Produced my first audio Ad for the podcast.

I made my first audio ad for our podcast and the online service that also stores the podcast, "Just Questions." It will be fun to hear with my Western PA accent, if I still have it from living in Virginia for most of my life.

Finally Dropped the First Podcast Show

Yes, me and my business partner finished our first podcast episode over the weekend. I had several technical issues with the recording; which was more about my equipment selection for gathering the audio which lead to having a hiss in the left channel which made the recording unacceptable? My after purchase research to solve the problem, I found it is a typical problem for the cheap audio mixer that I purchased. I found another company brand that after my tests was completely acceptable and without a hiss. My setup was simple, two Shure SM58S microphones, connected to a mixer unit and then directly into my Mac Laptop, where I used Adobe Audition to record the audio. My choice in microphones in Shure because, was because I used them ten years ago in my American Century Theatre podcast called, “Before the Curtain Raises.” That podcast for me lasted one season. The next year, the theater company didn’t hire me as their staff photographer and they kept doing the podcast with other people. I also learned the hard way with my software of choice. I’m an Adobe cloud software user with their complete suit of applications. These last few years I’ve been on a path to learn as much as I can with the applications. I paid for them, I should use them. This project requires that I learn how to edit audio with Adobe Audition, since it’s very similar to Adobe Premiere. If your audio is sub par, then your entire project just plain sucks.That hiss I received from my audio mixer box was only on the left channel which was connected to my microphone and not our guest’s. I learned how to delete that channel, copy my guest channel and make it truly stereo sounding with her voice coming through both left and right channels. I then recorded my questions with my desk setup and dropped them in place on the interviewer tracks. It turned out great. Next time I might need to place a little time before and after my questions to make it sound more natural. The good thing about this project, we entered it into the world of Apple Podcast content. They accepted the podcast with no changes needed in lest then twenty-four hours from the time I submitted the podcast to them. Even our podcast title was accepted.

My first podcast show of the season.

Yesterday I recorded my first audio podcast in over ten years. I will have to say, it went very well. Little technical trouble with my equipment setup, but in the end we recorded a show. My technical setup is a MacBook Pro, using Adobe Audition software to record a mixing box, feeding off two Sure SM58 microphones. Most of my audio equipment came from the first podcast that I did when I worked for The American Century Theatre company in Northern Virginia. This was one season with me, their photographer and the media agent, talking to the staff about the upcoming play. It was actually the last year that I worked for the theater company. Leaving wasn’t my choice, they just wanted fresh blood in the game. But the taste of doing a podcast was born in me.

It took me some time to get back on the horse, as they say. I didn’t have the time when my primary job at the agency was to send me to document crime scenes and agent involved shooting scenes.

My wife is also my partner on this podcast project, she is helping with the guests and with quality decisions about the show. She even helps our first guest with the questions that I pre-interviewed with the guest. The first attempted at the recording had some issues. The microphone was a little farther away and made it sound like she was in a room talking. What I found out was the audio setting for my laptop, jumped off the setting for the external mixer that was supplying the audio signal to the computer, and instead it went with the internal audio and microphone. My voice sounded fine because I was closest to the microphone and my guest was sounding like it was far off, which she was. After some conversation and several glasses of wine, I could fix the issue. My guest wanted to redo the audio interview anyway, so we did the interview again. My guest reviewed what she said and was happy with the outcome.

I will add the intros and exits onto the recording will make the whole interview about twenty minutes long. This is not bad for a first attempt. The total length of the interview is about eighteen minutes, and I am happy about that. It goes to show you, a couple glasses of wine lets the lips flow easier.