Quality standards for podcasts, please

25.10.2004 - 01:19 / filled under default

(Note 2 self: Next time look more carefully - it's Gillmor and not Gilmore *blush*)

Today was the first time I was not at my computer while listening to podcast but driving with my car to Hamburg (about an hour from here). I had half of Adam's podcast left, some openpodcasts and heard the Gillmor Gang from IT-Conversations.

First of all - Adam was entertaining as always and the Gillmor Gang from this time was very good in content about what is podcasting, where is this heading to, what is the difference to pirate radio or why might it be the new "world radio on demand" (the don't call it that way but that's what I think of it). If you have not heard it - you should.

But I do have ringing ears and headache now, big time. Why? While Adam has a very good recording quality and a very clean podcast, the Gillmor Gang is recorded voip (as I asume) with no denoising, no normalising and very high noise ratio. I had to turn up volume to get the quiter parts but steadily turn it down because my ears where ringing because all of a sudden the voice was louder and then quiter again.

Plus the constant noisefloor was very distracting to listen to. I know that I have to denoise my recordings, and I do it. And I adjust the noiselevel and do a little compressing so you won't have that much dynamic.

Second: every podcast has its own level of loudness. After the first ones I knew I had to turn down volume immediatly and slowly turn it up for the next track - and then restart it so I could listen to the start.

I therefor suggest a quality meater or an scale of "adam" as the unit how a podcasts recording quality is. As the Gillmor Gang pointed out, audio is a much more natural language than writing - but avoiding noise is even older than that.

I wrote on Adam's blog I like the "1 adam" unit but have thought it over and would suggest the daily source code to be 10 adam - and the Gillmor Gang from today be 3. Todays Rock and Roll Geek show on the other hand - while not being so crisp and energetic in it's quality (sound, not content!) would be a good 8, perhaps more.

So please, do my ears (and other ones) a favor and tell the people if you have done anything to improve your audio quality. And if you don't care: please tell me also, as I would know then that I should avoid your podcast. :o)

Interessting point Adam Curry pointed out in his podcast (thanks to Johnnie Moore for typing this)

Adam Curry's Daily Source Code is a good podcast. Keeping it real, he points out today (around minute 4:30) that in preparing for the Gilmour Gang, participants expressed strong anti-Bush opinions... but "no one spoke with the same passion during the actual taping even though the elections did come up... it always amazes me how the minute the microphone turns on then all of a sudden... everyone takes a stupid pill and we're not real anymore." I'd like to have heard the pre-taping discussion!

I had heard this before and would like a copy of that too, if this was the 'silent' version ...