hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4167.txt

Episode: 4167
Title: HPR4167: Removing another obstacle to recording an HPR show
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4167/hpr4167.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 20:39:03

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4167 for Tuesday, the 23rd of July 2024.
Today's show is entitled, removing another obstacle to recording an HPR show.
It is the tenth show of Biza, and is about five minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, not everyone is comfortable speaking to an audience directly.
Biza addresses this problem.
Hello again, this is Biza.
It's been quite a while since I last submitted a show to Hacker Public Radio.
I've been shamed into producing a new one by the number of recent episodes which have
been drawn from the reserves.
There's really no excuse for me or anybody else.
Everybody who listens to HPR has something worth saying.
Who listens to HPR can produce a show.
What's stopping you?
Perhaps you think you need some expensive recording gear or complex editing software.
If you've got a phone or a tablet then you've got a viable audio recorder.
Write a script and read it, or speak off the cuff.
It doesn't matter, as far as editing is concerned it really isn't difficult at all.
You can pick up the basics of cutting out any unwanted bits, using a tool like Audacity
in a few minutes.
Personally I prefer an application called MHWaveEdit, which is simpler still.
However, you may not need editing software at all.
There is a certain charm and honesty about uncut recordings, where every hesitation,
cough or any other extraneous sound is left in.
I often find myself preferring these rough recordings to the super slick ones produced
to professional standards.
I'm sure I'm far from being the only HPR listener who feels that way.
So you've got the equipment and decided whether or not to use editing software.
What else is holding you back?
You think you have nothing that anybody will be interested in hearing?
You're not an expert in anything?
You just don't realize how wrong you are.
The HPR audience is not made up of one-dimensional nerds with no interest in anything but tech.
Well I suppose there may be one or two, but they will be by far the exception.
There have been dozens or even hundreds of episodes which have nothing at all to do
with information technology, or any other aspect of technology for that matter.
Among my personal favorites were Klaatu talking about urban camping and Dave Morris
talking about fountain pens.
Everybody has had unique experiences.
Perhaps something has happened to you from which you learned a valuable life lesson.
Recording an episode about it might just save somebody from making a serious mistake.
They say that everybody has at least one book in them.
I would bring that up to date by saying everyone has at least one HPR episode in them.
There is however still one more potential barrier to recording an episode that nobody ever talks about,
and it's the one that affects me.
I hate public speaking and I dislike the sound of my own voice,
so I get very self-conscious speaking into a microphone.
I've had to give my share of presentations in my time but never felt comfortable doing it.
I used to be told that the more often you speak to an audience the easier it gets.
I didn't find that to be true at all.
Then one day I saw a video somebody had recorded of me giving a presentation.
It was dreadful and that destroyed what little confidence I had left to speak in public.
In my case it's more than a little ironic because after a couple of beers in the pub you can't shut me up,
but as soon as that red light on my audio recorder comes on,
I have a tendency to lose my train of thought or just dry up.
I'll bet I'm not the only person afflicted in this way.
This short episode is a demonstration of a solution to this problem.
I've got the equipment, I've got the software and I know how to use it.
I've got things to say as well, but I can't get a new personality or a new voice.
Fortunately technology has come to the rescue.
I'm not going to say it's artificial intelligence because it's not.
Same as with the 99% or more of all the many applications for which that claims me.
It is though a technology developed by some very clever people.
It's text to speech software.
It's been around for years of course.
In fact, my daughter who has mild learning difficulties used some software called
Dragon Naturally speaking at school well over 10 years ago,
which could convert any text into recognizable speech.
Back then the output was decidedly robotic.
What has changed dramatically in recent years though is the realism of the spoken words
transpose from the text.
For this episode I'm using an online tool called text magic.
It can process text up to 2,500 characters in length written or pasted into a text box
or uploaded in a text file.
It only takes a minute or so to process the text and playback the output.
You can also download the output as an MP3 file.
You can join those downloaded files together using any audio editor
and thereby get around that 2,500 character limit.
I'll put a link to this TTS tool in the show notes but there are many others these days,
both online and those you install locally.
There are lots of voices to choose from.
I'm using one called English US casual K,
which to my ears is the most realistic of the lot,
but you may well think otherwise and choose a different voice
or a different TTS application for that matter.
While I wouldn't call it a downside,
using this voice gives me an American accent,
which I find amusing being a London boy,
but that doesn't matter in the slightest.
You'll have to judge for yourself how effective this electronic voice is at recording an HPR show.
My own view is that it is not too far off the mark where intonation and stress are concerned.
It certainly does a far better job than I could do with my own voice.
If this experiment opens the door to just one other person recording an HPR episode,
it will have been worth it.
I have a feeling that I will be recording episodes a bit more frequently now.
Bye for now.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio
at Hacker Public Radio.org.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording podcasts,
then click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by
www.unsthost.com, the Internet Archive, and our Sync.net.
On this otherwise stated, today's show is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.