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The Studio

Here's a picture of the studio, for those interested:



Al sits on the very right in front of the computer which is facing the camera. The screen is displaying the current time and a countdown to when the show will be live. This same count is displayed on the production computer screen which is just above that computer.

Below that and behind Al's computer is the mixer, which is sitting on-top of the gate and audio compressor. You can see the microphones sitting in their shock-mounts, denoting where Al and I sit. The shock-mounts, which are those circular things, suspend the microphone on springs, so if we do silly things like knock the microphone stands, it mutes any noise you might otherwise hear.

The silver beveled screen in the center-left is Mike's screen.

The laptop on the far left is responsible for the ustream connection. An audio wire runs from the mixer, under the desk, to the line-in on this laptop. The signal heard by ustream, is the same signal being heard by the recorders. Starting next week, this laptop will also recored a backup of the audio. We will also use the minidisc recorder religiously.

We do not do post-production editing on the Al & Mike Show. What you hear on the live stream is what you hear on the MP3, minus the break in the middle where we stop the recorder. We do not require normalization of the levels or anything in the recording, as this is all done in real time with the outboard compressor and gate.

Episode 19 - Lost Forever

If you listened in live, you heard a very interesting show. If you didn't, then you missed out. Why? Because at about 40 minutes into the show, the Al & Mike Show suffered a catastrophic failure of our recording equipment. Although we intended to save face, and although appropriate backups were in place, none of it worked out. The backup system was also effected by the failure.

We apologize for anybody who did not listen live. But there will be no MP3 this week.

Of course this means I must actually perform better tests of our backup systems, and create another form of backup.