I should just keep my mouth shut because I know I am jinxing myself, but… I think I got my audio perfect.

It’s funny, I have said that so many times before and I ALWAYS end up thinking it sounds like shit. But this time it is wired correctly, tweaked, and sounding like heaven (atleast through my headphones). The real test will be when we do a show and have 3 people talking… loudly and obnoxiously.

Last week, when I thought I perfected my audio, it turned out like shit. I sounded good, but I also had to focus too much on whether I was too close to the mic or too loud, which affected my performance. As for my co-hosts, they sounded awful. Partially because their compression wasn’t tuned right, but mostly because they won’t get close enough to the goddamn microphone! Which I don’t understand at all. YOU CAN HEAR YOURSELF! They are all wearing headphones so they should be able to tell when they sound like garbage. But they don’t do any production, they just talk and think they don’t have to worry about the sound. I don’t blame them really, I need to get it tweaked to their voices, but I would love it if they could just get close to the mics.

Well wish me luck with this weeks show. I pray that it sounds good. If you wanna hear for yourself you can either tune in live this Thursday at http://www.WrecklessMediaRadio.com or you can download the latest episode the day after. Let me know what you think of the sound.

BTW: In reply to the comment left on my last blog entry. I don’t like using plugins and post production sound enhancers. I feel like it should all be done on the fly. Not only to cut down on production time but just because I am weird like that. Also, it needs to sound good on the live show as well as the podcast. Thanks for the suggestion though.

If you’ve been following my blog or my podcast, you’d know that my studio and I have a love-hate relationship. After three years of buying equipment, tweaking, and having mental break-downs, I still am unable to achieve that, seemingly mythical, talk radio sound.

People ask me, “Brian, why do you care so much about getting that specific audio? Your show already sounds great. Why does it need to have that talk-radio sound?” I WANT that over-the-top, cheesy, over-compressed FM Broadcast quality for one simple reason. It sounds more professional among podcasts. I want to grab people’s attention right away. I want them to think to themselves, wow, this is no little show, there are sound engineers behind the scenes making all of this work.

There have been many many times I have turned on a podcast and because of the audio quality shut it right off because I couldn’t handle it. I also believe that there is some sort of hypnotic characteristic that talk radio sound puts you in that almost forces you to listen.

Anyways, down to the technical shit. I have been daisy chaining my audio for the longest time. Going from my mixer to my compressors and voice processors, then going to my interface. Well apparently that is a BIG BIG BIG NO NO. That amplifies the noise, like crazy!

The correct way to do this is to use your mic inserts on you mixer. The only problem with this is that you need a compressor channel per mic. Which can be expensive but is completely worth it if you are serious about having great sound.

I rewired the studio like this last night and i was amazed at the difference. It is still not perfect by any means but I think it is a step closer to achieving the sound that I want. I’ll keep this updated as I get closer to the sound I want.

When I made BrianBerris.com I wanted it to be a place where I could post random thoughts, photos, and videos without following any sort of professional format. I have not been keeping up with it at all because I keep on thinking I need to present it in a certain manner. I need to remind myself that this URL is BrianBerris.com and here I am god and can post whatever, however, I want. Soooooo that is what I will be doing from now on.

I just posted a bunch of photos from over the summer when I went camping up north. It felt good to get some new stuff up there. I also got the most recent photos section working on the home page (which has been bugging me for a while).

New videos will be posted soon and some original music. Now that the site is working I will be blogging also.

Viva La BrianBerris.com