Haven’t done a podcast-related post in a while.
Season 3 of Game Buccaneers is chugging along, as we dive deeper and deeper into the lunatic fringe of the Metal Gear universe. This week we’ll be uploading an episode on Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the PSP.
This episode marks some firsts and lasts for Game Buccaneers. It is the first time 100% of the sound effects used were taken from my own growing collection and not scavanged from the wilds of the internet – a threshold I’ve been waiting to cross for a long time now. It is also the LAST time I will ever fix a sync error on the podcast.
The. Last. Goddamn. Time.
How could I know this? Well after spending an hour and change hand-syncing the individual audio tracks for Nick and myself, I’ve finally grown some self-respect. No more.
The issue stems from technology and the number of moving parts invovled in our recording setup. Traditionally, Nick and I each use our own mics and record on our own devices; Nick records his audio to the H2N Mic’s onboard storage, and I use my Snowball to record into my old laptop. Recording onto a computer is wrought with peril – memory limitations, background processes (thanks Win X) and general software quirks mean that, over the course of a 2-hour recording session, something is going to hiccup. Fixing these hiccups means cutting and pasting chunks of my audio track and hand-syncing them to the other track.
I’ve told myself for month that this is just an occasional price of doing business, but realize now that I can’t think of the last episode that didn’t have at least some major syncing issues that needed fixing.
Our solution – VoiceMeeter, a virtual mixer for windows that comines input from multiple mics into a single track. We will have to give up a few niceties that come with individual track edits, but at the end of the day whatever happens will happen in sync.
Our next episode has already been recorded this way, and while I haven’t finished the edit on it, so far results look promising. Here’s to less podcast stress for the furture.
-J
Jonny Aiello 