I was trolling Google this evening and I came across this little gem in the sponsored ads.

Its amazing how quickly podcasting is coming into its own.

20 years to get Internet-in-a-box, seven years to get Website-in-a-box took seven and only three months to get podcast-in-a-box.

Progress is sweet.

I wonder if anyone I know is quietly behind this.

I’m still in the process of getting my kit together, but I thought it would still be interesting to give you a glimpse of what my podcast setup looks like from a software perspective. Once I get the rest of the hardware in place – I’m waiting for a microphone, two shock mounts and two mic stands to show up from an order that I made a few weeks back and I’m still looking for a mixing board – I’ll share the rest of the picture.

My software setup is very simple. Everything I’ve been doing for the last six or seven shows  or so has been done realtime. This means that I’m actually playing music, talking and recording everything as it happens – a 40 minute show will take me 40 minutes to record. The only post-production I’ve had to do actually occurred with the last two holiday shows I’ve done. For the first one, I shortened down the length of the one-sided conversation that I had with Paul and stitched in the call music that you heard. For the second one, I trimmed off the last 5 seconds of dead air because of the excessive ambient noise. Took me all of 3 minutes to do both edits combined .  Anyways, my point is that my shows are largely heard as they get recorded. I stopped doing multiple takes, editing out the umm’s and ahh’s and other mistakes that regularly happen.

I use Wavepad to do the recording, WinAmp to play the various clips and tunes that you hear throughout the show and Windows Mixer to regulate the levels and turn my mic on and off. An external hardware mixing board will replace the Windows Mixer as soon as I can find something in the right price bracket. I opted for Wavepad over Audacity for reliability reasons. I used Audacity for all of two seconds and was quickly looking for a replacement because of its tendency to crash. I’m currently using the free version of Wavepad.

The show is triggered by the various short cuts and clips that you see in the folder in roughly the middle of the screen. Each of the playlists contains the set of tunes that I want to play, or the opening or closing tracks that I play with each show. I also include Mozilla short cuts in there in case I want to talk about something I found on the web. This keeps everything in one handy place so that I don’t have to do too much thinking while I’m talking.

Winamp has the capability of using plugins which alter how it outputs audio and changes other behaviors. I use a “cross-fader” plugin that creates a seamless transition between the various music tracks that I play on the podcast. It approximates how music is played on broadcast radio in an automated fashion with very pleasing results (and no effort from me).

Everything gets recorded out into Wavepad which captures the raw audio which I initially save as a WAV file and then quickly convert into an MP3.  The only reason I save to a WAV first is because it is a relatively quick save and moves the file out of memory onto disk. This takes the pressure off during the relatively long period it takes to encode the MP3 file – if the rig crashes, then I can quickly recover from disk. This is more of a precaution than anything else – the entire combination of software is very stable and I’ve not had any on-air problems that I haven’t caused myself.

Lastly, I use Skype for recording my remote interviews. I’ve experimented with a number of different setups and find the quality, simplicity and value to be unmatched.

On location recordings are done slightly differently. For these, I’ll actually record the show in segments and then stitch in music in post-production. I only have a half-duplex sound card in my laptop which makes it impossible to run a show through in realtime.

On the right-hand side of the screen is a long, thin notepad window. These are my show notes which is really a weird hybrid between a show script and show notes. I find that using a bit of a script helps me get the juices going at the beginning of the various segments and for introducing the music that I play. For the longer segments, I tend to ad lib extensively and rely on the notes strictly as a guideline. I expect that as I grow more practiced that my scripts will become more pointed and less scripty.

If you have any questions about how I fit all this together, make sure that you leave me your questions in my comments section – I’d be more than happy to clarify as much as you want me to!

ps – this screenshot goes with this show. If you look closely, you’ll see that the screen cap was made precisely 34:42.50 minutes into the podcast.  

I haven’t done my prep for this meeting yet and my plane leaves in just about 16 hours. Once in the air, I’m in transit for waaaay too long. I expect that a few minutes with Bret is going to give me what I need to get huge headstart on my prep without needing any internet connection – podcasts are all about timeshifting you know

Download for the Trip to South Africa:

Planning to be on a plane for 24 hours over the next few days? I have just the thing: a combination ICANN Blog Audio entry and Internet Pro Radio show. I talk my way through the ICANN agenda and play a few tunes to keep you company. It sure beats anything the airlines will be playing.

[Via Lextext]

d2r: "About two years ago I was walking through Dublin and I noticed that the then-new U2 Best of... collection had gone on sale. So I got it (of course). I don't even look at the price, something that happens to me with certain categories of goods which my head apparently refuses to consider from a financial point of view..."

I bought "Elevation" blind and absolutely loved it. Remembering back, at that point U2 had sucked for at least ten years and, in my mind at least, this was their last chance. On the other hand, their "Best of..." CD underscored their suckage and made me realize that "Best of..." really meant "NapsterPack: Tunes for the Technically Disinclined"

At that point I stopped buying CDs blind. Everything got a first sniff on Napster or WinMX or whatever - which I'll remind you is quite legal in this country :-)

"Vertigo" ain't getting bought.

WinMX sampling did get me tuned into Eminem. His last disc really had me hooked. From start to finish it was a story. It had a hook. It was a unique.

Podcasting grabs me in the same way. It's unique, it has a great hook. It is a story. It ensures that I'm in my local Futureshop on a pretty regular basis. My latest trip was to pick up a few extension cables for a new MIC that I'd bought on eBay. On my way out the door, I noticed a whack of copies of "3ncore" sitting on what I call "the sucker stands" - you know, those tables of crap that they stick within arms reach of the unnaturally slow checkout queues?

So of course I grabbed a copy. The Napster-cheapskate slice of my lizard brain checked out the price which scanned in at $12 CDN (like...$0.34 USD or roughly $12AUS).

The girl at the counter felt compelled to tell me that it was a cool album. I felt compelled to say something that didn't inculcate me as a 33 year-old buying hiphop music beyond my years.

"I'm the same age he is damnit!" I remember thinking to myself.

When I got out to the truck I tore off the cellophane, stuffed the CD into the deck and waited for the first track to start.

Suckage.

I live about ten minutes from the Futureshop, so I hit "FF" and waited for something good.

More suckage.

FF. Suckage.

More FF. More Suckage.

FF. Suck. FF. Suck. FF...

I got home before I heard anything good.

Two lessons here:

1) Pre-listening prepurchase rules.

2) Falling into "Trained Consumer" zombie mode sucks.

Wanna buy a slightly used Eminem CD? Eminem is a lot more like Iron Maiden than I initially thought. Washed up. Sucked out. Old...

He could probably kick my ass in a big way though.

I sincerely hope his next effort is more meaningful...