In which we look at buying bootlegs at cons.....

Oh.. and yeah.. I am being slack with posts...

working on it..

Enjoy!!

We forgives ya - you's busy!

In answer to the question about the origins of the term 'bootleg', this was the best definition I found: As a noun, bootleg means the top part of a boot, the part that is around the leg instead of the foot. From the practice of hiding small items in a boot to smuggle them past the authorities, the word became a verb, meaning "to smuggle," and an adjective, describing something that has been smuggled (or, more rarely, stolen). Anything that is regulated can be bootlegged, so the term now often refers to such items as audio or video recordings not released by whoever holds the rights to them (also known as "pirated" copies), to cigarettes on which the required taxes have not been paid (also known as "black market" cigarettes), and to jeans or other clothing with phony (or "counterfeit") manufacturers' labels on them. It is also the name given to a type of American football play. But, until I purchase a boot with legs, make mine GRG........craig

I know why you need to do it, but the Skype interview segment was hard to listen to. Teri's voice was badly garbled and faded in and out. Worse, the typical flow and pace of your banter was lost. The sound quality in general made it hard to finish the segment. I even had a hard time figuring out if Bill was talking or the guest, sometimes even if it was Bruce. I'm not technically savvy, but can't you talk on Skype, but record yourselves at the same time, ftp the loops to one person to assemble so the quality is good, but the spontaneity is still there. It would be more work, but it would sound better.

Yeah, we tried something new and it...yeah, didn't work out so well. I'm pretty sure I've figured out a fix so the GRD crew can do Skype recording and have it sound about as good as doing a regular show. The hitch is that it requires buying a piece of equipment. After that, though, they should be FLYING on Skype stuff.

Yeah... We realized going in it was gonna be a bit not as great as it could be.

Tomorrow we shall have the same situation... but hopefully the sound is a bit better.

Once I get the new equipment it will be flawless... so.. understood...ackowledged and working on it.

So what is the mystery equipment? Inquiring podcasters want to know!

The glorious piece of equipment would be the Creative X-Fi external sound card. If you've got a machine with enough horsepower (and I'm pretty sure that Flynn's new laptop does), it will allow you to pipe in your sound board through Skype using the Line In input as opposed to messing with making the Microphone input and the inherant fuzziness that comes with it.

It also comes with a nifty little software feature called "What U Hear". This, in and of itself, makes it worth the $50 alone. It allows you to set it as the recording device for Audacity. Since you're also able to monitor the sound coming in off the Line In input, it allows you to record your entire Skype conversation, along with sound programs like Jazzlr Show. It's what I use every single episode. Since we've got our chemistry down and don't really need to do any post production, all I need to do when we're recording is cut off the beginning until the intro music hits and cut off the end after the music/drop fades and it's ready to be encoded.

If you want to run it through Levelator first, I'd probably put the intro/music in with post. Otherwise, it can make for some odd fade ins/fade outs.

Ah, right on! We've got an overkill solution (essentially two machines, one dedicated to Skype which all runs into a mixer) which works great, but I'm only doing it that way because I already had equipment on hand.


Yes, one issue I learned pretty fast-- Levelate for voices only: it can destroy music.

Yeah, the X-Fi is a great piece of equipment for a single PC solution, especially on a laptop. Any Sound Blaster Audigy product will have that What U Hear option, even the $30 PCI card.