Audacity!!!

After NINE podcast episodes! NINE! After fussing and fretting about how to increase the dynamic range of my recordings and boosting the sound to noise ratio and blaming the microphone . . . Jen finally figures out that all she fricken needed to do was reboot the computer!!!!

How on Earth was I supposed to figure out that putting my machine on standby would mess up the microphone settings??!?!???!?! How!?!?!?

Anyway, this week's podcast is VERY crisp and I'm quite happy with it. For others who may have been experiencing the same problem, here's the fix:

1) Reboot!

2) Record!

3) Select a small portion of what is supposed to be background noise, then select "Effect", "Noise Removal".

4) Click on "Get Noise Profile".

5) Move the Step 2 cursor all the way to the left. If you don't, it makes your voice sound all underwater-warbly.

6) Remove noise! Done!

Podcast Up!!!

It was waaaaayyy harder than I imagined, but the very first podcast episode of The Longevity Thesis is up!!!!! It can be found at:

http://jrahn.podshow.com

I did have fun amidst all the frustrated swearing, but in the end, I'm quite pleased with the result. I had the music recorded last summer when the promo vid was made, but I still had to read the chapters and record that, edit out all the goof ups, and put in some promo spots for friends. Cellist Aurealis has agreed to play some more Tchaikovsky for me, this time on the cello instead of a keyboard. It's gonna be awesome!!!

For those who are interested, the sound recording and editing was done using a free linux-based program called Audacity (have I mentioned before my unending love of all things open source?) and later on, Justyn, the EDGE marketing manager pointed me towards a nifty little program called the Levelator to smooth out the sound levels.

Now I'm too tired to blink, but still raring to make the next one!!