Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with text stuff from dot Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today I have a good friend on the show
Speaker 1: with me, Steve ricka Berg. Say hello Steve. Hello Internet.
Speaker 1: So Steve, you do several things in the Internet world,
Speaker 1: and including a show that that you did for quite
Speaker 1: some time. Are you still doing Geek Credit or is
Speaker 1: that just on it's on hiatus. I'm hoping to bring
Speaker 1: it back soon, but yeah, it's it's been a while
Speaker 1: since I put out a new episode. Yeah. So. Geek
Speaker 1: Cred is a series that where Steve will interview various
Speaker 1: people in the geek sphere, and for episode forty three,
Speaker 1: I was one off, but episode three I was the
Speaker 1: I was the the the subject. I was grilled mercilessly
Speaker 1: by Steve and told all my secrets. So if you
Speaker 1: to hear the secrets of Jonathan Strickland, go check out
Speaker 1: geet Cred episode forty three and check out the rest
Speaker 1: while you're at it, because they are awesome shows. And
Speaker 1: I don't know how you landed so many amazing guests.
Speaker 1: You're more charming than I am. But the reason why
Speaker 1: I asked Steve on is that I got a listener
Speaker 1: mail and I immediately thought of Steve as the person
Speaker 1: to pull on here and talk about things. So here's
Speaker 1: the mail that I received, And I apologize a listener,
Speaker 1: I have lost your name because you sent the email
Speaker 1: before the great Terrible email crash of September two, fourteen UH,
Speaker 1: in which all of the old tech stuff emails got
Speaker 1: wiped out Willie and or Nilly, So I apologize. I
Speaker 1: do not have your name, but I do have the
Speaker 1: content of your email. And here we go. You guys
Speaker 1: having tech stuff touched on a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 1: but I don't think there's really been one on audio
Speaker 1: recording from start to finish. I think it could be
Speaker 1: pretty interesting to hear tech stuffs take on this and
Speaker 1: be extremely useful to people wanting to get into and
Speaker 1: know stuff about how audio is captured. So Steve is
Speaker 1: an audio producer, audio engineer extraordinaire UH and I have
Speaker 1: had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with him
Speaker 1: at Dragon Con twice now about audio production, where I
Speaker 1: get to play the person who doesn't know anything and
Speaker 1: Steve gets to play the person who knows everything, because
Speaker 1: that's who we are. So that's why I've had Steve
Speaker 1: on and we've worked it out and kind of covered
Speaker 1: the entire audio production one oh one idea for this podcast.
Speaker 1: So to start, we were thinking about going into setting
Speaker 1: up the whole idea of audio equipment from the microphone
Speaker 1: all the way to the actual recording hardware and software.
Speaker 1: So the microphone is the starting point really, and there
Speaker 1: are several different kinds out there, So Steve, can you
Speaker 1: run us through what are the basic recording micro phones
Speaker 1: such your average person is going to encounter? Sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are two real main varieties you see, and and
Speaker 1: the difference is really just how they how they convert
Speaker 1: sound waves into an electrical signal. And by microphone varieties,
Speaker 1: I really mean how they vary by their transducer, which
Speaker 1: is to say, how they convert air pressure into an
Speaker 1: electrical signal or by air pressure like we usually just
Speaker 1: call it, you know, sound. Um, So there are two types,
Speaker 1: like I said, condenser and dynamic microphones, and and they're
Speaker 1: really usually seen in very different types of uses or environments.
Speaker 1: So the first is a condenser microphone, which is sometimes
Speaker 1: called a capacitor because it essentially has a big capacitor
Speaker 1: requires power to work. So you have a charged plate
Speaker 1: which acts as the capacitor, and what happens is the
Speaker 1: voltage changes by vibration in the air, by the air pressure.
Speaker 1: So this is really in stark contrast to the way
Speaker 1: a dynamic microphone works, which works via induction. So you
Speaker 1: have a magnet and when sound hits the magnet generated
Speaker 1: there's a magnetic field, and so one sound hits it, it
Speaker 1: it generates the signal. So practically, what's what's the difference here.
Speaker 1: So condensers as a rule, tend to be a lot
Speaker 1: more sensitive. So you'll see condensers used in things like
Speaker 1: recording studios for music or or things like that, where
Speaker 1: it's usually a very controlled environment. Because the downside of
Speaker 1: a condenser is that it's also very sensitive, so it
Speaker 1: can pick up all sorts of other stuff you don't want.
Speaker 1: And a dynamic is in fact, i'm using a dynamic
Speaker 1: microphone right now. A dynamic doesn't require power, which makes
Speaker 1: it a little bit more universally usable, but it's not
Speaker 1: as sensitive. Um. The nice thing about dynamics is they're
Speaker 1: also very rugged. Um. When you see dynamics used in
Speaker 1: broadcasting and podcasting as well as in live sound, you
Speaker 1: can actually be Venerable SM fifty eight, which is kind
Speaker 1: of the standard that all microphones are certainly uh dynamic
Speaker 1: microphones are measured against. You know, forty years into its
Speaker 1: lifespan is kind of and for being so rugged, you
Speaker 1: can pound nails with it and the microphone will still
Speaker 1: work like it did on when it was brand new. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is um something that I learned the hard way
Speaker 1: when I was looking at microphones for my own use,
Speaker 1: my earliest microphone that I had, uh keeping in mind,
Speaker 1: like I didn't have any expertise in this area. I
Speaker 1: I knew some stuff, largely due to the work of
Speaker 1: folks like Steve who had very patiently taught me things
Speaker 1: despite my my ignorance. Um. But I got a conductor
Speaker 1: mike first, and I realized that the tiniest sounds would
Speaker 1: get picked up by this microphone, things like my dog
Speaker 1: running across the floor. I could hear the toe nails
Speaker 1: clicking on the hardwood. Um. And or if someone dropped
Speaker 1: a coin in the house and it was three rooms away,
Speaker 1: we got Yeah, I got picked up. And so it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where if I if I
Speaker 1: really wanted to get a soundscape of a really controlled environment,
Speaker 1: so I'm setting this thing up. That would have been
Speaker 1: a fantastic tool. But for someone who just wants to
Speaker 1: talk into a microphone, Um, then the dynamic microphones seem
Speaker 1: to be the most useful to me. Sure, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's very good practical reason why dynamic microphones, at least
Speaker 1: in the US are pretty much a standard for for
Speaker 1: radio and for broadcasting. Yeah. Now there's more about microphones,
Speaker 1: the just dynamic versus condenser, right, Yes, besides that simple delineation,
Speaker 1: I I do want to mention real quick, there are
Speaker 1: other types of microphones. These are the two most common. Um.
Speaker 1: There's even a subset of condensers which is electric condenser microphones,
Speaker 1: which is what usually see in consumer electronics. So your
Speaker 1: your phone's microphone or your headsets microphone as an electric
Speaker 1: condenser because those are really cheap and easy to manufacture.
Speaker 1: You also have other types like ribbons used for high
Speaker 1: and REQ and there are actually a multiple multitude of
Speaker 1: types of microphones, but these two are really the ones
Speaker 1: you're going to see if you're going to do any
Speaker 1: recording yourself. It's really picking between these two types, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: Then you have to consider what what style of mike
Speaker 1: as it. How is it picking up sound? Where is
Speaker 1: it pulling sound from? Is it directional or not? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you have the pickup or or the polar pattern.
Speaker 1: Nice way to understand this is to look at a
Speaker 1: graph of the of the pickup pattern. For example, an
Speaker 1: omnidirectional picks up in three sixty degrees. It's all all
Speaker 1: picks up sound from all directions equally um but in
Speaker 1: a in a directional microphone, for example, the most common
Speaker 1: form of that is a cardioid microphone. Cardioid isn't heart
Speaker 1: because it looks like a you know, simple heart shape
Speaker 1: upside down. So so what what that shows that it
Speaker 1: rejects some of the sound from the sides and from
Speaker 1: the rear and focuses more on the sound coming from
Speaker 1: the front of the microphone. Right. So again, depending upon
Speaker 1: the use of your mic, you would want a specific type.
Speaker 1: So for example, with me talking into this microphone here,
Speaker 1: I really want to limit where sound can come from
Speaker 1: and be picked up by the microphone because anything that's
Speaker 1: extraneous from me talking is going to be distracting. But
Speaker 1: in other environments you might want to have that coverage. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if I were doing a podcast with a
Speaker 1: group of friends and we were sitting around a table
Speaker 1: and omnidirectional microphone just to pick up that natural conversation
Speaker 1: could be perfectly legitimate. So we've got the microphones, we've
Speaker 1: got the basis there and what they do and what
Speaker 1: their their differences are. Uh. You mentioned that condenser microphones
Speaker 1: need to have a power source, and one of the
Speaker 1: questions we received was, uh, to clarify what phantom power is. Now,
Speaker 1: does it mean that the microphone is haunted? Uh? Maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, phantom power is is quite simply.
Speaker 1: The standard is is a forty eight vole signal. This
Speaker 1: can be provided via an external battery if you're out
Speaker 1: recording in the field, but most commonly it's transmitted through
Speaker 1: the microphone cable from the mixer or the audio interface.
Speaker 1: That's that can provide the phantom power to allow the
Speaker 1: microphone to work, so you don't need any external equipment.
Speaker 1: But that's that's really all it is. It's a forty
Speaker 1: eight vol power. Well that's good. See, so now we
Speaker 1: know that that is the power source that keeps the
Speaker 1: condenser microphone going, the one that the condenser microphone requires
Speaker 1: for it to operate. Simply because of the basic mechanism
Speaker 1: through which it converts air pressure, fundamental principle, the way
Speaker 1: it works. Yes, yeah, and uh, I like how you
Speaker 1: moved into all of that too, because it's it. It
Speaker 1: is good for us to remember that sound is a
Speaker 1: physical thing. It's molecules that are bouncing against each other
Speaker 1: and eventually making contact with your ear drum, which moves
Speaker 1: some little celia like finger project actions inside your ear,
Speaker 1: and then that gets interpreted as sound in our brains.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to think that the microphone is doing
Speaker 1: something similar, except in this case it's converting it into
Speaker 1: an electric current as opposed to a signal that our
Speaker 1: brain interprets. It actually has to go through that conversion
Speaker 1: process again when you're ready to play the sound back
Speaker 1: in whatever you know way. You're doing that with whatever
Speaker 1: kind of speaker you're using. But it's interesting to keep
Speaker 1: that in mind as well. So now that we've covered
Speaker 1: the basics, we've covered the polar patterns, I have to
Speaker 1: ask you another question that was posed by the listener
Speaker 1: about the idea of balanced versus unbalanced cables. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that means, sure, sure, balanced versus unbalanced? Okay,
Speaker 1: and most in most cables you have either to conductor
Speaker 1: or three conductor cables, so you have you know, tip
Speaker 1: or sleeve would your mono unbalanced cable tip ring or
Speaker 1: sleeve could be a stereo unbalanced cable or a mono
Speaker 1: balanced cable. Now the difference between balanced and unbalances effectively
Speaker 1: comes down to on a balanced cable, you have that
Speaker 1: because you have it twice, you have it phase reversed.
Speaker 1: It really limits any outside interference because the microphone cable
Speaker 1: can otherwise kind of act as a nintenna picking up
Speaker 1: all sorts of electromagnetic noise that's in your environment that
Speaker 1: you might not hear um normally, but you would it
Speaker 1: would make it into the recording. So balanced cables aren't
Speaker 1: the end of the world. I mean, most consumer gear
Speaker 1: is all unbalanced. It's just you want to limit the
Speaker 1: run with with her is unbalanced. Rather most consumer gear
Speaker 1: the advantage of balances you can do a long run
Speaker 1: and not have to worry about getting all that extra
Speaker 1: noise got you. Well, that makes sense. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: seen that in lots of different forms of electronics with
Speaker 1: various cables. And one of the dangers you run in
Speaker 1: is if you have a cable with poor shielding, then
Speaker 1: you can a lot of interference that way. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean I remember using really inexpensive earbuds for example,
Speaker 1: the would pick up interference from radio sources like a
Speaker 1: cell phone, and you get that terrible did it did it? Sound? Time?
Speaker 1: One would go off? All right, Well, then we've covered
Speaker 1: the cables. Let me ask you about one of the settings.
Speaker 1: Did I find on microphones the microphone gain? Yes, And
Speaker 1: that really kind of brings us into microphone level versus
Speaker 1: line level. Yeah, because they're a microphone level comes in
Speaker 1: much lower than your standard line level. You know, a
Speaker 1: microphone gets that extra to bring it up to line level.
Speaker 1: So that's where you have the microphone gain, which which
Speaker 1: is too How much gain you're going to need for
Speaker 1: a given microphone varies one by its type. Condensers need
Speaker 1: less gain typically than dynamics, for example, because dynamics are
Speaker 1: passive and just. But each microphone is different in know
Speaker 1: as far as how much game you'll need to get
Speaker 1: it to a proper line level. Cool. Now, we also
Speaker 1: have the concept of a recording level, where you're trying
Speaker 1: to set a level for making sure that you get
Speaker 1: a nice sound out of what you're trying to record.
Speaker 1: You don't want to have any peaks that are going
Speaker 1: to go beyond that recording level, because then you get
Speaker 1: this terrible distorted sound. And so one of the questions
Speaker 1: that was sent in was why are things recorded in
Speaker 1: negative decibels? And to really understand that, first we need
Speaker 1: to remember that decibels, Uh, that's a relative scale. We
Speaker 1: often think of decibels as being kind of a certain scale,
Speaker 1: that five decibel sound, a twenty decibel sound, of twenty
Speaker 1: five decibel sound, that these are these are hard and
Speaker 1: fast numbers, but it really is relative and it's lagarithmic.
Speaker 1: So the deciples are really meant to describe a relationship
Speaker 1: between two different things, and and decibels are not just
Speaker 1: for sound either, but we use it four sounds specifically,
Speaker 1: but you you could use it to describe the intensity
Speaker 1: of two different signals, and the decibels kind of describe
Speaker 1: the gap that's between the two, how much more or
Speaker 1: less intense one signal is compared to the other one.
Speaker 1: So when we get to the idea of negative decibels,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that it is negative loud, right, You
Speaker 1: can't you can't you can't have a negative amount of
Speaker 1: sound where it would be This kind of descripted conversation
Speaker 1: makes me think that if we were in spinal tap
Speaker 1: right now, it would be the most confusing conversation to
Speaker 1: the band. While going negative decibels, we want it, we
Speaker 1: want it to be more louder. It would make no
Speaker 1: sense to them. But the idea of the negative is
Speaker 1: so that you can set those parameters where if you
Speaker 1: go beyond those parameters, that's where you run into trouble.
Speaker 1: Do I have that right? Yeah? I mean I I
Speaker 1: do want to kind of preface this is like you said,
Speaker 1: descibel can be used for all sorts of things, and
Speaker 1: there are all sorts of different standards even within audio
Speaker 1: recording related to decibels. When you're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: negative decibels, that's usually referring to dB full scale or dBFS,
Speaker 1: which is what we use in the digital realm. But
Speaker 1: you also have you know, d d V or as
Speaker 1: an V for voltage, which is what you see usually
Speaker 1: in the analog world. So it gets even more confusing
Speaker 1: because zero, you know, a zero dB VU like you'd
Speaker 1: see an analog, is actually equivalent to negative eight ten
Speaker 1: dB full scale, So it can get a little bit
Speaker 1: hard to wrap your head around if you're expecting you know,
Speaker 1: one you know, you see it's like, I'm right at
Speaker 1: perfect zero d dB on my mixer, but wait, and
Speaker 1: why is it coming in this low It's it's designed
Speaker 1: to be able to have that extra headroom because in
Speaker 1: the analog world, you could go above zero dB, it
Speaker 1: would thicken up the sound, but sometimes that that high
Speaker 1: frequency distorced, that subtle high frequency distortion was was desirable.
Speaker 1: But in the digital world, zero dB is kind of
Speaker 1: like the speed of light. You can't go above that,
Speaker 1: or like over exposing a photo on a digital camera
Speaker 1: where it's just all blown out white. It's the same thing.
Speaker 1: Anything above zero dB, it just can't there's no you know,
Speaker 1: you can't go past the speed of light. Anything beyond
Speaker 1: that it just can't handle, right, So that's where you
Speaker 1: would get into, you know, really awful digital artifacts in
Speaker 1: the in the recorded sound and why you would want
Speaker 1: to have that set. So, just for a general rule
Speaker 1: of thumb, what what do you usually look for, like,
Speaker 1: what how do you usually set your levels for recording?
Speaker 1: What do you think is a good kind of uh
Speaker 1: scale to look at? Sure, Yeah, I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: because you can't go above zero dB. You want to
Speaker 1: make sure your signal is high enough, but you still
Speaker 1: want to have enough headroom for that variation. Um, A
Speaker 1: great rule of thumb is just negative peak between negati
Speaker 1: of twelve and negative six or or somewhere around there,
Speaker 1: so that if you get a little more excited and
Speaker 1: get a little louder, you're you're hopefully leaving enough headroom
Speaker 1: so that you're not going to clip which clip clip
Speaker 1: or go above zero Right. So, uh, if you've ever
Speaker 1: watched a video where someone does suddenly go from one
Speaker 1: level of volume to a much greater level of volume,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of several Let's plays that I've watched where
Speaker 1: they were playing pt the trailer that's for Silent Hills.
Speaker 1: That's a terrifying trailer. And I've seen people are watched
Speaker 1: videos where people started screaming and then you get the
Speaker 1: terrible clipping because they weren't anticipating. This kind of essentially
Speaker 1: makes this kind of ear bleeding distortion that you don't
Speaker 1: want to listen to. Right, Yeah, that's a general rule
Speaker 1: of thumb is you want to avoid that. So similar
Speaker 1: to this, we have the concept of equalization e Q
Speaker 1: and the various frequencies. I know that anyone who had
Speaker 1: a good stereo back in the eighties had that series
Speaker 1: of sliders that they could choose to play with for
Speaker 1: the different frequencies. And uh, you know, everyone had their
Speaker 1: own secret sauce and what they thought was important. But
Speaker 1: no one on the just the basic consumer level seemed
Speaker 1: to really appreciate what those those different sliders were for. Um.
Speaker 1: But when it boils down to it, it really comes
Speaker 1: down to essentially a volume more intensity knob for sounds
Speaker 1: that occur within a certain frequency range. Right, yeah, absolutely, um,
Speaker 1: Because I remember the range of human hearing is approximately
Speaker 1: twenty hurts to twenty thousand hurts at least if you
Speaker 1: don't you know, usually for younger people, the older you get,
Speaker 1: you tend to lose some of those higher for frequencies naturally,
Speaker 1: or if you've been to too many loud concerts, um
Speaker 1: or on the low and like twenty hurts, that's usually solo.
Speaker 1: It's actually subaudible, but you feel it, so you're still
Speaker 1: you're still kind of experiencing that when the sound frequency
Speaker 1: is that low. UM. So you know, the mids if
Speaker 1: you're if you're doing any equalization. You know, the mid
Speaker 1: level isn't gonna be ten thousand hurts because human hearing
Speaker 1: is is logarithmic. So usually when you see mids um
Speaker 1: you might see you know, if you're dusting the midsics,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be you know, two point five kill hurts
Speaker 1: hurts for example. Well, that's an important thing also to
Speaker 1: keep in mind. But what I love is that you
Speaker 1: are essentially having control over these various ranges of frequencies.
Speaker 1: So that's why the base slider is really what's doing
Speaker 1: is it's boosting the signal, boosting the intensity of any
Speaker 1: sound wave that falls in that frequency. It's not that
Speaker 1: it magically inserts boost a base where there was no
Speaker 1: base before. There has to have been a signal at
Speaker 1: that frequency for something to get played at all essentially
Speaker 1: Alloueder volume or recorded at allouder volume. Um. So, because
Speaker 1: I had friends, I mean I remember back in in
Speaker 1: school where I friends who would their magic sauce was
Speaker 1: just to turn that base slider all the way up
Speaker 1: to ten and say this is gonna be amazing, And
Speaker 1: then they get disappointed, and I'd say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you you gotta you gotta have some sound waves in
Speaker 1: that frequency range for anything to have happened. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's you know, another little a little misconception i'd like
Speaker 1: to clear up. And then we get into something that
Speaker 1: frankly tends to to make my head swim when we
Speaker 1: start talking about the concept of samples and bit rate
Speaker 1: and bit depth. So this is the digital audio world.
Speaker 1: This is this is really where I think a lot
Speaker 1: of our listeners fall into people who want to record,
Speaker 1: because digital recording equipment is very easy to get hold of,
Speaker 1: um even just very basic equipment that is good enough
Speaker 1: for you know, your average stuff that you want to do.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you're not going for a truly professional level recording,
Speaker 1: you can get away with a lot of In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that's on the consumer market
Speaker 1: that's not very expensive, can and under the right condition,
Speaker 1: sound like professional level recording. But this is where we
Speaker 1: start talking about the amount of information you're packing into
Speaker 1: a file, because when you get down to it, that's
Speaker 1: what digital that's what digital recording is all about. It's
Speaker 1: recording things in sequences of zeros and ones, and eventually
Speaker 1: that starts to take up file space. So with analog signals,
Speaker 1: one of the things to keep in mind is that
Speaker 1: the sounds we produce, the waves we produce, are continuous
Speaker 1: and they're variable, but we have to process that, uh,
Speaker 1: and in order to for it to become digital. Digital
Speaker 1: is not all about these continuous waves. Instead, a digital
Speaker 1: file ends up sampling that wave. And by sampling, you
Speaker 1: can think of it kind of like a snapshot, a
Speaker 1: very quick photograph of one particular part of that wave.
Speaker 1: And so each sample is a quantity is quantities to
Speaker 1: a finite number of bits, and what was once a
Speaker 1: continuous wave of sound now gets represented as that series
Speaker 1: of of bits of zeros and ones, And uh, really
Speaker 1: what comes down to it is how many times do
Speaker 1: you sample that wave? What's the frequency of your sampling?
Speaker 1: That kind of determines the resolution of the file. So
Speaker 1: if you weren't sampling it very frequently, you would have
Speaker 1: a pretty poor quality sounding uh file. It would end
Speaker 1: up being um well, less fidelity. I guess you could say, like, uh,
Speaker 1: the quality for telephone calls and cell phone calls is
Speaker 1: fairly low because you just have to have it be
Speaker 1: high enough so that the average person can understand what
Speaker 1: the other person is saying. For something like a recorded
Speaker 1: medium like c D s you want it much higher, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is where we get into the idea of
Speaker 1: bit depth. That's the number of bits within a sample.
Speaker 1: So this is really the sample resolution. And you've got
Speaker 1: different types of bit sampling rates. So CD audio uses
Speaker 1: sixteen bits per sample, blu ray goes to twenty four
Speaker 1: bits per sample. And this is where you're able to
Speaker 1: represent more subtle differences, uh in the level of the sound,
Speaker 1: as opposed to trying to flatten everything out. That's part
Speaker 1: of it anyway. Sampling rate will refer to the number
Speaker 1: of samples of an analog signal taken every second. So
Speaker 1: a continuous wave uh is going through you need to
Speaker 1: digitize it. You're really just capturing those specific moments. And
Speaker 1: this is where I had a note and and I'm
Speaker 1: glad that you were able to uh clarify this because
Speaker 1: it was a little confusing to me. You mentioned the
Speaker 1: range of human hearing goes from around twenty hurts to
Speaker 1: twenty thousand hurts. Uh, But when you get to the
Speaker 1: sam full rate of CD sampling, it's at forty four
Speaker 1: point one killer hurts. Now can you explain why that is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: just due to the way digital audio works. Or just
Speaker 1: the way sound works. You have since we have positive
Speaker 1: and negative pressure because it's a wave, so in this
Speaker 1: case you have positive and minus for those each of
Speaker 1: those values so effectively with a forty four point one
Speaker 1: kill hurt sample rate, they're frequent. The possible frequency range
Speaker 1: that can reproduce is going to be half, so it's
Speaker 1: gonna be two and fifty hurts or right around the
Speaker 1: limit of human hearing. So that's really that that that
Speaker 1: really opened up my eyes because I had read some
Speaker 1: descriptions about this but didn't really grasp it until you
Speaker 1: had clarified. So I'm very thankful to have you on
Speaker 1: the show. Not to say there aren't reasons for going
Speaker 1: above that sample rate UM, but it's usually more specialized
Speaker 1: us as you might because you there will be some
Speaker 1: getting it's real complicated stuff, but there will be something
Speaker 1: you can't have some a least seeing some artifacts in
Speaker 1: those very high frequency So sometimes for recording where fidelity
Speaker 1: is you know, ultimate, they might record at a higher
Speaker 1: sample rate UM or or sometimes you'll see for sound
Speaker 1: design they'll record at a higher sample rate because I'm
Speaker 1: gonna slow it down so much to get that you know,
Speaker 1: alien otherworldly sound that you need that extra those extra
Speaker 1: samples for it to work, for it to work. So
Speaker 1: in in terms of like a digital photograph, this would
Speaker 1: be like wanting to have more megapixels because you plan
Speaker 1: to eventually blow up that that picture too many times
Speaker 1: its original great analogy. Yeah, So one of the things
Speaker 1: I saw was that you can find sampling rates hitting
Speaker 1: levels around a hundred and ninety two kill a hurts.
Speaker 1: That's way higher than what you find in the c
Speaker 1: D sampling rate. And one of the thought processes behind
Speaker 1: this is that it captures ultrasonic frequencies when you start
Speaker 1: getting into that that level, and those ultrasonic frequencies, uh,
Speaker 1: those aren't perceptible to us on their own, We wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to hear them. This would be at a
Speaker 1: frequency far above human hearing. However, they can affect some
Speaker 1: other signals that we do here. This is called intermodulation distortion,
Speaker 1: so that's when inaudible parts of the sound spectrum start
Speaker 1: to interact with audible parts. What's interesting to me is
Speaker 1: that this is not something that you find present during
Speaker 1: the actual live performance of the sound. It is truly
Speaker 1: an artifact of the digitizing process. But it might be
Speaker 1: a desirable one depending upon the effect you're trying to achieve.
Speaker 1: So to me, it's interesting that you're recording sound that
Speaker 1: technically is is kind of not there, at least not
Speaker 1: it's not perceptible to you in the live performance of
Speaker 1: the recording, but then you can hear the effect once
Speaker 1: you're listening back to the recording. Before we move on,
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Speaker 1: All right, So we talked about sample rate. Then you
Speaker 1: have bit rate. That's the amount of information conveyed or
Speaker 1: process per unit of time. So a kill a bit
Speaker 1: per second would be a bit rate that's not a
Speaker 1: good one, but it would be one uh, but a
Speaker 1: high quality bit rate would be closer to it, like
Speaker 1: a d kill a bits per second um. And the
Speaker 1: maximum supported by the MP three format is three kill
Speaker 1: a bits per second. So there's a formula for figuring
Speaker 1: out the bit rate, which is the bit rate is
Speaker 1: equal to the sample rate times the bit depth. Times
Speaker 1: the number of channels recorded, because you can have more
Speaker 1: than one channel of sound being recorded at once. So
Speaker 1: if you were recording in stereo, you're using an audio
Speaker 1: CD with the sample rate of forty four point one
Speaker 1: killer hurts a bit depth of sixteen, you've got the
Speaker 1: stereo so therefore it's two channels. You would multiply four thousand,
Speaker 1: one hundred times sixteen times two, which, uh, running out
Speaker 1: of fingers, one million, four thousand, two hundred bits per second,
Speaker 1: so that'd be one you know, one thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: eleven point to kill a bits per second, one point
Speaker 1: for megabits per second. Yeah, that's a lot, and that's
Speaker 1: uncompressed audio, mind you. But but I do think you
Speaker 1: mentioned this, But I do want to be clear, it's
Speaker 1: important to not confuse bit depth, which we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: with bit rate. Those are two very separate that related,
Speaker 1: you know, but very separate terms. Right. Bit bit rate
Speaker 1: depends in part on bit depth along with the sample
Speaker 1: rate and how many channels you're recording. But they are
Speaker 1: two different concepts, so don't confuse the two. Even though
Speaker 1: they both have bit in the name. Uh, they are
Speaker 1: two different things. So Steve, if you were going to record,
Speaker 1: say podcast that you wanted to to send out there
Speaker 1: you had access to, you know, your general consumer level technology.
Speaker 1: What what would be the the rate you would suggest
Speaker 1: people record at. What what do you think is a
Speaker 1: good target to aim at? Sure um forty four point
Speaker 1: one kill hurt since the Sampar rate I would go
Speaker 1: with because you really don't need more, especially for podcasting.
Speaker 1: It's just the human voice, so there isn't you know,
Speaker 1: It's not like you're recording a you know, dense musical
Speaker 1: soundscape or something, right, unless you've got a bunch of
Speaker 1: Gregorian monks chanting in the background or something that would
Speaker 1: be a podcast I would listen to. Possibly I'm working
Speaker 1: on it, but I've only found one monk and uh
Speaker 1: he's not He's not the singing type. So as as
Speaker 1: far as bit depth, I mean, most consumer stuff records
Speaker 1: that sixteen bit. Some will go to twenty four bit,
Speaker 1: which is where you see most pro gear. Um. There
Speaker 1: is a benefit to going to twenty four bit because
Speaker 1: there are more essentially that the I we talked about
Speaker 1: with bit depth, the more bits there are, the more
Speaker 1: values there are to represent changes in volume. So it's
Speaker 1: a finer resolution, but sixteen bit is still perfectly serviceable
Speaker 1: if that's all you can do so with this kind
Speaker 1: of information. This sort of also plays into the conversation
Speaker 1: of how MP three's, especially early MP three's, how they
Speaker 1: started to change the nature of recording in a way, because,
Speaker 1: like you say, you know, when you have when you
Speaker 1: have less information in your file, you have to balance
Speaker 1: that out, you have to figure out what's being kept,
Speaker 1: and you know, especially for a compressed sound file formats
Speaker 1: uh And one of the things that the MP three
Speaker 1: file format would do is look for things that that
Speaker 1: the algorithm said would be outside of human range of
Speaker 1: hearing and just cut it on entirely. So I am curious, Steve.
Speaker 1: I know that this isn't in the notes, but I'm
Speaker 1: curious as to your thoughts on that subject. Well, the
Speaker 1: type of compression we're talking about here is is lossy compression.
Speaker 1: You have lost list compression, which is more akin to
Speaker 1: like a ZIP file for example, where you uncompressed and
Speaker 1: everything is the exact same as it was with with
Speaker 1: MP three. It's lossy or really you can think of
Speaker 1: this a lot like a gift or or a JPEG,
Speaker 1: where it's compressing it by throwing away some of that
Speaker 1: information that it's not quite as important. So you can
Speaker 1: still see what the images. You can still here what's
Speaker 1: what was recorded, but it's using psychoacoustics to throw away
Speaker 1: less important stuff to be able to make that file
Speaker 1: size a lot smaller. Yeah. So, now if you were
Speaker 1: going to listen to music, if you were going to say,
Speaker 1: I want to purchase a digital file of a song,
Speaker 1: what file format do you choose? Honestly, even as an
Speaker 1: audio engineer, I don't see as much of a benefit
Speaker 1: for for lossless. Now they're not that there isn't a
Speaker 1: benefit you know there, you know you're getting a pristine
Speaker 1: recording when it's lossless, when it's in Flak or Apple lossless,
Speaker 1: which which is what a lot of really hardcore audio
Speaker 1: files will turn will turn to. But honestly, for me,
Speaker 1: I did that whole lossle thing for a while, But
Speaker 1: at this point, as long as it's a decent bit rate,
Speaker 1: I'll go with you know, MP three or a a
Speaker 1: C so that you know, two six kill a bit.
Speaker 1: You know a a C you get from iTunes is
Speaker 1: perfectly serviceable to me for listening purposes. Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: feel the same way, Uh, and I feel that since
Speaker 1: I've got you on and you can't go until I
Speaker 1: conclude the episode, and it's got me locked in a cage, yeah,
Speaker 1: I effectively have you ust me to Uh So, here's
Speaker 1: here's the next questions. It's we can start looking at
Speaker 1: some myths around audio engineering for the audio files out
Speaker 1: in the audience. The folks who who are looking to
Speaker 1: have a nice sound system to listen to things on.
Speaker 1: What about those super high premium cables, do they really
Speaker 1: have the benefit of other more basic cables And a
Speaker 1: word no, certainly for digital cable. If it's a you
Speaker 1: know it's digital, it's gonna work or it's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: There isn't really much of a metal ground analog. You
Speaker 1: can make an argument. But those over those you know,
Speaker 1: super expending that sixty monster cable isn't going to be
Speaker 1: significantly different from that five dollar store brand cable, certainly, right,
Speaker 1: Especially if you're talking about something where you know it's
Speaker 1: got decent shielding on it, you're not gonna have to
Speaker 1: worry about interference through that, because electromagnetic interference can happen
Speaker 1: if you don't have good shielding on your cable. But
Speaker 1: most cables Now, even the the bargain ones have decent
Speaker 1: shielding on them, it's not that difficult to implement. UM.
Speaker 1: I feel the same way on this subject as well.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where you might be able
Speaker 1: to with the proper UH sensors detect minute differences in
Speaker 1: analog cables like super high premium versus your basic cables.
Speaker 1: But that's beyond human perception definitely. So okay, well again
Speaker 1: we're gonna go with another one here, analog versus digital
Speaker 1: media formats. Are you a vinyl guy? Are you going
Speaker 1: to listen to your eight tracks? C d s? Just
Speaker 1: digital files? What's what's up? Can of worms there? I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a digital guy, but that's the generation I am.
Speaker 1: But you do bring up a good topic. Is you
Speaker 1: know you have some audio files that still cling to
Speaker 1: their vinyl and I do understand why because due to
Speaker 1: the nature of those it produced produces high frequency distortion,
Speaker 1: which makes it pleasurable to listen to. So I understand
Speaker 1: why there's still that love for vinyl other than just
Speaker 1: simple nostalgia, which I get too. UM, But you can
Speaker 1: kind of simulate that UM through effects on a digital
Speaker 1: recording to kind of get that same effect. I have
Speaker 1: a lot of vinyl at my house, although I don't
Speaker 1: currently have a working turntable, so that's kind of it's
Speaker 1: just sort of keeping up space right now. But but
Speaker 1: I I have also felt that the vinyl experience, it's
Speaker 1: almost more like it's a personalized experience to the listener
Speaker 1: in the sense that vinyl albums, the more you listen
Speaker 1: to them, the more they will develop somewhere over the
Speaker 1: course of their existence, and that actually changes the quality
Speaker 1: of the sound. Whether it's the wear and tear on
Speaker 1: the needle or it's the wear and tear on the
Speaker 1: vinyl album itself, that changes the quality of the sound,
Speaker 1: and that can become part of your experience. It doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily make the song better or worse, it makes it
Speaker 1: a different experience, and I think that's part of what
Speaker 1: the charm is. Uh. There are also people who claim
Speaker 1: that the sound from vinyl is a warmer sound, but
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely certain what that's supposed to mean, because
Speaker 1: most people find it difficult to articulate what a warm
Speaker 1: sound is versus one that isn't. And I've also read
Speaker 1: some great studies where people were put into rooms to
Speaker 1: listen to music not told whether or not it was
Speaker 1: going to be an analog source versus a digital source.
Speaker 1: And if it's a double blinded test, it seems like
Speaker 1: most people can't tell the difference. It's it's just too
Speaker 1: subtle for for we mirror mortals. Even if it's the
Speaker 1: exact same source signal, the difference between analog versus digital
Speaker 1: is really hard to tell. So just busting some myths
Speaker 1: out there, folks, to help you guys out if you're
Speaker 1: interested in either recording or you just want to set
Speaker 1: up a night listening environment. Uh, Steve, is there anything
Speaker 1: else you would like to cover as far as the
Speaker 1: the audio recording one oh one set up? Sure? One.
Speaker 1: One thing we skipped over is connect cable connectors. We
Speaker 1: talked about unbalanced versus a balanced cable and the significance
Speaker 1: of that. But you're gonna see different types of connectors
Speaker 1: for connecting your your audio and will vary depending on
Speaker 1: whether it's professional used or more consumer used. So there
Speaker 1: are four main types that I really identify. So on
Speaker 1: the consumer side, you have your standard three point five
Speaker 1: millimeter sometimes called one eighth inch because it's really metric
Speaker 1: or metric or imperial. Still still the same size though.
Speaker 1: This is what you see for your you know, usually
Speaker 1: you see for your headphones, uh, for your whether it's
Speaker 1: for your phone or for something else, or connecting your
Speaker 1: computer to speakers. For example, the computer out is going
Speaker 1: to be at three point five millimeter jack. The other
Speaker 1: consumer type you'll you'll see, especially in old door equipment,
Speaker 1: is R C A UM. Which are those two usually
Speaker 1: you have If it's a stereo signal, you have two
Speaker 1: connectors or one one is white, one is red for
Speaker 1: left and right. But these both of these consumer types
Speaker 1: are always going to be unbalanced due to the nature
Speaker 1: of them. So on the pro side, you have quarter
Speaker 1: inch cables kind of like your one eight three point
Speaker 1: five millimeter cable, but just supersized. Uh. And you have
Speaker 1: XLR cables. The XLR cables is what you see from
Speaker 1: connecting microphones primarily. UM, it's it's a little bit different.
Speaker 1: It's a three pin it's a three pin connector. So
Speaker 1: with XLR, it's a three pin connector where you have positive, negative,
Speaker 1: and ground much like you have on on a tippering sleeve,
Speaker 1: or you have positive, negative and ground. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: the microphone I am speaking into for recording is an
Speaker 1: XLR microphone. Actually the microphone that Steve is hearing me on, however,
Speaker 1: is a USB microphone, which is one of the other
Speaker 1: types you might run into for those that that connect
Speaker 1: directly to a computer. UM, and that one is the
Speaker 1: reason why I'm using too Dear listeners is because our
Speaker 1: original set up, Steve could not hear me, and while
Speaker 1: that would have been an interesting podcast, we decided ultimately
Speaker 1: that being able to hear one another was it was
Speaker 1: probably the best choice. So yeah, the USB microphones, those
Speaker 1: are really popular these days because they tend to be
Speaker 1: relatively inexpensive and they're incredibly easy to use. They, you know,
Speaker 1: for the people who don't want to have to deal with,
Speaker 1: um lots of tweaking of audio levels, then it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of plug and play with some variations. I mean,
Speaker 1: most of them have a couple of different settings where
Speaker 1: you can choose, Like especially the condenser based ones have
Speaker 1: different settings you can choose so you can determine what
Speaker 1: fields they can record from, whether it's omnidirectional or not.
Speaker 1: But in general, I I like the XLR ones a
Speaker 1: lot more. Uh, just it's um it tends to be
Speaker 1: a bit more of a an investment just for all
Speaker 1: the stuff that you're gonna need for you know you don't. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the great thing about USB. You have the microphone,
Speaker 1: you connect the USB cable to your computer, you're done.
Speaker 1: So it has that digital or that analog to digital
Speaker 1: converter rather built in. It has a crean built in. UM,
Speaker 1: with an XLR microphone, you're gonna need more equipment. You're
Speaker 1: gonna need a mixer or an audio interface to bring
Speaker 1: that up to to bring that microphone level up to
Speaker 1: line level, and then something to whether it's a computer
Speaker 1: or something else, to digitize that signal. USB does all
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah. So for those of us who who
Speaker 1: like the simpler life, it's it's a it's a real benefit. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the wonderful things that I can rely upon
Speaker 1: is the fact that I work for how stuff works,
Speaker 1: and we have an audio podcast recording studio, and all
Speaker 1: of this stuff gets set up for me. So I
Speaker 1: really live in the lap of luxury as far as
Speaker 1: that's concerned. But if you're really doing it on your own,
Speaker 1: these are the sort of things you just you know,
Speaker 1: the basics that you need to know. It's not that
Speaker 1: you necessarily have to go and take a full course
Speaker 1: in audio engineering, but knowing some simple basic rules of
Speaker 1: thumb to follow will really guide you in the right
Speaker 1: the right direction for you to have really good audio quality.
Speaker 1: So U, I really appreciate you coming on the show
Speaker 1: and and I don't Oh yeah, absolutely, I'll probably have
Speaker 1: you on again. We'll talk about something completely unrelated to
Speaker 1: audio engineering. It'll maybe be a discussion about your favorite
Speaker 1: type of of starship in the Star Trek universe, and
Speaker 1: your answer will be USS Reliant because that's the best. Uh.
Speaker 1: Clearly you've put a lot of thoughts. I will, yeah,
Speaker 1: USS Reliant is my favorite starship in Star Trek. So
Speaker 1: not related at all to sound engineering, but I felt
Speaker 1: that it was on my chest and I needed to
Speaker 1: express it. It's unrelated, yes, uh so, So Steve, where
Speaker 1: can people find your work? If they they they've heard
Speaker 1: the stuff that sounds amazing, they want to know more
Speaker 1: about what you do? Where can they go? Gosh, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm all over the internet? Uh geat cred witch Jonathan
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top of the show, you can find
Speaker 1: over at geak cred dot net. You can kind of
Speaker 1: get in touch with me through Steve Rickyberg dot com
Speaker 1: or follow me on Twitter at Steve ricky Berg to
Speaker 1: see what I'm up to. Fantastic, Steve, thank you so
Speaker 1: much again, and listeners, I'm so thrilled this is. This
Speaker 1: has been a grand experiment having one of my buddies,
Speaker 1: uh distantly recording as I record so that you listeners
Speaker 1: can have the greatest experience possible. Now, if you guys
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether
Speaker 1: it's someone I should interview or a topic that you've
Speaker 1: always wanted to hear more about. Maybe it's a type
Speaker 1: of technology, or a company or a personality in tech,
Speaker 1: let me know. Send me a message. My email address
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. My
Speaker 1: handle at all three is tech stuff hs W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again. Releases for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics because it how staff works
Speaker 1: dot com.