Aaron Paul Vogel

For the first, and at the moment my favorite, audio post I'd like to offer the sounds of a drunk southerner telling a very funny joke. This was recorded at Benchwarmers in Ventura, Calif., one Friday evening while my friends and I were out have a few drinks. The guy just walked up (he saw all the cameras) and started talking to us. I believe his beginning statement was, "You know what you all ought to do with those cameras? You ought to head over to Iraq... blah, blah, blah." Well, since it was Ryan, Dan and me, I look at the guy and said, "Funny you should say that, we have ALL been there already." That started a half-hour long conversation (well, he talked, we listen and laughed mostly) and I managed to get about 13 minutes of it on my M-Audio Microtrack. This was, by far, the funniest part. Enjoy. That's Nice...

By buddy Joseph Hollack alerted me to Interactive Narratives a while back, but Joe's last blog update got to me to actually listen to IN's podcast. For people that are interested in the new media that is developing in the journalism world IN and it's podcast seem to be a terrific place to find out what other people - those who are actually creating the content and those that are watching the future - are thinking about all this. Take a look and a listen and let me know what you think. I'll be adding a link to the podcast to my own site.

The latest podcast is an interview with Travis Fox of WashingtonPost.com. The photo and multimedia part of the site is one of the most developed in the world as far as aesthetic of the presentation and the quality of the work. Of course being the Post they should be since they have more informational resources available to them than probably any other printed news source in the world. Fox just returned from Aceh, Indonesia where he was working on a video project about the anniversary of the tsunami that hit that region a year ago.

I was browsing through the site just now and came across this article about wet darkrooms and how, despite digital's incursion into every facet of photography, they are still popular with so many, particularly young students of photography. Very much worth a read. Despite being a technophile I'm still very much in love with wet darkrooms. I love the ease and detail with which I can tone in Photoshop, but for sheer physical pleasure nothing stands up to the smell of developer watching a print appear on a blank sheet of paper; as if by magic. I know that I for one will be teaching kids - maybe mine, maybe someone else's - the joys of the wet darkroom at some point in my life.

There's a great article that's been posted on one of my favorite how-to sites, Transom.org, about setting up a small home studio for recording audio. This is interesting to me in a "how did I do?" kind of way because I recently created just such a setup at my new condo. The article points out all the key equipment you may or may not need - there's some things like a mixing board that certain people such as myself can do without - and suggestions for which ones to get. While their brand preferences seem to run along those of a big studio (Pro Tools, M-audio, Yamaha, etc.) their suggestions for saving money are good for students, and small studios doing multimedia work. If you're interested in doing a home setup for whatever reason take a look at the article.Transom Tools: Setting Up A Small Recording Studio. I put in my 2¢ in the comments section with my setup which includes PreSonus Bluetube pre-amp, PreSonus Firebox, an MXL 990 mic and Soundtrack Pro.

Better Writing Through Radio Pt. I This is a very interesting article that has some terrific technique tips that apply not only to radio reporters but reporters in general. Her first four points are speaking to me particularly loudly right now. They are, in brief:

• Over-report
• Save your emails
• Save earlier drafts / make an "OUTS" page
• Make lists

"I always reach a point, in reporting a story, where I feel like I'm finished. I feel this finished-ness very strongly, and it makes me want to stop interviewing immediately and go home."

Well, it seems that for the moment some suspisions of mine are true: GarageBand 3.0 will in fact record on multiple tracks at once. Unlike Soundtrack Pro, Audacity, or a number of other programs I've checked out in the last few months, the latest version of GarageBand allows for recording things like in-studio interviews so that each individual has a track. This negates the need for an expensive mixer and allows for audio adjustment on individuals rather than the track as a whole. This would be one of those REALLY annoying "gosh, it would have been nice to know that 2 months ago" or "yesterdays technology is obsolete today" situations for me since I just 2 months ago purchased Soundtrack Pro. Of course at the time I wasn't even thinking of multitrack recording, but even if I was I don't believe there were any hints about this from Apple about this feature. Now that I know more about what I need and want out of software and hardware I'm thanking heaven for student pricing. At $80 for the regular version and $60 for the student price, I think it might just be worth eating the $180 or so I paid for Soundtrack Pro - which still has some terrific waveform editing features that I'll probably utilize in the future, so it's not a total loss.

To add to that, they've incorporated a sweet feature that integrates with iChat and iSight to record audio or video chats. I smell a podcast coming on, don't you Joe?

Well I have to say that this is about the most excited I've been yet over something I've learned to do with multimedia. I'll start from the beginning. This evening I had a little IM chat with Joe Hollak, as we're doing more and more often now. Somehow the topic came around to a discovery that Joe had made regarding recording telephone conversations. He'd discovered a program called Skype which enables anyone on a computer to call anyone on any other phone - land line, or cell - or another computer user. This is all done over the internet for a ridiculously cheap price. For $10 you can buy about 9 hours worth of outgoing calling. For an additional fee you can add an in-bout number and voicemail which effectively eliminates the need for a regular phone. The per-minute charge is for a number of international locations and a slightly larger fee is assessed to anyone calling outside of the regular service area. This is all well and good, but I have a cell phone that I use for all my calling needs, and at this point I've gotten into thinking that a home phone is redundant.

I stumbled on this wonderful site done by the Magnum photo agency as I was looking through Slate.com's Today's Pictures section - which is another great find in it's own right. Today's Pictures is a daily set of images taken by Magnum photographers. In addition, new photo essays from Magnum In Motion are posted as well. Both sites are worth visiting, but if you're particularly interested in the interactive essays take a look at Magnum In Motion first. There's an incredible back log of work there. Also, take a look at the Previous Days drop down menu on the left-hand side of Today's Pictures Dec. 1st, 2005 and Dec. 2nd, 2005 kicked off the new section with some classic photographs from Magnum's history - the very first on Dec. 1st being my personal favorite by Henri Cartier-Bresson

I'm happy today for a number of reasons. First of all my school session is almost over; the final projects are turned in, the tests are over with, and now I can look forward to a short break in the action before the deadlines and pressures return. Also, I finally got an RA number so I could ship my Presonus Firebox off for replacement. For those that don't know, I accidentally installed firmware for a Presonus Firepod onto my Firebox, rendering it pretty much unusable. I've been having a heck of a time with their tech support people; getting bounced from one person to another, having voicemail and email alike ignored, and some generally sad responses when I did get a hold of someone. Well today I finally got the Return Authorization number I needed and promptly boxed up the Firebox and shipped it off. Hopefully I'll get it back quickly as I've got a number of projects I want to use it for. Last but not least on the list of reasons I'm in a good mood is that it's Thursday, and that means Midnight Cinema... well, actually Seven-thirty Cinema. Every Thursday night one of the smaller local movie theaters, the Regency Buenaventura, shows a single show of a classic movie. Last week it was Fast Times at Ridgemont High and a few weeks before that was The Blues Brothers; both movies I'd never seen on the big screen. This weeks selection: Spaceballs! A bunch of people from school are getting together for it shortly. May the Schwartz be with you.

It seems that everywhere I look these days I'm seeing Colin Mulvany's name popping up. Mulvany - who's Video Journal blog for the Spokesman Review's website is something I've reading and linking to for about 6 months now - just turned up in the SportsShooter.com newsletter as a featured interview in an article written by another SS.com member G.J. McCarthy. The dialog is really cool, and interesting and encouraging to see on what I'd say is a 99% still photography centered website.

In addition, Mulvany is serving as part of the faculty for the 2006 Southern Short Course which I'm sure has a lot to do with his previous 15+ years of photojournalism, but I can't help to think that his recent success with video, and the integration of audio and slideshows he's done had something to do with it too.

For my photo class this session we had to write a paper critiquing a photojournalism, or photography based website such as magnum.com, nytimes.com, sportsshooter.com and the like. I chose to do my critique on Mulvany's Video Journal. I wasn't going to post it, but since I now have a category (did you happen to see that addition on the right hand side?) for essays and articles, I think I'll post it now. So follow the link below to read my critique of Spokesman Review's Video Journal.

Sony MiniDisc recorders to support Macs - DV Guru

As Ajit Anthony writes in this post over at DV Guru, "I don't know why a company like Sony would take so long to include a major population of the creative community," but they finally have; or will be. For quite a while indie audio gatherers - journalists, DJ's, podcasters, etc. - have been using the MiniDisc format as a highly portable, fairly cheap, and big-on-storage means of recording good quality sound in the field. If they were working on a mac, however, they were pretty much out of luck for support. In order to get the music off the recorder and onto your Mac you'd have to plug the recorder into the mic jack and play the audio back as you recorded it... all of it... minute by minute... very slowly. so if you had 5 hours of audio from a protest or an interview, you had to listen to all of it over again. This could be good as you had a chance to make notes and stuff. But really...

I looked into MD when I was first looking to buy an audio recorder, but decided the lack of support for Mac was something I didn't want to deal with. It seems like with this tick off the con side of the table MD stands a much better chance against solid-state digital recorders like the Marantz PMD660 or my M-Audio Microtrack.

On the other hand, the MD format has been less than popular in North America - apparently it's huge in Asia - so many industry people seem to think the MZ-RH1 is the last of a breed. With price estimates from $275 - $325 it seems Sony is betting there's still someone out there that needs one. Perhaps all those Mac people they've been ignoring until now. Then again, Sony hasn't been know for good ideas as of late.

Today I joined my friend Daryl Peveto at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., to record an interview with VII photographer Joachim Ladefoged. The VII photography agency held a seminar at ACC this weekend; which I did not attend after blowing a wad on Southern Short Course last weekend. I was, however, more than happy to drive down to meet Daryl and Joachim for the interview. I highly recommend you use the link above and take a look at his work. One of his primary focuses was Albania and the war in Kosovo. A few years ago he became a father and has since ceased his coverage of war, but has moved on to topics and stories no less interesting, including bodybuilders, mental hospitals, sex workers and a personal essay on his childhood in Denmark.

To gear up for the interview I decided to bring two means of recording so I could adapt to wherever we might be situated. I packed my messenger bag with both my portable setup - Microtrack, a few cables, and two wireless lavaliere kits - and my less portable setup - my laptop, Firebox, lots of cables including an extension cord, two dynamic mics, super-claps rigged as tabletop mic stands, and a small external hard drive. The reason for this was mostly education-driven. I had been considering the Firebox as a portable studio piece; something I could take with me to use for multichannel recording in a semi-controlled environment. The interview with Joachim seemed like just the place I might want to use such a device. It would allow for the use of dynamic mics over the lavalieres and should have drastically improved the sound quality.

So a few of you know of my constant battle with my Presonus Firebox firewire audio interface. To catch the rest of you up quickly let me just summarize: it has never worked right. I have a feeling that the biggest problem is my computer, so I won't go casting dispersions on the Firebox itself. Because I'm running A LOT of things on my, now two-year-old, Powerbook 1.33Mhz laptop, it has a tendency to slow down when doing heavy lifting. Add to that 2 external hard drives running off the same bus (click for explanation of a computer bus) as the Firebox and I had a bad situation on my hands. The one thing I will say about the Firebox is that even in this bad situation, it was a crap shoot from day to day even if I didn't change a thing. Read on for the solution I came up with and why USB audio interfaces are a great alternative to pricey Firewire...

Audio electronics manufacturer Samson (not Samsung) has a new portable audio recorder out called the Zoom H4. Most of the announcements - there are yet to be any real reviews - are touting it as a cheap alternative to Edirol's R-09 and M-Audio's Microtrack 24/96, though at $300 (anywhere you can find one available) they're a mere $50 below the current street prices. Like all the others there are pros and cons to this unit and I felt I'd list them here for posterity. Mind you, this is all from reading specs and announcements from the company.

Pros:
• Combo 1/4" and XLR jacks - very nice to have options like this.
• Functions as a USB audio interface - helpful when you have the time and space to record straight to a laptop, rather than bother with memory cards and transfering files later
• Built-in mics - very similar to the Edirol R-09. Good for backups but that's probably about it.
• Uses AA batteries - very cool for long stints away from a charging source.
Cons
• Uses SD cards - For photographers who are already carrying around bunch of CF cards, having another card type to worry about is just a pain. On the up side though, get a 2GB card and you'll probably never have to take it out as you'll never fill it up, and you can use the device as a USB card reader.
• No 1/8" mic input. Not a major problem, but there are some useful mics (Sony, AudioTecknica) that use the miniplug, so that's kind of lame. (BTW, Sound Professionals has a module you can buy to make a miniplug work on the XLR inputs.)
• Small LCD. I can't say much about this because I haven't seen one in person, but it appears to have a screen similar to that of the PMD660, which anyone who's used one will tell you is absolutely useless. There is no good menu system that fits well on a 2 or 3-line display. Period. Obviously people can adapt once they learn the system, but I say the easier the better, and in terms of LCD screens, bigger means easier to navigate.

Obviously I can't make any comments as to the actual quality of the recordings, which are more than just a function of what recording modes are available. In looking through the manual this thing has a gaggle of special effects that seem geared largely to musicians, not field recordings.

The one thing I will say is that competition is good, and price competition is even better. So in general the introduction of a legitimate competitor in the portable, semi-pro recording department is definitely welcome. Hopefully this will push everyone to continue to develop and improve their products as well as work on ways to hit that $200-$300 price point that consumers want.

I'd like to point those of you with or considering what seems like a complicated audio setup to a not so new freeware program called Soundflower made by Cycling '74. I'd found this program a while ago when I was looking for recording solutions when making calls with Skype, but for one reason or another couldn't get my head around how it works.

Now, for whatever reason, I've finally managed to get a couple of different computers here at The Bee setup with Soundflower. The first computer I setup was in the podcasting room. The Bee has a Mac Mini setup with three Blue USB microphones in a small, soundproofed room that they've used off and on for different podcasts. I setup Skype and Garageband to record telephone interviews for reporters. Without the aid of another USB interface to plug the output of Skype through (let alone free USB port on the back of the Mini) I used Soundflower and an aggregate audio device to simply re-route Skype's output audio to an input in Garageband.