Podcasts about sennheiser mkh

In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, we dive into the results of our recent Facebook group poll on favourite microphones. From the Shure SM7B to the Sennheiser MKH 8060, we discuss the mics you love and why. Robbo, George, AP, and Robert share their insights on the top picks, including some surprising mentions like the Austrian Audio OC18 and the affordable Audio-Technica AT875R. We also touch on some great customer service stories from Sennheiser and explore the nuances of various microphone features and performance. Join us for a passionate discussion about the tools that shape our sound! Episode Highlights: Introduction and shout-outs to our sponsors: Tribooth and Austrian Audio. Overview of the Facebook group microphone poll. Detailed discussion of popular microphones including the Shure SM7B, Rode NT1A, Neumann TLM103, Audio-Technica AT2020, and the Sennheiser MKH 416. Insights into user preferences and experiences with these microphones. Special mention of the Austrian Audio OC18 and its popularity among listeners. George's recommendation of the Audio-Technica AT875R as an affordable shotgun mic alternative. Stories of exceptional customer service from Sennheiser. Discussion on the Sennheiser MKH 800 Twin and its advanced features. Encouragement for listeners to join the Facebook group and participate in the ongoing conversation. 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 Y'all ready to be history? Get started. (0:02) Welcome. Hi.   Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone.   (0:05) To the pro audio suite. These guys are professional, they're motivated. (0:09) Thanks to Triboose, the best vocal booths for home or on the road voice recording.   (0:14) And Austrian Audio, making passion heard. (0:17) Introducing Robert Marshall from Source Elements and someone audio post Chicago. (0:22) Darren Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney.   (0:25) Next to the VO stars, George the Tech Whittem from LA. (0:28) And me, Andrew Pinkers, voiceover talent and home studio guy. (0:32) Line up, man.   Here we go. (0:36) And welcome to another pro audio suite. Thanks to Triboose.   (0:39) Don't forget that code, T-R-I-P-A-P 200 to get $200 off your booth. (0:45) And Austrian Audio, making passion heard. (0:48) We've had a bit of a passionate response to our new Facebook group, (0:52) which is the pro audio suite podcast group.   (0:56) And Rubbo threw up a survey about microphones, (1:00) which one people would like to use and do use and don't use. (1:04) Yeah, I just, I kind of figured a robust discussion about microphones is always well received. (1:10) So I figured I'd start one and it's only a small sample because we've only just started the group.   (1:15) But some of the results sort of had me thinking a bit. (1:18) So basically what I did was I did a poll. (1:20) And I didn't go with my favorites.   (1:23) I just went with the microphones that as a freelance audio engineer, (1:27) when I'm walking into other studios, I come across a lot. (1:30) And I stuck them up there with an option for people to put their own up there as well. (1:34) So the ones I put up were the SM7B, the NT1A, the TLM103, AT2020, 416, of course.   (1:43) And that was about it. (1:44) And then left it open for people to sort of put their own up. (1:48) And the question was, which one's your best mate? (1:51) So what's the microphone that you choose in your studio? (1:55) Now, I've got to be honest, I kind of did figure that the 416 would feature fairly heavily and it has.   (2:02) I mean, the 7B sort of comes in fairly close and the TLM103 are exactly the same in terms of response. (2:11) But then some of the ones in the comments were sort of interesting as well. (2:15) Well, the one I thought was interesting was someone jumped on to Bill.   (2:21) Now I've got to try and get his name right. (2:25) Bill Answa. Is that right? (2:26) Answa.   (2:27) Yeah, I think it's Bill Answa. (2:28) Anyway, sorry, Bill, if I got your name wrong. (2:31) He is using the Austrian audio OC18 into an SSL2.   (2:36) Well, someone's been listening to our podcast. (2:38) And is he using the 4K button? (2:40) He says. (2:41) Yes, he does.   (2:42) Yeah, he goes, yes, indeed. (2:44) Thanks for teaching me that. (2:44) Yeah, and Phil writes on the Lewitt, which doesn't feature fairly.   (2:49) Yeah, we mentioned it on the show, but I don't see it a lot. (2:55) What else was the other one? (2:56) What's the 875R? What's that, a shotgun? (3:00) It's an excellent, excellent bargain shotgun mic. (3:05) Is it? (3:05) Right.   (3:05) It's the one that you recommend, George, isn't it? (3:07) It's so good. (3:08) Like, it's only Achilles heel is that it's not the quietest mic. (3:12) Self-noise is, you know, not as good as a 416.   (3:15) But it's a damn good substitute. (3:18) You know, it sounds similar. (3:20) I have one.   (3:21) So one of these days we'll pull it out and we'll compare it. (3:23) Yeah, I'd love to hear it. (3:25) But it sounds similar.   (3:26) It's not quite as large. (3:28) It's sort of like a short shotgun. (3:30) Is the polar pattern as tight as a 416? (3:32) I would say no.   (3:33) I would definitely say it's not as tight at all. (3:37) It's a more, nowhere near sophisticated mic. (3:40) It doesn't have that very complex line tube interference design.   (3:45) Yeah. (3:45) So anyway, it's a very simple mic, but it just sounds good. (3:49) And they're always under 200 US, 175 maybe.   (3:53) So that one's a... (3:54) 169 B? (3:55) That one's a great value. (3:56) And we've been recommending it a lot to folks who want a stunt mic. (4:00) Well, this is an interesting one from Jeff Berlin.   (4:03) Obviously the obligatory 416. (4:06) But he also has a Bosch or Soundalux U195. (4:10) I don't know that microphone.   (4:12) What do you say? (4:12) I have a Soundalux U99. (4:15) And it is basically a clone of a U67 using an actual EF86 tube. (4:22) And the Soundalux mics became Bach.   (4:25) Yeah, that's right. (4:27) Yeah. (4:28) And they are pretty high-end mics.   (4:30) They got bought by Universal Audio. (4:32) Yeah, that's correct. (4:33) Oh, really? (4:33) Yeah.   (4:33) Wow, that's too bad? (4:35) Is that too bad? (4:36) I don't know. (4:36) I don't know. (4:37) I mean... (4:38) It's kind of weird.   (4:38) I thought they bought Sphere microphones. (4:40) They had to buy all of them microphone companies. (4:42) So I threw all the mics that were in the comments, I think, into the survey.   (4:46) So it's easier to see. (4:49) And it's going to make it easier for people to continue voting. (4:51) But did you see anything that surprised you here? (4:55) Not me.   (4:55) Nothing really. (4:56) I mean, there's certainly plenty of ones that you don't see regularly in professional studios, (5:01) not that that means jack shit. (5:02) Because in a professional studio, you're looking for a workhorse that will do a whole bunch (5:07) of things, I guess, especially in post-production houses, as opposed to music studios.   (5:13) There's just no representation of a PZM mic here. (5:16) Come on. (5:17) There's no crown PZMs? (5:19) Oh, man.   (5:21) Like, turn my wall into the microphone. (5:22) Yeah, that's right. (5:24) The MK4, the Sennheiser, what's an MK4? (5:27) It's like a lower end shotgun.   (5:29) No, actually, no. (5:30) It's their entry-level side address LCD. (5:34) Large diaphragm.   (5:35) Oh, okay. (5:36) Large diaphragm. (5:37) It's like, I mean, I think in character, it's somewhere very similar to a TLM102 or (5:43) 103.   (5:44) It's in that range. (5:45) Is it kind of like the AKG perception? (5:48) Kind of. (5:48) It's like that zone.   (5:50) But I mean, it's not that cheap. (5:51) It's still a $400 mic. (5:54) I think it's more like a two.   (5:56) Oh, it's used. (5:57) Maybe it's used $200. (5:59) Yeah, maybe.   (6:00) I mean, Guitar Center's got them, but maybe those are used. (6:02) But Sweetwater's trying to sell it for $400. (6:05) How much is an AKG perception? (6:07) LDC.   (6:08) I don't know. (6:08) They're quite a bit cheaper, like 200 range. (6:13) So, yeah, the Sennheiser MK4 is not bad at all.   (6:15) There's quite a few people who have those. (6:17) Well, speaking of Sennheiser, just as an aside, Chris McCallum, who we've (6:22) had on the show, he's probably one of Australia's best known location (6:25) recordists, put up a post about his Sennheiser. (6:30) He says, I have an interesting occurrence with a 10 year old Sennheiser (6:35) MKH8060 shotgun mic.   (6:36) One day it stopped working without warning and only issued a static (6:40) frequency. (6:41) I've taken it to Sennheiser's service and they've discovered that they are (6:44) unable to open the mic as the special screws holding the electronics (6:47) inside the barrel are completely seized. (6:49) They say they can see no sign of corrosion, but are unable to open (6:52) the mic, sort of shoring it open.   (6:54) What has surprised me is they have offered to take possession of this (6:57) mic and offer me a brand new one for an exchange of $700. (7:01) These mics now retail for well over $2,300. (7:04) So, I'm very happy with the outcome.   (7:07) So, this is now the second new exchange I've had since the (7:10) original purchase, as there was a recall in the very early serial (7:13) numbers. (7:13) So, it was replaced then as well. (7:15) I can't really fault their response and commitment to their brand.   (7:18) So, hey, that's... (7:18) Did you see my response on that? (7:21) No. (7:22) What's yours? (7:22) What did you say on that? (7:23) But they're charging him... (7:24) I was the original recording of the screws falling out. (7:30) They're basically saying they'll do the repair for $700.   (7:33) So, they're basically giving him a brand new mic for $700, yeah. (7:36) As the repair? (7:37) As the repair, I guess, yeah. (7:39) I'd say yes if it came with a one year warranty.   (7:41) Right. (7:42) At least. (7:42) Or whatever the new warranty is, I guess.   (7:45) It's a bit of a bummer though. (7:47) But yeah. (7:48) I had a similar thing.   (7:49) I actually had a similar thing happen with my 416. (7:52) It was an old one and it was playing up, (7:55) I sent it into Sennheiser and they kind of said, (7:57) look, we can fix it, but it's probably going to cost, (8:00) you know, almost the same price as a... (8:02) Probably about half the cost of a new one. (8:05) And then they... (8:06) Yeah.   (8:07) But then they sort of said, look, you can fix it, (8:09) but we can't guarantee it because it is old (8:11) and there's components could let go. (8:13) Then did me a cracking deal on a new 416. (8:17) Nice.   (8:17) As long as the mic wasn't cracking, that's a good deal. (8:19) Yeah, exactly. (8:20) Well, the first one was, the second one wasn't.   (8:23) Are you making fun of this London accent? (8:25) So, that's 8060 is a step up from the 416 in terms of... (8:28) Yeah, it looks like it. (8:29) Yeah, yeah. (8:30) Better signal response, maybe.   (8:32) Yeah. (8:33) The 8000 series is sort of their... (8:35) That's their new flagship line. (8:38) You know, small diaphragm mics in the head.   (8:40) Did Chris mention it in the episode when we had him on? (8:42) I feel like he did. (8:44) I feel like he's sort of go to mine. (8:46) Yeah, yeah.   (8:46) But see, Chris doesn't have a microphone locker. (8:49) He has a microphone walk-in wardrobe. (8:52) Yes, exactly.   (8:53) That's right. (8:55) Yeah. (8:56) He's the Imelda Marcos of microphones.   (8:59) I think Sennheiser makes a sight address version in that 8000 series. (9:03) It's multi-pattern and it's like $4000, (9:06) but it's supposed to be really excellent. (9:08) You know what I'm talking about? (9:09) 800.   (9:10) Is it the 800? (9:11) Is that what it is? (9:11) It's a really odd little mic. (9:13) It's very small. (9:16) And let's see if I can share.   (9:18) No, it's a multi-pattern. (9:19) It's not the little small tiny ones. (9:21) I know, but it's really small.   (9:23) I mean, I saw it at NAB. (9:25) I was like, oh my God, that thing's tiny. (9:28) I think I saw your video.   (9:29) I'm looking at the MKH 800 Twin. (9:34) This is a new model of microphone they just launched. (9:36) This is a different animal completely from what you're describing.   (9:40) This one's 3200. (9:43) And it is their variable pattern mic where you just simply... (9:48) What's that? (9:49) MKH 800 Twin? (9:51) Yeah, this is it right here. (9:52) I have it on screen, I think.   (9:54) Maybe. (9:54) There it goes. (9:56) There it is.   (9:57) Look at that sexy baby. (9:58) Quite spendy. (9:59) This picture doesn't show... (10:01) Well, you see how small it is by... (10:02) Because you can see the XLR barrel.   (10:05) The tail, it's small. (10:06) It almost looks like a mic port pro, the original one. (10:09) It is like the old KM86.   (10:13) The Neumann KM86, which is a side address, multi-pattern, small diaphragm mic that people go kind of gaga over. (10:21) Well, that's quite a spendy mic, 3200. (10:24) Which is two symmetrical push-pull... (10:28) It's a dual diaphragm.   (10:31) Is it dual output too? (10:33) Like, could we use it with our... (10:34) Yeah, so the way it works is you simply pot up and down the other capsule, and that's how you go. (10:40) So it's like... (10:41) But do you have a separate output of the other capsule so we can run it into our new software that you and I have purchased? (10:47) Right. (10:49) Yeah, it is quite a spendy mic.   (10:53) You know, it's so funny. (10:54) I have video of me interviewing the Sennheiser rep at NAB on YouTube, and someone's like, (10:59) Hey, isn't that Julian Kraus standing right behind him? (11:05) It was Julian Kraus standing behind you. (11:08) It was, it was like I missed an opportunity to chat with him.   (11:11) Oh, I saw it when I saw your video. (11:13) I saw him in the background. (11:14) He was having a look at the mics as well.   (11:15) Is that Julian Kraus? (11:17) I'm like, son of a gun, it is. (11:19) There are so many YouTubers at NAB, of course, you know. (11:22) I saw a couple, they were always like in transit, you know, but I would love to send hello to Julian (11:28) and thank him for his unbelievable commitment to very, very consistent and dry videos about audio interfaces.   (11:38) He's like the equivalent of the Sahara desert for YouTubers. (11:42) It is so freaking dry. (11:43) Yeah, but it's useful.   (11:46) And big. (11:46) You know, we're the polar opposite, really, aren't we? (11:50) Exactly. (11:51) And in fact, on that note, if you do want to vote for one of these microphones or tell us what you have, (11:56) go to your Facebook and or the Facebook, as I saw people call it, and look for the Pro Audio Suite podcast group (12:05) and you'll find the thread down there somewhere.   (12:07) Not the page, the group. (12:08) Yeah, the group. (12:09) We can even pin that, I think.   (12:11) Maybe it might be a way to pin it. (12:12) Well, I will. (12:13) I'll pin it to the top of our Facebook page.   (12:14) Oh, I can do it right now. (12:15) Oh, you can do that. (12:16) There you go.   (12:17) Pin the feature. (12:18) There you go. (12:18) So yes.   (12:19) Done. (12:20) Out. (12:21) Pinned.   (12:24) Pinned. (12:25) So that was fun. (12:27) Is it over? (12:29) The Pro Audio Suite.   (12:30) Thanks to drivers and Austrian Audio, recorded using Sauce Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Blue Doo Radio Imaging. (12:41) Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group or leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say kiddo. (12:48) Drop us a note at our website

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

Search the web and you’ll find hundreds of articles videos - and thousands of opinions - on the best mics to use for radio and podcasting. One of our sponsors is Angry Audio, makers of two novel mic processors to improve and control the sound of two popular microphone families. Our longtime friend and colleague, Cornelius Gould, designed the audio processing algorithms behind these specific mic processors. “Corny” joins us to talk about this rather unique approach to mic processor design and implementation. Plus Tom Ray pops in to discuss microphone choices with Chris Tarr. Plenty of opinions and some solid advice! Show Notes:Cornelius Gould is also the founder & host of The Rocketry Show podcast.The mic pre/processors for which Corny wrote the algorithms are the REbel & SMooth from Angry AudioTom Ray’s microphone is a PreSonus PX-1 condenser mic with a dbx 286s processorChris Tarr is liking his Electro-Voice RE20 with a RØDECaster ProKirk is currently using a Sennheiser MKH 416-P48U3 with a PreSonus Revelator iO24Article: The 4 Different Types of Microphones for your Studio Guests:Cornelius Gould - Audio Processing Architect at AngryAudioTom Ray - President of Tom Ray Consulting Hosts:Chris Tarr - Group Director of Engineering at Magnum.MediaKirk Harnack, The Telos Alliance, Delta Radio, Star94.3, & South Seas BroadcastingFollow TWiRT on Twitter and on FacebookTWiRT is brought to you by:NUG@NAB Radio Technology Forum is almost here! Register for this free event at NAB! Broadcasters General Store, with outstanding service, saving, and support. Online at BGS.cc. Broadcast Bionics - making radio smarter with Bionic Studio, visual radio, and social media tools at Bionic.radio.Angry Audio and the new Rave analog audio mixing console. The new MaxxKonnect Broadcast U.192 MPX USB Soundcard - The first purpose-built broadcast-quality USB sound card with native MPX output. Subscribe to Audio:iTunesRSSStitcherTuneInSubscribe to Video:iTunesRSSYouTube

For the 100th episode of the Location Sound Podcast, we've brought back our very first guest, production sound mixer Larry Williams, Jr.  Larry uses Sound Devices mixer/recorders and has a 664, a 688, and MixPre-6. He's all Lectrosonics wireless with a DSR4, 822 and 411 receivers and likes the Sanken COS-11D lav mics. On the boom pole, he uses a Schoeps MiniCMIT, Sennheiser MKH-416 and MKH-50. Larry also uses Tentacle Sync and Denecke time code boxes and a Denecke TS-C slate. He has worked on the HBO original series Hard Knocks, the Super Bowl and the NFL Draft. He's also been a regular sound mixer on Military Makeover with Montel Williams. Larry shares with us his ongoing sound industry journey and offers a lot of tips and tricks along the way.  Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Dettifoss. Take a journey into the serene and tranquil environment of Iceland through the sounds of its cascading waterfalls and flowing rivers. During my three-week journey through Iceland in a camper van, I was in awe of the country's breathtaking beauty. I had the chance to capture the natural sounds at several locations, including Dettifoss, Godafoss, Gluggafoss, Dynjandi, Svartifoss, Fjaðrárgljúfur, Thingvellir, Goðafoss, Seljalandsfoss, Glanni, and Haukadalur. Using the Zoom F6 and an ORTF stereo set of Sennheiser MKH 8040, I recorded 49 tracks of the natural ambiance of Iceland's waterfalls and rivers.  Recorded by Marcel Gnauk. IMAGE: Superbass, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Part of the Music for Sleep project - for more information and to hear more sounds from the collection, visit https://citiesandmemory.com/music-for-sleep/

Gluggafoss (Merkjárfoss), Gluggafossavegur, Iceland. During my three-week journey through Iceland in a camper van, I was in awe of the country's breathtaking beauty. I had the chance to capture the natural sounds at several locations, including Dettifoss, Godafoss, Gluggafoss, Dynjandi, Svartifoss, Fjaðrárgljúfur, Thingvellir, Goðafoss, Seljalandsfoss, Glanni, and Haukadalur. Using the Zoom F6 and an ORTF stereo set of Sennheiser MKH 8040, I recorded 49 tracks of the natural ambiance of Iceland's waterfalls and rivers.  Recorded by Marcel Gnauk. IMAGE: Anonymous Dissident, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Part of the Music for Sleep project - for more information and to hear more sounds from the collection, visit https://citiesandmemory.com/music-for-sleep/

Daniel nutzt die Gunst der Stunde und spricht über seine Lieblingsmikrofone. Infos zum Live-Event: https://www.deinefotozeit.de Hör mal rein und besuche uns auf unserem Discord-Server: https://dsc.gg/bildundton --- Die Mikrofone: - t.bone SC 400 - Rode VideoMic Go II - Rode NT1 - Sennheiser MKE 600 - Sennheiser MKE 2 - Sennheiser MKH 416 - Neumann U87Ai --- Besuch uns auch auf YouTube: Daniels Kanal: https://www.youtube.com/c/PlayPauseRecord/ Fabis Kanal: https://www.youtube.com/c/FabianRoeglin/ --- Schreib uns gerne bei Instagram: @dani.el.augustin @fabianroeglin --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bildundton/message

We are joined by Kai Paquin to talk about the Mid/Side microphone shootout he posted on his sound blog recently. The specific microphone models compared are: Schoeps MK41 // MK8, Nevaton MC59 // MC59-8, Sennheiser MKH 8050 // MKH 30, and Sennheiser MKH 40 // MKH 30. You can download the audio files of Kai's recordings to hear the results for yourself at: https://paquinsound.blogspot.com/2022/01/ms-mic-shootout.html Episode Homepage: https://tonebenderspodcast.com/191-mid-side-microphone-shootout/ Podcast website: https://tonebenderspodcast.com

Ted Hogeman is a Production Sound Mixer and Boom Op based out of the Washington, D.C. area. He has experience on all kinds of shoots, from run and gun documentaries and indie features, to high end short films and commercials. Ted uses a Sound Devices 833 mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics wireless with DPA 4061s and Sanken COS-11d lavs. Ted also uses a DPA 4017b, Sennheiser MKH-50, Schoeps CMC641 and Sennheiser MKH-8050 shotgun mics. For time code, Ted uses Tentacle Sync E and some of the original first generation units. He also uses a Betso SB-1 timecode box. For IFBs, Ted likes using some older G3 & G2 IEMs. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Stephen Harrod is a Production Sound Mixer and Boom Op based out of Los Angeles, California. He uses a Sound Devices 633 mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics wireless and Sennheiser G3s for camera hops. Boom mics are the Sennheiser MKH-416, MKH-50 and MKH-60. Stephen also uses a MixPre-10T in a second bag. Deneke and Tentacle Sync for timecode. https://www.stephenharrodsound.com/ Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

*Here's the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9qcq5jpnGEo I overview 9 recent Daily Goody‘s from April 30 through May 19 (see list below). You can sign up to receive Daily Goody's in your email every day or a weekly roundup. Sign up here. Note: In this episode I'm using my Sennheiser MKH 416 into an Apollo x4 interface (with a Distressor, Curve Bender and Pultec EQP-1A plugins running). Daily Goody posts that I discussed in this episode: Bringing Down a De-esser's Lower Range To Start Around 3-4 kHz if Necessary The Dreaded “Andumm” (Sounds like Ann Dumb) How Do You Set Your Final Episode LUFS Level to -16 Stereo or -19 Mono? “Firing” a Podcast Production Client Protecting Your Ears When Mowing the Lawn, etc. Rolls MS111 Mic Switch – Latching or Momentary Microphone Mute Switch Measuring the Intelligibility of Emergency Announcements in Public Areas NUGEN AMB: Audio Management Batch Processor Stripping Audio From Video Livestreams To Use as Audio Podcast Episodes Other Notes: If you ever have questions please reach out! The start date for the next PES semester is January 11, 2021 -- and the next one after that will start in April 2022! If you'd like to share this show with any of your podcaster friends, feel free to send them a message saying, “Btw, here's a show about podcast audio production you may find helpful” with this link: https://podcastengineeringschool.com/subscribe/) Let me know if you have any questions or need any help with anything, ~Chris

Anna Khromova is a production sound mixer and boom op based out of New York City. Anna uses a Sound Devices 833 mixer/recorder and a Sound Devices MixPre-6 as a backup and audio interface. For wireless, she uses Lectrosonics 411a receivers and 400 series transmitters as well as Lectrosonics SSM transmitters. Anna has a K-Tek Stingray Junior sound bag and harness. She likes using Sanken COS-11D lavalier mics, Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun mics and a Sennheiser MKH-50. Anna also likes Tentacle Sync timecode boxes. Follow her on Instagram @annasoundny. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

The FILO Podcast's editor joins Todd on the other side of the mic for this episode. They talk about the practicalities of audio post-production for video. How much time to spend, where to start, tools to use, all the good stuff. Show Notes: FILO 2022 Chicago Conference: Tickets are the cheapest they'll ever be right now! Head to filo.org/filo2022chicago for more details. Audio tools mentioned in this podcast: Izotope RX Sanken COS-11D Nuendo Schoeps CMIT5 DPA 4017 Neumann KMR 81 Sennheiser MKH 416 Cedar Noise Reduction Ryan Pribyl's work:  Level Audio Willow Creek - Mittens on Mission William's Story Celebrating Hidden Heroes Bettor Days Chasing Whiskey Subscribe to the FILO Podcast: Never miss an episode! Subscribe to the FILO Podcast on your favorite podcast platform and be alerted any time we launch a new episode. Leave a review of the FILO Podcast: Your ratings and reviews help spread the word about the FILO Podcast to others. We'd appreciate your help! Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Have ideas for the FILO Podcast? Email your feedback, send us your topic ideas or names of people you think we should interview! filopodcast@filo.org FILO Emails: The best way to stay in the loop with what FILO is up to, is to sign up to receive our emails. Follow FILO on Social Media: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Brandon Sequeira is a production sound mixer and boom op based out of Los Angeles, California. Brandon uses a Zoom F8 mixer/recorder, Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun mic, Sennheiser G4 wireless transmitters/receivers, Countryman B3 lavs, Lectrosonics LT transmitter for IFB receivers, Tentacle Sync for timecode boxes and a Betso Slate. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Steven Lagosh is a Production Sound Mixer and boom op based out of the San Francisco Bay Area in California. He uses an Aaton Cantar Mini mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics DCR822 wireless receivers and SMQV transmitters. Steven uses Sanken COS-11 lav mics along with Countryman B3 and B6 microphones. For use on the boom pole, he likes the Sennheiser MKH-50 and MKH-416 shotgun mics. And he uses Tentacle Sync for timecode boxes. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Phillip Perpich is a production sound mixer based out of Atlanta, Georgia. Phil uses a Sound Devices 664 mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics wireless and Sanken COS-11 lav mics. For boom mics he uses a Sennheiser MKH-60, MKH-50 and a Sanken CS-1. Phil likes to use Tentacle Sync timecode boxes and Lectrosonics IFBs. Check out his website at https://pperp8.wixsite.com/perpichprodsound Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Start your morning right with an artisanal coffee brewed by the baristas at Nylon Coffee Roasters at 4 Everton Park #01-40, Postcode 080004.  In this episode, you'll hear  Grinding Beans Mechanised Tamping Espresso Machine w Brew Boiler and Steam Boiler Frothing Milk Cup Cleaning Try to identify each step as it happens!  Their Coffee Bar overlooks a school and quaint little park, perfect for you to relax as you sip your cup of coffee. Opening hours: Wednesday - Friday // 8:30 - 4 Weekends // 9 - 4:30 Mondays & Tuesdays // Closed This was recorded with our 3Dio FreeSpace Pro II Binaural Microphone & Sennheiser MKH 8060 into a Sound Devices MixPre 6ii 32-bit 48kHz WAV Music is "My Caffeine" by Faith Richards Nylon Coffee Roasters WebsiteFacebookInstagram  Hear. Here. Website See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode of Making it to the Mic, Stephanie talks to Maria Pendolino, a successful voice actor who’s been in the business over 10 years. Maria works in many different genres including commercials, corporate narration, eLearning, explainer videos, animation, and more! She’s also a “negotiation queen” and encourages and empowers voice actors to charge what they and their time are worth. Maria’s Website: https://www.voicebymaria.com ( https://www.voicebymaria.com/ ) Maria’s Instagram: @mariapendo Maria’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariapendolino/ Maria’s booth: http://studiobricks.com ( http://studiobricks.com/ ) Microphones Mentioned: AudioTechnica AT2020 (her first mic in the closet), Neumann TLM 103, Sennheiser MKH-416 (mics using now) Making It To The Mic Website: www.stephaniepamroberts.com/podcast ( http://www.stephaniepamroberts.com/podcast ) Instagram: @stephaniepamrobertsvo Email: stephanie@stephaniepamroberts.com

Juan Montoto Ugarte is a Production Sound Mixer and Boom Op based out of Madrid, Spain. He’s worked on the feature film, Terminator: Dark Fate, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, the Netflix series Money Heist, and Woody Allen’s Rifkin’s Festival. Juan uses the Zaxcom Nova mixer/recorder, Zaxcom wireless, Schoeps MiniCMIT shotgun mic & Sennheiser MKH-50, DPA 4061 & Sanken COS-11d lavs and Tentacle Sync time code boxes. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Podcasters and broadcasters - Got a problem with your audio? Does your audio not measure up to the "pro" podcasts? Chris Curran is here for a whole hour with up-to-date advice and suggestions for clean, clear audio - always at the right volume. From your recording “space” to mic selection, to mic technique, to compression and post-processing - Chris brings the advice of a recording and podcasting pro. Show Notes:We discussed the new Shure MV7 podcast microphoneWe mentioned the ubiquitous Shure SM7B dynamic vocal micKirk mentioned his Sennheiser MKH 416 shotgun micAlso Kirk’s favorite dynamic mic, the Heil PR40We also discussed a couple of R0DE micsKirk likes his dbx 286s mic pre-amp and channel stripChris recommends iZotope RX 8 software for automated audio cleanupChris also likes the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation software We mentioned Auphonic for online file processing to “master” your podcastsAnd Descript looks very interesting for automatic speech to text and audio/video editing based on dialog Guest:Chris Curran - Founder of Podcast Engineering School and host of The Podcast Engineering Show Host:Kirk Harnack, The Telos Alliance, Delta Radio, & South Seas BroadcastingFollow TWiRT on Twitter and on FacebookTWiRT is brought to you by:Broadcasters General Store, with outstanding service, saving, and support. Online at BGS.cc. Broadcast Bionics - making radio smarter with Bionic Studio, visual radio, and social media tools at Bionic.radio.Angry Audio - with StudioHub cables and adapters. Audio problems disappear when you get Angry at AngryAudio.com. And MaxxKonnectWireless - Prioritized High Speed Internet Service designed for Transmitter Sites and Remote Broadcasts. Subscribe to Audio:iTunesRSSStitcherTuneInSubscribe to Video:iTunesRSSYouTube

Pamela Xing-Berman is a production sound mixer and sound designer based out of Los Angeles, California. She recently worked on a project for the non-partisan organization, She Votes. Pamela uses a Sound Devices 633 mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics and Sennheiser wireless, Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun mic, Comteks for IFB, Denecke smart slate and Tentacle Sync for timecode. Check out her website at https://pamelasound.com/ Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

James Alexander Kum is a Production Sound Mixer and Boom Operator from Gloucestershire, England. He's worked on films like The Woman in Black with Daniel Radcliffe, Wonder Woman 1984 and Last Night in Soho. James uses a Zoom F8n mixer/recorder and a SQN 5s II Production Field Mixer. He uses Audio Ltd. radio mics with Sanken COS-11, DPA and Tram lavaliers. James likes using the Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun mic for exteriors and the MKH-50 for interiors. He also uses Tentacle Sync boxes for timecode. https://jaksound.com/  Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Dominique Greffard is a production sound mixer and boom op based out of Montreal, Canada. He uses a Zaxcom Nomad mixer/recorder and Zaxcom wireless receivers and transmitters. Dominique uses DPA 4063 lav mics, Tentacle Sync E timecode boxes for sync, Sennheiser MKH-50, Sanken CS-3e and Neumann KMR 81 shotgun mics. He also likes Bubblebee wind protection and concealer products. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Time Stamp: 0:40 - What do you need to record a voiceover? 0:58 - Brief mic overview and recommendations for beginners. 2:30 - Industry recommendations for more advanced professional voice actors. 2:53 - DAW overview and recommendations. 4:22 - Learning to run a voiceover business (primarily from home). 5:58 - Review: what you need to get started in voice acting.   Links & Resources: Mic options for beginners: AT2020 USB, AT2020 XLR  Rode NT1-A  Interface options:  Focusrite Behringer Uphoria UM22 Industry recommendations: Neumann TLM 103 Sennheiser MKH 416 Shotgun DAW options: Audacity Adobe Audition Other: Difference between USB and XLR mics Andy Field's Business of Voiceover class Email me if you'd like to learn more about coaching with me   Subscribe to the Hello VO Podcast newsletter here and don't miss an episode!

Thomas Claire is a production sound mixer based out of New York City. He’s originally from France and tells his story of coming to the United States to follow his dream of working in film and television. He uses the Zaxcom Nova mixer/recorder, and the compatible Zaxcom wireless, as well as Lectrosonics and Wisycom, DPA 4061 lav mics and Sanken COS-11s, Sennheiser MKH-416 and Sennheiser MKH-50 boom mics and Ultrasync One for timecode sync boxes. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Benjamin Roembach-Clark is a production sound mixer based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He uses a Sound Devices 833 mixer/recorder but also uses the Zaxcom mixer/recorders as well. For mics, Ben likes the Sennheiser MKH-50 and the Sanken CS-3e. For wireless he uses Sony UWPs and Zaxcom units as well as Sennheiser G4 wireless for IFB. For lav mics, Ben uses Sanken COS-11. And for timecode he uses Tentacle Sync.

Stu Chacon is a Production Sound Mixer based out of Los Angeles, California. He uses a Sound Devices 664 mixer/recorder and a Sound Devices MixPre-6 for car work, Lectrosonics 411 wireless receivers, Sanken COS-11 lav mics, Schoeps CMIT-5u shotgun mic and a Sennheiser MKH-50 for indoor dialog. Stu uses Tentacle Sync timecode boxes and a Denecke smart slate. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Siddharth Sadashiv is a boom op, production sound mixer, sound designer and educator, currently based out of Shanghai, China. He uses a Zoom F8 mixer/recorder, Sennheiser G3 wireless mics and a Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun mic. Sid also uses a Denecke smart slate. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Michael "Ponch" St. Hilaire is a Production Sound Mixer based out of Queens, New York. He's recorded sound for shows like The Apprentice, The Amazing Race and Survivor. Ponch uses a Sound Devices 633 recorder and a Sound Devices MixPre-3 as a backup. He also uses Wisycom wireless transmitters/receivers, Sanken COS-11 lav mics, Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun mics and Tentacle Sync for timecode. Ponch also uses an Orca audio bag. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Jimmy Gilmore is a production sound mixer based out of Atlanta, Georgia. He uses a Sound Devices 664 mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics wireless, Sanken and DPA lav mics, Sennheiser MKH-416, MKH-50 and AKG 460B shotgun mics. For timecode Jimmy uses MozeGear and a Deneke smart slate. For power distribution, he has a Remote Audio BDS and a Meon LiFe cart battery. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

LaRon Cooper is a Production Sound Mixer based out of Kansas City, Missouri. He uses a Sound Devices MixPre-6 first generation mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics 411 wireless receivers and SMQV transmitters, Sanken COS-11 lav mics, 2 Sennheiser G3 wireless receiver/transmitters and Audio Root for power distribution. LaRon likes the Sennheiser MKH-50 and MKH-416 shotgun mic on his Ktek boom pole. He also uses a Ktek bag. LaRon also like using his Deneke time code box. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Jeremy Zunk is a production sound mixer based out of the Washington, D.C. metro area. He uses and owns a variety of Sound Devices mixer/recorders. He likes Lectrosonics wireless transmitters and receivers, Sanken COS-11 lavs and dpa lavs, Schoeps shotgun mics and the Sennheiser MKH-50. Jeremy also uses Tentacle Sync timecode boxes. Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Michael Solomon is a freelance production sound mixer based out of New York City. He uses a Sound Devices 633 recorder, Lectrosonics wireless mics, MozeGear TIG timecode sync boxes, Deneke TS-C smart slate, Sennheiser MKH-60 shotgun mic, Schoeps CMC-6 with a MK-41 capsule shotgun mic, Remote Audio power distro, Ktek booms and a Orca bag.

Paul Vik Marshall, C.A.S. is a Production Sound Mixer based out of Southern California. He uses a modified PSC audio cart, a Sound Devices 688 mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics wireless transmitters with the Venue receiver rack, Sanken COS-11 lav mics, Schoeps CMIT5s shotgun mics and Sennheiser MKH-50s. Paul works regularly with boom ops Eddie Casares and Mike Sanchez. Each episode of the Location Sound Podcast, we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Paul Buscemi, CAS, is a production sound mixer based out of Los Angeles, California. He works on television, documentary, commercial and new media. Paul uses a Sound Devices 633 mixer/recorder and a Sound Devices 688 on his cart, Lectrosonics wireless SMB and SMQV transmitters, 411 receivers and SRb receivers, Sanken COS-11 lav mics, Comtek IFBs, Lectrsonics 400a transmitters for camera hops and Lectrosonics LR receivers, Schoeps CMIT shotgun mic, Sennheiser MKH-50 and MKH-416 shotgun mics as well. Paul has built a hybrid sound cart based on the Zuca cart holding his Sound Devices 688 mixer/recorder with the CL-12 fader panel. He also uses the Denecke JB-1 and Tentacle Sync for time code. http://buscemiarts.com/ Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Glen Yard is a Production Sound Mixer and Post Engineer based out of Bournemouth, England. He's worked on film, television, docs, corporates and commercials. Glen uses a Sound Devices 664 mixer/recorder, Sennheiser 416 shotgun mics and a Sennheiser MKH-50. He also uses Sennheiser G3s for wireless, hops and IFBs. Glen likes Sanken COS-11 lav mics and B6 lav mics. He also uses Tentacle Sync for timecode. Check out his website at  https://www.glenglenglensound.com Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Curtis Judd is a Utah based sound for video enthusiast and freelance production sound mixer. He uses a Sound Devices 633 and has just acquired the 833. Curtis also uses a Sound Devices MixPre-10T as a backup, dpa 4017b shotgun mic, Schoeps CMC 641 and the Sennheiser MKH-8050 shotgun mics, Audio Limited A-10 wireless, dpa 4160 lav mics and Countryman B-6, and recently started using the Shure Twinplex TL47 and TL-48 with good results. He uses the UltraSync One and Tentacle Sync for timecode. Curtis also uses the Orca OR-30 audio bag. Check out his YouTube channel and his website at https://www.learnlightandsound.com/ Each episode we talk with location sound mixers, boom ops and other industry pros about the various aspects of recording sound on-location for feature and independent films, TV commercials, interviews, anytime where dialog from actors is recorded. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this podcast is packed with great stories and lessons about recording on-location.

Jim Keaney is a Production Sound Mixer and Boom Op who has worked on commercials, documentaries, narratives and reality TV and is based out of Boston, Massachusetts. Jim uses Sound Devices 633 & 688 mixer/recorders with an SL-6 accessory, and CL-6 mixing board, Lectrosonics SRc wireless receivers, Lectrosonics SMDWB and SMWB wireless transmitters as well as SRb's and SMQVs, Audio Root for power distribution, Betso TCX-2 timecode boxes, Sennheiser 416 shotgun mics as well as a Schoeps CMIT 5u and Sanken CS3e shotgun mics. Schoeps 641's and Sennheiser MKH-50 mics. Jim uses COS-11d lav mics and Countryman B6's. He also likes the Sony MDR-7506 headphones and the Remote Audio HN-7506 headphones.

Originally from Australia, Will Langdale is a production sound recordist and boom op based out of London, England. He uses a Sound Devices 633 mixer/recorder, Audio Limited A10 wireless transmitters and receivers, Sennheiser G3 wireless transmitters and receivers, dpa 4060 lav mics, Sennheiser MKH-50 shotgun mic, Tentacle Sync timecode boxes and Sennheiser HD-25 headphones. Will also uses Hide-a-Mic mic concealers.

Josh Morrison is a Production Sound Mixer and Boom Op based out of Phoenix, Arizona. He uses a Sound Devices 633 mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics SRc wireless receivers, Lectrosonics SMDWB wireless transmitters, Schoeps CMIT 5u shotgun mics along with a Sennheiser MKH-50 and MKH-416 shotgun mics, Sanken COS-11d lav mics, Tentacle Sync-E timecode boxes, Comteks for IFB for clients and Sony MDR-7506 headphones.

Justin Lacroix is a production sound mixer based out of southern Maine. He's worked on the reality TV show Survivor and on projects for MTV, Nat Geo, HBO and Vice. He uses a Sound Devices 633 mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics SRc wireless receivers, Lectrosonics SMWBs and SMDWBs wireless transmitters, Sanken COS-11 lav mics, Sennheiser 416 shotgun mics and Sennheiser MKH-50 for interiors. Justin also uses Tentacle Sync time code boxes.

Jay Menez is a production sound mixer, director, producer and author based out of Los Angeles, California. He uses a Sound Devices 688, Lectrosonics SRc receivers and SMWB wireless transmitters, SL-6 for power distro, Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun mic and the MKH-50, Sanken COS-11 lavs, and Betso timecode boxes. Jay's book is called Spark-The 8 Mental Habits of Highly Successful People.

Steve Saada is a boom op and location sound mixer based out of the Baltimore / Washington DC area. He's worked on the Netflix series, House of Cards and on the HBO series, Veep, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Steve uses a Sound Devices 633 mixer/recorder, Lectrosonics wireless, Audio Root power distribution, Sanken COS-11 lavs, Sennheiser MKH-50 shotgun mics, Betso timecode boxes and Sennheiser G3 wireless camera hops.

First, I give you my initial reactions and use cases for my new Sennheiser MKH-416 microphone. *NOTE: This is not an in-depth review or anything like that. Also, don't miss two revealing samples of audio: Audio Technica 8035 vs SennheiserMKH-416 My processed MKH-416 on my stream called Meditate With Chris I also discuss the 416's: Specifications (at the bottom of this post) Quality: Lots of smooth clarity in mid and high end. Smooth low end. My accessories: Shock mount, My laser gun holder Testing close miking: Definitely getting plosives even when using the included foam windscreen. Plosives are easy to fix in post, but if you're streaming Live it would be awesome to avoid the plosives going out on the Livestream. My streaming use case: Picks up my HVAC unit really well, mostly because there are no walls in between. My Portico II processing: 48v Phantom Power, since mic is not close to my mouth I'm adding quite a bit of low end at 220 shelving, rolling off the low end around 80 Hz, using the Blue Silk mode, and my usual amount of to-tape compression (mild). ANNOUNCEMENT: I started the Daily Goody! I discuss a use case for Auphonic Multitrack - leveling all voices to the same LUFS level before mixing and editing. I describe me EQ'ing the last quarter of a guests track because she moved away from the computer and there was suddenly background noise and she also lost some clarity. NEWS: Podcaster's Lounge is now on hiatus. NEWS: I just started a twice-daily meditation stream called Meditate With Chris REVEALED: My 5 days in a cabin in the woods. The 9 books I mentioned which are going to help me excel in 2019: (in no particular order) Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins Deep Work by Cal Newport The War of Art by Steven Pressfield Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz The Laws of Manifestation by David Spangler Above Life’s Turmoil by James Allen The One Thing by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan Here's to the best 2019 you could possibly have!!! Sennheiser MKH-416 Specifications: Transducer: Pressure Gradient/Interference Receiver Condenser Polar Pattern: Low, Mid: Hypercardioid -- Above 2 kHz: Lobar Frequency Response: 40 to 20,000 Hz Dynamic Range (Typical): 117 dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio: 81 dB Maximum Input Sound Level: 130 dB (@ 1 KHz) Sensitivity: 25 mV/Pa +/- 1dB Power Requirements: Phantom Power 48 V (± 12 v) Output Impedance: Nominal Impedance: 25 Ohms, Minimum Terminating Impedance: 800 Ohms Output Connectors: XLR-3M Type Pad: None Low Frequency Roll-Off: None Applications: Film, Radio and Television, Especially for Outside Broadcast Applications Dimensions (L x Diam): 9.84 x 0.74" / 250 x 19 mm Weight: 5.82 oz / 175 g DID YOU KNOW........We exist for the purpose of helping you, so please comment below with any questions or remarks. We appreciate you listening. Want to Start a Business or Have a Career as a Podcast Producer/Engineer? Listen and Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, Android, RSS, Email

Jack Bradley is a location sound mixer and boom op based out of New Haven, Connecticut. He's worked on features, short films, commercials and music videos. Jack uses a Sound Devices MixPre-10T, Sony UWP-D11 wireless mics and Sanken COS 11 lavs, a Rode Link for a wireless camera hop, Sennheiser MKH 416 shotgun mic, Tentacle Sync timecode boxes, Ktek boom pole, KTek Stingray bag and AudioTechnica M40X headphones.

It's that time again - time to update your iOS, macOS and even tvOS! Apple, you are killing me today! But it's better than wasting time with a silly podcast feud, which as an adult I'm embarrassed for my former co-workers who are attempting to goad me into. I won't take the bait, though I'm legitimately saddened by their need for attention, and the degree to which our former employers shun them. It took a lot of embarrassing, actionable behavior from these knuckleheads to make me unsympathetic towards their failed lives, but they pulled it off. I am sufficiently disinterested that I won't take the bait, and give them the attention they're craving. No, I'm quite busy updating all the computers, phones, tablets and streaming boxes, thank you very much. Also, I have a new favorite microphone: the CAD E100S. It's the microphone I've been using on this podcast for the last few weeks, and it has replaced the Sennheiser MKH 416 as my microphone of choice. I wish I'd discovered it sooner, since it's less than half the price as the 416. Check it out on Amazon (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/2QHRaJS Thanks for checking out tonight's episode - make sure to subscribe to the show, and to leave ratings and reviews! Come visit the show's brand new Facebook page (facebook.com/mattsagerpodcast) to stay up to date as the podcast continues to grow. And be sure to check out my Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/mattsager Plus, you can now get Matt Sager Podcast Merch! Show your love for the MSP with T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, and coming soon, stickers! https://www.wehavemerch.com/collections/the-matt-sager-podcast --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mattsager/support

Paul Jefferys is a location sound mixer from Jupiter, Florida. He uses a Sound Devices MixPre-10T, Zaxcom QRX 200 QRX 235 with IFB and TRX LA 3.5. His lav mics are Sanken COS 11's and shotgun mics are the Sennheiser MKH 416 and 816. Paul also uses the Orca OR-48 Sound Cart.

Mark LeBlanc is a location sound mixer based out of New Orleans, Louisiana. He's worked on TV shows like AMC's Preacher and Fox's Scream Queens and American Horror Story. Mark has also worked on Logan, Fantastic Four and G.I. Joe: Retaliation and American Made with Tom Cruise. He uses a Sound Devices 788T and CL-9, Lectrosonics Venues and recently picked up a Zaxcom Max. He uses a variety of mics including the AKG CK69 shotgun mic, Sennheiser MKH-416 and MKH-70.

Time for another game of What's In My Box! Today I field questions from a fan wanting to know which Weezer album I prefer - the self-titled 'Blue Album,' or Pinkerton. If you want to know my answer, listen to my podcast as you walk away! Also, I answer an aspiring voice actor's question about which microphone I recommend, and in the process describe not only my favorite mic, but another one I'm quite fond of and talk about other essentials for the working voice actor: a home studio, good hardware and software, etc. Links to products mentioned: Sennheiser MKH-416 Short Shotgun Interference Tube Mic With Zoom H6 Recorder - https://amzn.to/2pZBd2m Sennheiser MK4 Large Diaphragm Condenser Microphone - https://amzn.to/2yurnKF Sennheiser MKS 4 Shockmount for MK 4 Microphone - https://amzn.to/2NP0khX Sennheiser 504611 MK4 WINDSCREEN - https://amzn.to/2PIS453 BEHRINGER Black, 1-Channel Preamp (UM2) - https://amzn.to/2NPppJF The above are all Amazon affiliate links. Thanks for checking out tonight's episode - make sure to subscribe to the show, and to leave ratings and reviews! Come visit the show's brand new Facebook page (facebook.com/mattsagerpodcast) to stay up to date as the podcast continues to grow. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mattsager/support

On episode 138 of the BSP, I talk about a YouTuber being Arrested, Google Chrome v.69 tracking your browsing history, Instagram losing their CEO, Facebook using your 2 factor auth phone number to target ads, 50 million facebook accounts having access stolen, and much more.   Subscribe to the full audio podcast at http://www.bandrewsays.com   Twitter: @bandrewsays Ask Questions: AskBandrew@gmail.com Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/podcastage-store Discord: https://discord.gg/dXQUc7v   00:00 - Intro 00:53 - Conspiracy Theorist YouTuber Arrested 05:18 - Google Chrome Tracking Your Browsing History 08:00 - Instagram’s CEO’s Leave the Company 09:30 - Facebook Using your 2fa Phone Number to Target Ads at You!!! https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your-2fa-phone-number-to-target-you-with-ads/ 14:29 - 50 Million Facebook Accounts Had Access Tokens Stolen 16:36 - Opinion: What Can You Do To Protect Your Privacy / Security? 20:05 - Sonarworks True-Fi Coming to Mobile Devices 22:26 - Sennheiser MKH-416 23:51 - Canon Cameras with Clean HDMI Out 24:36 - Why You Can’t Edit Tweets 25:35 - Adverts Should Only Be at the End of Videos!? 29:15 - Why did I Revert Back to an MP3 player? 33:43 - Ask Bandrew 34:28 - Email 1 35:00 - How Can I Fix High Microphone Self Noise?  38:11 - Email 2 39:30 - How To Connect an XLR Mic to an Xbox One Controller 42:10 - Email 3 43:47 - How Do You Setup NW800 & Pyle Pad 10MXU 46:59 - Outro 

My guest is Mike DelGaudio - voice actor, narrator for The NY Times, Atlas Obscura and Audible, and an absolute YouTube rockstar! Check out his Booth Junkie channel on YouTube. We go deep into: Voiceover recording Whisper Room booths Sennheiser MKH 416 mic Neumann TLM 103 mic CAD E100S mic Roles headphone amp Audient iD22 audio interface Recording into Reaper on a Mac Sennheiser HD 380 Pro headphones Shure E215 in-ear monitors Apogee Duet interface Waves X-click plugin Thanks for sharing soooo much knowledge, Mike! DID YOU KNOW........We exist for the purpose of helping you, so please comment below with any questions or remarks. Thanks for listening! Want to Start a Business or Have a Career as a Podcast Producer/Engineer? Listen and Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, Android, RSS

Filmmaker Cynthia Hill earned an Emmy for her work on the PBS show A Chef's Life, which gets over 4 million views per episode and is seen around the world. Her latest project is Road to Race Day, a documentary series executive produced by Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) that offers unprecedented access into the world of Hendrick Motorsports the most successful stock car racing team in NASCAR history. The team is co-owned by Jeff Gordon and some of their other driver include Dale Earnhardt Jr., Chase Elliott, and Jimmie Johnson. Some of the things that we discuss include Filmmaking as a way to bridge the divide How Cynthia earned the trust of exclusive, occasionally secretive, organization What it's like getting notes from a filmmaker like Peter Berg The appeal of NASCAR and what makes it a quintessential American past time What we can learn from the collaborations of top-performing race teams and pit crews Cynthia's unconventional directing approach that allowed for real-time storytelling in the midst of race-day whirlwind How Cynthia and her team was able to record crisp sound even in the midst of a noisy speedway  # Sponsor for this Episode PODCAST SUCCESS STORY  I interviewed filmmaker Austin Alward during my Louisiana Film Prize 2016 coverage. After getting to know him, I felt like he might get along well with Sam Claitor, a producer friend over at Fable House. Austin and Sam hit it off and decided to partner on Le Grand Remix, one of the more ambitious short films I've come across. (It involves a crew larger than some feature films.) In April Sam and Austin were awarded a a $32,500 French Culture Film Grant from #CreateLouisiana and their partners.    Former podcast guests Austin Alward and Jolene Pinder pose with Sam Claitor after the award ceremony. Photo from CreateLouisiana's Facebook page.   At the time of this episode, they are finishing up the shooting for the film and are prepping a Kickstarter campaign to pay for the film's finishing touches. Congratulations to Austin, Sam, and the rest of the Le Grand Remix team for bringing your ambitious vision to life!     The nsavides Podcast made things a little better for Austin and Sam. How can it make things better for you?  podcast@nsavides.com # Related Things Cynthia's production company, Markay Media Composer Chuck Johnson's website Watch Road to Race Day on go90.com Cynthia on Facebook, Twitter Chuck on Facebook, Twitter Road to Race Day on Facebook, Twitter Audio equipment used to record the series Sanken COS-11D omni lavalier mics (paired with Lectrosonics SRb5P dual-channel wireless receivers and SMQV transmitters) Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun microphone Zaxcom Maxx mixer/recorder # Films & Shows Mentioned Boxing 24/7  Beasts of the Southern Wild  A Chef's Life Friday Night Lights  Patriot Day    Raw Road to Race Day # If You Liked the Show Sign up for The nsavides Newsletter. Subscribe or leave a friendly review: bit.ly/nsavidesPodcast Stitcher Say hello on Twitter:  @nsavidesPRO Thank you for visiting!   SaveSave

Note* I now use and recommend Zencastr instead of CAST. As you listen to previous sessions you'll hear me mention CAST from time to time but their service has gone downhill badly and Zencastr is now the best in that space, in my opinion. First, I reflect on this show - A Walk Down Memory Lane! Session 1 - March 10, 2016 2016 break from Thanksgiving to the New Year 2017 start - Session 38 with Garth Humphreys - January 5, 2017 Thanks/Shoutouts: I am continually delighted by so many emails, tweets, and friendships that this show inspires. I appreciate all of you! Lexington friends - The Podcasting Course (Emergency Medicine):  Anton Helman Rob Rogers Salim R. Rezaie Scott Weingart Jess Mason Anand Swaminathan Will Sanderson Gita Pensa Julie Derringer 2017 Previous Guests:  Arik Levy Stephen Ric Viers Roy Stegman Kirk Bowman Mary Mazurek Mike Murphy Rob Greenlee Patrick Keller Jason DeFillippo Adron Buske Zack Hanni The Return of Max Flight Garth Humphreys - host and producer of Audio.Pizza Current PES Students:  Ben Bryan Erika Hunter Jim Josh Landen Luke Ralph and Carol Lynn (also my mastermind partners!) Potential 17B participants:  Dennis Chris Jeff Jason Brad Wendy TOPICS this session: Recording with my Zoom H6 at the Pause Your Life retreat. AT 8035 shotgun mic. Also resumed my gawking at the Sennheiser MKH 416 - and sad that I didn’t buy it when it was on sale for $600 (normally $1,000). Arik Levy (last session, #54) “The Rode Broadcaster is the best mic ever!  Out of the box amazing. With no EQ I sound rich and smooth.  NT1 going back…” Describe my PES class recording and production process Zoom - record with this but don’t use it unless Camtasia fails Camtasia - the system audio is recorded very low PPT, Reaper, Soundforge, Ozone, RX 6 RX 6 Advanced (I upgraded from 5) --- 50% discount for PES Students Voice De-noise Phase Loudness EQ De-click De-hum As I mentioned in the audio, here's my affiliate discount link for Podcasters' Society: https://podcasterssociety.com/pes/ . It's a wonderful community for podcasters and producers who have already launched their show(s) and are ready to improve their show(s) big time. It's WAY more helpful than your average Facebook group, and I'm not knocking any podcasting Facebook groups because they are awesome, it's just that Podcasters' Society goes way deeper and wider in so many ways. Thanks for listening! DID YOU KNOW........We exist for the purpose of helping you, so please comment below with any questions or remarks. Thanks for listening! Want to Start a Business or Have a Career as a Podcast Producer/Engineer? Listen and Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, Android, RSS

Dan Powell is one half of Dead Signals Production, creator of the popular Archive 81 and Deep Vault found sound, radio drama podcasts. In this episode, we talk about his recording process, how he designs sound, and his editing process. He shares some of the hurdles he overcame while producing podcasts and what advice he'd give to anyone interested in making a modern radio drama. Key Takeaways: Don't buy your gear new—if you buy the best gear used, it'll last you forever. The hardest part of any narrative creative medium is the transition between two parts. Make sure you understand what's happening in your environment before you choose a space to record in. What you make should be in conversation with your audience, but don't make something just because it'll get a lot of downloads. Find people who are established in your field, reach out to them, and ask for some direct advice. Think about how the ambience and background noise where you're recording can contribute to the story and the feel of your whole piece. Aaron: Hey Dan, thanks for joining me today. Tell me a little bit about yourself—where you're from and where you are now. Maybe a little bit about what your path to audio and podcasting has looked like over the course of your life. Dan: I was born in Rome, Georgia and I was there until I was about 18. It was a medium/small size town in the middle of the woods. I spent a lot of time by myself alone with my thoughts, which is probably what caused me to gravitate to sci-fi, horror, and secular fiction. I began making radio dramas at the age of eight or nine. I used Window 95 Sound Recorder to make these one-man shows. Sometimes it would be me and sometimes it would be my friends, and we would get in front of a microphone and see what happened. That's really what introduced me to audio editing and creative sound design. From an early age, I was interested in what would happen if you slowed down, sped up, or changed the pitch of your voice. I went to Syracuse University for college and majored in English. I loved reading and still really do, but I realized I was spending all my free time in studios recording my friend's bands (or recording myself), and that working with audio might be a good career path. I'd always been interested in creative writing, but I thought it might be good to develop a more technical skill or trade that I could have on the side while writing. I ended up really enjoying working with audio and I decided to make that my primary creative and career pursuit. After school I moved to New York City. I interned, I did some odd jobs, I worked at an Apple store, and I eventually got my first job in the sound industry at Soundsnap, a commercial sound effects library. I did that full time for about two years and then transitioned to working there part time while making more time for freelance work, sound engineering, and working on my own podcast on the side. That's where I'm at now. Aaron: You met Marc (the other half of Dead Signals) in college? Dan: Yeah, Marc and I met his senior year and my post-senior year. I stayed after I graduated to do a fellowship in audio engineering and sound design. One of the cool things about Syracuse is they have this program where if you get to the end of your four years and you decide you want to do something different than what you studied, you can apply for a fellowship that will let you stay an extra year. You basically get a free year of credits that you can do what you want with. I did that after I finished studying English so I could build up my portfolio and get some more one-on-one mentoring strictly with audio stuff. That's where Marc and I met. Aaron: Then you guys formed Dead Signals Productions. Dan: We formed Dead Signals this time last year. Marc came and visited me in New York and we were talking about ideas we had. The project we worked on together in college was Marc's senior thesis project, a radio play he wrote and produced. I was just acting in it, playing the lead. More recently, starting last year, was when we started collaborating and both giving equal input for the project. Recording Radio Drama Podcasts Aaron: Let's talk about Archive 81 and Deep Vault, the recording process and the tools you use to handle the editing. Marc said you guys recorded Archive 81 in a bedroom. Do you remember which mic you used for that? Dan: It was the Sennheiser MKH 8040. I got this mic because it's a really good all-purpose sound design mic. It's good for all-purpose folio recording, like footsteps, fabric movements, and every day objects you want to record. It's also really good for ambient field recording. We recorded the dialog with this mic and another mic called a Sennheiser MKH30, which is a bi-directional stereo mic. The two of these things together form a really good pair for mid-side stereo recording. What I was really interested in when I bought these mics was, one, it was the best deal I found on eBay, and two, I was interested in doing more ambient field recording. Living in New York City there's so many interesting sounds everywhere. There are neighborhoods, parks, and subways. You can turn a corner and be in an entirely different sonic landscape than you were just in. I wanted something that was good for capturing my environment, but when it came down to produce Archive 81, after doing some tests, we realized that these mics would work just as well for dialog recording. I personally would have liked to use a wider diaphragm AKG microphone, but I still think the mics we used worked well for recording dialog. It's good gear and it's what we had available at the time. Aaron: I know a lot of podcasters who use $60 or $70 USB mics and there's a big difference in quality between those and the MKH. What do they run used, close to $1,000? Dan: Close to $1,000. The mic I'm on right now goes for about $1,200 new, but I'm a big Craigslist and eBay deal-hunter. When I was first getting into audio, one of the best pieces of advice I got was when I was talking to someone five years my senior who's successful and established in the music production scene here in New York. He said: Don't buy your gear new. Even if you buy the best gear used, it'll still last you forever. He told me, “I've made a spreadsheet of every piece of equipment I've purchased from when I first started out. Collectively I've saved about $30,000.” That really stuck with me, so now I only buy used gear. I got the mic I'm talking on now for about half of what it would cost new. Aaron: I'm currently on a Shure BETA 87A, which costs $250 new and I think I paid $120 for it used at Guitar Center and it's an awesome sounding mic for podcasting. Dan: I like the richness of it. In general, I really like dynamic mics for podcasts. I like the rich low end and the proximity effect you can get. I use the mics I use because I want to have a lot of applications for things like sound design and field recording, but I don't want to make it seem like you have to buy a $700 or $1,000 microphone. I've seen people get fantastic results with an SM58, which I use when I do event recording gigs. You can get one of those used on Craigslist for $50 in most cases. In many cases, it's probably more ideal if you're at home instead of a treated acoustic space because dynamic microphones do a better job of isolating the sound source and not picking up your refrigerator, your roommate, or your neighbors yelling at each other. Aaron: I agree. I love the large diaphragm condensers, but you do need a quiet, treated room to make them sound good and not pick up a bunch of sound. Alright; let's talk about sound design. Here's a clip of episode one of Deep Vault, which has some dialog with some reverb on. I wanted to ask you about that, and about the part in the music where the footsteps transition into the beat of the song. First, let's talk about the ambience and reverb you used. As I'm listening to it, there's some kind of ambient sound in that. I'm not sure if it's reverb in the space you recorded it in or if it's reverb you added afterward. There's also an air conditioning kind of “swoosh” background ambience. Can you describe how you achieved those effects? Dan: None of that reverb is natural. It's all added in post. I exclusively use impulse response reverb, which is basically the ability to capture the sonic snapshot of a real, indoor space by going in and blasting a sign wave or white noise in it and then recording the echo that comes afterwards, then notching out the original sign wave in post. This gives a ghost emanation of what a space actually sounds like. There's two reverbs fading out and in. There's the outdoor reverb, which I have a light touch on. It's meant to evoke the sense that the space is outdoors and then there's the echo-y underground reverb of the vault they're about to go into. If you listen prior to them entering the vault, you can hear how it evolves from one space to another. I think very visually when I'm working on it. I've said this a lot in various interviews, but because I'm working with Marc on the scripts from the beginning, I don't really think of this as post production. I'm always thinking about space and sonics as I'm reading the first draft of a show. I usually visually map out or make a flow chart of what the space looks like and how things need to transition from one stage to another. That helps me focus better. In the background, we have a desert ambient sound. It's a field recording of a desert that's near an urban area. You have some wind and outdoor air atmosphere, called the air tone, which is the outdoor equivalent of a room tone. If you search Soundsnap for air tone, you'll find a bunch of ambient recordings of outdoor air spaces that don't have crowds, people, or traffic. It's more a general wash like you hear in that clip. There's the air tone and then there's the vault sounds—the ambient sounds of the space they're going into, which is a field recording by a field recordist named Stephan March. I think it's some recordings of some abandoned bomb shelters on the Danish coast. It's some industrial room tones with some distant waves, but they have an underground low-fi industrial roominess to them. Those things blend together to create the atmosphere of the vault. Aaron: I'm embarrassed to say it now, but I was thinking these were effects you could achieve with something like the reverbs that come with ProTools or Logic Pro X. What program do you use to do all this stuff with? Dan: I use ProTools for editing, mixing, and basic sound effect placement. For what's referred to as composite sound effects design—designing a sound effect that needs a lot more depth to it than what you can pull from a library as is—I use Logic. I do that for two reasons. One, I think it's good to have separation between sound effect editing and show editing. I like to be in two different programs when I'm creating the sound of a robot or a door and when I'm editing the show. Having the different software environment helps to streamline that. The other reason is, though I do think ProTools is great, I think it's very flawed for making things creatively from scratch. I would never write a song or demo a song in ProTools because I don't think the user experience is tailored toward composition, whether that's composing a song or compositing a sound effect from scratch. It's great for editing and taking material that's aesthetically already done—like you recording a guitar through an amp—but if you're trying to dial in the tone of a guitar, I prefer to use Logic, something a little more built for making music from scratch. For this scene, I used pretty much all ProTools because I wasn't designing anything beyond simply layering things together and the reverb that goes along with that. I wrote the music in Logic. Dan's Favorite Editing Programs and Plugins Aaron: Are there any stock plugins you use inside of Logic or do you have any favorites? Dan: I use Logic's modular synth plugin, the ES2, a lot because I know it really well. It has a very particular sound but I've been using it for many years, and I can dial in the sound I want pretty quickly with it. I probably should learn some more synth plugins so I don't get set in my ways. Aaron: What about reverb or special effects? I know there's like 50 stock plugins inside Logic. Dan: Space Designer Plugin for Logic Pro X is incredible. It's a great impulse response reverb plugin. I use Waves IR1 for the reverb in this scene, but it could have as easily been achieved with the stock Logic Space Designer plugin, probably easier even, because they have a larger native sample library. Any sound designer you talk to will say that Space Designer is the best free stock plugin of anything. That's a big one. There aren't a lot of other stock Logic plugins I use for sound design in terms of compositing. Although I do really like the basic Chorus and Phaser modulation stuff for voice processing for robot voices. Aaron: You wrote the music for the show. Is the music going to be available somewhere else later? Dan: Marc and I would really like to release an album of the music from our shows. It's something we want to do and there's a few reasons we haven't done it yet. One reason is time. I'm very skittish about making sure everything is mixed properly. I wouldn't want to release the music stand alone unless I was absolutely sure it was put together well. The other reason is that I write most of the music for our shows, but we do have some songs that are done with side collaborators and I would want to make sure it's done legally and copywrite-wise we were in the clear. I want to sign some kind of licensing or formal distribution agreement to make sure everyone is happy money-wise. The song from episode one was me ripping off Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I'm a big fan of their scoring work. Music & Sound Effect Creation for Podcasts Aaron: Let's talk about how you achieved that effect for the song in the sample clip I played earlier. I'm guessing you had the sound of the footsteps on a ladder. Is that something you recorded yourself or is that something you got out of the sound library? Dan: I used several different libraries for that. There's a mixture of some simulated ladder movement in there, like arms reaching and hands grabbing the rungs of the ladder. There's also some pure metal footsteps in there. When I was originally putting that together, there were six or seven tracks, three of which were cloth movements and body motions and three of which were footsteps. Some were more foregrounded, like when one character named Jeremy is counting his steps. His footsteps are louder because he's drawing attention to the fact that he's counting them. The others are more off to the side to evoke the sense of space and depth, because presumably, they're going down a circular enclosure to a vault. That was a real pain to put together. Aaron: I can't believe you recorded clothes rustling to make this realistic. Dan: I can't speak to film, tv, or video, but part of what makes the footsteps convincing in audio dramas is the footsteps being good, but also having cloth movement and fabric rustling. Aaron: With headphones and soundscapes, you have left and right channels, obviously. What do you do when you're trying to make something seem like it's coming from above or below. Is there any way to achieve that affect? Dan: In episode two of Deep Vault, where two characters crash through the floor of the room their in, they're down there for a bit, and then you hear them crawling up through the crash hole to the other characters that are above them. I think it worked pretty well. I think the sequence of the narrative and that you hear them crash through the floor first and the space change around them helps to establish that. It's just a matter of having more reverb and/or more delay on the voices that are further away than the voices that are close to you. I'm still figuring out what my philosophy on panning things is for the Deep Vault. It's an ensemble cast with four actors talking at once, I have them panned around the clock—some are hard left, some are hard right, and some are close to the center. Usually if characters are interrogating or trying to get information from another character or recording, I'll try to have whatever recording or character they're talking to in the center to give the sense that they're gathered around this new source of information they're trying to learn. As far as making things sound far away or from above or below, it's a matter of adding more reverb to the things that are farther away and hoping the sense of space translates. Aaron: I think it does most of the time, but it's something I'm curious about. I'm thinking about the future with virtual reality and how they're going to handle the different angles of sound. Have you had a chance to try VR yet? Dan: No, but I have some friends who told me I need to do it and I really want to. I have some friends who say Google Cardboard alone is incredible. I'm curious what that technology is like, but also what it's going to mean for sound. I'm curious what sound for VR is going to be like and how it's going to differ from the old guard, but also how it's going to use some of the same techniques to make a realistic experience. Aaron: I used the equivalent to Google Cardboard, not even one of the great ones, and it blew my mind. It's going to be a game-changer. Maybe we'll both have future careers in sound design for VR applications. Dan: I'm just trying to stay ahead with what's new for sound design because I'm afraid of being replaced by robots. It's something I think about regularly. Am I doing something that will still be done by a human in 20 years? I feel ok about it most of the time, but you never know. Aaron: I like to think that you'll still have a job because you're being creative and you're doing things that take a human. I guess we'll see. Let's talk about then music a little more. You did this transition where you have this music playing over the sound of the footsteps, and the footsteps blend into the beat of the music. Did you write the beat first? Were you listening to the pattern of the footsteps or did you go back and match those things up later? Dan: They were matched up later, but my choice of percussion samples definitely made them more easily blendable. With the exception of the kick drum, which is more of a classic, electronic bass-pulse kick drum, everything else is found percussion—everyday objects being tapped on. Things like chairs, bags, or plastic silverware. I like working with low-fi sound percussion samples. I think the fact the percussion track in the song isn't a real snare drum recorded in a studio helps serve as the connective tissue between the footsteps and their percussiveness and the song's percussion, and it's driving the melody forward. The hardest part of any narrative creative medium is the transition between two parts. It glues two things together that work well on their own. Sonically, that could be a good example of choosing the right percussion sample in the context of this being a score rather than a stand alone song. Perhaps if this was just a song released on an EP and it wasn't meant to score anything, it would sound better with a non-found percussion or some other type of sound. Sound Proofing vs. Sound Treatment for Podcasts Aaron: Let's jump into some mistakes or hard times you came across when you started doing Archive 81 and the Deep Vault. What are some of the things you struggled with? Dan: I do have one thing about recording in a bedroom. The bedroom we recorded in sounded really good as far as bedrooms go, but we had only ever tested the sound in the room at night when everyone else in the house was really quiet. When it came to production time, we were recording during the three most blizzardy weeks in January when every person was holed up in their apartment in New York City. Above my friend's bedroom is a family with five teenagers, so we had to pause all the time because there were so many footsteps, running water, and cooking sounds. We didn't plan for all of that. I realized that, even though acoustically the room sounded very good, there was no isolation from what's above and outside. That was definitely an error I made in trying to plan the space. The next time, we paid for a real studio, because as cool as it is to record in a good-sounding bedroom for free, it's worth that money to not have to stop every take for outside noise. When you're pausing takes like that for noise coming from upstairs or outside, you're losing the groove you have with the actors. The actors might move around if you have to wait for 10 minutes between a scene and you might have to reset levels, which makes it harder to set levels in post and mix. That was a real learning experience. Make sure you understand what's happening in your environment before you choose a space to record in. Aaron: That applies to regular podcasting too. Someone asked me the other day, “How do I soundproof my room?” They're actually asking two different questions: “How do I make the sound of my room less noisy?” and, “How do I keep outside noise from coming in?” First, you have to stop noise from computers, air conditioners, refrigerators, and the sound of your voice from bouncing off the walls and being recorded by your mic. Then you have to soundproof the room so that the external sounds aren't picked up by your mic. For me, I have three windows directly in front of me and it's an old house, so the windows aren't soundproof at all. If someone was running a lawn mower outside of my window, everyone would hear it. Soundproofing is making sure noises from outside don't come in. Sound treatment is making sure there aren't noises inside your room causing problems in your audio. Know Your Limits Aaron: Any other mistakes or things that stood out throughout this process? Dan: There are so many. The question is what's a useful mistake to talk about, and what's one I perpetually torture myself about at night? I'll talk about casting. With Archive 81, we didn't have a system for how we went about casting it. We put the character notices out on Craigslist one at a time and auditioned and chose people piecemeal. It worked out for the most part, but there were some characters where we were in a real bind because we didn't have enough people in time, so we had to choose the best option. I would have liked to have more options. I pretty much did all the casting for the first season and I didn't go about it systematically, so for the Deep Vault, I wanted to make sure I did it more systematically. I spent a whole weekend auditioning people and planned in advance the characters they were auditioning for and allot time slots throughout the day so I could do it all at once. That was good and it was organized, but I packed too many people in one weekend, so by Sunday afternoon it was too much. I'm pretty introverted by nature and I think I chose my line of work in the technical side of audio production because a lot of times, it's just you and the machine. You do need other skills and to be able to talk to people professionally, but you also spend a lot of time alone, which I'm fine with. I definitely love socialising, like on this interview, but I'll be glad to go back to my little audio hole. That Sunday after three eight-hour days of auditioning and reading lines in character for these people, I was totally depleted. I think I've learned I need to be more systematic about it, but that I also need to spread it out over a few weekends in advance as opposed to trying to do it all in one weekend. Aaron: I'm a productivity nerd when it comes to planning out my days and making sure I have stuff to do. There's a lot I want to accomplish, but when you first get into that, you tend to overestimate what you can accomplish. You think you can do meaningful work for 12 or 14 hours and you don't realize that you can take on too much and say yes to too many things. Half way through, you've given it all you have for six hours and you're worn out and you feel guilty because you didn't do all the things you said you were going to do. It's good to plan and try that stuff so that you know next time not to plan 12 hours of work for both Saturday and Sunday. Maybe you can do that, but you don't know until you try. Start by planning and make notes about how it goes and you'll have a better understanding about yourself and your stamina for the next time. Dan: That speaks to the more general philosophy that doing it is the only way you'll know what your own patterns are, what works for you, and what doesn't work for you. Be open to some trial and error for your own personal workflow. It's easy to look up to certain human accomplishments and think, “This great musician practiced for 12 hours a day, so I must have to do that to be the Rachmaninoff of podcasting,” but at the same time, there are successful and accomplished people who have more human and normal working hour regimens. Trent Reznor is one of those people and it's obvious from his output that he's someone who never stops working. That works for him, but some people need more time to unwind and not get burnt out on things. Dan's Advice for Aspiring Podcasters Aaron: What kind of advice or tips would you give to someone who's interested in doing something like Archive 81 or Deep Vault—a found sound or radio drama podcast? I've noticed in the last year or two they're skyrocketing in terms of popularity. I think there's a lot of people who might be turning the idea over in their mind. What would you say to those people? Dan: The first thing is the writing and acting has to be really good. Have people you can trust give you feedback and critique who you can run things by. If the source material and story doesn't work, then everything that follows isn't going to work either. If you've never done a podcast before, be prepared for many ours of sedentary work. Doing this kind of work takes a lot time and it's a lot of time you have to spend alone in front of a computer. I lost count of the number of times this summer my friends said, “Hey, we're going to the beach. Want to come?” or other things I wanted to do and I had to blow them off because I was editing or doing revisions. Be prepared for that and make sure you're ok with that. If you need a lot of time outside of the house and you really need a social life, maybe this particular kind of podcasting isn't right for you. Interviewing is a very different thing. I don't like to be preachy about exercise, but I do think it's good to exercise if you're doing sedentary creative work because it makes the mind work better and for me, it puts me more at ease. Aaron: I'm with you on that, so two out of two podcasters recommend exercise and good sleep. Dan: Go out there and do it. Work hard and tell the story you want to tell. Don't make anything because you think it'll sell or bring an audience. Marc and I made Archive 81 because we thought it was a cool idea. What you make should be in conversation with your audience, but don't make something just because you think it'll get a lot of downloads. I still feel like I'm learning a lot and trying to figure all this stuff out. Keep an open mind and stay open to learning new things as you go along. I still study sound design with a mentor because there's always new levels I can push myself towards and I don't want to get too comfortable. Sound Design Resources Aaron: Are there any books, websites, or online courses for someone who's a total beginner, or someone like me who is relatively familiar with recording, mixing, and producing music and podcasts but hasn't really gotten into sound design? Dan: Transom.org is a great resource. Although it is geared towards beginners in radio and podcasting, I still find articles on there I can learn from. I think it has a good intro overview to things like sound design. I can't name anything specific, but for a few years now, when I want to learn more about a subject, I find someone I like and relate to who's established in that field and I reach out to them asking for some one-on-one mentoring lessons. That's something I think is worth paying for. Most people will take $50 for a few hours to talk about it. No matter what artistic discipline you're in, it's helpful to find people who are established in your field, reach out to them, and ask for some direct advice. That's what's been the most helpful for me. If there's a sound designer, composer, or radio producer you admire, reach out and see if that's an option. I don't think Ira Glass is capable of doing private lessons with as busy as he is, but I'm sure there are other people who are really good at what they do who are capable. Aaron: There's people at all different levels on this journey. We're talking about audio specifically, but it's true for anything. There are famous people you've heard of and then there's people in the middle who have more experience than you but maybe aren't quite so famous yet. Surrounding yourself with people who share your passion and interests on your skill level is great, but try reaching out and offering to pay for some consulting. Chances are they like talking about that stuff, but it is good to pay people for their time. That makes sure they're invested and they're not feeling like you're taking advantage of their time. Audio engineers have to make money to buy gear! Field Recording Gear and Tips for Podcasters Aaron: Diana asks, “What's your setup for mobile recording?” She's about to start a podcast and will be doing some traveling. I know there are times where you take microphones out into the real world to do field recordings. What's your setup? Is it the same mics and a portable recording device? Dan: A Sennheiser MD421 or a Shure SM58 will work great because most dynamic microphones are good at sound isolation. Another good option to consider would be the Sennheiser ME66 Shotgun Mic, which is a great short shotgun microphone. That's good for both ambient sound and interview recordings in a live setting. It's in the $200 to $300 range and you can find it on eBay, Craigslist, Guitar Center, or Reverb.com for much cheaper. Aaron: What device do you record into? Dan: The Zoom H5 or H6 is a fantastic piece of recording equipment. You can find that new for $300 or used for way less. It's a solid improvement over the H4N in many ways. There's less handling noise, it's less noisy, and the majority of people looking into podcasting would do great with one of those. Aaron: I think this is a situation a lot of people will get in. When you're out and about and recording, you have to think about the noise in the room and the ambient noise, and if there's a possibility of a lot of noise where you are. Coffee shops and crowded restaurants aren't going to be great for getting clean audio. You'll also want to set input gain levels correctly, so you can be sure the levels coming into the microphone doesn't hit zero and clip. You want to keep the highest peaks coming in around -12 DB. What's your thought on that? What do you aim for? Dan: I aim for -12 to -6 at absolute highest for both studio and in the field. I always stuck by that as universal truth of audio, but when I was doing some sound design training this summer with the person I was mentoring under, for sound effects recording, he was advising me to capture things at as high of a signal level as possible without clipping. Being able to focus and isolate the sound source that way really is much more beneficial when you're trying to make a sound effect at non-dialog level. Aaron: Did you have limiters on in that situation? Dan: I usually keep the limiters on, but I try not to hit them. I record on my rooftop a lot. Sometimes I get up at 6am and record the morning rush as it starts to unfold and I usually need the limiters to catch a truck horn or a plane that flies overhead. If you're in a noisy environment, that's another good case for using a dynamic microphone because it does isolate the sound source pretty well. When I was in school, I did a student radio project for a radio podcast production class where I was riding the campus buses and I was on one of those buses on a Friday night when it was filled with drunk kids going from one frat house to another. You can imagine how quiet that was. I was using a dynamic mic and it worked pretty well when I was cutting the interviews together. It had that loud, crazy ambience in the background, but if I held it pretty close to the speaker, I could still isolate them in a way that worked for the final product. Think about how the ambience and background noise where you're recording can contribute to the story and the feel of your whole piece. Dan: With all the woes that came with recording Archive 81 in a bedroom with loud upstairs neighbors, I do think the fact that it felt like an apartment helped the actors get the vibe. I'm not sure how much of that translated sonically, because it's hard for me to be objective about it at this point, but I do think that background worked for that piece. In theory, I would like to do more location recording for audio dramas. If something takes place on a busy street corner, I'd like to get out there with a more formal production sound rig and record it, but Marc and I work at a pretty intense pace and it's not always easy to coordinate that. Many times it makes the most sense to do it in the studio and create the atmosphere after the fact, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't. Aaron: Do what your gut says and plan for it. Last week, Marc said one of the hardest thing for him is the time constraints. I definitely feel that too. My podcast isn't anything complicated but it still takes a few hours to produce. When you have a full-time job, other projects, and people you want to hang out with, you really have to focus on what you want to say yes to and what you have to say no to. _Huge thanks to Dan and Marc for taking time out of their busy schedules to talk with me. If you've enjoyed these interviews, head over to their Patreon page and support these guys. Links: Dead Signals Productions Archive 81 Deep Vault Podcast: https://podcastingwithaaron.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/aaronpodcasting Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/aarondowd Blog: https://www.aarondowd.com Recommended Gear: https://kit.co/PodcastingwithAaron

Dan Powell is one half of Dead Signals Production, creator of the popular Archive 81 and Deep Vault found sound, radio drama podcasts.In this episode, we talk about his recording process, how he designs sound, and his editing process. He shares some of the hurdles he overcame while producing podcasts and what advice he’d give to anyone interested in making a modern radio drama.Key Takeaways:Don’t buy your gear new—if you buy the best gear used, it’ll last you forever.The hardest part of any narrative creative medium is the transition between two parts.Make sure you understand what’s happening in your environment before you choose a space to record in.What you make should be in conversation with your audience, but don’t make something just because it’ll get a lot of downloads.Find people who are established in your field, reach out to them, and ask for some direct advice.Think about how the ambience and background noise where you’re recording can contribute to the story and the feel of your whole piece.Aaron: Hey Dan, thanks for joining me today. Tell me a little bit about yourself—where you’re from and where you are now. Maybe a little bit about what your path to audio and podcasting has looked like over the course of your life.Dan: I was born in Rome, Georgia and I was there until I was about 18. It was a medium/small size town in the middle of the woods. I spent a lot of time by myself alone with my thoughts, which is probably what caused me to gravitate to sci-fi, horror, and secular fiction. I began making radio dramas at the age of eight or nine. I used Window 95 Sound Recorder to make these one-man shows.Sometimes it would be me and sometimes it would be my friends, and we would get in front of a microphone and see what happened. That’s really what introduced me to audio editing and creative sound design. From an early age, I was interested in what would happen if you slowed down, sped up, or changed the pitch of your voice.I went to Syracuse University for college and majored in English. I loved reading and still really do, but I realized I was spending all my free time in studios recording my friend’s bands (or recording myself), and that working with audio might be a good career path. I’d always been interested in creative writing, but I thought it might be good to develop a more technical skill or trade that I could have on the side while writing.I ended up really enjoying working with audio and I decided to make that my primary creative and career pursuit. After school I moved to New York City. I interned, I did some odd jobs, I worked at an Apple store, and I eventually got my first job in the sound industry at Soundsnap, a commercial sound effects library. I did that full time for about two years and then transitioned to working there part time while making more time for freelance work, sound engineering, and working on my own podcast on the side. That’s where I’m at now.Aaron: You met Marc (the other half of Dead Signals) in college?Dan: Yeah, Marc and I met his senior year and my post-senior year. I stayed after I graduated to do a fellowship in audio engineering and sound design. One of the cool things about Syracuse is they have this program where if you get to the end of your four years and you decide you want to do something different than what you studied, you can apply for a fellowship that will let you stay an extra year. You basically get a free year of credits that you can do what you want with. I did that after I finished studying English so I could build up my portfolio and get some more one-on-one mentoring strictly with audio stuff. That’s where Marc and I met.Aaron: Then you guys formed Dead Signals Productions.Dan: We formed Dead Signals this time last year. Marc came and visited me in New York and we were talking about ideas we had. The project we worked on together in college was Marc’s senior thesis project, a radio play he wrote and produced. I was just acting in it, playing the lead. More recently, starting last year, was when we started collaborating and both giving equal input for the project.Recording Radio Drama PodcastsAaron: Let’s talk about Archive 81 and Deep Vault, the recording process and the tools you use to handle the editing. Marc said you guys recorded Archive 81 in a bedroom. Do you remember which mic you used for that?Dan: It was the Sennheiser MKH 8040. I got this mic because it’s a really good all-purpose sound design mic. It’s good for all-purpose folio recording, like footsteps, fabric movements, and every day objects you want to record. It’s also really good for ambient field recording. We recorded the dialog with this mic and another mic called a Sennheiser MKH30, which is a bi-directional stereo mic. The two of these things together form a really good pair for mid-side stereo recording.What I was really interested in when I bought these mics was, one, it was the best deal I found on eBay, and two, I was interested in doing more ambient field recording. Living in New York City there’s so many interesting sounds everywhere. There are neighborhoods, parks, and subways. You can turn a corner and be in an entirely different sonic landscape than you were just in.I wanted something that was good for capturing my environment, but when it came down to produce Archive 81, after doing some tests, we realized that these mics would work just as well for dialog recording. I personally would have liked to use a wider diaphragm AKG microphone, but I still think the mics we used worked well for recording dialog. It’s good gear and it’s what we had available at the time.Aaron: I know a lot of podcasters who use $60 or $70 USB mics and there’s a big difference in quality between those and the MKH. What do they run used, close to $1,000?Dan: Close to $1,000. The mic I’m on right now goes for about $1,200 new, but I’m a big Craigslist and eBay deal-hunter. When I was first getting into audio, one of the best pieces of advice I got was when I was talking to someone five years my senior who’s successful and established in the music production scene here in New York. He said:Don’t buy your gear new. Even if you buy the best gear used, it’ll still last you forever.He told me, “I’ve made a spreadsheet of every piece of equipment I’ve purchased from when I first started out. Collectively I’ve saved about $30,000.” That really stuck with me, so now I only buy used gear. I got the mic I’m talking on now for about half of what it would cost new.Aaron: I’m currently on a Shure BETA 87A, which costs $250 new and I think I paid $120 for it used at Guitar Center and it’s an awesome sounding mic for podcasting.Dan: I like the richness of it. In general, I really like dynamic mics for podcasts. I like the rich low end and the proximity effect you can get. I use the mics I use because I want to have a lot of applications for things like sound design and field recording, but I don’t want to make it seem like you have to buy a $700 or $1,000 microphone. I’ve seen people get fantastic results with an SM58, which I use when I do event recording gigs. You can get one of those used on Craigslist for $50 in most cases. In many cases, it’s probably more ideal if you’re at home instead of a treated acoustic space because dynamic microphones do a better job of isolating the sound source and not picking up your refrigerator, your roommate, or your neighbors yelling at each other.Aaron: I agree. I love the large diaphragm condensers, but you do need a quiet, treated room to make them sound good and not pick up a bunch of sound. Alright; let’s talk about sound design. Here’s a clip of episode one of Deep Vault, which has some dialog with some reverb on. I wanted to ask you about that, and about the part in the music where the footsteps transition into the beat of the song.First, let’s talk about the ambience and reverb you used. As I’m listening to it, there’s some kind of ambient sound in that. I’m not sure if it’s reverb in the space you recorded it in or if it’s reverb you added afterward. There’s also an air conditioning kind of “swoosh” background ambience. Can you describe how you achieved those effects?Dan: None of that reverb is natural. It’s all added in post. I exclusively use impulse response reverb, which is basically the ability to capture the sonic snapshot of a real, indoor space by going in and blasting a sign wave or white noise in it and then recording the echo that comes afterwards, then notching out the original sign wave in post. This gives a ghost emanation of what a space actually sounds like.There’s two reverbs fading out and in. There’s the outdoor reverb, which I have a light touch on. It’s meant to evoke the sense that the space is outdoors and then there’s the echo-y underground reverb of the vault they’re about to go into. If you listen prior to them entering the vault, you can hear how it evolves from one space to another. I think very visually when I’m working on it. I’ve said this a lot in various interviews, but because I’m working with Marc on the scripts from the beginning, I don’t really think of this as post production.I’m always thinking about space and sonics as I’m reading the first draft of a show.I usually visually map out or make a flow chart of what the space looks like and how things need to transition from one stage to another. That helps me focus better. In the background, we have a desert ambient sound. It’s a field recording of a desert that’s near an urban area. You have some wind and outdoor air atmosphere, called the air tone, which is the outdoor equivalent of a room tone. If you search Soundsnap for air tone, you’ll find a bunch of ambient recordings of outdoor air spaces that don’t have crowds, people, or traffic.It’s more a general wash like you hear in that clip. There’s the air tone and then there’s the vault sounds—the ambient sounds of the space they’re going into, which is a field recording by a field recordist named Stephan March. I think it’s some recordings of some abandoned bomb shelters on the Danish coast. It’s some industrial room tones with some distant waves, but they have an underground low-fi industrial roominess to them. Those things blend together to create the atmosphere of the vault.Aaron: I’m embarrassed to say it now, but I was thinking these were effects you could achieve with something like the reverbs that come with ProTools or Logic Pro X. What program do you use to do all this stuff with?Dan: I use ProTools for editing, mixing, and basic sound effect placement. For what’s referred to as composite sound effects design—designing a sound effect that needs a lot more depth to it than what you can pull from a library as is—I use Logic. I do that for two reasons. One, I think it’s good to have separation between sound effect editing and show editing. I like to be in two different programs when I’m creating the sound of a robot or a door and when I’m editing the show. Having the different software environment helps to streamline that.The other reason is, though I do think ProTools is great, I think it’s very flawed for making things creatively from scratch. I would never write a song or demo a song in ProTools because I don’t think the user experience is tailored toward composition, whether that’s composing a song or compositing a sound effect from scratch.It’s great for editing and taking material that’s aesthetically already done—like you recording a guitar through an amp—but if you’re trying to dial in the tone of a guitar, I prefer to use Logic, something a little more built for making music from scratch. For this scene, I used pretty much all ProTools because I wasn’t designing anything beyond simply layering things together and the reverb that goes along with that. I wrote the music in Logic.Dan’s Favorite Editing Programs and PluginsAaron: Are there any stock plugins you use inside of Logic or do you have any favorites?Dan: I use Logic’s modular synth plugin, the ES2, a lot because I know it really well. It has a very particular sound but I’ve been using it for many years, and I can dial in the sound I want pretty quickly with it. I probably should learn some more synth plugins so I don’t get set in my ways.Aaron: What about reverb or special effects? I know there’s like 50 stock plugins inside Logic.Dan: Space Designer Plugin for Logic Pro X is incredible. It’s a great impulse response reverb plugin. I use Waves IR1 for the reverb in this scene, but it could have as easily been achieved with the stock Logic Space Designer plugin, probably easier even, because they have a larger native sample library. Any sound designer you talk to will say that Space Designer is the best free stock plugin of anything. That’s a big one. There aren’t a lot of other stock Logic plugins I use for sound design in terms of compositing. Although I do really like the basic Chorus and Phaser modulation stuff for voice processing for robot voices.Aaron: You wrote the music for the show. Is the music going to be available somewhere else later?Dan: Marc and I would really like to release an album of the music from our shows. It’s something we want to do and there’s a few reasons we haven’t done it yet. One reason is time. I’m very skittish about making sure everything is mixed properly. I wouldn’t want to release the music stand alone unless I was absolutely sure it was put together well. The other reason is that I write most of the music for our shows, but we do have some songs that are done with side collaborators and I would want to make sure it’s done legally and copywrite-wise we were in the clear. I want to sign some kind of licensing or formal distribution agreement to make sure everyone is happy money-wise. The song from episode one was me ripping off Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I’m a big fan of their scoring work.Music & Sound Effect Creation for PodcastsAaron: Let’s talk about how you achieved that effect for the song in the sample clip I played earlier. I’m guessing you had the sound of the footsteps on a ladder. Is that something you recorded yourself or is that something you got out of the sound library?Dan: I used several different libraries for that. There’s a mixture of some simulated ladder movement in there, like arms reaching and hands grabbing the rungs of the ladder. There’s also some pure metal footsteps in there. When I was originally putting that together, there were six or seven tracks, three of which were cloth movements and body motions and three of which were footsteps.Some were more foregrounded, like when one character named Jeremy is counting his steps. His footsteps are louder because he’s drawing attention to the fact that he’s counting them. The others are more off to the side to evoke the sense of space and depth, because presumably, they’re going down a circular enclosure to a vault. That was a real pain to put together.Aaron: I can’t believe you recorded clothes rustling to make this realistic.Dan: I can’t speak to film, tv, or video, but part of what makes the footsteps convincing in audio dramas is the footsteps being good, but also having cloth movement and fabric rustling.Aaron: With headphones and soundscapes, you have left and right channels, obviously. What do you do when you’re trying to make something seem like it’s coming from above or below. Is there any way to achieve that affect?Dan: In episode two of Deep Vault, where two characters crash through the floor of the room their in, they’re down there for a bit, and then you hear them crawling up through the crash hole to the other characters that are above them. I think it worked pretty well. I think the sequence of the narrative and that you hear them crash through the floor first and the space change around them helps to establish that.It’s just a matter of having more reverb and/or more delay on the voices that are further away than the voices that are close to you. I’m still figuring out what my philosophy on panning things is for the Deep Vault. It’s an ensemble cast with four actors talking at once, I have them panned around the clock—some are hard left, some are hard right, and some are close to the center.Usually if characters are interrogating or trying to get information from another character or recording, I’ll try to have whatever recording or character they’re talking to in the center to give the sense that they’re gathered around this new source of information they’re trying to learn. As far as making things sound far away or from above or below, it’s a matter of adding more reverb to the things that are farther away and hoping the sense of space translates.Aaron: I think it does most of the time, but it’s something I’m curious about. I’m thinking about the future with virtual reality and how they’re going to handle the different angles of sound. Have you had a chance to try VR yet?Dan: No, but I have some friends who told me I need to do it and I really want to. I have some friends who say Google Cardboard alone is incredible. I’m curious what that technology is like, but also what it’s going to mean for sound. I’m curious what sound for VR is going to be like and how it’s going to differ from the old guard, but also how it’s going to use some of the same techniques to make a realistic experience.Aaron: I used the equivalent to Google Cardboard, not even one of the great ones, and it blew my mind. It’s going to be a game-changer. Maybe we’ll both have future careers in sound design for VR applications.Dan: I’m just trying to stay ahead with what’s new for sound design because I’m afraid of being replaced by robots. It’s something I think about regularly. Am I doing something that will still be done by a human in 20 years? I feel ok about it most of the time, but you never know.Aaron: I like to think that you’ll still have a job because you’re being creative and you’re doing things that take a human. I guess we’ll see.Let’s talk about then music a little more. You did this transition where you have this music playing over the sound of the footsteps, and the footsteps blend into the beat of the music. Did you write the beat first? Were you listening to the pattern of the footsteps or did you go back and match those things up later?Dan: They were matched up later, but my choice of percussion samples definitely made them more easily blendable. With the exception of the kick drum, which is more of a classic, electronic bass-pulse kick drum, everything else is found percussion—everyday objects being tapped on. Things like chairs, bags, or plastic silverware. I like working with low-fi sound percussion samples. I think the fact the percussion track in the song isn’t a real snare drum recorded in a studio helps serve as the connective tissue between the footsteps and their percussiveness and the song’s percussion, and it’s driving the melody forward.The hardest part of any narrative creative medium is the transition between two parts.It glues two things together that work well on their own. Sonically, that could be a good example of choosing the right percussion sample in the context of this being a score rather than a stand alone song. Perhaps if this was just a song released on an EP and it wasn’t meant to score anything, it would sound better with a non-found percussion or some other type of sound.Sound Proofing vs. Sound Treatment for PodcastsAaron: Let’s jump into some mistakes or hard times you came across when you started doing Archive 81 and the Deep Vault. What are some of the things you struggled with?Dan: I do have one thing about recording in a bedroom. The bedroom we recorded in sounded really good as far as bedrooms go, but we had only ever tested the sound in the room at night when everyone else in the house was really quiet.When it came to production time, we were recording during the three most blizzardy weeks in January when every person was holed up in their apartment in New York City. Above my friend’s bedroom is a family with five teenagers, so we had to pause all the time because there were so many footsteps, running water, and cooking sounds. We didn’t plan for all of that.I realized that, even though acoustically the room sounded very good, there was no isolation from what’s above and outside. That was definitely an error I made in trying to plan the space. The next time, we paid for a real studio, because as cool as it is to record in a good-sounding bedroom for free, it’s worth that money to not have to stop every take for outside noise.When you’re pausing takes like that for noise coming from upstairs or outside, you’re losing the groove you have with the actors. The actors might move around if you have to wait for 10 minutes between a scene and you might have to reset levels, which makes it harder to set levels in post and mix. That was a real learning experience.Make sure you understand what’s happening in your environment before you choose a space to record in.Aaron: That applies to regular podcasting too. Someone asked me the other day, “How do I soundproof my room?”They’re actually asking two different questions: “How do I make the sound of my room less noisy?” and, “How do I keep outside noise from coming in?” First, you have to stop noise from computers, air conditioners, refrigerators, and the sound of your voice from bouncing off the walls and being recorded by your mic. Then you have to soundproof the room so that the external sounds aren’t picked up by your mic. For me, I have three windows directly in front of me and it’s an old house, so the windows aren’t soundproof at all. If someone was running a lawn mower outside of my window, everyone would hear it.Soundproofing is making sure noises from outside don’t come in. Sound treatment is making sure there aren’t noises inside your room causing problems in your audio.Know Your LimitsAaron: Any other mistakes or things that stood out throughout this process?Dan: There are so many. The question is what’s a useful mistake to talk about, and what’s one I perpetually torture myself about at night? I’ll talk about casting. With Archive 81, we didn’t have a system for how we went about casting it. We put the character notices out on Craigslist one at a time and auditioned and chose people piecemeal. It worked out for the most part, but there were some characters where we were in a real bind because we didn’t have enough people in time, so we had to choose the best option. I would have liked to have more options.I pretty much did all the casting for the first season and I didn’t go about it systematically, so for the Deep Vault, I wanted to make sure I did it more systematically. I spent a whole weekend auditioning people and planned in advance the characters they were auditioning for and allot time slots throughout the day so I could do it all at once. That was good and it was organized, but I packed too many people in one weekend, so by Sunday afternoon it was too much.I’m pretty introverted by nature and I think I chose my line of work in the technical side of audio production because a lot of times, it’s just you and the machine. You do need other skills and to be able to talk to people professionally, but you also spend a lot of time alone, which I’m fine with. I definitely love socialising, like on this interview, but I’ll be glad to go back to my little audio hole.That Sunday after three eight-hour days of auditioning and reading lines in character for these people, I was totally depleted. I think I’ve learned I need to be more systematic about it, but that I also need to spread it out over a few weekends in advance as opposed to trying to do it all in one weekend.Aaron: I’m a productivity nerd when it comes to planning out my days and making sure I have stuff to do. There’s a lot I want to accomplish, but when you first get into that, you tend to overestimate what you can accomplish. You think you can do meaningful work for 12 or 14 hours and you don’t realize that you can take on too much and say yes to too many things.Half way through, you’ve given it all you have for six hours and you’re worn out and you feel guilty because you didn’t do all the things you said you were going to do. It’s good to plan and try that stuff so that you know next time not to plan 12 hours of work for both Saturday and Sunday. Maybe you can do that, but you don’t know until you try. Start by planning and make notes about how it goes and you’ll have a better understanding about yourself and your stamina for the next time.Dan: That speaks to the more general philosophy that doing it is the only way you’ll know what your own patterns are, what works for you, and what doesn’t work for you. Be open to some trial and error for your own personal workflow. It’s easy to look up to certain human accomplishments and think, “This great musician practiced for 12 hours a day, so I must have to do that to be the Rachmaninoff of podcasting,” but at the same time, there are successful and accomplished people who have more human and normal working hour regimens. Trent Reznor is one of those people and it’s obvious from his output that he’s someone who never stops working. That works for him, but some people need more time to unwind and not get burnt out on things.Dan’s Advice for Aspiring PodcastersAaron: What kind of advice or tips would you give to someone who’s interested in doing something like Archive 81 or Deep Vault—a found sound or radio drama podcast? I’ve noticed in the last year or two they’re skyrocketing in terms of popularity. I think there’s a lot of people who might be turning the idea over in their mind. What would you say to those people?Dan: The first thing is the writing and acting has to be really good. Have people you can trust give you feedback and critique who you can run things by. If the source material and story doesn’t work, then everything that follows isn’t going to work either. If you’ve never done a podcast before, be prepared for many ours of sedentary work. Doing this kind of work takes a lot time and it’s a lot of time you have to spend alone in front of a computer.I lost count of the number of times this summer my friends said, “Hey, we’re going to the beach. Want to come?” or other things I wanted to do and I had to blow them off because I was editing or doing revisions. Be prepared for that and make sure you’re ok with that.If you need a lot of time outside of the house and you really need a social life, maybe this particular kind of podcasting isn’t right for you. Interviewing is a very different thing. I don’t like to be preachy about exercise, but I do think it’s good to exercise if you’re doing sedentary creative work because it makes the mind work better and for me, it puts me more at ease.Aaron: I’m with you on that, so two out of two podcasters recommend exercise and good sleep.Dan: Go out there and do it. Work hard and tell the story you want to tell. Don’t make anything because you think it’ll sell or bring an audience. Marc and I made Archive 81 because we thought it was a cool idea.What you make should be in conversation with your audience, but don’t make something just because you think it’ll get a lot of downloads.I still feel like I’m learning a lot and trying to figure all this stuff out. Keep an open mind and stay open to learning new things as you go along. I still study sound design with a mentor because there’s always new levels I can push myself towards and I don’t want to get too comfortable.Sound Design ResourcesAaron: Are there any books, websites, or online courses for someone who’s a total beginner, or someone like me who is relatively familiar with recording, mixing, and producing music and podcasts but hasn’t really gotten into sound design?Dan: Transom.org is a great resource. Although it is geared towards beginners in radio and podcasting, I still find articles on there I can learn from. I think it has a good intro overview to things like sound design. I can’t name anything specific, but for a few years now, when I want to learn more about a subject, I find someone I like and relate to who’s established in that field and I reach out to them asking for some one-on-one mentoring lessons. That’s something I think is worth paying for. Most people will take $50 for a few hours to talk about it.No matter what artistic discipline you’re in, it’s helpful to find people who are established in your field, reach out to them, and ask for some direct advice.That’s what’s been the most helpful for me. If there’s a sound designer, composer, or radio producer you admire, reach out and see if that’s an option. I don’t think Ira Glass is capable of doing private lessons with as busy as he is, but I’m sure there are other people who are really good at what they do who are capable.Aaron: There’s people at all different levels on this journey. We’re talking about audio specifically, but it’s true for anything. There are famous people you’ve heard of and then there’s people in the middle who have more experience than you but maybe aren’t quite so famous yet. Surrounding yourself with people who share your passion and interests on your skill level is great, but try reaching out and offering to pay for some consulting.Chances are they like talking about that stuff, but it is good to pay people for their time. That makes sure they’re invested and they’re not feeling like you’re taking advantage of their time. Audio engineers have to make money to buy gear!Field Recording Gear and Tips for PodcastersAaron: Diana asks, “What’s your setup for mobile recording?” She’s about to start a podcast and will be doing some traveling. I know there are times where you take microphones out into the real world to do field recordings. What’s your setup? Is it the same mics and a portable recording device?Dan: A Sennheiser MD421 or a Shure SM58 will work great because most dynamic microphones are good at sound isolation.Another good option to consider would be the Sennheiser ME66 Shotgun Mic, which is a great short shotgun microphone. That’s good for both ambient sound and interview recordings in a live setting. It’s in the $200 to $300 range and you can find it on eBay, Craigslist, Guitar Center, or Reverb.com for much cheaper.Aaron: What device do you record into?Dan: The Zoom H5 or H6 is a fantastic piece of recording equipment. You can find that new for $300 or used for way less. It’s a solid improvement over the H4N in many ways. There’s less handling noise, it’s less noisy, and the majority of people looking into podcasting would do great with one of those.Aaron: I think this is a situation a lot of people will get in. When you’re out and about and recording, you have to think about the noise in the room and the ambient noise, and if there’s a possibility of a lot of noise where you are. Coffee shops and crowded restaurants aren’t going to be great for getting clean audio. You'll also want to set input gain levels correctly, so you can be sure the levels coming into the microphone doesn’t hit zero and clip. You want to keep the highest peaks coming in around -12 DB. What’s your thought on that? What do you aim for?Dan: I aim for -12 to -6 at absolute highest for both studio and in the field. I always stuck by that as universal truth of audio, but when I was doing some sound design training this summer with the person I was mentoring under, for sound effects recording, he was advising me to capture things at as high of a signal level as possible without clipping. Being able to focus and isolate the sound source that way really is much more beneficial when you’re trying to make a sound effect at non-dialog level.Aaron: Did you have limiters on in that situation?Dan: I usually keep the limiters on, but I try not to hit them. I record on my rooftop a lot. Sometimes I get up at 6am and record the morning rush as it starts to unfold and I usually need the limiters to catch a truck horn or a plane that flies overhead. If you’re in a noisy environment, that’s another good case for using a dynamic microphone because it does isolate the sound source pretty well.When I was in school, I did a student radio project for a radio podcast production class where I was riding the campus buses and I was on one of those buses on a Friday night when it was filled with drunk kids going from one frat house to another. You can imagine how quiet that was. I was using a dynamic mic and it worked pretty well when I was cutting the interviews together. It had that loud, crazy ambience in the background, but if I held it pretty close to the speaker, I could still isolate them in a way that worked for the final product.Think about how the ambience and background noise where you’re recording can contribute to the story and the feel of your whole piece.Dan: With all the woes that came with recording Archive 81 in a bedroom with loud upstairs neighbors, I do think the fact that it felt like an apartment helped the actors get the vibe. I’m not sure how much of that translated sonically, because it’s hard for me to be objective about it at this point, but I do think that background worked for that piece. In theory, I would like to do more location recording for audio dramas.If something takes place on a busy street corner, I’d like to get out there with a more formal production sound rig and record it, but Marc and I work at a pretty intense pace and it’s not always easy to coordinate that. Many times it makes the most sense to do it in the studio and create the atmosphere after the fact, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.Aaron: Do what your gut says and plan for it. Last week, Marc said one of the hardest thing for him is the time constraints. I definitely feel that too. My podcast isn’t anything complicated but it still takes a few hours to produce. When you have a full-time job, other projects, and people you want to hang out with, you really have to focus on what you want to say yes to and what you have to say no to._Huge thanks to Dan and Marc for taking time out of their busy schedules to talk with me. If you’ve enjoyed these interviews, head over to their Patreon page and support these guys.Links:Dead Signals ProductionsArchive 81Deep VaultPodcast: https://podcastingwithaaron.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/aaronpodcastingYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/aarondowdBlog: https://www.aarondowd.comRecommended Gear: https://kit.co/PodcastingwithAaron

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