PoducateMe: Practical Solutions for Podcasting in Education
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Figure 24: The Inspector plug-in.
As you speak into your microphone, you’ll notice the colored level meters (A)
responding to the sound of your voice. If you also see a responsive graph in the
Spectral Display window (B), click the display on/off button (C) to disengage the
feature. Yeah, the spectral display looks cool and all, but the graph consumes a lot of
processing power and you can very easily do without it.
Keep the Inspector window open as you take care of positioning your microphones.
We’ll be re-visiting this critical utility shortly.
Microphone Positioning
To begin, have your guest and interviewer sit in front of their microphones and get into a
comfortable position. This is the position they will assume throughout the course of the
interview.
For our first in-person CareerChat interview, “The Internship Experience,” we placed the
microphone directly in front of and 6-8 inches from the mouth of our guest. A pop filter
was also attached to the mic stand and positioned about three inches in front of the
microphone, which was then aimed directly at our guest. Leslie’s setup mirrored that of
our interviewee.
Unfortunately, we picked up some sibilant noise that caused clipping several times during
the interview. Since then, we’ve been placing our microphones 6-8 inches away from and
slightly to the left or right of Leslie and company. The mic is also turned slightly inward so
B
C
A
