Sound Secrets from the Stage

Mike Dias:

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another show of... Take three. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of From the Stage to the Screen. This is the show where we bring the best practices from your favorite concerts, the best albums, the greatest TV commercial, movies, you name it. And we speak with professionals who are leading the charge there, and we're taking those best practices, applying very concrete and specific tips and tricks so that you, the content creators, the gamers, the business presenters, the streamers, can take what you're hearing from the pros and apply that to tell better stories with more hit and more impact. I'm your host, Mike Dias. And today we're speaking with two very close friends, Ben Keys, senior audio director for Disney and Jason Batuyong, modern engineer for many of America's favorite reality TV shows like America's Got Talent or X Factor.

           So with that, let's get right into it because we have a lot of ground to cover today. What we're going to go over is going to help you, whether you're just starting out, whether you've got a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand followers already, these are going to be very concrete tips that you can put into practice today.

           Jason, I've had the chance and the opportunity to work with some of the world's greatest professionals on lots of different productions. And I got to tell you, and I hope you take it as the compliment that this is meant as. You have a way about you, a demeanor that just puts people at ease and exudes confidence and relaxing. That's not always the case on a lot of sets and not only are you able to project that, but it transfers to everybody that you're with. What's your secret? How do I get some of that juice? Maybe some of you noticed that I flubbed the intro because my heart was racing. How do I get some of that?

Jason Batuyong:

Well, Mike, it's two things. One of them that we're not going to talk about today. And the second one more importantly is being prepared. And being prepared, not only physically with the gear that you're going to use, but also mentally thinking about absolutely everything that can go wrong. Things like do I sound good? And I wonder if you think I sound good right now, do you think I sound good?

Ben Keys:

I do not. I do not think so.

Jason Batuyong:

Okay, well I have purposefully made myself extra breathy and batty cue and bad gain structure and horrible compression on purpose so that we can go through it and see what's that all about.

Mike Dias:

Well, perfect. Before we get into there or should we just go there right now?

Jason Batuyong:

Well, let's clean it up so that we can talk about things and I'm a little more intelligible.

Mike Dias:

I like that. Okay, let's go right there.

Jason Batuyong:

Sorry to jump right into it, but I can't stand the way I sound right now. I feel ill prepared, put it that way.

Mike Dias:

So going through all the scenarios in your mind, what could go wrong? What tunnels you can go down? How do you transfer that to your talent? How do you set your talent to ease?

Jason Batuyong:

Well, first and foremost, I'm a monitor mixer and so I'm dealing with the contestant sound and not the audience or the broadcast. But number one is not asking them too many questions, not asking them if they need more of this or more of that. Typically, if they know they need something, they'll tell me. We check in on them but a lot of times tell them you sound great. Everything's good. We don't ask them questions. We make statements to them. And a lot of times that makes them feel a lot more comfortable than being asked a question and then having to come up with an answer of, oh, I don't know, do I need more track or do I need more reverb? Or is there too much 1K in my voice? They don't need to think about that. They just need to know they're doing a great job and we're here to support them.

Mike Dias:

Yeah, it's like going to a celebrity chef's restaurant and telling him how to cook, right?

Jason Batuyong:

Exactly.

Mike Dias:

Why do that?

Jason Batuyong:

You're getting it medium rare and you're going to be happy with that.

Mike Dias:

So I'm using that tip next time for sure. I'm going to start leading into that one all the time. What I'm hoping we can do today, because we've got you and your expertise. We've got Ben from Disney. We've got Derek from B&H with his expertise in photo and video. And what I really want to talk about is something that's been on my mind a lot lately. I've been scrolling through the beauty mags, I've been looking through GQ and then starting to feel quite fat and wrinkly and old. And then I start to remind myself and I know the business, I know the tricks and everybody there's Photoshop and airbrushed and everything's highly processed. It's the same for audio, but I still keep tweaking with my own knobs, trying to get my sound just right.

           And I think to myself, I wonder how many solo content creators are out there, benchmarking themselves against some of these Hollywood studios, some of these more professional outlets thinking, well, I just don't sound like that. But it's not even a fair comparison. It could be a little intimidating. So I'm hoping today with all of us here, we can kind of go through some of the practices to level the playing field to give everybody an equal opportunity to sound as professional as they can. And because of your background, we have a really opportunity to have an on hand demo and I wanted to keep it pretty open and a free for all of that. So let's first start off by just talking about gear and equipment. Jason, Ben, you guys just hop in, whatever makes sense.

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, number one is get yourself a good microphone. You can make yourself sound pretty decent with a middle of the road microphone, but the better your microphone is and this is not a good example right now, this is a great mic, but I've done some things to it that make it sound awful.

Ben Keys:

To compare and contrast, I'm using the same mic Jason is, and so it sounds much better.

Mike Dias:

Well, just to point out too, we did this for a reason, because you think you're showing up to a meeting and you think you're killing it. You think you're presenting and you think you're killing it, but you really sound like Jason or you sound like your teeny laptop speaker when everyone else sounds like me or Ben or Derek and nobody wants to be that guy. And the funny thing is you don't usually hear yourself. The microphone's not for you, it's for everyone else. So do you guys... Just you guys talk back and forth for a second so everyone can really hear this.

Jason Batuyong:

We'll count. I'll count to five and you count from six to 10. Ready?

Ben Keys:

All right.

Jason Batuyong:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Ben Keys:

6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

Jason Batuyong:

That's a drastic difference.

Ben Keys:

Definitely.

Jason Batuyong:

And it gets even worse when I do this. Right, but we won't do that.

Ben Keys:

And it's funny because your setup really makes a big difference, especially on a call like this, where you can actually cause a feedback loop and you don't necessarily hear it. It's just coming through everybody else's speakers and things like that. So those dangers are just always inherent. So it's a good example, Jason, of what it can sound like and how bad it can really sound.

Jason Batuyong:

Right and I'm monitoring myself. I'm hearing back all of the horribleness, which is not something that you normally get to hear on a conference or that. So it's important to be able to hear yourself while you're doing this, and know how good or bad for making it sound.

Ben Keys:

In all honestly, I have no idea how I sound right now. You guys are saying I sound good, so that's great. But otherwise I really don't know.

Derek Fahsbender:

How does it? If I can throw that in as a question, because in photo and video where I'm more comfortable, you have to worry about, how is someone viewing this? Are they viewing it on their phone? Or are they one of those people that keeps their brightness at 50%? So how do you guys account for that, not knowing how the audio's going to come across on the other side?

Jason Batuyong:

Well, I think it's a matter of... I recommend that people play at home as much as possible before going out and doing a live broadcast yourself or even recording one. You got to play with all of these different knobs and buttons and everything and figure out what they do. This microphone right here is really the instrument and you're playing that instrument with your voice and your voice is the ability, and the microphone is a tool. If I move way off the mic, you can hear it. It changes dramatically. But even just moving in closer or talking over the top and again, I've got all these weird processors going right now so you're not hearing all of that. But little moves make big differences.

           And so you're not always just grabbing a knob and turning it all the way, one direction, because that's going to really drastically affect. So making a recording or doing a live thing just for no one and having somebody on the other end listen or listening back to what you've recorded, you'll be able to tell, did those things that I did on the board or in the software, did they make a difference? Did I sound better? And you'll be able to go back and do it again and again and again until you're doing it right, and that's the preparation.

Mike Dias:

There's another thing if I can hop in on this Derek. So Jason had mentioned in his intro that he runs monitor side of things and you heard him just mention that he's monitoring this live while he is talking. If you look closely in his ears, he's listening. If you look closely, I'm listening in a close feedback too. So do you know the difference between front of house and monitor world. Can we kind of spend a couple minutes going over this for you and for the audience?

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Dias:

And Jason, you sound so bad, let Ben take this one.

Ben Keys:

Can we fix that now Jas? Is it time?

Jason Batuyong:

Talk through while I fix it really quick.

Ben Keys:

Okay, let's jump to that and then we'll talk.

Jason Batuyong:

Let's go to the console real quick, everybody. All right, so first I've over driven this quite a lot so I'm going to take the game knob, which is always on top and I'm going to drop that down and I'll bring my fader at the bottom back up and you can see my signal light is no longer hitting the peak red light. And I can start to bring up my master fader that you can't see. But I've also got this right here. It's a single knob compressor. I can turn that down and all of a sudden I'm a lot less breathy. I've also got the high frequency turned all the way down and oh, listen to that, a little articulation. Got some mids boosted. I've got all the lows turned down, bring that back in. I've got a high pass filter in. Oh yeah, here we go. It's really starting to come together. Bring this up a little bit more and we're good.

Derek Fahsbender:

That's game changing to see it done right before your eyes and hear the difference.

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, just a few simple things. A few simple turns of some knobs and we're back to broadcast quality.

Ben Keys:

You sound so rich now. Your voice sounds like the mountain man you are.

Jason Batuyong:

Oh, thank you.

Mike Dias:

It's really a great example to just see how far off the mark and how easy it's to get. We started off with a bad example, but a lot of people end up tweaking those knobs in search of getting better. And I know we'll talk about that, but let's go over... Just set the stage what's monitors? What's front of house? How do we really answer that question of how are you knowing what you're seeing, which is exactly equivalent to what you have to pay attention to? How somebody's going to see this? Are they watching on my phone, on TV, so on?

Jason Batuyong:

Right. So typically on a television show, we've got three different sound mixers. We've got the sound mixer that mixes the broadcast that goes out to the millions of people. And then we've got a front of house mixer and he mixes for the audience, so the hundreds or thousands of people. And then you've got the monitor mixer, which is what I do. And I typically mix for the one to 10 people who are on stage. We all have similar equipment. We're all using the same microphones on stage, the same playback system, the same mics on a band, anything like that. And they get split to all three locations. So we have the same sources and we mix them three different ways for three different audiences basically.

Mike Dias:

What's the equivalent of that when you're shooting?

Jason Batuyong:

I don't know how exactly to answer that.

Ben Keys:

Was that a question for Derek, Mike?

Mike Dias:

Yeah, that's for Derek.

Jason Batuyong:

Okay, great.

Derek Fahsbender:

Yeah, no, it totally makes sense. I mean, we're looking at it depending on the application, it would be something where, I guess I would compare it to different mediums. There's kind of some, it's like a Venn diagram. There's some crossover and some of the stuff it doesn't directly translate. But because ultimately everything I'm producing is made to be consumed from a third party. That doesn't matter really what's on my screen because I'm making it to show. So if I'm doing a print, it's like, okay, I have to monitor everything on my backend to make sure that when I print something out, I'm adjusting my levels because the levels that I adjusted to for a print are not going to be the same levels that I adjusted to show it on a phone or to post on social media or to even stream it on...

           If I were to stream it on like a projection monitor or... So based on the media that it's going to be presented on, that's adjusting my levels. So we don't really have the levels front. It's basically front of house, back of house in very loose terms, but it is just knowing how it's going to be presented, making sure that you're putting the best presentation for that exact medium.

Mike Dias:

It's the exact same thing. It really is. Go ahead, Ben.

Ben Keys:

No, what I was going to say was it's very similar. You will never hear the front of house mix on a live album. So what got recorded to the live album is almost never, I'm sure there are examples where that is the case, but it is not the guy that's mixing the stage from the front of house position, coming through the speakers for that audience. It's completely separate board, just like a broadcast mixer would be for a TV show. That's pretty isolated and hearing it through a set of speakers, like you would be listening to it at home rather than having to fight through the ambient sound of an auditorium or wherever that concert was happening. So every time you hear a live album, it has been mixed and then mixed again in a studio probably from that to be mastered down to an album. So there's so much that goes on in the difference between going live to an audience and being consumed singularly at home on whatever medium you're listening.

Mike Dias:

Yeah Derek, it's just like what you're saying. It depends on where it's landing and we as content creators, this really matters because where are people consuming this? How are they going to consume it? What do we want to put forward to let it shine in its best light? And so we got better levels. We were able to kind of answer that. Jason, you were talking about the microphone and I want to get back to that because that really is the... That's your first pass of leveling the playing field.

Jason Batuyong:

Absolutely. If you're going to spend money, you're going to need a decent computer, but second, you're going to need a really good microphone. You can get a really good microphone like Mike's using right now. That's a USB microphone, the icon, and that's a really, really good solution. The next level is getting a pro model that has an XLR on the back. And for that, you're going to need either a mixing console with a USB to go into your computer or an interface. Again, it's an investment, but it's an investment that you really should be making. With the regards to the microphone, the higher end and more purpose built microphone you can get for what you're doing is always going to be the best option.

Mike Dias:

Ben, what do you look for when you are auditioning microphones for your performers?

Ben Keys:

Wow, well in a stage environment, let's call it musical theater environment. We're dealing with something completely different as well. And historically a Broadway situation that they didn't really want to see the microphones and they were willing to sacrifice some sound quality for hiding microphones, whether it be in the hair, whether it be on a lapel, something like that. And the industry really moved away from that. And a lot of us... And honestly, the sound engineers have pushed this past the producers. The producers still don't want to see microphones. And everybody's saying, well, we can't hear. And if we can't hear, then it doesn't matter. You're up on the stage performing and yes, you can't see the microphone, but the audience at the back isn't able to hear what's happening on stage. So what are they buying the tickets for?

           People would much rather suspend disbelief in the fact that they see a microphone down by somebody's mouth, on a headset, Mike, and just kind of learn to look past that and be able to hear a quality show. Then they would be... Then to have the mic hidden. They don't see the mic and it's just magically appearing as if from nowhere. Everybody knows there's a mic on stage picking these people up, it's coming through the speakers, all of those things. So let's just get the best quality we can. Let's match skin tones and things like that. But there's just no sense in sacrificing the quality of the audio on a musical. I mean, it's in the name. We want the music, we want the singing. That's what it's all about. So if we can't hear it just doesn't matter.

           So we're going for the highest quality mic we can, as close to the source as possible. And so taking... There's hundreds of companies that make headset microphones. And honestly, microphones are one of those things where you get what you pay for. If you're buying the least expensive mic out there because that fits in your budget, you're going to hear that. You're going to hear as not good quality of sound. If you're buying a really high end microphone, you're going to hear that. And that's the entire signal chain unfortunately. The mic is the first spot, but then you're going into a wireless pack. You're going into a receiver, you're ending up coming down some copper or some fiber or however you're getting it to your mixing console. And the chain kind of spreads out from the microphone, but it's got to start with a good quality of source at the microphone head.

           So that's what we're looking for. And is the show super active and sweaty, then we actually need to get a mic that's really waterproof. If the show is a person standing there and singing and not moving around, well, can we get them on some sort of large element that's on a stand or a handheld rather than a face mic? We are going for the best quality we can with the look that the producers are wanting and if we can convince them to have the better element in front of the face of the performer, then our job is much, much simpler.

Mike Dias:

That makes a lot of sense. Jason, you were starting to tell us a little bit about the mic placement and you happen to write an article about mic technique and mic placement for in ears, which I've never seen anything like that before. It's become a bit of the Bible, especially for reality TV shows and people just starting to use ears. I want to talk a little about that, especially in light of what Ben's talking about on headsets. I mean, do you really have a lot of choice in where you're putting them or on handhelds? How do you play this instrument to the best of your ability?

Jason Batuyong:

Well, with the headset, a little goes a long way. When we're dealing with a mic in front of your face, an inch makes a difference, but with a headset, a millimeter can make a difference. How close the mic is to your cheek can make a difference. If the mics sticking out, if it's in an optimal area, but it's sticking out too far into the actual pattern of your breath, it's going to make air sounds. You're going to hear what sounds like wind.

           And again, like Ben was saying, the producers don't like the look of this so they're certainly not going to like the look of a wind screen on that. Even if you're outside and the winds blowing. So it's important to get it back into a certain point and you're going to be dealing with... In that particular environment, you've got Broadway singers, you've got people who can control their voice, so you're going to rely on them to create the emotion, the dynamics of that. When you move to a larger diaphragm in front of you versus on the side of your face, then you actually have the opportunity to move around.

           And unfortunately Earthworks has made this mic too good. And I'm not really getting the point across with my demonstration. And I have move way over here, for you to get the idea of what I'm saying. It sounds about the same. My article that I wrote... This would make a much bigger difference than it's making right now. I sound exactly the same. If you get this mic don't read the article.

Derek Fahsbender:

Jason, this is the second time we've had somebody try to do this. And Mike just laughs, because he knows you can't demonstrate this.

Mike Dias:

This is my favorite setup.

Derek Fahsbender:

You have to go across the room.

Ben Keys:

Do you want to switch our mics so you can...

Jason Batuyong:

I mean, I've got a 55 here. It's not plugged in yet. Give me a second. This will be great. Elvis, you hear.

Derek Fahsbender:

Can I throw a question in while we're getting that changed around?

Mike Dias:

Of course.

Derek Fahsbender:

Obviously you guys have the whole board there, for somebody like me who doesn't, and you guys have me super self-conscious over here. I'm like, how do I sound? How am I going on the air everyday sounding a hot mess or is there anything I can do? What can somebody do without... I don't have a board, I don't know audio. Is there any options that are within the realm of the everyday person, who's like, you know what? I just want to sound better. This isn't my career but...

Ben Keys:

Yeah, honestly, the starting out with that high end mic is your best option to get quality sound without any gear afterwards, whether it's a USB mic, whether you're using some sort of USB interface for a pro mic, that starting out with that quality. And Jason's going to show you the difference between... That mics about 120 bucks usually, the other one that he's holding right now. It's going to be considerably different and maybe not so much that people notice too much, but again, the medium that people are listening to also makes a big difference. So don't be too concerned that you're sounding like a hot mess unless somebody mentions it because...

           I started listening to a podcast recently that's been on the air for years and years and years now. And I went back and started listening from the beginning and it was literally these guys' first podcasts that they started and they were using just some microphone and they kept distorting every time they laughed hard and it was just miserable to listen to for the first year and a half. And then they figured out... They literally just changed the microphones and their sound quality went to here. And then they changed what they were doing on the back end to produce their show before they released it. It wasn't a live podcast ever, so it was always recorded. And they just got a better digital workspace to edit and clean things up and make it right. And so if you're doing something that's a recording to be released later, you've got so many more options.

           But the big thing is you can never make distortion go away in a recording. So if you ever overdrive your microphone and/or your recording, you can't make that go away. That will always be artifacts there. So recording in at a lower level is actually going to help you most times just to make sure you never hit that peak.

Mike Dias:

And the whole rest of the show.

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, we like to say bad in bad out. Meaning, if it goes in bad, it's going to come out bad too.

Derek Fahsbender:

So it's not like photo where you can go in, you have some leeway to, oh, I underexposed this a little, I blew this out a little bit. I can recover to an extent.

Ben Keys:

For us, underexposure would be the lower level, overexposure, we can never bring it back. A peak level, a distortion consider that as over exposure. It's really hard to bring it back from that.

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, there's a sweet spot. Just like there's a sweet spot in exposure. Something that's perfect for what you're doing right now. And for us, that's the preamp. Plus, where my voice is. And now I have a really good example because I'm on a dynamic microphone looking like Elvis caressing the microphone. But not only the sweet spot. If I talk a little too loud into this, you're going to hear it. If I back off, you're going to hear it and I can move my preamp knob around and I can try and get into that sweet spot. But I should probably try to get my voice into the sweet spot first and then fiddle around with that knob.

Mike Dias:

And Derek, the entire next 30 minutes we are going to talk to you as a single one off member of a team. What you can do after you start with a mic to get some of the [inaudible 00:28:30] sound. Yes, Jason's got a fancy board there but... And Scott, I'm sorry I forgot to mention this in pre, if you can enable screen sharing. We're going to talk channel strips. We're going to talk a lot of things that all of your listeners can buy directly from B&H and just have fun with right now too, which is kind of a perfect segue. So you got mic control, you got your mic, you really know how to use that instrument, that voice then what? What comes next?

Jason Batuyong:

Is that for me?

Ben Keys:

I don't know.

Mike Dias:

Yeah, either one of you guys.

Ben Keys:

Switch back to your other microphone Jas.

Mike Dias:

You want to take this Ben while...

Jason Batuyong:

Okay, I'm back here.

Ben Keys:

You kept looking like you were going to say something but you didn't. Sorry.

Jason Batuyong:

No I'm sorry.

Derek Fahsbender:

He said I don't want to talk on that mic.

Ben Keys:

Mike, I completely lost the question, could you reiterate for me please?

Mike Dias:

Yeah so all of us, we've all got good mics. We're all on camera. We're looking good. We're sounding good. And by the way, this is already 90% of the way there. But now how do we get that [inaudible 00:29:51]? What kind of sugar do we throw on top? Like what steps? How do I just keep getting better and better? And again, this goes back to me taking selfies with my phone. It's a good phone, but I still look wrinkly. I'm still not looking like young Robert Redford. I'm looking like old Robert Redford. Sorry, Robert Redford. But what little tricks can I do to... There's no such thing as raw audio, just the idea of EQ and compression. Let's talk about that before we talk about even sweeter. But what comes after the microphone?

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, to put it in simple terms, it's filters. Sorry, Ben.

Ben Keys:

No, you're fine.

Jason Batuyong:

Filters. The same filters that you would use to make your face look better on your screen. You're going to use EQ filters and then you're going to use a compressor to bring the levels' kind of if I'm talking really quiet and then I'm talking really loud, that's not going to read well. So the compressor's going to keep that kind of in a good range. Ben, sorry, go ahead.

Ben Keys:

I was going to go along the same lines. All of the stuff that Jason did to make his voice sound bad were things that were also going to use to make our voice sound good. He was using them in a very extreme manner, which damaged the sound, which we don't want. So we're going to do it a little bit to taste. We're going to add a pinch of salt rather than dump the salt on what we're doing. So I'm sure Jason's going to go through the channel strip a little closer and we're going to talk about the difference between what all these things do and what the extremes do versus just the touches.

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, I want to see this. I'm taking notes. Let me get a little closer with the microphone so you can actually hear the changes in real time. We'll move over here. And what we're going to do first is we're going to talk about the gain, so gain structure.

Mike Dias:

All right, hold on. Let's make sure we're switching over to see the board.

Speaker 5:

Is that my phone?

Jason Batuyong:

I think so.

Speaker 5:

Okay.

Mike Dias:

Look at that. That was the magic of Hollywood. This whole show you've seen Ben and Jason separate and all of a sudden just like, wait, what? You can't reach out through zoom and touch someone? Why didn't I get anybody over here?

Jason Batuyong:

Man will be there shortly. Don't worry.

Ben Keys:

All right, so same shot that we saw before, but let's take everything to just home base to just your equal, where you would go if you didn't have this.

Jason Batuyong:

We're going to start over... We're going to drop everything down. Can you still hear me?

Ben Keys:

Yep.

Mike Dias:

Barely.

Jason Batuyong:

Really quiet. I'll speak up a little bit here. Okay, so we do have the ability to pad this down if it's too loud. Thankfully, we don't need that right now. We sound pretty good, but we're not quite in the sweet spot. We've got some meters over here. The closer you can get to zero on your meter with the general timbre of your voice, the better it's going to sound. Let me see if I can, nah, just take my word for it. So I'm going to bring this up until I get. You hear it? It's getting a little sweeter. Maybe you're...

Ben Keys:

It's getting distorted, dude.

Jason Batuyong:

Is it?

Ben Keys:

Yeah. I think you need to pop the pad back in to get some of that gain.

Jason Batuyong:

How about this? No, I don't like the way that sounds.

Ben Keys:

Yeah, well you're not up there yet.

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, I'm just going to bring the...

Ben Keys:

All right.

Jason Batuyong:

Okay, so we're getting ourself into the sweet spot. Am I distorted still?

Ben Keys:

No, you sound great.

Jason Batuyong:

Okay, great. Again, we've got to talk about gain structure because I've got a lot of stages of gain that a normal person wouldn't have. This mixing console here is feeding into an interface. That interface is going into the computer. Zoom has its own automatic gain staging, and my zoom and your zoom and the person watching at home, they're going to have their own so we got to get it kind of good here before it gets to all these other stages.

           At the top of this chain there's a single knob compressor. This single knob compressor is going to, as you turn it to the right, it's going to compress more and more and more. And what you're going to hear is you're going to hear the soft stuff get really, really detailed. And you're also going to hear my breathing a lot more because it's bringing the low level up to match the high level, bringing them closer and closer together. There we go. This is all the way up. You can hear that the room sound, everything got louder. And we'll bring it back down to a more reasonable place, but you can hear the extreme. What this is going to do is as I get closer to the mic, it's going to sound a little bit more broadcasty, a little more ASMR kind of sounds. And then from there.

Mike Dias:

Walk me through why I'd want a compressor because actually you explained it to me the best that I've ever heard. If I'm looking at my teleprompter, if I'm looking down at my demo, I'm actually changing the mic placement. Even though I'm not purposely moving and I'm trying to be a conscientious speaker, I'm still jamming up the flow just by my subtle movements and that's where your compression actually fits in, right?

Jason Batuyong:

Absolutely. If you're a content creator and you've got three different things you're looking at, so you've got your computer screen, you've got your notes and then you've got something else happening over here. Each time you move your head, you're basically giving those three different arrival times to the mic, it's just changing ever so slightly. So by adding a compressor in, you're going to bring them in to sounding a lot more like one thing. And you can tell, I just turned it up a little bit, and as I moved my head, it really does sound quite similar. As we noticed earlier, this mic does a great job of helping that but it sounds more like the same thing as I turn and look at different things and look up.

           And then right now we've got a pretty flat EQ and that's helpful. The compressor as you turn it more is going to sound a lot like getting closer to a mic, you're going to get a lot more low end. And that's just the nature of how a compressor works. It kind of ends up building up a little low end. So two things we can do, we can add a high pass filter, which should get rid of some of the low rumbly things, though it's not going to... This is a 100 Hertz low pass filter, so that's not going to do much to my voice. My voice doesn't have much below 100 Hertz. So then we're going to have to go down to the low frequency shelf is what this looks like, or a filter, not shelf.

           And we can turn these lows down and it gets rid of a lot of that boom. For certain things, you're going to want a little bit of that boom. It's kind of a good sound, but you definitely don't want this much of the boom. That's all of the boom. This is zero, neutral right there. And then we're going to want just a little bit less. That's going to make it sound natural. It's going to compensate for the low end buildup that you're going to get from that compressor.

Ben Keys:

Sorry guys. I'm going to mute for a little bit.

Jason Batuyong:

All right.

Mike Dias:

Yeah this sounds great.

Jason Batuyong:

The EQ on this console right here has three bands, four knobs, but three bands, high frequency, mids and lows. This particular mid has what's called a sweepable frequency. So just to show you how that works, we'll go ahead and push this, so you can hear where we're at. We can go all the way to the top and that's boosting 5000 Hertz right there. And as we sweep around, you can hear that boost is moving down and down and down and down until it gets to 250 Hertz, which really just sounds terrible. Not super good for the voice. You can see how bad it sounds when I get here.

           In fact, if I were to take this knob and go down from there, you notice how much better that sounds. 250 is one of those vocal frequencies, which I think is why it's demarked on this console. If you go down a little bit from there, it takes a little bit of that honk away and you end up with a really good sound.

Mike Dias:

So going back to Derek's question, I love being able to see this and understand this and hear this, but if I'm just plugging ethos into my Focusrite, where does this come from? And I guess it comes down to the question of, am I doing this live, like we are right now? Or is this going in where I then get to edit it? And I guess there's two different ways to think about it, like in the box or in the live. And let's kind of go through both options. How do I get... I want to overpower everybody that I'm on the show with, so I want that sugar and sweet in my voice. How do I get this happening without having to buy a sweet board like that?

Jason Batuyong:

Well, a lot of interfaces have DSP, digital signal processing, built right into them. And if I can share my screen, I can show you what that looks like. Desktop. How about this? Let's share. You have to allow it.

Mike Dias:

They said that we should be set up to share.

Ben Keys:

You should be able to share.

Jason Batuyong:

It's on my side.

Ben Keys:

It's on your side, okay.

Jason Batuyong:

Yep. Let's just see if it works.

Mike Dias:

There we go.

Jason Batuyong:

Let's get rid of this and this and this. All right, this should be good. So everybody see these two things here.

Mike Dias:

Yep.

Jason Batuyong:

Okay, so as you can see, I get a little mixing console here, and that's just a part of the Steinberg UR-RT4 that I'm using currently. It also comes with a little effect suite and some digital signal processing. So over here, I can go ahead and turn on a compressor and I can turn on a really, really nice sounding EQ.

Ben Keys:

Jake, do you still have the compressor on the console up?

Jake:

Yeah.

Ben Keys:

Let's pop that out just to make sure.

Jason Batuyong:

It's always going to be there a little bit.

Mike Dias:

So you're driving the board through the digital interface now?

Jason Batuyong:

That's correct. Yeah, that's my signal chain.

Mike Dias:

And you don't have to have the same type of board, you could use just any other type of...

Jason Batuyong:

Interface.

Mike Dias:

Any interface will give you this.

Jason Batuyong:

Well provided that the interface itself has DSP built in. And so that's what you're looking for with this is a system that has digital signal processing. Otherwise, you're going to have to go into your DAW and that's... This would be used for a live situation and going into the DAW and utilizing the processing there, that it be in case you're recording it.

Mike Dias:

And there's the latency of doing it through the DSP doesn't matter?

Jason Batuyong:

No, it's really, really fast. I'm listening to it in real time and I hear no discernible latency. If you were to run it through a DAW and hit the monitoring button, you would have significant amounts of latency and you'd start talking slower because you'd be hearing yourself a little behind where your actual voice is.

Mike Dias:

And so once you have this set in, it's sort of set and forget, you get your flavor or your recipe of where you sound best, and then you don't have to mess with this anymore, right?

Jason Batuyong:

That's true. And you'll always refine it. You could move to a different location in the room, and it's going to sound differently, maybe not enough that you need to make adjustments. But just be aware that if you do move your system around, if you're closer to a wall, you're going to get a reflection off that wall and it's going to sound a little different.

Mike Dias:

So Derek, that's your answer right here. What are you plugging your ethos into right now? Let's see if we can get this for you and start tweaking you out.

Derek Fahsbender:

Yeah, so I have the Focusrite. So I have the basic, the little red Focusrite audio interface.

Jason Batuyong:

Does that have a companion app that you would make any setting adjustments with?

Derek Fahsbender:

I don't have anything. I don't know if they offer one. I don't have anything.

Jason Batuyong:

Okay, I mean, that'd be the first thing to check. Does the Scarlett [inaudible 00:44:32], one of those.

Derek Fahsbender:

Yep.

Jason Batuyong:

Two something.

Derek Fahsbender:

Let's see.

Jason Batuyong:

22 I.

Derek Fahsbender:

2i2.

Jason Batuyong:

2i2.

Mike Dias:

And if it doesn't, it's a phenomenal interface. We use that at the office all the time and we'll follow up and provide some links of interfaces that have these built in with the DSP. So again, that's just like you can start off with a starter microphone, you can upgrade your interface to then have this DSP option.

Jason Batuyong:

Right.

Derek Fahsbender:

Interesting.

Jason Batuyong:

So this DSP right here, you've got over here, you've got all of the different settings that you could possibly ever want in a compressor, your attack, your release, your ratio. You can set the knee and then you've got drive. And in this case, drive is going to be similar to the threshold of a standard compressor. It'd be the threshold and kind of gain makeup all in one. And you know those are advanced concepts, but you can hear, as I start to move this around, the sound is going to change just a little bit. And you can see a graphical interface of what is changing. So with that drive all the way down, you have a perfectly straight line, which means no compression, it's doing absolutely nothing as far as compression, where this line starts to bend that's the knee. So we can make that knee hard. And as we go up, you can see that it's a much sharper angle there. And the higher I go with this knob, it actually starts to sound heck of a lot better, unless that's not the case. Does it sound better?

Mike Dias:

I think it sounded good. Yeah.

Ben Keys:

Yeah, you sounded good.

Jason Batuyong:

Okay, good.

Ben Keys:

You stopped talking when you said that. So we [inaudible 00:46:34].

Jason Batuyong:

You've got things like attack and release. Attack is how quickly does this compressor compress onto your voice and that's typically measured in milliseconds and you can see that here. So if I take this all the way down, then there's basically no pump to the compressor. It is like a limiter and it is really fast and it's just happening as my voice happens. There's no waiting. The release is the same. If I take the release all the way down... Now I've got a compressor that is just going to hold right at the ratio. So the ratio can go all the way down from one to one, that's basically what you'd consider a brick wall limiter. If I get really quiet or if I get really loud, there's not going to be much dynamic difference between the two. If I take the ratio the other direction, now I have a much... Am I doing this backwards?

Ben Keys:

You're doing this backwards.

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, it's exactly backwards. Strike that. Reverse it.

Ben Keys:

We can see the graphics, you can't unfortunately, I don't think or can you?

Jason Batuyong:

No, I'm seeing the graphic.

Ben Keys:

Okay.

Jason Batuyong:

I just see it.

Ben Keys:

Now you're looking at a brick wall limiter.

Jason Batuyong:

Now we're looking at a brick wall. So just rewind, erase a little bit. This is no compression.

Ben Keys:

Nothing. That's something. You might as well be bypassing.

Jason Batuyong:

And this is all compression and you can see again, it has taken that line to a very flat and all the way. So a comfortable starting point is somewhere between 2.5 and say four. 2.5 you're not going to hear much of a difference between 2.5 and 3.5. But as you get closer to actual five to one ratio, you're doing a lot of compression. So for your voice, two and a half is a great starting point.

Mike Dias:

Yeah and for everything I've been hearing from you this talk, you want to... You were saying, Ben, you just want to add a little bit of salt and pepper, a little bit of spice to this. You don't want to notice it, you just want it to be better, right?

Jason Batuyong:

Yes.

Ben Keys:

Exactly.

Jason Batuyong:

Small changes make a huge difference.

Mike Dias:

Well, I just want to focus on that small change for a second. I want this. It's one thing just to have a good mic and to plug into an interface and just to sound great, but to be able to be on zoom and to know that I can also have this little cheat dial me. And Derek, I'm not the only one, right? You got to be looking at this like, how do I get this?

Derek Fahsbender:

Totally.

Ben Keys:

Honestly, Derek, I did a little research on the Scarlett. It looks like it comes with a full suite of plugins and things like that. I think you just need to kind of dive into your manual there and explore some of those options.

Derek Fahsbender:

Yeah, [inaudible 00:49:34] has sent me something on the side. There we go. Focusrite interface.

Ben Keys:

Yeah.

Derek Fahsbender:

So I just have to download it and register my... I don't even know if I register.

Ben Keys:

Yeah, most high end interfaces will have some version of this involved. And some of them are very, very high end. Focusrite has quite a bit of stuff to play with for sure, and you'll be able to experiment, compare and contrast the things that work and don't work. The only way to really do that is to record it and play it back, because everybody has a hard time hearing their own voice while they're talking and really hearing the changes of what you're doing. That's why Jason's kind of having to guess on some of these things a little bit and ask... Even though he is monitoring it, do I sound good still? Unless he was to record and play it back for himself, he really wouldn't be hearing the changes as much as they're actually coming out to the rest of us.

Jason Batuyong:

Yep. I have no idea what it sounds like to you guys. So I'm going to let you in a little secret here too. If I click on the little gear loop back. When you get an interface check to see if it has loop back.

Ben Keys:

I don't think we see that on our screen share J.

Jason Batuyong:

Oh no. Let's see if I can add it in. Well nonetheless, loop back is what's going to take everything that happens in your interface and it's going to come out of one output, the same output that zoom wants to see. And that's what makes all of this possible. I could use all of the channels on my interface, which is six inputs right now, which also includes all 16 of the inputs that are on this console. This Yamaha MGP16X. And it puts it all into zoom and zoom really likes to see one mono. It's going to take the first thing that you've got as your selected sound card on your computer and that loop back provides that path for everything that I am doing to come out of that internal output and go to zoom.

Mike Dias:

Derek, did you catch that? So not only is there the USB audio interface that we're looking at right now, this is separate than the board that Jason was doing the demos on.

Ben Keys:

There you go, J. We got it.

Mike Dias:

Yeah. Cool.

Jason Batuyong:

That last screen we had there.

Mike Dias:

Yeah, so we've been stacking bits just for demonstration purposes, but you don't need to have that board in order to still get this control. The Steinberg interface gives you this control. The board is just for fun. And again, more control looks great on a demo and really lets everybody see here, but you can get in and do this. Any content creator could spend an afternoon playing around with this and really getting to know how to make their voice sound perfect.

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah and not just the EQ and compression, but also these silly effects. You can also find that here on the interface. It's all here. I'm in a cave now.

Derek Fahsbender:

Mike, we had a question come in from our very own Scott who... Don't let him fool you. He's very interested in audio and the whole podcast world. So his question is this, how do you know what perfect sound is, perfect pitch? We all... Everyone hears differently. How do you know this is it? And be confident in that whatever sound you're... If I'm tweaking my sound, how do I know that I'm on target and I'm not the slightest bit off or way off?

Mike Dias:

I have my take, but I'm going to let Jason and Ben answer this one.

Jason Batuyong:

You have to practice.

Ben Keys:

Yep.

Jason Batuyong:

Practice. How do you get to Carnegie Hall, Ben?

Ben Keys:

Practice, practice, practice, practice, and turn left.

Jason Batuyong:

That's correct.

Ben Keys:

Yeah.

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, so you have to break a bunch of eggs. You're going to mess up omelets every time you try, unless you make 1000 omelets. Omelets are actually really hard to make and sound is actually really hard to make too. You're not going to know. Sound is subjective person to person. I started my career off as a drummer and so my ears are not great. So I have to rely on all the tools I can possibly find to reinforce that. Okay, I think it sounds good, but does it sound good? I have the confidence to tell you, yes it does sound good because I can look at it on an analyzer and say, okay, I know that the analyzer's not going to lie to me as much as my friends will. When I share a piece of music that I recorded and they're like, oh yeah, J, it sounds great. All right. Okay. But the analyzer doesn't lie.

           So utilizing as many tools as possible, learning all those tools, the best you possibly can, which again, it's like if you're going to learn guitar, you're going to sit down and you're going to play that guitar and you're going to get an amplifier for that guitar and you're going to move all the knobs on it until you created a sound that you like. If you don't do that, then what's the point? What's the purpose? You're just playing a guitar through an amplifier. And maybe it sounds terrible. Okay, you're having fun, but let's make it sound really, really, really cool. And you're going to like it more and you're going to want to do it more. So it goes back to that coolness factor. I do everything in my life for the coolness factor. Was it cool? All right. We'll keep it then.

Ben Keys:

The trick really is find something... Find a content creator that you like, that you like the way they sound and figure out how to mimic that. And if what you're getting back when you record yourself and play it back for yourself, if you're not getting the sound you want... Honestly, on the other end of the line the people listening, as long as it's not messed up, as long as it doesn't sound awful, again, they're not really noticing. So your view on what you're producing is almost the most important thing right now. And if you are not happy with what you're producing, then your confidence is down. You don't feel right about what's happening in the back of your head. It's just kind of spinning there. Do I sound good? If you've spent the time, if you've laid the groundwork to know that you sound good going out, then you have that confidence.

           I don't have to worry about whether I sound good because I've spent this time and I've learned my equipment. I've played with all the knobs. I've fiddled with all the things. I know because I recorded it. I've played it back for myself and I've changed nothing in between then and now. That I sound like this other person that I know that I like the way they sound. So I've copied that or not, or you've found your own unique, original sound that you love, which is totally fine as well.

           But spending the time on the back end and figuring out what it is to make that sound happen, then you don't have to worry about it ever again. You've got your signal chain in place. I mean, you can go double check every once in a while, but you don't have to worry about it in the back of your head while you're making your content. You can worry about the content.

Mike Dias:

And to me that really just comes back to what Jason was saying at the beginning, the way that his tech walks up and doesn't say, hey, you need more [inaudible 00:57:10] in your mix. Just says, you're good. It's not even a question, it's a declarative statement. You're good. If you have spent the time copying, finding something you like, tweaking it to get where you are, you're good. It changes your dynamic of how you present and the swagger that you speak with and the authority that you have. It goes back to that confidence of presentation once you've got those bits in there.

           And with that, we're really hitting right at the hour mark. And I think it's a great place to stop. First of all, I want to thank B&H for allowing us this opportunity to share these tips and tricks with everybody. A special thanks to Jason and that glorious beard. Can we throw in the story of Foo Fighters and the beard?

Jason Batuyong:

No, we don't need to.

Mike Dias:

All right. I don't need to say names. Just going to say, thank you [crosstalk 00:58:12].

Jason Batuyong:

[inaudible 00:58:12], let's say that.

Mike Dias:

Yeah. Thank you to Ben. Thank you for all the companies that you all represent. Scott. The entire B&H team. Derek, thank you for being part of this today. If you like what you've heard and you find this to be useful. We have another episode in two weeks. We have past episodes in the can. We have an Earthworks direct podcast called Amplitude. We really love sharing stories about how you can tell more impactful hooks and catches by emulating the pros who have been doing this for 30 plus years. Earthworks tries to be that bridge that connects the creators with the top performers on stages all over the world. And I think we're giving some great tips and tricks and tools that allow everybody to sound their best and look their best and feel their best.

           You guys, thank you so much for the opportunity, for the time. Derek, any closing words?

Derek Fahsbender:

No, I was going to let you close it. You do my job better than I do. And you guys have me paranoid to talk now. I'm like, man... I want to go back and because Danny and Scott is always like, you sound great. Now I'm like, man, when you step up against real pros, you got to worry.

Jason Batuyong:

Well, we'll get you all set up so that you can sound just like a professional.

Derek Fahsbender:

That's the perfect note to go out on. No, I want to thank you guys again. This is great. Mike, you're doing such a great job of this series. It's cool to be a part of it. It's cool to sit here and actively learn because I think the one thing that I take as an underlying concept in all of these that you do, no matter who is on is, how important audio is. If audio's going to be in the mix at all, it takes the cake as far as importance is concerned. You can have bad video quality, but if you can... As long as you can hear somebody clear, you're not going to get people complaining. You can have a great video, the second the audio goes off, we're getting comments in, people are screaming this is horrible, this is a terrible production. And I think that's the one thing that sets audio apart from everything else is you just can't have bad audio. You can take a grainy picture in the middle of the night and it evokes a mood. Bad audio, there's no mood there.

Mike Dias:

And yet audio is the last thing that we all talk about and the first thing we take for granted. Jason, let's close with this one. You had such a great take on that statistic that you are perceived to be 20% more intelligent with good audio, but there's more to that.

Jason Batuyong:

Yeah, there's a lot more to that. I'm not sure how to close with this. Lead me with more Mike.

Mike Dias:

This idea that intelligibility... Like where intelligibility focus and what that is?

Jason Batuyong:

Right. Intelligibility. It's an actual mathematical formula and I'm not going to bore you with the formula. But you can lower the volume considerably if you still maintain that formula of intelligibility. And I'll show you here just by bringing one of my faders down. And by making myself a little quieter and still having intelligibility, I can make everyone lean in. I can make an entire audience lean in to a keynote speaker who's on stage, as long as I maintain intelligibility. If I don't have that intelligibility, if I were to say, take the high frequency out and it were... Reach for the right knob. If I were to lose some intelligibility and go down a little bit more, then it loses its impact completely. Even if I bring the volume back up, I still don't have that intelligibility. So by restoring some of the high frequency, I get that back. And it's a way of having an audience engage. You don't have to be blisteringly loud to get people to pay attention. In fact, sometimes it's better to be really quiet yet still intelligible and have them lean in.

Mike Dias:

Jason, Ben, Derek, the entire team of B&H. Thank you guys so much.

Jason Batuyong:

Thank you Mike. Thank you everybody.

Derek Fahsbender:

Thank you.

Ben Keys:

Been our pleasure for sure.

Jason Batuyong:

Thanks for having us.

Ben Keys:

Thank you for having us, Mike. It was a great time.

Jason Batuyong:

Let's do another one. What do you guys want to do next?

Ben Keys:

Preamps.

Jason Batuyong:

There we go.

Derek Fahsbender:

I'm not done with you guys. I got to make this a thing.

Jason Batuyong:

Will you?

Mike Dias:

Scott, next time, we got you.

Derek Fahsbender:

We're dragging him in.

Mike Dias:

Thanks everybody.

Jason Batuyong:

We'll do [inaudible 01:03:16]. It's fine.

Derek Fahsbender:

Thank you again everybody. To all of our viewers, obviously thank you guys for tuning in. You're who we really do it for, as much fun as we have here, we do it for you guys. So thanks for tuning in. Guys that's it. Another round in the books. We'll see you in two weeks, Mike.

Ben Keys:

See ya. Bye everybody.

Derek Fahsbender:

Fantastic.

Jason Batuyong:

Bye.

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