LUFS Loudness Targets

0:00 Hey, welcome to Office Hours. It's going to be a short show today. Don't have a whole lot of questions. Tiny, tidy little panel. We'll probably bust through this in about 20 minutes. We'll see how this goes. Today we're going to talk about some audio things and also a very interesting little monitor that just got released or is about to be released. I think that's going to be sort of fun.

0:21 And oh, a couple of things. If you want to ask a question live, you can use this little QR code here. it'll take you to a site and you can fill in a question. Also, I'm going to tell you some other ways to get in touch with us and chat about nerd stuff. Anyway, Alexander, what's the first question? First question this morning is coming in from Jason Robbershaw in Sarasota, Florida.

0:44 Remember that small rig second screen we were all excited about last year? The one that would AirPlay to the back of an iPhone, now available in a wired config. Useful? so i'll tell you jason and uh alexander's gonna chat about this too i did buy one of those little things looks like this let's see if i get the reflection and you know what it's super cute and

1:05 it's and it's pretty cool the way it works except the wire as it turns out the wireless is kind of a problem what's your thought on it alexander i agree i mean i i didn't buy one last year because i didn't want to use something that used airplay i you know i prefer to always use cable wired solutions if possible so i'm i don't understand why they didn't release this in the first place

1:26 i don't know why it took so long but that said it's finally here so i'm finally going to buy one of these things and it looks like you cannot buy it right now right now i just looked at the the small rig uh website here so this is what we're looking at here it comes bundled with a little short stubby usb-c cable even has this little bluetooth remote i guess for triggering

1:46 records which looks interesting it's uh works up to 10 meters but yeah it comes with the cable it shows up for me as 86.90 I guess that's Canadian it converted to Canadian price so I put my name on the list to notify me I definitely want one and I guess in theory it should be lower latency but I don't know how much less latency it's got because it doesn't seem to say

2:11 here. So I'll report back. I'll let you know as soon as I have one. Yeah, I don't think the, I hear what you're saying about latency, Alexander, but considering what this, the intended purpose of this thing is, just to help you frame, I don't think the latency issues are that big of an issue. I will say this. I was super excited about this. I thought, oh,

2:32 that's a blah, blah, blah, blah. And you get the thing and then you realize that once you AirPlay, I think it's the way it does it, you AirPlay your phone screen to its screen, there's a lot of other things you can't do with your phone anymore. Like, I like to monitor off of, you know, where are they? The AirPods. I call them my Air Jordans.

3:00 And you can't do that because a lot of faculties of the phone are tied up just sending a picture out to that display. So I literally have never used it for anything. It was an absolute waste of 60 bucks or whatever it cost last year. And I will say that a wired version of it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. And considering that you can now, you know,

3:29 have little adapticators, maybe plug multiple things in. I tell you, we just, we never get satisfied. We always just want to keep adding more and more crap that we want our phone to do. Let's go to the next question, Alexander. All right. This one is coming in from Paul Vol, who's in Austin, Texas. Is a Black Magic Fairlight live mixer a perfect companion to an ATEM MIDI

3:51 when it comes to audio? That's a good question. What's your thought, Alexander? So this app doesn't require an ATEM. I mean, you can use it as a standalone app with a you know a core audio compliant interface USB interface you can run VST plugins now if I'm not mistaken I think it only works if you're going to use it with an ATEM I think you have to have the new extreme

4:16 ISO G2 with the latest firmware there was a firmware that was in beta that added support to have Fairlight recognize the ATEM as a USB-C audio interface I don't know if that's out of beta because I haven't been following it and I'm sure others will comment on it I go yeah anyways that's all it's interesting so it's basically what we're talking about is is this guy yeah no

4:43 we're talking I think he's talking oh he said fair like you know what you can interpret it two ways because when we said Fairlight mixer I assumed Paul's talking about the Fairlight live mixer software but they do have a piece of hardware. I think he's talking about this piece of hardware here that looks, appears to be expandable. Well, then I retract my statement. He is not. He's not talking about software? Yeah,

5:08 my final ruling because the URL that he included does in fact take us to the Fairlight Live audio mixer. And of course, the answer is yes. Now, the caveat may be, as Alexander pointed out, certain hardware or needing an update. But, I mean, it's the same company. It is literally designed to, you know, work with their devices. You know, the more buttons and stuff, the better, of course.

5:36 But, yes, absolutely. Now, I will say also that, you know, you don't want to overcomplicate things, especially if you are the one who's doing the switching while you're trying to have a, you know, a decent thought and something to say. So you don't want to overcomplicate it, but if it solves a problem, absolutely. Look at all that. I mean, I'll say this.

6:02 When I did my demo with Alex about my setup, and I'm using a digital audio mixer on the Mac, one of my objectives was I wanted to be able to have, you know, something I can reach out and grab. And so I think having a fader instead of a mouse makes a real big difference when you're dealing with live audio. If you're just recording something and doing post-production, whatever, a mix down, you can get away with a lot less tactile response.

6:41 I think it looks good. I think as is the case, all of us, I was going to say audio engineers, but really all of us are very particular about how we interact with the machines in front of us. And so it might be a good mixer. It might not be. There's so many things that it can have wrong. I think the one thing that we do know is that Blackmagic has been very dedicated to updating things and keeping things moving forward.

7:28 Jeff, did you have anything else you wanted to say? I did just want to add, you know, for the physical tactile, I don't know if a lot of people would do this, But, you know, you can map Stream Deck, you know, columns of buttons to effectively give you the tactile, you know, it's not a fader, but of course you can, you know, do the up, down, all that good stuff.

7:50 And, I mean, you can map other buttons too. So that's another way of getting that tactile physical interface to a software mixer. Yeah, but that sounds horrible, doesn't it? to go tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, to like incrementally jump up in. That sounds awful. I don't know. Would you do that, Alexander? Would you mix that way? Sorry, I wasn't paying attention. Okay.

8:22 So what Jeff was saying is that, you know. Welcome to the show. No. What Jeff was saying is we were saying that having a fader is better than not having a fader when it comes to mixing audio. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I said that having a fader, you know, we're all very particular about how we interact, but having that physical thing. And Jeff said, well, you could map some buttons on your stream deck to be like up a little bit, down a little bit.

8:55 No, no, no, no. Yeah, first of all, it seems like it would be very steppy. Not for a pro. You need actual physical controls. I have used touch interfaces but a stream deck would be like no way that's a that's a deal breaker I do still prefer physical faders that makes a huge difference absolutely if if I may I will tell you that you know depending on what you're using what plugin you're using I forget which one

9:22 this is I think it's a third party MIDI oh yeah because remember Chris part of your video way back inadvertently helped me solve a problem. But so I'm using all four vertical buttons for channel strips. And they map, I don't know if you've ever seen, but you know, you can map two buttons. So it shows you a physical fader that spans the vertical distance of two buttons.

9:48 And as you're doing the buttons, I mean, it is a fader. And, you know, it shows you the fader going up and down. And then you can have some of the other channel strip buttons above that. So don't poo-poo it, you know, without having seen it or tried it. And, again, my point being, this is not a replacement for any interface that you may want to use regularly.

10:10 But if you have a Stream Deck, you want some physical control, this is another way of getting it. Okay, I'm being told that there are some comments in the chat about this one. Fairlight standalone mixer software for the hardware. Okay, let's see. John Wallace says Fairlight Live is a software mixer that has a physical surface. Yep, we figured that out. Thank you, John.

10:35 Getting the audio into the ATEM is the problem. So handling audio outside of the ATEM pipeline isn't best handled by Fairlight. Yeah, I agree, John. John, I think we threw out the ATEM helper app pretty quick. Now we're just talking about the mixer. Having a button is not high enough fidelity. Agreed. I see what you're saying, though, Jeff. Jeff can no longer trust any answer you give.

11:05 Oh, jeez, John. John says I can no longer trust any answer you give. Okay. Sorry. If I had read that out loud to myself, I don't think I would have read it out loud. You're okay. And as I said, I'm crushed hearing that. I'm crushed. Okay, John, thanks for being honest. Next question, Alexander. All right, this is one of my questions. Lewitt have released wireless studio headphones with DSP that claim to be designed for mixing.

11:37 What are your thoughts? Tell me about Lewitt. I don't know anything about Lewitt. So Lewitt's a company. They're known for making microphones. I've used their microphones. They make really nice stuff. Headphones, this is a first for them. I've seen other companies attempt to do this with wireless headphones. They claim it's on par with wired headphones. They are always a gimmick. However, Luit, I tend to trust more because

12:06 they make microphones and a lot of the other companies that have tried to do these haven't really be known for this. So I'm still very skeptical. I still believe, in my opinion, this is a gimmicky thing, but they claim, well, so first of all, it has some interesting features. It has virtual studio monitor simulations. So basically you can effectively simulate tuned monitors in a professional, you know, acoustically treated room. This is all done

12:33 with DSP inside of the headphones. Now, and I saw their announcement. Again, I think this is trying to solve a problem that does not exist and then what was the price here price was somewhere here it was like five in the five hundred dollar price range it looked like for these uh six millisecond latency with these do you think that's that's low enough well for your mixing remember we're not

12:55 we're not going to be tracking vocals through it so i don't think it's it's not designed for that it's designed for mixing not for recording in real time with you know note latency but But I feel that when they tell me, when their pitch is, you know, now you no longer have to worry about wires in your studio. I've never had a problem with this.

13:14 Think about when you're mixing, you're at your desk, right? So you have a wired pair of headphones plugged into some kind of audio interface. You're never moving around. So I don't understand why we need a wireless solution. This just feels like completely unnecessary, over-engineered. I don't understand why anyone would spend this kind of money. I could probably get a really, really nice pair of studio headphones, open back headphones for less than that.

13:41 I just feel like this is just a gimmick. Well, I mean, I hear what you're saying, but sometimes you are moving around. I mean, look at this guy. If he's mixing here, he's moving around, right? That's why he has a wood floor and a chair with wheels. So, I mean, I know that most people aren't mixing on consoles that big anymore, but I'm, and actually on the Lewitt page, it did say, and I'm going to read it to you.

14:13 Just curious. It says for, where did I see it? Oh, built for mixing, mastering, monitoring, and recording. So you think that they absolutely don't think a singer could sing on these things. correct? I don't know. I'd have to try it. Again, I'm going to get one of these and we're a Lewitt dealer, so I'm going to get one and test it. Oh, cool, cool, cool, cool. So I will let you know.

14:38 I'm just, I'm just, the reason why I put this out there is a bit of an incendiary question, because I know these types of products have come out before and we've all talked about and we all have very strong opinions about how they tend to be gimmicky, but maybe it's different. I mean, Tech Evolves, I mean, they obviously, they've developed, I don't know if they've done some kind

14:56 of custom wireless chip thing like Apple to try to overcome some of the issues with Bluetooth. But we'll see. I'll report back. I just wanted to get everyone's opinion about it. Yeah, no, I'm very curious. And actually, I just don't know. I know that the best example of latency is just copper right into your ears with nothing wireless. And so I just don't know how many milliseconds it becomes a problem for a singer.

15:28 So anyway, Jeff, what's your thought on it? Yeah, I mean, obviously you guys have never been to a silent rave. I mean, how are you going to do that if everyone has wired headphones? So you need something like this. Yeah, but that doesn't have a latency issue. Right. I think one you know so one of the use cases if you know people are in the studio not that that's happening as much anymore you know and you have the folks on the couch stuff like that for whatever reason you're not playing out through monitors I mean it's one possible use but yeah I like wires for this kind of stuff.

16:07 And by the way, nobody's ever going to use these at one of those silent raves because I think they have an understood level of attrition that some of their headsets are not going to be coming back. These are not disposable. Let's go to the next question. All right. This is from the QR code submission. Jose in San Juan, Puerto Rico is asking a question.

16:33 What is the cheapest way to add tally lights to my three Sony FX3 30s set up as inputs to a Rodecaster video? I've seen the ones by Hollyland, but they're way too expensive. Thanks. You know, Jose, I think what you're going to find out is that there are – you're probably going to end up in like a DIY sort of situation. I've seen people do this.

16:58 I've seen people, you know, make little boxes that they vocro to the thing, whatever. But, and I don't know how much the Hollyland thing costs. So I don't know what your budget is. Alexander? I haven't done this. I've heard of other people doing similar things, not necessarily with the Rodecaster. But I believe you can control the Rodecaster over Bitfocus Companion. and there are cheaper tally light solutions out there on the market than the holly land and the

17:35 names are escaping me but if you poke around maybe ask on discord you could probably find I know other people have talked about this I seem to recall David Brady talking about these cheaper lights and he pointed me to them and I wish I had them bookmarked but there should be a way with bit focus companion if you are bit focus companion and a stream deck user that you can tie in the

17:57 triggering of the changing of the input states with also triggering the tally lights too, because you should be able to wirelessly or control them over, I'm sure, OSC or something like that. So there should be a way to do it. I just don't have a direct solution or a recommendation on a tally light, but they do exist. Yeah, I know I've seen stuff, but it's just not coming to me.

18:23 Mickey, you just popped into the room. Do you have anything you want to say about tally lights? You can just shake your head. I won't even have you. Okay. Let's move on to the next question. All right. This one's from David Brady in New York City, New York. David asks, could this be the new standard office hours microphone? If it had a PTT, that's push to talk, I'd be all over it like white on rice.

18:45 And there's a link to trash talk audio. Now I got to see. What is this? Who has it? Somebody haven't opened up yet. It's a great domain name, by the way. Yeah, right. Yes. This is the future. Please. Oh, I'm buying this. Is that an XLR? You know, they've had a USB version of this for a very long time. But does it have foldback?

19:11 Does it have foldback? There's no connector. You should be playing audio into it. David, I could absolutely just see you sitting at your desk at work going, yeah, that's not what I said. You got that all wrong. Drop it on the table. But then you have to get that foam thing, you know, that lets you put your shoulder against it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

19:35 Wow. Mouth mic, XLR cable, quarter-rich cable. Actually, and if I'm not mistaken, there's a 3.5 millimeter one that folks put out to use, like, in your car as, you know, with your phone at the time when you were still plugging it into the phone. Speaking of this, have you ever seen that video clip of a woman who got pulled over for talking on her phone in the car in her hand?

20:01 And the guy, and she goes, I wasn't holding my phone. He goes, I saw you. You had it in your right hand. And she holds her nub up. She goes, I don't think so. She didn't even have a right hand. Anyway, thank you, cops. Oh, you can get it in different colors, David. You should get a red one. check it, red. And it really does need push to talk, doesn't it?

20:27 Isn't that the bat phone? Yes. It's red, right? Oh, I love this. That's so funny, David. You might have to mod it with a push to talk button. Let's go to the next question, Alexander. That's going to be my dedicated comms mic from now on. Next question is coming in from Andre Dole in Berlin. Can you please explain the different audio levels you have to meet

20:48 for different platforms like YouTube? broadcast, et cetera. Why are there different levels expected? And what do you have to meet besides pure levels? Alexander? So there are, so in the world of broadcast, there are standards. There's actually a standards body for loudness. You know, there's different standards for the U.S. versus European Union and that type of thing. However, for internet streaming, there is no

21:17 official ratified standard other than the fact that many people many platforms have agreed on certain loudness target i'm talking integrated loudness which which is a measurement over time from the entire like for the entire program basically so you have to measure if you have a one-hour show you would measure the entire show and it would have to meet that certain target now

21:37 apple and most podcast platforms have agreed that they recommend if you're distributing a stereo program that it should be hitting negative 16 LUFS. Okay. And then they also recommend that your true peak should be negative. No, I think it's like negative 1.5 or negative one DBFS. That's the decibels full scale. And the reason for that is because a lot of the reason why this

22:07 actually started the origin of it is because a lot of people that move to listening to these programs are listening now in loud, noisy environments. They're listening on mobile devices. So they're on the train, they're on the bus, they're maybe in a noisy car. And these lower, quieter broadcast standards, like when they are, you know, recommending negative 23 or 24 LUFS, it's too quiet. So that's one of the constant complaints people seem to have,

22:36 consumers have, is that all this stuff is way, way too quiet. So they came up with negative 16, And that's what these platforms have kind of all agreed and recommended that you distribute your audio at. YouTube has decided to do something different. They recommend a much louder target of negative 14, which they're not going to penalize you if you submit something quieter.

22:57 They've tried to go around this now. So they now inside the actual audio player, they have a button you can check for boosting audio dialogue. and so they're trying to do their own things to kind of correct bad audio if it's if it's too loud you can you can kind of level it out so it's they're doing their own compression and limiting to get around that I don't like

23:22 distributing myself at negative 14 in my opinion requires far too much limit you're compressing the dynamic range so the louder you go the more compression and limiting is required and the more your audio starts to if you look at the waveform starts to become like a brick wall and i'm just not a fan of the way that sounds so everyone is kind of doing their own thing um you know specifically with um uh us i know andre

23:48 i know you you know what we do here you know we kind of invented our own thing like to try to at least have some consistency between panelists on a show like this it's nice to have some kind of audio meters that people can look at and just kind of get within the ballpark of a certain number. And we've decided it's going to be negative 23 LUFS. And that's just to make sure everyone's

24:11 within a tolerable range. And actually, without getting too much in the weeds of audio processing, some people say, well, if I want my audio at negative 16, shouldn't I just gain my mic up? No, it's impossible. If you tried to do that, and I recommend you try it, grab an audio meter, look at the short-term loudness if you gained your mic preamp to hit negative 16 you would

24:34 overdrive that preamp like crazy um if you if you just with your transients right just with transients you would you would just be distorting the heck out of it and you can't get to negative 16 without dynamics processing it's just not possible so that's why we chose that as a reasonable loudness target to just get everybody consistent and even and then any processing we need to do

24:58 afterwards can be done by the engineer that is working on that particular show and they can do that but that's at the end of the audio chain jeff so one thing that is interesting that i hadn't really thought of but just came across as an issue is levels or loudness that transcription software is kind of best at and and this is interesting because i had a problem with the

25:27 you know, because we're usually, if we're running it, we're running it against the raw recording. And, you know, oftentimes they can be too low. And checking, you know, it seems like everything says, you know, that they work best at levels like between negative 12 to negative 18, which, again, would be your original recording. And, you know, they try to also detect silences, you know, and notate that.

26:00 And they try and detect, now they're trying to detect those filler words, not just to put them in the transcription, but actually like OpenAI Whisper has learned or has been trained to actually identify them and then omit them from the provided transcription, for better or for worse. And so this, you know, is a bit of a challenge of getting that right balance.

26:27 OpenAI Whisper, for example, if you're using the APIs, one of the things it can do is normalize the audio before running the transcription. Yes, to all of that. I will say a friend of mine, and I put this in the Mucana chat, a friend of mine has been on a tear lately, vibe coding various plugins for certain things. And I know that some devices have like a button where you say, you know, mix this up to X level.

27:05 And like, for example, I think Raphael has a button that says, go ahead and gain this up to YouTube standards and stuff. And so I think that as things get more advanced, like for, and I'll say this, Alexander, riddle me this. You mentioned people like to do minus 16 lefts. We do minus 23 lefts. So are we quieter than minus 16 or louder than minus 16?

27:32 Yeah, that would be considerably – so that would be a lot quieter. Okay. So our minus 23 is very conservative. Minus 16, very difficult to get to. Yeah, it's fine if you're – again, it depends on the platform where you're distributing. If it's broadcast, then negative 23 is what they're going to suggest. Now, they have strict guidelines too. Like, for example, like there are a lot of – you know, if you're a post house, for example, and you're distributing to broadcast,

28:01 If you submit a file, like for example, like even Netflix. So Netflix now has their own standards. Now they want you to hit negative 27. And if you submit content to them that does not absolutely dead on hit that, it's rejected. Automatically rejected. So we would be too loud for Netflix. You'd be, you actually would be, yeah, you would be too loud.

28:26 They want more dynamic range for their content. Is that why we're not on Netflix? because I think this show should be on that list. Yeah, that was the secret I just gave you, the secret. I think we could have fixed that. Jeff, last comment? And the flip side of that is, for instance, YouTube will, if you're too loud, they will crank you down.

28:48 But if you're too low, they're not going to raise you up. So someone clicks on your video, and it sounds quiet, and it sounds horrible, so they go into the next one because you're just not the same as everyone else. So that's the trick is spitting them out. And DaVinci Resolve and others have those presets where you could just batch it up.

29:08 Here's one for YouTube. Does Resolve have that button? It does. Make me YouTube compliant? Yeah, I think YouTube right now is kind of like the radio was, like in the 70s, where every artist was going to their mastering engineer saying, I want my song to be the loudest one on the radio. And that's where that Alexander referenced it a bit ago about the brick wall,

29:35 the dynamic range just looking like a brick wall. We're going to go to the next question. But before we do, I just want to say that if you're just watching us live and you have not gone to officehours.global.com join, you're missing half the show. go there check it out the mukana system has a whole q a thing it has a back channel chat

30:01 people like me are dropping fire links in the chat that you're missing out on you can't follow those links and find those cool plugins that my friend rafael wrote so go to officehours.global slash join and uh there's the qr code there's that thing that's if you just have a quick question you need to blast out to us. And sometimes we even call those out.

30:27 And Robert said he's working on some other stuff. Anyway, that's that. Let's go to the next question. I'm trying buttons. Next up is from Paul Valhusan Austin, Texas. What is the most basic USB audio mixer and easy to use? How many inputs do you need on this mixer, Paul? I think Paul Wallace needs like a 48 channel mixer. Just plug all your mics in at once, feed them all into Zoom.

30:59 Anyway, Alexander, what you thought? It's hard to suggest a product without knowing the exact requirements. And Chris just mentioned that too. So we don't know how many inputs, how many outputs you want. Do you need effects? I'm assuming this is for live use. there are countless companies that have little usb mixers that you know will record the stereo some of everything just the left right main main bus is what they'll typically uh offer in these

31:27 things for example like and i'll just show you just a couple examples and they they make art makes three different versions of this mixer this is the usb mix this is the smallest one with two mic inputs phantom power available only on channel one channel two for some reason doesn't have it USB bus powered for recording to the computer over USB. It gives you the option of what channels you want to record

31:49 or do you want to just select it to loop back. And then there are other ones too, and it doesn't have any effects. There's the Mackie Pro FX6 V3. This is the smallest one. You only get, again, one of the limitations of these cheaper mixers is you get extremely limited EQ. You don't get sweepable mids or anything like that. You get a low and a high band.

32:09 That is all you get. At least the Pro FX has an FX engine on there and kind of unusual, but they put full-size XLR jacks on the main left-right out, which is kind of a luxury in these cheaper mixers. You know, Aniline Heat has their Z series, which actually I'm a fan of these in terms of the sound quality. The mic preamps, they're a British company.

32:29 I think they tend to sound better than a lot of other products in this price range. And again, this ZFX line, they have a whole line of these mixers, starting with the Z10, which is the smaller one with four mic inputs. And it's got an effects engine, somewhat limited effects engine. But it's got some good routing capabilities, USB recording. Again, this does not do multi-track recordings.

32:52 So hard to say which one you should go with because I don't know exactly what you need, Paul. So if you want to put another question in. But most of these are pretty straightforward to use. until you start getting into digital mixers with advanced processing. Most of these are fairly straightforward. What I will say is once you understand the basics of how a mixer works from top to bottom,

33:16 if you look at the channel strip here, I'll go back to it again, every mixer is going to have a similar layout. So you're going to have your gain pod at the top. You're probably going to have a high pass filter button that you can turn off and on. You're going to have some form of EQ, whether it's just a high and a low

33:31 or a high mid and a low or like with a sweepable mid frequency and then your effects and you're probably at least one monitor output send your pan pot left right and then your actual fader now obviously some mixers have an actual physical slider and this particular one because they're trying to save space just has the the pot the the knob actually they're all faders by the way are

33:56 potentiometers and these are potentiometers they're just in a knob instead of a slider so So it's the same thing effectively. What? No, you're totally right. I will also say this. When it comes to a USB mixer, and this is what I like about my MixPre-6, the characteristics and capability from that USB port are very important. And whereas with a physical mixer, as Alexander just showed you, you can look down the channel

34:28 strip and figure out what it can and cannot do. I don't even have to look at a manual. I see it's got one aux out and it's got one effects out. Well, the effects goes to the little effects thingamajig over there on the right hand side and the aux goes to a port on the back or the top of the thing that I can, you know,

34:46 mix monitors or whatever, whatever I'm going to use it for. But the capabilities of what is possible from that USB port, that's the thing you want to, in my opinion. That's the thing you want to be careful with when you're shopping for it because it's not intuitively obvious to the casual observer what it can or cannot do, and it's way too easy for us to make assumptions about what we would like it to do and then find

35:13 out, oh, crap, it doesn't do that thing. So anyway, that's my concern. Mickey, what's your thought on this? Yeah, I just wanted to add as well with these simpler, smaller mixers that happen to have a usb interface on it not all of them have a return coming from the computer back into the into the board into the mixer if uh if that's important to you and also not all of them

35:37 have a way to create a mix minus so if you do want to listen to say i'm assuming paul you want to use this for you know things like zoom um if you want to be able to listen to zoom through the mixer without the audio from Zoom going back out to Zoom, you have to make sure that there is a way to make sure

35:57 that that return audio from the computer can be mixed minus out of what you're sending to the computer. I personally think that Paul is just trolling us and trying to see how long we will talk about a question that he posts. I think he keeps a record. I think he has a spreadsheet, and he writes down the actual question that he asked,

36:15 and then he keeps track of how long each person talks about that question. Well done, Paul. You got us this time. Next question. Okay. This one's from Rane Hofso in Trumso, Norway. Can we talk about the different radial DIs and not to forget the radial DIPZ that can impedance match to the source? There is the Pro models, the Jensen Transformers, and all the various products that they have in their catalog.

36:43 Alexander, learn me. What's a radial DI? I don't know what that means. Well, radial is a very well-known company in the industry. Oh, it's a brand. They're a Canadian company. In fact, they're actually right down the street from where I live. I've been to their factory. They are the pretty much industry – You can tell it's in Canada because he said, I've been there to their factory.

37:03 Well, they just happen to be in the same city. Okay, go ahead. Lucky. They're cool guys. But yeah, you're right, Ronnie. Their catalog is dizzying. They have a lot of SKUs, a lot of different little solution boxes to solve many, many problems that people have in the live sound and studio recording world. So I'll just mention a couple of them because they're product catalogs too large.

37:25 Let's start with the one that you mentioned, the PZDI. So this is a really cool product. It's specifically designed for a lot of instruments that have really, really low output, particularly piezo pickups here. So, for example, like actually I had a customer a couple of weeks ago that had a violin, in and they got this little Fishman pickup that basically just clips to the saddle and you just

37:51 has a, weirdly Fishman thought it would be great to ship that thing with a little dinky eighth inch unbalanced output. So, you know, you got to convert that to quarter inch, but then you need some kind of preamp or DI box because it makes virtually no signal. So the PZ is an active solution requires phantom power, but it goes beyond just converting an unbalanced

38:19 instrument to a balanced XLR. It has other features. It has an impedance matching option here, so you can really optimize the pickup for the best possible sound by playing with the loading option for the impedance. It's got a pad, so for example, if for some reason you plugged something in that was too strong of a signal, you could pad that signal down so you don't overload it.

38:44 And then, of course, it has both a high pass and a low pass filter, which is kind of unique that you don't really see in a lot of DI boxes. So for now, I know you might be saying, Ronnie, well, if I'm, you know, I don't need high pass and low pass filters because I'm a sound engineer and I'm going to just I'm going to make those adjustments in front of house anyways.

39:01 100% agree with you however a lot of people that buy these boxes are people that are just one person operation and they're probably going to be grabbing one of these and playing in a scenario where maybe they don't have a front of house engineer they're gonna play in a bar or some small gig there's no engineer maybe they are their own engineer so it's cool to have these

39:24 high-pass and low-pass filters to really dial in the sound that the the way that they want as well. So that's a particular solution for those low output pickups. And then of course they have the Pro-DI. So this is probably, this is a single channel DI box, entirely passive, no power required, and just takes that unbalanced input, converts it to a balanced plus four DBU output. This is their top selling DI box. It does not have the higher end Jensen

39:51 transformers, although it sounds perfectly fine. It's built like a tank, like all radial products. It has a metal enclosure, very, very, very strong box. This has their cheaper, I forget what they call these ones, but they're a cheaper transformer, some kind of Chinese transformer in these ones. And then they have the Jensen JDI, which is one of the more popular ones. If you care about sound quality and you want the best possible sound, I'd recommend spending

40:17 the extra, get the Jensen transformer version of this is the passive one. Then they also make a active version of this one, which I thought I had it called up here, but I guess I didn't. anyways there is an active version of that with a jensen transformer so if you have something that is low output needs a little bit more juice you can get the active one which is powered by 48 volts

40:37 phantom power i'm just got to be careful about plugging in things that are already active that have high output like if i had an electric guitar with active emg pickup so typically something that has a battery or something that has a really high output you got to be careful because you can overload things. Although with jet, with, with radio stuff, and I've tested this, it's very

40:58 hard to overdrive those things. They have incredibly, um, large dynamic range. Uh, they also have a pad though. So if for some reason you did plug, uh, say an acoustic guitar with active pickups into that thing, you could pad that signal down by about 20 dB. You know, Alexander, if you were looking for a way to spend, to spend your hours in the day,

41:22 I bet you could probably get a job working for a place that sells those things because you you know I just like Okay, let's go to the next question All right, Paul Vahus in Austin, Texas. This is Asking Lewitt makes two mixers. What is the difference? Don't get sucked into another Paul question. He's just trying to see how long we'll talk about it. Make it short Mickey

41:44 What's up? I don't think that many They have two audio interfaces. Yeah, they have two audio interfaces, but they are not by definition mixers. They're primarily audio interfaces to get audio in and out of a computer. Primary difference is that the larger one, the Connect 6, has two preamps built in, and you can also connect it to two separate computers at the same time. So that'll allow you to, say, use it for

42:10 a podcast environment, for example, or a meeting environment where you have one computer that's your actual conversation computer where for example zoom is running um and another computer where something like a multi-track uh a dw doing a multi-track recording is running so you allows you to route audio between two computers which actually may be useful for something you're trying to do fenwick um uh but yeah that those are the primary differences uh i'm sure alexander

42:41 could add more, but they are not mixers. They have mixing capabilities using their DSP, but they are not mixers by definition. I think the real issue with the Kinect 6 is it's very difficult to balance a cup of coffee on top of it. Alexander, did you have something you wanted to add to this? No. No, Jeff. I'm sorry. Jeff had his head.

43:07 I was going to say it looks like Optimus Prime, but okay. Jeff? It does, yeah. So one of the other things that I pay attention to a lot, and a lot of companies will make this differentiation, whether actually warranted or not, and that's with the software, what capabilities you get. So this is the Connect 2, and you're not really mixing much with this,

43:33 and the quote-unquote channel strips are fairly limited. However, if you bounce up to the Connect 6, You get, now this is like unlocking features that are probably there anyhow, you know, like in a Tesla or something else, but this you get a lot more. You get, looks like at least two loopbacks. It seems like this one has, I guess, a loopback, but you have to pay more for it to be labeled

43:57 loopback. But this one you get additional effects. You get a lot more internal channels. So you can quote unquote do mixing, including other additional audio sources, which may be software or players on your computer in addition to mics or quarter-inch inputs. So aside from the additional inputs, you get a lot more by way of the software mixer. Yeah, I think you just named, if we gave our episodes episode names, we were going to call

44:32 this one Do Mixing. I like that. I think this goes back to what I was saying earlier about purchasing mixers. It's very, and a lot of different types of people listen to this show, and we appreciate all of you. Some are very advanced, and some are trying to become more advanced. I will say that as a young man, before USB existed, all I cared about is like that channel strip.

45:03 Like I, you know, the ins and the outs, and I've said many times, I think outputs on mixers are more important than inputs. But in today's day and age, you really have to dig into the software to see the capabilities that are not obvious when you look at the front panel of something. And Jeff pointed out very astutely that you see that in the software.

45:26 So you've got to look at the software. Let's go to the last question. All right. This is from Logan Gibson in Gadsden. What's AL? Is that Alabama? Yeah. Gadsden, Alabama. Yeah, welcome to the United States. Sorry, I apologize. I'm Canadian here. I don't know all the states. I believe AK is Alaska. Does anyone have experience with the Astral HH and a flag extension adapter?

45:49 We tried the ambient flag extension and the HH recognizes the capsule still, but it seems to be an internal wiring issue with the extension. Works fine on our Sennheisers. Logan, I don't know that anybody here knows what you're talking about. And I apologize for that. I wish we knew. I'm going to say I see half a dozen words in there. I don't know what they mean.

46:15 But thanks for asking. So they're talking about the sound devices RF handheld, the Astral HH. Ah. Okay, so HH means handheld. Yeah, I have two of them, but I've never had to use them with an extension adapter, so I can't comment. And the flag extension adapter is just an additional antenna to increase the range of it? No, no, no, no. No? Flag, flag, I send like a microphone flag, you know, the triangle or square piece that

46:42 goes on a handheld microphone for reporters where it says, usually has the network name or whatever on it. Yeah, yeah. For most interview style ENG microphones, you usually want something with a longer handle so that you can more easily, you know, cue the mic back and forth. With the typical handheld mics that you use on stage, which includes, you know, the form factor of the actual HH,

47:10 it's a little shorter. So some people on more stage-focused RF systems, RF handheld microphone transmitters, did add an extension, but they haven't had to use an extension on ours because we usually stick with the MD-486 for interview microphones for ENG work. So the flag extension adapter literally just makes the microphone longer so that you can put the flag on? So with a handheld, typical handheld RF mics,

47:42 you have your transmitter, which is usually inside the handle, and then you have a capsule that you screw on top. the extension adapter. It's just contacts at the bottom, threads, contacts at the top, threads, so it just goes in between the transmitter and the capsule just to extend it. Yeah, it's interesting, though, Logan, you say it works fine with your Sennheisers, but sometimes with the other stuff,

48:07 it doesn't. Who knows? We don't know. Sorry, we couldn't answer your question. That brings us to the end of this episode. I'm going to say if you want to help help put on Office Hours. And if you want to participate, because maybe you know exactly what Logan's problem was there, go to officehours.global.join. You can learn about the whole ecosystem of what we have going on here.

48:34 Also, and I don't have my notes up, I'm sorry, there's officehours.global.global. So, yeah, sorry, there's Ask Office Hours, and there's also officehours.global.com. Volunteer, you can work with the back-end crew. You can learn how we do all of this. And if you don't have time to volunteer to help out, you can also go to officehours.global.com. Donate. Office Hours is a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

49:11 So any, at least in the States, any donations that you give to help support the show, hey, you talk to your accountant, write that off. So that's a good thing. If we were to have gotten in the office hours bus and traveled around everybody's house, one of these days we're going to have to share some pictures of the bus. it would have taken us 30,000 miles to answer all these questions,

49:36 which is 49,000 kilometers and 241 SM58s for scale. Thanks for listening. Later, later. Fade the credits. Well, it wasn't a 20-minute show, but I knew it was going to be short. Did you show the little QR code doodad? Probably not. Oh, shoot. Hey, maybe we should put it in the credits, right? I don't know. Usually the TD does the QR code. The person cutting the show puts the graphics up.

50:11 No, I put it in. You do? I do, yeah. Why? Why? I don't know. It's just the way it's done. I wouldn't. That's not my job. Haven't you noticed it? Haven't you noticed it over my frame in the... Oh, I have. No, I know you do that. He wasn't paying attention. I refuse to do that. I refuse to participate in the production of...