It’s a long overdue update to my previous blog post about the tribulations of getting the audio right on the Fusion Patrol Podcast.
As last you may recall, I was testing Wiretap Anywhere from Ambrosia Software. Initial tests went very well and I subsequently purchased the software.
We’ve done several podcasts since then under a variety of conditions: our standard two-person editions and a couple three-person versions, once at three remote locations and another with two people being “in the studio” at my house and one at a remote location.
The results, to my ears, are outstanding. The quality of the audio (if not the actual content) is, I feel, on par or ahead of with the vast majority of amateur podcasts out there. We still have an issue in that Skype merges multiple remote sources into one, and I don’t know any way around that; however, Skype also seems to equalize them well enough that it isn’t too much of a problem.
In putting together our two-in-the-studio episode we did get some cross-over between the mics, which resulted in some echo problems, most of which I was able to remove in post-production.
Now I think it is time to move on to the next goal: increasing our audience size.
I’m not going to give numbers, but I’m frankly amazed at how many people do actually listen. It’s far more than could be accounted for than by “just my friends” but, at the same time, you couldn’t keep a radio program on the air with an audience of this size either.