Welcome Hi to the Pro Audio this week. These guys are professional and motivator thanks to try Booth, the best vocal booth for home or on the road voice recording and Austrian Audio Making Passion Herd introducing Robert Marshaws from Source Elements and Someone Audio Post Chicago and Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging Sydney to the vo Stars, George the Tech Wittam from La Andrew Peters Voice Ober Talents and Home Studio Go and welcome to another pro audio suite thanks to try Booth. Don't you get the code t r I PAP two hundred that'll get you two hundred dollars off your tri booth. Also Austrian Audio Making Passion Herd and of course Sentrance and the Pro Audio Suite with our new interface called the Passport Video. Speaking of which, before we go on, before we go on, we should get we should let the cat out of the bag that Robert actually sitting at the chef's table at the local five star restaurant recording this because there's a kitchen's going on in the background. I think he's going to be a slave labor together. I mean to turn the fan on. I mean, it wouldn't be safe for if we had the fan on the can I just say, I am not cleaning this one up, So I apologize for Robert's audio in advance while while we're doing the opening show tag don't forget or the plugs that we also have George the dot tech slash TPAs for the landing page where we will have specials for you guys to check out. You see, if if I, if I had the road app for the MIC, I could turn the gate on. But I'm not sure I've downloaded the road app for this thing. Sorry, don't worry about it. We'll do with it. As I was saying, the Passible vo does have one feature which was part of the whole deal of this, which is mixed minus. But if you're like me, you had no idea what mixed moy, I kind of do know what mixed minus, but you can't add, so how could you possibly subtracted exactly exactly? But we did have a guest who was on last week Memo, who we made a demo for. He did actually have a question. The question is about mixed minus. What is your question, Memo? Well, actually I don't know about the minus or the mix. But I just need something to show the client what I've just recorded, and it's always a problem for me, so any guidance or help will be greatly appreciated. The entrance passport via yes exactly. Well, yeah, I mean when it arrives. That's why he got his free demo because he ordered one. So there you go. His problem will soon be solved. But in the meantime, what's he do? Tell us again, memo, what are you? What are you recording on? What's your hardware? Okay, I'm I'm recording on a four sixteen that goes to an Apollo solo and then I record two pro Tools. And it's always been a problem. I mean sometimes I do the putting the headphones on near the mic so they can hear, and that's what I've been doing. But of course I know there's a better way to do it. It's just that I don't know what. We've got two unique perspectives here. I mean, you have two weight you have two primary ways because you have two different ways to route audio. You have the hardware console, which is the Apollo, and you have the software console, which is pro Tools. So and I know Robert knows the pro tools side very intimately and knows the Apollo pretty well too, and I know the apolocide very intimately. So we could probably answer this from two different directions. I'll be happy to hear about that. Let's let's let's first discuss the general concept, which is what is what is the minus and a mixed minus? And the minus and a mixed minus is your clients. You are sending them a mix of everything you want them to hear minus your clients so that they don't hear themselves selves back back at themselves selves and way of preventing especially feedback, feedback, feedback, and that I understand them. So there's a couple of ways to do it. You can do it within a mixing console, or the way the passport VO does it is actually just by presenting two separate audio interfaces. So one is for your recording and the other one is for your clients. So the recording interface plays back to the clients and the output of the client interface never goes back to the clients. So that's that's one approach, which is the passport VO, which is sort of has a number of advantages and it's very simple, but two interfaces, one for recording, one for playback, patch the output of the recording one into the playback and a sorry I shouldn't say that, one for recording, and the other one to connect with your clients and you patch. The output of the recording interface or the passport VO does us for you automatically goes into the client's side interface, so they hear playback from the re quarter. But George, but how do you connect it? I mean, I connect my mic to the passport, but then do I have to connect an extra XLR or it's just all inside. So basically the microphone goes into the recording interface, and it also goes into the client interface, so they hear you when you're recording because it goes into the client interface, and your recorder hears it because it's going into the recording interface. And then the passport passes the output of the recording also into the client interface so that they can hear playback from your recorder. So if I mean pro tools, if I play what I recorded, they will hear it. Well, hold on what the thing that they are using is. So is this scenario for you mostly coming up when you're doing a phone patch type thing like a zoom or some kind of online meeting a source connect. So there are scenarios where you are on a source accession as the act or the talent and you have to play something back. Is this coming up for you off? Not that often, but once in a while. That's fascinating when when it happens, is there is there an engine you're on the line, or are they asking you to record everything and then after the fact they say send us all the files. Yeah, no, there's not an engineer. I mean usually when you are connected to another studio, they will be recording on their side and they will be the ones playing back. But when you are by yourself, that's when things get complicated and you tell them that you are recording, but then suddenly they don't remember how the take, if it was good or not, so they ask you to play it back. But if you're doing this on source connect, who is the other person you're connecting? As questions? Yeah, I'm sorry, No, that will be a phone patch. Yes, if it's yes, if it's only the client, it will be a phone patch. Yes. I just it rubs me the wrong way. And I think a lot of us fills engineers that yes, that that it would be expected an actor to essentially engineer themselves while running a source connect session to another studio. The whole it's kind of against the point of a source exactly. The whole point is I want a studio engineer at the other end to do that, so that out of the way. So yeah, so you might be so when you're doing a phone patch, which we use sort of like as a way of describing anytime you're connected to a client, you know, on a we should call it a consumer consumer patch. Okay, so for that phone patch, what are you typically using on your end? Memo, you are using actually a phone or using a other software. Sometimes I use a phone, my iPhone and just connect that thing, not the wireless ones, but the ones that you connect to the phone they had phone, the white cable ones. Yes, I use that, and I think sometimes one time I use Zoom Zoom and they were hearing me through Zoo. The twos who would certainly be done differently. So this is what's interesting. So when you're dealing with the passport, what you'll be able to do is you'll be able to plug your iPhone into one of the two USB ports, So your phone is now patched directly to the passport, and the other port will go to your Mac for pro tools. This is the beauty of the passport is it has two separate USB interfaces like separate plugs, so you can literally use two separate devices, or you can use sort of two devices on the same computer and it will still effectively do the same thing. Yeah, so you'll you'll really like that. But in the meantime, whoa in the mean days? So the problem for you really is having It's the challenge these days, of course, is that there are so many ways that that clients will choose to connect to a talent. In some cases, talent chooses how to connect to the client. So it's sometimes you don't know. But if you could decide, memo, what would your first choice be using your iPhone? Yes, that's the simplest one. So yes, So it's tough to do an iPhone mix minus without additional additional equipment, of course, right. But and the Apollo Solo's biggest weakness is that it doesn't have it doesn't have auxiliary sends or outputs, so you can't create a separate special mix that sends audio from the Apollo Solo directly into your the Apolo Solo or the Arrow, they're the same now. They're actually the essentially identical. They just renamed the Arrow and called it the Solo. They're the same thing now. But yeah, it doesn't have line outputs. So if you're on the if you were on the Apollo twin that has a separate line output, and that would allow you to send audio from the twin through a series of adapters and special adapters, and you'll be able to feed that into your phone and receive that back into the Apollo. That you would be able to do. I have a twin that I don't use anymore because I travel with a solo. It's simpler. But if you're telling me that I need several adapters to make that work, then I'll wait for the passport. Now, well, well, can't can't you do it? Can't you do the same thing where you make the OX the internal OX the microphone input, and therefore you can ox over like that that trick that you use in the If you're not using the phone, yeah, if he if he's not trying to oh, oh right, right? If if if you're on, if you're yea if if you're on the phone. Yeah, if you're on the phone, you have a spables. Yeah, there are adapt adapters that will plug lightning into the iPhone and then from the lightning headset adapter, which is like an eight dollar adapter, right, just a little white dongle, little tail that plugs in and then that gives you back the headset act that Steve Jobs took away. I'm blaming Steve. He's dedicated yourself. But when the headset jack went away, we lost that. So they have an eight dollar daffor that does that. Then once you have a headphone output input jack, you can now split that out and connect it to your other stuff, you know, your mix or whatever. And for that there's a thing called the I rig made by ik Multimedia. It's a little box that just gives you the You can make that work too, right, But the Apollo Solo is lacking that dedicated line out for that purpose. The Twin could do that, and I have rigged that up for quite a few people that want to use their their phone, their actual iPhone for that function. But but it's still not as elegant as the passport. It's not as definitely, But you know, I'm just thinking what could he do in the meantime because he's got a little ways to wait for the Yeah, it's like me ugly but affected him. Now, now that you mentioned the passport, where would I have it? I mean inside the booth or outside the booth? Or what how long are your USB cables would be the answer? Actually, where do you want the user interface? Like if you want to be able to mute, microphone control, headphone levels, m control my gain et, etc. You definitely want it in the booth, Like that's where it's going. And then I just need a big cable that connects the passport to my computer. You will need a US You need two cables. You need two cables. One goes from the passport record side to your computer and the other one goes from the passport client side to your phone. Is okay, I'm glad to bringing this up now because this is something we're going to have to consider and have a really solid solution for our users. Right, So let's say this is your situation. Your computer's not in the booth, but you want to have the passport in the booth, and you're going to have to have that connected. We will definitely have to have or a way to get the right kind of USB connection to extend that from inside to outside. And that is sounds straightforward, but we still need to make sure we get the right cables and test it, you know, yeah, because USB does not typically like being extended very long. I mean, there are extenders that are active, so they will extend distances without any issues, but you still do have to test them out. I've run into so many scenarios where some some things work and other things don't. So this is a good point. We will make sure that that is part of you know, our recommendations. And just so you know, for example, my my microphone cables they are twenty feet long because I'd like to hide them, so they go from outside the booth through the lower part of the wall so so you don't see them. But if I have a cable go from outside the whisper room to the computer, it will be something about I don't know, maybe six feet long. Uh yeah, but it will it will cross. Yeah, a six foot USB wouldn't be too Yeah there there. I have run USB some long distances using various I've done like twenty yeah. Actually, yeah, like the active ones really helpful lot because because even like the passive ones will work, and then they will choose the worst time to decide to reset or flash out. And yeah, so yeah, this is a great this. No, this is a good point because if that all has to be considered. So for your setup right now, the way you are working with the and in your case is the apolo solo. I'm sounding it sounds to me like the apollo solo in your situation is is outside the booth right, Yes, actually he has one other option because he's got an iPhone and if he does his phone call through FaceTime. I don't recommend it. Then it works. It works, But what happens is the Apple wants to turn down the levels of the yes of the other things on everything else. See here's the thing, Robert, recording a podcast from your kitchen alside works, but it's not our dal Yes, I have proved this. Sure you didn't know this as a cooking show. I'll take mine medium mate. Yeah, so this is yeah, this is a very good point. So we'll have to have a way to make that easy for you. But for those that want to use a real, actual honestick in this phone, having that interface is going to be the key is being able to connect that. So that is something that makes the passport very unique, is that ability to do so. It's it's one of what like probably like less than five interfaces in the world that has a dual interface. Yeah, this this is a thing that's starting to happen. There's I'm sitting here next to my road Cast Pro two and it does have two USB ports, so it can connect to two separates system simultaneously. It's a much much bigger, much more complicated piece of equipment, right, but it has that capability. But yeah, the Passport does it internally. Now, if you're going to use the Apollo Solo, you could do it, but you could not use the iPhone for phone calling, so you'd have to use another method, whether that be Google hangouts or having the client call you on Zoom and then Zoom can receive a phone call through a landline call. There's a lot of other kind of workarounds, which at that point, why bother with the phone call part of it? Unless they that's all they have? So many clients like to just be on the friggin phone. Why is now it's like the warm, comfy blanket that you've had since you were four years old and you still like it and you just carry it with you everywhere, helps you go to sleep. He's one author at you that I did the other day for an unnamed agency client. It was a it was a bunch of TVCs and I had I had one talent in Brisbane, had one talent here, I had creatives here in Sydney as well. And then I also had the client sitting in the airport on his phone on a phone call. So I had ship going everywhere. And if you want to talk about mixed minus nightmares, there you go. There's a classic one. But well, when you when you have this situation, when you have clients this overwhere knows when you have like one client on the phone, the other client on whatever, zoom, another person's connect Each separate connection method involved needs its own separate mixed minus. So Sourabo was managing two or three simultaneous mixed minus. Can I just say thank you Nexus? Yeah? Which which is actually the other way you could accomplish this, because you've got pro Tools, you could you could build the whole mixed minus in pro tools using something like Nexus to get out of pro Tools and into your your other apps, and then that'd be the third, which place you could actually use FaceTime to make that phone call, because then you could make source Nexus have a special driver just for your Mac system, which is what FaceTime would use, right, and I wouldn't put Echo cancelation all over your main connection. Yeah. So, so I keep hearing I get the emails about the Nexus, and I really don't don't understand what it is. So so Nexus originally started out more as an engineer's tool, and basically what the solution or the thing that it solved was that engineers had pro Tools and they needed and their clients needed to be on whatever other app it was, you know, like you know, Zoom and Meats or whatever, or even Skype, and especially with pro tools, when when when when you're dealing with the pro tools audio interfaces like the higher end ones, Once pro tools launches and uses that interface, no other application can use that audio interface. It's completely exclusive to pro Tools. So how do you get audio in and out of Skype while using pro Tools at the same time. And so Nexus was essentially like a way to get sideways in and out of pro Tools with another audio interface. And the other trick that Nexus did is it lets you let you create what's called virtual audio interfaces, so you could have one for Skype, one for Zoom. I did this in the pandemic. I made this gigantic mixed setup that had Skype, Zoom meat like you name. It had probably a whole bunch of faders, and in theory it was like the Conference of conferences. So what Nexus lets you do is it lets you sort of create a virtual interface for each individual communications point that you want to use Zoom, et cetera, and lets you bring them in and out of pro Tools, like through the pro Tools mixer directly, so you have complete control of the volume and what you send to who. So as an engineer, you could do things like, hey, I have the talent on source Connect, I have all the clients on Zoom. Zoom is talking to source connect blah blah blah. Now all of a sudden, the clients want to say a bunch of crappy stuff about the client, about the talent. So you can mute Zoom from going to the talent and they can say, oh my god, this guy is terrible and then say okay, let us talk to them again, and then they open up the mic for the Zoom to go back to Source and they say that was great, whatever whatever disingenuous thing they want to say. But it was just a way of essentially a way of cross patching and introducing all these other communication points in and out of pro Tools or for that matter, any other workstation. But we've expanded what Nexus does and in fact, the Nexus Gateway, I guess I can say it now. It's it's soon going to replace Source connect now, and it's going to include video, and it's it's we're gonna start to get into the territory that's traditionally zoom so that you don't have to have so many things happening, like separate companies and things going on at the same time. You can handle it through one company a little more cohesive set up essentially. So Nexus is gonna it's not just going to have the plug in anymore. It's going to have a built in router, So some of that routing that you would do through pro Tools now you can do it just have it set up in your computer and have it static and you don't need to have pro Tools launched to have that mixer because I like Nexus will have a router. And then we made some specific plug ins which get a little bit more sort of geeky, but essentially the idea is to have one plug in that goes in pro Tools. Instead of making you have a big template set up in pro Tools, this one plug in has all these routes built into it so you don't have to figure out what you're doing in the sense the original Nexus plug in was like the Lego kit that wasn't built for you, and the new one is a little bit more here it is built. So my question is should I wait or should I try to set up Nexus? I mean how I Maybe you cannot tell me, but I mean my answer would be, oh, Nexus is very easy to set up, and once it's set up, it is very easy to use, so I would I would say that if you need the capability. In my mind, given what you have, I think and George you can tell me your piece, but I think Nexus would be simpler once he has a template in pro Tools. That's the key. Once you if you're going to live in pro Tools, if you do everything every day in pro Tools, and you want to start from a session template in pro Tools, then it is very easy because if it's preconfigured for you with everything where it needs to go. Then it is that easy, like you all launch them and you have to launch Nexus or I can't remember, Robert, it's outload, Well the new one. The new one's exactly what he wants because the new one has Nexus Review, which review is exactly you know, think of review as playback review the take. So for his setup, he would just launch pro Tools, make a record track and he could throw Nexus Review rate on that record track, or if he wanted to, he could make a master fader and throw it on the master fader, and then whatever app he's using, Zoom or whatever, the input to that app would be two Nexus Chat, and the output from that app would be from Nexus Chat. And if you were asking me, I would say, you'd want to use Nexus Gateway, which is sort of our version of Zoom, which in that case you wouldn't even need to route anything because when you launched Nexus Gateway, it'll grab to Nexus Chat and from Nexus Chat and everything for you automatically. You don't have to select them in the third party app. It's sort of knows where it wants to go if you're using all of our stuff, but it can certainly be used with any other you know, Meet and Zoom and Skype, et cetera. So the new one, the new one with Nexus Review, which I think you can go to our website and there's a place where you can request early access. It's going to be out in the next month, but if not right now, the next the officially the Nexus Io plug in. You need to build a little template within pro Tools which would effectively do exactly what the Nexus Review plug in does, and anybody who has Nexus will get the whole new suite of the router and the review plug in, and of course Nexus Io, which is the version of Nexus has been out for quite a while now. Actually, so yeah, I think that's the easier way. If you're comfortable with Pro Tools, then it's because the the Apollo mix or again, you can set up a template for it and everything. But when when that template gets reset or people sort of get messed up and for some reason it's not the right template, it's a real head spinner, I think, Yeah, or more so, yeah, Yeah, it's interesting going back to where we were years ago, which is having a separate booth where you don't have your computer when we're talking about possible vo or anything for that matter, where you you know, you need to have your fingers on the on the faders, which we don't do because we're in the booth. So it's just the you know, the person on the microphone in there. Certainly adds another level of complexity to any of this kind of stuff. I'm thinking now, I mean part of being a voice over talented to be a little bit technical. Yeah, you're forced two you're forced to. It's like a little bit it's the key, right. So I think the moment in time was ten years ago when all the talent was like, oh, I ever set up at home and this is going to give me the leg up and I'm going to get more clients. And really the move back then should have been ever set up at home? It cast extra and no talent went there. And you know why, Robert, and this is my opinion. In fact, I was only talking about this last week. The problem was that one, well, particularly in this country, you couldn't tell anyone yet I'm set up because if you were doing stuff and a lot of the stuff that we were doing was usually overseas, or you know, you've managed to massage one client. But if any of the big commercial studios knew they wouldn't book you. So everyone was very quiet about that, and you know, so you didn't want to be charging for it because immediately put a fee on your studio that like you're cutting our lunch, You're never coming in here again. So that was the problem and then it kind of went from there. But also a lot of people who did set up, particularly after Covidy, not live in the city, and you kind of then you sign weighing up costs real costs. So for me to drive into a commercial studio in Melbourne, it'll take me an hour and a half to get in, an hour and a half to get out. There's three hours gone plus the session which may go over twenty minutes. So it's cost me nearly three and a half hours at least to do a twenty minute session. And you kind of think, you know, and you'd have to do your laundry right correct, and there's probably but and that that's when it becomes like, okay, so it's petrol, wearing his hair on your car, time, all those kind of things. What's that, what's the value of that? Yeah, it's like it's like you rather not charge for it, because like all that is worth more than whatever fee you can eat out of your studio. Basically, yeah, is see that. But it did go kind of a bit differently when COVID did hit and there were people that were living down the coast here that didn't have a setup and they need somewhere. And that's when I was getting commercial studios calling me and saying, can we can be high your space for a talent to come in and do a source connect session. It's like yeah, sure, and then I'd charge an appropriate fee. But that was the only times warn the bottle of iron, trust me, I did that. That comes away from rob I've actually and said, you know, I feel a bit bad because I just see for some people it'd be a cheap bottle of wine, but for you it was probably what like ten or twenty bottles of wine probably. Yeah, top shelves, Champagne, Bollinger cost a fortune. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll do it for a case of course. Yeah. Yeah, I did actually get spotsored years ago by just give me another opportunity for a shameless plug. Definitely. On our team at Georgia Tech, we've got a bunch of techs like Robert himself. We've got a lot of skill and one of my guys on the team, if this might in some way be helpful or comforting, is trilingual. He's Portuguese, speaks fluent Spanish and English, and you know, we've been wanting to get him, you know, out there to other you know, to help people that speak other languages natively, because sometimes things connect easier when spoken in someone's native language. So well, it help us to be able to follow the script well exactly, I mean from a technical perspective, when you're being coached or technically supported, that can help. And his name's Amberto Amberto. Franco's on our team, and he also is an Apollo user as well, so he might be able to guide you in a smooth way into solving these issues via your own Apollo. So there's another possible resource for you. We had George the techo all about you not needing our own engineers will just teach you. Yeah, well, yeah, pretty much. We have both. We have we have technician to set you up, we have troubleshooting people. We have our hot line like Robert is on the hot line where you can call in and get emergency support. And then we also are doing virtual engineers and virtual producers where you can hire somebody to just run the session so you don't have to very cool provide lots of different types of services. Because the thing is, with all this, the way it's gone, it's like it's like trying to read a book while driving your car, and that's what people expect a time. Now. Yeah, it's going because because your head's not through your heads yeah exactly. I mean think about people doing video games and where the reads are really dynamic, and now you're worried about gain and then if you mess it up, you get that. I don't know if this happens to you, but if you mess something up, it kind of throws you mentally. Now you're thinking about that you just messed up three minutes ago. I mean, if you mess something up technically, like you botched the take, you you lost the file, whatever of whatever. Your head's not in the game. Yeah, now you're thinking about that your next take. You're not putting the performance into It's just a lot to throw at an actor. I was going to say, and how would you feel if you lost the job because you're trying to do the technical side of things, If you've lost the job completely because your mind's so often let me tell you a story that's exactly what happened to me. I lost a gig with ESPN for it was tennis. I think that I had won through Abrams in New York, that book that I got booked through them to do this thing for ESPN. I came back to Australia, went to my kept calling it football and I was really sucked. Yeah, but I didn't have DM but I had Source Connect and I said, can we use Source Connect? And they said no, we can't. We don't. We don't allow any computers talking to our computers over the Internet. When was that so Connect? Very early on? This is probably twelve years ago, I'm guessing, yeah, yeah, because that's why we invented the bridging systems, right, that's why. Yeah, you know, there was out of here just to add more more technicalities to this. So if you can imagine trying to do a session holding a mobile phone to my one ear while I'm trying to take direction and read scripts, it was an absolute nightmare. Yeah, so that was a big file. It's not fair. It wasn't fair on you know, it's not fair. I mean, that's the bottom line. It's just it's not fair. Totally. It also means the product will suffer in many cases because you're just at that point, you're just trying to pull off a session instead of having an incredibly great performance. Yeah, and some some talent are just so into it that they're able to pull it off because they're you know, they're just weigh into the gear anyways, and they're they're even some of the talent, especially the talent that are also musicians, you know, they were there anyways with it, so some are also it. Yeah, yeah, I mean exactly. There's just within the engineering hat, there's so many sort of different angles of that hat. You know, are you the computer technician, are you the audio engineer? Are you the I person? Because those are all three sort of what were traditional, traditionally separate jobs within the studio and now even within the studios. Robo can attest to this. He is the IT department, he's the tech, he's the engine he's the audio engineer. You're you know, just like the talent have to be everything for themselves. Everything is getting like squeezed into smaller spaces, and so yeah, I can kind of see you remember Joe Cipriano, Well you would, George, because I think he built it. But Joe Cipriano's studio he had set up in Bella, the one that looked like a radio studio. Yeah, yeah, it was a radio. So and when I when iul to do his place and looked at that, and I thought, oh, that's been odd. I wouldn't be, you know, doing that. I'd pretty much prefer to have a booth and all this kind of stuff. But you can kind of see with the expectations now on talent that really that's what home studios are going to end up looking like, because you're going to have to have your hands on the tools while you're reading. Well, someone say, you guys already do have your hands on your tool while you're reading. Let's be honest. I knew when I said is to clean it up, don't touch the big knob. The Pro Audio Suite and Austrian Audio recorded using Source Connects, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging takes the pot from George the check which I'm don't forget to subscribe to the show and joining the conversation on our Facebook to leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say good stop us a note at our websites, dot com,
