Revolutionizing Remote Collaboration: Inside Source Connect Four

Any history. Welcome, Hi to the pro audio Suite. Thanks you guys, a professional and motivated thanks to try Booth, the best vocal booth for home or on the road voice recording and Austrian audio Making Passion Hurd introducing Robert Marshall from Source Elements and Someone Audio Post Chicago, Aaron Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging side to the video stars, George the Tech Whittam from LA and Me Andrew Peters Voice sober Talent and home studio Guy and welcome to another pro audio suite Thanks to try Booth, don't forget the code trip AP two one hundred to get two hundred dollars off your try booth and Austrian Audio Making Passion Heard. Just imagine a New Zealander, an American, Canadian and Australian and a half Englishman walk into a podcast. It's just happened. We have apart from Robert Marshall, we have Rebecca Wilson, we have us and we have Vincent from Sauce Elements. Here we are wonderful and Argentine too. Can you talk from our laughter? Who is yeah? And Welcome to the party in Las Vegas by the sounds of it. Now we should say the award winning team. I was going to say, there's a bit of party going on because there's a new new trophy in the cupboard. By the sounds of things, there is Best in Show. We're holding it up right now. It's brilliant shining blue and its n A B Beast in Show and it's going to go Roberts a trophy case. Exactly, I do have a trophy case. We have a trophy. So phillis in Best in Show for remote collabor remote production. Yes, this is the new baby Source connect four. Yeah. Yes, it does autmost amongst other many cool things. Sours Connect used to do it more than it does now, So fill us in on the utmost thing, because that's that's that's a massive light forward. Yeah. It allows you to have all sort of the raw atmost stream, so not just a rendered mix going across a remote connection so someone can listen, but instead it gives you the flexibility to send what's called the bed. Then all the objects. These are all separate audio channels as many as it will be as many as one hundred and twenty eight, and the timecode, and then most importantly the metadata that steers all these objects around so that whatever the receiver has, as atmost does is it just conforms it. It renders it specifically for their speakers set up. So you could have a stage mixing a film with say twenty speakers, and a director reviewing that mix in real time, oversource connect with say twelve speakers or even ten speakers, and maybe another person's connected at the same time, and there they just have headphones, so they're getting it as binaural. It takes a lot of the thinking out of the equation, right, you just let the renderer on the remote side deal with the translation. So just let's the host or the you know, the mix host, if you will, put one stream up and have it divvy out to everyone accordingly, so everybody's in basically decides what it's what it wants to hear exactly. Yeah, right, well, no, they'll hear the same thing. They'll just experience it in specialization differently. Right, it'll be optimized for their speakers set up, because it'll be coming out of a renderer directly on their side, and the specialization would be compatible from what you hear in binaural or five point one. That's what someone's hearing a nine to one at six, but just with at least details. I guess the end goal is sort of like listening parody, which is almost impossible to achieve because everyone's going to have different speakers and configurations. But this is the most optimized version to get closest to that. We're dropping like, you know, one of the voice channels, so you're only hear one side of the conversation. Yeah, it's the purpose that that moost was made for so that there'd be one deliverable and then whatever your speaker set up, the person with the really nice speaker setup doesn't have to compromise for the person with the really simple speaker set up, and the other way around, and the other way around. The other person with the simple setup is not sort of burdened in a sense by having some something that they can't play because of someone who has a really fancy system. So at most is like a deliverable that lets you play back anything from stereo all the way up to you know, a huge speakers arrays and fifteen to twenty speakers even at home. I think I have kind of an alternate kind of take on this, which is basically like a bit of a tangent from that angle of it, but it's basically like these getting into a really tuned listening environment. It's a really expensive moment. You know, you can only you only get so many hours in there. And the ability that now you could be working on a laptop in headphones through the Dolby utmost renderer and building a mix towards your big mix session where you're gonna actually sit in room. That's kind of like what I think is at stake. And what's really exciting about this is you could be working on five to one. Before when you were working like in a stereo setting, is you weren't able to know that it's going to translate exactly. This is kind of grin at all. You were kind of you kind of use tools like like I had the waves thing that lets you take five to one and it'd make it yeah, binural, and you'd kind of have an idea. I think most engineers I know would say they do their best work when like the client leaves and they get to work on something by themselves in a bit. So now the ability that you could be working towards this grand big spatial mix in a laptop setting and then transmit that to a listening environment that you can get into or physically get there. That's the that's the real exciting prospect. It kind of feels like equity, really true equity. Let's bring it back into more of the realm of our listeners. I guess and AP and I have been having a bit of a play around with Source Connect four. Thanks very much to you guys. And the biggest step forward I see is firstly the GUI. You know, it looks so much more snack, so much more professional, so much more user friendly. But in terms of operation wise, the biggest step forward is the old queue manager, which now becomes restore replace in Source Connect four. We were like, you know, we've speake twenty years honing technology, and then we've thought, now we need to hone the user experience. It's really a general focus for all of us now. The queue manager so often was just people never read the manual, it didn't it didn't work automatically enough, and then people just go, is this thing I don't know? Shut it down, Let's get on with our session. It wasn't something that they thought to ask for because they never had anything like it before. It's weird I've done so many sessions where I've said, are you using queue Manager? And I get the answer no, what's that? Yeah, we just have one extra step to go, which is to be reading your station far automatically your prosals or logic by the session FI whatever we can, and then you honestly wouldn't have to do anything, and you've got restore happening all the time without needing to configure anything. For me, the other awesome one would be for it to work even after I've shut down source connects, because there's so many times that you you shut it down and you go, oh, I shouldn't have done that, should I? We have reconnection logic belt in now, or like a new method where you know, if somebody does shut down, you still got work to do. You can bring it back up and it'll reconnect it and restart. But we also you know, if you shut the program down, then I can't do it anymore. That's the same, But that's as far as like uploading the data maybe ahead of time or right away, so you don't have to wait for the talent to worry if the talent shuts their system down. This is maybe the most important thing about source speed for We've redesigned it from scratch, completely rewritten every line of code so that we can add these features that we know everybody wants. So the plan was the very first version on the first day. It's pretty much featured a featured with source Conique three because we just need to get out right with doy Okay, all right, some more extra cool stuff. But then what you're talking about, like, hey, Lis upload you know, the whole session to the cloud so that the engineer can get it later on. All of that stuff can come now because we've built hooks into all of this technology. Sure, well, let's let's pick through a few of them. AP and I were talking. We were looking at the at that restore replaced page. AP noted the recorded files area and was wondering if that was sort of a hybrid of the old source connector now where you could actually record directly to the cloud. Is that the case or is that actually looking at my my well, in my case, my pro tools folded going, these are the files you've recorded so far exactly, Those are the files that you've recorded in appro tools. But I would originally say the queue manager or the auto restore a replaced system recognizes as ones that it knows what they are and who they were connected to, and if there's any audio to fix or replace, restore or replace that it can do it. So those are your recorded files, and then the other one you might see in there is the uploads, which are files that maybe someone else recorded that you are uploading data to to either restore someone else's file or replace data in someone else's file. Okay, because I think I pay you. You sort of liked the idea of recording in the cloud, didn't you. Yeah, that's what those fat You're technically recording there, and we can make that recording more available. It's actually, uh, I think source connect three had that, but it had some flause to it. But exporting the connection, if it's not there already, we'll be there. He's been playing with twisted wife too much. That's the problem you've been playing with. Yeah. Indeed, I'm just gonna ask about port forwarding? Is that? How does that change? Has it changed? In so it's connect four, I got this one. How does that change? No? More port forwarding is necessary? Yeah, Basically we find a way, We find a way through your connection path and make it work so you don't have to go into your router and figure out anything complicated. You don't have to call us in a panic because you decided to take a vacation and then you get called for a job. But nothing like that. It's just gonna work. So source stream is available MEC and Windows and port forwarding, especially in the pro version is available if you want to use it. It does kind of it's the ideal path for the connection if it's available, and if you can lay out the red carpet persons connect it appreciates it. But it's no longer required only very strict networks, you know, exactly corporate environments. My question is director at you, Rebecca, and I'm wondering what hand COVID played in the development of source connect for the one we're seeing now. You know, it's still a complicated thing to process. What happened to the world in twenty twenty. We all changed. It was a one of a major cultural shift for us as humans, and so of course that can only be reflected in technology. And the main thing that changed, I would say for us is that we realized we kind of know what we're doing with the Internet, which was really nice to find out. It was really, you know, it wasn't a pleasant situation at all, but it was nice to know that we were able to help. That was really satisfying if you could have called anything in that situation certifying. And then it said to us, hey, I think that we have an idea what's going to be needed the next teen to twenty years, because we've already been doing it twenty years. You know, Robert and I were the team, all young spring chickens, and I have a cane. I don't know, maybe just an insight that we have from doing this so long. It was like, now the world's ready for us. I think what happened in the pandemic is a all the doubters went, oh, remote really does work. And for us, what we realize is that remote is no longer just like the talent's remote or the client's remote, but remote is everybody's remote, and they all have different roles, and how to put those roles together in the most cohesive way became more. Soros Connect four was about compared to what we thought Soros Connect four was going to be prior to the pandemic. If you think about source connects like source connect were pre COVID was something that was nice to have, and then when COVID hit, it was something you had to have, and that changed the whole game. I thought, well, Andrew, honestly, you and I you know, we're from the South Pacific, from Australasia. I wouldn't say that Source connickte was nice to have. It was kind of a you know, whether it was source CONIQT or something else, we had to have something, or how on earth are we going to work internationally because plane tickets are expensive, and you know, yeah, that's I think. I think so yeah, But I'm thinking from my point of view, like as a voice talent working with studios like you, historically you just drive it. I'd go to Melbourne or Sydney or whatever it was for a job, and you know, you managed to convince people that you know, you can actually connect with to my studio if I work with someone in Sydney or wherever. But it was kind of the luxury really, and people would just use local talent, could pull up in their car park and go into their booth. But once COVID hit, it was not like that at all. It was a different game. I think, especially here in Australia, there was a massive resistance to home studios, to the point where owners of studios would refer would refuse to work with remote voice actors because they figured they were trying to steal their work. So but COVID sort of put a whole new perspective on that, I guess really didn't it. Yeah, And there were people, there were people that were actually literally coming out and black banning talent for having a home set up. Yeah, that guy's got a home studio. He's stealing my work prior to like up to prior to the pandemic or did that say it at some point? Yeah, I think it was. Look, it was, it was softening, but it was still there. I think what the pandemic did is kind of shift the focus from the studio to the operator to the engineers at those studios. Right, So I definitely spoke to a lot of people in those places that said they got more work because they were able to do so much of it remotely. Well, I know that's a fact for a lot of studios where they were able to like have engineers at home and at the studios, or just because clients wereunn in, they were able to do just more work. Like, yeah, everybody could be put to work. All you needed was more licenses of whatever it was that you were using, like pro tools and source connect and what. Yeah, the irony of this whole thing when COVID hit all of a sudden, studios were calling me because they had to get out of the commercial studios and set up at home and asking if I could do tests with them to make sure their source connect was working well? Right, or weren't some talent going to your place just to do sessions because they were you know, they couldn't go all the way to the studio, but somehow they could give you COVID exactly. I don't know how the rules were, but I seem to remember you were hosting some talent at your place. Yeah, there was a few that came here because they that got out of the city and they were living sort of coastal so they couldn't get in there anyway. And they always asked if you know, people could come here that we're living locally, and of course I obliged. The amount of tech that was pushed on to pretty much every operator in a remote setting is I think probably one of the humbling parts of the pandemic, right, because you know, it was. It was once you have every role get remote, then all of a sudden, like I know a lot of audio engineers that know nothing about networks, you know, like it's like literally everyone has kind of thrown this wrench of technology and different roles. Now I got to be it as well as engineering. That's what support was here for. Yeah, And I was just thinking, like literally a big part of like source connect toping in pandemic was just a huge heavy load of but a tech support. And it wasn't just getting talent onboarded, but it was almost teaching a lot of people like how to work remotely or how to like not just do a remote ISD and like to freaking have everybody be remote, and a lot to do with routing. Yes, so you know all that's kind of I think that's what's you know, source connect for represents. I think a lot of the learning of that is how to streamline exist, make it, make the UI, make it make sense for you so you don't really need to think too much, you know. The getting rid of the eye lock and the point port forwarding requirements. I don't know if we talked about eyelock, but that's that's that's the thing, you know, like we've experienced that right, probably in huge volumes right at the start of the pandemic. What is this ilock? You need something physical and I can go up and get it, and you didn't need it physical at the time, but it was just another account. Is it gonna cause me anything? No, it's a free account. And you know, you can't verify or you can't easily set somebody up because there's this more email verifications for new accounts that are created, and God forbid the account that you created in source elements, that same account name is not available in eyelock, may have two different account means to remember and like two different passwords. And yeah, the people who was in their passwords because they'd use one thing for one account and one thing for another account. So that's gone. No more high lock. Wow, you heard it here first. You heard it here, folks, that's right exactly. But breaking news. Bravo did say that he would like the UI to be bigger, bigger. You can't see shre the gouey. Oh, smaller the guey. It would be nice to be able to scale it, like I want to see. I love the size of it as it is for now, but even when you've hit that little four corner box and it squashes down to the sort of send and receive meters and then the menu underneath, for me, it still takes up a lot of space on my screen. And you can make it smaller. Yeah, you can go up the corner and push it in. We're in the final mile of quality of life improvements. A lot of the stuff that you know, those sort of smaller bits are just they're going to get done in the next couple of months. And absolutely, I mean, you've embarked on a massive job. But that was one of the observations that I sort of I did say to Robert, is I want to see it big when I'm setting up the session and when I'm getting everybody connected. But once everybody's connected, I've got three screens in front of me. I've got my edit on one, my mix on another, and then my third is dedicated to picture for video, you know, source connect plugins, meters all the rest of it to keep them out of the way. So the less space that can take up for me, because I really only need to glance up and see if it's metering. If someone says they can't hear something can I throw in a future feature that I don't think is a spoiler because I really wanted Yep. We plan to separate the UI from the engine and you could run it from like another screen or an iPad. And to me, that's the sweet spot there, especially for you know people who are running you know, big installations. They can walk away and you know, you call, oh source, keep five's not working and they can look on their phone. Why should they have to go back to the machine. And what about integration with Nexus? I think you're going to definitely see Nexus and sort of connect integration and just further integration across the whole product line. Yeah, going towards the platform. I think because I was telling Robert on a previous episode, it wasn't all that long ago. I had a session where I had a voice talent up in Brisbane somewhere. I had a creative sitting in the airport and two guys in the agency here in Sydney, and then the client was also online from like Perth in Western Australia or something like that, and there was another talent in Adelaide and it was just this massive session and if you could have seen my poor old thirst screen with meters and everything else going and all the rest of it, it becomes a logistical nightmare trying to remember where you've put everything and who's on what. So combining that all together would be quite impressive. I can't see exactly what you might see, but I think connect and access sure communication to other. Well, that's actually a really good advancement that you've reminded me that you've you've put into four Here is the fact that all your connections appear in the one place. I think that's that's amazing. And the Christs connect for you. Yeah, so they all hear each other without you having to do a thing. Right, you can pull multiple outputs everyone recording everyone on a separate track, and you can even give them different inputs. Right, you can send them different things, but they will all send to each other. Can I make it to that person? Doesn't send to that person? We want to have a more project based where you could decide, you know, what role of everyone playing? What do they hear? What do you hear? Do you want? Here's what? You can make everyone hear each other in a round circle, and you could really play the game of like tell the story to the next person. And when it gets back to you like, there's not the story I told well, it's I mean, the way you've set it up now, it's almost a well and truly upsized source now, right, I'd agree. In a simple sense, it is like Source Connect three and Source Connect now sort of merging together and becoming getting each one giving the best of what they used to do, so you get the benefits. Yeah, the auto restore replace being like like, now you actually truly have an acquisition system that's like bit accurate, right, yeah, yeah, exactly. Never mind the browser, You're not going to get that there, so we know every sample and frame is. Speaking of frames, we have a system called the remote overdubed SYNC, which instead of remote transport sinc. Where you are to deal with latency on a project. If someone is singing or doing ADR the you know you're going back to I SDN. The original method is to send timecode into sync, two timelines on either side, so one chases the other and that works, but there's a lot of set up on either side. So the remote overdubbed Sync idea is that you can send to the talent whatever they you know, need to hear and whatever they need to see and they perform if it's a dr and they sing, and that performance gets back to you and you record it. And while you're recording it using the remote overdubb sync system, you hear it in sync and when you hit stop in your do you see the wavefor him, And then a moment later, a couple of seconds later, you see that waveform jump back in time to be where it should have been had there been no latency between you. So you can overdub really just connect and overdub. You don't have to tell people to load up this timeline and click this button to synchronize, and no more comments of that doesn't look right to me from the back of the room when you're recording with the talent, are you thinking or is it going to happen for iOS by any chance? Oh? Yeah, yes, I'm a big iPad fan. I really love mine as you use it mostly as a music school player to play piano, and YE would love to use source on It is definitely happening. Ip He's only asking you because he's trying to create the world's smallest voiceover road kit. It's a purely selfish motivation. I get it. He just needs to use a TRRS Cayble like if Andrews needs to talk to me about how to make things in his sleep, absolutely, you would have the world's smallest road case. Indeed, that's not the only thing that I've got the smallest of but that's another story for another day. Thank you guys, Thank you Rebecca, thank you Ross, thank you Vincent and of course Robert. Congratulations, congrats, thank you. Thanks the pro Audio Suite and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio. Imaging from George the Check. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and joining the conversation on our Facebook group to leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just think it's opposite motion at our website dot com m HM