Audio Mythbusters: 6 Studio Myths That Need Bin-ning
Movies First: Film Reviews & InsightsSeptember 08, 202500:30:1355.42 MB

Audio Mythbusters: 6 Studio Myths That Need Bin-ning



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Please take to the video stars George
Wisdom, founder of Source Element Robert




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Marshall, international audio engineering
Robin Roberts and global voice repeaters.




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And Austrian audio making passion heard.




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There's a few myths that are being heard
and shouldn't be heard,




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and one in particular
that Robbo stumbled across just recently.




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My bugbear.




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We actually talked about this
just a couple of weeks ago.




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He's using a date on your voiceover




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site, and I still see it bouncing around
and people talking about it.




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And it's not noise reduction people.




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I just had a gig where someone used a gate
and it really messed stuff up.




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It didn't stop at Harvard.




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Well it was.




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This person had a very long
audiobook to do,




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and you could tell that they were doing it




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in different environments and different,
like in the morning and the evening.




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We throughout the chapter, the noise
would increase and they had a gate.




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But one of the things I noticed
is because they gated everything.




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And I actually found that in some ways
the AI noise reduction




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wasn't as good as the traditional
take a fingerprint noise reduction,




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because it seems like a lot of the times
the AI noise reduction is




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more about just like,
amazing shrink wrap.




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It's like the perfect gate
around the words, but within the words.




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Sometimes the noise is still there
sneaking through.




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Yeah, absolutely.




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But with the fingerprint noise reduction,
it was actually




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like ripping that noise out
more during the driving.




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Slightly more artifacts in the process,
though.




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More artifacts?
Yes. More wishy washy. Yes.




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The AI sounded more natural,




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but this noise was noisy enough
that they wanted more of it removed.




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And the problem with the gate




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that I actually had was that
I had no noise to take a fingerprint up.




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Yeah. Well,
that's frustrating to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.




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And it was also short and I couldn't like
get in there and it was very hard.




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Yeah.




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This one I was dealing with had missing
T's and S's and also survived some.




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But let me ask you this
then, you know, did we get to discuss




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where the gate should be used on voice
everyone arguments.




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The last time you put a gate on a voice
as you were recording it never.




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Right. And I rest my case.




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I edit too many,
people set up with a channel strip.




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Like, I know voice actors or




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an audiobook narrator specifically
would not have chosen to do that.




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Some producer
would have set them up with that.




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So they've been using a symmetric 528 E,




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then they get a DB2 86




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because they have expander
gates built into them.




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Yeah.




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And they're told to do it that way.




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And I tell and I've had I have a client
particularly who does a lot of books.




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And I said it's tricky man.




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I said if your input level
is a little bit off that day,




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if you're coming a little bit weak,
whatever, that it's just not going




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to always open on an audio point
where you're acting as well.




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And so you're,




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you know, you're sort of energy's
going to change and all that sort of shit.




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You, you know, so it's in trouble
if it's like the scenario




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that I would least preferred being used
and then it's being like recommended,




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mandated by a production company to do it.




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Then it's like,
come on, if I was the engineer




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for the audio company,
they'd be getting a big, from me.




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Yeah.




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I hear gates all the time on like,
the news.




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You know, you can you can hear that.




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You can hear it chopping down the echo
in the room at the end.




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And it's like, I get it.




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You can't do anything
if it's live in the gates.




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The best thing, I guess.




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But if it's recorded.




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Don't do it.




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It's too risky.
The ultimate of destructive.




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Yeah.




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You know processing
it is absolutely unrecoverable.




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But at least you can be somewhat re
you know if you're cued,




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if it's a little bit too bright,
a little bit too big, whatever.




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Even,
even a compressor can almost be expanded.




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But a gate,
especially one that goes down to zilch,




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get nothing.




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I commented on a post on Facebook, I
this was a while ago now.




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Someone posted something about noise
reduction and someone mentioned the gate




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and I said, well,




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if you think you should use a




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gate on your voice over,
next time you're sending your final audio




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to an engineer, go through
and just slice out a few bits of audio




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and send it to them
and see what their response is.




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Here's the thing about the gate
if you put the gate on,




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you might not get caught in real time
and you might think you're okay.




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But even if you don't hear about it later,
they will curse you later.




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Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly.




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Yeah.




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If you're on a phone patch or,
as we like to say, almost never happens.




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But if you're on a zoom
or any kind of a remote.




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Correct.




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You're recording yourself.




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Absolutely.




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Don't use a gate in that scenario
because you have 100%




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post-production control of that audio
before it sends out.




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So even if you're embarrassed
by some noise or something that happened,




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you can always rerecord it to punch it in
or just fix it in post.




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Don't commit yourself to reach for it.




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And if you're on source Connect,
I guarantee they won't want to hear it,




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because the first thing they're going to
hear is what you're doing to the audio,




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because they're listening
to your little studio mic




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in your little booth
over there, $10 monitors, man.




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They hear everything,
so don't even try to fool them.




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And even if they're distracted,
they're going to hear it later




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when they get into it
and then they're going to be upset.




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Well, that's what I find interesting.




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When the sessions are done for,
you know, zoom or teams or whatever,




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is that the person at the other end
is not hearing the audio.




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Really.




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They're just hearing something
coming down the channel.




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They're not hearing what's actually
they're not hearing what's going on.




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It's even worse when they don't even put
an engineer on the other end.




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Yeah, we'll just record it ourselves
and direct and have the talent send us.




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And we assume that the town's a full up
engineer and has everything taken care of.




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Oh, yeah.




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You know, and it's.




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I didn't get that with engineers.




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I mean, I've, I've talked to engineers
who have done the same, you know, who,




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who did this.




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Where they, we do the session over zoom
and then I forward the recorded




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audio to them to, to do what
I did, trying to build more hours.




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But I think, you know,




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because we've talked together about this
one studio. Yes.




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They really do want to get Source Connect,
but they haven't at this stage.




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But, which we must talk about actually
get them to do it.




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But, anyway, so that when they get audio
I've talked to them about.




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But surely some of the people sending you
audio must be garbage.




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It is all good old what that.




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And it's like a lot of it.




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In fact the majority of it
80% is really bad.




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Yeah.




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This is why you radio guys make everything
sound like a radio filter and stuff.




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Because you got you're like,
oh, crap, crap, I got it.




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The only thing I can do
is make it sound crappier.




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Yeah, distort
it and put a telephone filter on it.




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Yeah, well,




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I mean, there's always that, you know, you




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sort of wonder why you're worrying
about recapturing pristine audio




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and then putting all these sort of effects
and shit on and any distortions.




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Yeah, it does make it easier than trying
to start from shit, as I'm sure you know.




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Well, it's




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it's really funny when you say something,
you go, you know, it's a bit of reverb.




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Your room is a bit lively.




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Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah.




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And then, of course,




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if you send pristine audio,




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they go, oh, much like a bit of redid on
that to give it a bit of zing.




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Yeah.




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Specific references I get to control
how much reverb goes on that.




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Yeah yeah yeah.




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It's a different




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it's like not like a short slapback sound
compared to an actual.




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Yeah. Paul or something.




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The other thing I've seen is actually
honestly like full up studios are like,




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oh yeah, we built our room,
but the air conditioning is always noisy




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and they're putting signal
through with like,




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real times noise reduction.




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Yeah.




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Like see Vox I was going to say
is the better one, I think.




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I think that's more benign.




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I've seen them use, the isotope one




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that takes a fingerprint
of the noise, voice denoise that.




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And I don't think
that one is so transparent. It's.




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No it's not.




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Yeah.




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If you you know, the problem is
it's just not that different from this one




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and others
is that you can only use like 5%.




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Yeah. Out of 100.




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Just the problem
with all these plugins is the scale.




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The range of the control
is dramatically out of whack




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with what is 10%
should be like 80 or 90%, right?




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Yeah.




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And so they get numerous
range of controls.




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Yeah.
So what are you going to do as a user.




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I mean, you know, you'd probably assume
maybe start somewhere in the middle,




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somewhere in the middle
is like drew grossly over MP3 sounding.




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Know like, yeah, I mean if you put an
this one at 50%, it's,




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it does sound like
it chops the hell out of the audio.




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So that's another problem too
is the design of the tools.




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You know,
I use the ones built in Adobe Audition.




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Same thing.




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I used more than 5
to 8% out of those noise.




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It sounds crap.




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So that's part of the problem.




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So what are some of the other mics
do we reckon?




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I mean, for me, USB
mics is a big one for me.




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And also the other one
that gets me about mics too




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is that I see a lot of times
these are you you've got to have a man




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or you've got to have
a, you know, know something or other,




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you know, one of these expensive
mics to be able to do.




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VoiceOver I kind of feel like,
what's the myth?




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So what what exactly is the myth
about USB, micro USB like securing their




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they're acceptable. I mean,




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I kind of I think I'm on the fence.




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I mean, there are some maybe




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I think there's some areas that it's good
in scenarios where it's bad.




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I think the scenarios where it's bad is
if you're live directed,




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because then if they're like,
can you make it




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a little gain adjustment on your mic
and you don't either one have a gain




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knob to control period,
which many of them don't like to run into.




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One fifth gen there's no gain.




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This is 32 bit.




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You don't have to worry about
gain anymore.




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Right? Exactly.




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And then so then some of the actors, like
I don't even know how to adjust the gain.




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Right? That's one problem.




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Another problem with USB
mics is when the gain knob is on the mic.




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Then they're like,
yeah, I'll adjust the gain.




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And yeah, playing with the microphone,
you're like, what?




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What are you doing?
I said, adjust the game.




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Well the knobs on
the mic like that doesn't look right.




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Let me show you the professional.
Yeah, yeah.




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But at the same time you can buy a road,
you can buy the road 91 to a ten.




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And it does record
very good quality over USB.




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But I think it's fine
in, in a, in a self-directed home record,




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you know, doing like a game
or doing like music or something.




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But yeah, in a real time session,




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if you're going to record
in that situation anyway, okay,




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if you're going to record at home,
why not just invest




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in a decent sort of even just a Scarlett,
I mean, be done with it.




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I mean, rather than, yeah,
I think here's the thing about USB mics




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is that as with any microphone thing,
it is first and foremost placement.




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Putting an iPhone in the right place
will sound better than annoying.




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You 87 in the wrong place.




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We all know that.




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Yeah. Placement. Yeah, but that's scale.




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It's like you want to be
if you're charging whatever, $400 an hour.




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As a voice actor or whatever,
you know, Union is,




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you want to be in the top 90,
95% of sound quality.




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And what sounds good enough
might not really be good enough.




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And it's really,
really easy with the USB mics to fall




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very far down
that because of a lot of things.




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You can't get a cable that's long
enough away from your computer,




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so you're stuck in many other ways.




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Sometimes they don't have a monitor
plugged into them.




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They're just so limiting.




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And I just don't think that, like, you
know, except for the most basic setups,




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they're not worth the investment.




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You can buy an XLR mic, and now
you have something that you can use




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pretty much for a lifetime, or a USB mic,
which is guaranteed




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to be outdated at some point
and chuck it in the garbage at some point.




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So yeah, they're not, they're not.




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It's like either I don't think
the USB interface is same thing.




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I mean, there'll be landfill
of so many interfaces




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now that are just so out of date
and just don't work properly anymore.




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Yeah, absolutely.




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Yeah.




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Stability is a problem
with some USB interfaces.




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I mean I mean, what a USB mic is,
is basically the cheapest,




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tiniest USB interface they could buy.




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Like at the bottom right ship.




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It's like the mic preamp
and the USB interface on one ship, right?




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Yeah, there are some exceptions.




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I know I've heard some apogee
mics to sound pretty good.




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I know that Sennheiser's mic for digital
is really a decent USB my,




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but those are exceptions,
but very much of an exception.




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Most people are buying USB mics
because they're inexpensive.




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They're not buying them
because they happen to




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be good at what they do
and that they're 3 to $500 mics.




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They're buying them because
they're not cheap, then they're cheap.




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And if you want the convenience of a USB
mic but you don't want to, you know,




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consider something like a sure.




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And the and the new one,




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it's like the b x to you, mvcs to you.




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Right.




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You'll take any mic
and turn it into a USB mic.




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I'll give you all the convenience
of the USB mic




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without making the dead
end investment into a USB mic,




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because once all that stuff is bolted
together, you can't separate it.




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And now one of those components going old




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bad renders the whole thing useless.




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Yeah, I think that's disposable.




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Like to me it's
kind of like the iMac problem too.




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You can get a cool iMac,
they look nice and they work fine.




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But when the when the computer is obsolete




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or the screen goes out,
you're throwing out everything.




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That's
another thing that never made sense.




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I think the iMac is good for,




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you know, the front desk
at an aerobics studio or something.




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You know, like




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it's like it's like a laptop
without the convenience of a laptop.




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Yeah.




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It's it's like it's not even fair to say
because it's not a bad computer.




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I have clients and have them,
but that's what bothers me about it.




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It's like the USB.




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My problem when the my something goes
wrong, you throw the whole thing out.




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It's you're done.
So it's it's another myth here.




00:14:19

Okay.




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So is, is this a myth.




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Like how much coaching do you need once




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you are in a career




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compared to like, like I can understand
needing coaching




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if you've not been in sessions
and you need to simulate a session




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and get a feel for what
it's like to be directed.




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But once you've been in sessions,




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I've seen a lot of like




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successful voice actors
seeking out coaching,




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and sometimes I think if anything,
you should be coaching somebody.




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But then when does the coaching end?




00:14:53

Well, I don't know when coaching ends,
but then it's also interesting




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to see some people who are coaching
who you think




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you've been around that long and.




00:15:03

Yeah, right.




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What do you got to do there.




00:15:07

Yeah, yeah yeah.




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It's funny.




00:15:09

I mean, look, I agree you should,




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you know,
I want to show you the employer coach.




00:15:13

I never had a coach, but
you certainly learn stuff pretty quickly.




00:15:17

In session, the dos the etiquette of of.




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You're doing this for a living.




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But I had no clue that
when I was booked for a job for,




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you know, you do an hour session,
that's you're booking is an hour.




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I used to think, well,
I didn't do the whole hour,




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so they get their money's worth




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and get the hell out of this really quick,
because that's what I thought.




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I thought,
you know, well, you pay me for the hour,




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so I should stay here for the hour,
and all they want is like you.




00:15:41

You stay here.




00:15:42

If you get out of here in five minutes,
we're going to be very happy.




00:15:45

That's right. Right.




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So, you know, then the rest of the time
we can get this done and pay less. But.




00:15:49

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.




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And also like, you know, using your eyes




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in a session, which we don't so much now
because we're usually working remotely.




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But using your eyes in the session,
watching body language through the glass,




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even though you're hearing one instruction
verbally, you can actually pick up more




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from looking at the visual cues
of the person, what they really mean.




00:16:12

Right?




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So then that was a so so is is coaching
something that more is like,




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you know, if you want to get experience
and you've not been hired on a job,




00:16:22

you can have a coach simulate
what it's like to be in session.




00:16:26

But really
the true coaching is just getting gigs




00:16:31

and being directed
and screwing some up and winning some.




00:16:35

And like, I don't know, I think that




00:16:39

there's a lot of coaching going on that,
you see, like I said,




00:16:42

I see people doing getting coached
that are like, you know, need coaching.




00:16:45

Like exactly.
I don't look, I don't get it.




00:16:48

And it's certainly in this country,
in Australia, the coaching is very, very




00:16:55

unusual.




00:16:56

There is a little I




00:16:57

mean, it's funny, look, I mean, I,
I can put my perspective on this




00:17:01

having never been a voiceover artist,
but as an audio engineer,




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I've never had a lesson
or a formal lesson in 36 years.




00:17:09

Right.




00:17:10

So technically, in terms of,




00:17:12

you know, all the stuff
that Robert and George are very good at,




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I'm not great at that stuff, but
what I think I have is a good pair of eyes




00:17:18

and an understanding of how to get a sound
to sound the way I want it to sound.




00:17:23

But technically there's, you know,
AP there's stuff that George and Robert




00:17:28

talk about that goes over both our heads,
but I kind of feel like




00:17:30

and maybe that's
where coaching can make up the difference.




00:17:33

And you might put
a voiceover perspective on that.




00:17:35

But I kind of feel like




00:17:36

if I did coaching now, I wouldn't
want to know about the hands on stuff.




00:17:40

I'd want to know




00:17:41

about all that technical stuff
that I've never really learned or under.




00:17:46

Well, I understand that,
but I've never really learned the whys




00:17:48

and wherefores, you know what I mean?




00:17:49

And I wonder whether coaching fills
those gaps in a voiceover sense.




00:17:55

I don't think,
it's it's interesting with coaching




00:17:57

because I think the best coach
you're ever going to work




00:17:59

with is an audio engineer
who's got a lot of experience, like,




00:18:04

if you're new to the game
and you go into a director session




00:18:07

with a person that's worked with,
you know, done a thousands and thousands




00:18:10

of sessions,




00:18:12

you're going to learn a hell of a lot more




00:18:13

with that person than you're ever going
to learn from a coach.




00:18:16

Yeah.




00:18:17

I mean, a lot of the best
coaches are both directors.




00:18:20

Yeah. Directors. Right.




00:18:21

Slash engineers or producers by far?




00:18:25

Absolutely.




00:18:26

I have a totally different myth
that's more tech translated.




00:18:29

Yeah, that getting a booth




00:18:32

means you have an instantly great sounding
recording environment.




00:18:35

Yeah. Yes, that's a nice one.




00:18:37

No. Yeah.




00:18:39

Give that man a cigar.




00:18:40

It is not true at all.




00:18:42

I just delete that on my on.




00:18:43

The job
I just did was, a voice talent at home




00:18:47

and another voice talent
who went to a studio.




00:18:50

Man, it's like against that thing
that you don't notice




00:18:52

when you're in session as much,
and then you start getting into it.




00:18:55

And as, you know, when you take a signal
and you compress it and boom, all the all




00:19:00

come out. Yeah. Yep.




00:19:02

And it's like, oh, I hear the booth.




00:19:03

And I was sitting there trying to like,
knock it out.




00:19:05

And it just, you know,




00:19:06

sometimes you try to knock it out
and it makes it sound worse.




00:19:08

You're just like
I it's it's stuck that way.




00:19:10

And and you can hear it
that the like we did the spot and the,




00:19:15

the English version sounds great.




00:19:16

And the foreign language
version was a booth at home.




00:19:19

And it just has that sound.




00:19:22

And to a lot of people,
they won't know what that sound is,




00:19:25

but it's the sound of a small box
and you just can't get away from it.




00:19:30

It's so you can




00:19:32

become complacent to it.




00:19:33

And it's not really like that.
You don't care.




00:19:36

Maybe that's not the right word.




00:19:37

It's just that it's like nose blindness.




00:19:39

Yeah.




00:19:40

You know,
you come home, you go from vacation, go.




00:19:43

This is what, my house.




00:19:45

Yeah, I don't know.




00:19:46

Yeah, but yeah, but it's like when you're
used to the sound of your own booth




00:19:50

in the way it sounds, day after day,
week after week, month after month.




00:19:53

It's normal.




00:19:55

I mean, I was used to the sound of bad
sounding whisper rooms




00:19:58

for quite a long time.




00:19:59

I just thought
that's what it sounded like.




00:20:01

When you get a nice open sounding studio
recording, like from a nice




00:20:05

a nice big dead booth
that doesn't have all those nodes,




00:20:09

and then you get the other tight
when you're like, oh, like




00:20:12

what was because I was working
with like the my first 5 or 6 real paying




00:20:15

voiceover clients were all home studio
promo voiceovers.




00:20:20

So that was the norm, you know?




00:20:22

And then I would start hearing
good, really, truly great recordings.




00:20:25

And I was like, whoa, okay.




00:20:27

I started to learn what it's supposed
to sound like and what it well,




00:20:30

what it could sound like.




00:20:31

And then it really opened my eyes.




00:20:33

And then, you know, ever since then, it's
been a pursuit of trying to capture




00:20:37

or recreate that great sound,
you know, from a really small space.




00:20:41

But, you know, if you're like, oh,
I have a really high ceiling.




00:20:43

I hear that's bad. I'm like,
no, no, no, no, that's really good.




00:20:46

That's really. Yeah, yeah.




00:20:47

They're like they're like,
oh I heard that's bad.




00:20:50

I'm like, no, it's just another myth.




00:20:52

It's just there's
so many myths about acoustics




00:20:55

because many of it
maybe is are not conventional wisdom.




00:20:58

It's not logical to you or whatever.




00:21:01

But, it's not the case at all.




00:21:04

You want to have you want to
you want to have every hard surface




00:21:07

as far away from the mic
is humanly possible, right?




00:21:11

You want




00:21:12

you want no hard surfaces in the room
and you want them all to be far away.




00:21:16

Like the booth can kind of do
two things for you.




00:21:19

It can deaden it up
and it can deal with noise.




00:21:22

As long as there's not excessive noise




00:21:23

outside the booth,
it can take care of those two things.




00:21:25

Right? It's like noise reduction.




00:21:28

It's going to solve your problem
and it's going to cause you a new problem.




00:21:31

Right, right.




00:21:32

It's the irony.




00:21:33

Like when you buy this very expensive
confining




00:21:36

hot uncomfortable box,
shove yourself and you're like in there,




00:21:43

you torture yourself for an hour
only to deal with the fact that you're




00:21:46

getting for many people's an occasional
noise from the neighborhood or something.




00:21:52

But 99% of the time it's probably fine,
you know what I mean?




00:21:56

And so that's the reality.




00:21:58

I mean, it's not true for why?




00:22:00

I mean, it's been abnormally quiet for
the last hour in this in my home studio.




00:22:05

But I mean, normally you hear of crackers,
usually a couple.




00:22:08

And listen, listen is
so now you got the whole air conditioner?




00:22:12

I'm in a very light room.




00:22:15

I mean, yeah, it's.




00:22:16

Yeah, it's it's my technique.




00:22:18

It's how loud you are to projection.




00:22:20

It's all these things.




00:22:21

But it is definitely a misnomer
that spreads, you know, far and wide.




00:22:26

There's only one voice over Booth company
that has worked with me directly.




00:22:30

And I'm not trying to say I'm
the king of all voiceover studios, but




00:22:34

I don't know anybody making voice over




00:22:36

Booth, who have collaborated
with a voiceover engineer




00:22:40

to ensure and listen
and try to make it sound better.




00:22:43

But vocal booth.com here in the States
is done, that they're the only ones that




00:22:48

I think you're right with me and yeah
invited me over and let's play with stuff.




00:22:53

I think we chatted while you were there
didn't we. Didn't we do an episode.




00:22:56

Yeah. Yeah.




00:22:58

And you
know I give them huge props for that.




00:22:59

I mean studio bricks




00:23:01

has got an engine acoustician
now that works in-house which is great.




00:23:05

And they're doing some you know
their new booths do sound pretty good




00:23:08

but it's taking them 12
plus years to get there.




00:23:11

Other companies never got there.




00:23:14

They just keep doing the same stuff
over and over




00:23:16

because most people don't know
the difference.




00:23:18

It's like the blind leading the blind.




00:23:19

And you know, and for the certain
level of work, it's good enough.




00:23:23

It's good enough.




00:23:24

I've got an audio book,
audio books and can get away with murder.




00:23:28

Yeah.
So he does books. A lot of them sound bad.




00:23:31

They don't even matter. Right?
Yeah, he'd say it.




00:23:33

And so it's like the boost
will will get you a certain level,




00:23:37

and then you either have to hire
someone like you, George, to tune it out.




00:23:42

But I would argue
that you can't ultimately




00:23:46

completely tune
a booth to not sound like Booth.




00:23:49

It's very difficult because by the time
you treat enough of the surface




00:23:52

with a thick enough treatment,
there's no room for you.




00:23:55

You can't move around very much. Yeah.




00:23:57

And you're like, you're like,
I can't bump up into the walls, right?




00:24:02

I mean, I had a client just very recently
send me a sample,




00:24:05

and he's like any listed




00:24:06

painstakingly, all the panels he had
and how thick they were in his notes.




00:24:11

And I was like, Jesus, no




00:24:14

six inch thick panels.




00:24:16

And I listened to the sample
and it was amazing.




00:24:19

That was like,
that's one of the best sounding raw files




00:24:22

I've heard in a long time.




00:24:24

It's like you've consulted
you on Booth design,




00:24:27

and he didn't really make that too clear.




00:24:29

He just said, I insisted on these panels.




00:24:31

The guy making them or the dealer selling
them was like, no, you don't need that.




00:24:36

And he was like,
no, I this is what I want.




00:24:39

And then sure enough, it sounded fantastic
because he had the right




00:24:43

and the right amount and thick
enough panels in the right places.




00:24:46

My studio work this here behind me
that you guys can't see on the show.




00:24:49

Sorry, but it's got up to six inches
of paneling on the walls.




00:24:52

Well, the only like like the
the two inch or one,




00:24:56

the one inch stuff deals with a lot, but
it does not hit the low end well enough




00:25:01

to just get the meat of the frequency
range of most voices, even women.




00:25:05

It there's a tremendous amount
of standing waves and resonances below 300




00:25:10

over three, three and one hertz,
and those panels do zero to those.




00:25:14

So so in my case I just put the thickest
panels above my shoulders.




00:25:19

Right.




00:25:19

So yeah they're encroaching in my space
but they're not in my wingspan,




00:25:24

if you know what I mean.
I can move my elbows around.




00:25:27

And so yes, it's a little claustrophobic,




00:25:30

but not so much
because I can still move around.




00:25:33

But I have that six inches
of paneling at my head




00:25:36

level, you know,
and it works surprisingly well




00:25:39

without feeling too cramped,
but so you just had to be clever about it.




00:25:43

And if you need help, talk to people
like us, because man, like, you know what?




00:25:48

It's supposed to sound like.




00:25:50

I can still remember the first setup
I had, which I,




00:25:52

when I think about it
now, is just ridiculous.




00:25:56

Yeah.




00:25:56

And, and then the second one I built,
which was not quite as ridiculous,




00:26:00

but still pretty ordinary.




00:26:03

It was




00:26:03

basically in a cupboard,
that kind of thing.




00:26:07

With acoustic foam inside the cupboard.




00:26:10

It sounded like you'd isolate




00:26:12

recording inside a motorcycle helmet,




00:26:15

but also Vox.




00:26:16

Yeah. Exactly.




00:26:18

Exactly the helmet.




00:26:20

And, and then the third one I went,
I actually sort of thought




00:26:24

I'd better get
a bit more serious about this.




00:26:25

And, I got a guy came over and help me.




00:26:28

We built one
which sounded really, really good.




00:26:31

And then, of course, this was the
this is the last one I built here.




00:26:34

This one you have sounds pretty good.




00:26:35

And it's got a good length to it.




00:26:37

Like, that's one of the things
it's a it's not a small booth, am I right.




00:26:41

Yeah.




00:26:41

The booth is over behind me.




00:26:43

I'm sitting on the.




00:26:44

Yeah, mine room
here, but, is it it's big enough.




00:26:48

Oh. Just at least like six foot, isn't it?




00:26:51

More. More.




00:26:51

Yeah. Exactly.




00:26:52

Yeah, yeah, I think we all go
through the same sort of progression.




00:26:56

I mean, Jesus, if I,
if I think about my first time studio,




00:26:59

it was in 2002




00:27:03

and it was the old G4 Mac, you know, the,




00:27:07

the great thing and all that
sort of stuff in the Quiksilver.




00:27:10

Yeah.
And it was an M1 mirror on the front.




00:27:13

Yeah, that's the one.




00:27:14

And an M box and a version Pro Tools
and and I had no treatment in the room.




00:27:19

There was a,
the wall behind me was a big long




00:27:23

wall of bookshelves
and full of books and trinkets in the.




00:27:27

So that was right.




00:27:28

So exactly.




00:27:29

So I didn't do anything
really in the room.




00:27:31

And I would sort of just mix in headphones
and all that sort of stuff.




00:27:35

And I compare it to now,
you know, with panels




00:27:37

I've made on the walls
and now the curtains




00:27:41

and all the shit that I've, I've done and,
you know, all that sort of stuff




00:27:45

in the bookshelf




00:27:46

intentionally down there because for
some reason, stuff was ricocheting.




00:27:50

I was originally going to have that behind
me, but I shoved it down in that corner.




00:27:54

So, yeah.




00:27:54

So, you know,
I'd like you think about the progression




00:27:57

and if you could see the,
the studios in the middle of all that,




00:28:01

it was certainly sort of just upper level
each time, I suppose.




00:28:04

But then I guess
each time you build a studio,




00:28:06

you think, okay, well,
what am I going to do this time?




00:28:09

That didn't work last time and stuff.




00:28:11

So it's probably logical
unless you have an interest




00:28:14

in this at a young age and you intern
and you get to be in the environment




00:28:17

and talk to the designers,
those things just never happen.




00:28:21

It's a black art,
and so you just learn it as you go.




00:28:24

Because unless you're lucky enough
to get to the right person early on




00:28:28

and you get to not have to make
a lot of mistakes, that happens.




00:28:32

But it's very, very rare.




00:28:34

And so you really just learn as you go
and you get better and better over time.




00:28:37

I'm still learning stuff all the time.




00:28:39

That's what's fun about on
is that you're always learning stuff.




00:28:41

It's never over.




00:28:42

It's yeah, it's like a continuous thing.




00:28:45

It's like because it's it's like
that thing where I remember when I was a




00:28:50

at a high school
just beginning to record drums, and then




00:28:53

every time I was like, every drum kit
I recorded, oh,




00:28:56

this one's better than the last one I did.




00:28:57

And I got even better.




00:28:59

And it's like, you get this feeling.
I finally got it.




00:29:01

And then you do another one. You're like,
oh, it's even better.




00:29:04

And you start learning
how to deal with it.




00:29:06

I won't do that again.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.




00:29:08

Well there's always that




00:29:10

or you start realizing what it is that is
like, oh, that one recorded really well.




00:29:14

And what was it?




00:29:15

It wasn't anything I did.




00:29:16

The damn thing was tuned.




00:29:18

Oh, you can tune drum.




00:29:19

Oh yeah. You know, it's amazing.




00:29:21

And so that that whole journey
and it's like it's exciting




00:29:24

when you're improving,
you know, it's like anything. Yeah.




00:29:27

Oh totally is. Yeah.




00:29:29

And that's not a myth.




00:29:30

That's not. That's a fact. Yeah.




00:29:33

And if you missed this episode,
go back to the beginning.




00:29:38

Well, that was fun.




00:29:39

Is it over




00:29:41

the audio sweet things




00:29:43

to try and Austrian
audio recorded using Source Connect.




00:29:47

Edited by Andrew Peters
and mixed by Robert Go.




00:29:50

Your own audio issues.




00:29:51

Just ask Robert.




00:29:53

Don't call him tech. Support him.
Use the tech. William.




00:29:55

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00:29:59

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00:30:03

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