Last night Cory & I were talking about some future expansions of the ministry and remembering how when TCC Radio first started I produced the street clips on my home computer here in Halifax but most of the show was actually done in the studio at Grace FM in London Ont.  We didn’t have a lot of control over the sound of the show and scheduling was really tough. But the guys at Grace were incredible with helping us getting started. Now, TCC Radio is recorded everywhere we can take a microphone, which often means the very cold streets of London Ont, and at Cory’s home.  Here in Halifax I produce all the recorded audio, and put together music tracks and such. I’m constantly seeking to improve the sound of the show.

One big thing about the show is that Cory is up front and center for about 11 to 12 minutes of voice commentary.  The largest part of my time investment is studying his voice and trying to find ways to have it sound as loud, clear and clean as possible. Last spring we upgraded one of the microphones we use on the street from a simple MP3 Voice Recorder to the very nice Zoom H2 microphone, and since then each of the guys have been working towards upgrading to this same mic.  This has to be the biggest improvement in the sound of the show since we started.

But that’s actually been a source of frustration in the production of the show. The thing sounds fantastic. So what’s the problem right? Well it’s like this.. Cory sounds GREAT on the H2 and it’s really been hard to get his voice to sound as good in the studio as it does on the street. What a strange problem eh? There are a bunch of factors, including the more conversational speaking pace that he can speak at in when he’s actually talking to people on the street which is much looser and deeper sounding than what is required in the studio. But a big factor is how the production of his voice is handled here in Studio ONE EIGHT ZERO here in Halifax.

Well, like I wrote above, I’m constantly trying to improve the sound of the show.  For this week’s show, Got Hope? Part3: Hope To Share, I’ve reworked the production of his voice from the ground up. I hope you like what you hear, and if you do (or if you don’t) please let us know! Here’s a picture of your host’s voice being processed here in the studio.

Bless you all, thanks so much for listening!

Kevin

TCC Radio is broadcast on 105.9 GRACE FM in London, Ont and is available as streamed content at www.tccradio.com Right now I’m working on getting the show setup for Podcast. I’m HOPEFUL that we’ll be able to do this shortly and that it will work. That will surely make it easier for people accross the country to keep up to date with the show.

Here are some technical tidbits about how the show is produced each week.

Research and writing are carried out from my computer running the Kubuntu distribution of Linux, using the KDE4.1 desktop. Yes I’m a lover of Linux. Every episode of TCC Radio is written in Open Office .

Up until April of this year all the audio development and production was carried out in Linux using the Audacity Multitrack Recording software package.  For the most part we have moved away from Audacity although Cory’s commentary is recorded in Audacity under WinXP in London Ont, and if you ever hear a tell-tale "BEEP!" on the show that was done in Audacity on Linux in Halifax NS.

Starting with the Absolute Truth series we began to use the Digital Audio Workstation software package SONAR 7 Producer Edition under the dreaded Windows Vista Home Premium.  My experience with Vista was at first VERY frustrating but after many many patches I have found it to be adequet for the purpose of recording the show.

The newest segment of TCC Radio is the Prayer Segment where we tell the listeners who we’re praying for this week. The musical backing track is currently being produced in Sony’s ACID but I hope to be shown how to do it inside of SONAR this week.

We have truly gone out of our way to spend money wisely. The advantages that Linux and Linux derived software is the incredible stability and customization possibilities along with an unbeatable price – free.  There are Digital Audio Workstations that are more comparable to SONAR available for Linux but the decision was made to use it because of the ease of production and the availability of local friendly support. So far it has been money well spent. There are things that just plain cost money and that it makes no sense to skimp on.

The computer the show is produced on is not top of the line but it is fairly beefy.  It’s an AMD 5600 X2 with 4GB of RAM and a TON of Harddrive space. It needs a faster Harddrive. The soundcard that does all the hard work of the show is a M-Audio 24/96 Audiophile, it’s a high quality card but is a few generations old.  The monitor speakers are very high quality (read expensive) but I can not remeber the name or model and I’m in an other location right now. 

Hopefully what you see here is that we have sought to build quality and not worried about bragging rights.  I am constantly learning about Audio Production and I can tell you it’s not as easy as you might think. 

I hope this was interesting!