Podcasting!
March 1st, 2009

Posted by Matt

Hi everybody, I promised a few pictures of the fancy-schmancy mic and mixingboard setup we used to record today’s LRRcast, So here they are.  Let it not be said that I don’t keep my promises….  Promise to avoid using double negatives notwithstanding.

Posted in LRR | 16 Comments »

16 Comments

  1. I can’t tell, but it looks like that mixer’s got phantom power (I have an extremely similar model, but with a fader for volume instead of a radial pot). I’d recommend a couple of cheap condensor mics. Much easier for that kind of thing.

    You could get some cheap new ones for like $20-$50 a piece, and they’ll do the job quite nicely.

    Comment by Kdz — March 1, 2009 @ 4:29 am

  2. I definitely noticed a difference but I’m afraid it wasn’t generally for the better. Everyone had a different volume level & a couple of you were a little too close to the mics. But as you said, you were still working out the kinks so I expect these issues were merely the result of a new type of set up. I hope it works out & kudos to Cake for the mixer donation.

    Comment by Evil Jim — March 1, 2009 @ 4:56 am

  3. It’s very weird to see how the podcast is setup, it kind of takes away the magic.

    Comment by Elomin Sha — March 1, 2009 @ 6:20 am

  4. There was a noticeable background hiss. I would suggest tweaking the gain or maybe the preamp just isn’t good enough.

    Comment by MarkVI — March 1, 2009 @ 5:53 pm

  5. not to mention there was an added amount of boom with plosives. you can solve that problem by rolling off the bass frequencies off each channel (anywhere b/w 80-120 Hz depending on the timbre/pitch/intensity of the voice of the person coming through each channel). OR in post you could run the final mix of the vocals (not the intro/outro music, of course) through a low-cut filter, again around 80-120 Hz.

    Comment by bradleyrains — March 2, 2009 @ 1:51 am

  6. I thought the whole Podcast sounded a bit… thick? Muffled?

    Comment by Tensen01 — March 2, 2009 @ 2:00 am

  7. I would simply use a high-pass filter with a cutoff frequency of somewhere in the range of 50-300 Hz. That would also get rid of the noise caused by touching the microphones.

    Also the his certainly is not normal, even cheap preamps shouldn’t do something like that. If it is the preamps, I can certainly design you better ones you can easily build yourself. Just e-mail me. They would cost you about $1 – $2 in parts, maybe even less.

    Comment by Casandro — March 2, 2009 @ 2:31 am

  8. also to add clarity (getting rid of the ‘thick/muffled quality), with that Behringer board, your only option would be to boost the high EQ. but a word of caution there, as you cannot zero in on a particular frequency with that board, boosting the highs, while increasing clarity, will also increase high-end hiss in about the 10k-20k range. again, your best option here would be to run the final vocal mix through a program like Sound Studio (which should have come standard with your Mac), use the Parametric EQ, center in about the 3.5k-4k range with a Q of 1.7 and boost by 7-10 dB.

    Comment by bradleyrains — March 2, 2009 @ 2:37 am

  9. Audiophiles are an annoying breed.

    Comment by Keith K — March 2, 2009 @ 12:24 pm

  10. I’m not talking about high quality I’m talking about the basics. I mean it should at least sound like a recording from the 1940s.

    Comment by Casandro — March 2, 2009 @ 2:13 pm

  11. I can tell that the mics work wonderfully, but you seem to be limiting your own quality by exporting at 40 kbps for the mp3.

    Comment by Maeko — March 2, 2009 @ 5:06 pm

  12. You guys are still too quiet.
    Graham and Paul are almost loud enough – as long as I have the volume maxed out.
    Can you increase the overall volume level please?

    (I don’t really care about levels being blown, or people being too loud – I can always turn the volume down, but the volume controls on my phone don’t go any louder).

    I love listening to you guys, but it is so hard to hear you.

    Comment by RodeoClown — March 2, 2009 @ 9:54 pm

  13. Everyone looks bored. I would liven up this scene with some cookies.

    Comment by Shandi — March 6, 2009 @ 12:10 am

  14. hell yes! screw the sound problems! get some damn cookcies on set and it’ll make for everything else. woo!

    Comment by Alek — March 7, 2009 @ 6:22 pm

  15. Tim looks like he’s ready to fall asleep. xD

    Who is that sitting behind Bill? Leave it to Bill to take up a third of the picture. xD!

    Comment by Tora — March 8, 2009 @ 11:22 am

  16. There’s an excellent reason that sleep makes up over a third of our time spent alive.

    I’ll explain that reason after my nap.

    Comment by Tim — March 11, 2009 @ 8:45 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.