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Secrets of Professional Podcasting

Joe Rybicki — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:06 -0600

Make your talking time shine.

So you've started a podcast, have you? And now that you've got a few episodes under your belt, you're starting to see your audience grow. Now it's time to get a little more serious about your craft. And we're here to help, with four tips to bring you closer to podcasting stardom.

Difficulty Level: Easy

What You Need:

> GarageBand '09 (included with iLife, free with new Macs or $79, www.apple.com)

> A microphone (see Step 1)

> A topic about which to ramble

1. The Right Gear Makes a Difference

Planning to record using your MacBook’s internal mic or your gaming headset? Please don’t. You don’t need a top-of-the-line microphone, but quality does make a difference. If a solo podcast is all the recording you ever expect to do, you can get the most consistent results from a decent headset mic. But avoid anything designed for gaming, as these tend to have mediocre recording quality even if the headphones sound great. Instead, plan to spend between $50 and $100 on a mic designed specifically for recording. We love the one on our U2 headset from CAD Audio ($49, www.cadaudio.com).

The USB-based U2 headset from CAD Audio is a decent, affordable option for podcasting.

If you’re not going to be the only one chattering away, or you expect to record anything besides podcasts, plan to spend at least $25 to $50 on a decent unidirectional mic, like the $49 Audix F50 (www.audixusa.com). But don’t forget you’ll also want a stand and some sort of windscreen to prevent against vicious pops.

2. Warm Up the Crowd

Want to wrap your podcast in a truly professional package? Then get yourself some theme music! You don’t need to compose a theme song from scratch--though if you have such talents, it certainly wouldn’t hurt. But for non-composers, Apple has thoughtfully included a whole suite of jingles with GarageBand.

Set your theme music to fade out and in slowly to avoid jarring silences.

Open the Loop Browser by clicking the eye in the bottom-left, then select the Podcast Sounds tab at the bottom. The Jingles menu gives you an extremely broad range of different styles to tinker with. Select one that’s 30 seconds or more, and give it about 10 seconds of play before the speaking starts. Click the gray down-arrow in the Track control panel to show the Track Volume automation curve. GarageBand will handle the “ducking” (i.e., lowering the jingle when the speaking starts), but you’ll still need to slowly fade the music out over the next 10 seconds or so. Then do the same thing in reverse at the end of your show. You’ll be amazed what a polished feel you can get from such a simple addition.

3. Don't Talk to Yourself

Bringing in guests can really spice up your podcast. And it’s becoming more and more common for podcasters to wrangle far-flung guests via phone or Internet-voice (VoIP) services like Skype: The host adjusts the levels of each participant before the session, and then records the output of the VoIP application with Audio Hijack Pro or WireTap Studio. While that can do the job, the sound quality is often subpar, and it becomes much more difficult to edit the podcast, since all the guests are on a single track.

Sync up remote recordings by having your guests all count together.

You can take a giant leap forward in quality and post-production flexibility by using a technique known as a “two-ender.” The concept is simple: You use a VoIP app to converse with your guests naturally, but each guest records his or her own voice locally and sends you the file, which you can then simply drag into GarageBand. Even if they don’t have quality recording gear like yours, it’ll sound worlds better than recording any kind of phone call. Just don’t forget to set a sync point in your recording: Having all participants simply count to 3 simultaneously will allow you to quickly match up the timing of the separate recordings.

4. Clean It Up

Finally, nothing screams “amateur hour” like wildly variable volume, forcing the listener to constantly scramble for the volume control. This is one of the most common transgressions against professionalism you’re likely to hear. But luckily, it’s also one of the easiest to fix.

For the sake of volume knobs everywhere, please compress your tracks.

Once you’ve recorded or imported all your vocal tracks--but before doing your final mixdown--go into each track and add a new effect by selecting one of the dropdown menus that currently says “None.” Scroll down to Audio Unit effects and choose AUDynamicsProcessor. This will make the loud parts a little quieter and the quiet parts a little louder. Unless you have guests moving dramatically closer or farther away from their microphones (which is why we recommend headsets), this should even out everyone’s volume, making your show considerably more listenable and your audience considerably happier. And that’s what it’s all about, right?

Industries Sown from the Seeds of Apple

Carol Pinchefsky — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:58:00 -0500

Apple’s reputation as a leader in innovation is well established, even legendary. But Apple’s successes aren’t just good business for Apple…they’re the source of competing and complementary inventions that never break orbit from Apple Inc. In other words, while some companies build products, Apple builds entire industries.

In many cases, Apple did not pioneer the technology that it became famous for (many credit the Newton as being the first PDA, which it is not). But, the company’s flair for capturing the imagination of businesses and of the public has made it the bellwether that other companies admit to following.

Here’s a look at some of the ancillary industries created as a result of Apple:

Mice

Apple Inc. did not invent the mouse--that milestone in interface technology goes to Dr. Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute and later used by Xerox--but the nascent company popularized the use of mice in 1984, when it released the Apple Macintosh.

Now most computers use mice in multiple sizes, shapes, and button configurations. Companies have been created to build a better mouse, and existing companies like Kensington, Logitech, and Creative, count mice as a staple of their product line.

Although Juan Rodriguez, global product manager of living space for Kensington, could not determine how many mice Kensington produces in a year, he agrees that the Macintosh’s use of the mouse has had an impact on Kensington’s business.

In fact, Kensington’s first product was made for the Apple II, back in 1981. “Our relationship with Apple goes back to our System Saver, a cooling power auxiliary device for the first Macintoshes,” Rodriguez said. Kensington has also built trackballs and other peripherals for the Macintosh.

Podcasting

Although podcasting came into existence just before the iPod, the fact that it’s called “podcasting” (coined by journalist Ben Hammersley in 2004) is a testament to the fact that Apple’s player boosted do-it-yourself audio content from a fringe activity to a mainstream medium that challenges broadcast radio.

Todd Cochrane, CEO of RawVoice, a podcast advertising company, has tracked between 25,000 to 30,000 podcasters. Five percent of these podcast full time (others broadcast as a hobby or a part-time). Cochrane, who represents 2,800 podcasters, says he writes checks for his clients that range from $30 to $15,000 each month.

The podcast industry is also buoying makers of audio equipment and editing software. Although podcasters can easily create shows using inexpensive microphones and free software (such as Audacity), some can lay out hundreds, even thousands of dollars on a microphone and editing software (like the Peak Pro XT) plus supplemental expenditures like a Microphone Pop Filter. With the podcast industry growing exponentially, these manufacturers will grow along with them.

In addition, small consultancies like Adam Weiss: Podcast Consultant and Morley Studios now exist to help podcasters grow from small time to prime time or to create podcasts for existing businesses.

MP3 Players

Before the original 5GB iPod hit the market, the Nomad Jukebox was the MP3 player of choice for people who traded the convenience of freedom from CDs for a clunky Diskman clone with poor battery life. Then came the iPod, a music player with sharp good looks that can slip into your pocket. It rapidly became the world’s best-selling MP3 player.

Jon Tackabury, who created iTunes Sync—software that allows non-iPod MP3 players to synchronize with iTunes—said that only the tech-savvy knew what MP3 players were before the advent of the iPod. He believes the iPod made MP3 players cool enough to pique the interest of the general public. MP3 manufacturers took notice: where twenty MP3 players existed before the iPod, almost 300 exist now.

Although the iPod is a wonderful gadget, it has several gaps that rivals seek to fill. For example, the Zune can send and receive music wirelessly; other MP3 players offer the ability to tune into radio and can support other formats (like Ogg Vorbis). And then there’s the cost. Tackabury said, “The iPod has a huge price premium. Even the nano is still pretty expensive considering the storage you get.”

As long as people crave on-the-go tunes and don’t care to shell out the price of an iPod or crave a feature Apple has not yet seen fit to add, the rest of the MP3 market will be there to sop up the iPod’s run-offs. For example, Tackabury owns an iPod, but he purchased the less-expensive Sansa ($30) for his children.

Online Music Stores

In the beginning, Shawn Fanning created Napster, an online service that allowed people to share music across the Internet. But the Recording Industry Association of America looked upon it and saw that it was bad.

And Steve Jobs said, “Let there be iTunes,” a music store that charged 99¢ cents a song, and the RIAA (and Apple’s new partners, such as Sony, Universal, and Warner) saw that it was good.

So did the customers. Since launching on April 28, 2003, the iTunes music store has earned itself a majority share of the online music market: today 80% of all purchased music comes from iTunes.

“Apple created the market for paid digital downloads,” according to Joshua Boltuch, co-founder of Amie Street.com. Now companies such as his (almost twenty of them have catalogs of over 1 million songs) employ dozens of people. Napster, the portable subscription service that arose from the ashes of the first bankrupt company, employs over 100 people.

To carve out new niches in the industry, Apple’s competitors have found ways to engage the public in a way that Apple does not. For example, Amie Street bridges the gap between iTunes and Napster by allowing a more flexible payment schedule: songs start out free, but the more recommendations a song has, the more it costs, up to 98¢. Amie Street also has its own social networking site.

Of course, music downloaded by Amie Street can be played on an iPod and organized in iTunes.

Handheld Computing

The Casio PF-3000, the world’s first “digital diary” was released in 1983, and the Newton was released ten years later. So how can we claim the Newton was responsible for the handheld computing industry?

Apple’s Newton paved the way for the Palm and the PDA because it bundled many features that already existed, like a calendar, address book, and desktop computer synchronization, and married it to handwriting recognition. Palm simplified their PalmPilot’s handwriting recognition input, and a handheld revolution was born.

Okay, this is really Palm’s victory. But the Newton was there first.

Small Form Factor PCs

Apple’s G5 Cube launched in 2000. Shuttle, perhaps the best-known manufacturer of no-bigger-than-a-breadbox Small Form Factor (SFF) computers, launched their first model in 2001. Want to guess where Shuttle Inc. and the rest of the SFF industry got their inspiration from?

The NeXTCube, most likely, released in 1988, and acquired by Apple in 1996.

But the Cube was marketed as both a computer and a triumph of design. Businesses took notice. Currently, more than 75 SFF computers models are available. Coincidence?

Microsoft

Kidding. But you have to admit, Microsoft has done pretty well out of selling operating systems based on the concept of WIMP (Window Icon Mouse Pointer), a concept pioneered at Xerox Parc but brought to the public with Apple’s Lisa and original Macintosh computers.