Category: Reviews-HowTos

When hitting the gym or going out for a trail run, headphones can cause a number of problems. From the ear buds getting slimy with sweat or the ear cups not holding onto the user’s head tightly enough, there are a bunch of inconveniences that occur. Th…

Google has been cleaning house of services and features over the last year or so, with Google Reader and iGoogle among the most notable casualties. While not so widely mourned, the recent scrapping of Google Notifier was also disappointing, as the …

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Finding a speaker purpose build for a specific need is challenging. Even when a Bluetooth speaker can be paired with a mobile device, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right speaker for the job. When it comes to tablets, a speaker that can be kept to the s…

You’ve got a microphone. You’ve got some web space. And you have a great idea for a podcast. Now, it’s onto the fun bit — the recording. Even if you’ve had a couple of false starts, don’t worry —  this is completely normal, especially if you haven’t had much recording practice. If you’re ready to get serious, though, you’ve come to the right place. This step-by-step tutorial will help you master the art of making your own podcast. 

Before beginning to record, and whatever your specific equipment, take time to prepare and give yourself the best chance of a good-quality recording. Ideally, use a room that has plenty of space for you to work and that contains primarily soft furnishings — this cuts down dramatically on echoes/reverb, which can’t really be removed in post-production. If you don’t have such a room, don’t fret. Luckily, podcast audiences don’t demand anything like the level of audio found in music, voice over, or radio work. A little echo is no big deal as long as it’s not unpleasant to listen to, and many people even add some in to provide a more booming radio-voice sound. Even a cupboard-style room with hard walls and wood flooring can be made usable by turning the microphone sensitivity down a little, or, if it really is a problem, hanging up a blanket helps dampen the sound. It’s also possible to invest in a microphone screen/vocal booth for between $100–$270 that essentially wraps acoustic foam around the back of your microphone. Save your money unless you’ve no other option, or are setting up a more general studio.

Now that you have the setup sorted out, it’s time to do a little groundwork — especially if you’re recording with another person and working without a script. Have a list of topics you want to cover, and have a clock or timer running (we use our iPad) to serve as a visible reminder. It’s easy to lose track of time while recording, and to get sidetracked. While a podcast can be any length you like, fifteen minutes is a good length to talk about one subject within a podcast, while half an hour to an hour is a reasonable period for the entire show. Remember, most people listen to podcasts on the move rather than at their computers, and too many breaks and subject changes gets jarring and makes it hard to remember what’s already been said. On the other side, anything under five minutes will be too short for people to invest in, and not worth your effort, either.

Good things to decide and practice in advance include how you’re going to introduce your podcast, as well as the order you plan to introduce guests and how to finish it. Plus, you need to think of a name for it. 

Giving the link to your website/podcast host is the obvious starter there, as well as reminding listeners to rate you on iTunes — though this is best saved for a couple of podcasts in. You can ignore other podcast directories at this point.

Finally, don’t forget about yourself. Podcasting can be extremely hard on the voice, especially early on. Always have room-temperature water on standby, and hydrate yourself in advance. As you approach the recording session, avoid soft drinks, milk, coffee, and tea for the sake of your voice and the quality of your recording. And it goes almost without saying — if talking starts feeling uncomfortable, take a break. You can always pick it up later on. 

1. Prepare to Record

If you need recording software, download Audacity from http://audacity.sourceforge.net. It’s an easy tool to use. In the top left, you’ll find the playback controls, and next to those, your main tools — the most important being the Selection tool for selecting a point, the two arrows for moving an audio file around, and the zoom control. Click with the latter to zoom in, Shift-click to zoom out. Volume settings are in the top-right, and not to be confused with the ones by each track. The first just determines how loud you hear everything. The second, how loud the track actually is. Most of the other buttons you can safely ignore. 

2. Volume Control

Make sure your microphone/mixer is plugged in over USB (directly, rather than via a hub) and make sure it’s set as the recording device in Audacity — here, we’re using a Rode Podcaster. Next, use Spotlight to find an app called Audio Midi Setup and select your microphone. Under Input, the Master slider controls the recording input level. The higher it is, the more sensitive your microphone will be. It’s possible to control this using the slider in Audacity, but this is a consistent place to check whatever app you’re using, and one where the volume is given as a number rather than just a basic slider.

3. Test Your Volume

Set the volume to 1.0 initially. In Audacity, look for the volume settings in the middle of the screen, click the arrow by the microphone, and pick “start monitoring.” Now, talk into the microphone in your normal voice, a little louder, and finally, more excitably. The volume indicator should go nearly, but not quite all the way across — capping somewhere between -6 and -12. When you shout, it’s going to spike — to compensate, move your head farther from the microphone. The actual volume level can be changed later. If it reaches 0dB during recording, though, the audio will be clipped and unpleasant.

4. Begin Recording

Save the project, giving it a name, and click the big red record button. If you need to pause the recording, press pause rather than the stop button. If you stop, pressing record creates a new track and goes back to the start. Pausing and unpausing continues where you left off. If you find yourself doing a lot of takes, try a big loud clap into the microphone to separate sections — this gives you an obvious peak in the waveform to find. Also, at the end, sit absolutely silently for about 10 seconds, so that the microphone can record some ambient noise to help clean things up later.

5. Prepare for Editing

To zoom in, use the magnifying glass tool. You should also drag down on the bottom of each audio track to see the waveform more clearly. This makes it easier to target bits of noise, and see any coughs, etc. To select part of the waveform, choose the caret-shaped tool from the top and click and drag. This marks the selection in blue. You can also select each side and nudge it, and to deselect it, click outside the selection. Don’t edit straight in your recording, though —  create a new file, then cut and paste the bits you want into it. Press Command + X to cut a selection in the recording. Click where you want it on the new timeline, and tap Command + V to paste.

6. Combining Recordings

For Internet recording, you can record directly from tools like Skype, but the professional way is for everyone to record their own side with a microphone/headset combination and the editor to merge them together as multiple audio tracks. To get the two recordings in sync, start each recording with a “3…2…1…” and loud clap. Once imported, this makes it easy to see where they should overlap. In your edit file, after aligning them, choose “Sync Lock” under the Tracks menu. Now, cuts and added silences affect all equally. To fix the inevitable volume differences, tweak the sliders on the left-hand side. 

7. Snap, Crackle, and Pop

Your microphone picks up a lot of noises, and your audience doesn’t want to hear all of them. Put on your best headphones. Crank up the volume. Zoom in using the magnifying glass. Start listening to each track, ready to hit stop when you hear noises such as sharp breaths. Use the Selection tool to select these moments and either kill them with Command + X, or replace them with silence with Command + L. Don’t be tempted to use a filter to do this for you. It’s better to go through it methodically, in order to avoid damaging the rest of your audio. 

8. Precision Editing

For problems that can’t just be silenced, like a sudden slurp in a section you don’t have a better take to drop in, select the Pen tool. Zoom into the track until the waveform is replaced with a series of dots. You can now draw volume changes onto the wave directly, creating troughs that get rid of the worst of the unwanted noise without the harsh snap of a cut or silence. As well as controlling the level of the volume drop, this lets you control the speed of transition. You don’t have to remove sounds entirely this way, just dull them. Option-clicking smooths the wave. Holding Control after clicking just affects a single dot.

9. Noise Removal

Thankfully, little noises are an easier matter to sort out. Select the silence from the end of the recording, then from the Effect menu, choose Noise Reduction. Click “Get Noise Profile.” This tells Audacity what the ambient in your room is — the hum of plugs, or your gentle breathing, for instance. Now, you can tweak the settings underneath to get rid of it. This takes tweaking for each recording. Focus on the top two options: how much to reduce noise, and what the threshold for it is. Both should be as little as you can get away with. Use Preview until it sounds about right.

10. Leveling

While we’ll look at a more flexible way shortly, Audacity offers a “Leveler” tool designed to reduce the gap between loud and soft audio, and produce a more consistent volume. This compensates for moments when your head was slightly farther from the microphone, or you simply spoke a little more softly, during a section. It’s not a miracle worker, and if the Light or Moderate settings aren’t enough, the higher strength ones are likely to cause a hit to your sound quality. If you’re planning to do more detailed mastering, don’t do this. As a quick way to make a podcast sound better, though, it’s fine. 

11. Volume Control

Volume is handled in dB, and you always deal in negative numbers. When setting volume, you’re actually adding “gain”; the definitions don’t really matter for now, but that’s how it’s described. To avoid blowing out an unwary listener’s ears, a podcast should max out at around -12 to -6dB, bottoming out at around -24. For a single track, this is easy — the Amplify Effect lets you pick a peak volume and adjust accordingly. For multiple tracks, use the Normalize tool instead, bringing them to the same peak (“maximum amplitude”) level. The overall dB is based on all tracks together, though, so experiment to find a good balance.

12. Adding Music

Music should be added as its own track, its volume adjusted to complement the spoken word tracks rather than vice versa. Basic Fade In and Fade Out effects are in the Effect menu, as is an Adjustable Fade with more options. Audacity also offers an “Auto Duck” tool. This automatically dips one track (usually music) when another is making noise so that it’s more prominent. You can pick the amount and how harsh the effect should be. For podcasts, though, you’re generally only going to be using music as an intro and as breaks. Having it run throughout is distracting, unless, of course, it’s a dedicated music podcast.

13. Extra Time Spent

This is actually enough editing for most podcasts, for a number of reasons: they’re not expected to have been through the hands of a professional audio engineer, chances are they’re going to be listened to through less-than-amazing headphones, and most importantly, because the more advanced things you can do are a great way to destroy your sound quality. Done properly, though, they can add a lot, compensating for weaknesses in your equipment, and providing what’s usually referred to as “radio sound” — that booming, full-throated resonance that sounds like it should be declaring, “This is World News Tonight.”

14. Deepen Your Voice

This is one of the easiest but most obvious edits, especially if using a budget microphone, the sound from which is often tinny and hollow. Go to Effect/Change Pitch and drop it by just a little — about 5 percent or so at most, so it still sounds like you. You can also get good effects in the Reverb tool by using the Vocal presets (click the Load button) or turning down the actual Reverberance and Pre-Delay to sound just full-bodied rather than actually echoing. Male voices especially can also benefit from a bit more bass, courtesy of Bass And Treble. All of these options are in the Effects menu.

15. Compression

Compressors reduce the audio range of your sound, which allows it to be amplified without the louder parts being clipped — much as we did with Leveler, but with more control. Audacity’s Compressor unfortunately doesn’t have presets, but its standard options are sufficient for podcasting. Select Compressor in the Effects menu, then untick “make-up gain” and adjust Noise Floor to around -20. Now, using Amplify or Normalize gets it as loud as you need, without spikes causing a problem. That said, most podcast editors are fine just using the one-click leveler and won’t notice any meaningful difference.

16. Equalization

Equalization is the processing of frequencies, and if you choose it in the Effects menu, you see it has a few handy presets. It’s not as complex as it looks, though, with the left side of the curve handling bass, the right treble, and the middle affecting the overall sound. In the presets, select “bass boost” to see how that looks — for these purposes, that’s the most important to play with. Also, try Telephone and Walkie Talkie to see how easy it is to apply a quick effect to your sound. These can be very handy if your podcast is going to include skits of any sort, or you want to simulate someone phoning in to your show. 

17. Fixing P-P-Plosives

Plosives come from air being sharply expelled into the microphone, primarily from the letter “p.” The best way to deal with them is not to record them, which can be done by using a “pop filter” in front of your microphone, or speaking just above it. After that, you can cut them directly, as with other noise. Alternatively, use the Equalizer, puling down gently from around the 200Hz point and bottoming out at around 40Hz as in the picture. This may take some experimentation, and it won’t get rid of the sound entirely, but it dims it to the point that it shouldn’t offend your audience’s ears.

18.  Final Export

MP3 is the official podcast format, and for the most part, you don’t need to worry about the settings. When you’re also including music, though, it’s worth jumping into the Options and boosting the quality from its default 128kbps to 192kbps. One thing to be careful of is your audio sources — if you use both mono and stereo, it can sound strange in the final edit. You can separate or turn a stereo track mono in the Tracks menu. You can also drag the L/R sliders on your mono tracks to move from one ear to the other. Don’t go all the way to separate multiple voices; a little is effective, a lot is unpleasant.

Every Monday we show you how to do something quick and cool using built-in OS X utilities such as Terminal, Apple’s command line application. These easy hacks can make life better and simpler, and don’t require any knowledge of coding — all you need is a keyboard to type ’em out!

In OS X Mavericks, Apple introduced a new feature called App Nap. This feature was designed to cut CPU and other computer resources to power-hungry applications when those applications are not currently in use. It’s one of several OS X features that has helped increase the battery life on Mac portables, but unfortunately, this feature isn’t without downsides. If you’re noticing that applications don’t complete their tasks in a reasonable amount of time, then it could be due to resources for those apps being cut when they are backgrounded or left unattended. Following this guide will show you how to disable App Nap when these issues arise.

Disable App Nap on a Per-app basis

If you’re noticing that only one application is having difficulties with App Nap, then you can easily disable it by locating the application in question and pressing Command + I (or choose “Get Info” from the contextual menu). In the Get Info window, check the option to “Prevent App Nap” and you’re done. App Nap will no longer affect this application. (Not all applications offer this option.)

Disable App Nap system-wide

If issues still persist with your applications and App Nap, or you don’t worry about system resources being utilized resulting in battery life issues (such as on a desktop Mac), then you may want to disable App Nap system wide on your Mac.

To disable App Nap on your Mac completely, simply open the Terminal application (located in /Applications/Utilities) and type in the following command followed by the enter key:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES

To completely disable this feature, you will need to log out of your account, then restart your Mac.

Re-enabling App Nap system-wide

If you realize that you want App Nap again on your system, open the Terminal application again, then type in the following command, followed by the enter key:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAppSleepDisabled -bool NO

To re-enable this feature, you will need to log out of your account, then restart your Mac.

Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article’s author on Twitter.

For all the different configurations of headphones on the market, it’s always a tough choice for buyers to get something that is just right. For consumers searching for a strong sound but who don’t want to shell out a couple hundred dollars on over-the…

Got an Apple, Mac, or iOS tech question? We have the answer. In this week’s installment of Ask, we’ll tell you how to combine multiple iPhoto libraries into one.

Question: Somehow I’ve created many iPhoto libraries, some of which are nested within other iPhoto libraries. How do I make it so that I have just one iPhoto library? I get the feeling there is more to it than just dragging the contents of one into the other.

Answer: You are correct — this process is a little more complicated than simply copying one iPhoto library into another. You can do it manually, but it’s usually error-prone and will typically leave you with duplicate photos. The easier way to merge multiple iPhoto libraries is by using the iPhoto Library Manager, which is available for $29 at http://fatcatsoftware.com/iplm.

Using the iPhoto Library Manager, click on the Merge Libraries icon in the toolbar. Here, you will be prompted to drag-and-drop all of the libraries that need merging into the “Source Libraries” section. After doing that, drag-and-drop the library that all of the sources should be merged into using the Destination Library section. We’d advise merging into a new, empty library, and choosing your Desktop as its location. 

One of the tasks that iPhoto Library Manager can perform is automated library merging.

Next, you should choose what happens when the application encounters duplicate files in the “Duplicate Handling” section, and set a few other options in “Options.” When you are done, click “Preview,” and if you are happy with the changes, you can then go ahead with the merge.

After you’ve verified the merge worked and all of your photos are intact, then delete all of the source libraries from your home directory’s Pictures folder, and move the newly created library from your Desktop to the Pictures folder in the Finder. Your new library should load when you fire up iPhoto; you may need to hold down the Option key while starting iPhoto, then select the iPhoto library you wish to open manually.

Ask is written by Cory Bohon, a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer.

Got a tech question? Email ask@maclife.com.

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Are you one of those people who likes to organize your life around to-do lists? If so, Mavericks’ Reminders app is here to help. Just as on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, Reminders makes it easy to create to-dos and synchronize them seamlessly with all your devices using iCloud — with any changes made on one appearing on all the others.

You get a default Reminders list to start things off, but it’s easy to add new ones. You can rename a list by right-clicking on its name, choosing Rename from the pop-up menu, typing a new name, and pressing Return. Reminders also lets you set up categories of lists so that you can get a quick overview of specific tasks, such as birthdays and anniversaries. We’ll show you how to add items to your Reminders list, set up and both time- and location-based alerts, and sync them using iCloud. To set iCloud up, open the Apple menu and go to System Preferences > iCloud. If you’re not logged in, type in your Apple ID and click Sign In > Next > Allow. Once that’s done, check that Calendars and Reminders is ticked. Next, sign in with the same Apple ID on any iOS devices you own by going to Settings > iCloud.

1. Create a Reminder

Open Reminders and click the + symbol (top-right). Type the name of the reminder and press Return. This creates a simple “to do” without a due date, time, or location. To mark it as done, click the box to the left of the reminder and it goes into your Completed items.

2. Timed Reminders

Repeat step one, but this time, hover the mouse pointer over the “to do” you’ve created. Click the “I” that appears. In the box that pops up, click “On a day,” then click the date to make a mini calendar appear. Now, simply choose the date to be alerted to your reminder.

3. Choose Your Time

Click the date you want to be reminded about. Now, click the hour to highlight it, then type in when you want the alert to appear — doing the same for the minutes — and click Done. Your reminder is now set and an alert will pop up on all your Apple devices.

4. Location Aware

You can make reminders appear when you’re in a certain place — handy if you’re syncing your Reminders to an iPad or iPhone. To do this, create a reminder, click the “I” as in step 2, and tick “At a location.” You need to have Location Services switched on.

5. Pick Your Place

Type in the location — an address from Contacts, a zip code, or the full address — and then hit Return. Pick 
the location from the list that appears, then choose whether you want to be reminded when you arrive or when you leave that location.

6. Completed Reminders

When you click the box next to a reminder, it’s marked as “Complete” and is moved to the Completed list. You can click on it to check on your completed tasks. Click to uncheck the reminder and it goes back on your reminders list. Reminders also appear in iCloud.devices.

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