Hi. Anyone here have any experience recording podcasts? A cohost and I are going to be doing one, but we’ve had some problems. Our idea was to basically get on Skype, record our half individually as we gabbed, then edit it together into something clean (and without the usual bunch of “Ums” and stutters) but my cohost has a background noise problem. In particular, his system noise is VERY loud and you can clearly hear birds chirping in the background through most of it.
The system sound is a predictable noise element, so it can be removed pretty easily, but the birds are chaotic and really can’t be. Removing the system noise just emphasizes the bird problem. Also, my recording is very clean comparatively, so when we edit it all together, the jumps are very noticable without making my end sound much, much worse.
So what are the options here? Is there any way to remove the birds - say, filter out extremely high pitched, squeaking elements? We have both Audacity and Audition.
I have no idea how to record these fancy new podcasts, but I do have some knowledge with working with MP3s. If you were just making MP3s for people to download I could help you…
Why does this whole movement remind me of when my sister got our family’s first tape recorder and we took turns interviewing each other?
Well, I think me and Jon have a cool show on our hands… there’s a minimum of talk (and what talk there is is going to be well-edited and it’s been partly scripted before hand to give us a tight, cohesive focus while still maximizing on spontaneity) and we have a tight but flexible idea, but who knows? Either way, yeah, it’s basically an mp3, so if you could help, I’d really appreciate it, Chet.
Beat it at the source, get him a better mic. You will have a ton of work to do everyshow trying to filter out his crap, why not just solve the problem once?
You can try a gaming headset, as they disregard much of the ambient noise, or you can pay a little more and get a dedicated microphone.
I haven’t watched it, but Kevin Rose made a video guide to recording podcasts, just a few days ago. You can find the vid here: http://revision3.com/systm/podcasting/
I was just reading that Gizmo Project, which is basically like Skype, works great for Podcasts because it has a single-click “save” button at the end of a conversation.
Yeah, well, we know we need to get him a better mike for future shows - what I was really looking for was decent advice on salvaging what we’ve already got.
Still, he’s apparently looking for a USB headset. Anyone know any reasonably priced ones that have good sound quality?
If you want a low cost USB headset the PS2 headsets, from what I’ve talked to with people on Teamspeak with, sound pretty decent, and I never heard any birds chirping in the background and that. They’re like $25USD or something I believe.
Personally I got one from Plantronics that lets you use basically whatever headset you want and converts it to USB. Bloody nice, so if you ever do destroy a headset you can get a decent PC headset again to replace the one you toasted and still have USB.
