(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history? Get started. Welcome. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone. To the Pro Audio Suite. These guys are professional. They're motivated. Thanks to Tribooth, the best vocal booth for home or on the road voice recording, and Austrian Audio, making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from Source Elements and Someone Audio Post, Chicago. Darren Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney.
And tech to the VO stars, George the Tech Whittam from LA, and me, Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home studio guy. Line up, man. Here we go. And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite, thanks to Tribooth. Don't forget the code, T-R-I-P -A-P 200. That will get you $200 off your Tribooth. And Austrian Audio, making passion heard. In fact, you'll be hearing it slightly differently with some new headphones that are releasing very soon. More passionately, yes.
It's going to be based on the Hi -X 15, but they're doing a bit of tweaking to it, changing a few things. Color scheme, the internals, and also a longer cable. Three meters. That's a three meter long cable. That's great. Does it also come with a cable management system? Like a hose reel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a fishing reel. Like a vacuum cleaner. Yeah, that, now we're talking. Yeah. So anyway, Austrian Audio have kindly given us a pair to give away when they're released.
I think they're launching at AES, so by the time this goes out, I think we'll be pretty close to that date, which is early October. So we'll be giving a pair of those away. And how do you enter to win these headphones, you may well ask? Well, simply, we're asking you to do a bit of a mix. Robbo, do you want to play your mix? Yeah, okay. Well, let's just play this piece of audio. Experience a new destination for adventure, nature, science, and culture.
National Geographic today, tonight at seven on the National Geographic Channel. Always wonder. All right, so there you go. That's what we're looking at doing. And just so we're clear, I'm not giving away any corporate secrets here. That piece was actually from like a year ago. So I'm not giving anything away. That's been to air and gone, so just so we're clear. Interesting that she chose to run the voice through a Leslie speaker. That's an interesting choice.
Well, we revoiced it too, because I wasn't sure about, you know, I didn't want anybody to get in trouble with voiceover artists who hadn't authorized us to play their stuff on their podcast. So AP kindly revoiced it for us as well. Well done. Yeah, so that was good. So yeah, but so I guess, I mean, no one's saying match mine. In fact, that's exactly the point we don't want.
What we'd love to hear is your interpretation from the conversation we had a few weeks ago when we did the process off with AP's voice. The idea with this one is, let's hear your interpretation of how you would mix that. Now, we're not just talking to audio engineers. Let's be clear here. We want submissions from everybody. We just want you to have a crack. I mean, the goal is basically to do a better job than you. Well, that won't be hard. So, you know, I'm not worried about that.
Yeah. So, but yeah, everybody, no matter where you're from, what you do, you know, chuck on a pair of headphones, throw it in Audacity or whatever you use and have a crack. Just have a go. It'll be judged. I don't know what we'll judge it on, but it'll be judged on something that, you know. Well, we're not judging it. Well, we're going to wear what we'll in association with the guys at Austrian Audio.
Yeah. They're going to one of their guys is going to jump on and have a chat about the new headphones and we'll play a few finalists and pick a winner. I would imagine they're going to listen to them on the new headphones. I think we have to. So if you want to win this, maybe you should buy those headphones. That would be hard because they're not out yet. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, they're in Fargo until they release at AES.
So this file you're going to hear of everybody's mixes will be, is that going to be before the embargo or after the embargo? It'll be after the embargo. After the embargo. Yeah. So, but we, you know, we'll all have our Austrian Audio headphones on, you know, they just won't be the new ones, I guess, but I guess what we're really looking for at the end of the day is just have some fun, seriously, just have a crack, you know, cause it's, you know, it's not brain surgery. It's just audio.
So, you know, the stems are all separate by the way. So it's not like you've got to load up a lot of stuff for that. You just will put the stems in your session and line them all up at the same start point and everything will fall into place. So there's a music stem, there's a dialogue stem, there's AP stem, and I think there's a sound effects stem from memory. So there's only four and a weed stem. So yeah.
So, but yeah, I'd encourage you to have a go and, and, and let's see what we can come up with. Now, Robert, because by the time this goes to air, of course, all the stuff that's happening as we speak has been and gone, but you're currently in London. I am. I didn't even think I'd be on this because I thought I'd be too sweet or something, but exactly. But no, we just got back from the IBC show in Amsterdam and that was really cool.
Tell us about the scope of IBC for those that haven't been able to go. Yeah. You know, it's really, really, really heavy duty broadcaster. So it's their NAB? It's their NAB. But you know what? Like one thing I was kind of disappointed in, not a lot of small booths, not a lot of like little small players.
Like NAB's got more of the little things that I find really exciting, you know, but it was all the major huge players and, and I, I, today I finally had a chance to do the big walk around and it is as big as NAB. Wow. Wow. That's big. But I'm trying to think if there's anything that I saw that was like, holy cow. And I'll get back to you. It's all blur. I can't think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I don't know, sound devices is doing their own wireless hookups and they named it Nexus. Oh. Really?
Yeah, I know. But, you know, like that, that was new and kind of in our area. When you say hookups, like transmitter speaks directly to their receiver mixers, like a mixer with receivers built in.
You know how they have their, their recorder mixer and then they have this, I think it's called the Nexus module and it has some pins on it and it just docks right on the top of this thing and has all the receivers for the wireless packs and it adds like a whole bunch of tracks for you to be able to record on too. That's smart. That's really smart. Because in the meantime, for the consumers, any Rodecaster Pro 2 can receive a wireless Rode wireless mic as an input.
So it just becomes another channel. Oh, like a year ago. So you only need the transmitter, only the transmitter receiver. Yeah. You want to, you want to turn that transmitter into a, just another input to your Rodecaster and clip it to your shirt for like a, on camera or standing or something. It's another channel in your Rodecaster. Wow. I've, I've never heard a, of anybody selling a wireless mic, only the transmitter and not the receiver. No. But I guess Rode must do that.
I don't think they do. I think it's just like, because we can, now we're doing this. But it clearly doesn't go out the multi -track though. It only comes in. So how's it go? Well, it's another pair of channels. It takes the place of another pair of channels. Right. Where's the antenna on the Rodecaster? It's probably using the Wi-Fi or the Bluetooth band or something, you know, you know, Rode is clever. Rode's slick. They're really clever.
I love that I can plug my, I have the wireless me, which is the cheapest wireless set up they have. It's like 150 and I can plug the receiver directly into my phone. I can plug the receiver directly into my Mac book. It doesn't matter. And then I can, now I have a wireless mic going into a track and it's, what's the receiver like a USB receiver, basically? The transmitter receivers look identical.
It's like a little inch cube, you know, that has the jacks and then the wireless me is unique in that the wireless receiver also has a mic. So you can use a second channel, you know, for doing interviews. Like I would have the wireless me receiver on my phone and that would be right in front of my face. And that's picking up my voice. Transmitters over on my subject and it's picking up their voice. And then I record and record split, split track or mix, depending on what you set it up to do.
They're just really clever, you know, but it's still considered consumer or prosumer. Even though they have the wireless pro, the wireless GoPro, I think if you showed up at a movie set in Hollywood with anything wrote on it, you wouldn't, you wouldn't pass muster. Yeah. Yeah. Sound mixers on a Hollywood film production are hauling around a hundred grand worth of stuff pretty, pretty commonly. Like it's, it's a level I never made it to. I was in production mixing for a while.
I never graduated to that level. You know, it just, I was using Sennheiser evolution wireless, this stuff, you know, stuff that was affordable, but decent. And I could get away with it. There's a distinct gatekeeping in terms of gear, gear, brand, and quality when you're at this very high level of production where every minute on set costs 10 grand or whatever. It's just, there's a certain level that you have to reach. You know, the cameras are going to be RE, RED, Panavision, maybe a Sony.
I don't know. There's a pretty slim pickings of what gear passes muster. I mean, actually sound devices is almost like an income is almost like an invader into this. Because really it's like Nagra and Diva and Zaxcom and sound devices, which really makes excellent shit as far as the hardware, but they're kind of the new, they're still the new kid on the block. They've been around since I got into Hollywood about 20 years, cause I had one of their three channel mixers and it was fantastic. Right.
Um, but it was just a mixer, you know, it didn't record, you know, and so the gear package has shrunk, but the functionality is doubled and tripled. And now you're guys doing reality TV, which is an absolute shit show of lavalier microphones are running eight, 10, 12 channels into a bag that they're carrying around strapped to their chest, you know, like a harness and mixing all that shit. And sometimes also holding a boom over their head. So it's a whole nother world.
And of course everything's multitrack, a hundred percent, everything's multitrack. So it's all changed dramatically in the 20 years I've been, but it's cool to see the innovations happening. I like sound devices very much. It's a great company, very well regarded, and they have an entry point level called the mix pre series. So if you're on that, if you don't have the budget for the two to 5 ,000, you can go under a thousand and get a mix pre.
What's cool about them is their preamps are very good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really top match. Well, you know, I look at the products we're developing or the first product anywhere we're developing with centrants and I really look at centrants as sort of like akin to that level in terms of build quality, professionalism, circuit design, and everything, but going a different way because, you know, the centrant stuff is analog internally.
It's analog, you know, right now that stuff's being vetted and tested. In fact, by the time you hear this very good chance, we're going to have that things, those things in our hot little hands. It might be available by Christmas. Yeah. I think before that actually. Before that, it's really going to come down to this first round. If this product, the beta product or the pilot, what do we call it? Prototype. Prototype. It's a prototype. That's out well.
I mean, we're literally seeing screenshots right now of the driver. Now there's a record and a communications channel, you know, showing, I'm like, yes, this is what I've been wanting to see forever. Now I'm finally getting excited again, you know. It's even looking at the box label and stuff. That's all. Yeah. It's very exciting right now. So anything, so IBC, it's definitely the NAB for Europe. If you're in Europe and you have a chance to go, it's worth going.
Yeah. I was going to say there were a lot of USB wireless mics and little wireless systems kind of like what you described and very tiny, but yeah, I didn't see anything beating myself up because I did go running around looking for stuff. It's so hard, man. Because, you know, there's a lot that's not relevant to you. So you kind of glaze over it and then you cherry pick and you get lucky and you find one cool thing.
And then, and then it, that gets lost in a wash of the other a hundred things that you saw. You know, so unless you're like me and you document video everything and make content, you forget, you know, that's half the reason I make content is so I can remember the stuff that I saw. I'll tell you what I saw that's cool. Pro Tools, Robbo, you're going to love this. Pro Tools now has a text or audio to text feature. So you're looking at the timeline and you see the words below the waveform.
And if you click on the word, it highlights the whole portion of the waveform that is that word. Like the script. You can search the bin and you can search the bin for words. About time. Oh my God. It's really good. Oh yes. That's good. I will be using that. They said it won't be out. I mean, it's like this. It's not the next version. It's not the next, but the guy was showing me like the, the alpha thing. Yeah. Oh wow. Can I use that now, please?
Did you guys also see that you can look at Spectral View? Did you know, did you already know that you could look at Spectral View in Pro Tools so you can see the Isotope Spectral View embedded in there? That's all a system called ARA, which Pro Tools is, again, late to the game on. That's been in every DAW for three years because that's a thing that Melodyne, I believe Melodyne and a few other plugin manufacturers created. And everyone's like, when is fricking Pro Tools going to support this?
Well, given Melodyne's in Pro Tools with the, you know, audio to MIDI functions and all that sort of stuff that they're running, you'd think they'd be a bit more on the ball, wouldn't you? Yeah. You can load Wave Lab into that. Oh, okay. Andrew. You know, I'm not, I'm obviously not a Pro Tools guy, but they seem to play the Apple card, which is, we're not going to be first. We're going to wait. We're going to develop a lot. We're going to spend a lot of time in development and testing.
We're going to make sure when it comes out, it's rock solid because they have to. They cannot afford to release something half-baked like some third-party Android phone. You know where they've missed the mark in that is the audio. We were just talking about that. The audio to MIDI thing I find sometimes works really well, but sometimes works really poorly as well. It just depends. It's really hit and miss.
And that's, you know, whether you're using, you're picked with rhythmic or, you know, any of the other sort of presets that they give you to pick when you're dropping audio down from an audio track to a MIDI track, I find it really sort of clumsy. Talking of recording a multi-track, I assume we can talk about this because you had already been to your meeting and demonstration, Robert, but you're off to my old neck of the woods tomorrow. You're going to Warner Brothers? Going to Watford.
Yes. We're going to wherever Warner Brothers is, and we're showing a whole bunch of film mixers, Source Elements' new feature, which, well, Dolby still won't let us officially announce it because we're still waiting on official certification, but that is basically going to happen for sure. So I'll say it.
We partnered and worked with Dolby, and they tweaked the Dolby Atmos renderer, and now it works hand-in-hand with Source Connect so that you can imagine a, because, you know, Dolby Atmos in a mixed theater is not 714, it's not 916. We're talking about 20 speakers, like that's the theatrical rendering of Dolby Atmos. So for us, this is like a real marquee product, essentially imagine a film is being mixed in LA, and the director and the writer and producers, they're in London.
So two big mix stages hook up, hook up on Source Connect 4, stream the bed and all the objects, which means with Atmos, 129 channels of audio, and then all the panning metadata. And you have basically two mix theaters running in parallel for review and approval of a theatrical mix. So it's going to allow a collaborative thing, cross continents or whatever, that was just not possible before.
Before you would have had to do it all, wait, render, mix, or whatever, send, let the other guys listen and approve, over and over and over and over, rinse and repeat. Pin the tail on the donkey. Like, nope. Yeah, pin the tail on the donkey, no I don't like that, no I don't like that, no I don't, yeah. Right. Yeah. Wow, that's fun. So now it's like, you know, just, whatever, 700 milliseconds away, and talk back right to the, you know.
I remember, Robert, when we did that session, and you were working, well actually it wasn't our session, it was the session with the orchestra in Austria, when you were working 5 .1 in your studio in Chicago, down the line, and that was like a big deal. That was a big deal, and that was only five years ago. Yeah. And you know, it's crazy, when Rebecca and I were testing this, I mean, you guys know about my shit internet at home, right? Yep. Yes we do.
I've got a normal cable connection, and my normal cable connection is slung over low frequency 900 megahertz wireless to my house, which then goes to my computer over wifi through at least one good wall, and then Rebecca was in Europe on 4G, and I shit you not, we did 88 channels without a problem. Bloody hell.
Yeah. You know, and that's all like 30 mega upload, download, you know, the 4G download was more than 30, but yeah, we were both expecting it, like, let's just see what happens, it might drop out a bunch, but we need to test this, and it just worked. What's that Bruce Springsteen song? Is that 88 channels and nothing on? No, I was thinking it was 52 channels, wasn't it? Right, it's just, yeah. Yeah. There you go. Maybe Bruce could come up with a new song.
I don't know if you could get Bruce to do a jingle for you, you know, 88 channels and plenty on, or something like that. Yeah, 88 channels and everyone working. Yeah, there you go. Everyone connected. Come on, Bruce. I know you're listening. Not gonna say sorry. Come on, Bruce. Yeah. I was just gonna say, to conclude this episode, don't forget, talking about multi-tracks, we have the stems, which will be in the show notes, is that right?
That will be in the show notes, and before we conclude the episode, and since we're on the subject of Austrian Audio, I would like to give another shout out to Austrian Audio for another reason, for their generosity.
I've been mentoring my neighbor's son, who only left school last year and is an aspiring audio engineer, and on a whim, I wrote a, because he's been borrowing my microphones and experimenting with them, and not that I mind that, but on a whim, I wrote an email to Bernd at Austrian Audio, and mentioned what I'd been helping Tyler do, and sort of said, is there anything you can do to help, and in the mail, turns up a My Creator set, so the satellite as well as the main mic, so Tyler's been
down there recording his guitar and his vocals, and mucking around recording his dad, who's also a violinist, and doing some really cool stuff, so a big shout out to the guys at Austrian Audio for supporting the next generation, as well as us old guys with no hair, or grey hair, or falling out, or whatever. Well, I don't think, there's plenty of hair on Robert, so if we get short, we can borrow some from him. That's right, very Sean Connery. Yeah, exactly. I was thinking more shaggy than Sean.
Yeah, but seriously, thanks guys, it's well appreciated, and Tyler's having a great time. Well, that was fun, is it over?