This is useful if you're trying to record your podcast in one take, but it won't suit everyone. You can even loop a sound effect, if you want to play music in the background. The Zencastr Pro service also grants you access to a Live Editing Soundboard, which makes it easy for the host to drop in your podcast's intro, transitions and other sound effects on the fly. It also includes 10 hours of automatic post-production per month. Upgrading to the US$20 per month Pro service (with a 14-day trial) lets you have more than three participants and record an unlimited amount of audio in MP3 or WAV. This automated post-production costs US$3 per hour on Zencastr's free Hobbyist service, but you're limited to eight hours of recording per month and you can only have three participants in a recording using 128 kbps MP3. With one click it will grab those individual Dropbox recordings, optimise everyone's levels, stitch together the recordings and mute people's audio when they're not talking to reduce unwanted background noise including echo. ![]() You can do all this with a free Zencastr account and you've already made life much easier, leaving you with individual recordings in Dropbox ready to be edited, but Zencastr's real magic is its automated post-production feature. Instead Zencastr records each person's audio on their computer, to get the best possible sound quality, and then uploads that recording to Dropbox after you've finished talking. Zencastr has its own built-in VoIP service, which is handy because Skype can be a pig, but Zencastr doesn't record that streaming audio – it's only there so the participants can hear each other. For the best audio quality it's best to disable echo-cancelling and do your best to curb the sound leaking from people's headphones/earbuds to eliminate echo. The host can also enable echo-cancelling, which ensures you can't hear yourself in the background of other people's recordings and vice versa, but this slightly impacts on the sound quality when people talk over each other. The dashboard isn't a mixer, the host can mute panelists (or they can mute themselves to cough) but you can't adjust their levels or fade them in and out. The Zencastr dashboard makes it easy for the host to invite guests and see which microphone their system is using – which is handy if people accidentally select their notebook's built-in mic instead of the attached mic. Each participant only needs headphones and a microphone – they can use the mic built into a notebook but you tend to get better audio with a headset or standalone mic connected to your computer via USB or the mic jack. ![]() Zencastr runs via a desktop web browser, there's no need to download and install software. Zencastr is designed to take much of the pain out of this process by recording each person's audio and then automatically uploading it and stitching all the recordings together to spit out a polished final product. ![]() Zencastr's post-production menu lets you select recordings, choose the preferred levels and set other preferences. We all wear headphones to ensure that you can't hear the other panellists in the background of our recordings, only our own voice, although that can be a challenge because most headphones and earbuds tend to leak a little sound. The Yeti mic is plugged into my MacBook Pro and I record using Audacity audio editing software, while Skype uses the Mac's built-in mic so I can talk to everyone else. I use a Blue Yeti mic mounted on a Rode PSA1 boom arm. I'm in Melbourne, Alex is in Sydney and we have regular guests from across the country so we're rarely all in the same room when we record.Įach week we start a group Skype conversation but also each participant uses a decent external microphone to record their own voice. This is how many podcasts are recorded, including Vertical Hold which I co-host each week with fellow Australian tech journalist Alex Kidman. The alternative is for everyone to record their own voice locally and then upload their recording to you, so you can stitch those recordings together to make it sound like everyone is in the same room. Before you start recording, the Zencastr dashboard lets you select your audio device and change other settings.
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