September 28, 2020 • 48 mins
Jonathan gives a peek behind the curtain at how TechStuff used to be produced versus how it happens now.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. And today's episode is
a little different from our typical episodes. And that's partly
(00:27):
because as I'm recording this, I'm about to go on
vacation and I wanted to make sure I had a
new episode for you guys. But at the same time,
I honestly just didn't have the time to do my
full research dive and writing course for an episode of
tech Stuff. So instead I thought we'd do a peek
(00:47):
behind the curtain episode and I could talk about about
how are podcasting has changed since the time of quarantine,
like the idea of the stay at home stuff and
how we at I Heart and the former stuff media
crowd have had to pivot in order to continue to
(01:09):
make podcasts and what that actually means and and uh,
I think it's a pretty great story, just one example
of how people all over the world are adapting in
this time of coronavirus. And I don't mean to suggest
that the way we adapted is in some way, you know,
(01:30):
extraordinary compared to others, but rather just kind of give
an insight into how things have changed for us. But
to do that, you know, it wouldn't be a Tech
Stuff episode if I didn't dive into history. And those
of you who have listened to Tech Stuff for a
long time, some of this might be familiar to you.
I've covered it in some previous episodes of tech Stuff,
(01:51):
but that was years ago, and I want to talk
about how the show got started and what it was
like recording at the beginning, and then eat into its evolution,
into what it was like just before the coronavirus crisis happened,
and what it's been like since. That has been part
of our lives. So to begin, we go back to
(02:14):
two thousand eight. Now that year, Uh, that was when
I was working for How Stuff Works dot com. Technically
I've been in the same job since two thousand seven,
but the companies have changed. It's a weird kind of situation.
It's like sitting in a car seat and the car
around you keeps changing, but you've never gotten out of
(02:36):
the chair. Well, back in those days when we were
launching podcasts, the idea originally was that we were going
to have a brand extension for how Stuff works dot com.
And but by that I mean every episode was supposed
to tie back to an article on how stuff works
dot com. If any of you listen to stuff you
(02:57):
should know, and you've been listening for a long time,
you know that. That's how they built their episodes. They said,
you know, you can read more at how stuff works
dot com at how such and such works. Well. Tech
stuff was the same way. It was challenging because I
don't know if you guys know this, but technology changes
(03:19):
pretty darned fast. So we would have topics on the
website that we're about tech, but they would get out
of date pretty quickly. I mean, I remember doing a
podcast about video gaming PCs, and at that time I
had never even built a PC. I had worked with
them quite a bit, but I hadn't built one, and
(03:39):
I had not fully appreciated just how out of date
some of the references were. But trust me, my listeners,
let me know. Since then, I have gotten a little
more education on the subject. But we would try and
take these articles and then flesh out a podcast around them.
We didn't want to just repeat the article. We wanted
(04:01):
to kind of be supplemental to the article and direct
people back to the website. Now, what we learned in
those early days at first was that one the the
limit we had put on ourselves, which I think originally
was ten minute limit, was way too short. And you
guys know me, I can barely introduce myself in less
(04:24):
than seven minutes, which doesn't give you a whole lot
of time to cover the actual topic at hand. So
we learned quickly to expand that. Originally I think we
pushed it to twenty minutes, and then thirty minutes. Then
eventually we said this just needs to be as long
as it needs to be, and text stuff gradually averaged
(04:44):
out to around forty five to forty seven minutes per episode,
sometimes going much longer, sometimes a little shorter, but that's
about where we ended up. Well. We also didn't monetize
our shows at that time. There was really no way
to monetize them. Advertising on podcasts had not yet really
become a big thing, didn't have any sponsors or anything
(05:07):
like that, so really we were just trying to convince
people to come over to the website and read the articles.
But as I'm sure all of you have experienced, in
one way or another. That's a big request to get
somebody to stop doing what they're doing on one platform
or device and go to a different platform or device
(05:28):
to check something else out. Because back when we started
doing podcasts, it was before you really used smartphones as
your main method of listening to podcasts or you know,
smart speakers or anything like that. You typically we're downloading
podcasts to a computer and then transferring those to an
MP three player. Yeah, this is back in the ancient
(05:50):
days of two thousand eight. And with that it meant
that by the time you were listening to it, you
were listening typically unlike an iPod, and there was no
way to navigate to a web page on the old iPods.
This was really before you started seeing that kind of
support built out on the iPhone. The iPhone had just
come out the year before. As for the recording process,
(06:13):
I can tell you what that was like, because it was.
It was pretty jang ki in those early days. We
had an office space in an area of Atlanta called Buckhead,
which is a kind of a i'd say an upper
class area of Atlanta, a lot of expensive stores and stuff.
(06:36):
I can't stand Buckhead personally. That's just my own personal opinion,
not a big fan of that part of town. Anyway,
we had an office there and in that office actually
it was it was an entire floor of an office building.
But in that office space we had one medium sized
room kind of in the middle of our office space
(06:57):
that was closed off. It actually you know, had floor
to ceiling walls and doors and everything, and it was
an oddly shaped room. It wasn't like a perfect rectangle.
It was had weird angles to it, and we usually
used it to shoot video and stuff in there, although
we didn't do very much of that. This was before
how Stuff Works was producing very many videos. We were
(07:20):
mostly focusing on writing articles for the site, but occasionally
we would shoot stuff in that space. Well, that's where
they decided to make our little recording studio. The room
had this odd alcove in one corner where it was
like a closet, but there was no door to it,
so it's just an alcove and we were using it
(07:41):
for storage, and that's what we decided to turn into
an audio podcast recording studio. Not ideal, but we fit
a table in there, a small table because there wasn't
a whole lot of space. A couple of chairs, a
couple of microphones, a couple of headphones, and then we
hung a sound dampening curtain across the entrance of that
(08:04):
alcove to shut it off from the rest of the room,
and on the other side of the curtain, in the
actual rooms space, we had a production computer, a Mac computer,
where a producer would sit as we would record and
monitor the recording to make sure that nothing was going wrong.
And so back then, my co host and I, Chris
(08:26):
Pallette and I would sit down and chat into the
microphones and it would get recorded to this production computer.
And back in the day are our producer most frequently
was Tyler who is now an executive producer over with
I Heart. Occasionally we would get Matt Frederick, who you
(08:46):
might know from stuff they don't want you to know, uh,
And once in a blue moon, Jerry would sit in,
but that's only if she really had no other options,
because she was very important back then more so even now,
and I didn't have a whole lot of extra time
in her schedule. But occasionally she would fill in if
(09:07):
if no one else was available, And so that's how
we would record. We would sit down and do that
and there were very few edits. Usually we would include
our goofs and mistakes and we would just correct ourselves
within the context of the actual episode. Um, we didn't
do the beeps thing that some of us have since
(09:29):
started to do, where we indicate it within the audio form,
we make a beep noise because you can actually see
it in the wave form. Uh, you see the the
shape of the wave form, and says, oh, well, that's
clearly where something's messed up and you can go and
fix it. We just kept on going. So if you
listen to those early tech stuffs, you will hear that
we were using, I believe sure microphones, which we have
(09:51):
stuck with for the most part, but that that studio
space wasn't meant to be a studio space. There was
hardly any baffling, baffling being sort of sound absorbing foam
to help cut down on things like echo and and
reverb and stuff. Uh, and it just was what we had.
(10:13):
Eventually we had to move into a smaller office space
within the same building. We no longer had the full floor.
We had about maybe a third of a floor lower
down in the building, and that really caused pain in
our podcasts. We were still doing podcasting, and occasionally we're
(10:34):
even monetizing them at this point. But now we had
a different recording setup. Instead of being in an isolated
room in the center of an office space, we had
an actual office. It wasn't designed to be a studio
at all. It was designed to be the office of
(10:55):
somebody fairly important because it was a corner office with
windows on two wall. Now, I'm sure any of you
out there who have had any experience with sound recording
no that it is not ideal to record in a
room that shares a window to the outside world. There's
(11:15):
a lot of noise that can come in. We were
located just off of one of the many Peach Tree
streets in Atlanta, but in this case, it's the Peach
Tree Street, and you could often hear traffic noises and
occasionally a whistle as a local character known as Baton
Bob would march up and down the street whistling on
(11:36):
a whistle and waving at people. So, yeah, if you want,
if you want to smile, just search Baton Bob Atlanta
and you'll get to see the the ambassador of smiles
that I'm talking about. Not ideal, but that's what we
had to work with then, so we would record again
(11:57):
using sure microphones, using headphones, so decent hardware. We did
eventually end up covering all the windows with materials like
like foam, absorbing foam, baffling foam, which probably meant that
from the outside we looked like there was some sort
of highly disturbed individual who was occupying that particular office
(12:20):
space because the windows were blacked out from that that
space on both sides, and that helped cut down a
little bit on noise. But even to this day, if
you listen back to some of the podcasts that were
recorded during that era, you might occasionally hear traffic noises.
You might even hear a siren, although most of us
(12:40):
would pause our recording whenever an emergency response vehicle was
going down Peachtree Street, which happened at least three or
four times per recording session, so that again was not ideal.
But at the time we were not a podcasting company either.
Podcasting was becoming more important and it was starting to
(13:02):
generate more opportunities, both for the company as a whole
and for some of the hosts in particular, and that
was great, but at that point our focus was still
on the website. At that stage, we were working with
Discovery Communications that was our parent company at the time,
(13:22):
and so things were different, like we were mostly working
on to make sure that we were in alignment with
our parent company, and that also explains why if you
go back and look at those episodes, even across all
the stuff channels, you'll start to see things like uh
topics that maybe we wouldn't have chosen on our own,
(13:44):
but they were in alignment with what the parent company wanted.
The easiest example I can give of that is the
Shark Week themed episodes. It was easier for maybe the
History show to really focus on Shark Week or even
stuff you should know, but for tech stuff, Shark Week
(14:05):
proved to be a bit of a challenge figuring out
how to talk about technology with sharks beyond things like
it's a cage and it protects you from being bitten.
That got that got to be pretty complicated. I think
on our first attempt we ended up talking about Bruce,
which was the nickname for the mechanical shark that was
(14:26):
used during the filming of Jaws. That was the way
we got around it. So that for a long time
was how we recorded episodes. It was either in that
one alcove or it was in a corner office where
we were doing our best to try and isolate all
the outside noise. But things would change dramatically when we
(14:50):
ended up relocating from Buckhead to a different part of
Atlanta and neighborhood called the Old Fourth Ward, and we
ended up in a a space in the brand new
Ponce City Market. I'll explain more about that in a second,
but first let's take a quick break. So we ended
(15:19):
up moving across town. For one thing, we got sold off.
Discovery Communications sold how Stuff Works dot Com to a
company called Blue Cora uh and then in turn, Blue
Cora spun off uh info Seek along with how stuff
Works dot Com, and we became part of a company
(15:42):
that eventually became known as System One. And that's about
the same time that we were relocating over to Old
Fourth Ward into the Pont City Market space. When we
did that, it was super cool, but it was also
incredibly challenging. And it was challenging because we had to
set up brand new studio space in this office and
(16:04):
at the time, Pont City Market was still being built out,
so our office space was complete, but there were entire
floors of Pont City Market that we're being converted over,
and to understand what Pont City Market is and and
the enormity of that challenge takes a little more history.
Pont City Market started off as sort of a store
(16:27):
and distribution center for Sears in Atlanta. It was located
right next to railroad tracks. In fact, the tracks are
still there, they're no longer active tracks. And there was
even a section of track that split off from the
main track and became a little section just in front
of Pont City Market, so that a train car loaded
(16:48):
down with stuff for Sears could detach, move down this
section of track, be unloaded, and then moved back to
join up with a train. So it's a really important
building and it's enormous. It's a couple of million square
feet of space, as I recall, and there's like nine
floors of it. It's huge. But Sears left that building
(17:12):
unoccupied for a long time. The Atlanta City government had
a small amount of space something like ten of the building,
but it remained vacant, and then eventually it was bought
by a development company that decided to turn it into
office and retail and loft space. So if you want
(17:32):
an extremely expensive loft in Atlanta, you could get one
at Pond City Markets, outside my price range, to be honest,
but that's where our office moved to. We built out
two studios originally, and we eventually named them Bowie after
David Bowie and Eno, so they're named after musicians. We
(17:54):
would later add two more studios. Originally they were both
video studio was one was a video studio for sets
and one was a video studio for backdrops like a
white psych or a green screen. Uh, those became prints
and buyork. And so if you've ever watched any of
the How Stuff Works videos where there was like a
(18:16):
little kind of study sort of look to it, like
like you're sitting in a study, that was that was
in one of those studios. And all the old forward
thinking videos where I was in front of like a
white background, at least the later ones, those were shot
in the other studio, but we converted those into audio
studios eventually. Because Stuff Media, the podcasting arm, split off
(18:42):
from how stuff works dot com. How stuff works dot
Com remained with System one and the Stuff Media group
we split off, we stayed in the same office space.
In fact, we cohabitated that office space for a while
with the how Stuff Works people. They eventually moved out
and got a different space, but Stuff Media remained there
(19:05):
and we ended up getting what are called whisper rooms
for those audio podcast rooms. Now these are like recording
booths um and so it's a recording booth sitting inside
a larger room. And on the outside of the whisper rooms,
we've set up desks where we have the production computers.
(19:25):
Those are Mac computers where we record to those those
computer systems. Inside the whispering rooms, we've got tables, chairs,
the microphones still using sure microphones and headphones um and
we have uh, individual little volume controls for our our
headphones so that we can arrange that to our hearts content.
(19:47):
I'm slightly hard of hearing, so I turned mine up,
but that would blast the ears off someone like Lauren.
So luckily we all have our own individual controls. We
don't have to, you know, have one master control for
all the headphones. Uh. We close off those doors we
record our episodes. The audio goes through a mixer in
(20:07):
a couple of studios. There's actually a physical console mixer
and then a couple of studios use a virtual mixer.
But in either case they're doing the same general job.
That is, they allow the producer to set audio levels,
so if one person is just naturally louder than another,
you can drop their level down a little bit so
(20:29):
that way you don't have a big jump between the
loud person and the quiet person. I tend to be
a little quiet, so they boost me up a little bit,
so that's odd. I'm not used to being quiet. But
my voice gets you can hear it now. My voice
is getting worn out the more I talk. Of course,
this is the third episode of tech Stuff that I'm
recording today that explains that. And like the studios that
(20:54):
we had back in the Buckhead space, which were again
just you know, kind of a rigged studios, these we
ended up using a lot more phone baffling. We were
able to have a lot more control over the space.
We made sure that the windows and doors that we
used in those spaces kept the noise nice and isolated,
so you don't have a lot of bleed over. People
(21:17):
can actually chat outside the rooms, and it's not terrible
if they start getting into a really animated conversation that
can sometimes bleed over into the audio. That we are
hearing as we record, and in that case I have
been known to jump outside and gently suggest people take
their conversation elsewhere. I'm very um genteel about such things.
(21:44):
We record into Audition. That is the software we use
at the office. It's a Mac based and so that
allows people to do things like isolate microphones. Uh. And Tari,
when she's recording me live at the office, use this
audition to put little markers down. Whenever I make a
(22:04):
mistake or have a terrible sound come out of me,
like if I have to sniff or cough or something,
she can put a little time marker on the recording
so that later on she can very quickly navigate to
those markers and make those edits um. And it just
makes things a lot easier. That's why she likes to
listen live while I actually record. And then if Tari
(22:28):
has to say something to me, she has a microphone
on her side and can communicate to me. It doesn't
get sent to the audition file. It's it's not going
through to recording, but I can hear it in my
headphones and then I can respond to it. Um. So
that's generally how things worked at Pont City Market. Oh,
(22:49):
I should also mention, so we have Bowie, Eno, Prince
and York text stuff almost always recorded in Eno, at
least over the last couple of years. Stuff you should know,
records in Bowie and sometimes I would record in Bowie
two occasionally. If you watched back in the day when
I used to stream live on Twitch. Um, that was
(23:12):
when we were using the Bowie studio. And that one
is unique among the different studios and all the other studios.
The producer sits at a table or desk that's outside
the actual recording studio and so they communicate over a
microphone to the people inside the studio. You know, Bowie
(23:35):
rather is the only one that's different that one. Uh
The producer actually sits inside the recording studio along with
the talent. So when Josh and Chuck were recording in
the office, Jerry was also in that same room with them,
so all three of them would be right there. And
that is the the one difference to all the other studios.
(23:56):
They have the producer isolated from the people inside the booth.
And uh, I just thought that was interesting. I don't know,
you know how that came about, but that's how it works. Uh.
In the case of Eno, there is a big window
on the side of the studio where the producer's desk is,
(24:18):
so I can look out the window and star, although
usually there's a giant display that's you know, eclipsing most
of her. And that's generally how it worked in the office.
We would sit down inside those studios and record. The
whisper rooms have a little bit more space in them
than either Eno or Bowie do, and so podcasts that
(24:39):
have more hosts in them tend to record in one
of those. Like when I would go into record with
Ridiculous History, Uh, it was usually in the Buyork studio
for example. But that's that's how things worked pre coronavirus,
and then everything would change. Oh, I should also add
(25:02):
that was also when we started to see a more
regular use of ads, when we were able to actually
monetize podcasts. In fact, that's the only reason stuff Media
was able to exist in the first place. We had
reached a point where the podcasts could be monetized and
make money that was on a level that was, you know,
(25:25):
comparable to what the website How Stuff Works was making,
and that's what made it possible to spend Stuff Media
off into its separate company, And part of the reason
we were able to do that is because we have
a sales team and an ads team, and they worked
together to be able to get potential ad reads for
(25:47):
the various shows. And typically hosts have the opportunity to
review the ads that will run on their shows, not always,
but usually, and we have a chance to say yea
or name. So if we find something truly objectionable, like
let's say that for some reason Sarainos wanted to run
(26:09):
an ad on my show, if it were still around,
I could say, yeah, no, not really, not really a
big fan of that one, and it would just go away.
But if it were something that I don't have an
objection to, then you know, I might do the ad
read myself. It's frequently how we do it, and then
we do a recording session, usually of just ads. We
(26:31):
don't typically record ads live in a audio recording of
an episode. We can do that, and it has happened
in the past, but more frequently these days we do
separate recording sessions so that we can really hone in
on getting the ad just right, and then we can
insert it into episodes later down the line. Uh. I
(26:53):
know that a lot of people don't really care for ads,
they find it irritating. But seriously, without advertisements, we don't
have a way of making revenue, and without revenue, there's
no reason for us to do the shows because we can't.
We can't recapture the cost it it takes to make
(27:13):
the shows. So the ads are what make the shows possible.
And our goal is to always choose companies that we
like and ads that we don't object to, and then
incorporate those in our shows. Some weeks it's more challenging
than others, but that's always our goal. So we don't
do it just to throw ads at you. We don't
(27:36):
do it because we're swimming in slag. Most of us aren't. UM.
Once in a blue moon, I might get something where
I get to try it out first, so that way
I can actually talk about it with sincerity. What I'm
doing an ad, But it's not like I'm surrounded by
products from all the major companies all around me all
the time. If that were the case, UM, I probably
(27:59):
have a lot more guitars, but I don't. So that's
how things worked pre coronavirus. When we come back, I'll
talk a little bit about how things have changed since
we started working mostly from home. But first let's take
a quick break for one of those ads. I was
just talking about March Friday. That appears to be the
(28:32):
last day that most of us were in the office.
Some of us kept going back a little bit after that,
but not much more after that. Georgia is where we
are located. And for those who have followed, you know
that Georgia has had a real rough time of it,
and part of that is because leadership in Georgia really
(28:55):
dragged its feet about issuing stay at home orders. Not
in Atlanta, we actually got those fairly early on, but
the state of Georgia, certainly that was not ever really
a big push. So most of us weren't coming in
after Friday the thirteenth. I can say that definitively because
(29:15):
I have had to go back to the studio a
couple of times since then. I'll get to that. And
when I was there, I saw on my co worker's
desk a desk calendar and the last date that was
showing was March thirteen. Grim reminder of how things used
to be. Well. We had to pivot very very quickly.
(29:38):
We were all recording podcasts. It was hard to do
without having access to the studios. We weren't sure how
we were going to manage doing this when we're all remote.
But fortunately we have a very dedicated team of people
who were working very hard to make sure we had
the assets we needed that included microphones. So most of us,
(30:02):
I think, ended up with an audio technical a T
two thousand five USB mike. This style of microphone is
a dynamic microphone. That means it's directional. It's not a
condenser mike. You can find condenser mics things like the
Snowball and the Yeti, both from Blue Microphones. Those are
condenser style microphones. This one's directional, which means that if
(30:27):
you start to wander off to either side of the microphone,
your volume is going to drop. Because the microphone is
really designed to pick up sound in a cone that
extends out from the end of the microphone, you're supposed
to maintain, you know, a fairly close distance to the mic.
We also have pop filters. These are a little round
(30:49):
filters that have a a gauze like material. It's it's
like almost like panty hose. In fact, there are people
who have made pop filters using Penny Ho's and the
chief purpose of that is to stop puffs of air
when you start hitting things like pas. Like if you've
listened to some of the episodes that came out shortly
(31:11):
after Lockdown, you'll hear a lot more popping peas, or
they'll be a lot more prominent. I'm using the word
words that have p's in them way too much right now,
But there are a lot more prominent in those early
episodes because it was before I had put my pop
filter in place. Now I've got it there and you
can still hear it, but it's not nearly as a
big of a punch in the in the ear drum
(31:32):
as it used to be. The a T two thousand
five USB mike. This is not an AD They didn't
get AD space or anything for it. But it's a
microphone I particularly really like because it does have an
XLR output, so you can hook it up to an
XLR cable if you wanted to put it to a
physical mixer and then connect that to a computer. But
(31:52):
also has the USB port so you can connect it
via USB to a computer directly. And it's actually a
pretty decent quality microphone. It's not at the same level
as the professional microphones we have back in the studio.
And I'm sure if you were to listen to episodes
back to back from one that was taken in the
(32:13):
studio to one that's done at home, you'd be able
to start to hear that. But it's it's decent, it's
really good. It's it's amazing to me how these style
microphones have improved over the last five years or so.
And uh, we tend to record into various recording software.
(32:34):
I use Audacity. Audacity is a free piece of software
and you can use it to record multiple tracks to
a single recording. Um, it's really handy. It's a little
bit it's a little bit tough to to learn how
to use all the different features. It's got a bit
(32:54):
of a learning curve to it. But it has a
lot of stuff in it that is really helpful for
podcast recording. For example, there's a noise removal tool where
what you'll do is you'll capture room tone room and
we would do this in the studio too, because it's
it's a very standard approach. But room tone is just
(33:16):
letting the microphone pick up the sound that is native
to whatever the recording environment is there might be a
hum from air conditioning or the noise from the fan
from a computer or something like that, and you just
let the mic record for you know, ten seconds or so,
and then you use that as a sample, and the
(33:39):
software what it does is essentially looks for frequencies that
match that sample and remove it from the finished recording.
So that way you can eliminate or at least reduce
the audio of whatever the room sounds like. So Audacity
has that capability to um. It has the ability to
(34:00):
do lots of stuff like I can do reverb things
like that, not that I ever would for an episode
of tech stuff seems like that be a bit much,
but you can do that. So if you want to
record stuff, I do recommend checking out Audacity. Like I said,
it's free to use. There are also a lot of
different plugins you can get that can add more features
to Audacity. I used to do that a lot before
(34:24):
I was recording podcasts with with how Stuff Works, So
that was that's that's kind of the approach I take.
I set up my microphone, I start Audacity recording, I
let it record for about ten seconds, and then I
record my episode. Stop the recording. I then go through,
remove any long pauses, and maybe do some minor edits.
(34:45):
I then save the project. I convert it to a
wave form and I save that to drop Box because
these files tend to be pretty large, and I share
from Dropbox over to Tari. So Tari can then download
a wave file and then she can import that into
Audacity and make edits and do things like attach things
(35:08):
like the theme music. Have it, but go into the
right um, the right the right format so that everything
is proper. You know, we've got the opening and closing theme,
We've got the ad breaks, all that kind of stuff,
and then she can then publish it and then you
guys get it. So now, uh, that's how I record
(35:29):
because I do a single host show, so mind's easy.
There are people who obviously have more than one host
in their show, and for them the process is slightly different. Uh,
they will record in one of several ways. They actually
there's there's not one single way to do this. So
I'm going to talk about a couple of different approaches
(35:50):
and the pros and cons to each of them. Some
people will use a service like zen Caster or squad cast,
and these services are somewhat similar, and it's really fascinating
how they work. So everyone logs into an online session
(36:11):
using whatever tool they're using, and they can hear each other,
and depending upon the service, they might be able to
see each other too through webcams, and as they uh
they can start recording through this session. But as they
start that recording, the recording is not going over the
internet directly to the cloud. Instead, each person is recording
(36:35):
to his or her direct device, their computer. So it
looks like you're just having an online video call. You're
all chatting and having your conversations as you record, and
it's almost like you're in a studio. It's just that
you're doing this over video chat. But what's actually happening
(36:55):
is that each audio track is recording to the individual
computers and then at the end, the computers upload that
recording to the cloud, where the service will then put
it all together so that it's all synchronized and you
have a nice master recording of separate tracks for each person.
(37:20):
That is phenomenal to me. That's like magic to me,
because it means that the quality of the recording you
get is the best that it possibly can be, because
it's the going natively to the computer. It's not like
an internet phone call. If you've had a lot of
Internet meetings, you know that even just a little bit
of Internet you know, hiccups will cause delays. You might
(37:42):
have someone's vocals drop out. There are a lot of problems.
But because this is initially recording to your local device
and then gets uploaded, you get a much better quality
recording that way, and then it gets uh put together
in the cloud and the producers can take that and
do the edits that they need to. They can download
(38:04):
a sound file and go through the editing process before
publishing it. That's one way that people are recording their
shows if they have multiple hosts. Another way is that
they will use some form of internet communication tool like
Zoom or Microsoft Teams or uh Skype or whatever in
(38:25):
order to have the call. They might even record that
that call so that they have sort of a scratch track,
that's what we call a reference track. But they will
record their individual audio locally, so they might start up
an Audacity file, for example, or a voice memo file
(38:47):
or something along those lines, and they will record themselves
locally to their machine, and then once it's all done,
they will share their recording to the producer of the show,
who then has to take all these recordings, synchronize them,
and put them all together. This is potentially very complicated
(39:08):
if people are recording at say different bit rates, you
can have real issues with synchronization, like you can have
it where audio will drift a bit and eventually you
can get to a point where someone is answering a
question before the person who's asking it has even finished
asking the question because the recordings haven't quite lined up properly,
(39:28):
and it requires a lot of fine tuning adjustment to
get it fixed. It's a lot of it's a huge headache.
If everyone's recording on the same bit rate and everything,
you you bypass that, but it doesn't always happen. Sometimes
people just don't notice their settings, so it still remains.
One of the big challenges is which way do you go.
(39:49):
Do you use the zen caster type approach where everybody
is in the same virtual space and then eventually their
audio gets uploaded to zen Caster and the producer can
pull it down, or do you record each track individually
send that to the producer who then has to assemble
the podcast out of that way. Tari is lucky for
(40:12):
tech stuff. She's unlucky in a lot of ways, but
this way she's very lucky because it's just me. So
she just has to get the one audio file from
me and then she can edit that and send it on.
So that's easy on that level. Uh. It's one of
those things where I didn't really appreciate it till I
had to deal with it. I've done a few episodes
(40:32):
where I've done some interviews, and that's where you start
coming into potential problems, whether it's an issue with the
software running on another person's machine, or their internet connection
or your internet connection. I mean, there are a lot
of things that can cause issues. Now. I mentioned that
(40:53):
I have gone into the office a couple of times
since we shut down in the middle of Mark and Uh,
in those cases it was because I was recording episodes
of Smart Talks, the IBM series that I um I
am one of the hosts for, and Smart Talks is
(41:14):
a really important show. I talked to really important people.
And my internet at home occasionally decides it wants to
go on vacation at a moment's notice and it'll drop.
So rather than risk having that happen while I talk
with these important people. I will make the trek into
the city to go to Pont City Market, to go
(41:35):
to one of our studios and to record there where
I can be reasonably sure that my internet connection is
as solid as it gets. It's fast, and it's not
likely to drop. And and because there's nobody else there
most of the time, uh, there's no congestion on the network.
It's just me. Sometimes it's me and maybe one or
two other people. I can report that everyone is following
(42:00):
very strict processes and rules in order to do this properly.
We wear masks, We have antibacterial uh wipes everywhere which
we use to wipe down equipment. We have you know,
hand sanitizing stations throughout the office so that we can
(42:22):
frequently do that as well. So we take that very seriously.
We have a full list of steps that we follow
when we go into the studio, which includes wiping down
the equipment both before and after we use it so that, um,
you know, when you're talking into a microphone, you want
to make sure that you've sanitized that microphone so that
the next person who uses it doesn't end up getting sick.
(42:45):
If you happen to be carrying COVID nineteen and you
don't know it. You don't want to infect anybody else.
So we do have those rules still in place. Everyone
follows them and it's been challenging. We've got some super
cool podcas asks that are coming out of our studio
that require us to use the studio space that I'm
(43:06):
really excited to listen to. I can't even talk about
them now, but let me tell you they are. The
people who are working on them are some of the
hardest working and most creative people I know. I am
not on this project, by the way, I don't merit
that consideration, but the stuff I'm hearing about it is
(43:26):
really exciting and I can't wait to share it once
it's ready to go. But it's one of those things
where they have to go into the studio and so
we have to take all those precautions. So when you
listen to our podcasts, whether it's tech stuff or stuff,
you should know stuff they don't want you to know,
ridiculous history. Keep in mind these shows are being done
(43:50):
by people in various parts of the world at this
point and on various pieces of equipment, and that we
all all had to adapt to that super fast with
not really a whole lot of prep time, And to me,
it is phenomenal that we were able to keep doing
(44:10):
that with a bare minimum of fuss uh, at least
fuss that was noticeable to the listeners. I'm sure there
was a noticeable change in the quality of recordings, and
in some cases there might be outstanding uh incidents where
it's even more noticeable. But overall, I think we've done
(44:34):
a pretty darn good job, and most importantly, we keep
delivering the stories that excite us to you guys. So
next time you hear a podcast that you really like
and you think, gosh, those folks aren't they are not
sitting across a table from each other the way they
used to, you know, take a moment to appreciate that
and the hard work that they do, not me. I
(44:56):
stay here by myself. It's really not any different. If
you want to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for Torii,
because since she can no longer listen to me record live,
she can't make those markers anymore in the audio file.
So that means she has to listen to every single
episode all the way through and catch all the times
(45:19):
I make mistakes, and then do it that way she
can't just you know, put in a marker so that
she can come back later and fix it quickly. She's
the one who really deserves the props. Me, I'm doing
what I always did, It's just I'm doing it into
a different microphone. Now. Well, that's a peak behind the
curtain of how things are going in the the COVID
(45:41):
nineteen world in podcasting. How we were able to to
pivot to that and adapt to that with I think
the a pretty small disruption to how we do things
in the grand scheme of things. I'm sure that like
most of my other co hosts, I'm sure everybody's really
(46:02):
looking forward to a time and we can go back
to the studio and see each other in person and
actually sit across from the table and and have a
discussion and not be separated by miles and miles between us.
I'm sure everybody, like me, we're all looking forward to that,
and I do think it will have an impact on
just the quality of the conversations we have. But my
(46:25):
hat is off to all of my peers out there,
both within the I Heart radio community and outside it,
everyone who's working so hard to try and keep things
going in incredibly extraordinarily difficult times, and then, of course
also goes outside the realm of podcasting. I know lots
of you out there have been impacted in various ways
(46:49):
and have been working very hard in your own right
to keep things moving, and my hat is off to
you as well. I think we're all in this together,
even if we all have to be a part. Wow,
that's that's deep. Okay, let's wrap this up. I have
to go out and get ready for a vacation where
I'm going to be in a cabin in the middle
(47:10):
of nowhere in the Georgia Mountains, and I will be
contemplating I don't know my toes. Maybe we'll see. Maybe
I'll learn to play guitar a little bit more while
I'm out there. If you guys have suggestions for future
episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a specific technology, maybe
it's a company, Maybe it's a trend in tech. Maybe
(47:32):
it's a personality and technology, anything like that, anything tech
related or how tech impacts our lives, reach out to me.
The best way to do it is on Twitter. The
handle is tech stuff h s W and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I
(47:55):
heart radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. And today's episode is
a little different from our typical episodes. And that's partly
(00:27):
because as I'm recording this, I'm about to go on
vacation and I wanted to make sure I had a
new episode for you guys. But at the same time,
I honestly just didn't have the time to do my
full research dive and writing course for an episode of
tech Stuff. So instead I thought we'd do a peek
(00:47):
behind the curtain episode and I could talk about about
how are podcasting has changed since the time of quarantine,
like the idea of the stay at home stuff and
how we at I Heart and the former stuff media
crowd have had to pivot in order to continue to
(01:09):
make podcasts and what that actually means and and uh,
I think it's a pretty great story, just one example
of how people all over the world are adapting in
this time of coronavirus. And I don't mean to suggest
that the way we adapted is in some way, you know,
(01:30):
extraordinary compared to others, but rather just kind of give
an insight into how things have changed for us. But
to do that, you know, it wouldn't be a Tech
Stuff episode if I didn't dive into history. And those
of you who have listened to Tech Stuff for a
long time, some of this might be familiar to you.
I've covered it in some previous episodes of tech Stuff,
(01:51):
but that was years ago, and I want to talk
about how the show got started and what it was
like recording at the beginning, and then eat into its evolution,
into what it was like just before the coronavirus crisis happened,
and what it's been like since. That has been part
of our lives. So to begin, we go back to
(02:14):
two thousand eight. Now that year, Uh, that was when
I was working for How Stuff Works dot com. Technically
I've been in the same job since two thousand seven,
but the companies have changed. It's a weird kind of situation.
It's like sitting in a car seat and the car
around you keeps changing, but you've never gotten out of
(02:36):
the chair. Well, back in those days when we were
launching podcasts, the idea originally was that we were going
to have a brand extension for how Stuff works dot com.
And but by that I mean every episode was supposed
to tie back to an article on how stuff works
dot com. If any of you listen to stuff you
(02:57):
should know, and you've been listening for a long time,
you know that. That's how they built their episodes. They said,
you know, you can read more at how stuff works
dot com at how such and such works. Well. Tech
stuff was the same way. It was challenging because I
don't know if you guys know this, but technology changes
(03:19):
pretty darned fast. So we would have topics on the
website that we're about tech, but they would get out
of date pretty quickly. I mean, I remember doing a
podcast about video gaming PCs, and at that time I
had never even built a PC. I had worked with
them quite a bit, but I hadn't built one, and
(03:39):
I had not fully appreciated just how out of date
some of the references were. But trust me, my listeners,
let me know. Since then, I have gotten a little
more education on the subject. But we would try and
take these articles and then flesh out a podcast around them.
We didn't want to just repeat the article. We wanted
(04:01):
to kind of be supplemental to the article and direct
people back to the website. Now, what we learned in
those early days at first was that one the the
limit we had put on ourselves, which I think originally
was ten minute limit, was way too short. And you
guys know me, I can barely introduce myself in less
(04:24):
than seven minutes, which doesn't give you a whole lot
of time to cover the actual topic at hand. So
we learned quickly to expand that. Originally I think we
pushed it to twenty minutes, and then thirty minutes. Then
eventually we said this just needs to be as long
as it needs to be, and text stuff gradually averaged
(04:44):
out to around forty five to forty seven minutes per episode,
sometimes going much longer, sometimes a little shorter, but that's
about where we ended up. Well. We also didn't monetize
our shows at that time. There was really no way
to monetize them. Advertising on podcasts had not yet really
become a big thing, didn't have any sponsors or anything
(05:07):
like that, so really we were just trying to convince
people to come over to the website and read the articles.
But as I'm sure all of you have experienced, in
one way or another. That's a big request to get
somebody to stop doing what they're doing on one platform
or device and go to a different platform or device
(05:28):
to check something else out. Because back when we started
doing podcasts, it was before you really used smartphones as
your main method of listening to podcasts or you know,
smart speakers or anything like that. You typically we're downloading
podcasts to a computer and then transferring those to an
MP three player. Yeah, this is back in the ancient
(05:50):
days of two thousand eight. And with that it meant
that by the time you were listening to it, you
were listening typically unlike an iPod, and there was no
way to navigate to a web page on the old iPods.
This was really before you started seeing that kind of
support built out on the iPhone. The iPhone had just
come out the year before. As for the recording process,
(06:13):
I can tell you what that was like, because it was.
It was pretty jang ki in those early days. We
had an office space in an area of Atlanta called Buckhead,
which is a kind of a i'd say an upper
class area of Atlanta, a lot of expensive stores and stuff.
(06:36):
I can't stand Buckhead personally. That's just my own personal opinion,
not a big fan of that part of town. Anyway,
we had an office there and in that office actually
it was it was an entire floor of an office building.
But in that office space we had one medium sized
room kind of in the middle of our office space
(06:57):
that was closed off. It actually you know, had floor
to ceiling walls and doors and everything, and it was
an oddly shaped room. It wasn't like a perfect rectangle.
It was had weird angles to it, and we usually
used it to shoot video and stuff in there, although
we didn't do very much of that. This was before
how Stuff Works was producing very many videos. We were
(07:20):
mostly focusing on writing articles for the site, but occasionally
we would shoot stuff in that space. Well, that's where
they decided to make our little recording studio. The room
had this odd alcove in one corner where it was
like a closet, but there was no door to it,
so it's just an alcove and we were using it
(07:41):
for storage, and that's what we decided to turn into
an audio podcast recording studio. Not ideal, but we fit
a table in there, a small table because there wasn't
a whole lot of space. A couple of chairs, a
couple of microphones, a couple of headphones, and then we
hung a sound dampening curtain across the entrance of that
(08:04):
alcove to shut it off from the rest of the room,
and on the other side of the curtain, in the
actual rooms space, we had a production computer, a Mac computer,
where a producer would sit as we would record and
monitor the recording to make sure that nothing was going wrong.
And so back then, my co host and I, Chris
(08:26):
Pallette and I would sit down and chat into the
microphones and it would get recorded to this production computer.
And back in the day are our producer most frequently
was Tyler who is now an executive producer over with
I Heart. Occasionally we would get Matt Frederick, who you
(08:46):
might know from stuff they don't want you to know, uh,
And once in a blue moon, Jerry would sit in,
but that's only if she really had no other options,
because she was very important back then more so even now,
and I didn't have a whole lot of extra time
in her schedule. But occasionally she would fill in if
(09:07):
if no one else was available, And so that's how
we would record. We would sit down and do that
and there were very few edits. Usually we would include
our goofs and mistakes and we would just correct ourselves
within the context of the actual episode. Um, we didn't
do the beeps thing that some of us have since
(09:29):
started to do, where we indicate it within the audio form,
we make a beep noise because you can actually see
it in the wave form. Uh, you see the the
shape of the wave form, and says, oh, well, that's
clearly where something's messed up and you can go and
fix it. We just kept on going. So if you
listen to those early tech stuffs, you will hear that
we were using, I believe sure microphones, which we have
(09:51):
stuck with for the most part, but that that studio
space wasn't meant to be a studio space. There was
hardly any baffling, baffling being sort of sound absorbing foam
to help cut down on things like echo and and
reverb and stuff. Uh, and it just was what we had.
(10:13):
Eventually we had to move into a smaller office space
within the same building. We no longer had the full floor.
We had about maybe a third of a floor lower
down in the building, and that really caused pain in
our podcasts. We were still doing podcasting, and occasionally we're
(10:34):
even monetizing them at this point. But now we had
a different recording setup. Instead of being in an isolated
room in the center of an office space, we had
an actual office. It wasn't designed to be a studio
at all. It was designed to be the office of
(10:55):
somebody fairly important because it was a corner office with
windows on two wall. Now, I'm sure any of you
out there who have had any experience with sound recording
no that it is not ideal to record in a
room that shares a window to the outside world. There's
(11:15):
a lot of noise that can come in. We were
located just off of one of the many Peach Tree
streets in Atlanta, but in this case, it's the Peach
Tree Street, and you could often hear traffic noises and
occasionally a whistle as a local character known as Baton
Bob would march up and down the street whistling on
(11:36):
a whistle and waving at people. So, yeah, if you want,
if you want to smile, just search Baton Bob Atlanta
and you'll get to see the the ambassador of smiles
that I'm talking about. Not ideal, but that's what we
had to work with then, so we would record again
(11:57):
using sure microphones, using headphones, so decent hardware. We did
eventually end up covering all the windows with materials like
like foam, absorbing foam, baffling foam, which probably meant that
from the outside we looked like there was some sort
of highly disturbed individual who was occupying that particular office
(12:20):
space because the windows were blacked out from that that
space on both sides, and that helped cut down a
little bit on noise. But even to this day, if
you listen back to some of the podcasts that were
recorded during that era, you might occasionally hear traffic noises.
You might even hear a siren, although most of us
(12:40):
would pause our recording whenever an emergency response vehicle was
going down Peachtree Street, which happened at least three or
four times per recording session, so that again was not ideal.
But at the time we were not a podcasting company either.
Podcasting was becoming more important and it was starting to
(13:02):
generate more opportunities, both for the company as a whole
and for some of the hosts in particular, and that
was great, but at that point our focus was still
on the website. At that stage, we were working with
Discovery Communications that was our parent company at the time,
(13:22):
and so things were different, like we were mostly working
on to make sure that we were in alignment with
our parent company, and that also explains why if you
go back and look at those episodes, even across all
the stuff channels, you'll start to see things like uh
topics that maybe we wouldn't have chosen on our own,
(13:44):
but they were in alignment with what the parent company wanted.
The easiest example I can give of that is the
Shark Week themed episodes. It was easier for maybe the
History show to really focus on Shark Week or even
stuff you should know, but for tech stuff, Shark Week
(14:05):
proved to be a bit of a challenge figuring out
how to talk about technology with sharks beyond things like
it's a cage and it protects you from being bitten.
That got that got to be pretty complicated. I think
on our first attempt we ended up talking about Bruce,
which was the nickname for the mechanical shark that was
(14:26):
used during the filming of Jaws. That was the way
we got around it. So that for a long time
was how we recorded episodes. It was either in that
one alcove or it was in a corner office where
we were doing our best to try and isolate all
the outside noise. But things would change dramatically when we
(14:50):
ended up relocating from Buckhead to a different part of
Atlanta and neighborhood called the Old Fourth Ward, and we
ended up in a a space in the brand new
Ponce City Market. I'll explain more about that in a second,
but first let's take a quick break. So we ended
(15:19):
up moving across town. For one thing, we got sold off.
Discovery Communications sold how Stuff Works dot Com to a
company called Blue Cora uh and then in turn, Blue
Cora spun off uh info Seek along with how stuff
Works dot Com, and we became part of a company
(15:42):
that eventually became known as System One. And that's about
the same time that we were relocating over to Old
Fourth Ward into the Pont City Market space. When we
did that, it was super cool, but it was also
incredibly challenging. And it was challenging because we had to
set up brand new studio space in this office and
(16:04):
at the time, Pont City Market was still being built out,
so our office space was complete, but there were entire
floors of Pont City Market that we're being converted over,
and to understand what Pont City Market is and and
the enormity of that challenge takes a little more history.
Pont City Market started off as sort of a store
(16:27):
and distribution center for Sears in Atlanta. It was located
right next to railroad tracks. In fact, the tracks are
still there, they're no longer active tracks. And there was
even a section of track that split off from the
main track and became a little section just in front
of Pont City Market, so that a train car loaded
(16:48):
down with stuff for Sears could detach, move down this
section of track, be unloaded, and then moved back to
join up with a train. So it's a really important
building and it's enormous. It's a couple of million square
feet of space, as I recall, and there's like nine
floors of it. It's huge. But Sears left that building
(17:12):
unoccupied for a long time. The Atlanta City government had
a small amount of space something like ten of the building,
but it remained vacant, and then eventually it was bought
by a development company that decided to turn it into
office and retail and loft space. So if you want
(17:32):
an extremely expensive loft in Atlanta, you could get one
at Pond City Markets, outside my price range, to be honest,
but that's where our office moved to. We built out
two studios originally, and we eventually named them Bowie after
David Bowie and Eno, so they're named after musicians. We
(17:54):
would later add two more studios. Originally they were both
video studio was one was a video studio for sets
and one was a video studio for backdrops like a
white psych or a green screen. Uh, those became prints
and buyork. And so if you've ever watched any of
the How Stuff Works videos where there was like a
(18:16):
little kind of study sort of look to it, like
like you're sitting in a study, that was that was
in one of those studios. And all the old forward
thinking videos where I was in front of like a
white background, at least the later ones, those were shot
in the other studio, but we converted those into audio
studios eventually. Because Stuff Media, the podcasting arm, split off
(18:42):
from how stuff works dot com. How stuff works dot
Com remained with System one and the Stuff Media group
we split off, we stayed in the same office space.
In fact, we cohabitated that office space for a while
with the how Stuff Works people. They eventually moved out
and got a different space, but Stuff Media remained there
(19:05):
and we ended up getting what are called whisper rooms
for those audio podcast rooms. Now these are like recording
booths um and so it's a recording booth sitting inside
a larger room. And on the outside of the whisper rooms,
we've set up desks where we have the production computers.
(19:25):
Those are Mac computers where we record to those those
computer systems. Inside the whispering rooms, we've got tables, chairs,
the microphones still using sure microphones and headphones um and
we have uh, individual little volume controls for our our
headphones so that we can arrange that to our hearts content.
(19:47):
I'm slightly hard of hearing, so I turned mine up,
but that would blast the ears off someone like Lauren.
So luckily we all have our own individual controls. We
don't have to, you know, have one master control for
all the headphones. Uh. We close off those doors we
record our episodes. The audio goes through a mixer in
(20:07):
a couple of studios. There's actually a physical console mixer
and then a couple of studios use a virtual mixer.
But in either case they're doing the same general job.
That is, they allow the producer to set audio levels,
so if one person is just naturally louder than another,
you can drop their level down a little bit so
(20:29):
that way you don't have a big jump between the
loud person and the quiet person. I tend to be
a little quiet, so they boost me up a little bit,
so that's odd. I'm not used to being quiet. But
my voice gets you can hear it now. My voice
is getting worn out the more I talk. Of course,
this is the third episode of tech Stuff that I'm
recording today that explains that. And like the studios that
(20:54):
we had back in the Buckhead space, which were again
just you know, kind of a rigged studios, these we
ended up using a lot more phone baffling. We were
able to have a lot more control over the space.
We made sure that the windows and doors that we
used in those spaces kept the noise nice and isolated,
so you don't have a lot of bleed over. People
(21:17):
can actually chat outside the rooms, and it's not terrible
if they start getting into a really animated conversation that
can sometimes bleed over into the audio. That we are
hearing as we record, and in that case I have
been known to jump outside and gently suggest people take
their conversation elsewhere. I'm very um genteel about such things.
(21:44):
We record into Audition. That is the software we use
at the office. It's a Mac based and so that
allows people to do things like isolate microphones. Uh. And Tari,
when she's recording me live at the office, use this
audition to put little markers down. Whenever I make a
(22:04):
mistake or have a terrible sound come out of me,
like if I have to sniff or cough or something,
she can put a little time marker on the recording
so that later on she can very quickly navigate to
those markers and make those edits um. And it just
makes things a lot easier. That's why she likes to
listen live while I actually record. And then if Tari
(22:28):
has to say something to me, she has a microphone
on her side and can communicate to me. It doesn't
get sent to the audition file. It's it's not going
through to recording, but I can hear it in my
headphones and then I can respond to it. Um. So
that's generally how things worked at Pont City Market. Oh,
(22:49):
I should also mention, so we have Bowie, Eno, Prince
and York text stuff almost always recorded in Eno, at
least over the last couple of years. Stuff you should know,
records in Bowie and sometimes I would record in Bowie
two occasionally. If you watched back in the day when
I used to stream live on Twitch. Um, that was
(23:12):
when we were using the Bowie studio. And that one
is unique among the different studios and all the other studios.
The producer sits at a table or desk that's outside
the actual recording studio and so they communicate over a
microphone to the people inside the studio. You know, Bowie
(23:35):
rather is the only one that's different that one. Uh
The producer actually sits inside the recording studio along with
the talent. So when Josh and Chuck were recording in
the office, Jerry was also in that same room with them,
so all three of them would be right there. And
that is the the one difference to all the other studios.
(23:56):
They have the producer isolated from the people inside the booth.
And uh, I just thought that was interesting. I don't know,
you know how that came about, but that's how it works. Uh.
In the case of Eno, there is a big window
on the side of the studio where the producer's desk is,
(24:18):
so I can look out the window and star, although
usually there's a giant display that's you know, eclipsing most
of her. And that's generally how it worked in the office.
We would sit down inside those studios and record. The
whisper rooms have a little bit more space in them
than either Eno or Bowie do, and so podcasts that
(24:39):
have more hosts in them tend to record in one
of those. Like when I would go into record with
Ridiculous History, Uh, it was usually in the Buyork studio
for example. But that's that's how things worked pre coronavirus,
and then everything would change. Oh, I should also add
(25:02):
that was also when we started to see a more
regular use of ads, when we were able to actually
monetize podcasts. In fact, that's the only reason stuff Media
was able to exist in the first place. We had
reached a point where the podcasts could be monetized and
make money that was on a level that was, you know,
(25:25):
comparable to what the website How Stuff Works was making,
and that's what made it possible to spend Stuff Media
off into its separate company, And part of the reason
we were able to do that is because we have
a sales team and an ads team, and they worked
together to be able to get potential ad reads for
(25:47):
the various shows. And typically hosts have the opportunity to
review the ads that will run on their shows, not always,
but usually, and we have a chance to say yea
or name. So if we find something truly objectionable, like
let's say that for some reason Sarainos wanted to run
(26:09):
an ad on my show, if it were still around,
I could say, yeah, no, not really, not really a
big fan of that one, and it would just go away.
But if it were something that I don't have an
objection to, then you know, I might do the ad
read myself. It's frequently how we do it, and then
we do a recording session, usually of just ads. We
(26:31):
don't typically record ads live in a audio recording of
an episode. We can do that, and it has happened
in the past, but more frequently these days we do
separate recording sessions so that we can really hone in
on getting the ad just right, and then we can
insert it into episodes later down the line. Uh. I
(26:53):
know that a lot of people don't really care for ads,
they find it irritating. But seriously, without advertisements, we don't
have a way of making revenue, and without revenue, there's
no reason for us to do the shows because we can't.
We can't recapture the cost it it takes to make
(27:13):
the shows. So the ads are what make the shows possible.
And our goal is to always choose companies that we
like and ads that we don't object to, and then
incorporate those in our shows. Some weeks it's more challenging
than others, but that's always our goal. So we don't
do it just to throw ads at you. We don't
(27:36):
do it because we're swimming in slag. Most of us aren't. UM.
Once in a blue moon, I might get something where
I get to try it out first, so that way
I can actually talk about it with sincerity. What I'm
doing an ad, But it's not like I'm surrounded by
products from all the major companies all around me all
the time. If that were the case, UM, I probably
(27:59):
have a lot more guitars, but I don't. So that's
how things worked pre coronavirus. When we come back, I'll
talk a little bit about how things have changed since
we started working mostly from home. But first let's take
a quick break for one of those ads. I was
just talking about March Friday. That appears to be the
(28:32):
last day that most of us were in the office.
Some of us kept going back a little bit after that,
but not much more after that. Georgia is where we
are located. And for those who have followed, you know
that Georgia has had a real rough time of it,
and part of that is because leadership in Georgia really
(28:55):
dragged its feet about issuing stay at home orders. Not
in Atlanta, we actually got those fairly early on, but
the state of Georgia, certainly that was not ever really
a big push. So most of us weren't coming in
after Friday the thirteenth. I can say that definitively because
(29:15):
I have had to go back to the studio a
couple of times since then. I'll get to that. And
when I was there, I saw on my co worker's
desk a desk calendar and the last date that was
showing was March thirteen. Grim reminder of how things used
to be. Well. We had to pivot very very quickly.
(29:38):
We were all recording podcasts. It was hard to do
without having access to the studios. We weren't sure how
we were going to manage doing this when we're all remote.
But fortunately we have a very dedicated team of people
who were working very hard to make sure we had
the assets we needed that included microphones. So most of us,
(30:02):
I think, ended up with an audio technical a T
two thousand five USB mike. This style of microphone is
a dynamic microphone. That means it's directional. It's not a
condenser mike. You can find condenser mics things like the
Snowball and the Yeti, both from Blue Microphones. Those are
condenser style microphones. This one's directional, which means that if
(30:27):
you start to wander off to either side of the microphone,
your volume is going to drop. Because the microphone is
really designed to pick up sound in a cone that
extends out from the end of the microphone, you're supposed
to maintain, you know, a fairly close distance to the mic.
We also have pop filters. These are a little round
(30:49):
filters that have a a gauze like material. It's it's
like almost like panty hose. In fact, there are people
who have made pop filters using Penny Ho's and the
chief purpose of that is to stop puffs of air
when you start hitting things like pas. Like if you've
listened to some of the episodes that came out shortly
(31:11):
after Lockdown, you'll hear a lot more popping peas, or
they'll be a lot more prominent. I'm using the word
words that have p's in them way too much right now,
But there are a lot more prominent in those early
episodes because it was before I had put my pop
filter in place. Now I've got it there and you
can still hear it, but it's not nearly as a
big of a punch in the in the ear drum
(31:32):
as it used to be. The a T two thousand
five USB mike. This is not an AD They didn't
get AD space or anything for it. But it's a
microphone I particularly really like because it does have an
XLR output, so you can hook it up to an
XLR cable if you wanted to put it to a
physical mixer and then connect that to a computer. But
(31:52):
also has the USB port so you can connect it
via USB to a computer directly. And it's actually a
pretty decent quality microphone. It's not at the same level
as the professional microphones we have back in the studio.
And I'm sure if you were to listen to episodes
back to back from one that was taken in the
(32:13):
studio to one that's done at home, you'd be able
to start to hear that. But it's it's decent, it's
really good. It's it's amazing to me how these style
microphones have improved over the last five years or so.
And uh, we tend to record into various recording software.
(32:34):
I use Audacity. Audacity is a free piece of software
and you can use it to record multiple tracks to
a single recording. Um, it's really handy. It's a little
bit it's a little bit tough to to learn how
to use all the different features. It's got a bit
(32:54):
of a learning curve to it. But it has a
lot of stuff in it that is really helpful for
podcast recording. For example, there's a noise removal tool where
what you'll do is you'll capture room tone room and
we would do this in the studio too, because it's
it's a very standard approach. But room tone is just
(33:16):
letting the microphone pick up the sound that is native
to whatever the recording environment is there might be a
hum from air conditioning or the noise from the fan
from a computer or something like that, and you just
let the mic record for you know, ten seconds or so,
and then you use that as a sample, and the
(33:39):
software what it does is essentially looks for frequencies that
match that sample and remove it from the finished recording.
So that way you can eliminate or at least reduce
the audio of whatever the room sounds like. So Audacity
has that capability to um. It has the ability to
(34:00):
do lots of stuff like I can do reverb things
like that, not that I ever would for an episode
of tech stuff seems like that be a bit much,
but you can do that. So if you want to
record stuff, I do recommend checking out Audacity. Like I said,
it's free to use. There are also a lot of
different plugins you can get that can add more features
to Audacity. I used to do that a lot before
(34:24):
I was recording podcasts with with how Stuff Works, So
that was that's that's kind of the approach I take.
I set up my microphone, I start Audacity recording, I
let it record for about ten seconds, and then I
record my episode. Stop the recording. I then go through,
remove any long pauses, and maybe do some minor edits.
(34:45):
I then save the project. I convert it to a
wave form and I save that to drop Box because
these files tend to be pretty large, and I share
from Dropbox over to Tari. So Tari can then download
a wave file and then she can import that into
Audacity and make edits and do things like attach things
(35:08):
like the theme music. Have it, but go into the
right um, the right the right format so that everything
is proper. You know, we've got the opening and closing theme,
We've got the ad breaks, all that kind of stuff,
and then she can then publish it and then you
guys get it. So now, uh, that's how I record
(35:29):
because I do a single host show, so mind's easy.
There are people who obviously have more than one host
in their show, and for them the process is slightly different. Uh,
they will record in one of several ways. They actually
there's there's not one single way to do this. So
I'm going to talk about a couple of different approaches
(35:50):
and the pros and cons to each of them. Some
people will use a service like zen Caster or squad cast,
and these services are somewhat similar, and it's really fascinating
how they work. So everyone logs into an online session
(36:11):
using whatever tool they're using, and they can hear each other,
and depending upon the service, they might be able to
see each other too through webcams, and as they uh
they can start recording through this session. But as they
start that recording, the recording is not going over the
internet directly to the cloud. Instead, each person is recording
(36:35):
to his or her direct device, their computer. So it
looks like you're just having an online video call. You're
all chatting and having your conversations as you record, and
it's almost like you're in a studio. It's just that
you're doing this over video chat. But what's actually happening
(36:55):
is that each audio track is recording to the individual
computers and then at the end, the computers upload that
recording to the cloud, where the service will then put
it all together so that it's all synchronized and you
have a nice master recording of separate tracks for each person.
(37:20):
That is phenomenal to me. That's like magic to me,
because it means that the quality of the recording you
get is the best that it possibly can be, because
it's the going natively to the computer. It's not like
an internet phone call. If you've had a lot of
Internet meetings, you know that even just a little bit
of Internet you know, hiccups will cause delays. You might
(37:42):
have someone's vocals drop out. There are a lot of problems.
But because this is initially recording to your local device
and then gets uploaded, you get a much better quality
recording that way, and then it gets uh put together
in the cloud and the producers can take that and
do the edits that they need to. They can download
(38:04):
a sound file and go through the editing process before
publishing it. That's one way that people are recording their
shows if they have multiple hosts. Another way is that
they will use some form of internet communication tool like
Zoom or Microsoft Teams or uh Skype or whatever in
(38:25):
order to have the call. They might even record that
that call so that they have sort of a scratch track,
that's what we call a reference track. But they will
record their individual audio locally, so they might start up
an Audacity file, for example, or a voice memo file
(38:47):
or something along those lines, and they will record themselves
locally to their machine, and then once it's all done,
they will share their recording to the producer of the show,
who then has to take all these recordings, synchronize them,
and put them all together. This is potentially very complicated
(39:08):
if people are recording at say different bit rates, you
can have real issues with synchronization, like you can have
it where audio will drift a bit and eventually you
can get to a point where someone is answering a
question before the person who's asking it has even finished
asking the question because the recordings haven't quite lined up properly,
(39:28):
and it requires a lot of fine tuning adjustment to
get it fixed. It's a lot of it's a huge headache.
If everyone's recording on the same bit rate and everything,
you you bypass that, but it doesn't always happen. Sometimes
people just don't notice their settings, so it still remains.
One of the big challenges is which way do you go.
(39:49):
Do you use the zen caster type approach where everybody
is in the same virtual space and then eventually their
audio gets uploaded to zen Caster and the producer can
pull it down, or do you record each track individually
send that to the producer who then has to assemble
the podcast out of that way. Tari is lucky for
(40:12):
tech stuff. She's unlucky in a lot of ways, but
this way she's very lucky because it's just me. So
she just has to get the one audio file from
me and then she can edit that and send it on.
So that's easy on that level. Uh. It's one of
those things where I didn't really appreciate it till I
had to deal with it. I've done a few episodes
(40:32):
where I've done some interviews, and that's where you start
coming into potential problems, whether it's an issue with the
software running on another person's machine, or their internet connection
or your internet connection. I mean, there are a lot
of things that can cause issues. Now. I mentioned that
(40:53):
I have gone into the office a couple of times
since we shut down in the middle of Mark and Uh,
in those cases it was because I was recording episodes
of Smart Talks, the IBM series that I um I
am one of the hosts for, and Smart Talks is
(41:14):
a really important show. I talked to really important people.
And my internet at home occasionally decides it wants to
go on vacation at a moment's notice and it'll drop.
So rather than risk having that happen while I talk
with these important people. I will make the trek into
the city to go to Pont City Market, to go
(41:35):
to one of our studios and to record there where
I can be reasonably sure that my internet connection is
as solid as it gets. It's fast, and it's not
likely to drop. And and because there's nobody else there
most of the time, uh, there's no congestion on the network.
It's just me. Sometimes it's me and maybe one or
two other people. I can report that everyone is following
(42:00):
very strict processes and rules in order to do this properly.
We wear masks, We have antibacterial uh wipes everywhere which
we use to wipe down equipment. We have you know,
hand sanitizing stations throughout the office so that we can
(42:22):
frequently do that as well. So we take that very seriously.
We have a full list of steps that we follow
when we go into the studio, which includes wiping down
the equipment both before and after we use it so that, um,
you know, when you're talking into a microphone, you want
to make sure that you've sanitized that microphone so that
the next person who uses it doesn't end up getting sick.
(42:45):
If you happen to be carrying COVID nineteen and you
don't know it. You don't want to infect anybody else.
So we do have those rules still in place. Everyone
follows them and it's been challenging. We've got some super
cool podcas asks that are coming out of our studio
that require us to use the studio space that I'm
(43:06):
really excited to listen to. I can't even talk about
them now, but let me tell you they are. The
people who are working on them are some of the
hardest working and most creative people I know. I am
not on this project, by the way, I don't merit
that consideration, but the stuff I'm hearing about it is
(43:26):
really exciting and I can't wait to share it once
it's ready to go. But it's one of those things
where they have to go into the studio and so
we have to take all those precautions. So when you
listen to our podcasts, whether it's tech stuff or stuff,
you should know stuff they don't want you to know,
ridiculous history. Keep in mind these shows are being done
(43:50):
by people in various parts of the world at this
point and on various pieces of equipment, and that we
all all had to adapt to that super fast with
not really a whole lot of prep time, And to me,
it is phenomenal that we were able to keep doing
(44:10):
that with a bare minimum of fuss uh, at least
fuss that was noticeable to the listeners. I'm sure there
was a noticeable change in the quality of recordings, and
in some cases there might be outstanding uh incidents where
it's even more noticeable. But overall, I think we've done
(44:34):
a pretty darn good job, and most importantly, we keep
delivering the stories that excite us to you guys. So
next time you hear a podcast that you really like
and you think, gosh, those folks aren't they are not
sitting across a table from each other the way they
used to, you know, take a moment to appreciate that
and the hard work that they do, not me. I
(44:56):
stay here by myself. It's really not any different. If
you want to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for Torii,
because since she can no longer listen to me record live,
she can't make those markers anymore in the audio file.
So that means she has to listen to every single
episode all the way through and catch all the times
(45:19):
I make mistakes, and then do it that way she
can't just you know, put in a marker so that
she can come back later and fix it quickly. She's
the one who really deserves the props. Me, I'm doing
what I always did, It's just I'm doing it into
a different microphone. Now. Well, that's a peak behind the
curtain of how things are going in the the COVID
(45:41):
nineteen world in podcasting. How we were able to to
pivot to that and adapt to that with I think
the a pretty small disruption to how we do things
in the grand scheme of things. I'm sure that like
most of my other co hosts, I'm sure everybody's really
(46:02):
looking forward to a time and we can go back
to the studio and see each other in person and
actually sit across from the table and and have a
discussion and not be separated by miles and miles between us.
I'm sure everybody, like me, we're all looking forward to that,
and I do think it will have an impact on
just the quality of the conversations we have. But my
(46:25):
hat is off to all of my peers out there,
both within the I Heart radio community and outside it,
everyone who's working so hard to try and keep things
going in incredibly extraordinarily difficult times, and then, of course
also goes outside the realm of podcasting. I know lots
of you out there have been impacted in various ways
(46:49):
and have been working very hard in your own right
to keep things moving, and my hat is off to
you as well. I think we're all in this together,
even if we all have to be a part. Wow,
that's that's deep. Okay, let's wrap this up. I have
to go out and get ready for a vacation where
I'm going to be in a cabin in the middle
(47:10):
of nowhere in the Georgia Mountains, and I will be
contemplating I don't know my toes. Maybe we'll see. Maybe
I'll learn to play guitar a little bit more while
I'm out there. If you guys have suggestions for future
episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a specific technology, maybe
it's a company, Maybe it's a trend in tech. Maybe
(47:32):
it's a personality and technology, anything like that, anything tech
related or how tech impacts our lives, reach out to me.
The best way to do it is on Twitter. The
handle is tech stuff h s W and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I
(47:55):
heart radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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