Volume problems on podcasts, a comparison of two podcasts I listened to today

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

Geeks Guide To The GalaxySearch Engine with Jesse BrownDavid Barr Kirtley, who puts together and hosts Geeks Guide To Galaxy is responding to my complaint about his podcast being too low in volume.

But his show isn’t the only one I’ve had this issue with. Our most recent podcast, #155, also featured two out of three of us complaining about the volume of the Clarkesworld podcast.

I’ve also complained, by email, to Tevi Troy of New Books In Public Policy about the same issue.

Most podcasts are ok for volume. But there are some that are consistently low.

But to get a sense of what I mean I’ll use the two latest shows as my example.

So, picking on David Barr Kirtley again, I listened to Geeks Guide To Galaxy on my walk home from work today (the episode with Morgan Spurlock) – I could barely hear it at maximum volume. It was raining and there were cars on the roadway and because I wasn’t in front of my amplified speaker system at home I just couldn’t hear everything that was being said, and to make it worse to hear anything I had to jam my earbuds down my ear canals. A podcast should physically hurt me.

Here’s the Geeks Guide To Galaxy file: http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/underwire/geeksguide57.mp3

Now, compare that experience to the one on my way in to work today. I listened to TVO’s Search Engine. And right away I had my iPhone set to half volume of full, and at that it was plenty loud, loud enough, in fact, so that even set at half volume and with my earbuds hanging loosely over my ears, I could hear everything.

Here’s the Search Engine file: http://feeds.tvo.org/~r/tvo/searchengine/~3/mZBN588091g/801144_48k.mp3

And, incidentally, at home now in another comparison I’ve just made again, I can hear Search Engine from across the room at 3/4 volume through my iPhone speaker. The Geek’s Guide is at full volume and is not loud enough.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Beside Still Waters by Robert Sheckley

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Robert Sheckley was a joker, a satirist, a poker of fun at all of the silliness in life. But there’s something more going on in this short short story from 1953. Sure there’s the existentialist angle, and of course there’s the requisite Sheckley humor, but it’s the other quality in Beside Still Waters that makes this Sheckley story a bit different. You can see it right there in the title (taken from Psalm 23 of the Hebrew Bible), and you can see it in the Virgil Finlay’s illustration for the story too:

Beside Still Waters by Robert Sheckley - Illustration by Virgil Finlay

Beside Still Waters is an elegiac tale, offering only a cup of sadness to the reader, it’s the sort of story that Clifford D. Simak might have written. And that should be recommendation enough.

LibriVoxBeside Still Waters
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Frank Malanga
1 |MP3| – Approx. 10 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 28, 2010
When people talk about getting away from it all, they are usually thinking about our great open spaces out west. But to science fiction writers, that would be practically in the heart of Times Square. When a man of the future wants solitude he picks a slab of rock floating in space four light years east of Andromeda. Here is a gentle little story about a man who sought the solitude of such a location. And who did he take along for company? None other than Charles the Robot. First published in Amazing Stories Oct.-Nov. 1953.
|ETEXT|

And here’s the |PDF| I made from the original magazine publication.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy #55 – Michael Chabon

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Geeks Guide To The GalaxyA recent Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy podcast was an interview with Michael Chabon, mostly about his role in the John Carter script.

Now depending on the guest and the topic Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy can be anywhere from fairly interesting to absolutely fascinating.

But like far too many podcasts it’s biggest problem is not content, it’s the volume mix.

Podcasts are not only listened to with high end earphones in soundproofed rooms, they’re listened to in the rain, in the streets, and from the tiny little iPhone speaker across the room.

Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy‘s volume is just too damn low.

Despite this, here’s the |MP3|.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Mindwebs: The Power Of The Sentence by David M. Locke

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

I just got an email from a friend of the site. He had this to say:

So, in between listening to Carlin’s podcast [Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History], and the Mindwebs episode I’m including here, I remember something one of your guests said during one of your podcasts. It might have been Gregg, and I can’t remember which podcast, but he said something to the effect that human bodies are vessels to carry ideas into the future, so that bodies are irrelevant, beyond that purpose. That’s a very interesting idea to explore, the pervasiveness of ideas, how once an idea is in the open, no amount of censorship can make it go away, and hence this Mindwebs episode.

My friend had added a recording as an attachment to the email, and after scanning it for viruses, I listened to it.

The Power Of The Sentence

Contrary to my anti-virus software’s opinion the audio does contain a danger.

And now after sharing that warning sentence with you I should point out that The Power Of The Sentence was David M. Locke’s only Science Fiction work. I’m wondering now if perhaps the story was not fiction, and that maybe the story was finished by a student of his.

Here are the details…

MindwebsMindwebs – The Power of the Sentence
By David M. Locke; Read by Michael Hanson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 28 Minutes [DRAMATIZED READING]
Broadcaster: WHA Radio (Madison, WI)
Broadcast: April 21, 1978
Provider: Archive.org
An English professor lecturing about the use of sentences finds his examples are taking on a life of their own. First published in the April 1971 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Incidently, more details about Mindwebs are available at the OTRPlotSpot.com.

[Thanks Mel … I think … We think.]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Thank You: AdSense $$ for January and February 2012

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

Thank YouFor nine years SFFaudio has been giving and giving and giving – and all we’ve gotten from it is a fun hobby, some so-called “internet” friends, and the occasional regular stack of audiobooks.

What’s the point in that?

What’s the point of anything without actually getting the bills paid?

Huh?

Who’s gonna pay for it?

You?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Hang on …. what’s this, a letter in the mail?

Something in the mail

…. it’s from Google?

Google AdSense cheque for January and February 2012

…. Huh.

Ok, so … yeah … so like I was saying, thanks for nothing … except paying attention to us … and paying us compliments … and actually paying for the cost of running the site.

But, other than that…

Yeah.

Thanks.

No seriously, thank you.

I’m serious now.

Thank you.

Really.

But you best be keeping it up.

What?

Don’t look at me like that.

What?

Are you saying I’m supposed to buy coffee with my own money?

Inconceivable!

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #155 – READALONG: Five Nebula Nominated Short Stories

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #155 – Jenny, Tamahome, and Jesse talk about the five Nebula 2011 nominated short stories for which there are audio versions.

Talked about on today’s show:

the Clarkesworld one was too quiet (by the way, we use Levelator), April Fools jokes fall out of date, The Cartographer Wasps And The Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu, Jenny’s favorite, it’s science and it’s fiction but is it science fiction?, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “nerdy mapmakers”, Ottoman Empire, Jenny is into language, ‘thrumming’, revolution, The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu, Tam was moved to tweet it, Jhumpa Lahiri and first generation Americans, do we need the fantastic part?, Mike Resnic-y, workshop stories, “he’s such a tool”, movie version?, Asian magic realism, the owl on Home Depot, Murakami, Jesse likes Leggos, childhood, Jesse please explain Mama, We Are Zhenya by Tom Crosshill, Tam sounds just like narrator Stefan Rudnicki, quantum mechanics, author’s blog post about the story, intellectual heft, it’s a five year old, Flowers For Algernon, head-eating clouds, Lost, YA novel about singularity, superpowers, and giant robots, author was a nuclear operator, Zhenya is everywhere, and now with a slightly older child — Movement by Nancy Fulda, we’ve read The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time |OUR READALONG|, “temporal autism”, we’ve also read Speed Of Dark |READ OUR REVIEW| so we are autism experts, or Asperger’s?, Daniel Tammet and prime numbers, “she doesn’t want new shoes”, father’s bug killer, (note: here I got E. Lily Yu mixed up with Yoon Ha Lee’s Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain from Sffaudio 120, here’s the full text and audio from Lightspeed), Her Husband’s Hands by Adam-Troy Castro, horror, SUPER CREEPY DO NOT WANT, the hyphen in the author’s name was originally a typo, Chiller Theater, war, The Hand with Michael Caine, Guy De Maupassant, House of Holes by Nicholson Baker, Bianca’s Hands by Theodore Sturgeon (podcasted by Spider Robinson), It by Sturgeon, some story about brains, eyes, and taste buds, Pruzy’s Pot (podcasted by Spider Robinson) has a monster under the toilet that does things, we make our Nebula picks and predictions, a moving story about ponies from last year, Kij Johnson, a story about sex with an alien, which story will be remembered in ten years? Toy Story III with immigrants, we will discuss Among Others by Jo Walton, sexy Welsh accent in the audiobook, Tam’s amazing Welsh accent, waiting for Jo’s series on Hugo-nominated novellas, get off my lawn with your books series’s!, how to find good stories/books, Christopher Priest’s amazing post, anything good after 1950?, Stories by Neil Gaiman and Alan Sarrantonio, The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains |READ OUR POST|, Joe Landsdale on novels

crosshill novella cover

Posted by Tamahome