July 7, 2025 • 37 mins
This week, the team tackles the most common myths about the Tri-Booth – the portable recording solution trusted by countless voice actors and audio pros. From misconceptions about its sound isolation, to confusion about setup and portability, we dig into what’s real and what’s just internet chatter.
Andrew shares his first-hand experience using a Tri-Booth on the road, Robbo explains how it compares to permanent studio spaces, and George breaks down the physics of why it works (or doesn’t) in certain environments.
If you’ve been considering a Tri-Booth or wondering whether it’s worth the investment, this episode will give you the clarity you need to make an informed choice.
Highlights:
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What the Tri-Booth can and can’t do for your sound
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How real users set it up successfully
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Why some people expect miracles from any portable booth
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The biggest mistakes people make when judging its performance
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How it compares to purpose-built spaces
Episode Resources:
🔗 Tri-Booth Official Site
Sponsors:
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Tri-Booth – Record anywhere, sound amazing. tribooth.com
-
Austrian Audio – Makers of the OC818 and other world-class microphones.
Connect with us:
🌐 proaudiosuite.com
📺 YouTube Channel
🎧 Listen on Spotify
🎙️ Listen on Amazon Music
Join Our Community:
👉 Facebook Group
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
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(37:46):
TV history.
Get started.
Welcome.
Hi. Hi. Hi.
Hello, everyone, to the pro audio suite.
These guys are professional and motivated.
Please text the.
Video stars
George Wisdom, founder of Source ElementRobert Marshall, international.
Audio engineering Robbie Robertsand global voice Andrew Peters.
Thanks to tribal Austrian audio.
Making, passionate
(38:06):
elements George the tech wisdomand Rob Irwin APIs international demos.
To find out more about us.
Check the Proteas.
Sweetcorn line up. Ready? Here we go.
I'm me and welcome to another proaudio suite
thanks to Austrianaudio miking, passion herd and tribals.
Don't forget the tribes MMO.
It's all new and it's not a smallso it's good for traveling.
(38:30):
Speaking of which, tribe is there?
I see lots of people talking about changesto making comments that I know
are unfounded, but I think we should doa bit of myth busting.
I was actually in a roomthe other day or a page,
and there was a post therefrom someone that said something like,
and I'm paraphrasing,but it was something like,
why would I buy a tribe boost when I canmake my own for, you know, X dollars?
(38:53):
And it's like, I thinkthere's a bit more to it than that.
It's just sort of. Like, yeah.
It's it's funny.
People just look at the
look at a few pipes in someand some blankets and go, well, you know.
Why I should actually preface thisby saying that when I first
saw the tribe boost, I thought,I'm gonna have a go at making one.
Of course, I was privy to that and.
(39:13):
It was expensive.
It cost me a lot more than I thoughtit was going to cost, and it didn't work.
And it was just massive and horrid.
So come on, George,give us all the company secrets,
because we all want to make our own now.
Yeah, well,
I mean, you know, most charlatansmainly designed products start that way.
I can make crappy or cheaper versionof that and sell it for four times.
(39:33):
You know, that's like,I just made that my men that were putting.
I like I. Thought you as being very smart.
Artisanal and Charlotte from Charlottedismally design manual.
But yeah, that's what a lot of productsstart that way,
you know, they're just like,oh, shit, I can make that.
And they make it, and I'mgoing to make it as cheap as possible.
But the number one goal being a profitmaking adventure.
(39:55):
Period. Full stop.Of course we're running.
We I should say Rick Bosman. I'm.
No, I'm in no waypart of the operations of a business.
It's fully. Rick.
But the point of the companyis to make money
and subside and and exist and persist.
And it has been able to do thatbecause of what is charged per unit
(40:15):
ad that not been built inat the price point that it is,
we would have slowly bled ourselves drybecause actually what's happened,
we haven't raised the price of the tribus
original right, since it was launchedalmost six years ago,
and the cost of everything has gone up.
(40:35):
Materials and labor, both.
So the product makes far less profitthan it did 4 or 5 years ago,
which is the exact opposite of whata company wants to have happen.
Right?
It's like when you're here,would you make a product to sell?
You try to lower costs over time,not have them increase.
We've had the reverse happenand we do promotions.
(40:59):
We meaning Rick,I keep saying we I'm I'm a partner
in terms of its design,but really it is 100% Rick's operation.
And the promotionshappen at every holiday.
And there's discount codes on our showand the promote.
And so many of them are sold on promotionso that the margin is even tinier.
So I get a little piece of the action
(41:23):
because I'm building filtersfor each person who purchases one.
So all that being said,that's the reason it costs what it costs.
And also the very best of every possible
material is used in its designand construction.
Right?
So we're not using off the shelfplumber's grade PVC.
(41:44):
We're using furniture grade PVCthat's a lot more expensive.
And it's a thinner wallso that it's much lighter per foot.
The sound blankets we're using,we have changed
and improved themseveral times in its lifespan.
And now for the last three years,that blankets are a
very high and heavy grade material.
That is something you have to nuanceif you want a product to still ship
(42:10):
and go on a plane and be under a 22 K
23 kg, is that the you'reis that the worst?
Yeah.
I think it's 45 pounds or something.
That's 50 pounds in the US.
Yeah 50 pounds I think it's fine.
It has.
It has to.
Everything has to be consideredto an intense degree
when you have those restrictions.
(42:30):
So you have size restriction,you have weight restriction
and you have it's got to be good.
It can't just look good.
It also has to performancehundred. It has to do it.
So if you take all those thingsinto consideration
and you DIY,you will have an extremely difficult time
replicating all of those factors yourself.
(42:52):
Trust me.
I've heard it.
I've heard many people mentionmaking one of their own,
and everybody make somethingthat's first of all, square.
Okay, now a square bad.
No, not necessarilyfor a blanket for squares.
Okay.
But how are you going to pack it into onestandard size
travel suitcase guaranteenot it's not going to work.
(43:16):
And how do we know?
Because that's where we started.
We started
with a conventional square shape,and we realized we couldn't pack that
into a suitcase.
And we had to figure outhow to make it smaller.
And that's when the triangle floor plancame out.
Now, of course,
you could probably also cobble togethera triangle floor plan on your own.
There's different ways to do it.
(43:36):
But it's still not going to break downand be as easy to transport
and have the least number of partspossible to still give you those results.
So that's my little like answer to theI could make it myself.
Don't don't even factor in the labor time.
Like I don't know your hourly rateis that you bill for your skills?
(43:56):
Whatever those skills are, I can guaranteeit's too expensive to build a trip.
Yeah, yeah.
And be with all the issuesthat you guys have already dealt with too.
That's the other thing.
Yeah, yeah.
So this is these are the reasonsit costs what it costs.
Am I dreaming
or did we talk about some of the designaspects in terms of,
acoustics actually inside the tradebooth, like
(44:19):
the blankets not touching the floorand stuff like that.
Was that purely a weight consideration,
or do I rememberyou saying something about,
the sort of higher frequencies and the howit helped that having some air coming?
No, it didn't really come downto frequencies.
It really came down very much toa practical application of the material.
It just didn't need to touch the floor.
(44:39):
Was it was that perhaps that was that.What it was?
What.
Well, so we had to decide again, weightand size, two restrictions.
We had to decide.
Is it more important to have the blankets
go from the roof height to the floor?
Be one single thickness of blanketfrom top to bottom,
or was it better to have the blanketsoverlap themselves at double
(45:00):
the thickness of blanket at the topone third of the.
Booth, which is where the microphone and.
Sacrifice space at the bottomand have the bottom be open.
That's what it was.
So we of course tested those things too.
And what we found outwas you got better performance
when you doubled up the blanketlayer up by the microphone
where the microphone actuallyis as well as on the roof.
(45:21):
So after we doubled the sides upand got the double layer
wrapping all the way around you,we still had a single layer on the roof.
Well, in the room we were testing it in.
Rick had this room in his housethat was very barren.
It was actuallya really good use case of this space
because it had hardwood floorand it was very had minimal furnishings.
So it was like a weird bonus roomoff the side of the garage or something.
(45:45):
And it was a great place to testbecause we were testing it
and still realizingthere was too much liveliness.
You're still getting too much river.
And I thought, well, okay,we have a double layer on the sides.
What if we were to figure out,
what if we just double up the roofand just put another layer over the top?
And that made a significant difference.
(46:06):
It was like, wow, okay, that really works.
So then whatincreased the cost of fabrication
quite a bit washow do you make a triangle piece
for the roofthat looks neat and fits nicely?
Then I have another triangle piecethat fits inside that piece.
And so in doesn'thang down and doesn't fall apart.
That was actually really difficult.
(46:27):
That was the number onemost difficult thing to build
correctly was the triangle roof.
And for many years Rick's wife
sewed these herself on.
Not professional grade sewing machines,mind you.
Just, you know, like a seriousamateur would use.
Not industrial grade. Right.
(46:49):
And she would sell these herselfand we would have other people
try to make them, you know, we had severaldifferent vendors or local fabricators,
assembly people seem, I don't knowif they call them seamstresses anymore.
That's an old school term.
But we had differentpeople try to make them,
and they were not doing it up to snuff.
And Rick's like,no, this isn't good enough.
(47:11):
My wife Tamara is going to haveto keep making these.
And she,she and she did for the first four years.
And now that theyhave relocated to Oregon,
where cost of labor is
cheaper,you know, everything's less expensive,
you're going to find a lovely husbandand wife couple who are now
handle assembling the boots for, tribals.
(47:32):
Okay.
So, gentlemen, I believe,is doing the fabrication of the frames,
and his wife is doing the sewing,
so they are still handmade in Oregon,you know,
and and so then you would say, well,why don't you make them in China, right?
Of course. That'swhere everything cheap is made.
It becomes a scaling issue. Right.
(47:53):
So we want to get this thing to competewith the other things on Amazon.
We can't make ten at a time.
We'd have to make a thousand at a time,you know.
Well,you guys know we've all been through it
now with the with thewith the passport video and what it cost
to make small numbersof hand-built product,
no matter where they're made,whether it's made in China or in the U.S.
(48:15):
or Canada, it doesn't matter.
We're Australia, it's a matter of scale.
And so, yeah, these are made in smallbatches because, again, Rick very wisely
decided he wasn't going to take outsome massive loan
as a startup for the companyor become beholden
to a VC, a venture capitalistor some other thing.
(48:37):
He bootstrapped this on his own dimeand built it organically.
And so that's the other reasonwhy it is a small run
and still kind of expensive product.
You know, that's what happensif this thing was made by the ten,
by the thousand in China,
we wouldn't have control over how wellit's made and how well it's so together.
(48:57):
And the actual materialsthe blankets are made out of,
they could any timeswitch them out to something cheaper.
And then all of a sudden the next thousandsmells like a chemical factory
because they used a crappyor smelly zigzag.
Like.
Blanket, like do researchfor sound blankets on, you know, moving
blankets on online and type in the wordssmell or stinks or smelly.
(49:21):
And you'll see that so many productssmell really terrible.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know how many thingsyou order from Amazon or online,
but sometimes you open the package andthe smell is bizarrely chemically laden.
I just got these, lighting diffuserpanels for lights for a studio I'm doing.
And I opened the packageand it was that weird,
familiar chemical, floral, carb, any.
(49:44):
Funky.
Chemical smell when I opened the package,you know, and I was like, yeah.
And hopefully they're not going to notice
because you know these things are confinedspaces for voiceover.
You're in a very small spaceand you're breathing heavily.
All right. It's all part of voiceover.
The last thing you want to be
is like ensconced in talksabout distractions and smelling.
(50:06):
So that's another consideration right.
It's very important to us.
So that's there's just so muchwe thought about and obsessed over
to get to the design that it is.
And just and just scaling it upis incredibly difficult
and still maintain the.
The clothes.
The thing I likeabout the fact of the triangle,
(50:27):
is that when you're travelingand you're in a hotel room or something
that's not overly sizable,and you don't have the luxury
of having a spare room to set it upin, it fits nicely in a corner.
Yeah, yeah.
That would mean it was saidthat the corner, the corner ability of it
and taking less spaceis certainly a big part of,
the practical side of it being a triangle.
(50:49):
But the actual acoustical benefits of itbeing a triangle
isn't somethingthat we've really been able to quantify.
Right, if you know what I mean.
We haven't been able to go, like, well,if it was a rectangle of the same exact
material in this size, how would it soundin comparison to this triangle format?
But the bottom line is, you know, it'snot a soundproof box, it's not a chamber.
(51:12):
It's it's a filter.
The sound passes through the materials,it goes out into the space,
reverberates aroundand then whatever remains
comes back and filtersthrough the blankets again.
So you're getting like a lot of bangfor your buck out of that material,
because it's not just hitting a
thin fabric andand hitting a wall and bouncing off.
(51:34):
It's passing through, dissipating,and then closing back.
So that that opens up a whole.
Another questionthen George going back to our episode
a couple of weeksago, what's the noise? Floor.
Yeah, right.
It's a thing we stand on.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
It's it's weird,but I, it's funny with the, the
(51:55):
you talk about the filter,I used it 1 in 1 hotel room.
I was in Sydney, and,I only had one place I could put it,
and it was a weird room, andI think I've mentioned this before, but,
my bedroom actually had a glass walland a glass door.
Yeah.
And so in the sitting area, that's
(52:15):
where I had to set it up,but I had to set it up.
So one side was actuallythe triangle was against the glass.
Okay.
So one bit against glassto get against the walls.
Yeah. That must have affectedthe sound a little bit.
And that was well,it did, but not dramatically.
I couldn't hear it.But that doesn't mean much.
But I certainly know one complaint.
It said, that's good.
You're not going to get a reverb issueas much as you may get a resonance issue.
(52:38):
So now when the when 1 or 2 of the sidesare very close to a wall,
you're going to get more likelysome kind of resonating issue, because now
the sound's going through the blanketand hitting a surface and reflecting back.
And so then you might get somethingwe would call comb filtering.
You may get a little bit of a mid rangesomething or other
(53:01):
that happens as a result.
And so you know, in an ideal world
the booth would really not be very closeto any one wall, maybe one wall.
But not really a corner.
So the irony is it makes senseto put in a corner, but you would
theoretically the best possible soundyou would get
is when it's not in a cornerlike more in the middle of the room.
(53:23):
Right.So that's not always practical, you know.
But these arethe things that affect sound.
And so we want to takeall those things into account.
So when people ask where do I put it
so well corner is the obvious choiceif that's all you got.
But if you can put it somewhere else,that's great too.
Another thing we found was that simplythrowing a blanket on the floor
can give you the last five, 10%,
(53:46):
absorption that you might need.
So if it's a reallyspartan room, all hardwood,
you know,
very Spartan or, God forbid, tilewhile you're.
In Fiji or something like that.Yeah, exactly.
Spain, South America, anywhere they lovetile.
Tile is so reflective,so that's where you get the most trouble.
So then taking a blanket or comforterand putting it underneath the boot,
(54:09):
so you're standing on this largeabsorbing thing
can give you the last 10% of absorptionthat you need.
I've also had people throwanother blanket over the entire tribal.
This roof.
I think that can help too,
but I have found thatit was still more effective.
Just put one on the floor and it's easierto it's and it's easier than trying
to put one over the whole tribebecause that's a lot of weight.
(54:33):
And you know, all that extra weighton this frame, it can be you can damage it
when you try to take it apart.You have to be careful.
You know, the other option that on thatjust occurred to me that you should put in
this thing is
you could have an optional add on, have aof a room service tray holder, you know.
So while you while you're recording youcan have your, your lunch or your dinner
or your breakfast there in front of youwhile you're munching away.
(54:54):
I mean, you're onholidays after all. Come on.
I know, yeah, I know, there's
so many cool accessories that we wouldthat we could put in that package.
You know, that's.
Also the other advantageof buying the tri boot is
it comes with the doesit not comes with your iPad holder.
It comes with your micstand comes with the light
and all that stuff, stuff thatyou would never have if you made your own.
(55:17):
Exactly.
And you go buy all those objects,which you certainly can.
You know, we're not getting these again.
We're not buyingthose things at a 1000 at a time.
We're buying themten units at a time from the same retail
establishedmeant that you would be pretty much.
So we're not getting some crazy pricing.
We're buyingalmost all the accessories at retail.
So there's not any marginon any of that stuff.
(55:40):
We just are turning it around.
And so we will we do itbecause we just want it to be easy.
The whole thing was think of everything.
What is all the random annoying stuffan actor
wish they had brought or packedor forgot to bring?
What can we have already in the kit?
And that's what's in the box.
(56:01):
And so yeah, the even the copyholder is sturdy enough to hold a laptop.
I don't know if I would put a 7 poundMacBook Pro 16 inch on it.
Could do it probably in a pinch,but a 13 inch MacBook air or an iPad or
no problem.
It'll it'll hold those thingswith no issue.
Well, I did the last trip.
(56:21):
I did, but that's exactly what I did.
I put my MacBook Pro on thethe copy stand perfect
so I can record and, and,you know, read off the MacBook.
So go back.
Go back for skipa few years when you tried
making your ownbecause it was a dismal failure.
(56:42):
I remember, but but I mean, how much time,how much time
and how much money do you reckonyou sunk into doing that?
To go only to go?
You know what?
It would have been easier just to buy one.
Well, I did it as an experimentbecause I wanted to find out if, yes,
I could do it.
And I did build something,but it was ridiculously large.
It was prohibitively expensive,I remember.
(57:02):
Yeah, it was hideously expensive and,a dismal well,
I'm going to say a dismal failure.
It wasn't totally dismal, but it didn't doanything that it should have done.
It was really heavy,very expensive and labor intensive.
Yeah.
The first try bootsthat was made, wasn't it?
Tried this again.
It was a rectangle and it would pack down
(57:24):
into a golf case, golf clubs case.
So you know big tennis right.
It's tall. Yeah. It's large and bulky.
And Rick carried and dragged that thing toand from the airport a couple of times.
And he's like, dude,this is just too freaking big and heavy.
It's too awkward to travel with this thingall the time.
(57:45):
And how are we going to make this smaller?
And that's when we really dug into like,okay, how do we shrink it?
How many we have to shrink it.
We had to have more sectionsto each of the legs.
All right.
Well thenhow long should this sections be?
You know, it.
It's just when you get into the detailsand you look closer and closer,
you find more details.
(58:06):
That's, That's why I just got
such a such a process to design this thingand be nuanced.
In fact, the new one, the memo,which I had no direct
involvement whatsoeverin actually design and fabricating,
that was another challenge because nowwe wanted to fit it into a carry on bag.
(58:26):
So the longest leg sectionhad to be much shorter
than what was on the regular track.
This thing, the longest leg piece onthe tribe, was about 24in, roughly,
maybe something like that.
And then the longest leg sectionon the memo could only be like
18in, 16in, something like that.
So then you had to figure out exactly whatlength those pipes should actually be,
(58:49):
and then you want those pipes to bethe essentially the all the same length,
so that when it folds down, it'susing every square
inch of the inside of the suitcase.
Right.
And you also want to order all those pipes
cut precut for youso that you can assemble them more easily.
Now you should have. The suitcase with it.
For which one? The dilemma.
(59:11):
The memo.
It should have comewith its own carry on suitcase.
You could have one if you just wantto just add $100 to the price.
I mean.
Yeah.
I mean everybody, everybodythat once that has
a carry on suitcaseis the reason they want.
So that was part of the reasonI think it was also a cost price point.
But I as I was telling them earlierlike they we don't make points or profit
(59:34):
on all those retail items like the cases,the cases and the lights and the
power strips and all the other stuffis all that stuff's bought at retail.
You know, we can'twe we'd have to order hundreds of units,
which we just can't do for freecash flow perspective.
Nor do we have place to keep it. Yeah.
To store it. All. Yeah.
(59:55):
So it's a very nuanced thing.
The way to scale that. It's made up.
Even the R&D that went into that.
I do remember when it was first announcedand we did an episode with Rick
and yourself here.I think you were Rick's place.
You out in a.
Yeah.
Somewhere we were in I tribus in Rick's.
It was like a community roomin his building.
(01:00:17):
Yeah, that was his very empty room.
Had, like, a sofa and that's it.
And we were standing in there togetherwith the booth in the booth,
which was kind of funny.
And kind of intimate and. Intimate.
Yeah. It's true there, you know,
have you ever,have you got a recording from anybody and,
and have you ever knownwhether they're going to try Booth or not?
(01:00:39):
I can't say I know that if they haveor they I've gotten
plenty of clothes closets,
lots of overly tubby booths,you know, like the booth.
Me somewherebetween 100 to 100 and 40 or 150Hz.
It's all. It's.
Yeah, it's on that,like 300 and down like that.
Yeah. Sound.
And you can eat.
(01:00:59):
You can eat you. It's not.
It's not under usable. Yeah.
But you can tell someone'sin like a tiny square booth.
Yeah.
I've never had anybody tell me or admitthat they're using a try.
Booth.
I would actually assume that the tri boothwould sound better than the box,
because it probably doesn'thave the standing waves in the same way.
(01:01:21):
Right?
Doesn't that the 4x4 booth do like
it doesn't knock out the outside sound?
It does a good enough job.
If you're not doing anything really loud,it does a good enough job
of getting rid of the room reflections.
You know, if you're not screaming andreally exciting the room, it kills that.
So it does have its advantages.
(01:01:42):
Actually, if you have arelatively quiet space ready,
you might actually
be better off with somethinglike a tri booth thinner than.
A whisper room.
And it was kind of a I said, booth.
Yeah, right.
I agree, I mean, I one of the thingsthat I'll do as a customer is
I will not just make you a filter,but I'll even try to match your sound
from your home studio.
(01:02:04):
Right.
So if you are using the tri boothfor travel,
for many peoplethis is their only booth actually.
But for those that actually douse it for travel
and they do have a home studio,one of the things I'll do for them
is I'll try when I make the filterto match the IQ of their home booth.
Right. So you add this back in.
Well, that's the travel.
(01:02:25):
Sometimes I'll get a sample
from the home studio booth, whisper room,whatever it is.
And it sounds worse. Yeah.
And then I'm like, yeah, what do I do?
Yeah.
So, you know, it's it's a weirdbecause I'll be like, okay, well,
this is the way it should sound, butthis is the way your home booth sounds.
So I'm going to add to cue here and thereso that they kind of match.
(01:02:47):
And then there's the whole point
of making the matchesso that you can pick up a job,
take up work,you know, continue a campaign.
All kind of things are reasonsvoice actors work on the road.
You know, they don't you don't workon the road to do an occasional audition.
You walk on the roadbecause you just absolutely have to.
Maybe, maybe you work on the roadbecause you're not working enough
(01:03:08):
and now you're homeless. Well, yeah.
You know, while you work on the road,however, you work on the road
because clients can't get the scriptsright the first time around.
That's why.
Oh, yeah.
Because now it's not.You have to do the pitch that.
Oh, we forgot that.
We forgot to put the phone number in or.
Yeah. Can we.
Yeah. The email address is changed right.
You know,the promo code is wrong or whatever.
(01:03:30):
Yeah. Yeah.
But it's funny though, because, like,you know,
as you know, I do like,pretty well daily stuff for, Dubai
and weekly
probably jobs for Singapore,but the daily stuff,
I know that the guy, AJ,who's the producer engineer in Dubai,
I've sent him stuff that I'm really open,honest with him and say, look, you know,
(01:03:53):
I'm on the road. Is it sounding okay?
And I every time, oh, pretty well,every time I've done that, he said,
I can't even hear the difference.
Mainly because he, he's alreadygot the processing set.
Up for your.
As a template, so he doesn'teven listen to it before he gets process.
So he has a change.
So he's got.
A team, knows he'sgoing to run you through that chain.
(01:04:14):
And so the first thing he does isafter records you from wherever you are.
His hits play on that chain and it matcheswell enough with the chain in place.
Yep. He's happy.
He doesn't even doesn't even drawsattention.
Then it's a different thing.
It's it's funny because I mean,if I'm sitting here, if I'm in my booth
at home, I'meither using, an 818 or an eight seen
(01:04:38):
monster in audio through either the Grace
and what I won or a 1073 knife.
But when I'm on the road, I'm
using either when it used to be an SSL two
and now it's similar,you know, the passport video.
And. By the way, we'regoing to have more of those on the market.
It sounds like.
(01:04:58):
Yes, exactly.
Yeah. I did hear that team.
You don't know when, but we are. Yeah.
We now have, lead over 15,possibly up to 15 more units.
Wow. That are going to go through
sort of a round to a fabrication,which involves.
Prefabrication.
A reset refurbishment, let's call it that.
(01:05:20):
And yeah, and believe it or not,it involves an x ray machine.
Yes it does. Does.
So the the USB chip
basically what happened is the USBchips were faulty on that round.
And apparently like this USB chip,the way it's soldered on,
all the pins are directly underneath it.
So the only way to take it off,solder it back on.
(01:05:41):
They have to use an x ray machineto check the solders
it once it's soldered back on. Wow.
It's like surgery. It is, isn't it?
So that's mind blowing. Not brain surgery.Yeah, yeah.
Well actually there you go. There'sthere's a plug for my new podcast.
It's coming out.
It's it's not brain surgery now.
Well I was going to call itit's not brain surgery but I've called it.
It's not rocket science but it's aboutit's about the science of radio imaging.
(01:06:01):
So it's sort of about that. Cool.
The process behind it's not about how tomake a sweeper and all that sort of stuff.
It's about, you know what?
Why why do we use radio imaging?
How can we use it, blah blah.
That's going to stick to the guy.
So I thought, it's not rocketscience was a good name.
So yeah, yeah yeahyeah. That's great. It's a great topic.
I know my my friendJodie Crangle does her audio branding one
(01:06:22):
and that's a lot of what it's aboutis bringing people in
who are experts in marketingand what works psychologically
and why we do what we doand how and not not so much of the how.
It's not a that's like you said, it'snot a technical thing.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a
I don't want to make ita, I don't want to make it
a, you know, I love these plug in
because in all that sort of stuff,it's more about,
(01:06:43):
you know, thinking about howhow our imaging influences listeners
and also sort of getting a programmersperspective because it ask an imaging guy
what imaging is about.
And he'll go, oh, it's about all the coolsounds.
And, you know, usingdescribe your neck right there.
But ask a programmer director
and he's got a completely different viewon what he wants when he's imaging.
So, you know, it's that's whyI thought it would be a good one.
(01:07:04):
And if,if you ask the voiceover talents about.
It's about the voiceover talents. Yeah.
You ask, I pay you to be on the radioimaging in the first place.
That's right. Exactly.How do I get that exactly.
Yeah.
So yeah,everyone's got their own perspective.
But, I mean, I, I'mactually I'm actually sort of
(01:07:24):
a getting back on topic,I'm actually a bit of a Tribhuvan Virgin.
I mean, I've recorded AP a couple of timesfor this show from a try booth, and
I was honestly, without blowing sunshineup your ass, I was honestly impressed
and I sent me some sampleswhen he's traveled as well.
A few years agowhen he first got it, to have a listen to
(01:07:45):
and I'll be honest,there's not much to pick wrong with it.
No, I.
Think the trade booth is like, you know,you know, studios that have these
like, reflectionfilters around the mics and stuff.
Yeah. Or guess.
So. They have a nice live room,but they don't want a live sound.
And then they put the reflection
filter around the mic,you know, God forbid a music vocal.
But I think something likethe tribute would be better than those,
(01:08:07):
reflection filters close to the mic.
And you don't necessarily need a cover,you don't need to cover the opening
to probably likefor that kind of a use case, like
I tell people all the time,
with your tribe,you don't have to close the opening.
You can leave the opening openin many cases.
So if if the space you're in is deadenough,
(01:08:28):
that it sounds good with the opening
the door, I guess the flaps flaps up.
If you leave the flaps openor the flaps up,
you can still get actuallya really good sound.
Sometimes that's all you need.
And if that's the case, it's even betterbecause you're not having to be
fully enclosed,which is a little bit less stuffy.
(01:08:49):
But there's even one more thing.
The fact that there's a space below
the blankets and the floor is a big,obviously space there.
If you open the roof like a hatch.
Against.
Now you have like an open opening and itconverts convection and it actually draws.
Flaring, stuffy.
Hot air out and the cool air,it makes a noticeable.
(01:09:11):
Difference.
So how much do you have to open itto get that? Not much.
I wouldn't presume how much.
I mean, you only need to just flipthe corner up and you'll have like a small
oh, the cupola.
It's like the cupola in the house.
Yeah, the cupola and a house.
The the thing where the air is vented
through the roof of the houseto keep that.
We call them whirlybirds.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And stop the stopthe mold from growing in the attic.
(01:09:33):
Yeah. So, yeah, this is the idea here.
And so,yeah, it's a shockingly effective thing.
I mean, when you're in an enclosed space
and you give any place for the airto escape, it's noticeable.
It's very nice. Yeah.
So you have that option too.
And it can really make itmore comfortable.
And the other thing is, of course,if you do this for a living,
then you work on your mic techniquebecause that actually plays in as well.
(01:09:57):
If you're way off the micand you're in attributes in a,
you know, a pretty, stark room,you're going to get reflections and.
The here'sthe funny thing that might take me
the best
studios allow for the sloppiestmic placement.
Yeah. Would you agree with that, Robert?
I would like a really welldesigned studio,
(01:10:18):
you know, like there's no bad combination.
And it's quiet enough that if you're off,like, you can still pick it up.
And then if you have a really good micthat has good off axis coloration,
it doesn't sound like garbagewhen you're, you know, a.
Foot to one side.
I mean, the for the 40,the 41 six squares.
But. Right.
(01:10:38):
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean there's, there's youI mean, guys, if you haven't
gotten to spend time in a commercial gradehigh end studio,
you don't really know,but you'd be amazed how far away the mic
can be placed in those environmentsand still get a really present sound.
It's a very wild thing.
I've heard recordings, and I'll askthe client how close to the mic are you?
(01:10:59):
Sounds like you're 4 or 5in away from themright now.
I'm about a foot away.
I mean, like, how is that even possible?
But then I see the roomor the acoustic setup or whatever
they've done, and I'm like, well, that'sbecause the acoustics are so good
that they allow youto be farther from the mic.
So smaller enclosed spaces require tighter
(01:11:19):
my placement full stops every time.
So is there ais there a mic that you would recommend?
I mean, I know
most people are going to take theireveryday mic
because for the reasonswe've talked about,
but if you were building a studiofor the first time
and you decidedthat you were going to use a try booth,
and then you were thinking, well,what Mike would I pair with that?
Would you?
Is there a mike you would suggest worksperforms better in a try booth,
(01:11:42):
or is it pretty mucheven across the board?
I'm going to guess that in at in Andrews.
You know, besides the 41 six,I bet you that, but what do you see?
Okay, the.
Yeah, I bet you that kick right in there.
It would be fantastic.
And but I do use 41 six.
That's what goes on there.
Well, I'll. Tell you what I. Mean.Cut that out. Pretty sight.
(01:12:03):
This isn't. This is.
No secret.
It's no secret that the mike that Rickuses and has for 15 years is a 41 six.
Yeah.
So what do you think is the mike we usedwhen we designed to try this and then.
Well,I kind of think that thing. Was a fit.
It would make sense as an industrystandard anyway.
I mean, let's be honest.I mean that's what most I. Mean, when.
Is Austin Audio going to puta, you know, like a, you know,
(01:12:24):
a small shotgun attachmentthat, that here.
That's true.
That's it will be a killer.
It will be a interchangeable capsule.
Mike. Right.It is already interchangeable, I believe.
Is isn't it entry?
Not a I don't think so.
Oh, so they're not doing it.
Austin's not doing itin a changeable capsule yet.
No, I remember unscrew.
(01:12:45):
Take that.
Yeah. Rememberwho bought that Lincoln Unscrews.
Remember who bought Austrian audio
guessing changeable capsule weights.
Yeah.
I mean, they could they could so easilymake a short shotgun attachment to that.
Yeah. You know, it's really funny.
Remember the,crazy shotgun mic that I, used for,
(01:13:07):
Or the really long one?
The really long one, right. Was that it?
So what do they call that?
It was the,Let's see what it is. Here was.
A sunrise.
No, it's the Audio-Technica.
Oh, okay. Got it. Yeah.
It was a really long shotgun.
It's like, 814, I think.
And then I'm on eBay.
And for $22,
(01:13:29):
a shotgun capsule pops up for that thing.
No. Way.
I'm. I'm like, oh,I think I'm going to grab that because.
Because I had two of them
and I had another preamp bodyand I was like, okay,
then I can have two shotgunsand I get the shotgun.
It's a short shotgun. No way.
So I have a long shotgun in the shortshotgun and a cardioid guide.
Now you really sound like an American.
(01:13:50):
I've got this shotgun,I've got that shotgun, blah blah blah.
Except that's right.
And a rack to hold on the back.
Sure.
And I guess.
That would be a funny to get your point.
Like a pickup truck with a shotgun first.
41 six in the back.
We got to do that.
Yeah, that's on the pro audio, right.
(01:14:12):
That's why that when we do this call,I do that one pretty quick.
Okay.
Yeah.
The priority. Is my kind of gun. Truck.
Now you can have italmost like we're hunting clients.
I'm hunting Clyde.
They're doing this before.
Before someone else does.
Someone's going to take that ideaand use it, you know?
(01:14:32):
Yeah. That's right.
Well, on that note, I think we've,dispelled some myths about the tribally.
So diesel, the fiber.
Use our Code Tribe app 200, andthen we'll get you 200 USD off your tribe.
Please do yourself a favor.
Does it get them off of the memo as well?Or is that just the tribe?
It just the tribe is my.I heard of the memos.
(01:14:53):
The first 100 units were all $100 offanyway, so there you go.
Yeah.
So if you buy a memo and you buy itand there's a first hundred them
that's also on. Yes.
Oh snap of the broadcast.
Well that was fun. Is it over
the front audio.
Sweet links to tribal and Austrian audiorecorded using Source Connect
(01:15:14):
edited by Andrew Peachesand mixed by Robert.
Got your own audio issues?
Just ask Rob.
Okay.
Tech support from Georgethe tech with Don't forget to.
Subscribe to the show and joiningthe conversation on our Facebook group
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TV history.
Get started.
Welcome.
Hi. Hi. Hi.
Hello, everyone, to the pro audio suite.
These guys are professional and motivated.
Please text the.
Video stars
George Wisdom, founder of Source ElementRobert Marshall, international.
Audio engineering Robbie Robertsand global voice Andrew Peters.
Thanks to tribal Austrian audio.
Making, passionate
(38:06):
elements George the tech wisdomand Rob Irwin APIs international demos.
To find out more about us.
Check the Proteas.
Sweetcorn line up. Ready? Here we go.
I'm me and welcome to another proaudio suite
thanks to Austrianaudio miking, passion herd and tribals.
Don't forget the tribes MMO.
It's all new and it's not a smallso it's good for traveling.
(38:30):
Speaking of which, tribe is there?
I see lots of people talking about changesto making comments that I know
are unfounded, but I think we should doa bit of myth busting.
I was actually in a roomthe other day or a page,
and there was a post therefrom someone that said something like,
and I'm paraphrasing,but it was something like,
why would I buy a tribe boost when I canmake my own for, you know, X dollars?
(38:53):
And it's like, I thinkthere's a bit more to it than that.
It's just sort of. Like, yeah.
It's it's funny.
People just look at the
look at a few pipes in someand some blankets and go, well, you know.
Why I should actually preface thisby saying that when I first
saw the tribe boost, I thought,I'm gonna have a go at making one.
Of course, I was privy to that and.
(39:13):
It was expensive.
It cost me a lot more than I thoughtit was going to cost, and it didn't work.
And it was just massive and horrid.
So come on, George,give us all the company secrets,
because we all want to make our own now.
Yeah, well,
I mean, you know, most charlatansmainly designed products start that way.
I can make crappy or cheaper versionof that and sell it for four times.
(39:33):
You know, that's like,I just made that my men that were putting.
I like I. Thought you as being very smart.
Artisanal and Charlotte from Charlottedismally design manual.
But yeah, that's what a lot of productsstart that way,
you know, they're just like,oh, shit, I can make that.
And they make it, and I'mgoing to make it as cheap as possible.
But the number one goal being a profitmaking adventure.
(39:55):
Period. Full stop.Of course we're running.
We I should say Rick Bosman. I'm.
No, I'm in no waypart of the operations of a business.
It's fully. Rick.
But the point of the companyis to make money
and subside and and exist and persist.
And it has been able to do thatbecause of what is charged per unit
(40:15):
ad that not been built inat the price point that it is,
we would have slowly bled ourselves drybecause actually what's happened,
we haven't raised the price of the tribus
original right, since it was launchedalmost six years ago,
and the cost of everything has gone up.
(40:35):
Materials and labor, both.
So the product makes far less profitthan it did 4 or 5 years ago,
which is the exact opposite of whata company wants to have happen.
Right?
It's like when you're here,would you make a product to sell?
You try to lower costs over time,not have them increase.
We've had the reverse happenand we do promotions.
(40:59):
We meaning Rick,I keep saying we I'm I'm a partner
in terms of its design,but really it is 100% Rick's operation.
And the promotionshappen at every holiday.
And there's discount codes on our showand the promote.
And so many of them are sold on promotionso that the margin is even tinier.
So I get a little piece of the action
(41:23):
because I'm building filtersfor each person who purchases one.
So all that being said,that's the reason it costs what it costs.
And also the very best of every possible
material is used in its designand construction.
Right?
So we're not using off the shelfplumber's grade PVC.
(41:44):
We're using furniture grade PVCthat's a lot more expensive.
And it's a thinner wallso that it's much lighter per foot.
The sound blankets we're using,we have changed
and improved themseveral times in its lifespan.
And now for the last three years,that blankets are a
very high and heavy grade material.
That is something you have to nuanceif you want a product to still ship
(42:10):
and go on a plane and be under a 22 K
23 kg, is that the you'reis that the worst?
Yeah.
I think it's 45 pounds or something.
That's 50 pounds in the US.
Yeah 50 pounds I think it's fine.
It has.
It has to.
Everything has to be consideredto an intense degree
when you have those restrictions.
(42:30):
So you have size restriction,you have weight restriction
and you have it's got to be good.
It can't just look good.
It also has to performancehundred. It has to do it.
So if you take all those thingsinto consideration
and you DIY,you will have an extremely difficult time
replicating all of those factors yourself.
(42:52):
Trust me.
I've heard it.
I've heard many people mentionmaking one of their own,
and everybody make somethingthat's first of all, square.
Okay, now a square bad.
No, not necessarilyfor a blanket for squares.
Okay.
But how are you going to pack it into onestandard size
travel suitcase guaranteenot it's not going to work.
(43:16):
And how do we know?
Because that's where we started.
We started
with a conventional square shape,and we realized we couldn't pack that
into a suitcase.
And we had to figure outhow to make it smaller.
And that's when the triangle floor plancame out.
Now, of course,
you could probably also cobble togethera triangle floor plan on your own.
There's different ways to do it.
(43:36):
But it's still not going to break downand be as easy to transport
and have the least number of partspossible to still give you those results.
So that's my little like answer to theI could make it myself.
Don't don't even factor in the labor time.
Like I don't know your hourly rateis that you bill for your skills?
(43:56):
Whatever those skills are, I can guaranteeit's too expensive to build a trip.
Yeah, yeah.
And be with all the issuesthat you guys have already dealt with too.
That's the other thing.
Yeah, yeah.
So this is these are the reasonsit costs what it costs.
Am I dreaming
or did we talk about some of the designaspects in terms of,
acoustics actually inside the tradebooth, like
(44:19):
the blankets not touching the floorand stuff like that.
Was that purely a weight consideration,
or do I rememberyou saying something about,
the sort of higher frequencies and the howit helped that having some air coming?
No, it didn't really come downto frequencies.
It really came down very much toa practical application of the material.
It just didn't need to touch the floor.
(44:39):
Was it was that perhaps that was that.What it was?
What.
Well, so we had to decide again, weightand size, two restrictions.
We had to decide.
Is it more important to have the blankets
go from the roof height to the floor?
Be one single thickness of blanketfrom top to bottom,
or was it better to have the blanketsoverlap themselves at double
(45:00):
the thickness of blanket at the topone third of the.
Booth, which is where the microphone and.
Sacrifice space at the bottomand have the bottom be open.
That's what it was.
So we of course tested those things too.
And what we found outwas you got better performance
when you doubled up the blanketlayer up by the microphone
where the microphone actuallyis as well as on the roof.
(45:21):
So after we doubled the sides upand got the double layer
wrapping all the way around you,we still had a single layer on the roof.
Well, in the room we were testing it in.
Rick had this room in his housethat was very barren.
It was actuallya really good use case of this space
because it had hardwood floorand it was very had minimal furnishings.
So it was like a weird bonus roomoff the side of the garage or something.
(45:45):
And it was a great place to testbecause we were testing it
and still realizingthere was too much liveliness.
You're still getting too much river.
And I thought, well, okay,we have a double layer on the sides.
What if we were to figure out,
what if we just double up the roofand just put another layer over the top?
And that made a significant difference.
(46:06):
It was like, wow, okay, that really works.
So then whatincreased the cost of fabrication
quite a bit washow do you make a triangle piece
for the roofthat looks neat and fits nicely?
Then I have another triangle piecethat fits inside that piece.
And so in doesn'thang down and doesn't fall apart.
That was actually really difficult.
(46:27):
That was the number onemost difficult thing to build
correctly was the triangle roof.
And for many years Rick's wife
sewed these herself on.
Not professional grade sewing machines,mind you.
Just, you know, like a seriousamateur would use.
Not industrial grade. Right.
(46:49):
And she would sell these herselfand we would have other people
try to make them, you know, we had severaldifferent vendors or local fabricators,
assembly people seem, I don't knowif they call them seamstresses anymore.
That's an old school term.
But we had differentpeople try to make them,
and they were not doing it up to snuff.
And Rick's like,no, this isn't good enough.
(47:11):
My wife Tamara is going to haveto keep making these.
And she,she and she did for the first four years.
And now that theyhave relocated to Oregon,
where cost of labor is
cheaper,you know, everything's less expensive,
you're going to find a lovely husbandand wife couple who are now
handle assembling the boots for, tribals.
(47:32):
Okay.
So, gentlemen, I believe,is doing the fabrication of the frames,
and his wife is doing the sewing,
so they are still handmade in Oregon,you know,
and and so then you would say, well,why don't you make them in China, right?
Of course. That'swhere everything cheap is made.
It becomes a scaling issue. Right.
(47:53):
So we want to get this thing to competewith the other things on Amazon.
We can't make ten at a time.
We'd have to make a thousand at a time,you know.
Well,you guys know we've all been through it
now with the with thewith the passport video and what it cost
to make small numbersof hand-built product,
no matter where they're made,whether it's made in China or in the U.S.
(48:15):
or Canada, it doesn't matter.
We're Australia, it's a matter of scale.
And so, yeah, these are made in smallbatches because, again, Rick very wisely
decided he wasn't going to take outsome massive loan
as a startup for the companyor become beholden
to a VC, a venture capitalistor some other thing.
(48:37):
He bootstrapped this on his own dimeand built it organically.
And so that's the other reasonwhy it is a small run
and still kind of expensive product.
You know, that's what happensif this thing was made by the ten,
by the thousand in China,
we wouldn't have control over how wellit's made and how well it's so together.
(48:57):
And the actual materialsthe blankets are made out of,
they could any timeswitch them out to something cheaper.
And then all of a sudden the next thousandsmells like a chemical factory
because they used a crappyor smelly zigzag.
Like.
Blanket, like do researchfor sound blankets on, you know, moving
blankets on online and type in the wordssmell or stinks or smelly.
(49:21):
And you'll see that so many productssmell really terrible.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know how many thingsyou order from Amazon or online,
but sometimes you open the package andthe smell is bizarrely chemically laden.
I just got these, lighting diffuserpanels for lights for a studio I'm doing.
And I opened the packageand it was that weird,
familiar chemical, floral, carb, any.
(49:44):
Funky.
Chemical smell when I opened the package,you know, and I was like, yeah.
And hopefully they're not going to notice
because you know these things are confinedspaces for voiceover.
You're in a very small spaceand you're breathing heavily.
All right. It's all part of voiceover.
The last thing you want to be
is like ensconced in talksabout distractions and smelling.
(50:06):
So that's another consideration right.
It's very important to us.
So that's there's just so muchwe thought about and obsessed over
to get to the design that it is.
And just and just scaling it upis incredibly difficult
and still maintain the.
The clothes.
The thing I likeabout the fact of the triangle,
(50:27):
is that when you're travelingand you're in a hotel room or something
that's not overly sizable,and you don't have the luxury
of having a spare room to set it upin, it fits nicely in a corner.
Yeah, yeah.
That would mean it was saidthat the corner, the corner ability of it
and taking less spaceis certainly a big part of,
the practical side of it being a triangle.
(50:49):
But the actual acoustical benefits of itbeing a triangle
isn't somethingthat we've really been able to quantify.
Right, if you know what I mean.
We haven't been able to go, like, well,if it was a rectangle of the same exact
material in this size, how would it soundin comparison to this triangle format?
But the bottom line is, you know, it'snot a soundproof box, it's not a chamber.
(51:12):
It's it's a filter.
The sound passes through the materials,it goes out into the space,
reverberates aroundand then whatever remains
comes back and filtersthrough the blankets again.
So you're getting like a lot of bangfor your buck out of that material,
because it's not just hitting a
thin fabric andand hitting a wall and bouncing off.
(51:34):
It's passing through, dissipating,and then closing back.
So that that opens up a whole.
Another questionthen George going back to our episode
a couple of weeksago, what's the noise? Floor.
Yeah, right.
It's a thing we stand on.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
It's it's weird,but I, it's funny with the, the
(51:55):
you talk about the filter,I used it 1 in 1 hotel room.
I was in Sydney, and,I only had one place I could put it,
and it was a weird room, andI think I've mentioned this before, but,
my bedroom actually had a glass walland a glass door.
Yeah.
And so in the sitting area, that's
(52:15):
where I had to set it up,but I had to set it up.
So one side was actuallythe triangle was against the glass.
Okay.
So one bit against glassto get against the walls.
Yeah. That must have affectedthe sound a little bit.
And that was well,it did, but not dramatically.
I couldn't hear it.But that doesn't mean much.
But I certainly know one complaint.
It said, that's good.
You're not going to get a reverb issueas much as you may get a resonance issue.
(52:38):
So now when the when 1 or 2 of the sidesare very close to a wall,
you're going to get more likelysome kind of resonating issue, because now
the sound's going through the blanketand hitting a surface and reflecting back.
And so then you might get somethingwe would call comb filtering.
You may get a little bit of a mid rangesomething or other
(53:01):
that happens as a result.
And so you know, in an ideal world
the booth would really not be very closeto any one wall, maybe one wall.
But not really a corner.
So the irony is it makes senseto put in a corner, but you would
theoretically the best possible soundyou would get
is when it's not in a cornerlike more in the middle of the room.
(53:23):
Right.So that's not always practical, you know.
But these arethe things that affect sound.
And so we want to takeall those things into account.
So when people ask where do I put it
so well corner is the obvious choiceif that's all you got.
But if you can put it somewhere else,that's great too.
Another thing we found was that simplythrowing a blanket on the floor
can give you the last five, 10%,
(53:46):
absorption that you might need.
So if it's a reallyspartan room, all hardwood,
you know,
very Spartan or, God forbid, tilewhile you're.
In Fiji or something like that.Yeah, exactly.
Spain, South America, anywhere they lovetile.
Tile is so reflective,so that's where you get the most trouble.
So then taking a blanket or comforterand putting it underneath the boot,
(54:09):
so you're standing on this largeabsorbing thing
can give you the last 10% of absorptionthat you need.
I've also had people throwanother blanket over the entire tribal.
This roof.
I think that can help too,
but I have found thatit was still more effective.
Just put one on the floor and it's easierto it's and it's easier than trying
to put one over the whole tribebecause that's a lot of weight.
(54:33):
And you know, all that extra weighton this frame, it can be you can damage it
when you try to take it apart.You have to be careful.
You know, the other option that on thatjust occurred to me that you should put in
this thing is
you could have an optional add on, have aof a room service tray holder, you know.
So while you while you're recording youcan have your, your lunch or your dinner
or your breakfast there in front of youwhile you're munching away.
(54:54):
I mean, you're onholidays after all. Come on.
I know, yeah, I know, there's
so many cool accessories that we wouldthat we could put in that package.
You know, that's.
Also the other advantageof buying the tri boot is
it comes with the doesit not comes with your iPad holder.
It comes with your micstand comes with the light
and all that stuff, stuff thatyou would never have if you made your own.
(55:17):
Exactly.
And you go buy all those objects,which you certainly can.
You know, we're not getting these again.
We're not buyingthose things at a 1000 at a time.
We're buying themten units at a time from the same retail
establishedmeant that you would be pretty much.
So we're not getting some crazy pricing.
We're buyingalmost all the accessories at retail.
So there's not any marginon any of that stuff.
(55:40):
We just are turning it around.
And so we will we do itbecause we just want it to be easy.
The whole thing was think of everything.
What is all the random annoying stuffan actor
wish they had brought or packedor forgot to bring?
What can we have already in the kit?
And that's what's in the box.
(56:01):
And so yeah, the even the copyholder is sturdy enough to hold a laptop.
I don't know if I would put a 7 poundMacBook Pro 16 inch on it.
Could do it probably in a pinch,but a 13 inch MacBook air or an iPad or
no problem.
It'll it'll hold those thingswith no issue.
Well, I did the last trip.
(56:21):
I did, but that's exactly what I did.
I put my MacBook Pro on thethe copy stand perfect
so I can record and, and,you know, read off the MacBook.
So go back.
Go back for skipa few years when you tried
making your ownbecause it was a dismal failure.
(56:42):
I remember, but but I mean, how much time,how much time
and how much money do you reckonyou sunk into doing that?
To go only to go?
You know what?
It would have been easier just to buy one.
Well, I did it as an experimentbecause I wanted to find out if, yes,
I could do it.
And I did build something,but it was ridiculously large.
It was prohibitively expensive,I remember.
(57:02):
Yeah, it was hideously expensive and,a dismal well,
I'm going to say a dismal failure.
It wasn't totally dismal, but it didn't doanything that it should have done.
It was really heavy,very expensive and labor intensive.
Yeah.
The first try bootsthat was made, wasn't it?
Tried this again.
It was a rectangle and it would pack down
(57:24):
into a golf case, golf clubs case.
So you know big tennis right.
It's tall. Yeah. It's large and bulky.
And Rick carried and dragged that thing toand from the airport a couple of times.
And he's like, dude,this is just too freaking big and heavy.
It's too awkward to travel with this thingall the time.
(57:45):
And how are we going to make this smaller?
And that's when we really dug into like,okay, how do we shrink it?
How many we have to shrink it.
We had to have more sectionsto each of the legs.
All right.
Well thenhow long should this sections be?
You know, it.
It's just when you get into the detailsand you look closer and closer,
you find more details.
(58:06):
That's, That's why I just got
such a such a process to design this thingand be nuanced.
In fact, the new one, the memo,which I had no direct
involvement whatsoeverin actually design and fabricating,
that was another challenge because nowwe wanted to fit it into a carry on bag.
(58:26):
So the longest leg sectionhad to be much shorter
than what was on the regular track.
This thing, the longest leg piece onthe tribe, was about 24in, roughly,
maybe something like that.
And then the longest leg sectionon the memo could only be like
18in, 16in, something like that.
So then you had to figure out exactly whatlength those pipes should actually be,
(58:49):
and then you want those pipes to bethe essentially the all the same length,
so that when it folds down, it'susing every square
inch of the inside of the suitcase.
Right.
And you also want to order all those pipes
cut precut for youso that you can assemble them more easily.
Now you should have. The suitcase with it.
For which one? The dilemma.
(59:11):
The memo.
It should have comewith its own carry on suitcase.
You could have one if you just wantto just add $100 to the price.
I mean.
Yeah.
I mean everybody, everybodythat once that has
a carry on suitcaseis the reason they want.
So that was part of the reasonI think it was also a cost price point.
But I as I was telling them earlierlike they we don't make points or profit
(59:34):
on all those retail items like the cases,the cases and the lights and the
power strips and all the other stuffis all that stuff's bought at retail.
You know, we can'twe we'd have to order hundreds of units,
which we just can't do for freecash flow perspective.
Nor do we have place to keep it. Yeah.
To store it. All. Yeah.
(59:55):
So it's a very nuanced thing.
The way to scale that. It's made up.
Even the R&D that went into that.
I do remember when it was first announcedand we did an episode with Rick
and yourself here.I think you were Rick's place.
You out in a.
Yeah.
Somewhere we were in I tribus in Rick's.
It was like a community roomin his building.
(01:00:17):
Yeah, that was his very empty room.
Had, like, a sofa and that's it.
And we were standing in there togetherwith the booth in the booth,
which was kind of funny.
And kind of intimate and. Intimate.
Yeah. It's true there, you know,
have you ever,have you got a recording from anybody and,
and have you ever knownwhether they're going to try Booth or not?
(01:00:39):
I can't say I know that if they haveor they I've gotten
plenty of clothes closets,
lots of overly tubby booths,you know, like the booth.
Me somewherebetween 100 to 100 and 40 or 150Hz.
It's all. It's.
Yeah, it's on that,like 300 and down like that.
Yeah. Sound.
And you can eat.
(01:00:59):
You can eat you. It's not.
It's not under usable. Yeah.
But you can tell someone'sin like a tiny square booth.
Yeah.
I've never had anybody tell me or admitthat they're using a try.
Booth.
I would actually assume that the tri boothwould sound better than the box,
because it probably doesn'thave the standing waves in the same way.
(01:01:21):
Right?
Doesn't that the 4x4 booth do like
it doesn't knock out the outside sound?
It does a good enough job.
If you're not doing anything really loud,it does a good enough job
of getting rid of the room reflections.
You know, if you're not screaming andreally exciting the room, it kills that.
So it does have its advantages.
(01:01:42):
Actually, if you have arelatively quiet space ready,
you might actually
be better off with somethinglike a tri booth thinner than.
A whisper room.
And it was kind of a I said, booth.
Yeah, right.
I agree, I mean, I one of the thingsthat I'll do as a customer is
I will not just make you a filter,but I'll even try to match your sound
from your home studio.
(01:02:04):
Right.
So if you are using the tri boothfor travel,
for many peoplethis is their only booth actually.
But for those that actually douse it for travel
and they do have a home studio,one of the things I'll do for them
is I'll try when I make the filterto match the IQ of their home booth.
Right. So you add this back in.
Well, that's the travel.
(01:02:25):
Sometimes I'll get a sample
from the home studio booth, whisper room,whatever it is.
And it sounds worse. Yeah.
And then I'm like, yeah, what do I do?
Yeah.
So, you know, it's it's a weirdbecause I'll be like, okay, well,
this is the way it should sound, butthis is the way your home booth sounds.
So I'm going to add to cue here and thereso that they kind of match.
(01:02:47):
And then there's the whole point
of making the matchesso that you can pick up a job,
take up work,you know, continue a campaign.
All kind of things are reasonsvoice actors work on the road.
You know, they don't you don't workon the road to do an occasional audition.
You walk on the roadbecause you just absolutely have to.
Maybe, maybe you work on the roadbecause you're not working enough
(01:03:08):
and now you're homeless. Well, yeah.
You know, while you work on the road,however, you work on the road
because clients can't get the scriptsright the first time around.
That's why.
Oh, yeah.
Because now it's not.You have to do the pitch that.
Oh, we forgot that.
We forgot to put the phone number in or.
Yeah. Can we.
Yeah. The email address is changed right.
You know,the promo code is wrong or whatever.
(01:03:30):
Yeah. Yeah.
But it's funny though, because, like,you know,
as you know, I do like,pretty well daily stuff for, Dubai
and weekly
probably jobs for Singapore,but the daily stuff,
I know that the guy, AJ,who's the producer engineer in Dubai,
I've sent him stuff that I'm really open,honest with him and say, look, you know,
(01:03:53):
I'm on the road. Is it sounding okay?
And I every time, oh, pretty well,every time I've done that, he said,
I can't even hear the difference.
Mainly because he, he's alreadygot the processing set.
Up for your.
As a template, so he doesn'teven listen to it before he gets process.
So he has a change.
So he's got.
A team, knows he'sgoing to run you through that chain.
(01:04:14):
And so the first thing he does isafter records you from wherever you are.
His hits play on that chain and it matcheswell enough with the chain in place.
Yep. He's happy.
He doesn't even doesn't even drawsattention.
Then it's a different thing.
It's it's funny because I mean,if I'm sitting here, if I'm in my booth
at home, I'meither using, an 818 or an eight seen
(01:04:38):
monster in audio through either the Grace
and what I won or a 1073 knife.
But when I'm on the road, I'm
using either when it used to be an SSL two
and now it's similar,you know, the passport video.
And. By the way, we'regoing to have more of those on the market.
It sounds like.
(01:04:58):
Yes, exactly.
Yeah. I did hear that team.
You don't know when, but we are. Yeah.
We now have, lead over 15,possibly up to 15 more units.
Wow. That are going to go through
sort of a round to a fabrication,which involves.
Prefabrication.
A reset refurbishment, let's call it that.
(01:05:20):
And yeah, and believe it or not,it involves an x ray machine.
Yes it does. Does.
So the the USB chip
basically what happened is the USBchips were faulty on that round.
And apparently like this USB chip,the way it's soldered on,
all the pins are directly underneath it.
So the only way to take it off,solder it back on.
(01:05:41):
They have to use an x ray machineto check the solders
it once it's soldered back on. Wow.
It's like surgery. It is, isn't it?
So that's mind blowing. Not brain surgery.Yeah, yeah.
Well actually there you go. There'sthere's a plug for my new podcast.
It's coming out.
It's it's not brain surgery now.
Well I was going to call itit's not brain surgery but I've called it.
It's not rocket science but it's aboutit's about the science of radio imaging.
(01:06:01):
So it's sort of about that. Cool.
The process behind it's not about how tomake a sweeper and all that sort of stuff.
It's about, you know what?
Why why do we use radio imaging?
How can we use it, blah blah.
That's going to stick to the guy.
So I thought, it's not rocketscience was a good name.
So yeah, yeah yeahyeah. That's great. It's a great topic.
I know my my friendJodie Crangle does her audio branding one
(01:06:22):
and that's a lot of what it's aboutis bringing people in
who are experts in marketingand what works psychologically
and why we do what we doand how and not not so much of the how.
It's not a that's like you said, it'snot a technical thing.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a
I don't want to make ita, I don't want to make it
a, you know, I love these plug in
because in all that sort of stuff,it's more about,
(01:06:43):
you know, thinking about howhow our imaging influences listeners
and also sort of getting a programmersperspective because it ask an imaging guy
what imaging is about.
And he'll go, oh, it's about all the coolsounds.
And, you know, usingdescribe your neck right there.
But ask a programmer director
and he's got a completely different viewon what he wants when he's imaging.
So, you know, it's that's whyI thought it would be a good one.
(01:07:04):
And if,if you ask the voiceover talents about.
It's about the voiceover talents. Yeah.
You ask, I pay you to be on the radioimaging in the first place.
That's right. Exactly.How do I get that exactly.
Yeah.
So yeah,everyone's got their own perspective.
But, I mean, I, I'mactually I'm actually sort of
(01:07:24):
a getting back on topic,I'm actually a bit of a Tribhuvan Virgin.
I mean, I've recorded AP a couple of timesfor this show from a try booth, and
I was honestly, without blowing sunshineup your ass, I was honestly impressed
and I sent me some sampleswhen he's traveled as well.
A few years agowhen he first got it, to have a listen to
(01:07:45):
and I'll be honest,there's not much to pick wrong with it.
No, I.
Think the trade booth is like, you know,you know, studios that have these
like, reflectionfilters around the mics and stuff.
Yeah. Or guess.
So. They have a nice live room,but they don't want a live sound.
And then they put the reflection
filter around the mic,you know, God forbid a music vocal.
But I think something likethe tribute would be better than those,
(01:08:07):
reflection filters close to the mic.
And you don't necessarily need a cover,you don't need to cover the opening
to probably likefor that kind of a use case, like
I tell people all the time,
with your tribe,you don't have to close the opening.
You can leave the opening openin many cases.
So if if the space you're in is deadenough,
(01:08:28):
that it sounds good with the opening
the door, I guess the flaps flaps up.
If you leave the flaps openor the flaps up,
you can still get actuallya really good sound.
Sometimes that's all you need.
And if that's the case, it's even betterbecause you're not having to be
fully enclosed,which is a little bit less stuffy.
(01:08:49):
But there's even one more thing.
The fact that there's a space below
the blankets and the floor is a big,obviously space there.
If you open the roof like a hatch.
Against.
Now you have like an open opening and itconverts convection and it actually draws.
Flaring, stuffy.
Hot air out and the cool air,it makes a noticeable.
(01:09:11):
Difference.
So how much do you have to open itto get that? Not much.
I wouldn't presume how much.
I mean, you only need to just flipthe corner up and you'll have like a small
oh, the cupola.
It's like the cupola in the house.
Yeah, the cupola and a house.
The the thing where the air is vented
through the roof of the houseto keep that.
We call them whirlybirds.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And stop the stopthe mold from growing in the attic.
(01:09:33):
Yeah. So, yeah, this is the idea here.
And so,yeah, it's a shockingly effective thing.
I mean, when you're in an enclosed space
and you give any place for the airto escape, it's noticeable.
It's very nice. Yeah.
So you have that option too.
And it can really make itmore comfortable.
And the other thing is, of course,if you do this for a living,
then you work on your mic techniquebecause that actually plays in as well.
(01:09:57):
If you're way off the micand you're in attributes in a,
you know, a pretty, stark room,you're going to get reflections and.
The here'sthe funny thing that might take me
the best
studios allow for the sloppiestmic placement.
Yeah. Would you agree with that, Robert?
I would like a really welldesigned studio,
(01:10:18):
you know, like there's no bad combination.
And it's quiet enough that if you're off,like, you can still pick it up.
And then if you have a really good micthat has good off axis coloration,
it doesn't sound like garbagewhen you're, you know, a.
Foot to one side.
I mean, the for the 40,the 41 six squares.
But. Right.
(01:10:38):
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean there's, there's youI mean, guys, if you haven't
gotten to spend time in a commercial gradehigh end studio,
you don't really know,but you'd be amazed how far away the mic
can be placed in those environmentsand still get a really present sound.
It's a very wild thing.
I've heard recordings, and I'll askthe client how close to the mic are you?
(01:10:59):
Sounds like you're 4 or 5in away from themright now.
I'm about a foot away.
I mean, like, how is that even possible?
But then I see the roomor the acoustic setup or whatever
they've done, and I'm like, well, that'sbecause the acoustics are so good
that they allow youto be farther from the mic.
So smaller enclosed spaces require tighter
(01:11:19):
my placement full stops every time.
So is there ais there a mic that you would recommend?
I mean, I know
most people are going to take theireveryday mic
because for the reasonswe've talked about,
but if you were building a studiofor the first time
and you decidedthat you were going to use a try booth,
and then you were thinking, well,what Mike would I pair with that?
Would you?
Is there a mike you would suggest worksperforms better in a try booth,
(01:11:42):
or is it pretty mucheven across the board?
I'm going to guess that in at in Andrews.
You know, besides the 41 six,I bet you that, but what do you see?
Okay, the.
Yeah, I bet you that kick right in there.
It would be fantastic.
And but I do use 41 six.
That's what goes on there.
Well, I'll. Tell you what I. Mean.Cut that out. Pretty sight.
(01:12:03):
This isn't. This is.
No secret.
It's no secret that the mike that Rickuses and has for 15 years is a 41 six.
Yeah.
So what do you think is the mike we usedwhen we designed to try this and then.
Well,I kind of think that thing. Was a fit.
It would make sense as an industrystandard anyway.
I mean, let's be honest.I mean that's what most I. Mean, when.
Is Austin Audio going to puta, you know, like a, you know,
(01:12:24):
a small shotgun attachmentthat, that here.
That's true.
That's it will be a killer.
It will be a interchangeable capsule.
Mike. Right.It is already interchangeable, I believe.
Is isn't it entry?
Not a I don't think so.
Oh, so they're not doing it.
Austin's not doing itin a changeable capsule yet.
No, I remember unscrew.
(01:12:45):
Take that.
Yeah. Rememberwho bought that Lincoln Unscrews.
Remember who bought Austrian audio
guessing changeable capsule weights.
Yeah.
I mean, they could they could so easilymake a short shotgun attachment to that.
Yeah. You know, it's really funny.
Remember the,crazy shotgun mic that I, used for,
(01:13:07):
Or the really long one?
The really long one, right. Was that it?
So what do they call that?
It was the,Let's see what it is. Here was.
A sunrise.
No, it's the Audio-Technica.
Oh, okay. Got it. Yeah.
It was a really long shotgun.
It's like, 814, I think.
And then I'm on eBay.
And for $22,
(01:13:29):
a shotgun capsule pops up for that thing.
No. Way.
I'm. I'm like, oh,I think I'm going to grab that because.
Because I had two of them
and I had another preamp bodyand I was like, okay,
then I can have two shotgunsand I get the shotgun.
It's a short shotgun. No way.
So I have a long shotgun in the shortshotgun and a cardioid guide.
Now you really sound like an American.
(01:13:50):
I've got this shotgun,I've got that shotgun, blah blah blah.
Except that's right.
And a rack to hold on the back.
Sure.
And I guess.
That would be a funny to get your point.
Like a pickup truck with a shotgun first.
41 six in the back.
We got to do that.
Yeah, that's on the pro audio, right.
(01:14:12):
That's why that when we do this call,I do that one pretty quick.
Okay.
Yeah.
The priority. Is my kind of gun. Truck.
Now you can have italmost like we're hunting clients.
I'm hunting Clyde.
They're doing this before.
Before someone else does.
Someone's going to take that ideaand use it, you know?
(01:14:32):
Yeah. That's right.
Well, on that note, I think we've,dispelled some myths about the tribally.
So diesel, the fiber.
Use our Code Tribe app 200, andthen we'll get you 200 USD off your tribe.
Please do yourself a favor.
Does it get them off of the memo as well?Or is that just the tribe?
It just the tribe is my.I heard of the memos.
(01:14:53):
The first 100 units were all $100 offanyway, so there you go.
Yeah.
So if you buy a memo and you buy itand there's a first hundred them
that's also on. Yes.
Oh snap of the broadcast.
Well that was fun. Is it over
the front audio.
Sweet links to tribal and Austrian audiorecorded using Source Connect
(01:15:14):
edited by Andrew Peachesand mixed by Robert.
Got your own audio issues?
Just ask Rob.
Okay.
Tech support from Georgethe tech with Don't forget to.
Subscribe to the show and joiningthe conversation on our Facebook group
to leave a comment, suggest a topic,or just say goodbye, drop us a note at.
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