I notice there are very frequent changes to Skype
We noticed that, too. There was a time for a while there that even Paid Pamela licenses threw in the towel and couldn’t keep up.
That’s why I did it in hardware.
The older machine on the right is Skype and that’s all it does. No struggling with oddball updates or sudden changes. Skype thinks it’s communicating with me on the kitchen table.
The machine on the left is the Audacity recorder and music playback.
This was an early engineering test. There’s nothing polished or professional about it.
Denise sounds like she’s on the sofa behind me. She’s actually four time zones that way (pointing east).
It could be argued that’s the perfect podcast. We spent the whole thing talking about when we’re going to have the next one.
There are other productions who do it that way. You never have to worry about Skype housekeeping. If everybody’s on headphones, a lot of the Skype distortion goes away.
There is yet another technique. Most people find they can record their local microphone just fine and it’s the far side that fails. Each location records their own microphone and ships the perfect quality sound files to you. It doesn’t matter what Skype sounds like. That audio never makes it into the show.
Koz