: Right.
: And there's an old thing with data, though, which is you don't have a copy unless you have two copies.
Speaker B: Right. True. This is what I think is interesting. So all these cloud storage scenarios have not changed price or capacity in many years. They're all still $10 for a terabyte or two terabytes. And that hasn't changed in a long time.
: The meaning of a terabyte hasn't changed.
Speaker B: Right. So what they're doing is they're making progressively more money per terabyte over the years. Yes, because their cost of storage is dropping, dropping, dropping year after year, and they're just keeping the price the same.
: But they are continuously having to reinvest. Because another thing about archive and storage is that any. And this is the problem I have. It's like an archive is not a static thing. It must be moved and massaged, and you have to keep it moving with the technology going forward. Because if not, you end up with things like, I've got archives. I mean, I've got analog reel to reel tapes, plenty of those with stuff on them. And I can dig up the deck to play it back. But once you don't have that deck anymore, you just don't have it. And I've got dat backups and exabyte backups. Remember those, robo?
Speaker A: Yeah, I do.
: And CD Roms. And then. How about this one? That happened to me. I did a whole huge. One of the biggest albums I ever did, and I backed it up to a stack of dvds, dvdrs, dvdrs, like four gigs each. Four gigs each, I think. Were they four gigs each? Is that how much they were? I think so, yeah, four.
Speaker A: And then dual layer were eight or something, weren't they?
: Eight, right. Okay. And these were some crappy ones. Within three years, I went to play those things. And basically. Data rot. Yeah, it's gone. That's when you learn the lesson. And so if you don't keep your data moving, you don't know what's going to happen to that physical device that's holding it. And not just what happens to it, but what happens to the ability to even use that type of device or that type of software that reads it.
Speaker A: Here's the interesting thing, right? I dragged out an old laptop case that I used to store all my dats in when I used to sort of freelance. And I always had dats, especially for radio imaging of bits and pieces that I would drag around with me. And I had to pull it out the other day. And this thing's been sitting in my garage, right? So not temperature controlled, not dust controlled, nothing else. There's about 60 dats in this thing. And I've got an old. It's not even on a digital database. It's an old sort of folder that's got like each dat has its own master and all that sort of shit. So I pulled this out, right? This is stuff that I recorded when I was still at AA in Adelaide. So we're talking 1996, right? I dragged this dad out and my trusty portable Sony Walkman, the TCD D 100, dragged that out, put some batteries in, plugged it into my Mac, chucked the dad in, going, there's no way this is going to work. Hit, dialed up the track number, play, bang, spun up to it, played it back. Pristine. Absolutely pristine.
Speaker B: No glitches, no static.
: I've had the same thing happen where the DaP machine has been completely screwed. And then you have to get a new DAP machine, but at least you can get those. But when the dat tapes go, you're kind of sol. Exactly your sol. Maybe you can find a read pass that works, but for the most part, that part of the tape is just like screwed. But that kind of thing happens even with files. I had a road. No, not a road. A zoom road. You'd be happy to know it's a zoom. And it was like a zoom recorder. Recorded the files, full concert, got home to play it. Files, complete silence. And it turns out that basically the zoom didn't like the little SD card. It was too slow, it was too this. And every indication was everything was fine until that file got big enough for the SD card to freak out. So all these mediums, even the new ones, still have their frailties. And I know dats are really known for being frail. Like, look at it wrong and it's never going to play back.
Speaker B: Well, they're really pro media, right? The pro devices that use media like solid state media usually have redundant disks. They all have two slots, whether it's SD or CF or some other high speed. They'll always have a double slot because they have redundancy that's totally pro level. That's for doing like.
: Because if you don't have two copies, you don't have one.
Speaker B: Yeah, that's like when you're doing mission critical. You cannot afford to lose what you're doing. My daughter's a work at.
: Exactly.
: Yes, indeed.
Speaker B: The oldest media I have still in a crate in my parents basement are DA 88 tapes, which were high eight digital tapes, and I don't have a machine anymore. I really don't recall telling my dad it's okay to sell my remaining Tascam Da 88, but apparently he did happen.
: So I was just at La studios, and they still have their PCM 800 in the rack, which is a Sony version of a D 88. I still have eight at's around. And then.
Speaker B: Yeah, I have no idea if those D 88. Some of them will work somewhat don't. I don't have a machine. I don't have any ide drives anymore. Everything's SATA. But one day I pulled up this Corboro box with like, 15 SATA drives, and I realized I could just go to Costco and buy $100 hard drive and literally put that entire box into one hard drive. And I could probably do that. In fact, I think three or four years ago, somebody said, hey, do you have this thing? And I went, I think I do. And I pulled out the archive drive and it wouldn't mount. I was like, okay, this is going to happen.
Speaker A: But here's the other thing, right? And this is the thing that annoys me, and I've made this mistake, is you've got to keep a track of this stuff because you're always trying to sort of downsize your archives, I guess. And this is the classic mistake that I made. For years, I carried around these 15 inch reels of analog tape, right? Stereotape. My first demo of commercials and stuff was on this stuff. And when I finally landed this place called take two, which was my last sort of full time post production gig, they still had a quarter inch machine. And we're talking 2001, 2002. And I thought, right, this is probably the last time I'm going to see one of these. So I transferred it all carefully, professionally onto dats and all that. I had about three dats of stuff. And about two years later, I went looking for them. Do you reckon I've ever seen them again? I've lost them somewhere. But whereas a 25 inch reel. Sorry, a 15 inch reel, that's pretty hard to lose, you know what I mean? So it's like, you got to be careful.
: Yeah, well, it's funny, when I was a kid, this is slightly off topic, but I suppose archiving in a strange way. But during summer holidays, a mate of mine, we used to go and try and get jobs. And his brother was a painter and decorator and he used to get us out, know, doing a bit of labouring for him. And he said, oh, do you guys want to earn some money? It's like, yeah. Yeah. So we jumped in his transit van and we took off down to London and ended up working in a recording studio. And we were painting Rod Stewart's office.
: What, pink.
: And he had above this. I can tell you exactly what color it was. Mission Brown and burnt orange.
: I knew there'd be something like pink or orange. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker B: Brown and orange headphones right here.
: Yes, that's right. Yeah, it was pretty funny. But the recording studio downstairs, they just used to bin all this quarter inch tape, just throw it away. So it was bins full of. My dad was in electronics, so I thought I might just help myself to some of those. I mean, they're throwing them away after all. And it was just seven inch reels. So I just grabbed a whole bunch of seven inch reels out of the bin, took them home and didn't play them for some peculiar reason. We just recorded over the top of them.
Speaker A: Right.
: God knows what was on those tapes.
Speaker B: Can you imagine?
: So check it out. One of the studios that I freelance at one of the gigs they had was transferring before auctioning off these tapes that this janitor got out of a recording studio in New York. It was CBS or something. Turns out it's like the masters or some early tapes from Dylan's first.
Speaker A: Wow.
: So they auctioned them and then in order to prove, like, they had to have one playback, I don't know, they ended up supervising the transfer. But literally, it's, know, these tapes, they were supposed to go through the bulk erase, but not all of them would make it to the bulk erase. And this guy apparently was kind of into folk music and just happened to pull these out. And they just passed around for years and years until finally some grandparent or somebody is like, we're going to auction these.
Speaker A: Do you reckon they stuck them in the microwave before they played them back?
: Well, it's not the microwave. You put them in the dryer, in the dehydrator.
Speaker A: I've heard stories and stories. It was always the microwave for me. We always used to nuke them. And you'd get one playback, but. Yeah, I haven't heard of the dryer.
: But that's getting that tape. Because you ever seen one that does it, that you don't do that to? Yeah, well, it peels like it peels. It's the scariest thing. It goes through that pinch roller. One piece of tape comes into the pinch roller and two pieces of tape come out. One is the original tape. The other one's the oxide that briefly looks like a piece of tape until it crumbles into dust.
Speaker A: Yeah. And the other is the back.
: And you're just like, because it's playing. And you're like, okay, I should just let it play because this is the.
Speaker A: Last playback should have been rolling on this ever. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? But going back to the Rod Stewart thing, was it Steve Balby on this show that was talking about. Steve was the bass player for noiseworks and his next band was what was greedy people, electric hippies. And they needed multi track to record their album. So they snuck into the archives and stole a couple of the noise works ones.
: Yeah, they stole some multi track tape from somewhere.
Speaker A: Yeah, it was noiseworks. They went and stole.
: Over some band's archive.
Speaker A: Well, his first bands. Yeah, the previous band, they stole their previous band's multi tracks and used those to record on.
: Okay. At least it was theirs.
: Bad archiving there.
Speaker A: I know. I guess the other thing that this whole subject leads to, and I guess, George, this is more up your alley, is the thing that always terrifies me is if I've got a remote session, I'll set it up the night before and I'll test everything and I'll save it and make sure that I don't really shut anything down. I'll just leave it all working. But the thing that terrifies me as I'm walking back into the room, know what's gone wrong overnight when the computer's gone to sleep? Has something ticked over or something gone wrong? And I'm going to open up the computer and I'm just going to get into this panic that something's not working. Is there anybody out there in voiceover land, George, who has a plan b? Or who's ever thought about having a plan b? Like, okay, so if my main computer, for some reason just cocks it and I can't get a sound out of it, what am I going to, pushing a broom? Yeah, what am I going to do?
Speaker B: I mean, the plan b is most people have a desktop and a laptop, so the laptop is the plan b. That's pretty much it. Home studio voice actors systems are pretty, let's face it, low end. I mean, you don't need a workstation, a $5,006 workstation to do voiceover at home. So you really just need another computer. And for most people, that's going to be the laptop.
: It's the travel rig. Isn't the travel rig the backup rig, too?
Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I've had clients run and grab their travel rig when something completely goes haywire with their Apollo or whatever, and they're panicking, and I'm like, just pull out your MacBook, plug in your Micboard Pro, plug in your 416, and get the job done and move on. And the client will be happy because you're in your studio, which sounds amazing, so don't worry.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: So that's the backup plan for any really true busy professional voice actor.
: When I used to really panic about capturing audio that it wouldn't go wrong, I would actually have two microphones. I worked at two microphones, one going to the main computer and one going to the laptop, and I'd have them both recorded.
Speaker B: Yeah, that's like BBC, remember? Wasn't like the 70s where they would literally duct tape. A second mic was for the television show and one was for the film.
: You would see that many microphones. Exactly.
Speaker B: That's true, because they didn't have distro boxes and splitters and stuff back in those days, I guess. But, yeah, we've never gone to that extent. In the beginning of my career, I did have clients running pro tools that had a DAT backup. That was definitely protocol. Pro Tools was so glitchy.
: Yeah. You would run a dat backup with a dat tape. In fact, the way we ran the DAT backup was that you would record the talent in stereo, and then you'd put the clients on the left side so that you had both sides of the conversation. But the talent was always at least isolated on one channel. If you ever needed just the talent.
Speaker A: There you go.
Speaker B: Yeah, I retired. Dat backups were my clients 15 years ago. But Howard Parker had one. He had a Dat recorder, and he would just hit record every time he'd walk into the booth on the dat and rewind it, because we just didn't know if he'd walk out in a half hour later. And pro Tools had a 61, whatever the hell it is. Buffer.
Speaker A: One of those fun errors that pop up that you got to go google what it means. Yeah.
Speaker B: As a voice actor who's solo working at home in their closet or their booth. And at those times, we didn't necessarily have a second monitor, keyboard, and mouse in the booth. So you don't want to lose a session. You don't lose in a half an hour, an hour or 2 hours narration. That's the worst. The worst ever is when there's a nonsensical glitch during a two hour session and you don't know what's happening. You have no idea. And meanwhile, the audio is basically garbage. It's like static.
: That's why sometimes in a session it is a good idea when you're like, okay, this is good. Stop and record a new file. Because computers like, if something's going to happen, it's more likely to happen to a big file. Back in the day, it wasn't uncommon for a file that was really big to be more likely to get corrupted, essentially.
Speaker B: Well, I have set up a modern equivalent to the DAT backup which is getting like $100 task cam, flash recorder, real basic one. And then plugging an output from their interface or their mixer into that and then saying, listen, you're doing a phone patch. It's a two hour narration. You do not want to lose that work. Just hit record on that thing over there. Now you have a backup. You'll almost never, ever need it. But the one time that you need.
: That freaking backup, if you don't make the backup, you'll need it. If you do make the backup, you won't need.
Speaker B: It's like if you don't bring an umbrella.
: Exactly.
Speaker B: It's going to rain.
: Exactly.
Speaker B: That is an absolutely dirt cheap and extremely simple. You can even have a scarlet two I two. And as long as you're not using monitor speakers plugged into it, you can just use the outputs, put it in direct monitor mode and it'll just send whatever you're saying straight out the back line into your Tascam. Like I'm saying, $100 recorder. The basics, the really basic one. And record.
: Yeah, it might be through like a little 8th inch connection. It might be mono, it might be analog. But you know what? It's going to be something compared to nothing. It'll probably be. No one will even know that it wasn't necessarily a digital copy.
Speaker B: Yeah, it can be a 16 bit 44 or 48 wave. It's fine. I've set this up for a lot of people and when I go to their studios or I talk to them, they almost always say I haven't used it in a long time because they're so used to it being reliable until.
Speaker A: It doesn't work, until the day it falls over. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B: And that's why I have clients that hire me and I work with them on a membership and like a contract and I check their systems out on a regular basis. Like, I do maintenance. I check. How much drive space do you have? Are you backing up? Is the backup working? Oh, crap. The time machine backup hasn't worked for six months. And you had no idea you filled.
: Your time machine drive. Exactly.
Speaker B: Or you filled your time machine, or whatever it is. It can sometimes just corrupt, get corrupt. What's my time machine right now say? It says cleaning up. I don't know how long it's been saying cleaning up. Maybe for a month. I have no idea. I just clicked on. It says cleaning up. So redundancy is really important for those big jobs that, where you're the engineer.
: Essentially, the thing that starts to separate really pro operation from. It's like if you're there with a backup when someone needs it, and they're like, I didn't even expect you to have it, but you have it, you're delivering, and I think there's.
Speaker B: Yeah, of course. I'm keeping everything I ever do. It's all in the cloud. At any moment, someone will email me and say, my computer crashed, I lost my stacks. I also can't find the email you sent me with the stacks or the email you sent me with the stacks. The links don't work anymore because it was another cloud based system that I don't use anymore. Right. I'm like, no problem. Within, like, ten, I can literally be on my phone, go to Google Drive, put in their name. We would just right click on that thing, and we would get the share link email to the client. I'm like, here's your folder. Here's literally everything I've ever done for you. And they're always grateful, and I never charge for it because I feel like we charge a pretty penny for what we do, and it's just one of those things that's so incredibly simple. It's not like I'm trying to keep online. I'm not trying to keep an online storage of, like, two terabytes for a client. These are not big folders. A big client folder is 2gb.
Speaker A: You got to be careful what you keep, though, too, don't you? Because you can become a bit of a hoarder very quickly. You really can.
Speaker B: Data hoarding, what's the problem? It's digital. Data hoarding is like, I could care less. Again, I'm not dealing in video, and I'm not dealing in big projects. So I can keep thousands of folders, which I do, and I don't care. It's no skin off my back.
Speaker A: See, I used to back up all my video, too. All the videos that came in for tv commercials and stuff and the revisions. And I used to keep every video back, all that up. After a while, I just went, man, this is crazy. So I keep it for, like, it ends up two years now because I basically have two hard drives that I rotate. So when one's full, I'll take it out, stick it aside, get the other one, put it in and erase it and go again. So, I mean, I figure two years is enough.
Speaker B: I feel like for any voice actor, it's an absolute no brainer to use some kind of cloud storage iCloud or Google Drive. ICloud is essentially automatic. The second you put anything into your desktop or your documents folder on any modern Mac, it is in the cloud. It just is. And so it's kind of a dirty trick to get you to upgrade your cloud, because it will fill up very quickly. But if you're not the kind of person that wants to think about another service and pay for another service and shop for one, and then think of a way to just use the dang icloud. It's built in, it's automatic, it's cheap, $10 a month for two terabytes. It'll take you a long time to fill that thing up. Just to me, it's a no brainer. And if you're on windows, there's an equivalent in the Windows side. I just don't know what it is. One drive, I think.
Speaker A: Yeah, I heard you mention time machine before. Can I give a shameless plug to someone who's not a sponsor of the show, but something I've used for years and I love is carbon copy cloner, which is.
: Yes, I love carbon. I use the Jesus out of that.
Speaker B: I used to use it. I don't use it anymore.
Speaker A: Such a good piece of software.
Speaker B: Yeah, no, the beauty of that was you could have a secondary disk that was plugged into the computer that was literally an absolute copy duplicate of your computer. So you could literally have the system drive crap out, hold down, and you.
: Can use that as your targeted backup. I used to point my hard drive at home to the hard drive at work so that it could get onto the back blaze at work.
Speaker B: Oh, wow.
Speaker A: Yeah, wow. There you go.
Speaker B: That's a hack. Well, yeah, I mean, just to have. That was a nice thing. Now, here's the thing. Here's a little gotcha for all us Apple people. If you're on an m one or any of the silicon macs, they can no longer boot with a dead system drive. So if your system drive in any silicon Mac is toast. You cannot boot to an external USB drive.
Speaker A: Oh really?
Speaker B: There you go.
Speaker A: I've got one running. I've got a backup running, so that's no good to me.
Speaker B: If the internal drive system is blown away, it's unaware of any external drive.
Speaker A: Why did they do that?
Speaker B: I don't know. Ask Tim Apple.
: It's Macintosh. That's why they did that.
Speaker B: Yeah, Apple. Apple.
: Because it's the slow progression of your computer into an.
Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker B: Yeah.
: That's annoying. I mean, I live and die on option. Booting the computer and having like some.
Speaker B: I'll check. I will re verify that. But when the silicon Macs first came out, this was a bonus contention. People were talking. So here's just what the first search result on Google says. If you're using a Mac computer with Apple silicon, your Mac has one or more USB or Thunderbolt ports that have a type c connector. While you're installing macOS on your storage disk, it matters which of these ports you use. Okay, well, that's totally irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the answer I'm looking for. How do you start up your m one or m two from an external drive? There's another thing. It's not easy as it used to be and likely requires that you purchase.
: I mean, you used to be able to boot up a Mac from the network.
Speaker B: Yeah, I'm reading this article from Mac World. I'm just skimming through it. Awesome. I don't want to say something that's untrue, but this is what I recall day one when it came out. This is what somebody said.
Speaker A: That's really annoying.
Speaker B: So yes, you have to have a certain type of drive. Actually, this article mentions Bombich's carbon copy cloner.
Speaker A: So we'll boot from that.
: No, it just mentions carbon to copy your drive probably.
Speaker B: Yeah, they're explaining the entire process. But that external drive has to be formatted in the correct way. Let's say you buy just a random hard drive, like a western digital, and you plug it in and then make that your clone. It will not work.
: You have to be. You always had to make it like guide partition. I think it was something like that. It changed over the years. It used to be even like hfs plus. And then it's.
Speaker B: Yeah, now it's apfs.
: Yes, the container.
Speaker B: Yeah, it's apfs. So I know we're going down a rabbit hole here, but yeah, this is the kind of thing you have to think about if you're really wanting to have redundancy and have a system that can essentially crash and be online within a minute. And for most voice actors, that's going to be just too frustrating and difficult to maintain. And for them just to have another computer that can plug in and go is really the most practical thing to do.
: That is kind of like the ultimate backup.
Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to get rid of my Mbox pro and my 2012 Mac Pro, but I think I might hang on to both of those and they might just be my backup.
Speaker B: Well, if it's easy for you to plug those in and get back, right back to work, then it's worth keeping.
Speaker A: I reckon that's the thing. I might just sit them in the garage, put them away in a box and seal it up and I can just grab them when I need them.
Speaker B: Yeah, sounds good.
: Sounds good to me.
Speaker B: Sounds good to me.
Speaker A: Well, who's backing up this podcast then?
Speaker B: Oh shoot.
Speaker A: Did you hit record?
Speaker B: Well, that was fun. Is it over?
#AudioArchiving #ProAudioSuite #SoundEngineering #BackupStrategies #DigitalHoarding #AudioProduction #VoiceOverTips #RecordingStudioLife #TechTalks #AudioPreservation
Speaker C: The pro audio suite with thanks to Triboof and austrian audio recorded using source Connect edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say good day, drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com.
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AI is reshaping industries, but how is it affecting audio outside of Voice Replication? This week, we're diving deep into this "can of worms" on the latest episode of the Pro Audio Suite podcast! Join us as we host a riveting discussion with MPA from WAVES as we unpack:
AI's role in enhancing creativity rather than replacing it. WAVES AI investment strategies. âą The potential risks of letting AI scrape and replicate without human creativity. The balance between traditional mixing and AI's edges in audio engineering. Perspectives on the rise of AI voices in media. We're not looking for a future where AI spits out a Taylor Swift song on command. Instead, we're all about how AI can serve as the ultimate assistant in the studio, ensuring creativity and passion remain at the heart of production. Don't miss this nuanced conversation on the future of AI in pro audio. đ” Be sure to subscribe and join our Facebook community for more insights!
#VoiceOverTechTalk #ProAudioSuite #DesignSimplicityInAudio
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Summary
In this episode, "The AI Conundrum in Pro Audio," the Pro Audio Suite team, featuring George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren 'Robbo' Robertson, and Andrew Peters, grapples with a hot topic shaking the foundations of the audio industry: the impact of Artificial Intelligence on audio plugins. The conversation spirals into a complex exploration, examining the role AI should play as an assistant in the creative process, rather than a replacement. Provocative insights are offered about the future and ethics of AIâsuch as the danger of AI scraping from AI without recognizing human input, creating potential issues like "patent trolls" in music. The team also touches on the broader implications of AI in society, including its recent prevalence in content creation, from YouTube narrations to social media interactions, questioning the authenticity and credibility of AI-driven content. This episode delves into the massive "can of worms" AI opens, from personal AI chatbots to AI voices possibly infringing on personal identity, spurring a rich discussion on how to navigate the balance between innovation and authenticity in the ever-evolving world of professional audio. Join the thought leaders at Pro Audio Suite to unpack the complexities of AI in the audio realm.#AIinAudioProduction #PluginInnovations #ProAudioSuitePodcast
Timestamps
(00:00:00) AI's Impact on Plugins: Introduction(00:00:12) Welcome and About Us
(00:00:42) Gomez on AI and Plugins
(00:13:10) Michael Questions AI's Role
(00:19:57) Artists' Use of AI in Mixing
(00:26:04) Public Awareness of AI Tools
(00:31:26) AI Voices on Social Media
(00:33:53) Personal AI Projects
(00:38:39) AI Narration and Voice Borrowing
(00:44:57) Gomez's Favorite T-shirt Color
Transcript
Speaker A: We're all talking about AI, but the question is, how will AI affect plugins?
Speaker B: Can of worms.
Speaker A: A can of worms.
Speaker C: A big can of worms. 54324. Let's go.
: Welcome.
Speaker C: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.
: These guys are professional.
: They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars, George Wittam, founder of source elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check the proaudiosuite.com learn up, learner.
Speaker C: Here we go.
Speaker A: So, MPa Gomez.
Speaker C: Actually, gross.
Speaker A: It is based on our prior conversation before we got on air, probably the wriggling out of worms and stuff. It's probably not ideal, really, but yeah. So, Gomez, what do you think? Or how do you see AI and plugins moving forward in the next couple.
Speaker C: Of years without giving anything away? Because obviously I have an inside of you, one of the largest, well, the largest plugin company in the world and the one who created third party plugins because we were the first we have in the past and continue to invest an absolute matzah in AI because the fact it's just not going away. And it's very, very exciting. Some of the things that can be done with AI, one of the things that's really important to us going forward is that we don't take the approach of AI. We're going to do everything for you. You don't have to lift a finger. That's not a direction, as far as we're concerned, that promotes passion in music, passion in what you do and passion and effort and creativity when it comes to how you're building your compositions or your music productions or your soundtracks or your game audio or whatever it is you're working on. There's a reason that we're all in this industry, and 99.9% of it is because we enjoy it. So creating tool that somebody just broke their microphone.
Speaker A: That was Robert.
Speaker B: I think I got a dodgy mic. Cable. Sorry.
Speaker C: Yeah. One of the things that we want to make sure of is that we focus on how can AI be the best assistant for what everybody is doing, not replace what they're doing. It's no fun if you type in, write a country music song in c minor, make it about a guy losing his new electric rivian truck and then a girl coming into his life and making him happy, and suddenly it pumping out a Taylor Swift song, there's no fun in that there's no journey in that there's no ownership in that the experience is gone. So what we're trying to do with AI, and I believe most companies are doing the same thing, is learn and work out all of the ways that AI connected to plugins can be more like jeeves or whatever it is to the robocop, to Iron man, where it's like the assistant that knows everything and is always there, but doesn't necessarily do everything for you. And this comes back to something that's really central with anything to do with artificial intelligence. Whether you're doing something with ChatGBT or Claude from, you know, Gemini Pro, or one of the llamas from Meta or Google, it's already been very confirmed over the last year and a half that if you don't know what you're doing or you don't know what you're talking about, then you can't get the most out of AI. Because AI does have a tendency to work better for people who actually can see and understand and perceive what is correct and what is not correct. When it comes to the outputs, some of you may have heard or may not have heard of this. If you're listening to this AI hallucinations, the AI hallucinations that happened with Chachibt initially, and then with Bard from Google were epically amusing to those of us who were beta testing, but terrifyingly convincing. When you have an AI, write an essay on something that sounds so much like it actually happened, but then when you fact check it, you find the names don't exist, the history dates don't exist, none of it exists, but it gave you roughly what you asked for. But if you don't know the topic, then you don't know that it's wrong.
Speaker A: Correct.
Speaker C: And one of the things that we're on that line of right now when it comes to AI, creativity and plugins, is how do we continue to evolve this technology and large language, large learning models and tensorflows, and all these different wonderful things, so that they assist without creating stuff that's completely in the other direction, and we have to dig ourselves out of a hole. And I think what's going to happen is you're going to end up with plugins that are more like mixing assistance or composition assistance, or sample creation assistance. In fact, there is already one, there's one called, I think it's called synth GBT that you type in. I'm looking for a bell sound, and it will give you a bell sound, like chibla belt or it's still fairly rudimentary, but if you look at how fast things move, it's not going to be long before you can put in. Okay, so I'm after a 16 pomophonic pad that evolves from this cut off.
: Starts in a minor chord, moves into a major chord over the course of blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker C: Exactly. I want it in this BPM, and I want it to duck like a pumper, like it's side chained to a kick drum, and have it pump something out. Now, the other problem with all of this that's going to come up the same as it already has done with image generation and text generation, is copyright. Because at this point in time, it's been determined that if something is created by AI, then human being does not have copyright to that. In the music world, that's going to create all kinds of fun and frivolity.
Speaker B: Can you imagine?
Speaker C: Yes, I don't need to imagine. It's already happening. One of the things that we've already done with things like studio verse, which is part of our rack plugin, that studio rack is you can scan your audio, and we will automatically, using AI, suggest a preset chainer for that track of audio that you're putting in. Whether it's a bass guitar or a vocal or a female vocal, will suggest some options for presets. The other thing you can do is you can type in into a new thing that we've got coming out, which is like studio burst for vis. You can create a chain of vis, or type in what you're looking for. And we'll suggest a Vi chain with macros, with automation, with levels, et cetera. That is pretty much created by a mixture of existing technology and AI. And we're finding that it's getting easier. And if we're finding that, then other plugin companies are finding this too. It's getting easier and a lot faster to create these things. The challenge is the easier it gets, the harder it is to create something that's actually going to be a wow factor for somebody that's sitting in their room and working on their music until 04:00 in the morning. You can't just give them AI anymore in anything. It's got to be epically good at helping somebody be a better version of themselves.
Speaker A: Interestingly, I look at this, and you go through all the big evolutions, and we'll use music as an example. But if you think about the things that changed everything, first of all, electricity changed everything, a microphone changed everything, a speaker changed everything. So you got an amplifier, all these different things that everyone's sort of gone. Oh yeah, electricity, electric guitars, microphones, amplifiers, all that kind of stuff. In the old days, if you would stack your instruments based on the volume and have one microphone in a room, then all of a sudden you're micing cabs in a studio and stuff like that. You got multi track instead of one sort of monotrack. All these things have changed. But this is the one that's kind of a bit scary because this is.
Speaker B: The one that takes the personality out of it. I think that's the thing.
Speaker C: That's the risk.
Speaker B: The risk is there that you take the humanity out of it and it just becomes this robotic thing.
Speaker C: There are so many websites already that will let you type in a topic or type in some words and it will pump out a rudimentary rap or pop song for you in some kpop style. And they're all awful.
Speaker B: Somewhat argue they all have anyway. Gomez right, but they're all awful.
Speaker C: But one of the things that needs to be said is these websites and these AI models that are being used are sitting on a server on a huggingface co somewhere that somebody is renting. In some cases it's a 17 or 15 year old boy or girl writing this code in an evening and then asking AI to help it with the front end interface for it and then punching out a website. The fact that it sounds awful is not what we should be paying attention to. The fact that it's so easy to create, that's the part that we need to be alert to, because we need to remind ourselves that this is a very slippery road and we could ruin an entire reason for creating if we let AI take over the job that we love doing. I think, look, I feel like I just did an Obama speech or something.
Speaker B: I'm a bit more on the fence, I guess, because I look at it this way, I think we all needed to start somewhere, right? And if you go back to ask Gomez, we walked into cart prep, me at two SM and you in the days at triple M, and you learned your craft by sitting there and then walking into the studio and eating your ham and egg sandwich while watching Jeff Thomas crank out an amazing promo, right?
Speaker C: Four BK for me.
Speaker B: Well, there you go. That's how we learned our craft. These days, there's less of an opportunity for that. So for me, I can see that AI provides this opportunity for someone who's trying to figure out their craft in terms of, okay, well, these are the basics. These are the rudimentary things you need to understand AI gives someone the opportunity to go and learn that stuff. But I think the trick is that we don't need to. But if you're going to hone your craft, you then need to move on from that. So I can see that AI provides a starting point, if you like, and it maybe makes it easier for someone to understand, whether it be post production or music or whatever you want to talk about, if it gives them a place to start, I think that's a good thing. But I think I do also agree with you that it opens a can of worms, of taking the humanity out of the craft as well. That's fine.
Speaker A: That's the whole thing. Yeah, the whole thing really is. That made music really interesting was human frailty. Like, the amount of records that probably your favorite record, there's probably mistakes all the way through it, and that's what made it appealing. There was something about that that worked, and when you take that out and it's become sterile, it just doesn't feel human anymore.
Speaker C: If you take people like Han Zimmer or to another extreme, Moby or lemon stellar or Frufru or, they all created their own style, and that style wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for them creating what was in their heads at the time. And this is one of the things that, I mean, when I say that if we let AI replace everything, then what will happen is what's already started to happen, to a point where we're finding that AI is skewing the information on the Internet, because AI is starting to already scrape information from AI and not know the difference between human created and AI created. So what we already have is a scenario where, I mean, I currently have access right now to 36 different large llms and tensorflows from all the major companies and some of the smaller ones. So I've got 36 different ais that do things. And one of the things that we've been finding is some of them are already not knowing what's human created and what's AI created. And that's a huge issue, because what it's going to do, especially in things like the audio world and the music world, is it's not going to know when it's ripping somebody off and when it's taking a style that's been scraped legitimately or illegally, and therefore it's going to end up. I mean, things like the court case that Ed Sheeran just went through, which had nothing to do with AI, and had everything to do with a family of somebody saying, oh, you totally ripped this off, whereas he didn't. Those kind of court cases are just going to get more and more prevalent with AI around because of the same reason that visual artists are already suing the major AI companies. It's getting super hard to work out what's the style of somebody and whether that style is worth something in the value, because they created it. If somebody else goes off and creates.
Speaker A: Something different, maybe that's going to be the new income stream for songwriters and creative people. Litigation and winning a court case, that's how you make your money.
Speaker B: Living off their old.
: Some people are going to become the patent trolls of music.
Speaker C: Elon Musk's wife has already done this by the. She's. I can't remember her name. It's something. She's. She's created an AI virtual model of herself, and anybody can create music with her voice, but she earns a percentage of the royalties off that.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker A: Do you know, that's funny that this is going way off track, but I saw an interview with Dolly Parton and.
Speaker C: Oh, yeah, no talent to talent. You're absolutely right. It is way off track. Yeah.
Speaker A: But it's interesting in the sense what you just said about Elon Musk's life is that she got a call from Colonel Tom Parker saying that Elvis wanted to record, I think it was, I will always love you, or something.
Speaker B: It was, I will always love you.
Speaker A: And he said, but we take a cut, we take 50% of the royalties. And she said, I'm not giving the royalties away to anybody, and said, no. And then I saw her say, I'm glad I didn't get Elvis to do it, because Whitney Houston did a much.
Speaker B: Better job, and I made money on that.
Speaker C: Yeah.
: Well, I think I have a different direction with AI or just music composition in general or style in general. You were talking earlier, Michael, about how these different artists that you named carved out a style, and I think about how those styles are partly shaped by the tools that are available to those artists at that time.
Speaker C: Absolutely. And the people who have come before them. Yeah.
: You look at, I think, of craft work.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker A: I was about to talk about work. Exactly.
: For that reason, their sound is incredibly sculpted on the technology that was available at that time and their unique style.
Speaker B: Yeah.
: And art of noise. My God. Yeah. So now you've got Hans Zimmer, who arguably has a limitless tool set. Right. I mean, it is. Let's face it, Hans Zimmer's tool set is limitless. You can get anything, afford anything. His only limit, literally is know, if it wasn't for the fact that a film score had a distinct know, that's his only limit. Right? So now the ability to sculpt something that would have been impossible to do by Hans Zimmer within a deadline, he's going to be able to expand that by factor know an order of magnitude by using AI Han Zimmers to help him expand the.
Speaker B: Just.
: I can't even fathom where that goes. Know? But it is interesting.
Speaker C: You know what I'd really like to do? I had this conversation with somebody at, like, 03:00 yesterday morning. I would love it if we could just give. If I was going to give AI all the potential of AI in the music world to one person and say, mess with this and let us know what we can do with it, I would give it to collier. Yeah. Yeah. That kid is nobody else. Just Jacob. Jacob, go off, do your eccentric stuff, work out what we can do with this as humanity, and then come back and we'll decide whether it's actually worth it or not. Because that mean. I don't know how. I didn't know about Chek Collier until about six months ago, but I am obsessed with how much talent, raw talent that guy has.
: Yeah, it's remarkable. I've seen him live three times. I saw him at the.
Speaker C: It's like. But it's like I watched a masterclass with him about how there is no such thing as a wrong note. And it's all about the tonage of how you play the notes. And I've never looked at piano the same since. It's like just this ball of energy that just makes such magic.
: Absolutely.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: Here's one thing that interests me, Gomez, and you might or might not be able to answer this, but you work with these guys fairly regularly at the top. So let's talk about Chris Lord Algae and that ilk. Algae. Sorry, excuse me. That's my Aussie Twang. How much of this stuff are they. When I say stuff, I mean AI. How much of this stuff are they using in their mixes? Are they sticking to the old school, or are they sort of going. I can see a few advantages to moving towards this AI sort of thing. So some of it's sneaking in, or are they steadfastly refusing to go that direction?
: Yeah, I mean, some artists are way more into trying the bleeding edge, and others are much more into sticking.
Speaker B: I'm kind of thinking of the Beatles singing into teapots and all that sort of stuff. I mean, for me, it's sort of a progression. But I'm interested from Gomez, if he can answer the question, how much?
Speaker C: So the person I had a conversation with at 04:00 the other morning about Jacob Collier was my man, Eddie Kramer. And Eddie, one of his most famous moments that had nothing to do with Hendrix or Led Zeppelin, recorded the Beatles at Abbey Road because he was the only one available and they wanted to record. And one of the things that Eddie was there for at the beginning was this epic use of, okay, so we have one channel and another channel, and that's it. We've all got, how do we make those work? And he was one of the ones who made it work and turned rock and roll into. He didn't define rock and roll, but he was there as part of the process and as I like to call it, part of the band, in a way. And he's one of the ones who is him and I will talk about AI until the cows come home, because it's exciting for him. He looks at it, he's just turned 80, and he's like, the potential on what we can do with music with this kind of technology, as long as we don't screw it up, it's beyond epic. It's exciting. Now, if we get back to the clas of the world, Chris is really good at choosing what he has on at the time. I mean, on one side, he just mixed the new green Day record, and it's already creating huge waves and hits everywhere it goes. The way he did that was they went back to the roots, and they did it exactly the same way. He recorded the first green day record nearly completely analog SSL console to tape as well as to digital, but with pro tools. It's like they went, okay, so let's go back to the roots and let's do it that way. And he was starting to do that when I was sitting in the studio with him in June of 2022, just before I'd come all the way back to me roots. And he was talking about, it was like, no, we're going to go back to the way it was. And I said, why? And he goes, because it worked. And we've got so into this technology that somewhere we lost the sound of that band and we need to find it again.
Speaker B: Definitely.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: Yeah. Imagine recording Led Zeppelin with.
Speaker C: Huh?
Speaker B: Imagine recording Led Zeppelin with AI. Exactly.
Speaker C: Well, the way Eddie and I were talking about it was, I posed the situation to said, what if? What if we could use AI in such a way that, because there are still recordings of Zeppelin and there's recordings that he's working on right now for the Hendrix estate of cassettes of Hendrix nobody's heard before, where there are dropouts. Now, these are not like isotope capable dropouts. These are dropouts for like 20 seconds. But what would it be like if you could say, okay, right, so this is the catalog of this artist. This is the problem we've got. We need to fill this 20 seconds with what they would auto fill.
: I need this piece.
Speaker C: Yeah.
: And then say, do four versions.
Speaker C: It's literally like the. It's like Adobe Photoshop. It's like Dolly. Yeah.
: Extend this image. I need to extend. It needs to be larger, fill in the background.
Speaker C: It's exciting to me. But again, we have to really be careful about number one. Firstly, I can pretty much confirm AI is not going to take over the world. We are not all going to be slaves to it. It's just not going to happen. And if it does, it's not going to happen in our lifetimes. But what we do run the risk of is we run the risk with being too blase with this technology, and we need to be very careful and present about how we want to use it. One of the things which I'm doing right now, and it takes a lot of time, I've never done it before. I'm writing the AI policies for an entire audio software company. And it begins with the word W. I work for them, but I'm writing the entire policy on usage of AI, whether it's sales or product specialists or coding or anything else, the entire policy based and down to ethics of AI. And it's hard because just have Chad GPT do it.
Speaker B: Nice one, George. Cliche one for George.
Speaker C: The problem is, when you're writing an AI policy, you can't get AI to write the damn policy.
: No, because there's no precedents. There aren't books on how to write a policy around an AI. Yeah, I know.
Speaker C: You're absolutely right. But here's the other thing that I think that we need to be aware of here. 80% of the population, if not more, have no idea that chat GBT or bard or Claude or llama from meta or Po or chat GBT pro or chat GBT teams even exists. They haven't got to them yet. We're still in the minuscule percentage of the world who are aware of this. It's like I use AI every day, but I'm using it to get rid of the menial tasks, and I'm using it to help speed up what I do. So I can do it well. But I have to remind myself how many people in the world, regardless of whether we're talking audio world, visual, or whatever else, have no concept yet of AI and even software companies. There was a study done inside of Adobe, and think about how many staff Adobe has, and there was a large chunk of people who were like, what's chatchippy? Wow. It hasn't got to their desk yet. It hasn't got to their office yet. It hasn't been relevant for, and these are people who, they don't necessarily read tech blogs or LinkedIn. They might go home and read a novel. Or I was about to say, these.
: Are people that actually go home, and.
Speaker C: These are people working. And that's the thing. These are people who, yes, they have passions, yes, they have hobies, but they stop. Their work. Stuff stops outside as soon as they get outside. And they haven't heard of it yet. I mean, a lot of them have, but there's a huge amount of people who have never heard of.
Speaker B: Is that a generational thing, Gomez?
Speaker A: I would say it's not generational.
Speaker C: My mom actually asked me to create a chat bot for her that she could use as her assistant, because I just created a company it's about to launch, not just in the last six months. I've created, it's called creative ninjas, and it enables you to choose what kind of assistants you want, and then they'll be in slack WhatsApp teams, et cetera, or on the website. And they are your assistants with the names you chose for them, the personalities you chose from. And she actually went through, and she said, I want you to create one of those for me. So she uses a chat bot AI assistant every day, and she's 85.
: Those are the people that really need that stuff. My short term memory has already been atrophied dramatically by the use of technology, not enhanced by it. So it's only going to get worse.
Speaker C: George, there's a plug in for that.
Speaker B: My short toy memory is being destroyed by 35 years of rock and roll radio. But that's another story. I think that the other thing that sort of comes to mind to me. And if you want to look for the good side of all this, though, there's AI involved, but it's not completely AI. But you look at now and then the Beatles thing that just happened a few months ago. I mean, we wouldn't have that if it wasn't for AI. That's a really sensible use of, like, to resurrect a recording like you were talking about with the Hendrix thing to resurrect a recording like that and then be able to.
Speaker C: And magical. And I feel so blessed that we got the chance to watch that.
Speaker B: I know, yeah.
Speaker A: Interestingly. But then once again, it's the human aspect of that that makes it work.
Speaker B: Well, McCartney and Ringo and George, to a certain extent to humanized it didn't mean we'll never know what John Lennon originally know. God knowing John Lennon, it could have gone anywhere, but they sort of beatilized it. And because they know they knew John intimately, they were able to do that and turn it into something that could have been.
Speaker A: Yeah. Interestingly.
Speaker B: Another number one in 2023. I mean, Jesus, talk about infinite.
Speaker C: Funny.
Speaker A: Talking about like Eddie Kramer being able to grab stuff and fill up gaps, if there's gaps missing, dropouts in tapes and stuff like that. Getting back to the voiceover thing, this is where it could be really interesting if an AI can actually do that. Say for instance, I do a 32nd read. So they've got the read, they got the raw read down. Then the client decides, I'm not happy with those couple of words. I want to change, I want to revise the script. Instead of me being called back in to do a reread or a drop in, they would just use the AI to copy my voice and change that.
Speaker C: Andrew?
: Yeah, I can do that in descript.
Speaker C: We can do that with the script. We can do that with eleven labs. We can do that with revoicer. There are multiple models that you can already do that. And I would love it if they were all used for good and not for evil. But I think that this is one of those times as well. You've just brought up something that's already here, which is an issue to me. I hear so many AI voices now on faceless YouTube videos and TikToks and even some commercials on tv and radio. And I think there's no soul in that and I can tell because I'm human. The problem is a client will pay dramatically less for that. And all they care about is that the message is there. The client of the client, the person who's listening to the ad. I haven't done a survey yet, but I think it'd be interesting. How do people in listener land feel about AI voices and are they as convinced of the message or do they hear the message the same? Because I just don't think it's going to fly.
: I think there needs to be some actual market research. I mean, it's got to be somebody doing it already. But sitting people down, either virtually or in a room and showing them and playing them ads and splitting back and forth between human performers and AI performers and literally just doing the actual work, doing the research and getting people's responses and how they feel when they hear those things.
Speaker C: Eleven labs has just brought in something else, which is speech to. Speech to conversion, which means that if somebody decides, okay, the AI voice wasn't good enough, but I need that voice that I created of Andrew, and I'm going to use the AI version because he's too expensive and I've already got all of this information from him. What I'm going to do is I'm going to read the speech with the right inflections and the right emotion, and then it will turn it into his. That, to me, is something I was like, I just wish they hadn't got to that that quickly.
Speaker B: Do we need to go there?
Speaker C: It's already there.
Speaker B: Yes, but why do we need to go there? Because that's only leading down a dark. That's. That's the thing.
Speaker A: Well, it's like the thing that Simon Murphy did where he got my voice. He trained his AI machine to copy my voice and then had me singing the lumberjack song from Monty Python.
Speaker B: Yeah, but see, that was.
Speaker C: That's a good use of technology.
Speaker A: Not if you heard it.
: Speaking of using technology, I mean, I'm using it. I've made my own Chat GPT, custom GPT of me. And it's freaking awesome. I love it. It's so great. I can sit there and answer 30 to 40 questions on Facebook and Reddit in an hour and I'm a hero. And they're great answers. They're far longer and more verbose and more complete than the answers would be if I had written them. Because I don't feel like typing all that stuff out and I can't remember half of it, and it finds all that information and it references where it came from and it gives them what they want and they're like, thrilled.
Speaker C: You used GBT Pro for that? Like, just created a GBT.
: I am using an app that probably. Well, the app I'm using is GPT for turbo or something on the back end, but it's an app called Custom GPT. Okay. The reason I liked it was because it was an incredibly friendly user interface. I mean, I could understand very quickly. It had very good transparent terms and it had extremely strong language about being anti hallucinating or using anti hallucinating technology, which, if you're going to make a chat bot, based on language model that you are providing of your own sources. It's incredibly important that it not hallucinate, right? I mean, I will not dare put something out for the public to access, which this will be for the public to access and subscribe to. And I would never do that if that information wasn't sourced and sourced of my own content. And that's what this is and it's revolutionary. And I can take that same content now in about a week I could have a book made, hardcover, bound book of that information using cheap BT technology to write the book. I know how to do that. How is that helpful? Well, that could leapfrog me into being able to get a speaking gig at universities and that could get me a speaking gig at a TEDx. All that stuff is all part of the journey of getting these kinds of levels of respect and notoriety. And so that's all on my roadmap now where that was going to be on my roadmap. But maybe in two to five years, now that all that stuff's on my roadmap in two to four months, right. I mean, it's just accelerated my goals.
Speaker B: But to be fair, you've got to have that knowledge in the first place. You can't just do all that.
Speaker C: That's the key. You can't not know what you're doing before you start.
: Absolutely.
Speaker A: Unfortunately, there's plenty of people out there who don't know what they're doing and they still become experts.
Speaker C: Well, this is nothing to do with AI, but it's like, let's not remember anybody out there. If you want to start doing something, start doing it today, because there's plenty of people who are way more irritating than you ever will be who are already doing it and they don't have half the experience you do and they're charging for it, those dicks. So go do what you want to do. Do the things you want to do.
: No, I wanted to make sure that I had ownership over this, even though I know that I can't.
Speaker C: But you don't.
: Well, I know that I can't stop somebody else going out and scraping a lot of that content. Not all of it. Some of it's totally private, but I can't totally stop them. But I wanted to be doing it first and have it branded under my.
Speaker C: Name because that's not what I meant. What I meant was because of the laws. So far, when it comes to AI, it doesn't matter whether nobody's going to stop you putting out a book. Nobody's going to stop you creating any of that. But if the copyright is ever contested, you will lose, not because a lot of the initial knowledge isn't yours, but because of how it was put together.
: No, you have to actually divulge in the book, this was written using AI.
Speaker B: Oh, do you really?
: Oh, yeah, right. You can't publish a book and say it was written by your own intellectual property without AI and falsify that you will lose. Yeah, it's an interesting, well, talking about.
Speaker A: That with credits, like in music credits, all those different credits for film, television, whatever. They talk about having a credit for saying blah, blah, blah done by AI.
Speaker B: Yeah. Well, what if AI narrates a documentary and they borrow the voice from somebody? Do they have to? Is that credit?
Speaker C: Before I forget. So there's this guy, I can send you guys the link afterwards. There's this guy who I just want to sit down and buy a beer for. And he's a coder, but he wrote a language model and he wrote code so that everything he did on his computer for a full day was narrated in documentary style by an AI voice and character of David Attenborough. And this guy went, they, he went so far with making it so accurate that this David Attenborough, like, he's sitting on camera now. He looks like he's confused. He may be trying to work out. It was so exact, it blew my mind, but it was so entertaining. I'll find the link and send it to you. It happened about a month ago and it just showed what's possible. It's like I hadn't even thought about doing something like that. But if he can do that with his daily life, then you could give an AI voice model like that, a bunch of edited footage of the Amazon or skateboarding or anything else and have it write the script and do the voiceover real time for you.
Speaker B: But here's the thing. Gomez, right, let's say he put that on YouTube and he ended up with 5 million views. Okay? He's now making money.
Speaker C: He doesn't earn anything.
Speaker B: No, I get that. And I'm not pointing the finger at this guy, but this is a what if, right? So if he put that on YouTube and he gets 5 million views, all of a sudden he's now making money from David Attenborough.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: So where's the copyright claim in that? You know what I mean? This is the massive can of worms that gets opened by all this, which.
Speaker C: Is why YouTube will not let him earn money and not even add money from that video.
Speaker B: Right. Okay.
: It's demonetized.
Speaker B: Well, it shouldn't be.
Speaker C: Yeah, this is one of those things that YouTube has been doing really well and Google have been doing really well for years. And I should know because the amount of events I've run for waves, if you so much as a melody or even hit a kick drum that's in a Dua Lippo song or anything else, you will be flagged and you will lose any monetization on that video whatsoever.
Speaker B: Think of dua lipa should be taken down anyway.
Speaker C: With some bands they will actually like Led Zeppelin for example. If you pay more than like think 5 seconds, YouTube are required to mute the video completely. So when it comes to voices, like David Attenborough and the voices. Can you guys hear my dog snoring?
Speaker A: Yes, I just heard your dog snoring.
Speaker B: After last night, he's probably a bit tired, mate.
Speaker C: What a weekend. Good dog. But yeah, it will recognize the vocal pattern and it will automatically say, copyright flag checked. No monetization on this video. And you can do three of those and you can contest it, but your chance of contesting it is pretty much zero.
Speaker A: The scary thing is if someone grabs something out of that David Attenborough voice, talking about something and uses it as like, well, this is what David Attenborough said and boom. And then people start believing it.
Speaker C: Yeah, I can share something which I'm working on, which is not waves working on, it's me working on it. With all the research I've been doing in AI myself. My mother is one of my role models. It's like what she's done in her life is epic. She is past middle 80s, she's never written a book about her life, but I'm starting to get her to put it together. What I've also done is, and it was actually one of the reasons why George I bought this mic was so that I could sit across the table from mum and actually get her to talk about everything. While I've been doing that, I've also created an AI model clone of her voice. And once the book is finished, whether she is alive or not, I'm going to put out the audiobook version of it.
Speaker A: Cool.
Speaker C: That's very cool because I believe that it's a good use of the technology.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker C: My mum has trained equestrian Olympic teams of the US, the UK. She trained the royal family. Princess Anne used to kind of pick me up as a baby and move me back to our tents at all shows when I got lost.
Speaker B: That's a princess.
Speaker C: It's totally also where I get my hair from 15 all. But it's like she's a legend in that industry. She's never written any of it down, and that's just a shame to me for the world. So I'm using AI to make it possible for me to be able to help write that book and then get AI to do the audiobook version.
Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great idea.
Speaker A: See, I should have been your mother's son, because at least now I look like I should be part of the royal family.
Speaker C: That's one of the weirdest things I've.
: Ever heard anybody say.
Speaker C: One of the weirdest things that's ever happened on this podcast.
Speaker B: Someone rolled the credits. Before this goes any further, I just want to make.
Speaker A: All right, we will wind it up. Thank you, Gomez. But I want to just say a couple of things. One is George in the background there, you've got an Australia sweatshirt, and I think that's from Larissa Gallagher.
Speaker B: Nice.
Speaker C: Indeed I do.
Speaker A: And the other thing is, you're wearing a tributh t shirt with a microphone in the shower.
Speaker B: Hello.
Speaker A: To which we'll never unsee.
Speaker B: Tributh. Thank you very much for your sponsorship.
Speaker A: And also, there you go. Look behind me. I don't know whether you can see it. There's a tributh there, all illuminated. Do not disturb. It says in there.
: Sorry, too late.
Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. It's very disturbing.
Speaker C: No, tributes are great.
: Yeah, sorry, you're already disturbed. Sorry, it's way too late.
Speaker C: It's probably one of the only podcasts that's ever had two tula mics in it at the same time.
Speaker B: There you go.
Speaker C: Get in contact with them.
Speaker A: See if you can get some free shit.
Speaker C: Is that really green, though? Really greenish.
Speaker A: Is it stuck at green or turquoise?
Speaker B: Turquoise or teal?
: This is sea foam.
Speaker B: Sea foam.
Speaker C: I'm sorry.
Speaker A: I call that color North Sea, I reckon.
Speaker C: Or the Atlantis, actually.
: I don't know what this color is.
Speaker B: But anything that's not black isn't cool.
: Anyway, I wanted to get something different.
Speaker C: It's funny, isn't it? All four of us are wearing black t shirts. We're just so old.
Speaker A: Yeah. No, it's because it doesn't look slimmer in black.
Speaker B: That's right.
Speaker A: You can't see the wrinkles.
Speaker B: Very rock and roll. You don't see Angus young wearing sea foam t shirts. Can I just say.
Speaker C: Well, that was fun. Is it over?
: The pro audio suite, with thanks to Tribooth and Austrian Audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio imaging with tech support from George the tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com. -
This week, we delve into Part Two of our discussion with Michael Goodman of Centrance. We get into the nitty-gritty of the intricacies of creating the PASpport Vo, and the benefits of maintaining simplicity in design by restricting the device to just six knobs, which enhances ease of use for podcasters and voiceovers alike.
#VoiceOverTechTalk #ProAudioSuite #DesignSimplicityInAudio
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Summary
In the latest episode of The Pro Audio Suite podcast, we delve into Part Two of our insightful discussion with Michael Goodman. The focus is on the nitty-gritty of audio equipment design, specifically the intricacies of creating the Passport Vo. Goodman highlights the benefits of maintaining simplicity in design by restricting the device to just six knobs, which enhances ease of use for voiceover artists.The conversation also explores the challenges and considerations in pricing and product functionality, like the decision to enable the Passport Vo to work with external preamps. Goodman provides a candid look at the rapidly evolving landscape of audio interface protocols, such as the impending obsolescence of the lightning jack in favor of USB-C and the limitations of ASIO on Windows.
Listeners will gain unique insights into the manufacturing process, from the adoption of a platform strategy to the precision of creating 3D printed parts. Goodman discusses the shift to new USB chips due to discontinued ones and reveals how smaller manufacturers are playing a key role.
For those interested in the technical aspects of audio equipment production and design choices that impact both the user experience and future compatibility, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge. Tune in to learn from Goodman's expertise and stay informed on the latest in pro audio equipment design.
#VoiceOverTechTalk #ProAudioSuite #DesignSimplicityInAudio
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction with George Wittam and Robert Marshall(00:00:32) George Discusses Design Limitations
(00:05:22) Unique Tools for Voiceover Artists
(00:08:44) Flexibility of the English Channel Passport
(00:11:56) Apple's Lightning Jack Obsolescence
(00:16:23) Challenges with Apple's Developer System
(00:21:36) Michael on the Passport VO Analog Mixer
(00:25:04) Progress on USB Chip Prototyping
(00:28:48) DIY Circuit Board Manufacturing
(00:33:15) Handling Tiny Components on Circuit Boards
(00:35:48) Michael Inquires About Custom Faceplates
(00:38:27) Closing Remarks and Acknowledgments
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready?
Speaker B: Be history.
Speaker A: Get started.
Speaker C: Welcome.
: Hi. Hi.
Speaker A: Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite. These guys are professional.
Speaker C: They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars, George Wittam, founder of source elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson, and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check ThePro audiosuite.com. And this is part two of our talk with Michael Goodman. In this episode, we pick up where we left off and we talk about the passport Vo.
Speaker A: I like the fact that there's a restriction to the design. Like, Michael had to decide what those six knobs could do or not do. And so it wasn't like, oh, let's just add more knobs. Let's just make it bigger.
: I did add more knobs in the black cab. It's got nine.
Speaker A: Just kind of pushing squeeze nine in there. Yeah, but no, that's the beauty of when we made the passport. We did not add more knobs. We forced ourselves to work within that restricted design space and say, we have six knobs. We need to do everything we need with these six knobs. If there's more than six knobs, how do you expect an actor to understand what the heck the thing is doing as you add more and more?
Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
: See, we should have looked at the black cab when we were asking for stuff.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: I have a funny feeling Michael's answer would have been the same.
: I think it's an excellent way of building simplicity into it, and really also, it makes you go through the design process. And I think it was a fun thing with the passport was exactly that. Because at first it was like, so many things. Add another knob, add another knob, and then you have to go through that slightly painful but sharpening process of going, like, we can't only have six knobs. How are you really going to do this?
: It's interesting. When I was younger, I geeked out a lot on the japanese culture specifically. I loved their propensity for making small pieces of art. Right. The whole idea with the ice sculpture, art should be ephemeral. It should be there, and it's not there anymore. Right. And then the whole idea with writing a poem on a grain of rice, et cetera. I love compact things. And when we started making hi fi products, we also make some headphone listening products at sentrance. I traveled to Japan a lot, and I attended these hi fi shows, and I noticed how people are focused on completely different priorities there. Because apartments are very small in Japan. And therefore nobody buys a traditional stereo system with big speakers and all that. Everybody essentially listens in headphones in a tiny little spot, usually on a train, on their way to work or back home. So that culture creates a necessity for smaller things. And then for some reason, it just kind of stuck with me. I like when, essentially, when you travel, you don't want to log around a 19 inch rack or even like a 500 series lunchbox thing. That's the way we're trying to make these things small. But getting back to passport vo, the restriction there was basically the same one that was popularized by Henry Ford, who said that you can have your Model T in any color as long as it's black. Yeah. So basically, we have this box, and whatever you want to have must fit.
Speaker C: In the box, which was good. And it was an interesting exercise, me being the guinea pig who potentially is going to be the person who uses this. Know, I didn't want it too technical and trying to get the terminology something that people like me would understand. So that was an interesting exercise for all of us as well.
Speaker A: There was a lot of pushing and pulling between the Andrew Robert hemispheres of the design team.
: There was?
Speaker C: Yes, that's right.
: Yes. I was wanting to keep it flexible and let it do more things. Be both. The. For instance, I wanted to be the interface that you could take on the road or leave in your control room and run it as your whole studio interface, or have it in your booth. And it could work in any place. And Andrew was like, I just want to travel with this was.
Speaker C: It was kind of interesting because we were the polar opposite. So you had Robert on one side, me on the other side, and George and Robbo in the middle. George particularly, trying to make sense of.
Speaker A: Our nonsensical and the filter. And I was trying to condense down everything. What they wanted to George was the traffic Michael. So that Michael didn't end up having to be the traffic cop. It got out of control at one point, expand at one point. Remember distinctly, I was like, wait, I was supposed to be protecting my.
: I think that was important, giving Michael one point of communication. Because it would have been maddening for him.
: Exactly. Well, I have to say, I actually enjoyed the process. I mean, there was a lot of creativity and ideation throughout the whole thing. And if you have. I love ideation myself. So I'm not really necessarily against it, opposed to it, as long as it eventually comes to a solid, well defined feature. Set, which I think we have. So that whole process that worked very well for me. And I do appreciate George coming in as a traffic cop and essentially directing.
Speaker B: A lot of that traffic and an architect as well. Can I just say, with all the drawings that he had to do, I.
Speaker A: Had fun trying to figure out a way to draw a signal flow diagram, which I'd never really done anything. And I know there's proper nomenclature and symbolism and all sorts of stuff in drawing one. I didn't know that, so I just did my own thing. But it really was cool because it helped me tremendously see it, understand what goes to what. And we revised that signal flow diagram. Oh, jeez, I don't know, seven or eight times, probably.
Speaker C: Yeah, probably a lot more.
Speaker B: A million times.
: I think it was the blend of having the signal flow diagram so you could really see what was exactly going to happen combined with the mockup of the final device so you could get an imagination of how it was really going to work in the field. I think we really came up with something that fits sentrins in the sense that it fits, obviously, the form factor, but it's super flexible and unique. You're not finding this absolutely any other interface.
: No, I think it'll continue to be unique because it is so purpose built that other manufacturers will look at it and go, why?
Speaker C: That's right, exactly.
Speaker B: Because there's nothing else out there that's been purpose built for voiceover artists. I think that was the initial motivation. For years, voiceover artists have had to take stuff that's built for music, for music engineers, and rework it to make it for voiceover.
: And it seems like this is such a niche industry that a larger manufacturer might not necessarily see a lot of business potential there. So I think that was a good match between our size being a smaller company and then a market being smaller that we were like, okay, that makes sense.
: I think you see that in its price point.
Speaker C: Yeah.
: Someone who's looking at it really basically goes, I can get a two channel USB interface, two microphones USB interface for $100.
: No, this is not that.
: If you see that in there, then you're not seeing what this is.
Speaker A: Yeah, it's not for you. There's almost like when you set something at a price point, you're trying to give a very clear, I mean, not only you're saying that it's worth it, obviously, but you're making a very clear statement that this is priced for professionals and it's worth every penny to a professional who will understand the value. And we've already had people stand up and say, I believe it. I see what you're saying. And they've blunt down the cash.
: And let's be honest, for a working voiceover professional, not everybody, of course, but a lot of those guys can make that much money in 15 seconds.
: Pays for itself in one gig.
Speaker A: That is true.
Speaker C: Exactly.
Speaker A: We knew that pricing was going to be tricky, but we also knew that we had a restricted space in which we had to work. We wanted the value to be there. But we also have to make a profit. Michael has to make a profit. We had ideas that would have driven the price even higher quite a bit that we could have implemented, but we didn't want to do that. There's a certain point where we thought, let's keep it under that.
: Well, I remember one was how we handled the, and this is actually something I have a question with, with the English Channel, we wanted to make the passport flexible enough to use an external preamp instead of the built in one. And I know that was important to Andrew. And one of the things I find with the English Channel is that when you come out line level XLR and you go into the courtcaster, turning the courtcaster down is not enough. You got to pad the other stages beforehand to get it because you're kind of feeding a mic pre into a mic pre. And I remember that was one of the things where we had to accept that we were going to go through that chip, if I remember right, and we didn't get a pure bypass of.
Speaker A: The mic because that was going to raise the parts count and the cost in other ways. And it was such a, the switching, it was something where it was going to add cost to make a very small percentage of users.
: It would not have made a difference to most users.
Speaker C: But even based on that, I have to say that if you look at the new Neumann interface, how much is that thing?
: Like one, $200, right?
Speaker C: No, more than that. It will be like over 2000 us.
: 18, from what I understand.
: 18, yeah. I'm sorry. And it doesn't do as much as the.
Speaker C: And also when you're talking about having, bypassing the internal preamp, it doesn't.
: Oh, really?
Speaker C: It doesn't. Like, nowhere on that new Neumann interface can you bypass a preamp.
Speaker A: Fascinating.
: I would wonder if that's a subject of pride. We give you the best preamp in the land. Why would you want to bypass that?
Speaker B: I would suggest that would be the case, yeah.
Speaker A: Well, the irony is that they sell a preamp like they sell a very expensive preamp. Outboard preamp. So you would think that they would have that.
: Do you want to know what device that is? It's the reincarnation, it's the perennial. It's like a locust that comes out of the ground every eight years. And the last one that emerged out of the ground was the mini me.
Speaker A: The mini me from Apigee.
: The apigee mini me. Yeah. Badass preamp. Badass converter.
Speaker A: Yeah. And soft clipping.
: It had that limiter but really expensive interface that's just going to. I'm expensive. I'm going to be the best kind of thing is what it's trying to be, but it's not flexible.
: Mini me is not a convincing name.
Speaker A: If that movie hadn't come, I'm sure.
: When that movie came true, but really, the mini me, it wants to be the original ad 1000, which I have several of those. And those are great.
: Yeah.
Speaker A: But they don't use Firewire or USB. Right.
: The mini me, I believe, is USB.
Speaker A: Are you sure? I don't think so.
: I'm pretty sure it runs as USB and a separate pre, but I don't.
Speaker A: Think it has any protocol. See, that's the thing. As soon as you add a protocol to the unit, like a USB protocol, a firewall protocol, you're now dating your product. It is now locked in time. It's now going to be obsolete at some point.
Speaker C: Correct.
Speaker A: Like this happened. Firewire. Actually, Firewire just became officially obsolete with, I think, Ventura, if you have a Firewire device.
: So even if you have like a firewired, a thunderbolt adapter, it doesn't matter.
Speaker A: They dropped off the protocol. It's gone. Poof.
: Well, the lightning jack is about to go the way of the dodo.
Speaker A: Yes, that's right.
: Really?
: Because of Europe.
Speaker A: That's a whole other can of worms. Right, Michael? Because I know you spent a long time dealing with the lightning port and the. What is it called? Made for Apple MFA?
: Mfi. Mfi. Made for iPhone.
Speaker A: Right. Made for iPhone. And wasn't that like a major stumbling block to getting the first mixer face built and designed?
: Correct. We started down that path in our hi fi devices because we wanted to make these headphone amplifiers that plugged into the phone because a lot of people started moving their music collection onto the phone and using the phone as the playback device. And then that kind of translated into recording products as well. So Apple decided to keep that walled garden ecosystem all to themselves. And then as a manufacturer, making a peripheral device, a product that would interface with the Apple iPhone, iPad, et cetera. You had to go through a lengthy bureaucratic process to establish yourself as a registered developer, essentially in the MFI ecosystem. And they policed that hard to the point. I mean, it got ridiculous. So the lightning jack actually is quite sophisticated. There's a chip inside and that chip has a serial number, a laser etched serial number inside. So every lightning jack in the world has a unique serial number. Believe it or not, this information is less relevant now. But it used to be relevant before. So what had happened is if there was a cable, a lightning cable, lightning to USB, that was not made per spec, any cable that you made as an MFI manufacturer had to be certified by an Apple approved lab and it had to do all the things that a lightning cable had to do.
: It was very annoying when they started.
: They enforced it all the time. And then what they ended up doing is there's been a plethora of chinese cables that were not approved. So Apple was able, because they actually had control over the chips inside of the lightning checks, they were able to remotely disable cables.
Speaker A: Wow.
: And then we still get these calls. It's like, man, I plug this lightning to USB cable into your product and it doesn't pass audio. It's your product. No, it's the cable. That cable just hasn't paid the fee. And by the way, you had to pay the fee to Apple. If you were MFI developer, the manufacturer of that cable either didn't pass the test or didn't pay the fee or whatever and their cable had been remotely disabled, which is bizarre. But that went on for a while and after a while we were know we're too small to be able to deal with this because there were like constant updates.
: So then you just have to get your own interface adapter so you couldn't plug straight into the phone anymore. You had to have some stupid dongle so Apple could get their fee.
: They got their fee one way or another. But now, thanks to Europe, it's just going to be USBC and the whole lightning adapter is no more.
Speaker A: Oh, so let me ask you, this is the MFI certification, whatever you want to call it. Is that now dead because of USBC or is it still in there somewhere?
: There is no special communication happening anymore because USBC is supposed to be generic. You had to announce yourself and you had to be in the database and that's how they tracked you essentially. But now there is no communication there. And then, so now it's just like a Windows machine. You plug a peripheral, a USB peripheral into a Windows machine. And if it's a generic peripheral, it pulls up a generic driver and knows what to do, knows how to work with it. With Mac, it's been like that forever. And they've written great drivers, a lot better than Windows. So that any audio interface, you plug it into a Mac, it works right away.
Speaker A: Yeah, as long as it's core. What do they call it? Compliant or core audio compliant?
: Core audio. Core. Audio compliant, right, exactly.
: And then. So it's going to be exactly like that with the iPhone and iPads. Been like that with the iPad for about a year now. So just one less hurdle to jump over, which that's progress. Yes. And that's good, because we had this conversation the other day when you were coaching me on how to make the proper connections here, and I was pulling my hair out, trying to get things working, and I realized that it works in this environment, not in that environment and all that.
Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Honestly, when I was writing that, I went down the rabbit on the developer page of Apple. Right. To understand better how the system works. And there was like seven distinctly different and unique modes of operation.
: Because it's trying to make all these decisions for you. It's like, can we interrupt this phone call? Can we interrupt this movie?
Speaker A: Right, right. Oh, my gosh, it is so complicated.
: It is pretty annoying.
Speaker A: It's all complicated on the developer side so that you, the user, don't have to think about it, but they make those decisions for you. And that's what runs us into trouble as pros. I wish, again, because of iPhone 15 Pro and the new chipset, maybe this is going to change. But yeah, I wish we could really control our devices and say, I want to use this as the input. I want to use that as the output. I want to send this over here.
: On the Windows side, there is this protocol that's been around for a while called ASIO. ASIO is the one that is direct to device. It was developed that way a long time ago.
: It was made by Steinberg.
: Yeah. And that would not be interrupted if you're playing a YouTube video or phone call comes in. Your session continues to be solid. Nowadays.
: The problem with ASIO is that it can't share very well.
: The whole point of it is that you shouldn't share. It should be like point to point, indestructible. You know what I mean?
: On the macOS, it's got it with core audio where it shares it just fluidly yet. And the only thing that you have to make sure of which is the same with any situation is you just keep. If I'm sharing it, we have to agree on what sample rate we're going to be at. The device can't be at more than.
Speaker A: One sample rate, but there's still weird stuff on the Apple side. Where is the volume up and down button on the keyboard going to change the output level of my device?
: Exactly.
Speaker A: I don't know. Is the gain, input gain setting on Mac OS going to be effective on the input level?
: Or would that be if that device is set as the output in system preferences, then your knob becomes a control if that device is controllable. Not all devices are controllable. And you'll see that some of them, if you select them as the output, the slider becomes grayed out.
Speaker A: But who decides that? The manufacturer of the device, the writer of the driver or the Mac audio.
: Stack or whatever, that's the device.
: In reality, it's everything. It's a little bit of both. So some decisions Apple has to make, some decision manufacturer tries to make, but then Apple could reverse those decisions at their own volition. Anytime you have a competition between a whole bunch of sound sources, like phone movie playing, another movie playing in this other window, and then your audio thing, the system has to decide what's the priority, which of these programs really has to be streamed and which other ones have to be muted, or do you want to just mix everything together? Which is kind of madness, right?
Speaker A: Yeah. IPhone does some weird stuff like, I know we're going down a rabbit hole.
: It's very useful. It's like the way a Nexus device works. They're like patch cables. And if you send two devices to go out the same patch cable, it just mixes everything together. The Wasopi Windows driver is a little bit more flexible and a little bit more core audio like than mixes.
: It mixes everything, and they worked hard on doing that. Here's a problem, because it has to mix so many different streams, again, from these movies and radio stations and everything else that you could be listening to and watching at the same time in the same Windows computer. What they do is they have to align the sample rates from all these different sources. The process of aligning the sample rates results in a delay in latency. So that's completely inapplicable to music recording. Robbie would know about that. And then, so if you're watching a movie and the sound comes in 30 milliseconds later, you don't know it. It doesn't matter if you're recording music and sound comes back 30 milliseconds later, it ruins the take.
: So I wonder if the latency in Wasapi is similar to the latency in core audio. Because anything that's native, every audio engineer knows it's more.
: It's a lot more. In Wasapi, core audio is just very well tuned.
: It's like Wasapi and fast. It's like Wasapi and ASIO combined in a way.
: Wasapi generally introduces delay, and it introduces a lot of convenience at the price of the delay, whereas ASIO is as little delay as you can have. So essentially, the delay through the computer is about two milliseconds each way, and then the rest of it is the interface. But it's point to point. There are no decisions to make, so there's no pausing to think whether we should do it this way or that way. That's the beauty of ASIO, and core audio is very much like that.
Speaker A: Since we're talking about Windows a little bit, is it too early for you to tell us, Michael, when you connect the passport Vo with its two USB buses or two USB interfaces to a pc, is the best choice for the user, in most cases going to be, what do they call it? Mme or Windows classic wave driver or direct sound. What's going to be the optimal setting? Do you think?
: Wasapi usually is the best if you know what you're doing and you're not sending several different streams into your interface?
Speaker A: Right, right. And you won't be, because with this design, each USB bus is basically a simple two in, two out. Exactly interface. Right. So the hardware, all that mixing that we try to do with software, and sometimes not very successfully, is being handled in the analog domain or internally inside the unit.
: Right.
Speaker A: So we don't have to even worry about that anymore.
: That was a very smart idea or path.
: That's the beauty of it. No drivers? No, yes. Nothing to. That's the goal.
: Yeah. You could have two separate applications running at the same time. One could be sharing applications such as source connect. The other one can be a recording application such as DAW, local DAW.
Speaker A: And then Adobe audition is a popular choice on Windows.
: Those applications could actually meet inside of the device, inside of passport Vo, and not really conflict with each other as they would be if you were trying to mix inside the machine.
: This is why we did it, because on Windows, this ability to have two applications use the same device at the same time can cause huge tech support issues. Huge. And one approach is to basically have someone like George help you out and figure it out. Going into drivers and turning them off of exclusive mode and things like that. And then crossing your fingers that it works.
Speaker A: No, I have. Mike McConaughey will do that. I won't touch that stuff anymore on Windows.
: Or just do it this way and dedicate one interface to one application, the other interface to the other, and then do all your cross patching and your blending and the analog domain with.
: That's unique. Nobody else does that, right.
Speaker A: And that internally. Michael, just to make that really clear, it's an analog signal path, that's all. It's staying completely analog?
: Yes. It's an analog mixer which has two inputs which happen to be digital streams from the computer.
Speaker A: But they've been converted from digital to.
: Analog to analog and become analog. Mixing in analog introduces zero latency. It's that old technology. We're going back to the british invasion. And it's seamless, essentially. There are no conflicts when you're mixing an analog.
Speaker A: Yeah, no sample rates to coordinate.
: George? It's a bit like when you use the Bering interface to plug externally back.
Speaker A: Into someone else's problem solver.
: It's that, but it's all in the box with knobs and switches to control it. Instead of like, you could have your.
Speaker A: Doll running at 24, 96, maybe 24 bit 96. And you can have your zoom or source connect running at whatever the heck the client wants, sample rate it needs to be. And they will not step on each other's toes at all. You don't have to worry about that.
: Yeah, that's completely transparent in the analog domain. So I think that was a brilliant move.
Speaker A: I can't wait. That's such a cool thing.
: Hey, listen, I can't wait either. So a small development on that front. I know everybody wants to know status. As mentioned before, we have three separate paths here. And we're about to choose one with regards to the actual USB chip. So I've laid out all of the analog circuitry. It's already done. So all that mixing that we've just talked about, that's all already in the design.
Speaker A: Cool.
: It's designed and it's waiting to be prototyped. I am pausing and not sending this to prototyping because there's one additional block that needs to be finalized. And that block is the USB portion of the design. Actually, there's two USB portions of the design because, as we just said, there's two USB ports and there's two different computers that you could connect this thing to at the same time. And then it would then blend between the signals from those two computers. So for the USB chip that goes inside of there, the two USB chips, we learned recently, unfortunately, that the chip that we've been using for like twelve years or so is now out of production. And the manufacturer does have a newer version, but it's larger and more expensive. But larger part is more important here because, yes, we do have that small box and it just wouldn't fit. So we started a big search for another chip. We found a manufacturer in Taiwan, which is a smaller manufacturer, and it makes a chip that is smaller also. And that seems to fit the bill. But we wanted to make sure that we kind of wanted to vet them.
Speaker A: Yeah, you don't just slap any random chip in there and hope for the.
: You know, it's like a couple of guys in an office. Are you going to be around next year? So I have a friend in Taiwan who visited them yesterday and sent me a lengthy email. Anyway, so he visited them. He lives in neighboring cities. It's an hour drive for him, not that big a deal. So he popped over and he had a meeting and he said it was a very pleasant conversation. Taiwan is where they make all of the chips pretty much in the world these days. So they use a couple of foundries. Foundries. A plant that makes chips. And then, so they use two very reputable suppliers for that. And everything is well tested. I was like, do they test these things? How's the reliability? Do they have any large customers? Turns out this company is not well known in America, in the west yet, but they are known in China, and they're shipping significant volume into China. So I think there's the reason to believe that it's going to be a reliable supplier. And so my friend there in Taiwan who actually works for large contract manufacturers, like, yeah, you should go ahead and work with them. Not a problem. I don't see a problem.
Speaker A: Milestone moment right here, folks.
: Just happened to yesterday, as a matter of fact. So we're like, oh, okay, well, then, thank you. So we're not concerned about their longevity and all that. So there was also a third path, which was there's still a stock available of the old chip that's gone out of production and we can put that in there. But that would just kind of be a step backwards, putting something in the product that you know is not going to be made anymore.
: Are there any features on the new chip? Like, it goes up to 384.
: It does.
: Does your taxes.
: It does do your taxes. That would be important. But the 384, I think less so I'm joking, of course, because who needs 384 in real life? Audiophiles love their 384. Except there's no content to play. But you got to buy your DAC.
: It's the album of mouse farts.
: To each his own.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: One other thing I want to touch on before we wrap it is I also know that you have invested in a rapid prototype, or what would you call it, a prototyping.
: You can make your own boards now.
: Right? It's a pick and place machine. That's the official name.
Speaker A: Pick and place. Got you.
: Yeah. Electronic components these days don't go through little holes in the side of the pc board. Instead, they're planar. Yeah. They're just put on the surface. And some of these components are smaller than 1 mm by 1 mm. They're really tiny.
Speaker A: Yeah.
: And then it used to be ten years ago that they're larger. Maybe three, four, 5 can actually use tweezers and just put them on the board yourself. It'd take forever, but you could do it right. And then you'd put this whole board with all these components that you just very carefully put on the board, and you would put it inside of an oven and heat it up for about ten minutes. There'd be a particular heat profile, and that would solidify all of the solder and then connect all the components together. And after you had a board for prototyping, that was a thing to do. Nowadays, components are so small that even if you have a magnifying glass, if you partied the night before, your hand is not as steady anymore. So therefore, assembling these things. And I'm not saying that people should not party, but it kind of puts a cramping your style anyway. So this automated pick and place machine that we have now does that for you. It's a robot, and it just kind of like, has a tiny little suction cup at the end of a needle. So it just moves over the hand, moves over to where you have your components on a reel. They're in a bobbin. This is reel. And it just picks one up by applying a little bit of suction, kind of sucks it out of the reel and then moves it to an appropriate place on the board and just kind of releases gently. And it can handle things that a human hand cannot handle. So from that standpoint, it's a huge benefit. And it actually does it fast, and it doesn't party the night before, from what I know, it doesn't ask for.
: Raises and it doesn't.
: Yeah.
Speaker A: So I have so many questions. I mean, I'm dying to see one of these working in action. I'm sure I could probably find it on YouTube. But how long does it take to populate a board that would go inside the mixer face or pork?
: About ten minutes at this point.
Speaker A: Wow.
: Whereas if you do it by hand, you're probably, like, at it for a couple of hours.
Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
: And you're developing cramps.
: When does it get to the point where it's like, just by order? When does it get to the point where you can make your board, you can assemble your board, you've got a 3d printer. Because I really like the case for the english channel. A lot of manufacturing is like, okay, we're going to make a product, and then there you have 60,000 of some plastic thing, and then maybe they sell, maybe they don't, and you just have a lot of extra waste and they're done. Here's like making these things as needed, right?
: 3D printing. Yeah, we make everything for order, and we've been sheepish about it for a while until we got to the point where we figured out how to make it look good and also make it reliable so it doesn't break. So these 3D printed parts at this point are completely usable. I mean, they're not toys anymore. They're functional pieces of mechanical design. And we love that because we can change colors. You can get the tray, the commander console, we call it, for the english channel. You can get it in lime, lemon, red, blue, white, black, whatever, gray. And this is so easy for us to do otherwise we would have to order thousands of each color and then store them somewhere. And now we just have these reels of filament, which is this just essentially plastic out of which everything's being made, and then we can make them to order. So that's really great. And then as far as how long does it take? Well, the box that we make everything in is still aluminum. So that box, fortunately for us, we make a lot of different products inside that same box. So we can order it by a boatload from the manufacturer because there is a minimum order quantity. But we figured that we will go through the entire order because we will put different products in that same box, and that way we can afford to buy a whole bunch at once.
Speaker A: So one more board thing is amazing. So after you've dropped tiny, tiny little components over this little board, so is that the point where it goes into the oven? And how do you keep the little tiny, tiny, tiny pieces from moving around.
: You squeeze paste, solder, solder paste, the official name. You squeeze a layer of this gooey. It's just like toothpaste, but it's dark gray. And it has the property that when you heat it up, it solidifies and it becomes metal. But basically you get a stencil, which is this thin metal plate. Steel plate, very thin, less than a millimeter. And then holes for the components are laser cut inside of that steel plate. And then you put that steel plate over the board, line it up correctly, and then you use a squeegee to essentially squeeze that paste over the stencil. And then where the stencil has the holes, the paste drops through the holes onto the pc board and then forms the tiny little squares in appropriate places. Then they're a little sticky, just like toothpaste. And then when a component drops onto these two squares, for example, if component has two pins, right, it kind of gets stuck in the paste and it doesn't move. And then you can handle the board. I mean, you don't want to throw the board because the components will fly off. But if you carefully handle it and carefully move it into the oven, then the components will not move. And then what actually happens in the oven is a beautiful thing due to surface tension. Essentially, the components, once they heat up, they line up because the tiny little solder bolts. So essentially you have liquid metal at that point. If you remember the movie terminator, there was this other terminator guy that was essentially made out of liquid metal, and he could reassemble himself at all points. Remember that?
Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
: T two. Yeah, that's liquid tension is like when liquid gets together, it just kind of just forms this one thing wants to make a ball. Wants to make a ball. And that is what allows these tiny little components to get soldered to the pads in a very even sort of glowing pattern where all the solder gets utilized and none of it is left around because it all kind of tenses up and kind of sucks into one bowl in each little pad.
Speaker A: That's cool, man. Thanks for describing that. That's really neat.
: Michael, I actually had one quick question with the faces. Can you cut your own faces right now?
: When you say faces, what are you referring to?
: Like, all your pieces are made out of the same metal, sort of two pieces of metal.
: Oh, I understand.
: And right now, they always have the same four outside screw holes to hold them together. But then on the top of it, there's different holes for different knobs. And what I'm asking is, do you need to make seven holes in this one, three slots for a different switch. And you're able to do that all at your place now. I mean, could you theoretically just.
: No, we still do it at a supplier, but. Good question. Yes. So the official term for this is platform strategy, is when you can make a lot of different things out of one thing. Another official term, if you want to keep going with the MBA speak. Design for postponement is what we're using here, if you want to be official about it, which means that you can make the decision on what the heck it is that you're building at the very last step. Right. Which also allows 3d printing is the same thing. You postpone the differentiation of the product, and then you can actually choose what you're building the day when you ship that thing. Right. Toyota has pioneered that in the 80s where with the whole just in time strategy and all that, because they were able to reduce the amount of stuff that they held at their warehouses, which were huge anyway. So what happens with these products is, on top of the product is this plastic overlay. It's actually a sticky sticker. Yeah, it's a thick sticker made out of polycarbonate. It's a polycarbonate overlay with an adhesive backing that we very carefully lay in this existing hole. And then that sticker we print. And then, fortunately, we have a supplier who doesn't want us to print thousands of them. They can print 100 at a time. And then those stickers themselves are not that expensive. And therefore we can get 100 stickers of each product and then essentially put the sticker on the product. The day we assemble the product and the day we ship it to the customer, which allows us to be a lot more flexible than a traditional manufacturing plant.
: So then if you have the ability to drill your own holes and slots at some point, whatever CNC machine that.
: Is, we have that.
Speaker B: There you go.
Speaker C: You do.
: I haven't let you into the warehouse yet. You should come back.
: I'd love to.
Speaker C: Yeah, he's on his way.
Speaker B: He's leaving now.
: And on that note, as Andrew would say, yes.
Speaker A: Well, that was fun.
: Is it over?
Speaker C: The pro audio suite with thanks to Tribut and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robo. Got your own audio issues? Just ask robo.com tech support from George Thetech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the go and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say, g'day. Drop us a note at our websiteprodiosuite.com. -
This week, we deep dive into the English Channel from Centrance. Special guest Michael Goodman chats about how it came about, the many unique setups and creative uses of the English Channel by voice artists and content creators alike. Plus, we explore its features, and with Robbo, Robert and Michael all using one for the show, there's plenty of tips and tools to help you get the most out of this impressive piece of kit, or inspire you to go check one out for yourself.
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Summary
In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, our hostsâGeorge Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren 'Robbo' Robertson, and Andrew Petersâoffer an insightful review of Centrance products, particularly focusing on the English Channel. The team is joined by special guest Michael Goodman from Centrance, who sheds light on the technology behind these innovative audio solutions.Listeners will gain an understanding of the technical nuances of the English Channel, such as its British EQ, clean modern circuitry, and wide frequency response, which altogether emulate the classic analog console experience with a distinct English style. In an in-depth discussion, the panel explores the creative uses of the product, and Goodman explains the motivation behind its unique design, such as the five db gain jump between products which correlates with a price difference.
Moreover, the episode delves into the features of the Portcaster and SoBox, highlighting how these devices can send audio to multiple recorders, and allowing one device to control another for an expanded multichannel setup. The challenges and eccentricities of integrating these tech solutions into a working studio setup are candidly discussed, including some unconventional methods they would normally not recommend to voiceover actors.
To cap it off, the show offers a quick preview of the next episode where Michael Goodman will return to discuss the Passport Vo, making it a must-listen for audio professionals looking to enhance their tech arsenal and push the boundaries of their creative workflow.
#ProAudioSuite #VoiceoverTech #CentranceSolutions
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction to Pro Audio Suite(00:00:52) Centrance's English Channel Review
(00:07:07) Comparison: Jasmine Preamp and Portcaster
(00:09:01) English Channel as a Portable Voice Recorder
(00:13:16) Modern Breakthroughs in EQ Circuitry
(00:15:29) Features of the English Channel Parametric EQ
(00:19:15) Instamano: The Mono Blend Knob for Instagram
(00:25:40) Portcaster's Monitoring and Output Capabilities
(00:28:28) SoBox: Link Switches Explained
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready? Be history.
Speaker B: Get started.
Speaker C: Welcome.
: Hi.
Speaker C: Hi.
: Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.
: These guys are professional.
Speaker C: They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars, George Wittam, founder of source elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite.com line up.
Speaker B: Learner. Here we go.
: And don't forget the code. Trip a P 200. That will get you $200 off your tribooth. Now, I should say, before we start the show, a disclaimer. What you are about to listen to is what we would not advise voiceover actors to do. That's all I'm going to say.
Speaker A: Do as I say, not as I do.
: Yeah, exactly. We have a special guest today from Centrance, Michael Goodman. G'day, Michael.
Speaker B: Hello, gentlemen. Pleasure to be here.
: It's lovely to have you. Now, today's review is about sentrance itself, but also the English Channel. And I know two of the people are using english channels as we speak. And one has done some funky little setup to his laptop. And that, of course.
: But Robert, I just kind of like that setup where I use the TRRs cable going into the laptop. I just like it because it's wrong. One of the things, actually, two things that I ran into and, Michael, maybe you can explain to me a little bit. But I found that when I use the English Channel with the xlrs going across the top, when you get into the portcaster, you're hitting the mic preamp with an amplified signal. And you end up having to not use as much gain on the mic preamp over on the soapbox as you want. Because even with the pads turned down. And I think I ended up using the pad in the English Channel as well to try to pad it back down so I could get into the meat of the soapbox in terms of processing, the compressor especially, and the deesser as well. So anyways, what I did is I have the mic going in the xlr going out and over into the english channel. And then I have an XLR cable going out which feeds into the. Whatever, the second ring of a tip ring ring sleeve jack. And that goes into my Mac. And then out of my Mac is the tip ring sleeve. The normal stereo output of that jack. And that goes to a female connector. And I take the output of that. I have an 8th inch to 8th inch or an aux cable. I take the output of that and I plug it into the 34 input of the port caster. And I also take another 8th inch cable, aux cable, and I go line out of the English Channel and into the phone TRRs input of the portcaster as well. And that's how I monitor my own voice. So I have two knobs on the Portcaster. I do not have a USB going into the computer, just a USB going into the power headphones 34 being fed in, which is the computer return and my microphone coming in through the TRRS channel two input. So I have the three four knob for you guys, and I have the channel two knob for my own headphones. And voila. Fully processed microphone with EQ using the built in Macintosh input and output through a TRRS cable. Doesn't sound too bad, does it?
Speaker B: Well, first of all, I have to hand it to you. You get the prize for the most creative, innovative use of this technology. And it still sounds good.
Speaker A: Can I just say, also the most convoluted.
Speaker B: Seriously, I guess it is a statement about the universality of this thing, because I hadn't thought about that use. Normally, what we'd recommend everybody to use is the english channel takes a microphone on the input and gives you a USB output that you plug into your computer. It does have really high quality inlook to digital and digital converters inside. So we believe it's better than the converters inside of a typical computer such as a Mac or PC. And therefore you'll get more audio file sound quality that way. But look, I mean, there's so many Gazintas and Gazawtas in that thing, you can probably slice it many different ways.
: Well, here's where I came up with that setup. And I decided to do this setup because I wanted to use the soapbox and the full processing, and I wanted to do something different as well. But where I first came up with that setup, and I think it works really well, is with the Jasmine mic pre, because then it's the same thing. You have the XLR feeding out and then you have the computer just return back to the line input and the Jasmine mic pre itself. The headphone already blends your headphones, your input, your mic input with the headphones. So you don't need the second Aux cable that I'm using here. But it's certainly a great way to literally use the Jasmine mic pre with a computer. If you just want to get the Jasmine mic pre.
Speaker B: That's actually true. And to be honest with you, we have received feedback about the Jasmine mic pre. One thing that it sorely lacks, apparently according to some users, is a USB audio interface. People are like, why don't you just put a USB jack that actually does audio on that thing, not just power. So then the Jasmine preamp basically turns into a micport Pro with a line level input and a mixer so that you can bring some music into your program or just listen to a backing track and sing along with it or play along with it, something like that. It really just becomes a mic port Pro at that point. With a slightly better preamp?
: I don't think so. It becomes like a focus, right? Blue ISA one where it has a Q mix input or a return channel so you can monitor in low latency what comes out of your daw.
Speaker B: If it had a USB audio interface, then it would be exactly like those things.
: No, the focusrite ISA desktop is not an audio interface. It has no USB. But it's a preamp with two return channels so you can monitor low latency out of your daw. There's not a ton of mic preamps that do it, but the Jasmine does it too, and it's a super useful feature even without the USB interface.
Speaker B: In developing the English Channel, we had to face a couple of decision points, because originally it was actually four devices. It was the Jasmine preamp followed by the dynamics box, followed by the EQ, the black cab, and followed by the audio interface, which is the podcaster. But four devices that just looked like a lot in front of you just looked way too complex. So a couple of voiceover actors heard about that and they're like, can you please put the preamp inside of the soapbox? So that's what we did, and thereby we made jasmine preamp pretty much obsolete in our product line. It's a foster child. Sad to say.
: I liked it. So the preamp is the same in the jasmine as the soapbox?
Speaker B: Yes.
: Can I ask what's the preamp in the passport?
Speaker B: The preamp is the same all across, so we call it the jasmine preamp. It's a custom designed discrete transistor preamp with a dual stage.
: But the courtcaster doesn't have a Jasper.
Speaker B: Cordcaster is portcaster with a very small modification. It's basically the same as Portcaster.
: So it is a Jasmine preamp in that one as well?
Speaker B: Yes, everywhere is the same preamp.
: So basically all your preamps are the jasmine.
Speaker B: What differs between products is the amount of gain available. So jasmine preamp, if you need the possible theoretical lowest noise, somehow it's different somehow.
: Even though it's a jasmine preamp. It's a better jasmine preamp.
Speaker B: Yeah. So we monkey with the gain inside the unit.
: Wow. Because the Micport Pro that's got, I think it's 65 db gain.
Speaker B: Is that 65? And then soapbox has 70 and the Jasmine preamp standalone has 74. 75.
: Wow.
Speaker B: There's like a five db jump and then there's a corresponding price difference.
: I haven't got one, but I know that generously you're going to send one for a review. The Micport Pro, and I know it's been around for a long time, but this is the latest version of it that you've got, which has been around for how long now, the New York.
Speaker B: One, the latest Micport Pro has been around since. I want to say that 2018, the.
: First Micport Pro was what, 2008?
Speaker B: 2009. Eight. You're right. Eight.
: I still miss my original.
: Well, someone's got it now. They're enjoying it.
Speaker A: Hello.
: And probably got your laptop as well.
: He's got both the laptops. He got a bag full of stuff.
Speaker A: Might not be a he. Come on, let's not get sexist here.
: Yeah.
: Someone who identifies as a thief.
Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
: I identify as a thief.
Speaker A: Yes, indeed.
: Now, Michael, with the english channel, who were you looking at when you were designing this? What was your market?
Speaker B: The mirror?
Speaker A: Before you answer that, I actually want to take you one step back inside your twisted mind.
Speaker B: I appreciate that.
Speaker A: Where did you come up with the idea for this?
Speaker B: So the name of the product, the English Channel.
: I'm curious about the name.
Speaker B: The name, obviously, is it uses British Egyu and everything else from a channel stripper on a british console, analog console. And therefore it's called the English Channel. So it's a channel from a british console. Now, you can argue that british consoles have been responsible for one of the most prolific periods in the history of the music industry, where in the 70s, early eighty s, a lot of really cool music was produced. I'm not saying that today music is bad, not at all. All music matters, obviously, but I just happen to like a lot of music that was made in the late 70s anyway, so that's the name. And it's sort of kind of a nod to that era. A lot of our customers who buy the English Channel are from that era. They have experience with analog technology, and to them that feels good. Now, how did the product come about? There's really two ways to think about it. First of all, we couldn't get any digital chips during the COVID and so we couldn't build the Micport Pro and podcaster mixerface, all those other things. And I was sitting on a very short lounge chair at a hotel in Mexico, last vacation before COVID And I was kind of anticipating that they were going to hit some trouble. And then I said to myself, we should design some analog products because digital does not look good in the nearest future. And so that's how the analog channel came about. More of a business necessity than anything else. But then as it started to appear to materialize, I was practicing with it. And about that time, I started really recording YouTube videos for the sentrance YouTube channel on a weekly basis. It's a job. And because I traveled a lot, I ended up taking the english channel with me wherever I went. Like, for example, two weeks ago, I was in Indonesia at a trade show, and I had the English Channel, and I did some streams from the trade show floor, which sounded just like what we sound like right now. And I could get rid of the noise in the trade show floor was loud and all that. So I started realizing that this is actually a very cool product for a traveling content creator, because, again, as I said, I was looking at the mirror jokingly, but I happen to be a traveling content creator because I have this job of making videos for our YouTube channel and then podcasts, things like that. I did have a podcaster before, and podcaster obviously came out first, and that's great for doing podcasts, interviews. I know George uses it for that as well, but it doesn't have way to enhance your voice and then also get rid of the noise. Everybody who's starting out in the voice arts at first has to come against this fear of hearing their own voice, because we never know how our voice sounds like when it's recorded right until we have a lot of practice. And then, so I also had a fear of listening to my own voice. And I thought, I probably want a little bit more bass, maybe a little bit less treble here in this area. I kind of sound more confident if I do some of the enhancements. And then, so what this thing allows me to do is honestly develop confidence in public speaking, believe it or not, which is kind of like not the intended use of the product, but it gives me that ability to feel better about myself, which is an unintended psychological consequence of a technological product.
: I have a question about the Eq. Is there anything, particularly on the technical side, that makes it a British Eq? I know that sometimes I found that the bandwidths can be pretty wide, and therefore, in that sense, sort of makes it a little bit more english in style, just the wider. I mean, they do get pretty. If I crank mine up here and I put it all the way on the left for the queue, you can kind of hear it. And it's pretty tight, but it doesn't sound like I'm sweeping a sine wave. And on the wide side, it's so wide, you can barely hear me sweeping that at all.
Speaker B: It is pretty wide. I mean, it's almost like a surgical instrument. If you put it to 0.4 and is just a shelf almost. At the other extreme, the frequency response of that thing is quite wide. I don't have the spec sheet in front of me, but I wouldn't be surprised if it goes up to almost 100 khz. So it's very wide. It uses modern circuitry. I mean, this is not the circuitry from the course. There's been a lot of breakthroughs in analog technology since then, so that's why it's quiet and it allows us to do some tricks. It doesn't have transformers. So some of the Rupert neve technology color. Yeah, he loved his transformers. And they gave you that bass. They gave you that strange kind of phasing sound. I mean, a lot of people prefer that. And there are manufacturers of audio interfaces. There's one right here in Chicago that loves transformers as well. And those guys, we've had a shootout, and it was very interesting because I brought some of our gear to their studio, and then they had some of their interfaces, and we had an interface shootout. And the results of the shootout were inconclusive in that they loved theirs and I loved mine.
: Did they want to do a black lion edition of the sentence?
Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
Speaker B: No, they hated our stuff because we didn't have transformers in it. And I was like, you guys, this doesn't sound natural. What goes in is not what goes out. And they're like, yeah, that's exactly the point. So different styles.
: So talking about that, though, if you're talking about late 70s, early 80s when you were designing the English Channel, what sort of preamps were you thinking about? It sounds like you weren't thinking about Neve. You were thinking about maybe API.
Speaker B: We wouldn't necessarily want know, copy somebody else's design, so that wouldn't be prudent for a lot of reasons, one of which just personal pride. We wanted to have our stuff. So you could argue that the whole concept of the british invasion and the british consul and all that is largely a psychological construct than any particular style of circuitry. Design.
: It's not an homage to any. Like, this isn't a V 72 club.
Speaker B: I wouldn't want to do that. There's so many people that say, oh, we make a microphone and it's the best U 87 this side of U 87, whatever. And that is a great marketing strategy for some people, but we decided not to do that. Like, okay, this is the Neve 1998, right? But in a different chassis. No, not at all. This is a sentence product that it is completely from ground up sentence. And then any marketing reference to Great Britain is an homage rather than any specific lift of any circuitry.
: I don't think I can think of any smaller three band, fully parametric EQ on the market at all than this.
Speaker A: No.
Speaker B: You can find these graphic eqs and pedals a lot.
: It's smaller than a 500 series module. It's like half the size.
Speaker B: Exactly. I didn't have one either.
: But find a three band parametric that's this small and it's XLR that's fully balanced.
Speaker B: You should try it on some instruments. It's pretty cool. You should also try. So, box on a snare. I was blown away.
Speaker A: Really?
: Compressor is really good.
Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty nice. I have a video up on our website where I actually go through a history of the sound of the snare drum by turning the compressor knob on the soapbox. So without compression, it's essentially the 60s. With medium compression, it becomes the gated snare starts to come in, and then if you compress all the way. If you turn the knob all the way to the right, then it becomes the. Becomes the gated compressed snare. With the additional.
Speaker A: I was going to say, you'd have to be winding the gate up as well. Right in the will.
: Say, if I can make a request for the soapbox too, that the gate is an expander, that'd be my only request.
Speaker B: So it doesn't pump as much or you can make it not pump as much.
: So it slides down to its. Whatever range -60 or minus, even infinity. But it never just goes there, it always has a slope. It opens more gradually and closes more gradually. Because I don't know if I can do it. But you can kind of even sometimes you can hear someone breathe in, you can hear it take their breath and like, chop.
Speaker B: It's pretty drastic. It's just basically on off. And it was designed to be that way. And it took a while to get the timing just right so that it covers the majority of applications. Obviously, we didn't have the space for a couple more knobs seems pretty quick. That was the point. So if you really use the gate, then it becomes pumpy. So it can be like that.
: Yeah, well, I found a good way around that is to use the blend.
Speaker B: The dry wet control. That's pretty much your answer.
: Yeah, it effectively changes the amount. So it always leaves a little bit. And it doesn't sound quite as, like, cut.
: It's like the range control. I like that. That mix of the dry wet will give you.
Speaker B: That is a poor man's expander, if you wish.
Speaker A: No, it's a sentence expander.
: Yeah, that's what it is.
Speaker B: The trick is old. The trick is not our invention.
: So tell us about the instant mono. I think that's another one that it's kind of a unique thing that you don't find that behavior on all interfaces.
Speaker B: The insta in Instant Instamano actually stands for Instagram. And we put that in portcaster. And what we've learned is that Instagram, originally, they may have changed that now, but originally it was mono. So therefore, if you connect a stereo usb audio interface to Instagram to do a live stream, then the left channel will go through and everybody will hear whatever's on the left channel, but the right channel will essentially be lost. So a musician who, let's say, is a guitar player and a singer at the same time. So a singer songwriter, they would plug the guitar into one channel and the voice, the vocal microphone into the other channel, and then only one of those things would come through. And that was extremely frustrating. We had an earlier product called Mixerface, where there was no blend, no stereo blend. It just two channels come in, two channels go out.
: I've got a mixer, right?
Speaker B: The older one didn't have that blend knob. Now, since COVID and since that whole idea of streaming from home came about, we learned that this is not good. And then that Instamano is essentially a mono switch for mono blend knob for Instagram, which essentially unifies or combines your microphone and your guitar that you plug into channels one and two and then sends that to Instagram. And then your fans hear both things. That's really what it's for. Now, why is it a blend knob and not a switch? Because I had a hole I needed to plug with a potentiometer, and it kind of felt good.
: How does it work exactly? All the way left. Right goes all the way to left is all the way left.
Speaker B: Yes. So when you turn it counterclockwise, which is to the left, you are printing. Mono printing. When I say printing, I mean, is sending a mono signal into Instagram. So, in your usb stream.
: But what's it doing electrically? Is it bringing the right side fully over to the left side? Is that what it is?
Speaker B: It's creating a monomix. So it takes 50% of the left and 50% of the right. It combines them together and creates a mono mix. And then it sends that mono mix to the left channel and that same exact mono mix to the right channel. That's the proper way of doing it.
: So what happens if you have it 50 50, like straight up at 12:00 now what's.
Speaker B: So then it's in between mono and stereo. And I am still trying to figure out a good use case for that.
: Well, it's like faking headphones for stereo. If you want a little left right bleed.
Speaker B: Yeah.
: At the 12:00 position, it basically takes. Left is 100% left plus 50% right, and right is 100% right plus 50% left. Is that what's happening?
Speaker B: It becomes 50 of, let's say 50 of each? Yeah. So it's slightly less than stereo. So now I have to correct myself. I said that I'm struggling to come up with a use case. I'm not. Because we make two microphones that you can plug into podcaster. These are tiny little mics that are housed inside the XLR shells. And then they are angled so that when you plug them into channels one and two over the podcaster, you form a xy stereo pair. And then at that point, portcaster becomes a stereo field recorder with two mics. And then you can record concert, a band, whatever, or sounds of nature, animals. We have people recording all kinds of things. Creeks, mountain creeks. And then. So there, what you can do is you can record in, like, full stereo. But sometimes if you're way too close to the source, the full stereo might actually sound uncomfortable. So in that case, you might want to reduce the width of the stereo perspective slightly. And that's where the mono stereo blend ability to kind of grow gradually between the two comes into play. Because I've stuck this actually big sewer in California about a year ago, and I recorded the sound of the mountain creek because I thought it would be cool. And I stuck the portcaster on a rock right next to gurgling water. Right. And I realized that the two microphones recorded completely different sounds from water hitting the rocks. And it actually sound like way too much stereo. So I had to blend it down a little bit, and then it was a little bit more listenable. That makes sense.
: I can't think of one product that has that. George, can you think of any other product that has that?
: It's one of those majorly missing features of almost every other standard stereo interface. Like if you look at a scarlet two I two, people try using a scarlet two I two all the time to do things like this. And then they get frustrated when one person's voice is in the left and the other one's in the right. And that's not what they need. What they needed was a mixer, but they're using interface and they just don't conceptually understand what the difference is.
: That is a unique feature. That pan move someone to the left or right is a very unique feature to these sentence interfaces. And you don't see the input pan on any device. What you do see is the ganged stereo monitor pan on almost all devices. So two places where sentrance has been unique. The Instamano knob. I can't think of any interface that does that unless it has a full mixer. The other thing that's unique is technically the original mixer face is the only interface I know of that has a separate left right usb versus input play.
: It's unique too. Absolutely.
Speaker B: Yeah. And then that use case it was useful for, and it was designed for, is when you have a guitar in one end, your voice in the other end, and you might want to listen to a little bit of a background track. And that gives you a blend between the guitar and the voice in the headphones. It essentially affects the headphones. Right. So you can keep your levels where you want them with the two level knobs, but you can adjust your headphone mix with those two other knobs, but.
: You could affect the blend. You could blend in more of your input than your output. But when you played back, your mix was different because it wasn't really. Yes.
Speaker B: This was for monitoring only.
: Totally. So what then is interesting also is the original mixer face. And I'm not sure if this one has, but the original mixer face at least also uniquely had a mono switch for the output. So you could at least hear the two centered. You weren't recording them centered, but it has a mono switch. And is that in the portcaster or does that switch go away?
Speaker B: It's still everywhere. And I have to say it confuses a lot of people, including famous youtubers. We won't name names, but essentially this thing was designed to be so flexible, it's useful. We possibly overloaded it for an average user. So I have customers who are tweaks and they love it. Because they can use in so many different ways. But for example, the mono stereo monitor switch allows you to print in stereo, but listen in mono. Right. Whereas the mono stereo blend knob, you're listening to whatever you're recording. So if you're blending with the mono stereo knob, you're actually printing mono, which is an important distinction.
: And again, I can't think of any interfaces to do this. Most interfaces don't give you these types of choices. They're just features you can't find on a focus. Right. Or something like that.
Speaker B: That's more for videography, things like that. So there's also a third. There's a line output on the podcaster. And then that allows you to record to essentially three places. So you can use the podcaster to send your audio to three separate recorders, one being the internal SD card recorder, one being the USB whatever it is that you're recording to or streaming live to. Right. And then the third one, the line out goes out to the camera. So that's for video applications. And then you can record audio onto the camera as well.
: Can I give you a total feature for that?
Speaker B: Go.
: Okay, so you're recording stereo audio onto the internal card of the Portcaster?
Speaker B: In this case, yes.
: And then you had the line output stereo technically going into the camera. Right. So put a timecode generator in this thing, record three channels of Timecode onto the Portcaster and then drop one channel of Timecode.
Speaker B: It's been brought up so far we've dealt with people who do shorter things and they just jam sync it. Where? I don't know what the current thinking, current wisdom is, but about 20 minutes of content recorded, it doesn't yet drift yet far enough.
: But it's a lot of work still. It's still a lot of work to go find it. Like timecode just lines it up for you. You don't have to go.
Speaker B: Yeah. After about an hour, it starts becoming a problem. But so far, I don't think we've dealt with anybody who's using these for very long periods of time. It's a voiceover artist who's recording for 30 seconds or if it's a youtuber. Then again, it's not a long thing.
Speaker A: On the soapbox, Michael, on the bottom of the soapbox, and I think I've figured this out, there are three link switches for each of the processing, for the gate, for the compressor, and for the Deesser. Can you tell us what they do?
Speaker B: We wanted SoBox to be extendable to multichannel situations. So, for example, for stereo or for multichannel recording. What you can do is you can actually line up several of these soapboxes and you can have one of them control the others in a linked situation. So in a stereo program, that's important because you don't want the two channel, the left and right channel to pump differently. You want them to sort of be in sync. And what those switches do is they allow you to choose. There are two jacks there called smart link. One is the link in and the other one is link out. So you can actually control one soapbox with another soapbox, and one became the master and the other one became the non master.
: But that's not like the slave of a compressor that's just controlling the same knob. It's setting the two knobs at the same position.
Speaker A: Right.
: There's still two parallel monocompressors.
Speaker B: No, if you switch the switch to the remote, then the knob becomes useless on that unit that is in the remote mode. Essentially, it will only listen to what the other unit tells it to do.
: Right. And what is the other unit telling it? Is it telling it where to set exactly so they.
Speaker B: Because it's a control signal, it's like.
: Working on a VCA kind of thing.
Speaker B: You can have one soapbox control another soapbox.
: Is the VCA controlling the gain reduction or is it controlling the position of that knob?
Speaker B: The position of the knob controls the VCA unless you flip the switch, put it in remote, and then a remote signal controls the VCA. And the knob essentially sits there doing nothing. You can rotate the knob on the slave unit and it would not do anything because the slave unit would be listening to the signal from the master unit.
Speaker A: Okay, so how are we linking those together?
: Is that the USB connection, the little 8th inch connectors.
Speaker B: Trrs. We're having an arc here. TRrs comes back.
: Is it trrs or just trs?
Speaker B: Trrs.
: Are you using the whole TRRs cable for the VCA?
Speaker B: Yes, because there's three things that we can control. Gate, compressor, and Deesser.
Speaker A: There you go.
: All three are on one link. You don't need three links. One wire, one wire gets you linked.
Speaker A: That's the smart link.
: That's cool.
Speaker A: Yeah, right.
: So much innovation in these things. It's great, man.
: Wow.
Speaker A: There you go. Very cool.
: That's part one of our chat with Michael Goodman from centrance, talking about the English Channel. Next episode, we have Michael back to talk about the Passport Vo, the collaboration between this podcast and centrance. Catch you next time.
: Well, that was fun.
Speaker C: Is it over the pro audio suite with thanks to Triboof and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robbo. Got your own audio issues? Just ask robo.com tech support from George the tech don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our websiteprodiosuite.com.#centranceTalks #VoiceoverTech #PodcastingGear #ProfessionalAudio #VoiceoverArtists #AudioInnovation #PodcastProduction #EnglishChannelReview #PodcastersLife #AudioTechnology #TriboothDiscount #PodcastTalk #PodcastGearReview #AudioEngineering #TechInnovation #centanceInnovation #VoiceRecording #PodcastSetup #AudioQuality #ProfessionalVoiceover #AudioTalk #MicPreamp #PodcastersCommunity #TRRSConnection #ProAudioSuite #PodcastersUnite #GearReview #AudioTalkShow
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We went off on such a tangent this week I figured what better way to come up with a description than to let AI do it, so after feeding it the transcript this is what it came up with..
In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, the hosts dive into a wide-ranging discussion covering the impact of AI on voiceover work, the intricacies of voice licensing in the digital age, and the challenges of maintaining digital identity and content integrity. From concerns about AI-generated voices and the protection of voice actors' rights to the potential theft of intellectual property and the evolving landscape of digital transactions, the hosts explore the multifaceted aspects of the audio industry and beyond. As the conversation takes unexpected turns, they touch on topics like the future of cash, online security, and the unique dynamics of holiday seasons in different parts of the world. Buckle up for a lively and insightful conversation that meanders through various aspects of the modern audio landscape and its broader implications.
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready be history, get started welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi.,Speaker C: Y'all ready be history, get started welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.,: These guys are professional. They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars, George Wittam, founder of Source elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech wisdom and Robo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check Thepro audiosuite.,Speaker B: Com line up learner. Here we go.,Speaker C: And of course, don't forget the code. Trip a p two hundred and that will get you two hundred dollars off your tribooth. Now, we're going to talk microphones today because there's one thing I don't think we've ever discussed, or not in depth anyway. Is RF on a shotgun mic? Now I'm assuming rf is radio frequency, but for anybody like me, what does it actually really mean? And should it be something that we consider when we're buying a shotgun mic?,Speaker A: You mean the fact that the microphone uses what they call an RF technology? Is that what you're referring? Sure. I'm sure Robert would know more about the details without me having to google it. I read about RF microphones for a few times and I think one of the side effects of a mic being RF technology, which by the way, has nothing to do with transmitting a radio signal, right. It's the ability for the microphone to reject noise. I don't know if I've ever heard of a four hundred and sixteen, for example, which is using this RF technology as having an issue. Picking up radio frequency noise. If anybody else has heard of that, if you've had a mic, a four hundred and sixteen picking up RFI, let me know. But one of the advantages of that technology is it's very highly immune to humidity.,Speaker C: Yeah, that's what I heard.,Speaker A: And why that exactly is, is definitely beyond my pay grade.,Speaker C: Isn't it something to do with the way inside the microphone? Each part talks to itself, like talks to each other. It uses like a radio frequency inside the microphone to communicate with itself. That's my vague recollection of what it actually is.,Speaker A: That is certainly plausible. I just wish I was more understanding of the technology.,: So we're talking about it rejecting radio frequencies, is that what you're saying? Like a shielded cable would reject?,Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's what it does. And if anyone's listening, we should do what everybody else does on their YouTube things. Leave us a comment in the comments section.,Speaker A: Can I do story time and read it to you?,Speaker C: Yes, do story time. Oh, I'm sitting comfortably, George.,: But read it in your best bedtime story voice, George.,Speaker A: Okay, yeah, well it would have to be in a german accent.,Speaker C: I'm not going to do that.,Speaker A: A bedtime german accent?,: No, that's scary.,Speaker C: That's really scary actually.,Speaker A: But there is a whole white paper from Senheiser and it's written by Manfred Hibbing and it's Sennheiser's professor. MkH condenser microphone sorry everybody, I'm sorry, but basically what it says is that high rf frequency solves a problem. So when the replacement of electronic valves by transistors commenced at the end of the fifty s, this change was also under consideration for condenser microphones. Reduced size, low supply voltages and lower power consumption were regarded as great benefits as well as being able to use simpler microphone cables. However, there was a basic problem. Direct replacement of the valve by a transistor was not possible due to the mismatch between the high impedance of the condenser capsule and the low input impedance of the transistor. Hence, for optimal matching, the capsule impedance needed to be drastically reduced. And then they go on to explain the impedance of capsules, et cetera, et cetera. So down to the next paragraph. How does RF microphone technology actually work? The principle is simple. After all that.,Speaker C: Yeah, sure it is.,Speaker A: Sound waves deflect the diaphragm of the condenser capsule and change the capacitance between the diaphragm and the nearby back electrode, or backplate. Contrary to the more common low frequency AF condenser method, the capacitance variations are not converted directly into audio signals, but modulate a high frequency radio frequency signal generated by an oscillator inside the microphone. This signal is then immediately demodulated inside the microphone, thus recreating the audio signal, but with a very low source impedance that is well suited for driving a transistor amplifier. Thusly, an RF condenser microphone is basically comprised of a transmitter and a receiver that are directly wired together. The RF signal is therefore kept inside the microphone only the audio signal is supplied to its output just like all other microphones. So yeah, what you were saying was pretty much usual for me.,Speaker C: What happened?,Speaker A: He picked it up through osmosis somewhere along the way.,Speaker C: That's right.,: Can I just say, Robert would make that a lot.,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: Yeah, sure. The thing with humidity, and here's a little paragraph about this, there is no other important benefit of the RF principle for practical use, the low electrical impedance of the capsule provides outstanding immunity against detrimental effects due to humidity, because even then, the leak resistance is very much larger than the capsule impedance. Thus, Mkh microphones, which I understand, all of those, all Mkh mics are RF mics. They're well suited for outdoor use. So this is why mkh mics, no matter whether they are the mkh four one five, forty one six, and I'm paraphrasing here, or any of the mkh stuff like the mkh forty. There's the eight thousand series, right? They have the eighty third. Eighty, twenty, eighty, thirty, eighty, forty, fifty, eighty, sixty. They have a whole new line. All of them are using this technology. And the reason for why it still persists to this day is it's excellent outside and thereby it's also excellent in a sweaty, hot, muggy voiceover booth.,Speaker C: If it's four x three x six. Yes, indeed.,Speaker A: Especially if it's four x three x six. Absolutely.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Talk about that outdoors, though, because this was something else where I got stuck in the rabbit hole that I mentioned before we started recording. Then there was a discussion about using shotgun mics inside. Now, this is basically for drama and stuff like that. So a boom op using a mic where they wouldn't use a shotgun inside, they would use a pencil. Small diaphragm, pencil condenser.,Speaker A: Yeah.,Speaker C: Now, if that's the case, if you're a field audio guy, why would you not use a pencil condenser as a voiceover person inside?,Speaker A: I don't know. I did have a pair, and I still do have a pair of pencil condensers, the classic octava mics that are so popular. And I used to use them to try to do field recordings. And I didn't know that much about mics at the time. And I would get the dreaded, we sometimes call it motorboating. It was like this.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Fluttering sound. And I didn't know why it was happening. I just knew it would happen. And it would always happen if I was outdoors and sometimes I was like, in a really humid environment and it would get really bad. And I was like, oh, no, the mic's bad. And then I'd bring the mic home and I'd pull it out of the box later and would be perfectly fine.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: So because with af microphones or audio frequency condensers, because they store a charge on a high impedance capsule, it's easy for that charge to find a way and leak across the insulation by riding on water molecules which cause those motorboat or crackling effects. So I don't know. I mean, I think it's just another added benefit of an RF mic is that you're just never going to have that problem. But Neumann, large diaphragm condenser mics where you have two diaphragms extremely close to each other, even if it's a cardioid, there's still two. There's the diaphragm in the front that takes the sound wave and then there's one on the back that picks up the signal, creating the changes in capacitance, blah, blah, blah. And those are so close together that water molecules actually transmit the electricity.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: It's amazing.,Speaker A: And create the static.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Do you know anybody who does use any pencil Mic for doing voiceover in their. I do.,Speaker A: I know people that use the eighty series or the eight thousand series, but those are MKh mics. So I believe all the eight thousand series Mkh mics are also rf.,Speaker C: Is that the eighty fifty?,Speaker A: Is that like the eighty fifty? The eighty twenty, eighty thirty are tiny little stubby capsules. I mean, they're mini because I guess they have the most condensed electronics and boy, are they expensive.,: Yes.,Speaker A: This is a stereo set. So I'm looking at two thousand eight hundred for a stereo set.,Speaker C: Don't look at the chefs then.,Speaker A: Yeah, I know. Chef takes to another level, right?,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: But yeah, the MKH forty is going to be about one thousand four hundred us. So if somebody's comparing mics and they look at this minuscule, laughably small mic and then they think, why would I ever use that over a four hundred and sixteen? Well, that's because it doesn't have the negative effects of a shotgun microphone.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Doesn't have any of the negatives. It doesn't have the negatives in terms of off axis phase problems.,: Yes.,Speaker A: You get a way more accurate pattern as you go off axis. Right. So that's one reason it's certainly very nice to work with, because it's so small.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: So it's never going to get in the way. But they're going to be extremely pop sensitive. Right. Because the capsule is right there at the grille. It's right in the front. Like any pencil mic. They work great on voice, but they pop like a mofo. Yeah, they pop really bad. So you have to have good mic technique and maybe a good pop screen. But they are quite an upgrade. Some really have found them to be quite an upgrade. Like an eighty forty from a forty one six.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: I would go with the eighty fifty because that's a super cardioid. That would be my choice if I was going this direction.,Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting. It's funny with shotguns and we were talking about this also before we jumped on because the road kit I set my daughter up with for her travels, I gave her the NTG three and we were just doing some testing a few hours ago just to make sure.,Speaker A: That is an RF mic too.,Speaker C: I believe it is an RF mic, but also it's quite bottom end.,Speaker A: It's eqed very differently. It is a very different tone from.,Speaker C: The forty one six, which I think for location is perfect because the further you get away from the source, the sound source, the thinner the audio gets. But if they've got that sort of hype bottom end, it actually keeps some of that in there in the sound, which is great for that kind of work. But it also sounds really good on a female voice. I mean, she sounds great on that ntG three. But when I put it up in front of me, I had one for a while, mud central. It just didn't work.,Speaker A: Muddy?,Speaker C: Oh yeah, it wasn't good.,Speaker A: You lose articulation. It doesn't have a crisp attack. It's very, yeah. There's another mic that's really popular because of its price point and that's the Cinco d two. Have you heard of that one?,Speaker C: No.,Speaker A: Very cheap shotgun mic. And of course it looks a lot like a forty one six. Of course, same color, same shape, same size, same everything. So of course it gets sold all over the Amazons and stuff as a cheap forty one six. But it sounds nothing at all like a forty one six. Nothing at all. Yeah, it's a very flat mic. Very flat, very dull. So when somebody sends me that sample, I know immediately I'm going to have to help the top end. And when I do that, up comes the noise. And that's the other problem with small diaphragm mics. Making a small diaphragm pencil or shotgun mic sound as low noise as a large diaphragm mic is no small feat. No, it's very difficult to do. So. That's another problem. You're never going to get a small capsule mic to be as quiet from a self noise perspective as you will a large diaphragm mic, even a cheaper diaphragm. Well, let's look at the rode nt one four or so db self noise. You're never ever going to find a small diaphragm mic with that kind of a measurement.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: What's funny is I'm reading the specs right now from the Senheiser mkh. Eighty fifty. They don't even quote the self noise.,Speaker C: Interesting.,Speaker A: Which to me is a way of saying it ain't so great, but it doesn't matter. This is a location mic. You're going to use it outside so it doesn't need to be that quiet.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: But still, it's a one thousand four hundred dollars mic and they don't quote the spec. So I find that kind of fascinating.,Speaker C: Yeah, but if you're buying a shotgun, and I know we've banged on about this before, but I still reckon the best value, the best bang for buck in any shotgun mic is the NTG five from road.,Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds once they got over there they had some growing pains with that. They did. We definitely had a few people with some issues and it seems that that has been sorted because I haven't heard of any of those kind of complaints of noise or whatever for well over a year now. It's been more than a year or two.,: I was a victim of one of those. The first one they sent me I had problems with, but sent it back and got a brand new one and haven't had any problems with it since. Full credit to road all.,Speaker A: I never ever had a problem replacing a mic.,: Yeah, and full credit to road. All I sent back was the actual mic and I got a whole new, whole new kit when they sent me back the new one. Typical of road.,Speaker A: Really.,Speaker C: So you got a nice little shock mount for your forty one sixes?,: Yeah, I've now got two of their shock mounts, which is kind of nice.,Speaker A: Well those are cool, man. If you were to go buy those pistol grip shock mounts with the rycoat style Lyre mount and everything, those are going to be one hundred dollars plus easily.,Speaker C: Easily.,Speaker A: And then the windscreen and everything else. I mean it's like one hundred and fifty dollars kit plus the mic.,: Yeah.,: And I do like it. It's standard fare in my room here. That or the austrian audio one or.,Speaker C: The other of the two. Yeah.,Speaker A: Mine pretty much lives permanently in my kit for going on the road and traveling. I have a pelican hard case and the ten TG five lives in there. It's just always there, ready to go.,: Yeah. Well, you know what I need to figure out now, thinking about that is cutting the foam in the road kit for my english channel so that the NTG five fits in there and then I've got it all in one case that's what I need to figure out.,Speaker A: Oh yeah. It seemed that there was enough space in there to squeeze in a shotgun mic.,: Absolutely. Just pick up the bag and away you go.,Speaker A: That'd be a sick kit, wouldn't it? Oh, man.,Speaker C: Fantastic.,Speaker A: I did actually dig around and I went on the recording hacks website, which is a great database of microphones recordinghacks. Com. And while it's missing mics here and there for sure, it does have pretty much all the Neumans and Sennheisers and the bigger brands and stuff. And I found the eighty fifty and they actually do list a self noise rating of thirteen DBA weighted. So the Sennheiser four hundred and sixteen is like sixteen, I believe. Okay, so they managed to shave three db of the self noise.,Speaker C: I think the NTG three is about the same. About twelve or thirteen from memory.,Speaker A: Yeah. That's good. I mean, it's going to be hard to find a lower value than that. I haven't seen. I mean, maybe Sheps has something quieter. Possibly. I haven't looked, but. S-C-H-O-E-P-P-S. Is that how you spell.,: Am I thinking of the engineer or the. Is it double P?,Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's confusing because you have the mic called sheps.,: Yes.,Speaker A: And you have the engineer, and I.,: Can'T remember whether it's double P for the engineer or double P for the mic. One of them has two.,Speaker A: I guess I kez guessed it right. It's S-C-H-O-E-P-S. So the CMC five, which is one of the quintessential chefs shotgun mics, is. It's got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Different capsule options.,: Wow.,Speaker C: Bloody hell.,: Wow.,Speaker A: They have this huge array of capsules that thread onto the body depending on what you're doing. So let's look at a cardioid. Let's look at a super cardioid, the mk forty one. It does not list a noise spec.,: Right?,Speaker A: There's no noise spec listed anywhere. There.,Speaker C: Kind of old school, isn't. It's like the old cmv microphones from Neumann back in the. Would have been thirty s. Forty s where you got the bottle. And instead of having a switch to go from cardioid figure eight to omni or whatever, you unscrewed the capsule and put new capsule on the top.,Speaker A: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, actually my mkhs. Sorry, my octavus. Same deal. I have three capsules per mic, but that whole kit with two mics and all the capsules costs less than one of these capsules.,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: You start realizing the difference in cost is pretty stark. I mean, they said the capsules are anywhere from eight hundred dollars to one thousand four hundred dollars for one capsule.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: I do like the idea of the ships. The shotgun, that's blue. I mean if you had that in the booth and as soon as you see that color, you go, oh, okay, somebody's serious.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Have you ever seen their v four u model? It has a blue bottle and then the grille has this very cool deco style grille. It's very cool looking. Look it up sometime for you. And it's a neat looking mic and it has a quirky thing. It's that the capsule has a slightly hinged head so you can tilt the capsule forward and back a little bit. Like ten degrees, twenty degrees.,Speaker C: Oh God, that looks good.,Speaker A: But it's a cool looking mic.,Speaker C: That is very tasty. Yeah, don't Google Robbie, you'll get blow your machine up.,: Well, I'm doing it on my iPad, but it's saying there's some problem with the website and I can't get on there. So I don't know what's going on.,Speaker A: V four U is three thousand dollars retail. And then it has a pretty flat response curve. I mean it has a small presence rise at four k, which is typical, but it's only like two or to three db rise. So it's pretty flat.,Speaker C: That is insane.,Speaker A: I remember trying it at one of the nams or whatever and being like, wow, that's a cool sounding mic.,Speaker C: It looks really neat, very tasty.,Speaker A: Oh, that's how much it costs.,Speaker C: Okay. Yeah, I might get one in the next lifetime. Yeah, I was in Tokyo and I saw a dunhill store and I went in there and they had these linen bucket hats and caps and stuff. I thought, wow, they're really cool. And I was looking at the price and tried on the bucket hat and it's like, yeah, I'll get that. So I said, yeah, I'll take this one. I said, actually, I might even get the cap as well. And the guy's looking at me going, no, you don't need the cap as well. Just take this hat. That's all you need. I'm like really doing yourself out of a sale here.,: Okay, whatever.,Speaker C: So I bought the thing and I'm walking back to the hotel and then I'm doing the calculation in my head and thinking I just got a bargain of thirty five dollars. I sort of went, hang on a minute. I got the digital point in the wrong spot.,Speaker A: I just paid three off of zero.,Speaker C: Three hundred and fifty bucks for a bucket hat?,: Yeah, right.,Speaker C: Dear, oh dear, oh dear. Anyway, yeah, well, that was fun.,Speaker B: Is it over?,: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribut and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robo. Got your own audio issues? Just askrobo. Com tech support from George the tech don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our websiteproudiosuite. Com.
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RF noise rejection is a pretty complicated thing. We try to make sense of it...
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
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And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
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We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, itâs an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners.https://georgethe.tech/tpas
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Summary
In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, professional audio experts George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren Robertson, and Andrew Peters explore the concept of RF technology in microphones and its benefits like noise rejection and immunity to humidity. They consider whether RF technology should factor into buying decisions when it comes to shotgun mics. The team also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different types of mics including small diaphragm and pencil condenser mics. They share their top pick for the best value shotgun micâthe NTG 5 from Roadâand discuss the impressive feats of engineering that go into manufacturing low noise mics. Lastly, they discuss the stark cost differences between mic capsules and complete kits before considering the features of the V4U model.#ProAudioSuite #ShotgunMicTechnology #RFMicrophone
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:00:44) RF Microphone Technology
(00:07:04) Shotgun Mics for VO
(00:12:42) Small vs Large Mic Models
(00:17:55) Mic Capsules & Their Uses
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready be history, get started welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi.,Speaker C: Y'all ready be history, get started welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.,: These guys are professional. They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars, George Wittam, founder of Source elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech wisdom and Robo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check Thepro audiosuite.,Speaker B: Com line up learner. Here we go.,Speaker C: And of course, don't forget the code. Trip a p two hundred and that will get you two hundred dollars off your tribooth. Now, we're going to talk microphones today because there's one thing I don't think we've ever discussed, or not in depth anyway. Is RF on a shotgun mic? Now I'm assuming rf is radio frequency, but for anybody like me, what does it actually really mean? And should it be something that we consider when we're buying a shotgun mic?,Speaker A: You mean the fact that the microphone uses what they call an RF technology? Is that what you're referring? Sure. I'm sure Robert would know more about the details without me having to google it. I read about RF microphones for a few times and I think one of the side effects of a mic being RF technology, which by the way, has nothing to do with transmitting a radio signal, right. It's the ability for the microphone to reject noise. I don't know if I've ever heard of a four hundred and sixteen, for example, which is using this RF technology as having an issue. Picking up radio frequency noise. If anybody else has heard of that, if you've had a mic, a four hundred and sixteen picking up RFI, let me know. But one of the advantages of that technology is it's very highly immune to humidity.,Speaker C: Yeah, that's what I heard.,Speaker A: And why that exactly is, is definitely beyond my pay grade.,Speaker C: Isn't it something to do with the way inside the microphone? Each part talks to itself, like talks to each other. It uses like a radio frequency inside the microphone to communicate with itself. That's my vague recollection of what it actually is.,Speaker A: That is certainly plausible. I just wish I was more understanding of the technology.,: So we're talking about it rejecting radio frequencies, is that what you're saying? Like a shielded cable would reject?,Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's what it does. And if anyone's listening, we should do what everybody else does on their YouTube things. Leave us a comment in the comments section.,Speaker A: Can I do story time and read it to you?,Speaker C: Yes, do story time. Oh, I'm sitting comfortably, George.,: But read it in your best bedtime story voice, George.,Speaker A: Okay, yeah, well it would have to be in a german accent.,Speaker C: I'm not going to do that.,Speaker A: A bedtime german accent?,: No, that's scary.,Speaker C: That's really scary actually.,Speaker A: But there is a whole white paper from Senheiser and it's written by Manfred Hibbing and it's Sennheiser's professor. MkH condenser microphone sorry everybody, I'm sorry, but basically what it says is that high rf frequency solves a problem. So when the replacement of electronic valves by transistors commenced at the end of the fifty s, this change was also under consideration for condenser microphones. Reduced size, low supply voltages and lower power consumption were regarded as great benefits as well as being able to use simpler microphone cables. However, there was a basic problem. Direct replacement of the valve by a transistor was not possible due to the mismatch between the high impedance of the condenser capsule and the low input impedance of the transistor. Hence, for optimal matching, the capsule impedance needed to be drastically reduced. And then they go on to explain the impedance of capsules, et cetera, et cetera. So down to the next paragraph. How does RF microphone technology actually work? The principle is simple. After all that.,Speaker C: Yeah, sure it is.,Speaker A: Sound waves deflect the diaphragm of the condenser capsule and change the capacitance between the diaphragm and the nearby back electrode, or backplate. Contrary to the more common low frequency AF condenser method, the capacitance variations are not converted directly into audio signals, but modulate a high frequency radio frequency signal generated by an oscillator inside the microphone. This signal is then immediately demodulated inside the microphone, thus recreating the audio signal, but with a very low source impedance that is well suited for driving a transistor amplifier. Thusly, an RF condenser microphone is basically comprised of a transmitter and a receiver that are directly wired together. The RF signal is therefore kept inside the microphone only the audio signal is supplied to its output just like all other microphones. So yeah, what you were saying was pretty much usual for me.,Speaker C: What happened?,Speaker A: He picked it up through osmosis somewhere along the way.,Speaker C: That's right.,: Can I just say, Robert would make that a lot.,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: Yeah, sure. The thing with humidity, and here's a little paragraph about this, there is no other important benefit of the RF principle for practical use, the low electrical impedance of the capsule provides outstanding immunity against detrimental effects due to humidity, because even then, the leak resistance is very much larger than the capsule impedance. Thus, Mkh microphones, which I understand, all of those, all Mkh mics are RF mics. They're well suited for outdoor use. So this is why mkh mics, no matter whether they are the mkh four one five, forty one six, and I'm paraphrasing here, or any of the mkh stuff like the mkh forty. There's the eight thousand series, right? They have the eighty third. Eighty, twenty, eighty, thirty, eighty, forty, fifty, eighty, sixty. They have a whole new line. All of them are using this technology. And the reason for why it still persists to this day is it's excellent outside and thereby it's also excellent in a sweaty, hot, muggy voiceover booth.,Speaker C: If it's four x three x six. Yes, indeed.,Speaker A: Especially if it's four x three x six. Absolutely.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Talk about that outdoors, though, because this was something else where I got stuck in the rabbit hole that I mentioned before we started recording. Then there was a discussion about using shotgun mics inside. Now, this is basically for drama and stuff like that. So a boom op using a mic where they wouldn't use a shotgun inside, they would use a pencil. Small diaphragm, pencil condenser.,Speaker A: Yeah.,Speaker C: Now, if that's the case, if you're a field audio guy, why would you not use a pencil condenser as a voiceover person inside?,Speaker A: I don't know. I did have a pair, and I still do have a pair of pencil condensers, the classic octava mics that are so popular. And I used to use them to try to do field recordings. And I didn't know that much about mics at the time. And I would get the dreaded, we sometimes call it motorboating. It was like this.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Fluttering sound. And I didn't know why it was happening. I just knew it would happen. And it would always happen if I was outdoors and sometimes I was like, in a really humid environment and it would get really bad. And I was like, oh, no, the mic's bad. And then I'd bring the mic home and I'd pull it out of the box later and would be perfectly fine.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: So because with af microphones or audio frequency condensers, because they store a charge on a high impedance capsule, it's easy for that charge to find a way and leak across the insulation by riding on water molecules which cause those motorboat or crackling effects. So I don't know. I mean, I think it's just another added benefit of an RF mic is that you're just never going to have that problem. But Neumann, large diaphragm condenser mics where you have two diaphragms extremely close to each other, even if it's a cardioid, there's still two. There's the diaphragm in the front that takes the sound wave and then there's one on the back that picks up the signal, creating the changes in capacitance, blah, blah, blah. And those are so close together that water molecules actually transmit the electricity.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: It's amazing.,Speaker A: And create the static.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Do you know anybody who does use any pencil Mic for doing voiceover in their. I do.,Speaker A: I know people that use the eighty series or the eight thousand series, but those are MKh mics. So I believe all the eight thousand series Mkh mics are also rf.,Speaker C: Is that the eighty fifty?,Speaker A: Is that like the eighty fifty? The eighty twenty, eighty thirty are tiny little stubby capsules. I mean, they're mini because I guess they have the most condensed electronics and boy, are they expensive.,: Yes.,Speaker A: This is a stereo set. So I'm looking at two thousand eight hundred for a stereo set.,Speaker C: Don't look at the chefs then.,Speaker A: Yeah, I know. Chef takes to another level, right?,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: But yeah, the MKH forty is going to be about one thousand four hundred us. So if somebody's comparing mics and they look at this minuscule, laughably small mic and then they think, why would I ever use that over a four hundred and sixteen? Well, that's because it doesn't have the negative effects of a shotgun microphone.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Doesn't have any of the negatives. It doesn't have the negatives in terms of off axis phase problems.,: Yes.,Speaker A: You get a way more accurate pattern as you go off axis. Right. So that's one reason it's certainly very nice to work with, because it's so small.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: So it's never going to get in the way. But they're going to be extremely pop sensitive. Right. Because the capsule is right there at the grille. It's right in the front. Like any pencil mic. They work great on voice, but they pop like a mofo. Yeah, they pop really bad. So you have to have good mic technique and maybe a good pop screen. But they are quite an upgrade. Some really have found them to be quite an upgrade. Like an eighty forty from a forty one six.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: I would go with the eighty fifty because that's a super cardioid. That would be my choice if I was going this direction.,Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting. It's funny with shotguns and we were talking about this also before we jumped on because the road kit I set my daughter up with for her travels, I gave her the NTG three and we were just doing some testing a few hours ago just to make sure.,Speaker A: That is an RF mic too.,Speaker C: I believe it is an RF mic, but also it's quite bottom end.,Speaker A: It's eqed very differently. It is a very different tone from.,Speaker C: The forty one six, which I think for location is perfect because the further you get away from the source, the sound source, the thinner the audio gets. But if they've got that sort of hype bottom end, it actually keeps some of that in there in the sound, which is great for that kind of work. But it also sounds really good on a female voice. I mean, she sounds great on that ntG three. But when I put it up in front of me, I had one for a while, mud central. It just didn't work.,Speaker A: Muddy?,Speaker C: Oh yeah, it wasn't good.,Speaker A: You lose articulation. It doesn't have a crisp attack. It's very, yeah. There's another mic that's really popular because of its price point and that's the Cinco d two. Have you heard of that one?,Speaker C: No.,Speaker A: Very cheap shotgun mic. And of course it looks a lot like a forty one six. Of course, same color, same shape, same size, same everything. So of course it gets sold all over the Amazons and stuff as a cheap forty one six. But it sounds nothing at all like a forty one six. Nothing at all. Yeah, it's a very flat mic. Very flat, very dull. So when somebody sends me that sample, I know immediately I'm going to have to help the top end. And when I do that, up comes the noise. And that's the other problem with small diaphragm mics. Making a small diaphragm pencil or shotgun mic sound as low noise as a large diaphragm mic is no small feat. No, it's very difficult to do. So. That's another problem. You're never going to get a small capsule mic to be as quiet from a self noise perspective as you will a large diaphragm mic, even a cheaper diaphragm. Well, let's look at the rode nt one four or so db self noise. You're never ever going to find a small diaphragm mic with that kind of a measurement.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: What's funny is I'm reading the specs right now from the Senheiser mkh. Eighty fifty. They don't even quote the self noise.,Speaker C: Interesting.,Speaker A: Which to me is a way of saying it ain't so great, but it doesn't matter. This is a location mic. You're going to use it outside so it doesn't need to be that quiet.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: But still, it's a one thousand four hundred dollars mic and they don't quote the spec. So I find that kind of fascinating.,Speaker C: Yeah, but if you're buying a shotgun, and I know we've banged on about this before, but I still reckon the best value, the best bang for buck in any shotgun mic is the NTG five from road.,Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds once they got over there they had some growing pains with that. They did. We definitely had a few people with some issues and it seems that that has been sorted because I haven't heard of any of those kind of complaints of noise or whatever for well over a year now. It's been more than a year or two.,: I was a victim of one of those. The first one they sent me I had problems with, but sent it back and got a brand new one and haven't had any problems with it since. Full credit to road all.,Speaker A: I never ever had a problem replacing a mic.,: Yeah, and full credit to road. All I sent back was the actual mic and I got a whole new, whole new kit when they sent me back the new one. Typical of road.,Speaker A: Really.,Speaker C: So you got a nice little shock mount for your forty one sixes?,: Yeah, I've now got two of their shock mounts, which is kind of nice.,Speaker A: Well those are cool, man. If you were to go buy those pistol grip shock mounts with the rycoat style Lyre mount and everything, those are going to be one hundred dollars plus easily.,Speaker C: Easily.,Speaker A: And then the windscreen and everything else. I mean it's like one hundred and fifty dollars kit plus the mic.,: Yeah.,: And I do like it. It's standard fare in my room here. That or the austrian audio one or.,Speaker C: The other of the two. Yeah.,Speaker A: Mine pretty much lives permanently in my kit for going on the road and traveling. I have a pelican hard case and the ten TG five lives in there. It's just always there, ready to go.,: Yeah. Well, you know what I need to figure out now, thinking about that is cutting the foam in the road kit for my english channel so that the NTG five fits in there and then I've got it all in one case that's what I need to figure out.,Speaker A: Oh yeah. It seemed that there was enough space in there to squeeze in a shotgun mic.,: Absolutely. Just pick up the bag and away you go.,Speaker A: That'd be a sick kit, wouldn't it? Oh, man.,Speaker C: Fantastic.,Speaker A: I did actually dig around and I went on the recording hacks website, which is a great database of microphones recordinghacks. Com. And while it's missing mics here and there for sure, it does have pretty much all the Neumans and Sennheisers and the bigger brands and stuff. And I found the eighty fifty and they actually do list a self noise rating of thirteen DBA weighted. So the Sennheiser four hundred and sixteen is like sixteen, I believe. Okay, so they managed to shave three db of the self noise.,Speaker C: I think the NTG three is about the same. About twelve or thirteen from memory.,Speaker A: Yeah. That's good. I mean, it's going to be hard to find a lower value than that. I haven't seen. I mean, maybe Sheps has something quieter. Possibly. I haven't looked, but. S-C-H-O-E-P-P-S. Is that how you spell.,: Am I thinking of the engineer or the. Is it double P?,Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's confusing because you have the mic called sheps.,: Yes.,Speaker A: And you have the engineer, and I.,: Can'T remember whether it's double P for the engineer or double P for the mic. One of them has two.,Speaker A: I guess I kez guessed it right. It's S-C-H-O-E-P-S. So the CMC five, which is one of the quintessential chefs shotgun mics, is. It's got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Different capsule options.,: Wow.,Speaker C: Bloody hell.,: Wow.,Speaker A: They have this huge array of capsules that thread onto the body depending on what you're doing. So let's look at a cardioid. Let's look at a super cardioid, the mk forty one. It does not list a noise spec.,: Right?,Speaker A: There's no noise spec listed anywhere. There.,Speaker C: Kind of old school, isn't. It's like the old cmv microphones from Neumann back in the. Would have been thirty s. Forty s where you got the bottle. And instead of having a switch to go from cardioid figure eight to omni or whatever, you unscrewed the capsule and put new capsule on the top.,Speaker A: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, actually my mkhs. Sorry, my octavus. Same deal. I have three capsules per mic, but that whole kit with two mics and all the capsules costs less than one of these capsules.,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: You start realizing the difference in cost is pretty stark. I mean, they said the capsules are anywhere from eight hundred dollars to one thousand four hundred dollars for one capsule.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: I do like the idea of the ships. The shotgun, that's blue. I mean if you had that in the booth and as soon as you see that color, you go, oh, okay, somebody's serious.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Have you ever seen their v four u model? It has a blue bottle and then the grille has this very cool deco style grille. It's very cool looking. Look it up sometime for you. And it's a neat looking mic and it has a quirky thing. It's that the capsule has a slightly hinged head so you can tilt the capsule forward and back a little bit. Like ten degrees, twenty degrees.,Speaker C: Oh God, that looks good.,Speaker A: But it's a cool looking mic.,Speaker C: That is very tasty. Yeah, don't Google Robbie, you'll get blow your machine up.,: Well, I'm doing it on my iPad, but it's saying there's some problem with the website and I can't get on there. So I don't know what's going on.,Speaker A: V four U is three thousand dollars retail. And then it has a pretty flat response curve. I mean it has a small presence rise at four k, which is typical, but it's only like two or to three db rise. So it's pretty flat.,Speaker C: That is insane.,Speaker A: I remember trying it at one of the nams or whatever and being like, wow, that's a cool sounding mic.,Speaker C: It looks really neat, very tasty.,Speaker A: Oh, that's how much it costs.,Speaker C: Okay. Yeah, I might get one in the next lifetime. Yeah, I was in Tokyo and I saw a dunhill store and I went in there and they had these linen bucket hats and caps and stuff. I thought, wow, they're really cool. And I was looking at the price and tried on the bucket hat and it's like, yeah, I'll get that. So I said, yeah, I'll take this one. I said, actually, I might even get the cap as well. And the guy's looking at me going, no, you don't need the cap as well. Just take this hat. That's all you need. I'm like really doing yourself out of a sale here.,: Okay, whatever.,Speaker C: So I bought the thing and I'm walking back to the hotel and then I'm doing the calculation in my head and thinking I just got a bargain of thirty five dollars. I sort of went, hang on a minute. I got the digital point in the wrong spot.,Speaker A: I just paid three off of zero.,Speaker C: Three hundred and fifty bucks for a bucket hat?,: Yeah, right.,Speaker C: Dear, oh dear, oh dear. Anyway, yeah, well, that was fun.,Speaker B: Is it over?,: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribut and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robo. Got your own audio issues? Just askrobo. Com tech support from George the tech don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our websiteproudiosuite. Com.
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The English Channel is a set of three, premium-quality Signal Processing Devices, designed to help you sound your best, anywhere. Quickly shape your vocal sound making it ready for live streaming or recording. The English Channel includes SoapBox, a Studio Mic Pre, Gate, Compressor and De-Esser, and BlackCabâą, a Parametric EQ with Sonic Enhancer. Rounding out the channel strip is PortCaster R4S, a Streaming USB-C Audio Interface with an SD Card Recorder. These tools use proven technology found in British recording consoles, hence the name. A full complement of vintage, tone-shaping goodness, The English Channel features sweet, warm-sounding "old-school analog processing". This means immediate adjustments and instant monitoring over headphones. No menus, no wasted time. Reach for the control and make the adjustment without taking your eyes off the action. Robbo has been sent one from the guys at Centrance and opens the box with George and AP..
A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth...
https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, itâs an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners.https://georgethe.tech/tpas
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Summary
In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, hosts George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren Robbo Robertson, and Andrew Peters unbox the English Channel, an audio studio in a box. This piece of technology is described as having three sections: a preamp, a filter, and an inbuilt compressor, which work together to produce a unique mix. Additionally, discussions highlight the Portcaster Vo Vo, a tool favored by content creators for its ability to switch from mono to stereo. The final product, Passport VO, an item with an inbuilt card recorder that can record and playback without clipping, is introduced and admired for its sturdy metal casing and ease of use for those with a basic understanding of audio. The hosts conclude with news of limited availability for the first batch of the technology and the upcoming guest appearance from Michael at Sentrance.#ProAudioUnboxing #EnglishChannelAudioStudio #PodcastTechTalks
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Show Introduction
(00:00:46) Audio Studio in a Box
(00:05:27) Unit Power and USB Input
(00:10:12) Portcaster XLM 103 Analysis
(00:16:00) Passport VO Microphone Switch
(00:23:47) Michael's Experience with Sentrance
(00:28:47) Difficulty Quoting Dates
(00:31:35) Conclusion & Final Thoughts
Transcript
Speaker A: And here we are again with another show. And we have another unboxing, something very special. And Robo's a very lucky boy.,Speaker B: Welcome.,Speaker C: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.,Speaker B: These guys are professional and motivated with tech. To the VO stars, George Wittam, founder of Source Element Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, Austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the Tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check ThePro Audiosuite.com.,: What you got, Robo?,Speaker C: I've got a little black box of magic.,: What did you get that I didn't get way down under before you'd ship it across the country. What the heck?,Speaker C: Very early Christmas present. And it's very cool. Can you see the black box? It's like a flight recorder. That was my first impression. It was like, whoa, what's this?,: It's very cool. Nice little kit. So what's this thing called?,Speaker C: And it's rock solid. It's called the English Channel. It's an audio studio in a box, effectively. So if we crack it open, there's this piece of magic inside. And I'm guessing that we can all.,: See that there's three separate units, is what I'm seeing.,Speaker C: Yeah. So there's three of Sentrance's units. All. Well, they're not linked together at the moment because you need to do that with these XLRs and USB connectors at the bottom. But it's very simple. Gotcha. Which we'll talk through in a minute. Effectively, you've got your pre and effects. So in the soapbox is your gain and your high pass, low pass filter, all that sort of stuff. There's a gate.,: So the soapbox is the preamp.,Speaker C: The soapbox is your preamp. So your mic goes into here and then it joins it. Daisy chains across the top to the others. But in the soapbox. Yeah, there's your high and your lowest pass filters, your 48 and your pad. And then you've got your gain, obviously, and a dry, wet mix for your effects, which we'll get to in a sec, including the gate, which is here, and a Deesser. And also the option to check to select the frequency the DS is working on, which I think is the bit of magic. You've also got an inbuilt compressor, which obviously is using a preset knee and ratio and all that sort of stuff. But from testing it out with AP the other week when it turned up, it's actually, not too bad. Used in moderation, and also when used in conjunction with the mix knob. So wet is full on wet. For those who are not sure what a mix knob is, full on wet is everything working at its capacity. But then when you use the mix knob and you start bringing it back towards dry, that processed effect is being mixed with the original signal coming in from the microphone.,: Interesting, because that is not a knob that most people are going to have in their signal chain. Like you have a single rack piece of gear. Let's say it's a channel strip. I'm thinking of a DBX 286. I know he's thinking of that piece of gear a lot when he developed a soapbox. The signal goes left to right, it goes preamp, then it goes through each thing in that sequence, and then it comes out the other end and it's all wet. You can't blend it. Here you have a blend, which gives you an interesting level of creativity in terms of controlling all that.,Speaker C: That's right. So even if you find that you've got to wind up the compression a bit more to get whatever the desired effect is you're looking for, you can still manage that, micromanage that by sort of then playing with your mix to get it just right, which is kind of clever. So I'm really impressed with that. I thought that.,: So that first box of soapbox has a preamp.,Speaker C: Yeah, has your preamp.,: It has a high pass filter.,Speaker C: High pass and low pass.,: Actually, no, just high pass.,Speaker C: Just a high pass. And then something called High Z. Oh.,: High Z would be for a guitar. Yeah, because it's got a high Z combo.,Speaker C: That's right. Well, that's the other thing, actually. Yeah. You can use this as a DI, but we'll get to that, I guess.,: And then it's got 2 meters. Is one an input meter and one an output meter? Yeah.,Speaker C: So one's an input meter and one's an out. But it's also showing you. Well. Yeah, so you can see your compression working, basically. You can sort of see what's coming in and what's going out when you're dialing in your compressor, which is kind of nice.,: Got it. And what are the three little lights across the top? Looks like? There's three LEDs.,Speaker C: So that's just showing you when your gate's working, when your gates kicking in and out. Then your compressor. Your compressor and your DS are working.,: XLR mail output. Is that right? Is there a dial on the back?,Speaker C: There's a switch there. There's your on off switch? I'm back here. Yes. So that's just your brightness of those lights back there that you can see.,: Okay.,Speaker C: So you can sort of make those a bit brighter or a bit duller.,: Oh that's cool.,Speaker C: Yeah, very cool. So then using the XLRs we then daisy chain from the soapbox into the black cab, which is his EQ.,: Does it come with cute little XLR?,Speaker C: It does actually. In fact we should have gone through that first in here. He's thought of everything. Can I just say, he's really switched on with this. You've got your little short XLRs in here which is very cool. So if we were putting this together we would be sort of daisy chaining from there to there like that, which is kind of cool. And then from there to the port caster. So you've got two of those all packed away and in nice little padded pouches too. Can I just say? And then in the other one, which is also very nice, we have the USBC connectors because the power also daisy chains. So the power comes into the soapbox and then using these USBs you can daisy chain to each of the other boxes. And he also gives you two USB C's for the power in and also one to go back to your computer interface, whatever it is you're using as well.,: Okay, so each one of these units needs power and they each have a USB input for power. But you don't need to have three power supplies then.,Speaker C: No. So you just use the shorter USBCs that he's provided like those XLRs and just daisy chain through each one. He's also given the long ones as well. But the nice thing that I think is really clever is if you haven't got USBC. He's also included the adapters for normal USB which is sort of nice.,: Nice.,Speaker C: So he's thought of everything.,: Not everybody does that product where I actually opened up a sound devices mix pre three for a client a couple of weeks ago. It's not a cheap unit, 600 $700 unit and there was no adapter and I was dead in the water until I went and got the right.,Speaker C: And isn't that the frustrating part? You get this cool piece of equipment like this land on your desk and you're like oh shit, I got to wait till I can get to it.,: Cost here so little for a manufacturer to throw those adapters, give you that extra thing and it's nice. I'm really glad he thinks of that.,Speaker C: Yeah, I was really impressed. Into the black cab is the next little box and you've got high mids and lows.,: Three band sweep.,Speaker C: Three bands, sweethearts, sweepable. They actually sound quite nice. And then again, up the top, you've got your high pass air, which is, I would presume, extra high. And you've got a pad and you've got a bypass as well. So if you don't want to put your EQ in there, listen up, voiceover artists, you can bypass that.,: Is there a hard bypass?,Speaker C: Yeah, that's his switch. Switch, yeah, it's a switch. And that's the other thing that he included in here, which I have to say, these switches are all sort of recessed into the top. But he includes one of those little metal things he used. The SIM card tool. Yeah, he includes one of those. So you can get in there and you don't have to use your pen or whatever else you can get in there with that and switch them on and off as well, Michael.,: So if you do want to bypass it on the fly, it's not something where it's just a button. You do have to kind of. You got to use the little pick to.,Speaker C: You do switch that? Yeah, you do. Or a toothpick or a pen or whatever, a paperclip, whatever you can get your hands on.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: So that's kind of nice. I think the only thing that I missed on here was a low shelf and a high shelf for me. These are all your sort of curves as opposed to an actual shelf.,: They're all bells.,Speaker C: Yeah, but again, bell shaped. That's right. Yeah, I said curve. But you get my point. Exactly. But I guess realistically, if you were doing a voice, you probably wouldn't be using the EQ section anyway. Well, I hope you wouldn't be.,Speaker A: Well, the other thing is, I don't think it's not targeted for someone like me. That's overkill and stuff on there. I would never use.,Speaker C: Yeah, true.,: Where I would see it being useful if somebody had it would be for making a small correction. So if you don't have quite the right mic, there's a lot of people that have a Neumann TLM 103 that shouldn't have one. And that mic is very upper. It's got a big upper shelf on it. I mean, it has quite a bit of a sibilance peak. And there's a lot of women who are being told to use that mic for some reason, or their friends have one and they go buy that mic and it's just really sibilant. So to be able to go in there and then smooth out that shelf with an EQ and just leave it, set it and forget it would be pretty sweet. That's where I could see the EQ coming into play. Or if you're in a small booth and the low end is not quite well controlled, you haven't done a good job of eqing the room or you did your best and it's still boomy. Having a little way to sculpt the low end would be helpful.,Speaker C: I told you George would know.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Yes.,: So the soapbox.,Speaker C: The black cab middle one. Yep, the black cab.,: The black cab. And then it goes into the.,Speaker C: Really, for the content creators out there, this is the really sexy and useful part of this thing, is you obviously have your mic that you've plugged in down onto the soapbox. You have that come in here and that's been through your processing chain, but in sort of shades of the passport Vo. You can also plug in your phone to here.,: I happen to have a Portcaster pro, by the way, and I love it.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: When I do it is awesome because of that phone patch functionality, the onboard recording, I mean, I'm using it for me. I'm using it as a field recorder for DOing field reporting, doing video interviews where I want to capture the audio in super high quality. I also used it in the video we did a while ago where we were at the. Actually, I don't think we did it for our show, but I did some videos recently that I [email protected], where I was inside the vocal booth. And in the video, if you happen to see it, you'll see me holding something in my hand. And that's the Portcaster. Yeah.,Speaker C: Right. Yeah, I saw it.,: To get a super high quality recording right off of the microphones we were using in the. Yeah, that's.,Speaker C: And when we see the rest of it, the question would be, why wouldn't you? Because you also got another mic input that can come into there. You've got a mono stereo blend. Now, I didn't play with this, George, because. So maybe you can give me a bit more. You could be a bit clearer about my understanding, and maybe I've got it wrong. But if you have two mics, does the mono stereo split them? Is that what I'm doing? If it's in mono, I'm hearing them both in both ears. But if I wind up the stereo, is it putting one in one ear and one in the other? Is that what I'm doing?,: Yeah, it's an interesting design choice. I mean that Michael did it. Because when it's in mono, it's just a mono mix of left and right. Everything comes down the middle. As you turn towards stereo, it now starts to separate them into a stereo channel.,Speaker C: So it's like a pan.,: And that's kind of unusual. Usually you either have mono or you have stereo. And here you have a knob. So you have anywhere from Mono to stereo.,Speaker C: Does that affect what's going out? Does that affect my output from here? Or is it only what I'm listening to?,: So that affects what goes to the line output. So if you're plugging it into a phone or a camera, and I believe it also affects what goes to the USB output that goes to the computer.,Speaker C: Because if you were doing a line.,: I think it affects all three, the recording, the line out and the USB.,Speaker C: Because if you were doing a live broadcast or something with this thing, that would make sense. Because me being me, I like to pan our show so that everybody's got their own little space. If you were doing a live broadcast, you could do that with here as well, I guess.,: Yeah. Or if you just want to have full separation of your two mic channels. Full left pan. Right, full left and right pan. You just turn that all the way to the right. And now your mic two is on channel two.,Speaker C: There you go. And you've got your separation. If you want to do it in post later on or whatever. Yeah, very nice.,: And I like that because the really basic interfaces, like the Scarlets and SSL Two s and the like, there is no option. Channel one is track one left. Channel two is track two right, period. So now you get a mixer where you can actually blend them and set them the way you want.,Speaker C: Yeah, very cool.,Speaker A: That's nice.,Speaker C: That's good. Your auxiliaries, there's two of. So you've got your mix of those down here. And then obviously volume, which is your monitoring. And what I missed up the top, which is also kind of nice, is you've got a limiter on both the XLR inputs, actually. I also think you can also put that limiter across your phone, by the looks of it, as well.,: Yeah, you know what? That's a darn good question. I don't know if the limiter circuit includes the phone patch function or if it's only for the preamp. I never saw the diagram and I haven't tested it. I have used all those functions, but I didn't notice whether the.,Speaker C: I'm presuming that it might affect the phone because it's on the same sort of eyesight level as that switch between the microphone and the phone. So might not.,: Yeah, we'd have to look at a signal flow diagram. When we designed the passport VO, that was a huge part of our time was spent scrutinizing, tweaking and adjusting the signal flow diagram to figure out where the switch is, where the knob is, where is each single piece in the signal flow as it goes. Know I'll take my opportunity to use this product here to promote our product. The reason we created Passport VO is because as feature riches of what this thing is that Robo is holding here, because this does things ours isn't going to, you know, three fully sweepable EQ bands Deesser things like that. But the reason we made the passport was there are really nuanced, interesting things we wanted to do with the signal path. We wanted to be able to have a separate return from the computer and have that be recordable or send that back to the headphones or whatever.,Speaker C: Right.,: So that was a huge part of the design. So it would be interesting to see. I'm sure Michael will say, oh, no, of course, I did it this way because this makes the most sense.,Speaker C: That's right. Given the attention to detail with everything else that's in this packet, it wouldn't surprise me that the limiter was across both of. So then the rest of the power of this beast is on the bottom down here for me, which is. And again, you'll probably expand more on what I've been able to play with in the short amount of time I've had it. But you have an inbuilt card recorder, right? So the micro SD, so you can record, you can play back off that. And I presume that only plays back to your headphones and not out the USB would be my guess.,: That does sound correct to me. There are things I use my unit for that I've done with it and I've never tried playing and then recording USB and seeing if it comes out. I don't think that it does that.,Speaker C: It would be very cool if it did. It would be very cool. I'd be well chuffed with Michael if he thought of that. But, yeah, maybe not. So then you've got the power daisy chain over that side and then the USB on the other side is your output back to your computer. 48 volts, obviously, monitoring in stereo mono, and a high and low output selector. What am I thinking of, George?,: What's the word? Oh, yeah, that's the line output pad switch. So if you're plugging this into a line level signal recorder. Let's say you plug it into, I don't know, some cameras and some devices can take a line level and other cameras can only take mic level. So having that switch means that if you plug this into your handicam, your DSLR, whatever your camera is, as long as you have it on low, you won't clip the input of the camera and distort the hell out of the audio.,Speaker C: Yeah, right.,: How many times have you seen like some low budget video production or TV where the audio is completely over modulated because they're shoving a mixer signal into their camera input, which is a mic input.,Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.,: It's designed to take this mic, plug that with an adapter to an 8th inch jack and plug it into the camera. That's what it's for.,Speaker C: Exactly. Yeah.,: So this can output either level without clipping.,Speaker A: So who do you think this is targeting? Robo?,: Yeah, that's a great question.,Speaker C: Who do I think it's targeting? I think definitely sort of content creators at home who maybe don't want to invest in a door or an expensive door or plugins or whatever, just want to be able to record and edit and spit it out. So it gives them the flexibility to add some of those features that are in here, the compression and the gating and all that sort of stuff. The thing that occurred to me after 35 years in radio is that outside broadcasting for radio, this thing would be perfect because you can plug your announcer mic in. You've got a guest mic should you need it. And you could use the phone return, or you could use the auxiliary input to monitor what's happening in the studio. So you can hear your music, you can hear the commercials, you can hear the callers coming in. But you could be sitting outside your local.,: Can be the return from the studio. Exactly.,Speaker C: You could be sitting outside your local store who's having a promotion that day doing your radio broadcast with basically just this and a laptop with a source connect connection. Hello.,: To me is the killer app for this thing. Is using it for Field broadcast?,Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.,: Awesome. For field broadcast. Absolutely. I also see it being accompanying a musician when they're traveling. They might want to run their guitar rig through this, or they might want to capture their stage kit, or they might want to use it in the room, their hotel room, to do jamming or practicing or laying down tracks or there's a lot of interesting ways to use it. I certainly don't see the typical voice actor using a full blown channel strip or an EQ like that. Probably not typically, if you happen to be a producer or engineer and you know how to fine tune that stuff, then maybe. Or if you got one and you had me or Robert or Robo tuning it for you, like, all right, let's add a little bit more of the low know, which I do that occasionally. I talk people through on Zoom or whatever, and I explain how to adjust everything. Source connect is really the best because you can hear the absolute detail. And then I can have somebody adjust the knobs on their unit. That's where this thing could be really killer.,Speaker C: It really is. Well, it's actually more than that. It's a three, four channel console in a box, really, because you got your mic input and then you've got your couple of other line inputs and all that sort of stuff that you can play around with as well. So it's basically a tiny console in a box, really.,: I meant to ask you, I know the Portcaster is USB power or battery power. The other two units require power, correct?,Speaker C: Yeah, they both require power, which comes from that daisy chaining sort of thing.,: Right.,Speaker C: And then the other cool thing, just as an aside, and I guess, for whatever reason, let's say I was going to record somewhere, and all I needed was the podcaster. When you flip these things over, you can unscrew them, and you don't need a screwdriver or anything. You can unscrew them and you can.,: Just take the one you bolted to the tree.,Speaker C: That's right. So you can just. Okay, I need the port caster, but I don't need anything else. So I'm just going to take that, throw that in my bag with a microphone, and I'm off. And my phone or whatever. He's thought of everything. I'm so impressed. It's very cool and very clever.,Speaker A: And what's the build quality?,Speaker C: It's really heavy. It's chunky. It's sturdy. These are all metal, the cases, by the feel of them.,: How do the Pot knobs feel? Do they have a nice.,Speaker C: And they're really comfortable to use. And they're not stiff. Stiff, but they're not so loose that you could just bump them, which is kind of nice, given that you'll be sort of moving it around a bit, I would imagine, and all that sort of stuff you can sort of almost set and forget. Like, you could do your setting before you left home. You might have to tweak it a little bit when you get somewhere. But I would imagine if you put it in the case and close the lid, you could arrive where you wanted to get to and it would still be set to where you were without being. Having been.,: Is this your first time hands on with sentrance equipment?,Speaker C: Yeah. I'd never heard of Sentrance until we started talking to them about the passport.,: I take it for granted because I've been dealing with or using Sentrance gear since 2009.,Speaker C: Yeah, right. Well, there you go.,: I'm really accustomed to the build quality and what they are. So it's cool that you're finally getting your hands on one because you're basically feeling by holding the podcaster you're going to feel exactly what the passport is going to feel like.,Speaker C: Man, I'll be sharing the love down here. I'll be honest with you. This thing is incredible. To finish off what else is in the bag. Which sort of just again, goes to show how much thought's gone into this.,: Thinking of everything. Yeah.,Speaker C: I mean he sent, this is now it's Us and he can't cover all countries. But there's your little plug which you can see, which is a US plug, but it's got your two USB connections for your power if you need that.,: But that's just a standard power supply for USB, right?,Speaker C: That's right, exactly.,: You've got a power adapter, a local power adapter in Australia of course.,Speaker C: And he can't do one.,: The power plug in Australia, are they unique to Australia or are they in common with parts of Asia?,Speaker C: Yeah, no, they're pretty much unique to here. So we've got three pin plugs. We've got an earth as well.,: Everything has an earth ground. Right.,Speaker C: Yeah. Without we've got. So we've got the positIve, negative Earth. We've got three pins. Yeah.,: It's crazy.,Speaker C: In the.,: US you can still buy lots of things without the Earth ground.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: Well this USB charger for Mac.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: That's extremely similar to a US one. It's just that the two pins are on slant. Yeah, the US is just parallel. Yeah, almost the same.,Speaker A: But normally I plug so. And I won't unplug anything because I'll probably turn something off.,: That'll be a bad sign. Don't unplug stuff while you're on this.,Speaker C: That's right. These are the bits that we always joke about that you'll never read but everything's. And I wanted to point this out.,: Only manuals for all of them.,Speaker C: Only because it sort of dumbs it. It's not dumbing it down, but it's so well explained that anybody who sort of has a general understanding of audio will be able to still sort of pick these things up and go, okay, I know what I need to do. They're clearly laid out. Everything's marked, everything's labeled nicely.,: Yeah, it's analog gear. It's got a USB, but it's analog. So each knob has a job. It's labeled what the knob does. So how much manual do you need when it's that straight versus something where it's like 15 layers of menus? I was setting up that mix pre three for my client. I was like, oh, my God, I need to open the manual, dude. I can't figure this thing out. To save my life, I had to watch YouTube videos and even to pass a signal to the Mac through the USB port. It was not intuitive whatsoever because it's all hidden inside little. The screen on that machine is like size of a post.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: Stamps.,: I don't know, bigger than a poacher stamp, but it's like this big. And so you're, like, touching the little. So having everything. A knob and a switch for one job, man, that's the dream. That's why I'm so excited about the passport.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So straightforward. No more firmware. Annoying stuff.,Speaker C: No more.,Speaker A: So we must be getting close, actually. How close are we to the passport video?,: Well, Michael has been giving us updates from time to know. I get emails. I don't know if you guys get emails, but I certainly get emails once or so, maybe a week, from somebody who's getting curious what's going on. There's still a projection of early spring, late winter, early spring, so March, April. It's such a moving target that it just doesn't feel right to quote any dates and times as soon as you do. It's the Elon Musk syndrome.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: Everything is, like, coming right? And you're like, hey, we've been waiting six years for this whole self fulfilled driving car thing, and they didn't hear you.,Speaker C: We're going to tell our advertisers to fuck off. Is that what we're going to do?,: I watched that whole interview. That was very interesting.,Speaker C: It was, isn't it?,: Yeah. So I'm always like, of the under promise, over deliver thing, but at the end of the day, it's going to come out when it's ready. And people don't like to hear that because we've had 87 eightyat of you have invested in that unit now at this point.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So we have a lot of people obviously vested in this.,Speaker C: It'll be worth the wait.,: But it's worth the wait. And it is definitely coming. Until we have had one in our hands to actually test a prototype, we won't be able to give you any definitive yes when it's coming. And it's funny if you look on the buy page on the actual [email protected]. We have a 4.8 star review. Six reviews. Six people are so excited.,Speaker C: Haven't even had.,: They've already given it a review.,Speaker C: They even got it. Yeah, there you go.,: Trust us, folks, it doesn't exist quite yet, but there are still some, believe it or not, available. There's twelve of the initial batch still available to buy. So when they do ship, you get it, you'll be able to get on that first batch. So stay tuned. We're all excited. And trust us, as soon as we have our unit in hand, just like Robo does, we'll be definitely be sharing it with you guys.,Speaker A: Indeed.,Speaker C: Indeed.,Speaker A: Now, we haven't made any reference to the fact you're wearing a Santa hat, George.,: Why would I be wearing a Santa hat anyway?,Speaker C: He's having a home classic.,: I put it on earlier, I did a video and I thought, I'll just leave it on.,Speaker C: Why not?,: You can't tell because it's too bright. But the lights are twinkling. There you go. Yeah.,Speaker C: We got a four star rating. And you got a four star Santa cap. I was going to say, and if.,: You'Re really good, I'll give you a five star.,Speaker A: That's funny. We've had a five star general. Now we've got a five star Santa. You may have noticed one thing that I obviously have been feeling a bit jealous about. Robo's hair, so.,: Robo.,Speaker C: I even had a haircut yesterday. Look at that.,: Mine is longer than ever. I've really let this thing go crazy seeing how long I can tolerate it, if I can make it through the end of the year.,Speaker C: So listen, guys, just before we wrap this thing up, just to bring this all together, I don't know whether I've told you guys, but we've got Michael from Sentrance coming on to do a video episode with us in a couple of weeks. To walk me through that, we're going to plug it in and have a play with it. So that should be a bit of an in depth dive. He might even make you look silly for once, George. I try, but I can never succeed. Maybe Michael will.,Speaker B: Leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say good day, drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com.
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Last week AP unboxed the new Mi Creatore set from Austrian Audio, this week we are putting it through it's paces. While its name implies that it might not be up to the rigours of professional voice over work, our tests might convince you otherwise...
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Summary
In this episode of Pro Audio Suite, we explore the audio capabilities of the Tributh vocal booth and Austrian audio equipment. On offer is a $200 discount code for listeners, invigorating discussions on the mastery of mic technique, a review of the sound quality of an Austrian Audio microphone, and the fantastic audio benefits of using a cardioid and hypercardioid pickup. Our panel pointed out the similar sound quality Austrian audio provides across varying price points, the possibilities of using the equipment in a stereo pair setting, and the pros of using a heavy-weighted stand. The episode concluded with an appreciation for the Pro Audio mic's simplicity, without any DSP, and its excellent headphone amplifier. This might just be an addition to your audio equipment wish list!#ProAudioInsights #MicTechniques #AustrianAudioReview
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction to Tributh & Austrian Audio
(00:01:01) Sample of Austrian Microphone
(00:02:30) Cardioid Vs. Hypercardioid
(00:04:46) User Feedback Request
(00:08:31) Integrating Multiple USB Mics
(00:11:53) Pro Audio Weight Material & Origin
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready?,Speaker B: Be history.,Speaker C: Get started.,Speaker B: Welcome.,Speaker C: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite.,Speaker A: These guys are professional, they're motivated.,Speaker B: Thanks to Tributh, the best vocal booth for home or on the road. Voice recording and Austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements and someone audio post Chicago. Darren robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging. Sydney to the Vo stars. George the tech Wittam from La.,: And me.,Speaker B: Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home, studio Guy.,Speaker C: Learn up, learner. Here we go.,: And don't forget the code trip a P 200. That will get you $200 off your purchase of the fabulous Triboof and Austrian Audio Making Passion Heard. And George.,Speaker A: GeorgeThe, tech TPAs for your discount codes and on over. If you need help.,: We all need help. I desperately need it, I'm told.,: Now, talking of Austrian audio, though, we did an unboxing on camera. That was last week. But anyway, this week we're giving you a sample of what it sounds like. And I keep popping. That's really naughty. This is the my creator. This is what the microphone sounds like. Any thoughts, chaps?,Speaker A: So this is just absolute, because right now mine's a bit hyped. I'm going through my 8118 and I'm definitely hyping it up quite a bit more than probably is necessary. So I'm going to flatten mine because I want to have a really good comparison. Okay. This is the eight one eight with no processing. Totally flat.,: Okay.,Speaker A: And let me hear you again.,: I'm on an unprocessed OC 16 then for a comparison, too.,: There you go.,Speaker A: Got it?,: Oh, yeah. And I've got a feeling I know it's like it's a bit of a weird test because different voices, but my feeling is listening in the headphones to both of you two. This one is closer to the OC 16 than the eight one eight.,: That was my first thought, the first time I heard you on it. Was it's very close to the 16?,: Yeah.,Speaker A: I'm looking to see what pattern I'm into because you guys would be on cardioid. I may not be. So I'm going to check mine.,: When you guys keep talking this one, because I'm pretty sure see, I keep popping.,: There's no professional on the other end of the microphone. That's the problem.,: Yeah, that's right.,: There's also no pop shield.,: If you've got shit mic technique, get a pop guard.,Speaker A: All right, well, now I'm on cardioid, which sounds a bit more natural. I was on a hyper before.,: It does, but it's not as hyped. It's not quite as 4160 sound.,Speaker A: Well, here's the thing. Like on the A one eight, when you're in cardioid, it's a true single capsule cardioid pickup. So you're actually only using the front capsule. So this would be more similar to you guys, because now I'm actually using a single capsule. When I go to hyper, the rear capsule comes into play and that's being mixed in out of phase to create that hypercardioid. So it definitely changes the way you sound on the mic.,: Did you flick it across it in.,: While I was talking, didn't you?,: Yes, it's the opposite to what you were telling. What I was hearing was the opposite to what you said, Robbo, because I think in hypercardioid there's more top end.,Speaker A: In static, it might be a more scooped sound, like more bass and more treble.,: Yeah, maybe that's.,: Yeah, could be.,: Maybe that's.,Speaker A: And this is more mid forward. Yeah, this sounds more mid forward to me.,: Yeah.,: But to me it's not as sort of hyped as this 16 or the creator that AP is on.,Speaker A: And we're hearing your mic, Robo, flat or are you still going through a change?,: No. I'm sending to you guys on source. Connect unprocessed. So I do have some processing in Pro Tools, but you guys aren't hearing that?,Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. It definitely sounds more hype.,: Let me turn it off. Hang on, maybe you are. Let me turn it off.,Speaker A: Hang on.,: Does that make a difference? Hello.,: Oh, yeah.,Speaker A: You sounded a bit like I was pretty hyped sounding earlier. When I turn this on, you get that extra sizzly top end. Yeah, I'll turn that off. And now I'm flat.,: Okay, so now we're all flat. Some kind of a noise gate going on there because all of a sudden I can hear.,: I did have a gate on.,Speaker A: Oh, yeah, me, too.,: Yes, I should have a gate on.,Speaker A: This will be an interesting post mix. You have to decide, Robbo, now, whether you process it in post or leave it. Totally.,: Well, that's the thing. I think I might just have to leave it.,Speaker A: Perhaps disclaimer this episode is raw.,: Is raw. Absolutely.,Speaker A: Just some limiting for the master.,: We're going bareback, but don't Google that.,: Isn't it interesting, though, that and we talked about this in the preview when AP was unboxing. It that Austrian audio have taken the time to make sure that all their products have a pretty similar sort of sound, regardless of price point, even, really, isn't it?,: Yeah.,Speaker A: The voicing of the capsules.,: Yeah.,: I mean, when you can say that an eight one eight, which is what, $1,500 or something, would that be right?,: I don't know. US?,Speaker A: About 1200.,: Yeah. So one $200 US. And you can say that it's reasonably close to the My creator, which is whatever we said that was 100 and something. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it?,: I'd be curious how this would sound. As I mentioned, when we're doing the unboxing in not a perfect environment. I mean, I've got to say that I'm sitting right next to a laptop computer screens. There's nothing in here that's diffusing any sound whatsoever except my buff head. But apart from that, there's nothing else. So it's not ideal, but I'm kind of thinking of more of a tight sort of environment where you're trying to obviously control some kind of ambient noise in a room that's pretty lively if you're traveling. How this would take to that, that's what I'd be interested in. And the other thing is how it takes to EQ as well. Could be an interesting one.,: So the other thing, though, is that, I mean, this is effectively also a stereo pair, right?,: Yeah.,: Because it comes with the stereo pair.,: Yeah.,: So it'd be interesting to hear it with that open.,: Well, imagine if you were doing here's an example. If you were a voice that did animation.,: Yeah.,: You could space these two mics out by maybe 18 inches or something, and then you've got one capturing the loud source and one if you could actually split them because they can be stereo. So I guess you do, you just monitor left for the one and right track for the other one. And then if you did start overloading the mic that's closest to you, you've got the backup behind you.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: There's a lot of clever ways to use it when there's two separate mic capsules versus a mic that has a stereo mode. Like the ever popular The Yeti from Blue has that multi pattern switch where you can go from omni to cardioid to stereo to figure eight.,: Right.,Speaker A: Well, the mic like this, you have way more flexibility. You can make an XY pair, you can make a Blum line, I think, whatever it's called. You can adjust how you want to use those two mics. Like, you could literally put up a stereo XY pair in front of a string quartet or something and record that.,: But you could even fake it with if you had the two like, instead of doing XY, you just reverse one, stick it basically so the capsule is almost touching each other right. And get some kind of weird omni going. I don't know how that would work.,Speaker A: Yeah, that should work. It's two hemispherical patterns connected in the center. You might have some phasing issues at the center, but yeah, it's more flexible to have two separate microphones to manipulate and do. You can just do so much more.,: Yeah.,: I'm just curious how this microphone actually does sound to the people listening. I mean, if you're listening to it and you like it, just leave a comment down below the notes and stuff. But what I'm hearing is very pleasing, actually. And I'm quite surprised because I did think being a USB mic, that there was going to be inherent issues. The price point, I thought, was going to be an issue for it as well. But I can't really hear anything now.,Speaker A: Roblo, now, I'm not trying to make more work for you, but I'm going to propose something, is that we leave part of the show unprocessed and then you process the remainder of the show the way you normally would. So we can hear what it sounds like raw, and we can hear what we all sound like through your production.,: Through the magic of podcasting. Let's move to the processed show now.,Speaker A: Exactly.,: The point I was going to make was that as a podcaster, if you were a podcaster and you were on, I don't know, let's just pick out a yeti, or you had a chaonica eyeball or something that you were sort of using and you wanted to up your game audio wise.,: I mean, step one, tick hello for.,: 100 and whatever bucks we were just talking about, you've got a new mic.,: That'S automatically going to do that.,: Yeah.,: And it's got an interface built in, so you're set that's it exactly.,Speaker A: I like that. Oftentimes we'll kind of shy away from a USB mic for anybody that's producing content, because it's just a mic. So if you want to add a second person or you want to interview somebody else on site, in physical person, it's not as easy to integrate multiple USB mics, but here you just have that second mic and you've got a two mic system and away you go. It's a clever way, it's sort of an analog, old school way of doing it, but the simplicity of it, I think, is the key here.,: Well, the other thing, too, thinking about.,: That without thinking too deeply, but hearing.,: You say that, and it occurs to me that even if you had more than two people, with some clever placement of those two mics, you could almost.,: Mic up maybe three or four people.,Speaker A: Well, yeah, you could have two and two.,: Yeah, that's right, exactly.,: If you had three, you could have the host on his own and then with some clever mic placement, you could place the other one so that you.,: Were picking up two.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: It all comes down to the room. The room has to be good.,: Yeah, absolutely.,: If you were in a concert hall or something, you probably wouldn't want to yeah.,: But you can also get lav mics. I think they're doing a lav mic as well. That goes with know, that kind of podcasting and all that kind of it's. It's really clever. Here's a thing, I always watch Bandru do this.,Speaker A: Podcastage. Is it podcast age or podcastage?,: Podcastage. It sounds like sort of being tied up and pod hostage, kind of, yeah. I'm being held hostage, so I'm going to tap on the desk. He always does that. So tapping on the desk and this is not ideal, as I said.,Speaker A: No, I mean, I can hear that you're tapping on the desk, but there's absolutely no thumping or rumbling or anything.,: No, it's not actually in the mic stand.,: Oh, now you can hear it now on the stand.,Speaker A: I'm getting it.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: And what stand are you using? Are you using that?,: The gravity?,: Yeah.,Speaker A: So that thing actually is helping a lot to isolate the mic from your desk.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: See, what helps a lot is mass, right. Weight.,: Yes.,Speaker A: So if you have that mic on a very lightweight stand, like a little folding tripod, it probably wouldn't do as well. But putting on a very heavy weighted stand on rubber like that, that's a pretty good package.,: Yeah, yeah, I think it works.,: A I will. I'll stick the link to that mic.,: Stand you're talking about in the show notes.,: The gravity. Yeah, it's a German design. I don't know where it's made. Probably China, but it's certainly designed and engineered.,: It's made out of heavy steel.,Speaker A: Chances are it's coming out of China.,: Yeah.,: Where's the steel from? Oh, I'd say probably a hole in the ground in Australia. But anyway, that's another story.,Speaker A: Another story.,: Yeah. But the conclusion for me of this mic is just bloody good. It sounds fantastic.,: I have no issues with it.,: I like it.,: Absolutely.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: No issues at all. It sounds like you it sounds like you unmested with.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Because we've all heard the USB mics. We've tried a lot of things, and some of the other companies are trying to be really clever with lots of onboard processing DSP, and sometimes those settings are on by default. You don't even know it. So now you're already mucking up the audio without even realizing it. And these guys are going on a more purest way, just like we're not going to muck with it. There's no DSP. It's just this is the way our mic sounds. This is the way it sounds. And that is a very familiar sound, which is a very good thing. That's what we want to hear.,: Yeah, great.,: And also, if anyone's interested, the headphone amplifier is extremely good, so that's a plus.,: Yeah, very nice.,Speaker A: So we figured out the knob is a multifunction knob that controls your headphone level and the monitor blend or mix or balance, as they call it.,: Okay.,: So the mix between you and me. Okay, very good.,: Well, there you go.,: Austrian audience, well done.,: Something else to add to the shopping list.,Speaker A: Christmas needing to just add it to their shipping list and send one to.,: The rest of us.,: Well, that was fun.,Speaker C: Is it over?,Speaker B: The Pro Audio suite with thanks to Triboof and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the Tech Wittam don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say G'day. Drop us a note at our website. The Pro Audio weight.
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The Austrian Audio MiCreator is a new type of creative tool. Equal parts high-quality condenser microphone and simple audio interface with USB-C Âź connectivity, MiCreator gives you the flexibility to create what you wantâhow you want. Just plug in and start recording in top-notch audio quality instantly. Or expand your setup using MiCreatorâs additional input to achieve stereo recordings, record an additional sound source, and more. And whether youâre recording at home or on the go, you can create with confidence thanks to MiCreatorâs ultra-durable metal housing.
Catch the video version here: https://youtu.be/vJBR0tBBUaw
AP got his hands on one and we figured we'd share his early Christmas day unboxing it as our first video episode...
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https://tribooth.com/
And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
https://austrian.audio/
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
Summary
In this episode of Pro Audio Suite, our hosts George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren Robert Robertson, and Andrew Peters unbox Austrian Audio's new Creator Studio. They humorously discuss their first impressions, visual appeal, and play around with its innovative features. The product, a comprehensive home recording solution, impresses them with its sleek design, changeable magnetic panels, dual microphone system for stereo recording, and high audio quality. Furthermore, they touch on Austrian Audio's partnership with Passport VR, presenting the Pro Audio Suite version of the headset that boasts stunning sound quality. The episode is packed with enjoyable conversation, honest opinions, and valuable insights into the latest in audio technology. Don't forget to subscribe and join their Facebook group.#AustrianAudioUnboxing #ProAudioSuitePodcast #HomeRecordingSetup
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:00:52) New Audio Tech from Austria
(00:01:22) Austrian Audio's Home Recording Innovation
(00:03:59) Microphone Customization
(00:06:30) Mic Functionalities
(00:10:25) Austrian Audio's High-Quality Mic
(00:14:58) Passport Vo Mic Modes
(00:19:24) Praise for Austrian Audio
Transcript
Speaker A: We have something special inside this box which we're about to reveal. Stick around, 54321.,Speaker B: Let's go.,Speaker A: Welcome.,Speaker C: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite.,: These guys are professional.,Speaker B: They're motivated with tech. To the vo stars George Wittam, founder of Source Element Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robert Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Tribooth, Austrian Audio making passion heard source elements george the tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's, international demo. To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite.com line up, Leonard.,Speaker C: Here we go.,Speaker A: And welcome to another Pro Audio suite, this time on camera, thanks to Tributh. Don't forget the code. Trip a P 200, $200 off your tribooth and Austrian Audio making passion heard. Now we're about to divulge something new from Austria.,: Cracking into a box.,: It's not even Christmas yet.,Speaker A: I know. This is it.,: I can hear the bells.,Speaker A: Well, you see, I have my Santa beard on.,: He's got the ho ho ho beard. I'm not talking about the white beard.,Speaker A: At least he gets three hoes every year. I'm lucky to get one.,: What's in the box?,Speaker A: What's in the box?,: Come on, show us the box first. What's it say on the front, Mr. Peters?,Speaker A: It says my Creator Studio.,: Nice. This is the Austrian audio. This is the new now, I've actually.,Speaker A: Had a play with this. And you've actually heard this robber? You heard what it sounded like?,: I have.,Speaker A: And so did you guys hear did.,: You get a blind listen?,Speaker C: Yes.,: Like, you did have a blind listen.,: It was one of those conversations. What mic am I on?,: Oh, I love that.,: I love and Robert was on some crappy audio technical thing.,Speaker A: But then he says to me I said, what am I? And he goes, Is that a microtech Gaffel? I'm like, no, it's a USB mic.,: He's like, holy shit. Not yeah.,Speaker A: So, anyway, so it comes with USBC comes with the does it come with two cables? Yeah, it comes with the TRS and jack. And that's for what is that? Well, that's a di on the end of that cable. That's just an unbalanced jack and a TRRS. So if you want to di into the microphone, you can use that. So di your guitar.,: So, wait a minute.,: Is that an output cable or an input?,Speaker A: An input cable.,: An input cable, yeah. We should actually mention that this is sort of Austrian Audio's nod to home recording, sort of, isn't it, really?,Speaker A: Absolutely.,: So it's not just a microphone? No, it's a microphone and an audio interface.,Speaker C: Correct. Yeah.,Speaker A: So, anyway, so you got that so unbalanced into a TRRS, into the back of the mic.,: Your normal USB, that quarter inch unbalanced, would go into a guitar or a keyboard or some instrument. Got it.,Speaker A: It's really cool. They also chuck in this, which I thought was really good because when you look at the bottom of the mic, you know when they got the small I don't know what it is in Imperial, but when you got the smaller thread in the mic, I thought, oh, that's going to be great. Trying to get that onto a stand. Standard mic stand.,: Call it quarter 20. Is that the camera standard in the US? Yeah.,Speaker A: Well, it's not actually. Is it camera? I'm not sure. Anyway.,: Is it really small or like the middle?,Speaker A: No, it's kind of like yeah, that's quarter 20. But they chuck that in an adapter, which I thought was really cool, because.,: When I looked at it so it goes from quarter 20 to five eight, which is the US imperial, whatever you call it. Microphone stand.,Speaker A: We call it Imperial, but I don't know whether imperial. Imperial.,: Yeah. We are the Imperialists. I always forget that.,Speaker A: Exactly. Now, inside we're being reminded that more.,: But that's another story. Anyway. Yeah. So what else is in that?,Speaker A: Well, this is kind of cool. You get the two magnetic panels, so if you want to change it from black to red, you can.,: What do they do?,Speaker A: Sorry?,: What did they change?,Speaker A: I'll show you. I'll show you in a moment when I get the mic out. Also your standard, like that thing you.,: Never read, that thing you throw in the bin.,Speaker A: If all else goes wrong, then maybe you'll look at that at some point.,: I have a huge bin full. You know what I use those for? It's the archive of all the crap I have bought in the last ten years in one box.,Speaker A: Well, I can tell you what these would have been used for years ago. Would have been perfect filters, but business cards, not doing the good old days. Anyway, you can't put those in your pool filter.,: Don't be silly.,Speaker A: I wouldn't be surprised what's in there. So here it is. That's the Austrian audio. My creator. And I can tell you, you would say it has some heft nice. Okay, but if you don't like the.,: Black keeps it simple, doesn't it?,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: If you don't like the black, you just go, now it's red.,: Nice. You could do they think of everything, don't they?,Speaker A: Same on the back. Chuck that on there. That one doesn't want to go on. Oh, yeah, it's on.,: See, that would go well in your booth with the red lights.,Speaker C: AP.,Speaker A: It's just perfect. It's my colors in here. Red and black.,: That's pretty cute.,Speaker A: So that's cool. But this microphone now, I don't know technically how it all works, but it's got on the front, it's got high, low and mute. Now, I do know the mute is when you're either using the other microphone that you can attach to this, or if you're using a di oh, I see what I did wrong. You take those ones off.,: That's why I didn't oh, I see, the replaceable guy.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: But I think that this mute is for if you're running a di. I think that's how it works.,: Okay, so that mutes the di.,Speaker A: Is that what you I think it allows you to monitor, like, if you use something in the back here, you've got the in out and you've got the out. Now the out from here would either be your headphones or you run this other lead. In fact, that's the point. Where is the other lead? I'm sure there's supposed to be another one that goes out of here and into the other microphone. If you have the two and speaking.,: That will be with the other microphone, I would presume.,Speaker A: I'm guessing it makes sense. I've not opened this box, so I don't know.,: So it's not one box, it's two.,Speaker A: Two boxes.,: It's a double unboxing.,Speaker A: Double unboxing. Top that. Oh, yeah.,: There you go.,: Unboxings for the price.,Speaker A: Yeah, the leads are in there. Okay, that makes sense. So let me just get this one out.,: So what's the idea here? Do we have a two mic system?,Speaker A: Yeah. So you can run it as a stereo mic. So you can say you want to do like an acoustic guitar or something and sing. You can actually one mic on or you could do two mics on the guitar. If you're just doing that, like, you've.,: Got a vocal ensemble that you need to record. You can do it in stereo. You can put one left and one.,Speaker A: Right, but also, like, even for what we mean if you're doing interviews yeah. So then you have the if I.,: Was doing, like once I recorded a podcast down at Bondi Beach, so I can imagine I would have lapel mics on the guests and then have one of those on a couple of stands just recording Ambience in the background, even.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: So that's the second part of the.,: Stereo, which okay, so that's the primary and secondary.,Speaker A: Yeah.,: Mic. That's the secondary.,Speaker A: So it has a link and an out. So if you're connecting the first mic to this one, you go into the link with the TRRS, whatever it is in there, and then your out becomes your headphone out. So it actually bypasses the headphone out of the main mic and then takes it into this one.,: Whoa, that's pretty clever.,: That's cool.,Speaker A: Yes, that's the other one. This is if you get the studio set, you don't have to buy them both.,: Yeah. This is the full studio set. Or you can get just the main mic as a single.,Speaker A: But I can tell you the quality and for the money, I don't know what they retail it. I haven't looked.,: I shall check.,Speaker A: But the quality of them is like it's really weighty.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Now I don't know whether they just.,: Yeah, well, what I heard of it, it sounds brilliant. I mean, we'll obviously do a test in another episode, but from what I heard of it for 30 seconds or so earlier today, it sounds awesome.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: So you get another couple of cables in here. What are they? Okay. Oh, you got an adapter. Okay. So you can run that into maybe a mini jack into that, and then split that into the back of the other one.,: That could be a lavalier.,Speaker A: That could be for the lav.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So the whole system set, which is what you have there, apparently, which has the master mic, the secondary mic, the color change panels, 1232 audio cables and a USB. And I'm seeing something else you didn't mention. It looks like there's a stereo bar. Did that come with your kit, too?,Speaker A: No, I haven't seen one.,: Okay. Because on the website, it actually also has a stereo bar. Hang up this whole thing on there, maybe because you have a preview package. Yeah, they didn't have the full retail kit, but the retail kit also has a nice zippered case. Everything goes into and a stereo bar, too.,Speaker A: Okay, that makes sense.,: And that whole thing is 299 us.,Speaker A: That's crazy.,: It's a good price, isn't it?,Speaker A: For what you get, honestly, and what it sounds like. I mean, look, I didn't listen to it until about half an hour ago when we set them up, and I just was talking to Robbo and Robert and to me, it sounded really good.,: Well, for me, the sound of it is on par with the 16 that I'm on, to be honest. It sounds brilliant.,Speaker A: Yeah, it does, actually, because I was thinking, like, even for what voiceover guys do when you're on the road, just chuck that in your bag. Yeah.,: Nothing in what you were doing when you were talking on that before when I was listening, there's nothing in there that you would make you go, there's no way I'm using that for a voiceover.,Speaker A: And it also doesn't need a shock mount because I don't know where you can see this, but it's actually suspended in rubber.,: Wow. Yeah. See, that's cool.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: They suspended the capsule. That's right.,Speaker A: And you can also it's really nice, swivel the capsule to whatever you want to do.,: I know they're a sponsor of the show and people are going to go, yeah, you're only saying that because but I'm sorry, I'd say this anyway. These Austrian audio guys, they're so on the ball with this stuff.,Speaker A: I agree.,: When companies that make high quality products step into this creator space, they are now competing on price. Right. So they have to cut corners. But the thing is that the miniaturization of electronics, the quality of the capsules and the electronics are so good that they can cut all those corners, add more features and still have sound quality that rivals their studio mic. And that's the craziest part of all, because I can't wait to actually hear it and test it out.,: Yeah, like I said, I was listening on Source Connect now when I was listening to Andrew, and he'd only just thrown it up. So it probably wasn't in perfect position either for him.,Speaker A: Terrible, actually.,: And it sounded brilliant. I mean, it sounded like this. Yeah.,: I decided, in solidarity, to throw I had my other mic up. Of course, I just brought up the Austrian audio. I felt left out, but yeah. So what do you perceive you might find this good for? Do you think you could do some take it on the road with you, or what do you think you might do with it?,Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, that could be well, that's it.,: That fits in your Vespa, right?,Speaker A: Does fit in the vespa. You're reading my mind, George. You're reading my mind as you, um san Diego nice guys.,: You know, you've just come up with a new test for the show now, every time we test new gear, is it is it Vesper worthy?,Speaker A: It is vesper worthy. I mean, you think about, like, I chuck the road case on the Vespa when I go on these tours, and this would be perfect because I don't have to worry about an interface. There's your microphone, everything. Just one cable and a mic stand. Boom.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So little nitpicky stuff. And maybe we won't know these answers until you've used it for a while. Does it have a no latency monitor? So for headphone use, you can hear yourself.,Speaker A: There was no latency when I was monitoring at the back. The other thing that was really interesting.,: You plug your headphones directly into the mic.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: And then to hear yourself, is that the knob? Is that what that big knob?,Speaker A: Two stage knob. I don't know what else it does, but when I had it and it.,: Was showing, you click on the knob and it changes modes.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: The other one might be gain from the other mic coming.,Speaker A: I think one is gain and one is monitoring.,: Is there a gain knob on that second mic?,Speaker A: No.,: So I wonder whether that's it coming in there.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: So it would be this will be operating everything, I'm guessing.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: But the other thing I thought was really interesting, I don't know what the gain is on this microphone itself, but the headphone gain was really loud, right?,: Oh, really? Yeah. Did you get good levels in your can in your head?,Speaker A: I had to turn it down. It was too hot coming from you.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: But yeah, it was very loud.,: Wow. Cool.,Speaker A: Yeah.,: I'm really looking forward to you doing a test with that now. I really want to hear it, put it through its paces.,Speaker A: Well, it'd be interesting to see what it sounds like in a not so well, in fact, we heard it in a not great environment because I was sitting right in front of the computer screens. But, I mean, if you're on the road and you're doing the so called pillow fort or something, which is not ideal, particularly for a microphone like this, which is. Would that be a large diaphragm? I guess it is, yeah.,: I've been looking through the manual documents, and there's a document called my Creator Faceplate Customizing.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: Wow.,Speaker A: So that means you can have your own design. Yes.,: I saw that they give you EPS, Adobe Illustrator files, PDF, and so you can literally have your own Faceplate design to your spec.,: And they will make it for you, I guess.,: Yeah. They give you all the ability to customize.,Speaker A: You've given me an idea.,: I know what you're going to say. I'm with you.,Speaker A: What am I going to say? Vespa?,: You say, I can see us making.,Speaker A: Our own well, actually, I was thinking about me then, but yeah, you're right. Well, they're both thinking about us and me and whatever. That's not a bad idea, actually.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: Maybe we should talk to Austrian Audio about the Pro Audio suite version of.,: The that's right, absolutely. To team up with the sentence Passport VR.,Speaker A: Well, you don't need it because it's got an interface in it.,: It is a two for one, isn't it? So that knobs functionality is twofold, as you discovered. One mode, it's gain for the mic, and the other mode it's headphone.,Speaker A: Yeah.,: So I wonder what controls the gain from the secondary mic then.,Speaker A: I wonder where that I think that probably does as well. Let me go back to the other mic.,: The switch on the front, if there is a three way switch for the microphone gain, if this is at the lowest mute position, the visible red marking on the switch signals that the mic is muted on the input side. This is a so called hardware mute. Regardless of any other mute in any other program, your mic is muted, which is very important. That's why in the Passport Vo, we have a hardware mute button.,: The swear button. That's right.,: Yes, exactly. So it has the swear button in the form of that little switch. However, this only applies to the signal from the internal microphone. Anything connected to the other input jack is not needed.,: From the back of the room, he's still going to hear get.,Speaker A: Yeah.,: And then it has a low and a high gain mode. So I suppose you have to experiment and figure out which of those positions you want to use.,Speaker A: I think I had it on high gain, but I would imagine if it's a super loud source, like in front of a guitar cab or something, and you're going to pull it down to low.,: Yeah. Very cool.,Speaker A: But it's great. And it's hard to actually I know, watching on camera and stuff, but it's hard to explain how solid this thing feels.,: Well, you can see it. It looks pretty solid.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So I'm guessing it's it must have a steel chassis.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So the outer the ring around the mic and the ring a ring around the chassis and the ring around the mic, I suppose are probably steel as opposed to aluminum.,Speaker A: Oh, yeah.,: Imagine how flimsy it would be if it was just plastic, too.,Speaker A: It's funny because the panels behind those fake panels that you can change is actually plastic behind there, but the actual front, the surround, all this kind of stuff, and all this is metal.,: Nice. You wouldn't want to drop it if it was only plastic or something. Flimsy absolutely. You'd be in trouble.,: So it also does have an internal pop shield over that cap.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: And it says if that's not sufficient because you have poor mic technique doesn't say that, but they have the OCP eight, which is an Austrian audio pop screen that you can add on to.,Speaker A: Oh, so it fits over the top of this cage here.,: I guess. So they don't show a picture, but it's in the manual.,Speaker A: I'm curious. I would like to know what that capsule is in there, though.,: Yeah, well, you never really know because let's say it's the same as the OC 16 capsule. Theoretically, it wouldn't be a great thing for them, maybe to advertise that, because then you're saying, well, you can get that capsule in a $200 mic. Yeah, $400 mic. But there are different mics for different use cases.,Speaker A: But I think the OC 16 has the same capsule as the OC 18. And the eight one eight, it's just the electronics and the assembly are different. The electronics, they've trimmed quite a bit of that down. And also the OC 16 is made in China.,: And this is also probably made in China.,Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.,: Kit yeah, right. Again, it's price point. They're having to create product at a creator competitive price point, which is fair enough. Think about who they're competing against. They're competing against the likes of the Yeti, the Blue Yeti, and that's $100 to $200, depending on the model and stuff. So, yeah, that's what they got to do. But I have no doubt that if they're going to put their name to something like this, it's going to have the sound quality you expect. Yeah, we'll do some more testing.,Speaker A: Sounded great. I mean, I think it's fantastic. I'll muck around with it more and we'll do an audio podcast using it, so anyone watching this can listen and check it out. But, yeah, I reckon it sounds good. Austrian Audio, you've done it again.,: Win a winner.,Speaker A: Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Which makes me hungry.,Speaker C: Well, that was fun.,: Is it over?,Speaker B: The Pro Audio suite with thanks to Triboof and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the Tech Wittam don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say G'day. Drop us a note at our website. Theproaudiosuite.com.
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WAVES director of training and development Michael Pearson Adams (Gomez to his Aussie mates) joins us in part 2 of a chat about plugins for Voice Actors.
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âWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.âHunter S Thompson
In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, we dive into part two of our discussion with Michael Pearson and Adams Gomez. We kick off by tackling the prevalent issue of hearing loss, exploring how it affects professional audio and the struggles people face in finding headphones that suit their hearing capabilities. Pearson expresses his ambition to build a chain for monitoring, specifically for those with hearing loss. We also delve into audio tools like the C Four Multiband Compressor and F Six Dynamic EQ, discussing their features, capabilities, and best applications. The conversation emphasizes the importance of tailoring preset tools to individual preferences, supporting efficiency in producing quality and personalized sound._QMARK
#HearingLossSolutions #ProAudioSuite #TechForHearingLoss
Timestamps (00:00:00) Intro: The Pro Audio Suite
(00:00:39) Building Hearing Loss Monitor
(00:07:36) Volume & Monitors in Mixing
(00:11:29) Multiband Compressor vs. Dynamic EQ
(00:12:12) Development of C Four Plugin
(00:14:01) The F Six: Parametric EQ & Music Dynamics
(00:17:16) Discussing Presets
(00:22:10) Quality of Presets
(00:28:24) Podcast Recording Technique: Source Connect & Voodoo Radio Imaging
TranscriptSpeaker A: Y'all ready? Be history.
Speaker B: Get started.
Speaker C: Welcome.
Speaker A: Hi.
Speaker C: Hi.
Speaker A: Hello, everyone to the Pro audio suite.
Speaker C: These guys are professional and motivated with tech. To the VO stars, George Wittam, founder of Source Elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, Austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check ThePro Audiosuite.com line up.
Speaker A: Learner. Here we go.
: And don't forget the code.
Speaker C: Trip a P 200.
: That will get you $200 off your Tribooth. Now, this is part two of our conversation we had with Michael Pearson, Adams Gomez, if you like, from waves. This week's discussion kicks off in a different place. We're talking about hearing loss.
Speaker B: I don't know. I don't want to take this off the rails too far, but something that's come up in the last couple of weeks, more than once. So it seems to be. Well, I wouldn't say maybe it's a coincidence, but maybe it's just the sign of the times and the fact that my clients are all getting older, but people are having a hard time finding headphones that work well for them anymore because of hearing loss. The topic came up. One person asked me about having their hearing aids tuned for professional audio. Another person asked me about just choosing headphones that are better for their hearing. And nothing that they tried worked well, probably because they have severe hearing loss.
: I was going to say Friday, but normally ice cream, right?
Speaker B: So what I'm getting at is I've been starting to want to build a chain for monitoring, specifically, especially for those with some hearing loss. And I'm wondering what other tool set you think might be useful. Like, if I was going to build a studio rack for a monitoring chain, is it just EQ or. I'm actually looking at compression and EQ together, because if you've lost some hearing in a certain band and you boost the bejesus out of that band, that could be bad too, right?
Speaker A: Two syllables. F sIx.
Speaker B: F six. Okay.
Speaker A: F six.
: Six.
Speaker A: Floating bands of multiband equalizing compression gives you the ability to choose the threshold on each and every one of them, move them around, and actually decide how each of those bands is compressed or expanded based on the reaction of the voice coming into it. To me, that would be the best starting place for you to create a chain like that would be that plugin.
Speaker B: Because it's obviously the only person that can decide if it sounds right is the listener. Like the person that has a lot. So the way I would have to do it would be to log in remote source, connect in remote into their screen, load the plugin, put it into a chain, and then just hide everything.
Speaker A: And give them the macros and name the macros appropriately.
Speaker B: Yeah, well, yeah, that would be the end result. Exactly. But to have that ability for them to sculpt the sound of their own headphones in a way they never could before, this sounds like the right tool to attack that. I want to start looking into building those chains for people because hearing loss is an issue.
Speaker A: There is a risk there as well. And I talk about this in a completely different way for this than I would if this was music. So, for example, in the music world, we have the lowest latency, as in zero latency vocal tuning, plugin, wavestune, and Wavestune live. And there's always been a lot of stigma about, oh, you can't have tuning. It's like one of the best things a tuner can do, if it's used properly, is give the singer confidence. Not fix them, but give them confidence. So if it's on in the monsters, it gives them confidence to remember that they are good and they can do a great job. And that in itself, that confidence minimizes any sharp or flat notes because they're not nervous. Now, on the other end of that spectrum, George, is in a voiceover world, the first thing that comes to my mind as a concern by creating a chain that lets them hear it properly is making sure that they're not hearing. To use an analogy, to make sure that they don't think they're in a Porsche when they're in a VW, as far as other equipment, because audio processing can make you sound amazing, but it also could hide multiple issues with the track that you're recording if what they're monitoring isn't what's being sent to the client.
Speaker B: I would never recommend someone who has loss of hearing loss unless they are an actual engineer with years of training. I would never suggest that they go into this thinking that they're going to fix their own monitoring themselves without the ears of another engineer or an engineer with good hearing or trusted hearing that can make a judgment, help judge them on where those settings should be. I know they could dig themselves into a heck of a big hole. It cannot be a replacement for everything else that we talk about. Proper acoustics, noise, floor mic technique, et cetera, et cetera, et know.
: Well, usually with hearing loss, it's the upper frequencies that go first. So my idea would be to talk to Yamaha and get them to build headphones that sound like NS ten s.
Speaker B: Well, the headphones that you have, you're still using the Austrian Audio 55s, right? The X 55s, yeah. Remember when I reviewed those with you and I thought they were too mid range forward? Right. I didn't like the way they sounded. Yeah, correct. But for you, they were a great match. Right? Yeah, that's the thing. And so headphones are, again, extremely subjective, but it can be a maddening process to try out a lot of different headphones. Like this client of mine.
: What was the headphone that rang out your ear from the inside? And then I tried your curve. How did that work?
Speaker B: They were really uncomfortable. Yeah, really? They had in ear plugs that plugged into the inside of your. Like, they literally went into your ears. And then they had a surround cup that went around the outside of the ear.
: It was a little.
Speaker A: That sounds horrible.
: They sound like my in ear, like.
Speaker B: The one they're called Noritones or Nora something. I can't remember what they were called. I returned them. But the idea there being that, yeah, you can make corrections to a point and then eventually your hearing loss is going to be too poor.
: Well, also, you can't correct it when you can't hear at some point.
Speaker B: Right.
: So just cranking it up, you just end up with feedback through your hearing.
Speaker B: That is true, yeah. Well, I mean, my friend is an optometrist or optimist. My friend is an audiologist. And they said the danger is if you do continue to boost, let's say four K, two K, whatever the frequency band, you're still subjecting that SPL on the eardrum or more, you're continuing to cause damage. So it's a tricky situation. But thanks for the F Six recommendation. I'll look at.
Speaker A: So there's a couple of things about that while we're talking about it. I just want to mention briefly, for all you lovely people out there, quick analogy. On my phone, I have a setting on my phone, just in the basic phone settings that limits the loudness that is allowed in my headphones on my phone. And I can change it to whatever DB I want. And I have it set fairly conservatively because I value my tool. That makes me money, my ears. But then on top of that, I also have a pair of very large monitors here in the studio that I have a mark on the output knob on the audio interface that I do not go above because at that point I know that I'm damaging my hearing. So my advice is always get used to listening as low as possible, because you can, and this is something that Jeff Thomas told me Robbo, years ago when I was his student, was if you can hear everything at a low volume, then it'll sound great loud. If you hear everything when it's loud, you won't hear everything at a low volume.
: You do have to stay at the right place when you're mixing within the Fletcher Munson curve to make sure that you're know if you're listening too low and you don't ever check it out up there for just a moment. And I'm not talking about hearing damage level, but you'll just lose the bass in the high end. It's just sort of the way the ear at lower levels loses the outer extremities first.
: I think like anythinG, though, I think checking your mix on different monitors. I mean, I always check at different volume levels. I mean, different levels. Yeah. The dim button is regularly used for me. I'll listen to it in a pass and then I'll dim it and switch monitors and have a listen that way and just flick around. I mean, you could muck around with a mix forever, I guess. But I think they're the two essential things is volume and different monitors.
: I'm constantly surprised when I think back when I was living in Sydney and in excess had Rhino Studios, rhinoceros, and I was there for. They were recording. I think I was there for Kick and X. I can't remember. No, it was definitely kick.
Speaker A: It was kick, yeah.
: So I was in there for Kick and I remember sitting there when they were recording and stuff and it was.
Speaker A: Chris Thomas English showing our.
: Know and then someone, oh, we're just doing a playback of one of the songs I think was going to be the single. I can't remember. Come and listen. So we're into another room to listen to the playback. It was so fucking loud. I don't even know what the song was. I have no idea. I don't know what they were hearing because I couldn't hear anything.
: It's probably what you need. The first single was it?
: Probably.
: I hate it when people, when you're in a room and it's really loud and you're just like, I don't want to be in here and you got to get out. But not. You really shouldn't go above 80 or you should keep that at maybe the top average.
Speaker B: Average. Yeah, maybe peaks of 90 to 100, maybe. It is amazing. The iPhone has the ability now to monitor your surroundings. And it will actually. Or the watch, I think, more so. And that's almost like a reason to get the watch. I keep trying to not buy the damn freaking Apple Watch. I'm like, I don't want another addictive gadget, but the fact that it does monitoring the noise levels around your environment and lets you know, yo, you were in an unsafe noise level environment, just so you very.
Speaker A: That's cool.
Speaker B: It's a really good idea. I mean, it's almost a reason to get one of those things.
: Tipto can't hear what you're hearing in your headphones, unfortunately.
Speaker B: No, it can't do anything for headphones. No, you're absolutely right. Absolutely right.
: I wanted to ask a question a little bit more if Gomez is here. So I love the C Four, and I use it like an EQ, and I use it like a compressor, and it's my deesser, and it's just like, whatever the hell you want it to be. And the F Six is kind of a dynamic EQ. The C Four is a multiband compressor. You see how the different frequency bands work, essentially, like, you're able to tune the F six more precisely. That is very true. But what are the other kind of differences between, say, a multiband compressor and a dynamic EQ?
Speaker B: Oh, boy.
: What uses.
: Wow, that's a can of worms.
Speaker B: This I want to hear.
Speaker A: Okay, so firstly, let's talk about the C Four, right. The C Four was a plugin that we developed, not for studios, but we developed it for live. And it kind of was a mixture of. Okay, so let's deal with something that gives you compression, expansion, bit of limiting dynamic EQ, normal EQ, and then has this one floating band, which we honestly didn't think anybody would use. And then everybody lost their shit over the floating band of the C Four. Sorry, not the C Four. So when we updated it, when we went to the C Six, we put the floating band in because people are.
: Like, that's so funny. Do you know what? I lost my shit over in the C Six? What was the individual key per band? That's so awesome. It's like, automatically duck it. But you don't have to duck the whole music. You can just sort of carve out some frequencies for the voice, and it doesn't sunk the music, like, fell out of nowhere.
Speaker A: Well, the beautiful thing about it is it lets you apply per band, compression, expansion, upward expansion, and to a point, dynamic EQ. This was a tool that, again, is still very much a broadcast person and live person tool. And we found a lot of studio people, not all studio people. I'm not going to generalize, but we found a lot of them were like, we just can'T work out the use case for this.
: Deesser. Yeah. Why have a Deesser when you can just have a multiband compressor with little compression on the high end?
Speaker A: Because it's not the way you're thinking with your broadcast and your post production hat on. Not your music production hat on. So now let's go to one of my favorite products, the F Six. The F Six is literally, okay, so everybody loved the floating bands in the C Six, so let's just give them six floating bands. What we did was we took our best code of parametric EQ and let you boost, cut, define change the thresholds, cues, everything on it, so that your EQ basically flows with the music dynamics. And it's not just a static boost or a static cut. One of the best things that you can do with the F Six is go, okay. Right. So use it as an EQ if you want, but then if you actually, then choose. Okay, cool. So on this one I'm going to make this a mid or a sides processing channel, and on this one I'm going to use this one with an external side chain. So you can have all of these things going on. And every single one can have a different side chain if you want to.
: The F Six has a separate side chain for each band.
Speaker A: Yes.
: Very sick. I kind of think of one of the differences as being the multiband approach where you have the filters that are always going to trade off with the next frequency band. Sort of keeps you in line, keeps you more flat, and you're kind of doing more general sculpting. Whereas the F Six being you got bandwidth, you can overlap things, you can poke a hole in this and not in that.
Speaker A: I use it for poking a hole in the mix all the time.
: I'd say that it's much more possible to get lost in the F Six and it's possible to, obviously with the C four you can do crazy stuff as well, but just that nature where the bands don't overlap and you're always dealing with sort of an equal amount across the board.
Speaker A: Having the crossovers and the visualization of the crossovers between these plugins has helped people a lot, but I actually find more people in user land for us get confused when they're talking to me about, okay, so talk me through the C Four. And this comes down to development and research and design as well. It's like C Four, I find, confuses people on getting the best out of it. Way more in 2023 than the F Six. The F Six, they look at and go, oh, okay, cool. All right. I understand it because we made it feel and look more like an EQ than compression, but it's both.
Speaker B: Yeah. I really like the design of that. I'm going to start exploring it more. I've played around some others, and this one looks more powerful and more flexible. And to be able to set up a deesser that's really precision and de harsher and do all that dynamically, that's very compelling. I can set that up in a chain.
Speaker A: Yeah. I love this plugin. I really do.
: It's the go to plugin in my template, to be honest with you.
Speaker A: Thank you.
: Oh, really?
Speaker A: Thank you.
: Hey, I want to throw one at you, and you could maybe dispel a bit of an argument that I've had with a few people. I want to talk about presets for a minute, because the presets that come with wave stuff are usually very good. There's no arguing with that. But I come across two schools of thought. I come across the people who basically go, I love the such and such preset on this plugin. So I put the plugin on the track and I turn it on and now don't really play with it. My argument would be that, yes, it's a great preset and it sounds good, but it's designed around someone else's voice. A different instrument. A different sounding instrument. Whatever the case may be, it's always going to need some tweaking. Would you agree?
Speaker A: Firstly, when we're talking about presets, I feel like this year, well, actually, in the last two or three years, we've kind of moved across a big bump of discussion, and we've gone from presets are bad, it's like it's cheating and all this kind of crap to presets are great. Thank God these software companies put so many of them in. Let me just take you through for a second. So everybody knows how these presets come about and how much time goes into them. So one of the first things that happens is the product manager and the team at Waves, or whichever other company I'm going to guess they do roughly the same. Clearly not as good, because we're awesome, but it's like the person who knows the plugin best is usually the product manager. And so a lot of those initial presets will come from the product manager, because the average plugin he's in charge of it through development. And that could be up to five years sometimes of living with that tool and working through development, QA testing, beta testing, going back, fixing things back into it again. So you get to know this tool intimately, and through that, you get to create presets because of your intimate knowledge of that specific plugin. But then what we do is we have an artist relations department run by a mate of mine by the name of Gitai. Barack and Gitai will take these software tools, these plugins, and he'll reach out to all of our artists that are waves endorsed to artists, everybody from like the Chris Lord Algis, Tony Maseratis, Eddie Kramer's, through to Manny Marrican and Andrew Shepp's and all the others, Armin Van Buren, Dead Mouse, anybody that's. But he will reach out to the ones that are relevant for the kind of person that will use this specific plugin, and we then ask them to create their own presets. And that's where you end up with the categories of different artists names in those plugins. So in that case, yes, you are dealing with that person working on presets in their room. So if it says Andrew Shepps, it's done in the ceiling space of his cottage in Worcestershire. It's a lovely sounding space. He's got really nice setup. He's got PMCs. The room sounds amazing. That's where those presets come from. And a lot of people will say, well, it's Andrew Scheff's preset. Must be amazing. Yes. For him. For you, it's a starting point. It's a starting point. Take that great starting point from that dude with a lot of experience, and then save as your name and tweak the hell out of it so that it works perfectly for you. They are a starting point. They are a shortcut. They save you hours upon hours of working out how to get what somebody else has already done for you.
Speaker B: Yeah, I tell my clients that, get my custom presets made, this is a starting point. You can use this happily for many years, and some do that clients come back five, six, seven years still using that preset you made or that stack or whatever. I'm like, really? I wasn't a very good engineer back then, but whatever. If you're booking, that's great. But, yeah, I tell people, if you're only going to do one thing, get one preset that's eqed to you, everything's dialed into you, and now you have an awesome stepping off point. To copy or make a duplicate from and go crazy. Now you can always return to home and get back to a starting point that works well. So these presets that you guys have designed.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: They're not custom to tuned EQ or whatever exactly to that, to your voice, but you're knowing that the parameters and the ranges of the parameters and such are in musical or tasteful know.
: Yes, perfect. I couldn't put that better myself. I'm going to use that on my next Facebook argument, George.
Speaker A: So we create these presets, and by.
Speaker B: The way, let me say, Michael, not everybody does good presets. I can tell you a very big company whose daw I use, and their presets are horrendous. So you guys really do put in the effort. Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker A: We really do. But what we try and do is we try and make sure that we're giving people a starting point that saves them time. And also take into account presets are there to give you an idea of what the potential power of the plugin is. So a preset might not, if you go through the presets, it might not be what you're after right now, but if you use the preset browser and just flick through them, you're going to find that, oh, my God, it can do that. Fantastic. Save that for later. I save presets that I want to get back to with my initials and that way I can go through them and I can type in MPA and it brings up and it goes, okay, cool, I need to get back and mess with that one or that one or that idea.
: It's funny, isn't it? We talk about presets and things, but it's also choices of microphones and preamps as well. I was doing a session this morning and I said, what do you want? You want me to use a large diaphragm mic with 1073 or do you want me to use 41 six with a grace? And they're like, oh, 41 six with a grace. So it's kind of like an analog preset, if that makes any sense.
Speaker B: Yeah, as long as you know what you used. Like, if you have to come back to that project again, if you've got more than one chain, you do have to do the extra documentation as a voice actor to make sure that.
: Do you know what, though? You don't, George. Because that bloody 41 six, there's no way you're going to miss that one.
Speaker B: Well, no, that mic is distinctive, but, yeah, no, the more chains you have to remember and preset and store the little bit more of a responsibility. You're going to have to keep track of that later down the road. You got to pick up that a year later. Having two distinct options is smart. Having 17 variations, maybe too much to keep track of.
: Sorry about that.
Speaker B: To have this mic and preamp as a combo you use, I have clients that have two mics, two preamps, or three mics, two preamps. What do they want to do? Well, they want to hear every combination of those three mics and those two. I'm like, no, you don't. You don't need to hear and use all three combos of every permutation. Once you have two chains or three chains maybe, that are like, go to. Just go to it.
: You just find things that you like that work, that are convenient, like, they technically work together, they sonically work together, they're packaged right.
Speaker B: There's gear. FOMO, man. It's FOMO. People are like, there's something new, there's something new. What can I make it better? I'm like, I get it.
Speaker A: And this is kind of why, obviously, we've talked about creative access subscriptions from waves before. One of the beautiful things about a subscription is if yoU're on, say, for example, the essential, you've got 110 plugins that you can mess with. And then rather than actually buying them, if you decide, no, I don't need those plugins, then cancel the subscription and go and buy two or three of them instead. It's totally up to you.
Speaker B: Like a mega demo. Yeah, pretty much the ultimate demo of every plugin. Yeah.
Speaker A: There is a very good argument for having an overwhelming amount of tools and finding that it degrades your work because you can't think about what to use at the time. A perfect example is, and I'll take this back to, this is 2008. 2008, I get a phone call from a mate of mine, Brian Gold, who owns a post production studio house in Detroit. Detroit.
: I know him very well. He's a great guy.
Speaker A: Yeah. And he rings me and he goes, mate, we need Mercury bundle for all the rooms. I'm like, I'm happy to help. How many rooms you got right now? And he goes, 13. So he had 13 rooms at Gold Sound. At that point in time. He had just put in decommands, icon consoles, plus HD, six protools.
: Was this when the Mercury Bundle had the TDM pricing? And then the native get.
Speaker A: Don't spoil my story. And Brian says to me, he goes, so I'm going to need mercury bundles for all those, I said, mate, for that I will personally fly in, install them all, give you a huge hug, and then get you drunk. So Brian then drops the bill on this, which is at that time, TDM Mercury was $13,450 each. And he bought 13 of them. And then he rang me and said, give me another one. I'm going to have a floating one. So there's 14 times 13,000. You do the math. So I go into the studios, and by this time, I'd known him and his team for a while. Lovely people. Brian's still a really good friend of mine, and I go in and I install all these mercury bundles and I go, okay, I'm going to come back in three months. I come back in three months. These guys, after I've taken them through all of these plugins before, they were still using the four plugins that they were used to, that they'd been using for the last two or three years. So there is a point where you have to look at this and go, okay, how many tools do I need and which ones am I going to use? And is too many degrading my work or improving my work?
: You're going to use the ones that give you the sound you want, the sound that you want, and the sound that you like.
Speaker A: Yeah.
: Okay, so I get one plugin, and the plugin would be Gomez Avox.
Speaker A: That's it. Arvox. It's one of the most epically simple and productive plugins you can buy for a simpleton.
: I want to go simple.
Speaker A: Well, that was fun. Is it over?
Speaker C: The Pro audio suite with thanks to Tribut and Austrian audio Recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the Tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say, good day. Drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com.
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