Technical Notes

A couple people have asked me to provide some notes on how I am technically pulling off these podcasts. My setup is actually really simple, although it took me a few iterations to get it to work how I wanted it to - and of course, I’m still experimenting with format in the shows themselves.

Anyway, I am working with an Acer laptop running Windows XP. I originally bought a headset by Creative which combined headphones and a mic together in one piece. It connected to my laptop in the front using the small circular headphone and mic jacks. When I went to record with it, however, I discovered a horrible buzzing sound and a rhythmic clicking that I just couldn’t seem to eliminate (I’ve heard from a friend who does audio engineering that you can EQ this out, but I couldn’t get it to work). So then I took a gamble and bought another headset earphone/mic combo by a company called Gigabit, except this one connected through my USB port instead. And that one ended up working out great! No buzz, no problems. Very clear sound in both recording and playback.

For software, I started out with Audacity, an open source multi-track audio program available from SourceForge. I wasn’t happy with it though. It’s not a bad program, but not as full-featured as some others out there. In particular, I went and got myself a copy of the old Cool Edit Pro 2 software from a few years back. I used to use this to record music on my computer and it’s awesome. Very self-explanatory to use if you’ve got any experience using maybe a 4 or 8 track recorder. You should be able to find a version of this on file-sharing networks, but there’s also a new version of it out. It looks like Adobe has bought Syntrillium, the company who made CoolEdit and has rolled them into the Adobe Creative Suite. Now it is called “Adobe Audition” and retails for something like $350 which, in my opinion, is preposterous considering the other options out there.

After I have mixed down to an MP3, I simply upload my files to my server (provided by DreamHost), and then post them to my WordPress blog, using a “Podcast” category and the PodPress plugin for wordpress. You can access the RSS feed for my podcasts (separate from my main blog feed, but also included within it) via my FeedBurner account.

I realize that probably doesn’t sound simple at all to somebody who doesn’t have a technical background, but it actually is once you can get all your ducks in a row. When I put together a podcast now, it can take me about 2 hours or so to write notes for, record, edit and upload a new episode.