Podcast Gear: When to Upgrade and What Really Matters

Dave Jackson [00:00:00]:
Ask the podcast coach for December 7, 2024.

Jim Collison [00:00:03]:
Let's get ready to podcast.

Dave Jackson [00:00:07]:
There it is. It's that music. That means it's Saturday morning. It's time for ask the podcast coach where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting dot com, and joining me right over there is the one and only Jim Collison from the average guy dot tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy?

Jim Collison [00:00:27]:
Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. Good to be with you. I know it's always good to be here on a Saturday morning. A crisp, chilly Saturday morning.

Dave Jackson [00:00:35]:
It is. Yeah. I went out this morning, got some gas in the car, and, you know, you bend over in certain ways and the wind hits you and you're like, oh, wow. That's,

Jim Collison [00:00:46]:
that's not

Dave Jackson [00:00:48]:
good. Yeah. And I am I don't know why, but it's always good when you start off the show with some complaints about your technology. But I'm gonna click the button right now. Okay. And, of course, it worked. A second ago when I said I'm Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting, nothing happened. And then I said, hey.

Dave Jackson [00:01:04]:
And over there is Jim Collison. And it waited 5 seconds, and then it kicked you in. And, of course, now it's working great because Yeah. It just it

Jim Collison [00:01:11]:
was just waking up. It's chilly.

Dave Jackson [00:01:13]:
It is. It's cold. It's chilly. The stream deck's a little, you know, little groggy this morning. So Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. But you know what? They'll wake you up.

Jim Collison [00:01:21]:
A little bit coffee.

Dave Jackson [00:01:23]:
That's right. So and that coffee pour is brought to you by our good friend, Mark, over at podcastbranding.co. The beautiful thing about Mark is I've used him for a lot of my products, and, yeah, he's gonna sit down with you 1 on 1, and you could go to a guy on, I don't know, Fiverr or wherever, and they're gonna give you one example. They're gonna be like, alright. Here's your artwork. And you go, yeah. But could you get it? No. Mark's gonna give you 3.

Dave Jackson [00:01:52]:
At least 3, I would think. I know when I've used him, he's always given me 3. So you can go, alright. What if I took part of number 3 and put it with number 1 and use the font from number like, you can completely customize this to where you're a 100% happy, not just like, here's your artwork. Thanks for your money. I'm out of here. He really wants to make sure that you are happy with your artwork and it really matches your brand. And if you go, I don't know that if I have a brand.

Dave Jackson [00:02:18]:
Well, he's not just an artwork guy. He can work on your website. Anything that you're putting out to the public, he can help you with. So when you're ready to look good, there's only one place to go, and that is podcastbranding.co.

Jim Collison [00:02:39]:
Such happy music. Big thanks to our good friend Dan Laffebvre over there based on a true story, based on a true story, based on a true story podcast dot com. Today, as we're recording this December 7, this is Pearl Harbor Day here in the United States. And of course, he released Torah, Torah, Torah. So if you want to go back and look, if you're a World War II enthusiast of some kind I always, those two words don't go together. Nobody's enthusiastic about war, but maybe about the time period. Check it out today. His review out there with John Parcel is available right now.

Jim Collison [00:03:10]:
Check it out: basedonatruestorypodcast.com. Dan, thanks for your sponsorship. It's, Dave, it's a lot like, I wanted to say, you know, Happy Pearl Harbor Day, but you don't really say it that way. Right? You know, it was, of course, a very tragic day in American history. But, but

Dave Jackson [00:03:27]:
A day that will live in infamy, if I remember right?

Jim Collison [00:03:30]:
I think so. Yeah. Oh, you even kind of had the accent right on that one.

Dave Jackson [00:03:34]:
Yeah. I just remember it's, you know, because it's from 1942 or whatever. And I don't think it was I should know. This is where I'm not a history buff. But I I wanna say Eisenhower, but that might be too early.

Jim Collison [00:03:45]:
No. Roosevelt.

Dave Jackson [00:03:46]:
Roosevelt. There you go. Yeah. So a day that will live in yeah. Because it's always bad audio. Yeah. That's always good.

Jim Collison [00:03:54]:
Listen, you see, it's a little bit like podcasting 15 years ago where you could see the difference between the technology. Right? You look back, even some of those early, like in the forties, in the Senate, you know, or in those buildings, they're dark. Like, they're not lit very well. And, and the microphones are giant, you know, these giant things with, with metal around them. And I mean, it was, it's just, wow, that was, that's really the way they did it back then. But the lighting is the most shocking in that building. And you go back and watch some of those things. It's just dark in there.

Jim Collison [00:04:30]:
And these big stone buildings that are just pitch black. Today, of course, I mean, everything is designed for the TV camera, right? Everything is designed to pick up the sound, but not so much in 1941.

Dave Jackson [00:04:41]:
Well, that and cameras are much more adept at recording in low light situations and then lights are so much better. I remember being that it's, you know, we're closing in on Christmas. My uncle would take home movies every year. And every year after dinner, we would all sit in the living room and watch last year's home movie and the year before and the year before. And this was I remember he had these lights and every home movie is people, especially if you're up close, just here's somebody going and just squinting. I can't see because I have the sun in front of me with a movie camera. It's like one of the worst movies ever. Old

Jim Collison [00:05:20]:
family photos, when you would take them in the sun, because that was the best sunlight, but then every, everybody's

Dave Jackson [00:05:26]:
got this Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:05:29]:
Oh, the seventies. Thank God for the seventies.

Dave Jackson [00:05:34]:
Well, but speaking of that, it's it is interesting that the just if you think about the other day, I was, I still have one. I'm going through I have so much stuff. It turns out last night I have a friend coming over, that comes in about once a quarter. I grew up with him. I've known him for over 40 years. And so my house is always a mess. And so I'm like, you know what? I've got all this Christmas stuff I got. I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to look what's in my closets.

Dave Jackson [00:06:02]:
I have so much gear in my closet. Like, I have the brand new Tascam Mixcast 4 just sitting here in the box. I think I used it once and never used it again. And but looking at this stuff, one of them is a MixPre 6 and that thing was like that thing was like $800.

Jim Collison [00:06:19]:
Yeah, that's a nice box.

Dave Jackson [00:06:21]:
Yeah. And of course, there's a newer model, but it's amazing looking at that was $800, I don't know, probably 6 years ago. And now you can get them, you know, PodTrak P4 that pretty much does everything. Now granted the what do you call it? The things the preamps in the MixPre are far superior than the Zoom one. But the Zoom one is definitely worth using. But yeah, I need to have another garage sale. And just like here, I think it's Tom Buck, who's a really popular YouTuber, and he he does the same thing. He he buys stuff, and he's I'm not gonna use this anymore.

Dave Jackson [00:06:57]:
And so he'll he just sells it. I think it's whatever it is. It's $100 plus $25 for sure.

Jim Collison [00:07:02]:
Yeah. And he's This could just get rid of it.

Dave Jackson [00:07:03]:
He's losing his shirt, but he's yeah. It's not making me any money in my closet.

Jim Collison [00:07:07]:
Well, you're losing it. It's just sitting there you're losing your shirt. Like at some point, it's gonna be worthless. This is my dilemma is I hold on to stuff until it's absolutely obsolete. And then you're like, Oh, yeah, Okay. That's the window. It's not really gonna work anymore. You know, pulling the Zune out of the drawer or, you know, some of those kinds of things.

Jim Collison [00:07:29]:
Got some Radio Shack equipment, right? And you're like, Yeah, this doesn't make any sense anymore. There's a sweet spot in there. Just when we think about podcasters and podcasting equipment and the sales cycle that goes with this, there's a sweet spot in there. And there's individuals that are really good at this of buying a piece of equipment, using it for 3 or 4 years. It's kind of seemed to be a good spot for that equipment. And then replacing it, and when you replace it, selling the piece of equipment, half or half or a quarter or what just getting something out of it and moving on. That is not me, but there are people who are really good at that. The opposite end is individuals who are replacing their equipment every 6 months because something new came out, right? We have the RODECaster Pro 17.

Jim Collison [00:08:15]:
And you're like, Didn't 16 come out in June? And you're like, Yeah, it did. But I gotta have the 17. I, maybe I'm talking about iPhones. Maybe that's what I'm talking about.

Dave Jackson [00:08:24]:
I just bought, I just bought the Shure Move mic, Right? The little lavs, you know, and literally 2 weeks later, Rode came out with their little smaller version. Now the Shure still like the Shure microphones are the size of your thumbnail. They're really tiny. But it's every time you buy anything, it's like, you know, Randy says, did anyone see that the Zoom PodTrak P8 is on sale for $249 Yeah. Which I'm kind of hoping when I see, like, equipment go like right now, the focus rights, all the Vocaster 1 and Vocaster, those are getting really cheap. And that usually means they're getting ready to come out with a new version or usually that a really kick in the gear after the new version comes out. And you're like, wait, why is this so cheap? And you're like, oh, it's their Vocaster 3 now. Okay.

Dave Jackson [00:09:14]:
And it's got, you know, whatever, some new feature that you probably may or may not use, but you got to get it because it's the new one. And, you know, you want to be like the cool kids.

Jim Collison [00:09:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the cycle, right? I think we're into the cycle now where, these organizations are, you know, so you do, you spend the year in R and D development getting ready to go. And then for Black Friday, you clear out all your inventory of the old stuff. You make an announcement about it in January at CES, and then you start selling them February March timeframe. It's different for everybody, but you know, that, that general timeframe. And you just kind of lather, rinse, repeat every year. So we see these cycles go on pretty quickly.

Jim Collison [00:09:55]:
One of the things that's been interesting, microphones themselves have been fairly stale in their development. Like we haven't seen a lot of new microphone types. You know, they're sure there's been some the wireless labs have had some development stuff. But what reminded me of that is this week, or last week, one of my, one of my engineers at work said, Hey, we're getting you a new microphone. And I was like, Well, I didn't ask for 1. Like, Why? And he said, I thought you'd be happy you want, you want it. And he says that, We're gonna get you Shure SM7Bs. And I was like, Oh, I mean, I've used an 182100 for 12 years.

Jim Collison [00:10:34]:
It's a great microphone it works. He's, Yeah, no, I want to get you a better one. And you're gonna get you I want one of those low profile,

Dave Jackson [00:10:44]:
boom arms

Jim Collison [00:10:45]:
that, yeah, that comes up from the bottom. And he's, I don't like the over the top thing. And I'm like, Okay. Well, I'm not gonna say no. And so yesterday, he, yesterday, I got an email, and he was like, Your new toys are in. Do you want to meet me in the studio? So we had a day of setting up, monkeying around with hold on. Can you give me another coffee?

Dave Jackson [00:11:06]:
Oh, absolutely.

Jim Collison [00:11:07]:
Is that Sarah's Yeah, Sarah's looking for some coffee, so she's

Dave Jackson [00:11:12]:
down here. There we go.

Jim Collison [00:11:14]:
So we got the we'll put the there you go. We got the boom arm in, the mic set up. We got it tested. It sounds really good. I mean, does it sound we always say this, you know, it's a $400 mic, right? $400 versus 100. Is it 400 is it $300 better? Maybe. But it looks good. I mean, I've got it like you coming straight up, and it'll be the reason we did that was, we're doing, they kind of want to standardize our podcast setup across our sites.

Jim Collison [00:11:45]:
So the guy who has to do that, it's like, Okay, I want a standard setup. Whenever we do something, I'm gonna buy this and this, and they're gonna go in. And the, the support guys are gonna know exactly how to set them up and exactly how to put them in. And so we have a new studio going in, sort of a pop up studio going in, in Chicago. And we've built one in Washington, D. C. So they've got now what he was really doing for me was standardizing my setup for the setup they put in the D. C, so everybody's the same.

Jim Collison [00:12:14]:
And that's smart, right? Standardizing that equipment.

Dave Jackson [00:12:17]:
Yes. So what's your, what's your plugging? Yeah. What you be plug no, the SM7B is going into what?

Jim Collison [00:12:25]:
Oh, a Focusrite. Yeah. Focusrite. Yeah. Because 4 I've got the big one with the 4.

Dave Jackson [00:12:30]:
Yeah. Because Chris was saying, you might want to throw a Cloudlifter on that. He's like, if you're going into a Focusrite, it probably has a lot of gain too. Now I think the game

Jim Collison [00:12:38]:
turned up quite a bit on that to still make it work. A Cloudlifter could work. I'm not gonna at least at this point. I think it's gonna be fine. But

Dave Jackson [00:12:45]:
Is there do you like the sound of your voice on that mic? Because people always go, Dave, you're using a PodMic USB. And I've got it's sitting right here. Well, it was I have an SM 7 b right behind me. No. It's right here. I see it.

Jim Collison [00:13:00]:
Oops.

Dave Jackson [00:13:01]:
Right? I could and it's look. It's oh, it's the Joe Rogan mic. And I don't hate this mic. I just like my voice on this mic better. And so Yeah. Yeah. I mean and before this, I had the RE320. And I like my I'm I don't know if it's because I'm you know, what I joke, but I'm kind of not joking.

Dave Jackson [00:13:19]:
I'm assuming there are higher frequencies that I used to hear that I don't anymore. And so I always tend to boost the I like my s's and t's very clear. And on that mic, they were really clear. And Jim was always like, I thought we thought you sounded a little it's a little harsh, you know, in this one. Yeah. The SM7B is definitely more muddy. And that's where I'm to me. I'm like, this is one kind of in the middle.

Dave Jackson [00:13:42]:
It's got it's still got the low end. But and I love the fact that this has basically if you're using this is the Rode Pod mic USB and you can kind of go in and make your settings and then save them in the mic. But I think that only works if you're using the USB, which I'm not. This is going into the RodeCaster Duo. But in the end, I just like the way, you know, pretty much it. This is where I kind of go. It doesn't matter because no matter what mic I have on this, I'm gonna dial it in until my ears go. So but I mean, do you like your voice better than that mic? Do you?

Jim Collison [00:14:16]:
Better? It's fuller than this microphone. Like it's just a fuller version of, you know, just a little bit. And it's really hard to tell, to be honest. But, and I left the settings on the back just flat. I didn't change anything on, you know, there's a, there's 2 sets of settings on the back where you can kind of change the thing make it do. So I read the instructions. I'm like, Well, let's just start. I'm a big stock guy.

Jim Collison [00:14:39]:
I like to leave things kind of stock, if at all possible. So we're gonna leave it stock for now. We'll test it. We'll do some full tests. I have some recordings coming up next week. This would have been a good week to have it. I had 4 recordings this week. So that would have been a nice, nice thing to have.

Jim Collison [00:14:54]:
But we'll test it out over the holidays. And then I have a full, you know, I have a full recording schedule that we're starting to set up starting, you know, post like January. So it'll get a lot of use. You know, you think about this: By the time you record it, and then you record it to stream we use StreamYard you record it into StreamYard, and then it gets downloaded, and some, my audio editor processes it in some way. And then you take it and push it into an MP3 file, which, where it's getting compressed. And then you also, you're pushing it to YouTube, which they add compression to it as well when they process it. You know, you kind of wonder, it makes it, you're like, Yes, garbage in, garbage out. And if you can start with the best possible signal you can get, You can create those, as much data that sounds good to start with.

Jim Collison [00:15:44]:
But I just wonder, Dave, how much you lose in all the walk downs of, you know, it's kind of like the power company, you know, they're sending 9,000 volts at you're right. And by the time it gets to you, it's stepped down to 240, you know, a 3 phase 240. You kind of just wonder what, yeah, you know, what it, what it goes through. Randy says, So your content is still 100% live streamed. And that is true we still do everything live first. It made me think, David, maybe you could give me some advice on this. He was like I can't believe I said No to this. He, my, he's I said, Well, now I'm gonna have to replace my mic at home, because the studio at home has an ETR 2,100.

Jim Collison [00:16:26]:
He goes, You want me to send you one? I was like, No. I'm not, I'm working, I'm not working at home anymore for the podcast stuff I do for Gallup. I'm like, No, I can't really. That doesn't let's not do that. But it made me think I've always had this microphone, because it Okay, if you look down here on the screen, the averageguy. Tv, I try to represent the average guy. I've always had this microphone because it's an average guy microphone. I wanted to tell people, You don't have to have an RE20.

Jim Collison [00:16:54]:
You don't have to have a Shure SM7B. You don't have to have a, you know, a $500 microphone. You can do it for $50 or $70 or $100, depending on when you get the deal on these things. So I just yeah, Chris says, Missed opportunity. Yeah, well, no. I mean, I'm a stockholder in the company. They don't need to be paying sending me a mic for home. It is.

Jim Collison [00:17:15]:
I mean, some people would have jumped at that. But, so, so, but I do have, I, it kind of makes me think, Okay, at work, if I'm gonna switch, I'll have to see. I have to use that microphone for a while and see if I really like it. Maybe I'll upgrade. Maybe I won't. My Average Guy brand wants me to stay on this microphone because it's a really good mic for the price.

Dave Jackson [00:17:35]:
Yep. You can't beat it. Everybody's talking preamps in the in the chat room. And one of the things that I know, I think it was Chris that mentioned the Cloudlifter. The thing I've never and and I feel bad because the guy gave me one. Mr. Cloud gave me a Cloudlifter and it works great. But and it's really handy if you need an extension cord for your mic cable because you have to plug the mic into this thing and then another mic cable in the other end of it.

Dave Jackson [00:18:07]:
So you end up with 2 mic cables with it being in the middle, which is great if you need to extend it. But if you don't, now you've got another 10 feet of cable that you when you only need 6, you know. So I like the FetHead. I think Randy had mentioned that Randy Black. Because the FetHead, you just plug into the mic cable and then plug it into the the mic. So you don't have this extra box and an extra cable. But I know the Rode caster duo and the pro 2 or whatever it was. They're like, you don't need a Fed head.

Dave Jackson [00:18:39]:
And I don't know that it would hurt using 1 as long as you turned on whatever that's called, fan

Jim Collison [00:18:45]:
Turn down your, yeah, turn down your gain. I mean, you're just adding it can't say an additional step. If you need it, it just depends what you like. I think in this regard, with microphones, it depends on what you like. What's the sound is it giving you the sound that you want? You know, I've, these ATR 2,100s are gain hungry. And if you get a cheap audio device, you got to crank it all the way to the end there. And so, in that case, do you spend another $100 on a lifter, on a box you should have just spent $300 on to get the good preamps to begin with, if you're gonna do it? So I don't know. Listen, I think that's a preference.

Jim Collison [00:19:23]:
I really do think that's a preference. You can do, you do what you feel is best for your audio.

Dave Jackson [00:19:27]:
Well, that's it. Ralph asks from Ask Ralph podcast. So I have the road pod mic. Should I upgrade? I don't know. Do you like the sound of your voice? And if you go, Yeah, I think it sounds good. Well, then no, don't upgrade. It's really because anytime you upgrade to anything, set aside at least an hour to play with it, to dial it in, you know? So anytime it's like I say, oh, I'm going to add this to my show. Okay.

Dave Jackson [00:19:55]:
Don't forget to budget some time. I forget. I've been I think I got my last build. I was on like a 6 month, you know, payment plan for this YouTube course and it's dawned on me. I haven't watched a single video. It's paid for now and I have a lifetime deal. But I'm like, I said, oh, I wanna learn this YouTube stuff. And I did not set aside any time to learn the YouTube stuff.

Dave Jackson [00:20:17]:
So right now that money I've just lit on fire, you know, but so, you know? But I do. I plan on it. You know? So that's you just have to keep that in mind. Ralph has another question. He says, here's an obscure question. I use my office for both recording my podcast and seeing clients. You know, not moving. The prompter and mic is getting old.

Dave Jackson [00:20:38]:
Does anyone know or do setup consulting? Well, if you want things the the coolest setup I've ever seen was an ironing board. And somebody had taken an ironing board and they used, I think, some belts. And they they took a belt to hold down their interface. And they had, I think, another belt to hold down that they had a, like, a desktop stand. You just sit there and then the mic comes up and they put a belt on that. And then what they would do is when it was time to podcast, they would grab it and they and set it up and there was their stuff and all they had to do was plug it into whatever. And when they were done, they would unplug the cords. And I think they even set it up to where it would then fold up and they would fold down the mic stand and they would just put it over in a corner.

Dave Jackson [00:21:26]:
And then the mic cables, you know, how the you end up with the like the legs of the ironing border are taller because they've now stretched out. They would just hang the cables on that. Then it was just, you know, you could easily put that in a closet and just when it comes time, you drag it out, you set it up, plug it in, and there we go. Because they just said, look, you know, my spouse is not gonna go for me taking, you know, an office or a spare bedroom. That's the kids playroom and we can't go. Nope. Can't play in there anymore. Sorry.

Dave Jackson [00:21:55]:
You know, and they didn't want to play in the basement or something or whatever it was. So that was one. But that's where things like, you know, Jim was talking about, you know, when you attach a low boom arm, it's not hard to take off. But that's where if you want something portable, that's where you grab one of these, he said, holding up. This is basically made for drum kits. So it's got this really heavy bass on it. And then you basically, you know, put this on your desk. This was pointed at my guitar, but, you know, you basically can adjust this now and put it to wherever you want.

Dave Jackson [00:22:30]:
And when you're done, you move it and, you know, presto, your desk is back. So it kind of depends on what you're doing. The teleprompter, that's a different story. And that's where it would be easier, I think, if you've got your stuff set up, if you have room, just set up 2 chairs and a table. Like, not a desk, a table, like a coffee table. And so when it comes time to talk to the client, you just move 6 feet to the left in these nice comfy chairs. Let's talk a little business. I'll grab my notebook.

Dave Jackson [00:23:06]:
I don't know. What do you think, Jim, if you need? Because otherwise, you're, like, trying to talk to your client over

Jim Collison [00:23:11]:
the Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:23:12]:
The the teleprompter or you unscrew it. It's just look, I get it. I have a Sony ZV 100 camera right here. And the reason I quit using it is because I had to get out of my desk. I know the oh, the horror. But I had to get out of my desk, turn it on, unplug it, go to the menu and say, I want to do streaming and then plug the cable in. And it was just the fact that I had to get out of my chair and it was like with the Elgato, whatever it is, Facecam Pro, I just go turn on the camera. And I was like, you know what? It doesn't look that much better with this.

Dave Jackson [00:23:47]:
And I'm like, I'm just gonna go with the easy one. So I totally understand the it's kind of a pain in the butt to take it down every time. But I don't know. What are your thoughts, Jim?

Jim Collison [00:23:57]:
Well, every time you introduce any kind of cable movement or unplugging cables or moving things around, you always introduce a problem. It's just gonna, something's not gonna get seated properly. Something's not gonna work the way it did before. You know, eventually the cables wear out. I mean, that is a, that's really hard on equipment. You know, you think about sound I did a lot of live music stuff, you know, 20 years ago. And man, we would roll through cables like crazy, just, you know, from all the beating those things take. So I think it's always better, if you can we'll probably try cheaper to try to set up a studio and leave it as much as you can.

Jim Collison [00:24:40]:
If you can't, then I do, like I had, I imagine, Dave by the way, you were super kind on the sound that ironing board made when you open it up. You're like, Whoosh! And it's more like

Dave Jackson [00:24:52]:
It sounds yeah. It almost has a Godzilla movie, kind of, you know. Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:24:59]:
So Exactly. Yeah. That was you were a lot better that time. I hold on. Let me wipe the blood out of my ears. So the but if you could, if you can maybe compromise in the middle with kind of a setup in a box, so to speak, or something like, like the ironing board where you, things are on a box that maybe you move around or it's built into it, so that you're minimizing some of the cable in and out. Or, you know, with your computer, maybe you can use a docking station or you can use some cables to help minimize the number of times you have to plug and unplug it. It's just hard on, it's hard on stuff.

Jim Collison [00:25:39]:
I mean, think about like my lightning connection in the car that I use, you know, when I plug my phone in to, to get, to connect it to, to Apple Auto. Well, that lightning cable, man, it has a life expectancy of about a year before, you know, because it's unplug, plug, unplug, sitting in a cold car, sitting in a hot car, plug, unplug. So the more you can minimize that and set it up in a way that you're not moving cables around, I think the better. Hey, if you have to do it to get it done, it's what you have to do. But try to minimize the steps, I think, of where things are and, you know, try to get it, try to get them consolidated into something that's not moving around all the time. That'll save you some test and setup. Because there's always that time, there's that one time you're in a hurry, and you have a guest waiting, and you can't get your stuff together. And you're like, Oh, hold on just a second.

Jim Collison [00:26:29]:
Oh, I'm having oh, I can't. And then they're like, Who is this guy? So that's, that would be my advice.

Dave Jackson [00:26:37]:
Yeah. John is asking your thoughts on the Mackie DZL Creator XS that's a mouthful Versus the RodeCaster Duo. I have seen the Mackie. The reason somebody asked, do I like the Duo better than the RodeCaster Pro? And I do because it takes up about, I don't know a hand width of my desk. The pro I got the duo simply because a I'm never gonna have 4 people in here. I don't know if they would fit and I just wanted my desk back. And now in theory if I didn't do this show where I'm doing this is made for this right live streaming, I would just use the PodMic on the USB because the software that comes with this is basically a RodeCaster with the big bottom and the, you know, all the other things that that the RodeCaster has built in. With a Rode PodMic, it's like getting, you know, a RodeCaster single channel for just you doing solo.

Dave Jackson [00:27:37]:
So I mean I could in theory do this, but it would be a little trickier than depending on what I could have all the music in Ecamm and do the intro music that way if I really wanted to. But that the biggest thing was the space. And so when you compare that to the Mackie DZL, that thing is a beast. I saw it at a trade show. John, if you want to, you know, Darrell Darnell, reach out to Darrell because he was at the booth, I think for BSW at the time and they had one sitting there next to the Roadcaster And it the thing I would like about it being older is the screen is a whole lot bigger. So and I think it does maybe a little more. Again, speaking very much out of my butt here, but it seemed like you could do more without a computer on the Mackie. Like, you could actually go in and drag your finger on stuff.

Dave Jackson [00:28:30]:
So it looked a little more flexible. I just remember thinking, wow, that would take up my entire desk. So that was the my biggest reaction when I saw the Mackie one was like, wow, that thing is ginormous. But I think it was made maybe to be less dependent on a computer because there was a lot of stuff you could do right there on the screen. So it's always fun. So the other thing about the RODECaster, because I have one, it turns out it was in my closet. The original RODECaster is in my end. I'm like, well, I might be able to get $50 for that now.

Dave Jackson [00:29:05]:
And the difference between that one. So RodeCaster 1 versus RodeCaster 2, there was a noticeable difference in preamps. Now there wasn't it wasn't like when I was talking on the RodeCaster, it was like it wasn't that much hiss, but there was a little. But that again is listening in a quiet room, smashing your headphones into your head. Do you go, I think I hear more hiss. You know, it's so that one and it has a cover on. I was like, okay, I need to sell that. And so did I look at it and go, Oh, it's so much better.

Dave Jackson [00:29:40]:
Yeah, it was better. And I forget there was a couple other things. Oh, the fact that on the RodeCaster, when you export your files, you get all 16. Whether you only had one channel or not, you're getting 16 tracks of nothing. We're 15 of them. We're this, like, right now, I'm gonna get 4 track 5 tracks, because I have the sounds. I have me and I have Jim. And for whatever reason, I did not turn off channel 3.

Dave Jackson [00:30:03]:
So that was the other thing I really liked about it. A little faster to transfer the stuff over. But other than that, it's there wasn't a huge difference. I know they just came out. Somebody mentioned that they just came out with an upgrade. Yeah. Uncle Marv is doing well with their firmware updates, adding features like the virtual channels they just added. So what this is, if I want it's really made for gamers.

Dave Jackson [00:30:27]:
In fact, in the video from RODE, they're like, hey, this is for streamers. And so you want to have Spotify going to you, but you can't play that over your YouTube. You could easily route your music just to you and then if you you know maybe for a podcaster if you were using some sort of tool for sound effects and you didn't have nope, that's that doesn't make any sense. I was gonna say and you didn't have a Rodecaster except we're talking about the Rodecaster update. But I guess if you wanted to have sound from your computer go into your stream and then you can dictate how much of this goes to because if you're doing a game, right, it's you and your team and you're shooting people or whatever. You can send some things to just your team if I understood this right. There was a lot of routing to it that I was like, oh, neato. Never use it very much.

Dave Jackson [00:31:16]:
Oh, you can use the sound buttons as mini triggers. I'm like, yep, I get it. Never gonna use it. So it's it is one of those things that on one hand what I like about it is from what I've seen, I haven't upgraded yet. It doesn't add a huge amount of complexity to the interface because that's the whole problem. When you add new features, I'm like, did you just mess up the interface? And from what I've seen of the videos, it didn't. So that's that's good news. So but yeah, so any of those I don't think any of them are bad when we're talking better.

Dave Jackson [00:31:49]:
We're talking, you know, 3% better. So it's not a huge deal. Randy says my average usage of podcast gear must be in the excess of 7 years. But my first rack of gear was in place twice that long. Yeah. A lot of times if it ain't broke, you know, don't fix it. You know, Todd the Gator, the ATR 2,100 series, you could throw it in a junk drawer and use it in a decade. Yep.

Dave Jackson [00:32:14]:
Those things are bulletproof. Same thing with the Shure SM 58. That's a non USB mic. But, you know, and John's, hey, anybody want to buy a slightly used RodeCaster Pro 1? And it's in a travel case. Yeah. That's always fun. Tim is asking, when will Descript drop SquadCast and fully push rooms, Descript rooms? I had a client interview the governor the governor of Wyoming and SquadCast was garbage and Descript customer service said try rooms next time. Interesting.

Dave Jackson [00:32:44]:
I don't understand. Here's where I wish they had some transparency. And when I go to Podfest next month, I'll be, hoping the guys from SquadCast are gonna be there. I'm confused as in like, didn't you buy SquadCast Descript? And if so, is really rooms just an upgraded version of SquadCast? And I don't know. It's just confusing. I'm with you on that, Tim. I don't get it. Why did you buy something and then replace it? Or is the replacement just because they're not calling it SquadCast? They're trying to get everything under the Descript, you know, umbrella.

Dave Jackson [00:33:19]:
Jim, you can help with this one. Maybe. Mathematica Humanista. I want to generate live English subtitles for my podcast that is run-in Portuguese. Any tips or services on that? I know you've worked with multiple languages.

Jim Collison [00:33:34]:
Yeah, you're gonna pay for it. No, no cheap way to do that. You're gonna for live translations is what you're asking for, not transcripts, right? It has to be well, it's actually both. Because you're running it in Portuguese, then the, a system needs to translate or put those in a transcript, right, transcribe them. Then they have to be translated. And so Microsoft was headed in this direction for a while. And their app, their translator app, the Microsoft Translator, if you just go to your both Google or Android I mean, I'm sorry, both Android and iPhone app stores, They used to make that available for everybody, where you could play the sound into it, and then someone could watch it on their phone or, yeah, watch it on their phone or listen to it, because it's got a voice associated with it as well. And, and they could do that.

Jim Collison [00:34:27]:
And that was free, and it worked great. And then they deprecated it. I think they figured out it was costing them too much money because it's expensive, and they took it down. So the, there are services that do that I'm trying to think, I think we used a service at Gallup to do some of that. But they're still not mainstream. And you got to, you're gonna pay, you're gonna end up paying for them. And there's no easy way to do it. I think we're getting closer to some of that happening with AI.

Jim Collison [00:34:56]:
I'm not aware of today. I, Dave, at work, when I produce a podcast in another language, you know, we do it just this week, I did one in Japanese. We do them in Portuguese and Mandarin and French, German, Spanish. I do the Spanish one all the time. I actually use that Microsoft Translator app to listen. So I have a second, I have a second computer that's just hanging out in the chat or hanging out in StreamYard there. It's listening basically to the feed. Then I'm pushing that into an iPad that is using the Translator app.

Jim Collison [00:35:29]:
And it's, I'm able to translate it from their language to English pretty fast for me. I can't broadcast that at this point. That doesn't work in a broadcast format, but I can see it. So we're getting really good at that. I think there'll be some services coming up to make that better. Today, you're gonna pay a service for that to get it done. So I couldn't tell you which ones to use. But I don't know of anything open source or free right now.

Jim Collison [00:35:55]:
Again, Microsoft was headed in that direction, and then they pulled it back.

Dave Jackson [00:36:00]:
Yeah, that's especially live, I can see where that adds another 0 to the price, probably, if you want to do that live.

Jim Collison [00:36:08]:
Yeah, the live is hard. And the live translations that I do, especially in Spanish, I think they would be better. Actually, the Mandarin is a lot better. Of course, there's more people who speak that than speak Spanish. But you have to, you're doing 3 steps. So you're doing a, it's trans the computer has to transcribe it, then it has to translate it. And then you really need a third step, which is, and your brain is doing this, is you're actually translating the translation. Because the translation's a transliteration in a lot of, in a lot of cases, not a true translation.

Jim Collison [00:36:46]:
Making an attempt to do word for word, and it doesn't take into account any meaning or any context. A translator, a true translator, a human translator, would take into account context and inflection and, you know, some of the nuances of the language. And so, you know, as an example, when we talk about CliftonStrengths, or people's strengths, we kind of understand that to be the things we're good at. But in, in Spanish, that translates to this kinds of, this kind of Fortilatous, this kind of strength, the muscle strengths. So you have to kind of do some explaining on that to be like, No, we're not talking about working out. We're talking about those things that we're good at. So you have to do some so today, when you're looking at a translator app, you're actually doing a third translation in your head, because it's transliterating it. Then you're kind of translating it to give it some context.

Jim Collison [00:37:40]:
When we do CliftonStrengths stuff, I already have a framework from which I kind of understand what they're talking about and why they're talking about it. So it makes it a lot easier for my makes it a lot easier for my brain to do the actual translation. It's much, much harder in a, you know, you say you're just talking to somebody trying to get directions somewhere. That's a little bit, you know, it's a little bit of a different so transcriptions, transliterations and translations are 3 very separate tasks that have to be done in that. We're getting really good at it. It'll just get better. Yeah, it'll just get better.

Dave Jackson [00:38:13]:
Chris from castahead.net. I still think 95% of podcasters don't need something like a RODECaster Pro. It has so much capability, but most people just like a simple quality plug and play. Yep. I would agree. And it's well, so I mean, the reason the SM7B is so popular as was the Haile PR 40, it's because somebody was being very popular using it. So when Leo Laporte switched to the Haile PR 40, everybody's,

Jim Collison [00:38:41]:
I

Dave Jackson [00:38:41]:
got to get a Hyal PR 40. And then when Joe Rogan came out and he had the SM 7 B, they're like, well, if you know, that's it. And Randy brings up the point. He says a lot of them a lot of podcasters, right? We get gear thinking it will help them grow. And in my last episode, I did a deep dive on media hosts because really, I have my favorite, right? But my favorite may not be the best choice for you because you don't need all the bells and whistles that I'm using. And it's kind of the same way thing with gear. Yeah. I'm using a Rodecaster Pro.

Dave Jackson [00:39:17]:
If I wasn't doing a live show, I wouldn't have a Rodecaster Pro because most of my shows are solo. And if I was doing interviews, I would just plug the pod you know, in my case, the Rode PodMic USB into SquadCast, record my interview. I don't need a RodeCaster. Yeah. It has all the effects and the big bottom and things like that. Yeah. And I have all that in my plug in, so I don't really need it. But unless somebody's saying for me, when do you need a new mic when you're using the built in microphone of your laptop or you're using your phone and you have it on, you know, whatever you call it or your speakerphone.

Dave Jackson [00:39:53]:
No. If you don't have a mic that you paid at least $60 for, you could probably improve. And it's like Jim said, like when you go from I remember when we all started, like the early days of podcasting, we had that stick microphone that came, you know, and it just everybody. Everybody said, oh, welcome to the podcast. Exactly. Right. Okay. So when you move to a an Audio Technica 2,100 or a Samsung Q2U, you're going to sound way better.

Dave Jackson [00:40:23]:
But when you go from one of those mics to the pod mic, yeah, you sound a little better. And when you go from a pod mic to an SM7B, yeah, a little bit, you know, when you go from it's marginal once you get to, you know, a decent mic. And we always make fun of the Blue Yeti, but it's not because the Blue Yeti is a bad microphone. It's because everybody uses it wrong. You know, you can actually get a decent sound out of a Blue Yeti. I mean, Rob Walsh from The Feed in Libsyn, he has a Blue Yeti, but he has it on a stand and it's, you know, 3 fingers from his mouth. And he's, you know, got it set right to where it's only picking up from the front, you know. So but I think a lot of people, unfortunately, because what's easier to do? Go to Amazon or better go to Sweetwater and buy a microphone or take the time to really understand what my audience wants and tweak my content and blah.

Dave Jackson [00:41:19]:
Like, that takes a whole lot more work. And so people buy the mic and it's then they wonder why it didn't, you know, I'm not getting any more downloads. And I got a new mic. I'm like, Yeah, because it's not the tech. Your sound is fine. It's the content. You know, I always think of I think it was Bill Clinton when he was running for office, and he said, it's the economy, stupid. Yeah, that's it.

Dave Jackson [00:41:40]:
I'm telling you now. Was it, was that Clinton that said that? It's the economy, stupid?

Jim Collison [00:41:43]:
That's the second time I've heard that quote in a month. That's weird. Yeah. And Yeah. Maybe it was. Maybe it was.

Dave Jackson [00:41:50]:
But that's where Well,

Jim Collison [00:41:53]:
Dan, Dan says too in chat. Dan says, I think sometimes people don't realize the room around the mic can matter as much as the mic itself, right? And room treatments and what do you have running in it? And are there beeps? And are there, are things bouncing off stuff? Man, I, at work, I deal with this all the time. And people come in and they're like, How do I sound? You know, and they're on a puck that's 1,000 miles away. And they, and well, but IT just sent me this thing. And I'm like, Well, Okay, you got to get it closer to you. And you got to be in a room that's not just, you know, they're in their kitchen with tile floors and hardwood table, and you're like, Yeah, you're in an echo chamber, my friend. How do you think you sound? Oh, is it good enough? No, it's not good enough. Like it's terrible.

Jim Collison [00:42:42]:
And they the funny thing is, when I, unfortunately, I probably say those exact words. I'll be, I'll say to them, Your sound is terrible.

Dave Jackson [00:42:49]:
It gets,

Jim Collison [00:42:51]:
it gets so what do I do? Remember that headset that we sent you back during COVID to use? Yeah, pull it out. But, but, and I don't understand why people are so afraid to wear those headsets. Like, it doesn't make you look ugly. It's, your hair is gonna be fine.

Dave Jackson [00:43:09]:
It messes with my hair. Watch the hair.

Jim Collison [00:43:12]:
No. I mean, it's put on the frickin' headset. It sounds a 1000000 times better than, and I've got some folks that I record regularly now, and they, if, listen, if I'm producing them, they show up with their headset on because they know I'm gonna say, Hey, where's your headset? Like, where is the, or where's the microphone? Some of them have bought their own microphones. They're kind of catching on. I think what I should do and maybe this is probably just unique to me but I should make them edit something that they do just one time. Hey, I'm gonna record you, but you're gonna be responsible for the edit. Because I don't think they go back and listen to them enough. I think they record it, and I don't think they ever listen to it again.

Jim Collison [00:43:51]:
Once you start listening to and editing your own audio, you start going, Oh, yikes. That's so if you have a cohost who has a, maybe you have a cohost who has a problem with mic technique or mic control or bad spot or it's a little echoey or some of those kinds of things, stop doing the editing for a week. Say, Hey, could you do me a favor? I need you to edit the file this week. Cause I guarantee you, most people don't go back and listen to what they've, they were on or what they just did or some of those, you know, make them do it.

Dave Jackson [00:44:24]:
Yeah. Dan says, Thank you to the chat room, Rich and Randy. It's the economy stupid was a phrase copied by James Carville in 1992 when he was advising Bill Clinton on his successful run for the White House. So there we go. But yeah, it's the thing that gets me with the bad audio. In fact, let's go to here. See, I just pressed the button. 1,000, 1,000, 2, 1,000.

Dave Jackson [00:44:51]:
Okay. We're going to press the button again. Yeah. I don't know what's going on with the stream. Yeah. It's pretty good. So I occasionally interview guests for my podcast. And while I'm pretty good at knowing who's going to work and who isn't, one seemingly unpredictable attribute is whether they have the ability to monologue or to elaborate on a talking point.

Dave Jackson [00:45:11]:
I usually try various angles of attack when this happens, ask more open ended questions, try to feed them a line of thinking as a follow-up question to encourage them to say more, but that doesn't always work on the fly. Over time, I've even stated meeting briefly with my guests beforehand that they chose to try to feel them out and and offer them more or less detailed outlines of of what I intended to ask. Always a good thing to let a a guest know why they're there. Even with those tweaks and variations though, once in a while, I get a guest who is really interesting and sometimes has even done more scripted speaking, and I just cannot for the life of me get full length sentences out of them. Over the summer, I had one guest who had a pretty interesting background, but I could not, no matter what I did, get more out of them than, yeah, I agree definitely or I would say so or at most a 1 to 2 line answer. I try to edit together something of substance, but for the first time, it was just so dead on arrival that I had to reach out to them and let them know I wouldn't be publishing the episode. So I'm going to stop there. Number 1, good for you for not publishing crap.

Dave Jackson [00:46:20]:
That's again, you're the goalie. He says, don't get me wrong. This doesn't happen a lot. But when it does, it's super stressful in the moment and even more afterwards to choose between publishing a very mediocre episode and disappointing someone who volunteered their time and expertise to be interviewed. How should I approach guests like this? Should I edit down their interview to a series of clips along with my own narration? That's not a bad option, really. Is it ever appropriate to refuse to publish? Yes, in my opinion. Or do you feel that a guest is owed publication in exchange for their time? What have you tried to encourage them to speak more freely and elaborate on their answers? So this is where all these scenarios require an awkward conversation, right? You're either awkwardly saying, I'm not going to publish that or whatever. So I would have the awkward conversation in the interview and just go, Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:47:16]:
Hey, awesome, Jim. Hey, Jim, I'm just going to this is an edit point for the editor. But just look, there's we're not under a time constraint. So I love that you're giving me short, succinct answers. But if you could expand on these a bit and really give the behind the scenes and just, you know, I don't need just one word answers. Just expand on that. Does that make sense? And Jim would say, Yeah, sure, fine. Okay, whatever, you know, and then we'd go back to the interview.

Dave Jackson [00:47:39]:
So that's the awkward conversation because then you're not because if you go, alright, I'm not going to publish this now, you also have the problem of, oh, crap. What are we going to put out this week? So this way you have an awkward conversation and hopefully that awkward conversation gives you something to publish. I don't know, Jim, any thoughts on this?

Jim Collison [00:48:00]:
I'm gonna say something kind of controversial on this one. Bad audio is your fault 100% of the time. It can always be prevented. It could always be listen, we got a bunch of podcasters in the chat room right now, and they're gonna lose their minds and be Always It's always your fault. You did not set up the call properly. You accepted more risk than you if you're gonna, if you're gonna get a big deal on, like you're gonna get a big deal guest, and you're not, so because of that, you're not gonna require a pre call. Or you're not gonna require, you know, we kind of do a meet and greet call. So just, I kind of get a feel for the guest.

Jim Collison [00:48:38]:
We have some conversations about, Hey, what we're gonna do and how this is gonna work and where I need you to be. If you're not, if you can't do all those, you're accepting the necessary risk then of them coming in hot and bad. And sometimes it works. Maybe you've seen them on other podcasts where you know they have the right equipment you know they're gonna be in the right spot. Did you do your homework? Did you go if you got a guest coming on, have you looked at the last three times they've been on something to see, Are they consistently coming from the same place? Are they consistently getting the right audio? Are you doing your homework on the guest? So I'd love to blame it on other people. And I, honestly, I have. In fact, probably 20 minutes ago, I blamed it on people coming in with bad microphones. You just heard me say that.

Jim Collison [00:49:25]:
It's my fault. It's my fault if I record audio that's bad. And so just, you got, I just own it. And stop, let's just stop playing the blame game on folks and saying, I can't. They're not. It didn't. But do I publish it or not? Well, no, you don't publish it. But it's your fault.

Dave Jackson [00:49:43]:
Right. Be better. Uncle Mark says, Uncle Mark says people think it's good enough to work for Zoom. And Chris says the same thing, but it works for Zoom.

Jim Collison [00:49:52]:
Not true. That's not a true statement.

Dave Jackson [00:49:54]:
Yeah. Todd said, you know, I had a co host who used a Blue Yeti correctly, but sat next to the furnace. Yeah, that's right. No. And so this is where I've had one guy that I did not publish his episode and I didn't know him. I got him. And this is no reflection on Pod Match, but I found him on. He was a coach of coaches.

Dave Jackson [00:50:15]:
And I was like, that's the guy I want, because that way I think every coach should have a podcast. And if I can be this guy's buddy, then he'll tell all of his coaches, buddy, go see Dave. And so I asked him to come on. We did a pre interview. His content on the pre interview was really good, but he had no microphone. And I said, Okay, great. We'll set up this date. Be sure to bring your good microphone because I've heard you sound so much better and it's a podcast, etcetera, etcetera.

Dave Jackson [00:50:42]:
He showed up. No good microphone and then did a horrible interview, which my takeaway was here's how you succeed. You have this guy's dad as your father and you'll be great. I'm like, that's not going to work. And so I kind of knew that in the interview and I got done and I was like, okay, I can't publish this. There's no takeaway and his audio is crap. And so I said, can we get on a Zoom call? I want to talk about our interview. And I said, well, remember I said to bring your good microphone.

Dave Jackson [00:51:11]:
I go, you didn't. And I go, and you went in a in fact, even said, I want to talk about this. He just took the interview and went, Oh, I'm going to do my presentation now. And I said, there's no takeaways for my audience. And he pitched me so hard because he wanted me as a client, it turns out. And in the end, I don't know that he dislikes me. He'd be I mean, I wasted his time, but I kind of told him, hey, since I don't know you, I reserve the right to not publish this. So let's say that guy thinks I'm a jerk.

Dave Jackson [00:51:39]:
Okay, great. I'd rather have one guy think I'm a jerk than the hundreds, hopefully, of people. Let's see for that show. Yeah. Hundreds of people that listen to me go. Thanks, Dave. You just wasted my time. So it's for me, it's all about the audience.

Dave Jackson [00:51:54]:
And, you know, that guy, you know, if he thinks, you know, I'm a jerk, that's fine. I think he's a jerk because he, it was all about him. You know?

Jim Collison [00:52:01]:
And like, yeah. It's super hard. I did an interview yesterday. Yeah, Friday. I did an interview in Japanese to so, so some language, you know, a little bit of a language barrier, although they both spoke English, so it was fine. And we did a setup call. I set it up as best as I could. We even, he even came in on his phone because he didn't get his laptop working right.

Jim Collison [00:52:22]:
And so I walked him through that. And he miraculously got the laptop set up while we were doing, you know, some chatting in there. So I got it all set. It was fine for what we do. And then as soon as the interview started, he had a nervous tic where he was tapping the table,

Dave Jackson [00:52:37]:
you know,

Jim Collison [00:52:38]:
or something. I could not figure out where the sound was coming from. It wasn't in the, it wasn't in the pre show at all. Now what I should have done is I started hearing it at the very beginning, and I should have stopped. I should have stopped both of them and said, Okay, I don't know what's going on. We need to and I didn't. That's my fault, not theirs. My fault for not stopping them.

Jim Collison [00:53:00]:
And then, of course, you get 15 minutes in, and you're like, Do we, I really want to start over on, you know, there's this big monologue in the very beginning. And sometimes on the second take, it's not as good, right? And so I'm like, Do I really want to so I let it go on. And the whole time, I listen, Dave, I can feel my heart just ready to explode out of my body, right? I know. I'm like, Oh, my, this is gonna be terrible. Now I'm gonna have to tell them and there's a, you know, there's a principle in this too: The earlier you stop things, the earlier you say something, the less damage. The damage you're doing on that file is exponential. It's not linear it's exponential. It just keeps getting worse and worse and things.

Jim Collison [00:53:42]:
So I let it go. It was a huge mistake. I should have stopped it. Fortunately, right after it was over and I didn't want my editor to have to deal with this. So fortunately, I was able to pull the file down when we were done. I ran it through Auphonic. It took out, magically, it took out all the tapping that was in there. And now you can hear the gating.

Jim Collison [00:54:01]:
You can hear the software gate coming in and going on that, whatever they're doing in Auphonic. Can kind of hear it a little bit. Now, is that me because I'm listening for it? Or, you know, when you're like, when you're listening for an AI voice, do you hear it because you know it? And if you don't know it, you probably don't hear it? I fixed it for my editor. It was good. It was good enough for what we were trying to do. But it was a perfect example of a reminder to me. All of that is my fault. I am the one responsible to make sure that I shoulda, shoulda, shoulda, and I don't do this enough.

Jim Collison [00:54:33]:
I should have stopped it at the 2 minute mark. It said, Woah, woah, hold on. Pop back in. Let's stop for a second. I'm hearing some tapping. How do we get this thing worked out so it's not doing it right? So earlier is better. It's all on you.

Dave Jackson [00:54:46]:
Yeah, absolutely. The chat room is chiming in on this. I had let's see. Where'd it go? Yeah. Uncle Marv again. People think it's good enough for Zoom. And the I had a thing where she had plosives and I asked her 3 times. She had a headset mic and it was getting kind of awkward.

Dave Jackson [00:55:07]:
So I'm like, okay, move it again. Now say happy peanut butter. And she did. It was kind of better. But I eventually, there were just every p, b, h, and k. For whatever reason, all those just made this nasty sound on the thing. And it took me 3 hours to go to every one of those, highlight it and pull the bass out of it. I was this is years ago, so we didn't have the tools now that we do.

Dave Jackson [00:55:31]:
And that's what Dan says. There are some editing tools out there now with all that that have been able to I, I know you mentioned Auphonic. There's Adobe Enhance. Somebody mentioned that earlier. I use a tool and it was not cheap. It was $300 and it was, he said, pulling up Hindenburg behind the scenes so I can it's Accentizde okay. Accentizde is the company, D Revive Pro. And it does a great job of pulling out the room noise and adjusting the EQ to where it can take bad audio.

Dave Jackson [00:56:09]:
Because I have a client of mine and he's decided to have a reoccurring cohost spot. And he's pulling in these, like, 3 different people. And I said there were 2 of them. And I said, these people need to go get, you know, a microphone. And the one did, and it cut his editing time in half. And the other one didn't. And I have to run it through this and I have to run it through deep breath and I have to run it through deep plosive and all this other stuff. And the thing is, we said it before, when you add something to the process, it's going to take more time.

Dave Jackson [00:56:42]:
And so when you add all these plug ins to clean up the bad audio, yeah, it does. And it saves you time from doing it manually, but it really slows down the export process. And so I was like, yeah.

Jim Collison [00:56:53]:
I can make it sound worse, right? It can make it sound.

Dave Jackson [00:56:55]:
Yes. Yeah. There. Yeah. Noise gates, especially if you're trying to get somebody sound out in the background because they've got, you know, Todd said the furnace. Okay, that's great that the furnace doesn't, you know, come through when they're not talking. But the minute they talk, you hear the sound of that in the background. And sometimes that actually makes it worse in some cases.

Dave Jackson [00:57:15]:
I think.

Jim Collison [00:57:16]:
Oh, go ahead.

Dave Jackson [00:57:17]:
Here's a fun one. I had a Jeff C. I had a guest who had a tech chat before the show. Perfect. But then they called in from a different location. You know?

Jim Collison [00:57:26]:
Don't break it. Why did we do why did we do this?

Dave Jackson [00:57:28]:
Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:57:29]:
I've had that happen too, Jeff, by the way. And you're like, hey, you're not in the same location. We did this. Oh, yeah. No. Things changed. Again, the bigger deal they are, right? Things change. It's, I don't know what it is with high profile guests that their schedules are just so out of control that they can't, you know, and they're like, Oh, no, I got called into Singapore.

Jim Collison [00:57:49]:
And you're like, Oh, geez. Well, maybe we should do this a different, you know, on a different day or something. But yeah, that's for sure.

Dave Jackson [00:57:55]:
Yeah. Randy says if we don't fight for our audience, you know, who's going to? You know, and then Dan again, based on a true story podcast.com. I had a guest with audio that was great in the interview, but looking at the file afterwards, it was really like not recorded hot enough. And he says Adobe podcast enhanced version 2, which is something I should probably buy. I mean, I have the plug in, so I don't need it, but I've used their free version and that works great 90% of the time. But the if you pay I think it's $100 a year. It's not that expensive. There's a dial to say how much of this effect do I want? Because we all know that there's that fine line that you go from, oh, good, underwater.

Dave Jackson [00:58:37]:
You know, if you just go a little too much, it kind of ruins the the audio on whatever noise reduction tool you're using.

Jim Collison [00:58:45]:
I actually think we're coming to a day where that's gonna change. When you, so you get bad audio from a person. Say you and I, we're doing this podcast today. And I find out at the end of the show I was really coming in from my camera mic, and not from this mic, which I've done before. And I think we're coming to a day where, you know, today we try to go in there and adjust that digitally, but in an analog kind of way, where we try to cut out the bottoms or cut out the tops or push the, you know, compress it in some way or expand it in others. I actually think we're coming, we're pretty close where if all I need is a short audio sample of you when you were good, and then I think AI just fixes that for us so that it just, right, so you have a guest. They didn't sound very good. If you can find 30 seconds of good audio from them somewhere or you say, Hey, the sound wasn't as great.

Jim Collison [00:59:40]:
Let's meet one more time. I want you to, I need to record you reading this statement. It's gonna take about 10 minutes. Can we do that? And you get them, you know, you get them someplace where you get better audio. I think we'll get to a spot where you'll feed that in, and the AI will take the audio itself and redo it. And it'll be, it'll sound super clear. I mean, it kind of already is doing this. I mean, 11 Labs is kind of doing this today in some form or fashion.

Jim Collison [01:00:07]:
It's not scalable from a long, like a long hour long podcast standpoint. But man, I think we're getting super close to that. That's the way they do it is an AI voice changes it with perfect audio. Then you're not trying to eliminate, Oh, I'm trying to take out this frequency because there was a dog barking in the background. Now it's just overwriting the whole thing. And it's getting the inflections that you make in the, you know, in the original audio. It's picking up on those inflections and some of those kinds of things. So I just think, I think the day of trying to pull out, digitally pull out things from it are pretty I think we're getting close to the end of that.

Jim Collison [01:00:45]:
And I think AI is gonna take over that kind, those kinds of edits. Imagine how cool that would be to just or, Dave, for us to just have a digital voice that's available out there to someone, and you can say, Yeah, let's do this recording. But I want you to, I want you to process it with my already approved perfect digital voice that I have out there. So it sounds good every single time. That would be great.

Dave Jackson [01:01:08]:
Adobe has a tool, and I will have to look it up. It's part of their podcast tools. That's like mic check. And you record into it, it'll say you need to be closer to your microphone or that kind of thing. So you can let Adobe be the bad guy, and it's hard to be the bad guy. John Domingo says, I edit for a famous podcaster who has the worst mic technique. He's a whisperer. Sounds like a Seinfeld, you know? Oh, no.

Dave Jackson [01:01:37]:
The whisperer and trails off at the end of sentences. I wanted to talk to him about it, but I don't want to upset him. Oh, this is where anytime you have to give somebody bad news, you want to explain it to them on how they're going to benefit. So if you have somebody that is just horrible and you're like, they're just talking and then all of a sudden they get comfortable and all of a sudden they're leaning back in their chair and you're like, wait. And you're like, hey, I love what you're saying. This is a great content. My audience is going to love this, but we got to keep you next to the mic. So it sounds great because otherwise, if I try to fix this later that you've kind of gotten and I understand you're getting comfortable, that's great.

Dave Jackson [01:02:15]:
I want you comfortable. But the minute we have it'll end up like cutting off half your words and we need all of your words. So if you could just do me a favor, you know, just stay close to the mic, whatever it is you need them to do. Or if it's I need you to get a real mic, not this, you know, I know it works in Zoom. I just totally get that. But this isn't Zoom. This is a you know, this is meant for other people to listen, where a Zoom meeting is just for the the 6 people in it, in that kind of yard. So when you explain on how great they are and you're trying to make them sound as great as their content, you know, just blow a little smoke, you know, which isn't really smoke if you think about it, but just explain how great they are and how you want to make them, you know, make the content sound as great as it needs to be.

Dave Jackson [01:02:57]:
I don't think anybody's going to be like, well, no, I don't want you to make me sound good. I don't see anybody saying that. But it is. It's awkward. That's just awkward. But I think if you explain to them how this is going to help them and remind them that people are going to hear this, you know, and but I know that's gotta be the number one thing. It's what works for Zoom. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:03:18]:
This isn't Zoom. This isn't a Zoom meeting. This is a podcast. So Oh, yeah.

Jim Collison [01:03:22]:
Oh, gotcha. I hear it all the time. And I it just I even, you know, I shouldn't say this, but I have a guy who has a mic. And he does the corp we do big corporate events. And he does it with this, he, they sent him this puck, and he sounds like he's a 1000 miles away.

Dave Jackson [01:03:35]:
Oh, yeah.

Jim Collison [01:03:36]:
Stop. Stop it. But you can't convince both Randy and Chris said in chat, Descript has a regenerate and a pinch. It's fairly decent, what I was talking about. I don't know if that regenerate function is taking the voiceprint, the digital voiceprint, right? That's what's really what you need: a digital voiceprint of that person in that interview and then doing some things to it make it better? Or, in Descript and maybe you guys can tell me in the chat in Descript, can you feed it another voiceprint? So can you say, Hey, here's by the way, the blockchain would be really good for this solution, where I could upload my own digital voiceprint to the blockchain and certify it. Say, No, this is me. Like, This is me. And then we're always worried about how, Oh, how are we gonna know it's real or not? Well, in the future, what if every voice has to be validated against the voiceprint that you have in a blockchain somewhere that only you have access to.

Jim Collison [01:04:33]:
No one can create it for you. No one can manipulate in that way. So there's a good we're always looking for blockchain solutions. That's one of those that this would play nicely into. But what I would want is I would want to be able to take an existing piece of audio and say, Every time this person speaks, fix it with this sample that I gave it that was clearer or better. Because, yeah, I mean, if all you've got is bad audio of them, I don't know if regenerate's gonna do much more than apply mathematical algorithms to try and fix the audio stuff. I mean, we can that's easy to do today. So I don't know if that can do it.

Jim Collison [01:05:14]:
You guys can let me know there in the chat.

Dave Jackson [01:05:17]:
Yeah, I love this one. Number 1, the whole, It's your fault. That's 100% true. And that's why it hurts. Yeah. The Todd the Gator. If you're the producer or the host of the podcast, I would also go further and say the bad content prep is 100% your fault. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:05:36]:
Yeah. When you're, you know, I that's where notebooklm from Google can help in some cases. Hey, go or chat gpt. I know you can point it at YouTube, like, at a YouTube video and go summarize this. So instead of watching a half hour video, hey, can you give me something in the next 6 minutes before this meeting starts? That's not good. Not that I've ever done that. No. Let's see.

Dave Jackson [01:06:02]:
And Todd says, yeah, it's always that one episode that you let the audio slide, and that's the one your friends hear and they turn off never to return egos. Yeah, that's true. And then this is, I'm with Randy on this one. One of the reasons why I like the El Gato face cams, there's no microphone. So you can't accidentally use the microphone from the camera.

Jim Collison [01:06:24]:
Next camera. Next, I have a Brio, but it's designed, you know, they're just trying to be helpful with this. Yeah. But next camera I get down here will not have a microphone in it for sure.

Dave Jackson [01:06:35]:
John says, Yeah, it works on Zoom. Yeah. Well, guess what? You sound like crap on on Zoom, too. So and then Chris makes a great point. He goes, if you're really going to get tweaked out, if you just want to push your buttons, try listening to the audio in these NFL postgame press conferences. They're not good for audio nerds, especially after a loss. My favorite is that they've never thought to do like a conference where, hey, if you have a question, walk up to the mic. No.

Dave Jackson [01:07:03]:
So it's always it's the press conference and the guys in the background is, so what do you think about the example? And then the guy answers the questions. Well, you know, I thank my team. We work together. We die together. And, you know, wait, what's what was the question? That sounds like every answer to every press conference. My favorite is always, so when you threw that interception, what was going through your mind? I was thinking I wanted to throw it to the other team. I'm like, no, what do you think he was thinking? NFL, just don't get me started. The No Fun League.

Jim Collison [01:07:33]:
Hey, before we run out of time, we're having a great conversation on this. But do we need to thank our awesome supporters?

Dave Jackson [01:07:40]:
We do need to thank our awesome supporters. Now the fun thing is I've pressed the button and, yeah, I need to update. My guess is when I get done with this, I'm going to go into Stream Deck and it'll say there's an update available. There

Jim Collison [01:07:53]:
we go.

Dave Jackson [01:07:54]:
So yes, we do want to thank our awesome supporters and remind you that this show is brought to you by the school of podcasting.com where you get courses, coaching, and community. And you can use the coupon code coach. And when you join, there is a 30 day money back guarantee. So you don't have to worry about, I'm not sure if this is right for me. And we're using PodPage. If you go out to Ask the Podcast Coach, you can see our version of PodPage. And, of course, that's completely customizable and now with audience surveys. So if you wanna go into 2024, quit guessing what your audience wants.

Dave Jackson [01:08:27]:
Just ask them. And right now, as we're streaming, we're using ECAM. If you wanna check it out, ECAM Live, go to ask the podcast coach.com/ecam. And cam has 2 m's. And if you need more Jim Collison, well, heck, who doesn't? Go over to the average guy dot tv, or if you wanna be a rebel, you can go over to home gadgetgeeks.com. Either one. I know. Crazy.

Jim Collison [01:08:50]:
What? Those both work?

Dave Jackson [01:08:53]:
And let me go or I could not get this to work today in Ecamm. I was having all sorts of problems, and my I have a friend in from out of town, and he showed up. And I'm like, I'm I'm doing show prep. I'm not you know, so I'm a little behind today. But I do have it set up here. And, so who will it be? The support of the week Yeah.

Jim Collison [01:09:10]:
Would be Yeah.

Dave Jackson [01:09:12]:
Wait. Hold on. I think I gotta make sure because I was showing it to my buddy. Yeah. So I have to clear the results because in my test, man, there are so many windows right now from clear the list. There we go. Will it be, you know, Ralph from Ask Ralph podcast or AI Goes TO College or Jon Muntz or, Jody Kringle? Well, we'll find out right now when I hit spin. And the answer is it's looking like nope.

Dave Jackson [01:09:40]:
It's Randall Black from Bible Bytes. If you want to check it out, Bytes is b y t e s. It's inspiring faith, 1 bite at a time, bible bytes.com. Randall, thank you so much for being an awesome supporter. And if you, dear listener or people in the chat room, if this show saves you time, if it saves you money, it saves you headache or just one, if it saved you a headache or if it keeps you educated, well, it doesn't you don't have to pay $20 to be on the wheel of names. You can join for as little as $5 a month. Just go to ask the podcast coach.com/awesome. It's a way of saying thanks, Dave and Jim.

Dave Jackson [01:10:23]:
We deeply appreciate that. So now I gotta go back to my note, Joy. We did have, well, here's a question, and it's interesting. We were talking about this week at the School of Podcasts. Jim, I don't know how much you're involved with. I know you do your own website and things like that, but it's something I've noticed. Do you use any kind of keyword tool for your Oh,

Jim Collison [01:10:47]:
I should. I should. I don't know if I totally understand keywords all the time or if it's if that's just a sham in itself. But no, I really That

Dave Jackson [01:10:55]:
was the thing that came up. Chris Stone from castahead.net is a member of the school of podcasting, and he kind of said, I'm not sure I'm buying it because when they say, oh, this is the top ranking, they never really say based on what? And then it's, you know, and I'd said I because the way it works, you can see what you're like, you get a number for your podcast ranking. Let's say you're a I don't know. You're a 37. And it says, hey, because you're looking for keywords that have a fair amount of search but not a lot of competition. That's the magic number. And if it says, hey, you only need to be a 34 to rank for this somewhat obscure keyword with a lot of blah blah blah. And so I wrote an article based on that keyword, posted it.

Dave Jackson [01:11:42]:
And in theory now again, I gave it a whole week, maybe 2, but I was not getting any hits at all to this thing that, you know, the robot said, oh, this is good. So I was just wondering if anybody is doing any kind of keyword stuff. There are a lot of tools. You know, I've used man Ghouls for years, but that's one of those things again that I'm paying for and that I'm not really using. And that, by the way, Jim, is the topic I was going to talk about at the beginning of the show that I couldn't remember.

Jim Collison [01:12:11]:
Oh, okay. There you go. It came wow.

Dave Jackson [01:12:13]:
Yeah.

Jim Collison [01:12:13]:
That went feedback from the depths.

Dave Jackson [01:12:16]:
That's it. Well, because I was taught John Jamango edits the future of podcasting. And so we have little chats behind the scenes and he was saying how he had found a couple things that he was paying for that was like, I just realized and I remember this every year, I have a subscription to Audioblocks. And I actually use that one, so I don't do it. But I canceled Ray Edwards has an AI tool to write copy. And, yes, it's cool. Yes, it's neato. Am I using it? No.

Dave Jackson [01:12:48]:
What was the other I almost I've almost canceled Cap Show multiple times because it's a $100 a month. But I gave it an episode and said write a blog post, and it was like 98%. Like, yeah, I can use that. So I'm like, okay. And then I go, so would I pay somebody a $100 a month to write a blog post? And I'm like, no. But I would pay them if I had 4 blog posts out of this. So I just need to use it more. But did you find anything? Because we all buy them on Black Friday, and we forget we bought them.

Dave Jackson [01:13:19]:
And then when it renews on Black Friday for the real price, not the Black Friday price, you're like, oh, I canceled my StreamYard because StreamYard is $800 a year now and it was gonna renew in January. And I was like, what's really weird about StreamYard, And it's kind of sneaky. You go into your billing account and you see all their plans that you can upgrade. And right below the fold, so you have to scroll down to see it, it's cancel your StreamYard. Because I was going through I finally went to their help article and so you just have to scroll down. And I was like, you couldn't have put that right underneath the upgrade button? So you have to be be careful with all these things that you subscribe to. And if you do subscribe to something, then, you know, use it, you know. And yeah, Chris is saying SEO is witchcraft.

Dave Jackson [01:14:06]:
It is a little bit. And

Jim Collison [01:14:09]:
But let's remember, SEO is controlled by a company who both tells you what is trending and sells you what is trending. They control both sides of the equation. Why they haven't been broken up yet? Oh, that's right. They are. So, you know, we, the system kind of sound like I need to put a tinfoil hat on here for a moment. The system's rigged, friends. SEO is rigged. So if you think you're actually, you know, Dave, in your sense, you're writing a, you're writing an article, you're posting it with a bunch of keywords in it, and you're thinking organically that's gonna get picked up? Not in a 1000000 years.

Jim Collison [01:14:50]:
You gotta pay. You want to play? You gotta pay. Like, so this, this, this rig system that we're dealing with here on this, the, and it's, you know, there's a, if you haven't been following what's going on with Google in that space, there are some folks who, both the United States and Europe, who are going after them for some of these practices. So like, for the average guy doing some of this stuff, I feel bad. I feel bad for you and me trying to figure out SEO and what it should be. We have people that's their whole job. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, if I'm thinking about making content, creating content, scheduling folks and doing podcasts and doing the editing, and then think about posts and what I could do for those kinds that's a whole nother, that's all. And then, listen, I think SEO, if you haven't figured it out yet, don't.

Jim Collison [01:15:40]:
Because what's It's gonna change. Yeah, what's coming along with generative AI is gonna be way more important. I mean, I think we're gonna look at remember Yahoo? And remember AltaVista? And they got replaced by Google? I think OpenAI and the stuff that we're doing from generative AI work, that's gonna replace Google search engines. So I think there's gonna come a day it's not tomorrow. Okay, it's not tomorrow. But I think there's coming a day in the next decade where we're gonna be like, Oh, remember when we used to search on Google? Remember how, remember the old days? Yeah, that, those days are, I mean, those things are coming. So I wouldn't necessarily spend a ton of time if I haven't figured it out to this point, I don't think I'd try and what I would do is get on the generative AI train and start saying, Okay, how can I optimize? What's going on in that space? Now, this is going to happen in generative AI as well. They're going to figure out their business model is, How do I sell? How do I get the search, you know, the generative AI bots, whatever it's doing that's building this stuff? How do I get that content to rank higher so it shows up in a generative AI search, if that's what we call them? I don't know what they're called, but in a chat, whatever.

Jim Collison [01:16:58]:
But we're gonna start, but I'd give up, at this point, I'd give up on SEO and say, it's old. It's on its way out. I think I'd learn I'd try to figure out what's going on in the generative space.

Dave Jackson [01:17:09]:
Yeah, if you go into because somebody's saying in the chat room that how do you, you know, know what's working, and I believe this is the website. Yep. Let's go to screen. I hit the button. Oh, yeah. It actually nope. It didn't change. Honest, if you I'll put a link in the show notes.

Dave Jackson [01:17:27]:
Is it seriously not going to show this on this? I'm hitting. Here we go. Sir. Gadashdev. Yeah. I'll put this in the chat room. This is a UTM, and we don't care what that stands for. But basically, what you could do here is and you have to be disciplined with this.

Dave Jackson [01:17:44]:
I just started using this, but you can see here if I wanted to send them to learn. Schoolofpodcasting.com and for campaign ID because the first two are mandatory, like that might be my episode number. And then the medium, I could just put SOP, maybe some of these you don't need. And it basically will give you this particular really long link, and you'll notice that it starts after this question mark. But you can go into Google Analytics. I use Fathom Analytics, and you can see where are people coming from. And so I do this. And if the medium might instead of website might be Pinterest or Twitter or whatever.

Dave Jackson [01:18:21]:
And we all kind of jokingly say, you know, 50% marketing works. I just don't know which 50%. That's a way to do that. But I have that page bookmarked now so that when I'm going to go put a link to some place I go over, it takes 4 seconds to fill it out. I don't obsess over it. Just something to give me a clue on how did these people get to my website. Because when I if I start to see enough data and that's the problem, this works great when you're Amazon and you have 8,000,000 people coming to your website. But when you get a couple thousand a month, it's I'm not really getting much of, of, you know, enough data to really make a decision on that.

Dave Jackson [01:18:59]:
So it's tricky on that, but that is a way to figure out kind of what is working and what is not. Randall says, when is the last time you did a reboot of your Mac Mini? Have you exited Stream Deck software? Yeah. I basically I'm gonna do all that stuff when we get done. It's kind of weird that it's being kind of weird.

Jim Collison [01:19:16]:
I've always kind of wondered I've always kind of wondered about E cam's software on a Mac. Because even from Day 1 on your mini, when you switch in between screens, when you do, like when you run the wheel, it skips a little bit. And you're like, That's not, that's not that, you know, I kind of wonder if there's a bottleneck in the ECAM world somewhere. I mean, it's just software. And I know, listen, I know I'm stepping on sacred ground because a lot of you, a lot of folks here love ECAM. But I'm kind of wondering if there's some bottlenecks going on the ECAM side. I see you more listen, I've watched your not saying your problems with the Stream Deck are being caused by that. But I kind of wonder if the ECAM process needs something.

Jim Collison [01:20:01]:
It should listen, I'm on an M4, and I see it stutter on me. And I'm, yeah. So I wonder if there's something going on on the ECAM side of things that, that makes it a little not quite as efficient. You should, that M1 should handle everything just fine.

Dave Jackson [01:20:17]:
Yeah. And Rich mentioned the Fathom Builder, same kind of thing. They just explain things a little more, like what this is for. So this is the one I actually have. I just go to hashtag build and my text expander puts in that URL. But it's one of those things where, for me, just doing for the past probably 3 weeks, I'm already seeing number 1 I saw where not like tons of traffic, but I get traffic from my newsletter. And so last night I was like, you know what I'm doing? My newsletter because I haven't done one since November 15th. And I was like, this has to be on the schedule, you know? So and I've seen where people there's a coupon code in my newsletter for the School of Podcasting.

Dave Jackson [01:20:58]:
So just like there's one here. So if you use the coupon code coach, that's so I can see what works, you know? And then Chris says you can open a ticket with Ecamm through their support link. You can easily send a diagnostic report, and they're great at getting back to you. Yeah. Ecamm is that's a solid company. Jeff says I switch scenes all the time and bring up graphics constantly. I don't have the issue. I run clean my Mac before each show.

Dave Jackson [01:21:25]:
Alright. I'll have to check that out. I don't think it's a bandwidth problem because I've got Google Fiber. But when was the last time I rebooted my router? Can't remember. Maybe that's the case. Yeah.

Jim Collison [01:21:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's true. You got a lot of you got a lot of hops in between there. I don't see the same here even, I don't see the same, crispness between E cam and StreamYard, so to speak. I don't, even on my own video and us doing this, this lags a little bit more than I just did a StreamYard video, you know, 2 nights ago. So it's, I have a fresh M4. Fresh.

Dave Jackson [01:22:03]:
So I

Jim Collison [01:22:03]:
don't know. I don't know. I'm not trying to blame. I'm not trying to blame. You just kind of wonder, you know, there's a lot of things that go. You're right. There's a lot more than just E cam. But it's got me wondering sometimes.

Dave Jackson [01:22:15]:
Yeah. Well, I can say this. It was funny. We were talking earlier about listening through the ears of a podcaster. We did a cool kind of just interview casual chat with this guy named Chris Hutchins, who was, you know, he's just an average Joe kind of person. Started his podcast and now is basically making a living from it. And what was interesting is we used Google Meet because PodPage is very Google centric. So we use Google Meet and we thought if we pinned people, that would be okay.

Dave Jackson [01:22:49]:
And it kind of worked right. But it wasn't like this, where the only 2 people you see are me and Jim. And it's meant for many people to listen. Now you can always jump in and ask the podcast coach.com/question. But I found out later as because Chris is giving these great answers, he talks about how before he goes on a show, he'll listen to 5 to 10 episodes of the show to really understand what the show is about. And then he'll he said, don't send people just to your website. Send them to something that audience would enjoy. And And I was like, well, that makes sense.

Dave Jackson [01:23:23]:
So I'm making these shorts and you didn't notice it when like right now, right? It's a kind of a full shot of me width wise. But when this is a short, it's just on my face. Like, it really zooms in. And I was like going, hey, his voice is not in sync with his mouth. And I was doing I mean, I tried 3 different software and it finally dawned on me I went back into the raw, like straight from Google thing and it wasn't in sync there. It's in it. Again, it's really you had to really look for it. And that's I finally sent a copy over to Brendan and I go, this looks like a bad Godzilla movie.

Dave Jackson [01:23:59]:
He's like, what are you talking about? And I went back and it's weird because it would start off in sync and then halfway through the answer be kind of out of sync because especially when he said podcast and you see his mouth close after you heard this of podcast. And I was like, okay, I'm listening through the or I'm watching through the eyes of a YouTuber now. So I was getting kind of crazy about that. But that's where I think our next time we do something like that, we'll use Streamyard or Ecamm or Evmux or whatever people are using for more of a meeting. Because, again, Google Meet's kind of like a Zoom thing. It's not really meant to be to do that. So we shall see. But that would also then give me a separate recording of just the guest, which we didn't have from a Google Meet.

Dave Jackson [01:24:42]:
And I was kind of wishing we had, but it was it was interesting. I bought something on AppSumo forever ago, and I thought it was one of those upload it to the cloud and we'll give you 4,000,000 clips. And instead, it was just a video editor. They really didn't have a clip generation tool. So I tried I think it was CapCut or whatever. Then I tried Descript. Descript actually did a decent job, but that's where I discovered, wait, he's out of sync. And it dawned on me that I finally had to keep going back.

Dave Jackson [01:25:09]:
I'm like, well, that's because I'm using the edited version that I did in Camtasia. I'm like, oh, I know. Let's go back to the original and maybe the original. Maybe it was Camtasia. I'm like, no. It was just ever so slightly out of sync from Google Meet. So at any rate, man, that went by quick today. Jim, anything coming up on Home Gadget Geeks?

Jim Collison [01:25:28]:
Good show. We celebrate 14 years of Home Gadget Geeks on Thursday night. So that's kind of fun. 631 episodes across those 14 years. Christian Johnson joins me. He really talks about, you know, there was a big hack on AT and T and Verizon, and it appears that hackers have gotten access to the SMS network. So we now have RCM between iPhones and Android, probably compromised. So do not be sending any secure, anything that's important.

Jim Collison [01:26:00]:
You probably want to both SMS and RCS, you probably want to be careful. Christian, there's more details on if I freaked you out, Christian's got some details on it. It's available right now, homegadgetgeeks.com.

Dave Jackson [01:26:13]:
Yeah, that's because I'm sitting here, I'm sitting here with a phone on AT and T, and I'm like, Oh, great. Wonderful.

Jim Collison [01:26:19]:
It freaked me out a little bit. So it was one of those, and nobody's talking about it, which is, which is kind of crazy. And it's a, it's, it's a problem. If you're getting secure information from an Android phone to your iPhone, it's probably being watched. So you, you might want to be careful.

Dave Jackson [01:26:35]:
Yeah. I I'm doing my question of the month answer version. I normally do that at the end of the month, but I was doing some things last week again about how do you choose a media host. So this week, I got a few responses, and I asked my audience if I made my show shorter, what would you cut? And if you wanted me to make it longer, what what do you wish I would do? And so I only got a few responses, but probably over the next couple of weeks, you're gonna hear me bang the drum hard on surveys because it's a new year. You're starting out, and I'm just there are so many examples of, like, when a survey look, I'm talking to a guy that works for a survey company. I'm preaching to the choir, but that's coming up on The School of Podcasting. We will see you next week with another episode of Ask the Podcast Coach.