Podcasting Hacks | O'Reilly Media

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I'll come home, eat, and surf the TV a bit, but

usually there's nothing good on. Then around

11 p.m., I'll turn on [the] Dawn and Drew

[podcast]. And it's like I'm hanging out

with old friends.

—Scott Saunders

Congratulations, you just found 3,000 new friends to listen and talk to! These 3,000 podcasting friends talk about their lives, their work, their passions, and their interests in segments of audio and video every day from around the world. It's all free, and it finds you because you can subscribe to what you like.

This chapter is all about how to find and listen to podcasts, how to pass podcasts on to your friends, and how to listen to podcasts on iPods and other music players, as well as on devices that are more exotic.

Use your browser to find podcasts. Click a link, and in seconds, you'll be listening to the podcast in your favorite MP3 application.

You can listen to a podcast right now with the software you already have. Moreover, with thousands of podcasts to choose from covering every conceivable topic, you are sure to find something you like. This hack shows you how to listen to and subscribe to podcasts, how you can find the right podcast using directories, and how to manage your podcast download inventory.

Your first experience with podcasting starts with you pointing your browser to a podcast web site and clicking one of the show links. Here are some links to the perennial best of the podcast world:

The Daily Source Code(http://www.curry.com/): This is Adam Curry's (ex-MTV veejay) 40-minute show, mixing podcast plugs, technology news, music, and more.
The Dawn and Drew Show(http://www.dawnanddrew.com/)

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I'll come home, eat, and surf the TV a bit, but

usually there's nothing good on. Then around

11 p.m., I'll turn on [the] Dawn and Drew

[podcast]. And it's like I'm hanging out

with old friends.

—Scott Saunders

Congratulations, you just found 3,000 new friends to listen and talk to! These 3,000 podcasting friends talk about their lives, their work, their passions, and their interests in segments of audio and video every day from around the world. It's all free, and it finds you because you can subscribe to what you like.

This chapter is all about how to find and listen to podcasts, how to pass podcasts on to your friends, and how to listen to podcasts on iPods and other music players, as well as on devices that are more exotic.

Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing!

Content preview·Buy reprint rights for this chapter

Use your browser to find podcasts. Click a link, and in seconds, you'll be listening to the podcast in your favorite MP3 application.

You can listen to a podcast right now with the software you already have. Moreover, with thousands of podcasts to choose from covering every conceivable topic, you are sure to find something you like. This hack shows you how to listen to and subscribe to podcasts, how you can find the right podcast using directories, and how to manage your podcast download inventory.

Your first experience with podcasting starts with you pointing your browser to a podcast web site and clicking one of the show links. Here are some links to the perennial best of the podcast world:

The Daily Source Code(http://www.curry.com/): This is Adam Curry's (ex-MTV veejay) 40-minute show, mixing podcast plugs, technology news, music, and more.
The Dawn and Drew Show(http://www.dawnanddrew.com/): A popular comedy show featuring a young Midwestern couple with insights on relationships and technology.
Scripting News(http://www.morningcoffeenotes.com/): The original podcast from Dave Winer. This is a combination audio/video blog that covers technology, politics, blogging, and a whole host of other topics.
The Rock and Roll Geek Show(http://www.americanheartbreak.com/movabletype/): A popular and well-produced music show featuring new artists.
Coverville(http://www.coverville.com/): A very well-produced music show featuring cover songs from a wide variety of artists. Clocking in at around 30 to 40 minutes per episode, this is a great way to enhance a workout or commute with familiar music played in a different style.

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Combine a bunch of feeds to make your own broadcast network.

Podcasting is like TiVo: you set up your subscriptions and get the shows you want as they come out. But what happens when you want to take your subscriptions on the road, or share them with your friends? This script allows you to create a single feed that pulls the most recent podcast from each feed you specify.

Save the following code as network.pl:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use LWP::Simple;
use strict;

# The list of feeds to retrieve

my @feeds = qw(
 http://www.curry.com/xml/rss.xml
 http://www.boundcast.com/index.xml
);
# The title of the network feed

my $networkName = "My Network";

# The URL of the home page

my $url = "http://www.mysite.com";

# A description of your network

my $description = "My very own network";
 
# Format the current date and time

my @days = qw( Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat );
my @months = qw( Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec );

my @t = gmtime( time );
my $date = sprintf( "%s, %d %s %d %02d:%02d:%02d GMT",

$days[ $t[6] ], $t[3], $months[ $t[4] ],
$t[5] + 1900, $t[2], $t[1], $t[0] );

# Print the header portion of the RSS 2.0

print <<END;
Content-type: text/xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>$networkName</title>
<link>$url</link>
<description>$description</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<pubDate>$date</pubDate>
<lastBuildDate>$date</lastBuildDate>
<generator>Network 1.0</generator>
END

# Iterate through each feed and find the first
# item with an enclosure then print it out

foreach my $feed ( @feeds )
{
 my $data = get $feed;
 while( $data =~ /(<item>.*?<\/item>)/sg )
{
 my $item = $1;
 if ( $item =~ /<enclosure/ )
 {
  print $item;
  last;
  }
 }
}

# Print the footer

print <<END;
</channel>
</rss>
END

This script will read the RSS from the feeds you specify in the @feeds array. Then it will combine all the feeds into a new, single RSS 2.0 feed with the name, description, and URL that you specify. Modify the variables at the top of the script before you upload it to your web server.

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Using Perl, you can quickly build a command-line podcatcher for yourself.

Rolling your own command-line podcatcher, like the one shown here, gives you ultimate flexibility in what podcasts you download and when you fetch them. You can also hook up this script to a cron job or to a Windows batch file and download new podcasts overnight.

Save this code as spc.pl:

   #!/usr/bin/perl -w
   use Storable qw ( store retrieve );
   use FileHandle;
   use LWP::Simple qw( get );
   use strict;

   # The path to the history file that remembers
   # what we have downloaded.

   use constant HISTORY_FILE => ".history";

   # The file that includes the URLs of all of the feeds

   use constant FEEDS_FILE => "feeds.txt";
   #The directory to use for output of the enclosure files

   use constant OUTPUT_DIR => "enclosures"; 

   # Loads all of the feeds from the feeds file and returns 
   # an array.
   
   sub feeds_load()
   { 
     my $feeds = [];
     my $fh = new FileHandle( FEEDS_FILE );
     while( <$fh> ) { chomp; push @$feeds, $_; }
     $fh->close();
     return $feeds;
  }
   # Returns the filename from a URL
   
   sub parse_filename($)
   {
     my ( $fname ) = @_;
   
   # Remove the arguments portion of the URL
   $fname =~ s/\?.*$//;
   # Trim anything up to the final slash
   $fname =~ s/.*\///;

   return $fname;
 }
   
   # Parses a feed and finds the title of the feed and the
   # URLs for all of the enclosures
   
   sub parse_feed($)
   { 
	my ( $rss ) = @_;
	
	my $info = {};
	my $urls = [];

	while( $rss =~ /(\<item\>.*?\<\/item\>)/sg )
	{
     my $item = $1;
     if ( $item =~ /(\<enclosure.*?\>)/ )
     {
       my $enc = $1;
       if ( $enc =~ /url=[\"|\'](.*?)[\"|\']/i )
       {
         push @$urls, {
         url => $1,
         filename => parse_filename( $1 )
         };
       }
     }
   }
   $info->{enclosures} = $urls;

   $rss =~ s/\<item\>.*?\<\/item\>//sg;
   my $title = "";
   if ( $rss =~ /\<title\>(.*?)\<\/title\>/sg )
   {
     $title = $1;
     # Strip leading and trailing whitespace
     $title =~ s/^\s+//g;
     $title =~ s/\s+$//g;
     # Strip out the returns and line feeds
     $title =~ s/\n|\r//g;
     # Strip out any HTML entities
     $title =~ s/\&.*?;//g;
     # Strip out any slashes
     $title =~ s/\///g;
   }
   $info->Podcasting Hacks = $title;

   return $info;
  }
  
  # Grabs and parses a feed. Then adds the enclosures
  # referenced in the feed to the queue.
  
  sub feed_read($$)
  {
    my ( $queue, $rss_url ) = @_;
  
	print "Reading feed $rss_url\n";

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Use Perl scripts and iTunes' COM interface to automate MP3 importing on Windows; on the Mac, it's even easier.

iTunes for Windows supports a powerful scripting layer using Windows COM interfaces. ActiveState Perl (http://activestate.com/) complements thisby making it easy to automate COM objects. I merged these two together to build a Perl script that complements the command-line podcatcher [Hack #3] .

The podcatcher downloaded all the enclosure files into an enclosures directory that was organized by show. This means that the script in this hack needs to crawl the directory structure to find the MP3s to import them, and then update your iPod. This is not a problem, though, since the


               File::Find

module [Hack #7] makes searching through a tree of directories a snap.

With the problem of finding the files out of the way, the script uses the


               Win32::OLE

module to tell iTunes to import the files.

Save this code to a file named addtoitunes.pl:

   #!perl -w
   use Win32::OLE;
   use File::Find;
   use strict;

   # iTunes refers to importing as 'converting' in its COM interface.
   # So we convert each path.

   sub convert($$)
   {
     my ( $itunes, $path ) = @_;

     # Make sure it's an MP3 file

     return unless ( $path =~ /[.]mp3$/ );

     print "Converting $path\n";

     # Start the conversion

     my $progress = $itunes->ConvertFile2( $path );

     # Monitor the SLOW progress

     my $done = 0;
     my $lp = -100;
     while( !$done )
     {
       my $p = int( $progress->ProgressValue() );
       my $m = int( $progress->MaxProgressValue() );

       if ( $m > 0 )
       {
         my $percent = int( ( $p / $m ) * 100.0 );
         $percent = 0 if ( $percent < 0 );

my $delta = $percent - $lp;
         if ( $delta >= 5 )
         {
           print "\t$percent%\n";
           $lp = $percent;
         }
         sleep( 2 );
       }
        $done = 1 if ( $p >= $m );
     }
      print "\n";
   }

   # Make sure we get a real path

   my $searchpath = $ARGV[0];
   die "Must specify search path\n" unless ( $searchpath );

   # Start up iTunes

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Subscribe to free amateur movies with ANT.

Videoblogs are the video version of podcasts. With RSS 2.0, you can now tune into these videoblogs the same way that you can with podcasts. ANT is a stable and high-quality client for videoblogs on the Macintosh.

On the righthand panel of the main window shown in Figure 1-13 is the list of subscriptions, and on the bottom panel is the list of downloaded videos that are available for playback. Once you have viewed a movie you can delete it from the playlist by selecting the entry and pressing the Delete key.

Figure 1-13: The ANT videocatcher

ANT comes with its own list of videoblogs that you can choose from. You can add your own as you find them. A great place to find videoblogs is the Videoblogging Yahoo! Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videobloggers/).

"Listen to Podcasts on the Web" [Hack #1]
"Listen to Podcasts on Your PDA" [Hack #8]
"Podcatching with Your PlayStation Portable" [Hack #9]

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Use the speech synthesizer on the Macintosh to turn text RSS feeds into podcasts and import them into iTunes.

If you get addicted to podcasts, you will find yourself wishing that your regular feeds were podcasts. However, those feeds are in text. Short of getting someone to read them, how do you get them into audio? You can use a speech synthesizer that turns the text into speech.

It might not be the most pleasant way to listen to text, but if you are at the gym and you want to get the latest technology headlines, you can use a speech synthesizer to read the headlines into MP3 files for iTunes [Hack #4] .

Save this code as asmac.pl:

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
    use LWP::Simple;
    use FileHandle;
    use Cwd;
    use strict;

    # The URL of the RSS feed

    use constant URL => "http://www.mysite.com/myrss.xml";

    # The artist name for the MP3s

    use constant ARTIST => "Artist Name";

    # The album name of the MP3s

    use constant ALBUM => "Album Name";

    # The output directory to put the MP3s into

    use constant OUTPUT_DIR => "mp3s"; 

    # Gets the feed and returns a hash of the RSS items, their titles
    # and the temporary filenames

    sub get_feed($)
    {
      my $out = {};

      my $text = get URL;

      while( $text =~ /\<item(.*?)\<\/item\>/gs )
      
    {
      my $item = $1;
      my ( $title ) = $item =~ /\<title\>(.*?)\<\/title\>/gs;
      my ( $desc ) = $item =~ /\<description\>(.*?)\<\/description\>/gs;

      $title =~ /[\n|\r]/g;

      $desc =~ s/[\n|\r]/ /g;
      $desc =~ s/$\<\!\[CDATA\[//;
      $desc =~ s/\]\]\>//;
      $desc =~ s/\<.*?\>//g;
      $desc =~ s/\<\/.*?\>//g;
      $desc =~ s/\"//g;
      $desc =~ s/\'//g;
      $desc =~ s/,//g;
      $desc = $title . ". " . $desc;

      my $filename = lc $title;
      $filename =~ s/ /_/g;
      $filename =~ s/[.]//g;
      $filename =~ s/-/_/g;
      $filename =~ s/\\//g;
      $filename =~ s/\///g;
      $filename =~ s/^\s+//;
      $filename =~ s/\s+$//;

      $out->{ $filename } = {
        description => $desc,
        title => substr($title,0,30)
      };
     }

     return $out; 
    }

    # Turns a story into speech as an AIFF file

    sub speakstory($$)
    {
      my ( $text, $filename ) = @_;

      open FH, "|osascript";
      print FH "set ofile to POSIX file \"$filename\"\n";
      print FH "say \"$text\" saving to ofile\n";
      close FH;
    }

    # Convert an AIFF file to MP3 with the right tags

    sub convert($$$)
    {
      my ( $aiffFile, $mp3File, $desc ) = @_;

print "Creating $mp3File\n";

     my $cmd = "lame $aiffFile $mp3File --silent --tt \"$desc\"";
     $cmd .= " --ta \"".ARTIST."\" --tl \"".ALBUM."\" -h";

	 system( $cmd );
	}

    # Get the feed URL and build MP3s for each of the entries

    my $items = get_feed( URL );
    foreach my $filename ( keys %$items )
    {
      speakstory( $items->{ $filename }->{description}, "temp.aiff" );
      convert( "temp.aiff", OUTPUT_DIR."/".$filename.".mp3",
        $items->{ $filename }->{ title } );
      unlink( "temp.aiff" );
    }

    # Import the files into iTunes

    print "Importing the MP3s into iTunes\n";

    open FH, "|osascript";
    print FH "set ofile to POSIX file \"".getcwd."/".OUTPUT_DIR."\"\n";
    print FH "tell application \"iTunes\" to convert ofile\n";
    close FH;

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A number of hacks in this book use Perl scripts. This hack covers installing Perl, Perl modules, and Perl support in your web server.

Perl is a widely used scripting language that I use in this book to perform a variety of podcast-related tasks. Perl comes preinstalled on Mac OS X and Linux, and it's easy to install on Windows.

If you have the time, it's worth learning Perl. The language syntax can be a little confusing at first but becomes familiar quickly. A lot of the value of Perl comes from the CPAN library of modules (http://cpan.org/), which covers every conceivable need.

Here are some helpful Perl modules that should interest podcasters:

MP3::Info: With MP3::Info your script can read and write the ID3 tags in MP3 files.
MP4::Info: This retrieves information from MP4 (AAC) format files.
Ogg::Vorbis::Header: This reads and writes information from an Ogg Vorbis file's header.
LWP::Simple: This library allows you to fetch any URL with a single function call.
LWP::UserAgent: This is the more functional version ofLWP::Simple. With this module, you can simulate a web browser surfing to a site, logging in, getting cookies, making requests, and then leaving. You can automate any complex web task with LWP::UserAgent.

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Use a PDA to listen to podcasts on the go.

Why restrict yourself to MP3 players or your PC when you want to listen to podcasts? Your PDA makes for a very capable podcatcher. Web-enabled PDAs can grab podcasts for you without having to sync to a computer.

This hack covers podcatching clients for both Pocket PC and Palm-powered PDAs.

With a Pocket PC device, you can use an application such as FeederReader to download podcasts from a wireless network and listen to or view them wherever you are. You can view any show notes included in the RSS feed, and with integrated file management, you can automatically delete podcasts after you've listened to them.

The integrated feel of the Pocket PC, with the optional ability to view notes from the podcast, makes for a great experience.

Section 1.9.1.1: Sneakernet or direct connect.

You can treat a Pocket PC as a simple MP3 player to listen to podcasts: either downloading songs over ActiveSync or using a card reader. However, to really take advantage of podcasts, you'll want to consider installing an aggregator on the device.

To listen to podcasts you will need a decent amount of memory. I recommend at least 256 MB for a small number (5–10) of stored shows, with up to 2 GB to hold a large number of podcasts to listen to over a long weekend.

Section 1.9.1.2: A walk-through using FeederReader.

First, download and install FeederReader (http://FeederReader.com/). You can install it into RAM or on a memory card. Installing it on a memory card will leave you more RAM for running programs. Using a program called CabInstl (search for "CabInstl" athttp://www.pocketgear.com/) you can install the CAB file onto your memory card.

Figure 1-19 shows the process of installing FeederReader with CabInstl. After installing and running FeederReader, you can add a new feed by selecting that menu item and entering a URL, as seen in Figure 1-20.

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Use your PlayStation Portable (PSP) to listen to podcasts.

Sony's new PlayStation Portable (PSP) unit can play MP3 audio files stored on its memory sticks. You can use this feature to listen to podcasts on the device.

Attach the PSP to your computer using the USB cable. Then select USB Connection from the Settings section of the Home menu. On both Macintosh and Windows the device will appear as a drive. Double-click the drive and navigate to the PSP directory. Cards that haven't been used in a PSP will not have a PSP directory yet, so just create one.

Once inside the PSP directory, create a subdirectory called Music, and another subdirectory within the Music directory, called Podcasts. The name of the Podcasts directory is really up to you, but the names of the other two directories must be PSP and Music.

Your can download the podcast .mp3 files to the PSP/Music/Podcasts directory using the Finder (Mac OS X) or Windows Explorer. Or, you can set your podcatcher to download to that device directly by specifying that as the storage path for the enclosures. On Windows, the full path will be <drive>:\PSP\Music\Podcasts, where <drive> depends on what the operating system allocates.

On Macintosh, the full directory will be /Volumes/<Card Name>/PSP/Music/Podcasts, where <Card Name> is the name you gave to the card in the Finder. This is Untitled by default. If you want to check the path for yourself, use the Go to Folder command in the Finder's Go menu and specify / Volumes.

Once the .mp3 files are downloaded to the card, just stick the card in your PSP and use the system menu to navigate to the music icon. Once there you should be able to specify the card as the storage device and see the Podcasts directory. Click the Podcasts directory to see the podcast files. Click whichever you want to play.

If you see the "There are no tracks" message, you have put the files in the wrong location and you need to ensure that the directory structure is PSP/Music/Podcasts, from the top level of the directory structure down. Check your owner's manual for more specifics if you are still having trouble.

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Podcasting gives you the power to compete with Howard Stern, from your basement.

—Joe Lipscomb

An hour from now you can be a podcaster. It's far easier than you think, and all you need are the microphone on your laptop and a connection to the Internet. Getting started early is very important. Podcasting is all about making mistakes and learning from them to create better podcasts. So, start right now and make your first podcast.

Use the hardware you have right now, and some free software on the Web, to make your first podcast.

If you don't have an internal microphone in your computer, you will need to get a microphone. Microphone solutions are available for all budgets. [Hack #12] covers the basics of sound input, and [Hack #13] will help you pick out the right microphone for your budget.

Once you have the sound input device covered, the next step is to download Audacity (http://audacity.sf.net/). This is a free application that runs on Macintosh, Windows, and Linux. It can record sound from any source, including the internal microphone on your PC or Macintosh laptop.

With Audacity installed, press the big red Record button and explain what you have in mind for your podcast. The meter bars attached to the window will show you when you are talking too loudly (by hitting the far side of the meter near the 0 mark) or too softly (by registering only slightly as you talk). Click the Stop button to finish the recording. When you are finished, you will have something that looks like Figure 2-1.

Figure 2-1: A recording in Audacity

As the recording is made, your voice is shown as a waveform on the display. Each word you say appears as a little blip in the signal that goes above and below the center line. The louder the word, the taller the blip.

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Podcasting gives you the power to compete with Howard Stern, from your basement.

—Joe Lipscomb

An hour from now you can be a podcaster. It's far easier than you think, and all you need are the microphone on your laptop and a connection to the Internet. Getting started early is very important. Podcasting is all about making mistakes and learning from them to create better podcasts. So, start right now and make your first podcast.

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Use the hardware you have right now, and some free software on the Web, to make your first podcast.

If you don't have an internal microphone in your computer, you will need to get a microphone. Microphone solutions are available for all budgets. [Hack #12] covers the basics of sound input, and [Hack #13] will help you pick out the right microphone for your budget.

Once you have the sound input device covered, the next step is to download Audacity (http://audacity.sf.net/). This is a free application that runs on Macintosh, Windows, and Linux. It can record sound from any source, including the internal microphone on your PC or Macintosh laptop.

With Audacity installed, press the big red Record button and explain what you have in mind for your podcast. The meter bars attached to the window will show you when you are talking too loudly (by hitting the far side of the meter near the 0 mark) or too softly (by registering only slightly as you talk). Click the Stop button to finish the recording. When you are finished, you will have something that looks like Figure 2-1.

Figure 2-1: A recording in Audacity

As the recording is made, your voice is shown as a waveform on the display. Each word you say appears as a little blip in the signal that goes above and below the center line. The louder the word, the taller the blip.

Figure 2-1 shows a short period of silence at the beginning of the recording. I didn't start speaking until one second after I pressed the Record button. You can remove that period of silence by using the Selection tool, which is in the upper lefthand corner of the window. Next, select the period of silence and click either the Delete key or the icon with the scissors to cut the signal. You can do the same at the end of the signal to remove any trailing silence.

Digital audio is exactly like digital photography or video, in that you can do as many takes as you like or do as much editing as you please. It's all just RAM or disk space and you can delete what you don't use. So, relax and take as much time as you need to say what you want to say.

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Podcasting is new, but broadcasting isn't. Learn the established secrets of the broadcasting trade that will help you create professional podcasts with basic hardware.

Without even thinking about it, you are taking on the role of producer, writer, host, engineer, and editor of your own show. Understanding the different roles in a radio show can help you compartmentalize your work so that you can concentrate on each job. While you are in the host role, your mind should be fixed on the job of hosting, without thinking about the engineering or the production aspects of the show.

In this hack, I'll cover each role and give you some tips from the professionals that you can use in your own podcast.

There are two levels of producer: the show producer, and the segment producer. The show producer is in charge of deciding how shows are organized, the theme of a show, and putting it all together. The segment producer handles an individual portion of a show, such as an interview or a comic bit.

A producer will tell you that a show needs a general theme and some structure. The theme is simply the subject of the podcast: some observation you had, a movie you want to review, or a story you want to tell. The structure of the show can be equally simple, with an introduction at the beginning, the show segment in the middle, and the credits and any plugs at the end.

The segment producer has two responsibilities: to research the topic and to author the show prep for his segment. This show prep is usually a set of notes that are given to the host before the segment starts. I'll cover what goes in the notes in the section titled "The Writer," later in this hack.

The podcast producer is concerned with finding guests for the show. The producer schedules a time to talk with the guest and does some research on the guest and what they are going to talk about.

Getting access to famous or important people can be difficult. As editor-in-chief of the Code Generation Network (

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There's no excuse for making poor recordings.

—Dave Isay

It is said that an engaging story can be played through a tin can and people will still listen. In reality, noise and a harsh sound will drive your listeners away before you even get to the good stuff.

This chapter will give you a solid start with the tools to make your podcast sound great, without having to spend a fortune.

Getting quality sound on the cheap is easy with today's digital tools, if you know what to look for.

For your first few podcasts, you should keep your setup simple. The internal microphone on your computer, or a very low-cost computer microphone plugged into the microphone port, is a good place to start.

You can use any reasonable set of headphones to monitor your sound. Monitoring your sound means sending the incoming microphone audio to your headphones as well as recording it to the output file. Monitoring yourself is critical because it gives you instant feedback. Is your voice too loud or too soft? Are you creating pops when you pronounce the p, t, or b consonants? Do you sound raspy or slushy? Monitors allow you to gauge this instantly and to make the appropriate changes. Without them, you will get to the end of the recording thinking you did great, only to find that you were a foot further away from the microphone than you should have been. The first rule of podcasting: any person controlling a microphone should be wearing monitor headphones.

Most any headphone will do, but you should disable any noise-canceling feature when you are recording. Otherwise, you will not get an accurate representation of your sound. Higher-quality headphones, such as the Sennheiser HD 570, are "open-air" headphones. These have great fidelity in playback and are a joy to wear. But these headphones make lousy monitors because they let in a substantial amount of room noise, including your voice, which can make you sound louder than the sound being recorded by the microphone.

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There's no excuse for making poor recordings.

—Dave Isay

It is said that an engaging story can be played through a tin can and people will still listen. In reality, noise and a harsh sound will drive your listeners away before you even get to the good stuff.

This chapter will give you a solid start with the tools to make your podcast sound great, without having to spend a fortune.

Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing!

Content preview·Buy reprint rights for this chapter

Getting quality sound on the cheap is easy with today's digital tools, if you know what to look for.

For your first few podcasts, you should keep your setup simple. The internal microphone on your computer, or a very low-cost computer microphone plugged into the microphone port, is a good place to start.

You can use any reasonable set of headphones to monitor your sound. Monitoring your sound means sending the incoming microphone audio to your headphones as well as recording it to the output file. Monitoring yourself is critical because it gives you instant feedback. Is your voice too loud or too soft? Are you creating pops when you pronounce the p, t, or b consonants? Do you sound raspy or slushy? Monitors allow you to gauge this instantly and to make the appropriate changes. Without them, you will get to the end of the recording thinking you did great, only to find that you were a foot further away from the microphone than you should have been. The first rule of podcasting: any person controlling a microphone should be wearing monitor headphones.

Most any headphone will do, but you should disable any noise-canceling feature when you are recording. Otherwise, you will not get an accurate representation of your sound. Higher-quality headphones, such as the Sennheiser HD 570, are "open-air" headphones. These have great fidelity in playback and are a joy to wear. But these headphones make lousy monitors because they let in a substantial amount of room noise, including your voice, which can make you sound louder than the sound being recorded by the microphone.

When you have decided that podcasting is something you want to invest more time in, you will want to upgrade your recording setup. Your laptop's internal microphone or line-in port is great in a pinch, but neither was made with studio recording in mind. Additionally, their location inside the computer can introduce extra noise. Reasonable microphones [Hack #13] and recording equipment are moderately priced today and they can greatly expand the quality of the signal, and thus, your editing possibilities.

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Learn everything you need to know to pick the right microphone, or set of microphones, for your podcast.

No matter what kind of content your podcast will carry, odds are you'll need a microphone somewhere in the process. Many different microphone types are available, and some are specially tailored for a particular use. Matching the mic to your needs will give you better sonic results, and might even save you some money!

If all you want is to get your voice on a podcast, you can use the built-in mic on your computer or webcam, or get an inexpensive USB headset mic [Hack #12] or a basic computer mic with a mini-plug that can jack straight into your computer if it has a micinput. But if you want to get a richer, more professional, more radio-like sound, or if you are recording material out in the field, you'll want a better mic.

Microphones come in two types: dynamic and condenser. In general, dynamic mics are more forgiving of rough treatment and do not require external phantom power. Condenser mics break more easily if dropped and require phantom power to operate, which must come from a recorder, a mixer, a preamp, an internal battery, or a separate power source. Condenser mics almost always provide louder output, reducing the amount of gain needed at the often-noisy preamplification stage. And condensers often give a brighter, more detailed sound.

Neither type is inherently better than the other is. Very commonly used in radio studios as announcer mics, dynamic mics such as the Electro-Voice RE20, Shure SM7B, and Sennheiser 421 produce very high-quality results. And the Shure SM57 and SM58 are reliable, inexpensive standards. In the field, the overall durability and lack of phantom-power issues make dynamic mics very attractive.

Large diaphragm condenser mics, such as the Neumann U 87 or AKG C 414, are standards for voice recording in studios. In recent years, inexpensive versions of this kind of mic have become easy to afford. These large, sensitive mics work best in a quiet, controlled space.

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Mixers can look intimidating at first, but they are actually easy to use and very powerful.

Mixers are an inexpensive way to get your audio close to broadcast quality, with no digital editing. Figure 3-7 shows the Behringer UB1202 mixer.

Going from left to right on the setup you can see a number of horizontal strips. These are called channels. This mixer has an amazing 12 channels in it. The first four are mono channels capable of taking XLR [Hack #12] inputs. The XLR input of the first channel is highlighted in the upper lefthand corner.

Moving down the channel you can see a set of three knobs. This is a simple three-band equalizer [Hack #57] that can boost or reduce the low, middle, and high frequencies on the channel. This is great for getting rid of high-pitched noises, adding some presence to a person's voice, or removing low hums.

Figure 3-7: The Behringer UB1202 mixer

Below the equalizer section, the next highlighted knob is the pan control. The pan positions the signal in the stereo space from left to right. By default, it's in the middle—dead center between the two channels. If you are recording two microphones and you want the output to be stereo mixed, you will want one to go slightly to the left and the other to go slightly to the right. This gives listeners a sense that they are at the table with the two people who are talking.

Right below the pan is the master gain for the channel. With this, you can boost or lower the amplitude of this channel relative to all the others. For a person with a soft voice you will want to boost it up, and for a louder person you should turn it down. The process of making small gain adjustments throughout the session is called riding the gain [Hack #56] . Another possibility is to use a compressor to manage the signal levels. More-expensive mixers have compression built right in as one of the effects.

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Hum and hiss are annoying and distracting. Find out where the noise comes from and how you can reduce or remove it completely.

Hum and noise can ruin your recordings and turn off your listeners. What's even worse is that you are paying for noise [Hack #39] , since a nice, clean signal will compress better. Better compression means a smaller MP3 file, which in turn means reduced bandwidth and disk space costs. Because software noise filtering distorts your sound, you will want to get rid of all the physical noise in your setup before turning to software noise reduction.

In a recording environment, the noise level is calculated in decibels. The studio's inherent noise is called the noise floor. The noise floor is the decibels of the noise in the room itself, which is called environmental noise. This also includes the noise of the sound recording system itself, which is called signal path noise. Since fewer noise decibels are better, you will want to lower your noise floor.

You should start by gauging your noise floor's current level. Then reduce your environmental noise, and then your signal path noise. Gauging your noise floor is fairly simple. You just record through your microphone [Hack #50] a sample of blank sound. Figure 3-8 shows a recording of the noise.

This is one of the few cases where you actually want a flat line.

The next step is to select the whole signal and use the View menu to plot the spectrum (see Figure 3-9).

The noise floor is the highest peak in the graph in Figure 3-9. In this case, it's near–40 dB, which is pretty bad. For a clean sound, you will want at least–60dB. Remember that less is better. A noise floor of–120dB means the studio and signal path are very clean.

Figure 3-8: Audacity with a recorded noise sample

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Use binaural microphones to give your podcast a three-dimensional sound field.

Podcasting brings listeners into your life. Podcasting with binaural microphones brings listeners into your head. The idea is simple: use two microphones to simulate your ears. The microphones [Hack #13] are usually small lavalier omnidirectionals that should sit as close to your ears as possible. Some people have even rewired headphones so that embedded lavaliers sit right on top of their ears. Others have gone as far as to build models of the human head with microphones that sit inside the ear canals.

Ideally, the two microphones will be matched exactly. Enthusiasts will go as far as to request two microphones with sequential serial numbers. Of course, this perfect matching costs money. A matched set starts at around $200 or $300. But cheaper unmatched sets that are suitable for experimentation and podcasting are available in the $30 range.

Figure 3-10 shows the Low Cost Binaural Set ($75) from Core Sound (http://core-sound.com/), hooked up through its filter and into a Marantz 660 solid-state recorder [Hack #69] . The recorder has a left and right XLR input, both of which are tied into the microphones that connect to either side of the glasses right above your ears.

Figure 3-10: A set of binaural microphones on glasses, attached to a Marantz 660

The signal from the left lavalier goes into the left channel of a stereo recording, and the signal from the right goes into the right channel. The recording must be in stereo, with no mix between the two channels. When you edit these files, apply effects to both channels equally. When you make cuts, be sure to cut from both channels equally.

You can connect the headset to your computer and record that way, just as you would with a standard stereo microphone. This type of recording is best suited for fieldwork, where you can share your world in stereo just as you experience it. You can attach a binaural headset to the line-in of your portable recording unit. If it sounds underpowered, you will need to buy the battery kit that is sold along with the binaural headset.

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Use the awesome Salling Clicker system to control your whole computer, including your recording setup, right from your cell phone.

Computers, and in particular computer fans, make a lot of noise that can really screw up your recording [Hack #15] . But many podcasters use their computers to record their podcasts, so the computer has to be nearby so that they can turn the recorder on and off, play cuts, and read the show notes. Some podcasters invest in a home studio and have a great recording booth with clean sound, but their computer is on the other side of the glass wall. What can they do to control that computer remotely?

Sure, they could use a wireless mouse or keyboard, but the key and mouse clicks can be noisy. Plus, it's not as cool as this solution; using a cell phone.

With a program called Salling Clicker (http://salling.com/) for Mac OS X, you can use your Bluetooth-enabled phone to control every application on your computer. And you can arrange them on your keypad in any way you want.

Figure 3-11 shows the Salling Clicker Preferences panel. On the left is the menu for your phone, and on the right is all the stuff you can assign to buttons on the phone. Most of the items on the list come with Salling Clicker right out of the box. An excellent iTunes controller for navigating playlists and selecting songs is also available, as is a Keynote controller that lets you use a Keynote slideshow to prompt you when you have canned segments you need to record.

Figure 3-11: Scripts added to Salling Clicker

I added a few scripts to automate Audio Hijack Pro [Hack #50] . Audio Hijack Pro is a recording application that can take sound from all of the standard inputs, or from any application. An Audio Hijack Pro session is a combination of an input source, the recording specifications, and any effects processing for the signal.

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Use command-line tools to encode your MP3 files as well as to build customized MP3 files on the fly.

The MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 format (MP3 for short) is a lossy compression format for audio. This means the sound going in will have elements removed to pack it into a smaller output size. The process of building an MP3 file from an input sound file is called encoding. The software that does this encoding is called an encoder.

MP3 first became popular around 1995. The first encoders did a poor job, so if you wanted an MP3 that was indistinguishable from a CD, you needed a bit rate of 256. (The bit rate relates to the amount of data stored per second in the file. The more bits, the better the sound.) Modern encoders, such as the latest version of the free LAME encoder (http://lame.sf.net/), produce CD-quality sound at a bit rate of 192.

Deciding what to remove from a recording to create the compressed file is fairly tricky. Modern encoders use a psychoacoustic model of our hearing to decide what to give the most bits to in the recording. Most of the time this will be the dominant frequencies in the segment being encoded. However, encoders are free to use whatever mechanism they think will produce the best sound for the given bit rate.

It follows that for less complex signals, such as a single human voice, we could spend fewer bits and still get a quality sound. This is why spoken-word podcasts encoded at 64 bits or even 32 bits still sound reasonably well. If you have a more complex sound, such as that of a music show, you should probably use 128-bit encoding.

Another option is to use variable bit rate encoding, or VBR. An MP3 file is organized into frames of data. Each frame has a header that indicates the number of channels, the sampling rate, and the bit rate. The bit rates can be altered from frame to frame. This is called variable bit rate, and it allows for a podcast to vary between complex musical segments and simpler spoken-word segments while achieving optimal compression overall.

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Use professional techniques and training to improve your podcasting voice.

You should keep two things in mind when you sit down to record your podcast: speak well for broadcast (diction, enunciation, etc.) and speak into the microphone [Hack #13] correctly. Both of these issues are relatively easy to address with a few key tips.

"Speaking well for broadcast" is something that calls to mind bad associations for many people. The idea of talking in "radio voice" (defined for most by the sound of early morning DJs or public radio smooth talkers) is the stuff of Saturday Night Live lampoons. Besides, there is of course no right or wrong way to speak for broadcast; it is, at its simplest, a pure and representative form of communication.

However, broadcasting (and by extension, podcasting) as a medium sometimes requires adjustments to have your voice, speech, and message be heard through the prism of an intermediary device (the microphone, for example) as you intended. It is common for people to be unhappy with the sound of their recorded voice. The idiosyncrasies of their speech or the lack of coherence and drive in their delivery can cause their broadcast to land on listeners' ears very differently than they imagined it would when they first conceived their message.

The speaking guidelines that follow are enormously helpful in terms of preserving the integrity of your message in auditory media. While working, be sure to record yourself every time—nothing will be more useful than hearing yourself. The following skill sets—techniques of the trade—are set forth as options to diversify and clean up your speaking for podcasts.

These are the issues that most American speakers have in their speech that come out in auditory media:

Hard r: Most American accents (with the exception of some New England and Southern accents) have very strong

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The answer gets to the heart of what makes

narrative work: whenever there's a sequence of

events—this happened, then that happened,

then this happened—we inevitably want to find

out what happened next. Also, and this is key,

this banal sequence has raised the question,

namely, what's this guy saying? And you'll probably stick around to find out.

—Ira Glass

This chapter covers the role of format in podcasts, starting with an in-depth look at the why and how of formats. Then the hacks in this chapter dig into the individual format types, and present some case studies along the way.

Apply the elements of a format to your podcast to give listeners a reason to subscribe to your show.

To format or not to format. That's a question many podcasters ask. Some believe formats smack of radio and are completely inappropriate to the ad hoc podcast, and others believe a format can help get content to listeners in the best way possible.

Deciding if a format is right for your show starts with understanding the term.

In its broadest sense, the term format refers to a show's style. There are sports formats, talk formats, news formats, and others.

But more specifically, the term format refers to how material within a show is arranged. In that sense, a format is an invisible framework on which your content rests. For example, you can format a sports show in several different ways: you can feature a series of three quick interviews separated by music clips, or you can feature one long interview bookended by music clips. Both are sports shows, but they are formatted differently. How you arrange those blocks of sound is how you "format" your show.

Formatting starts with choosing an overarching theme for the show's content. Will it be a political show, a review show, a music show?

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The answer gets to the heart of what makes

narrative work: whenever there's a sequence of

events—this happened, then that happened,

then this happened—we inevitably want to find

out what happened next. Also, and this is key,

this banal sequence has raised the question,

namely, what's this guy saying? And you'll probably stick around to find out.

—Ira Glass

This chapter covers the role of format in podcasts, starting with an in-depth look at the why and how of formats. Then the hacks in this chapter dig into the individual format types, and present some case studies along the way.

Additional content appearing in this section has been removed.
Purchase this book now or read it online at Safari to get the whole thing!

Content preview·Buy reprint rights for this chapter

Apply the elements of a format to your podcast to give listeners a reason to subscribe to your show.

To format or not to format. That's a question many podcasters ask. Some believe formats smack of radio and are completely inappropriate to the ad hoc podcast, and others believe a format can help get content to listeners in the best way possible.

Deciding if a format is right for your show starts with understanding the term.

In its broadest sense, the term format refers to a show's style. There are sports formats, talk formats, news formats, and others.

But more specifically, the term

Table of Contents

Section 1.9.1.1: Sneakernet or direct connect.

Section 1.9.1.2: A walk-through using FeederReader.