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slightly OT: questions about the Paracast production setup

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D

dorkbot

Skilled Investigator
Gene and David,

I've always appreciated the production quality of the show and I'm curious if you would be willing to share a bit about your setup(s) for recording the show. I understand you are mostly using Skype and recording this out of your respective homes.

1. What kind of microphone(s) are you using?
2. Are you in treated rooms? I never hear sirens in the background, etc.
3. Are you using any kind of processing hardware/software in between the mics and your computers?
4. It sounds like some calls with guests are Skype and some are landlines. What do you use to capture and mix the landline calls?

Anything else of interest about your production process?

Thanks
 
The setup on my end is pretty simple: I use a Samson CL8 mic (which I bought on sale years ago, for under $100, a good deal), connected to my Mac via a Native Instruments Audio Kontrol 1 interface. That's it, no other processing on my end. Sometimes I use a Blue Microphone Snowflake USB mic when I'm not home (like the Richard Dolan interview this week), it's a great little inexpensive (under $80) device. My computer is in my living room, no acoustic padding or insulation of any sort. I sometimes turn off the mic when things get loud outside in the environment. Gene uses SkypeOut when we speak to people on landlines, and he'll fill you in on any other processing happening in his odd little world.

dB
 
David Biedny said:
The setup on my end is pretty simple: I use a Samson CL8 mic (which I bought on sale years ago, for under $100, a good deal), connected to my Mac via a Native Instruments Audio Kontrol 1 interface. That's it, no other processing on my end. Sometimes I use a Blue Microphone Snowflake USB mic when I'm not home (like the Richard Dolan interview this week), it's a great little inexpensive (under $80) device. My computer is in my living room, no acoustic padding or insulation of any sort. I sometimes turn off the mic when things get loud outside in the environment. Gene uses SkypeOut when we speak to people on landlines, and he'll fill you in on any other processing happening in his odd little world.

dB
Click to expand...
Since everything is being recorded and edited at my end, the layout is a bit more complicated.

1. Mic is a Shure SM-58
2. Mixer is a Mackie DFX-6
3. Post-production, by the way, is done in Bias Peak Pro and Amadeus Pro.
4. When we stream a show, the output goes from a Mac Pro through the Mackie and to a Behringer MDX2600 signal processor. The signal is returned to the Mac Pro and streamed to our server via Apple's QuickTime Broadcaster.
5. On the server end, streaming is done via Apple's Darwin Streaming Server, an open source application, running under CentOS 5.2. This is an open source Linux operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise.

Questions?
 
Hey thanks very much. To my ears the show sounds pretty much as good as something recorded in a commercial radio studio.
 
I contacted two of my local radio stations to get Gene and David picked up.

So far, they seem to think that I'm the only person who's heard of them. They put on a better show than half the tards on the net.

Must work harder for my friends, so I can sponge off of their fame someday. Hahahahahaha.
 
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