Something That Happened.

Hardware

I use a Blue & White Power Mac, one that you could probably now call an "old" Mac now that it's been around for nearly 6 years. It's got a 500MHz PowerPC G4 inside the engine case (a Sonnet upgrade), accompanied by 384 megs of RAM. I've also added an Adaptec PowerDomain 29160 64-bit PCI SCSI card, which allows for data rates of up to 160MB per second. I'm low on hard drive space--a mere 9 gigs inside and another 9 attached externally--so I have to burn alot of CDs to clear my recorded audio from my drives.

Software

I record using a piece of freeware called Audio Recorder which lets you record in AIFF or MP3 file formats, then I import my recordings into the freeware app Audacity in order to be edited. (I don't record directly to Audacity because the program often crashes on my system, which is currently running Panther. Panther itself never crashes, but Audacity sometimes misbehaves. Still, it's a great program, and free.) Once I've completed my editing, I save the file as an AIFF and import it into iTunes, another free application. So all of the software I'm using is currently freely available (except for the operating system).

Audio Hardware

Now here, perhaps, are the most important components of my setup. I have a nice microphone that I picked up on eBay for about $100, a Beyer M58 I learned about reading Transom.org's Tools column. I was unable to get any sound out of the mic and onto my hard drive until I purchased a Behringer Eurorack UB802 mixer, a very basic mixer you can carry around in your backpack with your Powerbook. (The Chris Lydon Web Studio, which has a design objective of portability, has the same mixer.)

Technique

This is my basic recording process, though I'm constantly experimenting with new methods of recording. I fire up the Mac, including the external hard drive, and open the Audio Recorder application. I plug in the mixer and set its levels accordingly, depending on whether I'm going to whisper into the mic or yell and holler. If I'm recording a "live" show, I plug various recording devices into the mixer--CD players, cassette players, microcassette players, etc.--and cue them to the audio I wish to add to the mix. Otherwise, I simply record my voice, then record the additional material and import everything into Audacity to mix and edit. Once the recording is mixed/edited to my satisfaction, I export it and then encode it to 128kbps VBR MP3.

During the recording process, when I desire to add a soundbyte from another podcast, I usually use an MP3 CD player to playback the sound. This requires burning an MP3 CD with the podcast(s) I wish to incorporate into my recording. Had I an iPod, it would be much easier since I wouldn't have to waste time burning the CD, but since I usually burn a CD full of podcasts before retiring for the evening anyway, it's not that big a deal.