Are You Hopping Mad about Auto Hop?

So the latest invention in the quest by people to skip the very thing that keeps their TV programs on the air is an ad eraser embedded in new digital video recorders sold by Dish Network. Just turn on Auto Hop and ads automatically vanish. TiVo on steroids.

Here’s an article in the New York Times that goes into more detail.

So, how do I feel about that – as a voice talent whose income includes payment for doing announcing for TV Commercials? In some ways, a lot like the chief executive of CBS who wonders how he will produce shows like “CSI” without the support of the advertisers running the commercials. Or maybe a bit like News Corporation who has decided not to run Dish’s DVR ads.

Everyone in the chain is trying to figure out how to snag the eyeballs (and dollars) of the consumers. Consumers who seem to be starting to turn away from paying for cable or satellite and are looking to the Internet. My niece watches TV shows on her laptop whenever and wherever she feels like it. When I do watch TV, it is still from my easy chair in the living room without a DVR, so I tend to see mostly reruns of Bones, Law & Order and NCIS.

I would miss commercials, not only because I get paid to record them, but also because for me they are a source of education and sometimes inspiration. Not that I am a TV junkie, but part of the whole TV watching experience is studying the spots. I realize that the vast majority of the TV watching public probably doesn’t really care for commercials (except during the Super Bowl), but maybe they haven’t really thought about how their TV shows are currently being funded.

The operative word in that last sentence? “Currently.” Everything changes. Eventually.

I wish I had a crystal ball. It would be nice to see what the new business model(s) might be. I’d like to be prepared for when the current one goes away, and with it part of my income.

Popping Problem? Probably Positional Placement.

Every once in a while I’ll pop a “p” and have to do some editing to fix it, or even a redo, but plosives have not been a real problem for me. It is the sharp “s” that seems to be my biggest issue.

I have learned to hear the worst of my sibilance issues as they come out of my mouth and do a quick adjustment to my articulators (usually tongue placement more than anything else) and the next pass is usually sans-sibilance.

But the popping “p” doesn’t present itself until I listen to the recording. So preventing them from happening in the first place is the best plan of attack.

Dan Friedman, working voice talent and author of the book “Sound Advice,” is a frequent contributor to Procomm’s Voiceover Industry Articles. This one is all about that popping problem that plagues many voice actors.

Microphone Technique for Voice Over Talent

It includes a few pictures too – to help you find the “sweet spot” on your mic. Here’s one of them.

If you have a popping problem, read this article and experiment with your mic placement.

Talk about your work around!

Well, as I posted last week, stuff happens.

This week I started hearing a little BobCat driving up and down my alley. And when I poked my head out to see what was going on, I saw the tell-tale signs of upcoming concrete demolition. The road was covered with colorful spray painted arrows and initials detailing the underground path of gas pipes, water and sewer lines.

And a day later the truly irritating sound of a concrete cutter combined with a jack hammer – followed by large back hoes and dump trucks. Even when the concrete cutter wasn’t actually cutting, the generator truck was constantly running in the background.

I trudged down the alley yesterday to find the foreman to ask him what the “schedule” might be. Along the way, I navigated around and over large piles of dirt and was careful not to step in the new trough being gouged out along my side of the alley.

Well, like with so many things in life – there was only the barest suggestion of a schedule. “It depends.” If they run into a problem, they could shut down immediately until someone is able to figure out what to do next. If they don’t run into a problem, then they could just continue to power through from 8:30 to around 5. Lunch break? Again, that depends.

What he did tell me was that it would take 3-4 weeks! And after they are finished laying the new gas lines, the Water Department is going to follow and replace the sewer pipes in a completely different trough requiring another few weeks of concrete cutting and jack-hammering.

Hard to schedule a session in my studio around that.

So, back up plans are in effect. My portable recording gear is set up in an acoustically treated space in the main house (that sounds fancier than it is – trust me). And I have a couple of friends with studios on alert in case a client wants to direct and the construction is simply too crazy.

But for right now, during the daytime while the crews are working, I will be able to use the “inside” location. Everything is networked, so I can save to my regular recording tower, so that works. And I can always start work at around 4 PM when they usually are gone.

Sounds like everything is fine…yeah, right. Either my technical skills are deteriorating, or my stress level has started to affect my brain. I could NOT connect the dots yesterday while scrambling to get a phone patch session ready in my regular studio, and at the same time trying to get the back up system up and running in case there was too much noise.

The MicPort Pro is a very simple device and I have used it many times while traveling. I couldn’t find the cable – and to make matters worse, I was looking for the wrong cable – actually I was trying to use the headphone out jack instead of the mini USB jack and it wasn’t until I was wandering around Frye’s asking someone for a mini-plug to USB cable and finally LOOKING at the MicPort Pro that I realized I was a complete idiot. Left Frye’s with some M&M’s to cover my embarrassment. I was going to resort to using my dbx mini-pre, but somehow the power supply has disappeared.

I was actually able to use the regular studio for an emergency session yesterday around 4PM, but somehow a “pad” button on my new mixer (don’t quiz me on what that is) was depressed when it should not have been and the phone patch was distorted. Why I could hear playback of a QuickTime movie and not of my recording is still a mystery. And then, after I finished the session, why was I unable to record an audition 10 minutes later? Apparently the software had decided to revert back to the computer’s sound card instead of my Gina.

But today, everything seems to finally be working – with a quick troubeshooting trip from the engineer, my regular studio has all it’s ducks in a row again. The back up studio has new foam pads for the Sennheiser 414 – new bungee cables for the Hamburg’s shock mount - and a selection of pre-amps – a Mackie mixer, the MicPort Pro, a Mobile Pre USB (thanks to a fellow VO friend!) and the dbx (if I can find the power supply).

So, I SHOULD be all set for the chaos of the next couple of months. Cross your fingers that I don’t lose any more brain cells, or that the stress level goes down a notch or two.

Time for a Studio Tune Up

I upgraded to Adobe Audition 3 recently on my recording tower and started to notice a difference in my noise floor. A visual difference apparently - certainly nothing that my ears picked up, but a distinct difference in the way the single pixel line that denotes silence looked. It didn’t “look” quiet anymore.

My mics were changed out a little while before the software change – picked up a couple of ADK Hamburgs (after my AKG capsule blew and the new capsule sounded too bright). I also had my recording area acoustically “re-treated” after experimenting with locations. I also had the whole area upholstered.

I have never had any complaints or even a conversation about the “sound” of my space, but it just “looked” noisey.

Other factors that contributed to my ultimate seeking of expert advice…

• An aging analog Mackie Mixer
• A Gentner phone patch that was sort of patched through the Mackie and worked well enough, but not the way it really should work
• Speakers that had to manually be turned off while recording
• This new visual “noise” which made me crazy

The good news – the noise floor is fine (or pretty darned good) – it just looks different than it used to with the new software.

In effect, since I started using noise reduction after being sure that my tracks were noisey, my files are cleaner than they ever have been. No harm, no foul.

But, the bottom line is that my studio needs a tweak. A new mixer – new cables – new patching to do all the things I need to do without a work around. The goal is to provide the best possible results in the least amount of time – so that it is a win win for everyone.

Now, I am not an audio engineer – I rely on my ears and my eyes and customer feedback to determine if I am providing a quality product. So getting someone in here with actual engineering experience is probably a good thing.

The goal is to reduce the noise floor a few more db’s with these tweaks. More as it develops!

When Software Burps

Workflow is a time sensitive thing. We have delivery dates for the work we do and part of our job is to anticipate potential time-sucking issues that may impact a timely delivery.

I am getting pretty good at balancing my daily forays into Social Media, but we all have other areas that need attention.

• Family (my increased time with my mom needs to be figured into the equation)
• Exercise (oh, brother, this is high on my list of things I don’t get around to – do my weekly tap classes count?)
• Home and Garden (my yard is a MESS - my counters are getting mightly cluttered – and there is a leak in the big bathroom that needs to be attended to – not to mention I am stripping an old door for a remodel project)
• Volunteering (my work with MCA-I has increased recently due to some major changes in the association requiring more time as webmaster, singing in the church choir is fun and challenging – and there is a play I’d like to audition for next month)
• Personal Business (refinancing too a huge toll on my time this fall)
• Marketing (just started up my quarterly enewsletter again after more than a year in hiatus)
• Bookkeeping
• General attention to email (how is it possible that there are still 200 emails in my In Box with all the sorting and filing I did this morning?)
• Actual Work

These are all things that we can generally anticipate. The things we can’t plan for are the little burps when your software (and/or hardware) doesn’t work the way it should.

Suddenly your delivery schedule looms when you can’t get your software to do what it is supposed to do. Is it the software? Is it your computer? Is it a networking thing? With each question comes more questions – more time spent – more time passing as the deadlines grow closer.

Somehow it manages to work itself out in most cases – especially if you have a backup plan – which is something that probably  needs to be on that first list of things to do!

I have multiple recording options if one fails, and have rarely, if ever actually missed a deadline, but it sure does put a kink in the workflow when something isn’t working the way you expected it to work.

What the heck just happened?

Excuse me, did I miss something? Like the whole 2nd half of the year maybe? What is this pile of paperwork sitting here? Wait, what I meant to say was what are all these piles of paperwork sitting here? Why is that list of things to do getting longer instead of shorter?

Part of it is personal obligations – that has increased over the past year and a half or so – since my mom moved out here from across the country. Part of it is that my ability to be superwoman is diminishing due to hot flashes.

Part of it is a slight increase in the amount of time I am spending chasing down money from people I didn’t expect to have to chase down for money.

But a big part of it is the time suckers – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, other social media message boards, my volunteer time for MCA-I, this blog, the other blog, YouTube, Wimp and my new “droid.”

I love the phone – a Samsum Fascinate, but HATE the time it takes to delete email. I am assuming that eventually the phone will get “full” and slow down everything. If I am wrong about that – will someone let me know!

You actually have to delete the mail twice – unless I have missed something (see I would need to find the time to figure it out!). Delete it from the In Box and it goes to the Trash. You can select to delete all from the Trash, but that locks up the phone for minutes while it trys to accomplish this. That really needs to be addressed.

If it has been – again – will someone please let me know. I have a lot of work to do in the next few days and it would be nice not to have to worry about the phone slowing down due to lack of memory. God forbid that my life slows down at all.

Wait – maybe that would be GOOD thing!

Car Noise Reduction

Controlling random noise in a studio is a constant challenge if you don’t have a heavy duty floating walled recording space. Even if your space is treated acoustically and your tracks end up clean and noise free, sometimes there is a lot that ends up on the cutting room floor to achieve that result.

While it may sound a bit odd, I have two recording spaces. One inside a small closet in the main house is primarily for my ISDN projects. The other – the spot where I do most of my work – is out in the back yard in a separate structure. There is a small recording space and another larger area for the rest of the work we need to do when we are not recording.

I’ll tell the story of the two spaces sometime, but right now a growing noise issue is on my mind.

The bulk of my work is short form spots, short marketing pieces, IVR prompts and eLearning projects with lots of individual files. I have been able to work around the “noise” that passes by in the alley behind my studio – not completely frustration free, but successfully.

Lately though, the noise has been increasing. New neighbors? Different work schedules? Am I recording at a different time of the day? Don’t know, but I have noticed more cars passing – which takes just a second or two, but it does interrupt a take.

And now, on those occasions when I am recording a longer form project – when I want to record as many paragraphs as possible in one take – the noise from the alley is starting to be a bit more obtrusive. Recording an audiobook in this studio would require much more work and perhaps not as spontaneous a storytelling result.

The solution is probably relatively simple and not very expensive. Add a PC to the inside studio so that I can record. This would also be a value added service to my ISDN work.

 I don’t want to be in the main house all the time – I need a place to “go” when I go to work in the morning. I know myself well enough to know that the 25 foot walk from the back door to my outside office is enough to help me focus on my job.

The walk also reminds me to water the garden.

Fafftermath

I didn’t coin this – fafftermath – but it is what is happening to at least some of the people who attended the first ever FaffCon in Portland OR, September 11 and 12, 2010.

One of the things Amy, the organizer did near the end of the last day, was force everyone in the general session to answer some questions and write down some action items. This was so that we didn’t get back home and let life take over without capitalizing on the information that was shared and the energy that was exchanged and enhanced.

I managed to walk off without my notebook and my notes – and all my remaining business cards, but I did remember at least one of my action items (or if it isn’t on the list when I finally do see it again, it is now!)…get in contact with old clients.

So I have make it a point this past week to contact at least one lapsed client per day. And here’s what happened today.

Just after parking the car outside the world famous San Diego Zoo to spend some time with my nephew who is finishing a cross country trip, I got an email from one of these former clients whom I had not worked with since 2008. I had sent him a note just a couple of days ago checking in and suddenly a job popped up for me.

He followed up with a phone call and I explained that I was just going into the Zoo and asked him if this was a rush. Nope! So, off I went – playing Auntie the Tour Guide for several hours. When I returned to myh studio, there was a second job from the same client.

Less than an hour later, I delivered the reads and got the billing info.

Other examples of Fafftermath have popped up on some social media sites posted by other attendees.

 There just might be something to this peers sharing with peers concept!

I could work here…

Oh my – what a wonderful city Munich is – even if it is raining. And one of the first things I saw after climbing 4 flights of stairs to my brother and sister-in-law’s apartment in the Haidhousen area of Munich, was a wooden “whisper” room.

My brother is a horn player – a world-class horn player. He is presently principal horn for the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and for 30 some years was principal horn for the Munich Philharmonic. After finding this new apartment right in the middle of a park near the Iser River, he had to convince the landlord that his 3 times a day practicing wouldn’t be obstrusive. Somehow he was able to get the potential landlord to visit someone who had a “whisper” room in their apartment so that he could hear that there was really no sound emerging.

So there it was – a 13,000 Euro wooden room with snap together sides that block 95% of the sounds he makes when practicing. And even after nearly 40 years of playing the horn, scales 3 X a day are not the most pleasant sound for the average neighbor.

I was instantly jealous – because I could hear the low low low noise floor and knew that I would be very happy in that room. He has it hung with mirrors and pictures and a ventilation system – which is great for him, because he is trying to keep his noise out, not outside noise from coming in.

Check out the way it goes together

Me and My Equipment

You know how when you first start doing something you spend a lot of time figuring it out and you end up with something that works really great – and then over time – you end up forgetting what it was you did in the first place – and for a while that doesn’t matter – because everything is working just fine. But then it stops working fine – and like I said – you have no idea what you did in the first place – and now you are stuck with this incredible kluge job of tangled cables and settings.

That’s where I am right now. I’ve been doing voiceover work full-time now from my home studio for more than 10 years – and have slowly added this and that to the mix of equipment. In fact I have two separate “studios” – one for my phone patch and self-directed stuff (and now Source-Connect sessions) – and another for my ISDN work. The reason? I can’t record in the self-directed studio when it rains! So I had two mics – and one of them had to be sent out for repair after a blown capsule – came back way too bright – so I bought a new mic – and all was well with the world – for a while.

A long time ISDN client recently told me that he thought my sound was sounding not so good – not my acting skills – the actual sound of my signal. We tried resetting the codec. Then we tried a different mic – the one that came back from repair. It sounded a bit better than the other, but not much. He thought maybe it could be the pre amp in the Mackie – suggesting that a different pre amp might be helpful.

So I had an audio friend come over and look at things. He saw several little knobs on the mixer that were in the “wrong” places. He adjusted some of the switches on the repaired mic. We turned off this – we turned down that – we plugged and unplugged and patched and repatched. Then I called back the engineer hearing the “problem” and he STILL heard what sounded like bad MP3 compression coming from the two older mics – one really really bad. At that point, he suggested that I bring in the newer mic from the other studio and “voila” – he was happy.

Diagnosis – old mics need to be permanently retired. Solution – buy another one of the mics he was happy with. I have been very happy with the sound of the new mic – an ADK Hamburg edition – not very expensive – and now I have two of them – one for each room.

So, with technology issues solved (for the time being anyway), I need to let all my ISDN clients know that if they had been less than happy with the sound of my room, they were in for a pleasant surprise. Of course, with the ISDN troubles ironed out for a while, wouldn’t you know that the dial tone to my phone patch came up MIA about an hour later.

Ah – technology – don’tcha just love it!!!