Put me on the side of the fence with the people who revile the term “Podcast” and would prefer something less fad-like, such as “Blogcast”. Yet, there are a bunch of tutorials on the net about Podcasting. And while I’m in the market for some podcasting software, I have yet to see anyone recommend any package that gets beyond “Try it out”.
For example, the most popularly recommended software on Windows (sorry Mac folks, I don’t have a Mac or the patience to try out your software on my emulator) is Audacity. Well, ok, Audacity gets the job done, but let’s face it - it gets the job done minimally. So what else is out there?
Well, the first thing I’d like to share is Krystal. Krystal’s interface is a bit more complex than Audacity, but you get the extra power that you would expect from the extra interface elements. Like Audacity, Krystal is free!
One of the nice things about Krystal is the track mixer. You can bounce tracks (combine more than one track together into a single track) fairly easily. I’m still scratching my head on how this is done with Audacity. You can name each track, mix their levels separately, set eq on each track, and apply individual effects using industry-standard VST plugins. It even comes with a few useful plugins, such as Vocal Compression, which is good for mostly talk podcasts.
The recording trigger is pretty nice, enable recording on the track you want to record on, then click the big Record button on the transport window (“transport” is the technical term for the controls that make the recording index go forward and backward through the audio).
What I don’t like about Krystal is it doesn’t have native mp3 output. Neither does Audacity, but at least Audacity lets you dump the file to an mp3 encoder. On the other hand, I have had really crappy results from Audacity’s mp3 encoding interface, so much so that it’s better to get a good freeware encoder (lame/blade) and use its dedicated applications to tweak things to perfection.
Moving on, I should mention my de-facto editor of choice for media, Vegas Video. Now I know you’re saying, “Video?”, but Vegas is good for audio, too. Vegas was purchased by Sony, and they’ve dropped their old lousy line of video editing software to produce Vegas instead. Vegas used to be produced by Sonic Foundry, who makes ACID (also bought by Sony) and SoundForge.
The problem with Vegas is that it can’t import audio, only video. So why did I mention it? Vegas has one of the best track editors I’ve seen – Very easy to use. It has envelope controls for volume, allows stero panning (a “pan” is when something moves from one side to the other), can “solo” a track to listen to it exclusively, can very easily cross-fade two audio files in the same track, and outputs at high quality to any audio format worth outputting without excruciatingly difficult controls getting in the way. Vegas supports a slew of plugins for effects, so you’re not lost without a software reverb.
But like I said, no audio recording, and Vegas is not free (cough > $400 cough). So, we move on to its sister product, ACID.
ACID is pretty cool. It’s the same kind of interface that is in Vegas - it’s pretty easy to visualize what’s going on. There are a few quirks when it comes to handling tracks since this software is more geared for making loop-based music than really recording podcasts. People will say that there are much better packages for making loop-based music (like Cubase SX3, which I also have), but unless you’re truly hard-core, Cubase is too much for you to bother with, and it won’t make podcasts.
On the other hand, the recorder is pretty straight-forward. New tracks get created for each recording session. The nice thing about a good editor is that it’ll keep a single session of recording as a single track and let you re-use bits of it wherever you need to. ACID does this well. I was able to splice chunks together to remove silence, and chop off noise at the ends. Also of note- The media library in ACID gives you quick access to things you previously recorded and to loops (“loops” are audio files that you repeat/loop in order to create or synchronize with a beat) so that you can lay down a track with little effort spent hunting for your files.
Mixing isn’t as easy as crossfades in Vegas. You have to manually edit the volume envelopes in ACID. I also didn’t see a way to record in mono, although it’ll let you record in stereo and 5.1 surround (?!) at a variety of bitrates. Bouncing is done by rendering to a new track, which I guarantee loses fidelity. Bouncing in digital is all mental anyway; The computer shouldn’t have a hard time playing two tracks simultaneously, it’s just a matter of logically organizing it so your brain can understand - one combined track versus fifteen separate tracks that go together.
ACID will render to any audio format that Vegas does, which includes mp3 at various bitrates. I have a custom configuration I use for mine that lets me pack a lot of spoken audio into a tight little package, at roughly 3 minutes per 1MB. I really don’t understand why you might record a podcast in 44khz stereo when you’re just talking, anyway. Maybe it you have music, but how fantastic does your podcast intro have to sound? Use a variable bitrate mp3 if you’re so concerned.
To summarize, ACID is about $250 new retail, and is pretty good for producing regular podcasts. If you’re going for inexpensive but still want some pro features, skip Audacity and give Krystal a try.
As I said, I obtained a bunch of this software and tried it out. There is a lot of stuff out there, and it can be confusing. For example, M-Audio products look great but don’t seem to have a lot of utility in the podcasting arena. Suffice to say that if the user interface has lots of things that look like actual knobs, then it’s probably more than what you need or does something other than what you need.
Someone really needs to produce a consumer-friendly product. It should allow you to record audio and mix it in unlimited tracks with pre-recorded audio. You should be able to press hotkeys during the recording to insert preset sound effects on a separate tracks. It should be able to dump the whole thing to a nice and small mp3. Being able to adjust levels after the recording is a good idea, as well as including a few filters for reverb and compression, in case you don’t already have hardware to do that. It should not be Flash-based or force you to use a specific site to upload your audio.
If you have some other software that works good for your podcasting, I’d like to hear of it. Maybe I’ll give you a taste of my hardware gear next.
