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Lee Hanken
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Episode: 3673
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Title: HPR3673: Recording for Hacker Public Radio
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3673/hpr3673.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-25 03:21:44
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3673 for Wednesday, the 31st of August 2022.
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Today's show is entitled, Recording for Hacker Public Radio.
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It is part of the series podcasting how to.
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It is hosted by DNT, and is about 18 minutes long.
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It carries a clean flag.
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The summary is, My Experiences Recording Episodes of HPR.
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Welcome to another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
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This is your host, DNT.
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This one is prompted by an email conversation with Carl.
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He wrote to a few of us sending some samples of some recordings that he had made of himself,
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and he wanted to get some feedback on it.
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Carl, you may remember, he was the one that put together that collaborative episode with
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some shell snippets, and I sent a clip to that show.
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In Carl's email, he mentioned that he thought my clip sounded pretty good, and so he thought
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I might have something to say about recording audio.
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So that was pretty funny because of how I actually recorded that clip.
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So it was different than any previous episode of Hacker Public Radio that I recorded, because
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I was at work, and there were only two days in which to submit the clip, because Carl
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had helpfully set a deadline for this.
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So I had only two days at work, and I didn't have anything to record it with.
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So I went to the Play Store looking for an app I could install, and for simplicity, I
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just looked for something I recognized.
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I was hoping there would be an app from like Zoom or Road or something like that, one
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of the audio equipment manufacturers.
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And as it turned out, I found one that was called Dolby on.
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So that was how I recorded that episode, and I agree with Carl, it sounded quite good.
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It sounded a lot better than any of the prior episodes that I had edited myself.
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So clearly the people at Dolby are cooking some fancy filters there without telling us
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about it, and it's doing a pretty good job, it seems.
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So before that, I had recorded HPR episodes in a few different ways.
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The first one I think I recorded it in an iPhone 7 with the earbuds that come with the
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iPhone 7, then later I think there was at least one that I recorded using a Zoom H1,
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which is a small handheld recorder, one of those that have like an X, Y pair of microphones.
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It's like a stereo.
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It's really nice for recording ambient sound, for recording voice.
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It picks up a lot of background noise, anyway.
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Then I used the application that was shared by Norrist here on Hacker Public Radio, it's
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called SoloCast, it's a Python application.
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On the command line you prepare the script, and then the application will show you the script
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one paragraph at a time, you record the paragraph, and then it'll ask you if you like it or
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if you want to re-record it.
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Once you have recorded all of your segments, it'll splice it all together for you and
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do some normalization in a couple other things, I guess.
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So I used that with this headset that I use at work for calls, that's called it's the
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Sennheiser MbPro2.
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It's decent, it's pretty convenient, but it doesn't sound very good, I guess.
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Not too good.
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And then finally this Dolby on app, and then here I am recording the second episode using
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this app.
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It's not free, of course, so leave your comments on that if you want or record your own show
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about this use of non-free software and what it means, I want to hear your opinion on that.
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So then going back in time a little, so I went to college for film, and during that there
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was, I had one class that was about sound, and I also paid a lot of attention to sound
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recording and sound editing as well for my own interest, but during this class we learned
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a couple of things about editing sound.
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First mainly we learned about the compressor and EQ, so let's talk about the compressor first.
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The compressor is, you usually visualize it with this graph, so you're usually going
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to have a setting that's called the threshold, it's going to be in decibels, like for example
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I set the threshold to 16 decibels, so what that means is up to 16 decibels, the filter's
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not going to do anything to it, and any sound that is above 16 decibels it's going to
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attenuate.
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It's going to attenuate following another setting that's called the ratio, that's going
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to be something like 4, 1, for example.
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So the ratio is how much you're going to attenuate that sound, that's above the threshold,
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so if the ratio is very, very high, that means you're practically going to flatten anything
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that goes above 16, and you're going to take it right down to 16.
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What you're doing with that is if you're someone who's volume, who's speaking volume varies
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a lot, it's going to kind of even that out a little.
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You can imagine, for example, if you're recording someone playing the piano and they tend
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to hit the keys really hard sometimes, which in person it can sound very good, but to
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a microphone it can be very challenging, so the compressor is one of the things that
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can help with that.
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The compressor usually also has a setting that's called gain, that's basically just gain,
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and it's just there because typically you're going to attenuate the top of the peaks there,
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and you're typically going to want to lift up everything after that to bring it up closer
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to the peaks you want.
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You shouldn't overdo it with the compressor because I think it can make things a little
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monotonous if the volume is kind of always the same, so it can make it sound less natural
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or something like that, so you don't want to overdo it, but certainly I think with voice
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over with podcasts, with you can get away with quite a bit of compressor I think, if
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you disagree just let me know in the comments.
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So at this class in college, honestly the professor never really talked about normalization
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if I can remember it right, really I think what we would do is we would just try to get
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just with the compressor alone, we would try to get as close to the peaks that we are
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targeting as we can, and then we would just do the normalize would be at the very end.
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So the getting to the peaks that you're targeting, what that means is like I think nowadays
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with online stuff, you can easily go to minus 3, minus 1, and that's just fine.
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You may hear stuff about peaks having to be at minus 12 or minus 16.
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I think that's really kind of a technical standard to do with broadcast video and broadcast
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radio, I don't think it's really relevant anymore, so you can go a lot higher than that
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and most people I think do.
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So you would try to get as close to that as you can with the compressor and then use
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the normalize to get right there, then EQ.
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So the professor taught us this interesting technique, I think he called it the sweep.
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So the EQ, let's imagine a graphical equalizer, and you have the spectrum right there in front
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of you on the left are the highest, the lowest frequencies, that is the low pitch stuff,
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and on the right are the high frequencies, the high pitch stuff.
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So then typically you would have a line going from left to right, and with the graphical
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EQ you're going to mark some points there at different frequencies, and then you're going
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to attenuate or boost the signal at those frequencies.
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So what that's going to do is, for example, if you put some points here on the left and
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then attenuate them a lot, your voice is going to sound less low pitched.
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Here is also a setting that I don't remember where it's called, but it kind of makes
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the curve more closed or more open so that if you boost the signal at one point and you
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make the curve more open, you're going to be boosting a lot of the neighboring frequencies
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right there.
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So the sweep that this professor taught us, what it was, is you would start on the left
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of the spectrum, you would mark a point, make the curve pretty closed, and then you would
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boost it quite a lot, and then loop through a piece of your recording, maybe pick some
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part that you think is kind of representative for whatever reason, just play it in a loop,
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and then move the frequency of your point from the left all the way to the highest frequencies,
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and listen as you do it.
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So as you listen, the sound of course is going to change because you're going to be boosting
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all these different frequencies and you may notice some things.
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Keep your ear out for parts that sound really kind of nasal, just kind of annoying or something.
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Just whenever it sounds really terrible, when the signal is boosted, stop and take a note
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of what frequency that was, okay, and then keep going, then when you get to the end of
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the spectrum, you will have written down maybe like three frequencies or something like
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that, so then drop points at those three frequencies, and then attenuate them a little,
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and this time use a much more open curve, and then see how that goes, and then now it's
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going to be trial and error, just try a few different things here and there and see how
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it sounds.
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I think you would expect for it to sound more pleasant to the ear if you just do that.
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Now there's also boosting the signal at different points.
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I don't know much about that to be honest.
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I know there are areas of the spectrum that you can boost that can help your voice somehow,
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but I don't really know how exactly, so I don't think I'm going to be very helpful there.
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What you can do also is just look for some presets in your editing application that are
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named for things like voice over or vocal, whatever it is, and see what they do, and then
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just try those things out with your own EQ for your voice, right?
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So basically just do this once for your own voice, for your environment that you're going
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to be recording in the typical environment, you're going to want to keep consistent,
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and then just save it as a preset for your voice, so then you can just apply it to your
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recordings going forward.
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Now a kind of a thing I would say too is EQ is pretty subjective as is, I think, sound
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editing largely, I think, so I think the only thing you can do is kind of lean into it
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and just see what things sound like to you and see if it feels good or not, and just
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go by that, you know, that's all you can do.
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So then it's easy also to get for your ear to kind of get used to sounds.
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So a lot of times it's worth doing this and then stopping, putting it away, and then
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come back the next day, listen to it again, see if you still think it sounds good, a lot
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of times you won't anymore for whatever reason, so it's worth doing that.
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Now I talked about you're setting the EQ for you're saving a preset for your environment
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that you're going to want to keep consistent.
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Now this is much more important than the EQ and the compressor, to be honest, if you do
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no EQ or compressor, but your environment is great, your recording is going to be great.
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If you do, if you spend 24 hours on EQ and all the other stuff, noise removal, whatever,
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but the environment in which you recorded was crap, it's not going to sound any good,
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no matter what you do.
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So you want to look for a place that it's as little noise as possible and as little reverberation
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as possible.
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It comes from really from flat surfaces, so if your room has a lot of flat surfaces
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in like the walls, for example, and no furniture, sound is going to bounce back and forth
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a lot, there's going to be a lot of reverberation.
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This is the thing that's going to sound the worst in a recording, so it should be the
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number one thing you consider, or maybe not the number one thing, but one of the top things
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you consider.
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So a carpeted room, a room with more furniture, stuff on the walls will eliminate the reverberation
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really quickly, actually.
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Of course there's also equipment you can buy for that if you want.
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So one thing that a lot of people will do is they'll just go in a closet and record
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in a closet.
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Guess it's pretty warm, but it works very well.
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There's lots of clothes in there, so it's going to sound pretty much like you're in
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a sound studio.
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Another thing is the car, like the clip that I recorded for Carl's show I recorded in
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the car.
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Cars, car manufacturers have made cars a pretty hospitable environment for sound, so if you
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have a car, it's worth trying that out too.
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And then finally the time of day, pretty obvious, you know, for example, don't record it
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when your sprinklers come on and then you can hear the water flowing through under the
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house.
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And breathing and warming up really important things too.
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This is something I've noticed in myself for sure.
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Whenever I record an episode, I feel like when I start I'm kind of nervous, I'm not
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breathing right and it doesn't sound good at all, it's like embarrassing.
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And then after a while I start to relax into it and I start sounding a lot better, I'm
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talking a little more slowly, I'm breathing naturally, things are going great.
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So I think the reason for that is because I have warmed up by then.
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So what I've been trying to do is just warm up ahead of time.
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In this case, for example, I prepared a bunch of three by five cards with a sort of a script
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and then I just read through it on my own without the recorder even running.
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I just read through the whole thing trying to get to this state before I actually start
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recording.
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So try that out warm up before you record.
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Then I mentioned the three by five cards.
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So when we were talking to, when I was talking to Carl, I mentioned how back in the day,
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there used to be apparently a phone number you could call and you could just start talking
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and it would record it and it would make it into an episode of Hacker Public Radio later.
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So people would do that.
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They would just call a phone number and in one take, they would record an episode of
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Hacker Public Radio.
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I think to me, that's the standard we need to strive for here because in this world, it's
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pretty hard to make time for things like this.
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You work full time and you have your family to take care of a house, whatever else is going
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on.
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There's not a whole lot of time left for making art or making stuff for recording episode
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of Hacker Public Radio.
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So if you can do it in one take, if that's possible, at all, I want to investigate that
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and I want to figure out how I can do that, you know?
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So what I'm trying here today is these three by five cards.
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So I made them and then I read through them through one time without recording and then
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I went back to the beginning and started recording it.
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And it's pretty good.
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I think I'm still going to have to take it to audacity, but not nearly for as much as
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I usually do.
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So I think this episode will be finished much sooner than most episodes have.
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Most of my episodes anyway.
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Yeah, I listened to an episode by this Mr. Gadgets earlier today.
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And yeah, he just called in and started talking and 15 minutes later he had a show.
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Anyway, that was pretty much all that I have.
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In closing, I just want to say that none of this that I've talked about matters really
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as much as just having something good to say.
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Now that may seem hard to have something good to say, but here's the thing you do have
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something good to say.
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And the easiest way to do it is to just press record with your app or your recorder or
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the Dolby on app, if that's what you want to do.
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Press record and then say, hi, I'm a new HPR host and here's how I got here.
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All right.
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Thanks for tuning in and come back tomorrow for another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
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Bye bye.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work.
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Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
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If you ever thought of recording a podcast, click on our contribute link to find out how
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easy it needs.
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HPR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the internet archive and our
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things.net.
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On the Saldois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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License.
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