Interview with Rebekah Wilson, CEO of Source Elements
/Source Elements is at the forefront of routing audio from wherever it is to wherever in the world it needs to be.
The majority of the voiceover industry are using Source Connect to let their voice be heard in studios thousands of kilometer's away, as if they were in the next room.
Rebekah Wilson is a kiwi, a musician, a programmer, and an entrepreneur... And CEO of Source Elements. In this interview we chat about the story of Source Elements, where it came from, why source connect has been such a success, what we can expect from the eagerly anticipated version 4, and we also delve into the latest release, Source Nexus and what it can do in the studio. Find out more at www.source-elements.com
Toby Ricketts
Welcome to vo live brought to you by gravy for brain Oceania. My name is Toby Ricketts. And this is the podcast and discussion where we get people on who are movers and shakers in the audio and voiceover world and have a little chat about what's going on. And it's going to seem like this is a podcast about Kiwis doing amazing things in sound overseas, because the last few people we hit on were Kiwis as well. But I'd like to welcome to the podcast, Rebecca Wilson from source elements, the CEO, who was also a kiwi, welcome.
Rebekah Wilson
Tobt, thank you so much for having me on today. And thanks to gravy for the brain for making this happen. We love working with you guys.
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely. Now it's a fantastic partnership. So and there's a lot going on, at Source elements, which I thought was was a good time to sort of have a chat. I remember talking to you in March at the one voice conference in London, and and had a good chat about the future of source Connect, which is what you know what to VoiceOver is used so much to connect. But there's also a lot of stuff other stuff going on. So we're gonna we're gonna have a deep delve into some of that stuff and the history. But firstly, where are you now the sun is coming up for you. It's just gone down for me. So we're sharing the sun, as we all do, but what's your current location?
Rebekah Wilson
Currently in Madrid, new traveling around Europe, slowly. And I've been very fortunate to learn Spanish in the last years, and it's been a great opportunity to get involved with the Spanish speaking community. And it's just an honor and I'm loving it so much.
Toby Ricketts
Wow, that's fantastic. Yeah, lovely place to be in Europe. I imagine it's probably getting a bit colder now. But it's pretty welcome in Spain, I imagine. Yeah, but uh,
Rebekah Wilson
here in Madrid, it's nice because yeah, it is cold and everyone loves it. And you could get a proper Christmas feeling.
Toby Ricketts
If that's true, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. I do miss the the white Christmases having I come from England originally. So I am kind of grew up with them. But so you were you're from New Zealand originally? How long? Have you been overseas? Yes.
Rebekah Wilson
I left for Australia, like most most young Kiwis in my early 20s After university, and suddenly I moved to Australia specifically because I was like, well, I need a change. Where do I go? Coffee was really important. Where we are about coffee. So the only option was to go to Melbourne where I knew a friend who made really good coffee. So I moved to Melbourne. I loved it. Melbourne is a great city. Yeah. Yeah. And I was able to move around easily from the beginning because I had started doing programming for the internet in the mid 90s, when everything was just starting. So it was a very privileged time for me. Where, before I'd learned that computers existed, I was studying music. So I have the degree in music composition, orchestral music, and those who have classical composition. skills, which I love having. And then, yeah, when I was at university in the later years, I discovered that computers were doing these amazing things with sound. And I was like, Okay, go away orchestras for a while. And so I threw myself into electronic music. And realized also quickly that if I wanted to sound unique, as an electronic musician, I need to write my own software. So that's sort
Toby Ricketts
of how I got into it. So what year was that roughly?
Rebekah Wilson
Like 9596? That's really
Toby Ricketts
like the birth of when, when electronic music EDM was I guess it's now called as was really kicking off. Yeah, I remember. Amiga five hundreds, and I'm playing samples. And sampling was a really big thing. And like it was it was an amazing time to be into music and computers, because like they were, it was, you know, they were they were really intertwining and discovering what things could do. And I almost feel like, especially for a brain like yours and definitely for mine. I loved the problem solving and the kind of technical stuff you had to overcome to make music back in the days and I always find that oh, yeah, you have to support very stubborn. Yeah, exactly. And I find it disappointing now when like, I use something like Ableton Live and you have all the plugins and you can do anything. And it's kind of like that's more difficult than having a challenge that you have to you know, have constraints on you. I find
Rebekah Wilson
programming some code Toby, find these challenges will come back and it's really exactly
Toby Ricketts
I do wish I'd got into coding because I've never gone down that road I'll use computers, but never actually sort of you not gotten into inside them. But some so I mean, what how did you What was that first spark of getting into sort of code and computers?
Rebekah Wilson
No, like I said it was being Like at the university, and you know, they have an obligatory class back here is a computer and it's just digital music creation, you know, working with partials, working with samplers working with synthesizers.
Toby Ricketts
And so it's part of your head and yeah, my,
Rebekah Wilson
my brain was just like, it's like that first moment that you try, like, I don't know, Milford in Paris, you like, Oh, I like desert now, you know, because you never knew. And, yeah, and then the same thing happened with the Internet. So I remember the first time that I sort of experienced it, and it was just again, like, Oh, my God, like, I am no longer isolated on the small island, where, you know, it takes two years for blockbuster movies to arrive. And, you know, magazines are three months late. And, you know, we grew up like that we grew up very isolated in terms of media in we were very, also very special country for that, you know, we were very united country, and I'm so glad to have come, you know, be from New Zealand. I was to spec recently, after four years, went back to see my mum, and which was amazing. And it's like, okay, so, you know, as always, always the first place in my heart, that thank God for the internet.
Toby Ricketts
Like it really has shrunk the world. I mean, I absolutely could not do what I do now, from where I am. Without the internet, like it has absolutely democratized you know, geographically, it's democratized the world, I would have had to be in LA or, or New York or somewhere with studios and pages and all that kind of stuff. So it is amazing what it's what's comfortable. So I mean, out of it has out of that kind of those two interests, source elements of is the obvious, you know, who else could have done it? You know, it sounds combining, combining audio engineering, and music and computers. So what was the germ of the idea? Like, how did it all come together?
Rebekah Wilson
Oh, that's, that's, that's classic. So I had been living in Europe for a few years, and then decided to make my way back to New Zealand again, I'm very I love change. For me, I have very high entropy level. I don't like being static, though, moved around a lot. And one of the places that I stopped through I struggled through the Midwest, early 2000s. On the way back to New Zealand, USF to pick a side right in somehow I always went through Canada, Mexico, United States instead of Asia. So I don't know Asia, so Well, sadly. But most New Zealand is Australia's will tell you they was picked to
Toby Ricketts
go one way and then come back the other. And you? Oh,
Rebekah Wilson
that's clever. Yeah. And so I was in Chicago. And thanks, the internet, a friend of a friend of a friend had introduced me to somebody who had mixed a CD of mine in the 90s. And we were introduced, and we got on really well as friends. And they were sitting, having a drink at a bar as you do. And on a beautiful summer rooftop in Chicago in August. And he said to me, you know, we were talking this is Robert, co founder, it was
Toby Ricketts
gonna be my first guest, engineer,
Rebekah Wilson
very, very, very talented, very talented person. You know, as much as you know, I work hard, and I love what I do. My co founder is amazing, incredible, and hardworking, and very, very good thinker. Yeah,
Toby Ricketts
especially with audio, I've learned quite a lot from him, just from what he says on the Pro Audio suite podcast, like, learn amazing things about digital audio, and how it all works together and change some of my practice is because of it. So he is, yeah, it's good explaining it too.
Rebekah Wilson
Glad to hear that he's a great resource. And so he was working at a studio in Chicago. cusses very good, beautiful studio and a high rise, gorgeous views. And it was very, very, like eight years kind of Madison Avenue, kind of it was lovely. Really, for me, it was like, wow, this is crazy. And they were spending a lot of money each month on ISDN to make phone calls, you know, to actors to do voice overs, you know, to doing interviews, and so back then it would like a minimum cost of $1 a minute, if you wanted to go to Australia or something you like at least $5 a minute. And then the equipment and then the line higher and then the maintenance. So you know, it's talking about 1000s of dollars a month to do what you and I are doing right now, or just audio, micro sense micro service, right of the cost. And so he turns around and says to me, oh, you're a programmer. So this is you know, do you think we could do this eyestrain thing on the internet, you know, now that we've got like one megabit connection, so I was like, Sure. Stupid. It changed my life. It was you know, I never say no to something. So yeah. And then from that moment, we just threw ourselves into it and went back to New Zealand. And so it was all built It was all built long distance. And I think that was the key to our success, like we were forced from day one to, to make those made the Internet work for us long distance. And so in also Robert and I are very stubborn. And it took us a couple of years, but we got the first version of source connect out as a plugin, tiny little thing, just an audio back and forth. But yeah, changed changed our lives and I know really set the path to revolutionising the sound industry how they do remotes. Absolutely,
Toby Ricketts
yeah, cuz I do remember the days when, you know, one of those rare or two of those rec units was was an ISDN box and they cost a fortune. And then yeah, like you say, the line house and everything. And, and just the the convenience of, of having having something that was easy to connect and didn't have dropouts and stuff is fantastic. So I guess what you were trying to sort of like it was handy in that you were trying to solve the problem that you were already in, which was being long distance. So it's kind of easy to throw things back and forward. And what was in there is sort of designed in to get a little bit nerdy for a while, like, what what kind of pleasure was it was it built on because I know, like, the power source elements success over the years has been that it hasn't been reliant on someone else's proprietary stuff, it's built, like it's, it's kind of has a core, which is all your own, doesn't it. Whereas a lot of the other other software's that sort of came after rely on something else, like other part of the Chrome, you know, system that came out, or you know, that as soon as that happened, there was tons of people around offering this this amazing, you know, voice to voice communication over the internet, but it never had the same sort of quality or industry sort of backing as source connect. So why do you think that? You know, it took off? And, and how was it built so that it would be successful?
Rebekah Wilson
It's really simple. You know, look at the microphones that we're both using. These are not $20 microphones that you buy at Lidl, you know, that are fine when you're talking to your family, they're not the microphones built into the MacBook, these are purpose built professional microphones, that probably cost I hope, much more than source Connect, you know, in more than than, than the MacBook. So they're precision engineered tools for the purpose that we need, right? Very good quality. And, you know, not everyone needs one, my grandmother does not have a microphone microphone. That's usually what they were on the computer. But the source connectors the same, it's just the same as that look behind you, you got the beautiful keyboard, you know, that's not something that everyone has at home to have their kids to learn. So we have, you know, we invest in our tools. Because,
Toby Ricketts
what, what stage did Skype come along at the same time, which did very consumer job a couple years
Rebekah Wilson
later, right? So
Toby Ricketts
you were even before sort of,
Rebekah Wilson
yeah, and it was great, because we use Skype for our support calls because it was great. So Skype was really helpful for us to be able to do remote support. It was our first support message before the browsers came along.
Toby Ricketts
Interesting, because, you know, no one back then was doing sort of like Skype, but recording on their end, like from from what I remember, like it was Skype was very bad quality. Yes, exactly. Yes. Yeah. Hmm. But you know, like, these days, people, like, you know, we'll do a zoom call, and they'll kind of record on their end, but potentially, but I feel like source connect occupies that space where you might as well be in the booth, like, it's because you can get it on, you know, you can get it actually inside of your door, which I think is the key to its success is the fact that you can actually inject the audio right into Pro Tools as if someone's just in the booth. And was that the design from from day one that you could like, day one, right? Yeah. So it was injected right into the track.
Rebekah Wilson
I had to feel part of the engineers workflow. And I think what was also interesting at that time, was that voice actors, you know, if you go back to say, the year 2005, you would get a call for a job or an audition, and you would put on your jacket and walk down to the studio or drive if you're in some other parts of the world. And then you just walk into the booth, someone else would do all the technology for you. And you would do the hard part, which to me is the hard part, the performance. So you wouldn't usually have to touch any technology, know about microphones know about, you know, 48k versus 32 person, all these things. So we, we needed to do a huge amount of training to help voice actors, you know, get up and running. got I don't know how many partials licenses we sold for avid. And so had been a huge, really important partnership with Avid of course and with the other door manufacturers. And so You know, a lot of what we do, we build software. And we do training, we do technical support, the two are absolutely intertwined. We couldn't, we couldn't have a company without our tech support. So
Toby Ricketts
yeah, I used a significant amount of tech support in the relatively recent future, because I had a network change, I'd always just use source connect. And it would always just worked without the port forwarding, because you know, there's this big thing about, you know, with voice actors and the whole, or port forwarding, it's so tricky, and like GABA, and so I went on and I never had to did it, do it, because I was always just running through a simple modem, it just always worked. And then I upgraded my network and suddenly wouldn't work. And so I went on, like a three month journey on trying to reprogram routers, and, and I figured it out in the end, if you want the the nerdy version was because yeah, the Internet was was obviously going into like a router, which did the internet, and that one plugged into another router, which then provided the entire network. So I needed to like double port forward. And so yes, that got tricky.
Rebekah Wilson
So he made it work.
Toby Ricketts
I did exactly, that was the thing, and the tech support was really good. But um, I feel like, you know, there's such a massive variety of network hardware around the world, that it's, it's, you know, it's a attributed to a team that they take on that whole thing of like, you know, knowing every the insides of every router and every every piece of networking equipment. So what's with the like, how it's built source Connect? What's with the kind of like port forwarding, and what where does the audio actually sort of go? It's not? Is it peer to peer? Or does it go via service?
Rebekah Wilson
No, we, you really want to prefer peer to peer. So right now we're zum zum doesn't do peer to peer at all, we're going through their service, they can do processing, they can, you know, change the do analytics on the audio, which we know they do. News came out a couple of months ago. And so you're gonna have like higher latency, although they've got so many servers around the world, it's, it's minimal. In some cases, that might be better, because we can go through, you know, so here's your New Zealand, and here's me in Spain. And if we go peer to peer, it's not going to go direct, it's not possible. The same way as that I can't fly to New Zealand to Richmond, Spain, I have to do a hop, right. So the internet has to do the same thing, or hops in probably makes at least 10 hops to you. And so going through a server, especially with a big server infrastructure, like zoom, who will have servers and almost probably every country, or you can jump onto the New Zealand server, and then they have probably two or three hops, because they control all this server infrastructure in the middle, and it gets to me faster than it would maybe PHP with the speculative you never know, it changes every time you connect. If you look at how the internet is made, it's really important, I think it's really interesting to to understand this. It's a whole set of computers everywhere, that some are going down, some are coming up, some are changing the network, somebody's doing repairs, you know, a boat slice through a cable, this is happening all the time, like every second, every millisecond, the internet is changing. So every time that you send a tiny piece of data, like a little packet, 10 milliseconds or less, it might take a different route every time. And it's it's fascinating that this is why the internet works so well. It's resilient. Because it's built for failure in it's built to renegotiate constantly. It's really fast. Isn't
Toby Ricketts
it amazing that it just works. When you break it down? Like that is just absolutely you try and comprehend it and our brains just explode with complexity. So it is fascinating. So but you but source can it was always built to be peer to peer. All right? Well,
Rebekah Wilson
we prefer peer to peer, because you usually do get the best route. You know, we're not a big company like Doom, we don't have a billion dollar infrastructure to put servers everywhere. And, I mean, if we did, then, gosh, this speculating, you know, we could build a, you know, proof referral network that, use that, but then still, you're between you and the server is actually the weakest point. So between you going out from your router has to go through the city has to go through your building, you'll be sharing that network with other people, you know, it's you know, eight o'clock, you know, everyone's watching Netflix or neon, or whatever, in so this is actually the hardest part is to get through that. And so, if you can get the fastest route between you in what they call the the first hop in Port Forwarding really helps with that.
Toby Ricketts
Right. And that goes on the backbone, then another sort of like big line
Rebekah Wilson
that I want to get to the back bone as fast as possible.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, right. Very interesting.
Rebekah Wilson
There's other things too, if you port forward, you can also give priority so you can say these packets have priority over my 15 year old stands World of Warcraft, Beckett.
Toby Ricketts
And so that's what I wanted to do it was was the was the port forwarding because it is the sort of like thing that people get stressed out about. It's basically just like there's a whole bunch of letter boxes, like in your internet connection, isn't it? And it's just like, you have a dedicated one. That's this is just for source connect. So when that comes in this data box, send it to this computer without any delay. That's basically what it is. Right now,
Rebekah Wilson
pretty much. Well, there we go. So on that topic, maybe just to do a bit of a spoiler with what source Connect for is doing? Oh, yes.
Toby Ricketts
We were gonna talk about that. In a minute. We'll talk about now, actually, because I was gonna save it for a bit later. But it will be since we're on the source connect topic. My one of my questions was gonna be like, what, like, what have you fixed for this the next version of source cake for because we've been waiting for this like such a long time.
Rebekah Wilson
It's so close. It's so close. How
Toby Ricketts
close I need to know. So we're
Rebekah Wilson
going to have working very hard to have a beta in the first couple of months of next year. Cool. And so we'll be starting to reach out to people like yourselves who've been using it a long time. And we know we're gonna give us the most honest feedback. You know, it's really important, like, people who've known source Connect for 1015 years, because, you know, people going back to 28 2005. And, you know, we've we've got a strong relationship with and you'll try it out. And you'll tell us for sure. The sooner you know. Exactly, exactly. So you'll, you know, we'll be rolling that out first to the early early adopters. And then, yeah, working to get a release. Buy in this always the NAB Show in April, Los Angeles, Las Vegas. We try for
Toby Ricketts
verse MC technology. So it's very
Rebekah Wilson
rare that I talk about dates, my team will tell you, it's like Vic and Eva. It's a date. But you know what, I want it to come out in April. So I'm telling all my team, let's make it happen. Betas before the end for people who are Intrepid.
Toby Ricketts
Nice. Yeah,
Rebekah Wilson
so what's fixed? So source connect standard no longer has port forwarding? Can we fixed it, we do not have to go into your router. And do that ever again. Ever, ever, ever again, great. We still have the option and pro, because a lot of studios are behind firewalls, and they need that very specific setup. So you know, if so it's still there, it's still an option to be enabled. But it's no longer it's just like, you know, me tour zoom or teams, you just log in, and it just works. So, so what I was saying before about us not having billions of dollars of infrastructure, we do have some infrastructure, we're just not billion dollar one like zoom. So it's very good. And that will be growing as well. So you know. So that's the main big thing. The second big thing is that you can have up to six people on a call,
Toby Ricketts
which is really great. It's cool, right? Yeah.
Rebekah Wilson
Multi actor performances or ever producer or a client on with you or, you know, multiple microphones is many, many uses for it.
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely, yeah. And if they got all matched latency, if you had multiple microphones, or I suppose it doesn't matter that much, but there will be similar latency. So they're going different.
Rebekah Wilson
Something that we're planning, actually, so Yeah, good question.
Toby Ricketts
Go.
Rebekah Wilson
It's possible now. Yeah,
Toby Ricketts
yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Any other features that make it stand out from the others? I assume that the Mac and PC thing won't be a thing? Because that's been Oh, my
Rebekah Wilson
God. Yes. It's Windows and Mac 100%. compatible, it always will be going forward. That's a promise. Right?
Toby Ricketts
So this has been built from the ground up. Is that right? Like, it's not just an update? It's a new it's a new product?
Rebekah Wilson
No, no, it's a new product. Yeah. Right. But it looks it doesn't look the same. It's a new design. But it feels familiar. The, the settings are the same. It's got the same configuration, you've got your same user list in there, you've got the same you know, Connect button. So it's not going to be an unusual it's not going to be new to be like oh my god, what do I do is very, very familiar. In a new way. It's like, you know, getting your house re decorated.
Toby Ricketts
Exactly. It's good. But there's a video in there as well. Is that a thing? Not yet. Not yet.
Rebekah Wilson
Radio is is now in the source Nexus, right gateway
Toby Ricketts
product. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah, absolutely. And which we'll talk about a little bit later as one of your your other sort of products. Wasn't going to talk about the new source connector. So the pricing models because it's there's always been this. I was lucky enough. I think I came on board in like 2006 with a studio that I owned way back when so back then. And it was like, you pay your money. And that's it. You've got it, like let's it, you know, for a lifetime, is will old licenses still be coded? Because it's just a version upgrade?
Rebekah Wilson
Or is it? The big change happening is that because we've made massive, massive improvements to the software where you don't have to do port forwarding, we've got other features coming videos coming. All of these things have cost, running costs, like daily running costs, like usage costs. So your license, the only change is going to be is that with the support fees that we've been asking people to pay is going to be mandatory so that you can have your service running? Right,
Toby Ricketts
but you get you get support with it. I assume? So if there's any technically, yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Rebekah Wilson
And so much more. We have, you know, things that I can't talk about today, like, so much coming. Brains coming? Yeah,
Toby Ricketts
cool. So a lot of voice talent, that I've met with sort of wood, they didn't want to sort of sign up for something that was kind of long term, or was going to cost them quite a lot. But they would like to do it kind of job by job. And there was like a casual fee for a while. Is that going to continue in? And? Yeah, cool. So it's just like, month by month
Rebekah Wilson
to date, license it No, just a month by month, for sure. You can either, you know, get the monthly subscription when you need it. That does have the setup fee. However, that monthly fee is going to be I think, minimum, us 110 If you just take it like twice a year. But if you're using it three, four times a year, then we offset that, we don't ask you to keep paying that setup fee. So then it can be very affordable. Yeah, absolutely. Because I feel like within four months,
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, cuz it's something that the the voice talent, especially new voice talents, which sort of see all these jobs that say, you've got to have source connect, and they're like, Well, I don't want to, you know, buy it. Because if I don't get the job, then I still have to pay it sort of thing. And so I've been telling people that there is that that sort of short term option, good, which is, which is you know, it is a good option. And I see there's lots of other software providers like positron comes to mind or other sort of voiceover related products, where they they are, they're doing it on like a project per project basis. So you can basically just build it into your voice fee, which I kind of liked the idea of because then it's the clients demanding it, then you just add it to the fee for the client. So that definitely works for voiceover artists. One was not exactly a bug, but I want to talk about source connect now for a little bit. Because yeah, back in the day, I remember when source connect now came out, there was lots of confusion about about like, what, because people like you need source connect to people, like I have source connect, I have source connect now. And and but it was a substantially different product, even though it kind of did the same thing. So could you go over what the wipe source connect now became a thing. And what the differences between that was because I was kind of confused that it came out it was free. I was gonna like, you know, isn't that shooting yourself in the foot kind of thing? What was the rationale behind source connect now
Rebekah Wilson
looking to, you know, to go back to the desert analogy, which I like, you know, it's soy sauce Connect is, you know, very, very purpose built in image so that you can guarantee the recording is going to be perfect every time. So it works on your desktop, when your computer's running this thing called a clock, and your computer's making sure that all the timings are working. And we can work with that clock on the desktop, we can write software on the low level, to make sure that when audio is coming, we record it audio is coming and we record it right. And so you're gonna get a perfect recording. So you do that when you use your your tools, your audacity or your Adobe Audition your partials, you hit the record button, you don't have any doubt that what's going to come out isn't any different from what you recorded. However, with on a second level, you add a tool that's not purpose built for audio such as a browser, it's not made to it doesn't care about these clocks. You can't We can't guarantee to you that what you when you hit the record button, the same thing is going to come out, especially over a long period of time things can get out of sync. Further, the browser is not allowed to talk to your computer too easily. So if you close your browser before you save that recording on, it's gone. We can't save it right. So you could say okay, well why don't we save it to the cloud? Yes, but then we can't guarantee it's gonna get to the cloud. What if, during sending a packet your internet, that one of those, you know what we just talked about, you know, the whole resiliency of the internet, where there's little servers goes down and your packet gets lost? That happens a lot. You don't have that information. You so many things that can go wrong when you're recording files. This is why we have dedicated doffed desktop software. This is why digital audio workstation success must connect is just a nother kind of digital audio workstation. So the browser is amazing for communication. So here it became in 2013, they launched a protocol called Web RTC. They miss is it a form a form of it, these are in form as well. Google meet uses it. All of that source connect now uses that. And all of the other servers services out there that do real time audio or video chat. Gosh, all the video chats out there. Mobile and all they always use a protocol called Web RTC. Web RTC is primary purpose is intelligibility. When I'm talking, do you understand the words that I'm saying? That's what it cares about? It does not care about when I am recording, or you're recording me? Are you going to get the perfect recording? It doesn't care. So yes, it works most of the time, but is that good enough for when you're in a job with an important client?
Toby Ricketts
So it's a compromise?
Rebekah Wilson
It's no, it is an amazing compromise. So what we've done now is if we can segue to source Nexus on this, okay, is to to make it clear that, you know, we love the browser, it's just does incredible things, you know, you can record with it. You can do multitrack recording with it, you can do all these incredible things with it. And so we're really embracing it. And you'll see with source Nexus, a lot of really special things coming out. But what it'll do everything except guaranteed recording. And so source connect now was never really designed to be you know, a replacement for source connect was meant to be like, here's a place that you could join with your clients. And so you can check with them because they don't have source connect, and then you can route your system through. So we've made it clear. Now source Connect is where you are as a talent, you do performance. And then source Nexus on the Gateway is where you'll also be to interact with everyone else while you're doing that work. Okay, you could use it separately. Or if you don't have source Connect, you can use source Nexus, go for it. But just be aware, it's not the professional tool. But we also in one point, or to go back to what we touched on a bit earlier, we really want people to, to work, you know, into to come into the industry. And if using Source Nexus as a way to do that, then we support that as well. Because you know, those people who know, the limitations of Chrome they know so it's fine. Everyone knows. Because
Toby Ricketts
I mean, the biggest thing is still free. Yeah, well, that's, that was always the good. Drago wasn't it was like, wow, it's just free. But the biggest problem, of course, was that you could you know, it was you couldn't do it. But if you had to have a hardware way of getting that sound into your door, because you couldn't just route it digitally, like you could with source next to software or with source connected like that was the biggest I mean, that was that was you know, the biggest thing I came across, because it was useful to save the client. So you don't have source connects, but we can still use this thing. And you can listen to it, but I'll record it on my end or whatever. But it's I'm still curious as to like, did you see sort of web RCT come along and think we've got to be a part of this somehow we'll build something with with, you know, a source connect or source elements branding, just so that we don't, you know, did you have an intention when you built source connect now? That it would it would feel some kind of niche that you weren't that you wanted to be a part of?
Rebekah Wilson
Oh, absolutely. Because to enable people who, for whatever reason, you know, don't have the resources at that time to have the desktop software installed. And we know that installing source Connect version three has been, you know, not the easiest thing. So it was a a stopgap measure. And you'll see now that we have source Connect for that problems that have gone away, we can say look, just download source Connect for it takes three seconds. And this works. So we can't now we're able to take source Connect Now offline, it will start working. And then all of that functionality is available today. You can go to source dash Nexus, Nexus dot source elements.com. I do have source set Nexus, I have to set that up. Anyway, go to our website, go to your dashboard, you'll see a link right there in the dashboard, login, no cost, you can start doing exactly what you did on source connect. Now on source Nexus, it's more stable. It's exactly the same good sound quality, it's got a slightly you know, not slightly a lot better improved user interface. And we really encourage people to start using that now. And we'll start phasing off source connect now. Once we see enough people migrating or Over, because it's Sr, much better. And then if you also want video, then you can upgrade to the source Nexus license version, which is 1195 a month us. And that gives you high definition video for up to five people, plus screen sharing and audio broadcast, which is really great for sound engineers and composers and game sound people, many, many reasons. And then as a voice actor, you could also use it to send your isolated voice through a dedicated channel, either to be recorded by remote engineer or to be monitored by your clients and efficient is many uses and probably warrants a whole like, we did a webinar about it yesterday, you go to our YouTube channel, source elements YouTube channel, you'll see a really interesting webinar that went over this like an hour and a half, because we've seen so many questions we went over better. That's great resource there too.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah. Cool. That's, that's interesting. Yeah. So that's, that does make sense for it to sort of be migrated into that into the source Nexus series, because I remember, like, I think I downloaded a trial of source Nexus quite a while ago. And I loved the idea because I always solve the problems that you've solved with software, I would always sold with hardware. So if I had like an input coming out with a computer, you'd buy some hardware and then make an analog lead that would go in and form another channel. And you can select that. But you've done it all in the digital space. Yeah, it's a great way to do it, because I kind of like I'm quite tactile, and I quite like seeing like the way I've got it. Now like I've got a the SSL two plus recording, like my microphone, but then I've got like a sub chain coming off that with another old face that does all the Zoom stuff. And just kind of it's seems really complicated, but it's simpler for my brain, somehow. But I do like the idea of all this virtual routing that goes on with them with, with source Nexus and all the stuff that goes on in the box a bit like how, you know, many years ago, compression and EQ, and everything was out completely external, you had to actually run the cables between them. And now it's almost always like this, there's very few people still running output hardware, unless it's adding some kind of vintage color or something. So everything has become in the box, which I guess you've been leading the charge on in terms of remote remote audio solutions,
Rebekah Wilson
very hard to travel with the console equipment.
Toby Ricketts
Well, yeah, it's so true. And that's actually because I, I used to, I used to travel quite a lot. And I used to have a like a Neumann U 67. Or if you know that those were just like this one, but it's got a valve in it beautiful mics, but it needed the power supply is like this big. And it was just like trying to like put that in your luggage, it needed its entire own suitcase, and then it's like an the valve might get damaged on the way and it was just like this is not gonna it's not practical, practical. It's like that's one of the mics you just put in the studio and you leave it and in a controlled environment. So the 416 came along, and I was like, sold on the forensics firm for quite a long time. So yes, anyway, enough about me. Back to source elements. There's also a bunch of products that came up in the in the Black Friday thing that I and I was like, I don't even know what that does. There's like some like source source, talkback source zips. That's one of those two, what do they do?
Rebekah Wilson
Source? talkback is talking about hardware. If you if you put in your mind, like close your eyes, and what is a studio look like, right? You've got a console, you've got faders. And you've got buttons in them. So you would usually have built into that console a button that says TalkBack. And you could turn it on Hello, talent in the booth. Yes, that was good. Let's do it again. You know, in turn it off. And you back off it was. It's so true. We all do it, we all do it. And so that switch, as we just were saying more and more people are mixing in the box, you know, working on laptops or computers there and have a console. So we just it's a very simple like virtual switch that you can use with your keyboard to emulate that. Console switch says to talkback switch, very simple. But one of those things that says like, oh my god this works in it works because it integrated with your with your system works into the DAW. So you can you can use it to create quite complex switches. So for example, we made it so it also knows when the DAW is recording, so it would always turn the talkback off when you're recording to make sure that they weren't feedback or any kind. You could use it so that the client could use a switch on the on the phone so they could also communicate. It's not so useful anymore, because just the way that tension technology's moved, but it was very, very useful for a long time. Absolutely. Yeah. I really continued now. Yeah, right. But we're still selling it to people who know it's not getting upgrades but This habit if you want it,
Toby Ricketts
right, cool. I feel like like, the more and more we talk that source elements is really is really revolves around like these virtual tools and like basically coming up with clever ways to route audio within the system and to other people's systems. It's like that software bridge between what we're hearing how it goes into the box, and then comes out the other side. And it's like you've and not just not just that as a standalone audio, but how to integrate that within Pro Tools and within audition and all the different kinds of plugins that there are is would you say, that's a fair summary that that's that's kind of like where you sit as of lately?
Rebekah Wilson
Yeah, yeah. And this is all coming out of Roberts brain. Talk, he's like, you know, he he will be doing a job because he works with a sound engineer during the week, which is really important. We make sure he still keeps us you know, day job is at work, although he doesn't sleep. So he's like three day jobs. And yeah, he'll he'll, he'll give me a call at six in the morning. Okay, okay. Okay, figured out how to like bypass all those hard stuff that takes me two hours every time I need to set up a session. Now I can do it on one plugin. I'm not kidding. He's He's invented some incredible things. And one of them just came out again with the sauce Nexus sweet. So it's called sauce Nexus review, which is also really amazing for voice actors. So we're making a standalone version, what it will do that you'll run this application on your desktop. And the input will be your microphone, your good quality microphone, and then it will automatically route itself. You could either use it with Zoom, you could use it with sauce, Nexus gateway, you could use it with anything you want. And then it separates the sound and brings back the talkback of the of your clients or your producer, your sound engineer, and just allows you to then with a talkback built in, in its like a tiny little mini remote production studio. In one, it's really special. We need to do a dedicated show about it. Once we've got the standalone version. That's right now as a plugin, it's really designed for anyone using partials or working with an engineer. But it cuts down what would have been like, half an hour of like hard brain thinking to two seconds of putting a plug in on a feeder.
Toby Ricketts
That's cool. But you did be some configuration justice. Like you'd have to still tell it what your your your mic was, wouldn't tell what your mic is. Right? And that's it. And then it provides all the extra channels, right. So it's Yeah, simplifying. And yeah, simplifying that audio routing, like where it all comes back to again? Yeah, very cool. There's another one that I didn't recognize called Source zip. What was that
Rebekah Wilson
was it was fun. So again, take yourself all the way back to when the internet was slow. And computers were slow. And we were sending each other big files, and they take ages, those sources that literally does what it says it's that's audio video files to Bing, you know, up to a 10th of the size. And then you could send it a little zip package, and the other side would unzip it. And it would be then you could keep working. So instead of waiting for, you know, what was back then five or six hours for a transfer that may fail, I'm sure you remember the times when we had like, anxiety, is it a file going to be transferred or not, there are entire industries built on this, right? I'm transferring large files around the world. And to so we did that to alleviate the anxiety. And to make it really easy for transfer, it's just not needed so much anymore, there's still some pockets around the world who need it with their internet, they're still not so strong. So they really love it. But again, it's been built into source Connect for that's cool, we've transfer file transfer come into source Connect for now. So that's the other thing is all of these little tools that I'm telling you about, they're going into source connect or into source Nexus, you're going to be finally a company and you go oh, I know what they do. Because I've only got two products.
Toby Ricketts
That's the dream isn't it, is to try and get the wave of stuff down to a simple proposition where people understand what it is. I had a question about what happens with because I mean, we live in a world of pretty bountiful internet these days, like like you know, again, going down history lane and you know, trying to transfer transfer a gigabyte of data would have just taken weeks and now it happens so quickly. But if you're on like a slightly weak connection what happens with with the new source connect source like for if you're on a kind of a a dodgy connection like how do you you can't lower bit rate necessarily like there's got to be some kind of compromise Yeah, so how do you how do you solve that and then video coming up as well.
Rebekah Wilson
Yep, we have the gold standard of this again, like source Connect is used because you could guaranteed Recording, we guarantee the recording by knowing the status of the audio received from the other side. So if you're sending me audio, then I'm going to know on my desktop application again, because it's mine, it's not a browser, I have access to the lower level, I can see data receive data receive data received, oh, data missing, you know, ask for it again, and I've got time to put it back in. Or if there's no time, because sometimes it's it was like, last too long ago, I'll say, Don't worry, I'll do it later. But I'm gonna say that piece of data. And then once I finish the recording, I'll put it in, and then you play it back. And it's perfect.
Toby Ricketts
It's like the list of jigsaw pieces that sound magic. Yeah, yeah, that's the only ones that do this. Is that was that what has been called queue manager until now? Exactly.
Rebekah Wilson
Right. So again, this is built now into source Connect for as a talent, it just works automatically. You don't have to do anything to sleeve the software running. And we've got a little indicator that says, hey, things need to be happening, please don't log off right now. Or when you do go to log off, it'll say please don't log off right now. The engineer is still, you know, working with your data. But it's very tiny, and you won't even notice it. So it's you won't, what you'll notice is how happy your sound engineers. Yeah,
Toby Ricketts
exactly. Yeah. Because I've definitely I've encountered the problem, because I'm on PC, and usually studios are on Macs. And the fact that queue manager didn't wasn't compatible between the two. No, that's that's the right. But there must have I mean, there's must have been an incompatibility between, like the two platforms that they're built on, because they built on different different kind of infrastructure, for want of a better word on the different platforms. And they could kind of mostly talk to each other, but not quite, is that what went on? Or is it just you just at
Rebekah Wilson
the same time, but Windows and Mac, Windows and Mac are very different beasts, you know, they're just, they're just there. But you've got Linux as well, which is a whole nother thing, though, like you can you can write code, you know, that can be very simple. And you could run it on all of them. But at some point, your code is going to interact with your audio drivers, with your video controllers with your internet in the way that Microsoft and Apple in Linux in any other new operating system, their interfaces, they don't, they don't even are recognizable to each other. So we have this layer of like code, that's the same, but then we have to write a second layer of code, which is like much bigger, which is the interface layer. And that has to be different for Windows or Mac. Unfortunately, Windows 10, stopped supporting 32 bit code. And so we decided at that point, like, okay, that could take us a year to rewrite, or we put all the energy of source code for, and you're gonna see the output of that source kit for does have all of that support, you'll have, you'll have access to the queue manager, we just call it restore now, simply where it makes sense restoring, and you'll see this little animation. It's really cute. Yeah, fantastic.
Toby Ricketts
Cool. Well, we're, we're nearly done. I wanted to ask you this. I'll ask you the cheeky question now, because I've always wondered this. And it would be really funny if, if there was something to it. So you know, how when you go on to source connect, traditionally, and then you can make a test call? And you can like, do you know, stereo 44 One or whatever? I've always wondered, Is there a computer on somewhere with speakers, and you can go into it, and you're listening to all the things people say, when they go on the test? Because I wish that was a thing. Sometimes you go on, and it's quite busy, you have to wait for a slot. And it's like, it's just whoever gets on it. I imagine people are saying that. I mean, I've said the funniest things on there. And it would just be hilarious. Should be a podcast really? Well,
Rebekah Wilson
we could always do an April Fool's thing next year, when we, you know, we we route all of them together. But I know it's running on a headless Mac and on a server and, you know, we have it's really important to know we have very strict because security Yeah, clients you know, we're Hollywood won't work with us if we're not compliant. And you know, us listening to people's calls would be definitely,
Toby Ricketts
exactly yeah, yeah, it's I worked with a studio in Auckland, native audio, who are very good friends. And they were saying about all the like to get Disney certified or you have to just the layers of security are bonkers. It's crazy. Like yeah, it's just blows my mind. So
Rebekah Wilson
I always say that there's more money in Hollywood than the military.
Toby Ricketts
So final question, the future you've got Yeah, I mean, obviously the near future you've got these really exciting things coming up with source Connect for and source Nexus as is like all over the internet, the moment people talking about it, which is really good. But beyond that, what do you see as the kind of future of the company does it involve AI since everyone's jumping into that, into that game? What do you see happening?
Rebekah Wilson
I mean, yeah, AI is like saying, you know, do you want to use a knife and fork when you eat your dinner? It's more like, yes, the most convenient way to do that. I also don't like the word AI, I use the word machine learning, which is what it is, it's a machine learning to do tasks is machine receiving information from us. In order to do tasks, there's no such thing as what they would call AGI, artificial general intelligence that, to my mind, if I'm not convinced that will ever exist, I'm a skeptic on that. So what it is at the moment, it's a very clever algorithms doing what we told the machine to do. Here's some data, you know, analyze it, according to the algorithm that I taught you. There's no like, autonomous thinking going on. So however, what we have seen is the machine learning how to replicate voices, we know that's huge. We just saw what happened with the sag after strikes. And with a really, really positive outcome. I'm so glad. Also glad the strikes over I was in LA when it was over. And you could just feel the the light was it was lighter, you know, the air was lighter. Suddenly one was like, Yeah, I can work again. So I think it's great, it was really great was celebrating. So the other thing that email can do, aside from, you know, take our jobs, which I think is really, really small part of what will happen, will say, not take our jobs, but make our jobs more interesting and more creative and more exciting. So I you know, every new technology does two things, it creates an it destroys you, if you think about when the internet came along, you know, in everything from the perspective of Hollywood, it's like, they hated the internet, because piracy was possible on a massive scale for the first time. So what happened? It took them 20 years, but then, you know, Netflix and Disney, plus in Apple can't do streaming comes out. And now look, we have this extraordinary opportunities of so much amazing content being made and so much more work for us all. The Hollywood is, you know, the industry, it's bigger than it was in the 90s. Thanks to the internet, I believe the same thing will happen with machine learning, we just had to get over this hurdle of being like I'm afraid what is it going to do? You know, I believe that ultimately will just become an excellent tool at our service. And this is going to be a period of adjustment and have full maturity.
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely, yeah. There's it's only during periods of, of widespread disruption that you get those opportunities, isn't it? You know, let's look at the mammals and the dinosaurs. Exactly.
Rebekah Wilson
You know, if I was a voice actor, I would be researching, you know, how does this make my job? easier, faster, more efficient, you know, better. For example, I'm using a voice processor called crisp. And it uses machine learning to cut out sound. So right now you can't hear this. Right? You can't hear that. Nothing. I could have a machine drilling next to me and you wouldn't hear it. Because the machines learnt what is the contents of the human voice only let that pass to the microphone. I've been using it for two years. I got them love it. I can work from anywhere in the world. And I don't have if I'm not afraid of what's happening on beside behind me. Other voices get through because they haven't yet figured out how to train to my voice, which is what I'm waiting for the next version lips. So there we go. I want my voice to be trained. So then there's benefits, right? So as a voice actor, I'm going to want to train my microphone to my voice so that it can answer me, not replace me. There's one example. And I think there's many of them. I'm just one small person.
Toby Ricketts
Yet some that come up again, because Google meat has a little bit of that built in in terms of like, non speech noises don't really make it through in this YouTube setting off. And I've run several sessions with Greg for the brain to do like character noises and like death noises and you just see these people on screen. It's completely cuts out they're performing exactly because it's not. Exactly exactly. Yeah. Fantastic.
Rebekah Wilson
Well still sneaks, this actually will also pass all that to cool. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's
Toby Ricketts
that's a good thing that I liked that it is just the audio from your mic going straight into the system and then straight comes out the other side, you know, untouched which is which is perfect. Cool. Well, it's been lovely to catch up with you if we covered everything you wanted to Is there anything else exciting you wanted to talk about?
Rebekah Wilson
Probably just hope to see more of you at the one voice conferences next year. Yeah, We wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving. Today. Probably one in the US stuffed and lying on the sofa. So fun. We have Christmas coming up, which is nice.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, it's a good time of year to for for catching up and and seeing people and eating well, that's for sure. So yeah, we're just coming to summer in New Zealand which is always welcome Well thank you so much for joining me and thank you for giving your time and yeah, look forward to catching up soon,
Rebekah Wilson
of course to the absolute pleasure