PodFest 2025: Talking PASport VO with Jodi Krangle and Brian Morris

hey everybody it's George the tech here at podfest 2025 in Orlando Florida it's

the last day of the Expo and I will be taking an opportunity today to show off a new product that is now finally shipping George the tech it's called the passport vo that's the audio interface it's made by centrance and centrance is known for making super portable super high quality audio products and this is no exception this is designed specifically for the voice actor podcaster broadcaster audience this is not about music although it can work for that this is

definitely designed for communication

it's designed for recording interviews and performances and capturing them in extremely high quality while at the same time being extremely easy to operate because every single controll on the unit is a physical switch or Knob there's no touch screen there's no tiny menus there's no control panel you have to run there 's no drivers and software you have to install because this thing is USB class compliant and it just goes when you plug it in um right now it's plugged into my phone through a

lightning adapter on this older iPhone 11 but it has USBC and I have a battery pack plugged into the back of it to power the unit because it has two USB ports One USB port can be used for your mobile device or your Communications system whatever that might be it might be a separate PC it might be the same PC as you record with and the other USB port can be the dedicated recording interface for just doing audio recording without having to worry about conflicts with communication

software so it's just a clever device it's got a mic switch so you can switch between two microphone inputs because it has two microphone inputs and just pressing the button will switch inputs it also has a mute button which will that's right mute the mic no matter what mic you're on it will always mute the mic never worry about people hearing you when they're not supposed to while you're on a zoom or a live record uh it also has a built-in limiter so which is great for doing anything live

where you have to be concerned about clipping and Distortion as you get excited and energetic and it also has high pass filters to take care of Rumble if the mic you're using is very low frequency sensitive um so it's very versatile and it's available now if you go to centr.com passport vo that's passport with 1s Pas s for Pro Audio Suite you can grab one of these right now and uh I'm just so proud of it it's a it's a collaborative design effort between myself and my other Compadres on

the show the pro audio Suite podcast it's for pros by Pros how far are you

along in in podcasting are you doing it been at it for a while oh yeah I have been podcast editing and producing for six years and before that I was six years with a a local public radio station I have a radio background and I'm also a composer sound designer I had my own production company before that for about 15 years so I've been at it for a while gr grinding away at it but I have a a nice uh kind of self-contained Studio where I am now and uh for editing

voiceover recording uh music all kinds of stuff that's fantastic yeah it's a lot of fun yeah it is a lot of fun I love having diverse skills in audio it's it never gets boring it's true and I think I really think that U everything relates to everything else that's kind of a weird broad statement but I think you know the back you have a background in music well that can relate to your skill as a music editor cuz some you know I have to put on one hat and take

off another you know I'm a composer but then you have to when you're I'm editing a podcast I have to put on the music editor hat and be you know just disp passionate about that and uh that helps me as a composer uh voiceover skills just help me at editing voiceover editing you know voice tracks and things like that you got voice acting a bit of a voice acting skill set as well yeah a little bit Yeah I have a hard time

focusing I have a hard time focusing on a task at hand and F into completion but do you have a heart because you have so many different skill sets is it easy for you to sort of switch gears and stay in a lane for a while and and do that kind of I don't call it multitasking I call it microtasking is that easy for you um it's hard to answer that I I I think it's fairly easy for me um I find that uh the the downside of the whole thing is that you know as The Pie Gets

sliced thinner and thinner as you take on more things to learn which I love doing you know you have to try to find the time to devote to to you know the music or the voiceover or podcast editing and you have to make sure you don't let one slide for too long I'm glad you said the pie thing because I've used that same analogy when it comes to diving up time the T the pie is 100% you don't get more of that it's a big deal and like I say I enjoy you know trying new things and trying to learn new

skills but that's the downside you have to you know I don't like letting one slide too long I have to always try to you know make time for you know getting back getting back to this that haven't done in a week or getting back to that that I haven't done in a few days and um you know so it just it just depends but you do anything to manage that do you

use a spreadsheet a Trello or any of that text stuff or is it more like a giant whiteboard on the wall kind of thing no it's I don't the whiteboard in my head I kind of that's pretty impressive I well I you know I I probably should use one of those management tools and I you know that's one of the things that's good about being here podfest learning about some of these these things that I haven't used probably should you know and it's just good to broaden the broaden the pallet

so yeah how did somebody remind me about using Trello again I I I use it for one specific thing for managing my website development with our team but that's it and I'm realizing my gosh I'm leaving a huge amount of functionality like this one person was an editor and she showed how she uses it uh to manage all of her customers and then she can share their specific project with the customer and then she themes the project for for the customer so when they go to it it's got

their Graphics it's got their colors I was like wow that's intense Jody do you do anything like that I have been involved in some things that use Trello in that way like other people have invited me to be the client on that on that receiving end so I've seen it work but yeah what do you do to keep track of all the different things in your all the different tasks of your job because we all are wearing 20 hats honestly Gmail this this going to sound really weird but I snooze Gmail emails too know

exactly what's coming up on the day and then I just go through my email inbox and I'm an inbox zero trying kind of person so I tend to have like maybe one or two or three emails that are always there that I need to refer to but other than that I try and like remove all the email so it's funny because my clients know if they send me an email I'll respond in two seconds like I it's already I cuz I see it I'm constantly on my email I'm the same I for me really

the Gmail thing is what works for me too it it's something you live in every day all day and every time I try to reinvent the wheel and create a different system that synchronizes or blah blah blah you're like well I keep going back to my Gmail so that's where I have to do everything so a Google Calendar and tasks I use a lot those are yeah yeah that's I mean it's it's it works why fix it you know it totally works I have spent more time trying to optimize my workflow and I'm like well I

should just be working I know that's the thing that's good hey we try that we'll try working you know yeah God I wish I'd had this during my radio reporting days it would have been a nice thing to have that is

why we invented it we got I mean I've been supporting voice actors and I came from broadcast in a way as well I did radio a little bit when I was in college and I I kind I've had my finger in like the pie a lot of pieces of the pie and I was like why is there still not something that's been developed for the performer actor broadcaster podcaster person the thing that makes it the most unique is that it's old school I don't know why I didn't think of marketing it

this way but I think this is the first podcaster recording device invented by podcasters like for podcasters by podcasters I think it is I mean I don't know of anything else a lot of people will use it at home solo and what they'll do is they'll have two mics connected so you might have the booth mic and the desk mic or you might have the some people have a shotgun mic and some people have like a wider a different mic for just kind of different styles and it has a single push button

to switch between the two mics which is really unique like nobody's doing that and that's external hard drive this is a battery right now so because it's running off of a phone the phone these older iPhones can't power this a newer modern USBC device like a Android or a newer iPhone will power it but like lightning doesn't so it's got a battery has two USBS so what that means is they're versatile one can be for power but the way we really innovated was this port would be dedicated for recording

typically and this port would be dedicated for communication so a lot of people on PCS there's conflicts between audio devices like you try to record in audition and then the zoom the zoom interrupts the audition or whatever it is there's like conflicts this separates the two it's actually two separ audio interfaces inside dedicated one says comms for communication and one says record so when you plug them both in you see you see both there's no screen there's no

firmware there's no control panels there's no it's just Hardware so it feels like a professional tool you know we try to cover the basis for podcasters again for voice actors and for broadcasters and the rumor is that uh ABC which is Australian Broadcasting Company sort of like their I think it's like their PBS I'm not sure I believe they have a pre-order in for some of these from a distributor in Australia when do these officially hit the market well essentially now so what happened

was this was a pre-order device so we managed to convince a lot of our amazing clients and friends to put our money where our mouth is and pre-order them and they're $6.99 so it's not a cheap device right and we got 90 people to to to commit to it early on and that's how we got centrance to manufacturer to step up and make this they were like you know what I I'd like to make that for you but you're just going to have to sell it to sell it to your customers first and

that's how it worked so that was a year and a half ago and uh these things take time I mean it's a it's a small company centrance is based in Chicago centrance used to make or maybe they still do a a USB the mic Port Pro I have one yeah I have one yeah that's their claim to fame right in our world like that was cool I mean when I was using it a lot I had a period where that where that was U I was using it up quite a bit and then I moved on to some other things but yeah that's

a great little device yeah that's a secret weapon you leave in your bag you leave it in your glove box you know and you can plug what thing I like about that thing is you can just plug it straight into a mic you don't even have to have a cable it'll turn this mic into a USB mic you know that's but so it was kind of like the USB mic before there were USB mics and it was very high quality for its time like for something like that yeah so same company they've just been evolving and so this is based

on design that they'd already had this is the chassis and the layout is designed on something they've already developed so we didn't have to invent it's like the Reinventing the wheel thing we didn't have to invent the form factor the shape we just basically took what they had already developed and said that thing is great they have a product called the portter which is good we're like we love that but it'd be so cool if it did this and this and this and this and this extra stuff and the

reorganizing the guts was a big deal because everything inside the unit is an analog circuit other than the digital converter part everything internally is routed through analog circuitry and there's mix minuses in there right you have the communications Loop that could be fed here or there um there's no worry of Echoes and and loops and and um all the nightmar oh I hear myself echoing if you if you understand the basics of how to use it and where to plug it in on

your computer and what to choose as an input it's done for you you don't have to know about mix minuses and stuff so um we're we're we're proud of it obviously they we had 100 I think there's 120 units that got manufactured in the first batch 95 or so are spoken for and Michael is literally shipping them right now they there're people are starting to receive them and then they're posting right like this today and yesterday people are like I got my passport and

like people like while I'm here I know corvier is like I keep running out to my mailbox you know um but it's so fun because it's developed by us for us and nobody was doing it so we had to do it it's probably going to be the most well supported product too because you've got this crew of four of us and the manufacturer Michael all of us support in it and explaining it and training it and so it's it's just going to have so much knowledge around and education

around its use it's one of those things it's not going to come with a manual that's this thick it's only going to have like a 3X like a 4x6 card that folds out and that's it because we know people don't read manuals nobody reads manuals hard to get them to do thanks

for the improptu podcast episode it's fine yeah it's cool yeah thanks for hanging out with me today Brian this little you're you're from you're from LA right I live in LA yeah do you know a guy named Dave Walsh voice absolutely Dave's a great dude I trained Dave we're talking about you