lorin schultz

jcs2305 said:
[...] I personally have never made a call to Apple and have it not be resolved somehow.

Really? I have. More than once.

The most recent example is a problem with my iTunes Match subscription. It works fine across all our devices except one Mac, which shows some songs show as existing but unavailable for download. Over an hour on the phone with Apple failed to resolve the problem.

I'm not bashing Apple, my overall experience with its support has been positive, but no vendor is perfect.

cgWerks said:

I'd still recommend a dynamic mic to most podcasters. The reason I picked a condenser, is that I don't want to have to keep my head in such a precise placement compared to the mic and I'm willing to deal with the environment stuff. That said, I might also pick up an ATR2100 so I have the option for when the environment is noisier.

I was going to mention pickup pattern but though it might be beyond the scope of this discussion. Now that we're talking about environmental noise, it seems like a quick mention is in order.

Different mics have different pickup patterns. Some are omnidirectional, designed to pick up sound from every direction more-or-less equally. Others are more directional -- more sensitive to sound in front of the mic than to sound beside or behind it. The more directional the pickup pattern, the less extraneous noise is captured. It ain't a free lunch though, it comes with gotchas.

One is that you obviously have to control your own movements. With a tight pickup pattern, the sound will change as you move around in front of the mic. Another is that very directional mics also tend to be more sensitive to plosives (like P-pops). Third, they exaggerate lower frequencies, so while it might seem cool to "fatten up" your voice by getting close to a directional mic, you can very easily go too far and overwhelm the listener with excessive bottom end (which, if you're using typical, affordable speakers or headphone for monitoring, you won't even be aware of because you don't get very good low frequency response without spending long coin). Fourth, they don't reject all frequencies evenly so it's only one part of a more complete noise-abatement strategy.

Bottom line 1: Mic choice depends as much on your environment, style, and technique as it does any objective measure. That's why pro studios have a variety of options and choose the one best suited to the task at hand. You should try several in your own setting and keep the one that works best for you in your particular space.

Bottom line 2: How well a mic performs has as much to do with the skills of the person in front of it as anything inside it.

tominthedesert said:

Lorin:  what software do you recommend for recording, editing and sending VO's?  GarageBand or something else?

Thanks for your many posts by the way; clearly, you know what you're doing at the mixing board!

I haven't really used Garageband since taking a quick look at it years ago out of curiosity. Based only on casual observation (as opposed to actual experience) it seems perfectly capable. I can't think of anything you'd need to do that you couldn't accomplish with Garageband.

If you're working at a professional level I recommend making the investment in Pro Tools. While there's no question it's both expensive and overkill for VO work, the quality of the processing is much better than the stock Apple AU plug-ins so the finished product sounds a lot better. It's also by far the best audio editing platform.

The single greatest thing you can do to improve your recordings is treat the room. That will make more difference than using the even the best microphone in the world.

There a few factors that cue a listener that a recording is an amateur project and not high-quality professional. Listeners may not be able to articulate what exactly they're hearing, but not being able to put a name to the problem doesn't prevent them from hearing it.

The most obvious of these factors is room reflections (followed closely by poor mic technique). A microphone picks up whatever sound is present, and doesn't differentiate between the sound you want it to record and what you wish it wouldn't. You don't realize just how reverberant a typical bedroom or living room is compared to an acoustically treated studio until you compare the same equipment on the same source in both. The difference is night and day.

Fortunately you don't have to spend a fortune to get a room sounding good enough for a podcast. Just hanging heavy blankets around the recording area will help a lot. If you have a bit of budget but don't want to spend too much or permanently alter the room, look into theatrical curtains. Any hard, flat surface is an enemy. Bookcases full of different sized books help reduce slap echoes and smooth out the room reverberation. Acoustically absorbent materials like blankets, cushions, stuffed furniture (and professional sound absorbing panels) all help reduce room reverberation. If you can leave some dead air space between the absorber and the hard wall, even better (in other words, hang the blankets six inches away from the wall instead of right against it).

Once you have a decent recording space, the next step is to work on mic placement and vocal technique. Once you have a handle on all that, THEN look into better equipment. You'll be amazed how much better your recordings will be with a couple simple improvements to the room and your technique.

I put together a little video that pokes fun at Apple users with quick bits of Siri's voice dubbed over a scene from "South Park." Under the new UE rules, that might be okay. The problem is YouTube isn't going to hire the millions of people it would require to screen every upload and interpret the intention behind the use of copyright protected material. It's obviously just going to use automated filters to search for digital fingerprints and disallow anything that includes them. Thus the EU's claims of exemptions are meaningless because there's no practical way of accommodating them. Even if there were, hosts will be unwilling to risk allowing them for fear of punishment if their interpretation of intent differs from the regulating body in any particular case.

I can even imagine publishers and distributors having trouble posting their own content, as the filters recognize the copyright but not their right to it.