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30-09-2007, 11:06 PM
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Beware the Robot Mafia
Group: Administrators
Location: St. Albans, Melbourne
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MacTalk Podcast - Episode 4 - Online Now!
MacTalk Podcast - Episode 4 - I'll Edit That Out
Episode 4 is up, Gareth Townsend ( Quamen), Peter Wells ( fulltimecasual), Jedda Wignall ( Jedda) and Anthony Agius ( decryption).
Episode 4 is dedicated to Plaxo
Some housekeeping in this podcast, together with some chatter on the iPhone v1.1.1 update, Ants in a MacBook, the new Apple store inside Myer Melbourne, The Amazon MP3 store, why cocoa apps are good and a few other things.
Subscribe to the podcast via iTMS, or if you've already added it, refresh your podcast list inside iTunes.
Direct Download Enhanced AAC with bookmarks & images (28.4MB): http://heyinternet.com/mtpodcast/mtpod4.m4a
I ditched the MP3 version as it had a whole 10 downloads for episode 3. Not worth the space on the server.
Last edited by decryption; 02-10-2007 at 03:16 PM.
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30-09-2007, 11:17 PM
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Regular
Group: Regulars
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
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Who the hell is plaxo?
__________________
2.0ghz MacBook Pro, 23" Apple Cinema Display.
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30-09-2007, 11:33 PM
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Banned
Group: Banned Users
Location: Melbourne Australia
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I had to turn it off. The sound is all over the place and it shit me to tears after 5 minutes.
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30-09-2007, 11:47 PM
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Window Licker
Group: Regulars
Location: Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space..
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Fine here..
Last edited by Al Aero; 30-09-2007 at 11:51 PM.
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01-10-2007, 12:19 AM
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Regular
Group: Regulars
Location: Oatlands, Sydney, Australia, Earth, Milky Way, Virgo Supercluster
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe90
I had to turn it off. The sound is all over the place and it shit me to tears after 5 minutes.
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Very solid point.
If there is ONE thing and one thing only that I think you should improve is...volume control.
I am not sure how you guys are recording the audio... one mic? each has their own mic?
either-or... What you need to do is normalize the audio...there should not be so many highs and lows, it should be very consistent... this is the one thing that I must say is ruining (that may sound harsh, but I feel strongly about it) the podcast. Even if there is only one audio stream that you are working with... you need to normalize and smooth out the audio...
DOWNLOAD AND USE Levelator!
Drag the audio file (Probably before you split it up with garageband and make chapters as I am not sure if they will survive levelator... but anyway.
It works magic on podcasts like yours...
From there site:
Quote:
What is The Levelator?
Do you believe in magic? You will after using The Levelator to enhance your podcast. And you'll be amazed that it's free, now even for commercial use.
So what is The Levelator? It's software that runs on Windows, OS X (universal binary), or Linux (Ubuntu) that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next, for example. It's not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all three. It's much more than those tools, and it's much simpler to use. The UI is dirt-simple: Drag-and-drop any WAV or AIFF file onto The Leveler's application window, and a few moments later you'll find a new version which just sounds better.
Have you ever recorded an interview in which you and your guest ended up at different volumes? How about a panel discussion where some people were close to microphones and others were not? These are the problems the post-production engineers of Team ITC here at The Conversations Network solve every day, and it used to take them hours of painstaking work with expensive and complex tools like SoundTrack Pro, Audacity, Sound Forge or Audition to solve them. Now it takes mere seconds. Seriously. The Levelator is unlike any other audio tool you've ever seen, heard or used. It's magic. And it's free.
When we developed the IT Conversations component-based show-assembly system, we realized all the components had to be of the same loudness or the results would sound awful. We limped along for many months using the RMS normalization functions in various applications, but the results weren't satisfactory and it required tools and skillsets that some of our post-production audio engineers didn't have. One of our best engineers, Bruce Sharpe, offered to write a standalone software RMS normalization utility, which we've been using as part of our production system CNUploader since 2005.
The CNUploader's normalizer acts similar to an intelligent RMS-based compressor/limiter combination, and it therefore affects primarily the short-term (transient) sounds and the long-term overall loudness of the file. It doesn't make the kind of adjustments that a skilled audio engineer can perform in software or at a mixing console, riding the levels up and down to compensate for medium-term variations.
There are some hardware devices such as various AGC (automatic-gain control) components that can do moderate leveling, but since they have to operate in real time (i.e., without look-ahead), they can't do much. And they aren't cheap, let alone free. Even a skilled human can only react to changes unless s/he is lucky enough to be present during a recording session and can use visual cues to anticipate coming variations. Software can do better by performing multiple passes over the audio, generating a loudness map of where the volume changes. (It's not actually that simple, but the metaphor is helpful.)
Bruce, with help from his son, Malcolm, had proven that he knew how to tackle these problems in ways that no one else anywhere in the audio/software industry has done to date. So we asked him, "Bruce, do you you think you can write a leveler that corrects for medium-term variations in loudness instead of the short-term and long-term variatons processed by compressor/limiters and normalizers, respectively?" Bruce and Malcolm took on the challenge, and eight months later we began testing The Levelator.
You'll believe in magic.
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UPDATE: I used the app on the podcast (had to convert to AIFF first) and I got to say.. if you guys spend the little bit of time(its not instant, does take a little bit to do, but I am on a PC... so..its probably faster on the mac.) it would make the whole thing 1000% better. The content is there... but thats not all a podcast is about...
Last edited by pixelperfect; 01-10-2007 at 12:56 AM.
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01-10-2007, 06:36 AM
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Beware the Robot Mafia
Group: Administrators
Location: St. Albans, Melbourne
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Cheers for that link pixelperfect!
Levelator makes it sound much better. I've replaced the file with one run through Levelator - so redownload it if you think the audio sucked, should sound nicer now  |
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01-10-2007, 08:19 AM
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Regular
Group: Regulars
Location: North Coast NSW
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Noo! the precious mp3 link  |
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01-10-2007, 08:23 AM
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The Fail Whale
Group: Regulars
Location: Frequent Flyer!
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you havent been running it through levelator?
for shame.
anyhoo, i'm off to buy a 4 way headphone monitor for the mixer so that we'll all be able to monitor ourselves this week. should make everything much better in the future.
Last edited by fulltimecasual; 01-10-2007 at 08:52 AM.
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01-10-2007, 09:13 AM
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Regular
Group: Regulars
Location: Oatlands, Sydney, Australia, Earth, Milky Way, Virgo Supercluster
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron
Noo! the precious mp3 link |
you can always set your inport settings to MP3 (if you already haven't seeing as you like mp3) and right click in itunes and convert to MP3.
not going to sound great after that - converting a conversion is never going to sound great but hey. |
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01-10-2007, 09:54 AM
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Regular
Group: Regulars
Location: Brisbane
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Jesus... that tubgirl reference of course makes me go looking for what the hell you're talking about..
That's too much to even be in the inappropriate wednesday thread!
__________________
Successful Trades: krazy1, Astr0b0y, soulman, areal, smdnetau, Huy, Alessiman, step_andy, tibook, mulquemi, BoxDog, Devski, The Keddi, decryption
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01-10-2007, 09:59 AM
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Widgeteer
Group: Forum Leaders
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I haven`t heard the results of it, but that Levelator explanation text is complete BS. Totally made up garbage and FUD.
Levelator just sounds like it`s digital mastering with one setting. There`s nothing wrong with that, but FFS, just state what it is. There`s no magic in limting.
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01-10-2007, 10:06 AM
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Regular
Group: Regulars
Location: Oatlands, Sydney, Australia, Earth, Milky Way, Virgo Supercluster
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Quote:
Originally Posted by marc
I haven`t heard the results of it, but that Levelator explanation text is complete BS. Totally made up garbage and FUD.
Levelator just sounds like it`s digital mastering with one setting. There`s nothing wrong with that, but FFS, just state what it is. There`s no magic in limting.
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It's not a limiter.
It's a multi-pass gain controller.
It's not that hard to do, it is just like a normalizer, only it works through smaller segments of the audio, and smooths out the volume.
FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)? it's free?! Why they be using FUD?!
It's okay though.. like you said.. you haven't heard the results of it.
Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelator for more info... And check out the before/after from audacity.
Not to sound to harsh.. but starting a post with I haven't seen the results for myself etc.. and then bagging something out is not the smartest thing to do.
Last edited by pixelperfect; 01-10-2007 at 10:17 AM.
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01-10-2007, 10:12 AM
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Widgeteer
Group: Forum Leaders
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pixelperfect
It's not a limiter.
It's a multi-pass gain controller.
It's not that hard to do, it is just like a normalizer, only it works through smaller segments of the audio, and smooths out the volume.
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Umm... "multi-pass gain controller"... never heard of one.
Why would you need multiple passes? A limiter with look ahead and automatic range (so the db reduction is always a set amount) sounds like it`s exactly the same technique. Not exactly revolutionary.
I`m saying it`s FUD, because there`s a very strong chance they`re just using audio processing techniques that have been around since the 60s. They`re suggesting it`s not.
Btw... "gain controller" = anything that works with dynamics, so compresion, limiting, gating, expanding, or multi band versions of those are all gain controllers.
Last edited by marc; 01-10-2007 at 10:14 AM.
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01-10-2007, 10:15 AM
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The Fail Whale
Group: Regulars
Location: Frequent Flyer!
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yeah, i've used levelator for weddings and other videos i dont really care about. dont know what its doing, only that the results are bloody good. so i'd use it.
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01-10-2007, 10:21 AM
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Widgeteer
Group: Forum Leaders
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I`m not dissing magic boxes btw... the Roland Dimension D is great. I just don`t like product advertising that makes it out to be something it`s not. It`s like Apple releasing the iPhone and stating it`s "a magic talk device! OMG Chat to other people with iPhones!".
They really should just say "damn good automatic level mastering" and leave it at that.
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