Audie Awards on June 1st in NYC and Hillary Huber nomination, The Voice Acting Hub at Facebook.com, Webinar with Voice Coach Deb Munro, Elie Hirschman Chats about Radio Voice Syndrome, Colin Campbell Fires up the Old Phone Patch, Hillary Huber MP3 and Debbie Munro Mic & Me Workshop in the VOX Box.
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Audie Awards, The Audies, Hillary Huber, Cornelia Read, A Field of Darkness, Facebook.com, Voice Acting Hub, Elie Hirschman, Radio Voice, Don LaFontaine, Colin Campbell, Phone Patch, Mix Minus, Mic & Me, Debbie Munro, Toronto, Voice Over Workshop.
Transcript of Vox Talk #31
Matt Williams: Episode 31
You’re listening to VOX Talk! The voiceover industry’s number one podcast brought to you by Voices.com. It’s about voice acting, growing your business, and sharing your knowledge. VOX Talk is a show that you can be a part of. Getting involved that’s both fun and rewarding. It’s time for this week’s episode of VOX Talk with your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Hi there, I’m Stephanie. Welcome to VOX Talk! This week’s episode features Elie Hirschman, Colin Campbell and Hillary Huber as well as Debbie Munro and her Mic & Me Workshop in Toronto next weekend. On to the news.
Matt Williams: The Loop, informing you of news and current voiceover events.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: In voice over news, The Audies, a celebration of the best of the best in audiobook production and beyond, takes place in New York City on June 1, 2007. Hillary Huber, a Los Angeles based narrator, has been nominated for an Audie in the Mystery genre for her work narrating Cornelia Read’s “A Field of Darkness”. The audiobook was directed and produced by Pat Fraley.
For more details about the awards, visit TheAudies.com. To read more about Hillary and her work, go to the VOX Daily blog at Blogs.voices.com/voxdaily.
In other news, there’s a new club in town for voice actors who are members of Facebook.com, a social networking website. Search for The Voice Acting Hub and join the crew today. If you’re not yet a member of Facebook, signing up is free and easy. That website again is Facebook.com. Hope to see you there!

In closing, this coming Monday at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, we’ll be hosting a webinar for those who are interested in attending the Mic & Me Workshop in Toronto on June 9th and 10th. Debbie Munro will be on the call with us and she’ll be detailing her curriculum for the weekend workshop series. To register for the webinar, go to Voices.com and click on the Help Link at the top of the page, then click on “Webinars”. That webinar again takes place on Monday, June 4th at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Matt Williams: The Biz, helping you grow your voiceover business.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Today in The Biz, Elie Hirschman makes a confession.
Elie Hirschman: Hi there. This is Elie Hirschman with a confession to make. Confession is this, despite having been taught in my voiceover marketing class to aggressively and shamelessly plug myself at every opportunity. I am somewhat hesitant to tell people that I am in Voiceover’s voice acting. The reason is the funny looks that I sometimes get when I mention that I do voiceovers.
I think most people that I talk to are suffering from what I call “RadioVoice Syndrome”. They expect my voice to sound like Don LaFontaine’s or James Earl Jones’ or someone with a register far below what I can actually muster up.
Don LaFontaine: In a world where voiceover meets (voices only), one man dares to break the stereo-type.
Elie Hirschman: I’ve mentioned in previous podcast that my strength lies in accent, learning, and imitation and I could be called upon for any bit part in any voiceover production, voice acting production that Darker Projects has. I’ve even played multiple parts in one production where each voice had to sound distinct from other. And yes, I’ll admit it’s been of an inferiority complex that I can’t make my voice go quite as deep as those other guys.
“In a world where …”
But I think people have to clear that out of their minds when looking for voiceover talent. We’re not all going to reach that low but we can all do a high energy read like, “Tonight on Dave’s! Stephanie Ciccarelli of Voices.com. Plus tonight’s top 10 list!”
I believe voiceover talent should be judged on what they can do, not who else they should sound like. If you’re looking for a distinct sound for your business, for your voicemail, for whatever production you need voiceover for, you’re going to find it based on your criteria, not who the guy sounds like. There could be 12 Don LaFontaines out there but one’s going to get the job because he did it right or he happen to be in the right place at the right time.
Let’s keep an open mind. There are lots of voices out there and they’re all good.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thanks Elie! Radio Voice Syndrome is rampant and I’m glad that you’ve brought this subject to the fore! Thanks for encouraging us all to keep an open mind.
Matt Williams: Tech Talk, walking you through the technological landscape.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: This week in Tech Talk, Colin Campbell of AffordableAnnouncer.com explains some nuances of the phone patch.
Colin Campbell: Hi. It’s Colin Campbell from AffordableAnnouncer.com. I had a lot of questions on voiceover forums lately about how to hook up a phone patch or what broadcast pros call it phone hybrid. Phone patch, phone hybrid, same thing.
These units allow you to hook your system into a phone line so that your client can hear you while you record your voiceover for them. Then they can coach you on the nuances of what they are requiring. Making this little set up work though becomes complicated because of one simple concept. The simple concept is called, mix-minus.
What is mix-minus? Well, mix-minus is simply this. I can boil it down to one sentence. Don’t feed the caller back to himself. If you feed the caller back to himself, you’ll create what’s called the feedback loop and you’ll have ringing, awful, horrible noise that everybody will be annoyed by. In a pro set, that is a fairly easy affair because you have multiple buses on your mixer and you simply assign the caller what you think he needs to hear everything but himself.
But a lot of these sub $100 mixers from bearing your Tapco only have one main bus. So the only option at that point is to use the sub $100 mixers stereo capability of your advantage. Into this little mixer that you’ve bought just for this process, you need to have your live microphone, you need to have the caller and you need to have the PC’s playback so that the caller can hear you, the playback of the computer but not himself. So you pick a channel off the mixer and let’s say, left. Let’s pick the left channel off the mixer and feed that to the phone hybrid.
The caller will only hear everything that’s in the left channel. He won’t hear what’s in the right channel. So on the mixer, the longer input you’ve chosen for the caller is panned the opposite way. So if he’s only hearing the left channel, you pan the caller on the mixer to the right. You can hear him in the right side of your headphones, he’s listening off the left, he doesn’t hear himself.
Hooking up a phone patch or a hybrid can become a complicated affair if you don’t understand the basic concepts. All I’m trying to do is give you those. The first concept of course is mix-minus. You can’t feed the caller back to himself. Now, a lot of this depends on what you’re using for a computer interface if it’s live and hot without the computers help or if it needs the computer before anything happens. Hopefully, you can find the way to split your microphone feed off to the computer as well as make it live into this little mixer that feeds the phone patch.
To recap simple concepts. Number one, mix-minus. Never feed the caller back to himself. Number two, you need to hear the caller and you need to hear the playback, of the PC and you need to hear your microphone. The caller needs to hear the PC’s playback, the microphone, but not himself.
Well, it’s not a step by step tutorial on how to hook up a phone patch because there are so many different combinations of hardware out there, but I try to give you the basic concepts of what’s going on there and I hope it was helpful to someone.
Thanks! It’s Colin Campbell from AffordableAnnouncer.com. Goodnight.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: The phone patch is a mystery to many people. Thank you, Colin for sharing some of your insight in this department of audio recording.
Matt Williams: VoxBox, sharing your audio feedback.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Today in the VOX Box, I’d like to play a sample of Hillary Huber’s Audie-nominated performance, sharing an excerpt from Cornelia Read’s “A Field of Darkness”.
Hillary Huber: Great. I had successfully terrorized an old junkie. “Mr. (Sambles) I am so sorry. I’ve obviously upset you and that’s not at all what I wanted to do.” I tried to make my voice softer. “Mr. (Sambles), you know something. Please, you should tell me.” I wanted to reassure him, tried reaching toward his nearest hand again. “Don’t you touch me,” he said. Voice low. “Mr. (Sambles), why won’t you talk about it? You weren’t worried about it back then. You weren’t afraid to tell people. What changed? What happened afterwards?” “So who told you? Who sent you hear?” “No one sent me here. I swear! If I knew any way to convince you of that.” “I want you to leave. Get out!” he said. “Now.” “Please.” “I am an old man but I am capable of forcing you to leave.” I stood up. Inside the drawer, I could see the spoon, the stub of candle, the tip of the syringe. “All right,” I said moving toward the door. “I’m sorry.”
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thank you, Hillary for making this recording available to us to air on VOX Talk. As Marc Cashman would say, break a lip Hillary!
To close this episode, I’d like to play a quick promo for the Mic & Me Workshop – again, we do have a webinar scheduled for Monday June 4th, so be sure to register if you’re interested.
Female: Together with Voices.com, we’d like to present Mic & Me. Mic time audition voice workout. This is your opportunity to get behind professional recording equipment and voice your heart out. Your instructor, Debbie Munro will guide you through the audition dos and don’ts no matter what your level. Choose from numerous scripts covering narration, commercials, animations, and more. Discover audition techniques that most won’t share, what the casting, agents, and directors look for, how to win them over and taking risks. How to overcome your fears, confidence, and so much more. Debbie was fortunate to be taught by some of the best and her 5 years spent in casting allows her to share tips and tricks that most don’t even know about. This exciting class will take you to that next level. All voice sessions will be recorded for you to take home. Go to Voices.com to register.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thank you for listening! We love hearing from you and thank you also for staying subscribed. If you haven’t yet subscribed to VOX Talk, you can do so through the iTunes Podcast Directory or subscribe to the RSS feed by email on the VOX Talk blog at blogs.voices.com/voxtalk/. I’m your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli. Take care and we’ll see you next week!
Links from today’s show:
The Audies Official Website
The Voice Acting Hub
Facebook.com
Elie Hirschman
Colin Campbell
Hillary Huber
Register for the Mic & Me VO Workshop in Toronto, June 9-10
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