Dear Rym & Scott, ... What filters does GeekNights use?

Alex Leavitt

I know both (or one) of you have/has mentioned filters used in post-production for GeekNights. I was wondering if you guys found them online, or made them yourself (and would be willing to share)?

Omnutia

I would also like to get a hold of these filters in the rare case that my microphone starts working.
Though remember that it will be linux only as thats the only available version of Rezound.

Rym

The only frequency filter I use is a 140Hz highpass to remove unnecessary low-frequency noise, such as breathing, hums, and handling noise.
The audio is compressed twice: once at record and again with different parameters after the highpass but before normalization.  I could give you the parameters for both, but they wouldn't be useful to you, since they depend on the mixer gain settings I use at record time, not to mention the character of our own voices.
At record time, I also use an automatic sibilince-remover which is built into our compressor.
After normalization, I run a script that parses the audio for near-silent sections above a certain length.  It then shortens them based on the thresholds I set.
Lame runs a final lowpass filter as part of the encoding process.
 
That's all I do.

Apreche

but they wouldn't be useful to you, since they depend on the mixer gain settings I use at record time, not to mention the character of our own voices.

This is one key thing many people don't seem to understand. There aren't magic filters where you can just push a button to make audio sound good. You actually need to know about audio and change lots of things depending on the audio you are working on. It is impossible to avoid. You know when you look at audio engineers and they have huge audio boards with a zillion dials. If you don't know what most of those dials do, and where to set them, then nothing can help you. Do you set the knob to .22 or .23? Which sounds better? Does it make a difference at all? It is not easy.

cosmicenema

We need a pod-cast kit. Includes all the non-computer related hardware required and podcasting step-by-step guide. How much do you think one of these would cost? What's your set-up look like? Just curious!

Rym

We need a pod-cast kit. Includes all the non-computer related hardware required and podcasting step-by-step guide. How much do you think one of these would cost? What's your set-up look like? Just curious!
Our setup cost under $1500 all-inclusve (except the Marantz).  As for the actual setup:
We record to a Linux box running Rezound through a Eurorack UB802 mixer with a couple of Shure SM-57 microphones, running the whole thing through a Samson S-com compressor and doing the final mixdown in Audacity. The microphones are connected to the mixer.  The main out of the mixer is connected to the compressor on a single channel.  The output of the compressor is connected to the line in of the computer.
I'm writing a step-by-step guide currently, and have been for some time.  The problem is that, without an understanding of the fundamental principles, such a guide is pretty useless.  You really need to know a lot before you can make a quality podcast.

Sparkybuzzed

You can go cheaper and still get decent quality. It's not stellar, but it's a lot better than 80% of the casts out there. We use an Alesis MultiMix8USB Mixer and Behringer Super Cardioid XM 1800S mics. Unfortunately, we don't have the ready cash to pick up a compressor. We run everything through Cool Edit Pro 2.0. The whole setup cost less than $200 through some good deals I found.

Alex Leavitt

You can go cheaper and still get decent quality. It's not stellar, but it's a lot better than 80% of the casts out there. We use an Alesis MultiMix8USB Mixer and Behringer Super Cardioid XM 1800S mics. Unfortunately, we don't have the ready cash to pick up a compressor. We run everything through Cool Edit Pro 2.0. The whole setup cost less than $200 through some good deals I found.

My roommate and I have a fairly inexpensive set-up as well. I picked up a Xenyx 1202 FX mixer at Guitar Center for $100 (the employee gave me a $10 discount after some poor bartering). We also use two Shure SM48 microphones (they're only $50 each).

For recording, I use Amadeus on my Mac and then piece everything together in Audacity.

Alex Leavitt

After normalization, I run a script that parses the audio for near-silent sections above a certain length. It then shortens them based on the thresholds I set.

Did you write that script yourself? That's definitely one thing I'd like, because when we record, we have a lot of small blips of silence. Going through the entire cast to delete them sucks.

Rym

Did you write that script yourself? That's definitely one thing I'd like, because when we record, we have a lot of small blips of silence. Going through the entire cast to delete them sucks.
It's built in to Rezound.  If you want to steal it, you'll have to dig into the source code.