Podcasting

A "new" Drupal blogger with audio expertise has appeared on the Planet Drupal scene. Geoff Hankerson's blog has a mix of Drupal and technical audio pieces. Excellent! There are very few people with a solid foot in both worlds.

I recently bought a Zoom H2 recorder and I'm loving it. It's a handheld stereo audio recorder that records directly to a SD memory card. It has four built-in microphones as well as microphone and line-in inputs allowing it to be used as an independent field recorder or plugged into a mixing board or other device. And it runs off 2 AA batteries. In short, almost exactly what I want in a handheld recorder.

Even though I've only just started with the audio thing I'm really happy with the results. But better to let you listen.

First seen in Stephen Downe's fire hose of an aggregation feed at www.downes.ca:

Podcasting Legal Guide for Canada

Now, Creative Commons Canada is proud to present the Podcasting Legal Guide for Canada! More than just an adaptation of the original U.S. Guide, this version required an almost complete rewrite of the copyright sections to describe Canadian law, as well as substantial changes to the discussions of trade-marks and publicity rights.

Podcasting Legal Guide For Canada: Online (HTML) Version | PDF Version

I haven't read it in detail, but the sections I did read were very understandable. Definitely a great reference.

Finding out intermediate level audio recording information is time consuming and a little daunting! Having recently entered the world of podcasting for Mad About Movies I'm researching the gear needed for great audio. There's lots of basic information out there that goes something like: plug any old microphone into your computer and record with GarageBand or Audacity. And this works, to a point.

If you want to go to the next level, information gets a little harder to find. Take microphones. You can spend anywhere from $10 to $5000. How does a person with no experience know the appropriate amount to spend? If you have more than one person on your podcast you quickly conclude multiple microphones would be very nice. Again, options for mixing microphones start at $40 and go over $10,000. And when you've finally made a decision on the gear you think you want, where the heck is the best place to buy it in Canada?

What follows are my research results, so far. Turns out one of best sites, Transom, comes from the world of radio. If there's one thing I've learned after following Todd Maffin, radio people are just short of fanatical about sound!