Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

> Podcasts are bad because podcasts sound bad — and podcasts sound bad because podcasters aren’t thinking hard enough about what their talk sounds like.

But this is exactly why we should cherish podcasts! They're one of the last vestiges of the old, weird, free Internet that we have left.

Podcasts (mostly) sound bad because the people making them are (mostly) amateurs, which means they don't know the ins and outs of audio recording. They just hooked up a crappy USB mic to their laptop and started podcasting. And once they did that, there was no central corporate gatekeeper who could turn them off and tell them to come back when they knew what they were doing.

All of which, yes, results in a lot of crappy podcasts. But consider the alternative. Do we really want to see one more wide open indie publishing channel turn into bland, pre-digested corporate mush? Is the problem with podcasting that it's not enough like Facebook? Because that's the alternative: one more medium where all the weirdness has been wrung out, except for those random bits of weirdness that happen to tickle an algorithm that makes some corporate overseer another nickel.

Maybe that is what you want, I dunno. If so, don't worry! Now that people with money have taken notice of podcasts, there are plenty of would-be corporate overseers lining up to give it to you as we speak.

I don't know why you're talking about "the ins and outs of audio recording". The author makes clear that's not what he's talking about. In the very next sentence after your quote he writes:

>Forget the lousy microphones and the dinky interstitial stock music — the thing that derails most podcasts is the blab.

And later on he explains again.

>By “sound good,” I meant that I wanted podcasts to sound considered.

Anyway, I think this is just a matter of taste. I imagine the author also hates talk radio/sports radio. You know those 2-hour shows about the Philadelphia sports or whatever?

Much of podcasting is essentially the modern take on that. Of course, it isn't "considered". Of course it has "blab". That's kind of the whole point -- it is filling in a connection/emotional gap that people aren't getting in their day to day lives.

I, too, dislike the "eavesdropping on other people's tipsy pub conversation" genre of podcasts. I generally don't love the professionalized "least common denominator of an NPR listening audience's tastes, delivered in carefully rehearsed NPR voice" podcasts, either.

My solution is to not bother with those podcasts. There are so many others that I find to be more worthy of my time. Admittedly, it's probably a small fraction of all podcasts, but it still amounts to more than I could possibly find the time to listen to.

When do people take in their podcasts? I’m thinking it’s during he work commute or at work?

That’s what I’m thinking. I lightly listened to podcasts before becoming a remote worker, but now that I’m remote I never remember to start one up.

I'm sure people vary but driving/plane/etc. for me. I mostly don't listen at home unless I'm doing something fairly mindless that requires me to be using my hands.

ADDED: When I commuted regularly, I would often listen to audiobooks but they're less amenable to dipping in and out of than podcasts are.

During the morning routine, during commute, at work, after work, with a friend on road trips. Any time really.

I usually start something in the morning and lose focus as I'm working (which is kinda the goal).

For my part, I wonder something similar about how most other people seem to entertain themselves.

Podcasts and audiobooks are easy to consume alongside activities that occupy my hands or my hands and eyes. TV isn't compatible with other activities that need to occupy my eyes, and video games aren't compatible with anything that needs my eyes or my hands.

I did a bit of a study of this as I was involved with a podcasting related startup at one point.

It's really varied:

- Most podcast consumption is via smartphone

- A big chunk of that is on iOS (because default Podcast app placement is inconsistent across Android flavors)

- Heaviest consumption during commutes

- Significant consumption during the workday: white collar people listening in the background - often from their desktop/web while or blue collar in place of radio and music

- You also have people doing things like playing video games and listening to podcasts regularly.

I guess I've never really understood the background sound thing. It's not like I need silence; I have no trouble working in a coffeeshop for example. But I mostly don't even turn on music as background much less something like a podcast. And, when traveling with people, one thing that always drove me crazy was the person whose initial reflex on walking into a room was to turn on the TV as background.

> I guess I've never really understood the background sound thing.

I sometimes find complete or near complete silence off-puttingly artificial. It puts me in mind of an exam room. Any sound that does happen (including my typing) seems oddly exaggerated and therefore a little distracting.

If I'm properly concentrating I don't notice, so often I'll put on something short for background noise as I start a period of trying to get something done and don't replace it when it finishes as the need has passed.

I can't stand silence, I need the distraction from my own thoughts.

I listen while cleaning, while exercising (mostly running), and while doing yard work.

I listen to podcasts while cycling. Somehow makes me feel faster but my GPS disagrees.

If I'm out for a slow run (music or silence work better for a fast run, silence for a trail run as part of the point of that is enjoying the sounds as well as the sights of nature as I trundle around), pottering around the flat doing chores, sometimes on the train when I'm travelling.

Though some of what I listen to isn't really podcasts - it is panel shows and other radio output that gets mixed in with the podcast output of the BBC and other sources.

Usually I listen on the way to/from work (I have a short commute so it often takes a few days to finish longer material) or while working on my house/cooking/some other activity where I like having a story to occupy my mind.

Commute, plane rides, going for a walk, cleaning the house... pretty much any time I otherwise would listen to music or nothing, but instead I want to be entertained and learn a little something.

I listen while:

* cooking or cleaning (usually politics or culture stuff)

* working if the work isn't too intense (usually lighter stuff)

* on the treadmill (30 minutes of tech stuff)

* doing random stuff and just want a voice in the background, like some people keep a TV on.

I don't listen while commuting because my walking-and-public-transit commute requires that I stay alert and doesn't give me any sit-down time. Nor do I usually see anybody with headphones on during the tram ride. For longer stretches that would make sense, or maybe in a car.

[Edit: list format]

I only take public transit rarely but I've never been able to adapt to wearing earphones while walking about--especially in a city. I just don't feel comfortable being isolated from my environment in that way. Probably a pretty minority opinion these days.

I remember when I started listening to stuff while walking around in public (classical music, at the time). It was like giving the world a soundtrack -- strange at first, but you get used to it.

Car and gym. I need music, often sans lyrics, when working.

I listen to them while I run or do house work. I don't have a commute and if I listen to podcasts while I do knowledge work I either don't retain anything or my work suffers.

I dislike the "hour of unedited rambling" ones, enjoy some of NPR, and find the over-produced stuff like Radiolab insufferable. I also enjoy a lot of recorded music. But the great thing about podcasts is that, like blogs, there are way more of them than you can ever consume, and they're just RSS feeds, not locked into some platform (yet). To each his own.

I don't like aimless blab, I don't like the NPR style, but I've still got a huge list of podcasts that I regularly listen to. A podcast is just an RSS feed of audio files. There might be fads and fashions like any other medium, but there is also limitless possibility to do mad and brilliant things. The accessibility of a decentralised online medium combined with the intimacy of radio has IMO sparked a creative renaissance.

https://www.beefanddairynetwork.com/

https://www.imaginaryadvice.com/

https://athleticomince.com/

https://play.acast.com/s/blindboy

I would hope that blab would not be the point. I've always thought to myself that, when I see a link to a video or podcast about some technical topic, I know that some large chunk of that cast will be "er, um, is this thing on?", stupid jokes and laughter, and I think to myself, "Are they incapable of writing this down?".

I don't have time to watch or listen to these things and ignore them.

Blab is definitely the reason I listen to some podcasts. It's real. I get tired of the perfectly edited videos and television shows. Even better are LIVE podcasts where the show could go off the rails at any moment :)

Yes. And this is the same reason people enjoy local bands who perform live, especially if they're performing at the edge of their ability (i.e. taking musical risks).

Hell, I can deal with shitty microphones, I just wish people would figure out that you need to record all speakers' audio independently and not rely on Skype or Discord or whatever relaying it to a single location. Robovoice is the worst.

You don't need to necessarily have independent audio streams to have good audio, just independent sources. I did a podcast up until January, and as the person doing the editing, I found zero benefit to having one input stream per microphone, and ultimately I eventually just started outputting the multiple inputs as a single dual channel stream. Podcasts that aren't in person are rough to listen to though, for sure. The ability to read body language and respond without weird little timing idiosyncrasies just isn't there with Skype.

When I was doing a podcast, getting guests in the same room was always the limiting factor. Between lack of body language/other physical cues and technical glitches, I just never liked doing interviews remotely--although people obviously make it work.

Independent streams really helps me when editing. If I'm talking and one of the other guys' dog barks at the mailman, I know I can just keep talking and silence the dog later.

You're right, though, that the hardest part of recording remotely is avoiding collisions / incremental back-off problems. Then you have to cut out the "No, you go ahead" and people have a real bad habit of then following up with "I was just going to say, ..."

I think you missed the parent's point. Remote participants should be recorded locally. It's not about having multiple streams for flexibility in editing, it's about having high-quality sound instead of the compressed garbage that comes through a Skype feed.

I recently learned one of my favorite podcasts hires a local audio engineer to mic and record all their remote interviewees, which seems like insane overkill but obviously is one way to do it. Is there really not a product that's a dead-simple USB audio recorder you can ship out to your guests, have them plug it into their laptop, and lets them Skype/whatever you while simultaneously recording their audio locally and sending it out to your editor after the fact?

I just listened to an interview podcast that was clearly done on Skype. Interviewer on the left stereo channel, interviewee on the right. Despite the sucky sound quality of Skype and mics, the stereo separation made it relatively easy to follow.

Of course, this one is all about kitchen remodeling. I don't expect kitchen remodeling experts to also be audio engineers.

You're setting up a false dichotomy between decentralized & centralized, where the real concern here is quality vs. careless. The same technological advancements that have allowed everyone to have a voice have also made it trivially easy to obtain decent recording equipment and software to edit out the useless parts of the conversation. Not to mention the concepts of research and planning have been around since time immemorial, which are both free and the greatest contributors to producing a quality podcast. But that's more work than just using your phone mic to record a meandering hangout with your mates.

God, I miss the old weird internet.

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