Levelate Me

Podcasters, if you do a show and particularly if you do interviews or multi-person, multi-mike shows, you need the Levelator. I’m running all my interviews through it nowadays and it makes a world of difference. When two people are not at the same level, this evens them back out and makes it all good. It’s free, so take it and use it. There’s just no real reason to have that 12 dB difference in levels between people in a show anymore. It just means you aren’t even trying.

Via Gigavox big wheel Michael Geoghegan comes a link to their own interview with Bruce Sharpe, the guy who built the Levelator. For those of you into the inner workings of RMS normalization, this is your thing!

My PME Talk Seems to Be Hitting the Right Nerves

Today I got several emails from people that I didn’t already know thanking me for doing my talk at PME. The subject matter seems to be striking exactly the right nerve and helping people with that middle ground of the podcast life cycle.

It seems like a fun and interesting thing to do, so you start your own show. Theoretically it has unlimited upside potential but after a few or few dozen shows your listenership is not climbing anymore and companies are not knocking each other down to pay you sponsorship money, so now what? My thesis is that by orienting your expectations and goals to your own satisfaction, to your own sustainable level of enthusiasm you can keep the balance you need to keep going. By worrying less about listeners and money, you will do a better job of doing the things that might eventually attract listeners and money. There’s a bit of Zen koan in that advice, but I think it is absolutely true. It’s all about balance. People stop because they feel like the results they want to happen aren’t. By keeping your expectations such that you are satisfied no matter what, that balance remains unshakeable.

I just checked the Gigavox page, and thus far the average rating of that talk is 4.4 stars. That’s way better than any of my Voices in your Head shows ever got rated. Thanks, all. If the talk spoke to your inner podcaster, let me know.

Update: I got the weekly IT Conversations email, and this talk is the highest rated one listed in the mailing. Go, me!

EGC Clambake For October 4, 2006

Here is the Bittorrent link and direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for October 4, 2006.

I play a song from Slau; I present a series of interviews I did at this year’s Podcast Expo, with Jake Ludington, Eric Rice and Michael Geoghegan.

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