Get Schooled by The Stream Professor and Up Your Audio Game

Mike Dias (00:10):

Hello everybody. And welcome to another episode from the stage to the screen. This is the show where live sound engineers and studio professionals, help content, creators, gamers, streamers, and business presenters sound their best. We share best practices from your favorite concerts, from your favorite records, movies, games, TV, productions, and commercials, so that you can tell more impactful stories. So whether you already have that massive following, or you're just starting out, this show is for you. I'm your host, Mike Dias. And today we're lucky enough to be joined by ePost box himself, the stream professor, the golden voice of YouTube. So we are in for a treat and a good one. I'm gonna get right outta the way. And I want to just start fast and hard EPOS Vox when making videos what's the most important thing to focus on?

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EposVox (01:02):

For me, the most important thing is focusing on the viewer experience. It obviously you have to have your message. You have to have the goal that you're making a video with, but you have to make sure that the viewer or the listener, you know, it, audio only video is getting the, the, the best possible result, because you're not gonna communicate that message. If you're you're, you're not conveying it clearly. And so that comes in from everything from set design to the production value, to the, the language that you use to express it, because oftentimes depending on what you're hosting and how you're hosting it, the, the, the way you speak, the way you present, the way you host matters a lot. There's a lot of different niches and genres and things out there. And you have host ranging from, you know, college room lectures to super hike, kid stuff, and you gotta choose. You gotta make a lot of little micro decisions along the way to make sure you're presenting it in the way that the viewer is going to get the best result, uh, to make sure that your meaning and your message is actually conveyed.

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Mike Dias (02:10):

So that brings up a really interesting question or debate the age, old debate, audio or video, where do you focus

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EposVox (02:19):

Both, but ultimately audio's definitely number one. Uh, obviously, you know, presenting things visually matters, but if they, you could have you, you could be shooting on, you know, a Hollywood set with an, a Alexa and, you know, eight K whatever resolution. And if you sound like you're coming through an old telephone with a lot of interference, no, one's gonna be able to listen to you. And you're gonna have a couple people who stick around a couple people who are like, well, this looks really cool, but ultimately if you're trying to convey something and nobody can understand you or hear you, or there's too much distraction in your audio, it's gonna be a problem. So it's a, it's definitely a balance between both you can't neglect one or another, but audio is definitely the most important out of the two.

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Mike Dias (03:03):

I, I love that you say that, but yet I, I think I have an inferiority complex from working in pro audio for so long, right? You look at concerts and you've got eight semis worth of gear for lighting and, and pyrotechnics in the show. And you've got a little corner set aside for all the audio gear. And so I love that you say it, but does that jive with everything that you see, do your listeners feel the same way

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EposVox (03:29):

From what I can tell? Yes. I think the, I think what you are seeing, isn't a lack of importance of the audio, but rather that keeping it simple and, you know, less convoluted is ultimately how you get the best result. You, you, you see, you know, a, a small little rack for the audio versus all the, all the, all the wiring for the lighting and all those things. Those are a lot of point of like points of failure. If you, if you had a big DMX controller for 18 different mic setups to try to mic, you know, obviously there there's a lot going on, but if you, if you tried to go completely overkill with the audio, you're going to risk making it worse. Whereas if one light happens to not fire off at the right timing, that you're expecting that the audience at the concert, isn't really gonna notice as much as if suddenly they're louder through the microphones, then the singer is or something like that.

(04:21):

Um, and I don't think everyone, especially in the independent creation space, I don't think everyone necessarily prioritizes audio as much as they should, or either they, they, they don't think about it in the same head space all the time. But I think you see that in the, in the viewer reactions, in terms of the comments that you get, the, the people that hang around that once you reach that threshold of good enough, it stops mattering quite as much. Um, and so it becomes less flashy to emphasize on, but it also means that once you reach that threshold, you, you're not, you're not scaring people away.

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Mike Dias (04:57):

Yeah. And so what's really interesting about being able to talk with you about this. You really are that defacto source where people look to for how to get better audio mm-hmm <affirmative>. And before we jump into there, I am fascinated by your, your career arc. How did you become the stream professor?

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EposVox (05:17):

Mostly mostly on accident? Uh, I, I grew up being very interested in the, the, the digital video and photo mediums, well, analog first, but, you know, the, the, the new world of filming everything. And so I was always taking pictures, making videos with old cam quarters. Um, and the, the second YouTube became a thing. And really it was, it was daily motion and meta cafe and, and Google video, and then YouTube kind of all happening at the same time. I was kind of interested from day one. I, uh, one of my first channels I got was uploading clips from one service to YouTube and Google video, cuz that one service didn't have the public presence that YouTube did. The, the, the widespread appeal, even at the time, you know, super limited. Um, but I, I, I was all over it. And so I then wanted to figure out how to make my own videos, cuz I got started just figuring out the technology side of like, whoa, you can take, you can have a video file over here and then you can put it over here and suddenly everyone can watch it.

(06:18):

Like that was such a renowned concept. You know, your, your, your little tapes suddenly everyone could watch it. Um, and so then I needed to start building out my own gear set, which at the time was very limiting. You know, I needed, I needed a, a camera of some sort. So we had four 80 P webcams or 360 P webcams. I needed a microphone. So the one USB mic that was on the market at the time, because that was a bizarre concept. And I had no clue what an XLR cable was. Um, and then, you know, I just had to keep experimenting from there to finally figure out how to make videos, but all this I was, I was in high school. I was in a very young age, there wasn't a whole lot of information. And so along the way, I started getting really frustrated by that lack of information like today, you know, there there's a million YouTube channels teaching you everything you need to know about every subject, including this stuff.

(07:10):

Although I do think there are some areas where we still need more people like me teaching things. Um, but at the time, if you wanted to learn about audio, you needed to ask some audio engineer and hope that they're gonna help you or read textbooks that are outdated and don't have any clue what a podcast is. And there's, if you wanted to learn about video, you had to scroll through like two decades worth of doom, nine forums or something like that. And I got weirdly frustrated by this as someone who was always the, the, the tech explainer in my family and in my schools and things like that, you know, I was, I was showing the teachers how to get the TV on the right channel for your channel four for your BCRs and everything. So along the way, once I was making my own videos, I started making the videos on the things that I was learning that no one else was really talking about.

(07:59):

And so eventually that became about OBS studio. Well, OBS it wasn't OBS studio at the time, a free new free program that let you screen record in live stream without paying an arm and a leg and started making videos about that. It was mostly as I was learning, even learning it even I would like open up the program and be like, all right, this is really cool. This changes everything for me. I'm just gonna hit record as I learn it and show you what I'm learning so that you can see how important this is. And then from there, you know, it just kind of, it, it, it wasn't my, my primary focus for a while, but it became very clear over time. Like this is, this is what people care about out of what I make, and this is what I need to focus on. And the risk as they say is history.

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Mike Dias (08:43):

Did, did you have any background in audio or how did you, how did you start even to approach the subject

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EposVox (08:50):

At first? I didn't, it was, it was one of the things I was completely clueless on. Like I said, I bought the one, there, there was like one or two USB mics that existed in the commonplace, like at all. And I set it up and I knew immediately, it sounded really bad, but I didn't know what to do about it. I, I had really loud computer fans. My computer at the time sounded like a jet engine. And so that was interfering with things. And then I would reverb off of my desk and my walls. And I, I ended up getting, uh, a, a kind of goofy nickname of being called the golden voice of gaming YouTube at the time. This was like 2008. Uh, that was the, the, the, one of the early memes at the time was the golden voice guy, because my voice would reverb so hard off on my desk that I would add extra proximity effect based to my mic. And so I'd come out sounding like I was just like almost the inverse of helium. I'd just come out and be like, Hey, what's up guys today? We're making some, some call duty

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Mike Dias (09:40):

Videos and blah, blah,

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EposVox (09:41):

Blah, blah, blah. And it, I, I, I ended up down the rabbit hole of trying to figure that out, but it wasn't until towards the end of high school, when I started interning for a radio station that I really started figuring out like, okay, there's a lot to learn about audio. It was, it was not a big fancy, you know, you see some of the people who work at radio stations on YouTube and it's these big, you know, glass walls like fancy. This was a, a, a slightly big house, like around the corner from me now that was put together as like a passion project. And so the walls were covered in mattress liners. The desks were random tables they had, but they had, you know, re twenties, which was my first time being exposed to like the real deal, broadcast mics. They had racks of processing gear and all this stuff.

(10:24):

And I was like, this is the real deal. And so I, I worked with them for maybe like two years. And along the way, obviously the people I worked with cuz I was working with the, the host of the show. They weren't necessarily the, the audio engineers that built the place, but they knew, you know, what they needed to know to run the show. So I started asking, you know, around them, I started taking notes of how the radio station was just set up in the first place. And from there I started kind of learning the best practices and applying it to doing things on video as well, because I got hired to run it as a live streaming show cause live streaming was this whole new thing. And so I didn't have like a formal background in audio, but I, I, I used basically being thrown into the fire of it to kind of learn my way through as best as I could without going to audio engineering school, I guess <laugh>

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Mike Dias (11:16):

So, so you are the guy that I've been waiting to talk to then, because this is a nagging question for me. And, and I think for a lot of people on my side of the, the, the equation here, how much of, what you do of, of this new format of media, how much of it has its origins and traditional broadcast and how much of it has already diverged?

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EposVox (11:39):

I'd say all of it. It it's weird because you could look at what we do now as almost a completely, almost like a parallel track of content creation. Like you wouldn't say radio and, you know, entertainment, drama, TV are the same thing. And you would almost say that online streaming and content creation are kind of that different, but they, I think they started like online streaming, even what we're doing now started from a point within traditional broadcast and it just branched off of it. And I think that was a really slow process at the time, looking back in hindsight, it was, it was like a blink of an eye with how quickly time passes now. But it, it, it comes down to the accessibility of the gear and the, the, the democratization of the knowledge in that doing, doing a live podcast is not all that different.

(12:34):

Like what we're doing right now is not all that different than the radio show that I was interning at, but it's the scale and the ability to do it without needing a dedicated building full of rack, mountain gear and, and a scary guy with a beard that they brought in whenever the server stopped breaking, who never spoke to us and then vanished in a blink of an eye, he was interesting, but like it, it starts in a similar place. And then it comes down to the accessibility of it all because it's the, the, the expectations for, I guess, traditional broadcast differ a lot from a podcast. And obviously there are different production values, but if I go live on my YouTube channel and I'm teaching someone something, I have a certain expectation of production value, but because there's no, you know, I'm not on a contract with some client and there's no big name celebrities involved.

(13:24):

There's so many extra levels of like the, the surefire nature of how a broadcast has to run that doesn't really apply to content creation. If my, if my stream drops out that that's kind of, okay, whereas a professional broadcast has to have like three tiers of redundancy to make sure they can just fail over to it. And there's so much of that that is important for those kinds of things. Cuz someone's getting in trouble. If something doesn't go right, but it doesn't need to be that way for just someone at home sharing their message. And I think all of it is based in broadcast or you know, all of what we do because it's just, I mean, it's in the word, broadcasting, your idea, a YouTube slogan used to be, they took it away at this point, but it used to be broadcast yourself. Like it's literally baked into what we do, but it's broken down now into so many more micro categories with a lot of the, the baggage stripped away, I think.

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Mike Dias (14:22):

Got it, got it. And you're touching on something that I don't, I don't even know who to ask about this, cuz I don't want to sound silly, but we're here. And I think you're the right person. I would love to cover the difference between live streaming and YouTube format or, or recorded or you know, uh, time on demand simply because of course I know what the difference is, but I wanna understand the mindset and the audience difference who's tuning into what, why and how, how, how do you see those as two very, very, very different entities that unfortunately are often misunderstood and merged.

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EposVox (15:06):

I firmly believe that at this point, the majority of independent streaming stuff, something like the stream we're doing right now, definitely definitely differs. But I firmly believe that the difference in independent streaming versus video creation comes down to the interactive element and the parasocial relationship with that. Because when I upload a video, I like there's all the, you know, tips and tricks of pretend. You're talking to a friend when you're talking to the camera and all those things to get your like energy up. But ultimately I am, I am creating something to put out there and then I get the response later. Whereas with live streaming you with a lot of, you know, streaming on Twitch, on YouTube to your audience, it is almost entirely dependent on the interactivity element. It is you, you have chat up, you often have chat on screen, you are interacting with the chat, you are changing what you do based on chat.

(16:02):

A lot of the stream innovations come in the form of like having chat control your screen screen, switch the camera angles or affect what you do with challenges. And the expectation there is entirely different because the, the creator is almost not in control of the production. And that's something that doesn't really exist in broadcast. Like you have, you have the, the, the phone in games or something like that, but you don't have where the, the creator is there to serve the audience as much. Whereas when I upload a video, I am controlling every element I can, re-shoot the same. You know, if I mess up what I'm saying right now, I could, re-shoot it like 50 times till I get it right. If there's something that comes up, you know, in the audio, in the video, I can fix it in post all of those things. Whereas when you're live, all of those are left in a lot of that is, are things that you then have to account for or mitigate beforehand in the preparation. But it's also a matter of just, you were there to build a relationship or to engage in that relationship with an audience versus creating a piece of content that then stays if that makes sense.

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Mike Dias (17:09):

Uh, that, that actually speaks very much to where I've been approaching this from. And my follow up question to it is how much does audio matter on the live side of it? I have my opinion as a microphone manufacturer, but this is fascinating to me.

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EposVox (17:28):

I, I think it matters. Okay. I, on principle, I think it matters just as much, if not more, I think in practicality in how the audience takes it, it maybe matters a little less than video or than it than audio than that ratio in a, you know, VOD straight video format simply because live audiences are a little more forgiving and it it's more about like, like so many viewers care so much more about seeing the reaction on your face or seeing their name appear on screen in an alert than making sure that every little detail of your audio is correct. On top of the fact that so many livestream viewers now are listening on mobile and all of the things in that regard, that it's better in that specific context. For example, for me to get up, to go react to something relevant to the stream and just shout across the room into my mic than to have it presentable.

(18:23):

Whereas if I'm creating a video and I go do that, people are gonna be like, why didn't you just have a mic that goes with you or something, you know, but you also have to keep in mind that live streams are one hour, two hours for full-time creators, four to eight hours for the really crazy scenarios. That's a long time to have a bad audio scenario that would be fatiguing to your viewer's ears. And so between balance of say background music, other additional sounds as well as the processing your relationship. Like if I'm sitting here like eating the mic and plaing into it the whole time, it's very hard to stick around for like a two hour live stream of something really, really bad. And so I think in people's mindsets, the audio matters a lot less, but if you want to keep people around for the entirety of your show, you gotta, you gotta not be too exhausting to listen to

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Mike Dias (19:18):

My, my take on it is, is similar, but it diverges a little, right? And again, of course I'm biased on this, but to me, if at the root of it is this idea of community and this interaction. Then I also want to be able to pull somebody in the room with me into arrest attention. And I have found that the fastest and easiest and most compelling way to do that is through audio. The, when we were first developing the line of mic's, uh, you know, our streaming and broadcast mics, I was I'm in an old mill building. The walls are leaky. My boss is in the conference room. And in my mind, I know he's not in the building because I tried to have coffee with him earlier. But the oral illusion was so strong that I kept falling for the idea that he was sitting in the other room. And when I shared that with him afterwards, then he's like, that's funny. Who else do you think was in the room with me? And ah, it turns out that no one was in the room, it was all broadcast through the speakers and it fooled me dead on. And there is something about that essence that pulls and cuts through that makes it feel like life again.

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EposVox (20:34):

And to my original opening statement with your question that we opened with that is all about like prioritizing the, the viewer experience that is, if you have a big rattly sound or you sound like you're in a cave or something like that, that breaks that immersion that you're describing, but it also like makes the viewer feel that they're not like invited in, I guess, like you were saying, like, if, if you want the, if you want the viewer to feel like they are in there with you, that you're having a conversation with them, if you haven't done some degree, if I don't stop hitting the microphone, I'm gonna defeat my entire point. But if I, if you don't make it feel like you've put in the effort to get a, get a baseline of making the viewer feel like they're, they're, they're welcome. And that they're, they are focused on versus a distracting sound that doesn't focus on them. Then you're gonna break that. And if it feels like you're more engaged with the weird surroundings that you have, if it's not relevant to your content, there, there there's a lot to be said for room tone and things like that. But if it, if it doesn't, if it's not directly relevant to your content, then that breaks that connection you're describing with the viewer. So I, I definitely agree with what you're saying.

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Mike Dias (21:47):

Yeah. So I I've gotta ask you are so giving in your knowledge, right? It's why people tune into you. It's also, I think it's very telling in the way of, of how you talk about making sure that you're giving to your viewer and what being mindful of what, what you're presenting, but why do you do it? What is the why? And, and so many people can trace the evolution of their career back to starting watching you mm-hmm <affirmative> where does that come from?

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EposVox (22:19):

For me, it comes from just wanting to break down the walls, so to speak of that kind of knowledge barrier, because for a long time, and it's still that way in a lot of fields. And that's why I think there needs to be more people like me, especially in the actual like filmmaking or hardcore broadcast scenes. There's, there's so many people that either overtly want to, you know, keep things in a walled garden. And like, if you're not one of us, you don't need to know which is what I encountered a lot, or it's just kind of inherent, you know, even if it's not malicious, it's kind of inherent to the, the layers of knowledge that you have to acquire to be someone who's 20 years into an industry and doing this full time every day. It, it's very hard to break into that when you just have a question.

(23:05):

And when it comes down to when I'm, when I was starting out forever ago and no one online was talking about analog mixers and cleaning high frequency bleed out of your audio and the balance of XLR cables and all this stuff, trying to ask that from people online who are info dumping things, I've never heard of it. It creates barriers to being able to get your message out there, to just do the funding you wanna do, because realistically, so many people these days who have the ability to start making YouTube videos or live streaming are doing so, because it seems like a fun, new thing to do. And immediately when those barriers of gotta figure this crazy technical thing out, gotta figure this one out. Once those start going up, it just creates so much friction or just completely turns people away. There are plenty of hobbies that like I was interested in that I had to just never pursue because I couldn't get over those hurdles myself.

(23:56):

And I hate that feeling. I hate looking at someone who made a really cool thing and wanna know, okay, what is used to make that and not being able to find that out and thus having nowhere to start it is about like trying to make it more accessible so that people who have the great ideas don't get limited by the tech. I, I spent so long just trying to figure those things out for myself, that it was kind of, I, I don't think it was even a, a, a conscious decision. Once I started making videos, it was purely a, no one is talking about this. This needs to be talked about. So I guess I'm the one, like, it wasn't like a righteous, cause it wasn't, I'm gonna set out to do this. I was still planning on doing a completely different genre of video, but I was like, well, someone's gotta upload this, so I'm gonna do it.

(24:43):

And, uh, as someone who loves documentation and just like open communication about all the tools and everything, I was just like, I'll just contribute this upstream and someone else would run away with it. And then it was me that ran away with it. It just, for me, it's all about just making sure that everyone can have, I don't think everyone's gonna have an even playing field, but everyone has like access to what they need to know to have an even playing field. There are, there are plenty of people. I can't reach that, like even fundamentals of just using a computer or whatever. If I don't explain it in every video, they get really upset and it's like, I, I, I do everything I can and I can't provide everything, but I think I can provide enough that the people who were going to pursue it and actually get there eventually I can at least speed that up.

(25:29):

If not be the one who opens the door in the first place. And I, I wish me shooting with my webcam and my USB mic. That sounded like I was very white. I wish 10, 15 years ago when I was doing that, I had someone to tell me, Hey, maybe turn off your ceiling light and get an actual light. Because even just the prospect of having like a key light, wasn't a like, known, known about for YouTube videos, cuz we were all vlogging on cam quarters and webcams with our ceiling light on granted, I have a kicker light. So that's technically correct. But you know, like my big ceiling fan going, blowing out the webcam, my mic's sitting all the way up against my monitor, not up against my mouth and my voice bouncing around everywhere. All of these things. If I had someone just to be a guiding hand and be like, Hey, just move the mic here, turn that light off and put one over here immediately. I would've had so much better results than it. Would've been more impressive than I wouldn't have spent countless nights trying to figure out why my audio was terrible.

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Mike Dias (26:27):

Yeah. The whole feedback loop. Yeah. So, so, so with that, let's say I want to run home and start my channel tonight. Like I'm that inspired? What are the three tools that I need to level the playing field for everybody watching any advice, like get me in, in fighting distance with everybody else? What, where do I start?

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EposVox (26:46):

That is a really good question. I honestly, most of the tools you have most people have at home, like the, the, the quality you can get out of a smartphone, even for audio beats out the microphone I was using 15 years ago, it's I would still prefer, you know, if you can get a $20 lab mic for your phone or something, you're, you're gonna be a lot better off, but like you have so many of the tools potentially in your pocket and then it just comes down to the, the space that you leverage. So like my third tool would be the tool of thinking about it just a couple minutes before you shoot. I don't want, I, I, I hate getting stuck in myself and encouraging people to get stuck in analysis paralysis and like spending forever, trying to get things perfect before you start shooting.

(27:33):

But if you just think for a moment about what it's gonna look like, what what's your set look like? What, what, what are you trying to convey? And how does that, how does that relate to what you're doing for your first couple videos? You can totally just pull up your phone and be like, Hey guys, this is what we're doing. This is what I gotta say. And that's fine. You gotta get your practice in. So like do it, but take five minutes to think about what do I want the viewer to see in here? If you can answer that question, it doesn't matter what specific tools or tier of tools you're working with. You can probably make it happen, but if you don't make those decisions, then you're going to be trying to retrofit the, the gear advice or the tech advice to stuff you've already shot or to things you've already committed to. And that becomes way more limiting than just like a couple steps of pre-production. But ultimately, I mean, depending on what you're doing, you may not need video, but you know, a, a camera of some sort, a microphone of some sort and then a light, be it the sun or an actual light.

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Mike Dias (28:34):

Thank you. And I mean, that's really why I'm doing this show so I can get all this information so I can kind of take them all and run. So that thank you. So what I love about your, why your reason is to me, that dovetails so nicely with the movement that you're part of at the epicenter of really giving more for the viewers. So I don't know if everybody knows about the management company you work with and with standard and what you're doing with Nebula. I'd love to take a minute for you to share some of that. I think it's very inspiring.

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EposVox (29:09):

So Nebula is awesome. It's been dubbed goofily by like a couple websites and it's tongue in cheek, but like the smart YouTuber mafia, but it it's honestly, I think that's the best kind of joke name because it's, it's the opposite because it sounds like, okay, it's some gang running YouTube, that's taking things from people, but it's the opposite. It is empowering creators and allowing us to do things that we can't do. And in fact, I haven't formally announced this by name yet, but I can just throw this in here. I am actually starting this month shooting for my own documentary series powered by Nebula because it's allowing me to do this. Um, it's called <laugh>, it's called print screen. And it's the, it's just gonna be, uh, about seven or eight episodes diving into the background and the history of broadcast and content creation and how we went from not even having a camera and a home to being able to do this with just about anybody and that kind of community support both in terms of the resources to like learn how to do this on top of the platform that supports my career enough to do this is huge.

(30:16):

And so Nebula is both a, a video streaming site, uh, kind of, you know, like YouTube or Netflix or whatever that has a very awesome curated list of very high, like quality content creators as well as we now have our own classes. And so you can learn how to do what we do. You can like, uh, one of our, one of our members, Patrick H. Williams just spent two years making what was supposed to be the finale to his YouTube videos as a Nebula, just video. And it turned into a feature length movie. And so now he has a class on how to make a movie as someone who didn't intend to make a movie. And you, you, you get lots of those, you know, nitty gritty details. And then it's also just a community collective of incredible content, creators that support each other and help learn and do the best that we can because there's a lot to it. And frankly, as someone who tried to work, not intentionally, but tried to work in isolation for most of my career, having even just two people to bounce off of changes everything. And so it's a, it's a wonderful organization that helps creators do their best work without some of the barriers of the business stuff.

(31:27):

<laugh>,

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Mike Dias (31:27):

<laugh> just, that's it right there, man. I love it. I love hearing that. And what I love even more is when we, the theme that I've heard from you all day is democratization of content. And to be able to create a show like print screen, mm-hmm <affirmative> that covers the history of broadcast. Like that would not have been possible 10 years ago. So if we think, okay, this is what's happening right now, where do you see the future going? I mean, and you have the right vantage to say this you've been through this. You've been at the epicenter of the whole time, right? Your, my money. Money's gonna be on your take on this.

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EposVox (32:11):

Admittedly, my original had you asked me a year or two ago, my original vision has continued to be kind of rocked a bit, but I think global events play a role in that. And I think that's, it, it's not shifted long term, but I think it comes down to really honing in on kind of the best of each individual type of content. And we're even seeing that on a micro level with YouTube, like YouTube finally recognizes that podcasts are their own. And so they're gonna start treating them as their own format with special features and things like that. And I think we're gonna see live streaming was a big boom. It ex it, it had like a slow, it had, it had a long, a, a, a long fuse. And then it exploded very big when everyone was at home and needed more stuff to watch.

(32:58):

And I think we're gonna see it shrink a little bit, but I think what that exposed once the smoke fades is how much everyone can create content. And so we're going to see, continue to see exponential growth. I think in terms of the number of people making stuff, because the tools just keep getting better and better. You got the new phones, the iPhone 14 was just announced with even more crazy features. You got more and more phones, you got more and more tools available. You got more and more platforms like tool tools like TikTok and Instagram reels and YouTube shorts that completely knocks down all the rest of the, like, you don't need to edit videos anymore. You just use their little phone app and you're good to go. So that removes so many more barriers. And I think we're gonna see the, the, the gear is going to continue to get to the point where you don't have to think about it anymore.

(33:44):

Other than, as you climb the ladder of wanting to make better and better stuff, the average person is gonna have to think about it less, but we're gonna see a more competitive marketplace of ideas. We're gonna see your message, the reason that you're doing it mattering a lot more because there is inherently more noise to more people creating things and not saying any particular person's, you know, idea they wanna start streaming or creating videos with is any less valuable than others, like on their own. But a lot of people get into it because it's the cool new thing. And not because they have a change they wanna see for the world, but they don't necessarily need to, like, I didn't start for that. I just wanted to make cool gaming videos. And then it turned into this whole like mission of education. And by having the ability for everyone to stumble upon that path, if they want, or to start on that path, if they want, we're gonna see a more competitive marketplace where your ideas, your message, your goal that is going to matter so much more.

(34:41):

And that is going to actually impact who gets discovered. It's gonna be where we go with things. I think we're gonna see more creators involved in agencies like Nebula in, in groups. I, we, we've seen a lot kind of shut down the past couple years, and that's what I meant by. It's kind of rocked my vision a little bit, but a lot of factors go into that. Um, I think we're gonna one of the biggest broadcast video things that is having a lot of trouble right now, I think is doing so because it's still taking the traditional cable TV route. And that ha comes with a ton of overhead, especially for content where as we just discussed, people expect a lot more of a raw person to person engagement. And so I think we're gonna see new business models like Nebula, like other, you know, ways to group up creators that focuses less on the overhead of having massive buildings full of people just to produce a YouTube video and more focusing on how to communicate the message as clearly and as best as possible.

(35:44):

And it's going to be even more competitive in terms of what you're saying versus the production value, because I think it's getting easier and easier, especially with people teaching about it, to improve your production value. And the gear is getting cheaper and cheaper, like what I'm using. And so I think the, the gear becomes less of a problem and the ideas are gonna be what sores, because 15 years ago, when I started, I could've had the best message in the world, but if I sound like a distorted voice in a cave, it would still even back then still be harder to reach those people. Whereas now you can avoid most of those problems even easier today. And so it's just a matter of what do you have to say

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Mike Dias (36:29):

To me as a gear manufacturer? That is always our goal gear should be transparent. It should be invisible, should fade away. So that all that is left is creativity. That's, that is the point to enable. And so one of my favorite parts about this show is that we get to talk philosophy. We get to talk about the, how we get to talk about the why, but then we also get to give some really concrete steps that you were viewers can take home and apply immediately. Right? And so what I'm hearing from you first is really, again, prioritize the viewer and understand what your message is and who you are and what you want to give. But as far as signal chain goes, let's play with some gear. Like we've got the stream professor here. What, what can, can, can we do a little show and tell what do you, what have you got?

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EposVox (37:15):

Sure. So I am currently rocking. This is technically all temporary, cuz I just finished renovating my whole studio here. Perfect timing, amusingly. Um, but I'm rocking the earthworks ethos. Wonderful Mike that allows me to capture that up close. Like I'm in the room with you sound, but I also don't need to be right here. I can, I can, it's still on camera, which is not a thing for everyone, but for this kind of format, in my opinion, it's perfectly acceptable. Um, and eventually you just forget about it and it still, you know, it picks me up at a decent distance while still sounding right for my voice. I'm using actually the Elga wave arm, low profile as my microphone arm. It allows it to come out from under my monitor and then I can quickly just,

(38:01):

And just keep it outta my way, which I think it's also important for the gear to kind of fall out of the way in terms of your workflow too. Like when I'm sitting here working, I need to be able to just pull my mic over, but not sit there and fight and plug it in and set it up. And so this kind of thing helps a lot. Obviously there's yellow tech and other brands that have started doing this, but this was the one of the earlier cheaper, low profile arms. And then I actually have this mic run into the w a 12 mic pre um, from warm audio completely overkill.

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Mike Dias (38:29):

No, let's give, let, let's give those guys a huge shout out. Their stuff is fantastic.

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EposVox (38:33):

Been having fun with it. Uh, and then that's run into the personas. Revelator IO 24 as my input to my computer just to have clean audio going. And then I have a second option cuz I have a whole other desk over here. I could hook up my second mic and still keep recording. Uh, and so that is my primary set up here. Camera's the Sony a seven C I've got now Gotto key light over here, just cuz that's what I had available. And then a Keylight mini for my kicker up here to gimme a little bit of, not fading into my empty background there. Um, so yeah, that's my primary signal chain here using the fat channel on the pre personas to gimme some EQ and compression. Goodness.

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Mike Dias (39:11):

Oh and, and what's your take on EQ and compression?

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EposVox (39:15):

Uh, I, my, my, my initial take would be that I've done it wrong for about half of my career. Cuz I having come from that radio internship, I spent so long wanting to be the, the smooth, you know, the smooth ride we're, we're taking the highway. I'm gonna be a radio voice host and trying to do all that stuff. And I have finally learned over, you know, over a very long time. It's all about like the viewer's impression when they tune into your stream or video or podcast should not be wow. That's some really impressive. Post-processing like, cuz that's, that's the thing. Especially with certain dynamic mics like that is the thing everyone jumps to is how to make it sound as like process as possible and not even in a bad way, like it can sound good, but when the viewer thinks about it, you've kind of broken a rule there somewhere.

(40:02):

And so for me it's all about taming, gnarly frequencies. Like I really enjoy my voice, but because I constantly have allergies and congestion, I, it comes out very nasally in certain mics. And so I have to, you know, pull down the mids a little bit to combat that. So it sounds more like I should sound, um, uh, even, even if you think it's a character to your voice, use a high pass filter, so you're not exploding. People's eardrums with your base. It's it's not worth it. I, I made that mistake. I'm not going back. Um, but it it's mostly about just like maybe slightly enhancing your voice so that it sounds how you want it to sound, but mostly trying to remove the bad stuff because I think so many people, so many people's first impressions of their voice on a mic when they wanna look into EQ is they don't like how it sounds.

(40:45):

And if you're using a mic that's after a certain tier of, you know, goodness, for lack of a better word, it, it's probably a matter of, you just need to tweak it. Not I need to overemphasize other things. And so if I'm sounding less warm or weak on a mic than I need to reduce the things that are affecting that before I start boosting the warmth and coming out, like I'm swallowing the mic as I'm boom, boom, boom, boom. Um, and so those have been my rules lately is cut before you boost and try to just reduce what sounds bad before you try to add in magic to sound good, because as I've learned talking to more and more people who produce concerts and shows and things like that, they're not adding in all this extra, like they're not throwing a whole bunch on. They really are just kind of taking a little off the top, um, to make things sound their best.

(41:34):

And so I, I keep going back and forth depending on whether I'm repairing or adding in, whether I EQ before I compress or compress before I EQ, depending on it also depends on the mic. Like there, I shoot with a big shotgun mic for some of my bigger on camera stuff. And I usually compress that before I EQ because it, it will usually what I'm trying to EQ comes out of the compression, just from room tone and room tone and things like that. Whereas on a desktop mic, I'm more trying to tweak the specific frequencies that are being picked up in my environment. And so I wanna do that before I compress. And there's a lot of nitty gritty there.

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Mike Dias (42:08):

Yep. Uh, from video just interface. I love listening to you talk about stream deck. I want to pick your brain on that. Yes. And, and, and one, my, the question I want to get to is why aren't we seeing more stream deck with business presentations, but at two, I also want to talk about the convergence again between broadcast and where things are now. And it's a great story and example,

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EposVox (42:37):

I, if you're unaware of what the stream deck is, I should have had one easily accessible. I think I do actually, it's not worth it. It is a little macro PADD that you use to control your computer. And these have existed for a while. You could take a USB Nu PADD and tape labels over it and program it to do things. But this was designed by Elga, which is a streaming content creation focused company, specifically to be used with programs like OBS to control your scenes. And so right now I can sit here and show you the, the, the different views that we have going on of like, Hey, here, here's us and, and the stream going on, or I can, I can show or an infinite loop, that's gonna break fewer ears, apologi or eyes apologies for that. The point was to show the preview of everything going on and I can sit here and I can do that with my foot, even

Mike Dias (43:24):

Boom,

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EposVox (43:26):

And then go back, cuz now there's a foot pedal version, which is kind of crazy and I'm doing it again. Oh my God. I am so sorry. That's what happens when I try to be flashy. <laugh> you get the point though, priority one, keep the viewers in, you know, intentions in mind. Don't make sure what they're seeing is what they're supposed to see. We have a, a, a interesting point of, as you mentioned, a, a convergence of the broadcast scene and the streaming scene here, because this concept to, to streamers, even streamers who have been going a really long time, sounds mind blowing. Like even to me, I was like, this is amazing. Even though I had, at one point in time for my video editing, I had three keyboards and two other kinds of macro pads on my desk, all with taped labels for like all of my editing presets and macros and all of that. And so I was already in that world, but they built it with integrations directly into OBS. And there's now plugins for vMix and there their lights. I can, I can control my lights with it and you know

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Mike Dias (44:21):

What? Get at it. No, do that again.

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EposVox (44:25):

I can just disappear into the darkness and then come right back. Um, I can even, I, I set this up before. I don't have it ready since I'm moving everything around, but it has multi action. So I can press one button, turn on my lights, turn on the power, switch for my camera, open OBS and have everything ready at like one button. They made that barrier of usability a lot easier. But in the broadcast scene, whenever this first came out, there were a lot of people who worked in broadcast who were like, well that we, we already have TriCasters and big, you know, control panels with T bars for broadcast rigs. That was already a thing. The problem is those things cost thousands of dollars. They only work with the specific piece of gear that they're built for. Like, they they're designed to work with a TriCaster or an ATM rig or something like that.

(45:08):

And they don't really have general purpose usability for plugging into a computer and controlling OBS or something like that. There isn't that kind of interfacing. And so to, to a lot of people at first, it was like, okay, that's a toy version of the big boy that we have. But in terms of the accessibility, all of the features that they were bragging about of those big boy toys are now not all of them, but you know, a lot of them are now available in the hands of independent creators, which means other than when I set up a dumb transition, which I can turn back off just cause I was trying to be flashy. If I'm in the middle of presenting and I wanna show another view, I can just, while I'm talking switch scenes and then switch back and I don't have to like fumble with it, cuz you know, you've seen the presentations where they're like, all we're gonna go then the next slide, but first I wanna show you a video.

(45:50):

Oh, I, I, I clicked the wrong, okay, where's the video it's not playing blah, blah, blah. It removes the friction of the technology as we keep talking about. But it also prioritizes the viewer where it's like, I want the viewer to see what I'm talking about, not me fumbling with the technology. And we've now seen the divergence of that from the multi thousand dollars piece of gear to, I think they have one for under a hundred now of a control device that does similar things in parallel for the independent creator. But we've also seen that reconverge a little bit in that I have seen a not insignificant number of actual, like broadcast workflows that have started using stream decks within them, such as for eSports events, where they have racks and racks of video switchers and production gear. I've never heard of and you know, uh, uh, design servers and all this stuff.

(46:37):

And then they have a stream deck on top of their big control panel to control the rest because it's so much cheaper to start rolling out these cheaper devices than to, you know, spend your entire grant or budget on these big multi control panels. Um, and someone has developed a plugin for it called uh, bit focus companion, and that actually interfaces with all the broadcast stuff. So your extras, your DMX lighting it, it can connect to all of that. And so it has unified those two workflows a bit. And so we've seen things split off of broadcast and be like, here's what it looks like for the independent streamer. But then the broadcast people are like, Hey, that's actually pretty cool. And we've started to see it come back in that regard. And I've seen it in the broadcast trucks for, for the gram, like Grammy style, me style shows.

(47:21):

I've seen it for one of the white house state of U state of the unions. Like it's starting to show up in a lot of those places as more people figure it out and are hap you know, comfortable enough to alter their workflow. But we haven't really seen it outside of that to your question. And I think that comes down in a lot of ways to branding, but also just the, the, the scary change of technology in general, because it's branded a stream deck, it says stream deck right on the top. It is very much, you know, it's, it's telling you, it's four gamers. It's four streamers. If you're someone in a more business environment that doesn't want a laptop that looks like a Ferrari and a stream deck and a RGB lighting and all of that stuff, it's not gonna seem like something that's for you.

(48:05):

I mean, that's, that's kind of one of the basic rules of branding. Like if I show up like this in a, in a zoom call for like a corporate boardroom meeting, it's gonna feel like I showed up in the wrong room because this isn't the kind of set you expect to see people in those calls, same kind of thing. Um, but also I think it just comes down to like learning it because you plug a stream deck in and it doesn't do anything. So I can tell you right now, like it does all this magic. It does all this wizard, wizardry. I can control my lights. I can use auto hockey and control literally anything, but then you plug it in and it's like getting a magic wand, but not knowing spells or something like, you're gonna be like Uhhuh it's it's not working. And you still have to learn you.

(48:42):

You still have to visualize what you wanted to do. People, you brought up people doing boardroom presentations and stuff. The, the means of controlling a PowerPoint or like a general presentation haven't changed in like 30 years. Like you press next slide. You, you pull up the video, you, you have a laser pointer maybe. And so you have to spend a lot of time planning out your workflow of how it could change your life before you even know about it, or like, know how it work. And so there's a lot of pre-planning that goes in, and then there's a lot of just setting it up and the knowhow involved in that. And so I think we're gonna see it a lot more being put in by installers who go in and are, get hired to kid out a presentation room or to kid out a broadcast truck or something. And they're gonna be the ones who set it up, program all the buttons and be like, all right, don't touch it other than to use the buttons. And you're good to go. Um, but it's still, I think there's still a, a level of accessibility that while they, the team who makes this does a great job of making it available for the people who it's intended for, I think newcomers are still gonna be like, it's a bunch of buttons. What do I do with it?

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Mike Dias (49:43):

In case anybody's missing? I he's talking directly to me. I'm the guy who fumbles with my slide. <laugh> the, the next and, and, and pushes the button that doesn't do anything. But I want that, like, there's nothing else to say, like, that's a dream come true again, all the world's converging each leapfrogging, the other pushing it all forward for storytelling. That's what it all comes down to a PowerPoint. A business presentation should be about communicating. And there is so much we can learn from our end. That is, is standard best practice that we're not paying attention to on that. I think it's a great way to end as we kind of wrap this about converging. You had mentioned that you wanted to start just doing streams for games and not only have you been here at the start of YouTube, but you have watched the entire gaming evolution revolution. I wanna pick your brain on that too. What, what have you seen, where is that going? How has, how have the developments from gaming led to where we are right here?

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EposVox (50:47):

Despite the fact that I started out with gaming, one of my biggest frustrations over the years has been that so many people I guess from the, the outside almost exclusively thinks of live streaming as a medium or YouTube videos as a medium, as a gaming focused thing, because I think what we have seen and I, and I, I love being the person who's like, I've seen empires rise and fall, but I think what we have seen is that gaming represented the, the perfect storm of like mainstream use for broadcast technology. It was, you know, obviously there were people making vlogs and whatever videos on YouTube before, but gaming for at first was like one of the biggest, if not the biggest category, because it exploded so quickly because gaming has always kind of been a social experience. In some ways, you, you, you, you went to the arcade with friends and you, you, you all hovered around the same cab trying to get the high score and you competed with each other multiplayer gaming fighters, you know, tournaments, all of those things on top of sharing news about it, the publications it's always been a very social thing, even if it's portrayed as people on their own in their basements or whatever, it's always been a very social sharing experience.

(52:01):

And the second it became easy for people to just make videos about the games they were playing and upload them to a platform for free. That that was the crazy part was for free. We could just upload a video and anyone could watch it. You didn't have to pay for it that exploded. And we saw a massive surge in gaming content there, and that I think brought YouTube to the map in terms of people understanding what they could do with it, because suddenly people who aren't super technical, who just play video games and want to talk about it, need to figure out how to do that, that necessitated a, a shift in the technology to be more accessible, to be more plug and play, to be more available for them. And then that transitioned into live streaming. Whereas the first big live streaming platform was most like it started Twitch started as a website called Justin nut TV, which was more broadly appealing, but gaming was so immediately the primary focus of it that they just eventually ditched the original site, switched to what's now called twitch.tv and is entirely focused on gaming.

(52:59):

They're only just now within the past couple years, branching back out because gaming was the sole focus, but it, again, represented people like in mass, normal people who didn't previously want to get into hosting a radio show or a pay view show or something like that, needing to learn how to have good audio at it and bring guests on in real time and have proper lighting and all these things. It, it, it was the perfect storm for normal people who weren't in this field to need to learn the principles of this field. And then I think we're seeing it diverge a little bit more because I, I, I, I, I, it feels like at this point that gaming content both in life and in VOD has kind of reached a ceiling. And I think even maybe three or more years ago, it kind of hit a ceiling where the, the need was met.

(53:46):

The, the, the desire of the format was met. There, there isn't really anywhere to go with it that needs to be done because the, most of the people watching it are happy with where things are and pushing the envelope has diminishing returns. And so it kind of stopped evolving, but we saw because so many people got involved and so many people heard of platforms like people hadn't heard of Twitch and after people get famous on Twitch and people hear about it, more, same thing as what's happened with YouTube, more people look into it and they're like, oh, you can just live stream. And then we have mobile platforms that allow anyone to live stream. We now see people in other interest areas and cooking and beauty and fashion and everyday life in there. There's a dude on TikTok that makes weapons out of random sticks in the forest and rocks and bangs them together and makes beautiful axes and stuff.

(54:33):

He didn't have the ability to do that 10 years ago. And because of this big boom of a specific, you know, need for more consumer level gear, for average people from a field that was previously super inaccessible inexpensive, because that's the only people that needed it. We, we see an explosion of everyone else being able to do it, but it, to me, gaming was the big bang of like normal people needing to be able to broadcast and, and have the gear to do it, especially in the changing environments of gaming. And so I think it has pushed a lot of things forward that we're now reaping the benefits of in every format. Like, I, I may not make primarily gaming content I primarily teach. And so I have a much different format yet. So much of the gear and the processes that I use were made more streamlined or easier or cheaper because of appealing to the people who were making gaming content. And so I think it's been fascinating to watch. And I think, I think we're, we're rounding the curve of gaming no longer being the thing that people think it's all about, because I, I think it's at a point where it's fine and now everyone else is figuring out what they need, but it, it, it is certainly really fascinating cuz you, it's just not how people I think, expected it to have gone. <laugh>

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Mike Dias (55:50):

Fascinating. My mind is thoroughly blown. I want to thank you for your time, for your expertise, for everything that you do for the community. I want to thank B and H for hosting this for having the desire to teach and to educate and to bring all of this content and tools a uh, to everybody for content creation. And again, I wanna thank, uh, standard Nebula for enabling that platform. I can't wait to watch print screen. Mm-hmm <affirmative> everybody. If you like what IPUs Fox has shared today, please dig into the archives and please take a look at what he's doing now with, with AI generated art in, in that new space, there's plenty to fall down the rabbit hole. There <laugh> another tool that just knocks down the bear. You're it's what it's all about. And so before we sign off, if the B & H team's still in here, so we can just say proper goodbyes and thanks. We'd just love to have you guys back on join us. This is where we start struggling to turn on our, there it

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B&H Events Team (56:57):

Is. Look at that. I already, I had my screen off back here, over here. You guys caught me. I got caught. I told you it was gonna happen. I told

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Mike Dias (57:04):

You I was gonna be prepared, but that's just a game. Now, listen, you guys, we just want to thank you. You guys continue to, to pave the way and break down barriers. And I'm glad that we have this format to do this here. So a giant thank you to everybody and giant thanking to everyone who's watching. We like to cut these up to share snippets on all the different platforms as well. And, and, uh, yeah, we couldn't be happier tune in, in two weeks for our next episode. And from the earthwork side of things, we're about to release our podcast with the lead singer, from shade, talking about authenticity and finding your voice. I think everyone's gonna really enjoy that too. Thank you so much. We're happy to be part of this. Wonderful you guys. Thanks everyone. See you next time. Bye.

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