September 8, 2025 • 30 mins
We’re busting some of the biggest myths still floating around VO and podcast studios. From noise gates that wreck your takes to USB mics that promise “pro quality” but rarely deliver, we cut through the nonsense and share what actually works.
In this episode:
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Noise gates: why they usually cause more harm than good
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Noise reduction: AI vs old-school fingerprint NR
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USB mics: when they fail and why they’re limiting
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Expensive mics: shiny gear doesn’t fix a bad room
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Coaching: how much do you really need once you’re working?
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Booths & acoustics: why treatment matters more than a box, and why high ceilings aren’t the enemy
Hosts: Andrew Peters, George Whittam, Robert Marshall, and Robbo
Sponsors: Proudly supported by Tri-Booth and Austrian Audio
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
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And Austrian audio making passion heard.
There's a few myths that are being heardand shouldn't be heard,
and one in particularthat Robbo stumbled across just recently.
My bugbear.
We actually talked about thisjust a couple of weeks ago.
He's using a date on your voiceover
site, and I still see it bouncing aroundand people talking about it.
(01:05):
And it's not noise reduction people.
I just had a gig where someone used a gateand it really messed stuff up.
It didn't stop at Harvard.
Well it was.
This person had a very longaudiobook to do,
and you could tell that they were doing it
in different environments and different,like in the morning and the evening.
We throughout the chapter, the noisewould increase and they had a gate.
(01:27):
But one of the things I noticedis because they gated everything.
And I actually found that in some waysthe AI noise reduction
wasn't as good as the traditionaltake a fingerprint noise reduction,
because it seems like a lot of the timesthe AI noise reduction is
more about just like, amazing shrink wrap.
It's like the perfect gatearound the words, but within the words.
(01:50):
Sometimes the noise is still theresneaking through.
Yeah, absolutely.
But with the fingerprint noise reduction,it was actually
like ripping that noise outmore during the driving.
Slightly more artifacts in the process,though.
More artifacts?Yes. More wishy washy. Yes.
The AI sounded more natural,
(02:10):
but this noise was noisy enoughthat they wanted more of it removed.
And the problem with the gate
that I actually had was thatI had no noise to take a fingerprint up.
Yeah. Well,that's frustrating to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it was also short and I couldn't likeget in there and it was very hard.
Yeah.
This one I was dealing with had missingT's and S's and also survived some.
(02:31):
But let me ask you thisthen, you know, did we get to discuss
where the gate should be used on voiceeveryone arguments.
The last time you put a gate on a voiceas you were recording it never.
Right. And I rest my case.
I edit too many,people set up with a channel strip.
Like, I know voice actors or
an audiobook narrator specificallywould not have chosen to do that.
(02:54):
Some producerwould have set them up with that.
So they've been using a symmetric 528 E,
then they get a DB2 86
because they have expandergates built into them.
Yeah.
And they're told to do it that way.
And I tell and I've had I have a clientparticularly who does a lot of books.
And I said it's tricky man.
(03:15):
I said if your input levelis a little bit off that day,
if you're coming a little bit weak,whatever, that it's just not going
to always open on an audio pointwhere you're acting as well.
And so you're,
you know, you're sort of energy'sgoing to change and all that sort of shit.
You, you know, so it's in troubleif it's like the scenario
that I would least preferred being usedand then it's being like recommended,
(03:38):
mandated by a production company to do it.
Then it's like,come on, if I was the engineer
for the audio company,they'd be getting a big, from me.
Yeah.
I hear gates all the time on like,the news.
You know, you can you can hear that.
You can hear it chopping down the echoin the room at the end.
And it's like, I get it.
(03:58):
You can't do anythingif it's live in the gates.
The best thing, I guess.
But if it's recorded.
Don't do it.
It's too risky.The ultimate of destructive.
Yeah.
You know processingit is absolutely unrecoverable.
But at least you can be somewhat reyou know if you're cued,
if it's a little bit too bright,a little bit too big, whatever.
(04:19):
Even,even a compressor can almost be expanded.
But a gate,especially one that goes down to zilch,
get nothing.
I commented on a post on Facebook, Ithis was a while ago now.
Someone posted something about noisereduction and someone mentioned the gate
and I said, well,
if you think you should use a
gate on your voice over,next time you're sending your final audio
to an engineer, go throughand just slice out a few bits of audio
(04:41):
and send it to themand see what their response is.
Here's the thing about the gateif you put the gate on,
you might not get caught in real timeand you might think you're okay.
But even if you don't hear about it later,they will curse you later.
Absolutely.Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly.
Yeah.
If you're on a phone patch or,as we like to say, almost never happens.
(05:03):
But if you're on a zoomor any kind of a remote.
Correct.
You're recording yourself.
Absolutely.
Don't use a gate in that scenariobecause you have 100%
post-production control of that audiobefore it sends out.
So even if you're embarrassedby some noise or something that happened,
you can always rerecord it to punch it inor just fix it in post.
Don't commit yourself to reach for it.
(05:25):
And if you're on source Connect,I guarantee they won't want to hear it,
because the first thing they're going tohear is what you're doing to the audio,
because they're listeningto your little studio mic
in your little boothover there, $10,000 monitors, man.
They hear everything,so don't even try to fool them.
And even if they're distracted,they're going to hear it later
when they get into itand then they're going to be upset.
(05:47):
Well, that's what I find interesting.
When the sessions are done for, you know, zoom or teams or whatever,
is that the person at the other endis not hearing the audio.
Really.
They're just hearing somethingcoming down the channel.
They're not hearing what's actuallythey're not hearing what's going on.
It's even worse when they don't even putan engineer on the other end.
Yeah, we'll just record it ourselvesand direct and have the talent send us.
(06:09):
And we assume that the town's a full upengineer and has everything taken care of.
Oh, yeah.
You know, and it's.
I didn't get that with engineers.
I mean, I've, I've talked to engineerswho have done the same, you know, who,
who did this.
Where they, we do the session over zoomand then I forward the recorded
audio to them to, to do whatI did, trying to build more hours.
(06:32):
But I think, you know,
because we've talked together about thisone studio. Yes.
They really do want to get Source Connect,but they haven't at this stage.
But, which we must talk about actuallyget them to do it.
But, anyway, so that when they get audioI've talked to them about.
But surely some of the people sending youaudio must be garbage.
(06:52):
It is all good old what that.
And it's like a lot of it.
In fact the majority of it80% is really bad.
Yeah.
This is why you radio guys make everythingsound like a radio filter and stuff.
Because you got you're like,oh, crap, crap, I got it.
The only thing I can dois make it sound crappier.
Yeah, distortit and put a telephone filter on it.
Yeah, well,
I mean, there's always that, you know, you
(07:12):
sort of wonder why you're worryingabout recapturing pristine audio
and then putting all these sort of effectsand shit on and any distortions.
Yeah, it does make it easier than tryingto start from shit, as I'm sure you know.
Well, it's
it's really funny when you say something,you go, you know, it's a bit of reverb.
Your room is a bit lively.
Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah.
And then, of course,
if you send pristine audio,
they go, oh, much like a bit of redid onthat to give it a bit of zing.
(07:35):
Yeah.
Specific references I get to controlhow much reverb goes on that.
Yeah yeah yeah.
It's a different
it's like not like a short slapback soundcompared to an actual.
Yeah. Paul or something.
The other thing I've seen is actuallyhonestly like full up studios are like,
oh yeah, we built our room,but the air conditioning is always noisy
and they're putting signalthrough with like,
(07:57):
real times noise reduction.
Yeah.
Like see Vox I was going to sayis the better one, I think.
I think that's more benign.
I've seen them use, the isotope one
that takes a fingerprintof the noise, voice denoise that.
And I don't thinkthat one is so transparent. It's.
(08:18):
No it's not.
Yeah.
If you you know, the problem isit's just not that different from this one
and othersis that you can only use like 5%.
Yeah. Out of 100.
Just the problemwith all these plugins is the scale.
The range of the controlis dramatically out of whack
with what is 10%should be like 80 or 90%, right?
(08:39):
Yeah.
And so they get numerousrange of controls.
Yeah.So what are you going to do as a user.
I mean, you know, you'd probably assumemaybe start somewhere in the middle,
somewhere in the middleis like drew grossly over MP3 sounding.
Know like, yeah, I mean if you put anthis one at 50%, it's,
it does sound likeit chops the hell out of the audio.
So that's another problem toois the design of the tools.
(09:03):
You know,I use the ones built in Adobe Audition.
Same thing.
I used more than 5to 8% out of those noise.
It sounds crap.
So that's part of the problem.
So what are some of the other micsdo we reckon?
I mean, for me, USBmics is a big one for me.
And also the other onethat gets me about mics too
is that I see a lot of timesthese are you you've got to have a man
(09:23):
or you've got to havea, you know, know something or other,
you know, one of these expensivemics to be able to do.
VoiceOver I kind of feel like,what's the myth?
So what what exactly is the mythabout USB, micro USB like securing their
they're acceptable. I mean,
I kind of I think I'm on the fence.
I mean, there are some maybe
(09:45):
I think there's some areas that it's goodin scenarios where it's bad.
I think the scenarios where it's bad isif you're live directed,
because then if they're like,can you make it
a little gain adjustment on your micand you don't either one have a gain
knob to control period,which many of them don't like to run into.
One fifth gen there's no gain.
This is 32 bit.
(10:05):
You don't have to worry aboutgain anymore.
Right? Exactly.
And then so then some of the actors, likeI don't even know how to adjust the gain.
Right? That's one problem.
Another problem with USBmics is when the gain knob is on the mic.
Then they're like,yeah, I'll adjust the gain.
And yeah, playing with the microphone,you're like, what?
What are you doing?I said, adjust the game.
(10:27):
Well the knobs onthe mic like that doesn't look right.
Let me show you the professional.Yeah, yeah.
But at the same time you can buy a road,you can buy the road 91 to a ten.
And it does recordvery good quality over USB.
But I think it's finein, in a, in a self-directed home record,
you know, doing like a gameor doing like music or something.
(10:48):
But yeah, in a real time session,
if you're going to recordin that situation anyway, okay,
if you're going to record at home,why not just invest
in a decent sort of even just a Scarlett,I mean, be done with it.
I mean, rather than, yeah,I think here's the thing about USB mics
is that as with any microphone thing,it is first and foremost placement.
(11:09):
Putting an iPhone in the right placewill sound better than annoying.
You 87 in the wrong place.
We all know that.
Yeah. Placement. Yeah, but that's scale.
It's like you want to beif you're charging whatever, $400 an hour.
As a voice actor or whatever,you know, Union is,
you want to be in the top 90,95% of sound quality.
(11:31):
And what sounds good enoughmight not really be good enough.
And it's really,really easy with the USB mics to fall
very far downthat because of a lot of things.
You can't get a cable that's longenough away from your computer,
so you're stuck in many other ways.
Sometimes they don't have a monitorplugged into them.
(11:52):
They're just so limiting.
And I just don't think that, like, youknow, except for the most basic setups,
they're not worth the investment.
You can buy an XLR mic, and nowyou have something that you can use
pretty much for a lifetime, or a USB mic,which is guaranteed
to be outdated at some pointand chuck it in the garbage at some point.
So yeah, they're not, they're not.
(12:14):
It's like either I don't thinkthe USB interface is same thing.
I mean, there'll be landfillof so many interfaces
now that are just so out of dateand just don't work properly anymore.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Stability is a problemwith some USB interfaces.
I mean I mean, what a USB mic is,is basically the cheapest,
tiniest USB interface they could buy.
(12:36):
Like at the bottom right ship.
It's like the mic preampand the USB interface on one ship, right?
Yeah, there are some exceptions.
I know I've heard some apogeemics to sound pretty good.
I know that Sennheiser's mic for digitalis really a decent USB my,
but those are exceptions,but very much of an exception.
Most people are buying USB micsbecause they're inexpensive.
(12:58):
They're not buying thembecause they happen to
be good at what they doand that they're 3 to $500 mics.
They're buying them becausethey're not cheap, then they're cheap.
And if you want the convenience of a USBmic but you don't want to, you know,
consider something like a sure.
And the and the new one,
it's like the b x to you, mvcs to you.
(13:19):
Right.
You'll take any micand turn it into a USB mic.
I'll give you all the convenienceof the USB mic
without making the deadend investment into a USB mic,
because once all that stuff is boltedtogether, you can't separate it.
And now one of those components going old
bad renders the whole thing useless.
Yeah, I think that's disposable.
(13:41):
Like to me it'skind of like the iMac problem too.
You can get a cool iMac,they look nice and they work fine.
But when the when the computer is obsolete
or the screen goes out,you're throwing out everything.
That'sanother thing that never made sense.
I think the iMac is good for,
you know, the front deskat an aerobics studio or something.
You know, like
it's like it's like a laptopwithout the convenience of a laptop.
(14:04):
Yeah.
It's it's like it's not even fair to saybecause it's not a bad computer.
I have clients and have them,but that's what bothers me about it.
It's like the USB.
My problem when the my something goeswrong, you throw the whole thing out.
It's you're done.So it's it's another myth here.
Okay.
So is, is this a myth.
Like how much coaching do you need once
(14:26):
you are in a career
compared to like, like I can understandneeding coaching
if you've not been in sessionsand you need to simulate a session
and get a feel for whatit's like to be directed.
But once you've been in sessions,
I've seen a lot of like
successful voice actorsseeking out coaching,
(14:47):
and sometimes I think if anything,you should be coaching somebody.
But then when does the coaching end?
Well, I don't know when coaching ends,but then it's also interesting
to see some people who are coachingwho you think
you've been around that long and.
Yeah, right.
What do you got to do there.
(15:07):
Yeah, yeah yeah.
It's funny.
I mean, look, I agree you should,
you know,I want to show you the employer coach.
I never had a coach, butyou certainly learn stuff pretty quickly.
In session, the dos the etiquette of of.
You're doing this for a living.
But I had no clue thatwhen I was booked for a job for,
you know, you do an hour session,that's you're booking is an hour.
(15:29):
I used to think, well,I didn't do the whole hour,
so they get their money's worth
and get the hell out of this really quick,because that's what I thought.
I thought,you know, well, you pay me for the hour,
so I should stay here for the hour,and all they want is like you.
You stay here.
If you get out of here in five minutes,we're going to be very happy.
That's right. Right.
So, you know, then the rest of the timewe can get this done and pay less. But.
(15:49):
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
And also like, you know, using your eyes
in a session, which we don't so much nowbecause we're usually working remotely.
But using your eyes in the session,watching body language through the glass,
even though you're hearing one instructionverbally, you can actually pick up more
from looking at the visual cuesof the person, what they really mean.
(16:12):
Right?
So then that was a so so is is coachingsomething that more is like,
you know, if you want to get experienceand you've not been hired on a job,
you can have a coach simulatewhat it's like to be in session.
But reallythe true coaching is just getting gigs
and being directedand screwing some up and winning some.
(16:35):
And like, I don't know, I think that
there's a lot of coaching going on that,you see, like I said,
I see people doing getting coachedthat are like, you know, need coaching.
Like exactly.I don't look, I don't get it.
And it's certainly in this country,in Australia, the coaching is very, very
unusual.
(16:56):
There is a little I
mean, it's funny, look, I mean, I,I can put my perspective on this
having never been a voiceover artist,but as an audio engineer,
I've never had a lessonor a formal lesson in 36 years.
Right.
So technically, in terms of,
you know, all the stuffthat Robert and George are very good at,
I'm not great at that stuff, butwhat I think I have is a good pair of eyes
(17:18):
and an understanding of how to get a soundto sound the way I want it to sound.
But technically there's, you know,AP there's stuff that George and Robert
talk about that goes over both our heads,but I kind of feel like
and maybe that'swhere coaching can make up the difference.
And you might puta voiceover perspective on that.
But I kind of feel like
if I did coaching now, I wouldn'twant to know about the hands on stuff.
(17:40):
I'd want to know
about all that technical stuffthat I've never really learned or under.
Well, I understand that,but I've never really learned the whys
and wherefores, you know what I mean?
And I wonder whether coaching fillsthose gaps in a voiceover sense.
I don't think,it's it's interesting with coaching
because I think the best coachyou're ever going to work
with is an audio engineerwho's got a lot of experience, like,
(18:04):
if you're new to the gameand you go into a director session
with a person that's worked with,you know, done a thousands and thousands
of sessions,
you're going to learn a hell of a lot more
with that person than you're ever goingto learn from a coach.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of the bestcoaches are both directors.
Yeah. Directors. Right.
Slash engineers or producers by far?
(18:25):
Absolutely.
I have a totally different myththat's more tech translated.
Yeah, that getting a booth
means you have an instantly great soundingrecording environment.
Yeah. Yes, that's a nice one.
No. Yeah.
Give that man a cigar.
It is not true at all.
I just delete that on my on.
The jobI just did was, a voice talent at home
(18:47):
and another voice talentwho went to a studio.
Man, it's like against that thingthat you don't notice
when you're in session as much,and then you start getting into it.
And as, you know, when you take a signaland you compress it and boom, all the all
come out. Yeah. Yep.
And it's like, oh, I hear the booth.
And I was sitting there trying to like,knock it out.
And it just, you know,
sometimes you try to knock it outand it makes it sound worse.
(19:08):
You're just likeI it's it's stuck that way.
And and you can hear itthat the like we did the spot and the,
the English version sounds great.
And the foreign languageversion was a booth at home.
And it just has that sound.
And to a lot of people,they won't know what that sound is,
but it's the sound of a small boxand you just can't get away from it.
(19:30):
It's so you can
become complacent to it.
And it's not really like that.You don't care.
Maybe that's not the right word.
It's just that it's like nose blindness.
Yeah.
You know,you come home, you go from vacation, go.
This is what, my house.
Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, but yeah, but it's like when you'reused to the sound of your own booth
(19:50):
in the way it sounds, day after day,week after week, month after month.
It's normal.
I mean, I was used to the sound of badsounding whisper rooms
for quite a long time.
I just thoughtthat's what it sounded like.
When you get a nice open sounding studiorecording, like from a nice
a nice big dead booththat doesn't have all those nodes,
and then you get the other tightwhen you're like, oh, like
(20:12):
what was because I was workingwith like the my first 5 or 6 real paying
voiceover clients were all home studiopromo voiceovers.
So that was the norm, you know?
And then I would start hearinggood, really, truly great recordings.
And I was like, whoa, okay.
I started to learn what it's supposedto sound like and what it well,
what it could sound like.
And then it really opened my eyes.
(20:33):
And then, you know, ever since then, it'sbeen a pursuit of trying to capture
or recreate that great sound,you know, from a really small space.
But, you know, if you're like, oh,I have a really high ceiling.
I hear that's bad. I'm like,no, no, no, no, that's really good.
That's really. Yeah, yeah.
They're like they're like,oh I heard that's bad.
I'm like, no, it's just another myth.
It's just there'sso many myths about acoustics
(20:55):
because many of itmaybe is are not conventional wisdom.
It's not logical to you or whatever.
But, it's not the case at all.
You want to have you want toyou want to have every hard surface
as far away from the micis humanly possible, right?
You want
you want no hard surfaces in the roomand you want them all to be far away.
(21:16):
Like the booth can kind of dotwo things for you.
It can deaden it upand it can deal with noise.
As long as there's not excessive noise
outside the booth,it can take care of those two things.
Right? It's like noise reduction.
It's going to solve your problemand it's going to cause you a new problem.
Right, right.
It's the irony.
Like when you buy this very expensiveconfining
(21:36):
hot uncomfortable box,shove yourself and you're like in there,
you torture yourself for an houronly to deal with the fact that you're
getting for many people's an occasionalnoise from the neighborhood or something.
But 99% of the time it's probably fine,you know what I mean?
(21:56):
And so that's the reality.
I mean, it's not true for why?
I mean, it's been abnormally quiet forthe last hour in this in my home studio.
But I mean, normally you hear of crackers,usually a couple.
And listen, listen isso now you got the whole air conditioner?
I'm in a very light room.
I mean, yeah, it's.
Yeah, it's it's my technique.
(22:18):
It's how loud you are to projection.
It's all these things.
But it is definitely a misnomerthat spreads, you know, far and wide.
There's only one voice over Booth companythat has worked with me directly.
And I'm not trying to say I'mthe king of all voiceover studios, but
I don't know anybody making voice over
Booth, who have collaboratedwith a voiceover engineer
(22:40):
to ensure and listenand try to make it sound better.
But vocal booth.com here in the Statesis done, that they're the only ones that
I think you're right with me and yeahinvited me over and let's play with stuff.
I think we chatted while you were theredidn't we. Didn't we do an episode.
Yeah. Yeah.
And youknow I give them huge props for that.
I mean studio bricks
(23:01):
has got an engine acousticiannow that works in-house which is great.
And they're doing some you knowtheir new booths do sound pretty good
but it's taking them 12plus years to get there.
Other companies never got there.
They just keep doing the same stuffover and over
because most people don't knowthe difference.
It's like the blind leading the blind.
And you know, and for the certainlevel of work, it's good enough.
(23:23):
It's good enough.
I've got an audio book,audio books and can get away with murder.
Yeah.So he does books. A lot of them sound bad.
They don't even matter. Right?Yeah, he'd say it.
And so it's like the boostwill will get you a certain level,
and then you either have to hiresomeone like you, George, to tune it out.
But I would arguethat you can't ultimately
(23:46):
completely tunea booth to not sound like Booth.
It's very difficult because by the timeyou treat enough of the surface
with a thick enough treatment,there's no room for you.
You can't move around very much. Yeah.
And you're like, you're like,I can't bump up into the walls, right?
I mean, I had a client just very recentlysend me a sample,
and he's like any listed
(24:06):
painstakingly, all the panels he hadand how thick they were in his notes.
And I was like, Jesus, no
six inch thick panels.
And I listened to the sampleand it was amazing.
That was like,that's one of the best sounding raw files
I've heard in a long time.
It's like you've consultedyou on Booth design,
(24:27):
and he didn't really make that too clear.
He just said, I insisted on these panels.
The guy making them or the dealer sellingthem was like, no, you don't need that.
And he was like,no, I this is what I want.
And then sure enough, it sounded fantasticbecause he had the right
and the right amount and thickenough panels in the right places.
My studio work this here behind methat you guys can't see on the show.
(24:49):
Sorry, but it's got up to six inchesof paneling on the walls.
Well, the only like like thethe two inch or one,
the one inch stuff deals with a lot, butit does not hit the low end well enough
to just get the meat of the frequencyrange of most voices, even women.
It there's a tremendous amountof standing waves and resonances below 300
(25:10):
over three, three and one hertz,and those panels do zero to those.
So so in my case I just put the thickestpanels above my shoulders.
Right.
So yeah they're encroaching in my spacebut they're not in my wingspan,
if you know what I mean.I can move my elbows around.
And so yes, it's a little claustrophobic,
(25:30):
but not so muchbecause I can still move around.
But I have that six inchesof paneling at my head
level, you know,and it works surprisingly well
without feeling too cramped,but so you just had to be clever about it.
And if you need help, talk to peoplelike us, because man, like, you know what?
It's supposed to sound like.
I can still remember the first setupI had, which I,
(25:52):
when I think about itnow, is just ridiculous.
Yeah.
And, and then the second one I built,which was not quite as ridiculous,
but still pretty ordinary.
It was
basically in a cupboard,that kind of thing.
With acoustic foam inside the cupboard.
It sounded like you'd isolate
recording inside a motorcycle helmet,
(26:15):
but also Vox.
Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly the helmet.
And, and then the third one I went,I actually sort of thought
I'd better geta bit more serious about this.
And, I got a guy came over and help me.
We built onewhich sounded really, really good.
And then, of course, this was thethis is the last one I built here.
This one you have sounds pretty good.
(26:35):
And it's got a good length to it.
Like, that's one of the thingsit's a it's not a small booth, am I right.
Yeah.
The booth is over behind me.
I'm sitting on the.
Yeah, mine roomhere, but, is it it's big enough.
Oh. Just at least like six foot, isn't it?
More. More.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, I think we all gothrough the same sort of progression.
(26:56):
I mean, Jesus, if I,if I think about my first time studio,
it was in 2002
and it was the old G4 Mac, you know, the,
the great thing and all thatsort of stuff in the Quiksilver.
Yeah.And it was an M1 mirror on the front.
Yeah, that's the one.
And an M box and a version Pro Toolsand and I had no treatment in the room.
(27:19):
There was a,the wall behind me was a big long
wall of bookshelvesand full of books and trinkets in the.
So that was right.
So exactly.
So I didn't do anythingreally in the room.
And I would sort of just mix in headphonesand all that sort of stuff.
And I compare it to now,you know, with panels
I've made on the wallsand now the curtains
(27:41):
and all the shit that I've, I've done and,you know, all that sort of stuff
in the bookshelf
intentionally down there because forsome reason, stuff was ricocheting.
I was originally going to have that behindme, but I shoved it down in that corner.
So, yeah.
So, you know,I'd like you think about the progression
and if you could see the,the studios in the middle of all that,
it was certainly sort of just upper leveleach time, I suppose.
(28:04):
But then I guesseach time you build a studio,
you think, okay, well,what am I going to do this time?
That didn't work last time and stuff.
So it's probably logicalunless you have an interest
in this at a young age and you internand you get to be in the environment
and talk to the designers,those things just never happen.
It's a black art,and so you just learn it as you go.
(28:24):
Because unless you're lucky enoughto get to the right person early on
and you get to not have to makea lot of mistakes, that happens.
But it's very, very rare.
And so you really just learn as you goand you get better and better over time.
I'm still learning stuff all the time.
That's what's fun about onis that you're always learning stuff.
It's never over.
It's yeah, it's like a continuous thing.
(28:45):
It's like because it's it's likethat thing where I remember when I was a
at a high schooljust beginning to record drums, and then
every time I was like, every drum kitI recorded, oh,
this one's better than the last one I did.
And I got even better.
And it's like, you get this feeling.I finally got it.
And then you do another one. You're like,oh, it's even better.
And you start learninghow to deal with it.
(29:06):
I won't do that again.Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Well there's always that
or you start realizing what it is that islike, oh, that one recorded really well.
And what was it?
It wasn't anything I did.
The damn thing was tuned.
Oh, you can tune drum.
Oh yeah. You know, it's amazing.
And so that that whole journeyand it's like it's exciting
when you're improving,you know, it's like anything. Yeah.
(29:27):
Oh totally is. Yeah.
And that's not a myth.
That's not. That's a fact. Yeah.
And if you missed this episode,go back to the beginning.
Well, that was fun.
Is it over
the audio sweet things
to try and Austrianaudio recorded using Source Connect.
Edited by Andrew Petersand mixed by Robert Go.
(29:50):
Your own audio issues.
Just ask Robert.
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(00:21):
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And also, check out the tribe memowhile you're at it.
And Austrian audio making passion heard.
There's a few myths that are being heardand shouldn't be heard,
and one in particularthat Robbo stumbled across just recently.
My bugbear.
We actually talked about thisjust a couple of weeks ago.
He's using a date on your voiceover
site, and I still see it bouncing aroundand people talking about it.
(01:05):
And it's not noise reduction people.
I just had a gig where someone used a gateand it really messed stuff up.
It didn't stop at Harvard.
Well it was.
This person had a very longaudiobook to do,
and you could tell that they were doing it
in different environments and different,like in the morning and the evening.
We throughout the chapter, the noisewould increase and they had a gate.
(01:27):
But one of the things I noticedis because they gated everything.
And I actually found that in some waysthe AI noise reduction
wasn't as good as the traditionaltake a fingerprint noise reduction,
because it seems like a lot of the timesthe AI noise reduction is
more about just like, amazing shrink wrap.
It's like the perfect gatearound the words, but within the words.
(01:50):
Sometimes the noise is still theresneaking through.
Yeah, absolutely.
But with the fingerprint noise reduction,it was actually
like ripping that noise outmore during the driving.
Slightly more artifacts in the process,though.
More artifacts?Yes. More wishy washy. Yes.
The AI sounded more natural,
(02:10):
but this noise was noisy enoughthat they wanted more of it removed.
And the problem with the gate
that I actually had was thatI had no noise to take a fingerprint up.
Yeah. Well,that's frustrating to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it was also short and I couldn't likeget in there and it was very hard.
Yeah.
This one I was dealing with had missingT's and S's and also survived some.
(02:31):
But let me ask you thisthen, you know, did we get to discuss
where the gate should be used on voiceeveryone arguments.
The last time you put a gate on a voiceas you were recording it never.
Right. And I rest my case.
I edit too many,people set up with a channel strip.
Like, I know voice actors or
an audiobook narrator specificallywould not have chosen to do that.
(02:54):
Some producerwould have set them up with that.
So they've been using a symmetric 528 E,
then they get a DB2 86
because they have expandergates built into them.
Yeah.
And they're told to do it that way.
And I tell and I've had I have a clientparticularly who does a lot of books.
And I said it's tricky man.
(03:15):
I said if your input levelis a little bit off that day,
if you're coming a little bit weak,whatever, that it's just not going
to always open on an audio pointwhere you're acting as well.
And so you're,
you know, you're sort of energy'sgoing to change and all that sort of shit.
You, you know, so it's in troubleif it's like the scenario
that I would least preferred being usedand then it's being like recommended,
(03:38):
mandated by a production company to do it.
Then it's like,come on, if I was the engineer
for the audio company,they'd be getting a big, from me.
Yeah.
I hear gates all the time on like,the news.
You know, you can you can hear that.
You can hear it chopping down the echoin the room at the end.
And it's like, I get it.
(03:58):
You can't do anythingif it's live in the gates.
The best thing, I guess.
But if it's recorded.
Don't do it.
It's too risky.The ultimate of destructive.
Yeah.
You know processingit is absolutely unrecoverable.
But at least you can be somewhat reyou know if you're cued,
if it's a little bit too bright,a little bit too big, whatever.
(04:19):
Even,even a compressor can almost be expanded.
But a gate,especially one that goes down to zilch,
get nothing.
I commented on a post on Facebook, Ithis was a while ago now.
Someone posted something about noisereduction and someone mentioned the gate
and I said, well,
if you think you should use a
gate on your voice over,next time you're sending your final audio
to an engineer, go throughand just slice out a few bits of audio
(04:41):
and send it to themand see what their response is.
Here's the thing about the gateif you put the gate on,
you might not get caught in real timeand you might think you're okay.
But even if you don't hear about it later,they will curse you later.
Absolutely.Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly.
Yeah.
If you're on a phone patch or,as we like to say, almost never happens.
(05:03):
But if you're on a zoomor any kind of a remote.
Correct.
You're recording yourself.
Absolutely.
Don't use a gate in that scenariobecause you have 100%
post-production control of that audiobefore it sends out.
So even if you're embarrassedby some noise or something that happened,
you can always rerecord it to punch it inor just fix it in post.
Don't commit yourself to reach for it.
(05:25):
And if you're on source Connect,I guarantee they won't want to hear it,
because the first thing they're going tohear is what you're doing to the audio,
because they're listeningto your little studio mic
in your little boothover there, $10,000 monitors, man.
They hear everything,so don't even try to fool them.
And even if they're distracted,they're going to hear it later
when they get into itand then they're going to be upset.
(05:47):
Well, that's what I find interesting.
When the sessions are done for, you know, zoom or teams or whatever,
is that the person at the other endis not hearing the audio.
Really.
They're just hearing somethingcoming down the channel.
They're not hearing what's actuallythey're not hearing what's going on.
It's even worse when they don't even putan engineer on the other end.
Yeah, we'll just record it ourselvesand direct and have the talent send us.
(06:09):
And we assume that the town's a full upengineer and has everything taken care of.
Oh, yeah.
You know, and it's.
I didn't get that with engineers.
I mean, I've, I've talked to engineerswho have done the same, you know, who,
who did this.
Where they, we do the session over zoomand then I forward the recorded
audio to them to, to do whatI did, trying to build more hours.
(06:32):
But I think, you know,
because we've talked together about thisone studio. Yes.
They really do want to get Source Connect,but they haven't at this stage.
But, which we must talk about actuallyget them to do it.
But, anyway, so that when they get audioI've talked to them about.
But surely some of the people sending youaudio must be garbage.
(06:52):
It is all good old what that.
And it's like a lot of it.
In fact the majority of it80% is really bad.
Yeah.
This is why you radio guys make everythingsound like a radio filter and stuff.
Because you got you're like,oh, crap, crap, I got it.
The only thing I can dois make it sound crappier.
Yeah, distortit and put a telephone filter on it.
Yeah, well,
I mean, there's always that, you know, you
(07:12):
sort of wonder why you're worryingabout recapturing pristine audio
and then putting all these sort of effectsand shit on and any distortions.
Yeah, it does make it easier than tryingto start from shit, as I'm sure you know.
Well, it's
it's really funny when you say something,you go, you know, it's a bit of reverb.
Your room is a bit lively.
Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah.
And then, of course,
if you send pristine audio,
they go, oh, much like a bit of redid onthat to give it a bit of zing.
(07:35):
Yeah.
Specific references I get to controlhow much reverb goes on that.
Yeah yeah yeah.
It's a different
it's like not like a short slapback soundcompared to an actual.
Yeah. Paul or something.
The other thing I've seen is actuallyhonestly like full up studios are like,
oh yeah, we built our room,but the air conditioning is always noisy
and they're putting signalthrough with like,
(07:57):
real times noise reduction.
Yeah.
Like see Vox I was going to sayis the better one, I think.
I think that's more benign.
I've seen them use, the isotope one
that takes a fingerprintof the noise, voice denoise that.
And I don't thinkthat one is so transparent. It's.
(08:18):
No it's not.
Yeah.
If you you know, the problem isit's just not that different from this one
and othersis that you can only use like 5%.
Yeah. Out of 100.
Just the problemwith all these plugins is the scale.
The range of the controlis dramatically out of whack
with what is 10%should be like 80 or 90%, right?
(08:39):
Yeah.
And so they get numerousrange of controls.
Yeah.So what are you going to do as a user.
I mean, you know, you'd probably assumemaybe start somewhere in the middle,
somewhere in the middleis like drew grossly over MP3 sounding.
Know like, yeah, I mean if you put anthis one at 50%, it's,
it does sound likeit chops the hell out of the audio.
So that's another problem toois the design of the tools.
(09:03):
You know,I use the ones built in Adobe Audition.
Same thing.
I used more than 5to 8% out of those noise.
It sounds crap.
So that's part of the problem.
So what are some of the other micsdo we reckon?
I mean, for me, USBmics is a big one for me.
And also the other onethat gets me about mics too
is that I see a lot of timesthese are you you've got to have a man
(09:23):
or you've got to havea, you know, know something or other,
you know, one of these expensivemics to be able to do.
VoiceOver I kind of feel like,what's the myth?
So what what exactly is the mythabout USB, micro USB like securing their
they're acceptable. I mean,
I kind of I think I'm on the fence.
I mean, there are some maybe
(09:45):
I think there's some areas that it's goodin scenarios where it's bad.
I think the scenarios where it's bad isif you're live directed,
because then if they're like,can you make it
a little gain adjustment on your micand you don't either one have a gain
knob to control period,which many of them don't like to run into.
One fifth gen there's no gain.
This is 32 bit.
(10:05):
You don't have to worry aboutgain anymore.
Right? Exactly.
And then so then some of the actors, likeI don't even know how to adjust the gain.
Right? That's one problem.
Another problem with USBmics is when the gain knob is on the mic.
Then they're like,yeah, I'll adjust the gain.
And yeah, playing with the microphone,you're like, what?
What are you doing?I said, adjust the game.
(10:27):
Well the knobs onthe mic like that doesn't look right.
Let me show you the professional.Yeah, yeah.
But at the same time you can buy a road,you can buy the road 91 to a ten.
And it does recordvery good quality over USB.
But I think it's finein, in a, in a self-directed home record,
you know, doing like a gameor doing like music or something.
(10:48):
But yeah, in a real time session,
if you're going to recordin that situation anyway, okay,
if you're going to record at home,why not just invest
in a decent sort of even just a Scarlett,I mean, be done with it.
I mean, rather than, yeah,I think here's the thing about USB mics
is that as with any microphone thing,it is first and foremost placement.
(11:09):
Putting an iPhone in the right placewill sound better than annoying.
You 87 in the wrong place.
We all know that.
Yeah. Placement. Yeah, but that's scale.
It's like you want to beif you're charging whatever, $400 an hour.
As a voice actor or whatever,you know, Union is,
you want to be in the top 90,95% of sound quality.
(11:31):
And what sounds good enoughmight not really be good enough.
And it's really,really easy with the USB mics to fall
very far downthat because of a lot of things.
You can't get a cable that's longenough away from your computer,
so you're stuck in many other ways.
Sometimes they don't have a monitorplugged into them.
(11:52):
They're just so limiting.
And I just don't think that, like, youknow, except for the most basic setups,
they're not worth the investment.
You can buy an XLR mic, and nowyou have something that you can use
pretty much for a lifetime, or a USB mic,which is guaranteed
to be outdated at some pointand chuck it in the garbage at some point.
So yeah, they're not, they're not.
(12:14):
It's like either I don't thinkthe USB interface is same thing.
I mean, there'll be landfillof so many interfaces
now that are just so out of dateand just don't work properly anymore.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Stability is a problemwith some USB interfaces.
I mean I mean, what a USB mic is,is basically the cheapest,
tiniest USB interface they could buy.
(12:36):
Like at the bottom right ship.
It's like the mic preampand the USB interface on one ship, right?
Yeah, there are some exceptions.
I know I've heard some apogeemics to sound pretty good.
I know that Sennheiser's mic for digitalis really a decent USB my,
but those are exceptions,but very much of an exception.
Most people are buying USB micsbecause they're inexpensive.
(12:58):
They're not buying thembecause they happen to
be good at what they doand that they're 3 to $500 mics.
They're buying them becausethey're not cheap, then they're cheap.
And if you want the convenience of a USBmic but you don't want to, you know,
consider something like a sure.
And the and the new one,
it's like the b x to you, mvcs to you.
(13:19):
Right.
You'll take any micand turn it into a USB mic.
I'll give you all the convenienceof the USB mic
without making the deadend investment into a USB mic,
because once all that stuff is boltedtogether, you can't separate it.
And now one of those components going old
bad renders the whole thing useless.
Yeah, I think that's disposable.
(13:41):
Like to me it'skind of like the iMac problem too.
You can get a cool iMac,they look nice and they work fine.
But when the when the computer is obsolete
or the screen goes out,you're throwing out everything.
That'sanother thing that never made sense.
I think the iMac is good for,
you know, the front deskat an aerobics studio or something.
You know, like
it's like it's like a laptopwithout the convenience of a laptop.
(14:04):
Yeah.
It's it's like it's not even fair to saybecause it's not a bad computer.
I have clients and have them,but that's what bothers me about it.
It's like the USB.
My problem when the my something goeswrong, you throw the whole thing out.
It's you're done.So it's it's another myth here.
Okay.
So is, is this a myth.
Like how much coaching do you need once
(14:26):
you are in a career
compared to like, like I can understandneeding coaching
if you've not been in sessionsand you need to simulate a session
and get a feel for whatit's like to be directed.
But once you've been in sessions,
I've seen a lot of like
successful voice actorsseeking out coaching,
(14:47):
and sometimes I think if anything,you should be coaching somebody.
But then when does the coaching end?
Well, I don't know when coaching ends,but then it's also interesting
to see some people who are coachingwho you think
you've been around that long and.
Yeah, right.
What do you got to do there.
(15:07):
Yeah, yeah yeah.
It's funny.
I mean, look, I agree you should,
you know,I want to show you the employer coach.
I never had a coach, butyou certainly learn stuff pretty quickly.
In session, the dos the etiquette of of.
You're doing this for a living.
But I had no clue thatwhen I was booked for a job for,
you know, you do an hour session,that's you're booking is an hour.
(15:29):
I used to think, well,I didn't do the whole hour,
so they get their money's worth
and get the hell out of this really quick,because that's what I thought.
I thought,you know, well, you pay me for the hour,
so I should stay here for the hour,and all they want is like you.
You stay here.
If you get out of here in five minutes,we're going to be very happy.
That's right. Right.
So, you know, then the rest of the timewe can get this done and pay less. But.
(15:49):
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
And also like, you know, using your eyes
in a session, which we don't so much nowbecause we're usually working remotely.
But using your eyes in the session,watching body language through the glass,
even though you're hearing one instructionverbally, you can actually pick up more
from looking at the visual cuesof the person, what they really mean.
(16:12):
Right?
So then that was a so so is is coachingsomething that more is like,
you know, if you want to get experienceand you've not been hired on a job,
you can have a coach simulatewhat it's like to be in session.
But reallythe true coaching is just getting gigs
and being directedand screwing some up and winning some.
(16:35):
And like, I don't know, I think that
there's a lot of coaching going on that,you see, like I said,
I see people doing getting coachedthat are like, you know, need coaching.
Like exactly.I don't look, I don't get it.
And it's certainly in this country,in Australia, the coaching is very, very
unusual.
(16:56):
There is a little I
mean, it's funny, look, I mean, I,I can put my perspective on this
having never been a voiceover artist,but as an audio engineer,
I've never had a lessonor a formal lesson in 36 years.
Right.
So technically, in terms of,
you know, all the stuffthat Robert and George are very good at,
I'm not great at that stuff, butwhat I think I have is a good pair of eyes
(17:18):
and an understanding of how to get a soundto sound the way I want it to sound.
But technically there's, you know,AP there's stuff that George and Robert
talk about that goes over both our heads,but I kind of feel like
and maybe that'swhere coaching can make up the difference.
And you might puta voiceover perspective on that.
But I kind of feel like
if I did coaching now, I wouldn'twant to know about the hands on stuff.
(17:40):
I'd want to know
about all that technical stuffthat I've never really learned or under.
Well, I understand that,but I've never really learned the whys
and wherefores, you know what I mean?
And I wonder whether coaching fillsthose gaps in a voiceover sense.
I don't think,it's it's interesting with coaching
because I think the best coachyou're ever going to work
with is an audio engineerwho's got a lot of experience, like,
(18:04):
if you're new to the gameand you go into a director session
with a person that's worked with,you know, done a thousands and thousands
of sessions,
you're going to learn a hell of a lot more
with that person than you're ever goingto learn from a coach.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of the bestcoaches are both directors.
Yeah. Directors. Right.
Slash engineers or producers by far?
(18:25):
Absolutely.
I have a totally different myththat's more tech translated.
Yeah, that getting a booth
means you have an instantly great soundingrecording environment.
Yeah. Yes, that's a nice one.
No. Yeah.
Give that man a cigar.
It is not true at all.
I just delete that on my on.
The jobI just did was, a voice talent at home
(18:47):
and another voice talentwho went to a studio.
Man, it's like against that thingthat you don't notice
when you're in session as much,and then you start getting into it.
And as, you know, when you take a signaland you compress it and boom, all the all
come out. Yeah. Yep.
And it's like, oh, I hear the booth.
And I was sitting there trying to like,knock it out.
And it just, you know,
sometimes you try to knock it outand it makes it sound worse.
(19:08):
You're just likeI it's it's stuck that way.
And and you can hear itthat the like we did the spot and the,
the English version sounds great.
And the foreign languageversion was a booth at home.
And it just has that sound.
And to a lot of people,they won't know what that sound is,
but it's the sound of a small boxand you just can't get away from it.
(19:30):
It's so you can
become complacent to it.
And it's not really like that.You don't care.
Maybe that's not the right word.
It's just that it's like nose blindness.
Yeah.
You know,you come home, you go from vacation, go.
This is what, my house.
Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, but yeah, but it's like when you'reused to the sound of your own booth
(19:50):
in the way it sounds, day after day,week after week, month after month.
It's normal.
I mean, I was used to the sound of badsounding whisper rooms
for quite a long time.
I just thoughtthat's what it sounded like.
When you get a nice open sounding studiorecording, like from a nice
a nice big dead booththat doesn't have all those nodes,
and then you get the other tightwhen you're like, oh, like
(20:12):
what was because I was workingwith like the my first 5 or 6 real paying
voiceover clients were all home studiopromo voiceovers.
So that was the norm, you know?
And then I would start hearinggood, really, truly great recordings.
And I was like, whoa, okay.
I started to learn what it's supposedto sound like and what it well,
what it could sound like.
And then it really opened my eyes.
(20:33):
And then, you know, ever since then, it'sbeen a pursuit of trying to capture
or recreate that great sound,you know, from a really small space.
But, you know, if you're like, oh,I have a really high ceiling.
I hear that's bad. I'm like,no, no, no, no, that's really good.
That's really. Yeah, yeah.
They're like they're like,oh I heard that's bad.
I'm like, no, it's just another myth.
It's just there'sso many myths about acoustics
(20:55):
because many of itmaybe is are not conventional wisdom.
It's not logical to you or whatever.
But, it's not the case at all.
You want to have you want toyou want to have every hard surface
as far away from the micis humanly possible, right?
You want
you want no hard surfaces in the roomand you want them all to be far away.
(21:16):
Like the booth can kind of dotwo things for you.
It can deaden it upand it can deal with noise.
As long as there's not excessive noise
outside the booth,it can take care of those two things.
Right? It's like noise reduction.
It's going to solve your problemand it's going to cause you a new problem.
Right, right.
It's the irony.
Like when you buy this very expensiveconfining
(21:36):
hot uncomfortable box,shove yourself and you're like in there,
you torture yourself for an houronly to deal with the fact that you're
getting for many people's an occasionalnoise from the neighborhood or something.
But 99% of the time it's probably fine,you know what I mean?
(21:56):
And so that's the reality.
I mean, it's not true for why?
I mean, it's been abnormally quiet forthe last hour in this in my home studio.
But I mean, normally you hear of crackers,usually a couple.
And listen, listen isso now you got the whole air conditioner?
I'm in a very light room.
I mean, yeah, it's.
Yeah, it's it's my technique.
(22:18):
It's how loud you are to projection.
It's all these things.
But it is definitely a misnomerthat spreads, you know, far and wide.
There's only one voice over Booth companythat has worked with me directly.
And I'm not trying to say I'mthe king of all voiceover studios, but
I don't know anybody making voice over
Booth, who have collaboratedwith a voiceover engineer
(22:40):
to ensure and listenand try to make it sound better.
But vocal booth.com here in the Statesis done, that they're the only ones that
I think you're right with me and yeahinvited me over and let's play with stuff.
I think we chatted while you were theredidn't we. Didn't we do an episode.
Yeah. Yeah.
And youknow I give them huge props for that.
I mean studio bricks
(23:01):
has got an engine acousticiannow that works in-house which is great.
And they're doing some you knowtheir new booths do sound pretty good
but it's taking them 12plus years to get there.
Other companies never got there.
They just keep doing the same stuffover and over
because most people don't knowthe difference.
It's like the blind leading the blind.
And you know, and for the certainlevel of work, it's good enough.
(23:23):
It's good enough.
I've got an audio book,audio books and can get away with murder.
Yeah.So he does books. A lot of them sound bad.
They don't even matter. Right?Yeah, he'd say it.
And so it's like the boostwill will get you a certain level,
and then you either have to hiresomeone like you, George, to tune it out.
But I would arguethat you can't ultimately
(23:46):
completely tunea booth to not sound like Booth.
It's very difficult because by the timeyou treat enough of the surface
with a thick enough treatment,there's no room for you.
You can't move around very much. Yeah.
And you're like, you're like,I can't bump up into the walls, right?
I mean, I had a client just very recentlysend me a sample,
and he's like any listed
(24:06):
painstakingly, all the panels he hadand how thick they were in his notes.
And I was like, Jesus, no
six inch thick panels.
And I listened to the sampleand it was amazing.
That was like,that's one of the best sounding raw files
I've heard in a long time.
It's like you've consultedyou on Booth design,
(24:27):
and he didn't really make that too clear.
He just said, I insisted on these panels.
The guy making them or the dealer sellingthem was like, no, you don't need that.
And he was like,no, I this is what I want.
And then sure enough, it sounded fantasticbecause he had the right
and the right amount and thickenough panels in the right places.
My studio work this here behind methat you guys can't see on the show.
(24:49):
Sorry, but it's got up to six inchesof paneling on the walls.
Well, the only like like thethe two inch or one,
the one inch stuff deals with a lot, butit does not hit the low end well enough
to just get the meat of the frequencyrange of most voices, even women.
It there's a tremendous amountof standing waves and resonances below 300
(25:10):
over three, three and one hertz,and those panels do zero to those.
So so in my case I just put the thickestpanels above my shoulders.
Right.
So yeah they're encroaching in my spacebut they're not in my wingspan,
if you know what I mean.I can move my elbows around.
And so yes, it's a little claustrophobic,
(25:30):
but not so muchbecause I can still move around.
But I have that six inchesof paneling at my head
level, you know,and it works surprisingly well
without feeling too cramped,but so you just had to be clever about it.
And if you need help, talk to peoplelike us, because man, like, you know what?
It's supposed to sound like.
I can still remember the first setupI had, which I,
(25:52):
when I think about itnow, is just ridiculous.
Yeah.
And, and then the second one I built,which was not quite as ridiculous,
but still pretty ordinary.
It was
basically in a cupboard,that kind of thing.
With acoustic foam inside the cupboard.
It sounded like you'd isolate
recording inside a motorcycle helmet,
(26:15):
but also Vox.
Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly the helmet.
And, and then the third one I went,I actually sort of thought
I'd better geta bit more serious about this.
And, I got a guy came over and help me.
We built onewhich sounded really, really good.
And then, of course, this was thethis is the last one I built here.
This one you have sounds pretty good.
(26:35):
And it's got a good length to it.
Like, that's one of the thingsit's a it's not a small booth, am I right.
Yeah.
The booth is over behind me.
I'm sitting on the.
Yeah, mine roomhere, but, is it it's big enough.
Oh. Just at least like six foot, isn't it?
More. More.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, I think we all gothrough the same sort of progression.
(26:56):
I mean, Jesus, if I,if I think about my first time studio,
it was in 2002
and it was the old G4 Mac, you know, the,
the great thing and all thatsort of stuff in the Quiksilver.
Yeah.And it was an M1 mirror on the front.
Yeah, that's the one.
And an M box and a version Pro Toolsand and I had no treatment in the room.
(27:19):
There was a,the wall behind me was a big long
wall of bookshelvesand full of books and trinkets in the.
So that was right.
So exactly.
So I didn't do anythingreally in the room.
And I would sort of just mix in headphonesand all that sort of stuff.
And I compare it to now,you know, with panels
I've made on the wallsand now the curtains
(27:41):
and all the shit that I've, I've done and,you know, all that sort of stuff
in the bookshelf
intentionally down there because forsome reason, stuff was ricocheting.
I was originally going to have that behindme, but I shoved it down in that corner.
So, yeah.
So, you know,I'd like you think about the progression
and if you could see the,the studios in the middle of all that,
it was certainly sort of just upper leveleach time, I suppose.
(28:04):
But then I guesseach time you build a studio,
you think, okay, well,what am I going to do this time?
That didn't work last time and stuff.
So it's probably logicalunless you have an interest
in this at a young age and you internand you get to be in the environment
and talk to the designers,those things just never happen.
It's a black art,and so you just learn it as you go.
(28:24):
Because unless you're lucky enoughto get to the right person early on
and you get to not have to makea lot of mistakes, that happens.
But it's very, very rare.
And so you really just learn as you goand you get better and better over time.
I'm still learning stuff all the time.
That's what's fun about onis that you're always learning stuff.
It's never over.
It's yeah, it's like a continuous thing.
(28:45):
It's like because it's it's likethat thing where I remember when I was a
at a high schooljust beginning to record drums, and then
every time I was like, every drum kitI recorded, oh,
this one's better than the last one I did.
And I got even better.
And it's like, you get this feeling.I finally got it.
And then you do another one. You're like,oh, it's even better.
And you start learninghow to deal with it.
(29:06):
I won't do that again.Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Well there's always that
or you start realizing what it is that islike, oh, that one recorded really well.
And what was it?
It wasn't anything I did.
The damn thing was tuned.
Oh, you can tune drum.
Oh yeah. You know, it's amazing.
And so that that whole journeyand it's like it's exciting
when you're improving,you know, it's like anything. Yeah.
(29:27):
Oh totally is. Yeah.
And that's not a myth.
That's not. That's a fact. Yeah.
And if you missed this episode,go back to the beginning.
Well, that was fun.
Is it over
the audio sweet things
to try and Austrianaudio recorded using Source Connect.
Edited by Andrew Petersand mixed by Robert Go.
(29:50):
Your own audio issues.
Just ask Robert.
Don't call him tech. Support him.Use the tech. William.
Don't forget to subscribe to the showand join in the conversation
on our Facebook or to leave a comment,suggest a topic or just say goodbye.
Drop us a note at our website.
The audio suite is.com.
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