Here is the Bittorrent link and direct MP3 download for the audioblog for September 26, 2004. I talk about Feedster and Scott Rafer and how writing someone’s name now summons them; A-list vs Z-list bloggers; I present my first ever audio feedback which is a question on tools to use for Window based audioblogging; talk a little more on the gender disparity in this medium; and I renew my appeal for pointers to Spanish language audioblogs.
Links mentioned in this episode:
In the Windows Recording Control you may be able to set the recording input to “What U Hear” or similar. This is what it’s called for my SB Live card, at least. On my laptop it’s called “Sum”. You may need to go into Options|Properties to find and enable it so you can select it. Start recording and anything you play from another application should then be recorded. There is also a program called Total Recorder which can be used for this, but the last time I looked at it (version 3.0 I think) you had to use the recording program included with it, and, from memory, you could only record the output from one application. I think its main advantage was that it worked entirely digitally, so it was good for format shifting, whereas the “What U Hear” method might work in the analogue circuit of the sound card, but still, that’s good enough. Also, I suppose it’s good for systems with sound cards (or sound card drivers) that don’t provide a “What U Hear” or “Sum” recording input. As for routing audio between applications in Windows… beats me. I’d be interested in finding out.
People wanting to put together a podcast using the method Dave Slusher uses (ie. not recorded live in one take, but rather recorded in segments then edited to fit together) might want to check out Kristal Audio Engine at http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/. It’s a multitrack recorder that I believe is free for personal use. I think it’s mainly designed for recording music but it seems ideal for podcasters too, because you can also import .wav files with it, and do fades. One of the best features though is that you can move individual segments of audio horizontally along the time scale so that they sync up right where you want them. This is probably best seen than described. I think my only dislike about Kristal is that the UI could be improved by having its windows appear on the desktop outside of Kristal’s main window (similar to the Borland Delphi or C++ Builder UI, if people are familiar with that).
Creating desktop (or Start Menu) shortcut named “Recording Control” that runs “sndvol32.exe /r” is very useful for
anyone recording audio in Windows, since it avoids having to doubleclick on the Volume Control icon in the taskbar
and wade through the menus.
One last comment from me. 🙂 You can cue up more than one audio file in Winamp by running multiple copies of Winamp at once. Winamp won’t allow this by default though. You need to go into Winamp’s preferences and enable “Allow multiple instances”.
Thanks Andrew. I’m currently recording the audioblog. Wish me luck!
Andrew, thanks a lot for the help. I was hoping someone on Windows would join in. As it happens, today was the first time I did one of this style and I ended up doing just what I described yesterday – opening a bunch of windows in QT player and cuing each up indivdually.
Matt, I subscribed to your feed and will catch it on my next iPodder run. Looking forward to it!
Dave, I tried to track you back here, but I’ve responded to some of todays comments in my own very first audio post:
http://redmonk.net/archives/2004/09/27/its-all-dave-slushers-fault/
Cheers,
–Steve
26-09-2004