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"I want to do some voice recording and I know I need a mixer and a compressor, but I'm wondering if you know which mixer built-in compressor combo might be best?"

Which mixing board with built-in compressor is best for your needs depends on a number of factors. You need to determine what your budget is. Do you need only one mixer channel with compression or multiple channels? Do you want portability or is this a mixing console you plan to install permanently? Those are all questions you need to think through before making a purchase. Here are some mixers with compression built-in at various price ranges:

"I have recorded some tracks in Audacity using the project sample rate of 44100Hz. I also imported a track from a portable device at 16000Hz. All tracks sound fine when played simultaneously. However, when I want to insert an audio into the 16000Hz file, it is
distored. I have 2 questions:

1. Is there a way to integrate the two files into 1 track; and
2. Will I have a problem exporting mixed sample rates to CD?"

Mixing sample rates in an audio project can cause all sorts of problems with your final output. There is an easy fix to your problem, which is to simply resample one of the audio files so that it matches the other files.

As someone who travels regularly, I'm always looking for creative ways to get better sound from my audio recordings. Hotel rooms tend to echo and you don't always have control over the environmental noises. I went looking for a solution that would offer a more controlled sound and ran across professional voice actor, Harlan Hogan's, Porta-Booth, which is built from some fairly common components. You don't have to travel to find this solution useful, it's also a great way to tighten up your sound when recording at home without needing a whole room dedicated to recording. Making a few slight modifications, I put together a video showing how I built my own.

Watch the video on YouTube

Required Components for the Portable Voice Booth

Studio Foam The biggest variation between my portable sound studio and the one Harlan Hogan demonstrates on his site is the foam. He uses Auralex Studiofoam 2" Pyramid foam, which is only available via special order from places like Guitar Center in $400 increments (or $200 via Amazon) - I know, I checked. I opted for a sheet of 2x24x48 Auralex Wedge foam, which runs about $25 per sheet. It got the desired result and I don't end up with a box of leftover foam. The sheet is big enough to make 2, which is also the minimum number of cubes you can buy, so get a friend in on this project and save money. Any local music supply store should have similar foam.

Whitmor Cube The Witmor 14x14 collapsible cube ships in quantities of 2 for about $12.99 at Target.com, Wal-mart.com and Amazon (by way of Target). You can't get them in stores for some reason, so you'll have to order online.

Bread Knife You need a bread knife for cutting the foam - trust me it works better than anything else. A cheap Chefmate knife or any of the $4 or under variety, like the World Kitchen/Ekco 7" Bread Knife from Amazon are great solutions for this. Don't use your wife's bread knife unless you plan on buying her a new one.

Additional Tools The only additional tools you will need is a tape measure to make sure you cut the foam in the right place and a Sharpie to mark the foam to make the cut.

Assuming you already have a Sharpie and tape measure, you're looking at total cost of approximately $42 plus any tax and shipping for materials to make 2 of these cubes.

Space Saving Bags For Storage

I bought the Large Space Bags 3 pack from Target for my packing solution. You can get both the Space Bags and the Whitmor cubes through Amazon's affiliation with Target and spend less on shipping for the overall package (you can likely get a bread knife this way as well).

"Is there an RSS feed with my YouTube videos people can subscribe to?"

YouTube recently publicized a bunch of RSS feeds for subscribing to popular topics and categories, but they haven't made it obvious how someone might subscribe to your YouTube channel via RSS. Thanks to their well documented section for developers, this is a relatively easy. Each YouTube user has their own unique RSS feed in the format:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/jakeludington/uploads

Just replace my YouTube username, with your own YouTube username in the URL and you'll have an RSS feed of only videos you uploaded to YouTube. You can find more ways to access your YouTube information, like an RSS feed of your Favorites and Playlists, see the detailed YouTube API documentation.

A slightly different approach to this, including an enclosure with a SWF video file, is to use a URL like this where the file is in the format username.rss. This is a little more complicated because other people could tag their videos with your user name and show up in your RSS feed.Here's an example:

http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/jakeludington.rss

Subscribe to my YouTube RSS feed

Amazon didn't officially include podcasting support when they shipped the first Kindle devices, but that doesn't mean you can't listen to your favorite podcasts on the Kindle (or your favorite songs for that matter). There are actually two interesting ways to make this work:

1) You can play any MP3 audio file as background music on the Kindle. You transfer MP3 files to the Kindle using the USB connection, to either store audio on the device or on an SD card. Then from the Home screen do the following:

Scroll to the Menu and select Experimental

Select Play Music on the screen shown

This will continue to play until you click the Stop Music option in Experimental (or the Alt+P keyboard shortcut). You can jump to the next track using Alt+F.

2) The more useful way to listen to podcasts on your Kindle is by adding them to the Audible folder either on your device or on your SD card. This is actually designed specifically for listening to Audible Audiobooks, but also happens to work with MP3s. Once you have the MP3 files in the Audible folder, the Kindle treats them just like other audiobook files allowing you to jump back 30 seconds, skip ahead 30 seconds, play and pause audio.

While you can't subscribe to podcasts directly on the Kindle yet, these are two ways to use it as a podcast listening device.

See also: A giant list of Kindle compatible Audiobooks.

Download mp3DirectCut

MP3 files recorded directly with a voice recorder often require some editing. Many MP3s downloaded from the Internet need editing to trim unwanted sections. Both of these scenarios result in better quality audio when the MP3 is not re-compressed after editing. Enter mp3DirectCut, which provides an interface for directly editing MP3 files without first converting to a PCM audio format. mp3DirectCut speeds up the MP3 editing process in a number of areas, providing direct access to cut, copy, and remove sections of an MP3 in a non-destructive editor without ever needing to recompress. This saves time, disk space and eliminates the generational hit of decompressing and recompressing your MP3 files during editing. Note: If you install mp3DirectCut on Windows Vista you will need to run the installer as administrator. [Windows 9x/2k/XP/Vista $0.00]

Recording environmental sounds like singing birds, wild animal calls, water running through a streambed, or the chirp of baby birds is one of the more fascinating (and challenging) aspects of audio recording. Some of the same audio recording techniques apply when recording things like car noises, lawn mower engines and other man made sounds, but you don't always get a chance to do a second take with nature like you do with machines.

Getting started in recording nature sounds requires three basic things:

1) A recording device, like a MiniDisc recorder, Compact Flash recorder, or other digital audio recorder.
2) A stereo microphone or stereo microphone pair
3) Headphones for listening to what you're recording

The big reason to use a digital recorder is to avoid the hiss that comes with using a tape recording medium. The stereo microphone or pair of microphones provide the listener with something much closer to what you'd hear in the real world than a single microphone accomplishes on its own. A microphone zeppelin windscreen is also useful for cutting noise from wind while recording.

You also need a good dose of luck and patience in order to find the specific species of bird or animal you're hoping to record. For a great overview of what's required for recording sounds from the wilderness, the Wildebeat Podcast has a great interview on recording the sounds nature with Kurt Fristurp (of the National Parks Service Natural Sounds Program) and Dan Dugan (of the Nature Sounds Society). Two great tips from the podcast are how to find places free from unnatural sounds and some of the basic techniques for getting a good sample of the sound you hope to record.

One of the best places to get a quick foundation in how to record nature sounds is the Nature Sounds Society. Their Question Bird service provides a solid foundation of answers for people looking for detailed information on the types of audio gear you need for recording various kinds of natural sounds.

You won't get great sounding recordings by recording telephone calls with an iPod, but it is possible. In an ideal telephone recording scenario, you want independent control over each person on the call, so that if the person you call is too quiet, you can turn their volume up or your volume down. You won't get independent volume control for both sides of the call when recording a telephone conversation on your iPod, but you will get a recording that you can later use as part of a podcast or transcribed interview.

To record phone calls on your iPod, you need two things in addition to the iPod. You need a microphone add-on for the iPod and you need an adapter to pass the phone audio to the microphone.

Download Wavosaur

Wavosaur is a lightweight audio editing application with VST support. All the basics are covered here, including support for multitrack audio files, trimming, adding effects, making loops, and normalization. Most processing settings are also available for batch conversions, making Wavosaur a handy tool for applying the same settings to a bunch of files. I like are the option to remove silence in a batch, which is a convenient way to speed up spoken word audio without altering pitch. A vocal removal preset also scrubs music files of vocals, so you can make your own karaoke tracks in a batch. The vocal removal doesn't always get chorus sections perfectly scrubbed, but it shouldn't hurt your ability to sing over the top of the file. The application runs as a completely standalone executable, meaning you could put it on a thumb drive and use Wavosaur anywhere. The user interface is generally more intuitive than the popular freeware app Audacity, but the two make nice companions rather than being replacements for each other. While Wavosaur doesn't bundle all the features of things like Sound Forge and Audition, it does most of the common audio tasks well at a price neither of those two apps can touch. [Windows 2k/XP/Vista $0.00]

I'm always looking for more audio sound effects - especially free ones. Beatsuite.com has a collection of Royalty Free and free as in no cost audio samples designed specifically for podcasters. Terms of use are simply that you need to credit Beatsuite.com for providing them. As far as I can tell, the collection is available only on Apple's download site and the files are listed as requiring Mac OS X, but fear not, the WAV files in the download will work just as easily for Linux and Windows users too. The list of included sounds in the Royalty Free Podcast Promo Soundpack include:

Cafe Quarter Sting
Energize Sting
Night Metropolis Sting
Urban Tribe Sting
Constellations Loop
Eko Loop
Sci High Loop
Wave Movement Loop

While this isn't a massive collection of free loops, some is always better than none.

Royalty Free Podcast Promo Soundpack

For other free and royalty free sounds, be sure to check out Meanrabbit Sound Effects and The Freesound Project.

Beverly writes, I need to record voice to CD, efficiently, and have the cd play in any normal CD player. I have an M-Audio Microtrack recorder with 1gb compact flash, but it seems that I have a high quality recording but it takes up a lot of space. In a work day I need to make 6 recordings. Does it make sense to consider a 30gb iPod to record voice to, and then burn to CD?

You don't mention how long your six recordings per day are, but if you want good quality sound for recording, don't use the iPod or any other portable media player. The Microtrack recorder is a good tool for what you are doing. If you want to use less space per file change your record settings. Under the Record Settings on the Menu make the following changes: Set Encoder to WAV. Set Sample Rate to 44.1. Set Bits to 16 (not 24). Using these settings, you will get about 90 minutes on a 1GB Compact Flash card and won't notice any quality difference. A much cheaper solution than buying an iPod would be to get several 1GB or 2GB compact flash cards and then swapping the card when it gets full. This also gives you the flexibility of using the Microtrack all day long. Keep in mind that an audio CD only holds as much as 74 minutes of audio, so a single 1GB card recording 90 minutes of voice audio is more audio than you can fit on a single audio CD.

Tony writes, "Part of [my] podcast will involve material I record on an Olympus Digital Voice Recorder WS-100. It transfers the files to the PC via USB connection. However, when I tried to open the file with Audacity, it says the file is a Window Media file and need to convert it."

The Olympus WS-100 is definitely a convenient tool for voice recording applications. Before I get into how to convert Windows Media WMA files to WAV files you can edit with Audacity, let me offer an important tip: if you plan to edit the audio recorded with the WS-100, make sure you record in the HQ mode. The lower quality modes apply extra compression which is great for saving space, but your audio won't sound good if you recompress to something like MP3 later.

To convert files from WMA to WAV, the easy (although somewhat ugly) solution is WinFF. The app uses file conversion support from FFmpeg to convert between many different audio and video formats. Below are step-by-step instructions for converting from WMA to WAV with WinFF.

Converting WMA to WAV with WinFF

1) After downloading and installing WinFF, launch the application and select the WMA file or files you want to convert to WAV.

2) Choose the Wav for CD option from the Choose Format to Convert to... menu.

3) Pick a Destination folder to save your file(s) and click Start Converting.

When the conversion finishes, you're ready to edit the WAV files in Audacity or any other audio editor.

This tutorial should work for both Linux and Windows.

Mike asks, "I have a 7 second heartbeat audio track. I want to make it a 5 minute track. What is it called and how do I do it?"

What you're describing here is what's commonly referred to a looping an audio track. This is frequently done with a section of audio that's either repeated for a few times throughout a musical composition or a loop might be used to create a bed for an entire segment of music. The actual implementation varies slightly depending on which audio application is used, but the basic premise is the same - you figure out how long the piece of audio you want to loop is (7 seconds in this case) and then you establish how many times you need to play a 7 second file to achieve 5 minutes of continuous playback. I'll walk through the process of creating a 5 minute loop from a 7 second track using Audacity, which works for Windows, Mac and Linux.

If you don't already have it, download Audacity and install it before starting this project.

First open your audio file in Audacity by launching the application and choosing Project > Import Audio from the menu. With the audio file open, select the entire audio file either from the menu by choosing Edit > Select > All or the key command Ctrl+A.

Choose Effect > Repeat from the menu

Audacity bases repeats on the number of times required to repeat the file to achieve the desired length. 5 minutes is 300 seconds, so assuming your file is exactly 7 seconds long, it needs to play almost 43 times.

In order for the file to play 43 times, you need it to repeat 42 times because the first time it plays already exists on the audio timeline.

You can see after clicking okay the timeline shows 5 minutes of audio instead of the 7 seconds we started with. Save your new file by choosing Export as WAV from the timeline and you now have a 5 minute audio file with the original 7 second file left untouched.

Download The Levelator

One of the biggest frustrations of people who record and edit audio is the amount of time it takes to fix volume level issues. If you record two people, one of them is invariably softer than the other in the mix. You might turn your head away from the microphone to look at a distraction or have the microphone pointed away from the source. This even happens to the pros on occasion. To solve this common frustration, Gigavox created The Levelator. Essentially, the software examines a WAV or AIFF file, looks for volume inconsistencies and fixes them. It's a bit geekier than that under the hood. The Levelator handles both the gain optimization on a file and RMS normalization to make sure the volume level is consistent. The output is a new file, so you can always go back to the original if you need to. The software runs on both Windows and OS X and is free for personal non-commercial use. While The Levelator can't do anything to make your podcast more interesting, this is the first tool I've ever seen that makes almost anyone sound like they hired a top-notch engineer. If editing audio has been holding you back from podcasting or making music, give The Levelator a shot, you'll be surprised by how simple it is to sound great. [Windows 2k/XP Mac OS X $0.00]

To demonstrate how simple this is, I took an audio file recorded with my M-Audio containing wild volume inconsistencies. Below is the process of using the app, and the before and after screens of the WAV.

Original file data

Converting the file

Completed conversion

Original file and The Levelator output file

WAV after using The Levelator

Mike writes, I've been trying to embed a Windows Media Player on my website and have it play from a library. I've figured out the part of embedding the player itself but cannot figure out how to get the player to play from a list of mp3s elsewhere on my site.

You could create an ASX file that calls each of the files and then link to that ASX file from the embedded Windows Media Player, but I've never had that work consistently without setting up Windows Media Services on a Windows server. Using a simple ASX setup doesn't allow for easy skipping between tracks or any of the normal play controls you might expect from most of the common media players. The only easy way to build an embedded playlist with Windows Media Player is to have a server running Windows Media Services hosting all the files. A better alternative is to setup an embedded Flash based player designed for playing back files.

The quickest method for setting up a Flash based audio player is to purchase Wimpy MP3 (the same company also makes a video player). It offers a wide selection of skins, including one that looks a bit like iTunes and a mock iPod to embed on your page.

All you need to do to make Wimpy work is upload the application files to the same directory where the MP3s are stored on the server and paste the HTML code for the Wimpy app onto any page you want to have listeners playback your audio files.

The app is used by a number of musicians and podcasters for playing back tracks. The Geek News Central podcast is probably the best known podcast currently using Wimpy. You can see it in action on their podcast page.

More advanced configuration options include choosing the track order, so that the song you want first in the list shows up, as well as configuring a number of options about how the player works. At the most basic level, you simply upload the Wimpy files and it just works.

One of the most painful things to listen to in podcasting is a steady stream of "ums" and "ahs" interjected into an otherwise intelligent thought. I do it more than I'd like to. I've heard some cases where a person collecting his thoughts said "um" no less than 20 times in a 15 second stretch. You can fix this during editing, but it's hard to reconstruct the flow of a sentence if it happens to much and editing out the "ums" isn't much fun. The best solution is to learn how to speak without saying "um" in the first place. Mother Tongue Annoyances has a solid set of suggestions on how to eliminate "um" and "ah" from your speech. It takes some additional thought on your part while speaking and it won't happen overnight, but a little additional effort in improving the way you speak will make your podcast sound better and make you sound smarter while people are listening.

 

Get More Great Podcasting Tips

Download the Podcasting Starter Kit for over 100 pages of podcasting tutorials, tips and how to information perfecting your podcast. Podcasting Starter Kit helps you:
Find the right recording gear
Learn audio editing techniques
Publish Your Podcast
List Your Podcast in iTunes
Distribute Podcasts with BitTorrent
Get Thousands of Subscribers
Make money podcasting

Download Podcasting Starter Kit today

Find the best price on a Plantronics DSP 550 Headset

Back in early 2002 I voiced an entire 2 hour AM radio show using a Plantronics USB headset microphone and an old 166 MHz PC. Not ideal recording conditions, but the show actually sounded quite good considering the limitations of available gear. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been testing out the new Plantronics 550 DSP Ultimate Performance Headset. So far I'm impressed. The earphones offer great audio output from a comfortable design that I can wear without getting annoyed that I have headphones on. I get up from my computer often enough that I never kept them on to the point where I was feeling any ear discomfort. The microphone positioning is flexible to the point where you can get a good microphone position without getting too much plosive impact from P and B sounds. While there's noise cancellation built-in, the microphone is still extremely sensitive and picks up things like the click-clack of fingers on a keyboard, which means you need to eliminate extraneous noise if you're recording audio for any kind of published project. I don't have a way to test latency in lab conditions, but there seems to be almost no noticeable lag. Overall, I'm giving the 550 DSP a big thumbs up for both speech recognition tasks and for doing things like solo podcasting efforts. You'll get great sounding audio from recording directly to a PC application like Audacity or Adobe Audition, speech recognition apps will effectively capture your voice and if you use voice applications like Skype, your friends will be pleasantly surprised at how well your audio sounds. At $60 from most online retailers, this headset microphone combination is a steal.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm at BloggerCon today and tomorrow running the live stream for the event. You can tune in to BloggerCon between 8:15 am and 6pm Pacific today (Friday June 23) and tomorrow (Saturday June 24) via the same Limelight Networks stream we use for The Chris Pirillo Show. Phil Torrone's segment on Tools offered some great feedback on tools people use for blogging, posting media and podcasting. Even if you think you know it all already, there's still a tidbit or two to be learned. Via Niall Kennedy I learned about audio transcription service CastingWords. I'll provide a full review once I get my test transcription back from CastingWords, but for 42-cents per minute I'm likely going to have them transcribe all the interviews I did at the Seattle International Film Festival so that people who don't have time to listen still get the benefit of scanning through the interviews online for details.

I'm generally bored by the whole debate over whether 'Podcasting' is a good name for podcasting or not. It's been a topic of debate for most of the two-year existence of podcasting, continuing to this day. In the midst of defending Microsoft's own use of the term. (or lack thereof), Robert Scoble drops a more important gem into the discussion:

So, why hasn't podcasting taken off more yet? Easy! It's hard to discover new ones (you gotta listen to them). You go to Podtech.net or Podshow.com and poke around. You have to download a file before you can listen. In that time you probably got bored and started watching Lost again.

People like instant gratification. Podcasting as a whole can't deliver instant gratification because the entire process is geared toward set-and-forget delivery of information. As Scoble rightly points out, discovering shows in the first place is hard because you need to test the waters before you commit to a relationship with any given podcast.

Last night, while having a conversation about a video project I'm hoping to show off at Gnomedex, a discussion of online viewing habits led me to a realization about podcast discovery. Podcasts offering a play on the page option are going to win!

A completely unscientific sample of podcasts and video blogs shows that somewhere between thirty percent and fifty percent of all traffic to shows offering a stream on the Web option comes from streaming on the Web. This likely means if you don't offer an option to playback you show in the browser, you are getting far fewer listeners.

Taking this a step further, many people (myself included) subscribe to podcast feeds but don't automatically download the associated audio file because we don't want our hard drives filled with stuff we don't have time to listen to. Even when something sounds interesting, I don't want to wait for the bandwidth throttled download from some budget Webhost to complete because my time is valuable. If you wrote some compelling copy in the post associated with an individual segment, included an embedded player in your RSS feed and offer me the option to download, I would be infinitely more likely to listen because I could click play and get instant results instead of waiting for the file.

At it's core, RSS is just another Web page delivered in a different way. People understand the Web. People understand clicking a play button. If they like your show enough to subscribe, eventually they will understand downloading shows for offline playback. In the meantime, it's a YouTube nation where everyone wants to watch and hear the latest show instantly without waiting to download something they've never tried before.

 

Get More Great Podcasting Tips

Download the Podcasting Starter Kit for over 100 pages of podcasting tutorials, tips and how to information perfecting your podcast. Podcasting Starter Kit helps you:
Find the right recording gear
Learn audio editing techniques
Publish Your Podcast
List Your Podcast in iTunes
Distribute Podcasts with BitTorrent
Get Thousands of Subscribers
Make money podcasting

Download Podcasting Starter Kit today

One interesting thing I learned recently about Vista is Sound Recorder finally supports unlimited record times. This means you can theoretically record as much audio as your hard drive will hold without ever downloading an additional app. For podcasting, this becomes interesting because the barrier to entry for the recording side of the equation is reduced to zero because there's only one button.

My laptop's Intel chipset either doesn't have the right drivers or is simply too weak to support the Vista glass, so you'll have to pardon the scrap metal skin on the screen shots, but you'll get the idea.

In a recent discussion about options for sharing movies as Flash FLV or SWF format files, we were trying to find the most cost effective way to convert files for Mac OS X. I wrote about my favorite method for converting movies to Flash for Windows earlier. If you want really easy, YouTube is likely the best way to get the job done. Create an account, step through their wizard and your movie is online in fairly short order. At the same time, image quality is suspect and you get no control over parameters. YouTube also maintains control over where the file is hosted. If you want to host Flash movies on your own server, you need to convert them on your Mac and upload them yourself. FFMPEGX recently added support for converting most movie formats to FLV files. The following is a tutorial to step you through the process.

Microphone Boom Arm

One of the many tricks for getting great sounding voice audio for both podcasting and Internet radio is making sure the microphone is positioned comfortably close to your mouth. An easy way to accomplish this is by using a boom arm mounted to your desk. Pro boom arms often cost over $100 from audio gear retailers by the time the table mount and other extras are factored in. Ebay seller cdpeddler is selling a bunch of boom arms, including cabling and multiple bases for about $59.95 plus shipping. The booms include a number of features typically reserved for higher priced models. If you're looking for a simple way to improve your sound, proper microphone positioning goes a long way and a boom arm is one of the best ways to get a microphone at the exact position you need it.

Download Sonicart

In radio days gone by the term cart was shorthand for cartridge, as individual music selections were stored on cartridges for organization and playback. Sonicart plays of the antiquated name, creating a virtual audio cart system to organize a series of tracks and add breaks for voice over. With Sonicart, create a basic playlist of tracks, save the playlist for future use, interrupt the playlist with voice and commercial breaks and generally do all the on-air things a traditional radio station might do. If you want to create an Internet radio stream or a podcast with a multiple music selections, sequencing music files becomes vital. Sonicart is an affordable way to cue audio with automated control over interrupting and organizing a playlist for producing shows of all types. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

Dan writes, "I have been intrigued by the number of podcasts that are out there I subscribe to a few of them and listen on my computer and then delete them. I really don't have any desire to sink a small fortune in one of those IPOD things or clones thereof. Is there a way to put the music podcasts that I really love onto a CD?"

The short answer is yes you can burn CDs of your favorite podcasts. How you get there depends a little on which software you currently have available and what type of CD player you have. If iTunes is your primary solution for downloading podcasts, the built-in CD burning feature will work to create a CD from your podcasts. Windows Media Player also includes built in CD burning. Or you could opt to burn a CD using an app like Easy Media Creator or Nero. In each case there are a few basic things to keep in mind.

Make your own microphone zeppelin windscreen

I'm a big fan of DIY gear for shooting video or recording audio when your budget is holding back your ability to produce an otherwise great creative endeavor. You can save a ton of money in many cases and you get the satisfaction of creating something useful along the way. Case in point, the DIY microphone zeppelin windscreen from Joel Greenberg of Joel and Karen. Zeppelins are those fuzzy things you see covering microphones on long boom arms and help to greatly reduce wind noise when recording with a shotgun style microphone. Using some PVC, leaf guard, fur from the fabric store, and a hot glue gun, Joel built a very functional zeppelin to help cut down on wind noise when recording audio in windy outdoor environments in Texas. He details all the steps and provides a before and after audio recording sample to demonstrate the sound difference. As a bonus he also shows how to build a microphone shock mount using PVC too.

Patricia writes, How do I find out the terms of the particular musician to show whether or not I am required to give credit?

Do you know where I can purchase royalty free music tracks that I don't have to give verbal credit to? I found some sites where I can purchase royalty, but I still have to give verbal credit in my podcasts to the ones I found.

How can I find music with some of the more open Creative Commons licensing options so I won't need to give credit to the musician?

In general, it's a good thing to give credit to a musician when you use their works, whether you are required to or not. This can be as simple as mentioning the use of the work as part of the credits at the end of your show or providing a specific shout out when the song is played during the course of your show. My theory behind giving credit is the artist was generous enough to make their work available for your use; you should return the favor and do what you can to cultivate enough interest in the artist so they remain motivated to provide you with free access to their works. In other words, it's unfair to expect something for nothing.

Of course there are exceptions to everything and certain Creative Commons licensing options will afford you the option to not mention the creator of a song out loud, as well as a number of royalty free music sites where you can pay for tracks without needing to attribute the creator as part of the audio.

If you're not familiar with Creative Commons, it's a non-profit organization that established a number of simplified copyright licensing options for creative people to make sharing their works easier without giving up copyright in the process. These licensing options range from restrictive in requiring attribution while forbidding commercial use and alteration of your work aka Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs. To the much more open ended Attribution only or Public Domain dedication.

I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that you can provide attribution in both the ID3 metadata of the file you redistribute and/or on the Website where you host your files. This gets around providing a verbal shout out for using the track while still making sure the artist gets his or her due. Of course, it's always a good idea to consult with a lawyer before doing anything that might involve a legal infringement.

Creative Commons does provide a search of music with Creative Commons licensing although it can be time consuming to find anything you actually care to use.

Royalty free music, which is generally easier to use without attribution because you are paying a one-time fee for access to the music. One of my favorite sources of royalty free music, Shockwave-Sound.com offers decent sounding tracks at affordable prices with no attribution requirements. The only thing you can't do with their music is try to pass it off as your own. Another potential source of royalty free sounds, Partners In Rhyme offers fairly clear licensing as well, making the stipulation that you can't offer their files as a standalone download or re-bundled for sale in a collection of royalty free tracks. It gets more confusing at places like SoundDogs.com, which wants a cue sheet of every place music appears in a production.

Another alternative is to find a musician you like and see if they'll compose some music you can use. This likely won't be free, but you might be able to negotiate something where you can use the music without attributing it in the audio file, opting instead for attribution on your site or in the ID3 tags. For The Chris Pirillo Show, we got some help from a guy named Dave Ryder, who I believe also did music for a handful of other podcasters.

 

Get More Great Podcasting Tips

Download the Podcasting Starter Kit for over 100 pages of podcasting tutorials, tips and how to information perfecting your podcast. Podcasting Starter Kit helps you:

• Find the right recording gear
• Learn audio editing technique
• Publish Your Podcast
• List Your Podcast in iTunes
• Distribute Podcasts with BitTorrent
• Get Thousands of Subscribers
• Make money podcasting

Download Podcasting Starter Kit today

Day one of SES New York included some interesting sessions. A morning session on Searchonomics offered some interesting metrics on the study of search behavior, with Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer and Bill Tancer of Hitwise making the potentially snoozer topic of search behavior seem fascinating. If you want to understand how and when people look for things online, these are the people who know, from the inverse correlation between searches for hybrid cars and SUVs to the fact that the peak searches for diet sites happens on January 1 and drops consistently throughout the year, bottoming out around the end of November every year.

Podcast Search hit closer to home with Daron Babin of Webmaster Radio, Ethan Fassett of the Yahoo Podcast Search team and Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit covering topics related to making your podcast easier to find in the search engines. This is much more complicated than simply submitting a podcast to iTunes and hoping someone discovers you. Darin is a particularly good resource for SEO and audio, as someone who's worked in the search marketing industry for several years while also operating a Web radio show long before podcasting came into the picture. Much of what was discussed during the session echoed things I've said about podcast search in the past, with an overview of key points made in Podcasting Starter Kit.

So far the portability experiment in traveling with the Fujitsu Lifebook P1510D is working out nicely. The hardback book sized laptop is handling all my normal computing duties like a champ. The one thing I hadn't tested was the onboard Bluetooth for connecting to the Internet using the Cingular EDGE service on my cell phone. Apparently Fujitsu forgot to include the configuration utility, but I have an external Bluetooth adapter from Kensington so I'm connecting anyway. Battery life is holding up nicely. I used the Lifebook with both Bluetooth and WiFi off and on for about 7 hours today without running out of juice. I'm feeling confident in abandoning a more traditional laptop for the convenience of light weight and portability.

On the way back from dinner tonight the SNY TV studio was either experiencing technical difficulties or trying to send a message to the MS offices in the building across the street. Even in Seattle, with Microsoft just across the lake, I'm almost positive I've never seen Windows icons on a marquee.

Listen to the Vocab Minute

I'm sure the Princeton Review doesn't really need my help in promoting their Vocabulary Minute podcast, but it's too awesome not to mention. It's like Schoolhouse Rocks meets your English teacher, with a little musical help from Tom Lehrer thrown in for good measure. Each update contains a short song about a particular vocabulary topic with entertaining examples sung throughout. Since launching in December the podcast updates about once every two weeks with songs like I Agree (Do you concur or acquiese?), The Silly Hate Song (make words not war), and Do you know an Ingenue? Assuming the company keeps this up, this is like getting one of those vocabulary building books and some cool entertainment all rolled into one fun package.

Download Meanrabbit Sounds

If you edit your own home movies or if your podcasting, you can simply never have enough sound effects at your disposal. You just never know when that obscure sound of a huge comet crashing into a planet might come in handy for adding some spice to an otherwise dull birthday video. Meanrabbit offers a ton of great sound effects, free for personal use, in several downloadable collections. Ideally, the company hopes you'll buy versions at higher sample rates, but for most personal projects, the free versions work great. Sound effect selections range from more practical sounds like telephones, trains, clocks, motorcycles and other parts of daily life to the more obscure sounds of dinosaurs, alien invaders and wild monkeys.

 

Get More Great Podcasting Tips

Download the Podcasting Starter Kit for over 100 pages of podcasting tutorials, tips and how to information perfecting your podcast. Podcasting Starter Kit helps you:

• Find the right recording gear
• Learn audio editing technique
• Publish Your Podcast
• List Your Podcast in iTunes
• Distribute Podcasts with BitTorrent
• Get Thousands of Subscribers
• Make money podcasting

Download Podcasting Starter Kit today

Or at least one of them...

At 9pm Pacific, in an extended version of The Chris Pirillo Show is Dave Dederer, former and current member of The Presidents of The United States of America. He's the guy who plays the Guitbass and provides half of the vocals for everything from Lump, Kitty, Peaches and the more recently released single Jupiter. You might also recognize his talents in the song Cleveland Rocks from The Drew Carey Show. Dave will be speaking at the upcoming Podcast Hotel at The Triple Door in Seattle and is joining us tonight at 9pm. Tune in!

More details from Behringer
Compare Prices on F-Control Audio FCA202

One of the best ways to improve the sound of audio recording is to use a FireWire or USB audio controller instead of an internal solution. Expect for the highly shielded pro-level gear, internal audio cards almost always introduce noise into recordings because there's a ton of electronic crosstalk happening inside your PC with all the fans and wires crammed into a tight space. The downside to FireWire solutions is they tend to be expensive.

Behringer breaks this mold with their F-Control Audio FCA202 FireWire Audio Controller, at a street price of around $80, with the next closest competitor starting in the $150 range. The controller includes 2 1/4-inch unbalanced inputs and 2 1/4-inch outputs, with an optional power supply (bus power is supported) and headphone jack on the front face. The compact size of the unit makes it perfect for traveling, but equally suited for a more permanent location in a podcast configuration or small recording studio. 24-bit 96Khz recording is more than enough headroom for most applications.

I only have two small complaints about the unit. There's no phantom power option, which means I can't plug in a microphone without an additional power source. The other missing piece is XLR connections, but considering the highly portable UB502 and UB802 mixers from Behringer lacks XLR outs, this probably won't matter in most cases (and you're still below the cost of competing solutions).

A Behringer Edition of Ableton Live Lite is included, which is an awesome audio app, along with a few other software options, although it's compatible with virtually any Mac or PC software solution. I sucessfully tested it with both Audacity and Adobe Audition. I'm extremely impressed with the packaging, which includes the FCA202, power cord, software and two FireWire cables.

Bottom Line: If you're already using another FireWire audio solution, you're not going to throw it out to get the FCA202. On the other hand, if you want better sound than the stock internal soundcard in your PC, this provides a better price-for-performance solution than anything else in the entry level audio recording class.

 

Get More Great Podcasting Tips

Download the Podcasting Starter Kit for over 100 pages of podcasting tutorials, tips and how to information perfecting your podcast. Podcasting Starter Kit helps you:

• Find the right recording gear
• Learn audio editing technique
• Publish Your Podcast
• List Your Podcast in iTunes
• Distribute Podcasts with BitTorrent
• Get Thousands of Subscribers
• Make money podcasting

Download Podcasting Starter Kit today

After using M-Audio's Microtrack 24/96 to record all The Chris Pirillo Show interviews for CES 2006, I'm convinced it's officially the best portable recorder on the market. XLR connectors like those found on the Marantz PMD660 would be nice, but M-Audio did a better job of making it painless to configure audio levels to avoid clipping, so they win my vote. Pocket size is another great reason to choose the Microtrack. Like many portable devices, keeping the firmware up-to-date is crucial to getting a great experience when using the Microtrack in the field. On December 19, 2005, M-Audio released the most recent update, which included some minor fixes for accurately displaying space left on the CF card and improved formatting of CompactFlash media. If you own a Microtrack recorder but never updated your firmware, now is the time.

Microtrack Firmware Update

The list of fixes in previous firmware updates is massive:

Level meters display levels when playing back files. Level meters operate in REC PAUSE for easier level setting. Audio inputs can be heard when in REC PAUSE as well as REC (only for analog inputs). Reboots the unit instead of shutting down when a CF card is inserted. Pop-up menu added if the user tries to power off while recording. All input controls will be active during record or record pause, allowing you to adjust your levels more easily. Input and Headphone level controls work more smoothly when held down. FFWD or REW no longer cause the timer to flash the time ’00:00:00’ when engaged. Remaining record time is now calculated properly when recording from SPDIF input. Now stops phantom power from turning on and off. Now works if booted from card reader mode. Continues to work if file was closed because of max file size or no media full. S/PDIF is enhanced to 24-bit/48kHz, and is more reliable. Fixed the behavior of the L/M/H switch (L and H were reversed). Fixed a problem with the File menu (recorded files would not play from the Files menu until the machine was rebooted). Fixed problem where "no media found" message didn't always show. Adjusted screen contrast range. Fixed battery meter (if full and the external power was removed,the level dropped approximately 5-10%). Fixed level meter length (the bar of the level meter maxed out about 8 pixels shy of the end of the track, so it appeared that the unit had headroom left, even though it was clipping). Eliminated pop noises on boot-up. Eliminated static noises at the end of tracks.

I hate ear bud style headphones. Apparently my ears aren't standard sized because those little speakers either don't fit correctly or start causing me physical pain after very minimal use. For that reason I primarily use over-the-ear headphones when I'm not broadcasting my audio to a room over a speaker system. Etymotic headphones solve my problem with earplug-style fit, but I don't like to travel with something I'll regret accidentally leaving behind in a hotel room or airplane seat. Griffin's EarThumps are the perfect middle ground between ear bud discomfort and the elegant audio of Etymotic. EarThumps come with three different sizes of cushions designed to fit more ear sizes. The soft rubber cushions aren't quite as comfortable as Etymotic headphones, but the middle size fits nicely in my ears for comfort that seals out most outside noise (meaning you can turn the volume down) and wears longer than a standard ear bud. The sound quality is on par with most of the factory ear buds shipping with iPod, Creative and iRiver devices. A bundled carrying case will hold the EarThumps and your PSP Memory Stick or SD card for flash based portable players. At $20, you won't kick yourself if the EarThumps happen to get left behind in your daily travels.

Compare prices on EarThumps
EarThumps at Griffin

Si writes, My friend and I want to record some podcasts to make available for people to download for nothing. The only problem is, I live in Devon, and he lives on the Isle of Man. If you don't know the geography - that's quite a way away! We both have half decent PC's etc, so I just wanted your advice on how we might record a podcast live with each other as if in the same room?

There's currently no perfect solution for recording a conversation remotely. If you have the budget, installing a digital phone line on both ends will make the conversation sound amazing. Since it doesn't sound like your podcast endeavor is currently backed by a wealthy sponsor, you probably need to consider one of two more affordable options. You either need to have the conversation in real time over a traditional phone line or voice over IP solution, recording each part of the conversation separately (called a double-ender for reasons I'll explain below) and then piece the resulting audio files together or you compromise audio quality somewhat and go for the simplicity of using a VoIP solution for both talking and recording.

Recording both ends of the call independently is going to provide the best sounding result, assuming both your and your friend are technically astute enough to configure audio recording gear. This is called a double-ender, because recording takes place at both ends of the conversation rather than as one central recording. In this kind of arrangement, you setup a microphone at each end, with headphones to hear the other side of the call if you're using a software phone or just use the handset on your telephone to hear your friend's side of the conversation. Since timing the start of the recording is less than scientific, it's a good idea to agree on a keyword or phrase to designate the beginning of the discussion for later editing. Each of you hits record on your end. When the conversation is complete, save the files from each side of the call and send the missing side of the conversation to the person doing the editing. It's fairly easy to match up the conversation in software as long as neither person did too much interrupting throughout the call.

A second and generally easier way to record a conversation over long distances is to use a software VoIP solution. Skype gets all the attention in this space because it was the first app to come along and make it easy, but for recording I prefer Gizmo Project. The software includes a built in record feature, which makes it easy to capture the entire conversation. The downside is any network hiccups may result in some delay in one side of the call, but the simplicity is outstanding.

If you want to get into more complicated methods of recording VoIP calls, check out Doug Kaye's Skype setup, which includes an awesome diagram for recording VoIP calls using external hardware.

Feed2Podcast

PT over at Make tipped me off to a slick new service for turning any RSS feed into a Podcast. Basically you sign up for the service, add your text RSS feed to your account and Feed2Podcast automatically converts text entries to speech. The audio sounds a little robotic and could stand to use the AT&T Natural Voices that power TextAloud, but for free it's an impressive use of available technology. The service processes individual RSS posts as individual audio files, making it easy to listen to as much or as little of a particular site's content on your schedule. If you publish a Feed2Podcast feed, I recommend following the steps I suggest for avoiding feed hijacking, because anytime you give up control of your URL to a third party, you can put yourself at risk of losing subscribers over the long haul. I'm not sure if Feed2Podcast will extend beyond the current novelty into something viable in terms of audio quality, but the idea warrants further exploration and I'd be surprised if similar services don't start appearing in the coming months.

To see Feed2Podcast in action, subscribe to the MediaBlab text-to-speech podcast to hear articles from me as powered by Feed2Podcast:
MediaBlab Feed2Podcast or hear the full feed in their preview player.

A story circulating every major tech news outlet accuses podkeyword.com of hijacking the RSS feed for Vegan.com's Erik's Diner podcast. At some point, both Yahoo and Apple's podcast directories listed the Erik's Diner podcast referencing an RSS feed originating at podkeyword.com instead of the actual RSS feed hosted by Vegan.com. While this seems like something that could have been easily nipped in the bud, say several months ago when the iTunes podcast service first launched, it wasn't and now that Vegan.com is trying to re-route traffic from podkeyword.com to their own RSS feed, the Erik's Diner podcast is taking a major dip in subscribers.

This story is getting lots of press, because it's billed as an exploitation of new technology and because Erik Marcus, the guy behind the podcast, got a lawyer involved in the discussion with podkeyword.com. While I don't pretend to know the full story of what's going on between podkeyword.com and Erik Marcus of Vegan.com, I do know that most of what's taken place here is completely avoidable. There's only one way to make sure you never lose control of your feed and that's to never rescind that control in the first place. Here are some things you should do to make sure you own your traffic.

Retain Control of Your Feed

As someone who entered the online world through email publishing, I'm well aware of the importance of maintain control of your subscriber relationship. Handing off your subscribers to a third party, without having a backup plan means potential losing your subscribers. Lose your subscribers and you've effectively put yourself out of business. That's what backup strategies and contingency plans are all about. If you put the control over your RSS feed in the hands of a third party, you have no control over that feed if it goes down, if the company goes out of business or if that company decides to do something you don't like with your feed.

So what about using a service like FeedBurner to get statistics and manage your feed? I trust the people at FeedBurner. I've met a couple of them and chatted with them on the phone. But what if they get bought by someone I don't trust? Or what if FeedBurner goes out of business? I use FeedBurner for things like statistics, but I still publish my own URL as the source feed. By doing a redirect to FeedBurner, I can still promote a feed I control, while retaining all the advantages of using FeedBurner's service.

Monitor Major Podcasting Directories

I should title this section, 'Pay Attention, Stupid.' The nature of RSS is it's syndicated. This means anyone can pick up your feed and aggregate it into something else. Places like Bloglines make it easy for me to publish an OPML file of everything I subscribe to. In theory, a directory could republish my OPML file as part of their listing, regardless of whether my feed list contains original feeds or feeds I picked up elsewhere. I don't know how the podkeyword.com alternate feed for Erik's Diner got listed in iTunes and Yahoo, but it was either brought in as part of the initial directory launch or someone purposely submitted the podkeyword.com feed.

If your podcast is listed in one of the major directories, take the time to verify the source feed the directory references. When you submit your feed to a new directory, submit YOUR feed. Don't submit a proxy feed like FeedBurner, or podkeyword.com or any other alternate feed. The feed you submit to directories should be YourDomain.com/YourFeed.xml. Use redirects if you need the advantages of other services. Check the major directories to make sure they are using the correct URL. If they have an incorrect URL, use the appropriate feedback forum to correct the problem immediately. Don't wait.

Know Your Podcast Traffic

Study Your Server Logs. If you don't have server logs because you are using a free service, consider switching to a hosting service with statistics. Look at where your top referrers come from. Look at how many times your feed was requested (feed requests will be skewed if you redirect, which is okay) If there are sites bringing lots of traffic you've never heard of, investigate to make sure the traffic is something you want. In most cases, any traffic is good, but not if it eliminates fundamental control of your podcast.

Maintain Perspective

If you do the first three things I discuss, the likelihood of your podcast feed getting hijacked drops tremendously. People will use your podcast for things you either never wanted them to or you never thought of. There's no way to plan for every contingency. With a little due diligence you can make sure you retain control of your podcast and never run into a situation where someone is hijacking your podcast RSS feed.

Download Audacity

The development team behind Audacity keeps making it better. Audacity recently updated to version 1.2.4, which includes a handful of bug fixes and minor feature enhancements over the previous version. Most of the enhancements are minor interface improvements rather than any serious feature enhancements. If you want to try new features, take the beta version of Audacity 1.3 for a spin. For creating and editing audio clips, Audacity is the most affordable place to start. It offers all the basic features a multitrack editor should include, without bloating the software with features you might never use. Unlimited extendibility via VST plugins creates the foundation for comprehensive audio editing. Mac OS X and Linux compatibility make this the only truly cross-platform audio editing solution on the market. Recent updates add a VU meter to the toolbar and expose more commonly used features via convenient buttons. Each track now boasts separate pan and gain controls, for optimal mixing during post production. Normalize, Compressor, and Repeat functions are a vital part of core functionality. Previewing of effects prior to applying them to an audio track saves time having to undo changes. Audacity supports 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit audio. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

New in 1.2.4:

The File menu now includes a list of recent files.
The "Generate Silence" effect now prompts for a length.
Audacity is now built with Vorbis 1.1, which features better encoding quality and file compression.
Dragging sound files into the Audacity window now works on Mac OS X and Linux, as well as Windows. (Before, it worked only on Windows.)
Better support for certain audio devices on Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger"
The "View History" window can now discard old undo levels to save disk space on Windows. (This previously worked only on Linux and Mac.)
"Preferences" command is now in Edit menu.
"Plot Spectrum" command is now in Analyze menu.
Audacity 1.2.4 Release Notes

How do I combine two audio files with different sample rates in Audacity? I get voice mail files that come in at 8000 Hz, some recordings with my portable recorder at 16,000 Hz and my music files tend to be 44,100 Hz. When I play the tracks in Audacity, the lower sample rate files play to fast and sound weird. How do I fix this?

Sample Rate is important to audio files for two reasons. Sample Rate is the number of times per second you capture a snapshot of audio information during recording. Higher sample rates result in great audio detail, the same way you get smoother motion in video by capturing more frames per second. On playback, it's necessary to know the sample rate for compatibility with output specifications.

Audacity assumes everything in your project is the sample rate of the first file in your project. So if the first audio file in your project is an 8000 Hz file, the rest of the files are played as if they were 8000 Hz files also. Even though the Audacity track details show the original sample rate of a file, the software automatically matches the sample rate to the project sample rate during the import process. What you describe sounds like you changed the rate of an 8000 Hz file in a 44100 Hz project using the track Set Rate feature. This is easily fixed and you can get matching sample rates across files in a few simple steps.

What you describe is the result of using the Set Rate feature on any given audio track. Changing this setting from its default actually alters the waveform to conform to that sample rate. Because 8000 Hz audio takes up less digital space than 44100 Hz audio, changing its rate from 8000 Hz to 44100 Hz using Set Rate results in the same kind of playback speed increase you get from playing a 33 RPM record at 78 RPM. Avoid Set Rate for matching sample rates on files.

Instead, save the audio file at the current Audacity Project Rate. The project rate is located in the lower left corner of the Audacity interface. It defaults to the first audio file added to a project. So if your first Audio file is a 44100 Hz file, the Project rate is 44100. All tracks exported from the project will default to 44100 Hz. If the first track imported into a project is 8000 Hz, the entire project will be 8000 Hz and exported files will be saved with a sample rate of 8000 Hz.

To make sure all files have a matching sample rate, open the files you want to use for your project. Verify the Project Rate for the files is the sample rate you want for your entire project and choose Export Multiple from the file menu. At that point, you select the output format (WAV is best for incomplete projects), an output location and the naming convention for output files.

Close the project after exporting all tracks. Reopen Audacity and import all the tracks you just created. All files will have matching sample rates.

Pinging is one of those things bloggers take for granted. Ping-o-matic offers a slick service to notify most of the major blog aggregation and search tools that you've made a post or updated your site. It offers a smaller subset of directories and resources for podcasters to ping. If you want a purely podcast focused ping tool, AllPodcasts.com seems to be the place to go. For a more comprehensive list of sites you should ping each time you publish a podcast, Research Buzz offers a few additional podcast ping sites and a cool resource for building a ping database in an Excel Spreadsheet (Office 2003 required for this last one, of course). I'd personally rather see a service like Ping-o-matic aggregate this stuff all in one place so I don't need to maintain my own list. In the meantime, the combination of AllPodcasts.com and the Research Buzz recommendations help guarantee maximum exposure.

Jeff writes, "What are my software options to record radio music from my boom box to my PC so I can later burn some of the favorite tunes to CDs. Are there inexpensive or free programs that will allow me to edit these files? Also, I have a Dell Dimension 4400. Which audio port should I use at the rear of the computer to connect the boom box to the PC?"

I haven't thought much about recording AM and FM radio since I my cassette deck was relegated to a shuttle between analog tape and digital files. The effort required to split the tracks into individual songs, the random dropout in quality of over-the-air broadcasts and the time required to verify each audio file makes recording Internet radio more attractive. On the other hand, connecting your boom box to your PC is also one of many options for converting cassettes you can't replace to a digital format. If you want to record radio broadcasts from your boom box on your PC the steps are reasonably straight forward.

The connection is simply a cable running from either the audio out RCA jacks on your boom box or from the headphone jack (depending on which option is available). Connect the cable to the Line In jack on your sound card, which is typically colored blue on most computers (avoid the red microphone jack, which adds power to the signal).

Audacity will record the files. It's a free app and includes all the necessary features for normalizing your recordings as WAV audio files. You can add MP3 output to Audacity in a few minor steps.

To record audio from the boom box, make sure it's playing and the appropriate volume controls are turned up. You also need to make a few settings changes on your PC.

Configure Line In as your recording source

Either double-click the speaker icon in the system tray or go to Start > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices. Click the Advanced button in the Device Volume section of the Sounds and Audio Devices control panel.

With the Volume Control open choose Options > Properties from the menu and click the button next to recording.

Make sure the box under the Analog Mix or Line In column (this varies by soundcard) is checked and the volume is more than zero or you won't be recording anything. Leave the Recording Control open so you can make adjustments.

If you didn't already install Audacity, make sure you do it now.

Preparing to Record

Open Audacity and then open the preferences from File > Preferences

On the Audio I/O tab, verify your sound card is selected as the device for both playback and recording. In the channels dropdown box under Recording choose 2 (Stereo).

The File Formats tab controls the output formats for your audio. To avoid accidentally overwriting your audio files, select Make a copy of the file before editing under the When importing uncompressed audio files into Audacity options. Choose WAV (Microsoft 16 bit PCM) as the Uncompressed Export Format, Leave the OGG Export Setup untouched and follow the instructions on MP3 Export Setup to configure MP3 output.

Close the preferences by clicking OK.

From the main program window verify Analog Mix (or Line In) is selected as the recording input option on the Audacity Mixer Toolbar.

Start playback on the boom box and push the record button in Audacity. When you finish recording, press the Stop button and save the file as a WAV. The save is important so you don't lose your recording.

If you recorded several tracks from the radio, go through the audio recording and separate out each individual track. To save the file as an MP3, open the preferences again, choose the MP3 bit rate on the File Formats page (you generally want a minimum of 128 kbps for music) If you didn't setup the LAME encoder already, follow these instructions to configure it now.

For more information and further instructions on recording analog audio sources like cassettes and vinyl LPs, see also Converting Vinyl LPs to CD.

Recording Internet Radio

If you decide recording AM and FM radio is too much work, you might try recording tracks from Internet radio stations instead. Total Recorder is a great app for scheduling and recording Internet radio. A free alternative with fewer features is Radio Agent24. Depending on what options you select these software apps will often separate individual tracks automatically saving a ton of time.

How do I redirect my RSS feed to FeedBurner from IIS? I don't see the .htaccess file people refer to for Linux servers.

Assuming you have access to the IIS Management Console, redirecting a file is relatively easy. If your hosting provider doesn't allow access to the management console, you'll need to find out what options are available for redirection. Many Web hosts provide a GUI called Plesk that includes support for things like file redirection, Web stats and mail configuration. If you can't redirect the file yourself take a serious look at dumping the provider and submit a trouble ticket asking them to do the redirect for you. From the IIS Management Console, the process of redirecting your feed is straightforward.

Expand your site tree in IIS and locate the RSS XML file in your site hierarchy.

Right-click the file and choose properties.

From the file tab, select the A redirection to a URL radio button. Type in the URL for your FeedBurner feed. Check the boxes for The exact URL entered above and A permanent redirection for this resource.

Make sure you aren't creating an infinite loop situation by pulling your RSS feed from the same feed you are redirecting. See the tutorial on redirecting your podcast RSS feed for more details.

In some ways, creating and publishing your podcast is the easy part. The hard part is getting people to listen. In order to gain an audience you need to let people know you exist. Here are 12 strategies for making it easy for people to find your podcast.

Make Your Podcast Search Engine Friendly

The hardest part of introducing potential listeners to your podcast is making it easy for them to find you. There are two key ways people are introduced to new information online: they find something new through a link from a regularly visited site; or they find something new through Google. While you might exert minimal influence over who links to you by become pals with all the A-listers, you don't control whether people choose to link or not. One thing you control is the information on your site. First time visitors want a quick and accurate synopsis of video or audio prior to investing the time listening or viewing. Think of the accompanying text as the sales pitch that convinces a casual visitor your podcast is worth their valuable time. This text is also the information the search engine bots will see when crawling your site as part of the cataloging process. When someone searches on a topic related to your podcast, your page appears higher in the results if you have relevant text.

Create an Email List

Email seems counterintuitive to podcasting. Why would people subscribe to an email about your podcasts instead of just subscribing to the RSS feed? Because they either don't understand subscribing to audio yet or they don't want a bunch of audio filling up their hard drive. The podcasting and video blogging credo is giving people what they want, when they want and how they want it. Make reminders available in every format possible. If people don't want to subscribe to your RSS feed yet, so what. Offer an email subscription so they know when you post something new. Free services like Bloglet and Feedblitz handle the publishing hassle so you can concentrate on your podcast.

Press Releases

Press releases are seen as old media notification tools, but they still work. If there's an interesting angle in one episode of your podcast, write up 300-500 words about it and submit the release to free press release services like and I-Newswire. Events like your 100th episode, annual anniversary, interviews with interesting people or upcoming contests are all compelling reasons to send out a press release.

Subscribe to Your Podcast

I'm not kidding. Subscribe to your podcast in Odeo, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Google Reader, Bloglines and any other online service you can think of. Some of them won't support the audio enclosures, but that's not the point. If the service has one customer subscribed to a feed, the service knows that feed exists, which means your feed is indexed by that service. You don't have control over which service or applications your listeners choose, but you can make it easier to find your podcast within those services by subscribing to it.

Tag Your Text

Tags are a hot topic in generating traffic. Search sites like IceRocket and Technorati use tags to help generate meaningful search results. To associate your podcast with specific tags, you never need to visit these services. Tags are added in the text description associated with your podcast. For instance, if you have a podcast about cooking and in one episode you talk about making clam chowder, include tag links related to your topic in the post. The links look something like this:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/cooking" rel="tag">cooking</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/clam+chowder" rel="tag">clam chowder</a>

The rel="tag" designation is what tells search engines that link is a tag. For two word tags, using the '+' sign designates a space. The link can technically go anywhere, like the Wikipedia entry on clam chowder and still be seen as a tag by search engines like IceRocket and Technorati.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is related to the concept of tagging. If you ever tag your photos with keywords on flickr or archive posts on del.icio.us, you are already familiar with the concept. Like tagging, you assign keywords to a particular URL. The big difference is you do it within the constraints of a service. To continue with the clam chowder example, you log into del.icio.us and add a link to the page (not the media file) where your podcast is linked for download. You then associate keywords like 'clamchowder', 'soup' and 'cooking' with that page. People who search del.icio.us can see all the links to things tagged 'clamchowder' by everyone who uses del.icio.us and find your podcast in the list of tags.

Interview Interesting People

Interview people in the topic area of your podcast. If you do a music show, reserve a few minutes of every show to interview one of the artists featured on the show. When you post the show, send a link to the person you interviewed and encourage them to link to it from their own Website or blog. Other people in the interviewee's circle of influence will find out about your podcast and come check you out.

Comment on Other Podcasts and Blogs

If someone else covers a topic related to your podcast, comment on what they are saying either in their comments or in your podcast. Mention in the text synopsis of your podcast that you talked about what The Cooking Blog had to say about making clam chowder on your clam chowder episode and link back to their post about clam chowder. Participating in forums related to your topic is also closely related to commenting.

Guest Blog on Related Sites

You are already spending time talking about your favorite subject in your podcast, but a whole universe of people don't know you exist. If there are bloggers who write about your topic, offer to guest blog when they need a break or want to go on vacation.

Affiliate with a Network

Some of the early successes in podcasting are the result of network affiliations. Certainly, the show I produce, The Chris Pirillo Show, benefits from Chris's Lockergnome network. Engadget's podcast became popular with the help of a large Weblogs, Inc readership. Something more informal works too. Identify a group of bloggers, podcasters and video bloggers all talking about related topics and arrive at a way to team up and drive traffic to each other's efforts.

Build Relationships with Listeners

While listening to audio is technically a one way communication, encouraging and incorporating listener feedback in your show creates a sense of community. Actively solicit feedback from listeners by providing ways to call and leave messages or send email feedback. If you get email raves, read them during your podcast. If you get questions from listeners, answer them during your podcast when appropriate.

Get Listed in Directories

Don't limit yourself to podcast directories. Since you're now adding value to your RSS feed by creating meaningful text posts to accompany the audio, submit your feeds to every RSS and blog directory you can find. Robin Good offers a solid list of 55 places to submit your feed.

Some of the popular podcast directories include:
http://www.ipodlounge.com/
http://podcasting.meetup.com/
http://www.podcastdirectory.com/
http://www.podcast.net/
http://www.podcastingnews.com/
http://www.podcastpickle.com/
http://www.podscope.com/
http://www.podcatch.com/
http://www.podcastcentral.com
http://www.podcastalley.com/
http://www.syndic8.com/
http://newtimeradio.com

For a frequently updated list of submission directories, see Robin Good's MasterNewMedia

Find Behringer Shark DSP110 on eBay

Compare prices on Behringer Shark DSP110

One of the more complicated aspects of podcasting is getting your audio to sound good without investing massive amounts of time in improving your sound quality. While one school of thought suggests you are only as good as the time you spend in production, it's nice to know a few tools exist to make your life easier. One of the best pieces of hardware I found for improving sound quality with almost no additional investment of time is the Shark DSP110 from Behringer. The Shark does double duty as both a compressor and a noise gate, which helps prevent massive dynamic fluctuations and cut out some of the room noise picked up by your microphone. The Shark has phantom power for condenser microphones, making it a solid solution as a go-between for taking your microphone to your sound card. Default settings using the "learn" features of the Shark deliver impressive results, although like anything else, manually adjusting the settings further improves your sound. If you do voice recording with your PC, record podcasts or want an affordable gating system for instrumental recording, Behringer's Shark DSP110 delivers for a fraction of the price for comparable gear.

Marvin writes, "I have an IIS website that streams audio (.asf files currently). With a ‘standard’ IIS website hosting on Windows 2000, what would be the steps needed to begin podcasting. We would like to offer the audio we currently stream to the podcast market as well. We can convert the audio to any (even multiple) formats, but we don’t quite understand what needs to be set up on our web server to provide the support for podcasting.

Articles seem to cover in detail making the audio file. We have the audio file, but need to set up the rest of the support."

One of the primary (and often incorrect) assumptions most podcasting tutorials make is that you already have a blog or that you want a blog. With the content management solutions used in blogging come the primary tools required for creating the podcast feed listeners subscribe to. In most cases, this publishing is done automatically without user intervention. While this is perfect for the individual who never had a Website in the first place, it doesn't always fit with corporate (or non-profit) organizational Web hosting. The good news is, you do not need a blog or blog content management solutions to publish a podcast. Several software applications are designed to handle creating and updating the RSS feed which is the key element of podcast publishing. The key is using a solution that makes managing your feed painless.

It is possible to hand code RSS and manually update the file each time you upload a new audio file, but the opportunity for error makes using software a safer bet. The solution I prefer, FeedForAll, works well for both IIS and Apache hosted Websites. Below I walk through how to publish and update a podcast RSS feed using FeedForAll.

Before you proceed, make sure you know the location of the audio files for your podcast. Ideally these should be either MP3 or WMA files, although MP3 insures maximum compatibility at this point.

FeedForAll is available for both Windows and Mac users for $39.95. You can try it free for 30 days to make sure it's the best solution for your podcast publishing needs. For sheer ease-of-use, it's money well spent. A beta version with iTunes support is currently available.

Get FeedForAll for Windows

Get FeedForAll for Mac OS X

Stepping through the Feed Creation Wizard is one of the easiest ways to get a handle on publishing your podcast.

Step 1: Title your feed. This title should be something that makes it stand out, like the name of your organization or the specific topic of the audio. This title is what people will see in the application they use to subscribe to the podcast.

Step 2: Write a description for your podcast. This description shows up in podcast directories like to give potential listeners more information about what your podcast is all about. Think of this as the elevator speech for why someone should subscribe.

Step 3: Add the link to your site. The link should either be the main page of your site or if your podcast is associated with a particular sub-page on the site, a link to that subpage.

Step 4: Click Next past the intro to the items section. The first Item you create will be associated with the first audio file you make available in your podcast. Add a title for your first post. In general, this title should summarize what the post is about.

Step 5: Add a description for your podcast. This description should offer a few sentences about the audio file you plan to link so the listener gets some idea of what the topic(s) covered are.

Step 6: The link in your Item entry generally directs people back to somewhere on the Web to get more information about that particular post. If you don't have a specific page associated with the post, this can simply be a general link back to your Website.

After completing these basics for your first item, click the Finish button. You will be prompted to save the RSS feed, which is a smart idea to make sure you don't lose your work so far.

In the main FeedForAll interface, click the Items tab and select the item you just created.

Click the Optional tab to display the additional options for your entry. This is where you will associate the audio file for your podcast with the feed entry.

The Category selection is optional, although recommended to help classify your information. iTunes has a specific set of required categories, which I recommend for all podcast categorization for maximum compatibility. Since I'm using a church as an example for this feed, I'd use Religion & Spirituality as my top level category designation here. Leave Domain blank.

GUID is a unique identifier associated with this entry. In general, this is typically the same link that points to the online description of the entry that was included as the item link above. It could also be a unique number (like 00001, for instance). If you use a number instead of the link, uncheck the box next to Is Perma Link.

For original content, skip the source information. This is used only if you are quoting information from another site.

For a podcast, Enclosure is the most important section of the item. Here you add the URL for your audio file, the length of the file in bytes and the file type. The URL is the location of the file if someone were to access it directly from your server:

http://www.yourdomain.com/yourfile.mp3

The length of the file is the length in bytes. Typically Windows displays this length in KB, so multiply the number listed in Windows Explorer by 1024 to get the correct number for this (or multiply by 1048576 if you start with MB).

The last part of the enclosure is the file type. This varies depending on file type.

MP3: audio/mpeg
WMA: audio/wma
MP4: video/mp4
WMV: video/x-ms-wmv
MOV: video/quicktime

Author is an optional field and Comments is only used for a URL to a page that accepts comments about your podcast.

On the Feeds tab, the Optional tab for your feed offers some additional fields related to your feed. The language of the feed, global category for all information in the feed, Webmaster, editor, copyright and rating all provide useful details about your feed. Leave the default for Docs. TTL tells servers how often they need to check your feed for updates (in minutes).

With all these pieces in place your feed is technically ready for publishing. Save your feed. To publish the feed, upload the file you created to your Web server. FeedForAll offers a built in FTP client for uploading or you could easily use a standalone FTP app. From the Feed menu choose Upload and enter your FTP information.

The final piece of the puzzle is letting people know you have a podcast. This is as easy as putting a link on your site like: Subscribe to our podcast. where the link is the link to your podcast file. In the example I used here, that link is http://www.yourdomain.com/podcast.xml.

When it's time to add a new audio file to your podcast, simply open FeedForAll again. Select your podcast file. On the Items tab click the New Item button. Enter a title, link and description for your new podcast.

On the Optional tab, repeat the steps for entering additional details, making sure to enter the three fields related to the enclosure.

Save your feed and repeat the upload steps, overwriting the existing file on the server. This leaves the reference to the first item in the feed, appending your new item so that each subscriber has access to the previous file in addition to the new file. When subscribers check to see if you posted anything new, the new podcast will automatically download.

It's definitely smart to make your audio offerings available for subscription via RSS and direct download via a Website link. Enabling audio playback from the familiar audio playback experience of the Windows Media Player play controls helps get some listeners past the hurdle of figuring out how to tune in. If your audio file is a WMA or MP3 file, there are a few simple steps to linking your audio to Windows Media Player controls imbedded in the browser.

When you offer a direct download, users click on a link to the audio file and either view the video in their desktop Windows Media Player or save it to their hard drive. To stream your audio file with visible Windows Media Player controls, you need to embed the player in the page where you post your audio file. This requires some specific HTML code included in the page or blog post where the audio is linked.

I want to help my nephew stream a pre-recorded DJ session via WME but have no clue how to accomplish it. The recording part I can do. I want to stream the file so it loops when it is done. Is there a way to play the file with WMP and have it loop and stream it over the internet?

Setting up an audio stream using Windows Media Encoder is relatively easy. If you are planning to stream the file from a computer at your house, the tricky part is having enough bandwidth for everyone who wants to listen to it. If you stream the file from an online hosting service, the sky is the limit in terms of how many potential listeners your stream will support. More listeners translates to more money for hosting and bandwidth, so how many simultaneous listeners might be limited by your wallet. The initial setup requires a few steps, but you should be listening to music on the patio in a matter of minutes.

Getting Windows Media Encoder

If you don't already have Windows Media Encoder, the free download is available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/default.aspx

Once the download completes, install Windows Media Encoder 9, accepting the defaults prompted by the installer. With the install complete, launch Encoder by clicking Start, All Programs, Windows Media, Windows Media Encoder.

Configuring Your Audio Stream

The New Session window appears offering several wizard choices. Select Broadcast a live event and click OK.

Audio and Video device options are the first step in configuring broadcast settings. Since this is an audio only stream, uncheck the box next to video. WM Encoder uses the default sound card on your system automatically.

Next configure Broadcast Method. This tells WM Encoder the broadcast is being sent to a Windows Media server or broadcast locally by your computer. Choose Pull from the encoder.

Next the Encoder sets the broadcast port for the stream. By default the port number used by Encoder is 8080. In most cases, accept the default. Think of ports on a computer as being similar to extensions in a corporate phone network. Dialing the main company phone number gets you to the front desk, just like typing in a computer's IP address (in the example below http://192.168.0.9) gets you to the index page of whatever Website might be on the computer. Adding a colon followed by a port designation to the end of the IP address tells the computer you are looking only for information available at a very specific location, just like dialing a direct phone extension connects a specific employee. Port 8080 is commonly used for streaming because Website traffic is delivered to your computer on port 80, making 8080 easy to remember for techies. Notice WM Encoder supplies the broadcast URL below the port selection. These URLs are used to connect to the broadcast from the Pocket PC (or any computer on your home network). Click Next after deciding on a port, making note of the broadcast URL.

After selecting the port, it's time to decide on a broadcast quality level. Because you are streaming this out to the Web, keep in mind the amount of bandwidth you have available. A DSL or Cable connection general has 384-768 kbps upstream bandwidth available, which gets used for things like FTP, sharing files through BitTorrent and streaming audio or video data to other computers. It's also important to account for the ability of people listening to the stream to tune in. Having tested a wide variety of streaming options, I find the FM quality audio setting to be a fair trade off between audio quality and consistent connections. Click Next after making a selection.

The next screen offers to Archive a copy of the broadcast to a file on the computer. This is useful if you are broadcasting live performances, but isn't necessary when playing a pre-recorded file. Leave the box unchecked and click Next.

WM Encoder offers metadata fields to provide information about the broadcast. This is useful for broadcasting original content to the Internet, so listeners have details about the stream. Fill in the information or leave it blank, and then click Next.

Click Finish on the Settings Review screen.

The first time you setup a broadcast, Windows Media Encoder warns that any IP address on your network has access to the content of the broadcast. Since you are streaming to the Internet, presumably you want people to be able to listen.

Before you can stream the file, you need to make a minor edit to the settings you just configured. Click the Properties button on the toolbar, change Source from: to File and browse for the location of the audio file you want to stream. From the At end: dropdown list, choose Loop.

Testing Your Audio Stream

Click the Start Encoding button and Windows Media Encoder will start cycling through the file. You can test the connection locally by putting the local IP address for the streaming computer in the browser of another machine to listen like this:
http://192.168.0.9:8080

For people who want to access your stream from the Internet, use the IP address assigned by your ISP followed by :8080. If you don't know what your IP address is, the easiest way to find out is by visiting a site like IP Devil Girl

Configuring Your Router

There are a few tricky parts to making the stream available for live broadcasts. If you have a router connecting your PC to the Web, you need to forward Port 8080 on your router to allow people connecting to the ISP-assigned IP address to receive your stream. The process for forwarding a port varies by router manufacturer, but in general there are a similar series of steps. Linksys refers to the port forwarding page as Applications & Gaming, some other routers refer to port forwarding options as Virtual Servers.

To forward port 8080, you generally need to enter the following data:

Application or Description field: Windows Media Stream
Port Range Start: 8080
Port Range End: 8080
Protocol Type: Both (or TCP if a both option isn't available)
IP Address of your PC: You can find this by typing ipconfig at the command line
Enable: check a box to enable the port forward

In some cases you also need to repeat the Port Range Start and End for the local machine (often referred to as Private Port).

For optimal security, it's a good idea to login and uncheck the Enable box if you ever shut the stream down. That way if someone happens to be scanning your ports, they won't find an opening. It's an extra step that requires only a few seconds for additional security.

Promoting Your Stream

By promoting your stream, I simply mean letting people know how to find it. The official address for the stream will be http://X.X.X.X:8080 where each X is replaced by the numbers filling that particular octet of the IP address assigned by your ISP. Put a link to the stream on a Website or blog to let people know how to find it.

It is likely easier to register a domain name and point http://www.yourdomain.com:8080 at the stream. That way, if your IP address ever changes, or you decide to host the stream somewhere else, you don't end up confusing listeners.

What If My ISP Changes My IP Address?

This is another tricky part to this configuration. Not every ISP offers static IP addresses. If you plan to stream from home, see if you can get one. If your ISP changes your IP address frequently, there are two ways to deal with it. You can sign up for a dynamic DNS update service, which will automate the process of keeping your IP address synchronized with whatever domain name you are using to promote your stream.

Stream Hosting Services

If hosting an audio stream on your home computer is starting to sound too complicated, you can pay to have the stream hosted for you. Audio Realm is a great service for hosting Windows Media Streams. The cost per month depends on the number of simultaneous listeners you want to support. 30 simultaneous listeners at approximately the same audio quality level described in this tutorial costs $20/month.

As if we didn't already have too many directories to manage, Yahoo is throwing it's podcasting hat in the ring too. Yahoo Podcasts is a Web based directory, like Odeo with a faster search and cleaner interface. Yahoo managed to launch with a large library of podcasts and if you got an email from them saying you were about to get featured on Yahoo, chances are good that your podcast is in the directory. Do a search to verify your existence. If you aren't listed, there's a submit form in the sidebar of the Publish a Podcast pages. Subscribing appears to require either Yahoo Music Engine or iTunes, although I haven't successfully subscribed to a podcast in iTunes using Yahoo at this point.

Apple's AAC format allows podcasters to create "enhanced podcasts" complete with embedded photos at publisher defined points throughout the podcast. These files are only compatible with iTunes and iPods, leaving a large universe of listeners out of the picture. Microsoft's Photo Story could easily create something similar, with a voice track narrating beneath a series of images, but the WMV file created in Photo Story isn't compatible with most portable music players. One alternative that bridges the gap and maximizes compatibility is to create a script enhanced WMA file, These WMA files with embedded scripts play just like a normal WMA anywhere scripting isn't supported.

Listen to Venture Voice

Most of the small businesses that start in any given year fail before that year is out. The reasons for these failures range from undercapitalization, to lack of experience, to poor decision making to not having a clear vision or business plan. Few entrepreneurs create an overnight success the first time. While there's no way to get experience without actually trying, it is possible to draw on the experience of people who got there first. One great place to hear about the stories of people who are out there doing it Venture Voice, a podcast dedicated to interviewing the founders of small and growing companies, and the venture capitalists willing to fund them. If you're in the business of running a business or thinking of stepping away from corporate life in favor of the 17-hour days and low wages that make being an entrepreneur such an overwhelming draw, Venture Voice is the podcast you need to subscribe to. It's also a good place to stay on top of some of the new rising stars of online business. I met Gregory Galant, host of Venture Voice, between sessions at Webzine.

Paula writes, "I am doing all of my interviews over the phone. I recorded my first one and couldn’t hear any noise in my headphones but on the playback there are sections of mild to quite loud background fuzz. I have a digital voice recorder called Broadcast Host and a Voice over IP phone line. Anyhow, I was wondering if you might be able to give me some tips on how to remove this fuzz sound?"

The methodology for removing noise from an audio recording varies slightly depending on the software you use, but the principals are very similar. Ideally when you record a phone call or any other recording where you don't have control over variables like background noise and interference induced by things in your environment like clean power lines and clean phone lines, you want to make a noise profile at the beginning of the recording. This is 5-10 seconds of just letting the recording software run while any environmental sounds are recorded.

For a phone call, obviously you need to get the other person on the line before you can record, so the procedure is slightly different. When you set up the call, encourage the caller to use a wired phone connection (not cordless or cellular) if possible. Discourage the use of speaker phone, because it introduces additional noise variables. Once the caller is on the line, ask them to be silent for 5-10 seconds so you can capture the noise profile.

For my noise removal sample, I stood in the room where our dryer was running, for a clear demonstration of unwanted noise. As you will see in my example, the background noise is far too much for a decent casual conversation, but it illustrates this point nicely. Just letting the recording run for about 10 seconds gives me an accurate profile of the background sounds.

I'm eliminating the noise using the free Audacity audio editor, with built in noise removal. With the recording open in Audacity, I select the seconds of background noise by highlighting them. On the Effects menu choose Noise Removal from the list of available effects.

Click the Get Noise Removal button so the software analyzes the noise in your track.

Select the entire track and open Noise Removal from the Effects menu again. Adjust the slider for how much noise you want removed so it's about halfway between the center and the less setting. Click Remove Noise.

Generally, this gets rid of your noise without distorting the audio you want to keep. If you don't like the way your track sounds after performing these steps, reduce the amount of noise reduction a little more to help preserve the sound you want.

The final track keeps the voice recording, while eliminating background noise.

After podcasting for a few weeks, you realize your current hosting solution isn't working out. Maybe you were hosting your own podcast and decided to go with a dedicated service, or maybe you decide you want to continue hosting your audio files, but want better statistics from a service like FeedBurner. When you elect to make a change to the location of the RSS feed for your podcast, you risk alienating subscribers, because the podcast client they subscribed with still has your old URL saved. You need a way to bring those subscribers over to the new location without making them all resubscribe.

If your Web server is an Apache Web server, you need a minimum of FTP access to your server in order to redirect your old RSS URL to the new RSS URL. The first thing to do in setting up a redirect is to check for the existence of a file named .htaccess in your root Web directory. Depending on who you are hosting with, this directory may be called public_html, site, www, or something else entirely. If you aren't sure where the root Web directory of your server is, you may want to locate a geek who can be of assistance.

On the outside chance there is no .htaccess file in your Web directory, you can create one and upload it. This file is simply a series of single line text entries telling Apache what to do when it receives specific types of requests. You need a plain text editor for this task (DO NOT attempt this with Microsoft Word) I personally like Metapad for tasks like this one (or BBEdit if you're using a Mac). For purposes of redirecting your current podcast RSS feed URL to a new RSS feed, you need to enter only one line:

Redirect permanent /oldrssurl.xml http://www.domain.com/newrssurl.xml

If your current podcast URL is http://www.yourdomain.com/podcast/oldrssurl.xml then replace the /oldrssurl.xml in the line above with everything to the right of .com or:

Redirect permanent /podcast/oldrssurl.xml http://www.domain.com/newrssurl.xml

Once you've either updated or created the .htaccess file, you need to save it back to the Web root of your server. This redirect takes effect immediately and subscribers with any podcast client (including iTunes) should notice no interruption of service.

CPanel access also comes in handy because redirects are configurable from a Web interface using CPanel. If you have CPanel, login with your username and password, look for the link in CPanel to Redirects and follow the onscreen instructions.

If you host your podcast RSS feed on a Windows server the process is a little more straightforward. Open the IIS management console, browse to your site, right click the file for your RSS feed and enter the information in the dialog box on the File tab.

Sammy says, "I have produced my first podcast, and it is now listed with iTunes. My dumb question is what do I do with the second edition? I have recorded my second podcast, uploaded it to my server, and have created the RSS file for the second podcast. But I don't know what to do with that second RSS file. Do I upload it to my server, and put the number 2 on it? How do I get iTunes to recognize that there is now a second podcast available? As I said, I hope this isn't a stupid question, but I have scoured a dozen "learn to podcast" sites, but none talk about posting a podcast, BEYOND the first one."

This is most definitely not a stupid question. One of the most confusing things about creating RSS feeds in general is the process of creating them in the first place. When you create your RSS feed, you are essentially creating a running list of entries rather pointing to each new entry with a corresponding new RSS file. Ideally, you don't want to manually edit this file at all, you want software to the work of adding new information to the RSS feed and properly appending it.

The first time you created a podcast was likely the first entry in your RSS feed. This entry is defined as being a single item by surrounding it with >item< and >/item<. Now that you are ready to publish your second entry, you want to add a second >item< to your RSS feed. This way, you only ever publish one URL that people subscribe to and as you add new podcast episodes, every subscriber will get notification of the latest update.

Ideally, using an online publishing service like TypePad, Blogger, Liberated Syndication or MSN Spaces will automatically generate an RSS feed you can use for your podcast. Some of those services don't directly support RSS with the necessary enclosures for podcasting, but you can create a free FeedBurner account and then promote your FeedBurner URL as the subscription address for your podcast.

If you prefer not to use on of the online publishing solutions, the next best alternative is using a desktop application for publishing your RSS feed. Currently the best desktop application for RSS publishing is FeedForAll. There are some cheaper alternatives like Podcast RSS Buddy, but frankly they don't work all that well and result in headaches like duplicate entries. FeedForAll is available in both Mac and Windows versions, providing the desktop equivalent of a content management solution for your podcast, text, video blog or anything want to syndicate using RSS. The software provides a simple series of text fields for you to automatically generate all the text, enclosure details and information required to publish RSS 2.0 feeds for podcasting, complete with the relevant details for iTunes.

My personal preference is to use an online content management solution, because you get the benefit of managing everything in one place. I use Movable Type and Liberated Syndication for all the podcasting publishing I do currently. Movable Type requires you to have your own server and some minimal understanding of installing Perl applications, but you could easily use the hosted TypePad alternative. Liberated Syndication manages audio file hosting and the creation of Web and RSS files. Free solutions like Blogger and MSN Spaces require you to find hosting for your audio files and the additional step of signing up for a FeedBurner account to create the RSS feed.

Enhanced podcasts are simultaneously one of the coolest and most frustrating implementations in the iTunes/iPod universe. Documentation on how to do them is poor, Apple released a horrid command line tool that requires a third party tool for mere mortals to understand. Except for pt that is. The MAKE blog comes through with another great hack, providing practical instructions for adding images and chapter points to your podcast for better playback in iTunes or on an iPod photo. This means you'll need at least two versions of you podcast though because the format isn't supported by non-Apple products.

Apple did many things right in their support for podcasting in iTunes. For instance, if you listen to a podcast in iTunes and then browse away to something else in iTunes, when you return, the podcast picks up where you left off. Configuration options for syncing podcasts with an iPod work well for managing large subscription lists. It's easy to keep the latest episodes on your iPod, while leaving plenty of space for music. iTunes podcast support istn't without a few flaws. Apple forgot to enable the ability to manage podcasts using Smart Playlists. There is a way to make them work.

Podcasts are listed in a special iTunes playlist, walled off from the general iTunes Library. This is similar to the way Audible subscriptions are presented in iTunes. Podcast audio files live in the Podcasts folder, which is inside the iTunes Music Folder. The general Library ignores the contents of the Podcasts folder by default. The only way to create a Smart Playlist of podcasts is to add them to your Library from File > Add Folder to Library or simply by dragging the folder (from Finder or Windows Explorer) into the Library.

Adding the Podcasts folder to your library catalogs everything in the folder with all of your music. It's still neatly segregated in the purple Podcasts master playlist but now commingled with all your music. The upside to this is you now have full access to configuring a million ways to sort your podcasts. The downside is you have to sort around your podcast files when working with your songs.

Beyond the specific <channel> tags within the <itunes:x> tag collection, some of the tags are optimized for assigning more information to individual episodes of your podcast. These tags are placed inside the <item> and </item> tags for each entry listed in your RSS 2.0 feed. Depending on which software app you use for publishing a podcast, these may be handled automatically or you may need to manually add them to each item. At the moment, making a modification to WordPress and Movable Type RSS 2.0 templates is the easiest way to add these tags to your feed. Hosting services like LibSyn are handling many of these configuration issues automatically, which is a massive value-add for anyone paying for their service.

<itunes:author>Name of Podcast or Your Name</itunes:author>
<itunes:subtitle>255 char summary of episode</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary>4000 character show notes of podcast</itunes:summary>
<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
<itunes:keywords>Keyword1 Keyword2 Keyword3 Keyword4</itunes:keywords>
<itunes:category text="Category">
<itunes:category text="Subcategory" />
</itunes:category>

The individual <itunes:x> tags making up the iTunes RSS 2.0 specification don't add value unless implemented correctly. After verifying proper linkage to the Document Type Definition (DTD) it's time to place the within your feed. Some of the tags are meant specifically for the <channel> section of your feed. These tags are placed somewhere after the opening <channel> reference and prior to the <item> reference within the feed.

As a group this collection of tags looks like this:

<itunes:author>Name of Your Podcast</itunes:author>
<itunes:subtitle>Subtitle of Your Podcast 255 character max</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary> Description of your podcast goes here. </itunes:summary>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:name>Name of Your Podcast</itunes:name>
<itunes:email>youremail@yourdomain.com</itunes:email>
</itunes:owner>
<itunes:category text="Category">
<itunes:category text="Subcategory" />
</itunes:category>
<itunes:image href="http://yourdomain.com/yourimage.jpg" />
<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>

Once you understand how all the iTunes tags fit into the big picture of your RSS feed, it's time to implement them within your feed. Some of these tags are specific to the <channel> section of your RSS 2.0 feed and some are specific to individual <iten>. In order for any of these additions to work, you must designate a link to the Document Type Definition (DTD) for the iTunes namespace changes. In a standard RSS 2.0 feed, the namespace definition looks like this:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:blogChannel="http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule">

This tells aggregators to interpret your feed as an RSS 2.0 document and display it accordingly. Adding the iTunes DTD for podcasting requires you to include a second xmlns: tag within the rss definition space like this:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:blogChannel="http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/DTDs/Podcast-1.0.dtd">

Make sure you do not define rss twice like the example below because this will break some aggregators:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:blogChannel="http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule">
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/DTDs/Podcast-1.0.dtd">

The iTunes Block tag is specifically designed to tell iTunes to ignore a particular post in your podcast feed. This might be particularly useful if your feed combines text only posts and posts containing audio enclosures, because the text only posts are useless in the context of iTunes RSS support. Another potential use for this tag is to exclude an episode that is intended for a select audience (say subscribers using iPodderX, for instance). The Block tag is entirely optional and should only be used in those cases where you don't want a post to show up in the iTunes Music Store. To implement the Block tag in your RSS 2.0 feed, include the following in the <item> for your post: <itunes:block />

Duration is the iTunes tag associated with the 'Time' component of each episode of your podcast. This tag is implemented at the item level, displaying a time value for each episode in the format HH:MM:SS. Since people have few details about your show when they encounter it for the first time, this tag provides information that may help a listener decide whether they have time to tune in for one of your episodes. While it won't hurt anything to leave this tag out, as Apple indicates duration is for informational purposes only, not having it listed displays a Not Available notice in the Time description in iTunes Music Store. After a subscriber downloads any episode from your podcast, the Time is based on the actual audio file header information. Display the Duration of your individual episode file like this: <itunes:duration>HH:MM:SS</itunes:duration>

The iTunes image tag is one of the few tags added by Apple with any substantial value over the base RSS 2.0 specification. The RSS image tag is limited to maximum dimensions of 144x400, which seems fairly non-standard and certainly doesn't match the square dimensions of the album art displayed in the iTunes Music Store. Maximum dimensions for the iTunes Image tag are 300x300. It's recommended to use the maximum. This is one tag you should definitely include to make sure your podcast is differentiated from the default image in iTunes. Supported file formats are JPG and PNG. Apple seems to have two different methods for linking their image tag. Both appear to be correct.

The first method for including an image is the standard:

<itunes:image>http://www.YourPodcastURL.com/YourImage.jpg</itunes:image>

A second method shown in Apple's example is using the <itunes:link> tag to imbed the image:

<itunes:link rel="image" type="video/jpeg" href="http://www.YourPodcastURL.com/YourImage.jpg"></itunes:link>

The iTunes Owner tag designates the name and email address of the person or persons associated with your podcast. The designation is broken into two separate tags, one for email and one for name. These are wrapped with the overall Owner designation. This is another of the many redundancies in the iTunes name space defined by Apple. In almost every case the email will be the same email used to designate <managingEditor> in RSS 2.0, which often specifies email and a name in parenthesis.

The correct format for the Owner tag is:

<itunes:owner>
<itunes:name>Your Name</itunes:name>
<itunes:email>youremail@yourdomain.com<itunes:email>
</itunes:owner>

In theory the iTunes Keywords tag improves search relevance when people search by topic rather than searching for the name of your podcast. So far, I haven't found that search functions in iTunes check for anything other than Title, Author and Description fields because the keywords I've injected don't deliver any results in a search. I'm hopeful this is a temporary oversight, because using keywords certainly lends itself to making the feed more meaningful considering we don't have mechanisms for searching inside the audio contents at the moment. Use this field to key on specific topics covered in your podcast to aid in search relevance. This tag is used for individual items in your podcast feed.

Based on these criteria, the Keywords tag will look like this:

<itunes:keywords>Keyword1 Keyword2 Keyword3 Keyword4</itunes:keywords>

The Author tag is either the name of your podcast or your name, depending on the type of theme for your show. If you are the sole host of the podcast or the star of the show, using your name makes sense. If you have a group effort, sticking with the name of the podcast keeps all the egos satisfied, while also branding the show as being a collective effort. The author tag is used both at the RSS channel level and at the item level. At the channel level, this is an all encompassing tag for the podcast as a whole. At the item level, author could be the same as the channel level author or it may designate a specific collaborator. Based on these criteria, the Author tag will look like this: <itunes:author>Your Name</itunes:author> Or this: <itunes:author>Name of Podcast</itunes:author>

The Summary tag is exactly that, a summary description of your podcast. This is the elevator speech iTunes Music Store visitors read before checking out your podcast or ignoring it for something more compelling, so make it count. This is the only iTunes custom RSS tag without a 255 character limit. Think about what you would say to convince someone in 15 seconds or less why your podcast is awesome and use that text for the summary. In many ways this is the same thing as the <description> element in an RSS 2.0 channel definition, so it's redundant but necessary.

Your summary might look something like this:

<itunes:summary> In every episode, the MediaBlab podcast covers consumer electronics tips and technology hacks. Learn about VoIP, HDTV, Digital Video and more.</itunes:summary>

The Subtitle tag is used in iTunes to provide a quick 255 character summary of your podcast underneath the title on it's information page in iTunes. This can be a clever phrase or a continuation of the theme defined in your name. In the case of podcasts with names longer than 255 characters, this might be a good place to extend your name so that iTunes doesn't inadvertently cut it off. This doesn't seem like a particularly useful tag on the surface, but it's part of the retro-fit Apple made to conform podcasting to the layout of the iTunes Music Store. This tag is used in two places in your feed, with two different uses. It appears in the channel definition as a subtitle for the podcast and it appears in the item definition and is used for the Description of individual episodes in iTunes Music Store. For a Movable Type generated feed, I use the <$MTEntryExcerpts$> definition to populate the item level Subtitle.

The Subtitle tag looks like this:

<itunes:subtitle>Subtitle of Your Podcast</itunes:subtitle>

Apple wants podcasts inside iTunes to put the digital equivalent of a parental advisory on podcasts with foul language or mature topics. While this is very subjective across cultures, it's presumed the benchmark for explicit content is based on the norms in the United States. While the feed for our show made it into the iTunes Podcasts listing without a clear definition this is one designation you may want to include. Apple hasn't made it mandatory for listing yet, but it is most definitely not in their optional tag list.

If you do use explicit content in your show, the tag for your feed looks like this:

<itunes:explicit>yes</itunes:explicit>

A nice wholesome podcast gets no label at all using this tag:

<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>

While the RSS 2.0 <category> tag may be populated with any text, Apple has a specific list of requirements for the <itunes:category> tag. Currently iTunes supports 19 categories, with a smaller subset of them supporting a specific list of subcategories. You may designate more than one subcategory where appropriate. These categorizations are used to determine the hierarchy within the iTunes Music Store Podcast Section, so it's important to pay attention to what is allowed. iTunes allows multiple top-level category definitions for the same podcast, but will default to the first one listed when cataloging the Podcast in the iTunes Music Store.

Within your RSS 2.0 feed, an iTunes category with two subcategories looks like this:

<itunes:category text="Technology">
<itunes:category text="Computers" />
<itunes:category text="News" />
</itunes:category>

Top level categories are listed in bold below with subcategories immediately following. If a category has no subcategories, the next top level category is listed.

Arts & Entertainment Architecture Books Design Entertainment Games Performing Arts Photography Poetry Science Fiction Audio Blogs Business Careers Finance Investing Management Marketing Comedy Education K-12 Higher Education Food Health Diet & Nutrition Fitness Relationships Self-Help Sexuality International Australian Belgian Brazilian Canadian Chinese Dutch French German Hebrew Italian Japanese Norwegian Polish Portuguese Spanish Swedish

Movies & Television Music News Politics Public Radio Religion & Spirituality Buddhism Christianity Islam Judaism New Age Philosophy Spirituality Science Sports Talk Radio Technology Computers Developers Gadgets Information Technology News Operating Systems Podcasting Smart Phones Text/Speech Travel

One key area where I see iTunes making a big difference in the podcasting space is improving the subscription process. Currently, most of the subscribe options require podcasters to explain to users how to right-click and copy the URL before pasting it into a specific podcast receiving application or news aggregator. At the moment, most of us are stuck with scaring listeners away when they click on a link that reveals raw RSS code. A few javascript hacks have attempted to make this better, but the real solution is to have something imbedded in the URL that directs listeners to a subscription location. iTunes does this better than any other option (assuming your podcast is already listed in iTunes) Clicking on a link to the iTunes page for your podcast launches iTunes and displays the page with the option to preview specific "episodes" or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

There are two ways to accomplish the iTunes launch. You can reference a standard http://link, which looks like this:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73330048

Or you can use the iTunes Music Store Specific reference prefaced with itms:// which looks like this:

itms://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73330048

Both options direct subscribers to your page in iTunes with a simply one-click subscribe process directly in iTunes.

Visit The Freesound Project

Just listening to the cacophony of sounds I hear walking down the street to the grocery store, I know sound wants to be free. So where do all those free sounds go at the end of the day? They make their way to The Freesound Project, which is a growing database of audio clips, sound effects, beeps, boops, and other audible tidbits released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. Like all things free, your mileage may vary when looking for sounds in this collection. Not all sounds are released at identical quality levels and not all sample submissions are of the same caliber. Still, the data base has an outstanding preview feature allowing for listening to individual files or layers of files playing simultaneously. If you've been seeking a place where you can find great noises to include in your own creations, this is a great place to start. And if you have the rights to any sounds you'd like to make available to others, this is a good way to share the wealth.

One of the bigger hassles in editing voice audio tracks is cleaning up loud pops in the recording where plosive 'p' and 'b' sounds cause a burst of volume. These are easily avoided by placing a screen between the person speaking or singing and the microphone. By creating a fixed distance between the vocalist and the microphone you get the added bonus of reducing sibilant sounds made through speaking words with 's' and 'ch'. Buying a pop screen from a music supply store will set you back $20-30, depending on the quality of the screen and the stand it's mounted on. It's easy to build your own screen with some nylons and an embroidery hoop available at most craft stores for a couple of dollars.

To get started podcasting, you don't need any fancy equipment. Refer to my article on the absolute basics of recording a podcast to get started. In that article, I show you how a disposable microphone connected to your computer is really all you need to launch your podcasting career. Audio quality is somewhat lacking with a low-end microphone, in part because cheap microphones are notorious for picking up all kinds of room noise (which often includes the computer fan noise). Audio clarity ultimately suffers and it becomes vital to seek out better quality tools. After you get the basics figured out, there are several things you can do to improve the quality of your podcast, without breaking the bank.

Recording audio or editing video on your PC is resource intensive. Anytime you plan on recording, whether it's a narrative description for a home movie, conversion of your favorite old records, or the monologue for your next podcast, make sure your computer is optimized for recording before you start. Some of the tasks described here cover things that are good system maintenance practices and some are things specific to making sure you get the best recording possible out of your PC. All of the recommendations are designed to help eliminate your computer hardware as a possible trouble spot in the audio recording or video editing process.

Turn off Unnecessary Applications - IM clients are useful communication tools but are better left shut down when doing system intensive multimedia maneuvering. Turn off other background applications like anti-virus, firewall and spyware detection tools. Yes these are important for safe Internet browsing, but you shouldn't be connected to the Internet while you are recording. If you feel uncomfortable with disabling these services, unplug your network cable while you capture video or record audio, there are no known nasties that can infect a disconnected computer (If you need information from removable disks, scan them before shutting down these services). When you're done recording, re-enable all these tools.

Shutdown Unnecessary Services - Several applications are known to run in the background even when you don't have them open. This consumes extra memory that could be dedicated to your video or audio project. The software companies do this so the apps load faster when you click on them, but you don't want extra stuff running during processor and memory intensive media projects. One common culprit is iTunes, which runs two helper apps in the background waiting to launch if you dock your iPod (even if you don't own one) or click on a music file. On the other hand, there are some services your system needs to function, like lsass.exe. explorer.exe and alg.exe. Don't terminate any of the processes Windows requires to function or you will be rebooting. If you aren't comfortable shutting processes down, this might be a step worth skipping.

Say No to Disk Compression - Saving your audio files in a compressed format like WMA or MP3 may be a necessity for distribution but you don't want to compress your storage space. Everytime a disk write operation is performed the disk must temporarily be decompressed and recompressed when this feature is turned on. This not only consumes additional system resources it may damage your audio and video files.

Disable the Indexing Service - Indexing is supposed to make it faster to find files on your system. Whether indexing is turned on or not, Windows is not a very capable search tool. Save the system resources consumed by Indexing for your multimedia processing and turn off indexing. If you need an effective search tool, download the free Copernic Desktop Search. Copernic does index your files, but you can configure it not to hog the system while you're using other applications and it finds things far more effectively than the built in Windows Search.

Defrag Your Hard Drive - A fragmented hard drive can cause a variety of problems for large audio and video files. If you plan on working with audio and video editing applications frequently keep your system optimized. Defragging regularly is a smart habit to get into regardless of your audio and video habits. You can rely on the built-in defrag tool or upgrade to one of the full versions of Diskeeper or DiskMagik.

Turn Off System Sounds - All those warning beeps and event sounds that make noise when you click things can show up in your recording depending on how things are configured. Playing system WAV files has also been know to cause a shift in sample rates with some sound cards, which throws off the quality of your audio recording. Configure the system for no sounds from the Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices. On the Sounds tab, select No Sounds as your Sound scheme.

Optimize Video Performance - By default Windows XP enables lots of cute features designed to make the visual appearance more polished by adding drop shadows, fades and animated effects for window changes. These all increase the load on system resources but do nothing to improve the audio and video recording experience. You can turn all these features off, displaying what looks more like Windows 2000 or Windows 98 by opening the System Properties (WinKey+Pause Break), Clicking the Advanced Tab and clicking the Settings button in the Performance Section. With the Visual Effects tab displayed, switch to the option to Adjust for Best Performance, turning off all those extra appearance effects.

Control Sound Card Latency - If you've ever talked on your cell phone and heard your own voice echo in the earpiece, you are familiar with sound latency. Latency in sound recordings is virtually impossible to fix, so it's better to configure your system to deal with it ahead of time. The Advanced Tab of the Performance Options contains a section called Processor scheduling. The two options give priority to your applications or to background services. For best performance of your sound card, setting this to background services will help reduce potential latency issues. This is particularly helpful if you use MIDI instruments or want to record softphone calls through a service like Skype.

Store Project Files on a Second Drive - Your system drive is busy handling the tasks that make Windows work properly. It's likely the place you installed your audio and video editing applications. Use a second drive (either internal or external) to store the media for your projects, allowing the second drive to handle all the write-intensive operations of importing video from a digital video camera or recording an audio signal from a microphone or instruments.

You still have plenty to keep in mind to achieve a quality audio recording or video project, but following these simple steps will help prepare your system for the opportunity to succeed in making great multimedia.

There are plenty of reasons to record a telephone conversation. One of the most fun may be recording a call to customer service for purposes of maintaining your own quality assurance. A more popular reason for recording a phone call is to save both sides of the call as a recorded performance or interview. The podcasting craze brings a flood of questions about call recording to my inbox on a regular basis, so it's time to address the idea of call recording in a way that outlines both the recording options and the methods for recording a call.

Call Recording Options

There are several options available for call recording, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Radio Shack sells two different types of Telephone Recording Controls which are used to connect your phone to a recording device of some kind. A more expensive hardware solution, known as a digital hybrid, offers more control over the recording volume of both sides of the call at a drastic increase in expense. If you have a voice modem in your PC, several software applications are capable of recording all audio that passes through the modem. And there's also the option of recording a call placed through a service like Skype.

Publishing your podcast will vary slightly depending on which tools you use for blogging and where you host your audio files. At the most basic level you need enough storage space to host the podcast audio file, enough bandwidth to support the subscribers to your podcast, and an RSS 2.0 feed for people to subscribe to. Hosting options become complicated when you reach a large audience of subscribers. Most of the cheap Web hosting services aren't designed to handle transfer of large files.

Before You Upload

One of the most important things to do prior to uploading your podcast is to edit the ID3 tags in the MP3 file to add identifying information. ID3 tags tell your media player and portable audio player things like artist, title of the track, and genre which listeners use to sort audio files.

Most music players, like Windows Media Player have built in tag editing. I personally like the shell extension AudioShell for editing MP3 files because I can right-click the file and quickly edit the Title, Artist, Album, Genre, Year and add comments about the file.

Some of the managed blog services, like Typepad, offer storage space and could be used for podcasting, but the amount of file transfer available quickly runs out with just a few subscribers to your podcast. Blogger offers free accounts but doesn't currently support enclosing media files in a syndication format. If you have a hosting provider where you already upload audio and video files, you may be able to use FeedBurner to create the necessary RSS feed for distributing your podcast. FeedBurner is free and offers a simple wizard driven interface for generating the podcast feed.

Assuming you've never published a blog before and you don't have a hosting provider, the most straightforward podcast setup can be accomplished for about $5 per month using Liberated Syndication. If you plan on making a long term investment in your podcast, finding a solution allowing you to have more control over the process is your best bet. In the meantime, Liberated Syndication can get you started for minimal cost.

Disclosure: I have no affiliation with this service other than paying the $5 monthly fee for their base account.

Setting up an account with Liberated Syndication gives you the ability to post text just like you would on a normal blog. The account offers an interface for uploading audio files (or video). When you make a new post with a link to your podcast audio file, it automatically generates the necessary RSS feed for subscribers to get your podcast.

After creating an account with Liberated Syndication, login and configure the basic settings, publishing your first podcast is easy:

Click the podcast / blog tab, choose or create a category, title your post, add an image (if you want one), type a description for the podcast, upload the podcast file, and click the post button. When the uploading process is complete, your podcast will be live.

The page template is configurable, including being able to add Google Adsense and defining your own stylesheet. There's also an option for creating quick posts that automatically generate a new post if you upload an audio file to the site.

For an example of a site created using Liberated Syndication visit:
http://jakeludington.libsyn.com/

Aside from logging into Google to generate some Adsense code, everything you see on that sample podcasting page was automatically generated, including the layout and the RSS feed.

There are other solutions for free, but using Liberated Syndication eliminates virtually all of the possible errors because you don't have to type anything to generate the feed. I also handle all the podcast setup for The Chris Pirillo Show, which uses Movable Type to generate the RSS feed. More than once the audio file didn't get enclosed properly due to a typo. With Liberated Syndication's interface, typos are virtually impossible.

Get More Great Podcasting Tips

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• Find the right recording gear
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Recording voice audio can be a complicated process, but it doesn't need to be. I'm getting frequent questions about how to record a podcast and ultimately share the end result with people. Ideally, you want to invest in some audio recording gear to make your podcast sound good, but to get started, you don't need anything fancy.

Adding support for LAME MP3 encoding in Audacity is reasonably simple, but requires a manual installation of the codec and a few steps to connect the audio editor to the codec. Adding LAME to Audacity allows you to save your podcast as an MP3 file instead of uncompressed WAV format audio or OGG.

To add LAME support to Audacity first download the latest stable version of the LAME codec and unzip the files to a folder on your hard drive. For simplicity, putting the files in a folder like C:\LAME makes them easy to find.

Now it's time to connect your portable device and setup auto synchronization.

If you've never connected your portable device to setup auto synchronization, WMP10 will automatically prompt you to set up a profile. If you previously connected the device, you'll need to manually launch the wizard by clicking the Display properties and settings button.

Click the Settings button to launch the Auto sync device setup.

Choose Automatic and check the box next to Customize the playlists that will be synchronized.

Scroll through the list of available playlists until you find the Podcasts playlist. Check the box next to Podcasts and click Finish.

Depending on the available space on your device, you may want to let WMP10 optimize the files during the transfer process. This is particularly important if a variable bit rate file was used for the channel programming, because many players don't support variable bit rate files.

At this point, WMP10 will automatically transfer audio to your portable media player. Each time you connect the device, WMP10 will compare the content on the device to the content on the playlist and automatically keep the files in sync.

Back to the Beginning

Open Windows Media Player 10.

Open Tools > Options and click the Library tab.

Click the Monitor Folders button, then click the Add button to browse to Program Files\iPodder\downloads. Click OK to add this folder to the WMP10 watch list. Keep clicking OK until you have closed the Options window.

Click on the Library tab, right-click the Auto Playlists header and choose New from the menu. This launches the Auto Playlist wizard.

Name your playlist.

Click the link to add criteria below Music in my Library. Create an auto playlist that includes the following by selecting More for the list of criteria.

File Name Contains :\Program Files\iPodder\downloads

That parameter automatically adds everything in the downloads folder (and sub-folders) to your Podcasts playlist. If you want to transfer all the content, you can stop right here and skip to Syncing To Your Portable Media Player. If you subscribe to more than one or two programs, your playlist will rapidly grow out of control.

Use this parameter to keep content fresh with the daily audio programming:

Date added To Library Is After Yesterday

The Auto Playlist only includes content downloaded on the current date. You can extend this a little bit by changing the parameter to Is After Last 7 Days.

Sync A Podcast to Your Portable Media Player

Download and install the iPodder app for Windows.

Visit the iPodder.org Podcasts page to subscribe to content. At this point you'll need to copy and past a URL into the iPodder app.

Click the Check for new podcasts button to automatically download newly subscribed content.

You can set iPodder to automatically check for new audio to automate the process. I set mine to check every 12 hours, because most of the sites aren't updating content more frequently and I'm too lazy to pick specific times.

Until you want to subscribe to more channels, that's the last time you'll need to touch iPodder. Keep the app running in your system tray and it will dutifully download new programs as they are posted.

Creating a Podcast Playlist

Podcasting makes time shifting downloadable audio or video a piece of cake, as long as you have the right tools. At the most basic level, you subscribe to a broadcast channel using iPodder, which watches for updates to the channel and automatically downloads new files to your PC or Mac.

At the moment, full automation of the process is the process is possible only when using iPodder in combination with Mac OS X, iTunes, and an iPod. In the Mac OS X scenario, iPodder not only downloads new content, it automatically transfers the content to an iPod connected to the Mac. iPod owners connecting via Windows get automatic downloads, automatic population of the content in iTunes, but must manually initiate the transfer from PC to iPod.

If you don't have an iPod (which probably means you also aren't using iTunes), the auto-download still works, but there's no interaction with Windows Media Player at this point, and there's no automated transfer of content to any non-iPod portable device.

With millions of devices able to receive audio content automatically through Windows Media Player. (Pocket PC, Rio Karma, Creative MuVo, Creative Zen PMC and Dell DJ are just the devices I own that fit this description), it's only a matter of time before we see an iPodder client with software media player independence. In the meantime, using the autoplaylist feature of Windows Media Player 10, combined with Auto-synchronization is an easy hack for streamlining the process. In fact, this hack is more fully automatic than the Windows/iTunes/iPod solution.

Receiving A Podcast on a PC