Last night my brother and I sat down to chat about computers, business practices, and reporting (that will be saved for another podcast). We discussed “live blogging” (as opposed to dead blogging?), Ginger, the vehicle, not the character or spice, ROI on Macs vs. Windows, and what makes one a zealot.
Steve created the word “technigion” which I thought clever and away we went… It is an hour long, so best to take it a few bites at a time.
UPDATE: My brother has posted it on his blog as well with links to the folks and items we discuss in the podcast. He also ran Levelator which brings the sound levels even (I was closer to the mic than Steve during the recording).
12 thoughts on “Podcast: Two Brothers and at Least Two Views”
Hi fellow neologizers,
It is neat you are doing this… I am not sure though if i will be able to follow it technigiously though 🙂
technical comment, this is first podcast i have heard being broadcast in stereo, which is fantastic! audio-aesthetic niggle: I would do a mix that places both of you a bit inside the two speakers: i.e., currently a is all left, and b is all right. I’d mix a bit of each of into the opposite channel to avoid the odd “person in a speak box” audio effect.
And… I see you have “insert audio comment” … that is really cool 🙂 A bit like steve job’s next mail demo from 1995.
Thanks for the comments Tim! I will have to play with the settings in GarageBand; I believe it is the one setting the channels completely separate. (Although when I play it on a computer, i.e., not in earbuds, it feels more center left/center right and not so left/right.)
Well, I have used the levelator on the file, and uploaded it to my blog. Feel free to compare. It didn’t moderate the channel balance, but it did level out the difference in gain between the two microphones.
You can also simply subscribe to the podcast via itunes–just go search in the store for “The Professor’s Notes” (and as Christian asked me, the apostrophe s is important!)
Steve
Would you care to provide a link? 🙂 OK. Here it is.
BTW, It appears that the M-Audio is not a true mixer and therefore cannot affect the balance and neither can (so far as I can tell) GarageBand (because it all comes in as one channel).
So garage band would want the two mics to come in as separate tracks, and then you could mix one slightly left, and one slightly right.
The two mic’s are definitely on two channels in Garageband, but in two channels of one track.
The thing to do (I’m guessing, not having the raw input) would be pull the left and right channels of the base track into two new tracks: then mix the two tracks. Perhaps?
Tim, you are correct and I had my terminology wrong. They are two channels on one track. Can you pull the two channels into separate tracks with GB? I am just getting started with it, so I am not sure of all the tricks available. GB (and the Mac itself, so far as I an see) can only accept one audio source at a time (although LineIn may allow this to work; I haven’t played with it yet).
Do you know of any way to separate the track? Or of who to have two inputs at once? Anyone? Beuler?
One thing that very much impressed me was the audio quality on your podcast. What microphone and digitizer are you using?
And then I guess compression and data-rates matter? Or does g-band Podcast take care of all of those choices-where-there-is-a-known-right-answer-so-just-do-that-rather-than-making-me-guess for you?
I can see i am going to have to get myself a copy!
םולש
t
PS: did the salutation work? PLaying with using dir=RTL to handle Semitic languages.
!שלום
The Hebrew worked, but it is backwards (that is the shin is on the left and instead of the right, so it is intelligible you just need to be dyslexic. ;-))
The mics and preamp are the M-Audio Classroom Studio bundle found here. I thought the quality was quite good as well, although my brother sat too far away (“No, you were too close” he says…)
I have also been pleased with the Samson USB mic, but see the thread here and here.
Also, be sure to check out Scott Bourne’s new site PodCastGearGuy.com for reviews and suggestions of equipment.
Learned some more about right-to-left in html4. The reference i had gave the example of just adding dir=rtl as a parameter to the p tag.
Turns out the correct syntax is to use the bdo tag so …
םולש 🙂
mmm. pity this doesn’t have a preview command 🙁
Turns out the comment submission script strips out the required bdo tag.
Ah well. give up and stop messing up your comments page 🙂
Thanks for the education-pak podcast kit – I have added one to our equipment request for this semester.
cheers,
tim
Before you buy the M-Audio you might want to check into some things. I am still trying to see if I can mix/blend the channels in a single GarageBand track. If so, then this is a decent kit. If not, you may want to (I might want to) get a USB mixer instead…
OK. I have got it now. (Sometimes it pays to read the manual…) To get the two mics coming into the M-Audio preamp onto two separate tracks: (From GB Help)
When you select a track, recording is enabled for that track (meaning that recording will start on that track when you click the Record button). You can enable up to seven additional tracks.
To record on multiple tracks:
• Assign each Real Instrument track to a different input channel (or pair of channels) in the Track Info pane.
• Enable each track for recording by clicking the round Record Enable button in each track’s header. When you enable a track, its Record Enable button turns red.
• To record a Software Instrument at the same time as one or more Real Instruments, click the Record Enable button in the track’s header.
• Click the Record button in the transport controls.
• If you enable more than eight Real Instrument tracks or more than one Software Instrument track, the track farthest from the last track you enable is disabled for recording, so as not to exceed the maximum number of recording tracks.
To record on multiple tracks, you need to have an audio interface with at least two input channels for recording.
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Now that I that figured out, I can use the GB virtual mixer to…well…mix!