Podholes #05: Compressors, Expanders, and Gates, Oh My!
January 5th, 2007 by 
Steve Eley
Podholes #05: Compressors, Expanders, and Gates, Oh My! [34:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (102)The compression episode you’ve all been waiting for! (Or not.)
- Mike’s a smellfungus and a humbug
- Thank Steve when the new iPod models come out next week
- We like BSW
- Steve demos the BBE Sonic Maximizer
- The RNC compressor vs. the dbx 266XL
- Question (from Jim Van Verth): “Looking forward to more technical discussion about compression. Is Audacity’s compression bad?”
- Compressors vs. limiters vs. expanders vs. gates
- Mike’s Rant: Cheap compressors suck, and podcasters shouldn’t rely on them
- Mike says gates are more important
- Hard knee vs. soft knee
- Mike’s Tech Tip: record your noise floor so you can paste it in when you need it
- Hardware’s more convenient but riskier; software’s cheaper and gives you do-overs
P.A.P. Smear #2: We’ll be critiquing Episode 4 of GuitarCastOnline. This is a video podcast, so watch it first and then listen to us talk about it next week.
Have any questions or want to provide feedback? Just let us know!
Posted in Shows |
January 5th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Didja know there is a bit of an echo on Steve’s voice once in a while?
January 5th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Yep… Skype was getting into my side of the audio at times.
January 8th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Great Tech Tip Mike. I find I need to add pauses at times, and I had never thought about how to easily counter those silences… I ended up copying periods of white noise within the file I’m working in and pasting them in the gaps… this will be much easier.
Thanks!
January 8th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Hey Mike and Steve, Can you guys point us listners to any _free_ resources for a quicktime converter. All of the ones I have found are “Fake Free”. They come up under free quicktime to .wmv in Google and realy cost 30 to 75 dollars.
That is my largest bitch about most video podcast, All most every one knows that you need an .mp3 feed so that those of us who won’t by an DRM infected iPod can listen. But the same needs to be said for Video Podcast, they need to be available in .mpeg other format.
I have no problem converting the files to a format that I can watch, once I find a converter, but that is another barrier between the episodes and me and each barrier is one more reason for me to unsubscribe.
January 10th, 2007 at 7:27 am
I heard that there is a new podcast magazine that might make it into print instead of just being a collect money and then give it all back scheme like ID3 magazine. The new magazine is to be about blogging and podcasting but if they have a web site it is carefully hidden using obscure keywords. Do you know anything about it?
January 11th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Gentlemen,
Fantastic show! I was looking for something online about compression and expansion and keep getting hits about the universe….
Michael, excellent tip about recording the 30 seconds of dead air….I’m doing that the moment I get home…
I think I’m sort of torn between software vs hardware processing. Although you get the do overs in software, if what’s going is crap…then your still processing crap…
I’ve been eyeballing the dbx processor and I can’t wait to get Steve’s review and to hear some recorded samples. The BBE works very well in your setup Steve. I could really hear a significant difference.
Excellent show guys, thank you very much.
Andy Bilodeau
http://www.andycast.net
January 15th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Excellent show guys. I learned tons of what I need to know to make my podcasts better.
I would also like to point out that for Windows and G4/G5 Mac owners there is a set of free audio plug-ins called Fish Fillets which include a very nice compressor and a DeEsser.
You can find out more about these at:
http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.php?item=2&subItem=5
Unfortunately they will NEVER (caps from the developer) be ported to the intel Macs. Some licensing snafu that sounded really painful.
Additionally, if you have $$$ to spend, but don’t want a hardware compressor, you can look at http://www.sonalksis.com/
They have a bundle of 3 plug-ins for $260 which include a compressor, expander, gate, ducker. If they added a DeEsser I’d be in heaven. They also offer a demo period if you want to try it out before you buy.
I like the software tools, because you can use them on many tracks at once, and on different machines. I want Mike and Steve to talk about doing this stuff in software, in real time and in post, as opposed to hardware.
Paul Fischer
http://www.addcast.net