Voice Over Body Shop Hail and Farewell!

hey it's time for voice over body shop one more time believe it or not and uh George and I are just going to talk about the last 13 years essentially little reminiscing a little bit of sharing some of the fun show art you know the YouTube thumbnails that Dan's been making all these years on his own yeah you guys may not know that he makes them all himself so he'll talk he'll be showing some highlights on how he does it yeah and we have a a very special announcement that everybody's gonna love I think you're going to love our little our little fun new feature that we've built on the website and which we'll be demonstrating tonight stick around for that that's right and if you've got a question throw it in the chat room depending on where you are we're going to answer we are you know we're on Facebook we're on on YouTube how long are we running tonight until we're done hour and a half no she Sue only has an hour so having an heart out I can keep running the show if you got to walk out of here yeah anyway time for voiceover Body Shop one more time [Music] now voiceover Body Shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials.com the home of Harland Hogan signature products Source elements the folks who bring you Source connect vooh heroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voiceover training voice actor.com your voiceover website ready in minutes voiceover extra your daily resource for voiceover success and by World voices the industry Association of freelance voice talent and now here's your hosts Dan and George well hi there I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Wham and this is voiceover body shop or vo [Music] BS so back in before Thanksgiving in the before no yeah not the before times yeah no sometime last year now it's in the after times right um what happened well we were decided we were going to take some time off mhm and uh we we prescribed it yes we we said okay well the holidays are coming up everything is is just a mess and let's let's just take it easy for a couple let's maybe reframe the show give it a makeover right we wanted to talk about podcasting a little bit podcasting yeah exactly and then uh the week where we would normally do the show came along and I'm like I'm not into it right now after after a bit of vacation and you started realizing that you didn't mind missing the uh the responsibility my Sunday mornings were very busy you know because we would get up we'll watch the Sunday morning talk shows and I would sit there and I would put out the banners and and promoting the show and stuff and I want to really enjoy my coffee on Sunday morning and and you know and because just the way things were lined up I'm like I've had enough yep you know I we we've been doing this show since 20 March 22nd 2011 holy cow so we just passed that magic years yeah so you know it was how did we get the thumbs up on screen is that a new Facebook feature or a new Mac feature a Mac feature oh you must have somoma oh maybe I don't have Sonoma well maybe son who knows what's on there I don't know I turn on the computer and it's there in the morning and it and it works Zoom feature you have to say something upbeat there you go this is great you can get okay um but uh yeah it just turned out that I'm like I'm I the thought was is I was like ready to retire I was about to turn 67 there was lots of stuff going on if you read our our message in in Facebook uh about what was going on and and and there was a lot of surgery between now and then uh and yeah I mean I had back surgery 10 days ago I would show you my scar but that would really be showing off yeah don't the last thing you want to see is my tus on the air here so uh but uh you know I I I can't lift things yeah but I can walk standing up straight yeah which I had not done for for years I mean everybody thought I waso that way yeah yeah and uh but now I'm like walking straight I mean the next I was walking around the block the next day it's amazing what they did incredible yeah I mean they had to take a big piece of my you know one of my my my vertebrae out yeah scrape off all the you know the arthritis that's in there all those years of playing hockey and and and sitting like this the irony that being active all your life made you almost completely inactive right right you know and because of that I couldn't I couldn't do anything I couldn't play golf I want to learn how to play pickle ball although I'm really late to the party uh so you got to wait till it gets cool again yeah yeah maybe like 75 80 when you're in the retirement community I'm in a retirement community we're playing banana tennis banana tennis Oh I thought we were doing pickle ball what are you uh yeah yeah trying to say something funny here the pickle ball is what we used to play street hockey with oh yeah so now they're like well why them we just play tennis with it and now every commercial you see people playing P nobody's playing tennis anymore they're all playing actually have a funny story about that so Atlanta I was hanging out with some voice actors some young young voice actors and one of them told me that she was looking for an apartment but there a pickle ball court but it had no the problem was is that it did have a pickle ball court and the damn things are noisy it's like TK TK T TK you know and she's like so she was she was she literally said I'm running outside I'm so sorry for not having your name at the top of my mind right now I'm going to look you up because this is it's a great story but um she she ran out she she went she's like I'm going to look at my apartment now they're like okay she's like let me going to go in my I'm going to go in there and shut the door and just see what I hear you know she's like well wouldn't you know it when I was in there there was no pickle ball going on so I came back another time prepared and she said I came back put a microphone in the room brought her equipment set it up in the apartment hit record ran out to the pickle ball court and started hitting the pickle ball sound like then ran back upstairs I was like that is freaking genius yeah but that's what we do like when we evaluat people's home Studios for noise issues we tell you to put up your mic right record the environment what are we hear what are we going to have to fix right yeah hilarious why don't we go back and really talk about why we started this show yeah some of the exciting things that led up to it that was back in 2011 when the world was a very different place uh but George and I met at at a voice conference uh because you were brought in as a replacement for somebody who had been deported so everybody knows who I'm talking about uh and uh you you had a slide presentation on PowerPoint y that was just a little over the top a little bit too TMI right there was just too much information in this slides right and I was responsible for producing that room at that particular conference and I'm watching these slides I'm like oh my God he is going to go way over people's heads you could tell you you knew this was way off Target right because we do the same thing we help people with home Studios this even back in I started doing this about 2005 2006 and I run I'm like listen this is way over over your head or over everybody's head let's go through these slides and let's take a few out yes and we took about two-thirds of them out as I recall I said you do this they're going to be kissing your feet at the end of this well this this this slide right here I'm going to show you guys if I can this was the first slide I was going to show everybody as this is what you should have in your studio so no guarantees I can actually get this on the show but I'm going to try but um if I go to shareed stop screen and share screen again and present it has to be within chrome doesn't it I can you share other apps I have no idea I'll just share my whole screen let's just let it go let's just let her rip all right chaos and S here we go this is what I was going to show to the students who I didn't know I mean the first 10 voice actors I probably set up were all promo people right with ISDN right and all this crap so I was like this is what you need in your home studio T Tan's like oh my God no in fact I still use the slide as sort of a joke yeah you know like I'll show this as the first slide like at B Atlanta I did the mic to MP3 which is really kind of everything I know about recording you know within reason and the first thing I would show is this one you know and it just be like just kidding you know people sitting in the audience going yeah just a tad intimidating very intimidating we can cut out about five or six things that are on that in that picture Dan Dan Dan talk Dan talked me down real and he's here here's look at this well look at that there's there's heavy Jordan This is slide one of that thing and here was here's all the stuff we're going to talk about and it was uh it was going to go off the rails quickly and Dan and Dan reeled me back in and I'm so glad that you did Dan yes and we became fast friends after that I also remember you were you were promoting that that mobile system you know vo to go vo to go yeah and I was pretty impressed with that yeah and we stayed in touch and we did a couple of podcast together and then we decided you let's do this as as as an actual podcast but let's I can't remember why we decided to do it on cam oh so we could demonstrate stuff right and uh no it wasn't even that we decided to do it on camera from my perspective because I couldn't find a way to do live shows that didn't have a video attached right there was no platform that I could find that was as simp we used Ustream right and there was nothing as easy as Ustream because we had a payper viewer too which was yeah there was nothing really as easy and straightforward as that to just go live right and I was like well I guess we'll just have a static picture of you and me on camera or or just sitting like there and then that's it and I was like well we have a camera let's just be on camera right that was that was a huge mistake because being on camera live streaming video is a big pain in the tkas which T you got to say that just more FL T tus there you tus a big pain to tus we have gone through more changes to how we produced this show I mean can you let me see if I can remember all the the variations of how we done our show started with Ustream so that was me at my home on my LA on a desktop computer with a very complicated mixer which I didn't even need but I had for some reason you called it the Medusa and then whatever webcam I had and then you on in Buffalo me and me and Santa Monica you in Buffalo and we would use Ustream and we would go live and we would actually we it was really complicated because we were taking calls from by Skype right right so we were or or was it some other way we you and me were on Skype right that's how everybody was seeing us but then we were taking calls by pots like landline phon maybe it was by I think it was by Skype I must have had another phone system I think I had a second comp I know guys I'm sorry years I had another computer that was dedicated to Skype duties and that was right right and and and so we had that set up for because we were trying to be car talk we wanted to take calls well I mean I Dan's been in radio I didn't know that the way these shows mostly work is it's 100% pre-recorded you know I didn't realize that like what they do and the magic of how Car Talk is so seamless and so well-run is that it's all pre-taped right and they can edit it it's all TI edited oh you're going to be calling at such and such a time and I thought like we were trying to get callers to call in at the right time it was a a nightmare to do it was really hard right and then so pretty quickly we realized live call-ins wasn't and then we had Pat Fry on yeah and uh and and and a few other people that we knew Bob Bergen was one of our bur Pat was Pat was number one right maybe Bob was number two yeah and then uh there were a bunch of other people we started bringing on as guests but we but we that first we had Tom Kenny yeah Tom Kenny was a heck of a get yeah I got to thank Tara Strong for that one because Tara invited me to this um it was was like a fundraiser event for saving animals and she Tom is a huge animal lover like Tara and she invited me and she was like it's going to be fun if you want to come Tom's going to be there I'm like oh I'd love to get Tom on our show long story short he uh I gave him my card you know when he they were doing the they had the lineup where people were having their stuff signed you know and I said hi to him I said gave him my card and he was super kind and he was like sure I'll come on the show not only did he come on the show he literally came in into my house to be on the show in the flesh right I mean that was and that's when we used to do the show where you and I would talk Tech for the first half hour yeah we would no hour we would you and I did tech for a solid hour yeah and the guests had to just wait right and we had two huge stars that did this Tom Kenny and June F June F foray foray yeah yeah very late in her life but she was great I she was pushing book at the time and uh you know and I had the opportunity to go hey Rock watch me pull a rabbit out of my sleeve and she's like but that trick never works it was it was fastic she was the voice of rocky rocky squirrel but uh and uh yeah and and then we then people wanted to be on the show so we got a lot of you know the the top people in the business if you're looking for the Tom Kenny one by the way that was before V OBS that we were East West audio body shop that's right so you're going to have to dig a Little Deeper to find now eventually the chat bot's going to have everything from east west audio body shop in it too oh good it's it's going to have literally everything we've ever done it just takes more time to scrape it all but anyway we haven't told them about that yet but we'll get know I know I know I'm getting ahead of myself it's that decaf oh okay okay uh yeah but it was it was fun and it was I mean nobody else was doing it and certainly nobody was doing it about voiceover no there wasn't really there wasn't a talk show I don't remember there specifically being a podcast there may have been a podcast out by that point I I don't really recall right um but there certainly wasn't like a talk show and there certainly wasn't like a show about just Tech right we really thought we were going to do what two hours about tech I think that's what we initially thought yeah and we realized that's just that's just too much yeah well yeah not only that and we were doing it on a Sunday night yeah we would do it live on a Sunday night and I remember the Miss is getting really upset because I was up you know in in a spare bedroom upstairs where my studio was and Jacob's room was right next to it and she got really upset because you're going to keep Jacob up going to keep him awake when you consider he's now 27 years old gives you an idea yeah that was timeline 13 years ago um you know so it it caused tension but some of the great you know remember my my um uh ear notes and throat doctor that's when I literally learned about what an auto Rhino Lon olist is right and how to say it that's right and he's you know I don't know I don't know if Joel's still practicing and that was quite a classic yeah yeah I mean we we were singing on there we we the thing it was like the early days of Television because there were no rules it was actually more like cable access well yeah it was it really was um but we were we were doing it by by by Skype right and and then we were capturing that which was pretty new techn well that was another classic moment right so there was episode where Skype died died on my computer like in my studio I couldn't get Dan back on Skype so I got Dan on Skype on my phone I had it on my phone so there's a whole 40 30 40 minute episode where I'm holding Dan in my hand and talking to Dan like this right for the whole it it's just his voice coming out of the speaker getting picked up on my mic and that's how we did the show right because The Show Must Go On The Show Must go on and it always did yes I mean there were only a couple of times when it just it went totally kabo I mean they would it would break up well I can think of maybe one show one or two ever in our history where we just didn't go on the air that night right I mean maybe I mean we always got on the air one way or the other that's right even if it was late even if it was Stat or like freezing right there there actually a lost EP episode there is oh there's a couple of those actually there's a lost episode and I'm going to this is a I mean you guys probably don't know we did a whole episode with you remember this guy say the name and then I'll remember the episode I'm trying to remember him now this is we're talking like 500 shows Mark growl oh yes oh we did an entire we tried do an entire live show from his studio studio right we were we were touring people's Studios we over at at Dave and Dave and we were at we were at voice tracks West we were over at at uh the soundbox LA Tim freed Landers and we were doing remotes we were just we had no idea what the heck we didn't realize that the internet was going to be such a problem we didn't realize that you can't walk down the hallway on a smartphone and have it seamlessly stream audio from the catacombs of a giant building yeah no it was a total disaster it was so bad that we literally didn't air that that one right maybe one of these days we should BW that one back together BW it back together or recreate it really cuz Mark is now you know he's not retired but he's not in he's not in California anymore I know that much so we studio is still there but studio is still there and kicking yeah but that was that was an example of things where where things went so poorly right that we didn't even I mean cuz it was live if you were there that night watching it really you saw well you were the only ones that saw right and it was a total mess right and we had the saying you know it's you know East West audio body shop every week it's Apollo 13 and then things stabilized a little bit and yeah for a while yeah and not for long so then so then let me see the next iteration of the show after it really kind of went pretty much the same way until you moved here right right we may have moved from Ustream to something else I think that's when we moved to wirecast wirecast wirecast was the sort of the pro version of Ustream right so we moved to wirecast and and then things pretty much ran along and then Dan moved here yeah yeah and that's where things got very interesting well one because you and I were always doing the show from opposite coasts yeah that was the East West there there was the one time when I just sort of showed up in your studio yeah as I was out here for unfortunately my stepfather had passed away and they my mom lived in in in Orange and I came out and was like it's working Lee we see you yeah he's in the chat and uh you know and then suddenly I just walked in I'm like Hey we're together then there was the party we had at Ang gangues our third year anniversary show where we had probably about 20 30 people in in that huge apartment of hers and we were demonstrating Studio suit and yeah that was great that's that's another classic I'm realizing now a lot of these ones that we remember fondly were eabs episodes yeah they were cuz we had it we were Fearless yeah like let's see if this works yeah yeah it was a different era yeah so so but that even that episode even was before you moved out here that was when I decided to move out you decided because Larry Hudson who I know is out there said oh you're going to love it out here if you come and move out here is so I I conin the m to come out here we had a lot of reasons to move out yeah I mean I mean my son's at an animation school and uh you know and this is the Center of My Universe business the weather well the the weather yeah remember there was the one intro we had I said okay go down on the beach and shovel some sand with my kid yeah right and then I had to wait for a snowstorm and I went out into the driveway and so was you flipping sand and then me going uhhuh and shoveling shoveling snow that was a great intro yeah yeah and uh you know what we should do is put on on the website just have an archive of like all the old stuff oh yeah you know the old intr the old intros kind of like Mark CL has a a library of outtakes and stuff on his website by the way those are classic it's fix in the miix I think is their website fix inthemix.com and there's you have to go to the bloopers area right there's some gold on there man Shatner you know like oh yeah that's that one's a legendary like there's some really good stuff on there anyway it's the thumbs up yeah now one of the things that I would do every Sunday morning yeah because we would shoot the show on on Monday night like we're doing right now is I had to create a banner for Facebook and for the the promos that we would send out to our mailing list and in various other places y uh and there were a few that were my favorites you know and how did I do them I would like all right I would just go and go you know Google two guys doing this or two guys playing baseball or two guy and I would I would and I'd look at all these pictures and I'm like okay we'll try this one and thankfully this is way before generative AI art right no this was me using uh key uh uh keynote keynote and so you were using keynote all these years yeah to make those banners yes that's awesome cuz I knew how to do it exactly it was easy well let's look at some of those um put that one this was this was fairly recent I love this one because I had to you have to find the right pictures to go with it you know like the pictures of us so I had to be looking this way and you had and I would go through Facebook and all the pictures that were taken cuz I don't remember I I this one slipped by me I don't remember this one this is on the roof shot yeah Fant Let It Be it's fantastic you know and you but there's things I had to fix you know I'm like okay I have to put the sky here but make it look like we're actually there no there was the one I did with the right Brothers some of them people have no idea how much work you put into it to make it look that show the next one uh and then Jacob started drawing these characters of us yeah and look how perfect that fit into those yeah it was a no-brainer I think we did it with Yogi Bear and a couple other ones yeah yeah what's the next one there Sue oh now one of the things that I I have a real propensity for and I this really came out of I think a trip that Marcy and I took to uh to Eastern Europe we were in Czechoslovakia we went to the Museum of communism which if you're ever in Prague go to the museum of Communism it's it's very revealing it was actually quite interesting but I had this thing for Soviet propaganda art yeah because it's great stuff even though it's like big brother is watching sure and this one was you know two guys one guy is holding like a a sickle or something like that and and then you had Lenin pointing like that and I'm like let's see if this one works and that one worked really well for some reason I mean you are quite a history buff so that makes sense absolutely yeah by the way there's a great documentary on Netflix called um Turning Point the bomb in the Cold War oh yeah watch it if you guys don't understand what's going on in the world right now watch that it's a great review of the Soviet Union and how Putin came to power and why we're in the mess we're in it's all just a little bit of history repeating exactly Shirley Bassie mhm can't remember the name of the group that did that it's I oh propeller heads propeller heads that's right boom listen to that one Shirley Bassie was the one who saying Goldfinger that's right goldinger she sounds great still yeah know she can still years later she's amazing yeah what was that next one looking airplane yeah airplane yes heck yeah yeah I this it was the the 40th anniversary so is your mic on oh can be yeah we're you're on line one there be interstitially it sounded like it was just one two one two pot it up my channel oh it's on robot mode okay never yeah one of the it's one of the keypads on yeah don't yeah make sure you turn that off before I have to do anything for did you turn it on on purpose no she was just playing with it no I was I didn't touch it I thought you were doing on purpose never mind anyway this is an airplane clearly so you know it's like how do how do you had to find a picture now you'll notice that's the same picture of mey yeah okay which yeah it is that's right same angle but flipped right so okay so actually it's the same picture of you I flipped it the other way that's right nicely done is that Striker Striker uh Striker andley Neel yeah yeah you're you're the captain and auto the autopilot yeah yeah and auto the autopilot right I thought that would that would work now this was for the the uh the interface shootout we had oh yeah so I'm like okay I still this is still a good piece of uh content for those that want audio interfaces yeah I mean audio interfaces have changed a little bit you notice we haven't done one since cuz it's a big pain in the neck yeah really I we had I mean I had to record all this stuff and then we had to chop it all together yeah you know that's the thing we do the show live and it made things a lot easier because then we're just like okay you know cut off the end and you know and then cut it into two shows and yeah doing the show live is a part of the secret sauce of how we can we could maintain doing this over you would think doing it live makes things harder well it it does make certain things harder I mean like I said I was getting into the point of how we've changed the way we do the show and when Dan moved here we had to rethink completely well we had a studio to do yeah we have a studio we how do we have multiple look at this great set we have yeah of course if we have multiple if we have a studio we need multiple cameras right how we can have multiple cameras how we going to do that we fig that out well we we we had a first we had a pretty good MacBook Pro that we thought was good enough it's still sitting on the couch over there dead battery and all but was that before or after the Mac Pro I think the Mac Pro was before the MacBook Pro yeah so we had a cheese grater MacBook you know the big tower Mac right we had one of those and it was a beast it was a 12 core monster that we got on eBay and still wasn't enough no because well then we had well then we had the PC which I really refer to as the Beast we had to get the PC see because it turned out that wirecast which is what we were using doesn't work on a was so unstable it was terrible we had that was the re that was the main reason this show became Apollo 13 was because of wirecast we would have so many problems every other show we would have to do troubleshooting to get things it was a nightmare right so then we're like let's scrap it so I I was at NAB I saw I think it was Kerr carac yeah doing uh doing live appearances from NAB and I'm like what are you guys running this on what are you guys and they're like oh it's v-mix I'm like oh v-mix let's get v-mix so I'm get on the whole v-mix thing right and they're like it's Windows only I'm like okay all right well uh let's get a custombuilt PC so we had a custombuilt PC just to do vmix yeah and that thrusted us back into PC World and Sue had to learn the v-mix interface with Windows and it was it was quite a learning a learning curve and a half right but it was stable right vmix was way more stable and we did do the live show on vmix for a long time and then then you discovered streamyard well we discovered streamyard because then we had the pandemic oh right so all then we had to do the show remote we to do the show remote so that first it was remotely control I was trying to get Sue to remote control the studio v-mix computer and then listen to the show via I think it was Skype or was it Zoom it was on Zoom yeah so Sue was list trying that was the that's how she was trying to hear what Dan and I were doing that was the ifb so sue could hear us live even if we weren't on the air right it was so complicated and it did not work out well it was just a train wreck and a half yeah so that's when we discovered streamyard right which is using now it changed everything because super easy like if anybody while while I have my gripes about streamyard it does weird things like why Dan and I were jiggling up and down before and I don't I don't know but anyway it's super easy it's still doing it but is it doing it now yeah it's a weird software it's all based on the web it's on Chrome but in terms of you want to get a live show out in the air with the least amount of absolute headache and frustration yeah it's probably streamyard it's and it's getting better all the time it's got more features but that's and that's yeah now 5 years four years running yeah streamyard yeah so now you're all probably you know we're we're just shooting the poop here about that's going on it's it's the top of the hour here it's like yeah it's it's like 11 o'clock in New York holy cow in North Carolina oh that's right we've only been we've only been on for a half hour that's right okay so we it's uh I guess it's time for the big announcement because you guys are like what what are you guys gonna talk what is it what is it well you know when we decided to stop doing the show we were thinking well how do we how do we promote the stuff that we have we've got so many hours of material that's the thing there is so much useful Evergreen content any question you would ever have about voiceover was probably answered on this show by all the guests we've had on all the you know you know coaches and producers and uh if you look at 13 nearly 13 years all right let's say an average of an hour per episode cuz they were split in a half well well there was an hour and a half originally for a really long time was a full hour and a half right well mostly because the guests would continue to talk and I'm like okay how do we get in the Stop and yeah I mean well the shows were literally each Monday nearly two hours right remember never forget it so so you add all that together and then when we split the show into Tech talk I mean it's got to be like over a thousand hours of content maybe a lot more if you include ewbs easily because we did over 300 shows as EBS yeah and then we we did like 250 shows with a guest yep and we did 114 Tech talks4 you do the math yeah I mean that's how many hours it's anial insane amount of useful content right so then it was like how do we make this usable and consumable in as going on as the show goes on and then give me my Sunday mornings back right so if you go on like Google or if you go on YouTube and you search for things you can get lucky and find like an episode where something was brought up or somebody was a guest but beyond that you don't get much more useful information and then you got to comb through the episode find what you're looking for well remember Jack deia used to he kept a transcript of what we were doing in the good old days we would actually have a live Human doing show notes I'll bet you Jack's watching too but uh we really did and so we decided that um there needs to be a better way to find stuff I mean even for my own personal use I would be frustrated I would see things on Facebook people talking about a certain topic I'll be like oh my gosh we talked about this at nauseum on our show if I could only find what's the poignant thing that we said or the moment in the show where we said anyway we found a way and you found a way because I don't understand any of this stuff we found a way you kids in your your AI and and found a way and it looks and it looks something a little bit like this uh right here this is our this is our new AI now it I'm already logged in so it's not letting me show the screen blank the way it would normally show it but you can see John's eye peering through this is now how we uh you can find everything we've ever talked about on the show this is our AI Dan and George yeah and so we've built a chatbot it this is now how you can access all these years of content everything that's ever been said on the show every guest every topic and we talk about everything every question like you guys have ever asked everything that's been spoken on the show thanks to let's face it excuse me modern technology machine learning a this is all findable now right and so we we used the service that allow us to well it's not a c secret cuz it literally says on the bottom of the website what it is yeah powered by custom gp. we used I found a thing called custom gp. a while I was sick in bed with covid the first week of the year and we were able to use this tool set to scrape and get site maps and find as much useful information that Dan and I have spoken online as possible ingested into this thing and create this tool and it is all you have to do is ask it a question it is awesome and here's a few things if you guys have done anything with AI type tools you're probably quite accustom to the fact that they hallucinate yes this has been it it makes up stuff this has been a rather controversial part of any chat bot chat GPT type tool set right what's so cool about um this chatbot system is it doesn't hallucinate if what you're searching for is not definitively locatable it's not going to make it up the language model it doesn't make it up so for example I typed in the question a little bit earlier um are there any episodes where Sue Marino was seen on camera well that may have happened at some point but however because probably we never said her name suino right or something like that the the the database of everything we've ever said doesn't know where that is so it says sorry we don't have an answer we recommend getting help from Dan George or go to the website or you know we'll help you somehow you know right so it won't make up an answer but it it comes up with all kinds of good stuff right and the better your question the better the answer right like you can throw at it tons of details and it will formulate some pretty useful stuff so I if you guys have some good questions in the chat I will start throwing them in there and you guys can search it and see what it comes up with and see so give me some good questions while Dan thinks of something useful to say well I mean we it's easy to find this because we put it on all of our websites it's on of course vbs.tv yes it's very T if you look you look right above us if you're watching on our on our website it says do it say yeah the chatbot thing you click on that it'll take you to the chatbot it literally says the best shop talk in voiceover is now in chatbot form and right below in yellow it says introducing AI Dan and George chatot click here to learn more so the way it works you click on that if you click on that it's going to take you to yes it's going to take you to a pay wall so um at the moment it's priced at 20 bucks we think maybe that's a little introductory P an introductory price of $10 we're going to drop it down to 10 bucks a month and so what happens is once you log into this thing you got to put in your credit card info but what it's going to do is it's it's going to give you 14 days two weeks to hammer on this thing and play around with it and see if it's actually useful for you and what you're doing and what you're learning and if it is then it will start billing your card you guys know how free trial subscription stuff works it works like pretty much all the other cancel at any time but why would you want to right so so we're going to we're going to adjust the price maybe we'll take a break later and I'll fix the price and um and you guys can start playing around with it but we we are really proud of this it's it's the way to get information we never thought possible and every question that you could possibly have about voiceover I mean performance you know improv every Tech question we've ever covered uh you know but by the way we'd like to have your questions because George and I would still like to do what we do best which is answer your questions yeah well just we're actually kind of working on a question from Justin because Justin Ramen answer said Dan can you tell us your daily vo routine compared to when you first started as compared to now you know like checking emails auditioning checking p2ps and then a question for me from Eldorado to gtt what is what have you what have you done about your routines holy cow that's a whole show it is one question well I can I can do you want to get to you want to get to that one right now sure yeah what's my routine like well let's see I get up at 7:20 every morning then stay in bed till about 8:20 yeah I'm retired you know I I I I'm collecting my Social Security I don't have to answer to anybody except except the MS yeah yeah and uh and and Mishka and sometimes Jacob Mishka is the dog uh and uh but I will come out here after breakfast because this is a separate Studio this is gr this is the great thing about this place when we bought it it was a recording studio the first you know when we when we first bought the place and so we George and I worked it to reconvert it into a voiceover studio and a television Studio which is why we look so darn good on here we got lights we got everything is you know of course there was all the cable that was in here which is now sitting in a closet it's enough to support you know you know a tank hanging from it um uh but you know I I'll I'll go check my my email uh but when I first started it was yeah it was was a lot of going to the pdps uh and looking for auditions and firing those out and was there a point where you just decided I don't need to deal with the ptps anymore yeah about four or five years ago well when one of them really went South with how they were managing things I remember actually going to their office and saying you can't do this as were a lot of other people Y and I came home and I immediately took myself off of that one I was on the other one that had a numerical name to it we're not saying the names because we don't want to come up in AI search right but anybody that's been watching our show dipped a toe into voice over business knows we're talkinging about and I built my business on on those right you know the one was very good before they decided to change their management plan uh and they changed their priorities they they really did that's what it was it it suddenly we were no longer their customers we were their commodity yeah and I I didn't like that very much uh but I built a good solid clientele from that uh and had a couple of big contracts with uh a couple of companies that were constantly sending me stuff and then and then I started doing stuff like I became president of a local board which I'll never recommend uh because what what do they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions yeah um you know and and and and and no no good deed goes unpunished there's a lot of that uh and I became very philanthropic and started doing that that started to take away from my time from doing voice over then for some reason we started doing this about a couple years later and that took up time but we were doing the show to promote the fact that we were Consulting with people on home voiceover Studios and a lot of people were getting into the business and they needed assistance with that I spent about 50 % of my time doing voiceover and 50% of my time helping people with their home Studios and 50% of my time taking care of my dogs 50% of your time being a dad right 50% of your dad being a time being a husband right right so now now I get to do all that stuff actually uh and today you know it's it's pretty easy because my clients send me stuff they've been doing it for years and I count on you right you're a trusted voice right and and people keep sending stuff through my specimen collection Cup on my my my web page and it's you know it's a nice leisurely life out here in Southern California where the sun is shining except for this winter uh and uh you know I you know it's not bad and because it's so relaxing I I don't need the stress of trying to put this together every week right you know getting a guest and and you know that sort of thing so not that I didn't like doing it I just got tired of doing that when there were other things in my life I needed to be doing like looking after my family and you know make up for all the time that you know perhaps I was maybe not paying as much attention to them as I needed sure because this is a place great place to come out and hide yes yes more than anything and you all know what I'm talking about I never had that place to hide in my house grow with my daughter growing up and uh my daughter my daughter when she was able to when she was at the age of being able to run and walk was disruptive uh I don't know if and she would always run and walk onto the show is she would love to stick her head on the show do you ever remember hearing her banging on the door to my office oh absolutely very loudly like I mean like a kick drum boom boom boom boom boom you know like a monster so my kid was very disruptive so I mean things have not in terms of my business and what I do things really have not changed uh I still don't do voiceover as crazy and stupid as that sounds the more I say it to myself I never I never dipped my toe in the voiceover business um I still run my business full-time there was a distracted moment where I just decided to join another company from 2013 to we won't mention any 2017 I joined another company cuz I was you know I was tired of running my own business cuz it's freaking exhausting sometimes and stressful and um so that was a little distraction but but since then you know that was before I joined that company I was Eldorado recording Services I met my buddy Graham Spicer who helped me do a remake of my company a Rebrand we moved we changed to vo Studio Tech Graham and I joined this company we worked there together for four years then we both were asked to leave and we did and we went off to do new things and that's when I started George the tech I had to come up with a new brand I had to come up with everything literally in one night and that's what I did sometimes inspiration hits you got to go for it I was kicked out the plane and I built another plane from spare parts that I had still strapped on to me as I plummeted the Earth managed to not crash into the ground and then fixed the plane and the plane's gotten a little bit better now with our latest iteration of George the. Tech the new website which launched a year ago now um has been quite a journey and quite quite a process but it's the first time we built something from scratch from the ground up and it's been a huge amount of work huge amount of work it's probably I spend not so much now but for at least six months to eight months it was probably a quarter of my time was like just keep getting the website where you see it now and and improving it and and now it's coming up with services that meet more people's needs and then building a team that's especially since the new site came out quite a quite a list of people you got working with you know huge part of our huge priority is was to to have more more people that have more Specialties not only am I just one person I just didn't want to continue trying to pretend that I'm an expert at everything right I'm just I'm not an expert at everything I'm not an expert at Studio One I'm not an expert at logic I'm not an expert at Protools I can get around in these things I'm okay in Reaper which is why we tell people not to use those things there's a makes it a lot easier you know some people end up getting training from somebody who's an expert at one thing you know like there's a guy for Studio One there's there's schools that still teach Pro Tools to brand new voice actors don't understand that at all but anyway keep it simple kids I don't want to learn everything new and I don't want to convince people that they need to learn these crazy new things so my job is to be the advocate for the voice actor always really has been finding the right tools things that are easy reliable and efficient that's really my thing and and that's what I still do at as George the tech right um just trying to stay relevant and I guess the only thing that's really really new other than the chatbot experiment is um I've just decided while I was at vo Atlanta it would be a good time to launch a new membership so we actually have a membership program now now I've offered this for years but only to under the radar yeah not like online just you know a client of mine that's really busy I'm like you know you're hiring me a lot let's work something out so I do have a number of VIP clients who I see on a regular basis or help them well now really it's open to everybody now so if you're interested in getting like a more of a flat rate type support you can do that um on George the. you'll see a menu item for memberships and see what you think see if there's something there that's useful to you we have bonly meeting where we just talk Tech it's ask me anything you can get access to sound checks which is your specimen collection cup and unlimited access to the chatbot which we're going to demonstrate here in a little bit actually I have a question for our great for the VBS chatot I also forgot that I became president of world voices Oh you forgot that little thing uh yeah that's also taking up a lot of time right now my my term is up in October uh but you know we I I decided to take the organization and it the times have changed and what we originally came up with I don't think was really as relevant today as it was back in 2012 when we started it yeah and uh so we're really marketing our our our searchable directory of our professional members voice over. Biz yeah uh and we're promoting it to the people who hire us and they are hiring people from there so if you join wovo as a professional member if you qualify you can be on there and that's like you know is it a pay to play well it's $99 a year to be a member of the organization but we got other stuff we've got our demo player it's a very minimal cost yeah uh you know for a Professional Organization absolutely I pay more than that for every other organization I'm a part of yeah and and then we've got uh won which is which is going to be more like fafc con this year in Chicago but a bunch of you know what fafc con is in a nutshell explain the fafc con facon is an unconference uh where it's not where you bring in lots of big speakers to attract people it's members helping members essentially uh and and expert you know people who everybody's got some sort of expertise in something uh and their voiceover some people are really good at accounting some people are really good at marketing some people happen to be fairly good at home studio stuff you know until they they don't know and then they ask you and me about it uh and then or somebody else who's going to give them some long complicated answer and uh but we have you know we've got videos on stuff we have you know distinguished speaker series we've got webinars uh you know that sort of thing but the fafc con model was people would get together on the first night and and say what do you want to talk about and every would write it down and everybody would look at the cards and go well I want to talk about that and you'd put a sticker on it so the ones that got the most votes was it limited to 100 people 100 people back then yeah we're going to probably keep this to 150 yeah uh and uh so imagine 100 people in one like you know conference room sitting there with posted note type things you know writing down what their topic is they want to talk and then it's more of a discussion than it is presentation some people come with you know sort of yeah I mean there's definitely a lot of people that are coaches you know that kind of have a Spiel right like I did but it's non-commercial yeah it's not like we're we're pushing people you know buy this guy's book buy this you know which is by the way something that I have a big problem with in our business right now if you've only been doing it for a year you're not qualified to teach other people how to do it you know I I spent you know 12 years in broadcasting and and have a degree in broadcasting I know how all that stuff is everybody else is just guessing now they're getting online and going trying to create a TV show or a podcast that's what I used to do is it was the public service program on Saturday and Sunday morning you know intro body outro boom put on big reel of tape put it on there on Sunday morning hit the button and watch Sunday morning TV while that thing's running for half an hour and then wait got to go to the next one you know that sort of thing uh that was that was my life for for a few years uh but uh where was I going with that where were we talking about that's what happens when it's not important but I do I do have a question for the chat Bo good so here we go I'm going to and the question is sh Show me the chat box would you so this question came in from Justin I think it was from Justin sorry who was the one that said here's a question for the chat Chris did Chris Chris Walsh did okay so here's this question all right we're going to paste this into the chat boot together kids and Watch What Happens real time so go to the chatbot paste and the question is for the chatbot search on which episode did Mark Cashman explain what to say to clients if they want to know what they are paying for what did he say look at that let's see what let's see what we get so Mark Cashman discussed what to say to clients if they want to know what they are paying for in VBS episode 236 he mentioned that when giving clients a quote it's important to itemize the three things they are buying before than just one this approach helps clients understand the value of what they are purchasing and clarifies the breakdown of services provided boom gold come on guys I mean that's pretty useful it is right and then right below that um it says where did this answer come from and then so there's the video there's references to the actual episode of when that was mentioned now it's interesting it shows four sources yeah so I don't know how it derives which well Mark was on the show a bunch of times so yeah it does show multiple times when he was on the show um but it says that this is uh this was the best answer to that question so guys you have no idea how complex this is I I watched um I watched the a highlight reel of the Nvidia keynote oh Nvidia is the biggest company that you probably don't know about unless unless you're a gaming nerd you don't know they're I think the second or third biggest most biggest company in the world like right up there with Microsoft and Apple and um they are the ones that build the processors the servers the chips all this stuff that make stuff like this work it's unbelievably complex it it just seems like a search engine but what it's doing is it's searching through in our case of this particular chatbot the library it's called The Language model is built of uh just shy of 10 million characters and so it's searching through all that figuring out what's the most relevant way to come back to you with your from your query with something useful that really makes sense and then formulating a very well-written response but what set again what sets this apart from just your generic chat GPT by the way I have a chat gbt account from open Ai and it's pretty freaking cool I I make a lot of chat Bots but this one is absolutely has guard rails it will not it will not hallucinate if it can't find the answer that's relevant to your question and it's not within the database it will simply say I don't have an answer for you refine your search a little bit yeah yeah just come up with a bit different question because it's not going to make stuff up kids and that's a really big deal about this so how do you like that yeah there's one maybe we can throw some more in there later if anybody comes up with them are there any questions for me and Dan that's the question well we asked for them there should be some got in here uh um we while you're doing that we of course we have toh thank uh Jeff Jeff Holman who Mr Jeff Holman yeah who's probably out there watching going why can't I participate because know we're just this is a shoot in the breeze episode yeah it's a very loose yeah but he would he would monitor our chat room and uh shout out shout out to Jeff hullman Hollywood Jeff Holman yeah yeah Hollywood hullman yeah and you know go I can't remember his IMDb it's probably still hidden on our oh got a question on on screen now yeah thanks Jeff that was you were you were was a real help you loyally helped us almost from the beginning of the pandemic yeah yeah was when we really needed it yeah so thanks Jeff so we got another question here yeah this one uh came from lenina Del Robo which is actually a new name to me um Hey guys you're the best and I've really enjoyed your shows thank you congratulations and thanks for everything what are your thoughts on the Earthworks icon Mike it does it does need no it says Needs no interface I found it on Sweetwater okay so that must be the earthw worth icon USB mic yeah so they make two versions the USB and the XLR um I don't know have any I don't have any personal experience with that model but I do have its brother okay called the ethos oh I remember you were talking about the Earth Works ethos right and I have nothing but great things to say about the ethos it's been fantastic um I have not used the USB variation of the icon so I don't know uh I don't have anything specific to say about it I would I'm sure there's some good YouTube on the US remember specifically the USB version CU they make you know when you have a USB mic it's going to have different quirks right and different behaviors than an XLR mic it may not have quite the gain that you'll have with an interface or stuff like that but is it yeah I mean is the self noise going to be as clear is it going to be more noise some a lot of times these USB mics they kind of cut corners on certain components to to physically put them in the mic and there's just they're not always the most clear sounding right there are some good USB mics I mean we you know we know the Sennheiser makes one Sennheiser makes new4 digital digital yeah it's and the road nt1 fifth gen which is an amazing mic at fabulous price point two probably the best USB mics going they have a Common Thread between them is that they have zero knobs buttons switches or Jacks it's all software driven just a USB cable right so everything happens in the computer there's no headphone jack but they are uh really good sting USB mics but I yeah the the if you're really looking at ethos um I mean if you're really looking at earthw Works check out the ethos super impressive mic that can easily do voiceover work as well as podcasting and broadcast stuff yeah then again the the the bottom line on all of this is if it picks up your voice and it's a fairly good microphone it probably doesn't matter whatever mic you have is the mic you have it's this space around you that matters it's always it's the Acoustics and the louder you talk the more the Acoustics come into play I've been enjoying watching Dan tonight because Dan has been W been like backing way off and all this stuff and talking and it still sounds like he's right in front of the microphone right isn't that amazing this is this is the Harland Hogan uh v1a by the way that's the classic right there and the reason for that is this room's Acoustics are very well done right they're very there's this whole wall behind us that's behind this green screen is one g enormous acoustic panel actually it's called the studio studio suit hey let's show it here this is a good time to talk about Studio suit for for a minute a minute cuz it's long gone but there it is this is what's behind the green screen everybody if you've ever been wondering what's back here but it worked dude so what is Studio suit while we're talking about Studio suit was something I found in a warehouse in Buffalo uh somebody thought it was they were tense and this guy had bought an entire truckload of these things from some government surplus thing was wasn't it um quanset Hut insulation it was it was insulation for a quanset Hut like they would put these up in the out in the field these huge rolls of this stuff right and they would right roll it out you know and and and so this guy I knew who owned this we this Army Navy Store was like I'm going to use this people can soundproof their Studios with it cuz that's the stuff you're talking about it's not soundproofing it's sound dampening material yeah it's dampen yeah and it's it we put it in people's closets it was it was it you didn't need a Bas trap it just sucked sound into it and you know and I can talk right into it and it doesn't bounce anywhere it's incredibly absorptive in fact that one episode we were talking about where Dan is assembling a booth out of PVC is actually using the studio suit you would hang it from PVC pipe and it worked exceptionally well but it had a couple little minor issues some of them had a little bit of a milde problem right it it took a two or three bottles of FaZe to really get it smelling because they they were outside they were out in this pallet outside for 10 years so they smelled like a Boy Scout ttin and that is a very that is a very um divisive odor I don't know why for me Milo smell doesn't bother me cuz it's like nostalgic it reminds me being in my parents basement well that's what I was going to say it's like weird Barbie it it smells of basement weird Barbie yes exactly um yeah no that smell was very nostalgic it didn't bother me but for many for other folks uh yeah maybe not the best choice in an enclosed room but um and the other problem was was it was in these massive things and it was a 40 foot roll and I had to cut them into 8ot section manageable and that was not easy which is why I stopped doing it but the people who have it and it's all still in a warehouse in Buffalo no I I yeah maybe I don't know who knows where it is now I don't know if Rob what Rob did with it but you know that was stud it came in these big 10 foot long green cigars of canvas green canvas bags and uh it's essentially loose yellow fiberglass in a canvas wrapper right is what it is and it and it works really well it works really well and I still have yeah piece I think I got a couple pieces sitting in the in this in the in my voice Booth over here yeah there might be some still around well there's somewhere around this door over here oh no that's that's panels I made that's something you made yeah all right there was another question Su had on the screen a minute ago let's see if we can grab to that one she's scrolling scrolling dang it I had it on screen and you guys oh Patricia hi Patricia how would you prepare your voice for audiobook narration uh Dan since you don't do that anymore no no yeah I gave that up about 10 years ago I mean there's a lot of you guys out there doing audio books while you while you come up with an answer I'll search for it on our chat box yeah you know to me audiobooks are always high effort low reward uh but um how do you prepare how do you prepare your voice for that you warm up I come out CAU here in the morning and go BL I I do scales I you know you go oh do the vocal exercises to really loosen up your voice uh but doing a long session of audiobook I mean where you read an entire chapter and uh you know long form narration is physically exhausting can be you know I mean it was I mean when I have to talk all day as not not being a voice actor I get physically tired and I can feel it in my throat I feel how tired I am yeah I yeah I was in really good shape back in those days and I and I could if you're in good physical condition mhm and I was working with a trainer back then and I was able to uh wait the door swung open and a and a fig newton entered as grouo marks once said uh but you know I you have to be in good physical condition really to do voice over because there's so many people that try to read a sentence and take a breath every five seconds you know right you should be able to read an entire sentence without taking a breath look think about how much editing time you save just by doing that but what did the chatbot come up with it came up with a bullet list of stuff okay which is you know chatbots are really good at making lists and by the way I have been using my own personal George the tech bot you know my AI George for like a month and a half answering you guys' questions on Facebook and Reddit I don't know how much you if you've seen answers from me that are remarkably well written in verbose yeah possibly broken down into 8 to 10 bullet points yeah was probably in my chat box um I've been using it a lot but uh the answer U is it's eight points warm up your voice and there's you know there's more details for each one of these but warm up your voice just like Dan said stay hydrated thank you for the reminder I forgot because I I I don't stay hydrated I I I don't drink at all I mean I got to water intake but practice reading out loud if this is something new for you understand the material you're reading pretty important it helps it really does help work on your breathing proper breathing technique very crucial I'm just repeating what Dan said see look how look how relevant this is it's all up here create a comfortable recording environment extremely important for audiobooks when you're going to be there for hours and hours recording um rest your voice how how long would you go between breaks how long did you know before you're like I got to take a break more than two hours yeah hour I mean I I could do a chapter in an hour and I would stop you would take a break I'd take a break have a drink you know and go back and go back at it okay although generally what I back in the back in the day I would record and I would edit the chapter you like to do it as you go yeah know that would be my tendency I I would be so like it would be so in my head what I just recorded and I would just be thinking I got to edit it I gotta edit I gotta edit I gotta edit it I can't I can't let it go that would be me I would edit I'm the same way you know are you coming for lunch yeah I'll be there in a couple minutes edting this yeah yeah and the very last one which maybe the most important bullet point of all is seek feedback and training listen to people get advice from professionals don't think you know everything and just because you have a chatot doesn't mean you're right you have all the answers and get help because or ask us you know get help get help get help yeah great question yeah so and and KES we've been doing this all these years the thing is is the more you do it the year all the years that you and I have spent building home voiceover Studios very specifically I mean did we know everything when we started no of course I mean what was an old George Carlin joke how do you start a path you got to hold the grass down yourself at first oh that's a great line I remember that well Carlin had a bunch of them uh but we learned you know the more experience nobody has as much experience at home Studios as you and I do no this has been an absolute Obsession for a very long time yeah and you know everybody else is like oh here's how you be an engineer you don't have to be an engineer yeah you got to learn Pro Tools that the industry standard there's no which industry are you talking about yeah let's talk about which industry we're talking about right you know you're not a recording engineer you're a voice actor your job is to capture your voice in the proper acoustical environment with the right levels and now levels now ai is controlling that stuff well Ai and and and 32-bit float which is a topic I've been I have been teasing that I'm going to do a webinar or a video on 32-bit float for a very long time and it's time so I'm going to be doing that soon because it it's the question keeps coming up more and more often and I've got two perfect devices to test I've got the road N15 gen yeah with a 32-bit float USB ad converter magic sauce right and I have a zoom UAC 232 I think it's called which is sort of like their Scarlet 2i2 all right it's an audio interface with no gain knobs oh it has zero gain knobs the evo4 is like that too well it it will set a level it has a Smart Level that's a whole another thing so smart level setting this is becoming more of a thing especially now the new Scarlet 2i2 fourth generation came out it has auto level and safe modes I'm still dubious on the safe mode I was watching all these YouTube videos trying to get a better explanation basically a limiter or that's what I don't understand I don't know if it's a limiter where it when you get to clipping like zero it brings the level down for just a for a moment and then back or if it drops it down and then leaves it down right if it was me the way I would want that feature to be is if you do get to clipping that it would drop the level by I don't know let's say 60b just like that and then for the duration of the entire rest of the project it would be six down because then if you're editing the audio you know the precise moment where the gain changed and now you can just make your adjustment and post right you just take the first half and drop it down by six boom you're done so I don't I don't know I I the jury's still out on that now speaking of the Scarlet you notice I didn't mention the Scarlet solo do not get the Scarlet solo fourth generation because because channel one yeah is the guitar channel two is the is the mic they flipped it on us and now so if you're trying to use just a mess with you oh it's so irritating now I mean a lot of like Zoom type programs just automatically hear both channels and it's a piece of cake but your da isn't going to work that way so if you're just used to plugin in a mic to channel one hitting record you're going to get zero on your track unless you go into the settings switch the inputs now I know that sounds easy but trust me it's a pain in the neck when it's not the default right and so I really don't recommend the the 20 2 I2 fine the 4 I4 has much more complicated software if you geeking out on making mix minuses and all this crap go for it yeah it's fun to be a geek I mean if you want to play with stuff but you don't need it for doing voiceover catch it clean up front and and you know we've only been saying that for 13 years and sure let's grab some more questions John oor of all the home Studios you each have worked on what ones were your favorites and why can you remember anything that you worked on that just stands out uh let's see what's the one that flashes to your brain immediately oh some of the ones you know when you would go into these big expensive houses MH you know I'm suddenly in this Mansion up in you know in Ceno you're in the Gated part of the Gated part right exactly G of the Gated Community yeah you have to go in there and like I'm here you know okay you go in there and you're suddenly in this very very nice closet you and you see the kind of clothes people wear and and that sort of thing and I've done that many times and you realize they have a they have a perfect Booth already right because they have this huge closet right there's clothing on maybe all four sides if it's a big one right and you put the mic in there it's the one I mean we I've done so many it's the ones that look impossible and you just do make a couple of little adjustments know and it sounds good the way it is because as you always say if it sounds good it is good uh yeah I I mean I won't mention any names but you know there are a lot of places where I've you know they're a challenge so I go into a place and I sniff as I like to say all right what does it sound like over here okay all right if you place yourself here this is The Sweet Spot put the mic like this and you I just you know rinse and repeat and it it I always get it right because you know I don't want to I don't want to over complicate it I'll show people how to how to edit properly um but you know there's there's not one that was a favorite I love doing all of them you know unless someone was a real pain in the ass which which was very rare just a little Looney Tunes it's pretty rare yeah I mean we're working with regular we're working with people right you know yeah and and you know and of course there were a lot more people trying to get into it who had no experience at recording so right you know that's the fun part for me was you know quickly setting up but then explaining the business to them yep like I mean you I like you know I'm always making this joke that's the that's the extra special sauce of having one of us there physically with you or working with you right there's so many other things that just flow out because we've just been in your we've been in these environments so many times and we find little things to improve or we exactly little tips you know yeah and uh you know trying to deal with background noise and uh you know and I always said well you live where you choose to live you know if you're next to a construction site you know you're you're so that that's that reminds me of that one time okay actually let me show you I'll show you my favorite Studio before we go on my favorite Studio to this day is still still this one that one yeah I've been in that one Speaking of the impossible studio right yeah look at this thing it's a freaking glass fish tank right how can that possibly how can that possibly work the glass is all parallel there's no slanty glass right the room is basically a square right you know so it's glass glass glass square big huge countertop and there's a glass window on the opposite side also perfectly parallel right so every rule is broken in this space why is the glass slanted though in most Studios not for acoustical reasons there's two well there's two reasons one one is no glare so you can see through the that's the bigger one like yeah in radio Studios it was like you know okay three two one you try looking through the door of your studio bricks or really any door glass door that has double layers of glass and all you see is yourself all you see is reflection so that's one huge reason why the nonparallel glass is the norm um it can help in a small Booth too because the sound now reflects downward you know instead of right back at the mic you know but it's not necessary and and this is an example of that why does it work well it works because mic placement is critical we we have the Acoustics all focused on one one location where the mic is the entire ceiling of the booth is one Jack gigantic bass trap right so there is no resonances or anything the whole thing and every square inch that isn't glass or wood has acoustical paneling on it so um it's I put that drape in there thinking well we're going to need a drape because it's going to reflect right nope he never closes the drape so this this one is a real favorite of mine it's got stained glass at it cuz that window is already on the outside of the house like what are we going to do with that glass window well we should frame it out so you know this one's a favorite but there you go you can see where the two mics are located he's he's facing right into a huge it was a beautiful Studio panel you know and that one's still uh that's Howard Parker it's still in use today and so yeah I that's that one's that always comes straight to mind when that question comes up yeah it's always fun to see how people have already set up you know and then it's like no you you you know one you're talking into the side of the mic o or talking on the wrong side of the mic let's demonstrate yeah let's demonstrate that everybody needs to hear the wrong side of the mic right talk into the logo or if you got a road into the Gold Dot not across it the the Gold Dot kids the Gold Dot you know something just came to mind yeah one one of my favorite shows that we did well actually I ended up doing it was the one I did from Hershey the the Russian talk show you know where I you know I'm like is anybody here a FLA director at a TV say I do that totally cable access yeah and and and we we did it it was all with analog cameras and I had one of those S old Sony handy cams with your RCA cables plugged into a Radio Shack right TV switcher like I want to watch the I want to watch a VHS click right that was the switcher right you know there was the Gen loock was a little late but you know it was a little flunky but it work but it was fun it was you know we're I'm like hey I'm here at facon here let's talk to this person and oh God that was a lot of fun you know again it was there were no rules it didn't matter yeah we just went for it I think I think people need to start living their lives that way it's like well yeah there are rules you know you stop at a stop sign and you know things you know kill other people and but there are rules to to live streaming and doing a show Just go with it it's very few r as we've been doing for the last hour and 15 minutes here exactly exactly but maybe you know you have any more questions or uh yeah I know there's more in there all right well let's answer a few more I'm changing the price on the chatbot okay good by this is the other thing while we're doing this show he's on the internet going oh I gotta have something for Tech talk that's why the laptop is always right in front of me it's like oh wait a sec I hear somebody at the door fun in there problem product price changed excellent $1 it's $10 a month come here we've also had several dogs that have been in the studio we had Ari all those years and Tink but now we have Mishka Mishka Mishka likes to lick microphones lick the mic lick it and why not lick it lick it lick the mic can I lick the [Music] mic okay so has a question from somebody from Greg Hernandez what's your favorite part of VBS is it the interviews or the tech talk Tech talk Tech talk Tech talk Tech talk Tech Talk t to T talk yeah no I I mean it was it was fun meeting some really cool people absolutely I mean we had I mean Fred meled in here people who are you know fairly big stars Debbie Dairy Berry was always a pleasure to talk to uh and some of the cool people that we've met and it was interesting you know when they would come and they would be in my house and they'd come here and they'd sit here and i' get to look up their nostrils and everything it was It was kind of cool but you and I just shooting the poop here about all this stuff because I mean clearly we've had some the highlights are pretty obvious and we've talked about him a lot like June Fay coming into the studio he was passed on by now and just her live interaction with Dan and just she was amazing we um gosh I mean you know and and we had some great coaches on too I mean so many great coaches you know Dave Walsh she was always fun to have on and Mark Cashman and uh and John Bailey I mean it's we've had some friends of the shows over the Year John tayor John Taylor where where is John he's out in he's out in um Palm Springs oh he's in Palm Springs yeah he's loving his life in Palm Springs good for him um John John search for any episode with and you will laugh um but John Bailey became another friend of the show yeah just if if we were like dang it so and so got booked yeah called John see if John do it and he would write back who canceled and we bring him in John Bailey is fantastic guest yeah if if you go to the chatbot that's a picture of John in the middle of the the guy in the middle is John he doesn't look anything like that now yeah you know and you know and Scott Parkin you we had some fun times with Scott parin because he would always bring bottle of rum oh yeah who were who who were the who were the uh the guests we had that that would bring booze it was it was Scott yeah and it was compost Productions oh oh um yeah um oh no this I'm have to use the chatbot I'm gonna have to use the CH Bill Holmes sorry Bill it it it it came it was in back in the back of my mind sorry Bill Bill Holmes those two guys would show up to the studio usually shots yes and so within the first hour we were getting a little bit SCH knocker and getting pretty pretty pretty loose on the mic yeah yeah that those those were fun shows and uh you know it was just fun if it wasn't fun we wouldn't do it yeah you know and and when it became more it still was fun but there was still more the labor of it of the grind of it well and but the but the shoveling snow no it's not and it's not mining coal no it's not although there is a certain pleasure to shoveling snow like I'm proud of this driveway as it starts snowing again it's like but uh well we didn't have the snow well we had the snow but it was for us it was the leaves should we wait till all the leaves fall out of the trees before we start cleaning up the leaves right yeah and then and then there were the tip of my tips of the week which were well planned out Productions we got we got to do packages can't just be our talking for hours pre-recorded packages and those are those are still on the internet those are on um I think those are still on the V OBS website and you know you can type in tip of the week and it'll give you all the different tips of the week that I made uh Chris Anthony lown thank you for speaking up the voice of barie said we had Barbie of course we had Barbie thanks Chris yes we had the voice of Barbie yeah yeah it I mean come on I mean where else can you the funny thing was is people would would recognize me places I'm sure it happened to you too I'm walking down the street in Pebble Beach or in uh Carmel By the Sea people don't recognize me because I'm usually wearing a helmet and I'm on a bike going 15 20 miles an hour I'm walking down the street my my son had just graduated from from uh Middlebury College in in um uh Ventura and uh no not in ventur up up in the the Monteray Bay up in Monteray and uh so we went into uh Carmel By the Sea which is a beautiful little town absolutely and this guy's standing on the corner I'm walking by there with my mom and go he goes aren't you Dan Leonard I'm like yes I watch your show like great my mother was very impressed you know uh happened in a Subway a couple of times you know people see the mustache and they were like oh you're you're the guy that has that show on voiceover so clearly we were we were doing pretty well and then people would send me mustache stuff there was so much mustache stuff what H I was trying to get her attention without getting distracting you but it didn't work no well you're going like this I mean sleep no I just want to make sure Sue had to go at some point oh okay yeah at some point Point well we'll we'll finish up in five minutes here five or 10 minutes you want to run all the best wishes oh yeah sure we have best wishes from people we do I got to let Mishka out all right you let that hey Bonnie that's my cousin Bonnie in Pennsylvania she's just a little older than me and she was my one of my best Pals grow growing up hey Bonnie thanks for saying that Trey Mr Trey kendri Mosley who has his own podcast all right good to see you fellas says Trey Alicia Hurley says Where can we find new tech talk like all the new gadgets George talks about well I guess moving forward I guess my other show now the pro audio Suite it's probably the place to go because that's where I'm releasing new content and you know so yeah check that out it's a very different vibe um definitely more geeky um but yeah it's called the pro audio suite and we release stuff every week so that's one place to go um Paul Sager uh thanks for everything you too thanks for saying that thanks Paul yeah oh man Justin Rama says yes thank you Jack I watched all of eabs and thanks to him I was able to take notes easier so he's thanking Jack deulia for doing all the manually written show notes right which is things that just AR going to be happening anymore because of AI um Joan Covino says thanks for sharing your expertise humor and insight over the yours thanks Joan yeah we recognize a lot of names but that one I didn't yeah Alberto Alberto Franco in uh in Portugal it's 3:00 a.m. and he's watching live from Portugal you rock him Berto you do I mean all also I know that he works like Pacific time hours CU that's where all the clients are but thanks he's an interesting guy because I so great yeah it's like well you know you speak P because he's in Portugal he speaks Portuguese portuges and and I once said oh so you can you could do you could do stuff in in Brazil he goes they don't speak Portuguese in Brazil That's so some that's some other language well that's like saying that you speak Spanish but you're from Mexico versus from Spain I mean you know these are very different dialects but yeah you can understand it right um Bill Hein says thank you I've immensely valued listening to the two of you over the past 18 months and as I've started my and as I've started my vo Journey so much learning so much more to learn Ash thanful all right thank you Eddie Mr all caps EDD sure hate to see you two masters go thanks for everything thanks Eddie you're a great suppor of the show and Sue too thank you too Sue by the way the desk that Sue's sitting at is thanks to Eddie Yeah Eddie found this desk at Costco he's like he had one he's like I got to get one for the show he said you guys want to get one of these he's like I want to get you this desk we could we couldn't say no we couldn't say no he showed up and he brought this freaking super cool electric lift desk in the studio five roughly 5 years ago and it's been here ever since thanks thanks it's moved around a little bit but you know thanks Eddie you're awesome uh Larry Hudson our old buddy Larry I over here all by myself lasting laughing hysterically out loud you guys have created an amazing Legacy of greatness yeah man that means a lot Larry Larry lives up in the mountains up in rightwood yeah he's 10 foot of snow up there I mean they really get an hour from here and suddenly there's you know all that snow Yeah man yeah love Larry lar Larry by the way Larry again I was mentioning Larry was the one that told me you got to move out to California you're going to love it here yeah that was that Larry that Larry um Diana Costello Meritt oh wow go back oh jeez Good Times love y'all nice Buffalo G yeah I remember hanging out with her at um fafc yeah V Atlanta fafc con that kind of we we we miss you I we haven't talked in a long time did she have the T temporary tattoos I don't know I feel like she had temporary tattoos and we were sticking on everybody and laughing our oh that might have that might have been going on at one of those conferences but speaking of stickers not to get you know not to get oh but there's a sticker on the back of that mic I'm going to mute it for a second while you while you take it out of there but there's a very special sticker on the back of Dan's mic that I know will be very hard hard to show on frame but we we had this tradition in wovo there's uh this guy Pat Sweeney Pat who was a you know big fan of our show uh one of those people he was like my grandmother every he had a different relationship with everybody and everybody loved him because he was just a super duper guy and you know and he he passed on and uh so we have this thing you know he used to say I'm G to you you're going to give you give somebody a golden nugget and we give him a slap on the back and we came up with these stickers that say a pat on the back yeah and and that's that's his Testament and uh boy we miss you God he was such a we miss you Pat yeah there's so many great people I don't want to get into a list of people we've lost because I can't hold it together I'm not a professional um but uh there have been quite a few that we've lost over the years that have been our clients and Friends of the show and all that stuff and Pat I'll never forget you I'm glad you have that sticker on your mic cuz always remember that you know to you always give out give out advice and I know you like looking at Pat but Pat's on the back of the mic oh I know part of it but kids that's the back of them that's the back of I'm talking on the wrong side here aren't I okay there we go now I'm in the right side go anyway that's where the back of the mic sounds like well it's 9 o' here in California love you Lee Lee by the way whenever we say we Lee penny for being Lee Penny Lee Lee was a very early on supporter of our show as well coming into the studio helping us with some tech stuff early on um Big Time support of our show thanks Lee for being there all these years um God it's been a blast it's been a blast yeah so I guess that's going to wrap it up it's going to wrap it up if you want to eternally I know I'm getting a little for clamped um Talk Amongst yourselves we'll have some coffee and we'll talk um it's been a great time and uh we're going to be continuing to do things just in different formats and different ways but if you want to keep tapping into our knowledge vbs.tv and you'll access our our chatbot our chatbot there for now $10 for $10 a month 14 days free trial play with it test it and if it works well and by the way Dan you're going to be giving this chatbot to some supporters of our show yes and to wvo members wvo members so if you are a wvo member World voices member good standing you're going to get access to the chatbot for free yep and everybody who are making repeat subscription support of our show who were sending us money like like on PBS sending your dollars people would send us money and it it it helped with the equipment and all those things and we were and people did it for years and years and we really appreciate we're going to we're going to find a way to give you guys access to the chatbot too so use it enjoy it share it tell people about it and uh we want to keep helping people for years to come this way so I I guess that'll put a wrap on it they'll do it man a always a pleasure fortunately we live in the same town we can still have lunch of course but but we have to go to Chicago to woocon cuz that's the only that's how it works the only time you see people from La is when you go to a conference somewhere else City yeah you try to get together with people in La it's almost impossible I got to cancel I can't come like see everybody knows that you know it's it's it's very hard to make friends here you have to do have to be better yeah everybody has to you it's it's a discipline it is you know uh you know making friends and keeping friends and being friends and and being friends means giving and you know and I think everybody needs to learn that and and do that some people are better at it than others and but when you have friends that makes the world a much nicer Place absolutely man you know thank you and it's always been a pleasure working with you doing this show you would have thought that we'd been doing it for 13 years I know Sue thanks for hanging in with us so long I mean you've been our longest continuous uh technical director and you know gosh seven seven years years you've taken off so much stress off our shoulders doing this Le a lot though I definitely I feel like I could someone how to set up their uh their audio know I mean Sue is Sue is an incredibly versatile person she has so many skills Sue what's your email address can I plug your email it's my last name I'll put it up really quick marinos sue gmail.com.com if you need her for anything production podcasting live streaming setting up your studio set up your lighting properly yeah she knows that stuff she's brilliant yes but you know I we're still in business you've got George the tech I'm still the home studio master and you know you can send your stuff into my specimen collection box vs fan 10 off coupon code I think it still works on my website oh good if it doesn't tell me I'll fix it but exactly it should still work 10% off yeah and uh you know it's what we love to do is teach people how to do it right because if somebody sounds bad it makes everybody sound bad but if it sounds good it is good but by the way I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Wham and this has been voice over body shop or V BS thanks everybody you've been wonderful thanks everybody big [Music] heart