Audacity Forum

We're a 2-man podcasting team and we call our guests on Skype

One piece left out -- and you're doing the whole thing on one computer -- or you were until that turned out to be unworkable.

I don't know anybody doing a complex podcast like this, and apparently, nobody else does either. Everybody points to "people do this all the time." Who? Exactly? Whose podcast are we replicating?

I think any one of us can whip together a nice multi-point and multi-voice podcast, but we won't be doing it on one computer. Computers have exactly two sound channels, In and Out, and Skype takes both of them. Pamela "makes" more sound channels in system memory and that's how they record both sides of the conversation. Total Recorder does that, too.

Note that the computer is full -- overfull, really -- and we haven't dealt with talent microphones, headphones, and Audacity yet.

I asked you for the parts that Radio Shack supplied to allow you to plug your computer headphones into your mixer. I've never seen this offered as a commercial product and apparently, it's not. I have personally with these hands built all the stuff you need to do that. Into the XLR mixer connection, too -- a proper connection, because we needed that to work for one of our company systems. I can tell you specifically how to do it and which tools to buy. Do you know how to solder? Do you have an electric drill?

I've never seen any of this stuff available as commercial products.

I know how the grownups do this, I worked for a US television network, but it wasn't cheap and it took four people not counting the talent.

Have you looked at commercial "Podcast Products?" I've seen people offering packages that do the whole thing.

You can connect two USB microphones to some computers using "Aggregation." That's an engineering curiosity and not intended for production. You can't control the volumes and the two systems gradually drift out of lip sync.

Koz

"Hand held style" microphones can be OK, but you will need 2 of them (one each). When recording through the Multimix you could pan one microphone to the left and the other to the right, then after recording you can split the stereo track into 2 mono tracks, which will give you mostly one voice on one track and mostly the other voice on the other track so that you can balance the levels of the 2 voices.

"Condenser" microphones are generally more popular for voice recording than "dynamic" microphones, but if you use a pair of condenser microphones you may need to find a better room to record in, or hang loads of heavy blankets around the place.

The recording in a barn effect is very common and usually signals the dividing line between newbies and seasoned veterans. People who need to do theatrical presentations at home frequently resort to thickly padded closets or DIY "Studios."

http://www.kozco.com/pictures/boothFini ... op-mic.jpg

Yes, those are furniture moving pads. I bought a matched set. The seller couldn't understand why I wanted all the same size.

You can get headset microphones that put their signal down an XLR cable. The company owns two of them.

AKG C555L

http://www.akg.com/site/products/powers ... ge,EN.html

This is a stunningly good quality microphone that completely isolates you from your environment. You can walk out into a performance area with no thought at all about feedback, echo, or interference effects. We use them for shows where we try to convince people to write us big checks. Frequently.

That will plug straight into your mixer. Not shown is the control module which you wear on your belt and takes a 9V battery.

Headphones are rough, too. You don't want sound running free around your performance area, so some means to distribute show sound to headphones is needed.

We use the Symetrix SX204. I can't find the web site immediately.

Sorry about the PDF.

http://pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/STARIN ... /SX204.pdf

You need to Monitor the show from the mixer because the show in the computer may be late. The echo will drive you nuts. That means you need some way to get the Skype speaker into the mixer without causing feedback. The grownups call this Mix-Minus. The show intentionally missing certain pieces.

The upshot is you need a way to mix the show and record it, and the process is different from the mix to the headphones and Skype Send.

I do wonder how those pre-packaged services do it. I'm sure they leave parts out.

Koz

See? First year electronics stuff.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/headsetBattery.jpg

That provides the battery to run the headset microphone (pink plug) and passes the voice sound down to the mixer. If I have time later, I'll do a sound check.

Koz

I threw it open to the corporate email system and I got an interesting idea. Shoot it like a movie. Do all the Skype work with one headset or one speaker/microphone combination and one of the fine Windows capture software packages. These will all give you stereo files with Near and Far on separate tracks for editing, filtering, and production.

Then, with a straight Audacity and two microphones or two headsets with that hardware package, shoot the rest of the show, intros, outros, bumpers, stingers, music, etc. etc.

Then edit your brains out. If you capture and Export the same flavor WAV files for all the work, it's a relatively simple matter to jam it all together using multiple imports and the Time Shift Tools. Export a final show and upload. (Don't Save anything. Audacity will not Save a sound file.)

And yes, that does mean you need to be really good at bookkeeping. Somebody has to remember what the phone call was between sessions so you can get the edits right.

There's only one camera on a movie set. All those shots and angles are done with multiple takes of the same scene and clever editing.

This also puts you in ten to one Editing Default. A 10 minute show will take (approx) 100 minutes to cut. Longer if you're compulsive or unreasonably neat.

Koz

I've heard back from several people and they all do it in pieces. One poster uses Skype to connect the two show talents from different regions of the US. They use Skype to bounce off each other comedic style, but each records their own local voice in Audacity. One ships their high-quality voice to the other, cut together, post, and go home. The show theatrical cadence and timing was via Skype, but the actual voices are missing the Skype compression and echo artifacts, because neither of them actually went through Skype.

Terrific idea.

Koz

This is a voice track from that exact headset/adapter/mixer combination.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/npr3.wav

Koz