Raw vs. Processed: Navigating Client Expectations in Voice Over Delivery
The Pro Audio SuiteJuly 29, 2024x
29
00:25:0145.91 MB

Raw vs. Processed: Navigating Client Expectations in Voice Over Delivery

The Pro Audio Suite - S7 EP29: Processed Session Audio Welcome back to The Pro Audio Suite! In this episode, we delve into the intricacies of processed session audio and the importance of proper audio handling during recordings. Join Robbo, Robert, George, and AP as they share their experiences and insights on managing audio quality in various recording scenarios. Episode Highlights:
  • Session with a "Processed" Actor: Robert recounts a session with an actor who claimed to have no processing, but the audio told a different story.
  • Importance of Proper Gain Staging: Tips on managing preamp and output gain to avoid unnecessary compression and maintain audio integrity.
  • Challenges of Compression in Voiceover: The team discusses how heavy compression affects natural sound and the listener's experience.
  • Audio Quality in National Commercials: The state of audio production for television commercials and the shift towards lighter processing.
  • Mixing Techniques: Debates on mixing into a compressor versus post-mix compression and their impacts on the final audio product.
  • Client Expectations and Audio Delivery: Navigating client expectations regarding raw and processed audio and the importance of clear communication.
Key Takeaways:
  • Identifying and addressing hidden processing in recorded audio.
  • The significance of maintaining proper gain staging during recording sessions.
  • The effects of heavy compression on voiceover performances and how to achieve a natural sound.
  • Understanding client terminology and ensuring clear communication about audio expectations.
  • Practical mixing techniques to enhance audio quality without over-processing.
Join us for an episode filled with expert advice, real-world examples, and lively discussions. Whether you're a seasoned audio professional or just starting out, you'll find valuable insights to improve your recording and mixing techniques. Resources Mentioned:
  • Tips for Managing Audio Compression
  • Recommended Gear for Voiceover Recording
  • Understanding Client Terminology in Audio Production
Connect with Us:
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  • Subscribe to our YouTube channel for Pro Audio Suite Tips and more exclusive content.
  • Check out our sponsor, Tribooth, for the best vocal booth solutions.
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, it’s 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/ “When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.” Hunter S Thompson

00:00:00
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history?

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Get started.

00:00:01
Welcome.

00:00:02
Hi.

00:00:02
Hi.

00:00:03
Hi.

00:00:03
Hello, everyone.

00:00:05
To the Pro Audio Suite.

00:00:06
These guys are professional, they're motivated.

00:00:08
Thanks to Tribush, the best vocal booth for home or on-the-road voice recording, and Austrian

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Audio, making passion heard.

00:00:16
Introducing Robert Marshall from Source Elements and Someone Audio Post, Chicago.

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Darren Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney.

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Tech to the VO Stars.

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George the Tech Whittam from LA.

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And me, Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home studio guy.

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Line up, man.

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Here we go.

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Sound on TV.

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And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite, thanks to Austrian Audio, making passion heard.

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And also, Tribush, don't forget the code, T-R-I-P-A-P-200.

00:00:45
That will get you $200 off your Tribush.

00:00:48
Please buy one, because we want to keep Tribush as a sponsor, but you know, it's all about

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numbers.

00:00:54
Anyway, Robert's had an interesting session with an actor that claimed to have no processing,

00:00:58
but it appears probably was lying.

00:01:01
Robert.

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So, yeah, we hook up and everything's good, and first take, George, here's the tip off.

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First take, I mean, the meter goes all the way to the top, but it doesn't hit zero.

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Yeah.

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There's no way.

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Yeah, yeah.

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There's no way.

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And I'm like, can you turn that down?

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That's a light touch.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Well, first, I'm like, are you processing?

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Because it also just had that compressed sound, and I know he's a radio guy.

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You recognize compression when you see it or hear it.

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He's a radio guy, and I know a lot of times radio guys like their compression, I think.

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Yeah, they have a strip.

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Maybe I'm stereotyping that.

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Yeah.

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And I'm like, do you have anything on your mic?

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Are you processing?

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He's like, no, no, not at all.

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I'm like, all right, well, can you turn it down?

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You're like louder than the clients.

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You're louder than everything here.

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The spot's not even that loud.

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So he turns it down, and then, well, the meter just doesn't move beyond minus 12, but it's

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like...

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Magic.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Oh, he turned down the output.

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Yeah, he turned down the output.

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Yeah, whatever.

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He didn't...

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He was still hitting that compressor and, I think, limiter the same.

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Limiter, by the sounds of it.

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I asked him, like...

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So he didn't turn down his preamp gain.

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He turned down the output.

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Output.

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Output gain, yeah.

00:02:18
Okay.

00:02:19
So he technically turned it down.

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He turned it down.

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I mean, he turned it down, like, 10 decibels, because it was cranking.

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And then, you know, I think I probably mentioned it two, maybe three times.

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And it was always like, no, not processing.

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So I just, you know, move on.

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But it sort of annoyed me, because it's like, I can't put it exactly where I want it now.

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It's now, like, just in your face.

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I know where you're going, but for the listeners at home who listen to you and me bitch on and

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on each week, what corner did this guy now paint you into?

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He's just, like, in your face, like, and there's no subtlety to the read anymore.

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And I don't know what the word is, but it doesn't sound natural, actually.

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You know, we were kind of talking about that before, and it had that, like, just, you know,

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this isn't a radio show.

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This was a commercial, and it didn't need that.

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It wasn't also an in-your-face kind of, yeah, it was a national commercial.

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It wasn't the type of read that needed to be, like, it wasn't fighting loud music.

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It was...

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Yeah, you tell me, Robert, isn't the state of audio production for a voiceover in a national

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commercial for television very light processing?

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I'd say so.

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Like...

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Like, let's say it's the aesthetic of very light processing.

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You might be using a fair amount for certain reasons, but it doesn't sound processed.

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It doesn't have a compressed...

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Right, you need clarity.

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You definitely...

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Not clarity like waves, but you need, like, you know, you're gonna put a little 4K or

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2K...

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Almost on the edge of sibilant, but it's not...

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Yeah.

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It's definitely not annoying.

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It's not pushed.

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It's not pumping.

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It's not bigger than life.

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A lot of the times the clients are like, you know, like the old saying was, like, I want

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an everyday man or an everyday person, and you're not looking for that, like, inflated

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chest sound.

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And that's what I was getting.

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And...

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So when he was cast for that spot, he, you know, he did the audition, he got cast.

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That's the sound that they cast him from, right?

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And so now he's like, well, that's my sound.

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It sounded very, very polished, clean, cut, and loud, and consistent, and got that right

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on the mic.

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It was the same thing.

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And you usually think, oh, well, they processed it during the audition to make sure that they

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float above the rest and everything.

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They stacked it.

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Yeah.

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It's a term that's used a lot now, I have to say, stacking has become a bit of a...

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What's the word?

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An adjective?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Part of our vernacular.

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Now, speaking...

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Okay.

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Well, he's a test.

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Just because you say you're not processing and they don't keep on pushing, that doesn't

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mean you got away with it.

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No.

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That just means that no one wants to be rude, and they want to move on with the session,

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and they'll deal...

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This is the other thing, right?

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In terms of the amount of processing that I'm hearing was on what you were hearing.

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Is in these days, like for television, you've got loudness considerations that have to come

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into play.

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So if you're getting a voiceover that's had the living shit compressed out of it, or is

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quite clearly being compressed, and again, I'm playing devil's advocate here, because

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I know the answer, but I want people to hear your answer because you dealt with it today.

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What difference does that make in terms of your mix, in terms of when you've got to consider

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loudness overall?

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When you're starting something that's heavily compressed.

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I mean, I just couldn't make it as subtle as I wanted to make it, or make it as whatever.

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Natural.

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Natural sounding.

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And the other thing that people don't realize now is like, you know, you go back to 1990,

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and yeah, everything was loud, and you had to make it loud because there were no rules.

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But now, the LKFS level that a commercial has to be at, you don't even need a compressor.

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Right.

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I mean, like, now you're just looking at...

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Minus 24.

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I'll mix it to 23 or 22 because you get a 2dB kind of, you know, window.

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Look at you, sneaky gaga.

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Well, we used to do other things.

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We used to, for the surround spots, until we realized it was causing phase issues, we

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would put the voice in all three speakers across the front, so when it went to stereo,

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went louder.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Nice.

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But, you know, it's not the volume wars anymore, at least in the national spots, because everything

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is so just controlled, and you don't need to fight to make it loud.

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It's very easy with no processing just to make it as loud as it needs to be.

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What you're more looking for is consistency, you know, because does it start low and end

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up loud?

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Because you're going to be measured on your loudest point within the whole spot.

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But that's all stuff that can be done with a fader.

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That's leveling.

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That's not like making it...

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But it's like us turning around to the voice talent and going, listen, I'm sorry, but you're

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gonna have to record this spot with your headphones off.

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You know, you're boxing someone into a corner.

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And it's just, you know, the reason we ask is not because we want to be assholes, or

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not because we don't want you to sound like your audition, or any other reason other than

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I've got my job to do, do me a favor, help me out, turn the shit off.

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I don't want it on.

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Right.

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It's not the promo that's moving so fast that no one's going to take the time to mix it

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That's right.

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Yeah, promo's a different animal completely.

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Promo is ephemeral.

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Goes on the air, and it's gone.

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It wasn't a gate where you could even call it out and be like, you know, you hear that

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thing cutting off for your clients.

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There's no way my clients were going to understand, hey, like, what is compression?

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They don't even know what it is.

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So you mention it once or twice, three times, and then you just move on, and you're just

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sort of like, ah, like, that guy.

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This is the problem when, you know, this is the pro and the con of like the Apollo systems,

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whether you have the ability to do this, is the pro is that it's available to you and

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you can use it when it's necessary or appropriate for whatever it is that you're doing.

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It's also a pro to know that you can be easily shut off with a single click, and that you

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can get back to the setting that you had before, and you can have multiple settings.

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So you can have an infinite number of versions, right?

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The folks that are using Symmetrix 6200 or Symmetrix 52080 or DVX, whatever it is.

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They don't want to touch a knob because they're going to lose all those settings, right?

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Well, all of those things have one thing in common, a bypass button.

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So there's no excuse, because they can immediately press the button.

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But they are so addicted to the way they sound in their cans through that chain, and they

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know that if they shut that shit off, it's going to fuck up their headphones.

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And now they're going to be like, they're going to be out of their...

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What's he saying?

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That he trusts his settings more than me?

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Yeah.

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Well...

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He's saying, I want to hear it.

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He's saying, that's what I want to hear and not what you want to hear.

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And that's...

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That's my point.

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That's the problem.

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I shouldn't say he.

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They.

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Sorry.

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His name was.

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Albert.

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This person knew enough to know that the customer was saying, send it unprocessed.

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But he knew that his performance was suffering, because when he heard himself in the cans

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totally raw, it was affecting his performance.

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It was harder for him to get that performance.

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The UA does that perfectly, just turn off the record button.

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I was able to set up a UAD monitor chain that had what he wanted in LA2A, right?

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Slam, just like boom, bigger than life, whatever.

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And then we made up a separate chain in his post process and logic that maybe had some

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of that, maybe not.

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It was a mix.

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It was kind of a mishmash, right?

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But he had a monitoring chain and he had a processing chain.

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We were to separate those two out from each other.

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And, and I think that needs to be done.

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If headphones are a part of what you do, you really are dependent on the way you sound

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in those cans to get your performance.

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If you can't turn off the processing to get that sound, then you have to figure out a

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way around it.

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And there are ways to do it.

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It's not like it's impossible.

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You just need to know.

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When I record a singer, I will put the compression on it heavy in the monitors because it helps

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the performance.

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It helps them hear everything and makes it so that they're not trying to push too loud

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and they can have that subtle performance and they're not trying to float above, get

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themselves above everything, but I'm not recording it that way.

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And then later that's all things that can be done more thoughtfully with a fader instead

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of a compressor.

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That's why every DAW, the processing is always post by default.

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It does not record the processing on that channel.

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Except for Reaper.

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It gives you the option.

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Reaper does have a pre effects that is unique to Reaper, but on others, you have to go out

00:11:19
of your way to make an aux chain and then send it back into another file.

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And you can do all that, which I do sometimes too, but you have to go out of your way.

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But that's why it's always a post thing.

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We want as engineers to record the pre-fader, pre-processed, raw, raw audio on the whole

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and make that decision.

00:11:39
Coming back to what you want to hear, I mean, Robert, you're a music engineer.

00:11:44
You would know this.

00:11:46
There's debate out there in music producer or music engineer land, you know, do you mix

00:11:52
into a compressor or not?

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There's plenty of people who sort of have a slight compressor happening over the mix from

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the moment they press, you know, start mix.

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And then there are others who won't.

00:12:04
Do you mean do your mix into a compressor as in if it's going to tape or going into

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monitors?

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They'll put a compressor on just to sort of control everything and then mix into it.

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And then that's not their master.

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That's just a compressor on the stereo mix to sort of keep everything in check.

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And there's debate.

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It's a bus compressor.

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There's plenty of people out there who'll go, yeah, I do.

00:12:24
And there are people out there who go, no, there's no way I would.

00:12:28
But that's not...

00:12:29
Are you asking me how I do it?

00:12:30
Well, actually, yeah, that would be interesting.

00:12:32
I mean, I can make a few comments on that.

00:12:34
Like number one, if I'm moving fast, yeah, I'll mix into a compressor.

00:12:39
I'll mix and master all in one pass.

00:12:41
I had a client the other day that was like, the other studio is telling me that I need

00:12:45
to master it.

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And are they ripping me off?

00:12:47
I'm like, no, they're not really ripping you off.

00:12:50
But if you know what you're going for, you can kind of hit both in one stroke.

00:12:56
And maybe these days, people are just doing songs and they're putting them up on YouTube

00:13:00
and there's not an album.

00:13:03
If you're mastering and you're looking at the whole album, you need to master.

00:13:06
If not, yeah, you can kind of mix and master in one shot, especially because you're not

00:13:10
sending it to somebody else for their opinion.

00:13:12
If you're the same person who's going to mix and master, hey, why not do it in one

00:13:16
shot?

00:13:17
If I'm trying to move fast, I'll mix into a compressor.

00:13:21
But I don't think you necessarily get the most detailed mix that way.

00:13:25
Because there's a certain point after which you start pushing all your faders up.

00:13:29
It just doesn't matter anymore.

00:13:31
I think that's the point is like, do you monitor...

00:13:33
I know we're way off topic again, as usual.

00:13:36
But it's like, are you better off as the engineer mixing through compression that you're monitoring

00:13:42
versus printing that compression?

00:13:44
Because you just want to hear that mix monitored through that bus compressor.

00:13:49
During the session, it's nice to record through a compressor so that you just start hearing

00:13:53
the details of that vocal and you know if there are any problems and the singer knows

00:13:58
that they're not pushing too loud and you're getting a nice dynamic.

00:14:03
But I mean, by now you're mixing, you're in the mixing stage and you're mixing through

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a bus compressor.

00:14:09
Are you always printing that compressor or are you monitoring the compressor?

00:14:13
Because you want to hear the way it would...

00:14:15
I used to do it where I would mix into a compressor just to have an idea of how it's going to

00:14:21
be.

00:14:22
And I got burned one time because I did one of these albums where the band had this engineer

00:14:27
do three songs and that engineer do three songs.

00:14:29
And one of the engineers just sent them a pretty much mastered mix.

00:14:33
I mixed it and I did, especially because often when you send the clients home with a mix,

00:14:39
you throw it through a quick master because if not, they're like, it just doesn't sound

00:14:43
right.

00:14:43
I can't...

00:14:44
So you're like, here you go.

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Here's just a smack compressor to get it into place so you can listen to it relative to

00:14:53
other things and have an idea.

00:14:54
And then when I sent it off to the mastering engineer, I turned all my stuff off, came

00:14:59
back and this guy sucked.

00:15:01
And my stuff sounded small and the other guy's stuff sounded big because he didn't put anything

00:15:08
on my...

00:15:09
I'm so glad you said this.

00:15:10
And I wish I had just been like, here it is.

00:15:12
I'd done that.

00:15:13
I thought you were going to do it better because that's what you're supposed to do as a mastering

00:15:17
engineer, but you didn't do any of it.

00:15:19
And now I'm forever stuck in this, like my mixes sound small.

00:15:24
Thank you, Robert.

00:15:25
I have to thank you.

00:15:26
I'm going to send you one of those edible oranges, whatever you want.

00:15:29
Edible undies?

00:15:30
Because this is why I set up stacks for voice actors.

00:15:36
They have to know, if they don't know who the client is, this is especially for pay

00:15:41
to play.

00:15:42
I would say this is mainly pay to play.

00:15:44
And the pay to play client says, we want the audio raw.

00:15:49
They just know that that's something to say to a talent.

00:15:53
We want the audio raw.

00:15:55
Well, you get the final product if you happen to hear it.

00:15:58
A lot of times you never hear it, so you just move on with your life.

00:16:01
But if you do hear the final product, sometimes the audio mix blows.

00:16:05
It sucks.

00:16:07
It is not well mixed.

00:16:08
The voice is totally flat.

00:16:10
It's not compressed.

00:16:11
I hear stuff on YouTube ads occasionally, even television, proper television ads, that aren't

00:16:18
mixed.

00:16:19
And so it's this weird thing that actors have this razor's edge where it's like with enough

00:16:24
experience you start to learn that you have to actually process certain things because

00:16:29
if you don't, nobody else is doing it.

00:16:32
That used to only be in promos.

00:16:34
That's a tail wagging the dog problem now where we have to figure that out.

00:16:38
That used to only be in promos where they would record the promo straight to the tape

00:16:41
and before you knew it it was on the air and they were just moving so fast no one had

00:16:46
any time to think about it.

00:16:47
That's just moving fast.

00:16:48
Yeah, moving fast.

00:16:49
Yeah, but the trouble is a lot of times when they say they want the audio raw, it's not

00:16:54
what you think they mean.

00:16:56
What they mean is they don't want any music or sound effects.

00:17:01
And so the interpretation is, oh, okay, no processing.

00:17:05
No.

00:17:05
What they want is no sound effects or music.

00:17:08
They mean clean.

00:17:09
Because they're clueless.

00:17:10
They have no idea what they're doing.

00:17:11
So they don't know.

00:17:12
Yeah, it's jargon.

00:17:13
And those jargon-

00:17:13
They don't know their terms.

00:17:14
Yeah, that doesn't translate across cultures or even from one studio to another what raw

00:17:22
actually means.

00:17:23
That's a really good point.

00:17:25
Anyway, I'm not trying to defend my use of stacks or setting them up for clients because

00:17:29
they really need to listen to what they're putting out.

00:17:32
If they're just hitting a button and sending it-

00:17:34
No matter what you do, you're screwed if you do or you're screwed if you don't.

00:17:37
If you don't, the wrong client doesn't process your audio.

00:17:40
Now you don't sound as good as you could or you end up pissing me off because I'm going

00:17:44
to process your audio the way I want it processed and now I'm pissed off at you for processing

00:17:49
it and not giving me a choice.

00:17:51
There's also the belt and suspenders, which is you track it raw and you have a stack.

00:17:55
You send them both.

00:17:56
Well, this was a live session.

00:17:57
This wasn't like, you know.

00:17:58
Yeah.

00:17:59
Here's the perfect analogy, right?

00:18:01
You walk into a really nice steak restaurant and you sit down to order a steak and you

00:18:06
go, yeah, I'll have a sirloin and I'll have it blue.

00:18:11
Thank you because, well, that's my choice.

00:18:13
But the chef goes, oh, no, sir, sir, sir, I'm sorry, you cannot have blue.

00:18:19
You must have well done and you must have the onion gravy, you know, and it's like,

00:18:23
hang on.

00:18:24
That's not what I'm ordering.

00:18:26
I'm ordering a steak blue with mustard, please.

00:18:30
You know, but you're being told and it's the same when you sit down and in a session and

00:18:33
this dude's refusing to turn his compressor off, he's like, dude, don't try to sell me

00:18:38
what I don't want.

00:18:39
Yeah, but I've got a feeling this guy doesn't know how to turn the compressor off.

00:18:42
Or doesn't want to.

00:18:43
I think George's story is more up my alley in terms of and the reason I've got a bugbear,

00:18:48
by the way, can I just say is because the moment Robert opened his mouth on this, I had a session

00:18:52
last week with a very well-known Australian voiceover artist.

00:18:56
And I had this exact argument.

00:18:58
And at the end of the session, I was so pissed off.

00:19:00
I rang his agent and told them, did you finally give in, Andrew?

00:19:03
Did I give in?

00:19:05
Yeah, no, it wasn't me.

00:19:06
No, I'm joking.

00:19:07
It wasn't Andrew, but this guy, this guy should know better.

00:19:13
And now his agent and his agent, to be honest, the guy, the guy makes so much money.

00:19:18
His agent probably just went, ah, Robbo rang and complained, but get fucked.

00:19:22
I think I know who that was.

00:19:24
I've got a horrible feeling.

00:19:25
I know that was.

00:19:25
But anyway, I won't.

00:19:26
I'm not going to name names.

00:19:27
But the interesting thing is in the in the good old days where we used to go out to studios

00:19:32
with engineers that I sort of had some sort of friendship with or whatever, I'd always

00:19:36
ask them after we'd done the session, what what are you going to do to my voice?

00:19:39
What processing are you going to use?

00:19:41
And a lot of the time I'd sit there and I'd watch them after the session if the client

00:19:44
had gone or, you know, and just see how much they put on.

00:19:48
And most cases they didn't put much at all.

00:19:51
Totally.

00:19:52
Yeah.

00:19:52
Very little.

00:19:54
So my question is going to be once again to Robert and Robbo was if you if you were doing

00:20:01
a session with me for a commercial and it was like a, you know, not a big promo kind of

00:20:05
thing, just a nice conversational kind of commercial.

00:20:08
What processing would you use on my voice?

00:20:10
I would probably just I'll interject real quick and say, Andrew, that is testament to

00:20:15
your performance.

00:20:16
Like it obviously it's the room, it's the mic, it's the it's all the way down.

00:20:21
But it starts with you because you have excellent control of your instrument, your delivery,

00:20:26
your dynamics are consistent, all these things.

00:20:29
So they do absolute bare minimum to the processing because they don't need to.

00:20:33
I would I would basically probably just put a very, very low set high pass filter.

00:20:41
If I if I didn't hear any thumps, I'd probably just still put like a, you know, whatever

00:20:46
even like 40 hertz high pass filter with a very gentle slope.

00:20:50
I'd probably maybe bump the high EQ around two or four K, a DB or three.

00:20:59
And then a light sort of fastish compressor like LA 2A style to three DB.

00:21:08
And then everything else, I would just push the fader for what I needed it to be.

00:21:13
And that's about what I do, probably.

00:21:15
And maybe, maybe with you, probably not.

00:21:19
But maybe I'd have like a little de-esser.

00:21:22
I don't really use a de-esser.

00:21:23
I tend to use a multiband compressor with just a high, you know, just kind of tapping

00:21:27
the high high frequency down a little bit.

00:21:31
A nuanced de-esser.

00:21:33
Yeah.

00:21:33
Or DIY de-esser.

00:21:34
A flexible de-esser.

00:21:36
What would you do with Andrew's voice?

00:21:39
You know, processing wise?

00:21:41
Yeah.

00:21:43
Look, LA 2A goes on most things for me.

00:21:47
And that would probably be it.

00:21:49
A little bit of EQ.

00:21:51
Yeah.

00:21:51
Like Robert's talking about bottom.

00:21:53
Do you have the switch and compressor?

00:21:55
I like it in compressor mode, but there's another bone of contention, isn't there?

00:21:58
Let's be honest.

00:21:59
Would you put a high pass filter on it anyways, even if you don't hear anything in there?

00:22:03
Probably.

00:22:04
Yeah, probably take some of that.

00:22:07
Like I'm sort of a, I mix voiceover like, almost like vocals, like everything that's

00:22:13
unnecessary goes.

00:22:15
You know, that sort of muddy, yucky sort of low mids.

00:22:19
Dump it down.

00:22:20
I sort of tend to, because my go-to EQ is the F6, the Waves one, which is, you can use it

00:22:29
as an EQ or you can use it.

00:22:31
Is that the multi?

00:22:32
Is it the F6 or the C6?

00:22:34
You can use it as an EQ, but you can also use it as a multiband compressor as well.

00:22:40
I use the C4 from Waves, but same basic idea.

00:22:44
So I touch, so if you could see, if you could see the curve on those low mids, it's sort

00:22:50
of, there's a little bit dialed in, like maybe minus one or minus two, that's there hard.

00:22:53
And then I just run the compressor.

00:22:55
Do you boost up the highs or do you just scoop the lows out?

00:22:59
Depends on the voice.

00:23:00
It depends what you're hearing, again.

00:23:02
Because we're kind of saying the same thing, right?

00:23:04
A little bit, maybe, I guess, up the top.

00:23:06
Yeah, because I kind of leave the lower mids alone and I just give a boost on the highs,

00:23:12
but scooping out the lows or boosting the upper mids is like six and a half.

00:23:18
And then I like...

00:23:19
Actually, I've just realized that I've actually done jobs for, worked with both of you, actually,

00:23:24
Robert and Robo.

00:23:25
We should compare.

00:23:26
My stuff always sounds better than Robo's, right?

00:23:29
Yeah.

00:23:33
Of course it does, Robert.

00:23:35
When are we going to have a mix-off, huh?

00:23:37
Yeah, a mix-off, that'd be interesting.

00:23:39
I'd be interested to see what audio you're going to send him, though, AP.

00:23:43
I mean, if you send him pristine audio, that's not fair.

00:23:45
He gets head start.

00:23:46
Yeah, that's right.

00:23:48
That could be a really interesting one to do.

00:23:51
I'd send you both exactly the same file and just see what you both come back with.

00:23:57
And then you can derive our two hearing curves from that.

00:24:02
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:24:03
Which one's deafer than the other one?

00:24:05
Well, surprisingly, I was at the audiologist about three or four months ago and...

00:24:10
What was that?

00:24:11
Yeah, I can't remember.

00:24:12
What did you say?

00:24:13
I think my headphones have just stopped.

00:24:18
I mean, that's...

00:24:19
Well played, sir.

00:24:20
Well played.

00:24:21
Anyway.

00:24:22
Yes.

00:24:22
No, we should do that.

00:24:24
I'll stump up.

00:24:26
It's fine.

00:24:26
Well, that was fun.

00:24:27
Is it over?