Blog Relations

My Sony Hi-MD (mini disc) kicked the bucket somewhat prematurely. It chews and chews on a disc without engaging. I suppose the mechanism got mangled on one of my trans-Atlantic flights. I had to drag myself into the modern recording age and invest 300 quid in a flash recorder, AND stump up another 25 for an SD memory card. And do you know what? It was worth it.

The Edirol R-09 by Roland of seventies synthesizer fame won’t win any prizes in a beauty contest. It looks more like an electric shaver than a digital recorder – but that hasn’t stopped me falling in love with it. I’m suspicious of in-built microphones, but those silver grills on the top are pretty good – fine for journalistic notes at any rate. The plastic record and play buttons are big and chunky, but they are dead easy to use without reference to the manual. Even someone like me who is all thumbs and struggles to send a text message can use them with ease. There are buttons on the back for mono or stereo, automatic recording levels, etc. Volume controls are on the side. In other words, you can do most things without scrolling through a menu on the LCD screen. Transfer of sound onto the laptop is a doddle. You plug it into the USB and it becomes an external disc. I just open up SoundForge on my computer and start editing away. I have a 2 Gig SD card so it holds several hours of audio.

And what about the quality? It records in mp3 or WAV, the latter being uncompressed and very high quality indeed. It’s 24 bit, which is ample. You might want more bits for recoding the Boston Philharmonic, but short of that it will do for most things. I find it works best with my microphone routed into the sound mixer via the Line In. When I plugged my Sure SM58 directly into the R-09 I got a certain amount of hiss. Not much, but discernible. Perhaps the impedance does not quite match (or some such technical guff). Edirol recommend buying one of their own external condenser mics, but they would say that, wouldn’t they. I might try a transformer. I would hate to buy yet another mic for out and about interviews, but it might come to that…

“Podcast tips” are one of the top in-coming searches on Blog Relations. I haven’t written that many so far, perhaps for fear of looking like a know-all, high-lighting my own weak-points, or boring the general audience. But as more people try out podcasting, there must be punters looking for a few tips.

One of the first questions a would-be podcaster must ask himself or herself is, “Which microphone should I buy?”

For a safe bet, why not stick with a tried and trusted old work-horse? The Shure SM58 has been around since the 1960s, and features on numerous pop classics. It’s made for vocalists, and it’s just as good for those of us who merely babble into the mic, and don’t burst into song unless we are pissed. Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like our children’s podcast site, Storynory has a Christmas battle on its hands. We are in the middle of seralising our dramatisation of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. We’ve produced it as a play with two professional actors. I must admit that we are biased, but we really think that the result is highly entertaining.

Now we read that Penguin will podcast the unabridged audiobook of “A Christmas Carol”, read by Geoffrey Palmer, in five installments.

This is really David and Golliath. Our little Frog, Bertie (Storynory’s mascot) versus the mighty Penguin.

Penguin say of their podcast: “The first podcast to be launched by a major UK publisher. Launched 1 November 2005, featuring exclusive interviews, music and book extracts – visited by nearly 10,000 people from 60 countries.”

Well guess what, I don’t mean to boast, but on Tuesday Storynory received 1,400 unique visitors – and that’s just on one day. Not bad for a three week old frog. Maybe, just maybe, Bertie the frog will turn into a Prince quite soon.

When I started editing audio – and truly, I’m not talking about pre-World War days – we used quarter inch reel-to-reel magnetic tape, a crayon to mark the spot, and a scarily sharp razor blade to slice the tape. We would then piece it back together with sticky tape. In the digital era, I’ve used a variety of computer based sound programs, and I’m prety confident in my assertion that the best by a mile, is Sony Sound Forge.

Read the rest of this entry »