Microphones, Pop Filters, and the Praises of the Heil PR-40

Kole here.

My birthday was this past week, and my gift to myself was a new pop filter for my primary recording microphone.

Take a look at my old one: It's a standard silk filter made by Nady (the Nady MPF-6), which I've owned for about four years now.

It's really torn up from frequent use and travel. Some would say it's pooched. It has also absorbed about four years of my recording breath, which means it's filled with coffee, beer, and whiskey. Worst of all, it's pretty big (about 6.5 inches in diameter total). Big enough that if I set the microphone boom to the level where it hits me when I'm sitting comfortably upright, it blocks my view of the screen. This means that for 3 years, I've set my microphone really low and leaned down to speak into it. This is not ergonomically ideal.

I bought this bad pop filter because it was cheap. Probably about $15 at the time. It's cheap because it's made to work for any microphone (it screws onto the mic stand). I needed something cheap because I was unemployed when I bought it. Circumstances have changed.

In case you were unaware, a Pop Filter is a piece of screening material -- often silk or nylon, but sometimes metal mesh -- that you place between a microphone and a vocalist's mouth in order to reduce "plosives" or "stop consonants". Certain sounds are created by using your tongue or lips to entirely stop the flow of air out of your mouth. In English, most words with "D", "K", "G", "B" or especially "P" have nasty plosives in them.

On an unfiltered microphone, they sound incredibly loud or disruptive. A huge burst of air hits the microphone element and has the same effect as hitting a snare drum really loudly in the middle of a sentence.

A pop filter hinders this burst of air, cutting its volume without affecting the sound quality of other, more well-behaved vowels and consonants. It's an invisible shield that just makes everything sound better. Pop filters are especially important if you're using a condenser microphone. I'll explain why later.

LIFE HACK: If you're recording something and you don't have a pop filter, you can use a pencil or your finger to reduce plosives. Any time you're about to say a word with a "hard P", just hold the pencil or your finger in front of your lips. The plosive will be buffeted and your recording will be saved. This is inconvenient, though.

My new pop filter is a BSW RePop, which is made specifically for the kind of low-profile broadcast microphone I use. Take a look at my setup now.

It's called the "RePop" because it's primarily marketed towards owners of the Electro Voice RE-20, which is the most widely used broadcast microphone in existence. You may recognize it as the mic of choice for Rush Limbaugh (of course, his is gold because he's an ostentatious asshole). Close behind that is the Shure SM7-B, which is a little less costly, a little warmer in sound, and a great deal more awkward to use because of the way it mounts. The SM7-B is also a popular vocalist's microphone for anyone who sings loudly (John Roderick is an outspoken proponent of the SM7-B).

This metal pop screen, ostensibly designed for the RE-20, has an off-label use: it can be affixed to the Heil PR-40. You affix it directly to the microphone via very snug foam-lined ring, and the diameter of the PR-40 is the same as the diameter of the RE-20.

Early reports are in: this pop filter is fucking amazing. I barely notice it's there, and I can finally do the following three things at the same time:

1. Sit upright, comfortably, with proper posture.
2. See my computer monitor.
3. Sound good.

All of this thinking about microphones and sound quality shook something loose, and I want to talk about the Heil PR-40.

When you're looking to buy podcasting gear, you could do worse than to read Dan Benjamin's podcast equipment guides. Dan Benjamin runs 5by5.tv, and the shows on that network are a huge inspiration for my own. His guides have been around in some form or fashion since 2009. They've evolved and changed over the years, primarily in one recommendation: you have to buy a good microphone. He used to have whole sections about how to spend less than $100 on a podcast mic, but those sections have fallen off in favor of saying "go big or go home".

Gary uses a Rode Podcaster. He has that microphone because a very generous fan wrote us in early 2013 saying "Hey, I would like to buy you guys a piece of gear". I leapt to get Gary a Podcaster, because it's absolutely the best microphone for someone who doesn't own an XLR recording interface and needs to plug directly into a USB port.

I say it's the best because most USB microphones you can get in the $100 to $300 range are condenser microphones. This means that they record by sensing the sound that bounces off of a very wide metal diaphragm. Condenser microphones sound very warm, and are used for most vocals in music. Problem is, they're also very sensitive. If you're not recording in a sound proof padded booth, they will pick up echoes, room noise, and even the sound of cars passing on nearby streets. Worst of all, they are magnets for plosives. You can't avoid them without aggressive filtering. Condenser microphones are inexpensive and can sound good as long as you have the money to design a whole room around them.

Contrast those with dynamic microphones, which record sounds by sensing air disturbances around a magnetic coil. Since they have no moving parts, they're incredibly durable. The ur-example of dynamic microphones is the Shure SM58, which can be danced with, screamed into, and dropped without really hurting the quality of the audio. Dynamic microphones are also less sensitive and their pickup patterns are smaller. They only pick up sounds made within a certain radius of the microphone head.

The Rode Podcaster is a dynamic microphone, which means you can use it in a living space. It won't pick up your refrigerator motor in the other room. That FedEx truck passing by won't show up in your voiceover. It can't do much about a cat that's right on top of you, but that's fine because we love Rors.

For my own purposes, because I've chosen to use XLR microphones in order to have more control over the signal, I absolutely adhere to the Heil PR-40, for a couple of reasons.

When you jump from condenser to dynamic, there's a fear that you will lose some "warmness". I feel like an asshole audiophile saying that word, because it's the go-to word for people who defend tube amps and vinyl. It's also difficult to define. My understanding and usage of "warmness" is thus: What frequency of voice will it pick up, and does it sound like you're recording from a room?

If the frequency response is limited (i.e. it only picks up a certain part of the normal human speech range), you will sound artificial. If no room tone is picked up, it will sound like you're recording from a void. It's a tough balance. Condensers give you a warm and organic sound at the expense of having too much noise in your recording. Dynamic mics cut that noise but also lose any personality in your voice.

I've used the Electro Voice RE-20 before. We had those at my college radio station. They sound flat and dead to me. I've used the Shure SM7B before. It sounds amazing, but it's inconvenient to use because of the way it mounts.

The Heil PR-40 is the perfect compromise. It won't hear the sound of the main thoroughfare right outside my office window, but it will pick up enough room ambience to make me not sound like a robot. Its frequency response pattern perfectly matches my voice (read: radiogenic, deep, male). It's compact, and even in its shock mount (which absorbs low frequency rumbles from my desk) it maneuvers very easily on its boom. With this microphone, I can get by with only a small amount of soundproofing in my office, and it plugs directly into my dbx286s pre-amp.

If you're looking to start podcasting, I can't stand here and make a case for jumping right to the setup that I use. Taking a quick inventory, it would cost you about $625 for just the microphone, pop filter, shock mount, and boom arm. I don't say that total just to be all "look at me, I'm a big shot". I'm really not. I say that to underline that good equipment is an investment. You can take half-measures, but make sure you really research what you're getting into. A good microphone will have a bigger impact on your sound quality than anything else, and a bad microphone is hard and expensive to replace.

If you're recording a podcast over Skype, I absolutely recommend the Rode Podcaster. It limits you to USB, but it's the best way to get into professional-sounding recording. If you're doing anything else that requires more control over the signal chain, the PR-40 is the way to go. And make sure you get that pop filter. Like I said, it's fucking fantastic.

A Good Title

Kole here.

I think I put more time and effort into picking episode titles than I ought to.

Think about what purpose they serve. Most of our listeners already subscribe to our shows. They won't see a name like "Second Person Shooter" on The Level and think "Dang, I gotta get up on that." A great title isn't likely to entice a new listener. We talk about so much stuff in any given episode of The Level or Those Damn Ross Kids that it's impossible to make the title an effective billboard. On the other side, "Episode 86" is perfectly serviceable, but says nothing about the contents.

Instead, each title is a short little phraselet that serves two purposes: To amuse us, and to remind me of my favorite bit from a particular episode.

Let's look at the Title Greats. "You Look Nice Today" is the god king of podcast titles. "Nary a Dude" and "Sacks-Minelli Disease" are phrases that bring a smile to my face, prima facie. Looking to something more contemporary, Video Games Hot Dog does great titles too. "Coffee Frogs" and "A Balloon and Some Grease" can't be beat.

The 5by5 network makes a whole game out of picking the titles of their episodes. There's a website where people listen live while the hosts record the show, and vote on titles that pop up in conversation. "Scared of Your Own Life" and "Chigger Bites on the Bus Driver" work great. Same thing with Roderick on the Line, which gave us such greats as "Supertrain" and "Then There Was Pump Chili."

I could sit here and name great titles all day, but I think you catch my drift.

The actual process of naming an episode is so simple that I feel goofy describing it. I listen intently while we record, and whenever I hear some accidental poetry, I write it down. A good title should be.

1. Something we actually say on an episode, preferably verbatim.
2. Roughly nonsensical at first glance, but it should make more sense after you listen to the episode.
3. Memorable.
4. Steer away from profanity (since iTunes censors that).
5. Short, unless it's so long that it's funny.

I personally enjoy turning a phrase, or saying things in purposefully oblique or diagonal ways. It's fun to stretch the meaning of an idea into something barely recognizable, but still meaningful. I don't just do this on the shows, I do it in real life... but on the shows, I can preserve the best bits as titles.

If there's more than one good candidate for a title, I'll bounce it off of the co-hosts and see what they want. But most of the time, the winner is so clear that it'd be a waste to ask.

Naming things is hard. I've always been very bad at it. Just look at my first podcast, "Stand Under the Don't Tree and Riddle Me This", a nonsense phrase that I clung to specifically because of title block. Every episode of that show had a single-word title, like "Turtle", "Pogo", "Mensch", and "End". I liked that rigid structure and it served its purpose, but this new way lets us have a lot more fun.

Do you have any favorite titles? I'd like to hear them if you do.

The Bonfireside Chat Theme Song

Kole here, for a brief one.

Someone on a Duckfeed Live stream recently asked about what goes into the theme music we create for our shows. This is very firmly Gary's territory. He is a talented composer and musician, and the majority of the music you hear on the network is his creation.

The Bonfireside Chat intro and outro songs are a couple of exceptions (along with the theme song from The Level). When we were developing that show, we decided to change things up. Gary would handle the visual design (which is usually my duty) and I would handle the music. The result is a piece that stands out from others on the network.

I composed it over the course of an afternoon on December 17 of 2012, in the office of my apartment. My primary inspiration was the song was "All Saints' Day" by the Silent Comedy which was featured on this amazing trailer for Dark Souls.

I'd never heard of this band before seeing that trailer, but it's such a resonant pick. It represents so much of the game's mood, and so many of the game's themes. It's lonely, plaintive, and spacious. It begins with the line "I aint' no demon, Lord" and ends with an increasingly desperate refrain of "One day will this be over?" Fuck yeah.

I didn't want the song to be vocal, but I had a guitar at my disposal. Namely, a cheapo Fender electro-acoustic that I bought for myself when I got my first grownup job. The primary accompaniment throughout "All Saints' Day" is a very loose guitar line in minor key, alternating between strong strums and methodical arpeggios. This guitar has a lot of reverberation applied to it, making it sound like it's being played in a big empty cathedral. Again, fuck yeah.

I tuned my guitar to an Open D Minor and started messing around. I quickly found the main riff for the intro: A rapid strum across all of the open strings, while ascending up the high E string from Open to 3 to 5 to 7, repeated a few times with increasing speed and settling back on an open strum.

After I recorded this, I found some reverb that I liked and mixed in some radio noise to better match the theme of the show's name (Roosevelt's famous Fireside Chats). I then searched around for some audio of the chats to see if there were any relevant quotes I could sample. Turns out, there were. "All of our landings have been desperate adventures, but we hope to meet their counterattacks with power and confidence." Perfect!

But the intro was too cold. It needed a lead-in. I tuned back to standard and plucked out a "campfire" style open chord progression: G-D-A. Picture a youth minister warming up for "Kumbaya". This would segue into Roosevelt's quote, and into the panicked main riff before fading back into radio noise, leaving a nice space for either the intro to the episode or some audio from the dialogue.

The outro track was pieced together from some noodling I did while trying to find the main riff for the intro. I couldn't, for the life of me, tell you what chords those are. It's a very simple progression up the neck, in Open D minor, fingerpicked to create exhausted arpeggios before landing (again) on an open D minor.

It needed some extra texture, so I cranked the gain on another recording and played around by just running a glass slide over the strings, not picking or strumming or fretting anything. This created those ghostly glissandos you hear over both tracks.

I finished everything out by finding an appropriate Roosevelt line to sample, "And we all pray we'll have far more... soon", which leaves things on a nice hopeful note.

It's served us well ever since I recorded it, and I'm very proud of how it sets the mood for the show and pays homage to the Dark Souls source material. The extent of my musical practice involves learning to play songs I like so I can sing with some accompaniment. The Bonfireside Chat theme song is one of the few pieces of original music I've recorded, so it's anomaly for myself as well as being an anomaly for the network.

I hope this gave you some insight into that piece of music you hear every week. I also hope you like it as much as I do.

What to Look Forward to at PRGE

Kole here.

It's the weekend before the 2014 Portland Retro Gaming Expo, and I'm completely stressed out. I'm worried about the flight. I'm double checking that all of the swag and doodads I ordered will be delivered on time. I'm already starting to pack. I'm taking a mental inventory of all of the booth gear we have left over from last year, and making a shopping list for the inevitable Target run. I'm trying to shore up my meager Street Fighter II abilities so I don't make an ass of myself. I'm double-checking our recording and editing schedule to make sure that all of our shows will come out on time while I'm on the other side of the country. I'm putting our remote recorder through its paces, hoping it gives us the right audio quality. I'm making an outline for the live show, praying that I don't start spouting more nonsense than usual thanks to my nerves.

Most of the time, my heightened level of worry doesn't make sense. Whenever PRGE comes around, it feels justified and real. There are lots of moving parts, and it makes my stomach turn. But it's not all bad. Nope, we do it because it's fun.

It's fun to set up a booth and spend two full days meeting new people. PRGE attendees and volunteers are almost universally nice, engaged, and curious about what we're doing there. Last year, our second year in attendance, we had several returning guests who had become fans after talking with us the previous year. Everyone at PRGE shares a similar passion, and it's just small enough that you have a good chance of meeting most of the people who attend.

It's fun to make and hand out physical stuff. Everything we make is immortal and abstract, so we put a lot of effort into making cool physical stuff that bears our show art. The booth began as a way to promote Watch Out for Fireballs!, but the network has grown and now we can talk about a whole bunch of shows. We have stickers and buttons and brochures advertising Abject Suffering, Bonfireside Chat, and other shows from the network. Yes, it's marketing. We hope that the buttons serves as a reminder to go check out our podcasts. We hope that meeting us in person will make people more loyal fans. But it's nice to give things out.

It's fun to hang out with new friends. For as much as I talk with Gary when we record, I only get to spend any actual time with him once a year. Last year, we were joined by the Bob and Ray from the Retronauts, and Jenni from Video Games Taco. This year, we'll have the majority of the Duckfeed.tv network crew all in one place. Myself, Gary, and Nick, along with Brayton (from The Pitch) and Ben (from The Level). Bob's coming back, and so is Jenni... along with the rest of the Video Games Hot Dog/Taco crew. I'm meeting some of these people for the first time. These are people whose work and personalities have impacted my life in some way from a distance, and now we can actually talk face to face. That's remarkable, and I'm really jazzed about having an opportunity to celebrate with my peers and collaborators for a whole weekend.

It's fun to explore the show floor. One side of the hall is filled with arcade cabinets and pinball machines. Some of them are old favorites, others are oddities and rarities I'd never have a chance to play elsewhere. The other half is filled with exhibitors. Some are indie devs, some are homebrew devs. Some are retailers selling crates upon crates of old games and systems. Others are artists who sell posters and other physical things celebrating old games. It's a very diverse room, and I try to spend a little time at every booth when I'm there.

It's fun to talk in front of people. I was nervous at last year's live show because it was such an alien experience. Recording is something I do in a comfortable carpeted room, two beers deep, with the safety net of a thoroughly-prepared outline in front of me. Recording live means staring the audience in the face, feeling fully aware of how much I'm pulling my thoughts out of my ass. But people show up, and we laugh, and they shout out, and I survive. I'll do better this year, I think. That people will leave the show floor for an hour to hear us talk isn't aggrandizing, it's humbling, in a very positive way.

The Portland Retro Gaming Expo is the one opportunity for me to take this thing I do in my spare bedroom out into the real world. I'm incredibly grateful that PRGE exists, and that all of you fans and backers have given so generously to make it possible for the network to attend. Our hope is that you're not just funding a vacation, but rather funding something that can pay dividends for the network and the shows you enjoy. Our hope is that we can expose the shows to new people, and expose ourselves to more diverse new experiences that will broaden the reach of the content we make.

No matter what, this would be much harder without your support. If you're going to attend this year, please make a point of saying "Hi" and kicking my ass at Street Fighter II. If you can't attend this year, please consider coming out sometime soon. It's a great time.

On Time

Kole here.

I work a full time job for a company called Epipheo. It's a hip and trendy modern workplace where I have a floofy title ("Story Lead"). If I worked anywhere else, I would be called a Creative Lead, Writer, or Director. I talk with clients at large and small tech companies to figure out what makes their Thing so special, and then I take this back to a creative team to make an animated video out of it. This takes up about 45-50 hours a week, on a flexible schedule, where I'm never really "on" or "off" duty.

I love this job. I frequently have moments where I think "Wait, I'm being paid to do this?" I do voiceover work. I get to hang out with nice and cool people who help me grow creatively.

I also run the Duckfeed.tv podcast network. I host and edit shows. I interact with fans. I work very hard to find new ways to keep listeners and money coming in while making sure that the content keeps going out. I just reevaluated my time budgets for each show, and my weekly commitment to this network runs anywhere from 35 hours to 45 hours per week.

I love this job. I get to spend time talking with some of my best friends about the things that I'm passionate about. The work of everyone at the network has attracted a wonderful and dedicated group of fans who delight me regularly with their insight and wit. I frequently stop and think "Wait, people are paying me to do this?" I get to be independent.

Oftentimes I'll have days or weeks where I just have no energy. Where all I want to do is collapse on the couch and watch some show I've seen a million times before. Even reading seems like too much effort.

This is because I'm effectively working two full time jobs. A lot of people get to crash on the couch when they get home. That doesn't happen often for me.

This leads to times when I feel frustrated and guilty that I'm behind on email, or frustrated that I'm always just barely getting things done under the wire. Frustrated that I finish my blog entries late. Sad that I can't make time to work on Hex Crank, a project that always seems to get bumped from my list.

I'm not writing this to whine, although I wouldn't blame you for thinking I was.

I'm not writing this as a sideways method of asking for more money, even though this entry is inspired by my frequent bouts of trying to find ways to make Duckfeed.tv my full time gig.

I'm not on the edge of quitting or reevaluating my commitments to either of my jobs, but a sane man would.

I'm writing this to say that I suck at managing time.

And if you're out there reading this and you're already working on a side hustle -- or thinking about starting one -- I'd ask you to frequently stop and take stock of what you're giving of yourself, and weigh that against what you're getting back.

There are only so many strategies you can adopt to try and mitigate the time cost of doing creative work. A frequent joke is that I'm a "productivity guy" who subscribes to Inbox Zero and Getting Things Done... A LifeHacker and Disruptor who is constantly Innovationeering.

That's a partially accurate assessment of my situation.

As a man riddled with anxieties, I fret and I plan and I build systems, trying to place guard rails around my life. I break up my assignment games into easily digestible chunks and throw them onto a calendar. I plan releases and recordings months ahead.

I let people down all the time. I let myself down a lot.

We've all failed, will fail, and are probably failing right now.

But I also try and extend myself some grace and recognize that some nights are best spent covered up and watching bad TV. Or that some weekends are best spent at home with my family.

I've turned my hobbies into a second job. There's no great tragedy in wanting to play WATCH_DOGS but having to play Half-Life instead. I'm still playing a great game.

What I give of myself to this network is a lot of time. What I get in return huge. You guys listen, and you guys comment, and you guys share, and you guys give me your hard-earned money for something that is free elsewhere. You guys enrich my life in a way that few are fortunate enough to experience.

To return to my half-formed exhortation, my call-to-action is that you don't let the time commitment of your hobbies scare you away from pursuing them... nor should you let them swallow you whole if you can help it.

I apologize if this comes across as whiny or preachy. I'm not saying "poor me", I'm saying "lucky me". I just needed a moment of writing therapy.

I'm also sorry that this entry was late. I had a thing.

Random Acts of Suffering

Sorry I'm a little late on this entry. Normally we aim for Saturdays, but I was finishing up a large portion of Suikoden II in preparation for this recording.

Kole here.

Abject Suffering began as a little experiment to incentivize contributions to the network in different ways. It coincided with the (now defunct) Watch Out for Fireballs! app, and our crazy kludgy tribute system.

It then evolved into one of our favorite shows, when you love something you create, you want everyone to see it. We decided to make the Abject Suffering show free for all with our 2013 Kickstarter campaign, and took the show weekly as part of our Patreon campaign.

During the August Duckfeed Live Stream, a listener asked us if we were consciously making a shift from just "bad" games to purely "weird" games, or if that's a consequence of the random number generator. To clear this up, I want to shed some light on the process we use to pick the games for the show.

Abject Suffering has always been a show where we play the games that listeners suggest (i.e. force us to). Hence the tagline "Why are you doing this to us?" From the very beginning, people have gleefully provided us with titles through a form on the Abject Suffering webpage.

Using this form, listeners submit whatever they feel is appropriate for the theme of the show (along with pertinent information like the system, their names, and a comment about the game if they wish).

This form is native to SquareSpace (our blogging platform, not an endorsement) and all entries are routed into a Google Spreadsheet, which acts as a massive database of entries.

At the beginning of each month, I handle all of the scheduling and planning aspects for recording and releasing shows for the next two months. This includes rolling up which games we're going to suffer through.

I take the newest entries and compile them into a massive list of "groomed" data. I remove duplicates and make sure each game is a real thing. Then, I hit up random.org to roll up a random number. This number coincides with a row in the spreadsheet, and that game is slotted into the schedule. The row with the chosen game is deleted, and I roll again.

The only time we will call an audible and swap something out is if the game in question is impossible to emulate. Mainstream systems like NES, SNES, and Genesis are the safest bets. If a suggested game is on PlayStation, Sega CD, or PC, that gets a little dicier. We'll give it a shot, but there have been times when we've thrown a game out because it's unplayable on modern systems.

I've only barely answered the question so far, but I'll answer it directly now: The games we pick for Abject Suffering are entirely determined by what listeners suggest, along with a random number generator. That accounts for everything.

"Weird" and "bad" often go hand-in-hand, and we're always delighted when something catches us off guard. "Redemptions" are also great... when we can take a game that we wouldn't otherwise play, and experience something entirely novel (see: Bad Mojo).

I'll finish out with two compliments to offer the listeners who are kind enough to suggest games.

First, you take it seriously. Which is to say, nobody is saying "Mass Effect 2" lol. I've not seen any suggestions that break the spirit of what the show is about. Abject Suffering continues to be a delight because it's another way for us to interact with our excellent, excellent listeners.

Second, you guys are prolific. As of the day that I'm writing this (Monday, September 1 2014) we have 190 unused, unique suggestions. Duplicate requests are exceedingly rare. This means that if we shut off the tap, we'd have enough shows to do just under 4 years worth of episodes.

The trick is, each week brings roughly 10 suggestions from listeners. Whereas the well for good WOFF! games is relatively shallow, there are myriad bad/weird games for us to cover... and our listeners are doing to legwork of uncovering games from their past for us.

Abject Suffering might outlive us all.

Side Path: Forsooth! Projects That Almost Were and Will Be

Gary Butterfield here, Duckfeed.tv's resident bad boy. I'm taking a break from my cheap podcasting series (are you guys into that? Should I keep doing it?)to talk about a project I was gonna launch in September but that is going on the back burner due to time issues.

We do a lot of stuff here at duckfeed.tv because if we stop, we'll die. However, both of us have lives outside of the podworld. I have a lovely girlfriend, I'm a full time college man (Gooooooo Mascots!) and I work part time. And I do four shows on the network and a blog, including the live stream each month. All of those shows necessitate playing games in addition to getting on mic and making dumb jokes so it adds up to a major time commitment. I'm not saying this whine, I'm just trying to explain why I am going to put off launching my next "personal" pod project.

See, I love doing our game related shows but I sometimes thirst for a more singular show. That's why I started Pilot Season and the above is the reason it ultimately lived a very short time. I was thinking that something easier to edit might be more doable. Enter: Crying in the Bathroom.

Crying in the Bathroom was meant to be/will eventually be me talking to people about their worst jobs. Half hour long, goofs and commiseration about capitalism. I got as far as recording a theme song (which will be on the 2nd Super Mario Lab album) and recording a pilot with Brayton but honestly, I just don't know when I'd get it done.

And I really want to do it! There's almost nothing I like more than commiserating about work. I hate work. I'm not afraid to say it. And clearly, I love doing work on my own stuff (see above) I just hate doing work for other people. I just hate it. Every time I've worked in an office and someone asks me to transcribe some data into excel or update some material, my insinct is to say, "Hey, we're both adults. You don't get to ask me to do stuff like that."

I know this is silly. Before you call me a big baby, know that I'm calling myself a big baby a thousand times over. But I don't find much dignity in that kind of work. So shitty jobs, retail nightmares, affect me really deeply. And it's a shared experience and my theory is that everyone, on some level, really resents this shit and would love to talk about it.

So, look for that when they make a 27 hour day. This blog entry serves as a copyright as I have mailed it to myself, so don't steal my idea. If you want to see that show, let me know! And if I find the time to do it, let me know if you want to be on it. I more or less just want to get the biggest sample set for my theory. And that theory is that most jobs are trash.

In a Name: Duckfeed.tv

Kole here. I've got a short one for you this week.

Duckfeed.tv has been around for about three years now. Its early evolution was mostly accidental and haphazard, arising from my desire to bring Stand Under the Don't Tree and Riddle Me This (which would become The Level) and Those Damn Ross Kids onto a single website so they could benefit from cross promotion.

The network has been A Thing for long enough that I don't even think about its name much anymore. It's just the site where all of the stuff I make lives. But occasionally, when I'm talking to someone about the podcasts I do, I'll mention the Duckfeed.tv name and they'll either act confused or mention that it's a "cool name".

So, where did the name come from?

Short answer: The first episode of Those Damn Ross Kids.

To bring a little more drama to it, I'll set the scene. My brother Kris and I had decided to do a podcast. We had microphones, but no plan. We recorded for about an hour, and scraped together about 23 minutes of usable material.

One of our goofs revolved around my desire to create new folksy idioms. You know, stuff you'd hear a southern man say to dismissively sum up a situation. In the moment, I came up with "I'm just feeding ducks here", as an analogue for "I'm just throwing spagetti at the wall to see what sticks" or "I'm just spitballing here."

The canonical definition for feeding ducks became: "to throw out ideas or facts for a waiting set of ears, seeing which ones would grab attention." Just imagine Grampa Simpson sitting on a park bench throwing bread crumbs directly at some birds.

Kris wasn't as amused with it as I was. I love the saying because it summed up exactly what we were doing at the time: saying whatever we could to make each other laugh. And it's exactly what I was doing on any other show. It's what I heard other people doing on other shows.

Nobody knows what will work until it does. It was apt.

About six months later when I was kicking the idea for a network around, I returned to that first episode in a search for ideas. I remembered how powerful that idea felt, then I played around with it, and finally I arrived at Duckfeed.

We were feeding ducks.

Podcasts are distributed through RSS feeds.

I like birds, and ducks are cool I guess.

I was (and am) a big fan of 5by5.tv, so the .tv top-level-domain was attractive and memorable. .com is played out and .fm just sounds weird to my ears.

I grab-nabbed the URL and sketched out a quick version of the logo. As much as I hate the concept of branding, I had stumbled across a brand for my shows, and created a platform for other shows in the future.

About 4 months later, I met with Gary and started Watch Out for Fireballs! and the network started taking off, bringing the old shows to new audiences, and leading to more and more new shows.

I can't quite think of how to land this plane. It's a dumb little story about how a dumb little idea became a name for a thing. I hope it sheds some light on the origin of the network, and provides some context for our approach to creating content for you.

I guess in this metaphor you're the ducks. So, quack.

Your Dollars at Work: Saffire Weapon

Kole here.

If you've listened to any of our shows over the past two weeks, you've probably heard me beaming about the new piece of gear I've acquired.

More accurately, I've been acting like Jojo the circus boy with his pretty new pet..

What's so special about it? First, let me describe how we USED to record.

As I laid out in an earlier backer blog entry, it's important that each host is on their own track when you record. Everybody's recording setup is a little different, and their audio may require varying levels of processing (equalization, compression, noise reduction, etc). This also makes it possible to edit out overtalk, coughing, interjections, and the like. Various hiccups, both figurative and little.

Way back in the summer of 2010, I graduated from college and lost access to my student radio station's studio. I met a stranger in the parking lot of the Eastgate Mall here in Cincinnati and exchanged $100 for an M-Audio Fast Track Pro, which is the 1995 Ford Taurus of recording gear. It'll get you where you're going, but it won't be fancy. Also, its pre-amps are noisy as shit.

Microphones came and went, but eventually I settled on this setup: Locally, I run a Heil PR-40 into a dbx 286s microphone pre-amp and compressor. A splitter comes out of that, running audio into the Fast Track, and into the Line-In of an old Macbook Pro I have lying around. I'd then run a headphone line from the Macbook Pro into the other input on the Fast Track.

When it was time to record, I'd fire up Logic Pro X, point the two inputs to two separate tracks, and then go to town. It worked relatively well, unless more than two people joined a call. Then the recording would be me on one track, and everyone else on another. It was barely better than running every input through a single mixer.

You have to have more than one waveform, and "double enders" (each person records their own audio) won't work. I can write about that later if you want.

That lack of expandability combined with the noisiness of the pre-amps (and the fact that it had no-head room) to make everyone coming in through a Skype call sound worse than they needed to. It's hard to avoid Skype compression entirely, but you can massage it away.

That is, until the Fast Track itself starts taking a shit. Half the time when I fired it up to record, people would sound like static ghosts from the Silent Hill Otherworld. Our tracks were getting noisier and noisier.

Even though I had a road map set out for gear purchases using the Patreon money, it was time to jump ahead a few steps in the tech tree. Taking some of your kindly donated Patreon money, combining that with some of the network's emergency coffers, and loaning the network some of my own money, I set out to replace the most important piece of gear in our setup.

I've kept a gear wish list running for a good long while. I'd identified interfaces that address the Fast Track's shortcomings, but most of them have serious problems.

The Mackie Onyx 1620i Firewire mixer is a workhorse, but it's gigantic and it requires a rat's nest of patch cables to establish mix-minus.

The Apogee Quartet is a sexy, naughty piece of equipment. It's also incredibly expensive, clocking in at $1400 new.

The Apollo DUO Core is rack-mountable and really expandable. It's a studio in a box, but it's also $2000.

Running down the price spectrum, I was tempted by the low price tag on the Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL. It's a little icky that it doesn't let you switch between Mic and Line on your inputs (something even my dinky Fast Track Pro does), but the price was right. I was going to buy one of these until I read reviews saying that the USB 2.0 chip in it doesn't play nice with modern USB 3.0 jacks. It's a useless piece of junk.

Digging a little deeper, the best fit for Duckfeed's needs was the Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. It varies wildly in price between $600 and $400, but I was able to snag it at its lowest price.

This magical box has eight (8!) combination line/microphone pre-amps. It can accept 20 inputs and send out 20 outputs. It's rack mountable, so it stays out of the way of the rest of the setup. It plugs in through Firewire, which is nice too.

A line-out goes from each laptop (or, eventually, Mac Mini) into an input on the back of the box. Another line runs from the Saffire's output back to the Mac Mini.

The real magic, though, is the software... and what it lets us do.

Most modern interfaces include software mixing and routing applications, which let you control your audio signal like a podwizard. The Saffire MixControl program lets you arbitrarily assign any number of inputs to any number of outputs. You can also run several of these mixes together. They happen with no latency, since all of the audio is routed inside of the box before it reaches the DAW.

If you're following where I'm going, you know I'm about to talk about mix-minus.

The technique comes from old school radio. The idea is that remote callers, hosts, and guests need to hear what everyone else is saying, but not themselves. That would be distracting because of all of the lag associated with telephones and Skype. On an analog mixing board, you'd have to have enough Auxiliary Sends to create a special mix that would be fed back to each individual host.

Example: We're recording Bonfireside Chat with Gary, Kole, and Murph. Gary needs to hear Kole and Murph. Kole needs to hear Gary and Murph. Murph needs to hear Gary and Kole. That's three separate mixes that need to be created and routed. On a physical mixer, that's several patches.

With MixControl, all I have to do is set up a mix for Gary that includes Kole and Murph, and a mix for Murph that includes Gary and Kole. Couple this with another mix that goes to my headphones (combining all three hosts, since lag doesn't matter for local hosts), and you have what you need. Everyone can hear everyone else, and Logic Pro X records each input simultaneously.

At this point, the only thing limiting your number of hosts (up to 8) is the number of computers you have handy to run Skype into your mixer.

The pre-amps are clean and powerful, and you don't have any of the "hiss" that comes from pumping the Fast Track to get the gain you need. With the opportunity to sweeten each individual track, you can get a more consistent tone and edit out anything that might distract the listener. It's a professional piece of equipment, for an operation that's becoming increasingly professional.

We still need other gear, of course. Our second dbx 286s is coming this week, along with an audio rack. Ideally we'd have three Mac Minis, each with a dbx 286s in between them and the Saffire. We also need a network switch that can run gigabit ethernet to each box, so it doesn't sound like our Skype is sick. These are improvements that will happen over time, thanks to your generous efforts with the Patreon campaign.

Eventually it's going to be ridiculous that all of this is happening in the second bedroom of my Cincinnati apartment. Again, that's a bridge to be crossed much, much later.

Broken, Dumb and Fake.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I can't speak for a couple of pieces of music on the network. Kole wrote and recorded the themes for Bonfireside Chat and The Level. And I believe TDRK. I'm responsible for the music for WOFF!, Abject Suffering, Check it Out Comrade, The Pitch, Dead Idea Valhalla, WOFFTrax, Watch Out for Interactions and our video work. I'm not saying this as some sort of braggadocio. Kole's music is excellent and if anything, I probably horned my way into this role.

On the laundry list of dream jobs I'll never have, creating theme music is near the top. I have a frankly insane amount of respect for the jingle. I like music short and catchy with a strong melody and I don't tend to give much of a fuck about lyrics. All of this adds up to 30-45 second dynamic numbers. So much so that, when shows didn't present themselves, I kept making theme songs. Enough to fill an album. I love doing this, regardless of how successful I am.

My preferred medium in recent years is Mario Paint Composer. I have a vast amount of nostalgia for Mario Paint, one of the very first composition programs I ever used. The sounds therein recall the NES pallette without directly emulating it. It just FEELS nice. MPC adds a bit of functionality to classic Mario Paint, not least of which being able to record songs piecemeal and then string them together.

See, I started making music with hand-me-downs and never really advanced past that. My first drum machine, given to me a heavy metal uncle, was a Kawai R-50. Too old to sound realistic, not old enough to sound vintage. This wasn't an 808. This was state of the art 1988 in 1996, which is the worst of both worlds.

But it operated on the same structural principles as Mario Paint Composer. It taught me that songs are made of component parts. ABBBCCCDCCCDEEEE could describe an intro, couple of verses with a fill at the end and then a chorus. This way of thinking about music, as cold and inorganic as it is, has followed me my whole life. When I was in bands, I thought of music as collections of parts. Getting the parts right, putting parts together, etc. This leads to some compositional oddities that have in turn influenced my appreciation of music. I love the "left turn" that comes in tricky pop music. Things that seem like they shouldn't work but somehow do.

I think growing up lacking any sort of real encouragement in music, lacking resources to update my tools, I developed a sort of Stockholm syndrome. I've grown to love shitty piano patches, casio beats, distorted organ, barely on key vocals. At my most self reflective and wanky, I think growing up sans means informed my taste in all things. I think polish is the enemy of art, in many cases, and I'm a firm believer in "No Junk/No Soul." Virtuosic over-singing is a greater crime than off key caterwauling, at least in my book. It's good and just to appreciate frozen pizza as well as high end delivery.

I wanted to bring this aesthetic to the intro theme music of WOFF! Something that recalled old video game music without explicitly being a chiptune. I appreciate chiptune music, to a degree, but it often feels a little like it's trying too hard. The same could be said of bands like Metroid Metal or The Minibosses. I think that Anamanaguchi layers a breakneck speed and dancable beat to everything they do because it's meant for performing live. The metal bands in question add hard style posturing to add energy. I think this is because video game music was composed in a way that leant itself to the living room rather than the dance hall. It's stiff, dorky, windup. And as I previously mentioned, when it comes to music, I love broken, dumb and fake.

I composed the WOFF! themes on a Yamaha RM1x sequencer. This antiquated piece of technology isn't going to win any awards, you're not likely to see anything of it's ilk trotted out other than at a Freezepop show. It's a dorky, shitty piece of technology, which I love.

This working within limitations and embracing technological half measures is something I try to bring to all the music I do, the music for our shows being no exception. This may not be to everyone's taste but I like to think that it adds a sense of idiosyncratic character.