The 416 an Industry standard...

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The Sennheiser 416 has become an industry-standard tool. Being a  “shotgun” mic (or in tech terms a super-cardioid) the microphone is extremely sensitive in a very narrow field. For this reason, it is often used on film sets where the mic needs to be a little farther away from the actor’s mouth (so it’s not in the frame), and the production team wants to capture the actor’s voice without capturing background noise in the room. These qualities also make it extremely versatile for use in home voiceover studios!  But who first decided a Shotgun would be great for Voice Over, and why is it now an industry standard?  A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... 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Find out more here..   https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite   George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners. https://georgethe.tech/tpas If you haven't filled out our survey on what you'd like to hear on the show, you can do it here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZWT5BTD Join our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/proaudiopodcast And the FB Group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/357898255543203 For everything else (including joining our mailing list for exclusive previews and other goodies), check out our website https://www.theproaudiosuite.com/ “When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.” Hunter S Thompson Summary In this episode of the Pro Audio Suite, hosts George Wittam, Robert Marshall, Darren Robbo Robertson, and Andrew Peters take a deep dive into all things related to professional audio equipment. The discussion covers the technicalities of the legendary 41 six microphone, its proximity effect, and how its placement profoundly influences the output. Renowned rock and roll voiceover artist Steve Britton's microphone technique is highlighted, including how he utilizes the aggressive nature of the mic to enhance his voice. The hosts also discuss other microphones such as the eight one eight, the SM Seven, and the 4116, comparing their various characteristics and potential uses. Additionally, they touch upon potential changes in the industry due to the advent of AI voices. The podcast concludes with advice for individuals dealing with their own audio issues, encouraging listeners to explore and make the most out of their equipment like iPhone mic, acknowledging how surprisingly good it can sound when used correctly. Check out theproaudiosuite.com for more information and use the code Trip a P 200 for $200 off your tribooth. #ProAudioSuite #VoiceoverTechTips #TriboothDiscounts   Timestamps [00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Pro Audio Suite [00:00:30] Exploring the Proximity Effect of 41 Six [00:03:33] Voiceover Pioneer: Ernie Anderson's 41 Six Influence [00:07:44] Microphone Showdown: 416 Vs. SM Seven [00:12:16] Unraveling the Versatility of Eight One Eight [00:17:56] Mic Recommendation: Small Diaphragm Shep [00:23:19] Debunking the Myth: Foam on 41 Six [00:25:32] The History of Headset Mics [00:30:25] AI Voice Realm: A Threat or a Boon?   Transcript Speaker A: Y'all ready be history. Speaker B: Get started. Speaker C: Welcome. Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite. Speaker C: These guys are professional and motivated with tech. To the Vo stars George Wittam, founder of Source Elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo, Austrian audio making passion heard. Source elements. George the tech. Wittam and robbo and AP. International demo. To find out more about us, check thepro audiosuite.com line up learner. Speaker B: Here we go. Speaker C: And don't forget the code. Trip a P 200 that will give you $200 off your tribooth. Now, I've been playing around with the proximity effect of the 41 six, the legendary 41 six, and I've never really set it up to shoot straight down the barrel. Speaker B: So what's your default placement? Speaker C: Usually slightly off to the side. Speaker B: Okay. So still relatively level, but just coming pointing at you a little bit off to the side. Speaker C: Yeah. And pointing down. So pointing down but slightly side. Speaker B: Got it. Speaker C: This way is still pointing down, targeting the mouth, but going full it straight at it. And I did one read like that, then I followed it up with one slightly to the side, and then I followed that up with an eight. One eight. But I know we've talked about the proximity effects of the 41 six, but I actually couldn't believe the difference. It shocked me that it was so bright and it's how I remember the 41 six sounding. Speaker B: So what you're saying is like, you've kind of detuned the mic, you've detuned it to calm down. What makes the mic so aggressive? By using that placement and then when. Speaker C: I put it back holy crap. Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's what that mic? Speaker A: Well, it's interesting because there's a guy who AP and I know and have both worked with a guy called Steve Britton, who's sort of the big know, rock and roll voiceover guy, and he actually uses it to his advantage because he's not so hyped. His natural voice is not so sort of steeped in those sort of high mids and highs. So he actually gets right up on it. The best way I can describe it is he pretty much swallows the thing when he does a voiceover and uses it to his advantage because it sort of obviously accentuates that part of his voice that isn't really there naturally. The only deficit is that from an engineer's point of view, that as soon as you touch anything in the highs, it just blows up. You've got to be so careful around up there with him when you're sort of mixing him. Speaker C: Well, the strange thing about his voice is you think you're going to have to play with all the lows because it's such a big, deep voice, but as soon as you touch anything, the highs just go mental. Speaker A: Well, yeah, and that's the way you've got to work with Steve's voice, is rather than sort of additive EQ, it's subtractive you've really just got to sort of balance it by taking away some of that deeper stuff that's there in bucket loads. And just leave the top alone, otherwise it will just destroy itself. I've seen people with three DS's on a track trying to get rid of it once they've started sort of trying to get that typical radio cut through, which is the biggest mistake. And as soon as you say start again, but don't touch the highs, just cut some lows, they go, yeah. : Okay. Speaker C: So my question is with the 41 Six, it was the guy who was the voice of The Love Boat. Was he the first guy to use the 41 Six for Ernie Anderson? Speaker B: I don't know if he was the first, but he was certainly the most well known for it. : I thought Don LaFontaine made it really popular. Speaker B: Well, Ernie is the one who's caught on camera using that mic on video and other things, where he's in the studio at ABC and he's literally doing know. : And I got to imagine someone just did it because, like, here's a mic. It's the one that the freaking news guy uses. But here you go. Say the word. Speaker C: The story I heard was not like I think he was a bit paranoid and he didn't like being in the booth because he thought people were talking about him. Speaker B: Right. Speaker C: And so he wanted to sit out in the control area. Speaker B: That's right. Speaker C: And he couldn't use a normal large diaphragm, couldn't use a U eight seven. Speaker B: Out there, every damn thing. Speaker C: So one of the guys on the floor came up with the idea of using the 41 Six. That's what I heard. : Why don't you use this razor blade to record your voice? Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably a 415 or whatever they had at the time. : Yeah, probably a T powered 415 at the time. Yeah, I got a couple of those. Those sound a little bit different than the four. Speaker B: Little bit less distorted. Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Speaker B: That sound, for whatever reason, better, for worse, it's become the character of what a voiceover sound sounds like. Like when you listen to a voice recorded with a close up mic, I think we've gotten incredibly tuned what that sound is. It's become what was the word you used? Robo? Standard, but something else. Speaker A: Yeah, I did, didn't I? I used a big word printed benchmarked. It's a benchmark. Speaker B: Benchmark, yeah. Kind of a benchmark, yes. So I've been hearing that mic with my clients and promo people for so long. So when I hear another mic, right, upside of it, if it's an accurate mic with very little color, such as the OC 8118, it sounds well, it sounds like this here. Here's a 41 six of Andrew and then the eight one eight. So this is what a non accurate mic and then an accurate mic sounds like side by side. And then you did it in two different placements, right? Speaker C: Yeah. I did that was because of our discussion a couple of weeks back, where we were talking about placement with the 41 Six, which I'd never I thought, yeah, well, whatever. : Andrew, where do you like the 416? Speaker C: You'd be surprised where'd you like that. He's got a dark brown voice. No, he hasn't. Speaker A: Well, if they say that your voice is chocolatey, you can tell them why. Speaker C: Yes. Getting a bit messy now, is it? Speaker A: Yes, indeed. Speaker C: I always had the 40 116, sort of like facing down, but to the slightly to the side. So I'm sort of almost not quite side addressing, but you know what I mean? That's how I had it and I got used to that sound. And then after our discussion, I thought, I wonder if the proximity, I wonder what it really is like. So I moved the mic and went basically pointing straight at me, but slightly downwards towards my mouth, and I couldn't believe the difference. It was just like two different mic. It was two different mics and it was the old get a toothpick and stick it in your eardrum kind of sound that you get with the 41 Six. : Yeah, which is the other reason why I think engineers like it, because you get a voice recorded on that and it's just going to cut through everything and you don't have to do a lot more to it. It just sort of has this pre processing that works for a lot of that in your face advertising. Speaker B: The Hamburger Helper of microphones. : Yeah, it's just like in your face advertising. Right there, done. Speaker B: Here's what it sounded like. Here's the samples. I got them right here. Speaker C: The MercedesBenz GLE SUV is the complete package. The MercedesBenz GLE SUV is the complete package. The MercedesBenz GLE SUV is the complete package. So that's first one was straight down the barrel, second one to the side, and the third one was the eight one eight. : And you can hear it, it just gets less and less edgy, less and less. It does. Speaker A: The interesting thing about the 4116, and I guess its impact on the industry, is it's been copied a few times, probably, or tried to be copied. But I'm on an NTG five right now and it's probably the closest, I reckon, that I've heard. : I don't know. The NTG five has got more bass. I'm on an NTG five, too. I think the NTG five is a warmer mic. Yes, it does have that shotgunny in your face thing, but it's a little bit actually bigger sounding, but it's not necessarily more cuddy. I think this the eight one eight. You could take it and EQ it to do what the 416 does. Speaker B: Oh, yeah. : Pick up more room. But the 416 is just sort of like there it is, it's going to. Speaker A: Put done for you. : It's a cut. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: I'm so used to the way that bright cut condenser mic sounds that I add EQ to my own mic because I want it to sound more like that bright, condenser mic sound. Right. Now I'm talking into the Earthworks Ethos, which is a very flat mic. And if I cut my what is it, ten khz? Six DB shelf, basically. It's not a shelf, but it looks like one. Then it sounds like this. Right, and it still sounds good. It just doesn't have that top end, that bright sizzle. : I think the extreme difference would be go from a 416 to an SM Seven. Speaker B: Yeah, well, the SM Seven has like this kind of this mid range thing that I've never been a big fan of the way that sounds. Speaker A: For voiceover. Speaker B: Yeah, for voiceover. : Do you like the PL 20? The Re 20 better than the SM seven. Speaker B: Yeah. Personally, radio voice, the PL 20 is the Re 20 without that big basket on it, the front, right. : No, I cannot tell you the difference between them, actually. I believe they are the exact same, just years difference. Speaker B: Oh, got you. : For this year to this year. They made the Re 20 and then they I think the PL 20 was before the Re 20 got you. Yeah. No, I think that as powerful and big of a mic. And no matter how much Rush Limbo wanted to gold plate his, I think the SM Seven beat the PL 20 in overall installations since the Pandemic, at least. It's like, holy cow. Did they get the SM Seven out there on podcast? Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Speaker B: I don't know who they have to thank for it, but Joe Rogan is probably high up on the list because he's been YouTubing his podcast for quite a few years now. : I mean, there's an ad campaign that I've never seen an ad for an SM Seven. That's marketing. Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. : Yeah, you need it. And I didn't even tell you. Speaker B: I mean, I just installed a podcast studio and the mic was not chosen because that's the best mic. It was chosen because that mic was seen on another podcast. Yes, exactly. Because the owner is and the 416. : Has got that, too. And so it's like, yeah, the SM Seven, you can abuse it. And it's going to be pretty consistent and whatever dark and warm. And it has that thing for radio where it's not going to pick up. It's just going to seem to pick up the voice and not the other stuff. Right. Like the 416 has got the cut. Speaker C: Yeah, the SM seven. SM Seven b basically eat the things anyway, and they're built like a tank, which is perfect. : Yeah. You can abuse the whole mic and you won't hear. I mean, I don't know how Howard Stern gets away with abusing his Neumann condenser the way he does and you never hear it. Speaker C: Can you explain that one's? Speaker B: Still a mystery. : It's like it should just be like. Speaker B: This kind of shit all over the. Speaker A: Place because it's not connected, I'm sure of it. Speaker C: I don't think it's connected. It's a fucking prop, isn't it? : It's a prop, yeah. Speaker B: Now this sounds more like an SM seven B, doesn't it? This is that it does a little. : Darker fatter, a little bit less top. Speaker B: End, a little bit more mid bump around one k, couple of DB. Now it's like an SM seven. I could go to the low frequency and boost up the bottom end. Now, they would sound even maybe a little bit more. : So in the spirit of don't send us a processed voice. Stop using 416s because they sound too processed already. Speaker B: Yeah, stop using them altogether. Speaker C: But it's kind of weird, isn't it? We're like, we get a large diaphragm mic or something and then we try and EQ it up to sound like a four one six. Just use the 41 six and be done with it. Speaker B: Really? I've caught myself doing that where somebody's like, okay, here's a sample of my 41 six, here's a sample of my TLM 103, can you make me a stack for each of these two mics? And over the time I'm just like, okay, I'm not going to touch the EQ at all on the 41 six. : Yeah. And then you're going to make their tail on 103 sound like a 41 six. Speaker B: What, did you resist the urge? I used to, I used to, but I resist the urge and now what I'm doing is I'm mostly just going to do corrective EQ. Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: When there's like a harshness, a nasal, some resonance in the booth, then that's it. : I think with the TLM you could give it a little bit more of a glassy sound and not so much of an upper mid, but a way airy high frequency kind of airy boost and make it nice and it'll still have some sort of I wouldn't call it cut, but presence, literally. But it'll be different than the 416, which has that frequency that every speaker has. It's like four k, eight k all packed in there. It's like your worst speaker on earth plays back those frequencies, for sure. Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt, yeah. Well, and the eight one eight, well, it's the polar opposite, isn't it? : I think eight one eight is like the TLM. You could just give it like a glassy airy sound, you're not cornered into the sound of the four six. I think the eight one eight could be more of a chameleon than the 416. The 416 does its thing and that is it. Speaker C: Yeah. It's a one trick pony, that's for sure. Speaker B: It's a one trick pony, but the way you manipulate it is by placement. Speaker C: Yeah, well, that became obvious. Yeah, absolutely. It did sound like two different microphones just by moving it. Speaker B: I mean, the first time I saw. : A 42 different voice actors sometimes, yeah. Speaker B: The first time I saw a 40 116 in an audiobook production facility, I. Speaker A: Was like, yeah, that seems like for. : A long term thing, it's like that's a harsh mic to be listening to 8 hours of the same person. You'd want nice pillowy mic? Speaker B: Yeah. So I don't know what post they were doing on the audio. I'm sure they were doing some EQ. : It's like listening to classical music on NS Ten s? Yes. Speaker A: I was going to say you'd be pulling the earbuds out halfway through mowing the lawn. You'd be going, Jesus, my ears are bleeding. Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. : Well, maybe it's good for the lawnmower. You're mowing the lawn. It's like I can hear 4K. Speaker A: I've got Ebays in to stop going deaf, but I'm going deaf anyway. : Yeah. Speaker B: Here's a little test. Tell me what this is. Speaker C: The MercedesBenz GLE SUV is the complete package. : That is either the 416 straight on, I think, or maybe to the side. Speaker B: All that was was the eight one eight with a shelf high shelf on it. It was an eight DB shelf starting at seven. : Wow, that's a shitload. That's a lot of DB. Speaker B: It's so funny. I opened up the Au filter plugin, which is like a really simple four band EQ. And the setting I had last loaded, wasn't that's what it was? It was just like an ATP shelf at seven k. Wow. I was like, all right, let's see what that sounds like. That's what that sounds like. : Sounds like so the 416 is boost at. Boost at. Speaker B: But if you ran that EQ on the 416, well, you would get this. Speaker C: The MercedesBenz GLE make it stop. : D 416. Speaker A: Try selling a MercedesBenz with that sound. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my goodness. Speaker B: Off brand, for sure. Yeah, but it's weird, there's a lot of commercial work getting booked, especially female voice stuff. That is really bright. : Yeah, it is. I used to say a lot of the times, depending on the 414, some females didn't work as well with a 414 because their voices were already kind of airy and then you get that really top end mic on it. Yeah. And it's like they overcompensate and sometimes like a U 87 worked better because just sort of try to pick up some of those lower mids. Speaker B: I used to recommend the Rode NTG three all the time for women because it was a very dark, flat and warm mic and so it worked really to their advantage a lot of times, in fact. Speaker C: That's funny you say that, because that's the mic I got for Somerset for Interg three, because it just did not sharp and nasty. Speaker B: So, yeah, it's funny, when you have a good mic that gets all the information with no distortion, you can really EQ it. And when you have a mic that is pre filtered, pre EQed and arguably has some degree of distortion, it's much. : Harder to correct it like anything with audio, it's easy to work with a blank slate compared to trying to uncompress. Speaker B: Oh, boy. : It's impossible or unds. Speaker B: Right? : Or UN crazy 416 EQ something. Because no matter what you do, the fix that you apply will create other harms, and you'll just end up with Swiss cheese in the end. So these broader, flatter, big diaphragm mics or what's interesting is, I think, to get a really accurate voice, I've not seen anybody try to record voice with, say, like a Km 184. And sometimes you see a lot of the opera singers what's an opera singer set up, like, a nice small diaphragm away from the singer? Speaker B: Yeah. Distant placement. : Distant, right. And then you get that just like that is what it is. There's no proximity. And I'll bet you for some people's voice, maybe something like a really pure small diaphragm condenser would be pretty interesting. That's why I was curious about those rode TF. Mics. Speaker B: Yeah, TFI. : Those look pretty high end small diaphragm condenser. And I bet you those would probably. Speaker B: Wait, didn't one of you guys get the small diaphragm Austrian audio? Speaker C: Yeah, robert's got them. : I got the OC eight. I got the OC eight. And those are good. I was going to say, I don't think they're sheps killers. They're closer to 184s. They're not sheps, but they're much closer to like honestly, they're much closer to, like, 450 ones. They're a little bit less full and very good for symbols, but not necessarily the whole I think a really good small diaphragm mic like a shep would be amazing on the right person's voice. But you'd have to have the right booth, right? There's no way, you know, you can. Speaker B: Get a chef's headset microphone. I actually demoed it once. $2,400 headset mic. It was an ultrasound headphone. $600 headphone with a chef. : And the microphone is like a pencil. It's like a pencil, yeah, it was pretty big, actually. Speaker B: It had a big windscreen. It was for sports casting. It had a big gooseneck on it. And it was like this ridiculous contraption that I was able to get a demo of one time, and I used it. It's on YouTube somewhere. $2,400 headset. Headset mic. : Chefs and BNKS. Man, not cheap mic. Speaker B: No compromises. : Yeah, they are good, though, definitely. I mean, Neumann's, too, but those are like, chefs. Doesn't even try to make a 103. They're like, you're going to make $1,000 microphone. Ha. We'll make a $7,000 microphone. Our cheapest mic is $2,000. Speaker C: I would love to, at some point, find out how the 41 six did become so prevalent. : Honestly, I always hurdles, don LaFontaine. I remember I was shocked when I found out, like, really? 416? Speaker B: Just for the record, it was not the mic that was in this booth when I met him. Like, I never saw him using that booth. : The 416 was not the mic that Don LaFontaine used, not when I met him. Speaker B: I mean, I worked with him in 2005, but he'd already been recording for 20 years by that point. : Andrew, when did the 416 become all the rage, because when I started in 1998, it was like, u, people are using shotguns, but I'm just an early engineer who's like, shotguns are colored. You only use them because you have to because you have mitigating circumstances. Why would you ever use a shotgun in a perfectly clean booth? And I start working on higher end commercials, and you start finding these voice talent who are using it. And actually, come to think of it, cutters. We had VIP 50s until, like, the early 2000s VIP, and then we got these Mylabs. Okay, very interesting mic. Rectangular diaphragm. So the skinny side of the rectangle is supposed to give you the best of a small diaphragm mic, and the long side of the rectangle is supposed to give you the best of a large diaphragm mic. Speaker B: Far out. : But they were good. We even had some voicemail go like, what's that mic? Like, I need your setup. And one guy bought one. But by the early 2000s, we put 416s in all the booths, and eventually that was just the mic. Like, the VIP 50s got pushed to the side, and everyone who walked in just got recorded on a 416 by default. And that's by 2005. I feel like we were just all 416. So Andrew, I don't know. When do you feel like the 416 took over? Speaker C: Because I was in radio until 97, so I didn't really see any commercial studios because everything was done in the radio station. So there was from memory, I don't remember seeing any shotguns in any radio stations. It was usually SM seven. : You still don't true. You still don't see shotguns in radio stations. Speaker C: Well, you do here now. You do see them in the production areas. Speaker B: Really? Speaker C: Absolutely. They're all 41 sixes in the production areas of radio stations. So the first time I saw a 41 Six would have been probably late ninety s ninety seven. Ninety eight, I guess. : So that's when it started taking over, in, like, late 90s, early 2000s. Speaker C: Yeah. And then they became everywhere. And a funny story, actually, because I had to do a job when I was in La. So I had to find a studio. So I went to La Sound. Speaker B: And. Speaker C: Of course, they had the 41 Six there. But I was talking to I won't mention the person's name because he's pretty high profile and might get the shits with me, but I was talking about the 40 116 with this person and about the foamy, and he said, no one in this country would ever have the foamy on their 41 six. It just doesn't happen here. I don't know why you guys do that. That's ridiculous. That's crazy. Never seen it before. : Well, usually you just put the normal you put the normal steadman screen windscreen in front of it. Speaker C: Yeah, I sent him a photograph. There's me in the booth, La Sound with the foamy on the 41 six. So they definitely had the foamy on. Speaker A: Well, there you go. I always use the foamy. I used to, because there's plenty of people who didn't know how to use the mic, used to get up all over it and just make it. : Here's a funny one. Even Harlan Hogan's vo one A was based on an older MSL. Model. Was it based on or was it just an older MXL model? Speaker B: No one will really know except him. But they say it's, I think, a 1006 or something. : It's a 1006. Speaker B: And I have two of those and they sound amazing. : I got several. Speaker B: A really fucking good cheap mic. It's a really good cheap mic. : It was the first $100 large diaphragm mic I bought for me, too. And then I won't say who in Australia modify one. Speaker C: Yes, I know who that is. Yeah, we'll leave that bit out. Speaker B: So the chef's headset is the HSC four VXP. It's the model number, if you want to look it up, and very unique mic. And the capsule on it is what probably you're more interested in. And they make different versions, so they have a strong proximity compensation model so you can get it, like, designed to actually compensate for proximity effect. Which is interesting because, again, Sports, they want the boom right up in front of their mouth to reject background. : Let's start let's start putting, like, parabolic mics in the booth. Speaker B: I know you talked about that. That would be crazy. Well, the capsule, which is funny, I'm looking at an ad for the mic and they don't mention the capsule, but I think I did in my video. I have a video on YouTube from years ago. If you just search for Widows World episode 90 Headset Mic Roundup, you'll find this video. And I actually try out a bunch. : Of the Kip Winger headset mic roundup. Speaker B: I mean, I was trying from really cheap crappy stuff all the way up to the ships and everything. : The stuff that you start out with the mics that only pick up S's. Speaker B: Right, or have no low end response period, they just roll off below 200 something. : If you des them, they go silent. Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Well, there's just been a tradition of bad sounding headset mics for so many years. : Sure has. I mean, do you remember that audio technica that I was playing around with? Is it the really cheap one headset mic? I think it might have been a dynamic and it didn't even have the headset. It's just a head warning mic. But it didn't even have headsets. Speaker B: I use those in many aerobics or fitness studios where budget was an issue because they could be destroyed and it wasn't a huge loss. But, yeah, those are classics. But audio Tending, it just came up with a headset mic. That where they graphed basically an at 2020 capsule onto a headset boom. And it's like a $200 headphone with a 2020 capsule. And it's pretty freaking bad. I mean, it's pretty good. Again, comparing it to what else is out there, it's pretty good, but it's. : Still well, that's the reality. Honestly, if someone gave me a voiceover recorder on a cell phone, I'd get it on the yeah, you find a way and I'd find a way, and I'd freaking bass synthesize some stuff and make it sound as good as it can go. And unfortunately, with a lot of clients, they're like, okay, sounds good. I understand the words. Sounds like a commercial to me. But we know there's a huge difference between all that stuff. I don't know. I still don't like it. But I've had a couple of voices. Now I've run into the tiny, basically rode video microphone, USB video mic. Speaker B: Go two. : Yeah, it's like your pinky. Speaker B: That's probably because I've recommended it to a bunch of people. : You can blame me for that one. Yeah, it's like it's okay. Speaker B: It's $100 mic. : Yeah. The flaws are exposed much quicker and the escape routes are smaller. Speaker B: It's probably marginally better than the phone mic in the iPhone. Just it's a shotgun, so it's a little bit more directional. Yeah. At the end of the day, I'm blown away with, when you use the iPhone mic correctly, how good it actually can sound. It's crazy. : Yeah. And especially if they start putting, like, arrays of microphones in there and doing. Speaker B: Beam forming, they're doing I don't know which vert well, they're already doing that. I mean, you don't realize it, but they are doing that. They use three capsules and it's a beam. : Oh, the microphone and the iPhone is a beam. Speaker B: They have been for quite a while. I even had an LG phone. It was like a V 40 or something. It was probably six years ago. And I could steer the microphone pickup pattern front to back, depending on who using the little slider on the screen. And I could say, make it pick up the guy in front of me and then make it pick me up, and I could go back and forth. So that's been around in cell phones for a while. But anyway, I had a lot of fun doing interviews with the new rode wireless kit with the wireless me, because the rode capture app on the phone will shoot both cameras. So I'm shooting a video of me and shooting a video of the guest. And they have a mic and I have a mic. So when I'm done, I have two videos and two audio tracks to manipulate and post. And it's amazing how good of a production you can make from that, really? : From your pocket. Speaker B: It's crazy. Yeah. I posted a couple interviews. Speaker C: Was that the one with the woman from Heil? Yeah, I saw that. : This is why we're all out of business. Speaker C: I thought you'd actually done some naughty shots, but I didn't realize you were actually live with your bits to camera as well. : What's going. On with the AI voice realm? Has that calmed down or are people still freaking out on AI taking over? Speaker C: I haven't seen much like it's less. : A little bit less discussed recently? Speaker C: I haven't seen much at all. Speaker A: What microphone do you use on an AI voice? : How many drummers does it take to change the light bulb? I'll tell you the same number of voiceovers it takes to read a book. Speaker A: None. : Because you just get an AI to do it. Speaker B: Well, that was fun. Is it over? Speaker C: The Pro audio suite with thanks to Tribut and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robbo Got your own audio issues? Just askrobo.com. Tech support from George thetech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a topic or just say good day. Drop us a note at our website proaudiosuite.com.