May 22, 2012: SOURCE-CONNECT HOW-TO WEBINAR

Learn from the guy who supports the TOP talent in VO!

May 22, 2012: SOURCE-CONNECT HOW-TO WEBINAR / George Whittam

ATTEND TO LEARN:

• How Source-Connect connects you with clients real-time when recording
• How to configure and use Source-Connect (many versions)
• How to use Source-Connect when traveling
• How to evaluate whether to rent or buy
• How to replace current ISDN and bridging

And your registration includes a full recording of the live webinar.

Tuition: Just $39, including full recording.

Sessions:

Date	Time	Price
5/22/2012	9:00 PM EDT	$39.00	Register

Are you using Source-Connect - or thinking about it - to connect real-time with your voice over clients as you record in your home studio? 

Created by Source Elements LLC, Source-Connect delivers broadcast-quality audio using T1, cable or DSL Internet connections. And it's growing in popularity as an alternative to the more expensive ISDN system that requires hardware, subscription fees and telephone line charges.
 
But: how do you set up, configure and use Source-Connect properly? Are there limitations? Can it follow you as you travel?

These and many more questions will be answered on Tuesday night, May 22, in the Source-Connect How-To Webinar, led by home audio expert George Whittam.

An authority on the installation and configuration of Source-Connect, Whittam will describe and demonstrate onscreen the present state of this technology. He'll also discuss its future, and help newcomers to this service decide whether to take the plunge.

FOR INSTANCE, YOU WILL LEARN ...

• What Source-Connect is, and what it isn't
• About Source-Connect's many versions
• How Source-Connect functions for you
• About iLok - what's that?
• How to replace your current ISDN and bridging
• How to use Source-Connect when you're traveling
• About advanced network configuration
• Whether to buy or rent
• And much more.

Plus, personally ask questions during a live Q&A.

Tuition: Just $39, including full recording.

Sessions:

Date	Time	Price
5/22/2012	9:00 PM EDT	$39.00	Register

MEET GEORGE WHITTAM ...

Based in Los Angeles, George Whittam is the owner of Eldorado Recording Services - a full-service studio consulting company - and he's popularly known as the home studio consultant to the stars.  Whittam was the personal home studio consultant to the late great Don LaFontaine, and co-founder and designer of the Don LaFontaine Voice Over Lab at the SAG Foundation in Los Angeles.

He is also co-host of the popular Sunday night Ustream TV show East-West Audio Body Shop(EWABS), featuring home studio audio advice and guest interviews.

Tuition: Just $39, including full recording.

Sessions:

Date	Time	Price
5/22/2012	9:00 PM EDT	$39.00	Register

ISDN USERS: It's time to get a backup system

OK, some of you may see this is a thinly veiled way to boost sales of equipment or software.  If you can't be convinced otherwise, then stop reading now.  

Now, the rest of you smart people, here's my reasoning.

ISDN has been considered for over 15 years the gold standard for a voice actor's home studio connection to their client's studios.  When it was developed the Internet existed, but we had no broadband access in our homes.  At that time ISDN technology provided the fastest possible data connection mere mortals could access.  Along came audio codecs, hardware devices that take analog audio and squash it down to digital information that will fit down a 128kb/s pipe.  It worked well, it was state of the art, and many commercial and broadcast facilities invested in it.  

For 10 years ISDN was king of the mountain, with no chance of being knocked off.  But in the last five years high speed Internet access has become more ubiquitous, and new technologies have come along to dethrone the king.  The advantage of using an Internet based system has always been flexibility and cost, but not reliability.  It appears that the balance of reliability is starting to tip from ISDN to Internet.  

My theory is based on a few factors.  As of late more and more of my ISDN using clients are complaining of stability issues, dropouts, horrible blasts of noise, and increasing support challenges and costs for installation and monthly service.  The TelCos, in the Los Angeles area Verizon and AT&T, clearly don't have ISDN users high on the priority list.  Ordering the service is becoming impossible in some areas, finding someone to talk to when service outages occur is painful, and monthly rates only go up.   Call at TelCo to order ISDN and you'll see where the acronym's interpretation "I Still Don't Know" came from.  It's just not profitable enough for TelCos to promote the use of ISDN any longer, and it shows.  

ISDN requires special systems to be in place outside of the user's building.  It appears in the wall like a standard phone line, but what happens once that copper wire reaches the pole is completely unique to this system.  There are network cards and switches that have been in service for many years, some of them completely dormant for extended periods due to a lack of user base.  At least half of the orders I've had placed for ISDN have needed repair immediately upon fullfilment to be functional.  These systems just get older and more neglected over the years, while the Internet backbone receives the focus and funding.  It also seems more commonplace and accepted that ISDN codecs need to be rebooted and "futzed with" to get a reliable "lock" with the other user.  We just get used to this over time, but there really should be no reason we have to deal with this.  

Those of you who would be seriously put out if you lost ISDN service for more than a few hours, I seriously recommend putting a backup system in place.  The technology that has done the most to establish itself in the voiceover industry as an ISDN alternative is Source Connect.  For under $700 with iLok USB key you can install this software on any of your Windows or Mac computers.  There are no monthly charges, no install charges, no long distance, and no per-minute fees when you connect to another Source Connect user. Even if you don't use it for 6 months, that one time you use it to bail out an ISDN fail will pay for itself immediately.   If you are lucky enough to work with a Source Connected studio, be prepared for how incredible it sounds compared to ISDN!  

There are a few catches to using Source Connect to replace ISDN.  First, it can't connect directly to an ISDN codec.  Internet and ISDN are completely independent of each other and don't speak the same language.  If the client you are working with only has ISDN, you'll need to employ the services of a "bridge".  One such service dubbed Out of Hear, created by DG Entertainment engineer Steve Nafshun, does nothing but ISDN bridging.  His studio has four Telos Zephyrs connected to four ISDN lines, and multiple Source Connect accounts always at the ready to make your connection.  Steve assigns you a pair of ISDN numbers to give your clients and agents, and a correlated Source Connect account.  If your ISDN service goes on the blink, or you want to travel away from the confines of ISDN availability, call Steve and he'll patch you through.  It's seamless for your ISDN using clients, only increasing the latency or delay by second or so.   

Second, it does require at least a 300 kb/s upload and download Internet connection of good quality.  While WIFI can work in the best of circumstances, Ethernet is highly recommended.  Some hotels may only provide WIFI, so this can put you at greater risk for signal drops.  Configuring the network may be required in some cases for a trouble free connection, but I've found it usually can make a connection without special setup like port mapping.    In my point of view these are small prices to pay for a system that can be used anywhere in the world, with only a mic, USB interface, and lightweight laptop computer.  

One of my clients, Pat Duke, decided to forgo installing ISDN completely when he relocated to Los Angeles a few years ago.  Check out this video of his recent appearance on East West Audio Body Shop, as he describes his home studio and experiences using Source Connect.

Macbook Air: It's for real

When the original Macbook Air was released, I was crushed. 

I thought it might be the ultimate VO2Go laptop computer, but due to several shortcomings, primarily the inclusion of a single USB port, it was a completely unsuitable, let alone over priced.  Steve Jobs surprised everyone with the announcement of the re-invention of the Macbook Air, and let me tell you, this time Apple got it right.  This truly is the netbook that we were promised never to see from Apple.   OK, that's not entirely true, but let me explain...

When netbooks came onto the scene, their small size, affordable price, and solid state drives made them winners.  I quickly adopted the use of netbooks for VO2Go kits because beyond size, they performed adequately for the needs of most voice-actors.  Netbooks do have shortcomings, mainly in the lousy keyboard layout and noisy fan that spools up quickly to handle almost any load on the tiny Intel Atom processor.   Dell's Mini 10 came the closest to perfection, when they briefly produced a model with zero moving parts:  No spinning hard drive, no fan, total silence.  But for whatever reason, perhaps the relentless price battle for cheap netbooks, they removed the option to include an SSD (solid state drive).   Even with a spinning drive, they are still a great option and operate nearly silently, but battery life and performance suffers.

To be fair, the Macbook Air is in a different class than a true netbook.  By definition netbooks almost unanimously utilize an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz single core processor, a maximum of 2GB of memory (1GB typical), and a 160GB harddrive.  The MBA's entry level model has an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4Ghz processor and 2GB of memory, with the option to upgrade to 4GB, the critical two USB ports, an mini displayport, a webcam, 802.11 b/g/n WIFI (the fast kind), and a 64GB SSD.  Beyond that, it runs the (what I consider superior) Mac OS operating system, and is built with the quality that Apple is known for.  It's thin and incredibly light, but doesn't feel flimsy at all.  The keyboard is no smaller than that on any other Macbook, and the trackpad is large and easy to use.   It lacks an internal DVD drive, like all netbooks, and in most cases you won't miss it.  If you do something as nutty as install Windows 7 (yep, I did), get the DVD Superdrive from Apple for $80 and make life easy.  

What really blew me away when I finally got my hands on one setting it up Bill Ratner was the snappy performance!  While on paper it doesn't sound all that impressive for a $1000 laptop, don't let that CPU speed fool you.  Ghz is only a part of the equation, which became evident when I first booted the laptop from off to desktop in under 20 seconds.  While RAM (memory) also plays another large role in performance, it still takes a long time to load all of the operating system and applications into RAM from the comparitively snail-paced hard drive.  The SSD reads and writes bits of information VERY fast, and makes the MBA in day to day use feel like a much higher spec'd Macbook Pro or iMac. 

I can go out on a limb and say that you could use this as your every day computer at home and on the road.  Yes, an 11" screen is pretty darn tiny for office use, but just connect a 24" LCD display for $200, problem solved.  All you need is the mini displayport to HDMI adapter and HDMI cable and you're set.  Store all of your audio on an external USB drive, 1 TB units are under $100, and storage is not a problem.  You get the best of both worlds with the lightning fast SSD for the OS and cavernous size of the USB hard drive for audio.  It also wakes from sleep almost instantly, like an iPad, and can use any USB audio device, NOT like an iPad.  I was surprised to see that it DOES have a fan, but you can only hear it if you place your ear directly to the vent by the screen hinge.  Brilliant.  

 

In the case of the system I setup for Bill Ratner, we loaded Windows 7 with the Bootcamp utility.  This gives him the option to boot the Macbook Air into Mac OS or Windows 7.  The ONLY reason to do this would be to run a special app that must have a native Windows OS running, AudioTX Communicator being the culprit here.  Bill likes having options and redundancy, so he's got that covered running ATX in Windows and Source Connect Pro or Twisted Wave in Mac OS.  With a Sprint 4G USB modem installed, Bill can work wirelessly anywhere via Source Connect or ATX, depending on the data speeds he can get at the location.  With a Shure X2u in one USB port, and a USB hub in the other carrying the load of the modem, iLok dongle, and USB mouse, the Macbook Air doesn't break a sweat. 

Special thanks goes out to Beau Weaver, our voice-over geek guru in the field, who gave me his full report on his Macbook Air experiences within days of its release to the public.  It wouldn't have been as brain-dead easy (and risk-free) to setup for Bill if not for Beau's first-hand experiments and thorough report. 



Source Connect Standard 3.5 Standalone beta preview

Source Elements announced a beta release of their Source Connect Standard software. The most affordable professional audio codec available is now the easiest to use.  Users with a Standard license can have the same ease of use that the Pro license holders enjoy.  It is a completely stand-alone application that doesn't run within Pro Tools or Source Elements Desktop.  

All Source Connect Standard license owners can get a beta test temporary iLok license from Source Elements to give it a test drive.  Here's the link (you'll need to log into your account first).

I've given it a try and find it works great and is super simple to use.  Here is a quick video demonstrating Source Connect Standard 3.5.

Watch the tour:

SourceConnect Standard 3.5beta preview from George Whittam on Vimeo.

The audio device used by SCS 3.5 is set by the Mac OS System Preferences panel.  Whatever device is set for input and output will be used by the application.  It doesn't get simpler than this!  I recommend Rouge Amoeba's SoundSource utility for fast access to sound level control, right from the menu bar.  

So give it a try an let us know how it goes!

iLok users (Source Connect owners, that's you), listen up

Sorry about the downer message, but this is important.

I've been involved in selling Source Connect licenses for nearly four years now.  It was bound to happen but the first client of mine to have his gear stolen is now in he process of replacing everything, including his Source  Connect license.

I've mentioned the "Zero Downtime" program of iLok in documentation to many users, with the misconception that it would protect users in the case of a lost or stolen iLok.  Unfortunately, this is just not the case.  The function of Zero Downtime is to get you back up and running as quickly as possible with a replacement, temporary license you can download to a new ilok.  That is all.

So what is my point?  If you insure your recording equipment, include the cost of all licenses you store on the ilok.  You must understand that once the license is downloaded from your ilok.com account to the iLok USB dongle, that license ONLY exists on the iLok dongle.  If you have a $650 Source Connect Standard license, that iLok is now worth $50 plus $650.  If you have Source Connect Pro license, the iLok is worth $50 plus $1500, and so on. 

If your iLok is lost or stolen, your licenses went along with it.  When you contact the software vendors from whom you've purchased licenses, each will tell you the same thing.  We're sorry about your misfortune, here is what the replacement license will cost.  They consider their software license no different than a physical piece of recording gear, like a microphone.  They take their intellectual property seriously, and they survive by preventing the dis-honest from committing theft of their software, which everyone knows has never been more of a problem.