Podcasting Gear?
Submitted by chayak on Fri, 11/30/2007 - 17:38.
Well I was going to send this in an email but others may be curious as well so I decided to post it here on the forums. I'm a bit of an audiophile which comes from my previous job in the Navy as a submarine sonar technician. I basically spent about twelve hours a day, nine months out of the year doing audio analysis. The backend of the sonar mainframe which had a crazy amount of DSPs and processors handling thousands of channels in real time ran on linux (a topic for another time). After doing the job for so long I'm kind of picky about sound quality hence my collection of fairly high end audio gear on the playback side. I don't really have much on the recording side of thing but I'm very familiar with the gear.
Now to the question for Chad. What are you using to record and process your audio? I'm curious as I just put a Rode Podcaster on order for doing a few screencasts. It's probably in the intermediate area of mics but I have a few audio engineer friends who love it because they don't need to carry around a mic interface, mic, and maybe a mixing board. They just take their laptops and the Rode Podcaster and tossed them in their bags and go. You'll have to mix and process in software but knowing how picky they are about audio and that they use high end Neumann mics when they normally work it's pretty high praise. www.rodepodcaster.com
There's also some videos on there for microphone techniques which are handy for people who are not accustomed to higher end mics.
Good question Chayak. I'm
Good question Chayak. I'm probably going to dissapoint, as my setup is pretty ghetto, but an intersting one I guess. All I use is this Samson usb mic
It is only 80 bucks, and since it is USB, you don't have to worry about having any external equipment. I've found that this mic really puts out great sound. I only record on linux, and mostly at this time I use audacity. One trick I do use is to record on a laptop, simply because my desktops put out so much noise I end up with background noise. In the case of the laptop, I can find any quiet room, setup and record. The past two episodes I did in my living room, door shut, with a fire going:)
Hey, it's still a good mic
Hey, it's still a good mic to start out with. I'm just picky, probably too picky for my own good, about my audio equipment. I've known a few people, gear junkies mostly, that start off with a small digital recorder and end up with a handheld pro level recorder or a room in their house with acoustic panels that’s set up as a recording studio complete with some high end podcasting range gear. If it sounds good and it works, then there’s no reason to upgrade till you want the capabilities of better gear or just want a nicer setup. There’s some podcasters that record together over skype or gizmo and they sound surprisingly good for the modest gear they use.
yeah, it actually kind of
yeah, it actually kind of blows my mind that the podcast sounds as good as it does being that I only use 80 bucks worth of sound gear. Heh. I totally hear what you are saying. Being a musician, I'd have a better setup if I could afford it. (in fact I used to have a darla card in my computer but it is way out of date now.) Nowadays though, its just financial for me. I've got to go best bang for the buck right now:)
Have you ever used Ubuntu
Have you ever used Ubuntu Studio? It has some very good software included for audio and video production. It's even got audio processors that you'd have to shell out a good chunk of change to get in hardware form. The JACK system is like a patchboard so you can create audio paths through the processors and other apps before recording. One of the screencasts I plan on doing is showing how to set up a basic audio path in it and record then add things into it like preprocessing the audio with compression and such to give it more of a broadcast sound.
ubuntustudio.org/
Yeah, it is great for those
Yeah, it is great for those who are really into recording. I've had it on my home comp. The one thing I didn't like about it, is it loads a bunch of packages I never use. So now I just do a regular ubuntu install and add what I want to it. Let me know when you do that screencast, because jack scares the crap outta me:)
Beginning Podcaster
Hello all! I'm looking to start a linux podcast and am wanting some opinions on gear. I'm looking at this setup http://www.bswusa.com/proditem.asp?item=PODCAST-STARTER . I want to be able to have guests call in via Skype as well as insert effects, audio clips during the show. My plan is to record with my laptop running Ubuntu Hardy and Audacity. Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Aceazza