Voice Over Commercial Auditions Casting and Information

Sound Expert Mark Holden Talks to Tracy Pattin (Part 3) – with written transcript

February 25th, 2010 Posted in Audio Podcast

For 16 years, Mark Holden has been immersed in the world of sound as a recording engineer for TV, radio and live radio plays for LA Theatre Works to producing for the music industry and now opening his own recording studio in West Hollywood, The Invisible Studios. Mark is truly a sound expert. (So much so he can hear dogs barking in Eagle Rock when he�s at his studio in West Hollywood 10 miles away!) In this podcast, Mark talks about ISDN, phone patch and Skype for recording voice over jobs.

Right+Click to Download Podcast (8.7 MB)

Click below for the previous episodes of this podcast:

Podcast part 1 Home Studio Set up

Podcast part 2 Microphones

-Tracy Pattin

{Intro Music}

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Tracy: This is Part Three of my interview with Mark Holden. To hear parts one and two go the previous week’s podcast. Well let’s switch over as we kind of wrap up here. There is so much ISDN going on now.

Mark: Well we are ISDN ready here.

Tracy: Oh yes, okay you are ready for everything here.

Mark: We have an ISDN box.

Tracy: You don’t rent out for auditions but for actual projects.

Mark: Yeah, well I mean you know voice over demo’s things like that, professionally done voice over demos or ISDN sessions if you book a client and you need ISDN that kind of stuff.

Tracy: Well you have got a great studio. Well let’s talk about home ISDN setups because I know people have those now. Are they necessary, in the phone patch and all these and Skype and I also want to talk to you about Skype. So let’s start with the ISDN and phone patch and just briefly explain to people if they don’t know the difference what is the difference?

Mark: Well, I mean an ISDN is basically a way to, its sort of old technology but it still works really well and people use it all the time it has been around for several years. But basically it’s a way to connect to a studio directly or a client directly. So what’s needed for that ISDN is very expensive thing to get into for home studios because the boxes the ISDN boxes I believe start at around $3000. And then of course if your or whoever your client is or the studio your working with needs to have a similar ISDN box and then they have to be able to link to each other. It’s kind of cool it sort of like you just appear in the studio even though you’re not in the studio you are just at home doing your ISDN in the studio. As long as you have a nice room and stuff to the studio it sounds to them like you are in their studio. So it is just a way to do that. ISDN’s only something that people who are very working do in a home studio because it is very costly and I think it is about $100 a month for the service as well.

Tracy: Wow, Okay

Mark: It might be like $50 for the home service.

Tracy: So ideally its better to pretty much use a studio to have a client and work out something.

Mark: Yeah, to my knowledge the only people who have a home ISDN box are people who have been working in VO for years and years.

Tracy: Well like the late Don LaFontane who makes millions and millions and millions.

Mark: Yeah, I did several sessions with him while he was at home but he sort of had it down to a science. It is a little more complicated than the average person and expensive than the average person.

Tracy: And did he operate it from his home? Or did he have somebody there?

Mark: From what I understand, I never met him in person when I work with him you would just talk back to him like he was in your studio but from what I understand he had a uh, correct me if I am wrong I think he had a nice booth in his basement area or his downstairs area and he had he used a really nice microphone he used a Manly Reference microphone which is about a $2500 microphone and that was sort of and that was the Don LaFontane sound you know.

Tracy: And then did he operate the ISDN box himself?

Mark: Yeah once you get it installed and somebody comes in and shows you how to do it its fairly simple. But actually you always called in to Don he didn’t call your studio you called his studio. So he basically, if he were to open up the door at 10 o’clock and that was his booking you would already be online talking to him. And he would walk in and say “hello” and that was it, it would be one take and then we were done.

Tracy: Okay and so phone patch just give us an explanation of what that is if you could.

Mark: A phone patch is just a way that radio stations and studios do interviews via the phone and all it really does is it connects a phone line into your audio system so um, the only you wouldn’t ever use that to do auditions or things like that because it is phone fidelity and phone quality.

Tracy: And you can tell.

Mark: Yeah, but it patches that in, if you are doing a lot of interviews and things like that it can be very helpful.

Tracy: So essentially it is for the director, so that they are in the studio recording and you are listening to their direction or they can be on the phone not in a studio you can be recording in a studio.

Mark: Oh that type of phone patch.

Tracy: You could do that as well.

Mark: Yeah that is another aspect of phone patch. When you are not recording an interview, if you have a phone patch let’s say you have a client who is Seattle, Washington or something and you are down here. And they don’t need to hear full fidelity they just want to hear your performance and your takes you just call them from your phone patch box or they can call in to and they can hear your performance via their cell phone.

Tracy: But you still have to be in an actual studio, recording actual work.

Mark: I mean if you are recording actual takes and you would either be in your nice home studio or at a studio recording they are just listening and giving you direction and things like that via the phone patch. So lets a really cool way to work if they don’t really care about hearing your full sort of fidelity voice.

Tracy: Yeah

Mark: And they just want to hear your performance

Tracy: It makes it convenient for them.

Mark: Yeah, I have just done so many of those, I mean I have done phone patches when they are literally on their cell phone driving home and they are listening to takes “Oh yeah that was good”

Tracy: Yeah that’s great (Laughs)

Mark: Or they direct from their cell phone driving home you know, so that’s a neat thing.

Tracy: So and finally about all of what do you call these things these devices, Skype. Explain Skype and how it is useful for voice talent.

Mark: You know I am not actually, I am not super familiar with Skype I have used it a few times basically to call people for free but I am not sure you know what voice talent uses it for or if they use it.

Tracy: Because it does sound well I just know that it sounds like they are on the phone so the quality is really not good.

Mark: Yeah it is definitely low quality. I don’t know what it is but it is probably 64 KVS or you know maybe 96 or something but its definitely not full fidelity at all.

Tracy: Okay, well this has been so great Mark. So basically, what changes have happened I mean we talked about a year and a half a ago we did our last interview you and I. What changes have you seen, do you see any changes coming up?

Mark: Um

Tracy: Any advice for us?

Mark: You know I think its just so interesting to me because one might think it is counter productive for me to give people advice on how to set up home studios because I want them to come to my studio but really its technology you don’t ever want to curve technology its just times they are a changing. So, basically I just feel like we are getting better and better communicating high speed internet and things like that. And you know we should all sort of embrace this type of thing and then when pretty soon we will be able to do sort of full fidelity Skype. Our bandwidths will be so much larger and we will be able to do all of this stuff with great fidelity.

Tracy: Which means great quality sound.

Mark: Yeah a much higher quality sound because it is going to be much less compressed. So as we move through this whatever age we are in and the technology its just sort of embracing something that comes next to be able to communicate better quality faster you know easier. So specifics as far as what I’ve seen, I mean from a professional stand point there is a lot of changes going on right now in studios and things like that. But from a home studio stand point it is really about sort of creating your nice dead quiet space and getting some software that you can familiarize yourself with and just continuing to embrace the changing technology and you know it may seem annoying that you have to upgrade your software and things like that but we all as a professional studio owner we have to do that and it is much more expensive for us to do that.

Tracy: (Laughs)

Mark: So just keep your stuff updated, put a little money into to put the quality up and keep embracing the new technology.

Tracy: And come to you

Mark: Yeah

Tracy: (Laughs)

Mark: I mean if you have serious auditions and questions come over here and check us out.

Tracy: And they can check you out at Theinvisiblestudios.com

Mark: Yeah

Tracy: Well Mark Holden thank you for your great great insights. We will do another one of these with the next round of new technology.

Mark: Alright, Thanks

{Outro Music}

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