((( GLENN AUDIO )))

One says, “I’ve had words with that bar keep before.” The other replies, “that guy? He looks tough”. The first responds, “ya, but his bark was worse than his byte”… ouch. Sorry, it was the best I could do this early.

So who needs a separate hard drive in this age of terabytes and 4 GB RAM chips? YOU DO. Why? Because if you’re storing you’re audio on the same drive as your running your programs off of, you are taxing your system more than it needs to be.

The hard disk will be constantly moving between the program data and the audio data it is reading/writing. Adding a second hard drive, either internal or external, depending on whether you’re running a desktop or a laptop, will allow your drive to access information faster on both disks and you’ll run into way fewer CPU overload errors in your recording, or none at all if you’re lucky.
Be sure to get a drive that runs at least 7200 rpm. The disk’s storage capacity is up to you but depending on what you’re recording, podcasts for instance, you’ll likely want to go bigger; 1 minute of wav. quality audio is about 5 MB so just interpolate from there.

You know when you meet someone at a soiree and you just wish they’d back off a little bit? They are just too in your face? That’s kind of like “proximity effect”. The phenomenon happens when a more directional microphone, like the cardiod I discussed in my last post, is up really close to the speaker and you get this very “boomy” low end heavy sound. Great if you’re looking for that, but what if it’s affecting intelligability?

Omni-directional microphones, unlike cardiods, can pick up sound somewhat equally in all directions. This makes this polar pattern typical in lavalier microphones or lapel mics. The reception of audio in all directions works to reduce proximity effect and minimize that low frequency boost for a smoother sound across all frequencies.

Next time you’re looking to invest in a lav mic, think about the polar pattern. Remember that you’ll never make bad sound good, just less bad.

This is not a blog about bears in the artic making snow angels. Though I’m sure one exists somewhere.

Polar patterns are a the various directions in which microphones pick up sound. Cardiod or the “heart shaped” polar pattern is typically used in live sound situations because of it’s rejection of sound from one direction and it’s sensativity to sound in the other. This fair degree of “directionality” would allow the microphone to pick up the voice in front of it, while rejecting some of the noise from behind.

Think of how useful this is when there is a noisy computer fan right beside where you record. You in the front, fan in the back. Less noise! Seemly easy but very useful.

More fun polar pattern “trickery” to come.

In my post Location, location, location, I expounded upon how the environment in which you record can make all the difference to sound quality. Luckily for the individual podcaster, being located in a noisy room doesn’t have to make you cancel your latest show.

SE Electronics has come up with a wonderful device known as the Reflection Filter, that helps reduce room noise without need for a full vocal booth. Through a multi-layer acoustic material process, the filter is able to incrementally reduce noise over a wide frequency range. Well done sE!

I got another good question about “what mic is the best” to use for podcasting. I am sure this answer differs among many however, I quite like the Audio Technica ATR35-S. It’s self powered and can be had at a decent cost of about $50-80 US.

Doing a quick search on Amazon revealed a great offer for this mic and another with a wireless system.

I’ve always had great success with Audio Technica. I love their vocal microphones and am sure this system provides the same quality and reliability.

Nobody likes noise, unless it’s white noise, and even then, you’d hope it was coming from something other than your T.V. But noise has been public enemy number one for audio engineers since audio could be recorded.

There are classically a few methods of reducing noise in a curative fashion, but, as I’ve been preaching (I guess I’m doing that now), prevention is always better than a cure. With this in mind, be aware of your surroundings before you press that little red button for you next podcast recording.

If you are hosting a conference, see if you can find a location for your panelist or speaker that’s NOT beneath the air conditioning vent. If you are doing a solo thing, try to stay away from your computer fan, open windows or other noise generating machinery. Keeping a close proximity to the microphone will help as well, but don’t forget the potential for clipping at that distance.

A cleaner, less noisy recording will come out sounding infinitely more professional and you will have fewer sonic anomolies if doing any processing to the sound and when you compress your raw sound file to an MP3 or AAC, etc.

When will the standard of podcasts begin to be as well produced as the best T.V. or radio shows we’ve all grown to love? In listening to my weekly dosage of ATS it occurred to me that the lengthly format with seeming lack of pre-production just made me angry; especially for a guru of new marketing. A 30 second spot may be old but at least you get the point and can move on.

If podcasting is to become the radio of the future, it’s content producers must strive to do a better job of producing. Let’s begin to raise the bar now. Why not become an innovator?

By the way, cheers to all the podcasters who are doing the pre-production needed to put together a nice tight show. Personally I’m going to credit Paul Figgiani here because I know how hard he works at it. He is the consummate professional.

A reference manual is only as good as it’s index or table of contents. If what you’re looking for is clearly laid out for you, you can access that information more efficiently.

With this in mind, it occurs to me that if you are reading this, you have an interest (vested or not…perhaps pantsed?) in audio recording of some kind, yes?
With Apple coming out with more and more software to make anyone a podcaster or audio content creator, where does a real professional become necessary to you? Assuming you’re reading the apple manual. Perhaps you’re not. Is a Audio Recording for Dummies blog needed?
Alternatively, what are THE TOUGH QUESTIONS you have about recording?

Let’s get this whole online community thing rolling…

Anyone who can scan their music memory banks and send me from whence this song quote came from gets real props. I think one day they should invent a device that scans your brain and if there’s a song in there it should match it with a database and play that song on your computer. I’ll give that one to the entrepreneurs.

Anyhow, the issue of quality is constantly argued in audio circles. I went to an AES meeting once with keynote speaker George Massenburg; arguably one of the greatest minds of our technological time (this guy invented the parametric eq for God’s sake people). George spoke of how important audio quality was to the music industry and felt that the music industry would not die based on mp3 downloads because people wanted quality. They wouldn’t necessarily care the first time they heard a song but a true fan would listen repeatedly and start to find the minor glitches that might eventually lead to them actually disliking the song. Maybe not something to be concerned with for podcasting. Or is it!? DUN DUN DAHHHHH!

After a great episode (34) of Across the Sound with Joseph Jaffe where Jaffe, in a very impromtu manner, interviewed Saatchi and Saatchi’s CEO Kevin Roberts the question arose for me again… is sound quality important in podcasting if the real import of that podcast is content?

The quality of the recording of that interview was poor at best (no offense Joseph), I know it was done in an elevator, likely with a handheld recorder, but the important thing there was the content; don’t get me wrong (there’s another audio clip going in my head) I agree that content is king but here’s my point…

Audio that is recorded with full knowledge that that audio will be used for podcasting should be as good as possible. Why?

Efficient production gets the message out sooner.

I am an editor for IT Conversations; an excellent organization bringing you excellent content, constantly. How does this happen? Volunteers record discussions, panels, conferences, etc. then those programs are overseen by series producers to pick the best content from those panels, coferences,etc. which are then edited by the editors, uploaded to a server and posted on an IT Conversations site page. No slight to the engineers recording but it takes A LOT longer to edit content that isn’t recorded well. It’s no different than recording a band in studio; a bad drum sound never becomes good, just less bad.

The result? I, as an editor, spend more time trying to fix problems with volume & noise rather than editing minor speech problems (ums and ahhs). The second result is that it takes longer to get the program up.
Why does this matter?

If the name of the podcasting game is excellent content delivered to the masses, and the masses want their content as soon as possible, the content’s quality must be kept up throughout the whole process to save time in post production.
Think of any advertising that gets screwed up in printing; either a problematic ad is run or the product doesn’t get advertised when the company needs it to.

Audio is no different than text, it’s content value is just as high.

And easier to emotionally interpret Let’s think of who’s listening to this podcast. An attendee of the conference stands to benefit just as much as anyone from hearing that conference’s content. A repeated listen might fill in gaps in that person’s notes or perhaps they are siting the content of a panelist’s speech for research; maybe one of the most salient points here. In the same way that we preserve books and magazine’s for their relevant content, we should ensure the quality of audio remain excellent for future generations.

I could go on with reasons why, that’s not the intent, here’s the thing…

How do we solve this issue?

I have some of my own ideas that I will be posting in the future, but for now I invite your thoughts on the topic. Important? Not?

A common problem for many new audio recordists is getting good levels from a loud speaker where you end up getting either too low a signal or the opposite, digital distortion; that nasty crackling sound.

Most audio pros will put a device known as a compressor in the audio chain between the microphone and the recording device to control volume changes; what we call dynamics or the dynamic range. However for those of you doing extremely basic, bare bones audio recording, say a “goose neck” mic straight into your laptop, M-Audio has come out with a nice solution.

The M-Audio MicroTrack 10dB pad will reduce the level of the signal coming in for loud sounds. This still doesn’t fix the problem of varrying volume levels (I’m hoping to address this in future posts) but it will help if you have a loud speaker and you want them close to the mic to avoid excess noise.
It’s input connection is 1/8th inch (like a typical headphone jack) and output connection is also 1/8th inch. If you use a very basic mic to do recordings you can place this device in between the mic and your computer’s mic input jack; I’ve included the connection diagram below. Just keep in mind that you’d replace your mic with their’s and instead of a portable recorder, you’d use your computer/laptop.

As an extra note, you may want to check out the MicroTrack 24/96 itself for professional portable podcast recording.

If you have questions, please email me