Podcast Academy

In my opinion a solid understanding of analog and digital audio, recording, production, mixing and mastering is a necessity in order to optimize the quality of your podcast production work-flow. I’d like to recommend a fantastic resource to those of you who are interested in striving for and maintaining high quality results.

‘Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science‘ by Bob Katz is considered by many to be the bible of audio mastering. Bob himself is an established Grammy Award winning mastering engineer who is responsible for countless hit records. Katz also created the K-Sytem monitor calibration and metering specification. The underlying concept of the K-System is intended to suggest and maintain consistent level and monitoring management for music production, film sound production, and broadcasting.

The first thing that struck me about this book was how easy it was to read considering the complexity of the subject matter. It is for this reason that I find it suitable for all levels of media producers. Are you curious about the technical aspects of dynamic range management, compression, equalization, monitoring, or level management? If so this book is for you. ‘Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science’ will assist you in building a foundation that in the end will help you to achieve optimum results. [$39.99 US]

Please visit Digital Domain

Grape Radio is one of the premiere independent podcasts currently available. Live production takes place in a high end, custom built/dedicated podcasting facility that incorporates excellent broadcast quality gear. The facility is capable of supporting as many as four personalities at any given time. I’m very familiar with the studio and the entire production work-flow. In fact, the audio post production is performed right here in NYC on my workstation on a weekly basis.

The studio utilizes four Ev RE-20 mics, and two dbx 1066 dual channel dynamics processors [compressor/limiter/gates]. Four channel processing is available and intended to provide flexibility in terms of independent ‘on-air’ mic processing.

Mackie continues to impress me, and they have released a new digital dynamics processor that I believe warrants serious consideration for producers that share similar requirements. I’m referring to the QUADCOMP/GATE - four channel, 24-Bit digital dynamics processor. This single piece of gear offers processing algorithms custom designed by Acuma Labs.

I’m particularly fond of the design aspects of the processor. For example: there is only one single set of controls located on the front of the processor that is used to customize each individual channel. You simply select a specific channel by way of a switch and make your adjustments. It’s important to note that individual gain reduction and output metering references are available at all times for each channel. Processing includes compression, limiting, gating and expansion.

The best feature of all? Snapshots. You have the capability to store and recall saved settings. This is as intuitive as it gets in my opinion. The design and function concept simplifies what would otherwise be a potential nightmare to manage efficiently.

After researching the processor, I assumed two things: cool and expensive. I was wrong. Definitely cool, however not nearly as expensive as I anticipated. The Mackie QUADCOMP/GATE retails for $799 US. Impressive …

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-ptfigg.