Category: Technincial

To produce the podcast

Software

We used the RadioLogik software to play out our clips as nothing else was free and available for Mac. The software wasn’t overly complex to use as I was able to just drag in our clips from an ITunes playlist I had created earlier.  The software used two playout carts where you where able to alter volume, and the speed of playing the clip. The only issue I did encounter was that as it was free it would after thirty minutes make you wait for a minute to reactivate it and encourage you to pay for the software.

Audition

To get the clips I used audition routed through a piece of software called soundflower which allowed me to record my speaker output through audition meaning I could play the clip then edit it to the correct length in audition.

Pro tools

This is the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software we recorded the audio into via the studio desk and was also what we used to edit the piece into the final mix down. This was because both me and James own a copy of Pro Tools meaning the editing process was a lot more streamlined and as a result was much easier as we both knew what we were doing on it.

The desk in Studio 3 is an Audient ASP 8024 with 12 channels on meaning that we have numerous options in terms of how many microphones we use considering we will only have a panel of 5 people in the studio and most likely have a microphone on each of them to allow us to capture their voice a lot more clearly than if we had one microphone in the room, however there is the potential for bleed within the microphone however this can be resolved in post production.  Another advantage of this desk is the ability to pan microphones easily for example in the panel situation it would make sense to have the microphone for James paned centrally with the people sitting on the  left paned left etc, this helps the listener to gain a sense of the space in my mind as we don’t have the ability to show the space visually unless via social media.  Furthermore this desk also allows us to make use of the various equalisation units it has within it meaning we can alter the sound before it comes into the pro tools session, the most common use of this for us will be to eq out a bad sound, or cut the very low frequencies on a persons voice that do not add anything to the overall sound.  One of the most important abilities of this desk is that it allow the user to send different headphone mixes to two groups for example if someone wanted the clips to be louder than the rest of the people in the room this could be added easily. 

We will be using studio 3 within our project as a compromise for not being able to use a venue where a live audience could possibly be implemented. This has meant that we would most likely need to utilise a studio instead and there are two different types that could be chosen, the first is a traditional radio studio. The desk in this studio is an Alice Air 200o desk that can only take 3 microphone channels limiting us significantly as we would ideally have a microphone on each member of the panel. Furthermore, it’s  acoustic qualities are lacking as these type of studios sound a lot more dead and flat due to the acoustic panelling and floor material which results in much less resonance, dulling the sound and we ideally want the piece to sound lively.

To allow us both to have a more lively sound and enough channels we will use a more specific type of studio, this being studio 3 as it makes use of a —– desk meaning that there are a significantly higher number of channels.  However this does present a technical challenge in its own right as in the other types of studios they all have a playout system called Myriad within (write up here) that allows clips to be played out live and Studio 3 does not meaning we will need to work out a way to be able to play the clips in without jeopardising the recording.  Despite this, there is still a benefit to using this studio and that is because it has a lot more space than any of the others and could quite easily fit all five people into the studio, furthermore it also sounds a lot better in here due to the fact that the space sounds more lively and due to the different flooring types wood and carpet there are more options for experimenting with the sound.

Studio 3 photos

Within most similar programmes to our intend one such as ‘The News Quiz on Radio 4’,  ‘Fighting talk’ on 5 live , Mock the Week and Have I got News For You  (read about them here) all use a live studio audience so that there is reaction from the people in the audience to the jokes that were being said by those on the panel and it means that you have laughter in the background rather than using ‘stock’ clapping sounds. It also allows for audience reaction such as a comedian who is a guest on Have I Got news for you laughing at someone in the audience or in fighting talks case make use of the audience to send in questions or to vote on items.  However due to us not having the budget to rent the nearest theatre or venue of similar nature for example the Engine Shed we wouldn’t be able to. Alongside this there would be a huge increase in staffing and equipment hire costs as we would need to hire in security and many more staff unless the venue had a flat booking fee that included this.   Another thing for consideration is that we don’t have the experience or the infrastructure to physically ticket an event and pack it out.

This ultimately means that we wouldn’t be able to make use of a ‘stage’ option for our actual project due to the lack of money we have and the fact that we would be very unlikely to get that many people who were seriously interested enough to come and watch the piece be created. Another issue that we would have faced if we were to do it like this would have been that we wouldn’t have ‘big enough’ contributors to actually encourage people to come and watch/listen to the programme being recorded. Instead of using an actual theatre or similar type of location

However, if we were, in fact, doing the project for real on radio 4 it would be recorded in a theatre with an audience to allow us to exploit that audience interaction possibility that we wouldn’t otherwise have resulting in more potential content alongside just generally sounding better as there would be actual laughter meaning that you can gauge whether the audience actually enjoyed what was being said rather than what we are going to have to which is do it by what we find funny, making the editing process a lot slower and more complicated.