George ‘The Tech’ Whittam is the tech support to the stars of voiceover. From California he helps some of the biggest names in VO setup and tweak their home studios to perfection. His business is also in helping people new to voiceover setup a home studio on any budget, and he is co host of VO BS weekly webTV show, and the Pro Audio Suite podcast.
In this interview Toby Ricketts and George discuss the following:

How George first got into audio engineering
The people that helped him in his career including the legendary Don LaFontaine
Which studio he is most proud of designing and building
George’s own home studio (or lack of!)
The Top 3 things that beginner Voice actors need to consider when building a home studio
What is important to get right when designing a studio
We have an in depth chat in the areas of:

Acoustic Treatment and sound proofing
Microphones
Audio Interfaces
DAWs or Digital Audio Workstations
Outboard gear
Plugins
What are some exciting things coming up in the world of Voice and recording
The Pro Audio Suite podcast, and VO BS.

Here is a text transcript of the interview:

Toby Ricketts

Welcome to vo life brought to you by gravy for the brain Oceania. My name is Toby Ricketts. And on this video podcast we talk to the stars of audio and voiceover from around the world. And today's guest kind of combines both of those things. He's George the tech Witham. And he's tech to the voiceover stars. Take it like to be introduced.

George Whittam

Well, somebody called me that at one point. And I was like, Okay, I guess I can go with that

Toby Ricketts

one. Fantastic. Thanks for joining me today, I hope we're going to have like a total audio nerd out. Because I know we're both sort of very, very keen on on the behind the scenes of audio, like how does it make things better? How things make things crisp, and I feel like kind of in today's environment, there's never been that there's so much technology on the market, and it's just evolving at such a fast rate, that it's hard to keep current and and know what kind of the future is coming. But it's also there's so much opportunity, because it's such a low bar at the moment to get into high quality audio. But it is it

George Whittam

is it's well in terms of cost. It's certainly much much easier to get high quality audio for a low price. That's true.

Toby Ricketts

Absolutely. But we can we can get onto that when we talk about hardware a little bit later. Firstly, about your your sort of history. Like I sort of was into audio from about the age of seven or eight and built a studio in my room. What's your first audio memory? And when did you sort of get interested in audio?

George Whittam

Yeah, my, my dad was a, I would call him an amateur recordist. He had a reel to reel tape recorder when I was very little, or before I was born actually. And he had that gear around. And I wanted to play with it. And I recorded myself on a cassette recorder and like hearing myself talk back. And this is, by the way, you think, oh, early days of voiceover, I had no clue what voiceover was. And I didn't know what voiceover was for probably 30 more years. It was kind of funny, but my I just always like tinkering with audio. And then I actually became a musician. played trumpet, all through school and into college, graduated from Virginia Tech with a music degree. But got to spend a lot of time while at Virginia Tech, studying audio engineering as well, because we happen to have a really cool music department director who was really a technologist, too. So he had Fortunately, for totally Lucky for me, had installed a very state of the art recording studio and music salon for performance in the in the music school. So at a time when that was not that common, and certainly costs were quite a lot higher. And analog audio is still probably pretty pervasive. He was bleeding edge with digital tape decks, digital mixing console, and really Neumann mics and all these high end pieces of gear that I got to cut my teeth on and college and use to my disposal to do all sorts of different styles and music and recording. And it was a great a great experience. I got to I really got to mold the last couple years of my education there to get out of it what I wanted. And that was really amazing. What a great experience. That was.

Toby Ricketts

Yeah, absolutely it is. It is amazing when like educational institutions really invest in in gear so that you can actually, like learn on gear that you'll be using an industry and then it sort of cheap out or anything like that. And it's such a fantastic time at sort of like the unknown, even in the sort of high school level where you can you can just you're just kind of left to play with gear and plug stuff in and unplug it and try not to break it and see what works and what doesn't. And I know I learned especially a lot about probably compression, like I was lifted up with a compressor for a number of days and a microphone and just hearing what all the different knobs did. Yeah, if you're like me, you learn by doing, you know, you got it. Yeah,

George Whittam

definitely. I didn't. Our program at Virginia Tech was very fledgling. And it was we didn't get a lot into compression back. I remember distinctly going back and thinking back to the, the music I recorded, mixed and made CDs of back when a blank CDR was $15 and burning CDs and realizing that, you know, I didn't know anything about mastering. I didn't really know much about compression at that stage. And so everything I recorded back then was very raw in comparison to what people are used to hearing in on bigger budget productions and music mixes. So yeah, I was kind of late to learning how to use compressors and dynamics tools. I bet so I ended up really learning that stuff completely on my own. just experimenting and of course watching videos and, and reading magazine articles, which we used to do a lot, and getting kind of up to speed that way. But it was a lot of just real world learning for sure.

Toby Ricketts

Yeah, fantastic. Did you always kind of have a sense that you would be in audio that it really sort of you know, it bid you young?

George Whittam

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't know about pro audio as a career. Until really, I was late in high school, early college, I actually went to Virginia Tech to be an electrical engineer thinking that that actually was what I wanted to do. I thought, in my mind, for whatever reason, I wanted to know how the equipment worked. And I wanted to design and build it. What I really found out going through the process of an education and engineering was that I don't want to be an I don't want to be an engineer, it is much, much more challenging in terms of mathematics. You really had to study your butt off, it was much harder work and much more difficult than I had thought it was going to be. And when I got very lucky and took a music class in music school at Virginia Tech, which is just a small department, in a school in a big university, really, I discovered that there was another pipe another track for me to follow. And that's when I changed gears actually changed majors, from engineering to music and audio technology. And so really, I kind of, I don't know, I feel like even though I had an interest, I kind of came into it late, I didn't do anything in Pro Audio per se, until well into my college years. So I feel like a little bit like a late starter in that regard. But I really hit the ground running. And as soon as I graduated in 1997, I, I got an internship at a studio that I think is closed its doors in Philadelphia called sigma sound, which was a very well known studio back in the 70s and 80s and 90s, recording the DJs and Jackson Five and even David Bowie at one point. So I got to be in the real commercial studio world, just long enough to realize that I also didn't like that. And I was like, I need to find my own path here and audio and recording because I don't like the old school recording studio way of doing things the what they put you through the hours the low pay the whole thing, the hazing, whatever you want to call it. It was definitely not for me and I recognize that pretty early on.

Toby Ricketts

So you went out and and designed and ran a kind of a mobile recording studio for a while didn't Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's about

George Whittam

Yeah, totally. I started out with a mobile studio because I just had that weird opportunity to do something different. And my dad just so happened to have kind of an old ragtag mobile home RV. That was available to me. And I probably read read articles about live and remote recording. And I thought that sounded really cool to me. And I did live and remote recording in college, I would actually carry equipment from the studio from the sack from the Studio Lab. And they would let me remove gear and take it into bars and do live remotes, which to this day still blows my mind. Yes, amaze. And so that was on using these systems called Tascam da 88 eight track digital on a high eight, videotape. That's what they were. So when I wanted to start out in my own world, that was what I knew I knew the Da da system, I knew that technology I knew it was capable of and that's that's what I ended up adapting and putting into the the RV. So I had a 24 track 24 channel setup multitrack with this huge 150 foot long cable snake that I could drag out and pull into a venue and tap into the live sound system inside and do live remotes. And it was yeah, it was talk talk about figuring things out as you go along solving problems and dealing in a live situation and having to still get great audio. It was a heck of an education. And I you know, learned I learned a lot in the real world that way. It wasn't the pristine commercial studio where we took controlled environments and you have the best microphones money can buy. And you know all these things, your disposal, I had budget gear, and I had to make it work and get the best results I possibly could out of it. And so that definitely helped get me to where I am now in terms of helping people get good sound out of budget gear.

Toby Ricketts

Yeah, fantastic. And like problem solving. I imagined in that environment, like taught you a whole lot about how to solve problems on the fly and how to make good work in certain circumstances.

George Whittam

Absolutely. I Absolutely. And Toby, I'm going to ask you a question go on. Are you using an Apollo right now?

Toby Ricketts

No, not using an Apollo. So you've got an unusual audio interface from Arturia. The French company.

George Whittam

Ah, I've heard of Arturia. Selenium. And I've never used one audio fuse. I thought they look really cool. They have so much functionality. Yeah.

Toby Ricketts

Little tiny box, all USB powered as well, which is fantastic. But it's almost, and we're going to talk about interfaces later, because I'm definitely like rethinking my entire interface. Like, like theory, because I've just had one die on me like, and so it's like, oh, it's time to buy something else.

George Whittam

It does make you think, do you just replace and just get back to work? Or do you go? Yeah, you pivot. So anyway, sorry. I don't know why that popped up.

Toby Ricketts

Right. It was probably the ambient noise level rose, because there's a rainstorm going over. Don't have anyone else. That's what I was hearing the sea going up. Yeah,

George Whittam

I was hearing what I call a waterfall or whooshing or a white noise. And I'm thinking, is that as pre? Apollo? What's going on? Nope, nope. It's the actual environmental sounds really heavy too, because like, it was something calming down,

Toby Ricketts

but it stopped. Now it was one of those little thunder stormy events. But how about it?

George Whittam

Well, rain spell?

Toby Ricketts

I thought I like I mean, I know you'd agree. I could continue a kind of like, is that my noise? Or is that the other end? How do we resolve that? And I was thinking while you were talking, how am I going to solve this in post? But maybe we'll just leave it in as a talking point noise. Exactly. Yeah. So what made you start? George, the tech? How did you fall into being and you kind of like, tell us about your business? You're mainly for voiceover artists to sort of get the best sound out of their budget, right? Yeah,

George Whittam

absolutely. It's always been about voiceover artists. It's become more lately into other things that are tangentially related audiobooks, of course. And, and now, of course, podcasting, I do get occasionally asked to dial in a podcasting system. And occasionally, even then a live streaming or recording, you know, camera system, far less, but it's 99%. Audio, and in it all, because it's all because of really one guy that led me down the path because I was, let's see flashback to, let's say, around 2000 2001. Actually, there was one very, very distinctive moment in my, in my life that that changed the trajectory of my career forever. And that literally was the 911 attacks on New York City. My very mentor in an audio, Lane Massey, he was a he was the engineer that was doing all of the audio for the radio broadcasts that covered all of the Eagles, NFL football games. So anywhere they went, he and his crew went along with them. And I had been hanging out with Elaine and my cousin Andy, who's still doing that job to this day. All these years later, and Elaine, by the way, and I was hanging out with them, they were doing some music jams, and they were telling me about what they do. And I was like, Man, that sounds cool. I would love to do that. And lanes that will let me see if I can get an extra pass. They're real stingy about getting extra passes. But if I can get you an extra one, I'll let you come in and you can watch how I do what we do. And sure enough, they needed an extra parabolic mic operator talking about unusual microphones. Yeah, so you know, and they were like, seems like hey, you know, it's it's an opportunity. If you want to be the second pilot, parabolic mic, operator.

Now's your chance. And I stepped up. And that was my first experience ever being at an Eagles game at an NFL game in a stadium. It was standing on the sidelines, trying to get not run over by the camera cart, and not be too distracted by the cheerleaders standing right over here. And the football players over it was it was crazy. It was intense. But I I stood on that sideline and I did a sound. I did the sound with a dish microphone. The next game, he was like, I we have our mics covered. But again, I'll see if I can get you a spare pass. I'll get you up in the booth with me. Then I can show you how things run up in the booth. And he did. And then the week after 911 everything, just everything changed, right? And my friend leans like I'm not flying anymore. I am done with flying. I've been to 11 years worth of games. I've had enough of this stuff and he was freaking out, like a lot of people were and he said, You know what, everybody wants that job. Nobody says that you're gonna get that job just because you happen to show up and be in the booth but you're the only one qualified at this point. And I was like barely qualified at one game to learn how that system worked. And it was not just a Mackie mixer with labels. It was this custom made rack full of stuff that Leanne had custom made. Cobbled together. It was really, really amazing. So this could go on forever. I'll try to wrap it up. But basically, I got the job. He was like no one else can do it. You're on You're hired. I ended up doing the next game back in Philadelphia and everything, trial by fire. I managed to make it make it. You know, they kept kept me coming back. And in doing so that whole process of working with a station I ended up meeting, a producer named Howard Parker, Howard Parker actually lived in New York moved to New York, he needed a studio. So Lena and I built his studio there. I tagged along. flashforward, Howard moves to California. A few years later, I moved to California in 2004. And Howard found out I was there. And he said, Hey, would you help me do a little update to my studio, this would be my first official, you know, going into a vo booth and doing the work not just watching lean or hanging out. And I did I did some updates and did some this and that. And he said, This is great, man, it's great to have you here. I'll let you know, I'll let my manager know in New York, hey, this guy has been really helpful to me. And that's where it came from. I call Howard Parker client zero, because he literally created this business for me by getting me connected to a top promo and trailer agent or actually manager. And then he told a few folks. And that was like, Okay, this is a business, I need to drop everything else I was doing, including, at the time when I moved to LA I was production mixing, boom, operating on film sets, yeah, doing anything I could do to find a career in audio. And this just almost fell in my lap. And I just had to take the opportunity, it was just a no brainer to turn that into a business. So that's really the genesis of the whole thing of just being a tech for voiceover actors, which up to that point nobody had seemed to be doing.

Toby Ricketts

You see, I find it so interesting, like, and I love asking these questions at the beginning of an interview. Because for sort of people who are like engraving for the brain and sort of your trunk trying to figure out how to make a career of this stuff, it's useful to hear how you can't really predict how the course is going to go. But as long as you hang around in the industry and kind of tend gently on the sides, like as long as you're doing something in audio or around it, you just eventually fall into it. It's like the old adage of like, luck favors the prepared. And so absolute knowledge and if you're just if you're waiting for that, if you're on the station waiting for that train, eventually trains gonna come through and pick you right up. But like,

George Whittam

like, I love that phrase, luck, favors the prepared is the absolute true is just being persistent. I could have just kind of hauled away in the studio, like, like a Six Sigma sound. And I could have stayed in Philly. And I could have just been stuck in that kind of role. And you know, maybe I could have made a few hit records. Who knows if I stuck it out long enough. But I just knew I wasn't happy there. And so I just didn't stick it out. I was like, I'm not happy here. I'm going to change things and just kind of let things flow a little bit and followed, you know, these different pointers saying you should know there's a sign this, this is something you should try. And you've really, really, really solidified when I met Don LaFontaine. Yeah. When I met him,

Toby Ricketts

as this guy was who you worked with said you want to start with Don LaFontaine and go from there.

George Whittam

I know where do you go from there. That's the thing is I've already worked with Howard Parker, who's incredibly talented, successful promo trailer commercial voiceover. Then he introduced me to Milissa Disney and Rick Robles and Rick Wasserman through his manager. All of them are still my clients and friends at this point. And this is 2005, I want to say, and then, through all these different connections and getting to know a studio engineer, that studio engineer, Steve Nafion, said, Hey, I'm getting a buzz from this guy. Don's studio. I'm hearing a buzz all the time when I record him, because he's doing remotes. He's, he's on ISDN. That's the thing I learned ISDN back in the radio days, so I already knew about ISDN that was another little lucky strike. So he was like, he gotta go see Don, he's like, I'll get you as number you guys and talk. I'm like, oh, cool, who's done? And he was like, oh, yeah, you'll know, you'll you'll know. I had no idea who he was until I walked into his studio. And he said, Just a second. George. I gotta record a spot for a trailer real quick. And he does a Simpsons Movie. Yeah. And I, in hearing him in context, we're on that trailer. It was just it all everything connected. The dots all connected my brain. I was like, holy cow. This guy's a legend. And I'm in this legend studio. So I just, I was nice to him. I listened to what he needed. I was patient and just was loyal and just helped him whatever it whatever he needed. And he was keeping me busy enough that I had to drop you know, I was working on a film set occasionally and I would get a call from Don and then a The second ad we like to get off the phone off the phone, you already have a job. A hit that if you're on the phone, so yeah, so that was that's where it came from us. Thanks a referral of a referral of a referral, you know, connection, connection connection. And, and then once that once that happened, I was like, Yep, this is the business. Don was like, hey, nobody does this, what they built my studio and disappeared. I don't have a guy to call. There's nobody that I have for support. I'm like, This is nuts. Why isn't anybody doing this? And that's when I was like, Okay, I need to make this happen. That's where the, that's when the business really started to really focus. That's when I took my website, which was all like various recording stuff. I had my remote truck on it. And all this gear that I was like, that's when I like kind of rehashed everything, focused everything on VoiceOver and just changed the trajectory right there.

Toby Ricketts

Yeah, absolutely. And it's worth remembering that like at that time, like, I remember hearing that, like Don LaFontaine had his own like, personal recording studio. And it was like, Whoa, like, well, amazing. Imagine,

George Whittam

you know, kind of unusual for a voiceover at that time. At that time,

Toby Ricketts

it was it was like unheard of. It's like if you're earning that much that you can afford your own personal studio. And I mean, you fast forward to now. And it's like, everyone, like you have to have your own studio, you know, what integrates and shows how much has changed? And you've written that way? Yeah,

George Whittam

I didn't, well, I didn't know any different. And because my all of my first clients were already established or getting very established in voiceover. So they were either like getting already already signed with a manager or an agent. And they were saying, either, let's get I think, actually, Melissa, Rick Watson, actually, all three of them, Melissa requests, Ms. Robles, none of them had studios. All of them were being told by by their management, you need to get a studio now to be competitive. And so for me, I thought, well, yeah, this is what everybody needs to do to have, you know, this is the norm is to have a home studio. Up until that point, it wasn't that's for sure. Not especially not in LA.

Toby Ricketts

So what kind of What project are you most proud of? Like you would have you would have built studios, like from the ground up, like consulting on everything from like, an empty space, right through to finishing and then, and everything in between, I guess, like consulting on gear and recording stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

George Whittam

Yeah. Proud of it's, I mean, there's only one that it just shines above everything else. And because it was attached or connected to Don, and that was that is a lab that I helped design, or I did design actually called the Don LaFontaine voiceover lab. And it was designed and we did it in 2009, I think, and it's been an operation ever since. And it's, it's run by sag after their foundation side. So the nonprofit wing of sag AFTRA, and that one is a you know, that's a legacy project, you know, it's most of what I do is just very non glamorous little holes in the wall studios, people's closets, ISO booths, and occasionally get to build and design a really nice vo booth. But this one was like, a big deal because it's a teaching facility. So 1000s of voice actors have come and gone through this, they have a teaching program, they have a certification. So for over 5000 people have gone through that lab and been certified and to record themselves there. And, and my name is on the wall. You know, you walk in, there's this really cool display with this huge LED backlit VU meter looking not view but like a wave form on the wall. And there's names and all this stuff, and my name is on the wall and I to be attached to that project be found. I'm basically considered a co founder. And it's all because of dawn, you know, that project will always be extremely special to me, even though I've done so many cool home studios ever since. But yeah, that one, that was a big deal. And they took a big leap of faith because I had no track record of designing commercial studios at all. So they really took a leap of faith in me. And that was, I will never regret that. I'll never forget that either.

Toby Ricketts

Yeah, fantastic. And do you. I mean, you you obviously have a home studio. You're talking to us through a very not unusual looking but nice sounding mics that are written.

George Whittam

Okay. Let's be clear about my home studio. My home studio is a second room and in a two bedroom apartment. I'm relying heavily on on down expander processing to take out the background noise. I'm eating my mic. I'm about a fist with the way to make sure I get the best signal to noise ratio. I'm doing everything I can. The room is completely cluttered with stuff which acoustically makes it sound pretty good. I always leave my closet door for clothing open because that helps acoustically. It's just this crazy amalgamation of practical things. If I count there's probably 1234 actual acoustical panels in the whole room. Yeah, that's the reality of my of my space. But I just happen to have a really nice mic here. Thanks to a sponsorship of the podcast I do called Pro Audio suite. Yeah, this is an Austrian audio OCA one eight is an amazing, amazing microphone. Yeah. And I would never have had this mic if it wasn't for their support of the show. And it's an it really is an incredible microphone.

Toby Ricketts

It's a bit like when you visit a builders house, isn't it like, and there's just like, panels missing? There's drywall holes in the drywall. And they're like, I'll just, I'll get to that.

George Whittam

It's not that it's not that unusual. Yeah, I mean, I've met a few contractors with some mind blowing homes that they live in. But on the whole, that's kind of the truth. And it's a little bit relatable to me, I don't have a real, super amazing soundproof studio, I do see in the future getting an ISO booth of my own for doing testing and demonstrations. And, but at this stage, I just have I'm in I'm out of the studio in other people's studios, enough, and I have access to so many studios, I just haven't needed it for my purposes. So

Toby Ricketts

totally. Yeah, that makes sense. And do you do like voiceovers? Do you ever have you been called in because I know people in you know, often like the receptionist at a studio setting will get dragged in, especially nowadays with conversational, where you're being like on the rise, and they just want normal people, not the voiceover guy or the dragon to do voiceover stuff.

George Whittam

Honestly, it's i It's never happened. It's never happened. And my best guess for that is that, you know, the majority of the work I'm doing with the clients, I'm dealing with our our union, like I'm doing everything now. But a lot of what I used to do is union work. The clients were doing union work. I'm not doing union, I don't have any, there's no union thing I can join right for what I do. I'm completely freelance. Yeah. But a lot of my clients are union and, you know, does that kind of work did they don't just, they don't just call someone in. You know, it's, it's true. Absolutely. And so and then I guess, because I've never really connected to the client of my client. So that just those connections just never really happened. And also, I can sound okay, on microphone, I have a decent voice and all that kind of stopped. But I've done a little dip my toe and a little bit of voiceover coaching, or being coached in commercial. And I realized how this is actually pretty hard. This is difficult. It didn't come naturally. I can read a book, I could read a narration for a corporate narration. But something sounded convincing on a commercial, let alone doing characters or something. And I was like this is this is really a lot of work. And by the time I was dabbling in it, I was already much too busy running this business. So who knows, I mean, maybe 510 15 years, I will want to wind down some of the work I'm doing, get more into voice and actually try to be a voice actor. I don't know, it's, I don't know what's going to happen. But I've never done it in any way professionally. And I've never been paid for voiceover and also, I just I don't want to be a competitor to my clients. So it's just always kind of been a ethical thing for me. I just, you know, I just don't I don't want to be as another person competing for the same work that they are.

Toby Ricketts

Fair enough. Yeah, it's a good answer. So what do you think like, before we get into sort of nitty gritty of, you know, acoustics, mics, interfaces, and doors and everything, like what are the top three things that newbie voiceovers should know about recording audio? Would you say? Maybe not? Maybe the the general things to keep in mind?

George Whittam

Yeah, well, soundproofing is expensive. That's probably number one. So, you know, putting foam on the wall hanging a blanket over a window. None of these things are soundproofing. They do not

Toby Ricketts

stop the noise by the rain at the start of this interview.

George Whittam

Yeah, even if you've invested quite a lot in a building a space, you can still get sound that transmits en and, and the sound that you heard if ends up in the edit is subtle and can be very easily cleaned up in post. But you it was there it was noticeable. And you know whether would that noise be an issue to the client you're working with? When they notice it? Would they have an issue with that and when they tell you that your studio isn't up to snuff for their project, right? So when you're starting out you're not unless you've been gifted a hell of a healthy budget to buy a total isolate, you know, a proper ISO booth, or even build something. If you don't have 25 to $30,000 startup cost. You're not going to be doing that. You're going to be taking a room like this again. No more room, or you're going to be going into the closet trying to get away from an escape from any noise you can find. And that's where you're going to be starting from. So noise for you is always, almost always going to be your biggest issue. Depending on where you live. If you're in an urban suburban area, certainly noise is your biggest enemy. If you're in a pretty rural remote location, you might be really lucky. And noise is not really a big issue until there's bad weather. So it just depends on your situation. But the noise issues are what you're always going to be fighting with. And that's going to be your biggest concern and your challenge. Right. So that's one thing. Another thing that's really important to keep in mind is the acoustics of the space you're recording inside of. And acoustics is certainly a it's kind of a black well, okay, the acoustics of small booths is truly a black art. And I say that because I've, I've mentored or been mentored by I should say, several acousticians. I've read their works, studied it, researched it. And there's precious little about how to acoustically tune small spaces. Yeah, so they don't have the meter by meter.

Toby Ricketts

Yeah, boxy, hunky kind of sound that you get,

George Whittam

yes, there is very little information about how to do it correctly. Because every time I talk to somebody or read about it, they say, how to tune a small room and the small room they're talking about is eight by 10 feet. You know, it's like two by three meters or something. It's like, that's, you consider a small room?

Toby Ricketts

Yeah, so it is, of course, in a recording studio, you know, like a sigma sound context. That is Yeah, commercially. That is a smaller. Yeah, exactly, absolutely. But it's totally changed now, where you've got like rooms that are like two feet, by one and a half. Yes. And it's like, that's all people have often. And sometimes that like that is the most like I always say, walk in wardrobe. So like such a blessing, if you have a house is one of those because it's right in the core of the house, no windows,

George Whittam

it's literally about to help the lady tune her closet in New York, because that is literally almost literally the size, it's going to be when it's done, it's going to be about a foot and a half by two feet. When it's treated. I said it's gonna be small, I hope you do short form recording. Yeah, so that's another one, you're gonna be uncomfortable, you're going to be in a cramped space, and it's gonna get hot. And I would not recommend to most people to even consider starting with something like long form like audio moons looks, because it seems like an easy easy bar event to enter because of this system called ACX. Now where you can enter the you can enter that universe with a very, you basically can just sort of walk in and say here I am. And as long as you check the right boxes in terms of tack and all these things. You can be an audio narrator and they don't realize, man, there are so many details involved. It's such a it's such a so much. It's long sessions. Right? Yeah. And long periods of quiet consistency. Um, yeah, it's hard to do. It's really hard to do. So yeah, if you're gonna start start with very, very short things that don't require tremendous amounts of continuity in time. And you know, that it because that kind of stuffs really hard. So you need quiet, you need to consider the acoustics and another way to think of acoustics is like the lighting and a photo, right? You know, how a good photo looks when it's lit correctly. And you know, what's like, when you're trying to take pictures of your friends at the beach at noon, we're all the sun is coming down like this. And it looks terrible, right? We all know that. Right? Well, the acoustics is that for sound. So if you if you don't consider the acoustics and plan for it and adjust that it's just total crapshoot luck, whether you're going to get a good recording, or not. Right. So that's another biggie. And that's really the thing. I feel like I have the most proprietary knowledge in history and experience in is dialing in acoustics for any kind of any kind of situation to get it sounding good for voiceover right. So those are two biggies. I didn't even mention a mic yet right now, because those are, those two have to be considered and dealt with. Because it doesn't matter what mic you have at that point.

Toby Ricketts

Thankfully, you could have if you have the best mic in the world, you get a great recording. You have a terrible studio.

George Whittam

Yeah, and one of my favorite things I always used to teach and one of my webinars and classes was like a was a, they did a test, a blind A B tests where they recorded a voiceover on two different mics. One of them was the mic gear on the u 87. The other mic was one of these Sure, SM $5,800 $3,000. Right. So they recorded the same thing on both mics. And then they had a bunch of people listen to the two tracks and say which ones sounds better. I think what they said was more expensive. which one sounds more expensive? Well, of course, what they did was stack everything against the U 87. So bad mic placement. All these things were done incorrectly. The SM 58. I think in this case, it was just a mic placement thing. I think it was just how far close the mic was. And it was all stacked up against the 50, the u 87. And anybody who listened to that sample would pick this mic. And that's all to say that $100 mic will sound a lot better used properly, in the right way in the right placement and everything than a $3,000 mic will sound used incorrectly. Right? So technique is, is everything. Really, absolutely,

Toby Ricketts

etc. I've told the story to my students before but when I bought the USD seven, in my old studio, I was using a 416 and getting great results. That was fantastic. And I built the studio around the for one, six, because it's so directional. And I bought the UHD seven treated myself because it's been a good year and put it in and I was just I was just so crestfallen with the sound because suddenly, instead of directional, it was picking up the entire room. And I just got to so much of the acoustics and I was like, Wow, this was really horrible. Like, so I thought I've now I've designed this new studio, like around the UHD. Seven and the fact that it's cardioid. And it's picking up everything from the room. And it's just such a different sort of thing. A lot of people think you buy a great mic and you get a great sound, but it's so not true. It's that it picks up so much detail. Your studio needs to be as good as the mic to get like superior results, not not the other way around. It's yeah, it's

George Whittam

absolutely true. A cheap, a cheap, but okay, mic will sound amazing. And a good room and a really expensive mic and a badly tuned room will sound worse than the cheap mic did. Which is really, it's really crazy thing. But it's so so true. So yeah, I mean, really, microphones are so darn affordable now. I mean, Australia makes great mics. China makes great mics. Yeah, obviously the usual suspects, Germany, Austria, and us all make great mics. And you can spend $100 and you can spend $10,000, I can name every mic in between those two price points. You know, I'm saying get good results. There's a lot of options out there.

Toby Ricketts

So have you heard of the Go to Tools, you 87 Copy? Now go to tools. Okay, well, yeah, we end up with about there. So there's a company in Brooklyn, I'm about to do a video about this on YouTube and they sell this mic here which looks just like a UHD seven it's all the same stickers everything about it is exactly the same. And I've done quite a lot of testing now. And I cannot tell this apart from from from this mic. And this one cost 130 US dollars that's crazy. And it's just I'm quite I'm kind of like Mike's we've got to that point now where it's almost like all the secrets have been found and a duplicated and it's I'm just amazed at how you can buy a really cheap mic and as long as you've got a good room like you say and kind of a good interface to interface it with the mic is now like the least consideration almost

George Whittam

well I guess all the patents have expired on the UA seven because that is identical copy I don't know how they don't get

Toby Ricketts

that. Wondering that's what I was wondering. And I mean he doesn't he's unlike it even says Neumann new 87 on it. So I mean, I'm I'm a bit worried fascinatingly but it but get in before they get busted. Because yeah, like, well, it's a good thing to have in the kit. Okay, yeah.

George Whittam

Well, they're in Brooklyn, but they're not made there. I can tell you that. And yeah, the thing is like they don't unless they QC are each and every single mic that goes out before you buy

Toby Ricketts

it reckons he does he hands built handled himself that for that Pro, how

George Whittam

much money did you say

Toby Ricketts

130? US dollars?

George Whittam

That sounds

Toby Ricketts

how was it possible?

George Whittam

There was more dia there's more to know about this. That's very fascinating.

Toby Ricketts

It is the website and they they do you do 47 copies as well. And they do TLS 102 is 103 is it's unbelievable. But and and I've got a friend that builds that builds mics from from kits overseas. And he's like, I don't I can't even buy the components for double that. Like yeah, that's right. That's right, just you know, but it does a very, very convincing job of being UHD. Seven.

George Whittam

Well, it certainly looks the same. Yeah,

Toby Ricketts

it's plastic instead of metal. That's basically the only difference from the comparison video when I finish it.

George Whittam

But well, I guess it's the whole point of that is to is to say that. Yes, exactly. You said the technology behind the capsule that's inside the electronics inside. That is that was all designed 4050 years ago, or 30 to 4050 years ago, right? So all we're doing over and over is iterating and repeating and knocking off the same mics over and over and over and of course that's gonna get cheaper. Right? It's only companies that are thinking outside the box and doing unique things like this mic here. That where the cost of the mic to me feels truly justified and now so if you buy noise annuity seven, you buy it because of like, like exactly what you said, you've had a good year things have been going well, you just want to get the real thing you want to real you at seven, you know. And that's that's a really good reason to buy one

Toby Ricketts

if you're working with engineers in another country and there's a really high Jetson national TV CEO something if you tell the engineer I've got like got to 87 they just know what they're dealing with straightaway that the research yet see what coloration it has. It's just everyone has one that's like been the industry standard for such long and same with the 416, which I think is as good. Yeah, like different. But you know, but yes, I recommend it thoroughly.

George Whittam

Absolutely. Yeah. So that's so microphones are in before we were doing a lot on Zoom. You could just basically straight up lie. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people wouldn't have the first clue what microphone you're actually using. Unless that mic is way, way off base. Yeah. So So technology is changing. But really the microphone that most people are using, including that UD seven, including this audio technica here is a 50 plus year old design. And the technology has an has really not changed much. And you know, people are like, I can't tell people all the time, you can hold your iPhone. And if you hold it still get an amazing photo and let the software do everything else. computational photography, right. There is a precious little on the audio side of things, which I would what I would call computational audio. Nobody's doing it. Not really. There is stuff out there. But it's all very kind of on the fringes. But it's not taken seriously. And it still requires proper mic placement. at the right distance. There's no focus ring. You can adjust the zoom on the mic. Yeah, you can adjust the aperture. It's just an open mic technique.

Toby Ricketts

You know that there are reverb removal tools and all that kind of stuff. But it's very you can hear it. Like it. Yeah, you know, it screams when you use it. It does remove the reverb but at what cost like it takes off all your high notes. It might sound all muddy and stuff. And it's Yeah, it does. I think that it hasn't come like that far. With the computational. Yeah, like you say,

George Whittam

I think it's going to, I think it's starting to I think there's some companies that are really into supporting streamers to do live streaming of games. Yeah, true. They're, they're willing to spend quite a lot of money on gear. And they are really the bar is raised dramatically in terms of quality of what's expected from them now. So they're seeing more, there is some new things coming down the pipeline, where the mics are becoming smarter, and have more capabilities. But on all in all, you're spending 1000 plus dollars for an old fashioned piece of technology. Yeah, that's just all there is to it. It doesn't that doesn't do all that much different from the mic from 50 years ago.

Toby Ricketts

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, we talked about mics and stuff. So what the mic goes into, like interfaces is also another area where the cost has just gone down hugely in the last five to 10 years, like, you know, it used to cost a lot, you need to have a sound card that you know, I remember my sound blades that 5.1 That, you know, had to go straight to the motherboard, and had optical connections and all this amazing stuff. And now it's just like, I mean, you can get something for like 100 bucks. That does a very good job even for professional voice jobs. Yeah, you know,

George Whittam

I have I have a library of them right here. Yeah. This is every Digidesign Mbox ever made right here. That's the first one. This is the second one that says our phone patches in the middle. There's another one up here you can't see. Yeah, it's a Mbox is where the thing that everybody was buying, because they were buying Pro Tools and you're buying an inbox. And now, but this preamps were not good at all. They didn't sound that great. And you really needed external preamps and everything. Now the preamps built into the user interfaces, or the USB interfaces are in a similar way with the microphones. It's a technology that's matured, and now it's been shrunk into a chip. So that chip can be used over and over in many different designs. And it is a lot of mic a lot of interfaces have the same, essentially the same guts inside at the same price point. But yes, you can now plug and I know people that have done this u 87. into like a FocusRite Scarlett and get a very good sounding recording. And I would never I would never spec that in any studio. But somebody I knew was doing an animation gig and they literally shipped in this stuff. And he opened up the crate and inside was a scarlet and the u 87. And that's what they sent him to record with. And I was like, huh, yeah, so yeah, it has gotten to that point where the interfaces have the price point for quality audio, as Yeah, it's it's definitely solidly somewhere between the 100 to $200 price point. Yeah, and anything more than that is Yeah, anything more than that is like more bells and whistles

Toby Ricketts

is quite important. If you've got like a, you know, monitors and four channels maybe,

George Whittam

yeah, more ins and outs for more signal routing this way in that way. But if all you plug in is a pair of headphones and a mic, you almost anything suitable at that point, you don't need a lot. But I do have a couple of favorites that have certain features that I like, for their own reasons. But you know, you don't need you don't need to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars. But I can tell you why you would if you want to know.

Toby Ricketts

Well, actually, I mean, that's that's an interesting book because like, like I said, the standard anywho I my one of my interfaces died. And I usually have to on my desk so that I can when I'm doing zoom sessions or mentoring, and I want to show someone an example I can play back audio, like and have it come through the calling be recorded as well like, right, right, that daisy chaining thing. And it was a complete or complete, you know, Native Instruments, they do a complete six challenge phase. And I've had it for like 13 years, and it's been amazing. And suddenly I started getting like Blue Screen of Death errors from it. So obviously something inside is just not not not worked. And I can't have it. Yeah, it's not dependable, complete doors with a k, right? That's okay. And then we released it reasonably, it looks quite snazzy now. But like, I've also got this Arturia audio fuse, which is kind of an unusual, but really feature packed interface. Like it was about 900 bucks, like a few years ago, and I got the first generation which needed a motherboard replacement, which was slightly concerning at some point, but they've obviously hammered out the bugs now.

George Whittam

Bleeding Edge tech that came sometimes. Yeah, exactly,

Toby Ricketts

exactly. Because they were really pushing the envelope and it runs really hot. But like I've been in the market for like an interface that costs between like 500 and like $1,200 that that gives like the gear has amazing digital audio converters, just like you know, top of the line and has like fairly decent IO not like 16 channels, but like four channels. And like I've kind of like this not that there's some stuff in there but a lot of it has issues like I've been looking at the the apogee stuff because I was like to Apogee stuff but their Windows drivers a horrific apparently, like, you know, you go into Sweetwater and read reviews, which just kind of gives you a semi accurate summary of what's going wrong with people's gear.

George Whittam

I'll say earlier Apogee makes beautiful hardware, the D converters preamps. Everything's top flight, but drivers firmware and software. Yeah. Still needs a lot of work. Even on the Mac side. I'm a Mac guy, and they've always been mostly a Mac company. Yeah, there's issues on the Mac side. So yeah, I it makes me hesitate to recommend stuff because it just the flakiness of it. People have weird problems, even with brand new units. And I'm like, Yeah, I don't want purist quality at the, at the sacrifice of reliability or, you know, just easy to use and operate. I I'm not a big fan of interfaces, I have one single big knob on the top that does four 612 different functions. Yeah, either. That's that. If you're an engineer, you might grok that and start to learn it and understand it. If you're an actor, doing sessions live directed, that kind of mode of operation could really confound you and become confusing. And then you can do mess things up in the middle of a session. So yeah, I like simple, much simpler interfaces than that. But yeah, I've a few different ideas.

Toby Ricketts

Yeah. Nice. Um, what I've kind of settled on I wanted your advice on it was the the SSL two plus, which kind of sits at the bottom of that spectrum? Because yeah, that's that's way below the price point. Yeah. But if the sound quality is good from it, I love how it's got just like old school knobs and stuff. And drivers sound pretty good for people. Because drivers, I feel like drivers are almost more important than the hardware quality these days. Because if you've got something that has that sounds great, like you say, but that gives you like random spikes of zero dB audio, which apparently the FPGA is due on Windows drivers, then it's like, it's just you can't you can't handle that and through through decent gear. So yeah, what have you heard about the SSL two plus? Anything? Good.

George Whittam

I have one on my, on the shelf over here right out of frame. Yeah, these are two plus most people I just tell her I just mostly will I'd recommend the SSL to the plus has additional outputs, another headphone output. Yeah. So it's got a few extras for people that do more than one thing at a time. Like they have they have. They have maybe they have a booth and they have an actor or if they want more in and out that's the two plus Yeah, but it's proven to be very reliable. I don't know of a unit that has failed any of my clients yet. And I've recommended it for at least six months to a year now whenever it came out. It's passed the fidelity tests because my my buddy Andrew Peters and Melbourne who I do my podcast. Yes, he mentioned that. That That fact he's been using SSL two as his road kit so he just brings an SSL to as we love to call it a full One six. And he takes it along and he can pick up stuff on the road record remotely. And and that stuff can very easily be edited into his stuff that he recorded at home. On a very different chain actually this microphone and the OSI one, eight and then he's got a I think he's got a Neve preamp and some other really high end gear can RME interface and yeah, really, really high end stuff and he's able to that stuff seven degree cut right in. So that's all I really that's what I like about the SSL two as its it has that one knob one function. Yeah, old school design, which I think an actor really can eat more easily understand and use, especially in the heat of a live session. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, can you knock this game down a little bit? Sure. Grab the knob, turn it down. Or, or it could be? Yes. Just Secondly, click the preamp button. Oh, it's that's channel two. Click preamp again. Oh, now it's on channel one. Oh, now I can turn the knob. Like, that's just a fiddly way of getting things done. And anybody knows what, in cameras two? pro cameras aren't pro cameras necessarily. Because the picture quality is amazing. Because there's cheap cameras with amazing picture quality. It's the function of it's like every function has a switch or a knob. Yeah, you can get a camera, the whole side, it's got covered in switches and knobs because everything can be accessed on the fly immediately. Totally. And that's I liked that. I would love it if that idea was to be expanded. I know SSL has some bigger siblings to the SSL two. They have the big six, right? Yeah. And six. Yeah, so they have the six and the big six. And if you if you want to take that idea to the next level of SSL quality, one knob per feature and a USB interface, that's the next stage. It's a lot more expensive, right? But I have installed one and it's it's a fantastic piece of kit. So no

Toby Ricketts

one no one switch I was looking at the Sound Devices one you know sound devices do all those them on set recording. And they're famous for like military grade hardware and great converters and stuff. Yeah, I had one for a while Oh, nice. And but they their box like has DIP switches to access some of their function like phantom power and low cut roll off. And I'm like, I can't get out of a toothpick. Every time I want to unplug my mic. And like that kind of stuff. Like it's not a very good design feature, in my opinion. Yeah,

George Whittam

that that is for field use, where you have absolutely no chance of accidentally changing the state of those switches. That's true. And that's what that was designed for. Since they do have a newer generation of stuff called mix pre series, the mix pre three and the six and, and that one feels more like a digital interface. It's got a menu screen. And it's got everything's done through menus and settings on screen. So that kind of like you have evolved the design. And it's actually even more affordable to I've actually played around with one quite a bit. But yeah, that dip switch I did, I haven't. And that's another company. I don't know if you get these in your neck of the woods, your side of the planet. But there's a company called Centrowitz. It's spelled with a C. And they make some really interesting products because they kind of, they sort of take the same design AI language of sound devices where it's simple one knob per feature, analog interface feel, but really, really high quality sound. And they don't go overboard with bells and whistles in terms of there's no firmware. First of all, you don't have to worry about the firmware updates. That's good. There's no software console, it just plugging in and it does, it does what it's supposed to do. So it's kind of like taking them in the the idea of the SSL two and shrink it way down into a little portable unit that you can carry around with you even plug it into an iPhone because it has a lithium battery internally so it'll power the phantom power and all the amplifiers and you get incredibly good sound quality out of the of the mix. They have the what's it called the mic port Pro, the mixer face, and then I have a newer one called the podcaster. And yeah, they're they're a really good nice one too great for travel use because they're all designed around portability. Yeah, absolutely.

Toby Ricketts

That's fantastic. That's so I mean, like going back to because I know we've probably left a few listeners behind in the sort of beginner sphere with with devices. It I sympathize with people coming into the industry because it seems like it's just, you know, it's so complicated. There's so much to know, where do you sort of start looking for these things and I usually recommend something simple like the Focusrite Scarlett series because it's like so simple and I haven't really heard any complaints about that stuff. But you know, but but audio quality is kind of one of the things like with a cheap interface, what are people sacrificing most? Like by like, like when you gain an up there's a little bit of hiss maybe

George Whittam

At really cheap and other things, you're not going to get as much gain. So like if you most of us are using sensitive condenser mics, so it's not that big of a problem. But if you are recording a dynamic mic, and you need a lot more gain, usually run out a game, you just don't get enough. And then when the Gain knob is at the very top of the travel, the the hiss and the noise goes up, yeah, sometimes dramatically on some of them. So it's just not usable gain, you just you just add noise, right. So that's one thing that happens on some of the lower end ones. Other things that you miss out on is yes, you don't get as flexible, like routing for a headphone monitoring. Like I love an interface that has a dedicated knob that controls your headphone monitor, which means blending between the microphone signal and what comes out of the computer. Yeah, I'm doing interviews and zooms, and source connect sessions where you want to be able to again, all the listeners will see the theme here, quick on the fly easy to access, you have one knob that you can turn, and quickly turn them down and turn you up or turn you down them up. One knob does that job very, very quickly. And I love gear that incorporates that into the design. So that's what you may not, you're not gonna get that on the scarlet two, I two, but you'll get it on the scarlet two is four. Right? So you gotta go up one step to get it but you can get it. The SSL two has it like I love that. Steinberg, you are 22 it has that. So there are products in the sub $200 range that do a does have that feature. It's just, that's one of those little things, that's a usability thing that really makes a big difference to me. So sound quality may suffer at the low low low end gain, you're not going to get as much headphone monitor control is really lacking. And that's those are the main things and then when you get into another category, such as the Universal Audio polo, yeah, you literally it's like going into this outerspace whole different level of complexity and functionality. It is because

Toby Ricketts

I I wanted to love the Apollo so much and I bought one and I lasted like two days with it. And I just sold it in frustration because like a they didn't support Adobe Audition, which I thought what like that's like the most

George Whittam

that they do not officially support actually will work but they don't officially support and

Toby Ricketts

when those drivers are pretty Ropey and then I kind of thought well, but you're paying all this money, you're paying like, you know, 1400 US dollars for all of this horsepower, which most engineers don't want you to do. They don't want you to like,

George Whittam

Listen, this is one of the if you're wondering what we're talking about, yeah. And this was pulled out of a studio pulled out another studio. Yeah,

Toby Ricketts

so and it works for some people, but it really doesn't work for others I've found and like all the onboard processing power, I find this like kind of over the top like it's like you don't generally like you can do that once it's in your door. Unless you're doing like some kind of amazing wizardry over source connect, and you need to do it like to mask something. But usually studios just like just get a good mic a good interface and just send us the raw audio.

George Whittam

Yeah, let's notice if it is for masking things. Like there's a plug in called C suite, which is an incredibly good quality noise reduction dynamic real time noise reduction plug in. Yeah, that you know, for some people, that's the worth the cost of the unit just for that plugin. Yeah, depending on their situation. But yeah, on the whole, if you're not live streaming, not live recording. And if you're not a recording studio recording artists that want to hear themselves in their headphones, with reverb and compressors, and all this stuff. That's what that was designed for. For us in voiceover. Most of it is completely unnecessary and will be lost on you. Yeah. So it's it's I don't I now I'm at the same time while I'm kind of slamming it. I'm teaching a course on how to use it next week, right? Yeah, we've got 25 people signed up so far. So there's a lot of people with them. And I've set up countless units. Yeah, so despite all that, yeah, people enough people are like, I'm telling you, it's amazing. Yeah, you gotta get it, you gotta get it. It's not for everybody, the complexity of it the added cost of the plugins and everything else starts to get out of control. In the states the prices are a little more easy to swallow down where you are, certainly prices are marked up a lot. exchange rate isn't friendly. It's over it's over the top for almost any voiceover user

Toby Ricketts

Yeah, yeah, I came to the same conclusion just can you like use a number of different doors, digital audio workstations of course like audition Pro Tools twisted wave or density and Reaper do you get into the sort of the lower end ones as well?

George Whittam

Well, yeah, I guess the the the poster child for being low end which would probably be audacity, right because it's free. So it's the entry point for many, many people is Audacity. Now, and I taught it actually a beginner and expert X beginner advanced two part webinar this year on it. So I had to really kind of get myself more polished up and a little more familiar with it to see what was new. And it's gotten a lot better. You know, it's, it's fixed a few of the really quirky, annoying things and people never liked about it. And it's getting better. But the thing is, if it misbehaves on you, all you have are basically forums and places that you can post and complain. But there is no support. There is no support desk, there is no developer to talk to. It's just, if you have trouble, you're you're you're kind of you're kind of Sol, you're kind of you're screwed, right? Yeah.

Toby Ricketts

Feels the next step. Being a pro with Adobe Audition, I love Adobe Audition. And I'm like, you know, consider myself an expert in it. But if you have a problem with something that's actually designed wrong in it, there's very little recourse as well with Adobe, it's get through their front door. Oh, yeah. And complaints.

George Whittam

And I became very, I became quite chummy with one of their top people in their department. He actually was guest he guested on my Adobe Audition webinar last year.

Toby Ricketts

All right. All right. Let's

George Whittam

forget it was yeah, he's no longer here. He left the company. Alright, so he's not there anymore. So I thought that was interesting, huh? He's been there for many, many years during Gleaves during the bleeder. And he's been there years. And then, oh, no, I'm not there anymore. So that that kind of makes me scratch my head. I do like Adobe Audition as well. I really do like it. But I, I don't quite like what Adobe is doing that much. Yeah. So like, there's there's kind of these other software's that slip in and out of those features wise. So like, Audacity is multitrack. Sort of, but it's still kind of destructive. And then you've got a das audition has two modes, WAV editing mode, and then multitrack mode. So it's got like, two personalities, which is kind of cool. Yeah. Then then there's like, twisted wave, which is my favorite, like, down in really down in simple, very easy to learn. Very easy to master. Editor recorder program. One track. Destructive, no, no, no. And, you know, the you don't have basically, the ability to bring in other clips that you've recorded before. And it's, it's, it's just an editor recorder. But, man, is it efficient? I call it the scalpel. Where a Pro Tools is the Swiss Army knife, right. So it's, it's, so I like that one a lot. And I've taught that to a lot of voiceover actors over the lesson for 13 years. Now, Reaper is really unique, because it has the complexity, complexity to do, almost everything Pro Tools can do. And then things that can't do. Because it's almost infinitely modifiable. And I know people that are really into it, like love customizing Reaper scripting, and doing all kinds of stuff and really tuning it to their needs to their will. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I have no complaint, but I'm not going to tell a voice actor to buy a box of Legos and make a dog. Yeah, right. That's just not my way of doing things. Like yes, if you're an IT geek, and you love tech, and that's the you have a propeller on your head. And if that's what Reapers for you, man, and it's really a good deal, too. It's very affordable. You buy at once and you owner for life, it has a lot of pros. But cons are the feet the the menus are endless. The preferences every it is it is a deep one it is it just has way too many options. So that's for the reason I will not like say Reaper is the one. Yeah, the thing is, if you're a Reaper expert, you're going to tell everybody, Reaper is the one right? Yeah. And another one of those is Studio One, right? Yeah, it's it's made by PreSonus. And it's probably more related to I guess it's more like Pro Tools or logic than it is the other ones because it's multitrack. And it's great if you're a master at that, but again, same deal. You have to go through this masterclass. To make it do the basic thing you needed to do. Twisted wave you don't you turn it on, set the input, hit record, edit, save wave done, it's like boom done.

Toby Ricketts

You have a single track over the five steps that sound like the brilliant thing and you have to be on me Of course for that one nothing to do with a PC now. Yeah,

George Whittam

the Windows version is actually in development. So just think that will finally hit the Windows users. So but yeah, that's those are my favorites that I probably spend the most time Yeah, working in and just teaching training, trading processing settings and stuff for Yeah,

Toby Ricketts

and I always say like, Pro Tools is a bit like using a tour bus to collect garbage like it's like it's so overpowered as like, I mean, there's so many it's very it was basically like designed to replace multitrack rugged, like magnetic recorders in studios. So it's like it's really tuned for music and I todos using it for music. It's perfect but for voiceover, especially when they couldn't do real time bouncing, now people Yeah, audiobooks. And they were like, now I've got to bounce it out, it's going to take several hours. And it's like, what?

George Whittam

How can I know I couldn't, I couldn't believe how many audiobook producers were having the actors using Pro Tools back in those days. Yeah, they were doing it because they wanted to do punch and roll. And that has now become so pervasive, because of the demand of it, of having it for audition for audiobooks, that there's almost not a single program that doesn't have punch and roll anymore, audition, added it natively, twisted wave added it. Audacity has it, pretty much everything has punch and roll now. So that's really not a reason to get Pro Tools anymore, either. The reason get Pro Tools is because you need to learn Pro Tools, because you're an engineer and mixer. You mix for film, you mix for TV, or it's a standard, then you want to be able to transfer projects between studios. And that's what ProTools is

Toby Ricketts

for. Yeah, and it's interesting. It's one of the one of its strengths and weaknesses at the same time is that it's completely inflexible, you can't change hotkeys, you can't change any of the settings and mold it to how you'd like to work. But in the same way you can go into if you know, Pro Tools, you can go to any student world and use it straightaway. Yes. So it's kind of

George Whittam

crippled by their own success. They're crippled by their own standardization right there. That is that is the thing about Pro Tools. And you know, again, Reaper is the is the is the dark cloud over ProTools that saying, We can do all that for a lot less money, and you can completely modify every single feature, and give everything a custom keyboard shortcut. And and and, and, and, and and it's 3030 megabytes. And it's $100. You know, it's like, it's kind of mind blowing, and when you compare the two, but yeah, they're different horses for different courses. Oh, no,

Toby Ricketts

absolutely. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And finally, plugins, because that's been a huge area recently and outboard gear. I mean, outboards, kind of, I got rid of most of my outboard a long time ago. Now. It's just why like it needs servicing. And most people Yeah, the raw audio recorded and then you can do all your stuff in the box or your compression and stuff.

George Whittam

I'll name one piece of outboard gear just because I owned it. And I thought it was amazing for what it was, was the there was a company called FMR that made the R and C, R and C stands for really nice compressor. And it was it was a half third rack size was pretty small. It looked like an Mbox a little Mbox mini that's how big it was. And amazing circuit design and it had the super nice mode. And I used it when I was a set wax Bakshi way back when I was a production mixer. I had it between my mixer and my dat recorder. That's how long long ago I was doing this, right. And when you put on super nice, it was Ultra transparent. It had no artifacts, no pumping, amazing compression really cleaned and transparent. And that's what I want in a compressor. But again, yes, we it's all in the box. Now. It's all done digitally. We all can do it in post. So outboard gear inserts and things like this are pretty much in, in my world. They're pretty much dead. I don't recommend really any outboard gear at this stage of the game for voiceover actors, you know until they're buying unity sevens are like, well, I want to get the Avalon well go ahead and get the Avalon because you can. But does it make it sound different? Or better in really any appreciable way? No? Yeah.

Toby Ricketts

And if you do that great taken and the client says, Oh, can you send us an uncompressed version? You're like, Well, no. Oh, you printed the compression? Oh, yeah. Like yeah, yeah. And it's not like it's, and it's always that awkward moment where you've done something that's destructive, or you've you've compressed it on the way in and they just want to take it off and you just can't undo compression. It's just one of those. Yeah, yes. But there's some really exciting stuff in the world of plugins like like the RX series from isotope keeps coming out and keeps being kind of the same but a little bit different. Yeah, I'm surprised they haven't done anything in the area of breath removal for voiceover artists because like there's something like this deep breath and there's there's the Erickson one but it's still misses, like breaths all the time and then takes out like S's and syllables and I'm waiting for them listen up isotope and waves to like make an AI version which learns your breaths. And like an over time, you can say yes or no, that was a breath or wasn't a breath and it learns and get better at doing your breaths. But at the moment, it's a very kind of like old school. That looks like a breath of I'll get rid of it thing.

George Whittam

It's true. I gotta tell you, when it comes to that AI, kind of mindset waves came out with clarity VX Yeah, I try and this is not for depressing, but no in terms of something that learns your voice that literally is a plugin that learns your voice using a neural network. And it gets better over time and as as it gets better or it can better separate your voice from the the background noise or the background, anything. So you can separate your voice out from construction noise, aircraft, anything and just separate the voice. And the pro version lets you exactly control the blend between the two. And there's a lot more unit you can do in today's events and everything. Yeah, I have the cheap one just called VX. Yeah, and I don't have a need for it almost ever, but I do demo it and test it for people and show them what it does. And that one's pretty remarkable. So that neural network technology, I can't they gotta be thinking about man, what are the things we can do? Because waves does have a breath? Debriefing plugin. Yeah. So they take that and apply it to depressing. Yeah, that's going to be amazing, because I tell everybody the same thing. Go ahead, try it demo the deep breaths or eventually you're going to say it's not worth it. Because you can't trust that it's going to do what you want it to do, which means you have to check the work, which means you might as well have just done it yourself in the first place. That's not so much. I went

Toby Ricketts

on the exact journey for spent it spent a year like apologizing to clients that I got rid of all these Ss throughout the thing. And then just it was a sight to spend the time. Yeah,

George Whittam

I know, deep clicking has matured quite a bit that RX mouth cyclic plugin. Amazing is very good. So good. And so that's gotten a lot better more quickly. So obviously, the breath thing well done well is is something that still needs more work. And I'm sure that they know it needs to be better. And I'm sure they're working on it. So I think it's just a matter of time to see what comes next.

Toby Ricketts

Yeah, the demo of clarity on their website that with that they used it on Dune. And the really noisy set was amazing. But that really sold me when I got it, but then I found it actually. And I need to revisit this. But like I found it actually got worse over time until it wasn't actually doing anything. And it was leaving no Wow. So I need to there was obviously some training, input failure or something, because I was also using it like you can use it real time because you can put in Adobe Audition, you can go into the multitrack, you can have a stack with VST plugins and then have source connectors like the fourth thing on your stack. So it says all the processed audio, throw it straight through it. And I was like that was kind of my secret weapon for this like noise problem which has been, which has come through on this interview. And, but then I just decided I'm just going to treat the rain renditions there because it was always nice to treat at source but but it just didn't seem so it

George Whittam

didn't work on the long term. It worked didn't it didn't work on the short term, but it

Toby Ricketts

loved it for a week. And then after two weeks, I reassessed and I was like them. Ns one is doing a much more transparent job. It's getting rid of more noise, leaving more of my clarity in there. So I went back to NS one and I have a bag. So

George Whittam

now my favorite noise reduction tool is not very well known at all. It's called Bird Tom D noiser. And how do you spell company called Bird Tom, B er T om did the noise or plug in all of his plugins or share or not share where their honor were right, I let it literally just pay what you want what you think. And the Denizer tool is a little more complicated than most because it's not just a single slider, it actually has six controls. But if you have any patience to learn and experiment with it, it doesn't take long. And it's really really it's very, very low latency. You can monitor it real time. And it's very transparent. It doesn't it doesn't muddle up the audio really badly. So that one I've been extremely happy with it. I love that one I put that into chains when I put that into chains for people when just a simple download expander noise reduction tool type thing doesn't quite cut the mustard doesn't kill off all the weirdness the bird Tom does it extremely well. So that one I'm really happy with and it's not it's not expensive. You don't have to have the waves plugin manager or the isotope and you know, you don't have to get into this whole thing. You just download install run and go and it's that's great. So I love that one a lot. But Tom

Toby Ricketts

audio have to look that up. Yeah,

George Whittam

I heard some audio.

Toby Ricketts

So I mean, we talked about some exciting stuff coming up hopefully in the area of AI and and how we can get computational audio happening. Is there anything else that you're excited about sort of coming up in the in the voiceover and home studio area?

George Whittam

Well, I don't know. Some of it is kind of maybe not exciting, but more of kind of scary. Because you mentioned ai, ai voice Yeah, AI voice is getting as you can probably predict much better all the time. And the systems that can emulate what they do they not they no longer just take a voice and then map it over syllables. Now they take a voice and map in the breaths, the room tone, the mouth noise, everything that makes it sound human is now being mapped into the system. So they're becoming more and more and more and more convincing. So it is a little concerning. I mean, obviously, and I'm getting the feeling that it voice actors should probably seek out a way to license their own voice and control the likeness of their voice. Yeah, right. Because a

Toby Ricketts

lot of trust isn't it that you put in someone that once it digitized your voice, as like, you know, standing found out and then her famous case recently with Tik Tok and, and the fact that they can now take I mean, if they take two voice recordings, if they take two voice imprints, which they've licensed, and then they combine them into one voice, it's a new voice. So like, suddenly, you lose control of like, of your kind of like, it is a scary time. But I still feel like there are areas that are going to take a lot longer for it to like in like character acting games, stuff like that, but elearning audiobooks as well, as

George Whittam

I tell everybody the same thing. When you watch lower budget, television, movies, commercials, things, the music is almost always samples, it's synthesizers, it's performed by a single person in their studio. And the better productions with bigger budgets and production values that, you know, require it are not doing that they're recording real musicians in a real studio. Even though we've had the ability to sample and emulate real instruments for a long time now, we're still recording real orchestras. We're still recording real instruments by humans. And that's just simply not going to go away. And the same, I think the same holds true for voiceover. So yes, there's always going to be those that just for them, the bottom line is the bottom line. This is the budget before they would not have used voiceover because they couldn't afford it. Now they can afford AI. So they're going to use it. And unfortunately, what's going to happen is more and more companies that we're paying for voice actors will start using it to save money. That's the scary part. But it's just it's going to happen. So yeah, economics drives it. And, you know, I sat in on a on a on a webinar produced by one of these AI companies, I really wanted to hear what they had to say. But more importantly, what was interesting was reading the chat. And I actually posted in there, so what do you guys use this for? You in the chat? And and then why do you like it. And you know, one of them said, I got so tired of getting inconsistent audio from voiceover actors that I couldn't always use, it was just, I couldn't count on the quality being where it needed to be. So let that be a lesson to everybody out there. One of the things that's going to hasten people wanting to not work with real voiceover actors is voice actors sending in inconsistent, not very good quality audio, what am I used to deliver, and taking it a lot and taking a long time to deliver it, it has to be done quickly, efficiently and consistently. For the no one to keep hiring because that's that's what the pain point is. Yeah. Is the slowness, the difficulty for them, and the consistent lack of consistent quality? So that's for voice actors that are going to continue working and making money in this business, or that's the ones that are going to survive are the ones that are really good at doing all those things. Yeah. Fantastic. And then in the creative side, like you said, Yeah, animation. Yeah, things that with a lot of expression, human expression. And you know, my friends that are in voiceover, like, you're never going to replace sarcasm and all these things like, well, not in a dynamic way, you could have a sarcastic voice model, but you couldn't very easily direct the voice. And the thing is, at the end of the day, it'll take more time and more expertise to direct AI voice to get the thing that they want. They're gonna realize, Well, Jesus, if I used a human that would have to save me a hell of a lot of times, you know. So there's always going to be a place for real for real human voice speech, because somebody has to direct it, program it and get that sound. And it's not going to be easy. It's still not that easy for synthesizers to get convincing sound without a good programmer, it takes some of the nurses are doing so don't worry, everybody, don't freak out yet, not just, you know, keep doing what you're doing. And stay Pro and keep your quality bar up. Yeah, you know, what I think this business will be will be around for a really long time.

Toby Ricketts

Fantastic. Well, on that note of hope for the future, we did want to also note, your podcast, The Pro Audio suite, no, of course sound voice via OBS as well, which is on the OBS, the OBS, and I still have yet to listen to the simulcast version of V obs and the Pro Audio suite which I'm looking forward to Oh, yeah,

George Whittam

that was, uh, that way we just we literally had a collision of schedules, and rather than just making a small change, or little, let's just do this thing at the same time. And they and we did and it was it was a blast. Yeah, you'll see that actually, we have an audio version. The Pro Audio suite posted it as a podcast. And then V OBS, of course has it as a video cast. And you can see that at VO bs.tv as well on the web.

Toby Ricketts

Oh, cool. Yeah. I've learned so much from the Pro Audio suite. It's really fantastic to have, you know, four people bunch people together, just experts in their field, just you know, shooting the shit and talking about stuff. So it's, it's really it's really good listening every week.

George Whittam

We have a lot of fun. We have a lot of fun and occasionally we teach you something. Yeah. Lots of

Toby Ricketts

lots of chuckling. Yes. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for for your time today. It's been an absolute blast going over all this stuff. And yes, all the best.

George Whittam

Cheers. Thanks, Toby. Appreciate it. Thanks, everybody. Gravy for the brain and appreciate it very much.

VOLIFE Global Voiceover Blog

VO Life Interview with George (The Tech) Whittam