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The IT Conversations Studio  We're
often asked about our recording setup. Since we produced our
first IT Conversation in June 2003, we've continuously upgraded
our equipment and processes, and if you listen to our shows
in chronological order, you'll have no trouble hearing the
differences.
The photo at right shows part of our studio. For highest
quality, and because we're four miles from the telephone company's
central office, our studio telephone lines (since 9/16/03)
are digital ISDN and are connected to a
digital hybrid through an Adtran
Express 3000 terminal adapter. The caller and studio audio
(from Electro-Voice
RE20 dynamic microphones, as of 1/5/04) pass through a
mixer and a noise gate, compressor, limiter, and de-esser.
As of January 2004, we've been recording digitally on a PC
at 24 bits and 96kHz through an Echo
MiaMIDI interface. We also record a backup direct to audio
CD using the shown above.
For post production we normalize the tracks using Sony
SoundForge 7.0 and clean them up with Sonic
Foundry Noise Reduction. Staying in the 24/96 format,
we then edit, EQ, and mixdown with Flavio Antonioli's . Finally, we take our 24/96 files back to SoundForge
where we use Wave Hammer and other tools to master
for 16-bit, and convert to MP3 format using the Fraunhofer
IIS encoder. Of course, after listening to IT Conversations
squeezed into 32kbps/22,050Hz MP3s (to keep filesizes small),
you probably wonder if it's worth all this trouble. Well,
it really does help, but it's too bad you can't hear our beautiful
originals!
In the field we sometimes record
on a MiniDisc recorder (shown on the right side of the
photo) fed by lavalier microphones.
The web site runs on a Linux server with Apache and mySQL.
Server-side scripting is done in PHP, and we use the
template package with home-brew caching and content-management
software. MP3 streaming is done using a SHOUTcast
server.
Posted Tuesday, January 06, 2004 4:37:39 PM 
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