Justin Vincent

How We Record TechZing

Hardware

We both have Macs (and did the same thing when we both had PC’s).

Jason’s mic (at the time of writing this is a standard Plantronics skype headset) Justin’s mic is a combination of Centric Mic Port Pro, Sure Headset Mic & Sony Headphones. The headphones were chosen because they are light and can be comfortably worn with the Sure headset. Jason will soon be switching to the same mic combo.

Software

During the shows we talk to each other using Skype. Justin records the audio using Audio Hijack Pro. As a redundant backup we also record the show using Call Recorder at the same time (on both sides).

Audio Hijack Pro is setup to record audio into two separate mono audio files. One file is a direct input of Justin’s mic recorded to raw aiff. The other file is a recording of skype’s input also recorded as raw aiff.

Editing & Processing

After the files are recorded both are processed via Levelator. Just drag and drop files onto it. Then two output files are created. Those files are imported into Mackie Tracktion 3 where the show is edited removing any drops or static. Another part of the editing is removing the cross talk so that it sounds like the conversation flows naturally.

When editing the show both tracks have the Mackie filter “Final Mix” on them and then the same filter is used again for the master output (so it’s used 3 times). It is used for split band compression and dynamic limiting. Also both tracks have dynamics processors on them to stop any clipping and also as a gate to only allow noise above n-DB (test for best results) to be heard (eliminates background noise during silence for either track).

The track is then rendered directly as mp3 with 128 mbps with normalize set to true.

Publishing

Then the artwork and id3 tags are added to the .mp3 using Jaikoz. Then the mp3 is uploaded to Soundcloud. Finally a post is added to techzinglive.com. techzinglive.com uses WordPress and a hacked version Burbery Podpress for podcast publishing. The hack is to enable soundcloud player to work on the website. There is also a cheeky URL 301 redirect from http://techzinglive.com/mp3/techzing-<SHOW#>.mp3 –> http://soundcloud/techzing/techzing-<SHOW#>/download/ to enable us to abstract file location.