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- [00:01]
Andrew Morrison
Voiceover Coffee Shop Episode 78 welcome to the Voiceover Coffee Shop where we give you a glimpse into the world of the biggest voice actors in the industry over a delicious cup of coffee. And now, here's your host, voice actor Andrew Morrison. Hi there. My name is Andrew Morrison and welcome to the Voiceover Coffee Shop where we start our day with some of the finest names in voiceover. If you'd like to get to know more about me, feel free to check out my website@www.AndrewDMorson.com. in this episode we have my buddy George Whittem. George is well known within the sound space for being an expert in audio technology. He has expertise in studio design, audio recording technology and a snickerdoodle addiction. Anyhow, he's also the founder of George the Tech, co host of the Voiceover Body Shop, and co founder of Tribooth all organization GE toward enhanced and accessible sound for creatives of all kinds. In this episode we have a secret special guest breaking down the basics of good sound. George's sources to stay on the tech pulse and the future expansion plans of George the Tech.
- [01:17]
George Whittem
Hey, how you doing?
- [01:20]
Andrew Morrison
I'm good, man. How are you?
- [01:22]
George Whittem
I'm great. Just making sure I sound as amazing as humanly possible.
- [01:29]
Andrew Morrison
How do you start your day, man? How do you take your coffee in the morning?
- [01:32]
George Whittem
That's a good question actually, because I was just commenting this morning how. Man, this is it. This is my coffee. But I love this damn cup of coffee. So I'm not a co. I'm not a coffee connoisseur. So I'm not sourcing beans and going to specific roasters and all this crazy stuff. That's for some people. But what I do do is I get Trader Joe's Sumatra beans.
- [02:00]
Andrew Morrison
Trader Joe's is good.
- [02:02]
George Whittem
I grind them in my nutribullet blender, which is like an absolute no no to coffee nerds, right? Because it's gotta be in a burr grinder and possibly hand ground or whatever it is, right? And then I use a Nespresso vertuo coffee maker and I refill the pods myself because I don't want to buy Nespresso pods. I don't want to buy them.
- [02:30]
Andrew Morrison
How do you like the Nespresso machines? Because Paul Strikwito was telling me about those and. And he said they're good. I still have yet to buy one and I'm thinking about it.
- [02:39]
George Whittem
The reason why the virtual machine is good is because a, it makes cups of coffee, not just espresso. So there's Two totally different categories, right. Of Nespressos, there's the. The standard one. It's a small machine, and the pods are these little trapezoidal shaped, little fancy, cute little pods, right? Those are for shots of espresso. The virtual machines can do espressos, can do ventes, can do bigger coffees, americanos, whatever, because they have a much bigger capacity. And then, of course, they have a million different pods for them, just like they do for everything else. And. But it gets expensive. And then you have to use their pods. Unless you find that there's companies that make replaceable foil lids that go right onto the pods that they ship you. So you keep the pods after you used it, empty them out, fill them with your own coffee, put the foil lid on top, seal it off, and now you can reuse these pods until they literally wear out.
- [03:41]
Andrew Morrison
Fascinating.
- [03:42]
George Whittem
And so that's what I do. And then. And then, so I run them through the Nespresso. In the last month, I've been adding one tablespoon of Laird Superfood Creamer, which is a. Which is essentially just. It's just coconut sugar, coconut solid or coconut fats, you know, and that's it. Like, that's all. That's all there is in that. And then that's for a little bit sweetness, a little bit of frothiness. And I also add a half teaspoon of layered mushroom supplements, okay. Which have like four kinds of different superfood mushrooms, you know, that sounds like.
- [04:22]
Andrew Morrison
An earthy cup of coffee, man.
- [04:24]
George Whittem
Yeah, adaptogenic. Blah, blah, blah. Good for your brain, all this, right? And to top it off, because when we bought the Virtuo, it was Black Friday. It was. We bought it from Costco. So we're like, if this thing turns out to be a big, giant steaming waste of time and money, we'll return it. But it came with it a frother. So neat. This cool frother, right? That sits on a little base, you know, that it plugs into, and you can froth hot or cold. That has two modes. And here's the. Here's the man. Here's the piece de resistance. I get the pistachio milk from trader from Costco, okay? And it's one of those things that, now that you. Now that I found it, guarantee it will disappear, we'll never see it again, right? But this. This pistachio milk, not only does it taste great, has no added sugar, but it tastes like it because there's natural sugars, but it froths up in that frother. Like a, like a boss, like, like dairy milk does. And so it's amazingly good. So you put that in the coffee when it's done. And that's my cup of coffee. I drink that almost every morning and I call it my 20 cup of coffee.
- [05:41]
Andrew Morrison
That's awesome.
- [05:42]
George Whittem
Because if you went to some hipster place here in Venice beach, you know, just the cup of coffee would be seven, six dollars. And then all the other stuff I'm adding to it, maybe not $20. Let's call it a $12 cup of coffee. But it's a very expensive cup of coffee.
- [06:00]
Andrew Morrison
I know you're getting close, man. Pistachio milk, that'd be, that'd be difficult.
- [06:04]
George Whittem
Yeah, they'll charge you like $2 for a little pistachio milk. You know, if they have the adaptogenic mushrooms, which that would be hard to find, you know, before you know it. Yeah. So there you have it. There's my cup of coffee. Tmi.
- [06:20]
Andrew Morrison
So I mean, I know your story of, of getting your music and audio tech degree in 97 and then getting into voiceover in 2005. But like, what originally initiated you wanting to get into audio tech before you started your degree and before you started your career? Like, what was that initial? Like light bulb or spark? That, like, this is what I want to do.
- [06:44]
George Whittem
Oh yeah, well, that, I mean that definitely goes back to childhood. My dad being my dad, always having audio equipment around. Not pro stuff, just like a reel to reel, tape recorder, some microphones, some basic things, but things that he provided for me to experiment with and play with that I enjoyed recording and listening to myself back and I thought it was fun. So I had a little bit of an early on bug of recording. I just didn't have any science behind it. It was just for fun. It was a play thing to record and listen to back. And I used to record myself talking. I used to record family. My grandmother used to record my brother and I telling stories. Right. So when we were little, really little, so there's always been a tape recorder around. And then later on video cameras of course, became the norm too. So recording ourselves and each other has just been a part of my life since I was a little kid, really little. And so my dad, and later as I grew older, my dad, I turned out, oh, my dad's a musician. So he went back to playing trumpet again and got me back to playing trumpet. So now I was starting the music side of my life and I was about 10 or 9 at that time. So now I had a Hank. A Hankering for audio and recording stuff and listening to it back. And then I had the music side of it. So the other maybe, the other third leg of the school, school maybe was just a general interest in science and then in doing science related stuff. Going to summer science camps back in Westchester, Pennsylvania, where I grew up, the city that is now the town now made famous by Bam Margera from Jackass. You ask most young people if, where's Weston? Westchester. They're gonna. Isn't that where Bam's from? They're like, yeah, that's right. And that. And then you combine all that and my interest in science helping, and then going to science camp, then later on, teaching kids science in science camp.
- [08:52]
Andrew Morrison
Okay.
- [08:54]
George Whittem
And then in high school, teaching kids science at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philly. All of that stuff mixing around in a big vat. And then the next 10 years, dabbling in all kinds of different pro audio, from live sound to installing aerobic studio sound systems, to broadcast radio engineering for the Eagles football team, recording at home, creating a remote recording truck in an rv. All these crazy disparate types of technology and audio. You know, the, the school, the schooling. While I'm. I'm totally grateful to have a degree because I was the first one in my household to have a college degree. Be a B.S. yeah, no, I got a BA, not a B.S. bachelor of Arts. I was lucky to get that. But, you know, that was just a tiny, tiny, tiny part of what it took to get to where I am now, you know? Yeah. So I guess the message to all you out there thinking about going to college for engineering, there's way, way, way more important things to be doing with your time than possibly spending four years in college and spending a ton of money doing it. But I'm just saying maybe reconsider. But yeah, that's where it all came from. It was definitely from home. My dad's interests and him always being supportive of us experimenting and trying things and dabbling in electronics and technology and audio. All those intersections were a big part of it.
- [10:21]
Andrew Morrison
So what happened between you getting your degree and you branching into specializing in voiceover audio Around 2005? Like, what happened in that, what, eight year span that made you want to choose voiceover?
- [10:35]
George Whittem
Yeah, that's. That's a story. I mean, it really started with. So when I graduated from Virginia Tech, I quickly got an internship at a major recording studio in Philadelphia, which was called Sigma Sound. And Sigma was one of the venerable studios where artists would come from elsewhere to record. And unfortunately, that's not as Much nearly a thing in Philly as it was at that time. But at that time there was the Philly sound. There were producers that were famous in Philadelphia called Gamble and Huff, the OJs, the Jackson 5, even, even believe it or not, David Bowie came to that studio to record. They recorded Young Americans there. So I don't remember how I found that studio, but I did find. And probably in the back of Mix magazine. Every year, Mix magazine, we release all the schools where you can study engineering. You know, it was like a directory. And I found that it was a major studio that was open to internships and they were local. So I was. That was one of the first ones that I approached and I got interviewed and they, they took me in. And I think the reason they said was because you were not from the Art Institute of Philadelphia like everybody else was. Right. So.
- [11:53]
Andrew Morrison
Right.
- [11:53]
George Whittem
It was like a feeder, like everybody was feeding in from the local college. And I'm coming in from Virginia Tech. I was a total like unknown. So they gave me a shot and I spent some time there a couple of months. And I was there long enough to get a taste of that side of the music industry. Enough to know that it wasn't the world that I wanted to be a part of as much. I didn't like the way they treated their staff and their interns. I didn't like the amount of time people were investing for no money. And. And clearly they didn't see a real fit with me either because after a few months they just stopped inviting me back. There was just, no, I wasn't in the schedule anymore. That was just their way of saying, well, you know, you were. It was fine while it lasted, but in that period of time I learned a lot about that field. And then my dad had this camper, a funky 1973 El Dorado Chevy van based camper. The kind with the bed over the hood. The kind you see parked around my neighborhood in Venice, all over the place.
- [12:54]
Andrew Morrison
Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
- [12:55]
George Whittem
People live in these things. And my dad was supportive of the idea of starting a remote recording truck. So we converted that camper, which we did use for family, little family getaways. We did convert it into a recording studio with multi track tape machines, everything, everything you need to do a 24 track remote recording of a live event or some location record. It was in my truck. And that kept me busy for a while.
- [13:28]
Andrew Morrison
So people weren't actually like recording inside the camper?
- [13:32]
George Whittem
Nope.
- [13:33]
Andrew Morrison
Okay.
- [13:33]
George Whittem
As is almost always the case with what we call in the industry, remote trucks, they are just a place for the control room to exist. So the really big remote trucks are for television and uplinks, satellite trucks. You'll see them outside of a sports event stadium with huge cables coming out. That's kind of what this was on a very small scale, and it was just for doing music. And so I did a lot of different remote records around Philly and even a few around some gospel churches in Wilmington, Delaware. There was a lot of great music and talent going on around that area. And I was being brought in on projects here and there through my networking and marketing. And so that was what I kept myself busy trying to make money with for some time. In the meantime, I was also working at the music store that my dad was managing. So I was like the house audio engineer. So answering questions about PA systems, you know, selling them, doing some sales, going out, actually running some sounds for clients, things like that. And so I had that going at the same time, and I was dabbling in doing studio installs for other organizations. This was all, you know, you're freelancing, you're just doing what you can find.
- [14:55]
Andrew Morrison
Were you doing VO at that time?
- [14:57]
George Whittem
No.
- [14:58]
Andrew Morrison
And I. I know you do some recording as well.
- [15:01]
George Whittem
I, for the record, have never booked or done a voiceover. Good job.
- [15:06]
Andrew Morrison
Okay. I thought you did audiobooks. No, I believe that's listed on a site somewhere that says that you do audiobooks.
- [15:13]
George Whittem
There might be a chatgpt thing that comes up saying I'm a voice actor, because I actually put my name into ChatGPT once, and I said, give me a bio about George Woodham, and it said, I'm a voice actor, but I'm not. No, I'm not actually a voice actor. And I've never formally taken any lessons or even auditioned for work in voiceover for various reasons. But the main reason was I never. Reason I've always told myself and my customers was I never wanted to compete with my customers. I didn't want to be another person competing for the same gig that they were coming to me to learn how to do a better job at booking that job. And in the meantime, I'm auditioning for the same job. I just didn't want that to be a thing.
- [16:00]
Andrew Morrison
Okay.
- [16:01]
George Whittem
So I never did. Yeah, So I never actually recorded myself for money, ever. It was always just for fun and creating content. And to this day, if I'm recording, it's to be either interviewed or interview somebody else creating content for my podcast or for marketing my company, et cetera. So, yeah, fun Fact, I'm a voice actor or. Or. Or an audiobook narrator.
- [16:28]
Andrew Morrison
So out of all of those different hats that you're wearing, like with your science background or your tech background, which of those is the most fulfilling for you?
- [16:39]
George Whittem
It's definitely leaning more towards the right brain creative side than it is the very technical engineering side.
- [16:46]
Andrew Morrison
Yeah.
- [16:47]
George Whittem
But I feel like I walk that razor's edge all the time.
- [16:50]
Andrew Morrison
And I. Yeah, you look it.
- [16:52]
George Whittem
Yeah. I think I like. That's the part I really kind of. That maybe that's really where that's. Maybe the crux of the biscuit is like, I like having a handle on both sides of it and understanding very intimately how the two intersect. You know, that's. That's why our whole slogan now being performer friendly text is that we're a collective now of engineers and techs that know how to work with actors. A lot of us are. A lot of us are voiceover actors. A lot of us own studios, and a lot of us just very, very intimately understand voice actors. What they. The plight of the voice actor. And so for me, that is my thing is like, I feel like other than voice actor, being a voice actor myself, I understand. Or maybe being an agent or something, I feel like I understand voice act more than many people do. Yeah. And so for me, I think that's the most fulfilling is hearing a voice actor's problems, like being a therapist. And when they come to me and they go, here are my problems. And just knowing that at the end of whatever the time period we have together, it's maybe 30 minutes is the most common. Sometimes people book longer. I know what they're up against, I know what they're dealing with, and I know what the solutions are. And they walk away satisfied. That is probably one of the most satisfying things I do is just solving their problems quickly, elegantly, efficiently, and they feel so much relief afterward. That is the job well done. The feeling of a job well done. That is it. That's it right there. I really. I really will enjoy that a lot. And a lot of my colleagues are very smart in many different ways, but I just don't think. And just how, you know, talking to my customers, what their needs are, who they've already worked with. You know, all of my customers have already either if they haven't worked with me, they. Maybe they've worked with some of my other colleagues. Maybe they've worked with all of them. Sometimes they're like, oh, you've already worked with X, Y, Z, A, B, C. Holy smoke, Good luck. Figuring out the right answer to this question because that is, that is a little bit of a rat hole. Some folks do go down. They, they're such, they have such an absolute thirst for learning and knowledge that they will want to sample and take.
- [19:23]
Andrew Morrison
Right.
- [19:24]
George Whittem
Take advice and consult with multiples of us. And yes, while there's a lot of very fundamental things we agree on, there are going to be a lot of different pathways to get there. And sometimes it can be a little bit confusing, you know, because you can get some conflicting info. Right, right. So I'm rambling like hell here. I don't even know. No, you're good going with this. But that is that I definitely love solving people's problems elegantly and quickly. And you know, I talk to my own tech team and I do, I do the vast majority of the work at, at George the Tech still in terms of the actual hands on support, you know, sound checks, sound processing, acoustics, all that stuff, I'm doing the vast majority. But I've got others on our team that are very, very talented, seasoned people on their, in their own right. Like Jim Edgar, Humberto Franco.
- [20:22]
Andrew Morrison
I love Humberto.
- [20:23]
George Whittem
I love Humberto. I just, just before we talked, I spoke to him about helping me produce a commercial. Our first actual real commercial.
- [20:32]
Andrew Morrison
That's awesome.
- [20:34]
George Whittem
Yeah, I'm very excited about it. I'm nervous, I'm a little overwhelmed. But it's something we're going to work on together. So I've got great people working with us. Andrew Feliciano, you know, some of these guys own and run their own companies, right. So they have a very limited amount of time, but they still in their own ways find time to do work with our customers here and there, which is amazing. Mike McGonagall, he's like my crack Windows guy. He will dig into the worst possible Windows system. Sound conflicts, issues that I don't want to even think about. And then we've got Tim Friedlander. I mean his name literally needs no introduction at this point. Right. He's the Tim Friedlander. Right. So it's incredible. I'm incredibly honored and blessed about the team of people we've assembled. You know, Dan Leonard is also, he's on my on call team. We have a small section of people that are willing to take an on call, on demand call from time to time. You know, and that's not everybody. I've decided a while ago I don't want to have the Pavlovian response of hearing that phone and seeing the text and my body essentially starts to sweat. I don't want to do that kind of stuff anymore. So I do very little of it. And I have others that are willing to take those calls. Robert Marshall, he takes a lot of those calls. And Robert's the co founder of Source Elements. Right. I mean these people, all of them, 20, 25 years of engineering experience, but not just engineering, engineering experience, working with voiceover people, understanding voiceover people. Right. So it's an incredible team.
- [22:20]
Andrew Morrison
And you talked about like the, those different tastings that sometimes people go to, but the fundamentals are the same outside of the acoustics. Like what are your studio must haves? Like, I've got the Waves VX series just because you recommended it and it's awesome. But like, like what are, what are your, your fundamentals in today's day and age?
- [22:44]
George Whittem
Well, honestly, it really does come down to for many, many people who are not technical, it comes down to having a reliable setup.
- [22:54]
Andrew Morrison
Right?
- [22:55]
George Whittem
It is. There are so many ways in which, especially now more than ever, there are so many ways in which your recording system can get hosed. Like just updating, doing a very innocuous update can cause new problems that weren't there the day before, you know, and totally make you go crazy. So first and foremost, whatever you're recording with, it has to be really reliable and really consistent so that you can record day after day after day and not have any concern of anything interrupting you. Like my daughter. What's going on? What do you need?
- [23:35]
Andrew Morrison
Hey, how's the digital art going?
- [23:41]
George Whittem
I wrote it on the whiteboard. It's literally on the door of my studio when I'm recording. Read all the lines. Okay. 5pm thank you for asking her. I had my. She didn't hear you, but no worries. No, my daughter's staying here with me and she's a great artist and she's having a lot of.
- [24:10]
Andrew Morrison
Yeah. You showed Jordan and I some of some of her artwork that she was working on. Oh yeah, that's her Instagram stuff.
- [24:17]
George Whittem
Yeah, she's still very much into it and she's, she's starting to build a YouTube channel, you know, which is quite a process because, you know, it's a lot different from making just a picture or a five second video. Totally, totally derailed my train of thought.
- [24:30]
Andrew Morrison
You were talking, I asked you about like, what studio must haves on. Like the tech side of it is.
- [24:36]
George Whittem
Yeah, okay, so. So first of all, whatever you have, know how to use it and make sure it's reliable. So important. Don't overspend, don't underspend. Take advice from seasoned pros like us to make sure you get the right thing, whether if you're going Windows or Mac. I'm a Mac person. I'm definitely biased towards Mac systems. I find them much, much more user friendly for media production specifically because there's the driver situation on there is very far more straightforward.
- [25:05]
Andrew Morrison
Okay.
- [25:06]
George Whittem
So I'm a big fan of Mac for creatives, non technical creatives. There's a lot of us out there who are creative and technical and are not intimidated by a lot of things. But even the process of sorting out the waves licensing for one single plugin can derail an actor from getting jobs done. And it's happened. I have clients, you know, who I set up Clarity VX for, whose license just. Well, it just stopped working. You may be very familiar with how Waves the cloud works and how you re up your licenses and the whole thing. That's what I get for not putting my system on do not Disturb. We'll be on do not sister for an hour, but I'll still look at the text window. Just because she's, she's. Because I'm, I'm literally, I'm the parent right now. So I have to make sure she's still alive.
- [26:09]
Andrew Morrison
No worries. What is your source? Because you, because you're.
- [26:15]
George Whittem
I still haven't answered your question.
- [26:16]
Andrew Morrison
I feel like, okay, go for it.
- [26:19]
George Whittem
I don't know if I answered your question yet. For God's sake, I'm losing my track, my train of thought here.
- [26:27]
Andrew Morrison
You said that know what your stuff does. You were talking about licensing and, and.
- [26:33]
George Whittem
How licensing can get derailed. The simplest little thing, like a third party plugin that uses its own licensing system can take you down and miss a deadline and really be frustrating. So just the more tools and, and technology is in your setup, the more things that are going to go wrong. And it's going to happen when you're on deadline. It's not going to happen on a Friday. At the end of the day. It's not going to happen when you have a downtime or you're just experimenting. It's going to happen when you have to deliver that job now that's when things are going to go wrong. Then you're going to have to pay one of us on our team a fair chunk of dough to sort that problem out if you're not able to do it under duress. And that's what we're here for, right? So know what you have and know how to use it. That's really important. 2. Make sure. You've got a really good sounding recording environment. And it doesn't have to be fancy, it doesn't have to be expensive, but it does have to sound good. And what it takes to sound good is a little bit. It's not little bit. It's very much mysterious because I see everybody's pictures online. I hear hundreds, thousands of studios. And while there are formulas that do work with a predictable outcome. Right. I mean, somebody says, I have a room this size, what panels should I buy and where I know it's going to sound good if they do this. But it's the randomness of how people treat things with found objects and repurposed this and that and things that they already had or somebody gave to them. That's where things get really interesting because there's a lot of unpredictability that goes along with that. And so I'll see a studio and it might look like a beautiful blanket fort, but what you don't know is on the outside of that blanket fort is a wooden box. Because they built a plywood box and then hung blankets in it. And now it sounds like they're in a box. The next person is in a booth that looks absolutely identical from the inside out. The same blankets, everything's identical. But they don't have a big box around them. They're just sitting in a bedroom or something. And their sounds amazing. Right. There's. There's so much confusion around acoustics for small spaces. So much though it's such a black art that not even the acoustical manuals, the books, I have several. I don't have a lot of books. There's a few you can just barely see in frame. I had that. I only have about this many books. I don't know, 60 books.
- [29:07]
Andrew Morrison
Okay.
- [29:07]
George Whittem
A third of those are audio engineering and voiceover related stuff. And I've seen the books on audio engineering and acoustics specifically, and none of them have proper acoustical models and designs for voiceover booths. Small booths.
- [29:22]
Andrew Morrison
What are they built for? What are the models in the book?
- [29:26]
George Whittem
They're for rooms that are considered small or larger.
- [29:30]
Andrew Morrison
Okay.
- [29:30]
George Whittem
A small room is 8 by 10ft.
- [29:33]
Andrew Morrison
Gotcha. Okay.
- [29:34]
George Whittem
If it's smaller than that, they don't. They are not interested. So. So a four by four or three and a half by five or whatever it is. The answer to the question is make it larger.
- [29:50]
Andrew Morrison
Okay.
- [29:50]
George Whittem
Okay. So that's why it's such a black art. Like they're not interested, they don't deal with it. So we've all had to Just figure this stuff out as we go along. And I'm learning stuff all the time, either by seeing some random thing that a customer used that actually worked, or getting the opportunity to experiment with product and making things like I did with vocalbooth.com we partnered together last fall and came up with an acoustical panel design that's nothing too revolutionary. It's just we figured out that by using just these three panels in this particular arrangement, it's going to make any small booth four by six and under, sound dramatically better. Right? Just simple things. Concepts that just didn't really exist before that. So it's been really fascinating. But once you have your room sounding good, boy, you're way ahead of the curve, because now you can buy almost any mic of any price point, from $150 mic to a $1,200 mic, a shotgun mic, whatever you got, you know, condenser mic. You can get almost any good mic to sound good in there. And it blows me away sometimes how the lowliest of setups with the lowest budget of materials, sounds amazing. And the most expensive of setups. I'm not even exaggerating when I say $15,000 with a booth microphone, Apollo, and all the cool plugins on planet Earth, and it sounds like garbage. It happens on the regular. So, yeah, it's a very mysterious thing. And people, boy, are they really perturbed after they spent that much money and they find out the booth doesn't sound very good. They really get prickly about that.
- [31:39]
Andrew Morrison
What's the weirdest thing that you've seen somebody repurpose into acoustical treatment? Because you were talking about just repurposing items to turn them. Like, what are some weird things that you've just seen somebody try to use?
- [31:52]
George Whittem
Oh, man. For sure. I know. I've seen Astroturf for sure. Like, you know, bedding. That's a big one. You know, using a bed, bed foam, those thick, orangish yellowy foam pads. I've seen. Oh, my gosh. Trying to think of something particularly interesting that you would never think would be useful, but actually works. There. There is a guy. There's a guy on YouTube called DIY perks. I love his YouTube channel. He will spend an inordinate. You know, those videos, those guys that make things and they. They put in an unbelievable amount of time to make the thing, and, you know, you know it, too. And you're like, how is this ever a thing? And how's it sustainable? And I don't understand, but bravo, you know? Yeah, that's this guy, right? So he. He made acoustical panel one time out of old ratty. Just old ratty bath towels. He just took a whole bunch of bath towels, folded them up, made 2 inch layers of bath towels, made wooden frames, wrapped them in fabric, right? And they worked great. They worked great. So, you know, using old bath towels, using repurposing ceiling tiles and hanging them on the wall, like literally the kind you see in a t grid ceiling in an office, you know, and just putting them all over the walls. I've seen that. Now, not every situation has sounded good, but I've seen some pretty interesting ideas. Some of them pretty hideous, you know, like, that's the best you could do. Okay, well, you know, some of them. And sometimes it does sound good. When it sounds good, that's when it's like, oh, cool. That actually worked out great. But sometimes, a lot of times it doesn't. And another thing is, like, people think that it's always about foam, and that's the cheapest, easiest thing to get. The problem is there's much better materials that are actually very competitively priced, if not even cheaper, that are way, way more effective and in some cases have zero toxins. Or like, my favorite is cotton. You can get recycled denim. They make it into insulation. And this stuff's incredibly good sound absorber. It absorbs echo and even lower frequency sounds well. And you don't have to wear a mask and gloves to cut it, and you can just hang it on the wall. I mean, you don't even have to cover it with anything. It's not gonna. There's no dangerous fibers. It's just literally cotton, you know, so there's some really practical things that work right? So the acoustics is a huge, huge, huge deal. And then it's just audio interfaces. They either have. There's two kinds of audio interfaces, ones that can't do a playback or a loopback, and the others that can. That's pretty much it, right? I mean, yeah, there's a lot of other categories, but there's definitely a dividing line between those that can't play back a take for the customer or the client or the coach and those that can. And that's even a whole debate whether you should even be able to do it or even offer to do it. I've actually seen voice actors say, well, I would never do that. I don't offer. I don't offer to do playback. That's, you know, that's wasting time. That's their responsibility. And my opinion on that is, hey, if you're at that point in your career, we can literally tell somebody you won't do something for them.
- [35:34]
Andrew Morrison
Right?
- [35:34]
George Whittem
Good for you, bro. That part of the industry is shrinking rapidly because there's a huge number of people that are way more capable than you and will in a second play back the take and move on with their day.
- [35:53]
Andrew Morrison
Right. Where are you getting, where do you. What is your source of information? Like, what information do you absorb? Because, I mean, I know you have like a lot of in the field knowledge and stuff like that, but you are just very much readily like, I, I know what this plugin is. I know this, I know this, I know this. And like, that must be very time consuming to. To research all of that. So, like, where do you get the majority of your information on tech?
- [36:21]
George Whittem
I get it from a lot of the same places that a lot of people get it from, which is social media and YouTube, some articles from like a newsletter. But honestly, I don't look at newsletters that much. Yeah, I get a lot of them, but I. They just. Because of the way Gmail works, I just don't see them. They just get filtered out and I never look at them. But I do subscribe to a lot of YouTube channels. I do follow others in our business who are colleagues, in some cases even competitors or whatever, and I see what they're doing and I listen to what they're doing. I hear about plugins in Facebook groups that are geeky Facebook groups for audio, you know, and somebody will say, have you seen this yet? I have clients who have hired me who are in some ways even more technical than I am that will pontificate about tech in a way that I don't even feel like doing. You know, getting into the nitty gritty going down what I like to call the rat hole. So it's. I get it from a lot of places. I also, I guest on podcasts and I hear things. I host a show called the Pro Audio Suite, which is four of us absolutely geeking out about recording, voiceover and audio.
- [37:42]
Andrew Morrison
That's awesome.
- [37:43]
George Whittem
Deeply, you know, so that's another place where information comes from. Like, we, we just interviewed the product manager for Izotope. So of course he talked about RX11 on our show for 50 minutes. You know, so I pick it up from a lot of different sources, really. You know, but comments on questions are a pretty good source. Reading through the comments, you know, you pick up little things here and there. YouTube comments. I'll. I'll watch a video that I wanted to Find information for. And then find. The really important thing I wanted was actually in the comments, not in the actual video. That happens sometimes. So it's a lot of different places, but it's not from magazines and books like it would have been 20 years ago for sure. You know, and even then when I started this started in audio and when I moved to LA 20 years ago, I was getting a lot of my information through news groups. I don't think you know what a news group is.
- [38:41]
Andrew Morrison
I know what a news group is.
- [38:42]
George Whittem
A news group is.
- [38:43]
Andrew Morrison
Yes, I know what one is.
- [38:45]
George Whittem
Rec, Music, Dot, something like that. Like that's how the naming of these news groups was. And I learned a lot about the film production industry that way. That. That was my entry into learning about the ins and outs of audio field production. I found who the people were, I found out who the influencers were. And again, 20 years ago, I found out what resources I should read. I found out what book I should get. You know, that's because of those online resources. Yeah. So a lot of places, but a lot of it. Mostly the Internet.
- [39:26]
Andrew Morrison
So what other places are you planning to expand your business? Because I know you're kind of reaching a wider net past VO like we talked about, and you're trying to reach podcasters and stuff like that. But like outside of content creation, how are. How else are you marketing that and how else are you building that and what else are you building that into?
- [39:43]
George Whittem
Well, we're also going to be putting together product, product and material for. You know, it's so funny, there's two kinds of C Suite. I have found out. There's the C Suite audio plugin that I'm using right now actually from cvox or from C Suite called C Suite cvox. This is noise reduction and I'm using it right now. Okay. Two, there's another C Suite, which I learned about this year while I was at PodFest, the podcasting convention. Okay. In Florida, C Suite are all the executives that have a C in front of their title, right? Chief executive officer, chief of, you know, Chief Operating Officer, etc. Those are C Suite. It's just a cute way of saying executives. I found out that a lot of them do not know how to do an appearance like this, like we're doing right now. They get invited on podcasts, they are invited to speak on a topic for the media or whatever, and they come off abysmally. How many times have you watched CBS or whatever? Fill in the blank news outlet. And they say so and so expert from Wall Street Journal or from University of Whatever. And then they're sitting there looking at their laptop camera, down, down like this, and there's no light on their face and they're using the mic built into their AirPods and it sounds like garbage. And that's acceptable, right?
- [41:15]
Andrew Morrison
Right.
- [41:15]
George Whittem
My goal is to make that no longer acceptable and be. Make it so accessible to getting that information and make it so easy for them to fix that problem that we never have to suffer through crappy audio and video on a newscast or any show ever again. That's my goal. Does that sound like a big deal or too much of a goal or.
- [41:38]
Andrew Morrison
And how I see you scaling that is like you building out a course, but it's a cross between spatial audio and augmented reality. Oh, boy, I see that in two years.
- [41:50]
George Whittem
Wow.
- [41:50]
Andrew Morrison
The George the Tech experience.
- [41:52]
George Whittem
I would really have to collab with somebody that knows that technology well, but.
- [41:56]
Andrew Morrison
That would be a lot of fun. That would be. And it would be efficient. It would be like having your own George the Tech there with you.
- [42:03]
George Whittem
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously what you can't do is duplicate yourself. Obviously, AI is changing that. Like, the beginning of this year, I got inspired to make a chatbot. And so I have my own knowledge bot. That is me. It's everything I could find on the Internet about me that I created in a chatbot. Right. So I. I have that. But. And it's really cool. And I use it all the time to find answers on free people's stuff and you can even access it on my website. But. Okay, yeah. What's the next thing? I mean, the next thing is I can't be on every. I can't be. I want to be able to, but I cannot help everybody personally.
- [42:45]
Andrew Morrison
Right.
- [42:46]
George Whittem
So to be able to take what I've learned and my brand of knowledge, my brand of teaching, whatever that is, and be able to make that accessible to a lot more people over a much wider audience and much, much more affordably is definitely the goal, you know, because I. I know my hourly rate to a lot of people is going to be prohibitive. You know, they're going to be. Oh, my. I. That's how much my mic cost. You know, I know that. I know that. Don't think I don't know that. Yeah, but the reality is to do what I do full time and not dabble in voiceover and not have other, you know, gigs on the side and just fully focus on this. I'm only billing. And this is true for voiceover, too. How many true hours Per week? Are you actually billing versus how much are you doing everything else? Marketing, auditioning, social media, you know, outreach and operations and CRM and. Right.
- [43:50]
Andrew Morrison
Yeah.
- [43:50]
George Whittem
Like some, some entrepreneur coach I talked to is like, what's your true hourly rate? And I'm like, that's actually a really good question. It's not the rate you charge per hour on your website.
- [44:00]
Andrew Morrison
Right.
- [44:01]
George Whittem
That's not what you truly make per hour. You have to look at what you make in a year, take your yearly thing, try to figure out how many hours a week you work.
- [44:08]
Andrew Morrison
That's impossible.
- [44:09]
George Whittem
Which even hard is hard. I'm a little bit more buttoned down on that because I have family and I've kind of had to have some barriers at my age of 50, I've just realized I can't work too hard. I can't work too many hours.
- [44:22]
Andrew Morrison
Yeah.
- [44:24]
George Whittem
But let's say it's 40 hours and then you. And you do the math and you come out and you go, oh, my hourly rate isn't really nearly what I thought it was. Right.
- [44:32]
Andrew Morrison
Especially with like, with this, like, changing competitive, like, landscape that we're going into, it takes a lot more hours to one, figure out how to be more competitive and two, to kind of build up that platform for yourself. I mean, you, you've been like, even just in the past year or two, you've done a lot more content creation.
- [44:52]
George Whittem
Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. I've lit the, lit the fire big time on having at least a couple of pieces of content hitting the socials either. Right. You know, different platforms every week and making sure that everybody's always hearing from us. That's been a big, A big deal. And thankfully, with technology and an excellent assistant assistant of mine who works 10 hours or 10 to 12 hours a week for me. And we know we're just very efficient and we put out the content and it's been very important because buying ads is very, very expensive. So the best thing I can do is just make relevant, useful content and just keep it going, you know?
- [45:30]
Andrew Morrison
Yeah.
- [45:31]
George Whittem
So, yeah, it's. I've way tangentialized that conversation again. But you definitely have to know what you're worth and know how much you're willing to spend to pursue that hourly rate. And then there's certain things that are going to be. They're going to cost you more for you to do than to pay somebody else. And that's that CEO mindset. Right. So where was I going with that? Oh, we were talking about C Suite. That is the next frontier, really, is just I really want to make sure that there's just, there should not be an excuse. Just like anybody can pick up an iPhone and if you can hold your hand still enough and if your subject is still enough, you can get a usable photo in just about any situation, like any level of light, right. Audio will eventually be in that place and I want to be a part of that. Like, how does that happen? You know, how do we make it so easy to get good audio that just about anybody can do it? I'm, I'm not trying to be. And it could be to my very own detriment as an engineer, but I.
- [46:35]
Andrew Morrison
Was about to say that's going to be a detriment to me. If everybody can get clean audio, it's.
- [46:39]
George Whittem
Going to be a detriment to a lot of people. But there's no reason why audio has to be so cruddy and mediocre when it's not absolutely in, it's not impossible and it's not super expensive. It's just getting the knowledge into the, into the faces of the, of the people that really need it, when they need it. That's. How do you do that? How do you cut through the noise of social media, of media outlets and news and all the other BS going on? How do you cut through all that noise and get the information to that person who's looking for it when they need it? That's, that's the man. That's the whole thing. If I can figure that out, that's going to be huge. So yeah, that's, that's just part of the next year or so of time. You know, I've got other things up my sleeve that or more of an NDA type situation. But we're working on it.
- [47:32]
Andrew Morrison
So what do you do outside of tech? Like how do you recharge your batteries? What are like non techy things that you enjoy?
- [47:41]
George Whittem
There's one.
- [47:42]
Andrew Morrison
Oh, bicycle.
- [47:44]
George Whittem
So is it, is it mostly bikes?
- [47:46]
Andrew Morrison
Is it, is it just manual or like you on the electric bike train or like.
- [47:51]
George Whittem
No, I'm still. Personally, personally I don't ride any E bikes. I use them and played around with them. I set up one for my girlfriend so that when she rides, you know, it's like having a dog who's too fast. If you walk them, they never get any energy so you got to take them to the dog park, right? It's like if you ride your E bike, then it's like taking your dog to the dog park. Then I can get exercise and then I don't Go drive you crazy, right? You need that. You need that outlet. So for me, bike, biking is it. And you know, to some people, how can doing a two to three hour intense workout give you energy? But that's how physical fitness works, right? By the way, they're like, how can you have energy? Any, any energy left? Well, like. Well, that's because the more of that you do, the more energy store you have and the more capability and capacity you have to recover, and then you have even more energy to use. Right? So for me, cycling is it. And it's like physical fitness. It's social, it's. It's intellectually stimulating because there's a huge mechanical side to solving problems. There's myriad ways to upgrade them. There's, you know, it's just. And we have. And we're in la, we're very, very lucky that we have a lot of great riding all along the mountains of Los Angeles. There's just so much access to cycling. So, yeah, biking is a big part of it.
- [49:13]
Andrew Morrison
That's fantastic. Like what, what else? Like what, like what, what do you do, like, a lot when you travel? Like, like, I know I have seen you kind of like, slip away from, like, the crowds of people at, like, voiceover conferences. Like, what is your, like, Zen, your refresh, your. Your place of peace?
- [49:29]
George Whittem
Yeah. That is the one downside to cycling versus, say, running. You know, a lot of people get up and they go out and run or run in the morning. Not a big fan of running. You know, what do I do to chill out? Well, I mean, to certainly get away from people for a while is really important to recharge, having some peace. I definitely think I'm an extrovert, but there's still that need to have a recharging time where I'm not around a lot of people. I will usually connect with family. I'll talk to my parents, I'll connect with my partner. I will catch up on some work, which, as crazy as it sounds, when you do what you love, it doesn't feel like you're really working. And that's what's so hard about creating those, like, barriers. Not barriers, boundaries. Boundaries. Thank you. That's what's so hard about creating boundaries around your work, is when you like your work, that will take you away from other things in your life that you need to do, especially relationships. And that's the. A really difficult balance. Right. So for me, it's like making sure I'm keeping that balance. But I will. Yeah. If I have to get away from Something I will actually check. Email, I will check things I find that I actually enjoy. I actually enjoy running my company, which I don't think I really knew that I would like to. I always thought I would just enjoy only the tasks of, you know, that I'm hard to do, like a sound check or. But as over time I'm finding that I actually almost procrastinate doing those jobs because I'm enjoying more of the other tasks lists I have and the other operations stuff and the improvements that I can do and the. The new connections and making time for podcast appearances and that I've actually enjoying just as much. Right. So yeah, I will. Yeah, it sounds weird to say that I will go do work.
- [51:29]
Andrew Morrison
No, no, like that. Like that's perfectly. Because that's what I'll do is like even in my free time, like I'm scheduling out emails where I'm doing something because working on my business, it almost gives me like a sense of purpose. You know what I mean? So I don't like being stagnant.
- [51:45]
George Whittem
Yeah, yeah, no, I know, I know I drive my girlfriend nuts because she seems to her like I'm an absolute hyper, hyperactive, you know, like a adhd. But I do need to feel comp. I do need to feel useful. I do need to feel like I'm being productive. It's very hard for me to absolutely, truly relax. I can't remember the last time, and it's been a long time where I went on a vacation and was. And had nothing I had to do or nothing planned or no physical activities. It's. I see people's pictures at the some resort and I'm like, that's a weird way to spend your time.
- [52:23]
Andrew Morrison
Right?
- [52:23]
George Whittem
Maybe I'd like to do that someday. But wow, you know, like just sitting there. How the hell do you do that? You know, my. And I get that from my dad. My dad's 78. He just had a quintuple bypass surgery two months ago.
- [52:37]
Andrew Morrison
Geez.
- [52:38]
George Whittem
He's back at work working at the same music store that I went with, I worked at when I was out of college and volunteering at the Longwood Gardens facility in Pennsylvania, which is an incredible garden center with, you know, music and fountain shows and concerts and that's cool. All this crazy stuff. And he volunteers there. Right. So I guess I get it from my dad. Hyper, just can't very hard time shutting down and relaxing. And I guess I get it from my grandma too. I remember watching my late 70s grandma come over and she couldn't Just sit and rest. She'd be sweeping the sidewalks. So I got it on both sides.
- [53:19]
Andrew Morrison
It gets to a point where like when you're used to seeing that work equals like progress, then it almost gives you the. While some people get satisfaction from relaxation, which, I mean, I can't hold it against them because it's human nature. We are built to reserve and store energy. And so like I almost look at laziness as a human disposition. But, but there's just something about like constantly tweaking and driving that just gives you a sense of accomplishment where otherwise you're like, what am I doing? Every second counts. Why am I not spending my seconds doing something productive?
- [53:53]
George Whittem
I know, I know. I, I, that is a get. That is part of life is for me is, is feeling productive, you know, and whether you like them or not, there's a new audio autobiography out by, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger and it's called Be Useful. And it's like, that is definitely, like, that is definitely in my head is I, I always want to feel like I'm useful, whether it's for my own family, whether it's for my partner, my daughter, or my clients or my company or my bicycle community or whatever it is. I just want to always, I just always want to be useful, you know? So that when that book came out, he has a three part doc on Netflix. It is an unbelievably, it's the most narcissistic thing you've ever seen. I mean, how many, how many people narrate their own autobiography documentary on. Right, but he does, but there's also something so charming about it in another way because it's Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? Very weird thing. Like he, he's so, he can some ways make me crazy in other ways. I'm like, oh, I just love, I love his attitude. But yeah, I just want to be useful, I guess. And I want to, that's very satisfying. Being useful is satisfying and eventually I'll learn to just be and find that satisfying. But for now it's be useful.
- [55:19]
Andrew Morrison
Well, speaking of being useful, where can people find you and where can people find your stuff to book you to, to help be useful and give them the greatest audio ever.
- [55:30]
George Whittem
Thanks. Well, our name is. Our address. Oh, the mic's in the way. GeorgeThe tech looks great on paper, reads terribly on the phone.
- [55:44]
Andrew Morrison
Looks great on a shirt.
- [55:45]
George Whittem
It looks good on a shirt. It sounds terrible on the phone. Everybody thinks I'm saying Georgia Tech.
- [55:49]
Andrew Morrison
You went to Georgia Tech.
- [55:50]
George Whittem
I'm like, no, I went To Virginia Tech. Nothing against Georgia Tech, that's for sure, but pizza. Oh, really? Oh, so, yeah, that's how you find me. And you can get all access to it, Myriad information and services over there.
- [56:07]
Andrew Morrison
Fantastic. Thank you. Yeah. Weird, weird tip. So the pizza.
- [56:12]
George Whittem
Oh, by the way, I love. I love pizza like a freaking. You wouldn't believe, man.
- [56:17]
Andrew Morrison
So the piece, the Pizza association of Naples and snickered because your girlfriend.
- [56:25]
George Whittem
She'S like, there's some left. It's just turned into a powder. I'm like, I'll take it right here in the vein.
- [56:33]
Andrew Morrison
But yeah, the Pizza association of Naples, Italy is pretty like, like close. Like, they usually only certify pizzerias in Italy, but as last I heard, there are only two places in the US that are, like, certified as, like, authentic pizza in Naples, Italy. One of them is a place called John's in New York, and it's built out of like this beautiful giant cathedral building. And one is a place called Antico, and it's right behind Georgia Tech.
- [57:01]
George Whittem
No kidding. That's awesome. Because that's in Athens, Right? That's Athens, Georgia. No, no, I'm sorry. Georgia Tech is in Atlanta.
- [57:10]
Andrew Morrison
Yeah.
- [57:10]
George Whittem
Georgia University of Georgia. Thank you.
- [57:12]
Andrew Morrison
UGA is in Athens.
- [57:14]
George Whittem
Gotcha. My. My daughter lives between the two. She lives with her mother and there she's, you know, closer to Athens, actually. But I will keep that in mind next time I'm visiting because, yes, I'm a massive pizza holic, and I follow a pizza master maestro who's from Italy, who lives in the States, and he travels the country in the world finding the best pizza, you know, and. Yeah, so that is. I almost forgot that. Yeah, I'm pretty obsessed. I'm pretty damn obsessed with pizza.
- [57:43]
Andrew Morrison
Well, let me know. I'm right on the other side. On the other side of Atlanta. So we'll go. We'll go get some authentic pizza.
- [57:50]
George Whittem
Absolutely. Well, my daughter's starting high school in the fall. She's starting in an art school, art magnet school. So I'll definitely be wanting to come and visit. So I'm sure before the end of the year, I'll be down there to visit. Awesome.
- [58:02]
Andrew Morrison
Well, thanks for coming on, man. This has been great.
- [58:05]
George Whittem
Yeah, it's been fun. I appreciate your being open and just chatting. And I hope. I don't know whether I hope you edit this or I hope that you don't edit it.
- [58:15]
Andrew Morrison
I really hope you enjoyed hearing George's Path in audio, getting to know him a little bit more as a person and audio expert and hearing his insight on the future of audio technologies. If you'd like to book him for any audio related inquiries, you can visit georgethee Tech. Thanks for stopping by and I'll catch you in the next one. Thank you for listening to the Voiceover Coffee Shop. For more information on guests, new episodes and more, be sure to visit veocoffeeshop.com and our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast streaming platform. You know you want to.