Review: HP Stream Mini

This article is going up a week late because I moved recently, and it seems like my "getting situated" phase will never end. A big part of that is because I've suffered a huge number of technical setbacks with my studio setup, which have led me to discovering a new toy that I think will be a great addition to my system.

We record all of our shows over Skype. I've said it before, and you can probably hear it in our recordings, but it's the best way for us to handle our workflow. When the connection quality is good, it gives us a great audio file we can start editing right away. Most of the inexpensive methods of recording a Skype call will smash all of your audio into a single track, making it impossible to edit at the level of granularity we want to. Having separate tracks for each guest means you can EQ them differently, or edit out coughs or other background noises without needing to re-take everything.

I achieve this separation by recording into a Saffire Pro 40, which lets you record several tracks at once. But where does that audio come from? Well, I need a computer for every host that I'm Skyping in. So, for Bonfireside Chat, I need one computer for Gary, and another for our guest. And so forth. I've set up the Saffire to send each person's voice into a different track in Logic, and send everyone else's voice (minus their own!) back to them.

I've managed this setup very cheaply because I never get rid of any computers. One of them is my 2010 Macbook Pro, and the other is my 2007 Macbook Pro. The problem is, as computers get older, they start to fail. Especially laptops. For some reason, both of these machines started having kernel panics and misbehaving with the network as soon as I moved. I've gotten one machine back online, but it still likes to restart at random. The other looks like it's fried for good.

Fortunately, we crossed a Patreon milestone recently and I started ordering some gear. I wanted to replace the 2007 MBP because the headphone jack is messed up and there's an impedence missmatch that results in a stream of audio that clips if you don't pay attention to it. This time last year, my cheapest option would have been to buy a Mac Mini, which is still very expensive. The issue is that I need a computer that's very modestly appointed (it only needs to run Skype), but is also very small (so I can stack it on a shelf), but with enough customizability that I can install a VNC server for screen sharing. This rules out most machines I could build for myself, and a lot of the "net-tops" that were popular 5 years back (most of those run ChromeOS now).

I thank my lucky stars that HP released this little machine called the Stream Mini.

It's a $180 miniature computer that meets my needs very well. It has a meager processor and a tiny 32 GB SSD drive, but it comes with Windows 8 and runs Skype like a champ. I can plug an ethernet cord into it, so the network connection is rock solid. And it's small enough that I can squirrel it away in a place that's easy to run audio cables to.

Here's my Stream Mini, sitting on top of my audio rack cabinet, with a CD placed next to it for comparison's sake. Also: apparently I still have a CD in my house.

First, the physical stuff. It's blue and goofy, and it has an awkward "boat" shape that makes it less sleek than a Mac Mini would be. However, it looks like you could stack a bunch of them on top of one another, meaning you can have three operational computers in a very small space.

It has all of the ports that I could want, but I really only need the ethernet and audio ports. On the audio side, most compact computers ship with "combined" ports that are meant for headsets. This is a bummer, since I needed separate jacks for incoming and outgoing audio. The nice thing is that you can get adapters or splitters for about $8 on Amazon. With a little bit of configuration, I was able to get this port to act normal. The sound quality is good enough for my purposes, and with a pre-amp I can get great signal with less noise than you'd expect.

The lack of power doesn't really bother me, since I'll only ever run Skype on it. This is my first experience with Windows 8, and I'm a little put off by it, but I eventually figured out what spells and incantations I needed to recite in order to find the Control Panel.

Since I'm running this machine "headless" (without a monitor or input devices attached to it), it was important to be able to run a VNC server on it. I chose TightVNC, which installed just fine. By creating a Static Internal IP in my router configuration, I can just click a bookmark on my Mac and instantly open up a Screen Share that lets me have complete control.

This isn't to say it has been completely easy, or that I'm not worried about some aspects. Having a Windows machine means I'm open to malware, but I'll see what happens. It also took a non-trivial number of hours to figure out how to configure everything so that it would work the way I needed to, and I still have some concerns about long-term stability (I've had the machine for about a week).

That said, I think I can get away with using this thing. On paper, it meets my needs very well. In practice, I've had some headaches, but it feels like I'm solving the problems that shipped with it.

I'm fairly certain I can go ahead and order two more of them and convert my entire setup to these plucky little machines. This is an incredibly affordable way to get the audio separation we need, and I wish the HP Stream Mini was around a long time ago.

Note: This article contains links to the products that I'm talking about. These links are Amazon Affiliate links, and if you use them the network will receive a portion of the proceeds. I didn't write kind things about these machines at the behest of HP or Amazon. This is in line with other areas on our site where links to Amazon are Affiliate links as well.

Mechanical Anatomy

I recognize that my posts here haven't had much consistency to them and I hope you guys don't mind. I'm driven to write about what's interesting to me at the moment to keep it entertaining for me and you, hopefully.

So, in light of last entry lambasting the grind, I want to talk about a mechanic that I think works WONDERS. And it's a small one but I love it.

I started playing Pillars of Eternity recently and though I'm only a few hours in and I can tell I love it. It's essentially made for me in a season of games made for me (Bloodborne's Lovecrafty stuff, of course). And when I try to think of what is so impressive about it, I keep coming back to one very small thing.

See, resting is important in any RPG. JRPGs give you tents and savepoints and plentiful consumables to shore you up between towns. WRPGs are different. Dungeons are longer, consuables are pricier and often don't restore spells/mana. In Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale, etc, resting isn't handled very well. They need to make it a risk or else you'd do it after every battle and a string of fights that stretched your resources so thin would be exhausting. But resting needs to be effective or there's no point. The way those games handle it is a die roll. And I'm just now realizing that sucks.

See, in those games, you rest when you are hurt but you mostly rest when you need spells. And often, when resting in a dangerous location, you have a good chance of having your sleep interrupted by a monster. This makes sense in the fiction but fails in the game sense and the execution. In a game sense, it's overly harsh. You're resting because you're at the end of your rope and waking up, unrested, is a kick while you're down. Your casters are still useless and everyone is likely still hurt.

What this means is you quick save before hand and reload if it doesn't work. I can't figure out another way around this. And if there is a situation that has a binary solution and requires little player input or skill and you're quicksaving around it, it may as well not be there. It's as bad as grinding. It's a waste of time.

Pillars of Eternity makes resting a consumable in and of itself, while simultaneously healing most damage after battles automatically. What this means is that, though your characters can eventually be so worn down as to require rest, its rare. You can go a lot more encounters before needing it so being able to rest four times in a dungeon isn't a big deal. And you can find more consumables to extend that number. To top that off, casters have some at will/free encounter powers that make them useful even if they're tapped out.

This is great. It changes the way you approach dungeons. You're still gambling that you can take on one more room but your ability to do so is skill/tactic dependant rather than luck dependant. You have a good shot, even if you've been around the block, so to speak. Save scumming, a mechanic I generally defend in those games, is no longer necessary for this formality and instead can be relegated to trying different tactics for major encounters.

This isn't totally unique. One of my favorite games this year, Darkest Dungeon, did something very similar. In that game, you can be awoken to monsters but 1, it's part of enforcing exactly how brutal that game is and 2, it's AFTER you've recovered your resources so you take on that rude awakening at full strength.

This is likely to end up in a much larger review of the game on Comrade and as a Bside to a future Infinity Engineers entry (coming back soon, I promise!) but I had it on the mind and wanted to get it out.

Love you baes.

The Numbers

I used to check our numbers every day, at 12:30. It was my ritual to eat lunch, and then take care of a little bit of network stuff before returning back to work. I would check the daily download totals, and dutifully mark them down on a per show basis. For the year of 2012, I can tell you exactly how much every show was downloaded on any given day.

But putting that much time and attention toward keeping track of the numbers with that level of granularity became untenable. As we added more shows, I started checking them less and less. The problem is, you really don't need that much data in a spreadsheet... especially if your podcast download service is keeping track of things for you.

So... How much is too much? How little is too little? Which metrics should you pay attention to, and how much can you synthesize from those numbers? This won't be the definitive guide, but it should give you some idea of what my approach is to tracking our numbers.

Where the numbers come from

In a previous post, I outlined which podcast hosting services we've used over the years. The majority of those, like SoundCloud and Libsyn, will give you download metrics as a part of the service. For others, you will need to use a service like Podtrac to get numbers. Each of these counts downloads in a slightly different way, but what's important is consistency. Most of them also let you pull a specific report for a certain time period.

Day One Episode Downloads

When an episode is released, I want to know how many people download it in the first calendar day. This actually does a pretty good job of showing how many people are subscribed to the show... When the post goes live, people's podcatchers will immediately grab it.

Something worth noting here is that subscriber counts are useless. Services like Feedburner and FeedPress will spit out a subscriber count, but that number is skewed and bloated by the number of RSS-crawling robot spiders that exist. Numbers are only useful if they represent real actions taken by real people.

Weekly Episode downloads

One key number I look for is how many times an episode was downloaded in its first full week of release. This number works great to show you short-term growth (or shrinkage), pinned to decisions that were made in the previous show. What game did we cover? What was the length of the episode?

Determining this number could be really simple, or slightly complicated. The simpest version of this is just selecting a 7-day period after release and recording the number. The complicated version (which I do) involves pulling numbers from an Early Release feed (which goes out to Patreon backers), the number of plays on SoundCloud (a number that incorporates the people who download episodes via RSS), and the number of direct downloads.

These numbers are added together to get the golden number. I then do some spreadsheet math to determine episode-over-episode growth or shrinkage on a per-episode basis. But that's only a small part of the picture.

Monthly Episode Downloads

Not everyone grabs an episode right away. Downloads stay strong for about 30 days after an episode is release (explained further: It takes about 30 days for an episode's daily download total to stop exceeding a 1% marginal change over the current total of downloads). This means the 30 day total is important, too.

Getting this number is simple. You just do the calculation for the weekly download total, except for the 30 days after release (screw you, 31 day months!). I then run a percentage change comparison against previous episodes. Usually, the deviation is smaller at the monthly scale than the weekly scale. I don't know if this is regression to the mean, or what.

Episode Listener Totals

Even a monthly download total won't get you a full picture. Those fluctuations can't be used as a solid indication of how many people are actually listening to a show. Sometimes people miss an episode, or skip it for some reason or another.

To put a kind of "softening" filter over the numbers, I take a snapshot of how many listeners a given show has by taking an average of the 30-day downloads for the previous quarter's worth of episodes (12 for a weekly show, 6 for a biweekly show). Even though this number takes more processing to arrive at, I think it's more reliable. Freed from the daily, and even weekly fluctuations in a show's downloads, you get a number that grows or shrinks steadily. It's a more realistic and sound figure to make decisions by.

Monthly Show Listeners

Once all of the listener totals are in for a given month (this will happen at the end of the next month), I take an average of the Listener total for each episode released in that month, and then mark that down as the number of listeners the show had that month.

Monthly Show Downloads

Now we're back to simple numbers.

At first, I kept track of downloads every single day. Then I moved to calendar weeks (Sunday to Saturday). But even that proved to not provide any real insight. Now, it's my ritual to grab a total of a show's downloads at the end of every month. This is just a repeat of the process for getting weekly downloads, except with more days.

Backlog Downloads

Downloads of new content, or "fresh" downloads, only account for a small portion of the total downloads for a show in a month. It's great to know how many "backlog" downloads you have, to show you how many people are going back and listening to episodes older than a month. If this number-- as a percentage of total downloads for a month-- spikes, then you know that new listeners are doing deep dives on content thats new to them.

The perfect way of calculating this is really complicated, I use the easy way. I take the 30 day downloads for a given month, then add those up. Those are the "fresh" downloads. Then I subtract that number from the total downloads for that month to determine the "backlog" downloads. These are then expressed as a percentage.

For reference, evergreen shows have a higher percentage of backlog downloads. WOFF and BSC usually run at around 75% backlog downloads (i.e. 75% of the downloads go toward episodes that are older than 30 days), while something more periodical like The Level stays around 30% backlog downloads.

Quarterly Downloads

Take the monthly downloads for the three months that make up a quarter, then add them. That's the quarterly download. There really isn't much you can do with this figure, but it's nice to have.

What's it all for?

The release of our first Bloodborne episode of Bonfireside Chat inspired me to write this post. It's been a huge success for us, and within seven days it became our most-downloaded episode of any show, throughout the history of the network.

I was also inspired by the thought process that led me to write my previous post, on energy. These numbers go up and down. In general, they trend upward, but if I got bummed out every time they dipped I'd be in serious trouble. "Non-attachment to results" means doing the best work you can, but not defining yourself by how it's received.

Most publications keep numbers like this in order to determine advertising rates. We only do small ads for listeners, but even those are determined by a CPM calculation against the previous quarter's downloads for a show. There's a very loose correlation between downloads and Patreon dollars, but that could also be a function of time.

These numbers don't directly make us money, and they don't really jazz us up between episodes. So why do I keep track of them? Because they might be useful. They give a quick view of the health of the network, and confirm that we're slowly and steadily getting more listeners and more attention. There's no big trick to "growth hacking" this kind of stuff in the long term. We've said it time and again, the real magic is showing up. As long as we keep showing up, those numbers will go up.

The Energy

Hey all, Kole here. I'm sorry this entry is so late. Easter happened (or "hop"pened).

This entry might come across as a little whiny, but it's about something that's a real issue (I think). We frequently get compliments about our shows. Usually it's about quantity, sometimes it's about quality, but most of the time it's couched alongside a variation of the following sentiment: "I don't know where you guys get the time or the energy."

I don't know either.

Bloodborne came out a couple of weeks ago, and it was important that I beat it as quickly as possible. So I took a week off of work to mainline it.

I've mentioned it here before, but during the day I work for a company called Epipheo. We write and produce short animated marketing videos. As a "Story Lead", I work directly with clients to learn what their company does, figure out an effective way to explain it, and then I write a script and direct the people with actual talent. We make videos like this. I manage 15-20 projects at once, and it's an incredibly stressful job on its own, but they're cool enough and flexible enough to let me take time away to handle my side business.

As great as Bloodborne is, playing 45 hours of it within seven days is taxing. It takes a chunk out of you. But when the credits rolled and real life resumed, I was stuck with shows and emails that I'd neglected, and the hassle of picking up projects at work that I'd foisted on my colleagues.

I haven't recovered from that yet. I'm still exhausted and wired at the same time. None of my usual tricks have worked. A GTD mind sweep left me overwhelmed, cleaning my house was a hollow gesture because I'll be moving soon, I've been too distracted to read, and sitting down and minding my breath felt futile. Normally I'd play games, but... that's what got me here in the first place. Walking outside helps a bit.

I'll find my equilibrium eventually. I usually do. But I'm left in a state of protracted procrastination where I look at the work ahead of me and don't even know where to begin. Thank god I already paid my taxes.

When I feel bad about this, I have to make a conscious effort not to beat myself up over it. Across the network, people are very, very busy. Gary is balancing full time schoolwork and a job. Dennis works a job more stressful than my own, and taking care of his infant son. Ben works doing genius-maths for a game company. David is pursuing his PHD. My brother, Kris, just had a whole bunch of life upheavals.

I recognize that it takes some gall to complain, but all the same, I'll find myself not leaving the house on weekends. I'll inadvertently ignoring texts and calls, and not realize I've done so until hours later because I've been engrossed in something or another. Sometimes the energy just isn't there.

Still here? Cool. This is where I stop grousing about my personal issues and talk about the creative work that goes into producing our shows. Sorry this was a bit of a hike.

A while back, running this network stopped being all about an unbridled passion for the subject matter. This is a good thing, I think. Passion alone burns like sugar. Passion alone can dry up when the audience doesn't show up. Passion alone is inconsistent and unreliable. The passion for games, and talking about them, was augmented and added-to by a necessity to produce consistent work for a waiting audience.

For any company or creative endeavor, maturation means laying some cement and making sure your success is repeatable. The work doesn't stop. Long before we hit "Publish", we're already planning for the next episode. You've gotten glimpses at the apparatus that holds this network up, and it's absolutely necessary.

I'd say that a big part of what drives me forward -- where I get the energy -- is knowing that I have a "duty" (loaded word, I know) to keep the machine rolling forward. If you want to accomplish anything at all, give yourself a budget and a deadline. Since we traffic solely in time here, those two are pretty much one in the same. Nobody will yell at me if we slip a date. In fact, I won't yell at anyone if they slip a date. I don't have the right. But those deadlines are important to me because I know that I wouldn't do any work without them.

Audience affirmation is nice, but it's an inconsistent motivator. As we grow, we open ourselves up to more criticism and dissenting voices. Which is fine. They say mean things, but I think mean things about myself all of the time too. It's a problem. At the risk of tripping the Douche Alarm so hard that the DoD scrambles its jets, I'll admit that I've pursued mindfulness practices over the past several years in order to get my head right (cue "Samsara" goof).

This has been successful (insofar as I'm no longer dependent on pharmaceuticals), but it comes with a fundamental mindset shift. By rigorously trying not to identify with the feelings that arise when I read feedback about our shows, I work hard to not let either good news or bad news affect me too drastically. You leave the good, and you leave the bad, and you make note of any constructive changes you can make. Then you leave behind anything that isn't actionable. If I'm going to work hard to say "This person said my personality is gross, and I won't let it stick to me", then I can't turn around and say "This person thinks I'm funny, and I'll hold onto that forever."

Feedback and interaction, whether it's positive, negative, or adding content to our shows, isn't a reliable motivator for me. It might be for you, but it isn't for me.

I suppose I'm dancing around the topic of burnout. There's a very poignant Onion article that I've printed out. I keep it in my messenger bag. It's titled "Find The Thing You're Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life". It's perfectly incisive, utterly devastating, and a great snapshot of the absurdity of the disparity between how we spend our days, and what fulfills us. It's this disparity that causes us to burn out. Our minds are in one gear, while our efforts are in another gear. If your day job and the creative work you voluntarily pursue are two entirely different things, the only place you'll find any "give" is in the necessities of sleep, eating, social time, relationships, or leisure.

By this definition, I suffer burnout very frequently.

All of this may arise from the fact that I'm spreading myself way too thin. Which makes me a terrible source of advice for how to fit extracurricular creative work into your days. It's likely that I'm wound too tight. But as of this moment, it's not financially possible to jump in headfirst. I didn't touch a cent of my network money until very, very recently because I was terrified we'd need it to stay afloat if the Patreon didn't work out. I wake up most mornings thinking "Today's the day it all goes away."

The other day, my boss asked me what the endgame of this podcasting stuff was. I told him, very frankly, that I wish I could do this full time. I would be an independent business owner who focused all of his efforts toward developing new shows, honing existing shows, pursuing my interests and curiosities through discussion with smart people, and making my audience happy. I told him I felt goofy/guilty/bad admitting to my boss that my dream job lied elsewhere. Of course, he was cool. Everyone at Epipheo is ridiculously supportive of what I do here.

But it's one of those situations where I'm being drawn in two different directions. Lots of stuff is getting lost in the pull. And everyone all around knows it, even me.

Regularity

Kole here.

For a while, I worked at a radio station that served the blind and visually impaired community in Cincinnati. It was called the Radio Reading Service, and we were responsible for programming 24 hours of content, seven days a week. We were fined if there was dead air. If we missed a show, people would notice. If a volunteer didn't show up to pre-record the morning paper, I was stuck in the control room reading the sports pages live. Things were planned and pre-programmed down to the minute, and you always stayed mindful of how long it was until your next station break.

It wasn't as stressful as I'm making it sound, but the point remains: In live broadcast radio, regularity matters.

The same is true for podcasting, but in a different way. There's no immediate peril if you record a little later than normal, and there's no hard stop at an hour of show length. The joy is that you aren't a slave to a format or a show clock. But it's crucial that you show up on a regular basis, when your listeners expect you to.

There have been times when we've goofed on certain shows (Those Damn Ross Kids is one that is particularly prone to missing several weeks at a time for personal reasons), but I'm very proud of how Duckfeed.tv has managed to make a weekly schedule and stick to it. We've never missed an episode of Bonfireside Chat, and we've only missed a single episode of Watch Out for Fireballs! (and that was because I got into a car accident).

This is the result of a network-wide effort to make time for the shows and think through the best ways (and times) to make things happen. For my part, I work very hard to keep spreadsheets and calendars updated so we always know what we need to record, and when. This kind of effort is necessary when we're dealing with several shows and posting episodes nearly every day of the week. A bunch of network business will slip and fall by the wayside, but priority one is making sure shows get out on time.

A glimpse at the spreadsheet we use for show recording, editing, releasing, and planning.

I'll frame this as a piece of advice for anyone who wants to create a podcast, or any other kind of periodically released piece of creative work... Releasing on a predictable and regular schedule is good for your audience. And what's good for your audience is good for you.

The people you hear from on a regular basis are likely to stick around if you miss a week or two. They subscribe to your show. They'll be bummed out that they didn't get their latest fix, and they'll express concern over what happened, but you're not likely to lose them. They'll just be happy to see the notification when you release your next episode. But those loyal listeners are only a small fraction of any given audience.

The larger portion of any audience is people you never hear from. They're new listeners or fairweather listeners who are still feeling you out. While it's great that they're giving a show a shot, it's likely that if you go away (or "podfade") they'll happily move on to whatever's next. This is a very important group to keep in mind because any one of them could become a loyal and engaged listener if you demonstrate care and professionalism. If you show that you'll be there for them, they'll be there for you.

I even go as far as to try to post episodes of the show at the same time every day. It sounds a little crazy, but there exists in the back of my mind some listener who is counting on having the newest episode for their long commute or longer workday. This was easier to accomplish when I could schedule episode releases, but my lunch break most days is dedicated to putting up whatever show goes out that day.

This kind of regularity is good for the people at the network, too, and could be good for any creator. Each show records generally on the same day and at the same time. Editing schedules are predetermined, agreed upon, and noted on the spreadsheet. If there's an assigned game to play, we know what we're responsible for several weeks in advance. The more you plan, the more you're able to absorb the random stuff that pops up and screws with you.

It doesn't really matter how often you release a show. Whether it's weekly, biweekly, or monthly is up to you, and determined by how much time you have to dedicate to the effort. But once you establish it, clearly communicate with your audience and be there when they expect you.

Again, I'm not the paragon of this. Shows will slip without notice. I haven't updated Hex Crank in months. But it's always at the front of my mind to know what's recording this week, and what's going out this week. People are listening, after all.

The Hosting Service With the Mostest

There's a lot about podcast workflow that I've just internalized and don't really think about anymore. Once you solve certain problems, they just kind of stay solved. But something I always keep on thinking about is how the final audio files are served out to the listeners. This last leg of the journey is an important part of the listener's experience, and it's important to keep evaluating how well it's working.

You have a lot of options when you're looking to host your podcast, and I want to take this opportunity to offer a quick survey of the ones I've tried over the years. I'll tell you what I wish people had told me, and if you're the kind of person who would one day try to do this... hopefully it saves you some time and money.

A point of clarification before we get going: When I say "hosting", I'm talking about finding a place online where you can store your audio files, and people can download them. Website hosting is a different problem that, honestly, is a little bit easier to solve.

Shared Hosting

Web hosting services like Dreamhost offer hosting plans for websites, along with one-click installation for applications like Wordpress, which will create your website and podcast RSS feed for you with the right plugins. These are great for people who are just getting started out because they're inexpensive... Usually about $10 per month. You can add or remove files with simple FTP software, and things are generally pretty reliable... if not slow. Since your files are only hosted in a single place, behind a single connection, your users will likely be frustrated at how long it takes to download your show.

They also offer "unlimited" storage for your files, and "unlimited" bandwidth to serve them. Why the scare quotes? Because "unlimited" is almost never without limit. These services are "shared hosting" which means your web server is shared among several other users. If you start serving out gigabytes or terabytes of audio, the hosting company will likely throttle or cap you because that's considered "unusual use".

That's something you need to think about when you're making this choice early on: are you picking the option that will grow with you? I know I sure didn't. Even moderate success will cause this to happen, and the low cost is not worth the stress of this happening.

Square Space

This isn't an ad. I know that every podcast ever advertises for Square Space. I know that's how I found out about them, and I like their service so much that I use it to host the Duckfeed.tv web site.

Square Space gives you the option, when you're creating a blog entry, to add an audio block and either upload a file directly to Square Space itself, or point to an external file that is called up by your website's embedded audio player.

I'd feel more comfortable recommending this method than I would telling you to use shared hosting. I did this for a little while until analytics became really important. The uploader can be a little finicky, so be prepared for some false starts... but otherwise it's reliable. Download speeds tend not to be an issue because Square Space is built on a really powerful back end.

Analytics can be tough to implement. There's some voodoo you can do with Podtrac in order to capture your download numbers, but it's not as reliable as I'd like. If Square Space added enclosure download tracking to their service, it would be a tremendous help.

Here's a note on direct downloads: Not everyone wants to subscribe to a show through a podcasting application. There's a good portion of the audience that wants to download the files directly. Square Space recently added the option to add a "Download" button to any audio block. Make sure you turn this option on. Prior to this addition, you had to use a really janky javascript code injection hack.

Amazon S3

Amazon Web Services (AWS) might as well be the backbone of the internet. They offer cloud back-end stuff that's scalable and easy to get started with. Their web file manager is good enough, and it automatically gives you access to a Content Delivery Network (or "CDN"). This means your file is duplicated to a bunch of servers all around the world, and whenever someone tries to download it, it's served up from the nearest location. This means service is generally fast and reliable.

You can get analytics on this more easily by using Podtrac or Blubrry by prepending their tracking URL onto your file anywhere it shows up on your site.

The thing that will likely lure you into the Amazon ecosystem is the pricing. They lead in all of their marketing with "You only pay for what you use". This looks really attractive when you're small because you won't have to pay very much until you get big. But if you get big... oh boy, you'll pay. Let me walk you through an example.

Part 1 of our Morrowind WOFF! episode was 127.7 megabytes. It was downloaded 4461 times in its first 30 days of release, accounting for 570 gigabytes of bandwidth. At the $0.09/GB that Amazon charges, that single episode would have cost us $51.27 to serve out.

But that's just one episode.

Extrapolate that to a whole show's worth of episodes downloaded in a month, and we're looking at upwards of $375 per month just to host the audio for WOFF!. Then consider that we run a whole network of shows (arguably, none of them are as long as WOFF!, and only one is as popular), and the costs get out of control. It could easily take up half of our Patreon earnings, which is an inefficient use of those funds.

A big part of podcast success is growing your download numbers. Doubling them is always something you have in the back of your mind. When you're hosted entirely on AWS, that aspiration is always coupled with anxiety about doubling your hosting costs.

There are ways to get the upsides of AWS and CDNs, but with lower, more predictable costs.

Libsyn

We used Libsyn for several years at Duckfeed. It worked well when we used it, and there are only a few actual downsides to their service... along with one big intangible one.

First, the benefits. You pay a flat rate every month for hosting. It's "unlimited", but I haven't heard of anyone being kicked around for their success. The converse of that is the fact that they have an "Enterprise" plan for bigger shows, but unless you get as big as Adam Carolla or This American Life, you shouldn't have any problems.

Their cost tiers are kind of wonky. You are limited by how much audio you can upload per month, but this figure can be hard ot calculate ahead of time if you're just starting out. It feels like they're trying to lure you into overages, but their $15 for 250mb should work just fine as long as you're not a windbag like us. This can cut deep if you're trying to import an existing show, since they gouge for bulk uploads. Expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of hundreds of dollars to do this.

A downside to their pricing is that they don't offer a discount for buying hosting a year in advance. That's a real bummer, because those discounts add up if you stick around for long enough.

The end user experience for your listeners is fine. You can serve your RSS feed directly from the Libsyn service itself, and even create a (kind of crappy) website for your show. I'd discourage you from linking your audio hosting and your web hosting so closely, but it's an option a lot of people take.

Two things that are great about Libsyn are scheduled posting and predictable file URLs. You can pre-queue episodes to release, and have an exact idea of where your file will be located once it does. This lets you do a lot of the admin stuff more quickly and sensibly.

Their interface, while powerful, is kind of a nightmare now. Control always comes with complexity, but their jump to Libsyn 4 was a step backwards in usability (in my experience). This extends to the stats, which always used to be quick and comprehensible, but are now quick to hide the information you really want to see behind a gaudy, overdesigned interface.

The switch to Libsyn 4 was a big motivator for me to leave the service, but the biggest one is the fact that they are in real financial trouble. Their parent company, FAB Universal, has consistently been in hot water and I'm put off by what that means for the integrity of their service.

SoundCloud

This is where we're at now. All of our currently active shows, except The Level and Those Damn Ross Kids, are on SoundCloud right now. I'm currently in the process of getting The Level on there, but Those Damn Ross Kids might be a problem due to music copyrights in the earlier episodes (I'll talk about this later).

The biggest advantage of SoundCloud is the audio player. It looks really nice, it's customizable, and boy oh boy is it easy to share from. That last one is a big deal. Every time someone sees our content on the web, they can share it to their social media (and even point to specific points within an episode).

Pricing is also incredibly friendly. The Unlimited plan is $15 per month, and there's a 20% discount if you buy a year in advance. This makes it the most cost effective solution I've seen. There are no upload limits like with Libsyn or similar services, so you can hit them with everything you've got. I've never heard of a show being throttled, either.

Files download quickly, because SoundCloud's back end is built on the same kind of stuff AWS is. They are a machine made entirely to move as much audio as possible to as many people as possible.

There are some compromises you need to be willing to make, though.

Signing up for SoundCloud doesn't automatically mean you can podcast from it. Their podcasting program is in beta, so you need to sign up for the Podcast Beta and wait to be manually approved.

Their interface and stats are a little simplistic. You'll be able to do everything you need to do, but it won't be as quick as some other solutions that give you more control. You cannot (yet) schedule a post in advance. This means (ugh) you have to do everything manually on the day of release. Worse, you cannot manipulate the "Posted On" date of a sound after you upload it. So if you are moving an older show over to SoundCloud, you'll have to be okay with inaccurate dates showing up in iTunes. Finally, you can't get predictable direct links to your audio files. To get those, you will need to do some wizardry with the RSS feed that I can't go into here.

The scariest aspect of SoundCloud is also something of a necessity: Copyright scanning. Much like YouTube, they have robots that will examine your sounds for copyrighted material. This has only been a problem for Those Damn Ross Kids, whose first 50 or so episodes used songs by the Eagles of Death Metal (stupidly) as title music. Getting those onto SoundCloud would mean re-editing them, which I just don't have time for.

Consider the risks and implications yourself. I feel confident in my choice of SoundCloud because they're easy to use, and they're a rising star in audio sharing. All I need to do is upload the sound to SoundCloud and it goes directly out to listeners, and then I drop the embed code into a blog post on the Duckfeed website.

Honorable Mention: SimpleCast

SimpleCast.fm is a scrappy upstart that I seriously considered switching to. Their interface is neat, their download times are respectable, and their pricing is exceedingly reasonable. They lost out to SoundCloud only because I liked SoundCloud's audio player better, and because their stats aren't as detailed. I'd encourage anyone reading this to give them a shot, though. They have a good trial program, and very responsive support staff.

---

Like all of my process posts, this is a lot of detail that nobody asked for. Again, I hope this finds someone at the right moment to save them some time and money. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have in the comments, but please understand if it takes me a while to get to them.

Tutorial: In the Fade

Hey everyone, Kole here with a super technical video and writeup.

I was just editing this week's Abject Suffering, which features Zack Johnson from Video Games Hot Dog. The recording conditions were sub-optimal (there was construction in his building and we had to record his end separately and sync it up later), so I ended up doing way more editing than I usually do on Abject Suffering. Normally that show is as "live-to-tape" as it comes, but going through it with a fine-toothed comb created a better product in this instance. Yes, I recognize how weird it is that I'm writing this so soon after Gary's article about not over-editing.

This reminded me of one of the more subtle tools we have at our disposal for editing audio: Fades. Making crafty little cuts to eliminate unwanted sound is something that sometimes just has to happen. But sometimes it's hard to make those cuts sound natural.

Abrupt cuts from silence to sound, or sound to silence, can sound very jarring to even a casual listener.

If you're trying to cut around someone who's laughing, and you snip mid-"hah!", it will sound like a glitch.

If you're cutting right before someone makes a point, you'll catch them inhaling or clearing their throat before they speak.

If you're cutting out a stretch time when isn't speaking but there's background noise, you risk it sounding like those construction sounds just erupt from your listener's headphones.

Knowing how to strategically use Fades is an effective way to make the cut you want, while mitigating these problems.

A Fade in digital audio editing is any kind of automated shift from zero volume to full volume, and vice versa. Ramping up (or ramping down) the sound over a short amount of time eases the listener into this new layer of audio information.

There are several ways to accomplish this in any given audio editor, but my program of choice is Logic Pro X. This is a costly application (around $200) but it's worth every penny if you want something powerful that's built to edit a lot of audio fast. The video below will walk you through the thought process behind choosing when to deploy a fade, and it will also show you a few different ways to execute it.

Please excuse my horrendous track-naming practices. Yes, the top track is named "Kole" because that's always my mic no matter what show we're on. Gary's name is not Guest. Zacks name is certainly not "Jingles".

In case you don't want to watch a six minute video about this, I'll summarize in bullet points.

• Determine where you want to make a cut. If breaths or other noises are present, you will want to use a fade.
• Make the cut by either splitting the track, deleting a region, or dragging a region's "in" or "out" point to where you need it.
• Logic gives you the option to create a Fade by dragging inward from the upper corners of a region. Create the Fade, then listen to make sure it sounds natural.
• If you don't use the region corners, you can change the Cmd-Click Tool from Marquee to Fade.
• If you are using a digital audio workspace that isn't Logic (like Audacity or Garage Band) then you can approximate this effect by messing with the volume automation/rubber banding. (Or use whatever build-in Fade controls those programs feature).

This is super fussy. I wouldn't recommend learning Fades before you have a good sense for when to cut, but it's a way to up your polish so that your editing is less apparent. That's your goal: to stay out of the way.

Over-editing can be really bad for conversation-based shows like ours. I'll never recommend that you cut away from a digression. But sometimes a host has a coughing fit, or you have to take a break to use the restroom. It's worthwhile to know how to edit around that so that your audience doesn't know anything happened at all.

Kole's Rock Band Wish List

Kole here.

Why should Gary get to have all of the fun with the listicles? I alluded to this article during the Rock Band episode of Watch Out for Fireballs!, and it's been a joy to create. What you'll find below is a list of my ten most-wanted songs for Rock Band (or any music game, really) presented in alphabetical order. My baseline criteria were that the band couldn't already be heavily featured in Rock Band DLC, and that the songs could include the keyboard (for the purpose of variety).

I can't deny how self-indulgent this whole thing is. It's the weird podcaster's version of creating a mix tape for a very specific audience. The result is confirmation that I'm a total indie snob I guess. Harmonix would lose money on these tracks, but I would be first in line to buy them (and, probably, also be alone in that line).

"7/4 Shoreline" by Broken Social Scene

"Teenage Riot" by Sonic Youth was a great addition to Rock Band 2. It's such a great track that I wish I could ask for it twice, but I will sub in its closest indie alternative instead. "Shoreline" shores up the big weakness of our in-episode wishlist by having a female vocalist (and an incredible one at that). It also has the hallmark of my favorite Rock Band tracks, in that it's a complete wall of sound. Nobody would be bored here, since every single instrument, especially the drums, is doing something energetic that could belong in a song of its own. Can't forget that time signature, either.

"Carparts" by The Long Winters

Any number of Long Winters tracks would work here, so why not go with the first? "Carparts" is exactly in line with what I want from pop rock. It's upbeat while also being melancholy, and it uses backing vocals to really lift up the melody. It's also not afraid to lean on a keyboard to set off the guitar riff. And really, any opportunity to perform a John Roderick vocal part would be a delight. I could also see this resting right in the sweet spot on the difficulty curve, avoiding the pitfalls of either being a snoozer or being too shredding.

"Doin' the Cockroach" by Modest Mouse

There's value in a song that's succinct, but sometimes you want to go on a journey. "Doin' the Cock Roach" covers a tremendous amount of ground, shakily held together with jangly twine until the wheels fall off entirely. I won't lie, I'm mainly interested in the vocals here. Jon Hendren of Something Awful wrote a tweet saying "the guy from modest mouse sings like someone is chasing him with a garden hose" and he's totally right. I can't even begin to describe what happens with the tempo here, but as it slips into a full-on dance number the frenetic muted strumming of the guitar and harmonic jabs act as counterpoint to one of the craziest disco beats I've heard outside of "Everlong". I get the feeling this would be really, really hard on pretty much every part but if it came together how great would that be?

"Fresh Blood" by Eels

There's already an Eels song in Rock Band, against all odds. It's called "Saturday Morning" and everything about it works aside from the obnoxious falsetto vocals in the chorus. "Fresh Blood" is the exact opposite of that song in a lot of ways. It's slow tempo, dark, and brooding. It leads with the bass, has a scant guitar part outside of the chorus, and has an organ that's straight up spooky. All of this would be a welcome departure from what we usually get in a Rock Band track. Give me something that's laid back until it's not.

"Hail, Mary" by Shearwater

If there's any song on this list that's "just for me", it's probably this one. I embedded it into the page because the version that I want (the 2007 remaster) isn't even on YouTube. Shearwater is a band that splintered off of Okkervil River, as a side project for their more laid back songs. It slowly turned into its own venture when organist Jon Meiburg took over the band full time. Meiburg's vocals are the main draw here, hauntingly melodic with incredible emotional range. Before the rest of the band joins in, the guitar is understated but active. When the flood gates open, the organ turns into a devastating weapon and the drums march it to the front lines.

"Heavy Metal Drummer" by Wilco

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a fantastic album, and hearing it in high school had a huge impact on me. It's a weird listen at first because it sounds completely understated, but there's a lot going on if you're paying attention. The same applies here. The drums don't feature as prominently as you'd expect from the title, but that's the joke. The keyboard part bounces between pop piano and spacey synth, playing along with an almost entirely hidden lead guitar part. This falls into the "Carparts" category: upbeat pop rock is never a bad idea.

"Hush" by Deep Purple

The sad fact of Rock Band tracks is that you need the master tapes in order to make them. If you can't separate out each instrument, the game doesn't work. The cover of "Hush" on Guitar Hero 2 for Xbox 360 was great fun, even if you couldn't play the wacky rock organ or the blues shuffle drums. Even more, while the Harmony Vocals in Rock Band almost never worked out, it's always great fun when the whole band joins in with the melody. This song's "Na-na-na-na" hook would be absolutely perfect for that. I can only imagine that we never got "Hush" on the store because the master tapes are lost to time. That's a shame.

"Lovecraft in Brooklyn" by Mountain Goats

Some bands are guitar bands. Others are vocalist bands. The Mountain Goats are a lyricist's band. John Darnielle leads with the poetry and the music does whatever it needs to do to match its intensity. There's not very much in their catalogue that would be a good fit for Rock Band, since acoustic songs almost never work the way you want them to. But "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" is electric enough that I think it would work quite well. The first thing you notice is that drum part with its frantic ride on the cymbal and unusual syncopation. The second thing you notice is that unlike most Mountain Goats songs, this one is carried by a riff on both guitar and bass. The third thing you notice is that these vocals would be really difficult to chart as a melody, so they would probably have to be talkies (which is a little bit of a bummer).

"Secret Meeting" by The National

Similar to Wilco above, The National is terminally understated. Even though "Secret Meeting" is like an R.E.M. track in that it sounds like everyone wanted to be the lowest in the mix, this is an incredibly frantic song. Just listen to that bass, and the tremolo on the guitar part. It only picks up speed as the drum starts adding new fills in and the vocals get more insistent. I'm not just including The National on here because they're from Cincinnati, I assure you.

"Some Nights" by fun.

Just because a song is overplayed doesn't mean it's bad. You can do a lot, lot worse than Fun when it comes to modern pop. "We Are Young" worked fantastically in Rock Band Blitz, but I don't imagine too many people played that. "Some Nights" is a better song, I think, because it has more of a pulse to it. I used the SNL performance for two reasons. First, I hate the official video. Second, it takes seeing them perform it live to understand that there's a lot happening here instrumentally behind the production. The drums would give us two things we don't normally get, a beat that's a hybrid of martial and afro. The keyboards lead the vocal melody, and the guitar is surprisingly shreddy. "Some Nights" has been my karaoke jam for a couple of years now, and I'm sad we only got its inferior cousin as a playable song.

"Wake and Be Fine" by Okkervil River

What's that Kole? TWO Okkervil River songs? You're mad! No, I'm just a big fan of this band. I'd even say they're my favorite. Even though "I Am Very Far" is a weaker album than some of their others, "Wake and Be Fine" ranks as one of their most powerful tracks. Those drums are thunderous backbreakers, the vocals are apocalyptic, and the guitar parts exist 45 degrees off axis from the rest of the song. During the episode, we talked about how "For Real" would be fun because of those moments where the entire band syncs up for stabs in the chorus. The same thing happens here, in a much more baroque and intricate way.

---

I didn't include the three tracks I used for the episode ("Money City Maniacs", "The Way", and "For Real") because where's the fun in that? You've already heard those.

---

Hopefully this appealed to someone other than myself. I'm ready to close the book on thinking about Rock Band for now, but who knows what will happen in the future. They're saying it might come back. And maybe that means we'll get some of these tracks after all.

I'll believe it when I see it.

The Anatomy of Podcasts. Pt. 1: Over-editing.

After a heavy couple weeks of introspection, I want to get back to something a little more mechanical. I really appreciate the response to my last blog. Honest to goodness, I love you all.

I'm going to start a series talking about non Duckfeed podcasts and how they illustrate different principles of the medium. I need to throw a heavy caveat in there, however. Firstly, everything I say in this series is a matter of taste. If I extol a virtue or damn a vice, it's because I like it or dislike it. There is no accepted canon for podcasting. There are few universal best practices and like everything we do, I can only speak to my experience.

The second big caveat, which ties into the first one, is I'm not putting anyone on blast. In a couple of entries I'm going to talk about things other podcasts do that I don't care for. This doesn't reflect on them as people or podcasters and isn't meant to hinder anyones enjoyment of their work. It's simply me continuing my journey to the center of myself, figuring out what I like and why.

So, with that in mind, let's talk pacing. And more specifically, let's talk about Rachel and Miles Explain the X-men. We recently covered 3D Dot Game Heroes on BSC and that game is made for podcast listening. The music is good but there is enough quiet exploration that having some talk on in the background is all but mandatory. I've been in a Podrut for a while, unable to branch out into anything new but 3DDGH was the game that forced me to dig deeper. On a lark, I decided to download Rachel and Miles Explain the X-men and listened to the first 10 or so episodes while playing. And it's good...but...

If you've never heard it, the podcast is a husband wife team explaining X-men related topics and history, sometimes issue by issue, sometimes character by character. I LOVE the X-men. It was the first comic I got heavily into and I have a lot of affection for it to this day. The content of the podcast is more or less made for me. So, why those ominous ellipses above?

Pacing. If you've never heard it, Explains is an almost aggressively edited affair consisting of rapid fire short sentences between the hosts. From time to time there are digressions and jokes, but the whole thing feels tense in a way I just don't care for. Hosts hurry each other along, they're snarky asides come so quickly that it feels almost inhuman. It's like the podcast equivalent to an Aaron Sorkin walk'n'talk where you can hear the edits to make it sound more snappy.

When I say I hear the edits, I mean literally. I don't want to come off as an elitist (I'm sure you guys have heard edits I've made) but when you suddenly hear a shift in the silence between words, you know that someone has cut out an Um or an Uh or whatever. That's FINE but it happens ALL THE TIME in Explains.

The result is a little too polished for my taste. I have a future entry planned on the concept of Friendship Porn, a term that, as far as I know, I coined, that refers to the "buddy hang" feeling you get from a good podcast. I get absolutely none of that from Explains. The hosts put a lot of energy, it seems,into creating a facade of fast, clever snark and lorebits and the end result is incredibly distancing. Based on what I know of the hosts, it seems like I might get along with them or that I should like them but none of that comes through in the show for me.

I think over-editing is one of the first things I shed as I learned audio editing. Part of this was a function of practicality as I did more and more shows. However, there was a clear transition from Oh Shit, I Can Make Myself Sound as Articulate as I want! to Oh Shit, No One Actually Sounds Like That! This is Awful! I think I realized that with my creative output, a portion of what I'm "selling" (shudder) is myself and that over editing, creating a breakneck slamjam of fast talking audio was a way to obfuscate myself or at least intentionally construct myself in a way that made me feel uncomfortable.

And again, I don't mean to put Rachel and Miles on blast. I think I like them, I think I like the podcast. There is a wealth of great information within. But guys, relax a little bit. I don't come to podcasts to get facts and snark wiki-blasted into my brain as fast as possible. That's like shotgunning a beer. I'd prefer to sit back and hang out with some friends.

Next time, I'll be talking about a podcast that does this bro hang thing extremely well. I hope to see you there.

What We Sell

Kole here.

I was originally going to write up my "Ten Most Wanted Rock Band Songs" list this week, but Gary's entry last week was so rousing that I'm inspired to do better than a listicle. The Rock Band article will show up eventually, but not today.

Gary and I have different skill sets and affinities. We joke about it a lot, but you can see it play out in the content on this very blog. I like processes and numbers, to a degree that can look ridiculous to someone like Gary who is more fond of the softer sciences. That's cool: the network is comprised of people whose strengths line up with other people's weaknesses.

I've been very active this month crunching the numbers to analyze how we did in 2014. I handle all of the network's financials, which is becoming a much larger task as we start bringing in and spending more money. Tax season is upon us, and making sure we don't rot in prison for doing a thing we love is very important to me. Every day, Duckfeed.tv starts to look and feel more like a "real" business.

The other set of numbers I crunch relates to our listener base. I have a very comprehensive way of gauging how the network is growing on daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and even yearly bases. Over time I've stumbled on a way to accurately determine what our "audience" size is for every episode we release. I can see what different factors affect our downloads, at least in a very rough way.

I can say with confidence that there are at least a handful of thousands of you. That's small potatoes compared to larger shows and larger networks, but that figure is staggering when you stop and think "There are thousands of people who listen to me when I talk." In human terms, I look at those numbers and see a snapshot of how many people whose lives we touch in some small way with the work we do here.

I try very hard to keep things framed like that. As we grow, I want to remain grateful and humble, but most of all mindful of the fact that any amount of attention you pay us is special and fragile. Our dangerous task, as we look to grow, is to avoid letting those numbers just be numbers.

The danger is in being "Business Guys" about it.

My day job, for anyone who doesn't know, involves me working with companies large and small to create animated videos to market their products and services. Although I didn't start this job with any particular feelings about business and marketing, I've learned a great deal about how complicated the relationship between business and humanity is.

My general feeling is that, unless otherwise noted, businesses do a terrible job at being mindful of the value they provide in exchange for what their customers pay. This gets doubly gross in marketing, where time and attention are commodified and turned into currency. Time and attention are two of the most sacred things we have, and I believe it's incumbent on any business to think carefully about how they manage the time and attention of their customers.

The collision between all of these things: financials, listener numbers, time and attention is the question of how do we grow this business ethically. More pointedly, if this is a business: What do we sell?

Podcast valuation isn't dissimilar from website or blog valuation. You track your numbers, and base the value of a "spot" on how many people are likely to hear it. In this arrangement, what you "sell" is your audience. You're talking to advertisers and selling your listener's time and attention in big batches of 1,000.

Before we started the Patreon, I was considering hooking up with an advertising network. The Audible ads weren't doing great, and the ad network thing seemed to work for other shows. But then again, Audible ads seemed to work well for other shows too. Ultimately, it was a good thing Patreon started getting big when it did, because it stopped me from taking the network down a road where you guys were our product. (In fairness, the path toward advertising was only embarked upon halfheartedly. It was likely that, in talking with the people we were talking to, we would have dropped out before a single ad aired).

Patreon changed our game, but it makes it really hard to figure out what we sell. Is it the audio? Well, no, we give that out for free. And audio isn't a great product. It's everywhere.

Do we sell our time? Nope. Time isn't valuable to a buyer. It would be better spent splitting big rocks into smaller rocks, and then splitting those rocks into even smaller rocks. We can't say "Hey, look at how much time this took to make" and ask for money solely based on that.

Ultimately, we sell ourselves. As unlikely as it seems, we've fallen ass-backwards into a situation where there is a non-trivial number of people willing to give us a non-trivial amount of money just based on the things we say and the way we say them.

This is a precarious position to be in, because the money doesn't directly scale with the audience size. There's some correlation, but the number of patrons is far smaller than the number of people who hear a given episode. If a listener decides that we've stopped being relatable or fun to listen to, they pull support.

That is a comfortable business model for me, ethically, because it puts the onus on us to consistently put out high quality product, and continue to "be ourselves" so that the people who have been kind enough to offer their support so far stick around. It places the highest value on your time and attention.

Here's where my article intersects with Gary's. Do we put people off when we talk about potentially controversial things that matter to us? Most definitely. I've read the emails. It's lost us money. But my hope is that we steadily grow a core of people who relate to the things we say and are enthusiastic about participating in the business. I want to be in a position where we've attracted a kind of listener who will reward us for being genuine. The alternative is likely far more lucrative, but ethically onerous to me. I'm preaching to the choir, though, because if you're reading this then you are one of those people who has decided it's worth investing in us with both your time and money.

We'll experiment with other ways to monetize the work we do here. I don't want to write marketing videos forever, just like I don't want this to be a hobby forever. My dream job would be to run this business full time. We run the Amazon Affiliate program because it's a non-intrusive way for you to support us. We run ads from the community (like the ones we did for Latchkey Kingdom and C'est La Morte) because we would rather offer our ads as a service to our listeners than to large companies. Just today we sent out a survey asking you about what kind of merchandise you'd like us to sell.

We'll fuck those experiments up because we are human. I have limited time, and I'm bad at running a business. I drop the ball constantly. But I hold out hope that any missteps will take us in the right direction as long as I remember that the shows come first, that we're selling ourselves, and that our audience is great enough to support us for being us.

And I cannot thank you enough for that support.

A Good Fan is Hard to Find

Not every piece of gear needs to relate directly to the signal chain. There are all kinds of objects that will make a big difference for the quality of a show. A comfortable, non-squeaky chair. A soft coaster so you don't make a loud "CLUNK" when you put your drink down. Or, a fan.

I live in Cincinnati. I like this city for several reasons, but the weather is not one of them. One could accurately say that it's pleasant here for a total of one month out of the year: two weeks in spring, and two weeks in fall. Other than that, we get the worst of each season. Our coldest winters will involve weeks at a time of ~15 degree weather, and in summer the temperature always hovers around 90 degrees.

It's those summers that kill. Sitting in a closed room with still air and the sun pounding through the window, you start to work up a sweat. It gets hard to concentrate sometimes. You can't really dress for that, unless you strip bare... which I prefer not to do.

Even if you're lucky enough to have central air conditioning, it's likely that the blower's cycling will be picked up in your recording. Window unit air conditioners are just plain noisy. In either case, the best you can do is blast the air until it's time to record and how that it stays chilly for the duration of your session.

Obviously fans are out of the question. They oscillate and rattle and they get of balance and start creaking. Or do they?

Earlier this year, the heat was out of control, so I endeavored to find the best possible fan for my needs. My search ended up being very short, because The Wirecutter exists. This site provides a very valuable service: they ask "what's the best X?", and then they rigorously test examples of X until they find the best X. They also have a sister site called The Sweet Home that helps you shop for home goods. I love these sites and I wholeheartedly recommend their reviews.

The Wirecutter's choice for the best fan is the Vornado 660 Whole Room Air Circulator. Their review goes into much more detail than I can, but I will explain exactly why it's perfect for me, and why I don't regret a single penny of the staggering $100 price tag.

First, foremost, and above all else, it's quiet. I've tried to get a recording of what it sounds like, and you can't do it. By the time you get the microphone close enough to it, you're hearing the "whoosh" of the passing air instead of the mechanics of the fan itself. It sounds like a ghost sighing. This means I can run it constantly while I'm recording and it will never show up on my track. That's a huge deal. This is, of course, on the fan's lowest setting, but even there, it...

It moves a ton of air. This is also key. There's something about the design of the blades that means it doesn't have to spin very fast in order to circulate the air around you (which is how fans work). The Vornado 660 on its lowest setting cools me off more effectively than my old fan running at its highest (an loudest!) setting. This is surprising, since...

It's very, very small. The diameter of the unit is around 13". By comparison, it has roughly the same footprint as a banker's box. This means it will work in a variety of rooms, big and small.

If this sounds like a sales pitch, I assure you that I am not accepting money from the Vornado corporation. I just happen to think this fan was one of my best buying decisions in a long time. $99 is a lot of money for a fan, but amortized over hundreds of hours of recording and editing, it's more than paid for itself in terms of quality of life. The side perk is that I run my AC less, so my power bills wind up being lower too.

I realize it's absurd that I'm writing this in the dead of winter. Instead of admitting that this is poor timing, look at it this way: I'm giving you plenty of time to save up for this baby before the heat rolls in this summer.

Data Dump 2014: Show Length

We're nearing the end of 2014, which has been a huge year for the network. We began the Patreon campaign, which has allowed us to do new things, take Abject Suffering weekly, and afford gear upgrades to make our shows sound better.

A key stat that surfaced when we started putting the Patreon campaign together was that in 2013 we released 24 hours of content each month. In pulling all of 2014's stats together, I decided to check and see how we did this year.

In 2014, we released 252 episodes across 6 different shows. These total out to 285 hours, 42 minutes, and 17 seconds of content, which is just shy of 12 total days of audio. On average, Duckfeed produced 23 hours, 48 minutes, and 35 seconds of audio per month in 2014.

I can't remember what the exact number was in 2013, but we're holding steady.

Here's a per-show breakdown, if you're curious.

Watch Out for Fireballs! had a total of 27 episodes with an average length of 2:09:00. Contrast that with 23 extrasodes that averaged out to 0:41:02 each. There was a total of 73 hours, 46 minutes, and 58 seconds of Watch Out for Fireballs! in 2014.

Bonfireside Chat had more episodes, at 31, thanks to the interstitial episodes about Berserk and King's Field. The average episode length was 1:29:46. There were 21 appendices, each with an average length of 0:42:38. There was a total of 61 hours, 18 minutes, and 6 seconds of Bonfireside Chat in 2014.

Abject Suffering got huge this year. We released 43 episodes, averaging 0:31:57 apiece, for a total of 22 hours, 53 minutes, and 36 seconds of Abject Suffering in 2014.

The Level is an absolute monster of a show in terms of episode numbers and episode length. There were 46 episodes at 1:53:21, for a total of 86 hours, 54 minutes, and 19 seconds of The Level in 2014.

Check It Out, Comrade! broke onto the scene this year. There were 24 episodes averaging 0:31:10 apiece, totalling 12 hours, 28 minutes, and 3 seconds of Check It Out, Comrade! in 2014.

Those Damn Ross Kids, being our sole non-video game show (for now) was erratic, with 37 episodes at 46 minutes apiece, for a total of 28 hours, 21 minutes, and 55 seconds in 2014.

What does all of this mean? I don't know. We make a lot of podcasts. But more importantly, you listen to a lot of our podcasts, and for that we are eternally grateful. Thanks so much for making 2014 such a success. I hope all of you have a safe and happy holiday (whichever holiday you choose to celebrate), and we'll see you again in 2015.

The Baffling Story on Baffling

Let's set the scene: You're looking for a new apartment or house. You walk into a cavernous and empty room with a hard wood floor. You're looking around and seeing the potential. The couch could go here. The TV would have glare if we put it on that wall. You open your mouth to speak your concerns to the landlord or realtor, and you notice it...

The house feels empty because it sounds empty. There's a coziness to a lived-in place primarily because sound dies on the things you surround yourself with. Your bed, the carpet, your keepsakes... all of them stop sound waves from bouncing around all willy nilly. These things don't just fill the space in a room, they bring the walls in around you and make you feel safe.

An echo-y room reminds us of gym class or the warehouse where we will eventually meet our bloody end. It's distracting.

That's why, in podcasting, it's important to get your sound treatment shit right.

There are technicians with degrees in the physics of sound who can explain this a lot better than I can, but the basic principles are simple. Sound waves bounce off of flat hard surfaces. When these waves bounce back to you, they create an echo. Large flat surfaces that are parallel to each other create particularly nasty echoes. You want to eliminate these echoes.

Think about the room where you record. If it's empty, you have three sets of parallel flat surfaces working against you. The wall in front of you and the wall behind you. The walls to your left and right. The ceiling and the floor. Everything you put against those walls to interfere with that bouncing will deaden your room and improve the quality of your audio.

It's difficult to search for soundproofing or sound deadening advice online because most people are concerned with keeping sound in or out of a room. That's a different problem, and one that I'm not great at solving. However, I can give three tips on how to reduce echo in a room.

Pick your room. Bigger rooms tend to be more echo-y because they're less likely to be full. My "studio" is the second bedroom in my two bedroom apartment. I keep a bed in here in case I have guests over. I've also got a bookshelf in here, and one wall is a big closet where I hang some clothes (and I keep the door open while recording). Soft pieces of furniture, or furniture with a non-uniform surface deaden sound, so go nuts decorating.

If you can't record in a small room, try to divide your recording area off into a smaller portion of the room. Gary did this by putting a book shelf behind his desk chair and draping a blanket over the back of it. You would have no idea that his recording room is as big as it is from the way his audio sounds. It also helps that his room is carpeted, which brings us to...

Get yourself some carpet. Bare hardwood floors are trendy and nice, but they bounce sound around like a motherfucker. Even a shaggy 5' by 7' area rug in a 10' by 10' room will make a huge difference. That's my situation, and there's very little exposed hardwood in my studio. There's likely a discount retailer near you that sells moderately priced rugs, and they will have a huge effect on your acoustics. Also, carpet feels nice against your bare feet and vacuuming is fun.

Buy your way into soundproof heaven. If you're willing to spend some money on sound treatment, it will go a long way. If you look at professional studios, they always have some kind of foam paneling on the walls. This stuff is specially designed to reduce echo, and it's not terribly expensive.

I have twelve 24" by 24" panels hung up all throughout my room, mostly on the walls in front of me and behind me. I bought them from The Foam Factory for about $75, shipped. It comes in a neat little box all shrink-wrapped. It's fun to watch this stuff expand after you cut it open.

Pro-tip: Never, ever go to Guitar Center unless you absolutely need something right away. They will gouge you on every single item you buy. Compare my $75 foam to the Guitar Center equivalent, which runs a horrifying $229. That money is better-spent elsewhere.

Most online retailers sell multiple "patterns" of foam, and they make a case for why a certain cut will be better-suited for particular uses. I'm sure there is some kind of basis for this, but it also sounds like hocus pocus. I chose wedge because it's a simple pattern and also less costly than other cuts. I won't judge you if you go for a fancy, more aesthetically busy pattern. It's fashion.

There are multiple ways to hang this foam. Some places sell adhesive spray, but if you rent your place, you might worry about damaging your walls and losing your deposit. Depending on what material your walls are made of, you have some options.

If you have relatively soft drywall or sheetrock, you can use t-pins. A handfull of these will hold up each panel, and will only leave small pin-holes in your walls, which you can easily fill with Spackle or toothpaste when you move out.

If you have hard plaster like I have, t-pins won't work. Never fear, because you can use adhesive foam mounting tape or strips. I can't currently find the non-permanent versions of the Scotch mounting tape online, but they exist. Even small strips can hold up a large amount of foam, so don't go overboard. If you're worried about using any kind of adhesive on your walls, find an out-of-the-way patch to test on. If it pulls up any paint, try something different. When you're ready to take your foam down, carefully peel the foam from the tape, and then carefully peel the tape from the wall. This will reduce the risk of damage to the paint job.

When you hang your sound treatment, you don't need to create a continuous surface of edge-to-edge foam. That can get expensive in a hurry. You can leave strips of wall between your panels. This contributes to making the shape of the surface more complex, since the edges of the panels are exposed to create more surface area. I wouldn't hang the panels more than 1' apart though.

If you don't want to spend money on foam, you can hang good old fashioned blankets and towels from your walls. I personally wouldn't do this because it doesn't look good, but it's an option that works similarly well if you don't mind the aesthetic hit.

Hopefully those are some practical bits of advice if you're looking to kill the echo in your recording. If you have any control over the space you're in, even the smallest steps will make a noticeable difference.