Office Hours | Wednesday | September 16, 2026

0:00 Boy, you missed all the pre-show discussion. Unpopular opinion. The Resolve Speed Editor is neither speedy nor an editor. Film at 11. Welcome to Office Hours. Today we're going to be talking about audio and mostly audio, but video stuff and networking and all kinds of other things. If you have questions to ask, you can use this little guy right here, the little QR thing,

0:27 and I'm going to tell you later about more ways to ask questions and get involved. But to get started, Alexander, what's the first question this morning? First question this morning is coming in from Jeff Francis in Columbia, South Carolina. Has anyone used or heard of DMB Soundscape immersive PA software? Mr. Francis, what is this thing? Well, I just don't really know, except that I know it's a way to have a distributed PA system in a hall or anywhere you'd put a PA.

1:01 And the software is basically using objects to place those objects, time and phase level alignment, to place them given the speaker system that you have. So it's an object-based PA system. And then so you can either take individual channels or groups of channels and place them in a in a PA system. What I was looking at it for was a hall that's primarily going to be a PA system for just basic voice lift.

1:34 But sometimes we'll have stereo playback and sometimes we'll have multi-channel playback. So you could take the multi-channels and you could assign where you want the left, center, right, and the surround speakers, where you want them to come from. And the idea is this system is supposed to do its best job, as all object-oriented systems do, in making sound like it's coming from that space for everyone in the space.

1:59 So it's designed for PA systems covering large areas where most of the audience is not sitting in the sweet spot. But I'm just wondering if anyone's actually used the system or actually experienced the system. I don't know anything about it. I thought it was very interesting when the sphere opened, how they were saying that they could assign areas of the audience to say,

2:29 you're going to hear the show in German, you're going to hear the show in Spanish. you know like because i think i think the place has like 1200 speakers in the uh in the in the sphere but anyway no it's interesting you're off by at least a factor of 10 how many how many speakers are in the are in the space there was a hundred thousand speakers in the space okay so

2:54 yeah i was off a bit um individual drivers let's let's put it that way mickey what do you have to add yeah um i i haven't used a dnb immersive um product uh yet but i have uh played around with the the um acoustics elisa as well as the mayor space map uh they're they're what you would expect from an object-based system uh i don't know what the specific differences are but haven't played around

3:29 with both the L-Acoustic solution as well as the mayor one there. They're, they're, they're comparable. Of course, the way you interact with, with each differ. Space map, I think has some, gives you the ability to control it in a more dynamic and creative way, in my opinion, compared to ELISA, but it's object-based mixing, yeah, they're, they're, they're what you can do in one platform.

3:58 you can also do in the other. Cool. Alexander, let's go to the next question. This one comes in from Paul Valhusen in Austin, Texas. If you had to teach audio to video person in one hour, what's the order? Gain staging, mic distance, room, then everything else. What do you cut? Hmm. I think this would be a perfect time to reach out to our friend,

4:24 Nick Justishin. What do you have to say, Nick? Yeah, besides virtual production, I also teach all the time. So I'll start with philosophical. Number one, it's always most efficient, I feel, to meet the student where they are, right? So as much as you can communicate in video terms about audio is going to make the most of that hour that you have. So, if you're talking about gain staging, then you're associating that with gain noise,

5:01 light from video so that that video technician, video skilled person will be able to internalize the information you're sharing. And then I also recommend leading with, here is good audio. This is what we're going for. Like I always start with this is the golden standard or ground truth. this is what we're after so that the learner has something to compare to at all times of like,

5:31 okay, what's different about what I'm doing versus this was the gold standard. So I would lead with those. And then, you know, you have an hour. So the exact sequence of which concepts to teach is less important than choosing, you know, what you definitely can fit, cover them early on. Like what do you feel is the most important thing about sound quality?

5:59 You could illustrate mic distance with depth of field, by the way, for video. And then, you know, make the most of the hour. So there you go. I mean, you could get into nuances of EQ and all kinds of things. What would you do, Jeff? Sorry, I don't have a jingle for you. oh i feel so bad no jingle i know it sucks it sucks um i would start with uh if we're

6:24 going to deal with microphones i would deal with mic position and polar patterns and i think one of the key things that video people need to get is that um i think audio people need to get this too um directional mics are very different from zoom lenses uh light has an extremely short wavelength. Sound does not. So it's really hard to get directional things out of microphones. So

6:52 people see cardioid, they see shotgun, and they think it's going to be this zoom mic. You know, we've all looked through a telescope and you can see a very tiny thing and it excludes everything else. And that never happens with audio. Yeah, we've got some weird like planar microphones and do all kinds of crazy stuff. But typical production microphones are not that specific.

7:14 So the way you get isolation from other things is moving microphones close to the sound source. My position is probably where I would start. That's a really good analogy. Really good point. Miki, what do you think? Yeah, an hour. You can't teach audio in an hour. But I would have to support what Nick mentioned, which is allow them to monitor properly. give them a good set of cans

7:46 or put them in a proper listening environment and then let them listen to say songs that they like or movies and start them off breaking down what makes them like it, what makes them not like something and then from there you can start to get critical about the thought process behind that How was that achieved? Why did it sound this way? I think the important thing first is to give them an appreciation of sound.

8:22 Because without that, no matter how much you teach them, you can, you know, anyone can read off a book. Sound is just physics. But without the appreciation, then there's a very low chance that it would actually get absorbed. I'd start off there. Make them have an appreciation of good sound first. before going into the numbers and the science and the physics of it.

8:47 What would you do, Jeff? Colin? Actually, to Mickey's point, sometimes I read the room, I like to end with a crescendo and end with perhaps the most important part. So we assume they're going to forget everything up until that point, and let's leave them with the most important thing. Now, Jeff Francis has a great name. He also has a great point, which is really what I was going to focus on, which is positioning.

9:17 And that's the biggest problem I've had with footage I've gotten from videographers who also set up and recorded all the audio. And the biggest problem is mic positioning followed by their ability to communicate mic positioning to the talent that is actually out there. Because they may set it up fine and then two seconds later, you know, the person's getting comfortable so they move the mic wherever the heck they want it.

9:47 And it's too late. So positioning, and I often have to say to folks, you know, having a microphone in the room is not sufficient. You know, where it goes is quite important. So, yeah, that's the biggest thing I've had issues with. How about you, Alexander? What would you do? Everything that everyone said is accurate. I would say that, you know, as important, as critical as gain staging is, I'd say placement is even more important, as some of us have already explained.

10:16 and I have a perfect example of this. This is actually just happened to me this week. Someone complained that they, so someone rented a SM57, which we all know is a very common mic, you know, used on percussion, used on guitar amps. And, you know, these are designed for close mic applications. So they were using it on some kind of Persian percussion instrument,

10:35 can't remember the name. And I said, did you have it within like a couple inches of the instrument? They said, no. I said, how far away? And they're like, oh, well, we had it. Like, Like it was so far away my hands can't even fit in the frame. I'm like, well, there's your problem right there. Even if you got the gain, you would have had to gain the mic up so much.

10:53 I know. Look at Mickey. Look at Mickey. Cut to Mickey right now. This is like placement is everything. Nice direction. You know, I think the thing that I would do is I would concentrate on doing very, very little in that one hour. And if I had ultimate time and budget and access to great people, I would give the simplest task ever to the students and say, put a mic on this person.

11:24 She's going to read a page of dialogue. You're going to mix it to the picture. And I would give them 30 minutes to do it. They're going to take a video. Did I add a link to the poll? No, not yet. No, no. and then I would say, okay guys, come on in. And I'd bring in somebody like Mickey or Jeff Francis

11:47 and I'd say, put the mic in the right place. Mickey, drop it in. Now, let's do some isolation. Let's do some noise reduction. Let's put a little swell of music underneath it. And while we're at it, put that little sound effect that makes the line feel different. And then maybe even, you know, you can talk a little bit about where you're going to put the mic, whatever, or mic, and show them the before and after.

12:14 Okay, last thing, and then we're going to move on. Jeff Cohen, you had one quick comment? It's not even mine. I'll just say that Paul did put another link in the chat and is for this YouTube video. So if you want to learn yourself, you can see the YouTube link. in the gym. And Mr. Francis? Number one thing for someone, not necessarily

12:40 video, but for doing live sound, is to pay attention. You need to unmute the mic before the person begins speaking. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright, let's go to the next question. Alright, next up is from Jeff Cohen in Miami Beach, Florida. Does this exist? An audio device for clients with a red warning light to indicate you're speaking too low. What do you have to say, Nick?

13:11 I have wrong answers. I'm wrong answers only. Now, the first thing that came to mind when I saw this question was actually just like a small stream deck that you can operate with Bitfocus Companion on a Raspberry Pi. So you could send an OSC message to this and you could use the buttons as indicators. And you could also potentially use those buttons for the talent to provide feedback to crew, right?

13:38 Like, you know, skip me or like, oh, I have an answer for that. Like, raise your hand, that kind of thing. So, you know, that could be an I-O device. Another thing is ESP32s. Again, wrong answers only. I'm big on skills development. So this is about $5. It's essentially similar capabilities, actually more capabilities than an Arduino has. And one of the capabilities this has built in on, this is a development board, but it

14:06 has Wi-Fi built in. So for $5 and a couple LED lights and a little bit of messing around with code, you probably consult with an AI system to help you with that. But you have your own proprietarily developed communication lighting system. In fact, besides LED lights, you could also have a touchscreen display that would be about that size as well. And again, with a battery, you just lay it on the table in front of them.

14:38 And then again, you could have the talent could touch that touchscreen display and to somehow communicate back. So those are my wrong answers. I suspect Mickey has real answers for this question. And Nick, I'm going to say up front here, I won't be using the jingle anymore. So feel free to raise your hand for anything. You should not be embarrassed. Mickey, what do you have to say about this one?

15:01 It's hard to give a recommendation without knowing the exact circumstance here. But in this situation, that would typically come from a producer. It's also hard to say, like, what exactly do you mean by speaking low? Are you basing this off of like a decibel or a loudness measurement? Or is this just a perception of like, you know, you're not giving enough energy as a presenter.

15:26 Like if that, if these are like creative directions and that should come from a director or producer. This can be relayed again, depending on the circumstance. If it's like an onstage thing, a real like, you know, in-person event. this could be fed through a downstage monitor where you can ask for them to you know project a bit more if this is being on set like a corporate video that's being recorded you know

15:49 call cut then have the director give direction to the the um the presenter uh if this is a a live thing like say remote contribution again your return video feeds could could relay this message if you have a prompter fee that's being sent as a return um it could be done through there um but i i don't think there's any use for or any real use for something that just measures loudness or

16:19 electrical rms or whatever vu peak meters like measuring that um you know as level volume or loudness and just giving a signal light. Like, does that mean like when they stop and take a moment to think or, you know, catch their breath, does that mean it's suddenly going to light up because it reads, you know, a value of negative 60 dB? That's totally, totally useless.

16:48 Have the signal come from a director or producer, either through IFB or a prompter message. If only we could talk to the person who is asking this question. Oh, Jeff Cohen. Do you want to clarify? Sorry about that. I thought I had actually raised my hand because absolutely it would have helped had I given some context. But hearing Mickey's answer, I am often reminded what drastically different worlds we live in.

17:16 Because he's, of course, 100% right. If there were such people involved in some of these projects, they could be doing it. And this is for self-recording podcast clients and some in particular that, you know, every time you talk to them, just like a mic check, you're like, what are you talking about? I speak perfectly fine on the mic. And then they're talking amongst themselves and, you know, they feel comfortable, like

17:42 they're just talking amongst themselves. So they do the things that people do, which is, yeah, I don't know, I guess we'll do that. Yeah. But okay. You know, and it's Chris, what do you think about? But I don't know. I can't see myself doing that. I mean, that's, you know, it's for other people. So there's a lot of that. And, and Mickey's point also was the problem is how do you, you know, what do you do when

18:04 there's silence? So can you define a range? Like if it's above this, below this. So that's the problem. But, you know, and I thought some kind of electrical shock or something just to get them to be mindful of just speaking up. because when they speak up, they're fine. But they kind of often just, you know, do that thing like that. So, I don't know.

18:26 Go ahead. Mickey, any last notes? Yeah. If they're putting themselves in a situation where they don't have someone to direct them or guide them, like, you know, be it the tech, be it the producer, be it the director, if they're insisting that they want to do it by themselves to, I don't know, save money or something, then they have to learn how to do it themselves.

18:49 And secondly, if they can't speak properly, they can't speak properly, so they probably shouldn't be in a show. They probably shouldn't be a presenter. If they're going to just mumble, then you have to show that mumbling because that's them. Nick? And I just thought I'd add to this. something, this is maybe a different context, but at our studio, we're developing more and

19:18 more functionality into our teleprompter feeds. So with 2110, we have Blackmagic studio cameras, and with those, we can send video to the camera, and the HDMI output of the camera feeds the teleprompter. So we're breaking away from just slapping an iPad or phone under that glass and instead have a monitor and we'll develop what we've been affectionately calling a heads-up display, something more like what a pilot of an aircraft might see. And it gives the hosts,

19:52 the talent, a lot of indicators. They can see like running time of the show while they're looking at the camera. They can see what topic is coming up next. They can, if they're doing sports, we can actually have a replay playing in the teleprompter as they're talking about it. And so there's another opportunity for communication to talent and meanwhile, keeping them looking directly at the lens of the camera.

20:18 And Nick, I'm sorry, and we're done. So this is not a technical problem, in my opinion. A hundred and four sermon, quick Fenwick sermon. 114 years ago, the Titanic sank. and in that era is when the TV show Downton Abbey was set. The pilot, the first episode of Downton Abbey, the Titanic, the Crawfords find out, I think their name was Crawford. I don't

20:50 know what their name was. The Lord of the Manor finds out the Titanic sank and a lot of his friends, you know, millionaire friends died. On that TV show, the main guy, a grown man, employed another grown man as his valet who would dress him in the morning. He would lay out the proper clothes and make sure that his tie looked good and make sure that he was wearing the appropriate length

21:19 tails for whatever event he was going to. A grown man employed another grown man to dress him. Today, we would say, that sounds ridiculous. And I think in the same way, in a hundred years, and maybe in five years, our children will look at the early days of our careers and say, what do you mean, Papa, you used to put a microphone on a guy and point lights at him and focus the camera for him.

21:51 Why didn't he just do it himself? So what you're saying, Jeff Cohen, and I don't want to revisit this question anymore. I'm not looking for a rebuttal. What you're saying is, how do we make this? What magic box do I need to make this guy do a better job? The guy's just got to do a better job. He's just got to learn the task. If he's doing a self-recording, he's got to know how to

22:15 focus the mic. He's got to know how to sit in the right place. He's got to know how to put the mic in the right place. And he needs to know how to deliver without distortion and without everything being low. Self-recording means exactly that. Do the damn recording. Anyway, let's go to the next. Actually, wait. Before we go to the next question, I have a few things I want to say because it's

22:34 that time of the day. So I mentioned the QR code. There's other ways that you can get involved in the show. If you're just watching the live show, you only get about half of the experience. Go to officehours.global slash something. I'm going to tell you here in a second. Join, slash join. And you can log on to our Mukana software. You can get involved in a bazillion

22:56 different ways. And with Mukana and the backend chat, this show is a totally different experience. And I would highly recommend you get involved and learn how to do that. Now, Alexander, let's go to the next question. All right. This question is coming in from Paul Valhus in Austin, Texas. What's the one habit that makes a host sound radio without gear, mic technique, breathing, plosive angle, or just talking 20% slower?

23:23 It's 11% slower. And Alexander, your thoughts? so this is just being a good presenter being a dj what you call being on the radio that requires some level of talent but also skill that can be learned over the years of just exercising your voice it's a muscle like anything else put in your 10 000 hours as they say and you and you

23:46 will become better but uh yes microphones audio all that matters to a degree but what we're talking about here is just a skill that you build up. Some people just naturally have these big voices, right? Naturally, like, you know, my friend Mitch Hill has that kind of voice, but also he developed that over the years too. And now he can't get rid of it. And he always threatens, he always

24:14 threatens, don't make me use my radio voice. And I always joke, you know, I'm sure you use that voice to book a good table at a restaurant right so it's skilled Jeff Francis definitely skill dealing with plosives but since we're audio day let's remember proximity effect we have a directional mic and we get very close to it you notice I'm talking quieter because I don't want

24:37 to make the game go up but you should hear a boost in the low frequencies of my voice and this is because directional mics have a thing called proximity effect we look at our friend, the beta 57, notice the change in the low frequencies there as you move from two feet away to two inches to one inch to extremely close to the diaphragm. This is actually one of the things

24:59 that is most different between the 58 and the 57 is you can get closer to a 57 than you can to a 58 because the 58 has a grill on it. You cannot get right up against the diaphragm of a 58 without removing that grill so you can get additional proximity effect as you see Mickey removing the grill of a 58 and now it looks like a 57 question but really

25:25 close question how close is the 57 to the 58 minus the grill very close okay Yeah. Jeff Francis. I mean, sorry, Mickey. I'm doing this all out of order. I'd say one habit, practice. Again, so many, just like the previous question, it's not really a technical thing. It's a skill thing. If they don't know how, like with the previous one, if they don't know how to record themselves properly or perform properly, you'll have,

26:03 you know, a bad recording. Same with this. If the person, no matter what, you know, technical skill they build up, be it mic technique or, or pickup pattern, polar patterns, whatever, working, working the mic, if they don't actually practice their, their speaking, whether, whatever style it may be, be it what you call a sound sounding radio. If they don't practice that, then they're not going to get that sound and make it sound natural and just a second nature to them.

26:40 So I'd say practice. And Jeff Cohen. I think there's really two parts to that. One, what Jeff Francis said, of course, is that sometimes we come in here, but just because we get close and we get this doesn't mean we're all the way there because now what we're doing is really kind of more NPR. So we're really close, but we're talking like this that would put anyone to sleep in two seconds.

27:08 But energy is really what it's all about. That's the other thing is just the energy of the person. Are they compelling you to keep listening because the next thing they're going to say is so exciting? And that's part of it. I'll tell you, as an aside, two phrases that I hate. We're using a radio mic or I'm using my radio voice. I just hate those phrases.

27:32 Let's go to the next question. Well, Jeff Cohen, is that a shotgun? Is that a 416? It is, yeah. Okay, so as you got close, even with the windscreen on it, we can hear the effects of wind with your voice really close to that microphone. And along with proximity effect, all that stuff of directional mics, that goes into the more directional the mic,

27:56 the worse it's going to be for wind susceptibility. which is why I don't get it too close right moving on to Robert A. over in Houston do you folks think appearance is still important for on-camera talent of course uh uh I'm I just want to say I just recently re-watched not the entire movie but a bunch of clips from the movie broadcast news and if you are not familiar with that movie I would highly recommend you watch it

28:27 it's very interesting that the relationship between Albert Brooks and, and William Hurt, the, the pretty boy, you know, I look good reading the teleprompter and the hardcore news journalist who not a very attractive man. Uh, very interesting movie. Uh, Jeff Francis. So, you know, our appearance, we, we have a framer, right? because we care about our appearance on this show. So even just how, I'm not talking physical appearance,

29:00 I'm just talking about how we present. We do definitely have, you know, we've had, oh, what do we call them? Ruthless reviews where we look at people's cameras, we listen to people's sound. It happens every day in the check-in. It's like, you know, oh, you're a little off center. Your mic's, you know, your room's a little bit roomy. your level check, all that. So yeah, all of that matters. We want to put our best

29:26 foot forward because it shows that we care. We just talked a whole bunch about the CEO or the presenter who didn't care enough to get their level correct. It's like show that you care. And when you show up, people will listen. I agree. And it doesn't have to be that, you know, you look like a model or anything, just don't put anything in the frame that creates

29:53 extra distraction, like that hair coming out of your ear or that one eyebrow. By the way, I know I have crazy eyebrows. Alexander, what's your thought on this? Yeah, I agree. Appearances matter, you know, and I would say for anyone, even if you're not a high level executive, which it's even more embarrassing if you're a high level executive, you've put zero effort into grooming and doing meetings because people judge you based on your appearance.

30:19 Also, just a reminder that please, although we can only see from about here on up, please wear pants because I've seen this where people forget it's the summertime. Look, I understand it's warm outside. It's warm in your apartment. It's warm in your home. But I've seen it happen where people forget that they're not wearing pants and then they get up and the camera's still on.

30:43 PSA. Why don't you keep going, Alexander, and read the next question. All right. Next up is coming in from Paul Valhus in Austin, Texas. What are the best practices for high quality audio descriptions and captions in large Zoom events? And it looks like he has posted a link there to a Zoom article. What's the best way to do this, Mickey? In terms of best practices, of course, I mean, if this has to be asked, one should

31:12 really hire a professional professionals to do this audio description isn't um isn't just you know get an intern to to look at each frame and write a description for it there is a there is much a much much deeper craft into it um you're you're you're writing text or or words that will act as people's ice or or vision it's it's it's truly an art form so hire professionals to do it

31:39 same deal with captions. Get the companies that deal with accessibility for productions and let them do it in terms of back. Once you've hired these agencies or these companies, they will have actual humans working on it. And they would oftentimes want to jump into a conversation and get a better sense of what the topic of the production is like. And, you know, give them, prep them with keywords if there are any pre-scripted things.

32:17 They typically want to get these pre-scripted segments so that especially with captioning, they can, instead of having to type down these, you know, say play out videos while it's being played out live they can already type them out before the show before the production and just hit each line as they're being said and send it out to your broadcast system or if you have a live

32:44 caption display in a physical venue where an event is happening they can just throw those out so they they usually want to jump on a call and get the a brief and maybe key words that they should be prepared to be able to relay within their audio description and also their captioning. But yeah, if these questions have to be asked, hire professionals.

33:13 I would say like you're probably not ready to do it yourself. Yeah. And in the back end chat, Laura Thompson says, by all means, if you can afford it, It's best to use real humans. Like, for example, they used to do this quite regularly on SNL when they needed, you know, news for the hard of hearing. And Garrett Morris was great at it.

33:37 Anyway, let's see. Is there anybody else has their hands up? Nope. Alexander, let's go to the next question. All right. Brody Hefner, New York City, New York asks, could the panelists offer recommended resources, videos, production behind the scenes, examples, etc. that they've seen or heard recently that illustrate audio principles or best practices. What's the best example, Jeff? I don't know if it's the best example, but I enjoyed the Where the NBA Hides Its Mics YouTube video.

34:09 I'll put that link in the chat, but that's a good little breakdown of that. Another one I found is I follow Instagram of some companies like DPA Microphones. they will often have a lot of things from like Broadway and that kind of stuff where people are hiding microphones or on set and so it's good little tips and techniques of like how to hide

34:33 body mics and those kind of things and other placement things so check out Instagram of your favorite mic companies another example that I think is really great there's a whole series of behind the scenes videos of how they do audio on Saturday Night Live I was joking about Garrett Morris there if you don't recall that was the one where he was in the corner screaming for the hard of hearing

34:55 silly but there's a whole series of pieces and one is all about the boom op they talk about you know I think they have one about the PA in the room and excuse me all of the sound effects and whatnot, and then tested with what's-his-name that used to be on MythBuster, Savage. What's his first name? Jamie. Adam. Adam. Adam Savage. Yeah, Adam Savage.

35:27 He did a thing when Hamilton, I believe, was in San Francisco where he went backstage and he did one whole video about how they hide the mics in the costumes. He did one whole video with the front of house PA guy. Great behind the scenes stuff for different types of things. Actually, I take that back. Both of those are just live productions.

35:55 Yeah, I agree. Behind the scenes stuff. Mickey, what do you think? What do you know? so uh there was a series released i guess this just last week um on uh the avid pro tools youtube channel um film sound workflow secrets revealed the final mix and it's it it jumps into uh a little um it focuses a lot on the uh workflows specifically with mixing for atmos um so

36:25 So yeah, that's probably something if you're into post-production sound or even if you're just curious, it gets you into the mindset of how that whole production side of Atmos mixing worked. Very cool. Alexander, let's go to the next question. All right, next up from Stefan Fischer in Wurzburg, Germany. Did IBC bring some fancy new audio devices? What's the missing piece in your audio world?

36:52 Jeff Francis, have you heard any news from IBC? uh the new yamaha dm5 console oh it's two better than the three i understand or two less than the seven yeah they needed something in between those they needed something in between um one thing it does have is it has this like and i kind of want to see what this is like in the real world they they call these buttons under glass so the display goes down and

37:22 And there's touchscreen, but there's also, I think, something that's actually a tactile button involved there in the screen you see for the Q button and the on button. So curious to see that in actual use. I wonder if it's better at repelling liquids. Okay, next question. This one's coming in from Paul Vahus in Austin, Texas. Does Dobie's Enhanced Speech versus iZotope's Rx Dialog isolate versus Waves Clarity Vx?

37:54 Which one does the panel reach for first and which one wrecks sibilance? What do you think, Alexander? Well, I generally don't like sibilance, so I usually tie to... When you say wrecks sibilance, I mean, usually we try to remove excessive sibilance. But as far as what I use, I mean, I've tried all those and they're all pretty good. I tend to, first of all, most of the audio that I deal with that I record is good.

38:24 I don't need to use these tools. However, once in a while, if my client does a pod, if he travels remotely, he's done a couple where he goes somewhere else. He'll record the podcast in their studio, and I can hear the sound of the room. So I'll use Clarity VX for that, and that works exceedingly well. Is that an isotope? because I pay for Waves.

38:46 No, it's a Waves plugin. So I use it because I pay for Waves and I don't have a reason to pay for other ones. But I've tried all the other ones. They're pretty good. I mean, obviously, iZotope is probably the most well-known and most well-entrenched in the post-production world for removing noise like that. Adobe's tool is a web-based tool that is a lot newer.

39:05 And from some of the examples I've heard, it sounds pretty good, but I haven't tested it excessively or extensively because, again, I don't deal with a lot of bad audio because 99% of it is what I'm recording in my studio. It sounds good. Humble brag. Mickey? Yeah, between these three tools, definitely would rather use Dialog Isolate, which is just a single module within the RX product from Isotope.

39:36 Um, honestly, like clarity to me is, no, sorry. It's not good. At least for the type of work that I do. Um, Adobe's enhanced speech. I'm assuming, I don't know exactly what this is, but I'm assuming this is one of those one click things. No, thanks. Give me something I can do a good job with, which amongst these three, um, the entire RX suite, which includes the dialogue isolate module would be my tool of choice.

40:08 I will say about the Adobe thing, a couple of things. Number one, there is a one click thing, which I believe is what most people use. If you pay more, you get more controls. One of our producers has access to the pay more version. I don't for whatever. I don't know why I don't. I should. I should talk to her about that.

40:29 Anyway, and so when she fixes stuff, oftentimes she'll send me like three options. It's like that just becomes a pain. Also, it is my understanding that the Adobe thing is oftentimes listening to the voice and then regenerating it. And in general, I don't like anything that comes out of the Adobe. I'll also say, and I'll get to Jeff and Mickey here in a second, I'll also say that recently

41:01 I've been using the, I think they call it Magic Audio in Riverside, because we do a whole lot of Riverside recordings. And, you know, you get what you get. So it's essentially a self-recording where you try and talk somebody into it, but oftentimes they're just on their laptop mic or whatever. and their magic audio you dial down the the dry wet dry to about 60 percent i gotta say

41:25 i'm really impressed with it and that's built into riverside uh jeff cohen yeah and and that is a recent thing by the way so yeah it is descript had that first and it was I mean, in this arena, it was very good, relatively speaking. Riverside's was horrible. But then they, to their credit, they changed it up. And it's, again, in this arena, it's very good.

41:53 And you can, as you said, dial it in. And that is exactly what you get with Adobe podcast. Let me bring this up real quick, the enhanced speech. And do you have the extra knobs and sliders? Extra knobs. And now they have added one thing, which is interesting. I, you know, I heard their demo. I haven't had a chance to play with it, which is, I don't know why they're not showing it, but music separation.

42:16 So there's another switch or dial or slider somewhere where you get to dial in or out the, you know, if there is background music and you want to remove that. The demo, of course, looks really good. But now this is, you know, you have to run it through here. So, you know, are you going to take your audio and run it through here and then edit it or vice versa?

42:39 I mean, that's an extra layer of processing that ideally you avoid. And with the other ones, you, I mean, Mickey's having way better success than I am with RX. that doesn't surprise me, but that's, you know, it is, it's not doing that quote-unquote AI-based or machine learning that the other ones at least claim to do, which would include Adobe and Waves. And if you're doing video and you're in DaVinci Resolve Studio, the, as I've mentioned,

43:14 and the voice isolation is their version of Waves Clarity VX, and it is very good. You can dial it in. And again, we're talking about if you're starting with audio that's so bad that you need to do one of these things, it is really good for that as well, including you have separate sliders to back music out as well. So that's really good.

43:39 And I prefer to do it, if possible, in your editing, so it's only processed at rendering. Mickey? I just wanted to continue answering Paul's questions about, a question about sibilance. I don't know if you want to rec sibilance because you do want sibilance. You want to be able to hear my S's or someone's S's in their speech. You just want to tame it

44:07 or sometimes emphasize it if someone has, say, a list that you might want to, you know, give more definition to their S's. You may want to use ADSR in a reverse way. But going back to the tools that Paul mentioned, the RX suite as well as Waves Clarity are tools for audio restoration or noise suppression. They will not deal with, they're not designed to be used for treating sibilants.

44:41 I'm assuming the Adobe's enhanced speech may have that processing built in. So it may be able to work with sibilance there, but the two others, Rx and Clarity, not really. I want to tell a quick story that I probably shouldn't tell, but I'm going to tell it anyway. A good friend of mine was a demo artist for a big software company. I'm not going to tell you what the name of the software company is, but you may have heard of it.

45:13 And he used to do a demo where he showed how you could take audio and like scrub through it and find like, oh, there's a door creak in the background. And then he's going to select it. He's going to just magically delete the door creak. And this is about demos in general. he told me he goes dude we auditioned 30 different door creeks and we drew we had a we had a good

45:41 recording we dropped the door creek in because it was the one that our algorithm could pull out the best i never believe demos i don't care what well i saw it in the demo i don't care just stop believing demos. They're all lies unless you touch the buttons and do it with your own files. Before we go any further I just want to say that if you want to get

46:07 involved with the show here there are multiple ways that you could do it. I'm having problems using my my computer box here. I need that button right there. And so if you if you want to get involved there's ways to do it. You go to officehours.global.com volunteer, and you can actually, if you go through all the steps, you might actually be able to get to work on this show and actually produce it. You'd be surprised

46:35 how many people are working behind the scenes. It's not just us idiots here on camera. And if you don't have the time to, you know, donate all that time to it, then you can go to officehours.global.com donate. If you still want to help out, Office Hours is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, and at least here in the United States, you know, some of us paid taxes on the 15th a couple

46:57 days ago or yesterday, good grief. So that's traumatic. You can get a little bit of a deduction. So, Alexander, what's the next question? Next question's coming in from Eduardo Augustine in Panama City. I was asked in the House of Worship if there is a way to have a system to have automated translation so we are not limited to an interpreter. What would you suggest for this, any tool or software?

47:26 iPhones and AirPods. Jeff Cohen? Yeah, I think I've mentioned this before, but Google Meet is really doing some fascinating things with this. And so it's not clear if this is just to have up on a screen in there or, you know, are you live streaming out to an audience. But you can do either one with this. So it does real-time text translation, you know, so you run the audio as a guest into a Google Meet meeting.

47:59 And you can, you know, whoever's on the other end. So, for instance, if you're setting up a screen, you just have that. You choose whatever language you'd like to show. If you have an online audience, everyone can select their language and get it translated. And now the other thing I've mentioned, which would be fascinating for this, they only have a few languages so far, but they also do spoken word audio translation.

48:26 So in other words, the person is speaking in English and for a handful of languages right now, the person on the other end will hear that person speaking in their language and with their voice and with a minimal delay. In fact, they've really made it sound like how it would work in the UN with a translator. You hear the person start to speak first in their language, and then a second or two later

48:51 that fades down, and then you hear the translated voice. But in this case, it sounds like them. And they're expanding the number of languages that will do that as well. Alexander, let's go to the next question. All right. Next up from Stefan Fischer in Wurzburg, Germany. Do you use professional near-field monitors at your workspace, even if you don't do real mixing, just for the sake of having good sound, or do you prefer headphones?

49:20 Alexander, I know you use real monitors. What do you use? I have two sets of monitors. I also mix on headphones. Now, I will say this. There are people that have very strong opinions of this and say you have to have near-field monitors. However, you can look at quite a few examples of very well-respected engineers like Andrew Sheps, a Grammy Award-winning mixing engineer who's mixed albums for Metallica, Adele, Jay-Z, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and so on and so on and so on.

49:51 And he only mixes on headphones and he swears by it. So I would argue that you can get used to your brain, your ears can get used to anything and become familiar with the results that you would get out of those. And you can compensate. And as long as you understand the limitations of the monitoring solution that you have. Do you mind sharing the type of monitors you use?

50:17 I've got now I will say I don't have anything super high because I don't do any high end master. That's fine. But I've got a pair of my mains are a KRK VXT6. They're the older, they don't make them anymore. It's their older reference series monitors. Those are a six inch, six and a half inch driver. And then I also check on these smaller little Atom D3Vs.

50:44 It's a little three inch driver with a passive radiator on the side. And then for my headphones, I use the Audio-Technica R70Xs, which are open-back pair of headphones. And are the monitors powered, or do you have an amp? Yep, they are powered monitors, yeah. Jeff Francis, what's your preference? Yeah, I have Genelec-powered monitors. I also have a set of JBL little whatever, JBL3, little cheap guys.

51:14 And headphones, I also use quite a bit. die like the Sennheiser HD 650 open back headphones and then the Sony 7506 is when I need isolation and Mickey what do you mix on uh what do I mix on I mix on my mains are Genelik 80 50 series I also have a whole bunch of 1032 so I have a lot of rooms that I bounce between um yeah

51:45 80 series 1032 genelux jbl 7 series i also have some 3 series saying that though when when i'm not doing real mixing i still have have good speakers like say in my setups my rooms here in the studio as well as in my desk at home but when i'm on the go. I listen on cans. I listen on AirPods Pros. I listen on shocks.

52:22 Depending on what's appropriate for what I'm doing at that specific point in time. So I have no qualms about, say, yeah, using AirPods when I'm just in the grocery. I'm not going to carry around my Bayers or my 7506s when I'm doing grocery shopping. So I... And if the good monitors are there, I'll use them for non-work situations. But if not, I'll use what's convenient.

52:53 You know, there is a post house in the Bay Area, Remedy. I think it's Remedy Editorial. Great company. Scott Compton and his team, they're fantastic. And they've been sort of rebranding. And go check out their website. They're very good. And I have nothing negative I could say about Scott. But one of the buzz lines they've been putting in their branding is four-wall editorial.

53:24 Now, is that a term anybody's ever heard before? Four-wall editorial? Basically, I think what they're saying is, hey, we're a real business. You can come and sit in the room. And, you know, because we gave up our building, you know, five years ago. We moved out of the building, moved everybody at home. And I got to say, and it's slightly embarrassing, but whatever.

53:46 I have not done anything on speakers since March of 2020, the beginning of lockdown. Everything I've done, I've done on these headphones. Everything. The only exception is I will turn on the speakers on my Apple Cinema Studio display, whatever it is. It's a pretty nice one, but not the super nice one. If I want to check exact sync, because those are the most in-sync thing that I have to the timeline in Final Cut Pro.

54:23 Next question. All right. This one comes in from Gavin Roberts in London. Hi, team. One of the neat things out of this year's IBC looks to be an all-in-one production solution from Grass Valley called Avora. I'm keen to get your guys' initial thoughts on it. It looks to do a lot, including having an emphasis on audio mixing. Well, Gavin, nobody's looked at it. We'll take a look. Jeff has something to say. Go ahead, Jeff.

54:56 Jeff? Yeah, just that this is the first time seeing it and all I got is a basic your link and the page. So it's going to take a lot more research and probably using it to see what it does and whether we like it. All right. Next question. Jeff Cohen in Miami Beach, Florida asks, how do you overcome the client issue Tim McCullough

55:19 raised in chat that presumes they know the difference and that they care about it? Jeff, what do you have to say? Yeah, and this came up with the audio level thing. You know, obviously, lots of folks very appropriately said the correct answer, which is, well, they have to just do it correctly, of course. But Tim is certainly right where sometimes we probably all encounter this where our quality bar is higher than the client's quality bar.

55:55 And, you know, we don't want it to be down here. We want it to be here. But they're fine with it being, you know, okay. So that's the question. What's the answer, Mickey? Yeah, I think number one here is to educate. Assuming you're being compensated enough to go through the whole process of educating them, then, yeah, teach them, like, this is what we want.

56:23 This is what we want to go for. If they don't care, then I don't know if this is a, if you're being paid enough, then stick with it. Just accept the garbage and publish their garbage if this is a podcast or air their garbage. if this is live and that's on them if they don't if they don't really care about it but if you can

56:46 if you're able to go through the process of educating and then you know work through them show them try to show them the the improvement as you go along through that whole process of improving things every single show that you do improve improve improve and show them like Remember last week where you just sounded like a muscled person in the garbage can?

57:09 Now you don't. If they're unwilling to go through that process with you, first off, there might be something in that relationship that needs to be improved for them to trust you, to go through that whole education process. If not, it's time to maybe see if you can put your time into something else that you can be more fulfilled with in terms of your work.

57:43 Yeah. I know that with our clients, quite often by the time I am sent to do a recording, and again, we do a lot of stuff on Riverside, I have to ask the producers, how much am I allowed to push these people? Like, can I tell him to move to another room? No, he's in the room he's going to be in. It's going to be what it is.

58:06 I'm like, okay. And then we apply all the tricks that we can do to make it be a little bit better. And people have decided that this is as much as we're willing to do. A lot of times you've got to remember, sometimes you're dealing with people that are – sometimes the recordings that we are doing are customers of our client and our client doesn't want to push them too far

58:35 they're doing us a favor so anyway that's it for this week of The Grill I want to thank the panel let's see the panel here thank you everybody for giving your mornings and being a part of this is that everybody? is that all of us? I don't think Alexander's in that frame that's bogus close up of Alexander or I'm not doing the rest of the show.

59:00 Okay, now we're all in the frame. Thanks for being here. Thank you for the back-end crew. Thanks for every... Yeah, we saw Mickey in the last one. Thanks to the back-end crew for everything that you guys do. We'll be back next Wednesday with audio, but there's stuff every day, so talk to you later. Boom, right on time. Roll those credits. We're going to be down 60 minutes exactly, folks.

59:22 Nailed that. Let's see. Well, they were a touch slow on rolling the credits. Actually, I was probably two seconds long. But pretty tight show. And in case anybody wants to hear it one more time. Everybody needs their own jingle. I think I'll probably adjust to coming in maybe occasional Fridays so that I can do more general Q&A. I had some audio answers.

1:00:02 Yeah, Friday is good for general, for sure. David likes the grill. New name. What's that?