Join us for a special live broadcast from the bustling floors of NAM 2024 in Las Vegas! This episode dives deep into the latest trends and technologies shaking up the audio industry. We’re bringing you the inside scoop straight from the heart of the action, featuring:

• Exclusive Interviews: Robert opens the bag in whats in SourceConnect four, which is set to revolutionize how we handle Atmos and multi-channel audio streaming.
• Product Spotlights: Discover cutting-edge products like the new vocal booths that promise unparalleled sound isolation, even on noisy show floors as their VP of MArketing Freddie Gaetely joins us for a chat.
• Tech Insights: Learn about the tech that’s driving audio innovation, including the latest in virtual set technology that could change film and TV production forever.
• Live Demos: Experience the power of Austrian Audio’s OC 707 microphone, designed to deliver exceptional sound clarity, even in challenging environments.

Whether you’re an audio professional or a tech enthusiast, this episode is packed with insights that you won’t want to miss!

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”… As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth…

https://tribooth.com/

And if you’re in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They’ve got a great range of top-shelf gear.. 

https://austrian.audio/

Hunter S Thompson

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Summary
In this podcast, George and Robert explore the latest audio technology and trends from the NAB show, including the launch of SourceConnect four, which enables end-to-end Atmos audio streaming. They also discuss the impressive soundproofing capabilities of their trade show booth and the advantages of prefabricated booths over custom-built studios with guest Freddie Galey. The hosts delve into the logistics and costs of shipping vocal booths internationally and highlight Vocal Booth’s diverse market applications. Additionally, they share their experience using the Austrian Audio OC 707 microphone for recording on the road and discuss the advancements in virtual production technology showcased at the expo. The conversation also touches on the extravagance of Las Vegas and the use of wireless technology to record podcasts in a crowded convention setting.

#AudioTech
#VocalBooths
#NABShow2023

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Timestamps
(00:00:00) NAB Highlights with George and Robert

(00:00:57) Streaming Atmos Audio with SourceConnect Four

(00:04:35) Soundproofing Magic at the Trade Show

(00:05:57) The Value of Prefab Booths

(00:11:26) Shipping Vocal Booths to Australia

(00:15:12) Vocal Booths: From Testing to Pets

(00:19:00) Building Recording Booths for Any Space

(00:22:12) Recording on the Road with Austrian Audio

(00:24:17) Virtual Production Advancements at NAB Show

(00:28:53) The Excess of Las Vegas

(00:29:55) Wireless Tech Powering Podcasts at Convention

(00:32:24) Wrapping Up and Staying Connected

Transcript
: Y’all ready? Beat history. Get started.

: Welcome.

: Hi. Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the pro audio suite.

: These guys are professional.

: They’re motivated.

: Thanks to Tribooth, the best vocal booth for home or on the rote. Voice recording and austrian audio making passion heard. Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements. And someone audio post Chicago, Darren Robbo Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney Tech to the Vo stars, George the tech Wittem from LA, and me, Andrew Peters. Voice over talent and home studio line up.

: Learner. Here we go.

: And welcome to another pro audio suite. Thanks to tributh, it’s your freedom. The golden handcuffs. And don’t forget the code TripaP 200 to get $200 off yours. And austrian audio making passion heard. Now, lots of things are being heard at NAB as we cross live to George and Robert.

: Yeah. We are here at NAB 2024. Hello, everyone. We’re in Vegas, baby.

: What happens in Vegas instead of.

: Well, not today.

: Yeah. I hope the sales keep on going outside of Vegas.

: That’s right. But we don’t want the money to stay in Vegas. We want it to go with us. We’re all here to make money. That’s the bottom line, we have to admit.

: It’s true. It’s very true, actually. We want to show our stuff. That’s what we really want to do. And then if it makes money, very.

: Gordon Gekko of you, I must say.

: Yeah, exactly. Very few people leave Vegas.

: I’d be buying everybody and dismantling their companies if I was Gordon Gekko, wouldn’t I?

: Yeah, something like that.

: Yeah. Greedy’s good. I’m not in on that name, but I’ll google it later.

: It’s that movie where he’s like the Wall street guy, and he just buys other companies and destroys them. And all the union people are like, no. And he’s like, fuck you, capitalism.

: Yeah. So we’re. I’m here because of vocal booth. Vocal booth.com. We’ve done a little story about them already and what I’ve done with them. But we’re here. I’m here because I wanted to hang out with them and meet all of their customers and help them make.

: Then it might be the right decision.

: And Robert is, of course, here with source elements, and he’s helping to promote the launch of SourceConnect four, which is doing some very impressive stuff.

: Yeah, we got nominated for our best in show award. Specifically, we made source connect four. The upper end version is going to be able to stream Atmos end to end. And that actually doesn’t sound like that impressive because it’s possible to stream multi channel audio right now. But the difference is source connect four will be able to stream all the bed, all those channels, all the objects which could be up to like hundreds and 128. And the metadata for all those objects so that the receiving side can render that locally for their system on the fly. And then you can do that for up to five connections simultaneously. So you could have a director monitoring an Atmos mix and the stage could be on a 25 speaker system. The director could have a twelve speaker system. The producer could log in from another location and just receive on binaural and maybe the writer logs in and they’re at home and they only have five. One. And all those things can be rendered locally for each system so the stage doesn’t have to dumb down or render down to the common denominator. Yeah, that was great.

: Mind bending stuff.

: I think we need to add a caveat to that though. You can do all that unless you’re on the australian NBN.

: Well if you have Andrew’s Internet then all you can do is half a channel.

: That’s right. South of Melbourne. Not so great. Sydney. No problem.

: It seems that way, doesn’t it?

: Yeah.

: But seriously though, is that dependent on your connection?

: Well yeah, if you’re streaming 128 channels of audio we figure on the realistic side you need at least five megs upload. But really each person and it can add up quite a bit. So we’re really talking about people with really good pipes. But the intended audio audience for a product like that tends to be mix stage for a feature film. They’re sitting on top of a ton of bandwidth. And then on the home side, most people’s download, I mean you can get a gig download without even thinking about it.

: Yeah.

: So yeah, it’ll take your average podcasters.

: Not going to use it, let’s be honest.

: Of course.

: Or you just need George’s cell phone that can get a gig from.

: Yeah, we can get on 5g here. I can get 1.2 gigabit download.

: Wow, wow, wow.

: Inside a building.

: I’m moving to the states, so I’m done.

: I think the towers are in the building.

: Yeah, no, there are definitely microcells inside this building. So it’s. Anyway, to try to paint the picture. We are in the middle of the heart of the central hall. It’s about as central as this show kind of gets. The main stage is about 150ft in front of us, right down the hall, which has tremendous sound levels. There’s music playing. There’s presenters. It’s all kinds of stuff going on and yet we can get away with recording in this noisy environment until, uh oh.

: Bing bong.

: Hello, we have a guest. Until that door opens, you can hear the noise.

: I think we should do that again.

: Yeah, yeah, let’s hear that again.

: Before and after without all the talking.

: Over. Take two. Take two.

: Silence.

: Open the door.

: Wow.

: And then close the door.

: That’s crazy. That’s insane.

: It is really good at a show floor because I’ve been to plenty of booth demonstrations at shows and it’s really a hard, like, this is, this is as bad as it gets. You know, if you were doing a sports thing and who knows what’s going on outside. Maybe not NASCAR racing, maybe not Formula one, but who knows, like a football game, you could probably get away with quite a bit with some stuff like this. Especially if it’s, you know, off, you know, place in the right place.

: Yeah.

: Well, we’ve got another folk, another folk here. Yeah. Freddie Galey, which we’ve spoken to before. You betcha. How you doing, Fred?

: I’m doing awesome.

: He’s the reason we’re all, at least I’m here. And this is the reason why we have this booth here.

: That’s why we have the booth.

: How many years of nab for you now?

: This would be. Oh, when was my first one? In 2012? 2013?

: I think so. So that was after we teamed up because guy was the first one that we.

: Yeah, we were. I just, you know what? My Calvin, our owner, just sent me a photo like a couple days ago and he happened to be the one that we were down there and I said, source elements here is 2015.

: Wow.

: Yeah, it’s not been a while.

: And.

: I’ve been coming to these spottily over the years, but I’m so glad that I came to this one because the, the quality of the, of the people that attend nab are top notch. I mean, these folks are not just creatives, but they’re like education directors, station directors, managers, just incredible high level people here and they understand the value of this thing. The first thing I’m always impressed by is when you tell them what this, this is a big booth we’re in, what, eight by ten?

: Yeah, this one’s an eight by ten platinum plus. Or a double wall with an extra layer of mass loaded vinyl.

: Yeah. And you know, if we were at a music convention, you might tell them the price and a sticker shock might roll over their face, but not at a show like this, because people understand the value of what this thing does.

: What’s something like this? Like 15,000? Yeah.

: So the basic one of this one would go out as seen here at an eight by ten. And the platinum double wall, including all the shipping be 23,000 shipped.

: And the shipping is like two, three.

: Grand on the chunk of it.

: It’s pretty stiff, but we pay for the shipping, so that’s your out the door price.

: That’s what I love. These guys price everything shipped in the US, which really takes away any of the mystification of what stuff credit really.

: Costs and, like, parts and materials and someone to build it. You’re spending that much money, at least, and then double it for the frustration.

: I’ve done a lot of custom studio designs and builds with contractors, and it’s excruciating.

: Yeah, excruciating.

: Like, I. One of the things I get hard to do so often is, should I build or buy? And the build argument is so strong now more than ever, because construction’s so damn expensive. It’s very frustrating to deal with contractors. Not that they’re bad people.

: They don’t understand the details of, like, I even did it now, and my contractor, I said, put these little rubber pads underneath the floor, blah, blah, blah. Do not screw the new subfloor to the old floor. What did they do?

: Yes.

: Thousand screws in it. By the time I got home from work, it’s like, it’s done now. My floor is coupled, and I didn’t want it coupled.

: You can spend gobs of money way more than this thing for something this size, and then have one mistake. One screw goes through his timber, short out the build, and it’s ruined.

: You ruin the whole.

: That’s a couple. Yeah, yeah.

: One of the things, too, that I’ve had clients and stuff in the past is they’ve called us. They were already pretty well down the road with somebody, and then they were like, I’m just gonna see about having some. A prefab. And we came in, they’re like, oh, you guys are a third the cost, and you can have it here this month. Yeah, game on. Let’s go. And then that was the other big thing for them, too, is they were like, hey, I’m not modifying my real estate, so this is not going to be something I have to try and resell. This pool house with a recording studio in. It’s like we just take it each.

: Part of the art, right?

: You have to include that cost, which is once you want to sell it, you’ve now modified some basement room to something that people don’t want, and then you got to put it back, and that’ll cost you at least half as much to undo it all.

: Yep. I know. Watching Joe Cipriano’s custom built studio I designed 15 years ago essentially be dismantled and destroyed because the people that bought the house don’t need it was rather heartbreaking.

: If there’s one way to devalue your property, build a studio.

: Unless you’re very lucky.

: Yeah. Unless you actually find you’re just lowering the pool of people that want to buy your house on resale. Seriously. I had a real estate agent, and I was talking about building my studio and this and that, and I was like, definitely do not get rid of that bathroom. But all in all, I was like, you’re devaluing your property by building this huge studio in it. It’s like, well, I’m not moving in my case, but if you don’t know or you’re building, you know, buying an investment house and you might be planning on selling it, building a studio in there will cost you at least as much as a prefab booth. It will cost you more to get rid of it, and you will be frustrated by the whole process, and it will take you longer.

: It’s a serious commitment. Yeah.

: What’s even wild, too, is that recently, schools have been getting into that, too. I had one school that built an entire second story out of an acoustic floor just to be able to put our booths in on top of that so that they didn’t have to later demo all the sheetrock and all the studs and everything. They’re like, let’s just put 17 big booths up here, make it look like it’s all one structure, wood veneered, and wire all the h vac and everything into it. But later, we can just get rid of it.

: Do you know one of the best tricks I’ve seen? You buy a booth, and then you just build the simplest wall in front of the booth, and the whole thing looks like it’s built into the house, and it’s only been one wall with one stud and one layer of drywall, and it looks like Joe Cipriano’s place, practically.

: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

: So, gents, down there in Australia.

: Yes.

: What do you guys have in mind? What do you want to know?

: I actually have a quick question about the booth you’re in, because every Aussie and every Englishman is asking, yeah, it’s great. 23 grand in the states. But if I want one down here, what’s shipping going to cost me, and I’m Bhop.

: Funny you brought that up.

: 50,000, 100,000 australian. What’s the conversion rate is off.

: It fluctuates.

: We’ve been seeing NAB is very international. So there are Qatar people from Qatar, Dubai, Europe. And you guys, did you ship something overseas not too long ago?

: Well, even just thinking about Australia is just this last year we did University of Sydney down there and we did. I mean, containers full down there and they did a whole room full of booths and stuff. So logistics are the big thing down there. So if it’s something going to Sydney or going to a port city, that’s not too big of a deal. We have really good air options, we have really good freight options for the ocean options as well. And if we do a full container down there, it’s really easy. We can even get that dropped off at the place and then it’s almost like having a trailer.

: So we’re talking group orders. Maybe get together and do a group order or something, then fill a container.

: Yeah, exactly. You know, we can always use somebody consolidating stuff over there.

: So the shipping, the 23,000 for this booth shipped, that’s continuous us states or is that. Yep.

: That’s going to be anywhere where we don’t have to cross borders. Because then once we do get into, like, Canada, of course, we’ve got all the tariffs and fees and stuff that has to go in there and somebody has to be grabbing it on the other side. It’s usually. It’s funny how it’s really not sometimes that much more. Sometimes it’s like an extra $150 on our freight side to get it over there, but on. And that’s if they’re taking care of all the tariffs and all the import duties. We can do that. We can act as brokers for people too, though, and make it pretty easy. But again, it just depends on the level of.

: It’s a really world market now. I mean, we are doing build outs in the US where the windows and doors come from, China. This is not unusual. This is all happening right now. So things moving between continents is not nearly. Now, I know there was a little problem besides missiles. Yeah. ICB vocal booth. Intercontinental ballistic vocal booth.

: I’m sorry, it just crossed my mind. I don’t know what.

: Filters. Filters, yeah. So, yeah, no, it’s not unheard of. Would you buy maybe a little one off, four by four? I don’t know. It depends on. Because you’re sharing a container when you’re doing like, one booth. Yeah.

: And we do international crates, and so we can get it priced out just for a crate. The hard thing is that that is even a fluctuating market. So we’ve seen, all of a sudden it’d be dirt cheap, like, where we can get something down there for $1,200 shipping, but then we’ll see it, like, just absolutely spike. Like, of course, we saw weird things during the whole COVID pandemic, like ships that were just sitting out there with stuff rotting on it. So it was just astronomically up and down, so you never really knew. But we do really quick turnarounds on quotes, so that’s something that it’s all up front, like, you know, order the boot and then find out how much shipping’s gonna be once you guys, when somebody’s happy with the way that the quote is, they’re ready to go ahead and move to the next level. We’re on the phone with our logistics.

: Guys and we got it done.

: So AP’s just texted me, he’ll take a container load, please.

: Right.

: Right away.

: When you’re all done with the container, you can just line it with double wall and make a booth out of the container.

: Maybe we should line it with other things to pay for it.

: Yes.

: There you go.

: Exactly. I think this just became evidence.

: Hello, ASIO, if you’re listening. Yes.

: Yeah. So what’s your biggest market? Is it people like myself, like a voice over talent? Or is it more studios, as in, you know, commercial studios?

: I’m guessing it’s broadcasters and production companies.

: Yeah, it’s funny. Our biggest market, probably. I mean, if we wanted to talk just dollar wise, it’s going to be education and corporate, even testing. So those are the biggest ones that are getting really big boosts. So some of these will be 16 by 32ft and nine or 10ft tall. Some companies, like Medtronics or Philips, respiratronics or something, they’ll be doing really big production stuff and want to move all their testing stuff inside because they’re in a bigger factory. And so this is something that they can pop up right in a factory, bolt to the floor in there, and have a whole way of stuff coming in and out.

: Bolt it to the floor. You’re gonna couple it and then you’re gonna get all those vibrations through the.

: Yeah.

: And so again, what they’re all about is they don’t need an anechoic chamber, but what they need to do is have all that equipment out there and bring it down to a level that’s good enough for their testing inside. And so even inside of that big booth will be other booths.

: Oh, wow.

: Yeah. So it’s a big crazy thing. But again, to bring a level down to another level and to another level also, we’ve been doing a whole lot of stuff with Apple and Amazon and stuff too, and their testing departments. And that’s just one of the most consistent things that we have.

: And then what stuff do they need?

: A big thing that we designed for them is custom testing enclosures. And so this will be stuff to test all of their small. I don’t know what my NDA can let me say, but you all know.

: What Apple devices, that they all know.

: What Apple branded devices about the size of an iPad or the size of generally portable things. Portable. So a lot of stuff in the testing facilities where they’ll want to stack up like maybe 15 or 20 of these and have run localizations on all of those and not have them talk to each other. So they don’t need like an insane level of isolation, but enough to where they’re just not straight talking to each other or maybe even like speaker arrays or weird things on the inside and then even up to that. So, like, booths that are this size that they can go in and then have stuff kind of bounce around even. We do a lot of stuff like in the broadcasting world and stuff like the Nielsen Corporation that the Nielsen ratings and stuff too, where they build living room sets inside of our booth. So they have big 16 by 32 sets.

: Wow.

: And they’re all dressed out and they have robotics arms and stuff, but they can build all those living room sets, put all their listening devices in there and then run all the tests around. And they have, like, I can’t remember, they run like 32 of their own little tv stations in the back. And so they can broadcast to their own little closed circuit. Not closed circuit, but just a very small power thing and then test how this works across all of their tv stations and what it sounds like in this living room and what sounds like in that living room and if this thing is working and stuff. So again, that’s the crazy thing about vocal booth, is that we never know who’s gonna call and stuff. So we do get the people that, you know. Yeah, I’m unfortunate.

: I rarely say no.

: It sounds like, you know, yeah, we pretty much say no to very little.

: Do parents ever call and they just wanna put their kids in the booth, actually.

: Okay. So recently I did get a call and somebody wanted one for. They wanted one of our ant boxes that would perfectly fit a dog crate. And so they could put their dog in there because the dog had anxiety issues and he could be put in there. And we have ventilation and everything. And that crate slid right in there. And the dog could sleep in a nice, very quiet environment when they went to work. And then we had later one that somebody bought a three carat diamond for their parrot. So that thing was driving people crazy and the neighbors crazy when they go to work. And so they both. And I don’t know. I mean, you don’t ask questions.

: Polly’s got a booth.

: We just don’t say no.

: Back to this. Back to the dog crate one, though. It’s school holidays here, so I’ll take four of those, please.

: Absolutely.

: And they stack nicely.

: Yeah, yeah. Nice one.

: What, the children or the boots?

: The serial killer. Did the serial killer want an environment to do his thing in?

: A less eating Las Vegas hotel food for too many days in a row.

: Haven’t had that customer yet.

: There was somebody who wanted their entire bedroom put in one.

: Oh, wow.

: What were they getting up to in there then, I wonder?

: I don’t think.

: I didn’t ask, but I don’t think it was all about what kind of sound was coming from the inside, but from the outside, so that’s okay. They actually, it was one of the writers on Jimmy Fallon’s show. And they were like, I get done writing after the last show is done and we get too busy and I might not get home until 08:00 in the morning and done writing, and then I’m in Manhattan and this is a nightmare stuff. So sent a booth, and from our booths, they can all be built from the inside out. They have nice ventilation and everything. So he just built it right into his bedroom and then threw all the bedroom set and everything aside.

: That’s very interesting. Your boots can be built from the inside out. You can put the floor in a corner and you’re not screwed. You can put it in the corner. You don’t have to, like, build it in the middle of the room and then shove it in the corner.

: That’s huge.

: I have built enough booths that that’s a big deal. Like, I didn’t even realize that. That’s really.

: That’s huge.

: Yeah, we put all the stuff on the inside because so many places you want to maximize your, you know, your. Maximize your space. And so some people will even call, they just have an alcove like that. That’s a big thing with corporations stuff, too. They’re like, we’ve been given the area where the printer used to be. And that’s our recording studio now. And so, yeah, no problem. As long as you get there from the front, build all the sides, and even with really short ceilings, we can build it right up to within, like, two inches of the ceiling and then slide light in, you know, the ceiling panels so that you don’t have to go up and above and lay them down and then put that final wall in there. And that’s a.

: That’s a really big deal. I mean, building booths is, you know, building your own built in booth is really frustrating, but it’s still a task. It was.

: It.

: I mean, it’s gonna, like. I’m sure you guys can put this thing together in, what, like, 2 hours or something, but if your first time on this, you’re gonna spend the day building this thing.

: Yeah.

: At least the day. How good you are with instructions and how far it is you have to bring the panels or whatever. It just depends on the people and.

: How it’s like going to Ikea.

: I was just there yesterday.

: Very heavy Ikea, insulated with Romo.

: Okay.

: So funny enough, Ikea has actually become one of our clients, as last time. And we just sent him one of those little wrenches.

: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

: We seem to have lost our Allen key.

: Yeah, that’s right.

: Well, you’ve got a few leftovers, like.

: Yeah, yeah.

: What do I do with my missed.

: Yeah, yeah, totally.

: On that wall.

: You guys don’t mind, I’ve got. I’ve got some clients and stuff to see out here, too, but it’s great talking to you guys down there. And always a pleasure. So, Freddie, thank you for letting us enjoy.

: Cheers.

: Love having these guys around, and it’s been fun.

: Thanks, Freddie. Cheers, man.

: Thanks.

: Cheers.

: Now listen to the door. Here we go.

: Let’s hear it again.

: Seriously, it’s good.

: That’s very good.

: It is good.

: That mic is doing good, too. From the distance, it’s picking him up really clearly. It’s hard to tell how it really is when you’re the speaker.

: Yes.

: But when you turn it on him, it’s good.

: For most of you are probably only hearing the show. This is really an audio show today, and we are using the austrian audio OC 707. I promised I would make this my on the road mic.

: It’s a tighter polar pattern than the. Than the OC eight, I think. Right?

: I think so. Like, I’m. So we’re. Right now, Robert and I are equidistantly across from the mic, and it’s still getting both of us. But it’s a little more diffuse. Right? It’s not as focused.

: It’s got a good presence. Like, that’s even more presence. I hear that. And that’s just rotating the mic, like, 30 degrees or something.

: So very cool. It’s definitely not. It’s not a wide cardioid. It’s a more narrow, maybe almost hyper.

: I think it might be hyper. I don’t know, but it’s. I think it’s doing well.

: Yeah. Well, it’s weird, because in this booth, we have other mics. We have some earthwork ethoses, and we have some other gear. But I opted just to go single mic handheld, which sounds old school and weird, but the nice thing about that is I can essentially engineer this. So I’m controlling and mixing manually. This is an old school thing, but I’m literally mixing the three of us. And because we have one mic, we don’t worry about fading and crosstalk. We can get away from the glass. That’s. This booth has a lot of glass because it’s all about showing off. And, yeah, it’s working out really well.

: It’s funny you should talk about mics, though, because the file I sent to you, that was done in the back of the car with the austrian audio, Cc eight, I sent to one of the engineers at big radio network here. And he said, what mic is it, and where do you record? I told him, CC eight with the mic four pro in the back of my car. And his reply was, nuts. Absolutely nuts. He couldn’t believe it.

: Right?

: Yeah.

: So from now on, you’re doing all your sessions from your car?

: That’s right.

: Yeah, exactly.

: Exactly.

: Well, I gotta say. So I don’t know how much time you’ve had to really see the joint. I’ve only walked one lap of the central hall briefly, because, honestly, I’ve had so much to do here, I’ve not had a chance.

: I mean, I walked one row down, so just the aisle. We got a pretty good boot spot. So we’re on, like, a main aisle, but I just got to go all the way down and back. And I did see one thing that was really impressive. So do you know what a video wall is?

: Yeah.

: Like an led screen. It bolts together and is modular.

: Not quite. More like, okay. You used to shoot stuff on green screen. Why shoot on green screen when we already have the whole background shot?

: Oh, yes.

: So now they have this thing. It’s a $4,000 box, which is like. This is like million dollar shit. And now it’s like $4,000 box. You can build the whole environment virtually. Or if you go through a bigger process, you can shoot it all from multiple angles. It’ll stitch together. Then you shoot it with an iPhone or some camera that has the same thing that you use for VR. So wherever you move the camera, the video behind you moves in the exact same way. So you get the same angle. And all the parallax. Not only that, the thing controls all the lights that you set up around it. So if you turn it to a place where you say, this is dark, the lights will go down and.

: Whoa.

: Yeah, well, this is million dollar stuff. Like, I don’t know exactly how much the real deal stuff is, but this is like $4,000, I think.

: I remember seeing it here the last four, five, six years ago, and it was extremely, like, science fiction and extremely expensive, and it’s. Now it’s accessible. So what do they call it? Virtual sets, right.

: Well, it’s more than a virtual set, but yes, it’s a virtual set, but now it’s. I thought they call it a video wall or something, and it just negates the need for. Because a virtual set, you’re sitting there just looking at a green screen. But on this thing, the actors, like, running around doing this thing, and they look behind, and if there’s a character, they can make eye contact with the screen. They can act and feel it much more than pretending that they’re talking to a green screen and imagining what’s there. They can focus their eyes in the right places.

: Right? Yeah.

: Well, there’s a couple of guys I know here who set up a thing called Dreamscreen, which you can google, and that’s the same thing. But they’ve got massive sets with the whole back of the set is giant video wall. And they’ve shot a lot of films there. In fact, they were up for Metropolis, the remake of Metropolis, the Fritz Lang film.

: Yeah, it’s.

: Oh, wow.

: Except bring your own screen.

: Yeah.

: But they said it will work with projectors, so you can stitch together multiple projectors and fill a, you know, who knows how big of a wall.

: Well, they did a. They did a big thing here. One of the first things they did was a series called fires. It was all about the bushfires drama. And they, of course, could actually, you know, have the. Have the fires actually happening with the actors on set, on the screens. So the actor, even though they had, like, the, you know, the car there was on fire or whatever, they had blah, blah, blah. But they had the screens in the background so the actor felt like they were actually in the middle of a bushfire.

: Whoa.

: Wow.

: Yeah. This is the kind of thing you see at nab. It’s all the traditional stuff, like mics, camera booms. Um, but you’re seeing way more of this virtual type production. There’s. There are apparently 150 different classes here on AI stuff alone, because there’s a huge amount of education that comes along with it. We’re just. We’re just here for the expo. You know, we’re here to sell. But there’s a huge education component.

: I mean, that’s. That’s the problem with being an exhibitor, is that you can’t do it. You can’t see all this stuff. It’s like, it takes an nab. You can probably do in a. It’ll take you at least two days or three days to really see everything.

: And your feet are gonna kill you.

: Yeah. CES is insane. You’ll just shoot yourself when you’re done. But as an exhibitor, you get to stand on your feet all day. But you only get to see your own stuff because.

: Yeah, so. So I haven’t seen anything too revolutionary. There’s another company here that does soundproof windows, which I’ve known these guys forever called, literally soundproof windows. And they have an entire Conex shipping style container that they’ve converted into a quiet space so they can show off all their doors and windows. And it is damn impressive. As quiet as it is in here, takes it down another ten to 15 decibels.

: That’s. That’s like a whole other level.

: That’s, you know, that’s probably a hundred thousand plus install.

: Yeah. You’re not shipping that to a residential place, and you’re not building that on your own in a day.

: This thing’s on a. This thing’s on a flatbed truck. It’s trailered in, and they’ve used it in am show and stuff like that. You know, so it’s. I’m staying a whole extra day tomorrow just so I can start seeing things that I haven’t been able to see. Yeah.

: Because if you lose weight. No, it’s impossible to lose weight here. That’s my problem, actually.

: You know, a six dollar order of onion rings at the Westgate is enough to feed like a starving family.

: Yeah. And they don’t even talk about the buffets.

: I ate a $30 omelet this morning because that’s. It was a buffet. And all I wanted was a damn. Yeah, that’s Vegas.

: Right.

: Well, let me tell you. I mean, we just had the Sydney Royal Easter show here, which is like our big carnival of the year, I guess in Sydney, a cup of lemonade was dollar 18.

: What? Oh, my gosh.

: Yeah. $18 for a cup of lemonade?

: Oh, my gosh.

: That’s ridiculous.

: Well, the other thing I want to mention is that, you know, again, we’ve been talking about source elements and their new product. We’re using Nexus right now as our communications portal. So we’re all communicating real time over Nexus, and we’re using source Connect 3.9 because that’s the version we have currently installed. Third four just dropped, but we’re using that. And the amazing thing is, we’re doing all that on my laptop, which is running on a battery I don’t even have plugged in. We’re using a mic port pro, which is also running on batteries. And we’re using a hotspot on a phone connecting all this via wireless to a mobile, you know, a mobile data connection. And we’re doing all which.

: That is mind blowing because I’ve been to so many of these conventions where usually you have to come in with three separate cell phone connections and you do what’s called bonding them into one. When you get 100,000 people here with their cell phones, the towers just bog down to a crawl and you have to brute force it with three parallel connections. You’re just doing it like a pedestrian turn on my hotspot.

: Yeah, yeah. If you’re on Verizon here, you’re in good shape. If you’re on t mobile, you’re pretty well screwed, because Verizon, which I should.

: Mention the source elements booth, is using a Verizon connection, which they were very gracious to provide us with. And we hooked up and it was a gig. And I was like, gigabit.

: Yeah.

: Gigabit connections on wireless.

: Wow.

: So we’ve been just leveraging all this technology to do shows from here. We’ve been recording from this booth. I’ve done. This is my fourth podcast since I’ve gotten here, and it’s just incredible we can pull off these days. And, you know, and by the way.

: Everyone, I like to point out that this, in a show floor that’s really loud, is much better than most of the audio I give.

: Yes, indeed.

: This is a true fact. Actually, talking about the amount of bandwidth you’ve got there. I’m just looking at my hamster, and he’s giving me the hairy eyeball saying, give me a break. I’m puffed out.

: Yeah.

: Yeah. So it’s been great, guys. So I’m watching a ton of people outside the booth that are, like, circling. They want to come in and they’re.

: Going to start huffing and puffing and.

: Like, they’re being tutting and rolling their eyes. Is that what’s going on?

: We’ll put a. Yeah, no, no, no. There’s just people that want to come in, so.

: And I need to go huff and huff.

: You do HR puff and stuff.

: Exactly.

: That’s right.

: All right, we’re out.

: Yes.

: Well, that was fun. Is it over?

: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribers and austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging with tech support from George the Tech Wittem. 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, g’day. Drop us a note at our website, theproaudiosuite.com.

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