Lack of volume on podcasts

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Sir_Substance
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Lack of volume on podcasts

Postby Sir_Substance » 01 Aug 2008, 06:12

id just like to flag my experience of this, if other want to agree or disagree, thats fine.

im finding recent podcasts have a big lack of volume. i usually listen to them while mining in EVE online, and occasionally playing peggle while mining in eve online while listening to the podcast. mining can get boring.......

even when having the sound of both of these games turned down to the barest minimum (i cant stand a game without sound), i have trouble hearing people talk, often (but not limited to by any means) half way though any given sentence paul might be saying. no offense meant paul, you seem to drop your volume at the middle of a sentence.

anyway, the earlier podcasts had this issue, but the middle ones (starting approximately 13 casts after the first podcast and ending about 9 before this one i would say from memory, i havent actually listened to them to check) don't have this issue.

i donno if that's you, the mics you are using, the encoding or whatever. i just wanted to flag the issue. its possible its just me (and if it is, im about to get slammed for it).

carry on!
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St. Ricktopher
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Re: Lack of volume on podcasts

Postby St. Ricktopher » 01 Aug 2008, 14:55

Sir_Substance wrote:id just like to flag my experience of this, if other want to agree or disagree, thats fine.

im finding recent podcasts have a big lack of volume. i usually listen to them while mining in EVE online, and occasionally playing peggle while mining in eve online while listening to the podcast. mining can get boring.......

even when having the sound of both of these games turned down to the barest minimum (i cant stand a game without sound), i have trouble hearing people talk, often (but not limited to by any means) half way though any given sentence paul might be saying. no offense meant paul, you seem to drop your volume at the middle of a sentence.

anyway, the earlier podcasts had this issue, but the middle ones (starting approximately 13 casts after the first podcast and ending about 9 before this one i would say from memory, i havent actually listened to them to check) don't have this issue.

i donno if that's you, the mics you are using, the encoding or whatever. i just wanted to flag the issue. its possible its just me (and if it is, im about to get slammed for it).

carry on!


The main issues I have is the consistency of volume. I have it set on a volume which is loud enough to hear people speaking at regular volume, then all of a sudden they blow the levels and I have to turn it down. Then it's too quiet to hear people speaking at normal level again.
This is especially the case when I'm listening on the train or some other noisy environment.
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Master Gunner
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Postby Master Gunner » 01 Aug 2008, 15:40

I often find that they're talking at the low end of the scale, and have to strain to pick out what they're saying in some spots, even with Matt.
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forkbomb!
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Postby forkbomb! » 01 Aug 2008, 16:10

I replaygain their podcasts. It won't solve the dynamics problem, but it will bring it up to a reasonable volume.

As for what the crew could do to address this problem, I'd recommend dynamic range compression. I don't know what fx GarageBand has built-in, but if it has a compressor I'd recommend a 3:1 ratio, fast attack (~5ms), fast release (~100ms), soft-knee if you can do that, and with the threashold set down around -30db, and makeup gain of about 9db. That should bring Paul up to a reasonable volume, but keep Bill and Matt's arguments from blowing your speakers.
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Red Charlie
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Postby Red Charlie » 03 Aug 2008, 02:14

forkbomb! wrote:I replaygain their podcasts. It won't solve the dynamics problem, but it will bring it up to a reasonable volume.


Can that be added into Audacity as a plugin or does it run seperately?
It was really too big:

I give you this instead


.
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forkbomb!
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Postby forkbomb! » 03 Aug 2008, 15:13

I haven't seen a plugin implementation of Replaygain. However, I think Winamp and Foobar have replaygain built-in these days (I use foobar's version). If you're already using Audacity, you could use its built-in compressor effect, and then check the "Normalize" box to max the volume.

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