The Evolution of the TRi Booth: Designing a Portable Voiceover Studio

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite, thanks to Austrian Audio, Making Passion Heard,

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and Tribooth, the booth on the move. Speaking of Tribooth, I've often wondered,

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because I've seen other bits and pieces floating around on the interweb,

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what was the reason for the design or the launch of Tribooth, George?

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Five, four, three, two, one. Let's go.

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Welcome. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone.

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To the Pro Audio Suite. These guys are professional, they're motivated.

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With Tech the VO Stars, George Wittum, founder of Source Elements, Robert Marshall,

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international audio engineer, Darren Robbo Robertson, and global voice, Andrew Peters.

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Thanks to Tribooth, Austrian Audio, Making Passion Heard, Source Elements,

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George the Tech Wittum, and Robbo and AP's international demos.

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To find out more about us, check the ProAudioSuite.com.

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Yes. Well, the Tribooth was designed because there's so many products that were already out

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there marketing to this idea of a portable studio. So when Tribooth was developed,

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it wasn't like nobody else had come up with the idea of having a collapsible,

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mail it over UPS kind of a booth. It had been done. And that's kind of the reason why Tribooth

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came along because the other ones were so terrible. They were either much too bulky.

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I mean, frankly, they were just not very good. They had a lot of issues in terms of weight,

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in terms of the size of the packaging. We really wanted it to be something that could travel well.

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And for a while there, Rick actually was using another product. And the smallest we got it to

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fit was into a golf bag portage case, like a hard shell case that you put your golf bag in.

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And portable-ish, right? But you still had to check it as a oversized bag, as a sports thing,

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which depending on the airline could be a bit more expensive or a lot more expensive.

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And so it never met that need of fitting it into a standardized 23 kilogram luggage.

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So that's why we invented it.

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So it was the Tribooth to actually just save weight because you only needed three legs

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instead of four, or is there some acoustic value to having three corners, just having a triangle?

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Excellent question. The acoustic side of it is hard to... It's dubious. And the reason why I say

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that is the booth, the way it works, being this blanket for it really, is it's not a chamber,

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right? It's not like your ISO booth, like the booth behind me or any of the booths that you

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think of. Those are chambers. And then what you're trying to do is eliminate the sound that's

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bouncing around inside said chamber. In fact, I got to see Robert's chamber,

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Robert built a booth in his studio and it's a work in progress, but he had it very well padded

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and it was a very unique shape, right? It was. It's in a corner.

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Yeah, it's in a corner. It's the more unique the shape is and the more

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unusual or odd the shape is with fewer parallel surfaces, the better off you are.

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So anyway, with the TriBooth, what's really happening is it's more like an acoustical

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filter, right? So it's designed to not trap sound inside like a chamber or a box. It's designed to

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actually allow the sound to pass through it, right? So that's what's really happening. So

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it's passing through and a lot of the energy is dissipated as it passes out into the room,

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whatever reflects around the room and comes back in, passes back through the sound panels

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and back in, you know, hopefully most of it doesn't return, you know? And that's the concept

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and that's what makes it different. It's kind of hard to quantify. So it doesn't really matter

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whether it's a square or a rectangle or a triangle or a Pentagon or a circle. And I don't believe

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that it really actually does. I don't have the acoustical measurements and the science to back

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that up because I haven't really been able to find it. You know, I can't really find the data,

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like saying, this is what's going to happen to a sound wave when it's dampened from three

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non-parallel surfaces or one circular surface, right? Because it's not designed to be reflective.

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Maybe I'm over-complicating the explanation, but it doesn't seem to matter. It's really

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a practical thing. We wanted it to be as light as we could get it. And that was something that

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Rick came up with. One day, I'll never forget it. He had a straw, a drinking straw mock-up of it

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with the triangle floor plan, you know, and he stuck it. He's like, what do you think of this?

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And I was like, yeah, that's great. I think you got something there, right? Because the

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thing about the triangle shape is, think about just envision yourself inside a small booth,

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right? What is the least necessary part of said booth in terms of space, right? It's not the area

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next to you, right? You need to be able to move your arms. You need to be able to do this. It's

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really the area up in the front is mostly wasted space on either side of the mic, right? And so

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that's how we started to realize like, wow, we can really save space. We can make better use of the

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space that we have, thereby using less materials, less blankets, less frames, less weight, on and

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on and on and on. And that really was one of the main things that got us the design patent was the

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fact that it was a triangle. Yeah. It also allowed you, because I know with my tri booth, like all of

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them, you've got that portion from the top sort of down to waist height, roughly, of a double layer.

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Right. Yes. Whereas you being square, you couldn't have done that because that would have been

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all the weight without the double layer. Yeah. So that was another just experimental thing. So

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we first, of course, did the conventional thing, which was to take the entire sound blanket,

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hang it from the top and have it go to the floor, right? That's conventional. That's what everybody

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else does, right? And then we started experimenting with adding layers and we're like, what's the

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diminishing returns of adding more and more layers of blankets? Well, you could double up the layers

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and that does damp more sound, but it gets heavier very, very quickly. And all of a sudden,

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we couldn't pack it into a suitcase, right? So then we're like, well, how do we continue to

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maximize the performance of the materials that we can transport? We pretty much figured out the

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maximum amount of stuff where we can fit in the suitcase with the frames and with all the other

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accessories and still have it be at that critical under 50 pound or 23 kilogram weight limit.

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And once we were there, you know, we're like, okay, do we fold it in half? Do we have a third?

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So what happens is really about a third of the blanket is folded over the top, creating that

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double thick layer that's closest to the microphone. And then you have another portion that hangs down

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below, and then you have the space open at the bottom. And that is another one of those things

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that makes it unusual and kind of messes with your head because you're thinking, wait a minute,

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how can this thing be any good? There's a huge, huge open space underneath. How can that work, right?

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So that was something that we just learned through testing. I mean, let's, I'll be honest, it's been,

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it was a lot of just trial and error. It wasn't like a ton of mathematic calculations and acoustics

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and physics. It was just practical things and experimenting to see what worked. So once we got

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that double layer at the top third of the height of the booth, then we realized how important that

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same double layer was on the ceiling. Because we, when we first set up the booth in his one,

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one of Rick's houses, when he, where he was living at the time, we had this unusual room that had

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hardwood floors and a lowish, kind of a low flat ceiling. It was very Spartan, which was actually

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the perfect place to test it. It was very reverberant. And when we only had one layer of

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blanket on the roof, it was still kind of reverberant in there. It was not doing an awesome

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job, but when we threw another layer on the roof, it dropped down the echo quite a bit. It was like

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really a big difference. And we were like, man, we have to put another layer of blanket material

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on the roof. And so that was just another thing out of pure testing. I would go over to Rick's

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place every couple of weeks or so, and we would just test things and experiment, you know, and

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that's what we, how we came up with what you're, you're essentially what you're getting today, five

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years later. You know, the funny thing is when, when you did the tri-booth as an experiment,

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I decided I was going to make my own.

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Oh, I was privy to that. That was interesting. Pictures or it didn't happen?

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It, no, no, it happened. Yeah, it happened.

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I'm there going, Andrew, should you be doing this?

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Yeah, yeah. So I put, I built one. It was actually square.

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And I actually calculated how much it cost me in materials. Because I was thinking,

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oh, this thing can't be that expensive, surely. I think my materials ended up costing me about

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$600 or something from memory.

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Those blankets can't be cheap.

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It was just all the, you know, the bungee, the hooks, the...

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The cheap part was the PVC, probably.

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Yeah, yeah.

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But then you need the know-how and then you need the, you know, the wherewithal and the tools.

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If you use the PVC that you buy at the hardware store, it's going to be standard plumbing

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material. And it's functional, it works, right? But, you know, what we're using is a, what they

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call a furniture grade PVC. So it's a good deal more expensive and it looks way better, right?

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And then...

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Doesn't have like all the purple writing on it.

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Exactly.

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You should just drip the glue. You know how when they're done installing this stuff,

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they just like, they're like...

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Yeah, there's glue and they just like shove it together.

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With a little ball sponge and they just go...

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Yeah, exactly. You should just have that purple shit all over it.

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Well, you know, some of that glue or type of glue is used in the assembly in specific joints that

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we do not want to have come apart. But, you know, again, Rick is doing all that assembly by hand,

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booth by booth. And he's very particular about how it looks. He's like, really cares a lot about

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how the fit and finish looks and that there's no glue and there's no... Things are aligned and

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things are consistent.

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How many are out there? If I may ask.

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We've well past the 300 mark. So we're in the 320, something like that mark.

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Which is pretty good.

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And, you know, considering again, a boutique product that's being made by hand,

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it's pretty amazing. And it's five years later, the thing is still completely irrelevant.

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Five years later, there's still not something that's on the market that's a direct replica.

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Whether they would do it, you know, I don't trust China to respect a patent.

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They could care. They could care less. So nobody's come out of China yet with a knock off of it.

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Right. So either they don't see the value, they don't understand it, or they just simply

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don't want to make one. I don't know, because they knock off everything.

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The TiMu Tri booth.

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Well, you know, so one of the parts that makes the booth hard to replicate...

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The TriMu.

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TriMu.

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The TriMu.

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The TiMu TriMu.

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One of the things that makes the booth relatively expensive and hard to replicate are the corner

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pieces that give it the triangle shape. You know, they're adjustable angle pieces.

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Those were hard to find, and they're kind of expensive.

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In a perfect world, we would have those blow molded or injection molded and

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made custom for us. We would have to buy like a couple of thousand of those things, you know?

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So scaling was impossible, right?

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Again, if a company saw real value in knocking this thing off, that had the scalability, which

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is obviously some factory in China, they could do it, you know? And it just hasn't happened yet.

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I don't know if it ever will. And whatever the case is, I mean, we've come up with something

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that those that get it, get it. And those that use it tend to love it. The only thing people

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ever complain about is just that it's, it is pretty bulky, you know, in terms of something

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that's portable, it's still pretty bulky to travel with. And there are a lot of cases where people

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will opt to not bring it because they just don't quite want to lug it along for a weekend long

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trip. Andrew, you've had that situation, haven't you? Where you've just done the booth umbrella

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instead? Yes. I have. And look, if I'm going somewhere where it's a hot climate and I don't

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need much luggage, perfect. If I'm going somewhere that's winter and I need a suitcase,

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then it gets tricky because all of a sudden I'm trying to find someone to share a suitcase with.

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You know, the other half prefers that I don't have my clothes in her over full suitcase.

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She doesn't want your grungy jocks in her suitcase. I can imagine.

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No, she just doesn't have room because she takes pretty well everything she owns in the suitcase.

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Well, the other one that we've talked about, you and I, AP, with the Tribooth is if you

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were sort of plane hopping, if you were doing one of those holidays where you're going from here to

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there to the next spot, it's going to be pretty difficult too, right? But you know, I think you

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took it up the coast though once, I remember. I've taken it to quite a few places. It's been

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Sydney, Byron, Adelaide. Byron's the one I was thinking of, yeah.

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Yeah. George, how about this for a business? You ready?

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Like Rick stocks, 50 booths and he ships them and the person pays shipping and a weekly fee

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and it's just shows up at their hotel and when they're done, they box it up and Rick's

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got a return label and that's all part of it. Yep. That was a day. That was year one.

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We talked about that. That was the bookable part, wasn't it?

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Isn't that what to where Tribooth bookable came from?

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No, actually bookable is Rick's own coaching business.

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I always thought bookable was like you could book one and I thought that was the eventual

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plan that you'd be able to book one and have it just wherever you turned up. There you go. So,

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I've learned something new from this episode. There you go.

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But Andrew, would that be worth like what? A hundred bucks, a hundred dollars a week plus

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like shipping? If it was, well, you'd have to have the stock

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because the shipping from the States to Australia would be hundreds.

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Well, Rick will send you a few and you'll get a small commission for shipping them out.

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No, renting the booth has been something we've tried to figure out a model around

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and it's come up a couple of times and I think there may be a case where we've actually done it

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or Rick actually did something like that. But we actually, we had a case where we

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tried to ship one to New Zealand and to get there on time for a production and it just didn't get

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there on time for the production. So, then it kind of blew the whole thing.

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Yeah. So, the just-in-time part of it can be tricky. You definitely have to have them locally

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available at least in the country where they need to be. And so, we've looked at rental houses here

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in Los Angeles and it's a tough sell and I think it's because of its size. They could have a lot of

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microphones sitting in the same place as one of these things and it just takes up a lot of space.

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So, I don't know. I would love to do it. I think there's a lot of good reasons for it. We would

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love to not have to have everybody buy it when they know they only want to use it once a year.

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You know, it just, we haven't quite been able to, again, it's scaling it, it's the funding of it,

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it's the storage and the logistics, all those things. If we could get a rental company that

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does pro audio rental to buy them and rent them, we would fully encourage doing that.

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Just a thought, what about, like, we have staging connections here that do all the big gigs and all

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that sort of stuff that hire out, you know, PAs and all that sort of gear. You must have,

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there must be companies like that all around the world. Would they be interested?

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With the rental companies and stuff.

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Yeah, we just haven't had the right, the silver bullet in terms of what they want and what we,

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and what they, we just haven't found the right connections yet. They're out there,

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we just haven't beat the ground yet. I think we literally have to just do the calls, you know.

200
00:16:57,460 --> 00:17:01,360
Do you know who you should talk to? You should talk to U2's management, because when

201
00:17:01,880 --> 00:17:07,460
U2 were out here on the Zoo TV tour, you know, had the big TV displays on the stage and all that

202
00:17:07,460 --> 00:17:12,180
sort of stuff. One of the breakfast jocks who I worked with, a guy called Rob Duckworth, he's

203
00:17:12,180 --> 00:17:16,619
really good mates with the band, and he actually got me and a couple of other guys underneath the

204
00:17:16,619 --> 00:17:21,339
stage where they had like video editing going on and all sorts of shit. They had two voice booths

205
00:17:21,980 --> 00:17:26,400
in the corner, two like little portable voice booths over in the corner where they were doing

206
00:17:26,400 --> 00:17:32,320
voiceovers and Bono would record McPhisto and all that sort of stuff. It was really cool.

207
00:17:32,460 --> 00:17:34,500
Were they like wooden with carpet on them?

208
00:17:34,520 --> 00:17:37,800
They were something they'd cobbled together themselves. It wasn't anything that I'd ever

209
00:17:37,800 --> 00:17:43,660
seen. I was just like, holy crap, that's so cool. I mean, we're talking, what, 94, 93?

210
00:17:43,660 --> 00:17:44,800
It was 94.

211
00:17:45,740 --> 00:17:52,160
When it's a touring show, they've got riggers, they've got hundreds and hundreds of yards of

212
00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:59,820
heavy velvet blankets, I mean, quilted curtains. They essentially have the raw building blocks,

213
00:18:00,060 --> 00:18:07,040
you know, and the riggers and the swing crew and the grips and all that, they're pretty

214
00:18:07,040 --> 00:18:13,060
resourceful, you know, they'll make that stuff on the spot. So it's still like this niche thing

215
00:18:13,060 --> 00:18:19,820
where it's for somebody who doesn't have access to those resources, you know, but would still

216
00:18:19,820 --> 00:18:26,480
would like to have something like this. We'll find that audience yet, we're going to find them,

217
00:18:26,600 --> 00:18:32,720
you know, it's just, we haven't been as ambitious as to wanting to scale it yet.

218
00:18:33,300 --> 00:18:35,380
We would like to, but we haven't taken a big step yet.

219
00:18:35,380 --> 00:18:39,180
Yeah, we want to nail down the product first, right, and then worry about that sort of stuff.

220
00:18:39,260 --> 00:18:39,460
Yeah.

221
00:18:39,460 --> 00:18:43,660
Here's an idea, how about if you do rent it, you rent it with a passport VO.

222
00:18:44,780 --> 00:18:45,120
Yeah.

223
00:18:45,360 --> 00:18:46,940
And an Austrian audio microphone.

224
00:18:46,940 --> 00:18:48,660
Austrian audio microphone and headphones.

225
00:18:49,100 --> 00:18:50,000
And a Source Connect license.

226
00:18:50,640 --> 00:18:51,260
Oh, no, no, no, no.

227
00:18:51,260 --> 00:18:51,620
And a Source Connect license.

228
00:18:52,280 --> 00:18:55,380
Or a temporary Source Connect license.

229
00:18:55,780 --> 00:18:58,220
Yeah, all you have to do is bring your laptop, that's all you need.

230
00:18:59,080 --> 00:19:04,060
Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, packages are clearly another way of doing it. Like,

231
00:19:04,580 --> 00:19:11,720
you know, I think for those that don't travel often, that would be awesome, right? A lot of

232
00:19:11,720 --> 00:19:16,460
my voice clients that would buy this thing, they travel quite a lot, so they have their travel kit,

233
00:19:17,040 --> 00:19:23,000
you know, so it's still like a niche thing for that guy who travels really once a year with the

234
00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:28,600
family, does the big vacation and wants to have a whole turnkey set up, literally sitting in the

235
00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:35,240
hotel when he arrives, and that is another niche clientele, you know, that we haven't really

236
00:19:35,240 --> 00:19:35,600
serviced.

237
00:19:35,620 --> 00:19:40,760
How often when you're in a hotel is outside noise the issue? Like, I know the hotel room doesn't

238
00:19:40,760 --> 00:19:46,940
sound good, but the tri-booth should kind of take care of deadening up the return off the walls.

239
00:19:47,140 --> 00:19:54,700
Yeah, I mean, it's outside noise and it's inside noise. So some of the outside noise is the obvious

240
00:19:54,700 --> 00:20:02,360
stuff, right? Traffic or a busy street. The inside noise is like the HVAC system, the vacuuming

241
00:20:02,360 --> 00:20:07,880
upstairs, the people running around upstairs, the, you know, the fridge.

242
00:20:08,160 --> 00:20:09,340
The couple having sex next door.

243
00:20:09,360 --> 00:20:13,740
The occasional couple having sex, which pretty rarely happens during the day.

244
00:20:13,900 --> 00:20:16,040
You don't want people having sex in your bedroom.

245
00:20:17,480 --> 00:20:19,680
Mom, dad, shut up!

246
00:20:19,680 --> 00:20:27,380
Oh, that's what it's like when she tries to do a voiceover session.

247
00:20:31,360 --> 00:20:36,760
Oh my God. I don't know.

248
00:20:36,920 --> 00:20:40,960
Could you like have a little, like, like just like the breaths are a little bit too much.

249
00:20:40,960 --> 00:20:44,640
Yeah, exactly.

250
00:20:45,740 --> 00:20:50,240
You know what? Some of my clients have told me, like, I didn't expect it to be soundproof because

251
00:20:50,240 --> 00:20:54,880
we don't, we know it can't be soundproof, but we had a few people tell us like it was soundproof

252
00:20:54,880 --> 00:21:00,480
enough. Like it knocked down enough ambient noise to make a noticeable difference.

253
00:21:01,160 --> 00:21:06,460
And how to quantify that? Like, you know, we don't, you'll notice we don't have a spec that says

254
00:21:06,460 --> 00:21:12,420
row reduced noise by X, because it depends on the sound, depends on the intensity,

255
00:21:12,720 --> 00:21:16,300
depends on the microphone you're using, depends on so many factors.

256
00:21:16,520 --> 00:21:20,060
We just don't want to throw out numbers that can't be verified and backed up.

257
00:21:20,200 --> 00:21:25,000
We just, that's why it can be a little hard to sell to numbers people who want to see specs.

258
00:21:25,120 --> 00:21:29,340
I want to see stats. I want to see, you know, NRC and all this stuff.

259
00:21:29,460 --> 00:21:33,840
And it's like, you know, someday maybe we'll get it to a river bank labs and they'll do

260
00:21:33,840 --> 00:21:38,420
the NRC readings on the materials and it would be cool to do that.

261
00:21:38,660 --> 00:21:41,440
But more practical would be to just simply set the mic up in there,

262
00:21:41,860 --> 00:21:45,800
play a noise outside and then take the blanket down and play the same noise.

263
00:21:45,980 --> 00:21:47,800
And then what's the difference? Figure it out.

264
00:21:48,700 --> 00:21:52,280
But what, I mean, what you're essentially doing is what we always talk about is doing

265
00:21:52,280 --> 00:21:57,400
the most you can before you have to return to plugins and all that sort of stuff.

266
00:21:57,440 --> 00:22:01,980
You're doing everything you can in a situation where you're not in control of a lot of stuff.

267
00:22:01,980 --> 00:22:05,040
You're doing everything you can before you hit it with noise reduction,

268
00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:08,120
before you hit it with de-reverb, before you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

269
00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:11,020
You know, to me that makes complete sense.

270
00:22:12,660 --> 00:22:14,220
I do everything I can.

271
00:22:14,380 --> 00:22:17,340
You do, you work hard. I mean, you sweat over this stuff at night.

272
00:22:17,600 --> 00:22:21,060
I'm recording tomorrow. What can I do for Robbo to make his life easier?

273
00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:24,240
Let me think about, hang on, I know what I'll do.

274
00:22:24,300 --> 00:22:25,620
I'll wear two microphones.

275
00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:30,720
In fact, what I'll do is I'll send him both on the one track.

276
00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:35,460
Exactly, yeah, yeah.

277
00:22:35,500 --> 00:22:42,380
But I actually use my Tribooth in a couple of really pretty trying environments.

278
00:22:45,980 --> 00:22:49,840
And one was in Byron, and we were literally on the beach.

279
00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:53,340
So it was constant, you know, ocean noises, waves and stuff.

280
00:22:54,120 --> 00:22:59,380
And the other one was in a hotel, but it was, I was in the sort of lounge area,

281
00:23:00,260 --> 00:23:04,100
but it was the partition between the bedroom and that was glass.

282
00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:05,400
Oh, wow.

283
00:23:05,500 --> 00:23:08,160
And that was the only place I could put it was next to the glass.

284
00:23:09,020 --> 00:23:09,740
Super echoey.

285
00:23:10,100 --> 00:23:11,560
Oh, it should have been awful. It worked.

286
00:23:12,180 --> 00:23:14,120
Yeah, right. Oh, really? Yeah.

287
00:23:14,440 --> 00:23:16,400
And then like, in terms of what you can put in the booth,

288
00:23:16,460 --> 00:23:17,980
this is right off the website, you know?

289
00:23:18,120 --> 00:23:19,800
So like, we just did a few.

290
00:23:20,040 --> 00:23:22,300
What headphones have big red, what is that?

291
00:23:22,320 --> 00:23:24,100
Audio Technica ATH-M50s.

292
00:23:24,140 --> 00:23:27,360
They have make all kinds of custom ear pads, all kinds of stuff.

293
00:23:28,060 --> 00:23:30,440
Does it come with a water bottle too, does it? That's cool.

294
00:23:31,060 --> 00:23:34,800
Yeah, we just did a few pictures for people that are not as imaginative,

295
00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:36,680
you know, like, what do I put in the booth?

296
00:23:36,860 --> 00:23:37,580
What could it look like?

297
00:23:37,660 --> 00:23:41,740
Yeah, so this first one is just the most basic version, which actually,

298
00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:45,360
in this case, the universal audio interface is outside the booth.

299
00:23:46,020 --> 00:23:49,760
So, you know, sometimes having less stuff in the booth is the way to go, you know,

300
00:23:49,860 --> 00:23:54,540
and just have it sitting outside on a desk and just have a less cluttered environment, right?

301
00:23:54,540 --> 00:23:59,000
So in this case, there's nothing in the booth except mic, headphones, and a script, you know?

302
00:23:59,120 --> 00:24:01,720
This is, in this case, the script is on an iPad, right?

303
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:04,320
I think that's a pretty ideal setup.

304
00:24:04,860 --> 00:24:08,260
It's less, the less is more approach, less gear, less stuff in the way.

305
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:12,320
If you really want to have the DAW in front of you, then there's your typical

306
00:24:13,180 --> 00:24:15,520
MacBook sitting on the copy holder shelf,

307
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:19,920
and the copy holder shelf is strong enough to hold the weight of most modern Macs.

308
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:20,640
It might be a little bit...

309
00:24:20,640 --> 00:24:23,100
That's like what, like a Yamaha mixer on the shelf board?

310
00:24:23,100 --> 00:24:26,500
Yeah, that's an AGO-3, actually, in that picture.

311
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:28,000
And these pictures are pretty old.

312
00:24:28,060 --> 00:24:28,900
In fact, they're so old,

313
00:24:29,260 --> 00:24:32,120
where these are the original blankets that had a blue border on them.

314
00:24:32,220 --> 00:24:34,220
So these are pretty old pictures now.

315
00:24:35,740 --> 00:24:37,040
And then, yeah, so...

316
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:37,560
Glass of wine, too.

317
00:24:37,800 --> 00:24:38,160
Nice.

318
00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:39,700
Exactly, glass of wine.

319
00:24:39,940 --> 00:24:40,940
Good eye, good eye.

320
00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:44,260
That gets the reads going smoothly.

321
00:24:44,900 --> 00:24:45,480
That's right.

322
00:24:45,980 --> 00:24:48,040
And then an iPhone for timing at the bottom there.

323
00:24:48,040 --> 00:24:50,060
Was I there that day when you were doing...

324
00:24:50,060 --> 00:24:50,560
Yeah.

325
00:24:52,020 --> 00:24:54,160
You never finished that glass.

326
00:24:54,700 --> 00:24:55,200
Exactly.

327
00:24:55,780 --> 00:24:59,020
And then this was just the super light version,

328
00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:00,900
which is an iPad with an Apogee mic,

329
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:04,160
which actually I recorded somebody at Wovocon,

330
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:05,320
where it was just...

331
00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:07,920
She had a Yeti Junior, or the Yeti...

332
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:08,960
Whatever, the little tiny...

333
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:10,360
They made a worse Yeti than the Yeti?

334
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:11,160
They really do.

335
00:25:11,620 --> 00:25:12,820
They get smaller and worse.

336
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:13,780
That's not bad enough.

337
00:25:14,100 --> 00:25:17,040
And we used it, and, you know, it wasn't amazing sounding,

338
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:18,400
but it was quite usable.

339
00:25:18,700 --> 00:25:19,300
She was happy.

340
00:25:20,260 --> 00:25:24,400
So, yeah, you can just throw that up in there with your iPad, go for it.

341
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:28,740
And then this is just like an example of just using the booth

342
00:25:28,740 --> 00:25:31,720
for doing like an appearance or a meeting or something.

343
00:25:31,900 --> 00:25:33,980
I thought it meant it came with George the Tech on call.

344
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:35,580
It's like, George, what the fuck's going on?

345
00:25:35,620 --> 00:25:36,040
It can.

346
00:25:36,420 --> 00:25:37,560
I can't get it to work.

347
00:25:37,620 --> 00:25:38,420
For the right price.

348
00:25:39,100 --> 00:25:41,160
I can't get Poll A to go into Poll B.

349
00:25:41,260 --> 00:25:42,800
What the fuck's going on?

350
00:25:43,300 --> 00:25:46,680
Yeah, and in this case, he's got a lav microphone on in this shot.

351
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:51,020
But I mean, these are just a few examples of what you could do with the setup.

352
00:25:51,780 --> 00:25:53,000
I like that light.

353
00:25:53,220 --> 00:25:54,900
I like the light and the way it's...

354
00:25:54,900 --> 00:25:58,240
How does that connect to the blanket?

355
00:25:58,460 --> 00:26:00,720
It's got like elastic straps up there.

356
00:26:01,500 --> 00:26:04,200
Yeah, there are some straps pre-sewed into the roof.

357
00:26:04,780 --> 00:26:09,360
The roof of the booth is the most complex single fabricated thing in the whole product

358
00:26:09,360 --> 00:26:10,980
because it's a triangle.

359
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:13,480
So making it, it's a little bit more complicated.

360
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:16,600
It has a piece that has to be sewn in for the second layer.

361
00:26:16,980 --> 00:26:18,460
That's actually not that easy to sew.

362
00:26:18,820 --> 00:26:22,160
And then you have the loops, the little straps for the light.

363
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:24,140
There's a lot that goes into making that.

364
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:25,340
How do you sew a moving blanket?

365
00:26:25,540 --> 00:26:27,400
Jesus, the sewing machine must be industrial.

366
00:26:27,900 --> 00:26:34,540
Well, I'll tell you for a very long time, it was just Rick's wife using essentially consumer grade,

367
00:26:34,660 --> 00:26:39,360
you know, high quality, but the machines would occasionally just fail.

368
00:26:39,860 --> 00:26:40,880
You know, they would break down.

369
00:26:40,880 --> 00:26:44,340
Imagine, pull a sewing machine and be like, fuck.

370
00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:46,240
It was too much for the machine.

371
00:26:46,500 --> 00:26:47,020
Yeah, yeah.

372
00:26:47,120 --> 00:26:52,420
So he's finally found someone to help do the sewing, like a professional sewing service

373
00:26:52,420 --> 00:26:53,720
with the better machines.

374
00:26:54,420 --> 00:26:55,740
It took a long time though.

375
00:26:55,820 --> 00:26:56,560
He was very picky.

376
00:26:56,700 --> 00:26:57,700
We tried a few companies.

377
00:26:57,720 --> 00:26:59,100
But then he had to order them in bulk.

378
00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:01,640
And that's where it's like that whole thing of like, how many do you order?

379
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:04,960
Because if he, enough of that, he's making his own corner pieces out of PVC.

380
00:27:05,540 --> 00:27:07,600
Right, when these are made in batches of 10.

381
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:10,080
So that's how it goes.

382
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:15,680
And getting all the different pieces in time and on a fair price.

383
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:18,940
The thing is that we haven't raised the price because, well, we're idiots.

384
00:27:19,620 --> 00:27:24,380
So the profit margin has shrunk over the years because everything is more expensive.

385
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:25,320
Everything is going up.

386
00:27:25,500 --> 00:27:25,600
Yeah.

387
00:27:25,620 --> 00:27:26,000
Everything.

388
00:27:26,220 --> 00:27:31,460
So as you said, Andrew, when you added up the price and what it costs you down there,

389
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:37,940
yeah, it's essentially costing us 500 plus dollars in just raw materials, just all the bits and

390
00:27:37,940 --> 00:27:38,300
pieces.

391
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:42,120
And it's kind of where we're at, you know, and the rest of it is time.

392
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:44,800
It's time, labor and overhead and all that.

393
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:49,280
So, and then it's also me, because every time you buy a booth, it includes me setting up

394
00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:54,040
processing or doing a consult with you to get everything fine tuned.

395
00:27:54,160 --> 00:27:55,500
So that's also part of it.

396
00:27:55,780 --> 00:27:57,040
How much, how much are they?

397
00:27:57,780 --> 00:27:58,800
1500 U.S.

398
00:27:58,820 --> 00:28:04,980
And that's, I think that believe that's still including shipping to the lower 48 states of

399
00:28:04,980 --> 00:28:05,480
the U.S.

400
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:06,780
Including shipping.

401
00:28:06,780 --> 00:28:10,540
And Andrew, you said that, so in Australian, that'd be a million.

402
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:11,380
What would that be?

403
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:14,080
Yes, about 2.5, I think.

404
00:28:14,360 --> 00:28:14,600
Something like that.

405
00:28:14,600 --> 00:28:16,700
2.5 million pesos or something.

406
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:18,380
Australian pesos.

407
00:28:18,700 --> 00:28:18,820
Yeah.

408
00:28:18,940 --> 00:28:20,840
And a couple of cans of Foster's apparently.

409
00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:26,600
I think it's about a bit over two grand.

410
00:28:27,140 --> 00:28:29,500
No, it's about 2200, I think.

411
00:28:30,140 --> 00:28:35,760
So you figure at least, at least a quarter of that, more like two thirds of that or a

412
00:28:35,760 --> 00:28:40,260
third of that is just materials, not including how much time did it take you to put it all

413
00:28:40,260 --> 00:28:40,880
together, Andrew?

414
00:28:41,740 --> 00:28:42,380
Oh, God.

415
00:28:42,860 --> 00:28:44,700
And it was shit, to be quite honest.

416
00:28:44,860 --> 00:28:45,040
Right.

417
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:46,100
And then it still doesn't even look good.

418
00:28:46,100 --> 00:28:47,660
It took me a long time to make a shit product.

419
00:28:48,660 --> 00:28:48,820
I did.

420
00:28:48,980 --> 00:28:52,080
I'm looking at our own website, which I have not looked at in some time.

421
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:54,500
And apparently there's a rentals request.

422
00:28:54,500 --> 00:28:55,020
Well, there you go.

423
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:55,940
We just spoke about it.

424
00:28:55,940 --> 00:28:56,340
Oh, there is.

425
00:28:56,940 --> 00:28:57,420
So, yeah.

426
00:28:57,440 --> 00:28:57,700
One stand.

427
00:28:58,020 --> 00:28:59,280
We do have an individual expo rental.

428
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:00,220
Well, that's how Cookie works.

429
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:02,880
He just heard me suggest it and he's like, I'll do that.

430
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:04,480
Yeah.

431
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:04,780
Yeah.

432
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:09,320
By the time Andrew spends 10 hours doing this, you know, and anybody values their time.

433
00:29:09,580 --> 00:29:14,060
Rick's been watching this episode swearing, continually going, George, for fuck's sake,

434
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:15,020
we do rentals.

435
00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:15,900
Sorry, Rick.

436
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:18,380
I should probably know our own product, huh?

437
00:29:20,060 --> 00:29:22,740
Now Robbo's going to have to edit out half of the episode.

438
00:29:23,060 --> 00:29:23,160
Yeah.

439
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:24,480
Exactly.

440
00:29:25,660 --> 00:29:27,040
Just scroll back down for me, George.

441
00:29:27,220 --> 00:29:28,200
What's it say down the bottom there?

442
00:29:28,220 --> 00:29:29,020
You provide what?

443
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:30,400
You...

444
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:33,620
There is a security deposit.

445
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:34,140
Yeah.

446
00:29:34,740 --> 00:29:38,000
You provide the, hang on, dry booth is ideal for recording artists who find themselves

447
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:38,700
needing an affordable.

448
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:41,500
You provide the mic, interface, computer, and the talent.

449
00:29:41,940 --> 00:29:44,500
Well, there'll be plenty of people, a few people out there who probably can't supply

450
00:29:44,500 --> 00:29:44,960
that part.

451
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:47,840
You provide the rest, the entire unit.

452
00:29:49,500 --> 00:29:49,900
Yeah.

453
00:29:50,100 --> 00:29:54,080
Instead of having to make, require people to have insurance and all that stuff, which

454
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:58,980
most pro-rental houses in Hollywood, you cannot rent a damn thing.