InsectaPod Blog

The flash card that came with the device we use to record interviews held just 126k of info. For that reason, we recorded those interviews for episodes one and two as mp3 files, we couldn’t fit very much info on a card at an uncompressed quality level.

Memory is cheap, though, and we jumped up to a 2 gigabyte card recently and started recording at higher quality levels. The problem is that it takes a lot longer to load up a file for editing. Anna transcribed the recording from a recent interview yesterday, but really had trouble being patient waiting for the file to load. It’s not really a big deal, just that the process becomes more cumbersome as opening a file or laying an effect like normalization or equalization on it takes 5 or 10 minutes.

I’m not really even sure if it makes sense to record .wav when everything gets shifted to .mp3 for downloading, anyway. I think it’s a good idea to record at the highest quality we can, though, because we might want to put the episodes on compact disc or something down the road. I know that when I listen to cd quality for a while and then switch to .mp3, i can discern the lower quality. If we record at high quality we can alway compress the files to make them more manageable, but if we record compressed we can never make them sound full.

A while back I posted about the importance and challenge of capturing bug-related ambient noise for InsectaPod Cast.

One example of how recordings of ambient noise can capture reality as well as a photograph are the recordings of the Quiet American.

My favorite is the collection of recordings from Vietnam. Beach Rain is the sound of rain falling onto a poncho as the recordist walks along the coast, the swelling growl of waves crashing into the shore receding out of earshot. It’s fascinating, and inspiring. The kind of stuff I’d like to figure out how to capture.

Yesterday we met with an interviewee to rectify and earlier failed attempt to record an interview. The first interview we did was in March at an educational presentation for youth and the audio turned out to be unusable. I didn’t have a very good idea how the equipment worked and I was using the microphones built into the Zoom H4 unit exclusively, which made background and foreground noise nearly indistinguishable.

This time we used our new Electro Voice RE50, which worked great. The pops and esses that marred earlier recordings are greatly reduced with this mic, as are handling noise. There also isn’t as great a difference in volume depending on the distance of the mic from the sound source, and less general handling noise is audible on playback. The room we recorded in, a small library on the fourth floor of the Natural Science building, was also great. Very quiet and without echo, but not sterile-sounding. I’d like to do all our recording up there!

So the interview is done, and because we’ve switched up the format and will be focusing on one subject per episode, that means all field work for episode 2 is complete. I transcribed the interview before work today and I think Anna plans to start writing the script tonight. If we can get the voice-overs recorded before she leaves for a professional conference next week we should be in good shape to have episode 2 posted pretty close to the first of the month.

On Sunday Anna and I took our new microphone to the Bug House at Michigan State University to see what kind of recordings of actual insects we could pick up. The Bug House is an outreach facility open to the public and targeting kids. They’ve got a lot of enclosed exotic bugs for kids to learn about. When Anna spends time there it’s mostly centered on gently asking youngster if they want to hold a giant centipede and reassuring moms the centipede poses no mortal risk.

I bought the microphone, an audio technica short shotgun, hoping that the high sensitvity would allow us to pick up some of the fairly soft noises made in the bug house, such as those of a scorpion scurrying across sand. This mic is similar, I think, to the one my friend Jon Slaght uses to record owls, and by my reasoning, if it’s sensitive enough to record an owl hoot at 100 meters, it should be able to get the pitter-patter of a scorpion at 2 cm. I knew it wasn’t the perfect tool for the job at hand, but I was thinking it would be a good tool to add to the collection. That may have been a naive assumption on my part, though. We managed to get some good stuff, like these Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, and even the scurrying scorpion is audible, but most bugs didn’t make enough ruckus for the mic to pick up.

Which is too bad, the ability to record insects well was something I was banking on for InsectaPod Cast. I think the cockroaches are loud enough that we could have gotten something similar to the recording above with almost any $100 dynamic mic. I’ve spent some time looking for insect recording setups online, but haven’t found anything we can replicate. Most of the stuff google turns up is about recording loud groups of insects at a distance, such as crickets. If there’s stuff out there about capturing the tiny sounds of solitary bugs, I’d love to hear about it. At this point, it looks like the shotgun mic will be going back.

Anna and I were listening to an NPR report about water quality in natural public swimming areas. The report was from a river in Maryland. Listening, we noticed that the ambient sounds of people laughing and splashing and birds singing was present not just in the outdoor interview sections, but in the narrative portions, as well. It lent a cohesion to the piece, not only allowing us to more easily visualize the scene, but also tying the narrative and field reportage sections together neatly.

One of the more difficult aspects of making InsectaPod Cast is recording usable sounds other than interview and narration. It’s easy to schedule an interview with someone, and easy to stick a mic in front of them after you ask them a question, but much more difficult to ask, “what kinds of ambient sounds accompany your research?” and then get a strong, clean sample of a swarm of bees.

Those sounds lend an invaluable texture to an audio program, though. There are lots of articles on line about the importance of ambient sound in radio. Probably the best one I’ve seen is this one by Robin White published by the Association of Independents in Radio. The article makes compares an audio program without ambient sound to a magazine article without pictures, and warns that, “If you are working on a five minute story, you might want to set aside several hours just for gathering sound.” I’ve read White’s article several times now, and haven’t exhausted its worth. There’s a wealth of information great for not just getting good sound recordings, but demonstrating their importance to others.

But again, we’re left with the problem of getting these ambient sounds that will lend the depth InsectaPod Cast needs to make connections with listeners. What can we record, how can we record it, and how do we explain to interviewees that we need more time with them just to record “background noise?”

Our next scheduled interview is with Elizabeth Tibbetts, a researcher of wasps at the University of Michigan. I’m not sure what we can get for ambient sounds while we’re there. How much noise do wasps make? Maybe (probably) not enough to actually record. If that’s the case, I’m planning to ask her to talk through what she’s doing as she sets up an experiment. I think that fall-back could work well in this instance, but would get tiresome if used regularly.

I think the section in episode 1 where Klein talks in the car about gathering a swarm and then it fades to the sound of the actual swarm is the most interesting part of the episode. Those were the only two usable pieces of ambient sound we recorded for that episode. Originally we’d scripted the bed bugs section first, but moved them around so the klein-in-the-car clip could appear in the first few minutes. I’m pleased with the way that worked out, but am also hoping to have more options for ambient sound when scripting future episodes.

One of the things people on campus seem to be interested about regarding PodCasts is what kind of equipment is required to record one. The fact is, you can start out pretty inexpensively. Here’s a list of what I used to record episode 1.

• Microphone. Shure SM57. This is the bic pen of microphones- cheap, reliable and ubiquitous. It costs $100. Jeff Evans from the Landis Laboratory at MSU found mine on a sidewalk in Lansing. It was later stolen from me at a bar where my band was playing.



• Zoom H4 Handy Recorder. Flash recorders are kind of new on the scene and are replacing minidisc which replaced tape. This one cost $300, is compact, and has some decent features like built in stereo mics, xlr inputs for external mics (like the SM57) and built in audio compression. The 128mb included flash card holds 2 hours of mp3 and 9 minutes of high quality .wav file. I recorded most of episode 1 in mp3 because of the limited storage. I recorded all sounds, whether recorded in the field, interview, or narration, onto the H4 and then downloaded to the computer for editing.
• Audacity. This is a good open source (free) software for editing audio.

For recording a podcast that involves field or interview work, I think this is the bare-minimum. To just sit and recite something into a computer, you could use a $5 pc desktop mic, but unless you’re absolutely brilliant, why would anyone listen? I’ve already got some new mics I’m going to try out for episode 2, so there will be another gear list next month.