Jan 22, 2024
This week, we deep dive into the English Channel from Centrance. Special guest Michael Goodman chats about how it came about, the many unique setups and creative uses of the English Channel by voice artists and content creators alike. Plus, we explore its features, and with Robbo, Robert and Michael all using one for the show, there's plenty of tips and tools to help you get the most out of this impressive piece of kit, or inspire you to go check one out for yourself.
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Hunter S Thompson
Summary
In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, our hosts—George Wittam,
Robert Marshall, Darren 'Robbo' Robertson, and Andrew Peters—offer
an insightful review of Centrance products, particularly focusing
on the English Channel. The team is joined by special guest Michael
Goodman from Centrance, who sheds light on the technology behind
these innovative audio solutions.
Listeners will gain an understanding of the technical nuances of the English Channel, such as its British EQ, clean modern circuitry, and wide frequency response, which altogether emulate the classic analog console experience with a distinct English style. In an in-depth discussion, the panel explores the creative uses of the product, and Goodman explains the motivation behind its unique design, such as the five db gain jump between products which correlates with a price difference.
Moreover, the episode delves into the features of the Portcaster and SoBox, highlighting how these devices can send audio to multiple recorders, and allowing one device to control another for an expanded multichannel setup. The challenges and eccentricities of integrating these tech solutions into a working studio setup are candidly discussed, including some unconventional methods they would normally not recommend to voiceover actors.
To cap it off, the show offers a quick preview of the next episode where Michael Goodman will return to discuss the Passport Vo, making it a must-listen for audio professionals looking to enhance their tech arsenal and push the boundaries of their creative workflow.
#ProAudioSuite #VoiceoverTech #CentranceSolutions
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction to Pro Audio Suite
(00:00:52) Centrance's English Channel Review
(00:07:07) Comparison: Jasmine Preamp and Portcaster
(00:09:01) English Channel as a Portable Voice Recorder
(00:13:16) Modern Breakthroughs in EQ Circuitry
(00:15:29) Features of the English Channel Parametric EQ
(00:19:15) Instamano: The Mono Blend Knob for Instagram
(00:25:40) Portcaster's Monitoring and Output Capabilities
(00:28:28) SoBox: Link Switches Explained
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready? Be history.
Speaker B: Get started.
Speaker C: Welcome.
: Hi.
Speaker C: Hi.
: Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.
: These guys are professional.
Speaker C: They're motivated with tech. To the Vo stars, George
Wittam, founder of source elements Robert Marshall, international
audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew
Peters. Thanks to Triboo, austrian audio making passion heard
source elements George the tech Wittam and Robbo and AP's
international demo. To find out more about us, check
theproaudiosuite.com line up.
Speaker B: Learner. Here we go.
: And don't forget the code. Trip a P 200. That will get you $200
off your tribooth. Now, I should say, before we start the show, a
disclaimer. What you are about to listen to is what we would not
advise voiceover actors to do. That's all I'm going to say.
Speaker A: Do as I say, not as I do.
: Yeah, exactly. We have a special guest today from Centrance,
Michael Goodman. G'day, Michael.
Speaker B: Hello, gentlemen. Pleasure to be here.
: It's lovely to have you. Now, today's review is about sentrance
itself, but also the English Channel. And I know two of the people
are using english channels as we speak. And one has done some funky
little setup to his laptop. And that, of course.
: But Robert, I just kind of like that setup where I use the TRRs
cable going into the laptop. I just like it because it's wrong. One
of the things, actually, two things that I ran into and, Michael,
maybe you can explain to me a little bit. But I found that when I
use the English Channel with the xlrs going across the top, when
you get into the portcaster, you're hitting the mic preamp with an
amplified signal. And you end up having to not use as much gain on
the mic preamp over on the soapbox as you want. Because even with
the pads turned down. And I think I ended up using the pad in the
English Channel as well to try to pad it back down so I could get
into the meat of the soapbox in terms of processing, the compressor
especially, and the deesser as well. So anyways, what I did is I
have the mic going in the xlr going out and over into the english
channel. And then I have an XLR cable going out which feeds into
the. Whatever, the second ring of a tip ring ring sleeve jack. And
that goes into my Mac. And then out of my Mac is the tip ring
sleeve. The normal stereo output of that jack. And that goes to a
female connector. And I take the output of that. I have an 8th inch
to 8th inch or an aux cable. I take the output of that and I plug
it into the 34 input of the port caster. And I also take another
8th inch cable, aux cable, and I go line out of the English Channel
and into the phone TRRs input of the portcaster as well. And that's
how I monitor my own voice. So I have two knobs on the Portcaster.
I do not have a USB going into the computer, just a USB going into
the power headphones 34 being fed in, which is the computer return
and my microphone coming in through the TRRS channel two input. So
I have the three four knob for you guys, and I have the channel two
knob for my own headphones. And voila. Fully processed microphone
with EQ using the built in Macintosh input and output through a
TRRS cable. Doesn't sound too bad, does it?
Speaker B: Well, first of all, I have to hand it to you. You get
the prize for the most creative, innovative use of this technology.
And it still sounds good.
Speaker A: Can I just say, also the most convoluted.
Speaker B: Seriously, I guess it is a statement about the
universality of this thing, because I hadn't thought about that
use. Normally, what we'd recommend everybody to use is the english
channel takes a microphone on the input and gives you a USB output
that you plug into your computer. It does have really high quality
inlook to digital and digital converters inside. So we believe it's
better than the converters inside of a typical computer such as a
Mac or PC. And therefore you'll get more audio file sound quality
that way. But look, I mean, there's so many Gazintas and Gazawtas
in that thing, you can probably slice it many different ways.
: Well, here's where I came up with that setup. And I decided to do
this setup because I wanted to use the soapbox and the full
processing, and I wanted to do something different as well. But
where I first came up with that setup, and I think it works really
well, is with the Jasmine mic pre, because then it's the same
thing. You have the XLR feeding out and then you have the computer
just return back to the line input and the Jasmine mic pre itself.
The headphone already blends your headphones, your input, your mic
input with the headphones. So you don't need the second Aux cable
that I'm using here. But it's certainly a great way to literally
use the Jasmine mic pre with a computer. If you just want to get
the Jasmine mic pre.
Speaker B: That's actually true. And to be honest with you, we have
received feedback about the Jasmine mic pre. One thing that it
sorely lacks, apparently according to some users, is a USB audio
interface. People are like, why don't you just put a USB jack that
actually does audio on that thing, not just power. So then the
Jasmine preamp basically turns into a micport Pro with a line level
input and a mixer so that you can bring some music into your
program or just listen to a backing track and sing along with it or
play along with it, something like that. It really just becomes a
mic port Pro at that point. With a slightly better preamp?
: I don't think so. It becomes like a focus, right? Blue ISA one
where it has a Q mix input or a return channel so you can monitor
in low latency what comes out of your daw.
Speaker B: If it had a USB audio interface, then it would be
exactly like those things.
: No, the focusrite ISA desktop is not an audio interface. It has
no USB. But it's a preamp with two return channels so you can
monitor low latency out of your daw. There's not a ton of mic
preamps that do it, but the Jasmine does it too, and it's a super
useful feature even without the USB interface.
Speaker B: In developing the English Channel, we had to face a
couple of decision points, because originally it was actually four
devices. It was the Jasmine preamp followed by the dynamics box,
followed by the EQ, the black cab, and followed by the audio
interface, which is the podcaster. But four devices that just
looked like a lot in front of you just looked way too complex. So a
couple of voiceover actors heard about that and they're like, can
you please put the preamp inside of the soapbox? So that's what we
did, and thereby we made jasmine preamp pretty much obsolete in our
product line. It's a foster child. Sad to say.
: I liked it. So the preamp is the same in the jasmine as the
soapbox?
Speaker B: Yes.
: Can I ask what's the preamp in the passport?
Speaker B: The preamp is the same all across, so we call it the
jasmine preamp. It's a custom designed discrete transistor preamp
with a dual stage.
: But the courtcaster doesn't have a Jasper.
Speaker B: Cordcaster is portcaster with a very small modification.
It's basically the same as Portcaster.
: So it is a Jasmine preamp in that one as well?
Speaker B: Yes, everywhere is the same preamp.
: So basically all your preamps are the jasmine.
Speaker B: What differs between products is the amount of gain
available. So jasmine preamp, if you need the possible theoretical
lowest noise, somehow it's different somehow.
: Even though it's a jasmine preamp. It's a better jasmine
preamp.
Speaker B: Yeah. So we monkey with the gain inside the unit.
: Wow. Because the Micport Pro that's got, I think it's 65 db
gain.
Speaker B: Is that 65? And then soapbox has 70 and the Jasmine
preamp standalone has 74. 75.
: Wow.
Speaker B: There's like a five db jump and then there's a
corresponding price difference.
: I haven't got one, but I know that generously you're going to
send one for a review. The Micport Pro, and I know it's been around
for a long time, but this is the latest version of it that you've
got, which has been around for how long now, the New York.
Speaker B: One, the latest Micport Pro has been around since. I
want to say that 2018, the.
: First Micport Pro was what, 2008?
Speaker B: 2009. Eight. You're right. Eight.
: I still miss my original.
: Well, someone's got it now. They're enjoying it.
Speaker A: Hello.
: And probably got your laptop as well.
: He's got both the laptops. He got a bag full of stuff.
Speaker A: Might not be a he. Come on, let's not get sexist
here.
: Yeah.
: Someone who identifies as a thief.
Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
: I identify as a thief.
Speaker A: Yes, indeed.
: Now, Michael, with the english channel, who were you looking at
when you were designing this? What was your market?
Speaker B: The mirror?
Speaker A: Before you answer that, I actually want to take you one
step back inside your twisted mind.
Speaker B: I appreciate that.
Speaker A: Where did you come up with the idea for this?
Speaker B: So the name of the product, the English Channel.
: I'm curious about the name.
Speaker B: The name, obviously, is it uses British Egyu and
everything else from a channel stripper on a british console,
analog console. And therefore it's called the English Channel. So
it's a channel from a british console. Now, you can argue that
british consoles have been responsible for one of the most prolific
periods in the history of the music industry, where in the 70s,
early eighty s, a lot of really cool music was produced. I'm not
saying that today music is bad, not at all. All music matters,
obviously, but I just happen to like a lot of music that was made
in the late 70s anyway, so that's the name. And it's sort of kind
of a nod to that era. A lot of our customers who buy the English
Channel are from that era. They have experience with analog
technology, and to them that feels good. Now, how did the product
come about? There's really two ways to think about it. First of
all, we couldn't get any digital chips during the COVID and so we
couldn't build the Micport Pro and podcaster mixerface, all those
other things. And I was sitting on a very short lounge chair at a
hotel in Mexico, last vacation before COVID And I was kind of
anticipating that they were going to hit some trouble. And then I
said to myself, we should design some analog products because
digital does not look good in the nearest future. And so that's how
the analog channel came about. More of a business necessity than
anything else. But then as it started to appear to materialize, I
was practicing with it. And about that time, I started really
recording YouTube videos for the sentrance YouTube channel on a
weekly basis. It's a job. And because I traveled a lot, I ended up
taking the english channel with me wherever I went. Like, for
example, two weeks ago, I was in Indonesia at a trade show, and I
had the English Channel, and I did some streams from the trade show
floor, which sounded just like what we sound like right now. And I
could get rid of the noise in the trade show floor was loud and all
that. So I started realizing that this is actually a very cool
product for a traveling content creator, because, again, as I said,
I was looking at the mirror jokingly, but I happen to be a
traveling content creator because I have this job of making videos
for our YouTube channel and then podcasts, things like that. I did
have a podcaster before, and podcaster obviously came out first,
and that's great for doing podcasts, interviews. I know George uses
it for that as well, but it doesn't have way to enhance your voice
and then also get rid of the noise. Everybody who's starting out in
the voice arts at first has to come against this fear of hearing
their own voice, because we never know how our voice sounds like
when it's recorded right until we have a lot of practice. And then,
so I also had a fear of listening to my own voice. And I thought, I
probably want a little bit more bass, maybe a little bit less
treble here in this area. I kind of sound more confident if I do
some of the enhancements. And then, so what this thing allows me to
do is honestly develop confidence in public speaking, believe it or
not, which is kind of like not the intended use of the product, but
it gives me that ability to feel better about myself, which is an
unintended psychological consequence of a technological
product.
: I have a question about the Eq. Is there anything, particularly
on the technical side, that makes it a British Eq? I know that
sometimes I found that the bandwidths can be pretty wide, and
therefore, in that sense, sort of makes it a little bit more
english in style, just the wider. I mean, they do get pretty. If I
crank mine up here and I put it all the way on the left for the
queue, you can kind of hear it. And it's pretty tight, but it
doesn't sound like I'm sweeping a sine wave. And on the wide side,
it's so wide, you can barely hear me sweeping that at all.
Speaker B: It is pretty wide. I mean, it's almost like a surgical
instrument. If you put it to 0.4 and is just a shelf almost. At the
other extreme, the frequency response of that thing is quite wide.
I don't have the spec sheet in front of me, but I wouldn't be
surprised if it goes up to almost 100 khz. So it's very wide. It
uses modern circuitry. I mean, this is not the circuitry from the
course. There's been a lot of breakthroughs in analog technology
since then, so that's why it's quiet and it allows us to do some
tricks. It doesn't have transformers. So some of the Rupert neve
technology color. Yeah, he loved his transformers. And they gave
you that bass. They gave you that strange kind of phasing sound. I
mean, a lot of people prefer that. And there are manufacturers of
audio interfaces. There's one right here in Chicago that loves
transformers as well. And those guys, we've had a shootout, and it
was very interesting because I brought some of our gear to their
studio, and then they had some of their interfaces, and we had an
interface shootout. And the results of the shootout were
inconclusive in that they loved theirs and I loved mine.
: Did they want to do a black lion edition of the sentence?
Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
Speaker B: No, they hated our stuff because we didn't have
transformers in it. And I was like, you guys, this doesn't sound
natural. What goes in is not what goes out. And they're like, yeah,
that's exactly the point. So different styles.
: So talking about that, though, if you're talking about late 70s,
early 80s when you were designing the English Channel, what sort of
preamps were you thinking about? It sounds like you weren't
thinking about Neve. You were thinking about maybe API.
Speaker B: We wouldn't necessarily want know, copy somebody else's
design, so that wouldn't be prudent for a lot of reasons, one of
which just personal pride. We wanted to have our stuff. So you
could argue that the whole concept of the british invasion and the
british consul and all that is largely a psychological construct
than any particular style of circuitry. Design.
: It's not an homage to any. Like, this isn't a V 72 club.
Speaker B: I wouldn't want to do that. There's so many people that
say, oh, we make a microphone and it's the best U 87 this side of U
87, whatever. And that is a great marketing strategy for some
people, but we decided not to do that. Like, okay, this is the Neve
1998, right? But in a different chassis. No, not at all. This is a
sentence product that it is completely from ground up sentence. And
then any marketing reference to Great Britain is an homage rather
than any specific lift of any circuitry.
: I don't think I can think of any smaller three band, fully
parametric EQ on the market at all than this.
Speaker A: No.
Speaker B: You can find these graphic eqs and pedals a lot.
: It's smaller than a 500 series module. It's like half the
size.
Speaker B: Exactly. I didn't have one either.
: But find a three band parametric that's this small and it's XLR
that's fully balanced.
Speaker B: You should try it on some instruments. It's pretty cool.
You should also try. So, box on a snare. I was blown away.
Speaker A: Really?
: Compressor is really good.
Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty nice. I have a video up on our website
where I actually go through a history of the sound of the snare
drum by turning the compressor knob on the soapbox. So without
compression, it's essentially the 60s. With medium compression, it
becomes the gated snare starts to come in, and then if you compress
all the way. If you turn the knob all the way to the right, then it
becomes the. Becomes the gated compressed snare. With the
additional.
Speaker A: I was going to say, you'd have to be winding the gate up
as well. Right in the will.
: Say, if I can make a request for the soapbox too, that the gate
is an expander, that'd be my only request.
Speaker B: So it doesn't pump as much or you can make it not pump
as much.
: So it slides down to its. Whatever range -60 or minus, even
infinity. But it never just goes there, it always has a slope. It
opens more gradually and closes more gradually. Because I don't
know if I can do it. But you can kind of even sometimes you can
hear someone breathe in, you can hear it take their breath and
like, chop.
Speaker B: It's pretty drastic. It's just basically on off. And it
was designed to be that way. And it took a while to get the timing
just right so that it covers the majority of applications.
Obviously, we didn't have the space for a couple more knobs seems
pretty quick. That was the point. So if you really use the gate,
then it becomes pumpy. So it can be like that.
: Yeah, well, I found a good way around that is to use the
blend.
Speaker B: The dry wet control. That's pretty much your answer.
: Yeah, it effectively changes the amount. So it always leaves a
little bit. And it doesn't sound quite as, like, cut.
: It's like the range control. I like that. That mix of the dry wet
will give you.
Speaker B: That is a poor man's expander, if you wish.
Speaker A: No, it's a sentence expander.
: Yeah, that's what it is.
Speaker B: The trick is old. The trick is not our invention.
: So tell us about the instant mono. I think that's another one
that it's kind of a unique thing that you don't find that behavior
on all interfaces.
Speaker B: The insta in Instant Instamano actually stands for
Instagram. And we put that in portcaster. And what we've learned is
that Instagram, originally, they may have changed that now, but
originally it was mono. So therefore, if you connect a stereo usb
audio interface to Instagram to do a live stream, then the left
channel will go through and everybody will hear whatever's on the
left channel, but the right channel will essentially be lost. So a
musician who, let's say, is a guitar player and a singer at the
same time. So a singer songwriter, they would plug the guitar into
one channel and the voice, the vocal microphone into the other
channel, and then only one of those things would come through. And
that was extremely frustrating. We had an earlier product called
Mixerface, where there was no blend, no stereo blend. It just two
channels come in, two channels go out.
: I've got a mixer, right?
Speaker B: The older one didn't have that blend knob. Now, since
COVID and since that whole idea of streaming from home came about,
we learned that this is not good. And then that Instamano is
essentially a mono switch for mono blend knob for Instagram, which
essentially unifies or combines your microphone and your guitar
that you plug into channels one and two and then sends that to
Instagram. And then your fans hear both things. That's really what
it's for. Now, why is it a blend knob and not a switch? Because I
had a hole I needed to plug with a potentiometer, and it kind of
felt good.
: How does it work exactly? All the way left. Right goes all the
way to left is all the way left.
Speaker B: Yes. So when you turn it counterclockwise, which is to
the left, you are printing. Mono printing. When I say printing, I
mean, is sending a mono signal into Instagram. So, in your usb
stream.
: But what's it doing electrically? Is it bringing the right side
fully over to the left side? Is that what it is?
Speaker B: It's creating a monomix. So it takes 50% of the left and
50% of the right. It combines them together and creates a mono mix.
And then it sends that mono mix to the left channel and that same
exact mono mix to the right channel. That's the proper way of doing
it.
: So what happens if you have it 50 50, like straight up at 12:00
now what's.
Speaker B: So then it's in between mono and stereo. And I am still
trying to figure out a good use case for that.
: Well, it's like faking headphones for stereo. If you want a
little left right bleed.
Speaker B: Yeah.
: At the 12:00 position, it basically takes. Left is 100% left plus
50% right, and right is 100% right plus 50% left. Is that what's
happening?
Speaker B: It becomes 50 of, let's say 50 of each? Yeah. So it's
slightly less than stereo. So now I have to correct myself. I said
that I'm struggling to come up with a use case. I'm not. Because we
make two microphones that you can plug into podcaster. These are
tiny little mics that are housed inside the XLR shells. And then
they are angled so that when you plug them into channels one and
two over the podcaster, you form a xy stereo pair. And then at that
point, portcaster becomes a stereo field recorder with two mics.
And then you can record concert, a band, whatever, or sounds of
nature, animals. We have people recording all kinds of things.
Creeks, mountain creeks. And then. So there, what you can do is you
can record in, like, full stereo. But sometimes if you're way too
close to the source, the full stereo might actually sound
uncomfortable. So in that case, you might want to reduce the width
of the stereo perspective slightly. And that's where the mono
stereo blend ability to kind of grow gradually between the two
comes into play. Because I've stuck this actually big sewer in
California about a year ago, and I recorded the sound of the
mountain creek because I thought it would be cool. And I stuck the
portcaster on a rock right next to gurgling water. Right. And I
realized that the two microphones recorded completely different
sounds from water hitting the rocks. And it actually sound like way
too much stereo. So I had to blend it down a little bit, and then
it was a little bit more listenable. That makes sense.
: I can't think of one product that has that. George, can you think
of any other product that has that?
: It's one of those majorly missing features of almost every other
standard stereo interface. Like if you look at a scarlet two I two,
people try using a scarlet two I two all the time to do things like
this. And then they get frustrated when one person's voice is in
the left and the other one's in the right. And that's not what they
need. What they needed was a mixer, but they're using interface and
they just don't conceptually understand what the difference is.
: That is a unique feature. That pan move someone to the left or
right is a very unique feature to these sentence interfaces. And
you don't see the input pan on any device. What you do see is the
ganged stereo monitor pan on almost all devices. So two places
where sentrance has been unique. The Instamano knob. I can't think
of any interface that does that unless it has a full mixer. The
other thing that's unique is technically the original mixer face is
the only interface I know of that has a separate left right usb
versus input play.
: It's unique too. Absolutely.
Speaker B: Yeah. And then that use case it was useful for, and it
was designed for, is when you have a guitar in one end, your voice
in the other end, and you might want to listen to a little bit of a
background track. And that gives you a blend between the guitar and
the voice in the headphones. It essentially affects the headphones.
Right. So you can keep your levels where you want them with the two
level knobs, but you can adjust your headphone mix with those two
other knobs, but.
: You could affect the blend. You could blend in more of your input
than your output. But when you played back, your mix was different
because it wasn't really. Yes.
Speaker B: This was for monitoring only.
: Totally. So what then is interesting also is the original mixer
face. And I'm not sure if this one has, but the original mixer face
at least also uniquely had a mono switch for the output. So you
could at least hear the two centered. You weren't recording them
centered, but it has a mono switch. And is that in the portcaster
or does that switch go away?
Speaker B: It's still everywhere. And I have to say it confuses a
lot of people, including famous youtubers. We won't name names, but
essentially this thing was designed to be so flexible, it's useful.
We possibly overloaded it for an average user. So I have customers
who are tweaks and they love it. Because they can use in so many
different ways. But for example, the mono stereo monitor switch
allows you to print in stereo, but listen in mono. Right. Whereas
the mono stereo blend knob, you're listening to whatever you're
recording. So if you're blending with the mono stereo knob, you're
actually printing mono, which is an important distinction.
: And again, I can't think of any interfaces to do this. Most
interfaces don't give you these types of choices. They're just
features you can't find on a focus. Right. Or something like
that.
Speaker B: That's more for videography, things like that. So
there's also a third. There's a line output on the podcaster. And
then that allows you to record to essentially three places. So you
can use the podcaster to send your audio to three separate
recorders, one being the internal SD card recorder, one being the
USB whatever it is that you're recording to or streaming live to.
Right. And then the third one, the line out goes out to the camera.
So that's for video applications. And then you can record audio
onto the camera as well.
: Can I give you a total feature for that?
Speaker B: Go.
: Okay, so you're recording stereo audio onto the internal card of
the Portcaster?
Speaker B: In this case, yes.
: And then you had the line output stereo technically going into
the camera. Right. So put a timecode generator in this thing,
record three channels of Timecode onto the Portcaster and then drop
one channel of Timecode.
Speaker B: It's been brought up so far we've dealt with people who
do shorter things and they just jam sync it. Where? I don't know
what the current thinking, current wisdom is, but about 20 minutes
of content recorded, it doesn't yet drift yet far enough.
: But it's a lot of work still. It's still a lot of work to go find
it. Like timecode just lines it up for you. You don't have to
go.
Speaker B: Yeah. After about an hour, it starts becoming a problem.
But so far, I don't think we've dealt with anybody who's using
these for very long periods of time. It's a voiceover artist who's
recording for 30 seconds or if it's a youtuber. Then again, it's
not a long thing.
Speaker A: On the soapbox, Michael, on the bottom of the soapbox,
and I think I've figured this out, there are three link switches
for each of the processing, for the gate, for the compressor, and
for the Deesser. Can you tell us what they do?
Speaker B: We wanted SoBox to be extendable to multichannel
situations. So, for example, for stereo or for multichannel
recording. What you can do is you can actually line up several of
these soapboxes and you can have one of them control the others in
a linked situation. So in a stereo program, that's important
because you don't want the two channel, the left and right channel
to pump differently. You want them to sort of be in sync. And what
those switches do is they allow you to choose. There are two jacks
there called smart link. One is the link in and the other one is
link out. So you can actually control one soapbox with another
soapbox, and one became the master and the other one became the non
master.
: But that's not like the slave of a compressor that's just
controlling the same knob. It's setting the two knobs at the same
position.
Speaker A: Right.
: There's still two parallel monocompressors.
Speaker B: No, if you switch the switch to the remote, then the
knob becomes useless on that unit that is in the remote mode.
Essentially, it will only listen to what the other unit tells it to
do.
: Right. And what is the other unit telling it? Is it telling it
where to set exactly so they.
Speaker B: Because it's a control signal, it's like.
: Working on a VCA kind of thing.
Speaker B: You can have one soapbox control another soapbox.
: Is the VCA controlling the gain reduction or is it controlling
the position of that knob?
Speaker B: The position of the knob controls the VCA unless you
flip the switch, put it in remote, and then a remote signal
controls the VCA. And the knob essentially sits there doing
nothing. You can rotate the knob on the slave unit and it would not
do anything because the slave unit would be listening to the signal
from the master unit.
Speaker A: Okay, so how are we linking those together?
: Is that the USB connection, the little 8th inch connectors.
Speaker B: Trrs. We're having an arc here. TRrs comes back.
: Is it trrs or just trs?
Speaker B: Trrs.
: Are you using the whole TRRs cable for the VCA?
Speaker B: Yes, because there's three things that we can control.
Gate, compressor, and Deesser.
Speaker A: There you go.
: All three are on one link. You don't need three links. One wire,
one wire gets you linked.
Speaker A: That's the smart link.
: That's cool.
Speaker A: Yeah, right.
: So much innovation in these things. It's great, man.
: Wow.
Speaker A: There you go. Very cool.
: That's part one of our chat with Michael Goodman from centrance,
talking about the English Channel. Next episode, we have Michael
back to talk about the Passport Vo, the collaboration between this
podcast and centrance. Catch you next time.
: Well, that was fun.
Speaker C: Is it over the pro audio suite with thanks to Triboof
and austrian audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew
Peters and mixed by Robbo. Got your own audio issues? Just ask
robo.com tech support from George the tech don't forget to
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