Ep 157 - Mastering Your Voiceover Space with George The Tech and Rob Reider

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Education and real world knowledge about the voiceover industry it's the voiceover gurus podcast.
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The tech he must be a tech guy let's get him and so i could have either said
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i'm not the guy or what the hell i've i've been enjoying this interview process
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i'm getting better at it Let's just try something completely off,
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far out of left field and just see what, let's see what happens.
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So maybe you are the guy.
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We'll see. I mean, I had a good conversation with him. I took the,
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I'm extremely good at taking people off topic and I did exactly that.
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We were like, I'm talking about totally different stuff, but it was great.
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I mean, it was great. Anyway.
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All right. And that starts off. Welcome back to the Voice Over Guru's podcast.
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I'm your host, Linda Bruno. know.
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As you will notice, I am actually recording this podcast from my home because
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I managed to fall off of a three-foot wall stone wall in my backyard and blew out my knee.
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So I did not want to not record the podcast. So I thought I'm just going to do it from home.
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But anyway, I'm icing it and I might have to remove the ice in about 15 minutes.
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But I'm super excited because my good friend Rob Ryder had a wonderful suggestion of a topic.
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As you all know, I'm trying to pick some very creative and fun things for you guys to learn about.
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And then he mentioned that he was very good friends with George Widom and that
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he would be willing to come on the show. So welcome, Rob. Welcome, George.
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Thank you.
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Yes. How are you doing?
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Great to have you guys here. So first off, I know Rob's story.
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Rob's been on the podcast. George, tell me about yours. How did you get started
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Oh it started really more related to music because i my father is a pretty musical
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guy a lot of my family is and so as when i was young my dad always had instruments
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and but also my dad was into electronics a bit so we also had gadgets around
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like tape recorders and things like that,
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so i was always playing with these things and enjoying experimenting with recording
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but never anything serious, just for fun, just always for fun.
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And as I got into my high school years, I was still very much involved in technology and science.
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And that was my, those were my main loves while I still played music in the
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marching band and the concert band and the jazz band.
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When i went to college at virginia tech i went there for
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electrical engineering because i thought that would be the
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area i need to focus on if i want to be involved in
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recording technology i didn't really fully understand that what i really wanted
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to do actually was be an audio engineer not a studio not a equipment designer
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but someone that runs and operates and runs the gear i i was a little misdirected,
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but my grades were good enough.
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I got it into Virginia Tech as an engineer, which is not a small feat.
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And I made it almost two years before I almost failed out of college. I was doing miserably.
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I was not doing well for various reasons.
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I had a medical thing come up that was hugely disruptive. It was just all sorts of things.
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And I ended up by some absolute sheer After fortune, I took a music elective in music history,
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in jazz history, and the class was in a salon, like a music salon on campus,
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this beautiful, small, but really beautifully designed room.
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And the professor was this cool older gentleman who knew his music history.
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And there were Neumann mics hanging all around the room from the ceiling.
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And I was like, whoa, what is going on in here?
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And I asked him, and he said, oh, we have a recording studio here.
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And I said, well, how do I get to use that studio? He's like,
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you got to be a music major.
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I said, all right. I'm going to, I was like, how do you do that?
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He's like, you got to audition. I was like, okay.
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I picked up my horn. I practiced all summer. I managed to get good enough to
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get into the music school.
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I wouldn't have gotten to music school at Berkeley, but I got into the music
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school at Virginia Tech.
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All right.
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Playing trumpet, right? You were a trumpet player?
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Yeah. Playing trumpet. And so I graduated with a music degree in audio technology
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and a minor in communications. Thank you.
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And when it hit the ground running, got an internship right out of college in
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a studio, realized I hated being in a recording studio as an intern treated
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at that low level. I hated the hierarchy of it all.
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And so my dad, being an awesome dude that he is, he and I built a studio in a recording, in a RV.
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We made a mobile recording studio in an RV. Wow.
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And that was a blast. It never made much money, but I did get paid occasionally
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to record bands live on location, even a big gospel performance at a church
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in Wilmington, Delaware.
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I mean, you name it. I did all klezmer band at a Jewish wedding. I did everything.
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Oh, that's fantastic.
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It's great music. It was amazing, right? Wonderful.
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But then when I had opportunities to try new things, and I always did try new things.
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This is one of my strong suits and my weaknesses is squirrel.
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So, yeah, it's probably why I'm not a pilot because to be a pilot,
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you have to focus on learning to be a pilot for a long time.
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So, so the story goes, I met, I went to a radio station. I did remote engineering
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for the Eagles football team broadcast, the Eagles radio network.
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And then through that position, the fellow who referred me, Lane Massey,
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introduced me to a producer at the station.
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The producer went off to become a voice actor on his own right of great regard,
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doing, you know, promos and trailers, you know, the big glamorous voiceover
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gigs. He moved to California.
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Three years later, I moved to California. He said, hey, can you fix my studio?
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I said, yes. Then he referred me to his management company.
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The management company referred me to their talent.
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Oh, wow. That was kind of where that, that was the genesis of it all.
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I call Howard Parker, who was my client at the time, my client zero.
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Wow. So what year was this?
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That would have been 2004 was when I moved to California.
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And and and and while while in california when i moved to la i was doing production
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sound mixing trying to start a whole nother business going on movie sets and
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doing the sound on a movie set which i had no business doing and no background in and.
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That's tough work
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Yeah it was tough work it required a whole other different set of discipline
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terminology gear everything like a completely unique skill set and equipment
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and everything. Totally.
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So rather than lean on what I know, which was music, multi-track recording and
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live music and live sound, I just went a whole different direction.
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I still look back and laugh. Why the hell did I think that would be the right decision?
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But that's what happened. So that was a diversion.
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But when I met and worked with Donna Fontaine, that was where I really knew
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it was time to 100% focus on voiceover actors as my client base.
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And that was it. That was in 2005.
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Wow. And that was...
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Rod, how do you guys know each other?
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Well, I know George through when I started getting involved in voiceover as
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a transition out of the air show announcing business.
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One of the first podcasts I came across was the voiceover body shop.
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And he, George and Dan Leonard, hosted that thing.
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And I learned things and actually used both Dan and George to help tweak my studio.
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The thing behind me or this GIK acoustics baffle here was the last thing that
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I put in the studio when George said, I'm hearing some things.
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And I did not hear those things until he called my attention to this little
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bit of room reverberation.
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And, oh, I put on my trusty Sony's and cranked them up.
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And he was right. So I bought exactly what he told me to buy,
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put it exactly where he told me to put it.
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And so now with the other work that I've done with him, I have just stayed in
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touch with George on a semi-regular basis.
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As a matter of fact, I was out in California a month or so ago,
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a little over a month ago. We had spent two hours together at lunch.
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But George is being very humble. He said he met Don LaFontaine.
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He also designed an incredible studio for the guy who is probably the best known
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promo guy in the business. And you can go ahead and drop the name,
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George Are you talking about Joe Cipriano?
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I am talking about Joe Cipriano
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And when he moved Joe Cipriano asked George to help him put a studio in his new place And George,
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I don't know if people have golden ears But there are people whose ears are
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trained better than most of ours And I'm a former audio guy And I thought I
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heard things pretty well
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But when you get another set of ears on things, another set of eyes on things,
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folks like George and Dan and Jim Edgar and a few other, Tim Tippetts and other
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guys are out there and they really can make a difference.
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But I have stayed in touch with George. He helps me with my mastering of my audio books.
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He set up a system for that that makes it exceptionally constant,
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high quality, and automated.
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Yeah, my thing is it's got to be easy.
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You know i think there's some there's a okay i mean some people are going to
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hate me for this but i think audio engineers can be a little bit snobby and
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gatekeepy as we like to say in that you know this is difficult we spent years
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mastering this getting really good at this,
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we hear things you don't hear you know let trust us don't trust you you know and so,
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my job is is to because the voice and
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the reality of it is is the voice actor does have
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to trust themselves they do have to
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produce audio they don't get to just talk into a mic and forget about the rest
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that's a complete that's a total fallacy it's an old hollywood mentality notion
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of what voiceover is and maybe was you're the talent you walk into the room
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and you read the script and you walk get back that's.
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Usually that one of the first bubbles i have to burst when people come to my
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studio and they just you have to learn tech this is like at least in my opinion
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And 75% of it, the rest is, you know, you hone the craft and that's great.
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But if your room does not sound good, if you do not know how to handle difficulties
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on the fly in the middle of a session, you toast.
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People aren't going to hire you again. So if we go back and we think about beginner,
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beginner, beginner, you know, obviously people get very intimidated by the concept
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of putting together a studio.
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What do you think is the easiest entry way to go for someone just starting out?
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For most folks that have, let's leave out the people living in a tiny New York
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apartment or something,
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but let's say most folks with a reasonable size home or apartment that has some
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closet space and things like this, the first place to look is a closet because
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it's going to, a clothing closet.
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If you have a walk-in clothing closet, you're doing, you're
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ahead of the game because if you've got at least two
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or three of the walls of that closet with clothing and stuff and
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shelving you've basically got a booth because it
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it all that stuff in there will kill off
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all the echoey reflective resonant sounds that
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make a normal room sound
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bad and the thing is you have to you do have to train your ear as to what it's
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supposed to sound like and so you have to listen to things in a different way
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than you're accustomed to the reason i'm so good and i i appear to have a golden
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ear about the sound is it's sheer repetition of,
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you know, like I said, I don't like to practice things forever,
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but this is by mistake is something I've practiced,
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which is listening to thousands and thousands of voiceover people in their closets and their booths.
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And so that means that I can pick up on very subtle things that somebody else wouldn't pick up.
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But once I point out to them those things, then they know to listen for those
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things, Whether they're good at it or not, it's a different animal,
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but at least they're aware of it, right?
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And so that's a big part of it. And you can sound good in the most unusual circumstances,
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and you can sound bad in the most, well, okay, you can sound bad in a $10,000
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booth that you just purchased, and it can sound terrible.
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Why is that? This is a huge confusion.
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Yes.
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Why is that? This is a great conversation. How much time do you have?
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Should I say two words?
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A two-parter i know should i say.
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Stand standing waves standing
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Waves yeah so one of them every space that
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you're in has several problems it has reverb which is what most people think
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of that's the you clap your hands and it goes that's the sound of the reverb
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decaying down right big rooms racquetball chords there because you know like
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that reverb is not really the problem in a small room or closet. It's resonances.
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And so the reason you sound like you're in a box or in a tube or in a tunnel
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or tinny or all the different words people use to describe it is because that
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room wasn't treated correctly. But a walk-in closet full of clothing?
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Man, most of the time sounds amazing. However, a sound booth that was built
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by a company to be an isolation booth first,
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Most of those products were made to keep the guy playing a tenor sax from pissing
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off his family and the neighbors.
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That's all they were made to do. That's it.
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They were not meant to be accurate recording spaces, right?
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So people are still buying these and they're still being marketed as such.
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And then they're being, it's a, it's a misnomer, but it's not entirely the fault
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of the company making them either.
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It's the fault of the acoustics field, not having education or studied the science
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of recording a voiceover in a small booth.
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I have the books on the shelf right back
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here i have read through many of them as much as
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i can stand and i'm like where's the
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part about small rooms and they'll be like small rooms or any
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rooms roughly eight by ten feet or larger or
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you know eight you know they're like a small room starts
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at the size of a bedroom right and so
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there's no science there is no science on
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it there is nobody releasing white papers except me
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i did one for nab in 2016 which by the
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way i can't find any more and nobody knows
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what happened to it but i did a white paper for nab
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about recording good voice over in
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a small booth and not
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that i'm bitter not that i'm bitter or anything that if
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you type my name in on the nab website and you can't find
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my name i'm not bitter it takes
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me off i did write a paper for
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nab they did accept it but small booths they have they
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have unique problems and the acoustic science engineers the
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architects and all those just don't regard them as usable spaces
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so we've had to improvise and figure this.
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Out and that's what i've been doing and sometimes it's a total happy accident
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when it sounds great and sometimes it sounds bad when you spend a ton of money
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because the companies selling the products didn't realize where the deficiencies
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were and they didn't have the 10,000 hours of listening to voiceover actors in a small booth, right?
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So here I am. This has been my axe to grind, one of many.
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But this is one of my axes to grind, which is getting people's little boxes,
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little closets, and everything to sound good.
00:16:24.342 --> 00:16:28.602
So all that to look around is that you can sound really great in a closet.
00:16:28.602 --> 00:16:31.682
You can sound amazing without spending a penny on soundproofing or gear,
00:16:31.862 --> 00:16:36.582
I mean, or on acoustics, if you have the right, its space to begin with.
00:16:37.247 --> 00:16:41.447
What about going the opposite direction though? Because I have had some clients
00:16:41.447 --> 00:16:43.107
that have used me for years and years and years.
00:16:43.267 --> 00:16:47.967
So there's a very consistent thing that they like to hear from me and they know
00:16:47.967 --> 00:16:49.287
what my room sounds like.
00:16:49.447 --> 00:16:52.907
So for a while there, I was in an office building that was a bit loud.
00:16:52.947 --> 00:16:56.467
And so I'm like, oh, somebody's selling a whisper room out of Brooklyn.
00:16:56.727 --> 00:16:59.667
I'm going to get this whisper room and see if it'll help the situation.
00:17:00.047 --> 00:17:02.987
So they got the whisper room we put it together
00:17:02.987 --> 00:17:06.087
within contained within my studio and i
00:17:06.087 --> 00:17:08.947
started recording from there and my clients were not happy they
00:17:08.947 --> 00:17:12.067
were like it sounds you sound too dead they all complained
00:17:12.067 --> 00:17:14.807
so i basically sold the whisper room and went back to my other
00:17:14.807 --> 00:17:22.147
situation i mean is it just because the room i was working in was i don't know
00:17:22.147 --> 00:17:26.107
sufficient enough i don't know because this was not just one client telling
00:17:26.107 --> 00:17:28.767
me that it was sounding too dead
00:17:28.767 --> 00:17:33.167
it was it had lost something yeah well i don't know if that makes sense
00:17:33.167 --> 00:17:38.127
The the too dead thing is something that comes up a lot it'll be mentioned it's
00:17:38.127 --> 00:17:43.467
not that it's too dead it's that the wrong frequencies are too dead so it's
00:17:43.467 --> 00:17:45.567
not when you talk about a room being dead,
00:17:46.789 --> 00:17:51.789
There's only one truly dead room, and that's called an anechoic chamber. Look it up.
00:17:52.849 --> 00:17:58.069
Anechoic chamber. When you see a picture of one, you'll go, what the hell is that?
00:17:59.449 --> 00:18:04.209
It's this huge room with chicken wire that's lining all the walls, including the floor.
00:18:04.389 --> 00:18:10.249
And outside of the chicken wire are these gigantic cones of acoustic material absorbing sound.
00:18:10.409 --> 00:18:13.369
They're the quietest places on Earth. They're designed for scientific measurement.
00:18:13.649 --> 00:18:16.029
They have no echo, and they are truly dead.
00:18:16.789 --> 00:18:20.769
That's a dead room, right? Nobody wants to record or be heard of or stand in
00:18:20.769 --> 00:18:22.529
or even be in one of these rooms.
00:18:23.369 --> 00:18:25.689
It can get painful after a while.
00:18:25.869 --> 00:18:26.549
You get a.
00:18:26.549 --> 00:18:29.789
Sense of really, a lot of discomfort in one of those.
00:18:29.989 --> 00:18:34.269
Yeah, I've never gotten to see one yet. This one, again, as an audio nerd, it's a bucket list.
00:18:34.389 --> 00:18:40.249
I've been in one and it was, and we were literally walking on the chicken wire.
00:18:40.469 --> 00:18:42.829
This, whatever the floor was, a mesh wire.
00:18:43.189 --> 00:18:50.729
There was no floor in it. And it was almost as if you could feel or hear your
00:18:50.729 --> 00:18:57.209
heart beating, not just feel it, but it was a very, very strange and uncomfortable feeling.
00:18:57.589 --> 00:19:01.449
Yeah. Wow. So, okay, we're talking about extremes, but that's an extreme example.
00:19:01.869 --> 00:19:06.309
But what happens in these small boxes is the sound foam and the carpet gets
00:19:06.309 --> 00:19:11.749
rid of all the reverb or the high frequency sound, but leaves behind only the low frequency sound.
00:19:11.869 --> 00:19:14.389
And that's still allowed to continue resonating and bouncing.
00:19:14.689 --> 00:19:18.289
And so what people says, it sounds too dead. They say it sounds too dead.
00:19:18.529 --> 00:19:21.929
But what really is it doesn't sound natural.
00:19:22.269 --> 00:19:26.429
It doesn't sound balanced. It doesn't sound uncolored.
00:19:27.149 --> 00:19:33.169
These rooms color the voice, the sound. A bigger room has far less coloration,
00:19:33.169 --> 00:19:35.509
but it has its own problems.
00:19:35.689 --> 00:19:37.749
More reverb, more noise.
00:19:38.049 --> 00:19:42.729
As the room gets bigger, like I'm in my apartment, my office here,
00:19:42.729 --> 00:19:50.429
I'm leaning on some processing in my mixer so that you don't hear the constant gas-powered noise.
00:19:51.129 --> 00:19:54.389
Well, I don't know what it is. It's a leaf blower or something that's been going
00:19:54.389 --> 00:19:55.529
for two hours this morning.
00:19:56.149 --> 00:19:58.809
You don't hear it. But if you were a voice actor, you couldn't,
00:19:58.889 --> 00:20:01.349
you could not get away with being in this room that I'm in right now.
00:20:01.449 --> 00:20:04.829
And I, and I have a booth and I could be in that booth.
00:20:05.849 --> 00:20:09.989
However, if a, if a Cessna flies over, I will hear the Cessna.
00:20:11.569 --> 00:20:16.609
If it flies and they do, they fly right over my apartment. I'm in the takeoff
00:20:16.609 --> 00:20:20.569
lane where they make the left turn down the coastline.
00:20:21.129 --> 00:20:26.189
Of Santa Monica Airport. So I hear everything, even if I'm in the booth, I can't win.
00:20:27.189 --> 00:20:31.349
So the bottom line is, is the bigger rooms sound better.
00:20:31.889 --> 00:20:38.489
Every good commercial studio you've ever been in is not going to be a small ISO booth.
00:20:38.789 --> 00:20:44.609
It's going to have a 10 to 12 foot ceiling and a lot of space because it just sounds better.
00:20:44.809 --> 00:20:50.989
It just has different problems you have to solve, which is like a reverb time and noise control,
00:20:51.329 --> 00:20:54.829
you know, and if most of the work you do is self-directed, which face it,
00:20:54.929 --> 00:21:00.089
it is, you're auditioning 90, 90% of the time and doing jobs the other 10.
00:21:00.209 --> 00:21:05.029
And if you're really lucky, it's 80, 20, that work is all done time shifted.
00:21:05.169 --> 00:21:08.249
You can do it when you want to. So if it's noisy, you don't record.
00:21:08.809 --> 00:21:12.989
It's, it's the quiet on demand is what I, it's my phrase I've coined.
00:21:13.749 --> 00:21:17.249
That's that kind of work that's critical to have noise control.
00:21:17.969 --> 00:21:21.169
You know, you're on a SourceConnect session at four on Friday,
00:21:21.169 --> 00:21:23.829
and you know that's when the kids get home from school.
00:21:24.389 --> 00:21:27.209
You know that's when the traffic ramps up in your neighborhood.
00:21:27.749 --> 00:21:30.869
Doesn't matter. That's when the session is and you're being recorded remotely.
00:21:31.269 --> 00:21:35.549
That's where those bigger investments and soundproofing and all that are required.
00:21:35.909 --> 00:21:38.889
And so you create a new problem trying to fix the old one.
00:21:39.009 --> 00:21:43.809
You go from a big, beautiful room to a small ISO booth that doesn't sound as
00:21:43.809 --> 00:21:45.029
good as your big, beautiful room.
00:21:45.029 --> 00:21:51.289
Yeah, I was surprised actually. So do you think that the booth or the space
00:21:51.289 --> 00:21:55.909
wherever you're recording is ultimately, well, it's the first stop with everything.
00:21:55.909 --> 00:21:57.369
You have to get that set up first.
00:21:57.829 --> 00:22:00.509
Some people are like, I'm going to get this fancy mic and I'm going to,
00:22:00.609 --> 00:22:04.449
you know, but the fact is the room is the room is the room. We got to figure that out, right?
00:22:04.449 --> 00:22:10.869
The room okay the room for your sound is the lighting for your photo or your video,
00:22:11.709 --> 00:22:14.369
if you don't look evenly lit and you have
00:22:14.369 --> 00:22:18.309
a hard shadow or your head's all shiny or the
00:22:18.309 --> 00:22:21.269
lighting is just totally wrong or it's all coming from your shoulder your
00:22:21.269 --> 00:22:24.189
shoulder and you know you know what it looks like
00:22:24.189 --> 00:22:29.489
it's a lot easier to visualize bad lighting than it is to conceptualize bad
00:22:29.489 --> 00:22:35.689
acoustics but this is the relationship of sound to the room and an image to
00:22:35.689 --> 00:22:41.329
the lighting it's that important interesting you do not get a good image without good lighting full stop,
00:22:42.154 --> 00:22:45.854
I know AI is a different thing. I know everything can be faked nowadays and
00:22:45.854 --> 00:22:49.114
everything can be relit in post. And I know there's a ton of post things.
00:22:49.434 --> 00:22:55.274
But at the end of the day, if you don't, there's still at the top level of our
00:22:55.274 --> 00:22:59.754
industry where there's professionals involved at every level from the audio
00:22:59.754 --> 00:23:02.934
engineering all the way up, they know the difference and they care.
00:23:03.734 --> 00:23:08.634
And so the low paying, low hanging fruit jobs, they don't care as much.
00:23:08.774 --> 00:23:11.874
If you can send them something usable that sounds loud enough and clean enough,
00:23:12.154 --> 00:23:16.654
and you've been able to scrub out all the noise with the latest AI machine learning,
00:23:16.654 --> 00:23:19.254
you know, algorithm, they're going to be fine.
00:23:19.574 --> 00:23:22.774
You know, so when you're starting out, you can get away with murder.
00:23:23.034 --> 00:23:26.954
But when you start getting those critical jobs where there's engineering involved
00:23:26.954 --> 00:23:29.574
and producers involved, you can't.
00:23:29.994 --> 00:23:34.174
So that's my bigger question, my favorite question, because I have a lot of
00:23:34.174 --> 00:23:37.754
students that are like, oh, I put this processing piece on and I do this with
00:23:37.754 --> 00:23:41.414
my file. And I'm very old school because I've been doing this so long.
00:23:41.514 --> 00:23:44.254
And I've worked for very large companies. And the engineers,
00:23:44.414 --> 00:23:46.434
like you're saying, the producers, they hear everything.
00:23:46.774 --> 00:23:51.494
And so they want the cleanest. They want raw. They don't want me to put anything on it.
00:23:51.734 --> 00:23:55.494
So I'm used to creating. They're always like, what's in your mic chain, Linda?
00:23:55.754 --> 00:23:58.534
You know, and I have to give them everything. They want everything off. They want it to just
00:23:58.534 --> 00:23:59.034
Be my mic.
00:23:59.834 --> 00:24:03.634
And so I'm getting some confusion here. People are like, oh, no, no, no.
00:24:03.794 --> 00:24:07.694
This producer is telling me to add this or that. And I never touch that stuff.
00:24:07.694 --> 00:24:09.794
But now, is that the thing?
00:24:10.014 --> 00:24:12.154
I mean, like you're saying, the low-hanging fruit, they don't care.
00:24:12.734 --> 00:24:16.514
But, yeah, when you start to work with the big clients, they do care.
00:24:17.234 --> 00:24:18.234
So, I don't know.
00:24:18.234 --> 00:24:22.054
I want to point my finger to Rob now because you are in the trenches, Rob.
00:24:22.234 --> 00:24:26.634
So, what are you finding? What's the percentage of work you do where they say
00:24:26.634 --> 00:24:29.174
send it raw? What are your thoughts on that?
00:24:29.794 --> 00:24:35.234
Well, it depends on if I'm doing audiobooks, I will ask. And I've talked to P.J.
00:24:35.374 --> 00:24:43.834
Oakland about this, who's helped run the Audiobook Publishing Association Conference. Right.
00:24:44.936 --> 00:24:47.756
Ask the folks whether they want it raw or not.
00:24:47.936 --> 00:24:54.176
The low-hanging fruit or the less experienced producers may want it processed
00:24:54.176 --> 00:24:57.056
somewhat to get the levels up to where they belong.
00:24:57.056 --> 00:25:05.676
It is my contention, though, that if I'm turning in an audition or doing something
00:25:05.676 --> 00:25:10.376
for a corporate video or some other sort of voiceover work,
00:25:10.556 --> 00:25:13.676
I do run a little bit of processing,
00:25:13.916 --> 00:25:18.556
a little bit of gait just to make sure it's going to take away throat noises in between phrases.
00:25:18.556 --> 00:25:23.236
I do a little When I'm finished recording I do a mouth declick You know,
00:25:23.336 --> 00:25:28.636
that's an add-on But people don't hear that And it's so effective The mouth
00:25:28.636 --> 00:25:33.276
declick that I use is so effective That it is not hearable And no engineer I've
00:25:33.276 --> 00:25:35.836
ever worked with Has complained about that Also,
00:25:36.216 --> 00:25:42.176
if I'm doing it for another producer If I run a little bit of compression A
00:25:42.176 --> 00:25:46.156
little bit of normalization A little bit of compression And a little bit more normalization
00:25:46.776 --> 00:25:54.116
i run it so gently that no engineer has ever complained but the fact of the
00:25:54.116 --> 00:25:58.016
matter is if you overdo it here's i'm going to throw that right back to you
00:25:58.016 --> 00:26:01.276
george you can't unbake the cake yeah
00:26:01.276 --> 00:26:06.136
Yeah i mean what that's and that that makes me think about another thing which
00:26:06.136 --> 00:26:12.216
is what we call front-end processing versus post-processing so front-end processing
00:26:12.216 --> 00:26:18.896
is your classic recording studio or radio production studio channel strip with preamp,
00:26:19.256 --> 00:26:22.556
high-pass filter, compressor, expander, EQ,
00:26:23.496 --> 00:26:27.956
blah, blah, blah, and your signal goes all the way through, back out the other end to the console.
00:26:28.596 --> 00:26:32.036
That's the ultimate and impossible to unbake cake problem.
00:26:32.276 --> 00:26:37.496
And once you print that processing, it's in there for good.
00:26:37.616 --> 00:26:41.696
It's forever. so I'm especially for newer act newer voice talent.
00:26:42.640 --> 00:26:48.060
A hugely, hugely against front end processing because they, if they don't know
00:26:48.060 --> 00:26:50.920
what's going wrong and they don't hear that something's done wrong,
00:26:51.140 --> 00:26:54.000
the damage is done and he can't undo it.
00:26:54.320 --> 00:27:00.800
So, but, so the post-processing is a very, yeah, it's a very specific to the genre thing.
00:27:00.920 --> 00:27:03.780
And it's a very specific to the situation thing.
00:27:04.260 --> 00:27:06.980
And I have had a few clients who are working
00:27:06.980 --> 00:27:10.080
with somebody new a few of my talent clients who
00:27:10.080 --> 00:27:13.060
are working with a new client and they don't know
00:27:13.060 --> 00:27:16.340
what they don't know the client of their their client
00:27:16.340 --> 00:27:19.580
doesn't know what they don't know or they didn't ask
00:27:19.580 --> 00:27:26.420
or they just say i don't know and so i have had people say i send it raw and
00:27:26.420 --> 00:27:32.160
i send it with my stack or my processing and let them decide but the higher
00:27:32.160 --> 00:27:36.820
the level the job is there are more people are in the production chain and they
00:27:36.820 --> 00:27:38.460
each have more specialized jobs,
00:27:38.820 --> 00:27:42.060
including a dialogue editor, a remixer,
00:27:42.620 --> 00:27:45.680
you know, an audio engineer or producer, and they're all, they all have these jobs.
00:27:45.800 --> 00:27:50.840
And so when you're told specifically to keep it raw, I say, keep it raw.
00:27:51.080 --> 00:27:55.120
Now, and if you're working with a new client and they tell you to keep it raw
00:27:55.120 --> 00:27:57.820
and you think, well, I'll use this little bit of processing.
00:27:57.940 --> 00:28:01.400
They'll never know if they do know you lost a client.
00:28:01.860 --> 00:28:03.020
Right. Right.
00:28:03.020 --> 00:28:06.540
Then you're just like, oh, you just lied to us? You wanted to pull one over
00:28:06.540 --> 00:28:09.620
on us? We're engineers. Of course we can tell you're using a spander.
00:28:10.440 --> 00:28:17.640
We're not dummies. So it's tricky and it does take some diplomacy and even just asking questions.
00:28:18.340 --> 00:28:24.820
But on the extremely generalized, very general perspective is the lower the
00:28:24.820 --> 00:28:29.400
budget and the more you're working directly with your buyer, the less likely,
00:28:29.580 --> 00:28:33.340
the more likely it is that they want it fully produced.
00:28:33.580 --> 00:28:36.680
Like all cleaned up, levels, nice and loud.
00:28:36.880 --> 00:28:40.260
All they have to do is drop it in the final cut and they, you know,
00:28:40.380 --> 00:28:45.700
they bounce their file out to YouTube and that's what they're going to want.
00:28:46.484 --> 00:28:49.844
So, I hear normalizing is the big thing, and you just brought it up,
00:28:49.924 --> 00:28:52.764
Rob. Can you explain for me.
00:28:52.964 --> 00:28:56.344
Too, because, like I said, I don't do anything to my files. What does it mean
00:28:56.344 --> 00:28:57.744
to normalize an audio file?
00:28:58.724 --> 00:29:07.384
It means that it will bring the top peaks of your level up to a predetermined setting, say,
00:29:07.884 --> 00:29:15.224
a lot of folks say minus three decibels, so that all of your recording,
00:29:15.364 --> 00:29:21.644
if you record it too low and level, you can normalize it and bring it up so it can be heard easily.
00:29:22.084 --> 00:29:28.564
But even that, it's like figuring out the noise floor and things.
00:29:28.724 --> 00:29:31.004
There's a little bit of magic to it, don't you think, George?
00:29:31.564 --> 00:29:36.844
Well, there is a little bit. So the way I look at normalizing is I look at it as a calibration.
00:29:37.564 --> 00:29:40.504
Ah, good word. you as
00:29:40.504 --> 00:29:43.504
an actor unless you've got a huge amount of experience
00:29:43.504 --> 00:29:48.324
and you've been doing the same style of read and using the same gear for year
00:29:48.324 --> 00:29:52.704
after year you're going to be able to look over go this is my script i know
00:29:52.704 --> 00:29:57.584
where the gain knob should be i i can probably predict within a db of what my
00:29:57.584 --> 00:30:01.624
recording level is going to be because i've done a thousand times yeah,
00:30:02.112 --> 00:30:07.932
they probably don't need to normalize. Their levels are so consistent out of sheer experience.
00:30:08.392 --> 00:30:13.932
But for everybody else, setting the gain to be consistent with the same levels
00:30:13.932 --> 00:30:16.092
each time they record is tricky.
00:30:16.472 --> 00:30:20.152
And so normalizing is just another way of making a little correction,
00:30:20.352 --> 00:30:24.252
a little calibration, so that maybe one thing you recorded for that client had
00:30:24.252 --> 00:30:27.532
a peak of minus seven, another one had a peak of minus four.
00:30:28.072 --> 00:30:30.992
And now you can have them each now have a same
00:30:30.992 --> 00:30:34.312
peak level each time you send the files out that's
00:30:34.312 --> 00:30:37.672
just consistency it makes it it does make it easier what
00:30:37.672 --> 00:30:40.632
you shouldn't use it for is for really low recording levels
00:30:40.632 --> 00:30:43.512
because you just don't know any better you hit
00:30:43.512 --> 00:30:46.972
record you hit stop the waveform is a little teeny little tiny
00:30:46.972 --> 00:30:52.452
stripe across the screen and then you normalize to bring it up to proper levels
00:30:52.452 --> 00:30:57.512
almost always when that happens there is a noticeable noise level increase like
00:30:57.512 --> 00:31:03.032
the room tone and other noise in the audio file from the self-noise of the equipment
00:31:03.032 --> 00:31:05.372
and other things, all gets louder.
00:31:05.572 --> 00:31:08.692
You hear more hiss, almost guaranteed. You're going to hear more hiss.
00:31:09.332 --> 00:31:13.932
So you don't want to use it to make up for a dramatically low level,
00:31:13.932 --> 00:31:17.812
but you do want to, it is not a bad idea. And I don't think there's any harm.
00:31:18.172 --> 00:31:21.052
All normalizing is, is a level adjustment.
00:31:21.652 --> 00:31:27.072
That's all it is. It's only a control of level of the entire file.
00:31:27.552 --> 00:31:31.572
No one can possibly know if you've done it or not. they would never look at
00:31:31.572 --> 00:31:34.952
the file and go it looks like it's been normalized the only way they would know
00:31:34.952 --> 00:31:40.452
if it's been normalized if you normalize it to zero db so like the top of the waves touch,
00:31:41.052 --> 00:31:43.712
that's top you know the very top of the
00:31:43.712 --> 00:31:46.632
window then they might go oh you must have normalized
00:31:46.632 --> 00:31:52.312
that because there's no way to get exactly zero db recording level all the time
00:31:52.312 --> 00:31:57.172
it's not possible but yeah that's normalized it's it's often vilified by engineers
00:31:57.172 --> 00:32:01.892
again there's a little bit of a snobbery or a little that's not proper or that's
00:32:01.892 --> 00:32:05.132
not the way we do things or blah blah
00:32:05.332 --> 00:32:11.132
but my whole thing with voice actors is you know your job is not just engineering the file,
00:32:11.752 --> 00:32:16.372
you have a lot more stuff to do and worry about so if I can use a tool like
00:32:16.372 --> 00:32:21.232
normalize to improve the post workflow for you so you have this flow that's
00:32:21.232 --> 00:32:26.512
consistent and easy to recreate and can do over and over, I'm going to recommend it.
00:32:27.412 --> 00:32:31.912
Wow, lots of great information, right? So we spoke for so long that I decided
00:32:31.912 --> 00:32:36.852
to split the podcast into two because there's so much great information that you need to know.
00:32:37.012 --> 00:32:41.892
That wraps up the end of part one of the Voice Over Gurus podcast in this episode.
00:32:42.412 --> 00:32:45.052
Part two will be out there next week. Thanks for listening.
00:32:49.632 --> 00:32:52.192
Thanks for listening to the Voice Over Gurus podcast.
00:32:52.240 --> 00:33:13.417