Carel: 0:08

Over the past few months, Voice123's AV123 has played host to some great creators from all over the world who've had much to say. So we figured we should take stock of the best of the best by far so far, and tickle your eardrums with some audio snippets you might have missed the first time round. Take Jen Moss of JAR Audio, for example, who, when I asked her about the future of podcasting, mentioned the powerful personal relationship that exists between a speaker and a listener.

Jen: 0:42

Truly authentic content that feels and is human and personal and intimate and respects the pact of audio that you make with a listener, that that kind of content is actually going to become more sought after and more important, and people are going to go to sources of truth that they know to be human generated. Otherwise, it's just the internet talking to the internet, and they can't be bothered to wade through all of that.

Carel: 1:09

So let's dig a little deeper, shall we? Hi, I'm Carel, and it's a privilege to have you with us as a listener. With reference to what Jen Moss had to say about the internet, talking to the internet, the AI revolution was a topic that came up quite frequently. Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable, for example, feels that

Bryan: 1:31

I don't need AI to play guitar for me. I need AI to answer all my emails so I can go learn to play guitar. So, I think what we saw first was a real big jump from, like, engineering type stuff all the way to the final output. We're seeing some synthetic voice stuff, which is interesting there, but people immediately jump into a full podcast done with that synthetic voice and done with that. And cool. That's great. If your perfect skillset is growing and marketing a podcast, but you couldn't build the content or get the right voice to save your life, maybe you just found your perfect opportunity though. I doubt it, but I think we're going to see like a, a return to the focus on. How can I utilize AI to quickly sort everything into red, green, and yellow and then be able to know I throw away red and maybe once a month or once a quarter I have, I revisit the red to make sure it didn't throw anything wrong. Yellow is the things I know will take a little bit of time. So I'll put it to the back of the stack and green are the things I can eyeball quickly and approve. And then I can move on to the next thing, right? We're seeing AI tools used in editing with things like Descript and Adobe to remove ums and ahs. And that is really exciting to me. I mean, the tech space editing capabilities, I have no editing skills, but I've played around with Descript and it made me feel like I could do this. Is there a level between what I can do with that and what a professional engineer can do? Absolutely.

Carel: 2:51

But AI is undeniably useful and is certainly put to good use as dynamic audio by ad agency AMA, as the company's Jack Gillard explains.

Jack: 3:03

With dynamic, we can, we can use that so that when we when we save an impression, then we get the locations of the nearest dealership. So that's sort of, you know, one data point we could use, but we could use five, six, seven, so we could use well, one thing we really like to do is engage the listener with their moments. So that time of day, as I mentioned earlier, it's about capturing them in the same space that the listeners in so that when they hear a message, they hear something relevant. So. It might be talking about a sofa when you come home. So where we are and it's the afternoon. So where we can create that feeling of just wanting to slip your shoes off and jump, jump on your sofa, ready to snuggle down and watch the latest box set. And that builds that, that brand feeling the same as using rotation. We can use rotation. So every time the, the listener hears the advert, they'll hear something different. So we could highlight a different product feature. This not only allows us to create better creative, cause we don't have to try and shove everything into 30 seconds and have a really fast advert, but it also decreases the, the ad fatigue. So it just pricks up the ears a little bit and goes, Oh, that's a little bit different. I've heard, I've learned something new about the product. So, or we could be using weather, so could be raining where you are right now. And we could call out a feature on a car such as automatic wipers or automatic lights to to make their drive a much more pleasurable and safer experience. So it's how, how bold you want to go with it. But ultimately I think when you're deciding these dynamic points, it's about the message of the advert. So the key thing is to use it to enhance and elevate the advert rather than just. Using a location to get the shock factor that can be great to listen, but actually is it adding to your message? If it's a premium product, we don't want that. We want something that's a bit more subtle, just talking a bit more about your lifestyle and how we can fit in with this. So it's all about appreciating that end goal and target of the advert.

Carel: 5:07

Of course, the key to engaging your listener is storytelling, and storytelling is both an art and a craft. This is how Steve Porter of PorterHouse Media sees it.

Steve: 5:18

I mean, the story is number one. The writing and the story are, especially if you're doing something on a docu series level the writing and the story are number one, but the edit and the scoring is, and the sound effects and the use of sound effects, and the immersion that you can create with those extra, whether it is the combination of scoring or just the, or the actual subtlety of what you use sound effects to drive home a scene. Those are all right there at the top, as far as the most important elements. You know, everything lives and dies in edit, so you can have a great story, but if it's, you know, it's not kind of like stitched together in a sound way or doesn't capture your attention, that can also, you know, potentially lose the listener. And pacing. I would also add pacing is, is an art to itself, you know having enough pause and enough knowing when to speed it up and slow it down. Is, is also an art to itself, especially in a VO driven world.

Carel: 6:14

When it comes to captivating an audience through storytelling, it often pays to get brazen. Here's Megan Dean of Project Brazen to add a little bit of colour and context to the art of storytelling.

Megan: 6:27

The stories that we run with and that we pursue tend to have a few common elements, particularly narrative and investigative shows, which is really where we've made our name to date. And those sort of pillars are firstly, big characters are absolutely crucial. They form the lifeblood of a story. What we don't like to do is just cover a topic area. I think it, it's about storytelling in a way that's personal and that really resonates because whether you're, you know, creating an investigative show or a branded or a commercial podcast, that, that story is what will make you unique from, from others. So it's what lends your show authenticity essentially. So the first is character, as I said, in nonfiction, that's going to be real life characters with interesting stories, interesting life experiences, big personalities. If you're creating a fiction podcast, then you need to create relatable multidimensional characters, and then you also want to then use your character to shed light on a bigger story. So they're almost a narrative tool, a way into a larger theme or topic. So if you lead with the topic, your show is going to be kind of hard to connect with for listeners and you risk becoming a generic but using a personal story as a way in will help really bring it to life and make it more straightforward for a listener to engage with. Personal stories are really what compels listeners. So that could be any manner of things. But it's important that they're character led rather than led by a topic area. And the other thing that we like to do is happening now. So, whatever story that we're telling, for it to be brazen, it needs to have some sort of relevance to the modern day. It can be a historic story, but it needs to have a thread that takes you all the way to today.

Carel: 8:21

And speaking of today, the voice, as our primary means of communication, is as powerful as it has ever been, if not more so. A question that is often asked by aspirant podcasters is what microphone they should buy. There are quite probably hundreds of mics that would do the job, so it's almost as difficult a question to answer as asking how long is a piece of string. Sam Seguin of JAR Audio is a sound engineer. And this is his opinion.

Sam: 8:52

Shure released a USB version of the SM7 and it's miraculous. I think there's a certain public radio podcast voice we all hear in our heads when we listen to a show. It's that like close proximity effect. It's very round on the low end. And that mic delivers that and is fairly affordable. I'd say if someone's looking to get into it and they don't want to get a whole bunch of external gear and get good sound, that's the quickest way. That's again, a personal preference, but this goes back to you asking about what we do and where's the, the bottom line with guests is oftentimes, I, I maybe have to send you gear and you have no computer wherewithal. You don't know how to plug something in. I need to send you something that's foolproof. That you just plug in and play. So it becomes a bit of a, I would like to send people really nice gear, but if they don't know how to plug it in the 15 minutes before recording session, it's wasted on them. So it's a constant struggle of what's foolproof. What's going to arrive in time. What's going to sound good in post. So it's always fluctuating to go back to it. Something like the SM seven is pretty well, a classic as far as my ears are concerned, that is affordable and foolproof.

Carel: 10:06

Brittany Nguyen of Quill Podcasting adds to this, making the point that technical proficiency is pretty much a must have if you're a podcaster.

Brittany: 10:16

I think definitely knowing your audio editing software, whether it is Pro Tools or Adobe Audition or any of those, and really knowing different plugins to I think knowing the ins and outs of audio frequencies, basic audio editing, and just how you can manipulate audio and sound to make it sound how you want is extremely important, especially when we are doing remote podcasts. And so how do we tell a really effective story where sometimes quality is also compromised. Technology and audio has, I would say from 2020 until now in the aspect of AI, it has definitely helped us clean up audio a lot better. And even in those circumstances where people may not have a microphone or maybe not be in the best environment. For example, we have like a host, he lives in an RV van. He likes to travel around the world and he works out of an RV van. So he doesn't have the best Wi-Fi and so I think with that, first of all, it's like making sure their environment and wherever the recording is to their ability, the best it can be. And then afterwards, if, when we are putting it in post production, we are running it through a couple of filters and plugins that we have that work really, really well, and so we have a lot of AI filters that we use to clean up noise and sound. And even help them improve their speech as well. So some people are against AI, but I'm very pro AI in terms of making our lives better and also delivering really good work for our clients.

Carel: 11:53

Jen Moss of JAR Audio, however, feels that audio quality doesn't always have to be pristine.

Jen: 12:00

Maybe I'm just in a contrarian mood today because I told you I hate advertising. I also love bad sound because I think it's a great storytelling tool if it's handled correctly. So, for example, if you have kind of messy sound recorded on someone's iPhone while they're being chased by a grizzly bear which we literally have done. That is that is audio gold. When does the sound need to be clean and unencumbered? And when does it make sense for it to be a little rougher and rawer and give us a good, this is where the narrative comes in piece comes in, you know, bad sound is a, is an authenticity tool. It's a way of making people believe that something was authentically recorded by like Joe Smith who was running the Boston Marathon or whatever.

Carel: 12:50

Authenticity rules in storytelling because ultimately it's all about the suspension of disbelief. The world of audio is changing and podcasting is fast becoming where audio is headed. That said, no one is more sold on the power of audio than Oxford Road's Stew Redwine.

Stew: 13:10

So, the general arc of content is from broadcast to on demand. So that'd be the general, like if I was writing a historical entry on this in a hundred years is like we saw a shift in how media was consumed from broadcasting to all, you know, digital. Really? What is that? It's on demand. Okay. So on demand audio is really what we're talking about. So that's why podcasting is so narrow because it was on an iPod and then, you know, and then it's podcasting, but really what we're talking about is on demand audio. So that's grown because our ability to do that as people with technology has grown our ability to do more on demand audio. I also want to say though, I was, I was pausing there. Cause I think there's another macro trend at play, which is these these things and I mean I like talking to you with your fantastic accent I want to say these devilish devices and it seems like you would say it perfectly anyway yeah but the screens man the research on these particularly personal screens.

Carel: 14:16

I was just going to tell our listeners that you're waving your waving your mobile at me.

Stew: 14:20

Yeah, yeah, I am. I'm waving it at you. I'm waving it at you. As he waves his mobile phone in the air. These things are nasty. They're good, but they're also nasty. And the research continues, particularly, like, I'm a dad of two high school daughters. Like, you know, there's plenty of research on, you know, keep these things away from your teenage daughters, basically. Self esteem issues and all that kind of stuff. But in general, we all kind of know, like you know, doom scrolling and what zombies these screens can turn us into that I think there's a shift away from screens particularly the personalized screen. I think that that's a macro thing that's happening in the cultural unconscious of like, you know a virus to me these things cause more harm than good so that makes it viral and bad for the species The species is gonna self correct. It's gonna go. Okay these bad I need to go to things that are good. Well, audio is good. Another thing at play, why you you're asking, why is podcasts growing? I'm giving you a long answer, but I believe in all, all, all three of these things, one is digital on demand audio. So that, that is a macro trend. Two is, I think there's a survival instinct shift away from screens to audio. And I think we're beginning to see that three, the proliferation also related to technology, a better speakers in the home. Better speakers on our ears. That was super charged by the pandemic. So like all of those together is my answer to go. That is why podcast is growing, but fundamentally does it replace owning a tower that I have to hype a bunch of electricity to and maintain in order to send a passive signal? Yeah, I think it does because that sounds like I I don't know what's going to happen with the towers and I don't know what's going to happen with those passive broadcast signals. But man in on on demand dynamic audio sounds just if we step back from it, and I know people's jobs are on the line and all of that and there's traditions in place and we just step back from it. We go, yeah, I mean, obviously this one eventually will supplant that one.

Carel: 16:26

Yeah.

Stew: 16:26

It's just, what is the road to get there?

Carel: 16:29

And there we have it. And thank you for joining us powered by Voice123 AV123 has a lot more conversations coming. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss any of them. And remember, if you ever need a voice acting maestro to bring your AV projects to life, head over to voice123.com . It's free to use so you can hire voice actors for any project, or you can get our Managed Services to manage your project from A to Z. Finally, if you'd like to be a guest on the show, get in touch. We'd like to hear from you.