Editing The Pen Addict 217/transcript (section)

== Audio Gear ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Your new audio gear. So, you can tell I wrote it. So, we're peeling back the curtain in the first half of the show. Not only are we talking about the fact that I wrote the notes. Because usually Brad writes the notes and then I go in and I add stuff and I read stuff. But this time, I opened up my document this morning and there was nothing in there. And when there's nothing in there in the morning, it means Brad's having some kind of crisis. So, I sat down and put in what I thought the notes could be and then Brad added to them. We're a good team like that. But the other part is that, yes, we're going to talk about Brad's new audio gear. We have been recording this show for like four years or something. And Brad, for that whole time, has been using a microphone called the Blue Yeti. It was the microphone that I used to use back in the day. It's a really great USB microphone. It has a bunch of great settings. You can record multiple people with it if they're close to it. And it tends to run between $75 and $150. It's on deals on Amazon a lot. Right now, it's $124 as we talk today. And so, I will just start off this discussion by saying that if you are interested in podcasting, this is the microphone that I recommend. Everything else that we're about to talk about right now, I don't recommend if you're beginning. But if you are doing podcasting and you're interested in it and you're looking to get an upgrade, this set of equipment that we have got for Brad is a really great second step. And this comes just from the fact that we have been doing this at RelayFM for long enough that we have this kind of standard set of equipment that we think is the pretty good next step. And it's the equipment that we're going to talk about today. I have a set of all of it myself for mobile recording.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What I was going to say is what's funny is last week we talked about this after the show and like everyone wanted to know what we were using. So, we figured we'd just plug it into the beginning of this podcast real quick now that it's live and different and hopefully better. It's got to be better, right? It is better. Blue Yeti served us well for years and years and years. So, why don't you take us through what this setup is like. And, you know, I'm going to go ahead and give myself big props. I had this all set up for Myke this morning. We didn't have to tweak very much.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I couldn't believe it. I was setting out this morning to do some serious work with Brad to set this stuff up because it's not easy stuff to set up if you've never done it before. But that old Dowdy, he's a smart cookie. So, you have the microphone now that you're using is the Shure Beta 58A. There are a bunch of different microphones like this that Shure make. We may get you a different one in the future after we see because the 58A can be a little bit bassy. But I think that sounds pretty good for your voice. But we're going to see how we go with that over time. These are the microphones that we have used on all of the live recordings. So, the last live episode in Atlanta, we used these microphones. The three of us did. Because this is part of the Relay FM traveling kit as well as the fact that I also now have my own traveling kit. Because it's so good and relatively small for what you're getting. So, the Beta 58A, it is a pretty good microphone. It's kind of a staple of this stuff. It is a super cardioid dynamic microphone. So, it's pretty good at not picking up background lights and stuff like that, which we really wanted. But there are a bunch of different things that you need to do with a microphone like this. Then what you need to do is something like the Blue Yeti. The Blue Yeti is like an all-in-one piece of kit. It has a stand. You know, it's built into it. It has mute switch built into it. It has everything. And then all you need to do is just plug the sucker in and you're good to go. But that's not what we have here. You know, with the Beta 58A, you'd need to have an audio interface to plug it into, which is a USB audio interface. So, you have an XLR connection coming from the microphone, which is an audio cable, which plugs into the audio interface. And then we set up the audio interface with volume. And that's where Brad plugs his headphones in so he can hear himself talk and stuff like that. And then that plugs via USB into Brad's computer. And the Tascam US 2x2 is the audio interface that we're using. It's pretty small and it's pretty good for what you get. And you don't need to have any software installed to use it, which is a really good thing. I like not having to worry about that. And so, this is a really good piece of kit. And it's relatively small for what it gets. These things can be pretty huge. And also, it's not too expensive. So, I use something called the USB Pre 2, which is the same kind of thing that this Tascam is. It's an audio interface, but it's like three times more expensive. And it's just it has a few little features that I like. So, it's like with a lot of my equipment. So, I have like stages above Brad because I've used the kind of middle ground stuff like we have him using now. And because you're the boss. Yeah. I mean, this is all I do, right? Like he's talking into this stuff. So, like what we've done for you is, I mean, this stuff, maybe the entire thing. We also got you an arm, like a boom arm to rest it all on. So, this is one of the other things you need with this type of microphone. You need a boom arm and a shock mount and all that stuff because a lot of that stuff is built into the Yeti. It has its own stand. So, maybe this whole thing probably cost about $300 or $400, I think. Right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That seems pretty good for all this stuff. I would have thought it would have cost him more because I don't know anything about this stuff. I just, I trust you implicitly on this. Obviously, you want the best output that you can. So, you're going to do that accordingly. So, that seems pretty fair, quite honestly.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Exactly. I think so. This is about $300 or $400. And I mean, so, you know, you start off with $100 and then you're about $300 or $400. And in my equipment, I mean, okay, so this has been built up over a long time, et cetera, et cetera. We're looking over $2,000 for the stuff that I have. Sure, sure, sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's a different animal.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I know I don't have 2x sound quality than you do. Like, I don't sound two times better than you do, especially not now. Before I did, easily. And that was one of the reasons that we've done this, is I was personally getting fed up of editing the show and hearing me sound good. And then you weren't at the level that I wanted you to be, which is why we've done this. And we've been promising to do this forever. And I finally pulled my finger out and pulled the trigger. And it's because I love this show. And I think this show is very important. And I want to make sure that we give it the best audio quality that we can. So we've decided that we wanted to put the money into it and do it because it's needed now, I think, because we continue to push forward. Yeah, yes. Especially because for reasons unknown to me, we're picking up more and more people now. And I don't know where they're coming from. So hello, everybody.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so while this isn't an on-topic thing, we're pointing this out because we're able to do this because of you guys. And we know that the listenership's out there. We know that the listenership's growing. And we want to put out the best product that we can in doing these things, like upgrading my side of the audio spectrum, is just going to make the show better. And, you know, we wanted to – people like to, you know, dig into these things a little bit. We're not going to spend much time on it. You won't hear us talking about it again, probably. But there were a lot of people that wanted to know what the new rig was going to be. So I think that kind of covers it, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think so. If people have any questions about this, hit me up. I don't know everything, but I know what I know, if that makes sense. And it's just stuff that I've accumulated over time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Don't hit me up because I have no clue. You should have heard me moving around the boom arm while me and Myke were trying to set this up. But we got it going. I knew enough – I know enough to plug things in the right place and get the knobs spun up after that. Yeah, I got nothing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I hope as a listener out there, you appreciate it because that's what we care about the most. I hope that it sounds better to you. So whilst we're talking about equipment, maybe we should get a bit more on topic and talk about the stationary we're using today. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I had no plans. Like I was setting up all the hardware and forgot to bring anything into the room where I'm setting up because I didn't know where we're going to go from setup to recording. So I told Myke, well, hang on. Let me just go grab – I need to go grab a couple things before we start recording because I'm actually in a new room because this setup's a little bigger than my other setup. I'm actually in the old room I used to record in, Myke, when we were starting, which is known as the kids' playroom recording studio as opposed to the guest bedroom recording studio because it fits the boom arm better. But anyway, I had to run out and grab a couple things. I wanted to grab some of the pens that we're going to talk about later that I picked up in D.C. and I'm using one of them and it's the Aurora Optima Demonstrator. It's a beautiful, beautiful pen. We're going to talk about it more in a minute. It's filled with a lovely orange ink, which we will also talk about in a minute. And the first thing I grabbed was the Field Notes Byline Edition notebook because, number one, I could see it on my desk, which is not everything right now on my desk. You can see, as in like the top of my desk, you can't really see that. So this was still sitting on to the top, to the side. So that was the first thing I grabbed, knowing that it would work well with these fountain pens. And it continues to impress.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Interesting. All right, we're going to talk about that a little bit later on, that pen. Yeah, I'm using Byline 2 because I freaking love it. I've actually, this book, I flipped it over and started using the backs of the pages now. Nice. Trying to extend these things for as long as possible. Cool. And I, today, am using the Baron Fig Squire as my pen for the day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's such a good little pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, and I bought some refills, Retro 51 refills, and I bought a blue one, which I'd not used before. And it's just a nice change.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's actually what I chose to ship. You could actually choose blue or black when I ordered it from the Kickstarter. Oh, okay, cool. So that's what's in mine.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think I chose black and then just changed it. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One thing on the Byline Edition, friend of the show, and you've met him, and friend of you and I, Anthony Weller, who lives in Atlanta, and he travels. He was out helping out at WWDC. He came to the DC Pen Show, and he informed me that I think the number, if I have it correct, was he just ordered 14 more packs of the Byline Edition.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I did get another three.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I don't want any more grief on the five Nixons I bought last week, okay?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, this was what Thomas did with the Night Sky, and then he sent them all to me when they brought the black ones in. Because he just liked the black, but didn't really like the reticle grid. But he wanted black field notes, so then I ended up with them all, which was great. Talking about field notes, I want to provide a little bit of Myke Was Right follow-up from last week. Remember we were talking, I was talking about the Everything, the EEK, the Everything Extended Kit Edition Draplin field notes? And I mentioned the texture of the cover reminding me of Raven's Wing. Well, the good old Ginny at Three Staples has proven me right here, and she took some close-up photos of Raven's Wing and the special editions next to each other. And whilst they're not the same paper exactly, they've clearly been picked up as a way to hark back to it, because it's the same style of paper, made by the same company, but just not the same model. But when you look at them next to each other, you can see that there is that texture.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it looks almost identical, and it could be the exact same paper, it just could be variances and dye lots. You know, sometimes that happens with paper and fabric, as I learned. That's spot on. You're exactly 100% right. Yes. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I see. I knew it. The problem was, it was just something that felt right in my brain, right? But I hadn't checked it, because I know I have Raven's Wing, but they're in a box somewhere.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, yeah. Yep. And I'm very happy. I'm very happy. Perfect, perfect. That's a great addition. I had a funny thing yesterday. I was calling with an insurance person. My life has become just full of boring adult things now, talking to different agents, talking to different solicitors and stuff. And it's, you know, that's just how it is, unfortunately, right now. And I needed to take some notes. And I picked up my field notes, and the field notes book that I had on my desk was full. And I opened my cupboard while I'm on the phone with this guy to try and pick a field notes out. And I couldn't do it. Like, I couldn't decide which one to pick. So then I just picked, like, some random book that I was on my desk and just started writing. And now I had the paralysis of choice while I was on the phone. But then after the phone call, I decided that I picked up one of the Extended Kit Everything editions, the Pretty Much Everything editions which we've been talking about. And that is now on my desk. So I'm going to be using one of these bad boys, because that's the type of person I am.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that was the exact question I was holding out for. Are you going to use these? And the answer is yes. And I love you very much for that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. I've just picked on. I've got two packs. One can stay in there. And I have three books to use. Sure, sure, sure. Why else? I mean, you know, I am hoarding these things. But I'm hoarding them with the intention to use. Like, I don't hoard for the sake of hoarding. Like, there is, you know, I will use these books. But I know I'll never use them all.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.