Mar 4, 2024
In this week's episode of The Pro Audio Suite, we dive deep into the latest advancements in audio technology that are set to transform the voiceover and podcasting industries. Join us as we discuss the new features of Source Nexus, the differences between its free and paid versions, and how these innovations can significantly improve your recording workflow. Whether you're a seasoned voiceover artist, a budding podcaster, or somewhere in between, this episode is packed with invaluable insights and tips to enhance your audio production game.
Key Highlights:
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Exclusive Discount on TriBooth: Kickstart your episode with a special offer on TriBooth, using the code 'TRIPAP200' for a $200 discount.
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Introducing Source Nexus: Discover the benefits of the latest Source Nexus release, a game-changer for podcasters and voiceover artists looking to streamline their recording and playback processes.
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Free vs. Paid Versions: Learn about the major differences between Source Nexus's free and paid versions, including the unique features and capabilities of each.
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Enhanced Connectivity and Quality: Understand how Source Nexus can revolutionize remote recording sessions, offering high-quality connections and simplifying the playback of recordings without the need for extensive technical knowledge.
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Future Innovations: Get a sneak peek into what's next for Source Nexus, including new features designed to make voiceover booths resemble professional radio studios.
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Navigating Internet Challenges: Gain insights into overcoming common internet connectivity issues that can impact your recording quality, especially for artists based in remote locations.
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The Evolution of Voiceover Sessions: Reflect on how the voiceover industry has evolved over the years and the increasing demands on voice talent to also be audio engineers.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone involved in the audio production industry, providing practical advice, expert opinions, and a look into the future of voiceover and podcasting technologies.
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And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
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Summary
In this episode of the podcast, the focus is on the benefits of the New Source Nexus for podcasting and voiceover work. The host reminds listeners of a discount offer for TriBooth, urging them to use the promo code "TripAP200" for $200 off. The guest, Robert, explains how New Source Nexus is particularly advantageous for voice talents who work with clients that do not record them directly but rather use applications like Zoom. He emphasizes that Nexus simplifies the playback process, integrating with various recording applications to handle routing and mix-minus setups, making it user-friendly with its built-in mixer. Nexus is lauded for enhancing recording capabilities, especially for interviews and group conversations, as evidenced by its use during the podcast itself.Additionally, the episode touches upon the growing demands on voiceover actors, with Andrew Keen pointing out the limitations of expecting high-quality performances when continuously adding more responsibilities. He speculates that voiceover booths could evolve to resemble radio studios, given the expanding skill set required of voice talents.
Listeners are advised that the benefits Robert mentions apply to both the free and paid versions of New Source Nexus, though the paid version offers additional plugins that facilitate easier routing for professional needs.
#TriboothDiscount #SourceNexusPodcasting #VoiceoverTechSolutions
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Nexus Benefits for Podcasters(00:06:18) Evolution of Voiceover Booths
Transcript
Speaker A: And if you want to get a discount on your tribooth, don't forget the code. Trip a p 200 and that will get you $200 off. So use the code now. Something new was actually released a few weeks back. Now the new source nexus. My question for you, Robert, how will it benefit someone like myself or someone who does podcasts using Nexus?
Speaker B: I think for talent yourself, the first case would be something like where you have clients that are not recording you directly. Sort of the here's a zoom link, and then we're going to have you record everything and send files to you later. Yes, your clients are hearing you over whatever Zoom can do, and then they're asking you to play back. And it's not easy to set that up. So Nexus for a voice talent would make it very easy for them to play back whatever they're recording into. If it's a DAW like Pro Tools or audition or reaper, or if it's even just some desktop application like Twisted wave, it can do all the routing and the mix minus set up so that you can playback without having to sort of understand as much what you're doing. In a sense, it has the mixer built into it. It's very straight ahead. So that's the first use case podcasting we've got recording. I mean, we're using it right now, but we're improving those features and those are going to accelerate. And certainly just a platform for someone who wants to connect and record an interview or a group conversation. It works out great. Obviously. Here we are.
Speaker A: Is this the free one or is this the paid one that you would need?
Speaker B: You could do it with both technically, but with the free one you're a bit on your own. With the paid one, you get a set of plugins that really makes the routing easy. The paid one, which is $12 a month or it's $132 a year, that one provides all the tools and is where it would be most easily done. But the free one does provide you high quality connection to five people, and everyone hears you in very high quality, and if you want, you can hear them in very high quality, but the routing is a little bit more up to you at that point and not having plugins to help you or applications to help you with the audio routing. So you're more just plugging your microphone in and your headphones out. And if you want to integrate other applications or go through a DAW record through a set of plugins, things like that, then it makes it easier to have the plugins. And especially when it comes back to playing back. So you not only have your microphone feeding into it, but also playback from whatever you're recording. That's where those setups are easier with plugins or external software.
Speaker A: My question is actually what is the major differences between the free one and the paid one? If I pay for it, what do I get?
Speaker B: The paid one? You get the Nexus plugin set, which is Nexus review, which is a plugin that makes it very easy to put on a master fader. Or it's also a standalone application so that you can set up a playback to whatever connection you have and source. Nexus Gateway is the meeting room that you have. It's chrome based and unlike something like Zoom, it has a separate high quality audio broadcast. So you have a client room that has echo cancellation on it and people can have speakers open and a more comfortable environment. But then you as the talent, you can be on headphones sending your audio out in high quality to the participants and whoever they are. So this is a situation where they're not recording you directly because in that case you would be on source connect being recorded by an engineer who's pulling playback and edits in real time. What happens to you, Andrew, is as you've said, you've got stuck doing playback for people and crap, which I've set up for this.
Speaker A: I must admit I have sort of put my foot down on that one and basically say before we start, I'm not supplying playback and I'm sure that's going to come and bite me at some point. But the other question is, you know what my Internet's like here for some peculiar reason it's pretty crap. I mean the speeds are fine.
Speaker B: It's crap.
Speaker A: Yeah. So how taxing on bandwidth is Nexus going to be, particularly the paid one.
Speaker B: Gives you video as well. The free one doesn't have video. So if you choose to use video it's definitely going to tax it more in your case. I don't know what's wrong. You just live in a black hole of Internet. I think it particularly has to do with the peering. Within Australia you have really good speed. But if you do a speed test and you change your server to someplace in Chicago or close to there, then you'll see the true speed that you have from Australia to that distance, not some server that's down the street from be.
Speaker A: I don't know whether it's the modem, I have no idea. It is kind of weird.
Speaker B: I think it might be the peering. That's what I'm trying to say. Who's your Internet service provider, Telstra. Telstra. And when they get traffic that's destined for the United States, they got to put it onto some pipe, and probably ultimately it's a pipe that they don't own. So they're renting out and paying for a chunk of it. Then once they get to America, they have to know ingress into that network. So at some point they're paying somebody. And actually, the reality is, at many points, they're paying people, and the whole public Internet works off of best effort. And really it's least effort that all these companies, it's like if it's at t across the entire connection, they're going to make sure it goes great. When at T has to traffic other traffic from Verizon, at T does it at best effort, which is not to say that they thwart it, but they prioritize their own traffic. So suffice to say there's many peers that go across, and each time, each one of those has to pass the traffic. And if they're doing it slowly, it can make for a rough connection. And if you go international, you're definitely going to run into more peers than if you're just connecting to someone down the street who also has Telstra.
Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. But it is slightly frustrating, I have to say. Things don't connect properly. So now you're going to be adding stuff to Nexus. So what's in the pipeline that you can talk about?
Speaker B: Well, we already have shown whatever the right way to say that is at the National association of Music Makers Conference, or NAMM, and we showed an overdub feature which basically allowed a talent to load up an audio file, and then they could perform against it in time, and that whole performance would go out so that the other side could control it, so they could say, hey, let's play and record, and then you just see a takes list. So in a sense, in a voiceover kind of context, you wouldn't always have something to read along with, although you could, you could read along with the music. If they have the music from the spot that you're recording and you want to read the music, you could easily hit play, do a take, and you'd have a takes recorder that you can all play back and they can play back, too. So now, Andrew, they don't even have to ask you for a playback. They can just hit play for themselves on a list of takes. Essentially, it would just provide you a way to organize and kind of deal with those sessions where they don't want to hire an audio engineer and it's still not going to be like someone's going to be cutting things in real time. Here's take three, plus take five. No, but at least you can hear them and they're labeled and they can be downloaded.
Speaker A: I can almost see that voiceover booths are going to turn into, like, radio studios.
Speaker B: It can. I mean, more and more talent are being forced to be engineers in certain situations, and the clients want to make it as simple as connecting in on Zoom. But the problem with Zoom is, well, if you're going to have it work well and easily for everyone, there's going to be echo cancellation on it and it's not going to sound good and someone has to record the takes and it's all like ad hoc. Try to put it together, come up with something that works, complain when it doesn't all work together because there's not a cohesive workflow to it. It uses so many different things.
Speaker C: Yeah, there's way too many things voiced on the shoulders of voiceover actors. It's really annoying. I mean, there are so many things that need to be done for a session to go smoothly. And as soon as you heap another thing on top of the shoulder, on the shoulders of the voice talent, their performance is going to suffer. And that's just science. That's just how the brain works. You cannot keep adding more to someone's plate and expect the same quality of performance.
Speaker B: Not having someone deal with the aspect of the session that you need taken care of. If you try to avoid it, it's going to come up later. If you have someone record takes and then dump them in an engineer's lap, it's going to take that engineer as much time as having been there for the session to organize all that stuff. No matter how organized you give it to them, it's still going to take them time to import it. If you've not taken good notes, they're listening to all of it over again, basically, yeah.
Speaker A: If you take the clock back even 15 years ago, maybe even less, maybe ten years ago, depending on which market you're working in, how sessions have completely changed. I mean, if someone has said 15 years ago, when you're standing in a booth in a professional studio with an engineer setting everything up for you, that you'll be doing all this in the future, you'd be like, you got to be nuts. I'm not doing it. And now all of a sudden, it's like, if you don't do it, you don't work.
Speaker B: Unfortunately, a little bit of that happened early when voice talent began saying, oh, I have a home studio, so call me because I don't cost the fee of taking me to a local studio and paying for the studio. And so voice talent tried to use it as a marketing angle against each other early on, and they never charged for their facilities and they should have.
Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's true, but that horse is well and truly left the stable.
Speaker B: Well, they're depriving themselves of your input if they're going to expect to record it and give you a bunch of takes and then for you to go straight to the final edit because they already listened to it. That's them. They listen to it, not you. So you don't have any perspective. Be like, hey, what about take three? I actually think that one would really work. And if they want that input, you're listening to all of it over again. And there's the rub. It never doesn't happen. You're just skipping the step or you're going to pay for it.
Speaker C: And I'm just excited to see what comes because now there's a new platform built here, essentially infinite extensibility within the limits of whatever the current technology is. There's just so much more that can be done with Nexus now, and there's so many tools that we're going to be asking for as well as looking forward to using. So hang on to your hats. We're looking to see where Nexus goes next, and we're really glad to see that you've been able to bring it to the world. And congratulations.
Speaker B: Thank you.
Speaker A: Well done, Robert.