Podcast appearances and mentions of Robert Marshall

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Best podcasts about Robert Marshall

Latest podcast episodes about Robert Marshall

The Pro Audio Suite
Is It Time for a VO Conference in Australia?

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 9, 2025 10:54 Transcription Available


This week, it's just AP and Robbo flying the plane—and they're kicking around an idea that's been brewing for a while:

The Pro Audio Suite
Exploring Plugins with Matthew Kleiman from Kit Plugins & NoiseHub

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2025 50:00


This week on The Pro Audio Suite, we're joined by Matthew Kleiman from Kit Plugins and the newly developed NoiseHub. We dive into the current plugin landscape, what makes Kit Plugins stand out, and how NoiseHub is aiming to change the way audio professionals collaborate and manage assets. Join George ‘The Tech' Whittam, Robert Marshall, Darren ‘Robbo' Robertson, and Andrew Peters as they explore the tools and trends shaping the audio post-production industry today. 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 that is 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

Production Expert Podcast
The New Era Of Remote Recording

Production Expert Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 16, 2025 36:29


In this edition Ashea and Julian are joined by Source Elements technical co-founder and CEO Rebekah Wilson and principal inventor and co-founder, Robert Marshall, where they deep dive into the beginnings, the middle and the future of Source Elements, and why it's at the forefront of seamless, stress free remote recording.About Our Guests:Robert Marshall: Principal inventor and co-founder, overseas product development concepts and sales & support teams. He is the recording /mixing engineer for SUM1 in Chicago and works daily with our remote tools around the world in that capacity. He also has an extraordinary daughter who just started film school who is showing that the next generation is full of talent and good spirits.Rebekah Wilson: Technical co-founder and CEO, overseas engineering and product teams and general business functions. Originally trained as classical & electronic composer in conservatory-style, before source elements she toured as a composer/performer and worked in an experimental music institute in Amsterdam, work that merged into her interest of using tools such as Source-Connect for networked music performance and avant garde music, primarily as teacher and researcher.

Voice Over Body Shop
GTT VO Atlanta: Source Elements Source Connect 4 with Robert Marshall (virtually)

Voice Over Body Shop

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2025 10:46 Transcription Available


Join George the Tech at VO Atlanta 2025 as he provides an exclusive demo of the much-anticipated Source Connect 4 software. George connects with Robert Marshall from Chicago to showcase the software's impressive features, including noise filtering, dropout restoration, and seamless session backups. Discover how Source Connect 4 enhances workflow efficiency for both voice talents and studio engineers, with improvements in transport sync, multiple connections, and uncompressed audio replacements. Stay tuned for an exciting sneak peek at the upcoming video camera integration, set to debut at NAB. Upgrade seamlessly if you're already a subscriber, or learn more at source-elements.com. @Source-elements 00:00 Introduction to Source Connect 4 at VO Atlanta 2025 01:10 Live Demo with Robert Marshall 02:10 Testing Source Connect 4's Reliability 04:44 New Features for Voice Talent 06:47 Enhancements for Producers and Engineers 08:47 Upcoming Features and Final Thoughts - We are pleased to announce our upcoming webinar, Source Connect 4 for Voice Actors with Robert Marshall, on April 14th at 3:00 PM PT! Are you feeling uncertain about the necessity of upgrading to Source Connect 4? Are you unclear about its new features and functionality, or what will happen to your existing Source-Connect 3 license? This webinar is designed to address all your questions and concerns, providing voice actors with the essential information they need to navigate this new version. JOIN US ➡️ https://link.georgethe.tech/y-sc4rm - Website: http://georgethehtech Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/georgethetech Instagram: @georgethetech Podcast: http://theproaudiosuite.com

The Pro Audio Suite
VO Atlanta 2025 — The Ultimate VO Conference?|The Pro Audio Suite

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2025 41:04


In this episode, we dive into one of the biggest and most talked-about voiceover events on the planet — VO Atlanta. Andrew, George, Robbo, and Robert break down the experience from every angle: Is it still the king of VO conferences? What's changed post-pandemic? Who should (and maybe shouldn't) be booking flights for next year? The good, the bad, and the “interesting” from this year's event Tips for getting the most out of VO Atlanta if you go in the future Plus, a little side chat about conferences in general — when are they worth it, when are they not, and how they could be better. Oh, and don't miss the usual dose of questionable humour, honest takes, and hard-earned industry insight.

The Pro Audio Suite
Budget Audio Gear: Bargains or Bollocks?|The Pro Audio SUite

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 17, 2025 28:57 Transcription Available


This week's episode of The Pro Audio Suite dives headfirst into the world of budget audio gear, exploring whether cheaper equipment has actually improved or if it's still just average kit with fancy marketing. Here are some key highlights and insights from the discussion: Budget Gear: Better or Still Rubbish? Robustness & Quality: The crew revisits the Rode NT1's evolution—from early plastic models to today's sturdy iterations. They ponder its surprising collectability today. User-Friendliness: A cheeky chat unfolds about how budget gear manufacturers should assume nothing when it comes to user knowledge, advocating for painfully obvious product instructions, especially with mics like Rode's NT1. Headphones: Still the Achilles Heel? Consensus emerges around headphones as one area where low-budget options haven't improved as dramatically as microphones. The crew reckons that decent studio cans rarely dip below the $100 mark without significant compromises in sound and build quality. Austrian Audio gets a shout-out for their entry-level headphones offering decent quality, but it's noted that paying a little more generally delivers much better audio. Interfaces and Converters: Robbo's downsized rig is highlighted, having moved from larger interfaces to compact solutions like the SSL2 and the Centrance PASport VO. An important insight shared is that cheap interfaces often share internal converter chips with much pricier gear, meaning the sonic differences can be surprisingly subtle. Bargain Finds and Bargain Fails: Andrew points out the rise in cost of entry-level interfaces from brands like Focusrite, thanks to feature-creep. The group chats about bargain-basement gear flooding Amazon, discussing surprising finds like a $30 dual XLR-to-USB-C interface cable. Robbo humorously advises caution, noting that certain inexpensive gear—particularly cables and mic arms—can still be absolute rubbish. Chinese Clones and Cheap Accessories: George brings up affordable Chinese-made hardware like camera mounts and mic arms, now significantly cheaper yet surprisingly robust compared to premium brands. The "magic arm" clamp is a notable budget win. However, the consensus firmly recommends against skimping on headphones and cables. Quality connectors from Neutrik and Mogami cables are touted as essentials worth investing in. Plug-ins: Stock vs. Premium vs. AI Debate surrounds stock plug-ins vs premium offerings, questioning the necessity of higher-priced plug-ins from brands like FabFilter. Healthy skepticism about AI-enhanced plug-ins and noise reduction is expressed, particularly regarding Adobe Podcast's AI noise reduction. Emulators & Mic Modeling: Opinions split on whether mic emulation is beneficial or just a feel-good factor. Townsend Sphere and Antelope Audio's mics spark a conversation about whether emulated models truly rival their inspirations. Final Thoughts: Cheaper gear today often does punch above its price tag compared to the past, especially microphones. But there remain clear lines where quality is non-negotiable (headphones, connectors, and build quality in general). Ultimately, the episode reinforces the idea that good engineering practice and knowledge still win the day, regardless of budget constraints. It's another lively, opinionated, and informative chat from Robbo, Andrew Peters, George "The Tech" Whittam, and Robert Marshall, brought to you by their sponsors Tribooth and Austrian Audio. If you're keen to catch the full flavour and all the banter, check out the episode at theproaudiosuite.com. 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 that is 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  

Stuff your Doctor should know
#283 The Alkaline Lie;

Stuff your Doctor should know

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2025 75:53


To download my REVISED eBook, The Progesterone Supplementation Handbook, CLICK HERE Are you obsessing over alkaline diets and pH balance? You might be shocked to learn that being too alkaline can be just as harmful as being too acidic! In this fascinating conversation with Dr. Rose Hollo, a neuropathic doctor, we uncover the truth about pH, alkaline hype, and what really matters for your health.

The Pro Audio Suite
Exploring Waves Curves Equator – Is AI Changing the EQ Game?

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2024 12:01 Transcription Available


In this episode, Robbo, George, AP, and Robert Marshall take a deep dive into Waves' newest AI-driven plugin: Waves Curves Equator. It's an innovative EQ that analyzes your audio and creates custom EQ curves based on what it “hears.” We break down its features, test it on Andrew Peters' voiceover, and explore how it could change the way we handle EQ. Discussion highlights: How AI EQ works and its real-world applications Robbo's first impressions using Waves Curves Equator Automating EQ for radio imaging and other applications Will AI-driven plugins take over more of the audio workflow? We also explore some fun presets and discuss how AI might shape the future of audio production. Episode Links: Tribooth Discount Code: Use TRIPAP200 for $200 off Austrian Audio: Proud sponsor of the show Source Elements: Making remote production seamless Competition Alert! Submit your mix for a chance to win a pair of Austrian Audio Hi-X20 headphones. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, just have fun with it! Full details at www.proaudiosuite.com/win. See the video version of this episode here: https://youtu.be/kYbc9Dzz2yQ Show Notes Links: Enter the Austrian Audio Hi-X20 Headphone Giveaway Download the show stems and submit your mix Connect With Us: Join our Facebook Group Visit our Website Subscribe on YouTube 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

The Pro Audio Suite
The Future of Voice Licensing: AI, James Earl Jones, and the Ethics of Voice Replication

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 7, 2024 25:05 Transcription Available


In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, the team dives into the ever-evolving landscape of AI and voice licensing, exploring the groundbreaking decision by James Earl Jones to license his voice to Disney. What does this mean for voice actors? And where do we draw the line between legal licensing and exploitation? We also discuss recent lawsuits surrounding AI voice replication, the ethical boundaries of using voices without permission, and what these changes could mean for the future of the industry. The conversation gets heated as Robbo, AP, George "The Tech" Whittam, and Robert Marshall debate whether AI voice replication is an opportunity or a looming threat. With insights from the legal world, current case studies, and expert opinions, this episode is a must-listen for anyone in the audio or voiceover industries. Want to get involved? We've got an exciting Austrian Audio Hi-X20 Headphone Competition running, and it's simple to participate! Download the show's stems and create your own mix for a chance to win. Head over to theproaudiosuite.com to grab the files and get mixing!

The Pro Audio Suite
The Ultimate Audio Mix-Off & Austrian Audio Giveaway

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2024 21:53 Transcription Available


In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, we're excited to announce an exclusive Austrian Audio Giveaway as part of our new Audio Mix Competition! Tune in as Robbo, Andrew Peters, George "The Tech" Whittam, and Robert Marshall share the details on how you can win a brand-new pair of the latest Austrian Audio headphones!

The Pro Audio Suite
DAW Showdown: Comparing the Latest Digital Audio Workstations of 2024

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 26, 2024 25:30 Transcription Available


In Episode 33 of The Pro Audio Suite, the team takes a nostalgic journey through the evolution of Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs). From the early days of DSP and WaveLab to today's industry standards like Pro Tools and Twisted Wave, our hosts share their personal experiences, favorite tools, and some of the quirkiest DAWs they've come across. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a curious newcomer, this episode is packed with insights, stories, and a few laughs about the DAWs that have shaped the audio production world. Tune in and join the conversation about where DAWs are headed next. Introduction: The team welcomes listeners and gives a shout-out to sponsors, Tribooth and Austrian Audio. DAW Origins: Robbo shares his first experience with DSP at Triple M in Brisbane, sparking a discussion on early digital mixing consoles. Evolution of DAWs: The crew discusses how DAWs have changed from the 90s to now, mentioning early tools like Magix Samplitude, WaveLab, and Cakewalk. Modern Favorites: A look at the DAWs the hosts currently use, including Pro Tools, Twisted Wave, and Audition. Unexpected Tools: The team talks about some of the more obscure DAWs and editors, like Akon Digital's DAW and RØDE Connect. Challenges with New DAWs: The hosts share the challenges of learning new DAWs and the comfort of sticking with familiar tools. Final Thoughts: Reflecting on the importance of mastering your tools and the potential future of DAWs. Sponsors: Tribooth: The best vocal booth for home or on-the-road voice recording. Use code TRIPAP200 for $200 off your Tribooth. Austrian Audio: Making passion heard. Credits: Hosted by Robert Marshall, Darren "Robbo" Robertson, George "The Tech" Whittam, and Andrew Peters Recorded using Source Connect Edited by Andrew Peters Mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging Tech support by George "The Tech" Whittam Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day, drop us a note at theproaudiosuite.com. 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

The Pro Audio Suite
Processing Showdown: Comparing VO Chains Across the Globe

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 20, 2024 21:47 Transcription Available


In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, the team takes on a processing challenge. After AP shares a voiceover chain his client used on his voice during a session in Dubai, the crew dives into a comparison of different processing setups. From compression techniques to EQ adjustments, you'll hear how various approaches can make the same voiceover sound dramatically different. Whether you're a voiceover artist or a podcaster, this episode is packed with insights on refining your audio chain. Special thanks to our sponsors, Tribooth—your ultimate portable vocal booth—and Austrian Audio, where passion is made heard. Sponsors: Tribooth: The best vocal booth for home or on-the-road voice recording. Use code TRIPAP200 for $200 off your Tribooth. Austrian Audio: Making passion heard. Credits: Hosted by Robert Marshall, Darren "Robbo" Robertson, George "The Tech" Whittam, and Andrew Peters Recorded using Source Connect Edited by Andrew Peters Mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging Tech support by George "The Tech" Whittam Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day, drop us a note at theproaudiosuite.com. 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

The Pro Audio Suite
Audacity's Compressor Overhaul: What VO Artists and Podcasters Need to Know

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 12, 2024 19:12 Transcription Available


In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, the team dive into the recent updates to Audacity's compressor and limiter features. These changes have caused quite a stir, particularly among voiceover artists and podcasters who rely on Audacity for mastering their projects. George "The Tech" Whittam shares his insights on the updates, highlighting what works, what doesn't, and what it all means for your workflow. Plus, we discuss the frustrations that come with software updates and how to navigate them without pulling your hair out. Special thanks to our sponsors, Tribooth, and Austrian Audio, making passion heard. Sponsors: Tribooth: The best vocal booth for home or on-the-road voice recording. Use code TRIPAP200 for $200 off your Tribooth. Austrian Audio: Making passion heard. Credits: Hosted by Robert Marshall, Darren "Robbo" Robertson, George "The Tech" Whittam, and Andrew Peters Recorded using Source Connect Edited by Andrew Peters Mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging Tech support by George "The Tech" Whittam Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day, drop us a note at theproaudiosuite.com. 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

The Pro Audio Suite
USB Mics: Professional or Pretender?

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2024 23:34 Transcription Available


In this episode, the Pro Audio Suite team dives deep into the world of USB microphones. Once considered a big no-no for professional audio work, USB mics have come a long way. But are they truly ready to replace traditional XLR setups? Join Robert Marshall, Darren "Robbo" Robertson, George "The Tech" Whittam, and Andrew Peters as they explore the pros and cons of USB mics, discuss technological advancements, and share personal experiences. Special thanks to our sponsors, Tribooth and Austrian Audio, for making this episode possible. Sponsors: Tribooth: The best vocal booth for home or on-the-road voice recording. Use code TRIPAP200 for $200 off your Tribooth. Austrian Audio: Making passion heard. Credits: Hosted by Robert Marshall, Darren "Robbo" Robertson, George "The Tech" Whittam, and Andrew Peters Recorded using Source Connect Edited by Andrew Peters Mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging Tech support by George "The Tech" Whittam Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day, drop us a note at theproaudiosuite.com. 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

The Jan Broberg Show
Exploring The Male Survivor Perspective of Sexual Abuse Roundtable Hosted By Dave Markel [Part 2]

The Jan Broberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2024 43:32


[Content Warning]: Child sexual abuseToday Dave Markel, friend of the podcast and host of the S.A.S.S. (Sexual Assault Survivor Stories) podcast, is hosting a round table featureing three male survivors of childhood sexual abuse; David Weeks, Lee Cooper, and Robert Marshall. Each was affected in their own ways, but today in part two of this episode, they come together to discuss the differences they've seen between all male survivor groups compared to mixed groups or what they've heard from all female groups. They express the need for male voices to be more forward in this field of healing, not to detract from any female support in the world, but since men are less likely to report or disclose those who are able to speak out are vital to raising awareness. They also converse on the mixed signals a man has to sift through in order to have security in their sexuality. Lee Cooper addresses his shift from wanting to heal to wanting to speak out and take his perpetrator to court. In closing; Robert calls for those who have survived these abuses who find that telling their story isn't enough to take up advocacy, David stresses that we need to educate youth in psychology to better protect them from predators, and Lee emphasizes the need for core changes in the judicial systems so that predators are not favored.If you or your business could use Dave's consulting services visit his website at: www.markel-consulting.comBe sure to check out Dave Markel's podcast S.A.S.S.:https://sexassaultsurvivorstories.libsyn.com/Check Out David On Insta: Djweeks_Check Out Lee's Photography:PlacesNowhere.comInsta: coopscwCheck Out What Robert Is Up To:Insta: roberthmarshalljrThe Survival Circle website or on Insta the_survivorscircleBuy Robert's Book:EchoesIf you are someone you know is experiencing emotional distress or suicidal ideation, please access the resources below:National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call/Text 988National Sexual Assault Hotline  (RAINN) : 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)National Alliance for Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264Subscribe / Support / Contact:

The Jan Broberg Show
Exploring The Male Survivor Perspective of Sexual Abuse Roundtable Hosted By Dave Markel [Part 1]

The Jan Broberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 23, 2024 53:11


[Content Warning]: child sexual abuse, extortion, rape, psychological abuse, neglectToday Dave Markel, friend of the podcast and host of the S.A.S.S. (Sexual Assault Survivor Stories) podcast, is hosting a round table featureing three male survivors of childhood sexual abuse; David Weeks, Lee Cooper, and Robert Marshall. Each were affected in their own ways, but today in part one of this two part episode, they come together to discuss the impact that their traumas had on them throughout their lives, how their experiences differ from those of female survivors of sexual assault and abuse, and what it's like for men to disclose and reprocess their trauma in a legal setting.If you or your business could use Dave's consulting services visit his website at: www.markel-consulting.comBe sure to check out Dave Markel's podcast S.A.S.S.:https://sexassaultsurvivorstories.libsyn.com/Check Out David On Insta: Djweeks_Check Out Lee's Photography:PlacesNowhere.com Insta: coopscw Check Out What Robert Is Up To:Insta: roberthmarshalljr The Survival Circle website or on Insta the_survivorscircle Buy Robert's Book:Echoes Mentioned Resources:The Body Keeps The Score By Bessel Van Der KolkIf you are someone you know is experiencing emotional distress or suicidal ideation, please access the resources below:National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call/Text 988National Sexual Assault Hotline  (RAINN) : 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)National Alliance for Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264Subscribe / Support / Contact:

Hooked on T.J. Hooker
S04E13 - Trackdown

Hooked on T.J. Hooker

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2024 72:02


We're back in blue with a great episode on "Trackdown." Robert Hatch (Tom Zarek, Captain Apollo, Robert Marshall) is our killer of the week and he sure does love what he does. Hooker is an eternal force dating back before the founding of Los Santos. We hope you enjoy and we hope it gels! 

The Pro Audio Suite
Exploring the World of Microphones: 9 Mics, 4 Hosts, One Epic Discussion

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later May 27, 2024 19:24 Transcription Available


In this week's episode of The Pro Audio Suite, the gang dives deep into the fascinating world of microphones. Join Robbo, AP, George 'The Tech' Whitham, and Robert Marshall as they explore the nuances, pros, and cons of 9 different mics, including the Sennheiser MKH 416, Neumann TLM 67, Neumann TLM 102, Neumann TLM 103, AKG C414, Shure SM7B, Rode NTG5, Sennheiser MD 421, and Electro-Voice RE20. Whether you're a seasoned audio engineer or just starting out, this discussion is packed with insights that can help you make informed decisions about your mic setup. Tune in to hear the hosts' personal experiences, tips, and a few laughs along the way. Key Topics Discussed: Overview of 9 different microphones The unique characteristics of each mic Personal anecdotes and experiences with the mics Practical tips for choosing the right microphone for various scenarios 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 #ProAudioSuite #Microphones #AudioEngineering #Podcasting #Voiceover #SoundDesign #AudioProduction #MicReview #ProAudioTips #RecordingGear

Bethany Baptist Church of Chicago - Sermons
5/26/24 Mark 2:8-12 - Robert Marshall

Bethany Baptist Church of Chicago - Sermons

Play Episode Listen Later May 27, 2024


052624_robert_marshall_mark_2_8-12.mp3File Size: 56534 kbFile Type: mp3Download File [...]

Faith on the Journey: Conversations with Jocelyn
142. Why Are You So Angry? w/ Dr. Robert Marshall

Faith on the Journey: Conversations with Jocelyn

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2024 32:36


In a society that often teaches boys “not to cry” or to “be strong,” there are men who have grown up to believe that it is unacceptable to show sadness, disappointment, or any vulnerability. Instead, their hurt may show up as anger, aggression, or sexual conquest.  In this episode of Faith on the Journey, Rev. Jocelyn and Dr. Robert Marshall have a candid conversation about dismantling toxic masculinity and creating safe spaces for men to express themselves so they can journey toward healing and wholeness.  Podcast Highlights 01:56: Growing up in poverty and experiencing childhood abuse 04:05: Why is anger a common response for men who suppress their emotions, and how can they work through it? 09:37: The impact of the heavy emotional burdens men carry and the resulting collateral damage on themselves and others. 14:48: What kind of reflection is needed to become self-aware of true emotions? 19:29: The need for healing past traumas to prevent emotional immaturity in relationships 23:06: What are the steps someone can take to heal from anger that is affecting their loved ones?   Subscribe/Rate   Never miss an episode by hitting the subscribe button RIGHT NOW!  Help other people find our community by taking a few moments to leave a review in your podcasting app.  Leave a review by clicking the following link and scrolling to the bottom: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faith-on-the-journey-conversations-with-jocelyn/id1528800662   For shows where we advertise counseling:  Schedule a free counseling information session at https://www.faithonthejourney.org/counseling Subcribe to our weekly newsletter to receive free healing resources at:  https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/kHUxQqy   Connect with Faith on the Journey Faith on the Journey is a Christian company that specializes in bible-based trauma healing resources.  We offer Christian counseling and healing groups.  Learn more by visiting faithonthejourney.org.  Subscribe to our email list at faithonthejourney.org   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/faithonthejourneycounseling/    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/faithonthejourney    Youtube: Faith on the Journey.  Click https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLbmB8oL-hfU6bVW9kEIcFQ to subscribe.   Connect with Dr. Robert Marshall Social Media: @roberthmarshalljr Website: roberthmarshall.com The music for this show is provided by Bensound.com.       Host: Jocelyn J. Jones Produced by: Jocelyn J Jones Editor: J. Bonifacio The content shared during the Faith on the Journey broadcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to treat or diagnose any mental health condition.  Some of the content of this broadcast can cause an unexpected emotional response for those watching or listening to the program. If you are emotionally reactivated by the show's content, please seek professional support. Viewer discretion is advised. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jocelyn-jones8/support

Soccernostalgia Talk Podcast
International Head-to-Head –Part 16, Germany v. Scotland (with a video Interview with Mr. David Stuart of https://scotlandepistles.com/)

Soccernostalgia Talk Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2024 49:22


In this Blog Presentation with an interview, I look back at the past encounters between Germany and Scotland.The Interview will be as a video link companion, while the Blog will be a presentation of the events. The Interviewee is:Mr. David Stuart Mr. Stuart is a former fanzine writer and co-founder of the Scotland Epistles football magazine. Co-author of two books on the Scotland national side along with Robert Marshall. Mr. Stuart has appeared before on the podcast discussing the matches of the Scotland National Team. Mr. Stuart's contact info:twitter: @davstu11https://scotlandepistles.com/ Links of books, co-authored with Mr. Robert Marshall:https://www.amazon.com/Scotland-Country-Collectables-David-Stuart/dp/1785315455https://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Football-Souvenirs-Golden-Years/dp/1785318640  My contact information:on twitter @sp1873 and on facebook under Soccernostalgia.https://linktr.ee/sp1873 Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts:https://open.spotify.com/episode/0R5bURaKdcEAkrI8gYnLwa?si=wqn51YOhRQ6wvcmIv0wFug&nd=1&dlsi=b59e62f1a7a2491bhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/soccernostalgia-talk-podcast/id1601074369?i=1000655000913Blog Link: https://soccernostalgia.blogspot.com/2024/05/international-head-to-head-part-16.html Youtube link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDLh1O4vhU4Support the Show.

Greatness Podcast
Greatness Podcast (Ep 124) | Robert Marshall Discusses His Research of Over 800 Teams

Greatness Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2024 25:17


What are the primary differences between high-performing and low-performing teams? After decades of studying thousands of people on over 800 teams, Robert Marshall knows the answer to this question, and joined the Greatness Podcast to share his incredible insights. Top of the list - level of trust - may seem obvious, but Robert also discusses the importance of things like good facilitation. Robert also shares his insights on the importance of gender diversity on teams. Definitely worth a listen as nearly all of us need to operate well within teams. 

The Pro Audio Suite
Revolutionizing Remote Collaboration: Inside Source Connect Four

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 19, 2024 25:12


In this special episode of The Pro Audio Suite, join hosts Robbo, Andrew, and George as they dive deep into the latest advancements in remote collaboration technology with Source Connect Four. Joined by special guests Rebecca, Ross, and Vincent from Source Elements, the team discusses the game-changing features and improvements that make Source Connect Four a must-have tool for audio professionals. The episode kicks off with introductions and sets the stage for an in-depth discussion on Source Connect Four. Celebrating the recent accolades and advancements in remote collaboration with Source Connect Four, the team explores the groundbreaking features, including the Auto Restore/Replace function, which has been improved and made more user-friendly. They also delve into the future integrations with Nexus and other platforms, promising further enhancements for audio professionals. Discover how Remote Overdub Sync revolutionizes the overdub process, ensuring seamless synchronization in remote recording sessions. Exciting news for iOS users! Learn about the upcoming iOS compatibility for Source Connect Four. Wrapping up with congratulations and gratitude, the team reflects on the insightful discussion and looks forward to the future of remote collaboration in the audio industry. Tune in and stay ahead of the game with Source Connect Four, the ultimate solution for remote audio production! 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   loading Summary In this podcast, the Source Elements team celebrates their success and discusses the latest updates to Source Connect 4, including support for Dolby Atmos, improved user interface, and the Restore Replace feature. The software has been redesigned to simplify remote connections and enhance the user experience. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of remote recording technology, making it a necessity in the audio industry. The podcast also explores the potential integration of Source-Connect and Nexus, as well as the benefits of Source-Connect's remote overdub sync system. Finally, the host expresses gratitude to various individuals as the show concludes. #SourceConnect4 #DolbyAtmos #RemoteCollaboration loading loading Timestamps (00:00:00) Source Elements Wins NAB Best in Show (00:01:40) Source Connect 4: Dolby Atmos Support (00:05:52) Source Connect 4: Improved User Experience (00:08:36) Recorded Files in Pro Tools (00:10:08) Port Forwarding Simplified in Source Connect 4 (00:11:10) COVID's Impact on Remote Recording Technology (00:16:11) Streamlining Remote Audio Engineering (00:20:03) The Future of Source-Connect and Nexus (00:22:27) Remote Overdub Sync in Source-Connect (00:24:27) Farewell and Gratitude Transcript : Y'all ready? Beat history. : Get started. : Welcome. : Hi. Hi, hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite. These guys are professional. They're motivated. : Thanks to Tribooth, the best vocal booth for home or on the rote voice recording and austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements and someone audio post Chicago, Darren Robbo Robertson from voodoo radio imaging, Sydney tech to the Vo stars, George the tech Wittem from LA and me, Andrew Peters. Voice over talent and home studio line up learner. : Here we go. : And welcome to another pro audio suite. Thanks to tributh. Don't forget the code Tripap 200 to get $200 off your tributh. And austrian audio making passion heard. Just imagine a New Zealander, an American, a Canadian, an Australian and a half Englishman walk into a podcast. It's just happened. We have, apart from Robert Marshall, we have Rebecca Wilson, we have Ross and we have Vincent from source elements. : Ooh, here we are. : Wonderful. : An Argentine too. : Can you talk from our laughter who is here? : Yeah. : And welcome to the party in Las Vegas, by the sounds of it. : Now, we should say the award winning team. : Yeah, I was going to say there's a bit of a party going on because there's a new trophy in the cupboard. By the sounds of things, there is best in show. : We're holding it up right now. It's brilliant. Shining blue and it says, nab. Best in show. And it's gonna go under Robert's trophy case. : Exactly. I don't have a trophy case, but I have a trophy shelf. : Trophy shelf, yeah. : So, Phyllis, in best in show for. : Remote collaboration, remote production. Yes. : This is the new baby source connect four. Yeah. : Yes, it does. Atmos, amongst other many cool things, source Connect used to do and more than it does now. : So go and fill us in on the atmos thing because that's a massive leap forward. : Yeah. It allows you to have all sort of the raw atmos stream, so not just a rendered mix going across a remote connection, so someone can listen, but instead it gives you the flexibility to send what's called the bed. Then all the objects, these are all separate audio channels, as many as it will be, as many as 128 and the time code. And then most importantly, the metadata that steers all these objects around so that whatever the receiver has, as Atmos does, is it just conforms it. It renders it specifically for their speaker setup. So you could have a stage mixing a film with, say, 20 speakers and a director reviewing that mix in real time over source connect with, say, twelve speakers or even ten speakers. And maybe another person's connected at the same time and they just have headphones. So they're getting it as binaural. : It takes a lot of the thinking out of the equation, right? You just let the renderer on the remote side deal with the translation. So just lets the host, or the mix host, if you will, put one stream up and have it divvy out to everyone accordingly. : So everybody's end basically decides what it's. What it wants to hear. : Exactly. : Yeah. : Right. : Well, no, they'll hear the same thing. They'll just experience it in spatialization differently. : It'll be optimized for their speaker set up because it'll be coming out of a renderer directly on their side and. : The spatialization would be compatible from what you hear in binaural or 5.1. It's what someone's hearing in nine 1.6. But just with that lesser detail, I. : Guess the end goal is sort of like listening parity, which is almost impossible to achieve because everyone's going to have different speakers and configurations. But this is the most optimized version to get closest to that. : It's not like we're dropping like, you know, one of the voice channels so you only hear one side of the conversation. : It's the purpose that Atmos was made for so that there'd be one deliverable and then whatever your speaker set up. The person with the really nice speaker setup doesn't have to compromise for the person with the really simple speaker setup. : And the other way around. : And the other way around. The other person with a simple setup is not sort of burdened, in a sense, by having something that they can't play because of someone who has a really fancy system. So Atmos is like a deliverable that lets you play back anything from stereo all the way up to, you know, huge speakers arrays and 15 and 20 speakers even at home. : I think I have kind of an alternate kind of take on this which is basically like a bit of a tangent from that, that angle of it, but it's basically like these. Getting into a really tuned listening environment is a really expensive moment. You only get so many hours in there and the ability that now you could be working on a laptop in headphones through the Dolby Atmos renderer and building a mix towards your big mix session where you're going to actually sit in that room. That's kind of like what I think is at stake. And what's really exciting about this is you could be working on 5.1 before when you were working like in a stereo setting is you weren't able to know that it was going to translate. Exactly. This is kind of, or even at. : All, you kind of use tools like I had the, the waves thing that lets you take five one and make it binaural and you'd kind of have an idea. : I think most engineers I know would say they do their best work when like they, the client leaves and they get to work on something by themselves in a bit. So now the ability that you could be working towards this grand big spatial mix in a laptop setting and then transmit that to a listening environment that you can get into or physically get there, that's the real exciting prospect. : It kind of feels like equity, really like true equity. : Let's bring it back into more of the realm of our listeners, I guess. And AP and I have been having a bit of a play around with source connect four. Thanks very much to you guys. And the biggest step forward I see is firstly the GUI. You know, it looks so much more SmIc, so much more professional, so much more user friendly. But in terms of operation wise, the biggest step forward is the old queue manager, which now becomes restore replace. In source connect four we were like. : You know, we've spent 20 years honing technology and then we thought now we need to hone the user experience. It's really an internal focus for all of us. : Now the queue manager so often was just, people never read the manual. It didn't, it didn't work automatically enough. And then people would just go, what is this thing? I don't know. Shut it down, let's get on with our session. It wasn't something that they thought to ask for because they never had anything like it before. : It's weird, I've done so many sessions where I've said, are you using Q manager? And I get the answer, no. What's that? : Yeah, we just have one extra step to go, which is to be reading your session file automatically, your pro tools or logic or other session file, whatever we can. And then you honestly wouldn't have to do anything. And you've got restore happening all the time without needing to configure anything. : For me, the other awesome one would be for it to work even after I've shut down source connect because there's so many times that you shut it down and you go, oh, I shouldn't have done that, should I? : But you know, well we have reconnection logic built in now or like a new method where you know, if somebody does shut down, you still got work to do, you can bring it back up and it'll reconnect and it will restart. But we also, you know, if you shut the program down, then it can't do it anymore. That's the same. : But as far as, like, uploading the data maybe ahead of time or right away so you don't have to wait for the talent or worry if the talent shuts their system down. : This is maybe the most important thing about source page four. We've redesigned it from scratch, completely rewritten every line of code so that we can add these features that we know everybody wants. So the plan was the very first version on the first day. It's pretty much feature to feature for source connect three because we just need to get it out. : Right? : Yeah. : With doggy connection. : Okay. All right. Some more extra cool stuff. : There's a lot of cool stuff to. : Get you to want to upgrade, but then what you're talking about, like, hey, let's upload, you know, the whole session to the cloud so that the engineer can get it later on. All of that stuff can come now because with built hooks into all of this technology. : Sure. Well, let's pick through a few of them. AP and I were talking, we were looking at that restore replace page. AP noted the recorded files area and was wondering if that was sort of a hybrid of the old source connect now where you could actually record directly to the cloud. Is that the case, or is that actually looking at my. Well, in my case, my pro tools folder going, these are the files you've recorded so far. : Exactly. Those are the files that you've recorded in Pro tools. What I would originally say the Qmanager or the auto restore. Auto replace system recognizes as ones that it knows what they are and who they were connected to. And if there's any audio to fix or replace, restore or replace that it can do it. So those are your recorded files. And then the other one you might see in there is the uploads, which are files that maybe someone else recorded that you are uploading data to, to either restore someone else's file or replace data in someone else's file. : Okay. Because I think AP, you sort of liked the idea of recording in the cloud, didn't you? : Yeah, that's one of those features you're. : Technically recording there, and we can make that recording more available. It's actually, I think source connect three had that, but it had some flaws to it. But exporting the connection, if it's not there already, will be there. : AP has been playing with twisted wave too much. That's the problem I've been playing. : Yeah, indeed. Just going to ask about port forwarding. How does that change? Or has it changed in source connect four? : I got this one. How does that change? No more port forwarding is necessary. : Yeah. Nice. : Basically. : We find a way through your connection path and make it work. You don't have to go into your router and figure out anything complicated. You don't have to call us in a panic. You decided to take a vacation, and then you get called for a job. But nothing like that. It's just gonna work. : So source stream is available. Mac and windows. And port forwarding, especially in the pro version, is available if you want to use it. It does kind of. It's the ideal path for the connection, if it's available. And if you can lay out the red carpet for source connect, it appreciates it, but it's no longer required. : Only very strict networks and, you know, corporate environments. : Yeah. : My question is directed at you, Rebecca, and I'm wondering what hand COVID played in the development of source connect four, the one we're seeing now. : You know, it's still a complicated thing to process. What happened to the world in 2020? We all changed. It was a one of major cultural shift for them, us as humans. And so, of course, that can only be reflected in technology. And the main thing that changed, I would say, for us, is that we realized we kind of know what we're doing with the Internet, which was really nice to find out. It was really, you know, it wasn't a pleasant situation at all, but it was nice to know that we were able to help. That was really satisfying. If you could have called anything in that situation satisfying. And then it said to us, hey, I think that we have an idea what's gonna be needed the next 1020 years, because we've already been doing it 20 years. You know, Robert and I, the team are all young spring chickens, and. : And I have a cane. : We've still got some ideas left. I don't know, maybe just a certain insight that we have from doing this so long. It was like, now the world's ready for us. : I think what happened in the pandemic is a. All the doubters went, oh, remote really does work. And for us, what we realize is that remote is no longer just like the talent's remote or the client's remote, but remote is everybody's remote, and they all have different roles. And how to put those roles together in the most cohesive way became more what SourceConnect four was about compared to what we thought source connect four was going to be prior to the pandemic. : If you think about source Connect, like source Connect pre COVID was something that was nice to have, and then when COVID hit, it was something you had to have, and that changed the whole game. : I thought, well, Andrew, honestly, you and I, you know, we're from the South Pacific, from Australasia. I wouldn't say that source connect was a nice to have. It was kind of a, you know, whether it was source to nature or something else, we had to have something or how on earth we were going to work internationally because plane tickets are expensive and, you know. : Yeah, that's. : I think. : I think so, yeah. But I'm thinking from my point of view, like, as a voice talent, working with studios like you, historically, you just drive it. I go to Melbourne or Sydney or whatever it was for a job. And, you know, you managed to convince people that, you know, you can actually connect with to my studio if I work with someone in Sydney or wherever. But it was kind of a luxury, really. And people would just use local talent, pull up in their car park and go into their booth. But once COVID hit, it was not like that at all. It was a different game. : I think, especially here in Australia, there was a massive resistance to home studios, to the point where owners of studios would refuse to work with remote voice actors because they figured they were trying to steal their work. So. But COVID sort of put a whole new perspective on that, I guess, really, didn't it? : Yeah, and there were people. There were people that were actually literally coming out and black banning talent for having a home set up. : Yeah, that guy's got a home studio. He's stealing my work. : Prior to, like, up to. Prior to the pandemic, or did that subside at some point? : Yeah, I think it was. Look, it was. It was softening, but it was still there. : I think what the pandemic did is kind of shift the focus from the studio to the operator to the engineers at those studios. Right. So I definitely spoke to a lot of people in those places that said they got more work because they were able to do so much of it remotely. : Well, I know that's a fact for a lot of studios where they were able to, like, have engineers at home and at the studios, or just because clients weren't in, they were able to do just more work. Like, yeah, everybody could be put to work. All you needed was more licenses of whatever it was that you were using, like. Like pro Tools and Source connect and whatnot. : Yeah. : The irony of this whole thing. When COVID hit, all of a sudden studios were calling me because they had to get out of their commercial studios and set up at home and asking if I could do tests with them to make sure their source connect was working. : Wow. : Right. Or weren't some talent going to your place just to do sessions? Because they were, you know, they couldn't go all the way to the studio, but somehow they could give you COVID. : Exactly. : I don't know how the rules were, but I seem to remember you were hosting some talent at your place. : Yeah, there was a few that came here because they got out of the city and they were living sort of coastal, so they couldn't get in there anyway. And I was asked if people could come here that were living locally, and of course I obliged. : The amount of tech that was pushed on to pretty much every operator in a remote setting was, I think, probably one of the humbling parts of the pandemic. Right. Because, you know, it was, it was once you have every role get remote, then all of a sudden, like, I know a lot of audio engineers that know nothing about networks. Yeah. You know, like, it's like literally everyone has kind of thrown this wrench of technology and different roles now I got to be it as well as engineering. Well, that's what support was here for. : Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking like literally a big part of like source connect helping in pandemic was just a huge heavy load of tech support. And it wasn't just getting talent on boarded, but it was almost teaching a lot of people like how to work remotely or how to like not just do a remote ISDN, like to freaking have everybody be remote and lots of people routing. Yes. : So you know, all that's kind of, I think that's what source connect four represents. I think a lot of the learning of that is how to streamline exist, make the UI, make it make sense for you so you don't really need to think too much. The getting rid of the eye lock and the port forwarding requirements. I don't know if we talked about ilock, that's the thing. We've experienced that probably in huge volumes right at the start of the pandemic. : What's this? : What is this Iloc thing? : I need something physical and I can't. : Go out and get it. : You didn't need it physical at the time. Another account? Is it going to cost me anything? No, it's a free account and you know, you can't verify or you can't easily set somebody up because there's just more email verifications for new accounts that are created and God forbid the account that you created in source elements, that same account name is not available in Ilog. So now you have two different account names to remember and like two different passwords and. : Yeah, and people are losing their passwords because they use one thing for one account, one thing for another account. : So that's gone. : No more eyelock. : Wow, you heard it here first. : You heard it here, folks. That's right. Exactly. : Breaking news. : Bravo did say that he would like the UI to be bigger. : Bigger, small. : Can't see shit. : Smaller the GUI. : Oh, smaller the GUI. : It would be nice to be able to scale it like I want to see. I love the size of it as it is for now, but even when you've hit that little four corner box and it squashes down to the sort of send and receive meters and then the menu underneath, for me, it still takes up a lot of space on my screen. : And you can make it smaller. Yeah, you can grab the corner and push it in. : We're in the final mile of quality of life improvements. A lot of the stuff that, you know, those sort of smaller bits are just, they're gonna get done in the next couple months and. : Absolutely, I mean, you've embarked on a massive job. But that was one of the observations that I sort of, I did say to rob, but is I wanna see it big when I'm setting up the session and when I'm getting everybody connected. But once everybody's connected, I've got three screens in front of me, I've got my edit on one, my mix on another, and then my third is dedicated to picture for video. Source connect plugins, meters, all the rest of it to keep them out of the way. So the less space that can take up for me, because I really only need to glance up and see if it's metering. If someone says they can't hear something. : Can I throw in a future feature that I don't think is a spoiler because I really wanted. Yep, we plan to separate the UI from the engine and you could run it from like another screen or an iPad. And to me that's the sweet spot there, especially for, you know, people who are running, you know, big installations. They can walk away and, you know, oh, source Kinect five is not working and they can look on their phone. Oh yeah, oh, it's working now. : Right. : Why should they have to go back. : To the machine room and what about integration with Nexus? : I think you're going to definitely see Nexus and source connect integration and just further integration across the whole product line going towards that platform. : I think because I was telling Robert on a previous episode, it wasn't all that long ago, I had a session where I had a voice talent up in Brisbane somewhere. I had a creative sitting in the airport and two guys in the agency here in Sydney, and then the client was also online from, like, Perth in Western Australia or something like that. And there was another talent in Adelaide and it was this massive session. And if you could have seen my poor old thirst screen with meters and everything else going and all the rest of it, it becomes a logistical nightmare trying to remember where you've put everything and who's on what. So combining that all together would be quite impressive. : Can't say exactly what you might see, but I think sort of connect and nexus are surely more communication. : Well, that's actually a really good advancement that you've reminded me that you've, you've put into four. Here is the fact that all your connections appear in the one place. I think that's, that's amazing. : And they cross connect for you. : Yeah. : So they all hear each other without you having to do a thing. : Right. : You can pull multiple outputs, everyone record on everyone on a separate track, and. : You can even give them different inputs. : Right. : Right. You can send them different things, but they will all send to each other. : Yeah. : Can I make it so that person doesn't send to that person? : That's the plan for sure. We want to have a more project based style where you could decide what role is everyone playing? What do they hear? What do you hear? : What do you want them to hear? Who hears what? You can make everyone hear each other in a round circle and you could really play the game of like, tell this story to the next person and when it gets back to you. That is not the story I told. : Yeah, well, it's. I mean, the way you've set it up now, it's almost a well and truly upsized source connect now, right? : I'd agree. In a simple sense, it is like source connect three and source connect now. Sort of merging together and becoming each one, giving the best of what they used to do so you get the benefits. Yeah. : The autorestore replace being like, now you actually truly have an acquisition system that's like, bit accurate, right? : Yeah, yeah, exactly. : Never mind the browser, you're not going to get that there. : We know where every sample and frame is. : Speaking of frames, we have a system called remote Overdub sync which instead of remote transport sync where you are to deal with latency on a project. If someone is singing or doing ADR, going back to ISDN, the original method is to send timecode into sync. Two timelines on either side. So one chases the other networks, but there's a lot of setup on either side. So the remote overdub sync ideas that you can send to the talent whatever they need to hear and whatever they need to see and they perform if it's ADR and they sing and that performance gets back to you and you record it. And while you're recording it using the remote over dub sync system, you hear it in sync and when you hit stop in your daw, you see the waveform and then a moment later, a couple of seconds later, you see that waveform jump back in time to be where it should have been had there been no latency between you. So you can overdub, really just connect and overdub. You don't have to tell people to load up this timeline and click this button to synchronize. : No more comments of that doesn't look right to me from the back of the room. When you're recording with the talent, are. : You thinking or is it going to happen for iOS by any chance? : Oh yeah. : Yes. : I'm a big icad fan. I really love mine. I use it mostly as a music score player to play piano and I would love to use source connect on it and it's definitely happening. : AP is only asking you because he's trying to create the world's smallest voiceover roadkit. It's a purely selfish motivation. : I get it. : He just needs to use a trrs cable. And like, if Andrew just needs to talk to me about how to make things. : Uh huh. Absolutely. You would have the world's smallest road case. Indeed. : That's not the only thing that I've got the smallest of, but that's another story for another day. Thank you guys. Thank you Rebecca. Thank you Ross. Thank you Vincent. And of course Robert. : Congratulations. Congrats. : Thank you. : Thanks Andrew. Thanks, Jorge. : Well, that was fun. : Is it over? : The pro audio suite with thanks to Tribu and austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging from George the tech Wittem. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our website, thepro audiosuite.com. #ProAudioSuite #SourceConnectFour #RemoteRecording #AudioProduction #Podcasting #AudioEngineering #Podcasters #VoiceOver #PodcastProduction #AudioTech

The Newsmax Daily with Rob Carson
The Rob Carson Show- Pt 2 (04/12/24)

The Newsmax Daily with Rob Carson

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 12, 2024 82:39


-Kansas Sen. Robert Marshall joins Rob to talk about the Alejandro Mayorkas impeachment. -RFK Jr. doubles down on Joe Biden being the biggest threat to democracy. -Today on the Newsmax hotline: Dr. Kelly Victory of The Wellness Company joins to discuss the coverup of the origins of COVID and Rand Paul's new commission. The Rob Carson Show on Newsmax Radio is sponsored by The Wellness Company. Rest assured knowing that you have emergency antibiotics, antivirals and anti-parasitics on hand to help keep you and your family safe! Go to http://twc.health/Carson and use promo code CARSON to save 10% on your emergency medical kit! Today's podcast is sponsored by: Monetary Metals: Invest in gold & silver while to save for your retirement at http://monetary-metals.com/Carson Ladder: See if you are instantly approved for term life insurance at http://ladderlife.com/Newsmax To call in and speak with Rob Carson live on the show, dial 1-800-922-6680 between the hours of 12 Noon and 3:00 pm Eastern Time Monday through Friday…E-mail Rob Carson at : RobCarsonShow@gmail.com Musical parodies provided by Jim Gossett (www.patreon.com/JimGossettComedy) Listen to Newsmax LIVE and see our entire podcast lineup at http://Newsmax.com/Listen Make the switch to NEWSMAX today! Get your 15 day free trial of NEWSMAX+ at http://NewsmaxPlus.com Looking for NEWSMAX caps, tees, mugs & more? Check out the Newsmax merchandise shop at : http://nws.mx/shop Follow NEWSMAX on Social Media:  • Facebook: http://nws.mx/FB  • Twitter: http://nws.mx/twitter • Instagram: http://nws.mx/IG • YouTube: https://youtube.com/NewsmaxTV • Threads: http://threads.net/@NEWSMAX  • Telegram: http://t.me/newsmax  • TRUTH Social: https://truthsocial.com/@NEWSMAX  • GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/newsmax Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Better Mojo Better Life
Healthy aging meets anti-aging: Re-defining the way we approach life's fourth quarter

Better Mojo Better Life

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 10, 2024 48:39


Dr. Robert Marshall shares his motivation behind a life dedicated to helping men and women live longer, fuller lives as we age. As a young helicopter pilot in Vietnam, he lost many friends. His experience had a profound impact personally and professionally.  To honor those lost in his flight class, he made a commitment to live the best version of himself for as long as he could and help others do the same.  Listen as he shares his story, his research, his training and his take on the evolution of living longer and fuller lives. Plus, the importance of gratitude, purpose and a use it or lose it mind set. In addition, we discuss Oprah's big moment opening up about her weight loss journey. Dr. Marshall and Melissa explain the nature of these groundbreaking medications along with a few cautionary notes. Christina Imes weighs in on the similarities between the rise in popularity of these medications and other cutting edge treatments. Her advice to consumers is on point, be careful as this industry evolves. Do your research and choose a trained medical professional to help you achieve your goals. Melissa, as always demonstrates her industry expertise with great questions and thoughtful commentary.  Clearly, as Pellecome's CEO, she continues to vest herself in the community and stay ahead of the curve.

Ekklesia Salt Lake City
Isaiah 43:16-21

Ekklesia Salt Lake City

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2024 44:03


Robert Marshall preaches on Isaiah 43:16-21.

The Pro Audio Suite
Beyond the Talk Box: Celebrating Bob Heil's Impact

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2024 11:30


We delve into the legacy of Bob Heil, a titan in the pro audio industry whose influence reverberates through the echoes of rock and roll history. From his early days wielding the organ to revolutionizing live sound with his groundbreaking work alongside legends like The Who and Grateful Dead, Heil's journey is one of innovation, passion, and an indelible mark on music technology. We're treated to an exclusive clip from a memorable interview, uncovering the story behind the iconic talk box and its role in Peter Frampton's electrifying performances. Alongside reflections from our hosts and the fond recollections of interactions with Heil, this episode serves as a tribute to a man whose work amplified the soul of music.  Celebrating the Legacy of Bob Heil: A Look Back at the remarkable career of an audio industry pioneer, from his beginnings as an organ player to his revolutionary contributions to pro audio and live sound. Exclusive Insights: Featuring a clip from a 2017 interview with Bob Heil at the NAMM show, shedding light on his history, innovations, and the creation of the iconic talk box. The Birth of Rock and Roll Sound: How Bob Heil's innovative sound systems changed the game for artists like The Who and Grateful Dead, setting new standards for live music performances. Remembering a Legend: Personal anecdotes and reflections on Bob Heil's impact, his approach to sound engineering, and his legacy within the music and audio production communities. Tribute to a Visionary: Acknowledging Heil's vast contributions, from his early work with organs and sound systems to his influence on modern podcasting and amateur radio.   A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth... https://tribooth.com/ And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear.. https://austrian.audio/ 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   Summary In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, sponsored by Tribooth and Austrian Audio, the team pays homage to the late Bob Heil, a revered figure in the pro audio industry. Hosted by Robert Marshall, Andrew Peters, George "the tech" Wittam, and Darren Robertson, they reflect on Heil's influential career, from his beginnings playing the organ to revolutionizing the sound systems for rock and roll, particularly for the legendary rock opera "Quadrophenia." Heil, also a dedicated ham radio operator and a friend of Joe Walsh, leaves behind a remarkable legacy. His prowess is exemplified by his creation of the PR 40 microphone, considered the gold standard in podcast mics due to its distinctive tone.  The episode concludes with a remembrance of Bob Heil's innovation, good-natured enthusiasm, and his considerable contributions to pro-audio technology.  #RockAndRollLegacy #ProAudioInnovators #PR40MicMagic Timestamps (00:00:00) Introduction - Tribooth Sponsorship (00:04:34) Bob's Ham Radio and Microphone Endeavors (00:10:02) Evolution of Microphone Brightness (00:10:55) Pro Audio Suite Recording Setup Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready? Be history. Speaker B: Get started. Speaker A: Welcome. Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite. Speaker C: These guys are professional. They're motivated. Speaker A: Thanks to Tribooth, the best vocal booth for home or on the road. Voice recordings and austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements and someone audio post Chicago, Darren. Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney, to the Vo stars, George the tech Wittam from LA, and me, Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home studio guy. Speaker B: Here we go. Speaker A: And don't forget the code. : Trip a P 200. That will get you $200 off your triboof. And austrian audio making passion heard. Unfortunately, someone won't be heard anymore, which is a sad loss to the industry is Bob Heil, who's had an illustrious career kicking off playing the mighty organ and then becoming a pro audio guy. And George, you had the privilege of catching up with him on numerous occasions, I'm gathering. Speaker C: Yeah, I think more than once. There's just one particular interview from the NAm music trade show here in Anaheim from 2017, where I had a good, long interview, I mean, pretty long for a trade show interview. It was like nine minutes. And he really got a lot into his history. And at the time, I think I was remembering. Let's get onto the topic at hand, you know what I mean? He was giving me a lot of his backstory. And now I look back and I'm like, sure. I'm glad I had that chance. And to really hear it straight from him. I'm sure he's told those stories a thousand times. Right. But it was really cool hearing it from him. I mean, he literally created the sound system and envisioned the sound for quadrophenia. : Oh, really? Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker C: In fact, I have a clip here I can play from that interview where he talks about the birth of what he called the birth of rock and roll sound. I think that's what he called it. Here, take a listen. : Just go into the Internet, put in the night. Rock and roll sound was born. It's a true story. It really was the first night. And it was with the Grateful Dead. It's quite a story. They wrote the song trucking about it because they're selling all the gear. Yeah, well, their soundman got confiscated the night before because he wasn't supposed to be out of the state of California. We won't get into that. You can go figure it all out. But they come to St. Louis with no pa, ironically. To where? The Fox theater. Speaker C: The perfect place. : Well, there again, the stage manager calls you. You still have all those speakers? And I said, yeah, talk to this guy, handed the telephone to Garcia. And then we hit the front page of billboard because we went on tour with them out of there. And at that time, nobody had ever played through anything like that. I didn't know that. I'm like, this is pretty good, right? Because I had a longevity board that I had gotten and recording board. I had Macintosh amps. It was a big hi fi. That's what I looked and listened. It was beautiful. It wasn't just a loud pa. It was a beautiful sounding pa. That's new. Speaker C: That was new then. : Well, because of the pipe work. And I learned to listen. I had to voice and tune that as at the age of 15, we started in harmonically. Nobody realizes about the harmonics that are so important. I learned that as a young kid, and it's carried through everything I do. But then I was on the road. We hit the front page of billboard and everybody was calling us. One of them was the who. We ended up with them for six years. And from there it was humble pie. Jay Giles, on and on and on. But then they took Frampton out. He was a star of humble pie. They took him out as a solo act. And his little gal penny was married in my home when they were 18. She called me shortly after. She said, I need a Christmas present for Peter. And I sent her a talk box. You can write the rest of Peter Frampton's history, and it's well defined. You go to our website. : Wow. Yeah, I remember the talk box. Frampton comes alive. And that came out. It was like such a feature, and it was so weird. Like, you'd never heard anything like it before. What a story, though. Speaker C: Yeah. I'd love to get into his brain as to how he actually even came up with that idea. I'm thinking he was hanging a lot with the Grateful Dead when he came. : Up with that idea. I think I know what you're getting at. Speaker C: There was some serious psychotropic stuff activity going on there. But, yeah, I mean, the fact that he started. I didn't get that part of the interview, but he started as an organist, so that's a very high level of musicianship required to play an organ. And then he would set up the organs. He would tune the organs. : He was aware of the organs sound. And those organs have just to know how the PA sounds, because the organ's a big sound. You're aware of loud instruments. Speaker C: Yeah, with a lot of sources. Every pipe, every thousands of pipes. So, yeah, what an incredible background he had. And the. Then, you know, he's out there selling mics at know, which is. That's one of the neatest reasons to get to go to a nam show, is you did get to know a, you know, and you got to talk to him and interact with, you know, Wes Dooley from AEA microphones. Grew up repairing RCA microphones. : He's a trip. Wes Dooley is great. Speaker C: Totally. : Just another booth at Nam. Speaker C: Actually, a living historian. Right. And you get to talk to these folks face to face. It's amazing. But, yeah. I met Bob's daughter, who still works for Heil and still goes out to trade shows and does the beat, and she was very nice, and there's just a heck of a legacy there. So he will be missed for sure. And he was a huge ham radio operator. Amateur radio, as they call, playing organ. : Over the ham radio station like he has his own station. That was just like organ playing, I think, or something. Speaker C: Yeah, it was over. : He was also friends because he's actually from. Well, he died in Illinois. Speaker C: Yeah, he's from St. Louis. : Right. But he was friends with Thomas Holman. Speaker C: Wait a minute. : Thomas Holman started, did the THX protocol. Speaker C: Oh, he's the th and thx, yeah. Oh, wow. : And Thomas Holman ended up, I believe, over with connections to Skywalker Sound and another audio luminary or whatever. Speaker C: So cool. And then Bob also picked up, they picked up Bob to be a host on a podcast called this week in Tech Twit TV, which was the show that influenced me to start my own show 1512 years ago. And he did his own show over there about ham radio. And they did it for quite a long time, actually, until they had to end the show. But they still have his rig that he had built for that show. It's still at the Twitch studios in one corner of the know, a memory of really cool. Speaker B: Really, really cool. : The quirkiest thing, I thought, with Bob was his friendship with Joe Walsh, who was also a ham radio. : Didn't Joe Walsh also use the talk box a bit? Speaker B: Did he? Speaker C: He did. He said later in that interview that Joe Walsh really kind of had it mastered. He really clearly, in hearing his interviews and reading his interviews, how he had an extremely. He was extremely tight with Joe. They were best buddies, and they spent a lot of time talking ham amateur radio together. : Did they go driving in Joe's maserati? Speaker C: Probably. And it was actually Joe who was experimenting with using the mics that Bob had made for doing amateur radio because. : For doing studio work. Speaker C: Yeah. Bob hated the crappy mics. That amateur radio operators were stuck using. So he made a better mic. And then Joe was like, yo, plug this thing into your studio console. And Bob's like, I never would have thought of that. He's like, I'm telling you, it sounds better than an SM 57 or a 58. And he's like, yeah, you're right, it does. And a brand of microphones was born from there. His most well known podcast mic, the one that's kind of the gold standard, is called the PR 40. And it has a distinct tone to it. It has a distinct voice. : Is it kind of big sounding? Speaker C: It's big, and it has a lot of cut, like mid range. : It's like a combo of like an SM seven and a 416 or something. Speaker C: Kind of almost. It doesn't have the top end of a 416, but it definitely has more of a cut. So if you ever listen to Leo Laporte on this week in tech, or any of the shows that Leo does, you'll hear the distinct sound of that mic. It's not a flat or a hi fi mic, it's a broadcast mic. : But it's a dynamic sounding mic. Speaker C: Yes, it's a dynamic mic, and its voicing is designed for being heard. Let's just put it that way. : Yes. Speaker C: The PR 30 and the PR 20, to me, sound a little bit smoother. I like the voicing of them better, personally. But the bottom line is Bob tuned his mics by ear. And he said that specifically later in the interview. I wasn't curious about response curves and all this stuff. I would just go by what I thought sounded right. So those mics are tuned by Bob's ear. And the guy had a good ear, but probably by the time he got into his fifty s, sixty s, seventy s, didn't hear everything. : Did all the mics as he made them throughout the years just get brighter and brighter? Speaker B: It's a good question. Speaker C: It's a good question. I mean, I'm sure he wasn't the only one that put his ears on the mics after quite a while. Joking, but yeah, no, it's true. The sound systems I listened to growing up that were often not eqed well, unfortunately, were often helmed by a gentleman of an older generation. Yeah, I was like, no, too much two k and 4k. My ears are bleeding. : You're accelerating their progression towards mixing. Speaker B: Like you. Speaker C: Anyway, rest in peace, Bob, thank you for all your innovation and your good natured enthusiasm. Enthusiasm towards audio, and we really appreciate it. : Absolutely. Speaker B: Yeah. Well, that was fun. Is it over? Speaker A: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribut and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio imaging with tech support from George the tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say good day, drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com. #BobHeilLegacy #ProAudioSuite #AudioInnovation #RockAndRollSound #TalkBoxMagic #AustrianAudio #TriBooth #ProAudioLegends #SoundEngineering #MusicHistory

Atlanta Voiceover Studio
Episode 55: SOURCE CONNECT with co-founder Robert Marshall

Atlanta Voiceover Studio

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 4, 2024 37:36


Robert Marshall is co-founder of Source Elements, the company that offers Source Connect. He is the visionary behind the idea of leveraging internet connectivity to make post-production faster and more productive. He holds degrees in electrical engineering and music composition. In this episode, we discuss How Source Elements/Source Connect came to be How Source Connect works In what ways can Source Connect help VO talent Can you only pay for Source Connect for a single booking? Do you need to run a backup during your session? First look at Source Connect 4! What Robert sees the future of VO looking like [CLICK HERE](https://bit.ly/3uPpO8i) for 15% off a Voice123 Membership ($359 tier and up) Terms & Conditions (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CcYMkdLxWfbmwbvu-mwaurLNtWYVpIBgkJpOQTYLDwc/edit?usp=sharing) Learn more + Sign up for Source Elements HERE (https://www.source-elements.com/) *Follow Atlanta Voiceover Studio Here: * facebook.com/atlantavoiceoverstudio instagram.com/atlantavoiceoverstudio twitter.com/atlvostudio tiktok.com/@atlantavoiceoverstudio YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/gGPFePt8Rfs Atlanta Voiceover Studio & ProVoiceoverTraining's Classes & Workshops www.AtlantaVoiceoverStudio.com www.ProVoiceoverTraining.com **Sign up for FREE weekly VO tips: https://bit.ly/AVSemail

The Pro Audio Suite
Back It Up: The Art and Science of Audio Archiving

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2024 36:02


This week, Robbo, Robert, George, and AP dive headfirst into the digital abyss of archiving audio sessions. It's a showdown of practices, preferences, and pure paranoia that none of us want to miss. We're slicing through the magnetic tape of mystery to answer the burning question: To archive or not to archive? That is the question. Especially for voice actors like AP - is digital hoarding a necessary evil, or just a fast track to a cluttered hard drive? We're peeling back the layers on why every beep, click, and voiceover session might just be worth its weight in digital gold. Robbo, with his trusty naming convention stolen from his days at Foxtel, shares his vault-like approach to keeping every sonic snippet since Voodoo Sound's inception. That's right, folks - for a mere $25, Robbo will keep your audio safe from the digital gremlins, guaranteeing that not even a rogue magnet could erase your audio masterpiece. Then there's Robert, with his tech fortress of JBODs and RAID arrays, ensuring not even a single byte goes awry. It's like Fort Knox for soundwaves over there, proving once and for all that redundancy isn't just a good idea; it's the law in the land of post-production. But wait, there's a twist! Robbo shares a cautionary tale that's straight out of an audio engineer's nightmare - precious recordings lost to the abyss of DAT tape oblivion. A horror story to chill the bones of any audio professional, reminding us all of the fragility of our digital (and not-so-digital) creations. As for AP? He's the wild card, questioning the very fabric of our digital hoarding habits. But when push comes to shove, even AP can't deny the siren call of a well-placed backup, especially when clients come knocking for that one session from yesteryear. We also get a deep dive into the eccentricities of backup strategies, from George's cloud-based safety nets to the analog nostalgia of reel-to-reel tapes. It's a journey through time, technology, and the occasional Rod Stewart office painting gig - because, why not? So, gear up for an episode that's part backup seminar, part group therapy for data hoarders. We're dissecting the digital, analog, and everything in between to keep your audio safe, sound, and ready to resurface at a moment's notice. Don't miss this electrifying episode of The Pro Audio Suite, where the backups are plentiful, and the stories are even better. Who's backing up this podcast, you ask? Well, let's just hope someone hit record. A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth... 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 Summary In the latest episode of the pro audio suite, we dive into the world of audio archiving and discuss the various approaches and philosophies toward preserving our work. We're joined by industry professionals including Robert Marshall from source elements and Darren 'Robbo' Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, as well as George 'the tech' Wittam and Andrew Peters, who share their personal strategies and experiences with archiving voiceover projects. The conversation opens with a discussion about the importance of having a naming convention for files, with insights on the methods adopted from professional entities like Foxtel. Listeners will learn the value of archiving everything, as shared by Robbo, including the practice of charging a backup fee to clients to cover the costs of maintaining archives. George introduces his once-a-year protocol of transferring data to an archive hard drive, emphasizing how affordable data storage has become. However, he also highlights the importance of staying current with technology to avoid the obsolescence of media, sharing anecdotes about DA 88 tapes and the need to keep track of archival materials. The episode touches on practical voiceover tips, like not necessitating a workstation at home and utilizing a laptop as a backup plan for voiceover recording. We also cover the worst-case scenarios such as dealing with corrupted audio and the advantages of modern backup solutions. The discussion moves on to cloud storage, specifically iCloud, and its benefits for voice actors who might otherwise become digital hoarders. The team debates the challenges of booting up from an external drive on modern Mac systems like the M1 or M2, offering insights into the workaround solutions which may require additional purchases. Listeners are reminded of the great offers from our sponsors, such as Tribooth for the perfect home or on-the-go vocal booth and Austrian Audio's commitment to making passion heard. The episode comes to a close emphasizing the professional edge of the podcast, all thanks to the contributions of Triboof and Austrian Audio, and the craftsmanship deployed using Source Connect, with post-production by Andrew Peters and mixing by Voodoo Radio Imaging. The audience is invited to subscribe to the show and participate in the conversation via the podcast's Facebook group. #VoiceOverTechTips #TriBoothTales #ArchivingAudioArt Timestamps (00:00:00) Introduction: Tributh Vocal Booth (00:00:42) Archiving Discussion with Robbo (00:07:34) Talent Experiences with Archiving (00:13:17) Digital Media Frailties (00:18:48) Tape Transfers Before Auctions (00:21:27) Backup Plans in Voiceover Work (00:27:39) Importance of Redundancy (00:31:04) Apple Silicon Booting Limitations (00:35:25) Podcast Credits & Reminder to Subscribe Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready? Be history. Speaker B: Get started. Speaker C: Welcome. Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite. These guys are professional. They're motivated. Speaker C: Thanks to tributh, the best vocal booth for home or on the road. Voice recording and austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements and someone audio post Chicago, Darren. Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney. To the Vo stars, George the tech Wittam from LA, and me, Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home studio guy. Speaker B: Learn up, learner. Here we go. : And don't forget the code. Trip a p 200 and that will get you $200 off your tribooth. Now, Robbo and I were having a bit of a chat the other day about archiving, which is something I strangely do, and I don't know why I do it, but I do. But there are different reasons for archiving, and mine is obviously completely different to Robert's. And of course, it's completely different from Robo's. So how much do you archive and how far back do your archives go? Speaker A: Well, as I said in the conversation yesterday, I actually archive everything. I could pretty much pull out any session I've done since voodoo sound existed, which is fast approaching 20 years. But I do charge a backup fee to my clients, so they pay $25 for the privilege. And, look, to be fair, whether they pay it or not, I do archive it, but it's a built in cost covering for me to be able to go and buy a couple of hard drives every year. But I reckon if you're going to do it, the most important thing for me anyway, is having some sort of naming convention. So I actually pinched mine off Foxtel when I used to freelance there. The channels had a three letter prefix. So I give all my clients or podcasts a three letter prefix, and then I use an underscore, and then it'll be what the thing is, whether it's a program or imaging component or whatever, and then the name of it, and then the month, and then an underscore, and the date the day of that month, and then an underscore in the year, and then usually. Sometimes after that, if it's a revision, I'll do underscore r two, r three, r four. And then each year is on its own hard drive or hard drives. So if I need to go back and find something, I've just got an external hard drive player, shall we call it? I can't think of what you call them, but you just plug your hard drive in and it turns up on your Mac, and I can just go through and find what I need. But, yeah, I've got clients that are sort of expecting me to do that. As you and I were talking about yesterday, I don't know whether maybe voiceover artists are expected to or not, but as I said, I kind of thought it would be nice to be able to. : I do it only on occasions if there's any chance that they're going to come back and want to do a revision or they're going to lose something, particularly if it's a massive session or something, that I've actually done the edit myself. I'll keep it, because you can bet your life that they're the ones who are going to come back and say, have you still got that thing? Because we've lost it. Speaker A: Yes. : It's like, no, I haven't, actually. So I keep all those things, but I was keeping day to day stuff and it was like, what's the point? It's like that stuff's already been on the air and it's off the air, it's gone. So why am I storing that for other people? But, yeah. Interesting. What about you, Robert? : I have a couple perspectives on this, I guess, from just sort of a mix operation point of view. What we have is what you call, it's a JBOD, just a bunch of drives is what it stands for. And it's controlled with the raid controller. So there's eight drives in this one, and it's not that big, actually. It's only, what is it? Like maybe two terabytes or something? And across all eight drives are all of our jobs that are sort of current, essentially. And the way the JBOD works is that it's an array. And so you can literally lose any one of those eight drives can just completely go to crap and we won't lose any data. You just slide a drive back in there and it heals. Speaker B: A raid five or a raid six. : Raid six, actually. Speaker B: Right. : So you can lose two out of the eight, I believe, is what we are. And we've had it over the last ten years. When we bought it, we just bought a whole stack of the same hard drives. And we've only had to use like two in the last ten years. So that's like kind of our live job. And then what we do, we would have all of our live jobs on that drive. And then if we ran out of space, we would peel out whatever, we would just go for the jobs that aren't active. So some of these jobs that we have were on that drive and have never been. They just keep on coming back, essentially. So they're always on the active drive. Meanwhile, the people that come in and do one thing and then they're gone, you never see them again. They get moved off, and then we would make two copies of that. And what we've been doing now is like, I'll go home with one and Sean will go home with the other. But however it goes, they're just basically on dead drives, or they're not spinning anymore, they're just sitting on a shelf so we can access those and then what we have. So last for a backup of the main drive. Ray, if the building was to burn down, I was using time machine and then taking a drive home every now and then. But we started using backblaze, which is just a really good service. It's like cheap for the year, and it just backs up. As long as the drive is spinning, they don't charge you. I think by the size, it just has to be an active drive. So that's our off site backup. And then we just have a database, which is really just a spreadsheet where a job comes in. We have like a naming convention, and we name it by the job name and then a job number, and there's a database that has basically every time that job was ever touched. So to us, these are all like a bunch of little rolling snowballs that get bigger and bigger and bigger and jobs come back and they get added to, or they just never go away. And they're always on the active drive. And that's how we do the post operation, the music operation. When I'mixing a band, I just have like a hard drive that sticks around with me for a while and then eventually it gets put on a shelf. And I have a lot of these drives that are sort of just dated. And I've used source zip a lot back in the day when I was low on hard drive space. But the problem is some of these drives are 40 pin ide drives, and I keep around a one firewire case that has a 40 pin. Like I can plug in any one of these hard drives. And then others are SATA. And those are really easy with the USB slots or the USB docking for the SATA drives, but it's looser. I just basically go by date and the client will say, hey, I did something with you, and I'll just go rummaging through my hard drives and hopefully find one from that date. Every now and then you may do two hard drives in a year, but those are my two systems. One is very stringent and good. And the other one is loose. : So George, do you know any other talent who know archive their sessions? Speaker B: I think the vast majority barely are functional on a computer that I work with. So they have extremely minimal protocol. : I know a lot of talent that don't even make a backup to be honest. Speaker B: Yeah. As far as they're concerned, once they got paid they could care less, it's gone. Some people are more data processing type people like me and they like to keep everything they've recorded. So what I would tell people, which almost never comes up, but my protocol is I have an archive hard drive that I will dump things onto about once a year. So I'm basically clearing space off of my local drive, cloud drives. I use Dropbox, Google Drive and iCloud. So stuff's in different places for different reasons. My business is on Google Drive, right. So every single client folder is on Google Drive at all times. And there's something around a terabyte or so there. And that's not that much because I'm not doing multi track productions or in most cases any video. Right. It's just small numbers of files. But my client media folder is on disk anyway because it's bigger than what's on my disk. But what's on disk is about 250gb and there's roughly 32,000 items in that folder. : Wow. Speaker B: And then it's funny, I just have 26 folders, ABCD and so forth. And the biggest folder is the letter C. So statistically there are more people by the name of C and I go by first names, right? So first names with c are the most common. Then s, then j, then a, then D, then m. It's kind of funny, I have all these weird statistics about names because I have 4000 clients. So it's really interesting to see some of the names that are so common. : I've got stuff. This is how stupid it is. I think I'm actually an order. I've got files here. Like I keep a folder for each client and then every session gets put into the folder, right? I look at some of them and even looking at the folder go, God, I haven't worked with those guys for years. And then you open the folder and look at the date of the sessions. It's like that was like 15 years ago. What the hell am I keeping that for? Speaker B: It's amazing, right? Well, data is cheap. It's really cheap to store data. I mean it's never been cheaper, so it's kind of like there's no harm in doing it you just have to eventually clear house. You're eventually going to fill your cloud drive or your local drive. So you have to have some kind of protocol to then move things. : You eventually have to take it into your own domain and not have it up on the cloud. Speaker B: Right. : And there's an old thing with data, though, which is you don't have a copy unless you have two copies. Speaker B: Right. True. This is what I think is interesting. So all these cloud storage scenarios have not changed price or capacity in many years. They're all still $10 for a terabyte or two terabytes. And that hasn't changed in a long time. : The meaning of a terabyte hasn't changed. Speaker B: Right. So what they're doing is they're making progressively more money per terabyte over the years. Yes, because their cost of storage is dropping, dropping, dropping year after year, and they're just keeping the price the same. : But they are continuously having to reinvest. Because another thing about archive and storage is that any. And this is the problem I have. It's like an archive is not a static thing. It must be moved and massaged, and you have to keep it moving with the technology going forward. Because if not, you end up with things like, I've got archives. I mean, I've got analog reel to reel tapes, plenty of those with stuff on them. And I can dig up the deck to play it back. But once you don't have that deck anymore, you just don't have it. And I've got dat backups and exabyte backups. Remember those, robo? Speaker A: Yeah, I do. : And CD Roms. And then. How about this one? That happened to me. I did a whole huge. One of the biggest albums I ever did, and I backed it up to a stack of dvds, dvdrs, dvdrs, like four gigs each. Four gigs each, I think. Were they four gigs each? Is that how much they were? I think so, yeah, four. Speaker A: And then dual layer were eight or something, weren't they? : Eight, right. Okay. And these were some crappy ones. Within three years, I went to play those things. And basically. Data rot. Yeah, it's gone. That's when you learn the lesson. And so if you don't keep your data moving, you don't know what's going to happen to that physical device that's holding it. And not just what happens to it, but what happens to the ability to even use that type of device or that type of software that reads it. Speaker A: Here's the interesting thing, right? I dragged out an old laptop case that I used to store all my dats in when I used to sort of freelance. And I always had dats, especially for radio imaging of bits and pieces that I would drag around with me. And I had to pull it out the other day. And this thing's been sitting in my garage, right? So not temperature controlled, not dust controlled, nothing else. There's about 60 dats in this thing. And I've got an old. It's not even on a digital database. It's an old sort of folder that's got like each dat has its own master and all that sort of shit. So I pulled this out, right? This is stuff that I recorded when I was still at AA in Adelaide. So we're talking 1996, right? I dragged this dad out and my trusty portable Sony Walkman, the TCD D 100, dragged that out, put some batteries in, plugged it into my Mac, chucked the dad in, going, there's no way this is going to work. Hit, dialed up the track number, play, bang, spun up to it, played it back. Pristine. Absolutely pristine. Speaker B: No glitches, no static. : I've had the same thing happen where the DaP machine has been completely screwed. And then you have to get a new DAP machine, but at least you can get those. But when the dat tapes go, you're kind of sol. Exactly your sol. Maybe you can find a read pass that works, but for the most part, that part of the tape is just like screwed. But that kind of thing happens even with files. I had a road. No, not a road. A zoom road. You'd be happy to know it's a zoom. And it was like a zoom recorder. Recorded the files, full concert, got home to play it. Files, complete silence. And it turns out that basically the zoom didn't like the little SD card. It was too slow, it was too this. And every indication was everything was fine until that file got big enough for the SD card to freak out. So all these mediums, even the new ones, still have their frailties. And I know dats are really known for being frail. Like, look at it wrong and it's never going to play back. Speaker B: Well, they're really pro media, right? The pro devices that use media like solid state media usually have redundant disks. They all have two slots, whether it's SD or CF or some other high speed. They'll always have a double slot because they have redundancy that's totally pro level. That's for doing like. : Because if you don't have two copies, you don't have one. Speaker B: Yeah, that's like when you're doing mission critical. You cannot afford to lose what you're doing. My daughter's a work at. : Exactly. : Yes, indeed. Speaker B: The oldest media I have still in a crate in my parents basement are DA 88 tapes, which were high eight digital tapes, and I don't have a machine anymore. I really don't recall telling my dad it's okay to sell my remaining Tascam Da 88, but apparently he did happen. : So I was just at La studios, and they still have their PCM 800 in the rack, which is a Sony version of a D 88. I still have eight at's around. And then. Speaker B: Yeah, I have no idea if those D 88. Some of them will work somewhat don't. I don't have a machine. I don't have any ide drives anymore. Everything's SATA. But one day I pulled up this Corboro box with like, 15 SATA drives, and I realized I could just go to Costco and buy $100 hard drive and literally put that entire box into one hard drive. And I could probably do that. In fact, I think three or four years ago, somebody said, hey, do you have this thing? And I went, I think I do. And I pulled out the archive drive and it wouldn't mount. I was like, okay, this is going to happen. Speaker A: But here's the other thing, right? And this is the thing that annoys me, and I've made this mistake, is you've got to keep a track of this stuff because you're always trying to sort of downsize your archives, I guess. And this is the classic mistake that I made. For years, I carried around these 15 inch reels of analog tape, right? Stereotape. My first demo of commercials and stuff was on this stuff. And when I finally landed this place called take two, which was my last sort of full time post production gig, they still had a quarter inch machine. And we're talking 2001, 2002. And I thought, right, this is probably the last time I'm going to see one of these. So I transferred it all carefully, professionally onto dats and all that. I had about three dats of stuff. And about two years later, I went looking for them. Do you reckon I've ever seen them again? I've lost them somewhere. But whereas a 25 inch reel. Sorry, a 15 inch reel, that's pretty hard to lose, you know what I mean? So it's like, you got to be careful. : Yeah, well, it's funny, when I was a kid, this is slightly off topic, but I suppose archiving in a strange way. But during summer holidays, a mate of mine, we used to go and try and get jobs. And his brother was a painter and decorator and he used to get us out, know, doing a bit of labouring for him. And he said, oh, do you guys want to earn some money? It's like, yeah. Yeah. So we jumped in his transit van and we took off down to London and ended up working in a recording studio. And we were painting Rod Stewart's office. : What, pink. : And he had above this. I can tell you exactly what color it was. Mission Brown and burnt orange. : I knew there'd be something like pink or orange. Yeah, there you go. Speaker B: Brown and orange headphones right here. : Yes, that's right. Yeah, it was pretty funny. But the recording studio downstairs, they just used to bin all this quarter inch tape, just throw it away. So it was bins full of. My dad was in electronics, so I thought I might just help myself to some of those. I mean, they're throwing them away after all. And it was just seven inch reels. So I just grabbed a whole bunch of seven inch reels out of the bin, took them home and didn't play them for some peculiar reason. We just recorded over the top of them. Speaker A: Right. : God knows what was on those tapes. Speaker B: Can you imagine? : So check it out. One of the studios that I freelance at one of the gigs they had was transferring before auctioning off these tapes that this janitor got out of a recording studio in New York. It was CBS or something. Turns out it's like the masters or some early tapes from Dylan's first. Speaker A: Wow. : So they auctioned them and then in order to prove, like, they had to have one playback, I don't know, they ended up supervising the transfer. But literally, it's, know, these tapes, they were supposed to go through the bulk erase, but not all of them would make it to the bulk erase. And this guy apparently was kind of into folk music and just happened to pull these out. And they just passed around for years and years until finally some grandparent or somebody is like, we're going to auction these. Speaker A: Do you reckon they stuck them in the microwave before they played them back? : Well, it's not the microwave. You put them in the dryer, in the dehydrator. Speaker A: I've heard stories and stories. It was always the microwave for me. We always used to nuke them. And you'd get one playback, but. Yeah, I haven't heard of the dryer. : But that's getting that tape. Because you ever seen one that does it, that you don't do that to? Yeah, well, it peels like it peels. It's the scariest thing. It goes through that pinch roller. One piece of tape comes into the pinch roller and two pieces of tape come out. One is the original tape. The other one's the oxide that briefly looks like a piece of tape until it crumbles into dust. Speaker A: Yeah. And the other is the back. : And you're just like, because it's playing. And you're like, okay, I should just let it play because this is the. Speaker A: Last playback should have been rolling on this ever. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? But going back to the Rod Stewart thing, was it Steve Balby on this show that was talking about. Steve was the bass player for noiseworks and his next band was what was greedy people, electric hippies. And they needed multi track to record their album. So they snuck into the archives and stole a couple of the noise works ones. : Yeah, they stole some multi track tape from somewhere. Speaker A: Yeah, it was noiseworks. They went and stole. : Over some band's archive. Speaker A: Well, his first bands. Yeah, the previous band, they stole their previous band's multi tracks and used those to record on. : Okay. At least it was theirs. : Bad archiving there. Speaker A: I know. I guess the other thing that this whole subject leads to, and I guess, George, this is more up your alley, is the thing that always terrifies me is if I've got a remote session, I'll set it up the night before and I'll test everything and I'll save it and make sure that I don't really shut anything down. I'll just leave it all working. But the thing that terrifies me as I'm walking back into the room, know what's gone wrong overnight when the computer's gone to sleep? Has something ticked over or something gone wrong? And I'm going to open up the computer and I'm just going to get into this panic that something's not working. Is there anybody out there in voiceover land, George, who has a plan b? Or who's ever thought about having a plan b? Like, okay, so if my main computer, for some reason just cocks it and I can't get a sound out of it, what am I going to, pushing a broom? Yeah, what am I going to do? Speaker B: I mean, the plan b is most people have a desktop and a laptop, so the laptop is the plan b. That's pretty much it. Home studio voice actors systems are pretty, let's face it, low end. I mean, you don't need a workstation, a $5,006 workstation to do voiceover at home. So you really just need another computer. And for most people, that's going to be the laptop. : It's the travel rig. Isn't the travel rig the backup rig, too? Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I've had clients run and grab their travel rig when something completely goes haywire with their Apollo or whatever, and they're panicking, and I'm like, just pull out your MacBook, plug in your Micboard Pro, plug in your 416, and get the job done and move on. And the client will be happy because you're in your studio, which sounds amazing, so don't worry. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: So that's the backup plan for any really true busy professional voice actor. : When I used to really panic about capturing audio that it wouldn't go wrong, I would actually have two microphones. I worked at two microphones, one going to the main computer and one going to the laptop, and I'd have them both recorded. Speaker B: Yeah, that's like BBC, remember? Wasn't like the 70s where they would literally duct tape. A second mic was for the television show and one was for the film. : You would see that many microphones. Exactly. Speaker B: That's true, because they didn't have distro boxes and splitters and stuff back in those days, I guess. But, yeah, we've never gone to that extent. In the beginning of my career, I did have clients running pro tools that had a DAT backup. That was definitely protocol. Pro Tools was so glitchy. : Yeah. You would run a dat backup with a dat tape. In fact, the way we ran the DAT backup was that you would record the talent in stereo, and then you'd put the clients on the left side so that you had both sides of the conversation. But the talent was always at least isolated on one channel. If you ever needed just the talent. Speaker A: There you go. Speaker B: Yeah, I retired. Dat backups were my clients 15 years ago. But Howard Parker had one. He had a Dat recorder, and he would just hit record every time he'd walk into the booth on the dat and rewind it, because we just didn't know if he'd walk out in a half hour later. And pro Tools had a 61, whatever the hell it is. Buffer. Speaker A: One of those fun errors that pop up that you got to go google what it means. Yeah. Speaker B: As a voice actor who's solo working at home in their closet or their booth. And at those times, we didn't necessarily have a second monitor, keyboard, and mouse in the booth. So you don't want to lose a session. You don't lose in a half an hour, an hour or 2 hours narration. That's the worst. The worst ever is when there's a nonsensical glitch during a two hour session and you don't know what's happening. You have no idea. And meanwhile, the audio is basically garbage. It's like static. : That's why sometimes in a session it is a good idea when you're like, okay, this is good. Stop and record a new file. Because computers like, if something's going to happen, it's more likely to happen to a big file. Back in the day, it wasn't uncommon for a file that was really big to be more likely to get corrupted, essentially. Speaker B: Well, I have set up a modern equivalent to the DAT backup which is getting like $100 task cam, flash recorder, real basic one. And then plugging an output from their interface or their mixer into that and then saying, listen, you're doing a phone patch. It's a two hour narration. You do not want to lose that work. Just hit record on that thing over there. Now you have a backup. You'll almost never, ever need it. But the one time that you need. : That freaking backup, if you don't make the backup, you'll need it. If you do make the backup, you won't need. Speaker B: It's like if you don't bring an umbrella. : Exactly. Speaker B: It's going to rain. : Exactly. Speaker B: That is an absolutely dirt cheap and extremely simple. You can even have a scarlet two I two. And as long as you're not using monitor speakers plugged into it, you can just use the outputs, put it in direct monitor mode and it'll just send whatever you're saying straight out the back line into your Tascam. Like I'm saying, $100 recorder. The basics, the really basic one. And record. : Yeah, it might be through like a little 8th inch connection. It might be mono, it might be analog. But you know what? It's going to be something compared to nothing. It'll probably be. No one will even know that it wasn't necessarily a digital copy. Speaker B: Yeah, it can be a 16 bit 44 or 48 wave. It's fine. I've set this up for a lot of people and when I go to their studios or I talk to them, they almost always say I haven't used it in a long time because they're so used to it being reliable until. Speaker A: It doesn't work, until the day it falls over. Yeah, exactly. Speaker B: And that's why I have clients that hire me and I work with them on a membership and like a contract and I check their systems out on a regular basis. Like, I do maintenance. I check. How much drive space do you have? Are you backing up? Is the backup working? Oh, crap. The time machine backup hasn't worked for six months. And you had no idea you filled. : Your time machine drive. Exactly. Speaker B: Or you filled your time machine, or whatever it is. It can sometimes just corrupt, get corrupt. What's my time machine right now say? It says cleaning up. I don't know how long it's been saying cleaning up. Maybe for a month. I have no idea. I just clicked on. It says cleaning up. So redundancy is really important for those big jobs that, where you're the engineer. : Essentially, the thing that starts to separate really pro operation from. It's like if you're there with a backup when someone needs it, and they're like, I didn't even expect you to have it, but you have it, you're delivering, and I think there's. Speaker B: Yeah, of course. I'm keeping everything I ever do. It's all in the cloud. At any moment, someone will email me and say, my computer crashed, I lost my stacks. I also can't find the email you sent me with the stacks or the email you sent me with the stacks. The links don't work anymore because it was another cloud based system that I don't use anymore. Right. I'm like, no problem. Within, like, ten, I can literally be on my phone, go to Google Drive, put in their name. We would just right click on that thing, and we would get the share link email to the client. I'm like, here's your folder. Here's literally everything I've ever done for you. And they're always grateful, and I never charge for it because I feel like we charge a pretty penny for what we do, and it's just one of those things that's so incredibly simple. It's not like I'm trying to keep online. I'm not trying to keep an online storage of, like, two terabytes for a client. These are not big folders. A big client folder is 2gb. Speaker A: You got to be careful what you keep, though, too, don't you? Because you can become a bit of a hoarder very quickly. You really can. Speaker B: Data hoarding, what's the problem? It's digital. Data hoarding is like, I could care less. Again, I'm not dealing in video, and I'm not dealing in big projects. So I can keep thousands of folders, which I do, and I don't care. It's no skin off my back. Speaker A: See, I used to back up all my video, too. All the videos that came in for tv commercials and stuff and the revisions. And I used to keep every video back, all that up. After a while, I just went, man, this is crazy. So I keep it for, like, it ends up two years now because I basically have two hard drives that I rotate. So when one's full, I'll take it out, stick it aside, get the other one, put it in and erase it and go again. So, I mean, I figure two years is enough. Speaker B: I feel like for any voice actor, it's an absolute no brainer to use some kind of cloud storage iCloud or Google Drive. ICloud is essentially automatic. The second you put anything into your desktop or your documents folder on any modern Mac, it is in the cloud. It just is. And so it's kind of a dirty trick to get you to upgrade your cloud, because it will fill up very quickly. But if you're not the kind of person that wants to think about another service and pay for another service and shop for one, and then think of a way to just use the dang icloud. It's built in, it's automatic, it's cheap, $10 a month for two terabytes. It'll take you a long time to fill that thing up. Just to me, it's a no brainer. And if you're on windows, there's an equivalent in the Windows side. I just don't know what it is. One drive, I think. Speaker A: Yeah, I heard you mention time machine before. Can I give a shameless plug to someone who's not a sponsor of the show, but something I've used for years and I love is carbon copy cloner, which is. : Yes, I love carbon. I use the Jesus out of that. Speaker B: I used to use it. I don't use it anymore. Speaker A: Such a good piece of software. Speaker B: Yeah, no, the beauty of that was you could have a secondary disk that was plugged into the computer that was literally an absolute copy duplicate of your computer. So you could literally have the system drive crap out, hold down, and you. : Can use that as your targeted backup. I used to point my hard drive at home to the hard drive at work so that it could get onto the back blaze at work. Speaker B: Oh, wow. Speaker A: Yeah, wow. There you go. Speaker B: That's a hack. Well, yeah, I mean, just to have. That was a nice thing. Now, here's the thing. Here's a little gotcha for all us Apple people. If you're on an m one or any of the silicon macs, they can no longer boot with a dead system drive. So if your system drive in any silicon Mac is toast. You cannot boot to an external USB drive. Speaker A: Oh really? Speaker B: There you go. Speaker A: I've got one running. I've got a backup running, so that's no good to me. Speaker B: If the internal drive system is blown away, it's unaware of any external drive. Speaker A: Why did they do that? Speaker B: I don't know. Ask Tim Apple. : It's Macintosh. That's why they did that. Speaker B: Yeah, Apple. Apple. : Because it's the slow progression of your computer into an. Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, right. Speaker B: Yeah. : That's annoying. I mean, I live and die on option. Booting the computer and having like some. Speaker B: I'll check. I will re verify that. But when the silicon Macs first came out, this was a bonus contention. People were talking. So here's just what the first search result on Google says. If you're using a Mac computer with Apple silicon, your Mac has one or more USB or Thunderbolt ports that have a type c connector. While you're installing macOS on your storage disk, it matters which of these ports you use. Okay, well, that's totally irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the answer I'm looking for. How do you start up your m one or m two from an external drive? There's another thing. It's not easy as it used to be and likely requires that you purchase. : I mean, you used to be able to boot up a Mac from the network. Speaker B: Yeah, I'm reading this article from Mac World. I'm just skimming through it. Awesome. I don't want to say something that's untrue, but this is what I recall day one when it came out. This is what somebody said. Speaker A: That's really annoying. Speaker B: So yes, you have to have a certain type of drive. Actually, this article mentions Bombich's carbon copy cloner. Speaker A: So we'll boot from that. : No, it just mentions carbon to copy your drive probably. Speaker B: Yeah, they're explaining the entire process. But that external drive has to be formatted in the correct way. Let's say you buy just a random hard drive, like a western digital, and you plug it in and then make that your clone. It will not work. : You have to be. You always had to make it like guide partition. I think it was something like that. It changed over the years. It used to be even like hfs plus. And then it's. Speaker B: Yeah, now it's apfs. : Yes, the container. Speaker B: Yeah, it's apfs. So I know we're going down a rabbit hole here, but yeah, this is the kind of thing you have to think about if you're really wanting to have redundancy and have a system that can essentially crash and be online within a minute. And for most voice actors, that's going to be just too frustrating and difficult to maintain. And for them just to have another computer that can plug in and go is really the most practical thing to do. : That is kind of like the ultimate backup. Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to get rid of my Mbox pro and my 2012 Mac Pro, but I think I might hang on to both of those and they might just be my backup. Speaker B: Well, if it's easy for you to plug those in and get back, right back to work, then it's worth keeping. Speaker A: I reckon that's the thing. I might just sit them in the garage, put them away in a box and seal it up and I can just grab them when I need them. Speaker B: Yeah, sounds good. : Sounds good to me. Speaker B: Sounds good to me. Speaker A: Well, who's backing up this podcast then? Speaker B: Oh shoot. Speaker A: Did you hit record? Speaker B: Well, that was fun. Is it over? Speaker C: The pro audio suite with thanks to Triboof and austrian audio recorded using source Connect edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say good day, drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com. #AudioArchiving #ProAudioSuite #SoundEngineering #BackupStrategies #DigitalHoarding #AudioProduction #VoiceOverTips #RecordingStudioLife #TechTalks #AudioPreservation  

The Pro Audio Suite
AI - The Assistant Not the Replacer

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2024 47:07


AI is reshaping industries, but how is it affecting audio outside of Voice Replication? This week, we're diving deep into this "can of worms" on the latest episode of the Pro Audio Suite podcast! Join us as we host a riveting discussion with MPA from WAVES as we unpack: AI's role in enhancing creativity rather than replacing it.  WAVES AI investment strategies. • The potential risks of letting AI scrape and replicate without human creativity. The balance between traditional mixing and AI's edges in audio engineering. Perspectives on the rise of AI voices in media.   We're not looking for a future where AI spits out a Taylor Swift song on command. Instead, we're all about how AI can serve as the ultimate assistant in the studio, ensuring creativity and passion remain at the heart of production. Don't miss this nuanced conversation on the future of AI in pro audio.

The Pro Audio Suite
Michael Goodman: Designing within Limits – The PASport VO

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2024 39:01


This week, we delve into Part Two of our discussion with Michael Goodman of Centrance. We get into the nitty-gritty of the intricacies of creating the PASpport Vo, and the benefits of maintaining simplicity in design by restricting the device to just six knobs, which enhances ease of use for podcasters and voiceovers alike. #VoiceOverTechTalk #ProAudioSuite #DesignSimplicityInAudio 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   Summary In the latest episode of The Pro Audio Suite podcast, we delve into Part Two of our insightful discussion with Michael Goodman. The focus is on the nitty-gritty of audio equipment design, specifically the intricacies of creating the Passport Vo. Goodman highlights the benefits of maintaining simplicity in design by restricting the device to just six knobs, which enhances ease of use for voiceover artists. The conversation also explores the challenges and considerations in pricing and product functionality, like the decision to enable the Passport Vo to work with external preamps. Goodman provides a candid look at the rapidly evolving landscape of audio interface protocols, such as the impending obsolescence of the lightning jack in favor of USB-C and the limitations of ASIO on Windows. Listeners will gain unique insights into the manufacturing process, from the adoption of a platform strategy to the precision of creating 3D printed parts. Goodman discusses the shift to new USB chips due to discontinued ones and reveals how smaller manufacturers are playing a key role. For those interested in the technical aspects of audio equipment production and design choices that impact both the user experience and future compatibility, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge. Tune in to learn from Goodman's expertise and stay informed on the latest in pro audio equipment design. #VoiceOverTechTalk #ProAudioSuite #DesignSimplicityInAudio Timestamps (00:00:00) Introduction with George Wittam and Robert Marshall (00:00:32) George Discusses Design Limitations (00:05:22) Unique Tools for Voiceover Artists (00:08:44) Flexibility of the English Channel Passport (00:11:56) Apple's Lightning Jack Obsolescence (00:16:23) Challenges with Apple's Developer System (00:21:36) Michael on the Passport VO Analog Mixer (00:25:04) Progress on USB Chip Prototyping (00:28:48) DIY Circuit Board Manufacturing (00:33:15) Handling Tiny Components on Circuit Boards (00:35:48) Michael Inquires About Custom Faceplates (00:38:27) Closing Remarks and Acknowledgments Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready? Speaker B: Be history. Speaker A: Get started. Speaker C: Welcome. : Hi. Hi. Speaker A: Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite. These guys are professional. Speaker C: They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars, George Wittam, founder of source elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson, and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check ThePro audiosuite.com. And this is part two of our talk with Michael Goodman. In this episode, we pick up where we left off and we talk about the passport Vo. Speaker A: I like the fact that there's a restriction to the design. Like, Michael had to decide what those six knobs could do or not do. And so it wasn't like, oh, let's just add more knobs. Let's just make it bigger. : I did add more knobs in the black cab. It's got nine. Speaker A: Just kind of pushing squeeze nine in there. Yeah, but no, that's the beauty of when we made the passport. We did not add more knobs. We forced ourselves to work within that restricted design space and say, we have six knobs. We need to do everything we need with these six knobs. If there's more than six knobs, how do you expect an actor to understand what the heck the thing is doing as you add more and more? Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I agree. : See, we should have looked at the black cab when we were asking for stuff. Speaker C: Yeah. Speaker B: I have a funny feeling Michael's answer would have been the same. : I think it's an excellent way of building simplicity into it, and really also, it makes you go through the design process. And I think it was a fun thing with the passport was exactly that. Because at first it was like, so many things. Add another knob, add another knob, and then you have to go through that slightly painful but sharpening process of going, like, we can't only have six knobs. How are you really going to do this? : It's interesting. When I was younger, I geeked out a lot on the japanese culture specifically. I loved their propensity for making small pieces of art. Right. The whole idea with the ice sculpture, art should be ephemeral. It should be there, and it's not there anymore. Right. And then the whole idea with writing a poem on a grain of rice, et cetera. I love compact things. And when we started making hi fi products, we also make some headphone listening products at sentrance. I traveled to Japan a lot, and I attended these hi fi shows, and I noticed how people are focused on completely different priorities there. Because apartments are very small in Japan. And therefore nobody buys a traditional stereo system with big speakers and all that. Everybody essentially listens in headphones in a tiny little spot, usually on a train, on their way to work or back home. So that culture creates a necessity for smaller things. And then for some reason, it just kind of stuck with me. I like when, essentially, when you travel, you don't want to log around a 19 inch rack or even like a 500 series lunchbox thing. That's the way we're trying to make these things small. But getting back to passport vo, the restriction there was basically the same one that was popularized by Henry Ford, who said that you can have your Model T in any color as long as it's black. Yeah. So basically, we have this box, and whatever you want to have must fit. Speaker C: In the box, which was good. And it was an interesting exercise, me being the guinea pig who potentially is going to be the person who uses this. Know, I didn't want it too technical and trying to get the terminology something that people like me would understand. So that was an interesting exercise for all of us as well. Speaker A: There was a lot of pushing and pulling between the Andrew Robert hemispheres of the design team. : There was? Speaker C: Yes, that's right. : Yes. I was wanting to keep it flexible and let it do more things. Be both. The. For instance, I wanted to be the interface that you could take on the road or leave in your control room and run it as your whole studio interface, or have it in your booth. And it could work in any place. And Andrew was like, I just want to travel with this was. Speaker C: It was kind of interesting because we were the polar opposite. So you had Robert on one side, me on the other side, and George and Robbo in the middle. George particularly, trying to make sense of. Speaker A: Our nonsensical and the filter. And I was trying to condense down everything. What they wanted to George was the traffic Michael. So that Michael didn't end up having to be the traffic cop. It got out of control at one point, expand at one point. Remember distinctly, I was like, wait, I was supposed to be protecting my. : I think that was important, giving Michael one point of communication. Because it would have been maddening for him. : Exactly. Well, I have to say, I actually enjoyed the process. I mean, there was a lot of creativity and ideation throughout the whole thing. And if you have. I love ideation myself. So I'm not really necessarily against it, opposed to it, as long as it eventually comes to a solid, well defined feature. Set, which I think we have. So that whole process that worked very well for me. And I do appreciate George coming in as a traffic cop and essentially directing. Speaker B: A lot of that traffic and an architect as well. Can I just say, with all the drawings that he had to do, I. Speaker A: Had fun trying to figure out a way to draw a signal flow diagram, which I'd never really done anything. And I know there's proper nomenclature and symbolism and all sorts of stuff in drawing one. I didn't know that, so I just did my own thing. But it really was cool because it helped me tremendously see it, understand what goes to what. And we revised that signal flow diagram. Oh, jeez, I don't know, seven or eight times, probably. Speaker C: Yeah, probably a lot more. Speaker B: A million times. : I think it was the blend of having the signal flow diagram so you could really see what was exactly going to happen combined with the mockup of the final device so you could get an imagination of how it was really going to work in the field. I think we really came up with something that fits sentrins in the sense that it fits, obviously, the form factor, but it's super flexible and unique. You're not finding this absolutely any other interface. : No, I think it'll continue to be unique because it is so purpose built that other manufacturers will look at it and go, why? Speaker C: That's right, exactly. Speaker B: Because there's nothing else out there that's been purpose built for voiceover artists. I think that was the initial motivation. For years, voiceover artists have had to take stuff that's built for music, for music engineers, and rework it to make it for voiceover. : And it seems like this is such a niche industry that a larger manufacturer might not necessarily see a lot of business potential there. So I think that was a good match between our size being a smaller company and then a market being smaller that we were like, okay, that makes sense. : I think you see that in its price point. Speaker C: Yeah. : Someone who's looking at it really basically goes, I can get a two channel USB interface, two microphones USB interface for $100. : No, this is not that. : If you see that in there, then you're not seeing what this is. Speaker A: Yeah, it's not for you. There's almost like when you set something at a price point, you're trying to give a very clear, I mean, not only you're saying that it's worth it, obviously, but you're making a very clear statement that this is priced for professionals and it's worth every penny to a professional who will understand the value. And we've already had people stand up and say, I believe it. I see what you're saying. And they've blunt down the cash. : And let's be honest, for a working voiceover professional, not everybody, of course, but a lot of those guys can make that much money in 15 seconds. : Pays for itself in one gig. Speaker A: That is true. Speaker C: Exactly. Speaker A: We knew that pricing was going to be tricky, but we also knew that we had a restricted space in which we had to work. We wanted the value to be there. But we also have to make a profit. Michael has to make a profit. We had ideas that would have driven the price even higher quite a bit that we could have implemented, but we didn't want to do that. There's a certain point where we thought, let's keep it under that. : Well, I remember one was how we handled the, and this is actually something I have a question with, with the English Channel, we wanted to make the passport flexible enough to use an external preamp instead of the built in one. And I know that was important to Andrew. And one of the things I find with the English Channel is that when you come out line level XLR and you go into the courtcaster, turning the courtcaster down is not enough. You got to pad the other stages beforehand to get it because you're kind of feeding a mic pre into a mic pre. And I remember that was one of the things where we had to accept that we were going to go through that chip, if I remember right, and we didn't get a pure bypass of. Speaker A: The mic because that was going to raise the parts count and the cost in other ways. And it was such a, the switching, it was something where it was going to add cost to make a very small percentage of users. : It would not have made a difference to most users. Speaker C: But even based on that, I have to say that if you look at the new Neumann interface, how much is that thing? : Like one, $200, right? Speaker C: No, more than that. It will be like over 2000 us. : 18, from what I understand. : 18, yeah. I'm sorry. And it doesn't do as much as the. Speaker C: And also when you're talking about having, bypassing the internal preamp, it doesn't. : Oh, really? Speaker C: It doesn't. Like, nowhere on that new Neumann interface can you bypass a preamp. Speaker A: Fascinating. : I would wonder if that's a subject of pride. We give you the best preamp in the land. Why would you want to bypass that? Speaker B: I would suggest that would be the case, yeah. Speaker A: Well, the irony is that they sell a preamp like they sell a very expensive preamp. Outboard preamp. So you would think that they would have that. : Do you want to know what device that is? It's the reincarnation, it's the perennial. It's like a locust that comes out of the ground every eight years. And the last one that emerged out of the ground was the mini me. Speaker A: The mini me from Apigee. : The apigee mini me. Yeah. Badass preamp. Badass converter. Speaker A: Yeah. And soft clipping. : It had that limiter but really expensive interface that's just going to. I'm expensive. I'm going to be the best kind of thing is what it's trying to be, but it's not flexible. : Mini me is not a convincing name. Speaker A: If that movie hadn't come, I'm sure. : When that movie came true, but really, the mini me, it wants to be the original ad 1000, which I have several of those. And those are great. : Yeah. Speaker A: But they don't use Firewire or USB. Right. : The mini me, I believe, is USB. Speaker A: Are you sure? I don't think so. : I'm pretty sure it runs as USB and a separate pre, but I don't. Speaker A: Think it has any protocol. See, that's the thing. As soon as you add a protocol to the unit, like a USB protocol, a firewall protocol, you're now dating your product. It is now locked in time. It's now going to be obsolete at some point. Speaker C: Correct. Speaker A: Like this happened. Firewire. Actually, Firewire just became officially obsolete with, I think, Ventura, if you have a Firewire device. : So even if you have like a firewired, a thunderbolt adapter, it doesn't matter. Speaker A: They dropped off the protocol. It's gone. Poof. : Well, the lightning jack is about to go the way of the dodo. Speaker A: Yes, that's right. : Really? : Because of Europe. Speaker A: That's a whole other can of worms. Right, Michael? Because I know you spent a long time dealing with the lightning port and the. What is it called? Made for Apple MFA? : Mfi. Mfi. Made for iPhone. Speaker A: Right. Made for iPhone. And wasn't that like a major stumbling block to getting the first mixer face built and designed? : Correct. We started down that path in our hi fi devices because we wanted to make these headphone amplifiers that plugged into the phone because a lot of people started moving their music collection onto the phone and using the phone as the playback device. And then that kind of translated into recording products as well. So Apple decided to keep that walled garden ecosystem all to themselves. And then as a manufacturer, making a peripheral device, a product that would interface with the Apple iPhone, iPad, et cetera. You had to go through a lengthy bureaucratic process to establish yourself as a registered developer, essentially in the MFI ecosystem. And they policed that hard to the point. I mean, it got ridiculous. So the lightning jack actually is quite sophisticated. There's a chip inside and that chip has a serial number, a laser etched serial number inside. So every lightning jack in the world has a unique serial number. Believe it or not, this information is less relevant now. But it used to be relevant before. So what had happened is if there was a cable, a lightning cable, lightning to USB, that was not made per spec, any cable that you made as an MFI manufacturer had to be certified by an Apple approved lab and it had to do all the things that a lightning cable had to do. : It was very annoying when they started. : They enforced it all the time. And then what they ended up doing is there's been a plethora of chinese cables that were not approved. So Apple was able, because they actually had control over the chips inside of the lightning checks, they were able to remotely disable cables. Speaker A: Wow. : And then we still get these calls. It's like, man, I plug this lightning to USB cable into your product and it doesn't pass audio. It's your product. No, it's the cable. That cable just hasn't paid the fee. And by the way, you had to pay the fee to Apple. If you were MFI developer, the manufacturer of that cable either didn't pass the test or didn't pay the fee or whatever and their cable had been remotely disabled, which is bizarre. But that went on for a while and after a while we were know we're too small to be able to deal with this because there were like constant updates. : So then you just have to get your own interface adapter so you couldn't plug straight into the phone anymore. You had to have some stupid dongle so Apple could get their fee. : They got their fee one way or another. But now, thanks to Europe, it's just going to be USBC and the whole lightning adapter is no more. Speaker A: Oh, so let me ask you, this is the MFI certification, whatever you want to call it. Is that now dead because of USBC or is it still in there somewhere? : There is no special communication happening anymore because USBC is supposed to be generic. You had to announce yourself and you had to be in the database and that's how they tracked you essentially. But now there is no communication there. And then, so now it's just like a Windows machine. You plug a peripheral, a USB peripheral into a Windows machine. And if it's a generic peripheral, it pulls up a generic driver and knows what to do, knows how to work with it. With Mac, it's been like that forever. And they've written great drivers, a lot better than Windows. So that any audio interface, you plug it into a Mac, it works right away. Speaker A: Yeah, as long as it's core. What do they call it? Compliant or core audio compliant? : Core audio. Core. Audio compliant, right, exactly. : And then. So it's going to be exactly like that with the iPhone and iPads. Been like that with the iPad for about a year now. So just one less hurdle to jump over, which that's progress. Yes. And that's good, because we had this conversation the other day when you were coaching me on how to make the proper connections here, and I was pulling my hair out, trying to get things working, and I realized that it works in this environment, not in that environment and all that. Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Honestly, when I was writing that, I went down the rabbit on the developer page of Apple. Right. To understand better how the system works. And there was like seven distinctly different and unique modes of operation. : Because it's trying to make all these decisions for you. It's like, can we interrupt this phone call? Can we interrupt this movie? Speaker A: Right, right. Oh, my gosh, it is so complicated. : It is pretty annoying. Speaker A: It's all complicated on the developer side so that you, the user, don't have to think about it, but they make those decisions for you. And that's what runs us into trouble as pros. I wish, again, because of iPhone 15 Pro and the new chipset, maybe this is going to change. But yeah, I wish we could really control our devices and say, I want to use this as the input. I want to use that as the output. I want to send this over here. : On the Windows side, there is this protocol that's been around for a while called ASIO. ASIO is the one that is direct to device. It was developed that way a long time ago. : It was made by Steinberg. : Yeah. And that would not be interrupted if you're playing a YouTube video or phone call comes in. Your session continues to be solid. Nowadays. : The problem with ASIO is that it can't share very well. : The whole point of it is that you shouldn't share. It should be like point to point, indestructible. You know what I mean? : On the macOS, it's got it with core audio where it shares it just fluidly yet. And the only thing that you have to make sure of which is the same with any situation is you just keep. If I'm sharing it, we have to agree on what sample rate we're going to be at. The device can't be at more than. Speaker A: One sample rate, but there's still weird stuff on the Apple side. Where is the volume up and down button on the keyboard going to change the output level of my device? : Exactly. Speaker A: I don't know. Is the gain, input gain setting on Mac OS going to be effective on the input level? : Or would that be if that device is set as the output in system preferences, then your knob becomes a control if that device is controllable. Not all devices are controllable. And you'll see that some of them, if you select them as the output, the slider becomes grayed out. Speaker A: But who decides that? The manufacturer of the device, the writer of the driver or the Mac audio. : Stack or whatever, that's the device. : In reality, it's everything. It's a little bit of both. So some decisions Apple has to make, some decision manufacturer tries to make, but then Apple could reverse those decisions at their own volition. Anytime you have a competition between a whole bunch of sound sources, like phone movie playing, another movie playing in this other window, and then your audio thing, the system has to decide what's the priority, which of these programs really has to be streamed and which other ones have to be muted, or do you want to just mix everything together? Which is kind of madness, right? Speaker A: Yeah. IPhone does some weird stuff like, I know we're going down a rabbit hole. : It's very useful. It's like the way a Nexus device works. They're like patch cables. And if you send two devices to go out the same patch cable, it just mixes everything together. The Wasopi Windows driver is a little bit more flexible and a little bit more core audio like than mixes. : It mixes everything, and they worked hard on doing that. Here's a problem, because it has to mix so many different streams, again, from these movies and radio stations and everything else that you could be listening to and watching at the same time in the same Windows computer. What they do is they have to align the sample rates from all these different sources. The process of aligning the sample rates results in a delay in latency. So that's completely inapplicable to music recording. Robbie would know about that. And then, so if you're watching a movie and the sound comes in 30 milliseconds later, you don't know it. It doesn't matter if you're recording music and sound comes back 30 milliseconds later, it ruins the take. : So I wonder if the latency in Wasapi is similar to the latency in core audio. Because anything that's native, every audio engineer knows it's more. : It's a lot more. In Wasapi, core audio is just very well tuned. : It's like Wasapi and fast. It's like Wasapi and ASIO combined in a way. : Wasapi generally introduces delay, and it introduces a lot of convenience at the price of the delay, whereas ASIO is as little delay as you can have. So essentially, the delay through the computer is about two milliseconds each way, and then the rest of it is the interface. But it's point to point. There are no decisions to make, so there's no pausing to think whether we should do it this way or that way. That's the beauty of ASIO, and core audio is very much like that. Speaker A: Since we're talking about Windows a little bit, is it too early for you to tell us, Michael, when you connect the passport Vo with its two USB buses or two USB interfaces to a pc, is the best choice for the user, in most cases going to be, what do they call it? Mme or Windows classic wave driver or direct sound. What's going to be the optimal setting? Do you think? : Wasapi usually is the best if you know what you're doing and you're not sending several different streams into your interface? Speaker A: Right, right. And you won't be, because with this design, each USB bus is basically a simple two in, two out. Exactly interface. Right. So the hardware, all that mixing that we try to do with software, and sometimes not very successfully, is being handled in the analog domain or internally inside the unit. : Right. Speaker A: So we don't have to even worry about that anymore. : That was a very smart idea or path. : That's the beauty of it. No drivers? No, yes. Nothing to. That's the goal. : Yeah. You could have two separate applications running at the same time. One could be sharing applications such as source connect. The other one can be a recording application such as DAW, local DAW. Speaker A: And then Adobe audition is a popular choice on Windows. : Those applications could actually meet inside of the device, inside of passport Vo, and not really conflict with each other as they would be if you were trying to mix inside the machine. : This is why we did it, because on Windows, this ability to have two applications use the same device at the same time can cause huge tech support issues. Huge. And one approach is to basically have someone like George help you out and figure it out. Going into drivers and turning them off of exclusive mode and things like that. And then crossing your fingers that it works. Speaker A: No, I have. Mike McConaughey will do that. I won't touch that stuff anymore on Windows. : Or just do it this way and dedicate one interface to one application, the other interface to the other, and then do all your cross patching and your blending and the analog domain with. : That's unique. Nobody else does that, right. Speaker A: And that internally. Michael, just to make that really clear, it's an analog signal path, that's all. It's staying completely analog? : Yes. It's an analog mixer which has two inputs which happen to be digital streams from the computer. Speaker A: But they've been converted from digital to. : Analog to analog and become analog. Mixing in analog introduces zero latency. It's that old technology. We're going back to the british invasion. And it's seamless, essentially. There are no conflicts when you're mixing an analog. Speaker A: Yeah, no sample rates to coordinate. : George? It's a bit like when you use the Bering interface to plug externally back. Speaker A: Into someone else's problem solver. : It's that, but it's all in the box with knobs and switches to control it. Instead of like, you could have your. Speaker A: Doll running at 24, 96, maybe 24 bit 96. And you can have your zoom or source connect running at whatever the heck the client wants, sample rate it needs to be. And they will not step on each other's toes at all. You don't have to worry about that. : Yeah, that's completely transparent in the analog domain. So I think that was a brilliant move. Speaker A: I can't wait. That's such a cool thing. : Hey, listen, I can't wait either. So a small development on that front. I know everybody wants to know status. As mentioned before, we have three separate paths here. And we're about to choose one with regards to the actual USB chip. So I've laid out all of the analog circuitry. It's already done. So all that mixing that we've just talked about, that's all already in the design. Speaker A: Cool. : It's designed and it's waiting to be prototyped. I am pausing and not sending this to prototyping because there's one additional block that needs to be finalized. And that block is the USB portion of the design. Actually, there's two USB portions of the design because, as we just said, there's two USB ports and there's two different computers that you could connect this thing to at the same time. And then it would then blend between the signals from those two computers. So for the USB chip that goes inside of there, the two USB chips, we learned recently, unfortunately, that the chip that we've been using for like twelve years or so is now out of production. And the manufacturer does have a newer version, but it's larger and more expensive. But larger part is more important here because, yes, we do have that small box and it just wouldn't fit. So we started a big search for another chip. We found a manufacturer in Taiwan, which is a smaller manufacturer, and it makes a chip that is smaller also. And that seems to fit the bill. But we wanted to make sure that we kind of wanted to vet them. Speaker A: Yeah, you don't just slap any random chip in there and hope for the. : You know, it's like a couple of guys in an office. Are you going to be around next year? So I have a friend in Taiwan who visited them yesterday and sent me a lengthy email. Anyway, so he visited them. He lives in neighboring cities. It's an hour drive for him, not that big a deal. So he popped over and he had a meeting and he said it was a very pleasant conversation. Taiwan is where they make all of the chips pretty much in the world these days. So they use a couple of foundries. Foundries. A plant that makes chips. And then, so they use two very reputable suppliers for that. And everything is well tested. I was like, do they test these things? How's the reliability? Do they have any large customers? Turns out this company is not well known in America, in the west yet, but they are known in China, and they're shipping significant volume into China. So I think there's the reason to believe that it's going to be a reliable supplier. And so my friend there in Taiwan who actually works for large contract manufacturers, like, yeah, you should go ahead and work with them. Not a problem. I don't see a problem. Speaker A: Milestone moment right here, folks. : Just happened to yesterday, as a matter of fact. So we're like, oh, okay, well, then, thank you. So we're not concerned about their longevity and all that. So there was also a third path, which was there's still a stock available of the old chip that's gone out of production and we can put that in there. But that would just kind of be a step backwards, putting something in the product that you know is not going to be made anymore. : Are there any features on the new chip? Like, it goes up to 384. : It does. : Does your taxes. : It does do your taxes. That would be important. But the 384, I think less so I'm joking, of course, because who needs 384 in real life? Audiophiles love their 384. Except there's no content to play. But you got to buy your DAC. : It's the album of mouse farts. : To each his own. Speaker C: Yeah. Speaker A: One other thing I want to touch on before we wrap it is I also know that you have invested in a rapid prototype, or what would you call it, a prototyping. : You can make your own boards now. : Right? It's a pick and place machine. That's the official name. Speaker A: Pick and place. Got you. : Yeah. Electronic components these days don't go through little holes in the side of the pc board. Instead, they're planar. Yeah. They're just put on the surface. And some of these components are smaller than 1 mm by 1 mm. They're really tiny. Speaker A: Yeah. : And then it used to be ten years ago that they're larger. Maybe three, four, 5 can actually use tweezers and just put them on the board yourself. It'd take forever, but you could do it right. And then you'd put this whole board with all these components that you just very carefully put on the board, and you would put it inside of an oven and heat it up for about ten minutes. There'd be a particular heat profile, and that would solidify all of the solder and then connect all the components together. And after you had a board for prototyping, that was a thing to do. Nowadays, components are so small that even if you have a magnifying glass, if you partied the night before, your hand is not as steady anymore. So therefore, assembling these things. And I'm not saying that people should not party, but it kind of puts a cramping your style anyway. So this automated pick and place machine that we have now does that for you. It's a robot, and it just kind of like, has a tiny little suction cup at the end of a needle. So it just moves over the hand, moves over to where you have your components on a reel. They're in a bobbin. This is reel. And it just picks one up by applying a little bit of suction, kind of sucks it out of the reel and then moves it to an appropriate place on the board and just kind of releases gently. And it can handle things that a human hand cannot handle. So from that standpoint, it's a huge benefit. And it actually does it fast, and it doesn't party the night before, from what I know, it doesn't ask for. : Raises and it doesn't. : Yeah. Speaker A: So I have so many questions. I mean, I'm dying to see one of these working in action. I'm sure I could probably find it on YouTube. But how long does it take to populate a board that would go inside the mixer face or pork? : About ten minutes at this point. Speaker A: Wow. : Whereas if you do it by hand, you're probably, like, at it for a couple of hours. Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. : And you're developing cramps. : When does it get to the point where it's like, just by order? When does it get to the point where you can make your board, you can assemble your board, you've got a 3d printer. Because I really like the case for the english channel. A lot of manufacturing is like, okay, we're going to make a product, and then there you have 60,000 of some plastic thing, and then maybe they sell, maybe they don't, and you just have a lot of extra waste and they're done. Here's like making these things as needed, right? : 3D printing. Yeah, we make everything for order, and we've been sheepish about it for a while until we got to the point where we figured out how to make it look good and also make it reliable so it doesn't break. So these 3D printed parts at this point are completely usable. I mean, they're not toys anymore. They're functional pieces of mechanical design. And we love that because we can change colors. You can get the tray, the commander console, we call it, for the english channel. You can get it in lime, lemon, red, blue, white, black, whatever, gray. And this is so easy for us to do otherwise we would have to order thousands of each color and then store them somewhere. And now we just have these reels of filament, which is this just essentially plastic out of which everything's being made, and then we can make them to order. So that's really great. And then as far as how long does it take? Well, the box that we make everything in is still aluminum. So that box, fortunately for us, we make a lot of different products inside that same box. So we can order it by a boatload from the manufacturer because there is a minimum order quantity. But we figured that we will go through the entire order because we will put different products in that same box, and that way we can afford to buy a whole bunch at once. Speaker A: So one more board thing is amazing. So after you've dropped tiny, tiny little components over this little board, so is that the point where it goes into the oven? And how do you keep the little tiny, tiny, tiny pieces from moving around. : You squeeze paste, solder, solder paste, the official name. You squeeze a layer of this gooey. It's just like toothpaste, but it's dark gray. And it has the property that when you heat it up, it solidifies and it becomes metal. But basically you get a stencil, which is this thin metal plate. Steel plate, very thin, less than a millimeter. And then holes for the components are laser cut inside of that steel plate. And then you put that steel plate over the board, line it up correctly, and then you use a squeegee to essentially squeeze that paste over the stencil. And then where the stencil has the holes, the paste drops through the holes onto the pc board and then forms the tiny little squares in appropriate places. Then they're a little sticky, just like toothpaste. And then when a component drops onto these two squares, for example, if component has two pins, right, it kind of gets stuck in the paste and it doesn't move. And then you can handle the board. I mean, you don't want to throw the board because the components will fly off. But if you carefully handle it and carefully move it into the oven, then the components will not move. And then what actually happens in the oven is a beautiful thing due to surface tension. Essentially, the components, once they heat up, they line up because the tiny little solder bolts. So essentially you have liquid metal at that point. If you remember the movie terminator, there was this other terminator guy that was essentially made out of liquid metal, and he could reassemble himself at all points. Remember that? Speaker A: Oh, yeah. : T two. Yeah, that's liquid tension is like when liquid gets together, it just kind of just forms this one thing wants to make a ball. Wants to make a ball. And that is what allows these tiny little components to get soldered to the pads in a very even sort of glowing pattern where all the solder gets utilized and none of it is left around because it all kind of tenses up and kind of sucks into one bowl in each little pad. Speaker A: That's cool, man. Thanks for describing that. That's really neat. : Michael, I actually had one quick question with the faces. Can you cut your own faces right now? : When you say faces, what are you referring to? : Like, all your pieces are made out of the same metal, sort of two pieces of metal. : Oh, I understand. : And right now, they always have the same four outside screw holes to hold them together. But then on the top of it, there's different holes for different knobs. And what I'm asking is, do you need to make seven holes in this one, three slots for a different switch. And you're able to do that all at your place now. I mean, could you theoretically just. : No, we still do it at a supplier, but. Good question. Yes. So the official term for this is platform strategy, is when you can make a lot of different things out of one thing. Another official term, if you want to keep going with the MBA speak. Design for postponement is what we're using here, if you want to be official about it, which means that you can make the decision on what the heck it is that you're building at the very last step. Right. Which also allows 3d printing is the same thing. You postpone the differentiation of the product, and then you can actually choose what you're building the day when you ship that thing. Right. Toyota has pioneered that in the 80s where with the whole just in time strategy and all that, because they were able to reduce the amount of stuff that they held at their warehouses, which were huge anyway. So what happens with these products is, on top of the product is this plastic overlay. It's actually a sticky sticker. Yeah, it's a thick sticker made out of polycarbonate. It's a polycarbonate overlay with an adhesive backing that we very carefully lay in this existing hole. And then that sticker we print. And then, fortunately, we have a supplier who doesn't want us to print thousands of them. They can print 100 at a time. And then those stickers themselves are not that expensive. And therefore we can get 100 stickers of each product and then essentially put the sticker on the product. The day we assemble the product and the day we ship it to the customer, which allows us to be a lot more flexible than a traditional manufacturing plant. : So then if you have the ability to drill your own holes and slots at some point, whatever CNC machine that. : Is, we have that. Speaker B: There you go. Speaker C: You do. : I haven't let you into the warehouse yet. You should come back. : I'd love to. Speaker C: Yeah, he's on his way. Speaker B: He's leaving now. : And on that note, as Andrew would say, yes. Speaker A: Well, that was fun. : Is it over? Speaker C: The pro audio suite with thanks to Tribut and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robo. Got your own audio issues? Just ask robo.com tech support from George Thetech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the go and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say, g'day. Drop us a note at our websiteprodiosuite.com.

The Pro Audio Suite
Michael Goodman: Unveiling the Secrets of Centrance and the English Channel

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 22, 2024 31:57


This week, we deep dive into the English Channel from Centrance. Special guest Michael Goodman chats about how it came about, the many unique setups and creative uses of the English Channel by voice artists and content creators alike. Plus, we explore its features, and with Robbo, Robert and Michael all using one for the show, there's plenty of tips and tools to help you get the most out of this impressive piece of kit, or inspire you to go check one out for yourself. 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 Summary In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, our hosts—George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren 'Robbo' Robertson, and Andrew Peters—offer an insightful review of Centrance products, particularly focusing on the English Channel. The team is joined by special guest Michael Goodman from Centrance, who sheds light on the technology behind these innovative audio solutions. Listeners will gain an understanding of the technical nuances of the English Channel, such as its British EQ, clean modern circuitry, and wide frequency response, which altogether emulate the classic analog console experience with a distinct English style. In an in-depth discussion, the panel explores the creative uses of the product, and Goodman explains the motivation behind its unique design, such as the five db gain jump between products which correlates with a price difference. Moreover, the episode delves into the features of the Portcaster and SoBox, highlighting how these devices can send audio to multiple recorders, and allowing one device to control another for an expanded multichannel setup. The challenges and eccentricities of integrating these tech solutions into a working studio setup are candidly discussed, including some unconventional methods they would normally not recommend to voiceover actors. To cap it off, the show offers a quick preview of the next episode where Michael Goodman will return to discuss the Passport Vo, making it a must-listen for audio professionals looking to enhance their tech arsenal and push the boundaries of their creative workflow. #ProAudioSuite #VoiceoverTech #CentranceSolutions Timestamps (00:00:00) Introduction to Pro Audio Suite (00:00:52) Centrance's English Channel Review (00:07:07) Comparison: Jasmine Preamp and Portcaster (00:09:01) English Channel as a Portable Voice Recorder (00:13:16) Modern Breakthroughs in EQ Circuitry (00:15:29) Features of the English Channel Parametric EQ (00:19:15) Instamano: The Mono Blend Knob for Instagram (00:25:40) Portcaster's Monitoring and Output Capabilities (00:28:28) SoBox: Link Switches Explained Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready? Be history. Speaker B: Get started. Speaker C: Welcome. : Hi. Speaker C: Hi. : Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite. : These guys are professional. Speaker C: They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars, George Wittam, founder of source elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite.com line up. Speaker B: Learner. Here we go. : And don't forget the code. Trip a P 200. That will get you $200 off your tribooth. Now, I should say, before we start the show, a disclaimer. What you are about to listen to is what we would not advise voiceover actors to do. That's all I'm going to say. Speaker A: Do as I say, not as I do. : Yeah, exactly. We have a special guest today from Centrance, Michael Goodman. G'day, Michael. Speaker B: Hello, gentlemen. Pleasure to be here. : It's lovely to have you. Now, today's review is about sentrance itself, but also the English Channel. And I know two of the people are using english channels as we speak. And one has done some funky little setup to his laptop. And that, of course. : But Robert, I just kind of like that setup where I use the TRRs cable going into the laptop. I just like it because it's wrong. One of the things, actually, two things that I ran into and, Michael, maybe you can explain to me a little bit. But I found that when I use the English Channel with the xlrs going across the top, when you get into the portcaster, you're hitting the mic preamp with an amplified signal. And you end up having to not use as much gain on the mic preamp over on the soapbox as you want. Because even with the pads turned down. And I think I ended up using the pad in the English Channel as well to try to pad it back down so I could get into the meat of the soapbox in terms of processing, the compressor especially, and the deesser as well. So anyways, what I did is I have the mic going in the xlr going out and over into the english channel. And then I have an XLR cable going out which feeds into the. Whatever, the second ring of a tip ring ring sleeve jack. And that goes into my Mac. And then out of my Mac is the tip ring sleeve. The normal stereo output of that jack. And that goes to a female connector. And I take the output of that. I have an 8th inch to 8th inch or an aux cable. I take the output of that and I plug it into the 34 input of the port caster. And I also take another 8th inch cable, aux cable, and I go line out of the English Channel and into the phone TRRs input of the portcaster as well. And that's how I monitor my own voice. So I have two knobs on the Portcaster. I do not have a USB going into the computer, just a USB going into the power headphones 34 being fed in, which is the computer return and my microphone coming in through the TRRS channel two input. So I have the three four knob for you guys, and I have the channel two knob for my own headphones. And voila. Fully processed microphone with EQ using the built in Macintosh input and output through a TRRS cable. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Speaker B: Well, first of all, I have to hand it to you. You get the prize for the most creative, innovative use of this technology. And it still sounds good. Speaker A: Can I just say, also the most convoluted. Speaker B: Seriously, I guess it is a statement about the universality of this thing, because I hadn't thought about that use. Normally, what we'd recommend everybody to use is the english channel takes a microphone on the input and gives you a USB output that you plug into your computer. It does have really high quality inlook to digital and digital converters inside. So we believe it's better than the converters inside of a typical computer such as a Mac or PC. And therefore you'll get more audio file sound quality that way. But look, I mean, there's so many Gazintas and Gazawtas in that thing, you can probably slice it many different ways. : Well, here's where I came up with that setup. And I decided to do this setup because I wanted to use the soapbox and the full processing, and I wanted to do something different as well. But where I first came up with that setup, and I think it works really well, is with the Jasmine mic pre, because then it's the same thing. You have the XLR feeding out and then you have the computer just return back to the line input and the Jasmine mic pre itself. The headphone already blends your headphones, your input, your mic input with the headphones. So you don't need the second Aux cable that I'm using here. But it's certainly a great way to literally use the Jasmine mic pre with a computer. If you just want to get the Jasmine mic pre. Speaker B: That's actually true. And to be honest with you, we have received feedback about the Jasmine mic pre. One thing that it sorely lacks, apparently according to some users, is a USB audio interface. People are like, why don't you just put a USB jack that actually does audio on that thing, not just power. So then the Jasmine preamp basically turns into a micport Pro with a line level input and a mixer so that you can bring some music into your program or just listen to a backing track and sing along with it or play along with it, something like that. It really just becomes a mic port Pro at that point. With a slightly better preamp? : I don't think so. It becomes like a focus, right? Blue ISA one where it has a Q mix input or a return channel so you can monitor in low latency what comes out of your daw. Speaker B: If it had a USB audio interface, then it would be exactly like those things. : No, the focusrite ISA desktop is not an audio interface. It has no USB. But it's a preamp with two return channels so you can monitor low latency out of your daw. There's not a ton of mic preamps that do it, but the Jasmine does it too, and it's a super useful feature even without the USB interface. Speaker B: In developing the English Channel, we had to face a couple of decision points, because originally it was actually four devices. It was the Jasmine preamp followed by the dynamics box, followed by the EQ, the black cab, and followed by the audio interface, which is the podcaster. But four devices that just looked like a lot in front of you just looked way too complex. So a couple of voiceover actors heard about that and they're like, can you please put the preamp inside of the soapbox? So that's what we did, and thereby we made jasmine preamp pretty much obsolete in our product line. It's a foster child. Sad to say. : I liked it. So the preamp is the same in the jasmine as the soapbox? Speaker B: Yes. : Can I ask what's the preamp in the passport? Speaker B: The preamp is the same all across, so we call it the jasmine preamp. It's a custom designed discrete transistor preamp with a dual stage. : But the courtcaster doesn't have a Jasper. Speaker B: Cordcaster is portcaster with a very small modification. It's basically the same as Portcaster. : So it is a Jasmine preamp in that one as well? Speaker B: Yes, everywhere is the same preamp. : So basically all your preamps are the jasmine. Speaker B: What differs between products is the amount of gain available. So jasmine preamp, if you need the possible theoretical lowest noise, somehow it's different somehow. : Even though it's a jasmine preamp. It's a better jasmine preamp. Speaker B: Yeah. So we monkey with the gain inside the unit. : Wow. Because the Micport Pro that's got, I think it's 65 db gain. Speaker B: Is that 65? And then soapbox has 70 and the Jasmine preamp standalone has 74. 75. : Wow. Speaker B: There's like a five db jump and then there's a corresponding price difference. : I haven't got one, but I know that generously you're going to send one for a review. The Micport Pro, and I know it's been around for a long time, but this is the latest version of it that you've got, which has been around for how long now, the New York. Speaker B: One, the latest Micport Pro has been around since. I want to say that 2018, the. : First Micport Pro was what, 2008? Speaker B: 2009. Eight. You're right. Eight. : I still miss my original. : Well, someone's got it now. They're enjoying it. Speaker A: Hello. : And probably got your laptop as well. : He's got both the laptops. He got a bag full of stuff. Speaker A: Might not be a he. Come on, let's not get sexist here. : Yeah. : Someone who identifies as a thief. Speaker B: Yes, exactly. : I identify as a thief. Speaker A: Yes, indeed. : Now, Michael, with the english channel, who were you looking at when you were designing this? What was your market? Speaker B: The mirror? Speaker A: Before you answer that, I actually want to take you one step back inside your twisted mind. Speaker B: I appreciate that. Speaker A: Where did you come up with the idea for this? Speaker B: So the name of the product, the English Channel. : I'm curious about the name. Speaker B: The name, obviously, is it uses British Egyu and everything else from a channel stripper on a british console, analog console. And therefore it's called the English Channel. So it's a channel from a british console. Now, you can argue that british consoles have been responsible for one of the most prolific periods in the history of the music industry, where in the 70s, early eighty s, a lot of really cool music was produced. I'm not saying that today music is bad, not at all. All music matters, obviously, but I just happen to like a lot of music that was made in the late 70s anyway, so that's the name. And it's sort of kind of a nod to that era. A lot of our customers who buy the English Channel are from that era. They have experience with analog technology, and to them that feels good. Now, how did the product come about? There's really two ways to think about it. First of all, we couldn't get any digital chips during the COVID and so we couldn't build the Micport Pro and podcaster mixerface, all those other things. And I was sitting on a very short lounge chair at a hotel in Mexico, last vacation before COVID And I was kind of anticipating that they were going to hit some trouble. And then I said to myself, we should design some analog products because digital does not look good in the nearest future. And so that's how the analog channel came about. More of a business necessity than anything else. But then as it started to appear to materialize, I was practicing with it. And about that time, I started really recording YouTube videos for the sentrance YouTube channel on a weekly basis. It's a job. And because I traveled a lot, I ended up taking the english channel with me wherever I went. Like, for example, two weeks ago, I was in Indonesia at a trade show, and I had the English Channel, and I did some streams from the trade show floor, which sounded just like what we sound like right now. And I could get rid of the noise in the trade show floor was loud and all that. So I started realizing that this is actually a very cool product for a traveling content creator, because, again, as I said, I was looking at the mirror jokingly, but I happen to be a traveling content creator because I have this job of making videos for our YouTube channel and then podcasts, things like that. I did have a podcaster before, and podcaster obviously came out first, and that's great for doing podcasts, interviews. I know George uses it for that as well, but it doesn't have way to enhance your voice and then also get rid of the noise. Everybody who's starting out in the voice arts at first has to come against this fear of hearing their own voice, because we never know how our voice sounds like when it's recorded right until we have a lot of practice. And then, so I also had a fear of listening to my own voice. And I thought, I probably want a little bit more bass, maybe a little bit less treble here in this area. I kind of sound more confident if I do some of the enhancements. And then, so what this thing allows me to do is honestly develop confidence in public speaking, believe it or not, which is kind of like not the intended use of the product, but it gives me that ability to feel better about myself, which is an unintended psychological consequence of a technological product. : I have a question about the Eq. Is there anything, particularly on the technical side, that makes it a British Eq? I know that sometimes I found that the bandwidths can be pretty wide, and therefore, in that sense, sort of makes it a little bit more english in style, just the wider. I mean, they do get pretty. If I crank mine up here and I put it all the way on the left for the queue, you can kind of hear it. And it's pretty tight, but it doesn't sound like I'm sweeping a sine wave. And on the wide side, it's so wide, you can barely hear me sweeping that at all. Speaker B: It is pretty wide. I mean, it's almost like a surgical instrument. If you put it to 0.4 and is just a shelf almost. At the other extreme, the frequency response of that thing is quite wide. I don't have the spec sheet in front of me, but I wouldn't be surprised if it goes up to almost 100 khz. So it's very wide. It uses modern circuitry. I mean, this is not the circuitry from the course. There's been a lot of breakthroughs in analog technology since then, so that's why it's quiet and it allows us to do some tricks. It doesn't have transformers. So some of the Rupert neve technology color. Yeah, he loved his transformers. And they gave you that bass. They gave you that strange kind of phasing sound. I mean, a lot of people prefer that. And there are manufacturers of audio interfaces. There's one right here in Chicago that loves transformers as well. And those guys, we've had a shootout, and it was very interesting because I brought some of our gear to their studio, and then they had some of their interfaces, and we had an interface shootout. And the results of the shootout were inconclusive in that they loved theirs and I loved mine. : Did they want to do a black lion edition of the sentence? Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Speaker B: No, they hated our stuff because we didn't have transformers in it. And I was like, you guys, this doesn't sound natural. What goes in is not what goes out. And they're like, yeah, that's exactly the point. So different styles. : So talking about that, though, if you're talking about late 70s, early 80s when you were designing the English Channel, what sort of preamps were you thinking about? It sounds like you weren't thinking about Neve. You were thinking about maybe API. Speaker B: We wouldn't necessarily want know, copy somebody else's design, so that wouldn't be prudent for a lot of reasons, one of which just personal pride. We wanted to have our stuff. So you could argue that the whole concept of the british invasion and the british consul and all that is largely a psychological construct than any particular style of circuitry. Design. : It's not an homage to any. Like, this isn't a V 72 club. Speaker B: I wouldn't want to do that. There's so many people that say, oh, we make a microphone and it's the best U 87 this side of U 87, whatever. And that is a great marketing strategy for some people, but we decided not to do that. Like, okay, this is the Neve 1998, right? But in a different chassis. No, not at all. This is a sentence product that it is completely from ground up sentence. And then any marketing reference to Great Britain is an homage rather than any specific lift of any circuitry. : I don't think I can think of any smaller three band, fully parametric EQ on the market at all than this. Speaker A: No. Speaker B: You can find these graphic eqs and pedals a lot. : It's smaller than a 500 series module. It's like half the size. Speaker B: Exactly. I didn't have one either. : But find a three band parametric that's this small and it's XLR that's fully balanced. Speaker B: You should try it on some instruments. It's pretty cool. You should also try. So, box on a snare. I was blown away. Speaker A: Really? : Compressor is really good. Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty nice. I have a video up on our website where I actually go through a history of the sound of the snare drum by turning the compressor knob on the soapbox. So without compression, it's essentially the 60s. With medium compression, it becomes the gated snare starts to come in, and then if you compress all the way. If you turn the knob all the way to the right, then it becomes the. Becomes the gated compressed snare. With the additional. Speaker A: I was going to say, you'd have to be winding the gate up as well. Right in the will. : Say, if I can make a request for the soapbox too, that the gate is an expander, that'd be my only request. Speaker B: So it doesn't pump as much or you can make it not pump as much. : So it slides down to its. Whatever range -60 or minus, even infinity. But it never just goes there, it always has a slope. It opens more gradually and closes more gradually. Because I don't know if I can do it. But you can kind of even sometimes you can hear someone breathe in, you can hear it take their breath and like, chop. Speaker B: It's pretty drastic. It's just basically on off. And it was designed to be that way. And it took a while to get the timing just right so that it covers the majority of applications. Obviously, we didn't have the space for a couple more knobs seems pretty quick. That was the point. So if you really use the gate, then it becomes pumpy. So it can be like that. : Yeah, well, I found a good way around that is to use the blend. Speaker B: The dry wet control. That's pretty much your answer. : Yeah, it effectively changes the amount. So it always leaves a little bit. And it doesn't sound quite as, like, cut. : It's like the range control. I like that. That mix of the dry wet will give you. Speaker B: That is a poor man's expander, if you wish. Speaker A: No, it's a sentence expander. : Yeah, that's what it is. Speaker B: The trick is old. The trick is not our invention. : So tell us about the instant mono. I think that's another one that it's kind of a unique thing that you don't find that behavior on all interfaces. Speaker B: The insta in Instant Instamano actually stands for Instagram. And we put that in portcaster. And what we've learned is that Instagram, originally, they may have changed that now, but originally it was mono. So therefore, if you connect a stereo usb audio interface to Instagram to do a live stream, then the left channel will go through and everybody will hear whatever's on the left channel, but the right channel will essentially be lost. So a musician who, let's say, is a guitar player and a singer at the same time. So a singer songwriter, they would plug the guitar into one channel and the voice, the vocal microphone into the other channel, and then only one of those things would come through. And that was extremely frustrating. We had an earlier product called Mixerface, where there was no blend, no stereo blend. It just two channels come in, two channels go out. : I've got a mixer, right? Speaker B: The older one didn't have that blend knob. Now, since COVID and since that whole idea of streaming from home came about, we learned that this is not good. And then that Instamano is essentially a mono switch for mono blend knob for Instagram, which essentially unifies or combines your microphone and your guitar that you plug into channels one and two and then sends that to Instagram. And then your fans hear both things. That's really what it's for. Now, why is it a blend knob and not a switch? Because I had a hole I needed to plug with a potentiometer, and it kind of felt good. : How does it work exactly? All the way left. Right goes all the way to left is all the way left. Speaker B: Yes. So when you turn it counterclockwise, which is to the left, you are printing. Mono printing. When I say printing, I mean, is sending a mono signal into Instagram. So, in your usb stream. : But what's it doing electrically? Is it bringing the right side fully over to the left side? Is that what it is? Speaker B: It's creating a monomix. So it takes 50% of the left and 50% of the right. It combines them together and creates a mono mix. And then it sends that mono mix to the left channel and that same exact mono mix to the right channel. That's the proper way of doing it. : So what happens if you have it 50 50, like straight up at 12:00 now what's. Speaker B: So then it's in between mono and stereo. And I am still trying to figure out a good use case for that. : Well, it's like faking headphones for stereo. If you want a little left right bleed. Speaker B: Yeah. : At the 12:00 position, it basically takes. Left is 100% left plus 50% right, and right is 100% right plus 50% left. Is that what's happening? Speaker B: It becomes 50 of, let's say 50 of each? Yeah. So it's slightly less than stereo. So now I have to correct myself. I said that I'm struggling to come up with a use case. I'm not. Because we make two microphones that you can plug into podcaster. These are tiny little mics that are housed inside the XLR shells. And then they are angled so that when you plug them into channels one and two over the podcaster, you form a xy stereo pair. And then at that point, portcaster becomes a stereo field recorder with two mics. And then you can record concert, a band, whatever, or sounds of nature, animals. We have people recording all kinds of things. Creeks, mountain creeks. And then. So there, what you can do is you can record in, like, full stereo. But sometimes if you're way too close to the source, the full stereo might actually sound uncomfortable. So in that case, you might want to reduce the width of the stereo perspective slightly. And that's where the mono stereo blend ability to kind of grow gradually between the two comes into play. Because I've stuck this actually big sewer in California about a year ago, and I recorded the sound of the mountain creek because I thought it would be cool. And I stuck the portcaster on a rock right next to gurgling water. Right. And I realized that the two microphones recorded completely different sounds from water hitting the rocks. And it actually sound like way too much stereo. So I had to blend it down a little bit, and then it was a little bit more listenable. That makes sense. : I can't think of one product that has that. George, can you think of any other product that has that? : It's one of those majorly missing features of almost every other standard stereo interface. Like if you look at a scarlet two I two, people try using a scarlet two I two all the time to do things like this. And then they get frustrated when one person's voice is in the left and the other one's in the right. And that's not what they need. What they needed was a mixer, but they're using interface and they just don't conceptually understand what the difference is. : That is a unique feature. That pan move someone to the left or right is a very unique feature to these sentence interfaces. And you don't see the input pan on any device. What you do see is the ganged stereo monitor pan on almost all devices. So two places where sentrance has been unique. The Instamano knob. I can't think of any interface that does that unless it has a full mixer. The other thing that's unique is technically the original mixer face is the only interface I know of that has a separate left right usb versus input play. : It's unique too. Absolutely. Speaker B: Yeah. And then that use case it was useful for, and it was designed for, is when you have a guitar in one end, your voice in the other end, and you might want to listen to a little bit of a background track. And that gives you a blend between the guitar and the voice in the headphones. It essentially affects the headphones. Right. So you can keep your levels where you want them with the two level knobs, but you can adjust your headphone mix with those two other knobs, but. : You could affect the blend. You could blend in more of your input than your output. But when you played back, your mix was different because it wasn't really. Yes. Speaker B: This was for monitoring only. : Totally. So what then is interesting also is the original mixer face. And I'm not sure if this one has, but the original mixer face at least also uniquely had a mono switch for the output. So you could at least hear the two centered. You weren't recording them centered, but it has a mono switch. And is that in the portcaster or does that switch go away? Speaker B: It's still everywhere. And I have to say it confuses a lot of people, including famous youtubers. We won't name names, but essentially this thing was designed to be so flexible, it's useful. We possibly overloaded it for an average user. So I have customers who are tweaks and they love it. Because they can use in so many different ways. But for example, the mono stereo monitor switch allows you to print in stereo, but listen in mono. Right. Whereas the mono stereo blend knob, you're listening to whatever you're recording. So if you're blending with the mono stereo knob, you're actually printing mono, which is an important distinction. : And again, I can't think of any interfaces to do this. Most interfaces don't give you these types of choices. They're just features you can't find on a focus. Right. Or something like that. Speaker B: That's more for videography, things like that. So there's also a third. There's a line output on the podcaster. And then that allows you to record to essentially three places. So you can use the podcaster to send your audio to three separate recorders, one being the internal SD card recorder, one being the USB whatever it is that you're recording to or streaming live to. Right. And then the third one, the line out goes out to the camera. So that's for video applications. And then you can record audio onto the camera as well. : Can I give you a total feature for that? Speaker B: Go. : Okay, so you're recording stereo audio onto the internal card of the Portcaster? Speaker B: In this case, yes. : And then you had the line output stereo technically going into the camera. Right. So put a timecode generator in this thing, record three channels of Timecode onto the Portcaster and then drop one channel of Timecode. Speaker B: It's been brought up so far we've dealt with people who do shorter things and they just jam sync it. Where? I don't know what the current thinking, current wisdom is, but about 20 minutes of content recorded, it doesn't yet drift yet far enough. : But it's a lot of work still. It's still a lot of work to go find it. Like timecode just lines it up for you. You don't have to go. Speaker B: Yeah. After about an hour, it starts becoming a problem. But so far, I don't think we've dealt with anybody who's using these for very long periods of time. It's a voiceover artist who's recording for 30 seconds or if it's a youtuber. Then again, it's not a long thing. Speaker A: On the soapbox, Michael, on the bottom of the soapbox, and I think I've figured this out, there are three link switches for each of the processing, for the gate, for the compressor, and for the Deesser. Can you tell us what they do? Speaker B: We wanted SoBox to be extendable to multichannel situations. So, for example, for stereo or for multichannel recording. What you can do is you can actually line up several of these soapboxes and you can have one of them control the others in a linked situation. So in a stereo program, that's important because you don't want the two channel, the left and right channel to pump differently. You want them to sort of be in sync. And what those switches do is they allow you to choose. There are two jacks there called smart link. One is the link in and the other one is link out. So you can actually control one soapbox with another soapbox, and one became the master and the other one became the non master. : But that's not like the slave of a compressor that's just controlling the same knob. It's setting the two knobs at the same position. Speaker A: Right. : There's still two parallel monocompressors. Speaker B: No, if you switch the switch to the remote, then the knob becomes useless on that unit that is in the remote mode. Essentially, it will only listen to what the other unit tells it to do. : Right. And what is the other unit telling it? Is it telling it where to set exactly so they. Speaker B: Because it's a control signal, it's like. : Working on a VCA kind of thing. Speaker B: You can have one soapbox control another soapbox. : Is the VCA controlling the gain reduction or is it controlling the position of that knob? Speaker B: The position of the knob controls the VCA unless you flip the switch, put it in remote, and then a remote signal controls the VCA. And the knob essentially sits there doing nothing. You can rotate the knob on the slave unit and it would not do anything because the slave unit would be listening to the signal from the master unit. Speaker A: Okay, so how are we linking those together? : Is that the USB connection, the little 8th inch connectors. Speaker B: Trrs. We're having an arc here. TRrs comes back. : Is it trrs or just trs? Speaker B: Trrs. : Are you using the whole TRRs cable for the VCA? Speaker B: Yes, because there's three things that we can control. Gate, compressor, and Deesser. Speaker A: There you go. : All three are on one link. You don't need three links. One wire, one wire gets you linked. Speaker A: That's the smart link. : That's cool. Speaker A: Yeah, right. : So much innovation in these things. It's great, man. : Wow. Speaker A: There you go. Very cool. : That's part one of our chat with Michael Goodman from centrance, talking about the English Channel. Next episode, we have Michael back to talk about the Passport Vo, the collaboration between this podcast and centrance. Catch you next time. : Well, that was fun. Speaker C: Is it over the pro audio suite with thanks to Triboof and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robbo. Got your own audio issues? Just ask robo.com tech support from George the tech don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our websiteprodiosuite.com.   #centranceTalks #VoiceoverTech #PodcastingGear #ProfessionalAudio #VoiceoverArtists #AudioInnovation #PodcastProduction #EnglishChannelReview #PodcastersLife #AudioTechnology #TriboothDiscount #PodcastTalk #PodcastGearReview #AudioEngineering #TechInnovation #centanceInnovation #VoiceRecording #PodcastSetup #AudioQuality #ProfessionalVoiceover #AudioTalk #MicPreamp #PodcastersCommunity #TRRSConnection #ProAudioSuite #PodcastersUnite #GearReview #AudioTalkShow

The Pro Audio Suite
Navigating the Future: AI, Voice Licensing, and the Challenges of Digital Identity

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2024 33:39


We went off on such a tangent this week I figured what better way to come up with a description than to let AI do it, so after feeding it the transcript this is what it came up with.. In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, the hosts dive into a wide-ranging discussion covering the impact of AI on voiceover work, the intricacies of voice licensing in the digital age, and the challenges of maintaining digital identity and content integrity. From concerns about AI-generated voices and the protection of voice actors' rights to the potential theft of intellectual property and the evolving landscape of digital transactions, the hosts explore the multifaceted aspects of the audio industry and beyond. As the conversation takes unexpected turns, they touch on topics like the future of cash, online security, and the unique dynamics of holiday seasons in different parts of the world. Buckle up for a lively and insightful conversation that meanders through various aspects of the modern audio landscape and its broader implications. 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 Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready be history, get started welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi.,Speaker C: Y'all ready be history, get started welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.,: These guys are professional. They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars, George Wittam, founder of Source elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech wisdom and Robo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check Thepro audiosuite.,Speaker B: Com line up learner. Here we go.,Speaker C: And of course, don't forget the code. Trip a p two hundred and that will get you two hundred dollars off your tribooth. Now, we're going to talk microphones today because there's one thing I don't think we've ever discussed, or not in depth anyway. Is RF on a shotgun mic? Now I'm assuming rf is radio frequency, but for anybody like me, what does it actually really mean? And should it be something that we consider when we're buying a shotgun mic?,Speaker A: You mean the fact that the microphone uses what they call an RF technology? Is that what you're referring? Sure. I'm sure Robert would know more about the details without me having to google it. I read about RF microphones for a few times and I think one of the side effects of a mic being RF technology, which by the way, has nothing to do with transmitting a radio signal, right. It's the ability for the microphone to reject noise. I don't know if I've ever heard of a four hundred and sixteen, for example, which is using this RF technology as having an issue. Picking up radio frequency noise. If anybody else has heard of that, if you've had a mic, a four hundred and sixteen picking up RFI, let me know. But one of the advantages of that technology is it's very highly immune to humidity.,Speaker C: Yeah, that's what I heard.,Speaker A: And why that exactly is, is definitely beyond my pay grade.,Speaker C: Isn't it something to do with the way inside the microphone? Each part talks to itself, like talks to each other. It uses like a radio frequency inside the microphone to communicate with itself. That's my vague recollection of what it actually is.,Speaker A: That is certainly plausible. I just wish I was more understanding of the technology.,: So we're talking about it rejecting radio frequencies, is that what you're saying? Like a shielded cable would reject?,Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's what it does. And if anyone's listening, we should do what everybody else does on their YouTube things. Leave us a comment in the comments section.,Speaker A: Can I do story time and read it to you?,Speaker C: Yes, do story time. Oh, I'm sitting comfortably, George.,: But read it in your best bedtime story voice, George.,Speaker A: Okay, yeah, well it would have to be in a german accent.,Speaker C: I'm not going to do that.,Speaker A: A bedtime german accent?,: No, that's scary.,Speaker C: That's really scary actually.,Speaker A: But there is a whole white paper from Senheiser and it's written by Manfred Hibbing and it's Sennheiser's professor. MkH condenser microphone sorry everybody, I'm sorry, but basically what it says is that high rf frequency solves a problem. So when the replacement of electronic valves by transistors commenced at the end of the fifty s, this change was also under consideration for condenser microphones. Reduced size, low supply voltages and lower power consumption were regarded as great benefits as well as being able to use simpler microphone cables. However, there was a basic problem. Direct replacement of the valve by a transistor was not possible due to the mismatch between the high impedance of the condenser capsule and the low input impedance of the transistor. Hence, for optimal matching, the capsule impedance needed to be drastically reduced. And then they go on to explain the impedance of capsules, et cetera, et cetera. So down to the next paragraph. How does RF microphone technology actually work? The principle is simple. After all that.,Speaker C: Yeah, sure it is.,Speaker A: Sound waves deflect the diaphragm of the condenser capsule and change the capacitance between the diaphragm and the nearby back electrode, or backplate. Contrary to the more common low frequency AF condenser method, the capacitance variations are not converted directly into audio signals, but modulate a high frequency radio frequency signal generated by an oscillator inside the microphone. This signal is then immediately demodulated inside the microphone, thus recreating the audio signal, but with a very low source impedance that is well suited for driving a transistor amplifier. Thusly, an RF condenser microphone is basically comprised of a transmitter and a receiver that are directly wired together. The RF signal is therefore kept inside the microphone only the audio signal is supplied to its output just like all other microphones. So yeah, what you were saying was pretty much usual for me.,Speaker C: What happened?,Speaker A: He picked it up through osmosis somewhere along the way.,Speaker C: That's right.,: Can I just say, Robert would make that a lot.,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: Yeah, sure. The thing with humidity, and here's a little paragraph about this, there is no other important benefit of the RF principle for practical use, the low electrical impedance of the capsule provides outstanding immunity against detrimental effects due to humidity, because even then, the leak resistance is very much larger than the capsule impedance. Thus, Mkh microphones, which I understand, all of those, all Mkh mics are RF mics. They're well suited for outdoor use. So this is why mkh mics, no matter whether they are the mkh four one five, forty one six, and I'm paraphrasing here, or any of the mkh stuff like the mkh forty. There's the eight thousand series, right? They have the eighty third. Eighty, twenty, eighty, thirty, eighty, forty, fifty, eighty, sixty. They have a whole new line. All of them are using this technology. And the reason for why it still persists to this day is it's excellent outside and thereby it's also excellent in a sweaty, hot, muggy voiceover booth.,Speaker C: If it's four x three x six. Yes, indeed.,Speaker A: Especially if it's four x three x six. Absolutely.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Talk about that outdoors, though, because this was something else where I got stuck in the rabbit hole that I mentioned before we started recording. Then there was a discussion about using shotgun mics inside. Now, this is basically for drama and stuff like that. So a boom op using a mic where they wouldn't use a shotgun inside, they would use a pencil. Small diaphragm, pencil condenser.,Speaker A: Yeah.,Speaker C: Now, if that's the case, if you're a field audio guy, why would you not use a pencil condenser as a voiceover person inside?,Speaker A: I don't know. I did have a pair, and I still do have a pair of pencil condensers, the classic octava mics that are so popular. And I used to use them to try to do field recordings. And I didn't know that much about mics at the time. And I would get the dreaded, we sometimes call it motorboating. It was like this.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Fluttering sound. And I didn't know why it was happening. I just knew it would happen. And it would always happen if I was outdoors and sometimes I was like, in a really humid environment and it would get really bad. And I was like, oh, no, the mic's bad. And then I'd bring the mic home and I'd pull it out of the box later and would be perfectly fine.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: So because with af microphones or audio frequency condensers, because they store a charge on a high impedance capsule, it's easy for that charge to find a way and leak across the insulation by riding on water molecules which cause those motorboat or crackling effects. So I don't know. I mean, I think it's just another added benefit of an RF mic is that you're just never going to have that problem. But Neumann, large diaphragm condenser mics where you have two diaphragms extremely close to each other, even if it's a cardioid, there's still two. There's the diaphragm in the front that takes the sound wave and then there's one on the back that picks up the signal, creating the changes in capacitance, blah, blah, blah. And those are so close together that water molecules actually transmit the electricity.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: It's amazing.,Speaker A: And create the static.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Do you know anybody who does use any pencil Mic for doing voiceover in their. I do.,Speaker A: I know people that use the eighty series or the eight thousand series, but those are MKh mics. So I believe all the eight thousand series Mkh mics are also rf.,Speaker C: Is that the eighty fifty?,Speaker A: Is that like the eighty fifty? The eighty twenty, eighty thirty are tiny little stubby capsules. I mean, they're mini because I guess they have the most condensed electronics and boy, are they expensive.,: Yes.,Speaker A: This is a stereo set. So I'm looking at two thousand eight hundred for a stereo set.,Speaker C: Don't look at the chefs then.,Speaker A: Yeah, I know. Chef takes to another level, right?,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: But yeah, the MKH forty is going to be about one thousand four hundred us. So if somebody's comparing mics and they look at this minuscule, laughably small mic and then they think, why would I ever use that over a four hundred and sixteen? Well, that's because it doesn't have the negative effects of a shotgun microphone.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Doesn't have any of the negatives. It doesn't have the negatives in terms of off axis phase problems.,: Yes.,Speaker A: You get a way more accurate pattern as you go off axis. Right. So that's one reason it's certainly very nice to work with, because it's so small.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: So it's never going to get in the way. But they're going to be extremely pop sensitive. Right. Because the capsule is right there at the grille. It's right in the front. Like any pencil mic. They work great on voice, but they pop like a mofo. Yeah, they pop really bad. So you have to have good mic technique and maybe a good pop screen. But they are quite an upgrade. Some really have found them to be quite an upgrade. Like an eighty forty from a forty one six.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: I would go with the eighty fifty because that's a super cardioid. That would be my choice if I was going this direction.,Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting. It's funny with shotguns and we were talking about this also before we jumped on because the road kit I set my daughter up with for her travels, I gave her the NTG three and we were just doing some testing a few hours ago just to make sure.,Speaker A: That is an RF mic too.,Speaker C: I believe it is an RF mic, but also it's quite bottom end.,Speaker A: It's eqed very differently. It is a very different tone from.,Speaker C: The forty one six, which I think for location is perfect because the further you get away from the source, the sound source, the thinner the audio gets. But if they've got that sort of hype bottom end, it actually keeps some of that in there in the sound, which is great for that kind of work. But it also sounds really good on a female voice. I mean, she sounds great on that ntG three. But when I put it up in front of me, I had one for a while, mud central. It just didn't work.,Speaker A: Muddy?,Speaker C: Oh yeah, it wasn't good.,Speaker A: You lose articulation. It doesn't have a crisp attack. It's very, yeah. There's another mic that's really popular because of its price point and that's the Cinco d two. Have you heard of that one?,Speaker C: No.,Speaker A: Very cheap shotgun mic. And of course it looks a lot like a forty one six. Of course, same color, same shape, same size, same everything. So of course it gets sold all over the Amazons and stuff as a cheap forty one six. But it sounds nothing at all like a forty one six. Nothing at all. Yeah, it's a very flat mic. Very flat, very dull. So when somebody sends me that sample, I know immediately I'm going to have to help the top end. And when I do that, up comes the noise. And that's the other problem with small diaphragm mics. Making a small diaphragm pencil or shotgun mic sound as low noise as a large diaphragm mic is no small feat. No, it's very difficult to do. So. That's another problem. You're never going to get a small capsule mic to be as quiet from a self noise perspective as you will a large diaphragm mic, even a cheaper diaphragm. Well, let's look at the rode nt one four or so db self noise. You're never ever going to find a small diaphragm mic with that kind of a measurement.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: What's funny is I'm reading the specs right now from the Senheiser mkh. Eighty fifty. They don't even quote the self noise.,Speaker C: Interesting.,Speaker A: Which to me is a way of saying it ain't so great, but it doesn't matter. This is a location mic. You're going to use it outside so it doesn't need to be that quiet.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: But still, it's a one thousand four hundred dollars mic and they don't quote the spec. So I find that kind of fascinating.,Speaker C: Yeah, but if you're buying a shotgun, and I know we've banged on about this before, but I still reckon the best value, the best bang for buck in any shotgun mic is the NTG five from road.,Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds once they got over there they had some growing pains with that. They did. We definitely had a few people with some issues and it seems that that has been sorted because I haven't heard of any of those kind of complaints of noise or whatever for well over a year now. It's been more than a year or two.,: I was a victim of one of those. The first one they sent me I had problems with, but sent it back and got a brand new one and haven't had any problems with it since. Full credit to road all.,Speaker A: I never ever had a problem replacing a mic.,: Yeah, and full credit to road. All I sent back was the actual mic and I got a whole new, whole new kit when they sent me back the new one. Typical of road.,Speaker A: Really.,Speaker C: So you got a nice little shock mount for your forty one sixes?,: Yeah, I've now got two of their shock mounts, which is kind of nice.,Speaker A: Well those are cool, man. If you were to go buy those pistol grip shock mounts with the rycoat style Lyre mount and everything, those are going to be one hundred dollars plus easily.,Speaker C: Easily.,Speaker A: And then the windscreen and everything else. I mean it's like one hundred and fifty dollars kit plus the mic.,: Yeah.,: And I do like it. It's standard fare in my room here. That or the austrian audio one or.,Speaker C: The other of the two. Yeah.,Speaker A: Mine pretty much lives permanently in my kit for going on the road and traveling. I have a pelican hard case and the ten TG five lives in there. It's just always there, ready to go.,: Yeah. Well, you know what I need to figure out now, thinking about that is cutting the foam in the road kit for my english channel so that the NTG five fits in there and then I've got it all in one case that's what I need to figure out.,Speaker A: Oh yeah. It seemed that there was enough space in there to squeeze in a shotgun mic.,: Absolutely. Just pick up the bag and away you go.,Speaker A: That'd be a sick kit, wouldn't it? Oh, man.,Speaker C: Fantastic.,Speaker A: I did actually dig around and I went on the recording hacks website, which is a great database of microphones recordinghacks. Com. And while it's missing mics here and there for sure, it does have pretty much all the Neumans and Sennheisers and the bigger brands and stuff. And I found the eighty fifty and they actually do list a self noise rating of thirteen DBA weighted. So the Sennheiser four hundred and sixteen is like sixteen, I believe. Okay, so they managed to shave three db of the self noise.,Speaker C: I think the NTG three is about the same. About twelve or thirteen from memory.,Speaker A: Yeah. That's good. I mean, it's going to be hard to find a lower value than that. I haven't seen. I mean, maybe Sheps has something quieter. Possibly. I haven't looked, but. S-C-H-O-E-P-P-S. Is that how you spell.,: Am I thinking of the engineer or the. Is it double P?,Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's confusing because you have the mic called sheps.,: Yes.,Speaker A: And you have the engineer, and I.,: Can'T remember whether it's double P for the engineer or double P for the mic. One of them has two.,Speaker A: I guess I kez guessed it right. It's S-C-H-O-E-P-S. So the CMC five, which is one of the quintessential chefs shotgun mics, is. It's got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Different capsule options.,: Wow.,Speaker C: Bloody hell.,: Wow.,Speaker A: They have this huge array of capsules that thread onto the body depending on what you're doing. So let's look at a cardioid. Let's look at a super cardioid, the mk forty one. It does not list a noise spec.,: Right?,Speaker A: There's no noise spec listed anywhere. There.,Speaker C: Kind of old school, isn't. It's like the old cmv microphones from Neumann back in the. Would have been thirty s. Forty s where you got the bottle. And instead of having a switch to go from cardioid figure eight to omni or whatever, you unscrewed the capsule and put new capsule on the top.,Speaker A: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, actually my mkhs. Sorry, my octavus. Same deal. I have three capsules per mic, but that whole kit with two mics and all the capsules costs less than one of these capsules.,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: You start realizing the difference in cost is pretty stark. I mean, they said the capsules are anywhere from eight hundred dollars to one thousand four hundred dollars for one capsule.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: I do like the idea of the ships. The shotgun, that's blue. I mean if you had that in the booth and as soon as you see that color, you go, oh, okay, somebody's serious.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Have you ever seen their v four u model? It has a blue bottle and then the grille has this very cool deco style grille. It's very cool looking. Look it up sometime for you. And it's a neat looking mic and it has a quirky thing. It's that the capsule has a slightly hinged head so you can tilt the capsule forward and back a little bit. Like ten degrees, twenty degrees.,Speaker C: Oh God, that looks good.,Speaker A: But it's a cool looking mic.,Speaker C: That is very tasty. Yeah, don't Google Robbie, you'll get blow your machine up.,: Well, I'm doing it on my iPad, but it's saying there's some problem with the website and I can't get on there. So I don't know what's going on.,Speaker A: V four U is three thousand dollars retail. And then it has a pretty flat response curve. I mean it has a small presence rise at four k, which is typical, but it's only like two or to three db rise. So it's pretty flat.,Speaker C: That is insane.,Speaker A: I remember trying it at one of the nams or whatever and being like, wow, that's a cool sounding mic.,Speaker C: It looks really neat, very tasty.,Speaker A: Oh, that's how much it costs.,Speaker C: Okay. Yeah, I might get one in the next lifetime. Yeah, I was in Tokyo and I saw a dunhill store and I went in there and they had these linen bucket hats and caps and stuff. I thought, wow, they're really cool. And I was looking at the price and tried on the bucket hat and it's like, yeah, I'll get that. So I said, yeah, I'll take this one. I said, actually, I might even get the cap as well. And the guy's looking at me going, no, you don't need the cap as well. Just take this hat. That's all you need. I'm like really doing yourself out of a sale here.,: Okay, whatever.,Speaker C: So I bought the thing and I'm walking back to the hotel and then I'm doing the calculation in my head and thinking I just got a bargain of thirty five dollars. I sort of went, hang on a minute. I got the digital point in the wrong spot.,Speaker A: I just paid three off of zero.,Speaker C: Three hundred and fifty bucks for a bucket hat?,: Yeah, right.,Speaker C: Dear, oh dear, oh dear. Anyway, yeah, well, that was fun.,Speaker B: Is it over?,: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribut and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robo. Got your own audio issues? Just askrobo. Com tech support from George the tech don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our websiteproudiosuite. Com.     

The Pro Audio Suite
RF in microphones. What is it?

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2023 22:46


RF noise rejection is a pretty complicated thing. We try to make sense of it... A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth... 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 Summary In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, professional audio experts George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren Robertson, and Andrew Peters explore the concept of RF technology in microphones and its benefits like noise rejection and immunity to humidity. They consider whether RF technology should factor into buying decisions when it comes to shotgun mics. The team also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different types of mics including small diaphragm and pencil condenser mics. They share their top pick for the best value shotgun mic—the NTG 5 from Road—and discuss the impressive feats of engineering that go into manufacturing low noise mics. Lastly, they discuss the stark cost differences between mic capsules and complete kits before considering the features of the V4U model. #ProAudioSuite #ShotgunMicTechnology #RFMicrophone    Timestamps (00:00:00) Introduction (00:00:44) RF Microphone Technology (00:07:04) Shotgun Mics for VO (00:12:42) Small vs Large Mic Models (00:17:55) Mic Capsules & Their Uses    Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready be history, get started welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi.,Speaker C: Y'all ready be history, get started welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.,: These guys are professional. They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars, George Wittam, founder of Source elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech wisdom and Robo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check Thepro audiosuite.,Speaker B: Com line up learner. Here we go.,Speaker C: And of course, don't forget the code. Trip a p two hundred and that will get you two hundred dollars off your tribooth. Now, we're going to talk microphones today because there's one thing I don't think we've ever discussed, or not in depth anyway. Is RF on a shotgun mic? Now I'm assuming rf is radio frequency, but for anybody like me, what does it actually really mean? And should it be something that we consider when we're buying a shotgun mic?,Speaker A: You mean the fact that the microphone uses what they call an RF technology? Is that what you're referring? Sure. I'm sure Robert would know more about the details without me having to google it. I read about RF microphones for a few times and I think one of the side effects of a mic being RF technology, which by the way, has nothing to do with transmitting a radio signal, right. It's the ability for the microphone to reject noise. I don't know if I've ever heard of a four hundred and sixteen, for example, which is using this RF technology as having an issue. Picking up radio frequency noise. If anybody else has heard of that, if you've had a mic, a four hundred and sixteen picking up RFI, let me know. But one of the advantages of that technology is it's very highly immune to humidity.,Speaker C: Yeah, that's what I heard.,Speaker A: And why that exactly is, is definitely beyond my pay grade.,Speaker C: Isn't it something to do with the way inside the microphone? Each part talks to itself, like talks to each other. It uses like a radio frequency inside the microphone to communicate with itself. That's my vague recollection of what it actually is.,Speaker A: That is certainly plausible. I just wish I was more understanding of the technology.,: So we're talking about it rejecting radio frequencies, is that what you're saying? Like a shielded cable would reject?,Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's what it does. And if anyone's listening, we should do what everybody else does on their YouTube things. Leave us a comment in the comments section.,Speaker A: Can I do story time and read it to you?,Speaker C: Yes, do story time. Oh, I'm sitting comfortably, George.,: But read it in your best bedtime story voice, George.,Speaker A: Okay, yeah, well it would have to be in a german accent.,Speaker C: I'm not going to do that.,Speaker A: A bedtime german accent?,: No, that's scary.,Speaker C: That's really scary actually.,Speaker A: But there is a whole white paper from Senheiser and it's written by Manfred Hibbing and it's Sennheiser's professor. MkH condenser microphone sorry everybody, I'm sorry, but basically what it says is that high rf frequency solves a problem. So when the replacement of electronic valves by transistors commenced at the end of the fifty s, this change was also under consideration for condenser microphones. Reduced size, low supply voltages and lower power consumption were regarded as great benefits as well as being able to use simpler microphone cables. However, there was a basic problem. Direct replacement of the valve by a transistor was not possible due to the mismatch between the high impedance of the condenser capsule and the low input impedance of the transistor. Hence, for optimal matching, the capsule impedance needed to be drastically reduced. And then they go on to explain the impedance of capsules, et cetera, et cetera. So down to the next paragraph. How does RF microphone technology actually work? The principle is simple. After all that.,Speaker C: Yeah, sure it is.,Speaker A: Sound waves deflect the diaphragm of the condenser capsule and change the capacitance between the diaphragm and the nearby back electrode, or backplate. Contrary to the more common low frequency AF condenser method, the capacitance variations are not converted directly into audio signals, but modulate a high frequency radio frequency signal generated by an oscillator inside the microphone. This signal is then immediately demodulated inside the microphone, thus recreating the audio signal, but with a very low source impedance that is well suited for driving a transistor amplifier. Thusly, an RF condenser microphone is basically comprised of a transmitter and a receiver that are directly wired together. The RF signal is therefore kept inside the microphone only the audio signal is supplied to its output just like all other microphones. So yeah, what you were saying was pretty much usual for me.,Speaker C: What happened?,Speaker A: He picked it up through osmosis somewhere along the way.,Speaker C: That's right.,: Can I just say, Robert would make that a lot.,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: Yeah, sure. The thing with humidity, and here's a little paragraph about this, there is no other important benefit of the RF principle for practical use, the low electrical impedance of the capsule provides outstanding immunity against detrimental effects due to humidity, because even then, the leak resistance is very much larger than the capsule impedance. Thus, Mkh microphones, which I understand, all of those, all Mkh mics are RF mics. They're well suited for outdoor use. So this is why mkh mics, no matter whether they are the mkh four one five, forty one six, and I'm paraphrasing here, or any of the mkh stuff like the mkh forty. There's the eight thousand series, right? They have the eighty third. Eighty, twenty, eighty, thirty, eighty, forty, fifty, eighty, sixty. They have a whole new line. All of them are using this technology. And the reason for why it still persists to this day is it's excellent outside and thereby it's also excellent in a sweaty, hot, muggy voiceover booth.,Speaker C: If it's four x three x six. Yes, indeed.,Speaker A: Especially if it's four x three x six. Absolutely.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Talk about that outdoors, though, because this was something else where I got stuck in the rabbit hole that I mentioned before we started recording. Then there was a discussion about using shotgun mics inside. Now, this is basically for drama and stuff like that. So a boom op using a mic where they wouldn't use a shotgun inside, they would use a pencil. Small diaphragm, pencil condenser.,Speaker A: Yeah.,Speaker C: Now, if that's the case, if you're a field audio guy, why would you not use a pencil condenser as a voiceover person inside?,Speaker A: I don't know. I did have a pair, and I still do have a pair of pencil condensers, the classic octava mics that are so popular. And I used to use them to try to do field recordings. And I didn't know that much about mics at the time. And I would get the dreaded, we sometimes call it motorboating. It was like this.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Fluttering sound. And I didn't know why it was happening. I just knew it would happen. And it would always happen if I was outdoors and sometimes I was like, in a really humid environment and it would get really bad. And I was like, oh, no, the mic's bad. And then I'd bring the mic home and I'd pull it out of the box later and would be perfectly fine.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: So because with af microphones or audio frequency condensers, because they store a charge on a high impedance capsule, it's easy for that charge to find a way and leak across the insulation by riding on water molecules which cause those motorboat or crackling effects. So I don't know. I mean, I think it's just another added benefit of an RF mic is that you're just never going to have that problem. But Neumann, large diaphragm condenser mics where you have two diaphragms extremely close to each other, even if it's a cardioid, there's still two. There's the diaphragm in the front that takes the sound wave and then there's one on the back that picks up the signal, creating the changes in capacitance, blah, blah, blah. And those are so close together that water molecules actually transmit the electricity.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: It's amazing.,Speaker A: And create the static.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Do you know anybody who does use any pencil Mic for doing voiceover in their. I do.,Speaker A: I know people that use the eighty series or the eight thousand series, but those are MKh mics. So I believe all the eight thousand series Mkh mics are also rf.,Speaker C: Is that the eighty fifty?,Speaker A: Is that like the eighty fifty? The eighty twenty, eighty thirty are tiny little stubby capsules. I mean, they're mini because I guess they have the most condensed electronics and boy, are they expensive.,: Yes.,Speaker A: This is a stereo set. So I'm looking at two thousand eight hundred for a stereo set.,Speaker C: Don't look at the chefs then.,Speaker A: Yeah, I know. Chef takes to another level, right?,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: But yeah, the MKH forty is going to be about one thousand four hundred us. So if somebody's comparing mics and they look at this minuscule, laughably small mic and then they think, why would I ever use that over a four hundred and sixteen? Well, that's because it doesn't have the negative effects of a shotgun microphone.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Doesn't have any of the negatives. It doesn't have the negatives in terms of off axis phase problems.,: Yes.,Speaker A: You get a way more accurate pattern as you go off axis. Right. So that's one reason it's certainly very nice to work with, because it's so small.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: So it's never going to get in the way. But they're going to be extremely pop sensitive. Right. Because the capsule is right there at the grille. It's right in the front. Like any pencil mic. They work great on voice, but they pop like a mofo. Yeah, they pop really bad. So you have to have good mic technique and maybe a good pop screen. But they are quite an upgrade. Some really have found them to be quite an upgrade. Like an eighty forty from a forty one six.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: I would go with the eighty fifty because that's a super cardioid. That would be my choice if I was going this direction.,Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting. It's funny with shotguns and we were talking about this also before we jumped on because the road kit I set my daughter up with for her travels, I gave her the NTG three and we were just doing some testing a few hours ago just to make sure.,Speaker A: That is an RF mic too.,Speaker C: I believe it is an RF mic, but also it's quite bottom end.,Speaker A: It's eqed very differently. It is a very different tone from.,Speaker C: The forty one six, which I think for location is perfect because the further you get away from the source, the sound source, the thinner the audio gets. But if they've got that sort of hype bottom end, it actually keeps some of that in there in the sound, which is great for that kind of work. But it also sounds really good on a female voice. I mean, she sounds great on that ntG three. But when I put it up in front of me, I had one for a while, mud central. It just didn't work.,Speaker A: Muddy?,Speaker C: Oh yeah, it wasn't good.,Speaker A: You lose articulation. It doesn't have a crisp attack. It's very, yeah. There's another mic that's really popular because of its price point and that's the Cinco d two. Have you heard of that one?,Speaker C: No.,Speaker A: Very cheap shotgun mic. And of course it looks a lot like a forty one six. Of course, same color, same shape, same size, same everything. So of course it gets sold all over the Amazons and stuff as a cheap forty one six. But it sounds nothing at all like a forty one six. Nothing at all. Yeah, it's a very flat mic. Very flat, very dull. So when somebody sends me that sample, I know immediately I'm going to have to help the top end. And when I do that, up comes the noise. And that's the other problem with small diaphragm mics. Making a small diaphragm pencil or shotgun mic sound as low noise as a large diaphragm mic is no small feat. No, it's very difficult to do. So. That's another problem. You're never going to get a small capsule mic to be as quiet from a self noise perspective as you will a large diaphragm mic, even a cheaper diaphragm. Well, let's look at the rode nt one four or so db self noise. You're never ever going to find a small diaphragm mic with that kind of a measurement.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: What's funny is I'm reading the specs right now from the Senheiser mkh. Eighty fifty. They don't even quote the self noise.,Speaker C: Interesting.,Speaker A: Which to me is a way of saying it ain't so great, but it doesn't matter. This is a location mic. You're going to use it outside so it doesn't need to be that quiet.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: But still, it's a one thousand four hundred dollars mic and they don't quote the spec. So I find that kind of fascinating.,Speaker C: Yeah, but if you're buying a shotgun, and I know we've banged on about this before, but I still reckon the best value, the best bang for buck in any shotgun mic is the NTG five from road.,Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds once they got over there they had some growing pains with that. They did. We definitely had a few people with some issues and it seems that that has been sorted because I haven't heard of any of those kind of complaints of noise or whatever for well over a year now. It's been more than a year or two.,: I was a victim of one of those. The first one they sent me I had problems with, but sent it back and got a brand new one and haven't had any problems with it since. Full credit to road all.,Speaker A: I never ever had a problem replacing a mic.,: Yeah, and full credit to road. All I sent back was the actual mic and I got a whole new, whole new kit when they sent me back the new one. Typical of road.,Speaker A: Really.,Speaker C: So you got a nice little shock mount for your forty one sixes?,: Yeah, I've now got two of their shock mounts, which is kind of nice.,Speaker A: Well those are cool, man. If you were to go buy those pistol grip shock mounts with the rycoat style Lyre mount and everything, those are going to be one hundred dollars plus easily.,Speaker C: Easily.,Speaker A: And then the windscreen and everything else. I mean it's like one hundred and fifty dollars kit plus the mic.,: Yeah.,: And I do like it. It's standard fare in my room here. That or the austrian audio one or.,Speaker C: The other of the two. Yeah.,Speaker A: Mine pretty much lives permanently in my kit for going on the road and traveling. I have a pelican hard case and the ten TG five lives in there. It's just always there, ready to go.,: Yeah. Well, you know what I need to figure out now, thinking about that is cutting the foam in the road kit for my english channel so that the NTG five fits in there and then I've got it all in one case that's what I need to figure out.,Speaker A: Oh yeah. It seemed that there was enough space in there to squeeze in a shotgun mic.,: Absolutely. Just pick up the bag and away you go.,Speaker A: That'd be a sick kit, wouldn't it? Oh, man.,Speaker C: Fantastic.,Speaker A: I did actually dig around and I went on the recording hacks website, which is a great database of microphones recordinghacks. Com. And while it's missing mics here and there for sure, it does have pretty much all the Neumans and Sennheisers and the bigger brands and stuff. And I found the eighty fifty and they actually do list a self noise rating of thirteen DBA weighted. So the Sennheiser four hundred and sixteen is like sixteen, I believe. Okay, so they managed to shave three db of the self noise.,Speaker C: I think the NTG three is about the same. About twelve or thirteen from memory.,Speaker A: Yeah. That's good. I mean, it's going to be hard to find a lower value than that. I haven't seen. I mean, maybe Sheps has something quieter. Possibly. I haven't looked, but. S-C-H-O-E-P-P-S. Is that how you spell.,: Am I thinking of the engineer or the. Is it double P?,Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's confusing because you have the mic called sheps.,: Yes.,Speaker A: And you have the engineer, and I.,: Can'T remember whether it's double P for the engineer or double P for the mic. One of them has two.,Speaker A: I guess I kez guessed it right. It's S-C-H-O-E-P-S. So the CMC five, which is one of the quintessential chefs shotgun mics, is. It's got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Different capsule options.,: Wow.,Speaker C: Bloody hell.,: Wow.,Speaker A: They have this huge array of capsules that thread onto the body depending on what you're doing. So let's look at a cardioid. Let's look at a super cardioid, the mk forty one. It does not list a noise spec.,: Right?,Speaker A: There's no noise spec listed anywhere. There.,Speaker C: Kind of old school, isn't. It's like the old cmv microphones from Neumann back in the. Would have been thirty s. Forty s where you got the bottle. And instead of having a switch to go from cardioid figure eight to omni or whatever, you unscrewed the capsule and put new capsule on the top.,Speaker A: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, actually my mkhs. Sorry, my octavus. Same deal. I have three capsules per mic, but that whole kit with two mics and all the capsules costs less than one of these capsules.,Speaker C: Yes.,Speaker A: You start realizing the difference in cost is pretty stark. I mean, they said the capsules are anywhere from eight hundred dollars to one thousand four hundred dollars for one capsule.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: I do like the idea of the ships. The shotgun, that's blue. I mean if you had that in the booth and as soon as you see that color, you go, oh, okay, somebody's serious.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Have you ever seen their v four u model? It has a blue bottle and then the grille has this very cool deco style grille. It's very cool looking. Look it up sometime for you. And it's a neat looking mic and it has a quirky thing. It's that the capsule has a slightly hinged head so you can tilt the capsule forward and back a little bit. Like ten degrees, twenty degrees.,Speaker C: Oh God, that looks good.,Speaker A: But it's a cool looking mic.,Speaker C: That is very tasty. Yeah, don't Google Robbie, you'll get blow your machine up.,: Well, I'm doing it on my iPad, but it's saying there's some problem with the website and I can't get on there. So I don't know what's going on.,Speaker A: V four U is three thousand dollars retail. And then it has a pretty flat response curve. I mean it has a small presence rise at four k, which is typical, but it's only like two or to three db rise. So it's pretty flat.,Speaker C: That is insane.,Speaker A: I remember trying it at one of the nams or whatever and being like, wow, that's a cool sounding mic.,Speaker C: It looks really neat, very tasty.,Speaker A: Oh, that's how much it costs.,Speaker C: Okay. Yeah, I might get one in the next lifetime. Yeah, I was in Tokyo and I saw a dunhill store and I went in there and they had these linen bucket hats and caps and stuff. I thought, wow, they're really cool. And I was looking at the price and tried on the bucket hat and it's like, yeah, I'll get that. So I said, yeah, I'll take this one. I said, actually, I might even get the cap as well. And the guy's looking at me going, no, you don't need the cap as well. Just take this hat. That's all you need. I'm like really doing yourself out of a sale here.,: Okay, whatever.,Speaker C: So I bought the thing and I'm walking back to the hotel and then I'm doing the calculation in my head and thinking I just got a bargain of thirty five dollars. I sort of went, hang on a minute. I got the digital point in the wrong spot.,Speaker A: I just paid three off of zero.,Speaker C: Three hundred and fifty bucks for a bucket hat?,: Yeah, right.,Speaker C: Dear, oh dear, oh dear. Anyway, yeah, well, that was fun.,Speaker B: Is it over?,: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribut and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robo. Got your own audio issues? Just askrobo. Com tech support from George the tech don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our websiteproudiosuite. Com.     

The Pro Audio Suite
Centrance English Channel Unboxing

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2023 32:43


The English Channel is a set of three, premium-quality Signal Processing Devices, designed to help you sound your best, anywhere. Quickly shape your vocal sound making it ready for live streaming or recording. The English Channel includes SoapBox, a Studio Mic Pre, Gate, Compressor and De-Esser, and BlackCab™, a Parametric EQ with Sonic Enhancer. Rounding out the channel strip is PortCaster R4S, a Streaming USB-C Audio Interface with an SD Card Recorder. These tools use proven technology found in British recording consoles, hence the name. A full complement of vintage, tone-shaping goodness, The English Channel features sweet, warm-sounding "old-school analog processing". This means immediate adjustments and instant monitoring over headphones. No menus, no wasted time. Reach for the control and make the adjustment without taking your eyes off the action. Robbo has been sent one from the guys at Centrance and opens the box with George and AP.. A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth... https://tribooth.com/ And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear.. https://austrian.audio/ We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, 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    Summary In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, hosts George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren Robbo Robertson, and Andrew Peters unbox the English Channel, an audio studio in a box. This piece of technology is described as having three sections: a preamp, a filter, and an inbuilt compressor, which work together to produce a unique mix. Additionally, discussions highlight the Portcaster Vo Vo, a tool favored by content creators for its ability to switch from mono to stereo. The final product, Passport VO, an item with an inbuilt card recorder that can record and playback without clipping, is introduced and admired for its sturdy metal casing and ease of use for those with a basic understanding of audio. The hosts conclude with news of limited availability for the first batch of the technology and the upcoming guest appearance from Michael at Sentrance. #ProAudioUnboxing #EnglishChannelAudioStudio #PodcastTechTalks    Timestamps (00:00:00) Show Introduction (00:00:46) Audio Studio in a Box (00:05:27) Unit Power and USB Input (00:10:12) Portcaster XLM 103 Analysis (00:16:00) Passport VO Microphone Switch (00:23:47) Michael's Experience with Sentrance (00:28:47) Difficulty Quoting Dates (00:31:35) Conclusion & Final Thoughts    Transcript Speaker A: And here we are again with another show. And we have another unboxing, something very special. And Robo's a very lucky boy.,Speaker B: Welcome.,Speaker C: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.,Speaker B: These guys are professional and motivated with tech. To the VO stars, George Wittam, founder of Source Element Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, Austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the Tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check ThePro Audiosuite.com.,: What you got, Robo?,Speaker C: I've got a little black box of magic.,: What did you get that I didn't get way down under before you'd ship it across the country. What the heck?,Speaker C: Very early Christmas present. And it's very cool. Can you see the black box? It's like a flight recorder. That was my first impression. It was like, whoa, what's this?,: It's very cool. Nice little kit. So what's this thing called?,Speaker C: And it's rock solid. It's called the English Channel. It's an audio studio in a box, effectively. So if we crack it open, there's this piece of magic inside. And I'm guessing that we can all.,: See that there's three separate units, is what I'm seeing.,Speaker C: Yeah. So there's three of Sentrance's units. All. Well, they're not linked together at the moment because you need to do that with these XLRs and USB connectors at the bottom. But it's very simple. Gotcha. Which we'll talk through in a minute. Effectively, you've got your pre and effects. So in the soapbox is your gain and your high pass, low pass filter, all that sort of stuff. There's a gate.,: So the soapbox is the preamp.,Speaker C: The soapbox is your preamp. So your mic goes into here and then it joins it. Daisy chains across the top to the others. But in the soapbox. Yeah, there's your high and your lowest pass filters, your 48 and your pad. And then you've got your gain, obviously, and a dry, wet mix for your effects, which we'll get to in a sec, including the gate, which is here, and a Deesser. And also the option to check to select the frequency the DS is working on, which I think is the bit of magic. You've also got an inbuilt compressor, which obviously is using a preset knee and ratio and all that sort of stuff. But from testing it out with AP the other week when it turned up, it's actually, not too bad. Used in moderation, and also when used in conjunction with the mix knob. So wet is full on wet. For those who are not sure what a mix knob is, full on wet is everything working at its capacity. But then when you use the mix knob and you start bringing it back towards dry, that processed effect is being mixed with the original signal coming in from the microphone.,: Interesting, because that is not a knob that most people are going to have in their signal chain. Like you have a single rack piece of gear. Let's say it's a channel strip. I'm thinking of a DBX 286. I know he's thinking of that piece of gear a lot when he developed a soapbox. The signal goes left to right, it goes preamp, then it goes through each thing in that sequence, and then it comes out the other end and it's all wet. You can't blend it. Here you have a blend, which gives you an interesting level of creativity in terms of controlling all that.,Speaker C: That's right. So even if you find that you've got to wind up the compression a bit more to get whatever the desired effect is you're looking for, you can still manage that, micromanage that by sort of then playing with your mix to get it just right, which is kind of clever. So I'm really impressed with that. I thought that.,: So that first box of soapbox has a preamp.,Speaker C: Yeah, has your preamp.,: It has a high pass filter.,Speaker C: High pass and low pass.,: Actually, no, just high pass.,Speaker C: Just a high pass. And then something called High Z. Oh.,: High Z would be for a guitar. Yeah, because it's got a high Z combo.,Speaker C: That's right. Well, that's the other thing, actually. Yeah. You can use this as a DI, but we'll get to that, I guess.,: And then it's got 2 meters. Is one an input meter and one an output meter? Yeah.,Speaker C: So one's an input meter and one's an out. But it's also showing you. Well. Yeah, so you can see your compression working, basically. You can sort of see what's coming in and what's going out when you're dialing in your compressor, which is kind of nice.,: Got it. And what are the three little lights across the top? Looks like? There's three LEDs.,Speaker C: So that's just showing you when your gate's working, when your gates kicking in and out. Then your compressor. Your compressor and your DS are working.,: XLR mail output. Is that right? Is there a dial on the back?,Speaker C: There's a switch there. There's your on off switch? I'm back here. Yes. So that's just your brightness of those lights back there that you can see.,: Okay.,Speaker C: So you can sort of make those a bit brighter or a bit duller.,: Oh that's cool.,Speaker C: Yeah, very cool. So then using the XLRs we then daisy chain from the soapbox into the black cab, which is his EQ.,: Does it come with cute little XLR?,Speaker C: It does actually. In fact we should have gone through that first in here. He's thought of everything. Can I just say, he's really switched on with this. You've got your little short XLRs in here which is very cool. So if we were putting this together we would be sort of daisy chaining from there to there like that, which is kind of cool. And then from there to the port caster. So you've got two of those all packed away and in nice little padded pouches too. Can I just say? And then in the other one, which is also very nice, we have the USBC connectors because the power also daisy chains. So the power comes into the soapbox and then using these USBs you can daisy chain to each of the other boxes. And he also gives you two USB C's for the power in and also one to go back to your computer interface, whatever it is you're using as well.,: Okay, so each one of these units needs power and they each have a USB input for power. But you don't need to have three power supplies then.,Speaker C: No. So you just use the shorter USBCs that he's provided like those XLRs and just daisy chain through each one. He's also given the long ones as well. But the nice thing that I think is really clever is if you haven't got USBC. He's also included the adapters for normal USB which is sort of nice.,: Nice.,Speaker C: So he's thought of everything.,: Not everybody does that product where I actually opened up a sound devices mix pre three for a client a couple of weeks ago. It's not a cheap unit, 600 $700 unit and there was no adapter and I was dead in the water until I went and got the right.,Speaker C: And isn't that the frustrating part? You get this cool piece of equipment like this land on your desk and you're like oh shit, I got to wait till I can get to it.,: Cost here so little for a manufacturer to throw those adapters, give you that extra thing and it's nice. I'm really glad he thinks of that.,Speaker C: Yeah, I was really impressed. Into the black cab is the next little box and you've got high mids and lows.,: Three band sweep.,Speaker C: Three bands, sweethearts, sweepable. They actually sound quite nice. And then again, up the top, you've got your high pass air, which is, I would presume, extra high. And you've got a pad and you've got a bypass as well. So if you don't want to put your EQ in there, listen up, voiceover artists, you can bypass that.,: Is there a hard bypass?,Speaker C: Yeah, that's his switch. Switch, yeah, it's a switch. And that's the other thing that he included in here, which I have to say, these switches are all sort of recessed into the top. But he includes one of those little metal things he used. The SIM card tool. Yeah, he includes one of those. So you can get in there and you don't have to use your pen or whatever else you can get in there with that and switch them on and off as well, Michael.,: So if you do want to bypass it on the fly, it's not something where it's just a button. You do have to kind of. You got to use the little pick to.,Speaker C: You do switch that? Yeah, you do. Or a toothpick or a pen or whatever, a paperclip, whatever you can get your hands on.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: So that's kind of nice. I think the only thing that I missed on here was a low shelf and a high shelf for me. These are all your sort of curves as opposed to an actual shelf.,: They're all bells.,Speaker C: Yeah, but again, bell shaped. That's right. Yeah, I said curve. But you get my point. Exactly. But I guess realistically, if you were doing a voice, you probably wouldn't be using the EQ section anyway. Well, I hope you wouldn't be.,Speaker A: Well, the other thing is, I don't think it's not targeted for someone like me. That's overkill and stuff on there. I would never use.,Speaker C: Yeah, true.,: Where I would see it being useful if somebody had it would be for making a small correction. So if you don't have quite the right mic, there's a lot of people that have a Neumann TLM 103 that shouldn't have one. And that mic is very upper. It's got a big upper shelf on it. I mean, it has quite a bit of a sibilance peak. And there's a lot of women who are being told to use that mic for some reason, or their friends have one and they go buy that mic and it's just really sibilant. So to be able to go in there and then smooth out that shelf with an EQ and just leave it, set it and forget it would be pretty sweet. That's where I could see the EQ coming into play. Or if you're in a small booth and the low end is not quite well controlled, you haven't done a good job of eqing the room or you did your best and it's still boomy. Having a little way to sculpt the low end would be helpful.,Speaker C: I told you George would know.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Yes.,: So the soapbox.,Speaker C: The black cab middle one. Yep, the black cab.,: The black cab. And then it goes into the.,Speaker C: Really, for the content creators out there, this is the really sexy and useful part of this thing, is you obviously have your mic that you've plugged in down onto the soapbox. You have that come in here and that's been through your processing chain, but in sort of shades of the passport Vo. You can also plug in your phone to here.,: I happen to have a Portcaster pro, by the way, and I love it.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: When I do it is awesome because of that phone patch functionality, the onboard recording, I mean, I'm using it for me. I'm using it as a field recorder for DOing field reporting, doing video interviews where I want to capture the audio in super high quality. I also used it in the video we did a while ago where we were at the. Actually, I don't think we did it for our show, but I did some videos recently that I posted@Vocalbooth.com, where I was inside the vocal booth. And in the video, if you happen to see it, you'll see me holding something in my hand. And that's the Portcaster. Yeah.,Speaker C: Right. Yeah, I saw it.,: To get a super high quality recording right off of the microphones we were using in the. Yeah, that's.,Speaker C: And when we see the rest of it, the question would be, why wouldn't you? Because you also got another mic input that can come into there. You've got a mono stereo blend. Now, I didn't play with this, George, because. So maybe you can give me a bit more. You could be a bit clearer about my understanding, and maybe I've got it wrong. But if you have two mics, does the mono stereo split them? Is that what I'm doing? If it's in mono, I'm hearing them both in both ears. But if I wind up the stereo, is it putting one in one ear and one in the other? Is that what I'm doing?,: Yeah, it's an interesting design choice. I mean that Michael did it. Because when it's in mono, it's just a mono mix of left and right. Everything comes down the middle. As you turn towards stereo, it now starts to separate them into a stereo channel.,Speaker C: So it's like a pan.,: And that's kind of unusual. Usually you either have mono or you have stereo. And here you have a knob. So you have anywhere from Mono to stereo.,Speaker C: Does that affect what's going out? Does that affect my output from here? Or is it only what I'm listening to?,: So that affects what goes to the line output. So if you're plugging it into a phone or a camera, and I believe it also affects what goes to the USB output that goes to the computer.,Speaker C: Because if you were doing a line.,: I think it affects all three, the recording, the line out and the USB.,Speaker C: Because if you were doing a live broadcast or something with this thing, that would make sense. Because me being me, I like to pan our show so that everybody's got their own little space. If you were doing a live broadcast, you could do that with here as well, I guess.,: Yeah. Or if you just want to have full separation of your two mic channels. Full left pan. Right, full left and right pan. You just turn that all the way to the right. And now your mic two is on channel two.,Speaker C: There you go. And you've got your separation. If you want to do it in post later on or whatever. Yeah, very nice.,: And I like that because the really basic interfaces, like the Scarlets and SSL Two s and the like, there is no option. Channel one is track one left. Channel two is track two right, period. So now you get a mixer where you can actually blend them and set them the way you want.,Speaker C: Yeah, very cool.,Speaker A: That's nice.,Speaker C: That's good. Your auxiliaries, there's two of. So you've got your mix of those down here. And then obviously volume, which is your monitoring. And what I missed up the top, which is also kind of nice, is you've got a limiter on both the XLR inputs, actually. I also think you can also put that limiter across your phone, by the looks of it, as well.,: Yeah, you know what? That's a darn good question. I don't know if the limiter circuit includes the phone patch function or if it's only for the preamp. I never saw the diagram and I haven't tested it. I have used all those functions, but I didn't notice whether the.,Speaker C: I'm presuming that it might affect the phone because it's on the same sort of eyesight level as that switch between the microphone and the phone. So might not.,: Yeah, we'd have to look at a signal flow diagram. When we designed the passport VO, that was a huge part of our time was spent scrutinizing, tweaking and adjusting the signal flow diagram to figure out where the switch is, where the knob is, where is each single piece in the signal flow as it goes. Know I'll take my opportunity to use this product here to promote our product. The reason we created Passport VO is because as feature riches of what this thing is that Robo is holding here, because this does things ours isn't going to, you know, three fully sweepable EQ bands Deesser things like that. But the reason we made the passport was there are really nuanced, interesting things we wanted to do with the signal path. We wanted to be able to have a separate return from the computer and have that be recordable or send that back to the headphones or whatever.,Speaker C: Right.,: So that was a huge part of the design. So it would be interesting to see. I'm sure Michael will say, oh, no, of course, I did it this way because this makes the most sense.,Speaker C: That's right. Given the attention to detail with everything else that's in this packet, it wouldn't surprise me that the limiter was across both of. So then the rest of the power of this beast is on the bottom down here for me, which is. And again, you'll probably expand more on what I've been able to play with in the short amount of time I've had it. But you have an inbuilt card recorder, right? So the micro SD, so you can record, you can play back off that. And I presume that only plays back to your headphones and not out the USB would be my guess.,: That does sound correct to me. There are things I use my unit for that I've done with it and I've never tried playing and then recording USB and seeing if it comes out. I don't think that it does that.,Speaker C: It would be very cool if it did. It would be very cool. I'd be well chuffed with Michael if he thought of that. But, yeah, maybe not. So then you've got the power daisy chain over that side and then the USB on the other side is your output back to your computer. 48 volts, obviously, monitoring in stereo mono, and a high and low output selector. What am I thinking of, George?,: What's the word? Oh, yeah, that's the line output pad switch. So if you're plugging this into a line level signal recorder. Let's say you plug it into, I don't know, some cameras and some devices can take a line level and other cameras can only take mic level. So having that switch means that if you plug this into your handicam, your DSLR, whatever your camera is, as long as you have it on low, you won't clip the input of the camera and distort the hell out of the audio.,Speaker C: Yeah, right.,: How many times have you seen like some low budget video production or TV where the audio is completely over modulated because they're shoving a mixer signal into their camera input, which is a mic input.,Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.,: It's designed to take this mic, plug that with an adapter to an 8th inch jack and plug it into the camera. That's what it's for.,Speaker C: Exactly. Yeah.,: So this can output either level without clipping.,Speaker A: So who do you think this is targeting? Robo?,: Yeah, that's a great question.,Speaker C: Who do I think it's targeting? I think definitely sort of content creators at home who maybe don't want to invest in a door or an expensive door or plugins or whatever, just want to be able to record and edit and spit it out. So it gives them the flexibility to add some of those features that are in here, the compression and the gating and all that sort of stuff. The thing that occurred to me after 35 years in radio is that outside broadcasting for radio, this thing would be perfect because you can plug your announcer mic in. You've got a guest mic should you need it. And you could use the phone return, or you could use the auxiliary input to monitor what's happening in the studio. So you can hear your music, you can hear the commercials, you can hear the callers coming in. But you could be sitting outside your local.,: Can be the return from the studio. Exactly.,Speaker C: You could be sitting outside your local store who's having a promotion that day doing your radio broadcast with basically just this and a laptop with a source connect connection. Hello.,: To me is the killer app for this thing. Is using it for Field broadcast?,Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.,: Awesome. For field broadcast. Absolutely. I also see it being accompanying a musician when they're traveling. They might want to run their guitar rig through this, or they might want to capture their stage kit, or they might want to use it in the room, their hotel room, to do jamming or practicing or laying down tracks or there's a lot of interesting ways to use it. I certainly don't see the typical voice actor using a full blown channel strip or an EQ like that. Probably not typically, if you happen to be a producer or engineer and you know how to fine tune that stuff, then maybe. Or if you got one and you had me or Robert or Robo tuning it for you, like, all right, let's add a little bit more of the low know, which I do that occasionally. I talk people through on Zoom or whatever, and I explain how to adjust everything. Source connect is really the best because you can hear the absolute detail. And then I can have somebody adjust the knobs on their unit. That's where this thing could be really killer.,Speaker C: It really is. Well, it's actually more than that. It's a three, four channel console in a box, really, because you got your mic input and then you've got your couple of other line inputs and all that sort of stuff that you can play around with as well. So it's basically a tiny console in a box, really.,: I meant to ask you, I know the Portcaster is USB power or battery power. The other two units require power, correct?,Speaker C: Yeah, they both require power, which comes from that daisy chaining sort of thing.,: Right.,Speaker C: And then the other cool thing, just as an aside, and I guess, for whatever reason, let's say I was going to record somewhere, and all I needed was the podcaster. When you flip these things over, you can unscrew them, and you don't need a screwdriver or anything. You can unscrew them and you can.,: Just take the one you bolted to the tree.,Speaker C: That's right. So you can just. Okay, I need the port caster, but I don't need anything else. So I'm just going to take that, throw that in my bag with a microphone, and I'm off. And my phone or whatever. He's thought of everything. I'm so impressed. It's very cool and very clever.,Speaker A: And what's the build quality?,Speaker C: It's really heavy. It's chunky. It's sturdy. These are all metal, the cases, by the feel of them.,: How do the Pot knobs feel? Do they have a nice.,Speaker C: And they're really comfortable to use. And they're not stiff. Stiff, but they're not so loose that you could just bump them, which is kind of nice, given that you'll be sort of moving it around a bit, I would imagine, and all that sort of stuff you can sort of almost set and forget. Like, you could do your setting before you left home. You might have to tweak it a little bit when you get somewhere. But I would imagine if you put it in the case and close the lid, you could arrive where you wanted to get to and it would still be set to where you were without being. Having been.,: Is this your first time hands on with sentrance equipment?,Speaker C: Yeah. I'd never heard of Sentrance until we started talking to them about the passport.,: I take it for granted because I've been dealing with or using Sentrance gear since 2009.,Speaker C: Yeah, right. Well, there you go.,: I'm really accustomed to the build quality and what they are. So it's cool that you're finally getting your hands on one because you're basically feeling by holding the podcaster you're going to feel exactly what the passport is going to feel like.,Speaker C: Man, I'll be sharing the love down here. I'll be honest with you. This thing is incredible. To finish off what else is in the bag. Which sort of just again, goes to show how much thought's gone into this.,: Thinking of everything. Yeah.,Speaker C: I mean he sent, this is now it's Us and he can't cover all countries. But there's your little plug which you can see, which is a US plug, but it's got your two USB connections for your power if you need that.,: But that's just a standard power supply for USB, right?,Speaker C: That's right, exactly.,: You've got a power adapter, a local power adapter in Australia of course.,Speaker C: And he can't do one.,: The power plug in Australia, are they unique to Australia or are they in common with parts of Asia?,Speaker C: Yeah, no, they're pretty much unique to here. So we've got three pin plugs. We've got an earth as well.,: Everything has an earth ground. Right.,Speaker C: Yeah. Without we've got. So we've got the positIve, negative Earth. We've got three pins. Yeah.,: It's crazy.,Speaker C: In the.,: US you can still buy lots of things without the Earth ground.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: Well this USB charger for Mac.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: That's extremely similar to a US one. It's just that the two pins are on slant. Yeah, the US is just parallel. Yeah, almost the same.,Speaker A: But normally I plug so. And I won't unplug anything because I'll probably turn something off.,: That'll be a bad sign. Don't unplug stuff while you're on this.,Speaker C: That's right. These are the bits that we always joke about that you'll never read but everything's. And I wanted to point this out.,: Only manuals for all of them.,Speaker C: Only because it sort of dumbs it. It's not dumbing it down, but it's so well explained that anybody who sort of has a general understanding of audio will be able to still sort of pick these things up and go, okay, I know what I need to do. They're clearly laid out. Everything's marked, everything's labeled nicely.,: Yeah, it's analog gear. It's got a USB, but it's analog. So each knob has a job. It's labeled what the knob does. So how much manual do you need when it's that straight versus something where it's like 15 layers of menus? I was setting up that mix pre three for my client. I was like, oh, my God, I need to open the manual, dude. I can't figure this thing out. To save my life, I had to watch YouTube videos and even to pass a signal to the Mac through the USB port. It was not intuitive whatsoever because it's all hidden inside little. The screen on that machine is like size of a post.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: Stamps.,: I don't know, bigger than a poacher stamp, but it's like this big. And so you're, like, touching the little. So having everything. A knob and a switch for one job, man, that's the dream. That's why I'm so excited about the passport.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So straightforward. No more firmware. Annoying stuff.,Speaker C: No more.,Speaker A: So we must be getting close, actually. How close are we to the passport video?,: Well, Michael has been giving us updates from time to know. I get emails. I don't know if you guys get emails, but I certainly get emails once or so, maybe a week, from somebody who's getting curious what's going on. There's still a projection of early spring, late winter, early spring, so March, April. It's such a moving target that it just doesn't feel right to quote any dates and times as soon as you do. It's the Elon Musk syndrome.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: Everything is, like, coming right? And you're like, hey, we've been waiting six years for this whole self fulfilled driving car thing, and they didn't hear you.,Speaker C: We're going to tell our advertisers to fuck off. Is that what we're going to do?,: I watched that whole interview. That was very interesting.,Speaker C: It was, isn't it?,: Yeah. So I'm always like, of the under promise, over deliver thing, but at the end of the day, it's going to come out when it's ready. And people don't like to hear that because we've had 87 eightyat of you have invested in that unit now at this point.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So we have a lot of people obviously vested in this.,Speaker C: It'll be worth the wait.,: But it's worth the wait. And it is definitely coming. Until we have had one in our hands to actually test a prototype, we won't be able to give you any definitive yes when it's coming. And it's funny if you look on the buy page on the actual store@centrens.com. We have a 4.8 star review. Six reviews. Six people are so excited.,Speaker C: Haven't even had.,: They've already given it a review.,Speaker C: They even got it. Yeah, there you go.,: Trust us, folks, it doesn't exist quite yet, but there are still some, believe it or not, available. There's twelve of the initial batch still available to buy. So when they do ship, you get it, you'll be able to get on that first batch. So stay tuned. We're all excited. And trust us, as soon as we have our unit in hand, just like Robo does, we'll be definitely be sharing it with you guys.,Speaker A: Indeed.,Speaker C: Indeed.,Speaker A: Now, we haven't made any reference to the fact you're wearing a Santa hat, George.,: Why would I be wearing a Santa hat anyway?,Speaker C: He's having a home classic.,: I put it on earlier, I did a video and I thought, I'll just leave it on.,Speaker C: Why not?,: You can't tell because it's too bright. But the lights are twinkling. There you go. Yeah.,Speaker C: We got a four star rating. And you got a four star Santa cap. I was going to say, and if.,: You'Re really good, I'll give you a five star.,Speaker A: That's funny. We've had a five star general. Now we've got a five star Santa. You may have noticed one thing that I obviously have been feeling a bit jealous about. Robo's hair, so.,: Robo.,Speaker C: I even had a haircut yesterday. Look at that.,: Mine is longer than ever. I've really let this thing go crazy seeing how long I can tolerate it, if I can make it through the end of the year.,Speaker C: So listen, guys, just before we wrap this thing up, just to bring this all together, I don't know whether I've told you guys, but we've got Michael from Sentrance coming on to do a video episode with us in a couple of weeks. To walk me through that, we're going to plug it in and have a play with it. So that should be a bit of an in depth dive. He might even make you look silly for once, George. I try, but I can never succeed. Maybe Michael will.,Speaker B: Leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say good day, drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com.       

The Pro Audio Suite
Austrian Audio Mi-Creator unboxing.

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2023 20:04


The Austrian Audio MiCreator is a new type of creative tool. Equal parts high-quality condenser microphone and simple audio interface with USB-C ® connectivity, MiCreator gives you the flexibility to create what you want—how you want. Just plug in and start recording in top-notch audio quality instantly. Or expand your setup using MiCreator's additional input to achieve stereo recordings, record an additional sound source, and more. And whether you're recording at home or on the go, you can create with confidence thanks to MiCreator's ultra-durable metal housing. Catch the video version here: https://youtu.be/vJBR0tBBUaw AP got his hands on one and we figured we'd share his early Christmas day unboxing it as our first video episode... 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    Summary In this episode of Pro Audio Suite, our hosts George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren Robert Robertson, and Andrew Peters unbox Austrian Audio's new Creator Studio. They humorously discuss their first impressions, visual appeal, and play around with its innovative features. The product, a comprehensive home recording solution, impresses them with its sleek design, changeable magnetic panels, dual microphone system for stereo recording, and high audio quality. Furthermore, they touch on Austrian Audio's partnership with Passport VR, presenting the Pro Audio Suite version of the headset that boasts stunning sound quality. The episode is packed with enjoyable conversation, honest opinions, and valuable insights into the latest in audio technology. Don't forget to subscribe and join their Facebook group. #AustrianAudioUnboxing #ProAudioSuitePodcast #HomeRecordingSetup    Timestamps (00:00:00) Introduction (00:00:52) New Audio Tech from Austria (00:01:22) Austrian Audio's Home Recording Innovation (00:03:59) Microphone Customization (00:06:30) Mic Functionalities (00:10:25) Austrian Audio's High-Quality Mic (00:14:58) Passport Vo Mic Modes (00:19:24) Praise for Austrian Audio    Transcript Speaker A: We have something special inside this box which we're about to reveal. Stick around, 54321.,Speaker B: Let's go.,Speaker A: Welcome.,Speaker C: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite.,: These guys are professional.,Speaker B: They're motivated with tech. To the vo stars George Wittam, founder of Source Element Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robert Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Tribooth, Austrian Audio making passion heard source elements george the tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's, international demo. To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite.com line up, Leonard.,Speaker C: Here we go.,Speaker A: And welcome to another Pro Audio suite, this time on camera, thanks to Tributh. Don't forget the code. Trip a P 200, $200 off your tribooth and Austrian Audio making passion heard. Now we're about to divulge something new from Austria.,: Cracking into a box.,: It's not even Christmas yet.,Speaker A: I know. This is it.,: I can hear the bells.,Speaker A: Well, you see, I have my Santa beard on.,: He's got the ho ho ho beard. I'm not talking about the white beard.,Speaker A: At least he gets three hoes every year. I'm lucky to get one.,: What's in the box?,Speaker A: What's in the box?,: Come on, show us the box first. What's it say on the front, Mr. Peters?,Speaker A: It says my Creator Studio.,: Nice. This is the Austrian audio. This is the new now, I've actually.,Speaker A: Had a play with this. And you've actually heard this robber? You heard what it sounded like?,: I have.,Speaker A: And so did you guys hear did.,: You get a blind listen?,Speaker C: Yes.,: Like, you did have a blind listen.,: It was one of those conversations. What mic am I on?,: Oh, I love that.,: I love and Robert was on some crappy audio technical thing.,Speaker A: But then he says to me I said, what am I? And he goes, Is that a microtech Gaffel? I'm like, no, it's a USB mic.,: He's like, holy shit. Not yeah.,Speaker A: So, anyway, so it comes with USBC comes with the does it come with two cables? Yeah, it comes with the TRS and jack. And that's for what is that? Well, that's a di on the end of that cable. That's just an unbalanced jack and a TRRS. So if you want to di into the microphone, you can use that. So di your guitar.,: So, wait a minute.,: Is that an output cable or an input?,Speaker A: An input cable.,: An input cable, yeah. We should actually mention that this is sort of Austrian Audio's nod to home recording, sort of, isn't it, really?,Speaker A: Absolutely.,: So it's not just a microphone? No, it's a microphone and an audio interface.,Speaker C: Correct. Yeah.,Speaker A: So, anyway, so you got that so unbalanced into a TRRS, into the back of the mic.,: Your normal USB, that quarter inch unbalanced, would go into a guitar or a keyboard or some instrument. Got it.,Speaker A: It's really cool. They also chuck in this, which I thought was really good because when you look at the bottom of the mic, you know when they got the small I don't know what it is in Imperial, but when you got the smaller thread in the mic, I thought, oh, that's going to be great. Trying to get that onto a stand. Standard mic stand.,: Call it quarter 20. Is that the camera standard in the US? Yeah.,Speaker A: Well, it's not actually. Is it camera? I'm not sure. Anyway.,: Is it really small or like the middle?,Speaker A: No, it's kind of like yeah, that's quarter 20. But they chuck that in an adapter, which I thought was really cool, because.,: When I looked at it so it goes from quarter 20 to five eight, which is the US imperial, whatever you call it. Microphone stand.,Speaker A: We call it Imperial, but I don't know whether imperial. Imperial.,: Yeah. We are the Imperialists. I always forget that.,Speaker A: Exactly. Now, inside we're being reminded that more.,: But that's another story. Anyway. Yeah. So what else is in that?,Speaker A: Well, this is kind of cool. You get the two magnetic panels, so if you want to change it from black to red, you can.,: What do they do?,Speaker A: Sorry?,: What did they change?,Speaker A: I'll show you. I'll show you in a moment when I get the mic out. Also your standard, like that thing you.,: Never read, that thing you throw in the bin.,Speaker A: If all else goes wrong, then maybe you'll look at that at some point.,: I have a huge bin full. You know what I use those for? It's the archive of all the crap I have bought in the last ten years in one box.,Speaker A: Well, I can tell you what these would have been used for years ago. Would have been perfect filters, but business cards, not doing the good old days. Anyway, you can't put those in your pool filter.,: Don't be silly.,Speaker A: I wouldn't be surprised what's in there. So here it is. That's the Austrian audio. My creator. And I can tell you, you would say it has some heft nice. Okay, but if you don't like the.,: Black keeps it simple, doesn't it?,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: If you don't like the black, you just go, now it's red.,: Nice. You could do they think of everything, don't they?,Speaker A: Same on the back. Chuck that on there. That one doesn't want to go on. Oh, yeah, it's on.,: See, that would go well in your booth with the red lights.,Speaker C: AP.,Speaker A: It's just perfect. It's my colors in here. Red and black.,: That's pretty cute.,Speaker A: So that's cool. But this microphone now, I don't know technically how it all works, but it's got on the front, it's got high, low and mute. Now, I do know the mute is when you're either using the other microphone that you can attach to this, or if you're using a di oh, I see what I did wrong. You take those ones off.,: That's why I didn't oh, I see, the replaceable guy.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: But I think that this mute is for if you're running a di. I think that's how it works.,: Okay, so that mutes the di.,Speaker A: Is that what you I think it allows you to monitor, like, if you use something in the back here, you've got the in out and you've got the out. Now the out from here would either be your headphones or you run this other lead. In fact, that's the point. Where is the other lead? I'm sure there's supposed to be another one that goes out of here and into the other microphone. If you have the two and speaking.,: That will be with the other microphone, I would presume.,Speaker A: I'm guessing it makes sense. I've not opened this box, so I don't know.,: So it's not one box, it's two.,Speaker A: Two boxes.,: It's a double unboxing.,Speaker A: Double unboxing. Top that. Oh, yeah.,: There you go.,: Unboxings for the price.,Speaker A: Yeah, the leads are in there. Okay, that makes sense. So let me just get this one out.,: So what's the idea here? Do we have a two mic system?,Speaker A: Yeah. So you can run it as a stereo mic. So you can say you want to do like an acoustic guitar or something and sing. You can actually one mic on or you could do two mics on the guitar. If you're just doing that, like, you've.,: Got a vocal ensemble that you need to record. You can do it in stereo. You can put one left and one.,Speaker A: Right, but also, like, even for what we mean if you're doing interviews yeah. So then you have the if I.,: Was doing, like once I recorded a podcast down at Bondi Beach, so I can imagine I would have lapel mics on the guests and then have one of those on a couple of stands just recording Ambience in the background, even.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: So that's the second part of the.,: Stereo, which okay, so that's the primary and secondary.,Speaker A: Yeah.,: Mic. That's the secondary.,Speaker A: So it has a link and an out. So if you're connecting the first mic to this one, you go into the link with the TRRS, whatever it is in there, and then your out becomes your headphone out. So it actually bypasses the headphone out of the main mic and then takes it into this one.,: Whoa, that's pretty clever.,: That's cool.,Speaker A: Yes, that's the other one. This is if you get the studio set, you don't have to buy them both.,: Yeah. This is the full studio set. Or you can get just the main mic as a single.,Speaker A: But I can tell you the quality and for the money, I don't know what they retail it. I haven't looked.,: I shall check.,Speaker A: But the quality of them is like it's really weighty.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: Now I don't know whether they just.,: Yeah, well, what I heard of it, it sounds brilliant. I mean, we'll obviously do a test in another episode, but from what I heard of it for 30 seconds or so earlier today, it sounds awesome.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: So you get another couple of cables in here. What are they? Okay. Oh, you got an adapter. Okay. So you can run that into maybe a mini jack into that, and then split that into the back of the other one.,: That could be a lavalier.,Speaker A: That could be for the lav.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So the whole system set, which is what you have there, apparently, which has the master mic, the secondary mic, the color change panels, 1232 audio cables and a USB. And I'm seeing something else you didn't mention. It looks like there's a stereo bar. Did that come with your kit, too?,Speaker A: No, I haven't seen one.,: Okay. Because on the website, it actually also has a stereo bar. Hang up this whole thing on there, maybe because you have a preview package. Yeah, they didn't have the full retail kit, but the retail kit also has a nice zippered case. Everything goes into and a stereo bar, too.,Speaker A: Okay, that makes sense.,: And that whole thing is 299 us.,Speaker A: That's crazy.,: It's a good price, isn't it?,Speaker A: For what you get, honestly, and what it sounds like. I mean, look, I didn't listen to it until about half an hour ago when we set them up, and I just was talking to Robbo and Robert and to me, it sounded really good.,: Well, for me, the sound of it is on par with the 16 that I'm on, to be honest. It sounds brilliant.,Speaker A: Yeah, it does, actually, because I was thinking, like, even for what voiceover guys do when you're on the road, just chuck that in your bag. Yeah.,: Nothing in what you were doing when you were talking on that before when I was listening, there's nothing in there that you would make you go, there's no way I'm using that for a voiceover.,Speaker A: And it also doesn't need a shock mount because I don't know where you can see this, but it's actually suspended in rubber.,: Wow. Yeah. See, that's cool.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: They suspended the capsule. That's right.,Speaker A: And you can also it's really nice, swivel the capsule to whatever you want to do.,: I know they're a sponsor of the show and people are going to go, yeah, you're only saying that because but I'm sorry, I'd say this anyway. These Austrian audio guys, they're so on the ball with this stuff.,Speaker A: I agree.,: When companies that make high quality products step into this creator space, they are now competing on price. Right. So they have to cut corners. But the thing is that the miniaturization of electronics, the quality of the capsules and the electronics are so good that they can cut all those corners, add more features and still have sound quality that rivals their studio mic. And that's the craziest part of all, because I can't wait to actually hear it and test it out.,: Yeah, like I said, I was listening on Source Connect now when I was listening to Andrew, and he'd only just thrown it up. So it probably wasn't in perfect position either for him.,Speaker A: Terrible, actually.,: And it sounded brilliant. I mean, it sounded like this. Yeah.,: I decided, in solidarity, to throw I had my other mic up. Of course, I just brought up the Austrian audio. I felt left out, but yeah. So what do you perceive you might find this good for? Do you think you could do some take it on the road with you, or what do you think you might do with it?,Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, that could be well, that's it.,: That fits in your Vespa, right?,Speaker A: Does fit in the vespa. You're reading my mind, George. You're reading my mind as you, um san Diego nice guys.,: You know, you've just come up with a new test for the show now, every time we test new gear, is it is it Vesper worthy?,Speaker A: It is vesper worthy. I mean, you think about, like, I chuck the road case on the Vespa when I go on these tours, and this would be perfect because I don't have to worry about an interface. There's your microphone, everything. Just one cable and a mic stand. Boom.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So little nitpicky stuff. And maybe we won't know these answers until you've used it for a while. Does it have a no latency monitor? So for headphone use, you can hear yourself.,Speaker A: There was no latency when I was monitoring at the back. The other thing that was really interesting.,: You plug your headphones directly into the mic.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: And then to hear yourself, is that the knob? Is that what that big knob?,Speaker A: Two stage knob. I don't know what else it does, but when I had it and it.,: Was showing, you click on the knob and it changes modes.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: The other one might be gain from the other mic coming.,Speaker A: I think one is gain and one is monitoring.,: Is there a gain knob on that second mic?,Speaker A: No.,: So I wonder whether that's it coming in there.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: So it would be this will be operating everything, I'm guessing.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: But the other thing I thought was really interesting, I don't know what the gain is on this microphone itself, but the headphone gain was really loud, right?,: Oh, really? Yeah. Did you get good levels in your can in your head?,Speaker A: I had to turn it down. It was too hot coming from you.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: But yeah, it was very loud.,: Wow. Cool.,Speaker A: Yeah.,: I'm really looking forward to you doing a test with that now. I really want to hear it, put it through its paces.,Speaker A: Well, it'd be interesting to see what it sounds like in a not so well, in fact, we heard it in a not great environment because I was sitting right in front of the computer screens. But, I mean, if you're on the road and you're doing the so called pillow fort or something, which is not ideal, particularly for a microphone like this, which is. Would that be a large diaphragm? I guess it is, yeah.,: I've been looking through the manual documents, and there's a document called my Creator Faceplate Customizing.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: Wow.,Speaker A: So that means you can have your own design. Yes.,: I saw that they give you EPS, Adobe Illustrator files, PDF, and so you can literally have your own Faceplate design to your spec.,: And they will make it for you, I guess.,: Yeah. They give you all the ability to customize.,Speaker A: You've given me an idea.,: I know what you're going to say. I'm with you.,Speaker A: What am I going to say? Vespa?,: You say, I can see us making.,Speaker A: Our own well, actually, I was thinking about me then, but yeah, you're right. Well, they're both thinking about us and me and whatever. That's not a bad idea, actually.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker A: Maybe we should talk to Austrian Audio about the Pro Audio suite version of.,: The that's right, absolutely. To team up with the sentence Passport VR.,Speaker A: Well, you don't need it because it's got an interface in it.,: It is a two for one, isn't it? So that knobs functionality is twofold, as you discovered. One mode, it's gain for the mic, and the other mode it's headphone.,Speaker A: Yeah.,: So I wonder what controls the gain from the secondary mic then.,Speaker A: I wonder where that I think that probably does as well. Let me go back to the other mic.,: The switch on the front, if there is a three way switch for the microphone gain, if this is at the lowest mute position, the visible red marking on the switch signals that the mic is muted on the input side. This is a so called hardware mute. Regardless of any other mute in any other program, your mic is muted, which is very important. That's why in the Passport Vo, we have a hardware mute button.,: The swear button. That's right.,: Yes, exactly. So it has the swear button in the form of that little switch. However, this only applies to the signal from the internal microphone. Anything connected to the other input jack is not needed.,: From the back of the room, he's still going to hear get.,Speaker A: Yeah.,: And then it has a low and a high gain mode. So I suppose you have to experiment and figure out which of those positions you want to use.,Speaker A: I think I had it on high gain, but I would imagine if it's a super loud source, like in front of a guitar cab or something, and you're going to pull it down to low.,: Yeah. Very cool.,Speaker A: But it's great. And it's hard to actually I know, watching on camera and stuff, but it's hard to explain how solid this thing feels.,: Well, you can see it. It looks pretty solid.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So I'm guessing it's it must have a steel chassis.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So the outer the ring around the mic and the ring a ring around the chassis and the ring around the mic, I suppose are probably steel as opposed to aluminum.,Speaker A: Oh, yeah.,: Imagine how flimsy it would be if it was just plastic, too.,Speaker A: It's funny because the panels behind those fake panels that you can change is actually plastic behind there, but the actual front, the surround, all this kind of stuff, and all this is metal.,: Nice. You wouldn't want to drop it if it was only plastic or something. Flimsy absolutely. You'd be in trouble.,: So it also does have an internal pop shield over that cap.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: And it says if that's not sufficient because you have poor mic technique doesn't say that, but they have the OCP eight, which is an Austrian audio pop screen that you can add on to.,Speaker A: Oh, so it fits over the top of this cage here.,: I guess. So they don't show a picture, but it's in the manual.,Speaker A: I'm curious. I would like to know what that capsule is in there, though.,: Yeah, well, you never really know because let's say it's the same as the OC 16 capsule. Theoretically, it wouldn't be a great thing for them, maybe to advertise that, because then you're saying, well, you can get that capsule in a $200 mic. Yeah, $400 mic. But there are different mics for different use cases.,Speaker A: But I think the OC 16 has the same capsule as the OC 18. And the eight one eight, it's just the electronics and the assembly are different. The electronics, they've trimmed quite a bit of that down. And also the OC 16 is made in China.,: And this is also probably made in China.,Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.,: Kit yeah, right. Again, it's price point. They're having to create product at a creator competitive price point, which is fair enough. Think about who they're competing against. They're competing against the likes of the Yeti, the Blue Yeti, and that's $100 to $200, depending on the model and stuff. So, yeah, that's what they got to do. But I have no doubt that if they're going to put their name to something like this, it's going to have the sound quality you expect. Yeah, we'll do some more testing.,Speaker A: Sounded great. I mean, I think it's fantastic. I'll muck around with it more and we'll do an audio podcast using it, so anyone watching this can listen and check it out. But, yeah, I reckon it sounds good. Austrian Audio, you've done it again.,: Win a winner.,Speaker A: Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Which makes me hungry.,Speaker C: Well, that was fun.,: Is it over?,Speaker B: The Pro Audio suite with thanks to Triboof and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the Tech Wittam don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say G'day. Drop us a note at our website. Theproaudiosuite.com.     

The Pro Audio Suite
The best way to use plugins on your Voice Over audio.

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2023 23:23


WAVES director of training and develpment Michael Pearson Adams (Gomez to his Aussie mates) joins us in part 1 of a chat about plugins for Voice Actors.  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    Summary In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, we introduce our special guest MPA, also known as Gomez from Waves. We deep dive into the realm of audio plugins, focusing on user-friendly options for the less technically inclined. Gomez explains how these streamlined plugins can simplify tasks, such as noise reduction and reverb clean-up, in audio recordings. However, the debate ensues on the importance of pre-recording room preparations and the potential overuse of reduction plugins. The discussion also touches on the advancements in AI technology for handling audio issues, the concept of "best edit," and the niche specificities of various plugins like Clarity DXD Reverb and Dereverb Pro. Use code Trip200 to get $200 off your Tribooth. #AudioEngineeringSimplified #ProPluginInsights #KeepingItSimple    Timestamps (00:00:00) Introduction with George Wittam and Robert Marshall (00:00:38) Discussing Noise Reduction Plugins with MPA Gomez (00:08:38) Mastering Extreme Editing (00:15:50) The Art of Invisible Editing (00:16:48) Exploring Plugin Niches    Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready? Be history.,Speaker B: Get started.,Speaker C: Welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.,: These guys are professional.,Speaker C: They're motivated with tech. To the VO stars, George Wittam, founder of Source Elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, Austrian audio making passion heard source elements George the tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check ThePro Audiosuite.com line up.,Speaker B: Learner. Here we go.,: And don't forget the code. Trip 200 to get $200 off your Tribooth. Now, we have a special guest today, MPA, known to us as Gomez from waves, is here to talk about some simple, let's put it this way, plugins for people like myself. A simpleton when it comes to audio engine. Simple people. Exactly.,: Right brain, folks. Right brain. Not simple, just right brain.,: Yes, exactly.,Speaker A: And I guess that's where the premise for this episode came from, really, was about keeping it simple. Because I was reading a Facebook post from a guy who was proclaiming the fact that he'd sort of been doing a session in a hotel room and hadn't bothered to build the pillow fort or do anything to negate the sound of the room, and then recorded his session and then used some sort of noise reduction plugin, like clarity, like whatever, like RX, to clean it up. And my first thought was, well, you're making the plugin work harder than it needs to, and that means that you're going to end up with artifacts in the audio that you want to keep because you've got this thing working so hard. Whereas I would prefer to hear, as an engineer, I would prefer to hear that you've done what you can to negate the room and then used a noise reduction plugin. If you feel it is absolutely necessary to just clean up what little artifacts are left, because there's less chance of that doing any sort of damage to the audio that I want to use. But then also, for voiceover artists and people who aren't techie, the words ratio attack time release time threshold mean nothing. So how do you use these plugins? And I guess the reason for getting you on, Michael, was to sort of, you know, what can they do?,: The thing with Pillowforts, from a pro point of view, and an advisory point of view, is people can actually go way over the top with those to the point that it degrades the sound more is not better. And I say the same thing to somebody. It's like when I'm advising them. And they say, well, we've been recording the voiceovers in the clothes closet. And I'm like, okay. And the result, they're like, well, it sounds really muffled and horrible and dead. There's no higher or mid or high frequencies. And I'm like, okay, so the first thing I want you to tell me is, is that cupboard filled with coats? If it's filled with things like coats and nothing else, then you're basically killing your sound. If it's filled with things, that is a variety of different kinds of cloth and material, you've got a much better chance of it just stopping audio dead rather than absorbing it. You don't want everything absorbed. You want it not bouncing around the room. The other one that I always love is when somebody goes, yeah, well, I put pillows and stuff around me. And I said, well, where in the room are you? This is next to the window. I said, you mean that floor to ceiling window in most hotels? Yeah, that's the one. It's a beautiful view. I wanted to see the view. It's like, well, the view is killing.,: You right now, bouncing off the window.,: Yeah. So there are varying levels of problem that need to be looked at. And that's literally one of the first things that we do when we're helping somebody is go, not only tell me that, yes, you're doing a pillow for this, I want to know what kind of clothes are in those closet. Not in a creepy way, but are we talking heavy winter coats? Are we talking big felt coats? Are we talking dresses, jeans? What are we talking about? How high?,: But at some point, do you solve the problem acoustically so much that you don't need a waves product? Or at what point is it like, okay, well, I can't actually bring in, or maybe I don't even want to go through the extent of flipping the mattress up on its side to put it along a wall.,: Flipping a mattress, as far as I'm concerned, just says more like you're worried about an assassin. So nearly every single masterclass I do with my waves hat on, I spend as much time telling people about the fact that I want you to use as few plugins as you possibly can to making sure that you're just not overdoing things. And it's one of the biggest problems is that people throw plugins on with way too much kind of ease and breeze without actually really thinking about it sometimes. And that also degrades. So you have to really decide, is this plugin going to fix something? Or am I just putting it on because I've heard it helps.,: You don't hear it helps, but you heard it helps.,Speaker A: Yeah. But the other thing is, too, Gomez, is that you should exhaust all your options in terms of getting a clean recording before you even put a plug in.,Speaker B: Yeah.,: Right.,Speaker A: To just open up the mic in the middle of the room and then go, oh, well, I'll just chuck a plugin on. In some cases, you're going to have to work that plugin so hard to get it cleaned up that it's to the detriment of the audio. Whereas if you've done everything, you.,: Absolutely.,Speaker A: And then you only need a tiny bit of plugin to get that tiny last few artifacts out of there, then that's a much better way of approaching it.,Speaker B: Right.,: There's also the positioning in a locality, too, of your face and your mouth to the microphone, even when you're in a. You know, if you're. If you're in a room that's really kind of echoey, entirely like a normal hotel room or anything that's got wooden floors, like this room, for example. I have no plugins on this because I didn't have time to put any on. But the simple reality is the closer you get to the microphone, the more chance that you've got of mitigating some of those issues without putting anything on it at all, and then you've got more of a chance of, okay, so what do I need to put on here? Clarity VXD Reverb or clarity XVX D Reverb Pro are definitely plugins that I wave a flag for the amount of effort, the amount of years, and the amount of time that we put into them. And people shouldn't buy them or try them just because somebody said years. There's just as many things out there that sound amazing, that somebody created in a month. But we did that. There's so many samples that we fed into this AI, like hundreds of thousands. And because of that, the result is it really works. But again, like any plugin, you can't overdo it. So my best suggestion with a plugin like Clarity VX de Reverb in a hotel room or an office or somewhere where you are, that is not your ideal place, or the place that you know is take it all the way to the extreme and then pull it back.,: Just a quick question for you. So if I was in a position where I couldn't actually manage the room that well, I've done everything I possibly can to control whatever artifacts, particularly reverb in a hotel room or whatever. If I use clarity VX de Reverb, is it destructive? So when I'm sending the file off to an engineer, can they?,: That depends on your routing. What platform are you using it in? How would you be setting it up?,: Well, I'm just saying if I give it too much, is it going to.,Speaker A: Do damage to the audio? Yes, it will do damage to the audio. Like anything over compressed, over noise reduction, overuse of noise reduction. You can even over EQ. Really?,: Yeah, definitely.,Speaker A: Anything like that because you're fucking with the audio. So you're changing the audio. Yes. It's, as Gomez said, hundreds of thousands of samples. But if you make it work too hard, it's got no choice but to start eating into the audio you want to keep. I would presume Gomez is.,: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Which is why I say take it all the way to the extreme and then work your way back.,: Yeah.,: And by the way, I give that advice for pretty much every plugin. It's like if you really want to know how to use subtracted EQ, go to the extreme and then move your way back. Same with compression and everything else, but with something like an aipowered de rumor, which is effectively what clarity DXD Reverb is. It cleans up the noise and the reverb in the room. You are going to get to a point where you're basically saying, okay, I've taken it out of automatic mode and I'm just going to get what it gives me on extreme and it's going to kill your audio file. However, I will tell you that it's very hard to do that in clarity. Any of the clarity plugins, because way back when we released vocal rider. Remember vocal rider?,Speaker A: I use vocal rider all the time.,: Okay, so Vocal rider was one of the first plugins that we ever designed and developed that was focused specifically on identifying the frequency range and spectrum of a human voice. So if you put vocal rider on like a drum, it's not going to work as well as a human voice. It's not even going to know what to do with it. You put it on a guitar, same deal. It's not going to know what to do with it. This is also why we then released bass rider. And then we focused that on the spectrum and frequencies for bass. Now, going back to vocal rider, that was our first jump into that field of, okay, so we want this to only understand what's going on with the human voice. Now, let's move forward to 2021, 2022, when we released Clarity VX this is very much designed around the human voice, and we've actually created it in such a way that it's hard to really mess it up. But depending on how much noise you've got and how bad the room is, especially on the pro version of the plugin, where there's more to tweak. Yeah. You can over dig yourself into a hole with the simple one with just a big knob in the middle and a couple of small switches. It's really hard to mess it up.,: Can I ask you, when does it go from being reverb to being resonance? Or maybe early reflections? Right. Because there's a certain point where Reverb is the artifacts or the room itself. When it gets to a certain size, maybe less than, I don't know, six by 8ft or something, reverb no longer is the same problem anymore. Now you're dealing with, like, pressure zones and early reflections. Are we getting to the point yet with AI where we can start actually dealing with that stuff too? Because you sound like you're in a tube. You sound like you're in a box problem. Are we getting to the point where we can fix that too?,: I figured that's part of the room, part of the reverb.,: It is part of the room. And dereverb it totally is. We can fix that.,: That's awesome.,: Yeah.,: Because that's much more complex than just a reverb tail.,: Well, that's always been the problem. Most other, there's been various de reverb plugins out there. And to be honest, what I used to use before clarity came out with a dereverb is you just take a waves C four and you put it all the way on expand, and you can tweak each frequency band and you can kind of sit on the tail. And none of the other products out there could get rid of the early reflections, which were really the telltale sign of you being in a small space, right? Essentially, yeah.,: There's a lot you could do with clarity VX, just the noise fixing plugins. But with de Reverb, we went all the way. And it's down to the little nuances of reflections as well as the big tails and everything else. It's like we want to make you sound like you're in a room that has no reflections. And that's one of the reasons why one of the controls you have is basically controlling the presence of the plugin. And it kind of takes your voice and makes sure that you're telling the plugin. Okay. So now that we've cleaned up that noise. I want you to take my voice and focus more exactly on that. And then the plugin will go, okay, right, so now you're in a cleaner room and you've got the ability to take your voice and put it right out front. So the other thing that you can do is you can basically choose which neural network you want to use. So if you're doing spoken voice, pick one for spoken voice. If you're singing, then use that neural network. You can choose whether you want stereo or whether you want mono. So if it's just a voiceover and that's it, then you can actually tell it, okay, I'm just dealing with mono single here. And it's going to work in a different way, but it will clean it up really nicely for you.,: It's funny, though, because it is quite subjective. Because I do remember I was away in April, and I obviously had to work while I was away in some pretty weird environments. And I sent a file to Robert. And I sent the same file. In fact, I think I sent it to all three of you, George and Robbo. I got feedback from Robbo and I said, would you use that? He said, yeah, I'd use that. And I got one back from Robert saying I wouldn't be happy if I received that. So to me, that is a sign of the whole thing being a bit subjective as well. Some people have no problem with it, and some people have a major problem with.,Speaker A: Audio is subjective, I guess, in its own, in and of itself. Audio is subjective, I suppose.,: Yeah. But the question, of course, is. So if that's the case, would I use it for Robo? No. Would I use it for Robert? Probably.,: It also depends on your listening environment. I mean, I can tell you that if I'm listening to something in this room, in this home studio, through my speakers, then it's going to sound different to if I'm in British Columbia at EA Sports in their mastering studio, and the same voiceover would sound probably completely different because they're listening to. There I'd be listening through PMCs, and here I'm listening through Adams.,: They're in a very expensive room, I would guess.,: Yeah. EA Sports has, I think, about 28 rooms right now.,: I heard the video game industry is doing okay. Like there's a budget these days.,: Their audio rooms are insane. You know, when a company like EA Sports stops calling itself a headquarters and calls itself a campus.,Speaker A: Welcome to the Voodoo Sound campus. Can I just say too, by the.,: Way.,: Campus is a road.,Speaker A: Yeah, campus is a row of tense. Let's have a look at something else. Speaking of games, say I'm a voiceover artist and I've just finished recording an hour or so of gaming voiceover and I look at the file and I think, oh, shit, that's a little dynamic. And for whatever reason, God knows why, but I feel like I should put some compression on it. But the word ratio to mean means nothing and attack and release time. What's a good one for that?,: Something really transparent and relatively hard to screw it up too badly.,: Yeah, well, everything. You want everything to be the best edit that you never heard. If somebody is listening to something and going, oh, there's a plugin on that, then you failed. It's as simple as that. So the term the best edit I never heard is one of my favorites.,Speaker A: I use it all the time. I stole it off.,: You did, didn't you? Yeah, I did, yeah. So now that I've said that, I forgot what you asked Rob.,Speaker A: So something like, I mean, my thought would be Avox, but you guys also have all the one Knob series and all that sort of stuff for someone, a compressor in the hands of somebody who knows nothing about what they're doing but needs to put a tiny bit of compression on something.,: What's a good one in that case? Yes. Rvox. So in studio rack I have a chain that I save and it's just my voiceover chain for this specific microphone. And the first plugin on it is clarity VX de reverb. The second one is Avox and the third one is one knob brighter.,Speaker A: Such a good plugin.,: Which one, sorry, let me say it in another.,Speaker A: Move back to Australia.,: There you go, one knob brighter.,: Brighter.,Speaker A: One knob brighter is such a good plugin and I think we've talked about this before, but Slate digital do a similar one, fresh air, but they're both equally good and I guess, I suppose, like clarity and all the other noise reduction plugins, each seems to have their own sort of niche that they work best in, I suppose. I think one knob brighter on voice is awesome, but Fresh air on it across a mix for me, just gives it that little extra bit of sheen.,: Oh, absolutely. And fresh air is. I nearly look at fresh air as something that's more comparative to something from us that would not be anything to do with restoration or eqing of any kind. There's a plugin which I'm trying to remember the name of and good God, I can't remember it for my life now, but it lets you adjust the width of each of your frequency groups, like low, mid high, mid high, lets you monitor them or stereo them. And I embarrassed that the product name has gone out of my head. But yeah, that's the one that I usually compare more to, to the air one from those guys.,: When do you make the leaps from clarity VXD Reverb to dereverb Pro?,: Realistically, if you're not producing the audio yourself, then from my perspective, clarity DXD Reverb is totally good for you. That's kind of what you need, right? Yeah. If, however, you are taking on and you're doing post production and you're dealing with everything that's coming in from multiple voices, multiple places, and you've got a multi track in front of you and you're dealing with that on a day to day basis, then that's when pro comes in because that's where you have the ability to control the tail more so you can smooth out the tail. You've got independent knob rather than just a simple fader for presence. You've got something that we call a strength multiplier. You've got the ability to go into every single part of the frequencies and choose which ones you really want the plugin working on and which ones you don't.,: Is that that EQ curve looking thing across the middle?,: That's the one of the graph? Yeah. The one that says strength and frequency.,: Right.,: So effectively that's exactly it. To strengthen frequency, it's like, okay, rather than just a knob, what we did was go, okay, right. So we're dealing this for the seasoned post production guy or somebody of that ilk going, okay, so this is where that room is. Let me focus all that and bring out. I don't want much of the strength on that part, but I do over here between three and eight K, it's very tweaky. Oh, it is. Very now.,: But if you were trying to match, like, if you had five different sources and you wanted them to sound like they're literally in the same space, sounds like the level of tweakability you would want to have.,: Absolutely. But if you're a voiceover or you're somebody that's doing your own stuff and you're doing it, or you're doing a podcast and you've got a guest coming in and they're on their MacBook Pro microphone and they're sitting in a kitchen on a tiled floor with a window behind them. And that's the kind of thing where honestly, just use the normal one with the one big knob in the middle. It's like a lot of plugins. You can get yourself into a hole really quickly unless you've got the expertise to be able to deal with it. Which is also why we released two versions of these. One of them is a quick fix, and by Quick Fix, I do not mean degraded quality at all. It's exactly the same neural engines, but it gives you less tweakability so that there's less risk of you messing it up yourself. And then you've got Pro, which has more tweakability, plus a limiter built in, plus width control, plus tail smoothing, plus the ability to get more neural networks and an analysis of both mono and stereo. It gives you a lot.,: Yeah, that was just part one of our chat with Michael Pearson Adams or Gomez, if you like, from waves. We'll be back next week for a continuation of this conversation, and we're also tapping into something which is kind of topical as we age, because some of us are doing that. We'll be talking about hearing loss and how best to manage it when you do this for a living. So join us next week. More chats about hearing, more chats about plugins, and more chats with Michael Pearson Adams from Waves. See you next week.,Speaker B: Well, that was fun. Is it over?,Speaker C: The Pro audio suite with thanks to Tribut and Austria and audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com.     

12 Million
#40 - Robert Marshall, CEO/ Founder - I Am Man, Inc. / The Survivors Circle

12 Million

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 8, 2023 53:34


Speaker, Author, and Male Empowerment Coach who helps boys and men win within! Follow Robert on Instagram | Learn more about Robert | Visit the Survivors Circle ====== 12 Million Podcast is a weekly conversation for the culture that was inspired by the Richard Wright book "12 Million Black Voices" 12 Million is a place for an intelligent and thoughtful conversation with BIPOC entrepreneurs, leaders, influencers, artists, and creators. Follow us on Instagram ⁠⁠@12millionshow

The Pro Audio Suite
Valve/Tube Mics and how to look after them

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2023 8:51


They sound great, look incredible, and have a distinct sound that makes them unique. But how should you look after your Tube/Valve mic? From keeping dust out of the capsule to preventing it from overheating, what's the best way to care your your investment? 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    Summary In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, hosts Robert Marshall, Darren Robertson, George the tech Wittam and Andrew Peters dive into an intriguing discussion about unique microphone handling techniques and the associated benefits. They answer a listener's question on why some people hang their microphones upside down - a technique often linked to protecting the microphone from overheating and avoiding dust accumulation on the capsule. They also introduce a discount code "trip a P 200" to get $200 off your Tribooth, recommended as the best vocal booth for home or on the road. Additionally, the team humorously integrates tire chat, sponsored by Canadian Tire, into their discussion. Don't forget to join the conversation on their Facebook group. #ProAudioSuite #MicrophoneTips #TriboothDiscount    Timestamps (00:00:00) Welcome to Pro Audio Suite (00:00:45) Hanging Microphones Upside Down (00:05:39) Trivia: The White Michelin Man    Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready be history.,Speaker B: Get started.,Speaker A: Welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite. These guys are professional. They're motivated.,Speaker A: Thanks to Tributh, the best vocal booth for home or on the road. Voice recording and Austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements and someone audio post Chicago. Darren robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging. Sydney to the Vo stars. George the tech Wittam from La. And me, Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home studio guy learner.,Speaker B: Here we go.,Speaker C: Welcome to another Pro audio suite. Don't forget, if you would like to get $200 off your tribooth, use the code trip a P 200. We had a question sent to us about microphone position particularly. Why would you hang your microphone upside down?,Speaker B: The answer is pretty obvious, if you think about it.,: To get to run all the blood out of it.,Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.,Speaker C: Yeah.,: So you can record Pink, who's famous for singing on stage, hanging upside down.,Speaker B: There you go. There's another good answer to dry it out. Well, there's that as well. That's right. Yeah, exactly.,Speaker C: Or you could record like Brian Wilson in a beanbag.,: I think the new thing with microphone should kind of be like how gangsters will hold the gun sideways. I think we do the gangster style sideways microphone.,Speaker B: Right.,Speaker C: But here's another reason, a serious one. And this is a fine example of a microphone that should be hung upside down. This is the Microtech Gafel M 92.1s, featuring the original M seven capsule. And inside is a valve, or for our American friends, a tube, the EF 86 tube, which, of course, generates heat. And what does heat do? It rises. Rises, affecting the capsule. But if you hang it upside down, it goes out the bottom.,: The heat avoids the capsule.,Speaker B: And we have a wiener.,: And there's another reason. And also it gets it out of the way of the script and all that stuff.,Speaker B: Yeah. And it looks cooler, too, I reckon.,: Yeah. Those are the practical reasons for voice actors.,Speaker C: The other reason you hang your mic upside down is dust as well. So you don't get dust inside the.,Speaker B: That'S a good one. Keep the dust off the capsule, probably. Yeah, absolutely.,: And you should turn the phantom off because a polarized capsule will attract dust.,: Oh, see, I've been trying to think of good reasons to tell people to turn off phantom. I usually tell people, don't worry, just leave it on.,: I'm pretty sure a polarized capsule will attract polarized dust.,Speaker B: There's the two schools of camp. There's the school that says, Leave it on because turning on and off all the time is crap. And there's the school that says Turn it off. Because for all the reasons we've just mentioned yeah.,: I think you should therefore just turn it on to, like, 24 volts phantom when you're gone.,Speaker B: You think so? Half?,: No, you're taking me seriously.,Speaker B: Are you standing by that robert, are you going to pay all the police pay because you my mic claims? Because I want nothing to do with that.,Speaker C: No, not absolutely. But I always turn everything off anyway.,Speaker B: When I yeah, I turn off it. I put my computer to sleep, but I turn everything else off. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's the best way. I mean, God knows what's going to happen.,: Sometimes if you leave stuff turned on and the right thunderstorm comes by, kaboom. But if it's turned off, it might not quite get hit as hard.,Speaker C: That's one thing well, I bet people don't have because I've got the what do you call it, the CyberPower thing. So if we do get a major surge, it blocks it.,Speaker B: Yeah, I've got surge protection stuff on mine. But I always come back to my grandmother, because if I was talking to my grandmother when I was living in a state, when I was working in radio and there was a storm coming, she'd say, oh, I better get off the phone, there's a big storm coming. Okay, right on and see you later down the phone. She made me paranoid.,: Especially if it was like the cordless phones you had at your house back in the day when cordless phones first came out and they had the big antenna. And there used to be this guy that would walk around the block and he's like, this is so great. Because it was 900. Could go a good distance farther than WiFi. But yeah, if you're walking around with a big antenna coming off like.,Speaker C: The umbrella.,Speaker B: So if you hang your mobile phone upside down, do you still get struck by lightning?,Speaker C: No, and don't hold me to that.,: Yes. Are you sticking with that one, Rob?,Speaker B: I didn't know that. I want that court case either.,Speaker C: No way.,Speaker B: Right.,: How about we make a pair of headphones that are purely metal band made to wear in the rain?,Speaker B: There you go. Put them inside the voiceover bodysuit. Yeah.,Speaker C: With a large antenna. Like a lightning rod.,Speaker B: Yeah, lightning rod for the voiceover bodysuit. There we go.,: They can have little pokey things that get a really good contact on your temple so that when the lightning hits.,Speaker B: It just goes like, oh, look at George. There we go. George has got the metal band on his headphones. Look at that. They're cool.,: I like, George, that's too bad.,Speaker C: You know what you could do, though, just to if you wore the metal headphone and you put a lightning rod sticking out the top, then you run a wire from each side down your body and then connects to a metal plate on the bottom of your shoe. By right, you should be earthed and you should be okay in a lightning storm.,: Right. You're doing the same thing as you do to a whole house.,: Yeah.,: And we might need to do this for the voiceover bodysuit. What's it called? The lightning rod. Isn't that what you install?,Speaker B: You know what it's called, Robert? It's called the self charging device.,: The voiceover bodysuit is so goddamn soundproof that you can use it in a lightning storm.,Speaker B: There you go.,: But you need the additional add on option of these.,Speaker C: The optional lightning rollers.,Speaker B: Just gets sillier and sillier. We got to do it one day. We got to come up with a prototype.,: Didn't you send a picture the other.,Speaker B: Day, the Michelin Man? The original Michelin Man. Yeah.,: Do you know why the Michelin Man was white? Was wrapped in white tires?,Speaker B: I didn't know that either until I saw that. I know what you're going to say, so I'm not going to answer that.,: See if anyone natural rubber back in the day was white.,Speaker B: Yeah, they're white.,Speaker C: Of course they used to be white.,Speaker B: Natural rubber is white until they started dyeing it black. That's why the Michelin man's white. Always wondered that.,Speaker C: Now I know because my grandfather was a chauffeur back in the 1920s. And the car he used to drive, I can't even remember what make it was now because it was so long ago since I've seen any photographs. But that had white rubber tires, which, being a chauffeur would have been a bitch because he had to clean them all the time.,: Clean them all the time, absolutely. I'm sure that's why tires are black now.,Speaker C: Yeah.,Speaker B: Was that where white walls came from? Because the tires were white? But then we were driving on the black bitumen road, so the rubber became black on the bottom. The sides were still white, maybe.,: Yeah, probably.,Speaker C: I think when they make white walls, they actually take the black off and it's white underneath.,: I think that's how they do it.,Speaker B: There you go.,: Yeah, they wanted that white look. They wanted that classic, like a tuxedo for cars.,Speaker C: Imagine if you had white tires and you did a burnout. It confused the shit out of people behind you. They go, what the hell is a lane marking here? What am I supposed to do?,: Yeah, all of a sudden, people are like, driving in your direction. If you did a big spinning burnout, they're like, oh, over here.,Speaker A: Oh, shit.,: Check it out online. There are some red tires, some blue tires, just so that when you do burnouts, it leaves crazy colors on the street.,: Yeah, you could get like a red, white and blue tire and then you could be very patriotic about your burnouts.,Speaker C: Yes, you could. You could.,Speaker B: You have to change the name of the show now. The Pro Audio Suite and Tire Chat.,: Yeah, just general brain spillage sponsored by Canadian Tire.,Speaker B: Well, that was fun. Is it over?,Speaker A: The Pro Audio suite with thanks to Triboof and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the Tech Wittam don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say G'day. Drop us a note at our website theproudiosuite.com.     

The Pro Audio Suite
NEXUS 2 - The Professional way to record Web Based Sessions

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 30, 2023 35:20


Source-Nexus I/O is a plugin and virtual driver system that upgrades your workstation with a versatile audio input-output routing solution, tailored and customizable for streaming audio seamlessly from both DAWs and Desktop applications.  It Automatically connects to Source-Nexus Review for effortless streaming.  This week's episode is the soundtrack to a walk-through of the new interface we recorded with Robert. It's an in-depth look at a game-changing software you can't afford to miss if remote sessions are a part of your day-to-day business... You can see the video on our YouTube channel.. https://youtu.be/uxzEsSiJyQA 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 In this episode of Pro Audio Suite, the team introduces Robert Marshall from Source Elements and discusses the company's new communications platform for media professionals, Nexus. This platform enhances remote work by enabling content creators and voiceover artists to bring audio directly into a standalone app, and set up online review sessions with clients. Nexus also simplifies audio routing, making it easy to use, even for non-technical users. The platform, priced at $11.95 per month, promises a lot of value and utility for users. In future iterations, Nexus plans to provide more improvements and functionalities, making it an affordable, powerful tool for media professionals. #ProAudioSuite #SourceNexus #HomeStudioSolution   Timestamps (00:00:00) Welcome & Sponsor Shoutout (00:00:53) Intro to Source Connect (00:07:56) Discussing Buffer Setting (00:14:41) Nexus Tech Support History (00:20:23) Source Connect for Video Editing (00:26:16) Pro Tools I o Routing Issues (00:28:41) Source Connect Pricing (00:30:59) Broadcast vs Communication Users   Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready to be history? Speaker B: Get started. Speaker C: Welcome. Speaker B: Hi, hi. Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite. These guys are professional, they're motivated. Speaker C: Thanks to Tributh, the best vocal booth for home or on the road voice recording and Austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements. And someone audio post chicago Darren, robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, sydney to the Vo stars, george, the tech Wittam from La. And me, Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home studio guy. Speaker A: Line up. Speaker B: Here we go. Speaker C: And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite. Don't forget the code trip a P 200 to get $200 off your tribooth. : And don't forget Georgeth tech TPAs for your deals. Speaker C: Man indeed, indeed, indeed. And don't forget demosthework.com. Anyway, that's enough plugs now we're talking. Speaker A: About Source elements.com today. Speaker C: This is a first for us, the first time we've been seen on camera, which sorry about that. It's the way it goes. Speaker A: No, scary. : Oh, crap, I forgot I should need to stop picking my nose now. Speaker C: As long as that's all you're picking. Speaker A: Yes, that's got your balls. Whatever you do. Speaker C: So this is the new source nexus. Speaker B: Robert yeah, we just released this and really something that I guess if a lot of our crowd are voice talent, at least initially here, this is kind of showing more of the client side or our new version of a client side application kind of shooting down the middle. We had originally made Source Live, which has a really high powered server assisted video streaming system and it can have a lot of, I think up to 20. We tested up to 26, 25 or 30 people. We just ran out of people to test with. But it shouldn't have any limits on the number of connections. So the idea here was to take Nexus, which has started to become sort of a slightly more commoditized concept. Nexus going way back how many years ago? I'm not sure, but it feels like probably at least ten, maybe a little bit more, maybe 13 years ago or so. Nexus comes out and really sets this genre for how to construct post sessions so that you can have your talent coming in on Source Connect. You can have your clients in on various meeting platforms, you can have a remote connection. Nexus was also used for bringing in sound effects, feeds and other monitorings of other types of things, things that you would normally patch into a patch bay in the hardware world. This is now all starting to happen application and Nexus is this patching center, as the name implies. But that capability has been slightly commoditized. You have all kinds of things like even UA and Apollo has our virtual drivers built into the interfaces and interfaces are coming out with loopback connections and blah, blah, blah. So here we are innovating and saying, what was Nexus originally used for? And a lot of it was used for integrating these communications platforms and we thought let's make a communications platform that's a little bit more built for media professionals. And on this side, the initial sort of intent is for review and approval. So you can imagine either you've got clients on the gateway here and they are meeting and then there's a talent connected and the engineer can patch all this together using Nexus actually. And they would have a session where talent's connected in on source connect and the clients are all here on a meeting platform. And so here's sort of a meeting platform that's more designed for media professionals and specifically like a review and approval workflow. Here's kind of what it looks like a little bit. One of the first things with Nexus is it has now a plugin dedicated for it that does a lot of this template setup. People used to have these crazy templates for Pro Tools and now if you oops, what I should do is share my screen. So here's Robert's Screen. So the first thing that Nexus has besides this meeting room looks pretty similar to a lot of things but here's one big difference. There's a plugin that's included with it. And the plugin has, as you can see, my talkback coming in here has the input from the mix. So I can hear the mix actually right here. The mix is also sent to the broadcast input, which we'll talk about in a split second. And then here's the chat return. So if someone says hello, we will see this meter bounce. Speaker A: Hello. Speaker B: There you go. So that's how I hear. And this takes care of all the mix minus and all the routing that people would have to do in one drop of a plugin on the master fader. Yeah, you don't have to change your session structure. You don't have to mix to a bus. So you can separate the people from what you're listening to and make them mix minus. Essentially, this does it for you. And so here's this broadcast input. But over here in the gateway, I've got this broadcast section. So now I can send my mix separate from my communications input, which is not something you get to do with zoom, et cetera, et cetera, all the other ones. So here's a high quality stereo communications feed without having to have problems with my talkback conflated within it and those kinds of things. So now you guys might notice that if I just literally go over here and this might be loud. Here's a rock tune in this session and then as easy as that is it's a good level right I put it down to -20 because we have to blend it with this stuff and. : Coming back to me in full stereo. Like high fidelity. Speaker B: Yeah, high fidelity, full stereo. Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Speaker B: That's the whole point. But really it's like I don't want you looking at my screen because there's too much stuff there. And whatnot what you really want to see is this. So if I jump back out and I share my window, you can't see what I'm doing because I'm not sharing it, but I'm basically sharing again. But this time, instead of doing entire screen, I'm picking window. I'm picking that Pro Tools video window. So now we can play this spot that we using as a little ADR demo. And right now that's more stuff to talk about later, the remote ADR workflows, but here's just a review and approval thing. And so a lot of voice sessions are not synced to picture. You're just, hey, read it three times. All right, I'll cut that in and you see it happening. And essentially, here's the core of that session. I can have a talent connected. I can bring the talent in through here, actually through a new plugin, but I can't really talk about that. But the classic connection where you have Source Connect and a plugin on an Aux track. So here you can see I'm receiving from source connect. This is the original Nexus plugin. And so there's from Source Connect, and that's popping over to my record track over here. And then an Aux send from receive of Nexus. And I can send the chat over to the talent. Speaker A: So you don't have your talent on Nexus then? Is that what you're saying? Speaker B: You don't want to? Because then you have all right, everyone mute their mics or you don't have separation, essentially. So what you have is you can have the talent join Nexus. And one of the first we plan on kind of rolling out updates rapidly. And one of the ones that's up on the dock is a no audio button, meaning not just mute your microphone, but mute the whole output. So then the talent can be here. The talent can look at the picture, see the clients and record. And within the realms of that latency, you can even record sort of with pictures as long as the engineer slides it back. And it happens a lot over these remote systems. You just kind of deal with the latency a little. : Can I ask you about the buffer setting? I now see in my window? It says off no buffer right now. Speaker B: Yeah, right. Another thing. So stuff you can't do in zoom oh, the broadcast, which is really high quality, is giving me a little bit of trouble. You can add some buffering on your side. So maybe that connection is going to be a little bit more latent, but it's going to have a stronger connection because as you know how it goes with all of these Chrome type things, it's all up to the way Chrome really decides to treat the audio. And Chrome loves to drive latencies as low as possible and just say, screw it, I'm going to stretch audio and mask all kinds of stuff and quite frankly, make up more audio than I'm actually broadcasting just to kind of make communications work. And if it is high quality, that's nice, but it's not my goal. My goal is just communications. Just by adding to that buffer, at least we can protect that audio stream a little bit and make sure that clients aren't hearing. So, for instance, the way I do it, when I send my talent to the clients, I'm sending them through the broadcast input so they hear that voice record from the talent in really high quality. Whereas we're over here the chat. Even though there is a broadcast option on the chat, you don't really need it. And that way you also have echo cancellation built into here and you're optimizing the way things are. You're not all eggs and all echo canceled. Good enough for a lawyer's meeting or the other side, something like Source Connect now was where it's just like wide open, pure audio, but then you have feedback issues. This is kind of trying to blend. You got clients who are used to the business meeting. You've got Vo talent and playback that needs to be high quality. Put all that together in the right. : Way, that's always challenging a lot of things. It's an all or nothing proposition. It's either Zoom equality or everybody's in a high quality and it's just you introduce new problems, especially the client is not prepared for that. Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's like for people that aren't initiated in this stuff, it's easy for us to say stuff, but we do this day in and day out. At least I do. : Obviously, we always have headphones at the ready. Speaker B: Yeah, we're actually getting it pretty good on the iPhone and iOS devices, and those have their own challenges. We have a warning right away that says, like, if you're going to use this for communications, we can't really give you as high quality broadcast audio. So there's another thing that's unique to this is there's a mode to it where you can just join it for the broadcast audio, which is a case where maybe you do want to have a sidecar zoom meeting. Some of the issues with a sidecar zoom meeting with a high quality broadcast on the site is now Zoom is unaware of its echo cancellation. So the high quality audio broadcast echoes through everyone's connections because it doesn't think that that's part of its initial input output. It doesn't catch it in its algorithm as well as when it's all integrated into one platform. But yeah, you can join this and just use it for the broadcast, or you can use it for the meeting, but when you use it on the iPhone, if you just want to use it for the broadcast, you'll get high quality. But if you use it for communications and the broadcast, the broadcast unfortunately gets stepped on. And I'm sure you've seen some of that happen even when you just get a phone call. As soon as the iPhone thinks it's in a communications mode. It's like it's doing that good enough for communications, make it intelligible kind of thing. But still there's people that might be driving. You might have a producer who's just really they just want to make sure the session is flowing well. They're not listening to it in the same way that the writer and the art directors are, for example, worrying about what time is it and are we going to have to pay somebody overtime if this goes any longer? Yeah, but that's pretty much it. The idea is it's trying to be really simple about it as well. Speaker A: It's very cool. I mean, as you say, it takes zoom out of the equation, which is the best bit. Plus, as you say, we're listening to the talent in broadcast quality as well, which for me as an engineer is a big thing. I don't want to have to listen. Speaker B: And in any session you do, you can remote heise it in just like one drop of a plugin. You don't even have to think about it. So one of the unique things about the review plugin here is that you can bring your talk back in from any input in the whole computers. Right now I'm using same as system, which is picking up this road NTUSB actually. So same as the system setting or picking it up directly. And that can be my Talkback input, which is on a trigger with a slash key. Or if you're on a Pro Tools HDX or HD native system, when Pro Tools launches, your audio interface is exclusively owned by Pro Tools. And if your Talkback mic is going to that audio interface, how do you get it in there? Here you go. You pick it up on the side chain. Speaker A: Nice. That's clever. Speaker B: I like that you tell this thing. So say my input is I don't know, it wouldn't be one of these buses, but I don't even have a hardware input. Yeah, so in this case but then you just pick your input there and then here you'd say use key input. That covers all the HD native and anybody else with an exclusively run hardware audio system. There's a few others out there. I'm trying to think of what they are, but maybe like a Fairlight, for example, and that CC one card that they have and things like that can make use of that input. Actually, come to think of it, I'm not too sure Fairlight has gotten around to putting side chain inputs on their plugins yet. That's a different issue. They could sure use it. Because I remember I did a tech support thing the other day for a Fairlight person and what I ended up doing is making an Aux channel, dropping a Nexus plugin and picking up making the Aux channel the input for his talkback mic and then just sending it off to a virtual device like Nexus 23 24. So then over here on the review plugin. I just went over and picked up Nexus A 24 or whatever and got his talk back into the system, even. Speaker A: Though, yeah, that's clever. Speaker B: It took an extra channel. It'd be nice if fairly put in a side chain on their plugins. And I forget what other exclusive systems there are, but there are some plenty, I believe. Speaker A: Well, it's very cool, mate. You must be pleased with it. Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I mean, it's funny how it's exactly a year. We went to AES last year and showed a prototype of this and we put the prototype together in like the month or two before AES, I think. And it was like that kind of thing where you make 80% of the progress. We had a review plugin that looked a lot like this stuff was functional. And then the whole last year has been spent like the details. Speaker A: So was the idea, I mean, Nexus One, shall we call it the original Nexus? For me, it's no secret I've talked about it on this show a million times. I love it. Looking at this and watching you use it now was the idea to take something that was really useful, but probably you needed to have a bit of a tech understanding and make it a bit more user friendly. Is that what you were trying to do? Speaker B: So we would find things like this. You'd get someone and they'd buy Nexus at that time. It's like 295 at the time. But they'd be on the phone with one of our tech support people for another 45 minutes an hour. We're building a template for them. It's kind of expensive, honestly. And this isn't everybody, but there's like a certain level of users I just need to do this thing and well, what you need to do is kind of complicated. That's fine. Can you show me? And then you show them and then next thing you know, when they get stuck or something, they're back at it. And originally Nexus didn't even include live tech support. Try to simplify because some of these people, george, I know you know this syndrome where people get set up with something that is barely at their capacity to remember, especially if you're setting it up for them. Because it's a different thing when you brew something up in your head. But if someone's just like, Here you go, whiz, bang, boom. And then you're like, oh, fuck, I got to get off the phone. See you later. Have a good day, sir. And it worked. I don't even want to close my computer. So the idea was this first one is just to take that whole kind of set up and distill it into here. I mean, here's your classic mix minus is what this is. : Just because someone's a talented engineer, mixer, whatever, it doesn't mean they necessarily are trained and know how to build some of the really routing and stuff. Speaker B: Those are different I know exactly how that is. I mean, that's kind of how I got my start. Like, I was a sound designer and mixer at Cutters, and there's sort of operators I was always involved with even. What equipment are we going to buy? How are we going to set up? How can we be more efficient, are we going to do our storage? I mean, there's so many aspects. : You were like engineer, technician, really. Speaker B: I was a little bit of like the I didn't do all the soldering because there was also like a whole department of full text. But I was like the liaison and I would define and get my hands very dirty doing the stuff for the audio department because you're also an audio department in a company that was originally a video company. So the video texts are videotechs and they can do what you want, but they don't know the same stuff. They know exactly how to run an Avid and premiere and all those things. And then audio is kind of a weird thing. So, yeah, it came out from you're setting stuff up and then here we are making the stuff that we trying to simplify these things. Speaker A: So I guess the important point to make here too, especially for content creators or for voiceover artists, is all this techie stuff in the background. Especially if you're a voiceover artist, that's not your responsibility, that's the engineer's responsibility. All you need to do if you're a voiceover artist is dial into the Engineer on your usual source connect connection. Yeah, but dial into the audio engineer on your usual source connect connection and bang, you're in. But if you need to run sessions or if you want that connectivity, then you've got all this in Nexus as well. Right? Speaker B: So first thing I was going to say is there's engineers that they just want to walk into work, go, where's my talkback mountain? Where's the mic pre for the talent? Where do I search my sound effects? And I just want to run that way. Yeah, they're not worried about like, am I on the latest version of this and that and what do I have? They're more of the artist type of engineer and not so much of the tech kind of engineer. And they're doing a lot of great work, but they're just not into it as much. And so a lot of those people, as you said, sometimes especially is what's happening these days is people are going freelance a lot. And a lot of those people had the support of a big team in a post house like that. And now they're freelance and they're leaning on either companies and people like George or some of our tech support. And so the idea is to simplify this, but here's something that a voice talent could do with this. Imagine you have clients that think, and I'm going to say think that they can save money and time by having the Voice Talent record themselves and then just throwing a bunch of audio takes and poorly, poorly noted stuff at Audio Engineer to say just put it together. And somehow that's going to save 1 hour of an Audio Engineer's time by making them edit stuff after the fact. And Robbo, you and I both know that they will get more of what they want quicker for less money if they just do a supervised session with an engineer on the line. Nonetheless, it happens to a lot of Voice talent. Andrew knows this and they are like, can you play that back for me? Speaker A: Yes. Speaker B: Now, as a Voice Talent, all you got to probably I think this is stereo only. We should modify this for mono, but you could just make a master fader in your daw and chuck this on it. And now you can do playback without thinking about it. You just play it back. You're broadcasting your mic. You want to do a playback, especially if you use the push to talk. You can mute your microphone. So the playback is nice and clean for them, but they're probably not recording you anyway, so they just want to hear it and decide if. So this could be useful for a talent who just needs to have a very simple playback system. And one of the things also that's going to come out pretty soon is a standalone version of this plugin because it's also useful for video editors. They want to share their video edit screen and what they're working on with clients in exactly the same way we are in Pro Tools. But the video editing systems don't have quite the same idea of always a live ongoing mixer. So in this case, you would just use Nexus to bring the audio directly into the standalone app. The audio from your system essentially like a copy of your audio from the system. And then you can have your Talkback mic selected directly. And now someone running Final Cut or Premiere can easily set up a review session with their clients so they can work remotely as well. Speaker A: Cool. Speaker B: So it does have a couple of applications. There some other fun stuff. You hit the Talkback button and it dims things. So for example, if you can talk over it, when you're like right over here, this happens and that happens and it dims the mix. And you can just decide what you want to dim just by selecting here what gets dimmed when you dim. Speaker A: Nice. Speaker B: If you do need to run with Zoom or something like that, there's some preferences here. You can send your Talk back to your broadcast input. Like I said, Zoom can't differentiate these things. So that way you could use this with a Zoom type setup or whatever. Just a traditional meeting. : Google meet, right? Microsoft. Speaker B: This is a funny setting. Normally this is off and we take away the master fader for the engineers. So that they don't end up turning their whole mix down and printing it. But if they do want to have their control of their mix of their own level, then they can turn that preference on and have is that just. Speaker A: For if what you're sending. So that's effectively what I'm sending out my mix bus, is that right? Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So if you were to somehow move this fader and then mix everything down yeah, it's down. You might bounce down at like negative something bad. Speaker A: But if you're recording and things are a bit hot, at least you can trim it a touch, right? Speaker B: Right. If you want, you can turn this on and you can control your monitor mix a little bit easier without having to change your master fader. But when you mix down, you want to either make sure you put this puppy at zero you can type the numbers in here, by the way, too, or you can do the preference and just turn it off. So there is no way, there's no fader. It's gone. Speaker A: See, the thing for me is in Pro Tools, and you might correct me if I'm wrong here, but when I have a session and I save memory locations, right? So I'll create a new session. I'll create a record section as a location memory, and I'll tell it to remember the tracks that I'm viewing and the zoom and all that sort of stuff, and the mute and the mute and all that sort of stuff. And then I'll create another section which might be Mix, and then I'll have other tracks. So when I slip through and when I go to each memory location, it's muting and unmuting master faders. So on my record section, my record master fader, I would have this Source Connect plugin on it. But then when I went to my next one, if I was doing the mix and I opened up that memory, it would be a different master bus, which wouldn't have that on there. So that would negate that forgetting to turn it off. Right. Speaker B: It's like the old SSL boards that would have, like I forget what the modes are called, but like mix down mode and tracking mode, and it would do a whole bunch of switch arounds to deal with queuing and things like that. Yeah, you're kind of like switching your mixer into different modes depending on what you're doing it's one of the favorite. : Things with Twistawave is being able to hide the little volume slider on the bar at the top because people will slide that thing down. Don't even realize why it's so quiet. Start recording at a higher level or doing all kinds of weird stuff. No, that's just your playback, dude. So I love that. I can hide it, make it disappear. Yeah, you can't touch it anymore. Speaker A: Opening a hole. Speaker B: That's why we put this here, because it's just like we were trying to make this thing the idea a lot with this was to reduce tech support and try to which ironically is the. : Idea of the Passport Vo is to also reduce support, which is I'm actually frankly a little concerned about. Speaker B: It was kind of funny when Andrew and I talked about doing this episode, he's like, and then all you need, you need this and Passport Vo. And I was like, with this, you just kind of need a basic two out interface. Like you could just do a road AI one. Speaker A: See, if you buy the Passport Vo, you don't have to pay $15 a month either. See, there you go. Speaker B: That's true. How many months is that at like $600? The Passport Vo is a piece of hardware and it's beautiful in its own right. And even though it does cover a playback workflow, there's many differences. I'm personally not worried about it. Speaker C: The thing we sort of don't touch on, which is something that's kind of more common than it was pre COVID, is once because I lived remotely for seven years before a mate of mine who's an audio engineer moved here as well. And when he decided to move here, it was like, thank God for that. At least I've got some kind of support. So things go wrong in here, at least I can give him a call. He'll just pop around and fix it for me. So all these things that make life a lot easier and technically support you in a kind of roundabout fashion are perfect for people like myself or Pip the audio engineer, just so we don't have to sort of go, shit, I've got no one around here to fix anything. Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I like it too, even though I know what to set up. It's like couple tunnel or however you say that. Having to set up sessions and do things and do all your routing when it is nice. Oh, I started this little thing. I wasn't planning on doing a review, but now someone wants to hear it. Hold on, put the plugin on there and you're not changing things. And so it's just convenient even if you know what you're doing, it's like, why work harder? Speaker A: Look, I can't tell you the amount of times Nexus has saved my ass since I've had know just that fact of being able to get stuff out of the box, out of the software, out of the software, where you kind of think, holy shit, how am I going to get this out of here and into there? Nexus is usually the answer. Speaker B: I'll give you the craziest thing I solved with Nexus. One time this guy was desperate and he had some problem with his audio interface. I forget he had like an input and an output device and he couldn't use the same device for input and output, but one device was only running at one sample rate and basically end result is you couldn't get these. Two things to aggregate together and work as a single device for Pro Tools. So he ended up with Pro Tools kind of like me right here, where he's got no input. I think right now with my Pro Tools interface, if we go to my I O setups, you get in these weird situations, no inputs. Speaker A: Wow. Yeah, look at that. That's crazy. Speaker B: Got nothing, right? Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: But you're like, I need some inputs. So you just drop a Nexus plugin on a bunch of aux channels and like, hey, inputs. Speaker A: Yeah, that's clever. Speaker B: And I just sidewired his whole Pro Tools system. Speaker A: There you go. : Sometimes the Pro Tools I o routing is confoundingly frustrating. I mean, I've tried to set it up for people. I feel like every time I try to customize the I get, I confuse myself. Speaker B: Half the problem with the Pro Tools I O is that you're all good, and then you get a session from somebody else, and then your I O set up is cluttered with a bunch of other shit from somebody else. You're like, yeah, what are these things? I never created them. Can I delete them? And then if you really get into it, sometimes Pro Tools picks the wrong output. You can have many differently named things going out, the same physical output, so you're hearing everything where you want. Then you're like, I don't need this output. And proto's like that's being used in the session. Make sure that you don't screw yourself, because if you delete that output, then who knows? Yeah, it is interesting. Nexus kind of puts all that routing just on the top level, and for some people, it's a little bit easier. : To see, I think, so it makes more sense to me, that's for sure. Speaker A: So give us the sell, Robert. What's the sell, mate? How much a month? Speaker B: We are trying to make this very affordable. So the idea is that what other people would spend in, say, a streaming service and a high quality streaming service I won't name any names, and they're cobbling together different services to make things. Our Nexus is right now, and we hope to keep, at this point, 1195 a month. And we're just going to add to it. : That's cheaper than my Netflix subscription, man. Speaker A: Yeah, it is pretty cheap, I'll be honest. Speaker B: It's cheaper than, like, middle. I don't know the Zoom pricing exactly, but I believe at least one of the lower tiers of Zoom is like, $20 a month, I think. Does that sound right? : Cheaper than Zoom pro. Speaker B: Yeah. And then with Zoom, you got to add other services. So really, with Zoom, you're looking at at least $30. Speaker A: Well, with Zoom, you still got to have Source Connect, right? And all that sort of stuff. And at least with this, with the broadcast setting, you can get away without that for a while. Speaker B: You yeah. I mean, with this, you might still have Source Connect, but you might not need a separate broadcaster. Some of these users are often trying to put things together in more affordable ways or I don't know. This is designed to be a lot of bang for the buck and we're going to add a lot to it and a lot of very specific industry type workflows built within so that you can get your job done easier. Speaker A: What about podcasters and video creators and all that sort of stuff? Speaker B: Right now there's the record button, right, that we're actually using, but I'm not sure exactly how it's going to be presented, like, which overall tiers. But yeah, the ability just to hit record and then collect all those files easily. It's not going to be the direct to Daw workflow that maybe a higher end podcast might use, but for a simple, I just want to collect files and send them to the engineer who's going to edit them together. And never give that engineer bad files, by the way, people. It's very rude. Speaker A: Jesus. Take your own advice for once. Speaker B: Will. : Pot calling the catalog. Speaker A: I was going to say absolutely. Do as I say, not as I do. Speaker B: That's right, exactly. : Robert, let me ask you this. So from you're in this case, what would they call you? The host of the session? Speaker B: Yeah, I'm the host. It's my room. : Does the host get to see the settings on the guests? So as a host, do you know that a guest is using broadcast versus communication? Speaker B: Yeah, which we're not using right now. You would see the HQ there, I think. Got you. Yeah. There's going to be some of that stuff. We plan to have like a button where you can see what the bit rates are of the connections and things like that. But right now this is 1.0. That's right. Speaker A: This is the beginning. Absolutely. Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker C: But it's funny because I've talked to you about the client of mine in Dubai, the studio there that I do a lot of work with. I've been talking about this, and they're super, super keen. And that's why they want to get this as part of their workflow because it just tightens everything up, everything's in one place for them, which is good for them and bloody good for me. Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. : I was confusion about should I mute this or mute that? Should I unmute this? You don't want to be listening to this, but only be listening to. Speaker B: Yeah. Andrew, for you, you're recording in Twisted Wave, and so when they ask you for playback, you have to play back at a twisted Wave, right? Speaker C: Well, no, because I usually use the bigger machine and not the one I'm using here. So it's wavelab. Same thing, though. But I just don't play back. Speaker B: Right, you just don't play back. No. In a later iteration, when we get the standalone version of this, you'll be able to just pipe wavelab right through it as your system output and then you can do playbacks. Speaker A: That's opening a whole nother can of worms. Speaker B: This is feeding the animals at the zoo. Speaker C: Correct. It's like, I know I can, but should I? This is the question. Speaker A: But at least you've got the option, though. You can make the moral decision, but at least you've got the option there. You might be recording a podcast and you might want to play something back or something. But in a voice session you might go, well, listen, you might take the stance to, well, you're not paying me to be an audio engineer, so no, I don't play back. Not that you would tell them that. Speaker B: It's creatives. It's like, imagine you've got an art director and a writer and they're just like, what song do we want on the spot? What about this one? What about that one? And they're playing stuff over the cell phones before it's like, here, you could just be like sharing what's on my desktop. Check out this song. I don't know. I like this one. They're just playing each other's itunes library at each yeah. Speaker A: Well, there's the other thing you could do, too. You could almost with Nexus, if you can get an analog line into whatever it is you're using and you can plug your phone in. You could plug a phone call in through this as well, too, couldn't you? You could have someone listening on the phone. Speaker B: I don't know that one day you don't actually. Maybe you can order this and order a phone number. Speaker A: Yeah, well, there you go. I just think the amount of times that I've had sessions where the client's been on holidays or the creative has been stuck in the airport and I've had someone on a phone as well and you can still throw them into this mix. Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the way I throw people on a phone call into my session right now is I'll use even like FaceTime is a really easy one. You can get a phone call on FaceTime and FaceTime shows up on the Mac and Skype if you buy a phone number from them. The nice thing about FaceTime is, like, everyone has a phone in their computer just by the nature of it. So that's like one way to just. Speaker A: Make Nexus your input and your output of that. Absolutely right. Speaker B: Exactly. Speaker A: Yeah. Very cool indeed. Well done, sir. Speaker B: Thank you. : Bravo. Speaker B: We are proud. And if anybody has questions, source elements.com, check it out. Speaker C: Indeed. Check it out. Speaker B: Well, that was fun. Is it over? Speaker C: The Pro Audio suite with thanks to Tribut and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the Tech Wittam don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say G'day. Drop us a note at our website. Theproudiosuite.com.  

The Pro Audio Suite
What gives a mic its "sound"?

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 9, 2023 12:42


Like phono cartridges, headphones and loudspeakers, the microphone is a transducer – in other words, an energy converter. So it should stand to reason that they all sound the same right? Well we all know that's not the case. So what colours the sound? And how can we use these "tweaks" to our advantage in the studio.. 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    Summary In this episode of Pro Audio Suite, George Wittam, Robert Marshall, and Darren Robbo Robertson explore the complex dynamics of microphones. The team deliberates on how mic's are each individually tuned by their manufacturers to produce a unique sound, and the way this sound is received is subjective to each person. They discuss how modern condenser mics are so similar to one another and the importance lies not so much in finding the right mic for a specific voice, but rather the right mic for a particular situation. They emphasize the value of a flat mic which can be customized through EQ, and argue against choosing a microphone based on its prestigious model. They also discuss combos that work well together like the coupling of a 41 six and a neve like preamp. Listen in to gain more insight into the world of professional audio. To connect with the hosts and find out more, visit theproudiosuite.com. #ProAudioSuite #FindingTheRightMic #AudioEngineeringInsights    Timestamps [00:00:00] Introducing the Pro Audio Suite Team [00:00:35] How Microphone Sounds Differ Based on User Perceptions [00:05:20] The Versatility of Flat Mics and Helpful Recording Tips [00:09:04] Choosing the Right Microphone: Mics vs Preamps and Selling Opportunities    Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready be history.,Speaker B: Get started.,Speaker C: Welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite.,: These guys are professional.,Speaker C: They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars George Wittam, founder of Source Elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo austrian audio making passion heard source elements. George the Tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check theproudiosuite.com welcome to another Pro Audio Suite.,Speaker A: Now, this week I saw on a very large voiceover forum a question about someone wanted to buy a microphone and wanted to get a microphone that suited their voice. And another conversation happened when I was doing a session with Adrenaline in Vegas and we talked about U. Everybody expects you to have that because that's the industry standard. But the point was that if I had a U 87 and Adrenaline's got a U 87, they would sound completely different because they're in different environments.,: Yeah. This is where things get really interesting, right? What is it that makes a mic sound the way it sounds? Right. There's a lot of factors, right? There's the capsule, there's the electronics, there's other factors. There's the actual designer. A mic is tuned to sound a certain way. It's tuned by the manufacturer, it's tuned by the designer. They make an aesthetic judgment right, of how that mic should sound. How a mic should sound to that person is a unique subjective thing. That's why vintage microphones especially are so varied. And this is why I think modern condenser mics are so non varied. They're all way more like each other because the commonalities are. So they're just table stakes now of what a modern condenser mic sounds like. And that could be because of a couple of mics, could be because of a 41 six, could be because of a U 87. But whatever it is, there are sounds that of mics, there are voices of mics that are now considered like a reference point. And everything that's different is now just considered a vintage sound or a different sound. There are variations, the word colored, color, there's coloration.,Speaker A: Exactly.,: The thing is funny though, is like, we don't want a non colored mic, right? If we wanted a non colored mic, we would be using dead flat omni mics or something, right. But we all kind of agree that's not exactly what we want the sound of our voices to sound like either. Right.,: We want the boost and like the hyper reality thing. And a mic can bring that focus. But I kind of think the difference isn't so much like the right mic for the right voice. I think much more that it's the right mic for the right situation.,: Yeah. And situation, the space, the context, like.,: The space for you to deal with the microphone if you're traveling, like your whole situation and all the appropriate stuff.,: The background noise, is it going to be an outdoor setting.,: One mics sound better than the other. But if this one's better at cutting out noise or focusing better in a tight booth, then this one the pros outweigh the cons. Then every now and then you get that weird thing that happens where something like the 416, which was, sorry, the 40 116, where something like the 4116 was designed to reject noise and be a mic for a specific purpose which might have some compromises. And then over time, people find that they actually like the compromises for the effect. And there we come back to the word color and the color and the sound that it has. And so you have something like the 41 Six that has that cut, which was really a byproduct away of its initial design to reject noise and record just the voice and made it a less ideal microphone in a true I'm flat kind of respect and more here I am for the situation.,: Yeah. It's not a quote unquote musical mic. It's a utility mic that makes voice rise above or cut that Robert mentioned. That is what makes that mic character work for many voiceover scenarios. But maybe isn't the best mic for a voiceover where it's not a voiceover, it's an audiobook. There is no music, there are no effects. It's a voice and a vacuum that isn't you don't necessarily want a mic that cuts. So it is a little bit of that. There's also mics that I will hear on a voiceover's, voice that I don't just subjectively, I don't like the way they sound. I don't like the choices of how that mic is voiced. I don't like the EQ. Again, sometimes they call it a vintage sound. Right. And some of those quote unquote vintage sounding mics to me are subjectively. Not what I would want. Will they work? Yeah. Can I EQ it later? Sure. And we've said on the show before, the flatter the mic is, the better you can EQ it, the better you can get the sound you want.,: You're not fighting someone else's EQ. The way I think of it, if someone gave you a nice flat piece of metal and basically said, give me a curve, you'd have a pretty easy time doing it because you'd have one thing to create. If someone gave you a big curved up piece of metal and said, give me a smooth curve, you'd have trouble making a smooth curve out of it because the thing's already curvy in a different way.,: That's a good analogy. Yeah. If that metal had several little bumps and bends in it and they said, make it a perfect smooth curve. What a pain. How much work you have to put into that thing to get that piece to yeah. I don't know. The science of it is it's not a science. It's completely subjective. You can chase the perfect mic for your entire life, Andrew.,Speaker A: Yes, you can.,: Is that a problem.,: I think you can play to certain mics and use them in different ways. It's not like Bob Dylan with harmonicas, but if you're doing a certain type of read, really, you can get more out of a 41 six than some other mic that doesn't have that same proximity in that focus or something at the same time. If you're going for a really smooth pillowy kind of thing, maybe an 87, but probably not a 41 six.,Speaker A: But I wonder, if you were just if you could only have one mic to do everything, would it be a 41 six, OC eight, one eight? An OC eight one eight, and then you can do everything. But it's funny, this discussion the other day, though, where it said if you actually put in the gear you have in your home studio and you had 41 six, u, 87 Avalon, everyone would go, oh, yeah, well, they're professional, they got all the right gear. Right, but it might be all the wrong gear because it might not work in their situation.,: Yeah, exactly. I would say, really, if it's really a valuable pursuit for you, it's just something you've always wanted to do. Maybe you've been in this for ten plus years. It might be worth it for you to invest in a modeling mic. Because now you get to have the fun, the pleasure, the pain, whatever, of trying out a humongous variety of microphones and trying them. Now, here's the thing. Do not record these models of mics to impress yourself. You will end up picking the sparkliest, shiniest, prettiest sounding microphone, I'm guaranteeing you that, and that is not necessarily what you want. So you may want to do that exercise and then send that recording to somebody else, a trusted producer, engineer George the tech, offers mic check. We will evaluate and rank a whole bunch of mic samples and we will tell you subjectively, or I would say subjectively, what is the best of the top, maybe the top three for your voice, ranked from best to worst. So that's what you want to have. Don't try to impress yourself. Unless you are a producer and you spend your days producing and you've heard a lot of voiceovers and a lot of different contexts, I would not try to evaluate yourself. I think that's a tricky spot to get yourself into.,Speaker A: Well, interestingly, out of the choice I did for a session the other day, I offered the OC eight one eight through the Neve and I offered the 40 116 through a Grace and they went with the 4116 through the Grace and loved it.,: And this was an industrial yeah, it.,Speaker A: Was actually a training industrial film medical thing.,: Did you read it all in a vacuum or did you hear the music that they were going to put behind it?,Speaker A: No, I didn't hear it, it was all in the vacuum.,: Yeah, but I can see why it's funny, because after you get like a long form thing, in a way, you probably end up wanting the smoother mic after a while.,Speaker A: It certainly has something and depending on the voice, it certainly brings things out in a voice that could be quite appealing.,: Yeah. It's also the combination, because I don't know if you spent the extra energy to do the other combination, the neve.,: And the little bit of too many variables, but.,: A neve is a colored preamp. A Grace is an uncolored preamp, so that combination of color and uncolored could be a pro and a con, depending on what you're doing, too. So you may have found out that the 41 six neve was the best combination. Yeah, it's hard to say when you're changing multiple variables, it's just a matter of luck and opinion. They're going to say, you gave me two choices, I picked choice B in that case was what really worked out well. So, yeah, I think some people find the coupling of a 41 six and a neve like preamp is a good combo.,: I think it was the 41 six. It was the 41 six with the Grace, wasn't it?,Speaker A: Yeah, and it sounds great. I mean, it must admit, it does actually sound really good.,: Sure, it's clean and just on a dime. I imagine it'd be pretty similar to like a John Hardy and a 41.,Speaker A: Six, which is yeah, or a millennia.,: Or millennia, yeah, millennia especially.,Speaker A: Yeah. But it's got that there's something about it that the combination of the 40 116 and the Grace just has this kind of and it's a really weird term, but kind of a 3D thing going on, if that makes any sense.,: That is one of those audio terms. It's funny.,: Yeah, it is a funny audience term. I don't know how to describe things as 3D yet, but I'm working on it.,: They pop out.,Speaker A: So, anyway, the conclusion is there isn't one. Really?,: You're not going to like our answer.,: The right mic for the voice in the right situation, in the right time, in the right place.,: Yeah, I think the bottom line, there is no right mic for the voice, because the voice is not in a vacuum. It's working in a context of a space and of a production script. A script, a style. Yeah, right.,Speaker A: Oh, on that note all right, anyone want to buy some mics? I've got plenty.,Speaker B: Well, that was fun. Is it over?,Speaker C: The Pro Audio suite with thanks to Triboof and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the Tech Wittam don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say G'day. Drop us a note at our website. Theproaudiosuite.com.     

Ekklesia Salt Lake City
The Book of John | John 14:4-14

Ekklesia Salt Lake City

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2023 40:05


Robert Marshall preaches on John 14:4-14.

The Pro Audio Suite
The 416 an Industry standard...

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2023 31:28


The Sennheiser 416 has become an industry-standard tool. Being a  “shotgun” mic (or in tech terms a super-cardioid) the microphone is extremely sensitive in a very narrow field. For this reason, it is often used on film sets where the mic needs to be a little farther away from the actor's mouth (so it's not in the frame), and the production team wants to capture the actor's voice without capturing background noise in the room. These qualities also make it extremely versatile for use in home voiceover studios!  But who first decided a Shotgun would be great for Voice Over, and why is it now an industry standard?  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 Summary In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, hosts George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren Robbo Robertson, and Andrew Peters take a deep dive into all things related to professional audio equipment. The discussion covers the technicalities of the legendary 41 six microphone, its proximity effect, and how its placement profoundly influences the output. Renowned rock and roll voiceover artist Steve Britton's microphone technique is highlighted, including how he utilizes the aggressive nature of the mic to enhance his voice. The hosts also discuss other microphones such as the eight one eight, the SM Seven, and the 4116, comparing their various characteristics and potential uses. Additionally, they touch upon potential changes in the industry due to the advent of AI voices. The podcast concludes with advice for individuals dealing with their own audio issues, encouraging listeners to explore and make the most out of their equipment like iPhone mic, acknowledging how surprisingly good it can sound when used correctly. Check out theproaudiosuite.com for more information and use the code Trip a P 200 for $200 off your tribooth. #ProAudioSuite #VoiceoverTechTips #TriboothDiscounts   Timestamps [00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Pro Audio Suite [00:00:30] Exploring the Proximity Effect of 41 Six [00:03:33] Voiceover Pioneer: Ernie Anderson's 41 Six Influence [00:07:44] Microphone Showdown: 416 Vs. SM Seven [00:12:16] Unraveling the Versatility of Eight One Eight [00:17:56] Mic Recommendation: Small Diaphragm Shep [00:23:19] Debunking the Myth: Foam on 41 Six [00:25:32] The History of Headset Mics [00:30:25] AI Voice Realm: A Threat or a Boon?   Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready be history. Speaker B: Get started. Speaker C: Welcome. Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite. Speaker C: These guys are professional and motivated with tech. To the Vo stars George Wittam, founder of Source Elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, Austrian audio making passion heard. Source elements. George the tech. Wittam and robbo and AP. International demo. To find out more about us, check thepro audiosuite.com line up learner. Speaker B: Here we go. Speaker C: And don't forget the code. Trip a P 200 that will give you $200 off your tribooth. Now, I've been playing around with the proximity effect of the 41 six, the legendary 41 six, and I've never really set it up to shoot straight down the barrel. Speaker B: So what's your default placement? Speaker C: Usually slightly off to the side. Speaker B: Okay. So still relatively level, but just coming pointing at you a little bit off to the side. Speaker C: Yeah. And pointing down. So pointing down but slightly side. Speaker B: Got it. Speaker C: This way is still pointing down, targeting the mouth, but going full it straight at it. And I did one read like that, then I followed it up with one slightly to the side, and then I followed that up with an eight. One eight. But I know we've talked about the proximity effects of the 41 six, but I actually couldn't believe the difference. It shocked me that it was so bright and it's how I remember the 41 six sounding. Speaker B: So what you're saying is like, you've kind of detuned the mic, you've detuned it to calm down. What makes the mic so aggressive? By using that placement and then when. Speaker C: I put it back holy crap. Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's what that mic? Speaker A: Well, it's interesting because there's a guy who AP and I know and have both worked with a guy called Steve Britton, who's sort of the big know, rock and roll voiceover guy, and he actually uses it to his advantage because he's not so hyped. His natural voice is not so sort of steeped in those sort of high mids and highs. So he actually gets right up on it. The best way I can describe it is he pretty much swallows the thing when he does a voiceover and uses it to his advantage because it sort of obviously accentuates that part of his voice that isn't really there naturally. The only deficit is that from an engineer's point of view, that as soon as you touch anything in the highs, it just blows up. You've got to be so careful around up there with him when you're sort of mixing him. Speaker C: Well, the strange thing about his voice is you think you're going to have to play with all the lows because it's such a big, deep voice, but as soon as you touch anything, the highs just go mental. Speaker A: Well, yeah, and that's the way you've got to work with Steve's voice, is rather than sort of additive EQ, it's subtractive you've really just got to sort of balance it by taking away some of that deeper stuff that's there in bucket loads. And just leave the top alone, otherwise it will just destroy itself. I've seen people with three DS's on a track trying to get rid of it once they've started sort of trying to get that typical radio cut through, which is the biggest mistake. And as soon as you say start again, but don't touch the highs, just cut some lows, they go, yeah. : Okay. Speaker C: So my question is with the 41 Six, it was the guy who was the voice of The Love Boat. Was he the first guy to use the 41 Six for Ernie Anderson? Speaker B: I don't know if he was the first, but he was certainly the most well known for it. : I thought Don LaFontaine made it really popular. Speaker B: Well, Ernie is the one who's caught on camera using that mic on video and other things, where he's in the studio at ABC and he's literally doing know. : And I got to imagine someone just did it because, like, here's a mic. It's the one that the freaking news guy uses. But here you go. Say the word. Speaker C: The story I heard was not like I think he was a bit paranoid and he didn't like being in the booth because he thought people were talking about him. Speaker B: Right. Speaker C: And so he wanted to sit out in the control area. Speaker B: That's right. Speaker C: And he couldn't use a normal large diaphragm, couldn't use a U eight seven. Speaker B: Out there, every damn thing. Speaker C: So one of the guys on the floor came up with the idea of using the 41 Six. That's what I heard. : Why don't you use this razor blade to record your voice? Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably a 415 or whatever they had at the time. : Yeah, probably a T powered 415 at the time. Yeah, I got a couple of those. Those sound a little bit different than the four. Speaker B: Little bit less distorted. Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Speaker B: That sound, for whatever reason, better, for worse, it's become the character of what a voiceover sound sounds like. Like when you listen to a voice recorded with a close up mic, I think we've gotten incredibly tuned what that sound is. It's become what was the word you used? Robo? Standard, but something else. Speaker A: Yeah, I did, didn't I? I used a big word printed benchmarked. It's a benchmark. Speaker B: Benchmark, yeah. Kind of a benchmark, yes. So I've been hearing that mic with my clients and promo people for so long. So when I hear another mic, right, upside of it, if it's an accurate mic with very little color, such as the OC 8118, it sounds well, it sounds like this here. Here's a 41 six of Andrew and then the eight one eight. So this is what a non accurate mic and then an accurate mic sounds like side by side. And then you did it in two different placements, right? Speaker C: Yeah. I did that was because of our discussion a couple of weeks back, where we were talking about placement with the 41 Six, which I'd never I thought, yeah, well, whatever. : Andrew, where do you like the 416? Speaker C: You'd be surprised where'd you like that. He's got a dark brown voice. No, he hasn't. Speaker A: Well, if they say that your voice is chocolatey, you can tell them why. Speaker C: Yes. Getting a bit messy now, is it? Speaker A: Yes, indeed. Speaker C: I always had the 40 116, sort of like facing down, but to the slightly to the side. So I'm sort of almost not quite side addressing, but you know what I mean? That's how I had it and I got used to that sound. And then after our discussion, I thought, I wonder if the proximity, I wonder what it really is like. So I moved the mic and went basically pointing straight at me, but slightly downwards towards my mouth, and I couldn't believe the difference. It was just like two different mic. It was two different mics and it was the old get a toothpick and stick it in your eardrum kind of sound that you get with the 41 Six. : Yeah, which is the other reason why I think engineers like it, because you get a voice recorded on that and it's just going to cut through everything and you don't have to do a lot more to it. It just sort of has this pre processing that works for a lot of that in your face advertising. Speaker B: The Hamburger Helper of microphones. : Yeah, it's just like in your face advertising. Right there, done. Speaker B: Here's what it sounded like. Here's the samples. I got them right here. Speaker C: The MercedesBenz GLE SUV is the complete package. The MercedesBenz GLE SUV is the complete package. The MercedesBenz GLE SUV is the complete package. So that's first one was straight down the barrel, second one to the side, and the third one was the eight one eight. : And you can hear it, it just gets less and less edgy, less and less. It does. Speaker A: The interesting thing about the 4116, and I guess its impact on the industry, is it's been copied a few times, probably, or tried to be copied. But I'm on an NTG five right now and it's probably the closest, I reckon, that I've heard. : I don't know. The NTG five has got more bass. I'm on an NTG five, too. I think the NTG five is a warmer mic. Yes, it does have that shotgunny in your face thing, but it's a little bit actually bigger sounding, but it's not necessarily more cuddy. I think this the eight one eight. You could take it and EQ it to do what the 416 does. Speaker B: Oh, yeah. : Pick up more room. But the 416 is just sort of like there it is, it's going to. Speaker A: Put done for you. : It's a cut. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: I'm so used to the way that bright cut condenser mic sounds that I add EQ to my own mic because I want it to sound more like that bright, condenser mic sound. Right. Now I'm talking into the Earthworks Ethos, which is a very flat mic. And if I cut my what is it, ten khz? Six DB shelf, basically. It's not a shelf, but it looks like one. Then it sounds like this. Right, and it still sounds good. It just doesn't have that top end, that bright sizzle. : I think the extreme difference would be go from a 416 to an SM Seven. Speaker B: Yeah, well, the SM Seven has like this kind of this mid range thing that I've never been a big fan of the way that sounds. Speaker A: For voiceover. Speaker B: Yeah, for voiceover. : Do you like the PL 20? The Re 20 better than the SM seven. Speaker B: Yeah. Personally, radio voice, the PL 20 is the Re 20 without that big basket on it, the front, right. : No, I cannot tell you the difference between them, actually. I believe they are the exact same, just years difference. Speaker B: Oh, got you. : For this year to this year. They made the Re 20 and then they I think the PL 20 was before the Re 20 got you. Yeah. No, I think that as powerful and big of a mic. And no matter how much Rush Limbo wanted to gold plate his, I think the SM Seven beat the PL 20 in overall installations since the Pandemic, at least. It's like, holy cow. Did they get the SM Seven out there on podcast? Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Speaker B: I don't know who they have to thank for it, but Joe Rogan is probably high up on the list because he's been YouTubing his podcast for quite a few years now. : I mean, there's an ad campaign that I've never seen an ad for an SM Seven. That's marketing. Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. : Yeah, you need it. And I didn't even tell you. Speaker B: I mean, I just installed a podcast studio and the mic was not chosen because that's the best mic. It was chosen because that mic was seen on another podcast. Yes, exactly. Because the owner is and the 416. : Has got that, too. And so it's like, yeah, the SM Seven, you can abuse it. And it's going to be pretty consistent and whatever dark and warm. And it has that thing for radio where it's not going to pick up. It's just going to seem to pick up the voice and not the other stuff. Right. Like the 416 has got the cut. Speaker C: Yeah, the SM seven. SM Seven b basically eat the things anyway, and they're built like a tank, which is perfect. : Yeah. You can abuse the whole mic and you won't hear. I mean, I don't know how Howard Stern gets away with abusing his Neumann condenser the way he does and you never hear it. Speaker C: Can you explain that one's? Speaker B: Still a mystery. : It's like it should just be like. Speaker B: This kind of shit all over the. Speaker A: Place because it's not connected, I'm sure of it. Speaker C: I don't think it's connected. It's a fucking prop, isn't it? : It's a prop, yeah. Speaker B: Now this sounds more like an SM seven B, doesn't it? This is that it does a little. : Darker fatter, a little bit less top. Speaker B: End, a little bit more mid bump around one k, couple of DB. Now it's like an SM seven. I could go to the low frequency and boost up the bottom end. Now, they would sound even maybe a little bit more. : So in the spirit of don't send us a processed voice. Stop using 416s because they sound too processed already. Speaker B: Yeah, stop using them altogether. Speaker C: But it's kind of weird, isn't it? We're like, we get a large diaphragm mic or something and then we try and EQ it up to sound like a four one six. Just use the 41 six and be done with it. Speaker B: Really? I've caught myself doing that where somebody's like, okay, here's a sample of my 41 six, here's a sample of my TLM 103, can you make me a stack for each of these two mics? And over the time I'm just like, okay, I'm not going to touch the EQ at all on the 41 six. : Yeah. And then you're going to make their tail on 103 sound like a 41 six. Speaker B: What, did you resist the urge? I used to, I used to, but I resist the urge and now what I'm doing is I'm mostly just going to do corrective EQ. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: When there's like a harshness, a nasal, some resonance in the booth, then that's it. : I think with the TLM you could give it a little bit more of a glassy sound and not so much of an upper mid, but a way airy high frequency kind of airy boost and make it nice and it'll still have some sort of I wouldn't call it cut, but presence, literally. But it'll be different than the 416, which has that frequency that every speaker has. It's like four k, eight k all packed in there. It's like your worst speaker on earth plays back those frequencies, for sure. Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt, yeah. Well, and the eight one eight, well, it's the polar opposite, isn't it? : I think eight one eight is like the TLM. You could just give it like a glassy airy sound, you're not cornered into the sound of the four six. I think the eight one eight could be more of a chameleon than the 416. The 416 does its thing and that is it. Speaker C: Yeah. It's a one trick pony, that's for sure. Speaker B: It's a one trick pony, but the way you manipulate it is by placement. Speaker C: Yeah, well, that became obvious. Yeah, absolutely. It did sound like two different microphones just by moving it. Speaker B: I mean, the first time I saw. : A 42 different voice actors sometimes, yeah. Speaker B: The first time I saw a 40 116 in an audiobook production facility, I. Speaker A: Was like, yeah, that seems like for. : A long term thing, it's like that's a harsh mic to be listening to 8 hours of the same person. You'd want nice pillowy mic? Speaker B: Yeah. So I don't know what post they were doing on the audio. I'm sure they were doing some EQ. : It's like listening to classical music on NS Ten s? Yes. Speaker A: I was going to say you'd be pulling the earbuds out halfway through mowing the lawn. You'd be going, Jesus, my ears are bleeding. Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. : Well, maybe it's good for the lawnmower. You're mowing the lawn. It's like I can hear 4K. Speaker A: I've got Ebays in to stop going deaf, but I'm going deaf anyway. : Yeah. Speaker B: Here's a little test. Tell me what this is. Speaker C: The MercedesBenz GLE SUV is the complete package. : That is either the 416 straight on, I think, or maybe to the side. Speaker B: All that was was the eight one eight with a shelf high shelf on it. It was an eight DB shelf starting at seven. : Wow, that's a shitload. That's a lot of DB. Speaker B: It's so funny. I opened up the Au filter plugin, which is like a really simple four band EQ. And the setting I had last loaded, wasn't that's what it was? It was just like an ATP shelf at seven k. Wow. I was like, all right, let's see what that sounds like. That's what that sounds like. : Sounds like so the 416 is boost at. Boost at. Speaker B: But if you ran that EQ on the 416, well, you would get this. Speaker C: The MercedesBenz GLE make it stop. : D 416. Speaker A: Try selling a MercedesBenz with that sound. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my goodness. Speaker B: Off brand, for sure. Yeah, but it's weird, there's a lot of commercial work getting booked, especially female voice stuff. That is really bright. : Yeah, it is. I used to say a lot of the times, depending on the 414, some females didn't work as well with a 414 because their voices were already kind of airy and then you get that really top end mic on it. Yeah. And it's like they overcompensate and sometimes like a U 87 worked better because just sort of try to pick up some of those lower mids. Speaker B: I used to recommend the Rode NTG three all the time for women because it was a very dark, flat and warm mic and so it worked really to their advantage a lot of times, in fact. Speaker C: That's funny you say that, because that's the mic I got for Somerset for Interg three, because it just did not sharp and nasty. Speaker B: So, yeah, it's funny, when you have a good mic that gets all the information with no distortion, you can really EQ it. And when you have a mic that is pre filtered, pre EQed and arguably has some degree of distortion, it's much. : Harder to correct it like anything with audio, it's easy to work with a blank slate compared to trying to uncompress. Speaker B: Oh, boy. : It's impossible or unds. Speaker B: Right? : Or UN crazy 416 EQ something. Because no matter what you do, the fix that you apply will create other harms, and you'll just end up with Swiss cheese in the end. So these broader, flatter, big diaphragm mics or what's interesting is, I think, to get a really accurate voice, I've not seen anybody try to record voice with, say, like a Km 184. And sometimes you see a lot of the opera singers what's an opera singer set up, like, a nice small diaphragm away from the singer? Speaker B: Yeah. Distant placement. : Distant, right. And then you get that just like that is what it is. There's no proximity. And I'll bet you for some people's voice, maybe something like a really pure small diaphragm condenser would be pretty interesting. That's why I was curious about those rode TF. Mics. Speaker B: Yeah, TFI. : Those look pretty high end small diaphragm condenser. And I bet you those would probably. Speaker B: Wait, didn't one of you guys get the small diaphragm Austrian audio? Speaker C: Yeah, robert's got them. : I got the OC eight. I got the OC eight. And those are good. I was going to say, I don't think they're sheps killers. They're closer to 184s. They're not sheps, but they're much closer to like honestly, they're much closer to, like, 450 ones. They're a little bit less full and very good for symbols, but not necessarily the whole I think a really good small diaphragm mic like a shep would be amazing on the right person's voice. But you'd have to have the right booth, right? There's no way, you know, you can. Speaker B: Get a chef's headset microphone. I actually demoed it once. $2,400 headset mic. It was an ultrasound headphone. $600 headphone with a chef. : And the microphone is like a pencil. It's like a pencil, yeah, it was pretty big, actually. Speaker B: It had a big windscreen. It was for sports casting. It had a big gooseneck on it. And it was like this ridiculous contraption that I was able to get a demo of one time, and I used it. It's on YouTube somewhere. $2,400 headset. Headset mic. : Chefs and BNKS. Man, not cheap mic. Speaker B: No compromises. : Yeah, they are good, though, definitely. I mean, Neumann's, too, but those are like, chefs. Doesn't even try to make a 103. They're like, you're going to make $1,000 microphone. Ha. We'll make a $7,000 microphone. Our cheapest mic is $2,000. Speaker C: I would love to, at some point, find out how the 41 six did become so prevalent. : Honestly, I always hurdles, don LaFontaine. I remember I was shocked when I found out, like, really? 416? Speaker B: Just for the record, it was not the mic that was in this booth when I met him. Like, I never saw him using that booth. : The 416 was not the mic that Don LaFontaine used, not when I met him. Speaker B: I mean, I worked with him in 2005, but he'd already been recording for 20 years by that point. : Andrew, when did the 416 become all the rage, because when I started in 1998, it was like, u, people are using shotguns, but I'm just an early engineer who's like, shotguns are colored. You only use them because you have to because you have mitigating circumstances. Why would you ever use a shotgun in a perfectly clean booth? And I start working on higher end commercials, and you start finding these voice talent who are using it. And actually, come to think of it, cutters. We had VIP 50s until, like, the early 2000s VIP, and then we got these Mylabs. Okay, very interesting mic. Rectangular diaphragm. So the skinny side of the rectangle is supposed to give you the best of a small diaphragm mic, and the long side of the rectangle is supposed to give you the best of a large diaphragm mic. Speaker B: Far out. : But they were good. We even had some voicemail go like, what's that mic? Like, I need your setup. And one guy bought one. But by the early 2000s, we put 416s in all the booths, and eventually that was just the mic. Like, the VIP 50s got pushed to the side, and everyone who walked in just got recorded on a 416 by default. And that's by 2005. I feel like we were just all 416. So Andrew, I don't know. When do you feel like the 416 took over? Speaker C: Because I was in radio until 97, so I didn't really see any commercial studios because everything was done in the radio station. So there was from memory, I don't remember seeing any shotguns in any radio stations. It was usually SM seven. : You still don't true. You still don't see shotguns in radio stations. Speaker C: Well, you do here now. You do see them in the production areas. Speaker B: Really? Speaker C: Absolutely. They're all 41 sixes in the production areas of radio stations. So the first time I saw a 41 Six would have been probably late ninety s ninety seven. Ninety eight, I guess. : So that's when it started taking over, in, like, late 90s, early 2000s. Speaker C: Yeah. And then they became everywhere. And a funny story, actually, because I had to do a job when I was in La. So I had to find a studio. So I went to La Sound. Speaker B: And. Speaker C: Of course, they had the 41 Six there. But I was talking to I won't mention the person's name because he's pretty high profile and might get the shits with me, but I was talking about the 40 116 with this person and about the foamy, and he said, no one in this country would ever have the foamy on their 41 six. It just doesn't happen here. I don't know why you guys do that. That's ridiculous. That's crazy. Never seen it before. : Well, usually you just put the normal you put the normal steadman screen windscreen in front of it. Speaker C: Yeah, I sent him a photograph. There's me in the booth, La Sound with the foamy on the 41 six. So they definitely had the foamy on. Speaker A: Well, there you go. I always use the foamy. I used to, because there's plenty of people who didn't know how to use the mic, used to get up all over it and just make it. : Here's a funny one. Even Harlan Hogan's vo one A was based on an older MSL. Model. Was it based on or was it just an older MXL model? Speaker B: No one will really know except him. But they say it's, I think, a 1006 or something. : It's a 1006. Speaker B: And I have two of those and they sound amazing. : I got several. Speaker B: A really fucking good cheap mic. It's a really good cheap mic. : It was the first $100 large diaphragm mic I bought for me, too. And then I won't say who in Australia modify one. Speaker C: Yes, I know who that is. Yeah, we'll leave that bit out. Speaker B: So the chef's headset is the HSC four VXP. It's the model number, if you want to look it up, and very unique mic. And the capsule on it is what probably you're more interested in. And they make different versions, so they have a strong proximity compensation model so you can get it, like, designed to actually compensate for proximity effect. Which is interesting because, again, Sports, they want the boom right up in front of their mouth to reject background. : Let's start let's start putting, like, parabolic mics in the booth. Speaker B: I know you talked about that. That would be crazy. Well, the capsule, which is funny, I'm looking at an ad for the mic and they don't mention the capsule, but I think I did in my video. I have a video on YouTube from years ago. If you just search for Widows World episode 90 Headset Mic Roundup, you'll find this video. And I actually try out a bunch. : Of the Kip Winger headset mic roundup. Speaker B: I mean, I was trying from really cheap crappy stuff all the way up to the ships and everything. : The stuff that you start out with the mics that only pick up S's. Speaker B: Right, or have no low end response period, they just roll off below 200 something. : If you des them, they go silent. Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Well, there's just been a tradition of bad sounding headset mics for so many years. : Sure has. I mean, do you remember that audio technica that I was playing around with? Is it the really cheap one headset mic? I think it might have been a dynamic and it didn't even have the headset. It's just a head warning mic. But it didn't even have headsets. Speaker B: I use those in many aerobics or fitness studios where budget was an issue because they could be destroyed and it wasn't a huge loss. But, yeah, those are classics. But audio Tending, it just came up with a headset mic. That where they graphed basically an at 2020 capsule onto a headset boom. And it's like a $200 headphone with a 2020 capsule. And it's pretty freaking bad. I mean, it's pretty good. Again, comparing it to what else is out there, it's pretty good, but it's. : Still well, that's the reality. Honestly, if someone gave me a voiceover recorder on a cell phone, I'd get it on the yeah, you find a way and I'd find a way, and I'd freaking bass synthesize some stuff and make it sound as good as it can go. And unfortunately, with a lot of clients, they're like, okay, sounds good. I understand the words. Sounds like a commercial to me. But we know there's a huge difference between all that stuff. I don't know. I still don't like it. But I've had a couple of voices. Now I've run into the tiny, basically rode video microphone, USB video mic. Speaker B: Go two. : Yeah, it's like your pinky. Speaker B: That's probably because I've recommended it to a bunch of people. : You can blame me for that one. Yeah, it's like it's okay. Speaker B: It's $100 mic. : Yeah. The flaws are exposed much quicker and the escape routes are smaller. Speaker B: It's probably marginally better than the phone mic in the iPhone. Just it's a shotgun, so it's a little bit more directional. Yeah. At the end of the day, I'm blown away with, when you use the iPhone mic correctly, how good it actually can sound. It's crazy. : Yeah. And especially if they start putting, like, arrays of microphones in there and doing. Speaker B: Beam forming, they're doing I don't know which vert well, they're already doing that. I mean, you don't realize it, but they are doing that. They use three capsules and it's a beam. : Oh, the microphone and the iPhone is a beam. Speaker B: They have been for quite a while. I even had an LG phone. It was like a V 40 or something. It was probably six years ago. And I could steer the microphone pickup pattern front to back, depending on who using the little slider on the screen. And I could say, make it pick up the guy in front of me and then make it pick me up, and I could go back and forth. So that's been around in cell phones for a while. But anyway, I had a lot of fun doing interviews with the new rode wireless kit with the wireless me, because the rode capture app on the phone will shoot both cameras. So I'm shooting a video of me and shooting a video of the guest. And they have a mic and I have a mic. So when I'm done, I have two videos and two audio tracks to manipulate and post. And it's amazing how good of a production you can make from that, really? : From your pocket. Speaker B: It's crazy. Yeah. I posted a couple interviews. Speaker C: Was that the one with the woman from Heil? Yeah, I saw that. : This is why we're all out of business. Speaker C: I thought you'd actually done some naughty shots, but I didn't realize you were actually live with your bits to camera as well. : What's going. On with the AI voice realm? Has that calmed down or are people still freaking out on AI taking over? Speaker C: I haven't seen much like it's less. : A little bit less discussed recently? Speaker C: I haven't seen much at all. Speaker A: What microphone do you use on an AI voice? : How many drummers does it take to change the light bulb? I'll tell you the same number of voiceovers it takes to read a book. Speaker A: None. : Because you just get an AI to do it. Speaker B: Well, that was fun. Is it over? Speaker C: The Pro audio suite with thanks to Tribut and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robbo Got your own audio issues? Just askrobo.com. Tech support from George thetech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say good day. Drop us a note at our website proaudiosuite.com.

The Pro Audio Suite
Whats your signature sound?

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2023 19:54


Perhaps it's a quirk in your 416 that sits perfectly with your voice. Is it an anomaly in your room that adds that special something to your voice, or is it where you position the mic that just has you humming?  A signature sound isn't essential, but most engineers have one (achieved through compression and eq admittedly). There's no reason your home studio can't have one too. "As long as it sounds good, it is good" as the saying goes... 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   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 #rode #rodemicrophones    Summary In this episode of Pro Audio Suite, industry professionals George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Andrew Peters, and Darren Robbo Robertson, discuss crucial aspects of audio engineering. The show offers valuable insights into microphone usage, including a unique story about an unusual microphone that became a signature sound for its user despite initial concerns over its broken state. The hosts stress the personal nature of microphone choice while exploring factors that affect sound quality, from room attributes to mic placement. They specifically mention the unique attributes of the U 87 cardioid and 818 microphones. They also promote a deal on Tribooth using the code PAP 200 and recommend their audio services. Geological technical support and ongoing discussions are available through a dedicated Facebook group. For more information about Pro Audio Suite's hosts and their services, listeners can visit theproaudiosuite.com. #ProAudioTips #UniqueMicrophoneSounds #TechTalkWithProAudioSuite    Timestamps [00:00:00] Intro: Meet the Pro Audio Suite Team [00:00:30] Special Offer: Discounted Tribooth & Personalized Demo  [00:01:11] Segment: George Talks About Unique Mic Problems  [00:02:50] Tips: Importance of Room & Mic Placement [00:09:48] Mic Review: The Magic of U 87 Cardioid   [00:14:50] Comparison: Eight One Eight vs Neumann TLM 170 R [00:19:22] Closing: Thanks and Invitation to Join our Community    Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready?,Speaker B: Be history.,Speaker C: Get started.,: Welcome.,Speaker C: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite.,: These guys are professional and motivated with tech. To the Vo stars George Wittam, founder of Source Elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo Austrian audio making passion heard. Source elements. George the tech. Wittam and robbo and AP's. International demo. To find out more about us, check thepro audiosuite.com.,Speaker C: Learn up. Learner. Here we go.,Speaker A: Here you go. Ready?,: Welcome to another Pro audio suite. We're your guests, Robo, Andrew and George. And I'm Robert. And you can get a good deal on a tribooth with PAP 200. And you should have Andrew and Robbo do your demo, by the way, and let's get on with it.,: Okay. It's actually trip 200, but yeah, nice work there, Robert. You missed your calling there.,Speaker B: I tell you what, jesus, you were.,: Looking so good there for a minute and you just fell at the bloody.,Speaker B: I think your job's safe, AP.,: Yeah, you call this a job? Really high binded. Now, George, you were telling us about an experience, once again at one voice with somebody who had a microphone that people were complaining about being broken, but it's kind of become his sound. What was the story?,Speaker A: Yeah, he told me that and again, I haven't heard this mic yet, so I would like to hear it at some point. I told him, hey, give me the audio and I should give him credit. I think maybe I shouldn't. Yeah, no, I should give him credit. It was Chad Fisher and he's worked with me in the past. I think he just finished building a studio, too, that looked pretty impressive. But he said that he's got a 416 or 41 six. That is sounding odd. According to folks that he has sent the audio to that know the mic. He has said that they were concerned that maybe something is up with that mic. And I said, did you buy it used? Was it damaged? Was it counterfeit? All those things could be true. He said, no, I bought it from one of the big companies. The big companies. And I said fascinating. Well, you could certainly reach out to them and ask them to give you another one and exchange it. Or you could look at this as a unique experience and realize that this is the mic that you're booking on and that people like the sound and you may not want to muck with it. So I said, literally, just engrave your initials in that thing. And this is your mic. It's your unique sound. And if you want to get another one because you want to have a proper one or whatever, a regular one, go for it. But this is a unique mic for you. Don't mess with it. Does anybody else have a mic with a quirk or character that they choose to keep using that you know?,: Yeah, well, I was going to say I won't mention the name because I don't want us to get sued or anything. But we've talked about this off air quite a lot. But a very famous American record producer has an AKG C Twelve an original C Twelve which was sent to AKG for testing when they were building the capsule which has now become the Austrian Audio Capsule, the CKR Twelve. Anyway, this famous record producer's C Twelve, which he absolutely loved, he loved used it on everything, was actually broken, but he had no idea that it was broken. He just loved the sound of this broken microphone.,Speaker B: That's the beauty of audio, though, isn't it, is that beauty is in the ear of the beholder. And if he loved the sound that that mic made, it doesn't make him any less or anything else. Just a sound he liked. And that was his sound. So good on him.,: I reckon if it sounds good, it is good, right?,: It is, exactly. Because nothing sounds the same and it's funny. People go, oh well, I've got a U 67 and blah, blah, blah. It's like does it sound like any other U 67? Probably not. I doubt it very much.,Speaker B: I don't know whether George has any experience with this, but I've had sessions with people who've said, pick your amazing multi thousand dollar mic, it could be any of them. They go, I've got a such and such, and you hear them in the room that they're in or where they've got it placed or whatever, and it sounds like shit. Well, I'd rather, to be quite honest have you got a four one six.,: That we can just thing is the room yeah, exactly. That's classic.,: Yeah, the room is key, but also it's like what complements your voice?,Speaker B: What defines your sound.,: And if you're.,: Working it's true, a mic is a very personal choice.,Speaker A: The room is key, but the mic placement is key. And it depends a lot on the kind of mic. I do find that the shotgun mic, 40 116 especially, is tricky to get the placement really awesome and the mic will change its sound quite a lot based on placement. Whereas a large diaphragm condenser cardioid mic will not change nearly as drastically based on the placement. It will certainly increase proximity effect if you get too close, but you can move quite a bit, side to side, up and down without a huge change.,: In the sound, without falling in different places of the pickup pattern. Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the things about a 41 six is you have to stay consistently in front of it because it drops I mean, that's the whole point is it drops off significantly as you get to the side. But the problem is that that's not linear, it's colored, it's different when you get it doesn't drop off evenly.,Speaker A: Yeah. And it has this weird pickup nodes on the sides of the mic. If you look at the pickup pattern.,: Or in the back, if you look.,Speaker A: At the pickup pattern, polar pattern, I should say diagram, you'll see it looks almost like a sword because it's long in the top, short has a tail on the bottom and these little things that stick out on the side. So it's definitely an OD pickup pattern.,: Out of interest. So if you're setting up a 41 six, if you imagine the talent standing in front of the microphone, where do you actually place the mic and what area of the person do you point the mic at?,: The nose, just above the plosive line.,Speaker A: I mean, the tip of the mic is right above the plosive line, but where is it aiming?,: Yeah, at the mouth, basically. But just keep the diaphragm away from the gush of air from the plosives.,: Because I've been to so many different studios where the 41 six is pretty well everywhere anyway in this business and there is no consistency with the way the engineers set up the mic.,Speaker B: Well, see, every engineer's got his own sound, too. Every engineer's got his own preference for where the MIC's aiming and all that sort of stuff.,: It kind of depends on where you are. If you're in a horrible sounding booth, then just get into it and try to nullify the booth compared to the ratio of your voice. And then you can just EQ out the proximity effect because the 40 116, being a shotgun, has quite a big proximity effect to it.,Speaker A: It's still a different it's still not quite the big proximity effect, though you're going to get from a large diaphragm cardioid because you can get so much closer to the capsule.,: Well, because the capsule is way up the microphone in the 416 yeah.,Speaker A: It's not near the tip. It's up halfway up the tube of the mic.,: Right. If you were able to virtually get your mouth there, then the proximity effect would probably be insane.,Speaker A: Oh, for sure. Well, if you use a Harvard cardioid or cardioid version of that mic, which would be the I guess they didn't make one, but the newer series, the MKH no, the is it called the MKH 80 series 80208 030-804-0805.,: It's probably like MKH 20. Maybe one of those might be similar to the yeah.,Speaker A: Or Neumann 184 or any one of those pencil mics. The proximity effect is massive, but you just have to be really careful not to pop the mic because the capsule is right there, really easy to pop.,: There is no filter. There's nothing there at all.,: Sounds a bit like you and I, Robert. No filter.,: Tourette's. Tourette's, Mike.,: Yeah, but it's funny, the 41 six, I've had them directly in front of me pointing, as you said, above the sort of forehead kind of thing, pointing to the mouth. I've had them pointing to the chest, I've had them coming in from the side, all sorts of different pointing to the chest.,: Chest, yeah.,Speaker B: Wow.,: I've seen people who do the side thing and the sort of nose thing. If you want to thin it out, you just kind of get it away from the mouth and a little bit more on the head and they'll get a little bit brighter for you. But I've not seen the chest.,: Yeah, that was years ago. I remember someone pointing and they had it set up in front of me and it was like basically probably about almost a foot away from my head and pointing down past my face.,: Excuse me, pointing at your chest?,: Yeah, my laundry is done. Yeah, pointing at my chest must have been so woofy. It was certainly bassy, that's for sure.,: I mean, that's the problem that you have when you have, like, a lavalier mic that's too far under the chin and you lose all the top, all the high end. You have to kind of clip a lavalier mic a little bit lower down, so you get some because if not, the chin creates an acoustic shadow of the s's. And the other detail.,Speaker A: I was in a booth today, one of my clients whose studio designed, and he has a 41 six and a U 87. And he says sometimes I'll go to the U 87 because I just kind of get mic fatigue working on a 41 six all the time because of its tiny sweet spot and all this stuff. And I said, hey, by the way, he's like, but sometimes I use that mic and I hear a little bit too much reflection off the console below and display next to the mic, et cetera, et cetera. And I said, well, do you know about the secret microphone that's inside of U 87? He's like and I said, Flick the little switch on the front to figure eight. And he tried it and he was.,: Like, Whoa, drop everything from the holy cow, that's crazy.,Speaker A: I said, now stand on the side and talk into it. And it was like he was blown away. I said, yeah, this is an entirely different mic and a different sound from the U 87 cardioid or the 41 six. Really, it's a third mic you already had, you just didn't know and try it out and experiment.,: It's a much softer sound with a bigger proximity.,Speaker A: It's more ribbon like, dare I say.,: I mean, the ribbon mics really cancel out the side because the problem with what do you call it, the figure eight on the U 87 is it's two capsules and they are a little bit apart, right? So they don't cancel out at all frequencies. But you get a ribbon mic, that thing is infinitely thin and it really does just vanish to the side.,Speaker A: But I'll tell you, you don't need it to fully vanish to be an advantage. If you have anything reflective below or to the side, it will pretty well kill that. It's great. It just focuses the sound. I was like, Check this out. And he was like, Whoa, that's really cool.,: You've seen those diagrams where they go through the polar patterns and you can see them continuous because people think of polar patterns as being discreet. But really polar patterns are a continuum from omni to cardioid. And then it goes to figure eight. And in there like your hypercardioid is kind of between a figure eight and a cardioid, for example, I think. And that's why the hypercardioid's got the node in the back. And so it's not like a good tube mic. If you've played with a good tube mic, the polar pattern is a continuous knob.,Speaker A: That's right, yeah.,: And some of the better pencil mics are offered in what they call the wide cardioid.,Speaker A: Oh, yeah.,: And those are very natural sounding. They kind of have the naturalness of more close to the naturalness of an omni with still some focus, some proximity effect. A little bit. Yeah. You can't avoid it, but yeah, it's like polar patterns are not one, two, three, there's an infinite number between the.,: Omni and but the thing I actually talk about polar patterns and stuff like that. If you have the OC eight, one eight and you get the dongle that patches into the back, even better. Yeah.,: You can play with the polar patterns on a frequency basis with that polar pattern.,: Well, you're talking about pretty cool. The other part when you've used the two XLRs but this is if you.,: Use the two capsules.,: Yeah, but if you use the dongle, the bluetooth dongle and use the app on your phone, it's not just like clicking from one pattern to another, you're just sliding from one pattern to another.,: Right.,: So you can do a mix of so I'm talking about yeah, which is.,: What I'm talking about. But even better, you can record both of them and then in your daw after the fact, you can play with the polar pattern after you record yeah.,: But that's if you're using the two USBs not USBs, yes, the two XLRs.,: And then you have to use the plugin afterwards.,: But the plugin different plugin. If you get the bluetooth dongle that goes in the back of the mic, then you get a plugin that goes on your phone and it just gives you the polar pattern.,: That's what it is.,: The idea is that if the MIC's up on a boom pole, instead of bringing the thing backwards and forwards, you can do it from your phone.,: So the advantage of that multi frequency polar pattern designer is you could have a booth with a problematic low end, and especially in a corner. Maybe it's the only corner that you can put the mic where you have enough space, but you can treat the low frequency with, say, a figure eight. Get the mic so it rejects the weird bounce back to the side. And then in the upper frequencies, you can open them up to a cardioid or a wide cardioid where it sounds more natural, gives you a little bit more space to move about without having such a critical sweet spot on the microphone. And you can kind of have the benefits of a figure eight where you need it, have the benefits of a cardioid and a wide cardioid where you need them, and really play around with the polar pattern to fit your exact need, instead of just having one polar pattern across the whole spectrum. And then you have to deal with the nonlinearities where you don't want them to be.,: It'd be good if you could actually use that thing post or pre print, so you could actually set and forget if you got a trouble. Oh, you can do it. I've never tried it.,: Well, you can just record both capsules and then you can put the plugin on there and design it away. So if you're always recording both, in fact, you could even do it where you could automate the plugin. So on certain words, if you go really low, you could even change the where were we parameters if you were really going crazy. But yeah, you can definitely put that plugin on a post process. But to do that and make use of it, you have to record both capsules separately.,: Correct.,: You have to use the two XLRs. But that's the whole point of that Mike, is that it is literally that flexible.,: Yeah. I still like the app, though, that I find really handy. Instead of clicking from one pattern to another, you can actually just slide across an infinite amount of mixtures of everything.,: Like the old classic tube mics.,: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.,: You say it's a great mic when you look at the price point.,Speaker B: Well, absolutely. And also we're talking about your distinctive sound. That polar pattern thing sort of gives you the chance to make as well, doesn't it?,Speaker A: Really?,: That's right, indeed.,Speaker A: If you use the Polar designer Bluetooth tool, then it's locked into that fifth setting. It has a magic fifth setting that becomes your pattern.,: You can set it yeah, it's in.,Speaker A: The firmware, which is great.,: Does it do it by the frequencies, too, or is it just by the so you have to use the plugin to get the frequency per frequency. That'd be amazing if you could bake it in there. And then you just have your own microphone, your sound, but still like what I was going to say, the price point of the eight one eight. And you look at it compared to like a U 87.,Speaker A: Actually, a better mic to compare it to is actually the Neumann TLM 170 R. And I mentioned that one because that one's come up a little bit more often. One of my clients bought one a while ago and she hasn't used it yet. And she said, I bought it because Disney uses it and she does a lot of Disney. So I said I was wondering why. So I looked at the frequency response of the 170 R and I saw it was definitely a lot more of a flat response. It's much flatter. And so they want that really just uncolored sound. But that's a multi pattern with more choices. The U 87 just has the classic figure eight omni and card. This one's got more inter, it's got hyper cardioid and a few other things. And it's not a bargain mic.,: 123456 no use. That thing is $2,000. It's more money used than the eight one eight.,Speaker A: It's still quite spendy on the Neumann in the Neumann lineup. And the only thing that competes from Neumann on price would be the 107, I think is what it's called TLM 107.,: But that's a single pattern.,Speaker A: I think that's the multi pattern one. They have a TLM series or is it a 104?,: The 107 is around at least used. It's around 1300 or $1,200.,Speaker A: That's a multi pattern, though, right? I don't see yeah, that's the multi pattern. It's got a funky little digital control joystick on it. It's really OD on the back of the mic.,: Is that how it does its it's.,Speaker A: Actually a multifunction joystick and that controls the pad high pass and polar pattern by flicking the stick around. And I'd say in terms of quality, it's somewhere in the 103 to 100 and it actually might be more like the 102 in terms of what capsule it uses and stuff. So, yeah, that's the only thing that's in any way similar to the 12345 pattern.,: It's about the same price point as an eight one eight, but a little more.,Speaker A: It's a bit more.,: Yeah, it's $200 more or so.,: Yeah.,Speaker A: So bang for the buck. That eight one eight is still it's outstanding. Outstanding.,: Yeah. It really is a killer mic.,Speaker B: I'm just looking at the Ma one. I don't know if you guys have ever seen that. It looks like a butt plug.,: Have you been using those again?,: Yeah, sorry. We can stop him talking out of his eyes.,: Sorry.,Speaker B: It was the first thing that came into my mind.,: There's the out.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Well, that was fun. Is it over?,: The Pro audio suite with thanks to Tribut and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robo Got your own audio issues? Just ask robo.com with tech support from.,Speaker C: George, the tech Wittam.,: Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say G'day. Drop us a note at our website, theproudiosuite.com.     

The Pro Audio Suite
Software licensing structures... The good the bad the ugly

The Pro Audio Suite

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2023 23:02


Waves have just announced some big changes to its licencing structure. What does it mean for you and how does it compare to other software that might be in your studio? https://www.waves.com/support/using-waves-plugins-on-multiple-computers PLUS, Robbo reviews the SSL bundle. Try it free for a month and see for yourself... https://www.solidstatelogic.com/products/ssl-complete-bundle-subscription 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   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 #rode #rodemicrophones        Summary In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, hosts George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren Robbo Robertson, and Andrew Peters discuss the latest events and updates in professional audio technology. A significant highlight of the episode is Source Elements' win at the One Voice Service Provider award for the second time. This is followed by discussions on software licensing structures, especially about plugins by Waves and Twisted Wave. George Wittam offers insights into ethical business strategies and effective marketing. Further, Robbo shares his intriguing experience with the SSL bundle and emphasizes its unique features. Finally, the episode reflects on the importance of imperfections in audio production for an authentic sound output. The Pro Audio Suite also acknowledges its sponsors, Tri-Booth and Austrian audio, and tech support from George Wittam. Enjoy and engage in further discussions on their Facebook group. Don't forget to subscribe! #ProAudioSuite #TechPodcast #OneVoiceAward    Timestamps [00:00:00]  Intro: Meet the Talent & Special Offers                    [00:01:01]  One Voice Service Provider Award: Personal Insight                    [00:03:04]  Waves Announcement: New Subscription System [00:05:25]  Twisted Wave's Policy: More Freedom for Users [00:11:02]  Excellent Marketing?: A Case Study on George  [00:13:22]  Robbo's Experience: Navigating the SSL Bundle [00:20:11]  SSL Plugins' Uniqueness: The Beauty of Imperfection  [00:22:29]  Ends Credits: Thanks & Reminders    Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready be history.,Speaker B: Get started., Speaker C: Welcome., Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite.,: These guys are professional and motivated. To the Vo stars George Wittam, founder of Source Elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Tri-Booth Austrian audio making passion heard. Source elements. George, the tech. Wittam and Robbo and AP's International demo. To find out more about us, check the pro audiosuite.com. Speaker B: Line Up Ladies. Here we go., Speaker C: And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite. Don't forget, if you do want to buy a Triboof, use the code trip a P 200 to get $200 off your Triboof. Also Rombo and AP's international demos. We are offering a 30% discount. Just go to thepro audiosuite.com, and have a look at the link, which is up in the top, which says Robo and AP's International Demos. Click on that and drop us a line if you're interested. Also, while we're recording, you, George, are in Dallas at One Voice, and somebody won an award that you saw. Who would that have been?,: Well, not only did I see I was another candidate for the award. Another nominee., Speaker A: Oh, were you really? We're surrounded by brilliance.,: I'm sorry, man., Speaker C: And the nominations are there's two One.,: Voice nominees right here in the room. One of them won. Yeah. So there was a category called they did it Last Year as well, called Service Provider. And they make it very clear it's voted on by the public. And nominations are, I think, nominated also by the public, or at least the judges. So, yeah, I got nominated and my friend Uncle Roy did, and a whole bunch of other people that I know were nominated and Source Elements. So last year Source Elements took it, and this year they did, too, because they do good service.,Speaker C: There you go.,: They do good service and they do it all around the world.,: Thank you.,: Which is a lot of people.,Speaker C: Indeed. Yes, indeed. Indeed. Well, congratulations, Robert.,: In a way, I'd like to fuse the discomfort of me or Uncle Roy winning it's because we're buddies.,: You guys would have to sit at the same table.,: It's awkward. We're buddies and we do the same business. It just feels weird. It just feels weird. So anyway, congrats Source Elements, and maybe we'll see you next year.,Speaker B: Cool.,: Well, awesome.,Speaker C: I think the key actually, George the key is just don't turn up and you'll win an award.,: Yeah, well, it didn't work last year.,: Let me see. Do I have it here?,: The best speech, actually, was a woman who said, I thank myself.,Speaker A: Oh, really?,: Because it was a self submitted it was a self book on the gig. It was not through an agent. So she said, I thank myself.,Speaker A: There you go.,Speaker C: Well, that was a good nice.,Speaker B: Absolutely.,Speaker A: Yeah.,Speaker C: Now, we should be thanking Waves, actually, because Waves have just announced that you can use their plugins if you pay your subscription, I guess it is, on.,: Two computers without having to beg them for it because you could do it before by begging them and they would let you use it on two computers. But now it's official.,: Yeah, they would always let you do it on two computers if you maintained your whoop. Actually, that was one of the benefits of maintaining the whoop. But it is interesting. In the email, it very explicitly says this is for the same operator.,Speaker C: Here comes your takeaway.,: They're using the same exact business model as Adobe does, where the activation is good on two machines. If you log into a third machine on Adobe, it will tell you you're on a third machine and you must disable another machine and or it disables all of them and then you just start reactivating again. I can't remember which one it is.,Speaker A: But it tells you. Yeah, it tells me anyway.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Which is really handy because as I've said many times before, I don't know anybody that actually works on one computer. We all have at least two devices that we work on. So it makes perfect sense to be able to do that. And it's funny because I don't know whether Twisted Wave you can use at one license on two computers. I'm pretty sure. Steinberg you can't.,: So, Twisted Wave, before the new subscription plan, it was unlimited. And I know that because I've used it on unlimited computers, technically. I mean, every computer I've ever owned has had a license.,: Just drop your license.,: I don't remember or recall reading any stipulation on the site about numbers of computers per user. So they may still be holding on to that same policy. I don't know. I would have to look that up.,Speaker C: Yeah, because it is very handy.,: I mean, it's interesting because it is like a potential leak of licenses for them. But at the same time, to police it, you have to make that into the licensing structure. Especially for Twisted Wave. They are doing their own. We're basically licensing through Ilock so we don't have to build it and we just live within the structure that they provide.,Speaker C: Which leads me to the next bit, because when you jumped online, George, we were having quite a deep discussion about the pros and cons of the eye lock.,: I was literally saying I was looking forward to the day where I could open my house, start my car, like you name it, with my eye lock.,: Well, once you're in an ecosystem, you want everything to be in that ecosystem.,: Whatever that yeah, my keychain would be so simplified.,Speaker C: It would be just one it would.,: Be nice if it was also a pass key as well. So it had the password manager for all of your stuff.,Speaker A: That would be nice.,: Yeah, it's really interesting. If I lock was supposed to get into that and then you could have a hardware dongle for your pass parents. My parents would actually relate to that. That's funny.,: Yeah. It's so much easier than saying, okay, use this authenticator app on your phone that you installed just to use this one thing and open that app up and then authenticate off of that. It's a lot for the user.,: The two factor authentication sometimes is annoying, and I'm trying to get all my two factor over to Google Off, but I have some that's through my text, some that's through the email, some that's through Google Off.,: I mean, it's difficult for us. I mean, imagine what it's like for know the know the regular user. Or Andrew.,: Or Andrew.,: It's very challenging. Well, I just checked on Twisted Wave FAQ. Can I install Twisted Wave on more than one Mac? Yes. According to Twistwave's license, you're allowed to install Twist Wave Mac on as many computers as you want, as long as you are the main user. It says the main user of the license. So that would mean to me that you could have an assistant or an editor or an engineer working with you sharing that license. That's what I interpret that as to say.,Speaker A: But anyway, okay, so Voodoo Sound bought Twisted Wave, and Mrs. Voodoo Sound was using Twisted Wave upstairs in the voice booth for her own voiceover company. Even though you could technically say that Voodoo Sound is at this premises, is that this is where it gets interesting, doesn't it? And you can get yourself in trouble.,: It's two simultaneous uses for it's, like being, very strictly speaking, even though it's one household, it is two uses on two jobs. And I think the intention is that you as a person cannot be duplicated, and so you should be using your license once, regardless of where you are. Here's the way Waves phrase it. Starting November 1, we will add a second license to all active creative Access subscriptions, allowing subscribers to use their plugins on separate computers without having to move licenses between devices. The second license is for use by the owner of the main product license only.,: Yeah, I think that's what Thomas's and.,: They do state it. And it's an honor system is what it is.,: He's just not getting as quite as a fine tooth. He didn't have an attorney rewrite it for him. It's just him trying and I'll speak for Thomas when I say this, so you have to verify with him is really he's going again by a bit of an honor system, which he's known for that anyway, like for many, many years. He didn't enforce really anything with the license.,: Did he do anything else or did he only do Twisted Wave?,: I only know him as doing Twisted Wave, period. And then he branched out to the iOS version and then the online version, and then the Windows version.,: His whole living. He feeds all twelve of his kids through Twisted Wave?,Speaker A: Yes.,: Well, he's got four platforms he's supporting now. So it's a lot to support and keep running and debugging.,: I mean, it's impressive because he had a pretty permissive licensing thing and he's a one man show. It's amazing actually, assuming he does not have some other second gig and that this isn't just like a side hustle, it's actually impressive.,: My understanding is he doesn't have a side hustle.,Speaker C: No, it's definitely not taking up enough.,: Time that he just can't do other things. Maybe he got the Mac version to a point where it was running so well that he thought, well, it's time, let's get the Windows version built. So the Windows version is fully released and it supports stacks just like the Mac version. You got to bring BYO plugins because there's not a single free plugin on a Windows machine. So you start right out of the gate by having to get plugins. Right? That's a big difference right there. But I have a few plugins of my own that I prefer to use that are totally free for those who really need to set it all up. And one of them is because of Robo himself, said have you ever used Melda Productions plugins? And I was like, Nope. And I have installed and used them and for the free bundle that they have is pretty darn feature rich.,Speaker A: There's some kick ass stuff in there, isn't there?,: Pretty darn good. Yeah, exactly. So I have used the melba. EQ. I haven't used much else from them, but it did a fine job for some folks. But I've really been enjoying being able to support that cross platform at last without having to run an actual Windows PC to make a stack. As long as I build that stack using VST plugins on my Mac, it will load those plugins and everything on the PC, which is nice.,Speaker A: Yeah, that's cool.,: Yeah.,Speaker C: Back to Thomas though. If you meet the guy, which I'm sure one day he will jump on a silver bird and head to North America at some point depending how much money he makes out of Twisted Wave. But you can tell like you meet the guy, you know, when you meet someone, you know they're just a really honest character and incredibly intelligent, obviously. And that's thomas. That's the guy.,: If he starts showing up at conferences and sponsoring, we'll know.,Speaker C: Exactly.,: As far as I can tell, he has spent absolutely $0 on marketing.,Speaker A: But it's a good product and good products market themselves sometimes, don't they? Let's be honest.,: That's what I'm saying. Can you please tell that to our department of marketing?,: Well, I mean, honestly, I never had a marketing budget until the last year or so. And now that George the tech is a team of people, marketing is becoming much more of a real thing. Like I really need to get the marketing machine running. So when you start hearing George LATEC on different places and different platforms and you start getting tired of hearing that name then it means I'm doing the right thing. So that means my marketing is working.,Speaker C: There was a thing that we used to talk about in radio and when you're at the point of hearing a song, if you work in a radio station that is driving you insane because you're just overloading on that song, you usually find that it's just starting to get some traction with the listener.,: The regular listener. Yeah, the listener in the real world.,: So as soon as we're sick of George, that's when George really hit it. That's when George changes his name to Uncle George.,Speaker C: No.,: Can't be.,Speaker A: Uncle George.,: My dad's Uncle George, Uncle George.,Speaker C: But the whole uncle thing. Yeah. All I can think of when you say uncle anyone is some old bloke in a pair of shorts that are too tight with one knacker hanging out the side. That's what it sounds.,: You got to work on that for your Uncle Roy.,: I'm just not letting my daughter call.,Speaker A: Yeah.,Speaker C: Now speaking plugins robbo, you've been mucking around with the SSL bundle?,Speaker A: Yeah, I downloaded it because I'd had the Slate Digital bundle and I sort of got to the point where there was only a couple of things that I really sort of liked and continued using being a couple of compressors, the gray compressor, fresh air, which is free anyway, and a couple of other things. So I actually let that go. And talking of budgets, I sort of realized, hey, I've got X amount of dollars a month free. What other bundles are out there to sort of rent and have a play with? And so I downloaded the SSL one which I've been playing with for a couple of months now. And can I just say, there's not a dog in there. It's so good. There's so much stuff that's sort of really nice to play with. I mean, compressors and EQS go without saying. There's some other stuff like they've they've done some instrument specific stuff. They've done, like a drum strip and a guitar strip. The vocal strip I kind of like, I guess. I mean, it's not a dog, but I don't really use it a lot. The drum strip I use all the time. The guitar strip, I don't really do a lot with guitars, so I don't have much to do with that. But the other stuff that's really good is they call it the flex verb, which is their reverb and the X delay, which is also really cool. So, yeah, there's a bunch of stuff in there that's really worth playing around with. And I guess when the time comes and I sort of get sick of it, what will I keep? I would definitely keep the reverb. The DSR is very nice. Their limiter, which they call X limit, has been the final plugin on my mastering chain now since I downloaded it because it's particularly sweet is it like a brick wall? Yeah, it's a brick wall.,: Brick wall limiter?,Speaker A: Brick wall limiter, yes. And it's just seamless, though. You get it set up right, you just don't hear it working at all. And it gives everything that sort of nice punch, obviously, that you look for from a limiter I'm really enjoying based.,: On some other model or something from their own.,Speaker A: There's a whole bunch of models of stuff. There's two bus compressors, a couple of channel strips, bus Compressor Six, I think they call it, and the Bus Compressor.,Speaker B: Two.,Speaker A: Channel Strip Two. But look, they've got a 30 day free trial, so you can have your first month on them. So definitely worth downloading and having a play with.,: You have to give them the credit card.,Speaker A: Give them the credit card. So you got to put a date in your diary if you want to cancel it. I think I'll probably have it for another couple of months. Well, until something else pops up, probably, I'll just hang on to it because, as I say, I do set aside some money to play around with new plugins each month, and that's what I've landed on at the moment. So until something else crops up that I want to try, that's where it will stay.,Speaker C: It's funny with the SSL plugins, though, because when I bought the SSL Two, it came with these plugins. I thought it was in perpetuity, but of course it was not. So there was a whole bunch of stuff like a channel strip and a flex verb and vocal strip xCOMP, there was an EQ, XEQ, X phase, et cetera, and X valve comp.,Speaker A: Sounds like you've got the same bundle.,Speaker C: Yeah, but the thing is, I can't use any of them.,: Why not?,Speaker A: You can't physically use them or they won't work on your machine.,Speaker C: I don't think I can use them because I think from memory, it was like it was just a trial.,Speaker A: Yeah, well, you would have got the 30 day free trial of this.,Speaker C: Possibly, yeah. In fact, I just clicked on it, it says all visible licenses expired.,Speaker A: There you go. Yeah.,: I've been also using the Plugin Alliance stuff, and the main reason why I got Plugin Alliance was because having a HDX card and Waves stopped doing HDX plugins, which are the DSP chip on the Pro Tools cards. So the only ones that you could really get the low latency on was Plugin Alliance. And I have to say, they have a lot of really good stuff, especially their channel strip emulations of various consoles. They have like an API and a Neve and an SSL, and like every generation of SSL and every generation of or a few generations of Neves and the Focus, right, and the AMIC 90, 98, they have a pretty broad range of plugins and they're all easily the same similar quality as the Wave stuff. I have to say, some people I think actually think better, but it's really hard to know when, like, oh, this emulation is better than that emulation. And you're sitting there going like, I've never touched the real thing.,Speaker C: Yes, exactly.,: I have no idea. Really? They sound good.,Speaker C: Well, that's true, though, because everyone that's got these buying plugins guarantee that 95%, if not more, have never actually used the real thing.,Speaker A: Oh, sure, yeah, totally.,Speaker C: So it's like you could basically sell them anything.,: You just use the same EQ algorithm in all of them. Yeah, exactly.,Speaker A: But you would have had to work in a lot of rooms for anyone to have done that. Or be a Chris Lord Algie or someone like that who mixes in different rooms. The average schlopp like you and me, who works in a studio for a few years and then moves to a different job. You certainly wouldn't have played with all of them.,Speaker C: And then half the gear that you were probably using, that was actually the original piece of equipment that they were emulating was probably broken anyway or just getting tired.,Speaker A: Well, that was part of the charm, though.,: That's my good friend Jim Reeves, who mixed a lot of stuff I mean, like, free ride and all kinds of stuff back in the day. And he was joking, but I don't think so much. He was basically saying, like, all these kids, they love the sound of analog. They're in love with the sound of a tape deck that hasn't been aligned in three weeks and its heads are worn out. That's what they think of analog, because that's what we were working on in the studios. There were cranking sessions out left and right. The decks were not necessarily aligned every single time. There was a lot of yeah.,: What people miss is the imperfections of analog. Yeah. They don't miss improperly recorded audio. They just miss the imperfections and the distortion. I mean, the thing that makes a neve preamp sound like a neve or whatever is not that's right. It's accurate. It's that it's not accurate.,: You can say the same thing for a 416.,Speaker C: Yeah, sorry.,: 41 six. That's the distortion that makes it that edge.,: It's the color, it's the EQ curve, it's the way it sounds compressed. All those things is what makes the mic work.,Speaker C: It's funny. I'm sure that we've all been down this track before, but when it's your turn to clean the heads on the reel to reel and you realize that no one has cleaned them for so long, you got the cotton bud, and it's like it's black. You go like what?,: You go through, like, ten swabs. You're like, really?,Speaker A: What do you mean, your turn? It was my job every friggin morning.,: That's exactly what Jim was saying.,Speaker C: Yeah, well, I tell you what. In the studios, the on air studios, no one did it.,Speaker A: I can imagine. Too busy smoking a joint to clean the heads.,Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.,: Blowing the smoke right onto the head.,Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.,Speaker C: And through the mic capsules and everything.,Speaker A: Sitting there smoking a siggy while you got the razor blade and the splicing block out. Yeah, totally.,Speaker C: Exactly. But that's true, though. It's the imperfection that everyone tries to emulate. But the thing is, the imperfection was different on every single unit.,: Well, that's where it's funny, because literally one of the patented things, or whatever that plugin alliance has is this thing called I can't remember it, but basically, when you throw down the plugins, if you throw down 20 SSL plugins on your daw, all 20 will be different.,Speaker C: Oh, really?,: Because no channel in real life, no channel on that board is identical.,Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.,: You all knew that there's like some channels that had the red tape on it and some had the they have the same thing where they vary the performance of the plugins themselves so that you get that same chaotic variation across your daw.,Speaker C: Yeah, because I mean, if you're looking at a huge console, there's all sorts of things coming to play. One of the main things probably is heat.,: Well, like, the channel is closer to the power supply on. Correct. Like, I have a four channel mic preamp and the channel closest to the power supply is a little bit noisier than the other two.,Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Well, there you go. Plugins.,Speaker A: Hey, plug in, baby.,: Yeah, plugins.,: Plug me in, baby.,Speaker B: Well, that was fun. Is it over?,: The Pro audio suite with thanks to Tribut and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robo Got your own audio issues? Just askrobo.com tech support from George thetech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say g'day. Drop us a note at our website.,Speaker B: The Pro audio suite.com.     

Shouts of Grace Radio
Guest Speaker: Pastor Robert Marshall (Ep. 232)

Shouts of Grace Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2023 25:00


Guest Pastor Robert Marshall speaks at Redemption Hill on Mark 7, continuing our journey through the book of Mark. 

Ekklesia Salt Lake City
The Book of John | John 11:45-54

Ekklesia Salt Lake City

Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2023 34:04


Robert Marshall preaches on John 11:45-54.

Voice Over Body Shop
Voice Over Body Shop Ep. 252 with Robert Marshall of Source Connect

Voice Over Body Shop

Play Episode Listen Later May 2, 2023 63:57


What's next in VO Tech? Robert Marshall geeks out with The Guys. Making VO Recording Easier, More Convenient And ready for next 10 years, Robert Marshall, of Source Elements,Co-Host of the Pro Audio Suite joins us to talk about the new PASport Pro from Centrance and other great VO Tech stuff. Lets look at this amazing new piece of gear. Robert Marshall is the innovations co-founder of Source elements, holds degrees in electrical engineering and music composition. Using his skills as a musician, engineer, and producer, he is the visionary behind the idea of leveraging Internet connectivity to make post-production faster and more productive. Learn all about the new technology and catch the Replay all week on Facebook, Our website VOBS.TV or listen to the podcast. We love our fans and donors for your continued support. VOBS can't be here without YOU and our other great supporters: Voiceoveressentials.com,  VOHeroes.com  Sourceelements.com,  VoiceOverXtra.com,  VOICEACTORWEBSITES.com  And World-Voices.org

Mental Health check in with Talik
Let's talk about it my brothers

Mental Health check in with Talik

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 22, 2022 62:53


Men's mental health chat with Andrew Lemon, Brian Thomas, Robert Marshall and Rayvann Kee II --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Dumb Love
Episode 158: Fashionable Trenchcoats

Dumb Love

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 16, 2022 74:07


Hosts Jen O'Neill and Sally Brooks begin the episode with listicle quickies about the worst first dates and weird dating apps. Then Sally tells the wild true crime story of Dalia and Michael Dippolito and Jen gives us the beautiful true love story of Robert Marshall and Anne Cooper-Menguy. They end the episode talking about things that are dumb (bad weekends and panic attacks) and things they love (great friend and great sets).  Check out the new Happy Town merch! See pictures from this episode! Contact Dumb Love  dumblovepod@gmail.com Follow Dumb Love: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter dumblovepodcast.com