Segundo Podcasting Rig
Written byPosted on March 14, 2006
Filed Under Podcasting
In the past few weeks, we’ve received several emails on the equipment we use for the show.
Shure Beta 58A (x2): Our main recording mikes for the interviews. (You may have noticed a slight boost in audio quality with the last few shows. These mikes are one of the reasons why.)
Shure SM-57s (x3): Backup mikes, what we were using before we nabbed the Beta 58As. (Don’t ask us what we were using before that!)
Behringer UBB1002: A battery-powered mixer we use for large-scale interviews for more than two people. We can record anywhere on battery power! That was our goal in the first place with these podcasts: a sort of nouevelle vague romanticism of having audio facilities that we could schlep about without the need to plug in anywhere. What, our minds asked, if the power went out and the authors we talked with were in the middle of a stunning story? Of course, with real-world conversations, you simply pull the votives out of the cabinet and carry on. This may be a rather odd justification, but consider the other reason: In a public place, finding a place to plug in is often a pain in the ass, particularly if it makes our subjects have to uncomfortably hunch over or the like. We do our damnedest to make our guests comfortable. Hence, battery power.
This replaced our Samson Mixpad 9, which we picked up used, not realizing that it was designed for live PA situations rather than what we were doing.
Samson Mixpad 9: We maintain this as a shaky backup. Or in the event that all audio production facilities suddenly stop manufacturing mixers. Actually, we’re not quite certain why we still have this. Probably because it sounds like a drum machine when it really isn’t. (Used for Show #11.)
Sony Minidsc Recorder MZ-R70: We’ve had this puppy since 1999, believe it or not. And it’s served our purposes extremely well. We’ve definitely put 200,000 miles on this trusty Dodge Dart, but catastrophically dropped this in a Manhattan subway a year ago. The thing still works, but it does have its occasional quirks, which we clean up in post.
SOFTWARE:
Audacity: Yes, we use this. It actually works very well for a lot of basic cleanup and cuts. And the best part is that it’s free.
Cakewalk Sonar: We can’t say enough fantastic things about this multitrack editor. We haven’t tried Cubase or Garage, but there’d have to be an utterly compelling case to get us to change.
Sound Forge: If Audacity doesn’t do the trick for a specific audio gaffe, you’ll find us firing up this application and doing our damnedest to restore the audio.
FURTHER NOTES:
It takes us at least 20 hours to produce a podcast. That includes booking the guest, reading the book(s), doing the research, preparing our questions, doing an equipment check, conducting the interview, dumping the audio into our computer, engineering the puppy, uploading and promoting it.
Radio Shack is actually quite fantastic for affordable mike stands, Y-adapters and ancillary doodads. It is not so good for mikes. Believe me, your microphone matters!
The better it sounds in production, the less work you’ll have to do in post. So it’s important to get the best signal possible in the field!
Organizing and booking guests is sometimes more time-consuming than you might imagine. But we do enjoy the many people we’ve talked with along the way and hope to meet several of them in person at BookExpo America.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
I’m glad you enjoy this enough to spend those 20 hours because they are fantastic for those of us spending the half hour or so listening to them!
Ed, not to be picky, but over on Metaxucafe you said you use a Shure SM-57, not a 58. We bought the former over the weekend. Hopefully the two work equally well.
Pete: You’re quite right. They are SM-57s, not 58s. My apologies.
Thanks for the info. I need to upgrade equipment if I am to really conduct interviews. My bad equipment has led me to do a lot of email Q&A rather than actual interviews.