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You don't need to necessarily have independent audio streams to have good audio, just independent sources. I did a podcast up until January, and as the person d

You don't need to necessarily have independent audio streams to have good audio, just independent sources. I did a podcast up until January, and as the person doing the editing, I found zero benefit to having one input stream per microphone, and ultimately I eventually just started outputting the multiple inputs as a single dual channel stream. Podcasts that aren't in person are rough to listen to though, for sure. The ability to read body language and respond without weird little timing idiosyncrasies just isn't there with Skype.

ghaff 8y ago
When I was doing a podcast, getting guests in the same room was always the limiting factor. Between lack of body language/other physical cues and technical glitches, I just never liked doing interviews remotely--although people obviously make it work.
floren 8y ago
Independent streams really helps me when editing. If I'm talking and one of the other guys' dog barks at the mailman, I know I can just keep talking and silence the dog later. You're right, though, that the hardest part of recording remotely is avoiding collisions / incremental back-off problems. Then you have to cut out the "No, you go ahead" and people have a real bad habit of then following up with "I was just going to say, ..."
ghostly_s 8y ago
I think you missed the parent's point. Remote participants should be recorded locally. It's not about having multiple streams for flexibility in editing, it's about having high-quality sound instead of the compressed garbage that comes through a Skype feed. I recently learned one of my favorite podcasts hires a local audio engineer to mic and record all their remote interviewees, which seems like insane overkill but obviously is one way to do it. Is there really not a product that's a dead-simple USB audio recorder you can ship out to your guests, have them plug it into their laptop, and lets them Skype/whatever you while simultaneously recording their audio locally and sending it out to your editor after the fact?

ghaff 8y ago

When I was doing a podcast, getting guests in the same room was always the limiting factor. Between lack of body language/other physical cues and technical glitches, I just never liked doing interviews remotely--although people obviously make it work.

floren 8y ago

Independent streams really helps me when editing. If I'm talking and one of the other guys' dog barks at the mailman, I know I can just keep talking and silence the dog later. You're right, though, that the hardest part of recording remotely is avoiding collisions / incremental back-off problems. Then you have to cut out the "No, you go ahead" and people have a real bad habit of then following up with "I was just going to say, ..."

ghostly_s 8y ago

I think you missed the parent's point. Remote participants should be recorded locally. It's not about having multiple streams for flexibility in editing, it's about having high-quality sound instead of the compressed garbage that comes through a Skype feed. I recently learned one of my favorite podcasts hires a local audio engineer to mic and record all their remote interviewees, which seems like insane overkill but obviously is one way to do it. Is there really not a product that's a dead-simple USB audio recorder you can ship out to your guests, have them plug it into their laptop, and lets them Skype/whatever you while simultaneously recording their audio locally and sending it out to your editor after the fact?