This thread is for discussing the March 8th show.

We, of course, will host open lines for you to call in and discuss whatever news topics interest you.

Please call in tonight. I came down with a head cold yesterday and you all will be stuck listening to my nasally voice ramble on if you don't call. Plus, we'd rather hear your opinions than ours anyway.

Talk to you tonight!!

Well, I for one am looking forward to tonight's show.

Jaime's sick, and so that should make for some really interesting radio...!

Mike

The sound last night was the best yet. It sounds like a "real" radio show now.

Thanks. Mike is really getting the production down smooth and we're both more comfortable behind the mics. Not mention the fact that it helps that we get great callers.

I appreciate everyone who put up with my nasally voice last night.

If you haven't listened yet, download the show and tell us what you think. Plus, you'll have a better understanding of why next week Mike and I plan on having a live, taste-test of celery soda.

You two do sound good as do some of the regular callers... :shiftsfeet:

I hope you are better, Jaime, by the time the next show rolls around. I have a feeling that that particular soda is going to have a unique taste at least.

Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray Tonic is actually pretty tasty stuff. Just a nice, light, refreshing celery taste.

Thanks! I'm doing a lot of testing and tweaking to the setup between shows, trying to get the sound as good as possible. I'm really learning a lot about how to run all of this stuff. I think there are two small things that improved the sound of this show over the last one.

One is that I built two new desks-- one for each of us. We were both crammed in to one of those 72x30 office tables before. It caused Jaime's mic to pickup my voice, and my mic to pickup her voice. Now, we've each got our own 42" wide desk, and we separate them for the show so we're sitting about eight feet apart instead of three feet apart.

It wasn't possible for us to be separated before early this week because I needed to see her screen to monitor line 2. But, I built a piece of hardware that connects to each computer's serial port and, through the magic of visual basic app that I wrote, lights up an LED to indicate which lines are open, and which lines have callers. It's pretty cool!

The other small factor that I think improved the sound quality is that we have new mic stands. They make it really easy to position the mic-- even while you're talking into it-- exactly where you need it to get the proximity effect that seems to be a talk radio staple. Before, we had to put the mic in one place, and leave it. That meant we were forced to sit in the exact same position for 2+ hours, and that is just uncomfortable. At one point during the last show, I was just leaned back and relaxed, and I looked over at Jaime to see her leaned back, relaxing, doing the same thing. Of course, she could have just been trying not to pass out...heh.

I plan on doing some tweaking of the phone system this weekend since there were some issues with the levels. The problem is that I have no way to monitor the levels of the audio that the callers receive through their phone while we're actually on the air. I have to check the levels before we start, set them the best I can, and cross my fingers.

But, the good news is that we should be able to afford the new audio interface that will replace the current generic consumer-level soundcards that we use for the phones with a much better pro-sumer type soundcard. It includes a really nice mixer application that will let me view the level of the audio that the callers receive while we're on the air, and make adjustments accordingly. That will mean big improvements.

Anyway, I am really enjoying this radio show, and hope everyone else is too. I think Jaime and I are improving every week, and I like that we have regular callers who participate every week. I can go on and on about this!

A couple of last things: 1. Listenership is up 21% over the previous 5 week average gauged by downloads. That means we've had around 425 listeners to this past show, compared to around 350 before. That is pretty darn good if you ask me. 2. Someone gave us a lousy review on iTunes, so if you use iTunes, please review us with your honest opinion (so long as it is better than 2 stinking stars )

Oh yeah, and I find it hard to believe that this celery soda is going to be any good. But, we'll see...!

Mike

What kind of equipment are you using in total? Do you have a list?

We sure do.

Here's our "studio tour" page: http://radio.americasdebate.net/?studio

The equipment list at the bottom is mostly accurate (need to update it for the new mic stands).

The pictures are quite outdated now, and are missing some equipment. Since I took those shots, I have:

- Hung 19 pieces of carpeting, each about 7 feet long and 1-3 feet wide, vertically on all the walls. It's not pretty, I guarantee that, but it is hard to argue with the results. Our room is paneled and painted over with an enamel, and we have 2 sets of parallel walls. We were getting quite the bounce when it came to high frequencies, and that caused a lot of unpleasant reverberation. After I hung the carpet, the difference in the room was unbelievable. We have an old house with picture-rail, so I can easily remove the panels if necessary.

- Placed a "wall of carpet" between our computers and the rest of the room to try to capture some of the high frequencies, and to try to stop some of the turbulence noise from the power supply fans.

- Built two new desks

- Installed the new mic stands


If you are interested, here is the general signal path:

Music: Two separate stereo outputs coming from a SBLive! card using hacked drivers to open up more outputs, running straight to their own channels on the mixer.

Callers: Two lines on separate PCs. Line outs carry the caller voice to a mono compression channel for downward expanding, compression and limiting and then into the mixer. The audio the caller hears is a custom mix for each caller (mix-minus) that runs out of a mixer aux channel to the line in on each caller's soundcard.

Hosts: Condenser mics -> preamp for phantom power and tube warmth -> dynamics processor for downward expanding, deessing, compressing, and limiting -> mixer.

Main mix: Runs from the mixer, analog stereo, into a stereo dynamics channel for limiting and overall compression, and into the Audiophile 2496 for encoding.

It's taken me a while to really understand compression and levels, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. Our next show should sound even better.

Like I said, I could talk about this stuff all day...heh...!

Mike

Interesting...I didn't know AD Radio was available for download thru Itunes till today. I bought my Ipod Nano last year and have used it exclusively for music, but now I have something to download for those drives back and forth to work when I don't feel like listening to music or those "established" idiots on the radio.

Kudos!

I just listened to the archive for this episode. The sound quality is much better. I could always hear the hosts very well, but I usually had trouble hearing the callers. Now I can hear them a lot better.