Get in text with technology with text stuff from dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and today I have a good friend on the show with me, Steve ricka Berg. Say hello Steve. Hello Internet. So Steve, you do several things in the Internet world, and including a show that that you did for quite some time. Are you still doing Geek Credit or is that just on it's on hiatus. I'm hoping to bring it back soon, but yeah, it's it's been a while since I put out a new episode. Yeah. So. Geek Cred is a series that where Steve will interview various people in the geek sphere, and for episode forty three, I was one off, but episode three I was the I was the the the subject. I was grilled mercilessly by Steve and told all my secrets. So if you to hear the secrets of Jonathan Strickland, go check out geet Cred episode forty three and check out the rest while you're at it, because they are awesome shows. And I don't know how you landed so many amazing guests. You're more charming than I am. But the reason why I asked Steve on is that I got a listener mail and I immediately thought of Steve as the person to pull on here and talk about things. So here's the mail that I received, And I apologize a listener, I have lost your name because you sent the email before the great Terrible email crash of September two, fourteen UH, in which all of the old tech stuff emails got wiped out Willie and or Nilly, So I apologize. I do not have your name, but I do have the content of your email. And here we go. You guys having tech stuff touched on a lot of this stuff, but I don't think there's really been one on audio recording from start to finish. I think it could be pretty interesting to hear tech stuffs take on this and be extremely useful to people wanting to get into and know stuff about how audio is captured. So Steve is an audio producer, audio engineer extraordinaire UH and I have had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with him at Dragon Con twice now about audio production, where I get to play the person who doesn't know anything and Steve gets to play the person who knows everything, because that's who we are. So that's why I've had Steve on and we've worked it out and kind of covered the entire audio production one oh one idea for this podcast. So to start, we were thinking about going into setting up the whole idea of audio equipment from the microphone all the way to the actual recording hardware and software. So the microphone is the starting point really, and there are several different kinds out there, So Steve, can you run us through what are the basic recording micro phones such your average person is going to encounter? Sure? Yeah, there are two real main varieties you see, and and the difference is really just how they how they convert sound waves into an electrical signal. And by microphone varieties, I really mean how they vary by their transducer, which is to say, how they convert air pressure into an electrical signal or by air pressure like we usually just call it, you know, sound. Um, So there are two types, like I said, condenser and dynamic microphones, and and they're really usually seen in very different types of uses or environments. So the first is a condenser microphone, which is sometimes called a capacitor because it essentially has a big capacitor requires power to work. So you have a charged plate which acts as the capacitor, and what happens is the voltage changes by vibration in the air, by the air pressure. So this is really in stark contrast to the way a dynamic microphone works, which works via induction. So you have a magnet and when sound hits the magnet generated there's a magnetic field, and so one sound hits it, it it generates the signal. So practically, what's what's the difference here. So condensers as a rule, tend to be a lot more sensitive. So you'll see condensers used in things like recording studios for music or or things like that, where it's usually a very controlled environment. Because the downside of a condenser is that it's also very sensitive, so it can pick up all sorts of other stuff you don't want. And a dynamic is in fact, i'm using a dynamic microphone right now. A dynamic doesn't require power, which makes it a little bit more universally usable, but it's not as sensitive. Um. The nice thing about dynamics is they're also very rugged. Um. When you see dynamics used in broadcasting and podcasting as well as in live sound, you can actually be Venerable SM fifty eight, which is kind of the standard that all microphones are certainly uh dynamic microphones are measured against. You know, forty years into its lifespan is kind of and for being so rugged, you can pound nails with it and the microphone will still work like it did on when it was brand new. Yeah. This is um something that I learned the hard way when I was looking at microphones for my own use, my earliest microphone that I had, uh keeping in mind, like I didn't have any expertise in this area. I I knew some stuff, largely due to the work of folks like Steve who had very patiently taught me things despite my my ignorance. Um. But I got a conductor mike first, and I realized that the tiniest sounds would get picked up by this microphone, things like my dog running across the floor. I could hear the toe nails clicking on the hardwood. Um. And or if someone dropped a coin in the house and it was three rooms away, we got Yeah, I got picked up. And so it was one of those things where if I if I really wanted to get a soundscape of a really controlled environment, so I'm setting this thing up. That would have been a fantastic tool. But for someone who just wants to talk into a microphone, Um, then the dynamic microphones seem to be the most useful to me. Sure, Yeah, there's there's very good practical reason why dynamic microphones, at least in the US are pretty much a standard for for radio and for broadcasting. Yeah. Now there's more about microphones, the just dynamic versus condenser, right, Yes, besides that simple delineation, I I do want to mention real quick, there are other types of microphones. These are the two most common. Um. There's even a subset of condensers which is electric condenser microphones, which is what usually see in consumer electronics. So your your phone's microphone or your headsets microphone as an electric condenser because those are really cheap and easy to manufacture. You also have other types like ribbons used for high and REQ and there are actually a multiple multitude of types of microphones, but these two are really the ones you're going to see if you're going to do any recording yourself. It's really picking between these two types, right. Uh, Then you have to consider what what style of mike as it. How is it picking up sound? Where is it pulling sound from? Is it directional or not? Yeah, I mean you have the pickup or or the polar pattern. Nice way to understand this is to look at a graph of the of the pickup pattern. For example, an omnidirectional picks up in three sixty degrees. It's all all picks up sound from all directions equally um but in a in a directional microphone, for example, the most common form of that is a cardioid microphone. Cardioid isn't heart because it looks like a you know, simple heart shape upside down. So so what what that shows that it rejects some of the sound from the sides and from the rear and focuses more on the sound coming from the front of the microphone. Right. So again, depending upon the use of your mic, you would want a specific type. So for example, with me talking into this microphone here, I really want to limit where sound can come from and be picked up by the microphone because anything that's extraneous from me talking is going to be distracting. But in other environments you might want to have that coverage. So, for example, if I were doing a podcast with a group of friends and we were sitting around a table and omnidirectional microphone just to pick up that natural conversation could be perfectly legitimate. So we've got the microphones, we've got the basis there and what they do and what their their differences are. Uh. You mentioned that condenser microphones need to have a power source, and one of the questions we received was, uh, to clarify what phantom power is. Now, does it mean that the microphone is haunted? Uh? Maybe I don't know. Um, phantom power is is quite simply. The standard is is a forty eight vole signal. This can be provided via an external battery if you're out recording in the field, but most commonly it's transmitted through the microphone cable from the mixer or the audio interface. That's that can provide the phantom power to allow the microphone to work, so you don't need any external equipment. But that's that's really all it is. It's a forty eight vol power. Well that's good. See, so now we know that that is the power source that keeps the condenser microphone going, the one that the condenser microphone requires for it to operate. Simply because of the basic mechanism through which it converts air pressure, fundamental principle, the way it works. Yes, yeah, and uh, I like how you moved into all of that too, because it's it. It is good for us to remember that sound is a physical thing. It's molecules that are bouncing against each other and eventually making contact with your ear drum, which moves some little celia like finger project actions inside your ear, and then that gets interpreted as sound in our brains. So it's interesting to think that the microphone is doing something similar, except in this case it's converting it into an electric current as opposed to a signal that our brain interprets. It actually has to go through that conversion process again when you're ready to play the sound back in whatever you know way. You're doing that with whatever kind of speaker you're using. But it's interesting to keep that in mind as well. So now that we've covered the basics, we've covered the polar patterns, I have to ask you another question that was posed by the listener about the idea of balanced versus unbalanced cables. I don't know what that means, sure, sure, balanced versus unbalanced? Okay, and most in most cables you have either to conductor or three conductor cables, so you have you know, tip or sleeve would your mono unbalanced cable tip ring or sleeve could be a stereo unbalanced cable or a mono balanced cable. Now the difference between balanced and unbalances effectively comes down to on a balanced cable, you have that because you have it twice, you have it phase reversed. It really limits any outside interference because the microphone cable can otherwise kind of act as a nintenna picking up all sorts of electromagnetic noise that's in your environment that you might not hear um normally, but you would it would make it into the recording. So balanced cables aren't the end of the world. I mean, most consumer gear is all unbalanced. It's just you want to limit the run with with her is unbalanced. Rather most consumer gear the advantage of balances you can do a long run and not have to worry about getting all that extra noise got you. Well, that makes sense. I mean, we've seen that in lots of different forms of electronics with various cables. And one of the dangers you run in is if you have a cable with poor shielding, then you can a lot of interference that way. Um and uh, I mean I remember using really inexpensive earbuds for example, the would pick up interference from radio sources like a cell phone, and you get that terrible did it did it? Sound? Time? One would go off? All right, Well, then we've covered the cables. Let me ask you about one of the settings. Did I find on microphones the microphone gain? Yes, And that really kind of brings us into microphone level versus line level. Yeah, because they're a microphone level comes in much lower than your standard line level. You know, a microphone gets that extra to bring it up to line level. So that's where you have the microphone gain, which which is too How much gain you're going to need for a given microphone varies one by its type. Condensers need less gain typically than dynamics, for example, because dynamics are passive and just. But each microphone is different in know as far as how much game you'll need to get it to a proper line level. Cool. Now, we also have the concept of a recording level, where you're trying to set a level for making sure that you get a nice sound out of what you're trying to record. You don't want to have any peaks that are going to go beyond that recording level, because then you get this terrible distorted sound. And so one of the questions that was sent in was why are things recorded in negative decibels? And to really understand that, first we need to remember that decibels, Uh, that's a relative scale. We often think of decibels as being kind of a certain scale, that five decibel sound, a twenty decibel sound, of twenty five decibel sound, that these are these are hard and fast numbers, but it really is relative and it's lagarithmic. So the deciples are really meant to describe a relationship between two different things, and and decibels are not just for sound either, but we use it four sounds specifically, but you you could use it to describe the intensity of two different signals, and the decibels kind of describe the gap that's between the two, how much more or less intense one signal is compared to the other one. So when we get to the idea of negative decibels, it doesn't mean that it is negative loud, right, You can't you can't you can't have a negative amount of sound where it would be This kind of descripted conversation makes me think that if we were in spinal tap right now, it would be the most confusing conversation to the band. While going negative decibels, we want it, we want it to be more louder. It would make no sense to them. But the idea of the negative is so that you can set those parameters where if you go beyond those parameters, that's where you run into trouble. Do I have that right? Yeah? I mean I I do want to kind of preface this is like you said, descibel can be used for all sorts of things, and there are all sorts of different standards even within audio recording related to decibels. When you're talking about you know, negative decibels, that's usually referring to dB full scale or dBFS, which is what we use in the digital realm. But you also have you know, d d V or as an V for voltage, which is what you see usually in the analog world. So it gets even more confusing because zero, you know, a zero dB VU like you'd see an analog, is actually equivalent to negative eight ten dB full scale, So it can get a little bit hard to wrap your head around if you're expecting you know, one you know, you see it's like, I'm right at perfect zero d dB on my mixer, but wait, and why is it coming in this low It's it's designed to be able to have that extra headroom because in the analog world, you could go above zero dB, it would thicken up the sound, but sometimes that that high frequency distorced, that subtle high frequency distortion was was desirable. But in the digital world, zero dB is kind of like the speed of light. You can't go above that, or like over exposing a photo on a digital camera where it's just all blown out white. It's the same thing. Anything above zero dB, it just can't there's no you know, you can't go past the speed of light. Anything beyond that it just can't handle, right, So that's where you would get into, you know, really awful digital artifacts in the in the recorded sound and why you would want to have that set. So, just for a general rule of thumb, what what do you usually look for, like, what how do you usually set your levels for recording? What do you think is a good kind of uh scale to look at? Sure, Yeah, I mean, of course, because you can't go above zero dB. You want to make sure your signal is high enough, but you still want to have enough headroom for that variation. Um, A great rule of thumb is just negative peak between negati of twelve and negative six or or somewhere around there, so that if you get a little more excited and get a little louder, you're you're hopefully leaving enough headroom so that you're not going to clip which clip clip or go above zero Right. So, uh, if you've ever watched a video where someone does suddenly go from one level of volume to a much greater level of volume, I'm thinking of several Let's plays that I've watched where they were playing pt the trailer that's for Silent Hills. That's a terrifying trailer. And I've seen people are watched videos where people started screaming and then you get the terrible clipping because they weren't anticipating. This kind of essentially makes this kind of ear bleeding distortion that you don't want to listen to. Right, Yeah, that's a general rule of thumb is you want to avoid that. So similar to this, we have the concept of equalization e Q and the various frequencies. I know that anyone who had a good stereo back in the eighties had that series of sliders that they could choose to play with for the different frequencies. And uh, you know, everyone had their own secret sauce and what they thought was important. But no one on the just the basic consumer level seemed to really appreciate what those those different sliders were for. Um. But when it boils down to it, it really comes down to essentially a volume more intensity knob for sounds that occur within a certain frequency range. Right, yeah, absolutely, um, Because I remember the range of human hearing is approximately twenty hurts to twenty thousand hurts at least if you don't you know, usually for younger people, the older you get, you tend to lose some of those higher for frequencies naturally, or if you've been to too many loud concerts, um or on the low and like twenty hurts, that's usually solo. It's actually subaudible, but you feel it, so you're still you're still kind of experiencing that when the sound frequency is that low. UM. So you know, the mids if you're if you're doing any equalization. You know, the mid level isn't gonna be ten thousand hurts because human hearing is is logarithmic. So usually when you see mids um you might see you know, if you're dusting the midsics, you're gonna be you know, two point five kill hurts hurts for example. Well, that's an important thing also to keep in mind. But what I love is that you are essentially having control over these various ranges of frequencies. So that's why the base slider is really what's doing is it's boosting the signal, boosting the intensity of any sound wave that falls in that frequency. It's not that it magically inserts boost a base where there was no base before. There has to have been a signal at that frequency for something to get played at all essentially Alloueder volume or recorded at allouder volume. Um. So, because I had friends, I mean I remember back in in school where I friends who would their magic sauce was just to turn that base slider all the way up to ten and say this is gonna be amazing, And then they get disappointed, and I'd say, well, you know, you you gotta you gotta have some sound waves in that frequency range for anything to have happened. So, uh, that's you know, another little a little misconception i'd like to clear up. And then we get into something that frankly tends to to make my head swim when we start talking about the concept of samples and bit rate and bit depth. So this is the digital audio world. This is this is really where I think a lot of our listeners fall into people who want to record, because digital recording equipment is very easy to get hold of, um even just very basic equipment that is good enough for you know, your average stuff that you want to do. Maybe if you're not going for a truly professional level recording, you can get away with a lot of In fact, a lot of the stuff that's on the consumer market that's not very expensive, can and under the right condition, sound like professional level recording. But this is where we start talking about the amount of information you're packing into a file, because when you get down to it, that's what digital that's what digital recording is all about. It's recording things in sequences of zeros and ones, and eventually that starts to take up file space. So with analog signals, one of the things to keep in mind is that the sounds we produce, the waves we produce, are continuous and they're variable, but we have to process that, uh, and in order to for it to become digital. Digital is not all about these continuous waves. Instead, a digital file ends up sampling that wave. And by sampling, you can think of it kind of like a snapshot, a very quick photograph of one particular part of that wave. And so each sample is a quantity is quantities to a finite number of bits, and what was once a continuous wave of sound now gets represented as that series of of bits of zeros and ones, And uh, really what comes down to it is how many times do you sample that wave? What's the frequency of your sampling? That kind of determines the resolution of the file. So if you weren't sampling it very frequently, you would have a pretty poor quality sounding uh file. It would end up being um well, less fidelity. I guess you could say, like, uh, the quality for telephone calls and cell phone calls is fairly low because you just have to have it be high enough so that the average person can understand what the other person is saying. For something like a recorded medium like c D s you want it much higher, right, Okay, So this is where we get into the idea of bit depth. That's the number of bits within a sample. So this is really the sample resolution. And you've got different types of bit sampling rates. So CD audio uses sixteen bits per sample, blu ray goes to twenty four bits per sample. And this is where you're able to represent more subtle differences, uh in the level of the sound, as opposed to trying to flatten everything out. That's part of it anyway. Sampling rate will refer to the number of samples of an analog signal taken every second. So a continuous wave uh is going through you need to digitize it. You're really just capturing those specific moments. And this is where I had a note and and I'm glad that you were able to uh clarify this because it was a little confusing to me. You mentioned the range of human hearing goes from around twenty hurts to twenty thousand hurts. Uh, But when you get to the sam full rate of CD sampling, it's at forty four point one killer hurts. Now can you explain why that is? Yeah, just due to the way digital audio works. Or just the way sound works. You have since we have positive and negative pressure because it's a wave, so in this case you have positive and minus for those each of those values so effectively with a forty four point one kill hurt sample rate, they're frequent. The possible frequency range that can reproduce is going to be half, so it's gonna be two and fifty hurts or right around the limit of human hearing. So that's really that that that really opened up my eyes because I had read some descriptions about this but didn't really grasp it until you had clarified. So I'm very thankful to have you on the show. Not to say there aren't reasons for going above that sample rate UM, but it's usually more specialized us as you might because you there will be some getting it's real complicated stuff, but there will be something you can't have some a least seeing some artifacts in those very high frequency So sometimes for recording where fidelity is you know, ultimate, they might record at a higher sample rate UM or or sometimes you'll see for sound design they'll record at a higher sample rate because I'm gonna slow it down so much to get that you know, alien otherworldly sound that you need that extra those extra samples for it to work, for it to work. So in in terms of like a digital photograph, this would be like wanting to have more megapixels because you plan to eventually blow up that that picture too many times its original great analogy. Yeah, So one of the things I saw was that you can find sampling rates hitting levels around a hundred and ninety two kill a hurts. That's way higher than what you find in the c D sampling rate. And one of the thought processes behind this is that it captures ultrasonic frequencies when you start getting into that that level, and those ultrasonic frequencies, uh, those aren't perceptible to us on their own, We wouldn't be able to hear them. This would be at a frequency far above human hearing. However, they can affect some other signals that we do here. This is called intermodulation distortion, so that's when inaudible parts of the sound spectrum start to interact with audible parts. What's interesting to me is that this is not something that you find present during the actual live performance of the sound. It is truly an artifact of the digitizing process. But it might be a desirable one depending upon the effect you're trying to achieve. So to me, it's interesting that you're recording sound that technically is is kind of not there, at least not it's not perceptible to you in the live performance of the recording, but then you can hear the effect once you're listening back to the recording. Before we move on, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor, and our sponsor is Little Bits. A Little Bits is the easiest and most extensive way to learn and prototype with electronics. So they're making hardware limitless with an award winning, ever growing library of electronic modules. And they range from the very simple like power or sensors or led light, to the very complex such as wireless modules or programmable modules. And there are more than sixty modules and trillions of billions of combinations that are possible. It moves electronics from the hands of experts to the hands of everyone, and they're used by makers, artists, designers, engineers, students and podcast hosts. They sent me a kit I got to experiment with it. The first thing I built was a joy buzzer. Is really simple. I used a power module, a couple of wire modules, a button and a buzzer and they link up magnetically. Nothing could be easier. You don't have to do any soldering, you don't have to do any wiring. It's all built for you and really you just let your imagination take control. Well, little bits is offering new customers twenty dollars off your first kit, So go to little bits dot com and enter the promo code text stuff when you place your order and you'll receive twenty dollars off your first kit, plus free shipping to the United States. So little bits dot com and don't forget that promo code text stuff when you place your order. All right, So we talked about sample rate. Then you have bit rate. That's the amount of information conveyed or process per unit of time. So a kill a bit per second would be a bit rate that's not a good one, but it would be one uh, but a high quality bit rate would be closer to it, like a d kill a bits per second um. And the maximum supported by the MP three format is three kill a bits per second. So there's a formula for figuring out the bit rate, which is the bit rate is equal to the sample rate times the bit depth. Times the number of channels recorded, because you can have more than one channel of sound being recorded at once. So if you were recording in stereo, you're using an audio CD with the sample rate of forty four point one killer hurts a bit depth of sixteen, you've got the stereo so therefore it's two channels. You would multiply four thousand, one hundred times sixteen times two, which, uh, running out of fingers, one million, four thousand, two hundred bits per second, so that'd be one you know, one thousand, four hundred eleven point to kill a bits per second, one point for megabits per second. Yeah, that's a lot, and that's uncompressed audio, mind you. But but I do think you mentioned this, But I do want to be clear, it's important to not confuse bit depth, which we talked about earlier, with bit rate. Those are two very separate that related, you know, but very separate terms. Right. Bit bit rate depends in part on bit depth along with the sample rate and how many channels you're recording. But they are two different concepts, so don't confuse the two. Even though they both have bit in the name. Uh, they are two different things. So Steve, if you were going to record, say podcast that you wanted to to send out there you had access to, you know, your general consumer level technology. What what would be the the rate you would suggest people record at. What what do you think is a good target to aim at? Sure um forty four point one kill hurt since the Sampar rate I would go with because you really don't need more, especially for podcasting. It's just the human voice, so there isn't you know, It's not like you're recording a you know, dense musical soundscape or something, right, unless you've got a bunch of Gregorian monks chanting in the background or something that would be a podcast I would listen to. Possibly I'm working on it, but I've only found one monk and uh he's not He's not the singing type. So as as far as bit depth, I mean, most consumer stuff records that sixteen bit. Some will go to twenty four bit, which is where you see most pro gear. Um. There is a benefit to going to twenty four bit because there are more essentially that the I we talked about with bit depth, the more bits there are, the more values there are to represent changes in volume. So it's a finer resolution, but sixteen bit is still perfectly serviceable if that's all you can do so with this kind of information. This sort of also plays into the conversation of how MP three's, especially early MP three's, how they started to change the nature of recording in a way, because, like you say, you know, when you have when you have less information in your file, you have to balance that out, you have to figure out what's being kept, and you know, especially for a compressed sound file formats uh And one of the things that the MP three file format would do is look for things that that the algorithm said would be outside of human range of hearing and just cut it on entirely. So I am curious, Steve. I know that this isn't in the notes, but I'm curious as to your thoughts on that subject. Well, the type of compression we're talking about here is is lossy compression. You have lost list compression, which is more akin to like a ZIP file for example, where you uncompressed and everything is the exact same as it was with with MP three. It's lossy or really you can think of this a lot like a gift or or a JPEG, where it's compressing it by throwing away some of that information that it's not quite as important. So you can still see what the images. You can still here what's what was recorded, but it's using psychoacoustics to throw away less important stuff to be able to make that file size a lot smaller. Yeah. So, now if you were going to listen to music, if you were going to say, I want to purchase a digital file of a song, what file format do you choose? Honestly, even as an audio engineer, I don't see as much of a benefit for for lossless. Now they're not that there isn't a benefit you know there, you know you're getting a pristine recording when it's lossless, when it's in Flak or Apple lossless, which which is what a lot of really hardcore audio files will turn will turn to. But honestly, for me, I did that whole lossle thing for a while, But at this point, as long as it's a decent bit rate, I'll go with you know, MP three or a a C so that you know, two six kill a bit. You know a a C you get from iTunes is perfectly serviceable to me for listening purposes. Yeah, I I feel the same way, Uh, and I feel that since I've got you on and you can't go until I conclude the episode, and it's got me locked in a cage, yeah, I effectively have you ust me to Uh So, here's here's the next questions. It's we can start looking at some myths around audio engineering for the audio files out in the audience. The folks who who are looking to have a nice sound system to listen to things on. What about those super high premium cables, do they really have the benefit of other more basic cables And a word no, certainly for digital cable. If it's a you know it's digital, it's gonna work or it's not gonna work. There isn't really much of a metal ground analog. You can make an argument. But those over those you know, super expending that sixty monster cable isn't going to be significantly different from that five dollar store brand cable, certainly, right, Especially if you're talking about something where you know it's got decent shielding on it, you're not gonna have to worry about interference through that, because electromagnetic interference can happen if you don't have good shielding on your cable. But most cables Now, even the the bargain ones have decent shielding on them, it's not that difficult to implement. UM. I feel the same way on this subject as well. It's one of those things where you might be able to with the proper UH sensors detect minute differences in analog cables like super high premium versus your basic cables. But that's beyond human perception definitely. So okay, well again we're gonna go with another one here, analog versus digital media formats. Are you a vinyl guy? Are you going to listen to your eight tracks? C d s? Just digital files? What's what's up? Can of worms there? I'm I'm a digital guy, but that's the generation I am. But you do bring up a good topic. Is you know you have some audio files that still cling to their vinyl and I do understand why because due to the nature of those it produced produces high frequency distortion, which makes it pleasurable to listen to. So I understand why there's still that love for vinyl other than just simple nostalgia, which I get too. UM, But you can kind of simulate that UM through effects on a digital recording to kind of get that same effect. I have a lot of vinyl at my house, although I don't currently have a working turntable, so that's kind of it's just sort of keeping up space right now. But but I I have also felt that the vinyl experience, it's almost more like it's a personalized experience to the listener in the sense that vinyl albums, the more you listen to them, the more they will develop somewhere over the course of their existence, and that actually changes the quality of the sound. Whether it's the wear and tear on the needle or it's the wear and tear on the vinyl album itself, that changes the quality of the sound, and that can become part of your experience. It doesn't necessarily make the song better or worse, it makes it a different experience, and I think that's part of what the charm is. Uh. There are also people who claim that the sound from vinyl is a warmer sound, but I'm not entirely certain what that's supposed to mean, because most people find it difficult to articulate what a warm sound is versus one that isn't. And I've also read some great studies where people were put into rooms to listen to music not told whether or not it was going to be an analog source versus a digital source. And if it's a double blinded test, it seems like most people can't tell the difference. It's it's just too subtle for for we mirror mortals. Even if it's the exact same source signal, the difference between analog versus digital is really hard to tell. So just busting some myths out there, folks, to help you guys out if you're interested in either recording or you just want to set up a night listening environment. Uh, Steve, is there anything else you would like to cover as far as the the audio recording one oh one set up? Sure? One. One thing we skipped over is connect cable connectors. We talked about unbalanced versus a balanced cable and the significance of that. But you're gonna see different types of connectors for connecting your your audio and will vary depending on whether it's professional used or more consumer used. So there are four main types that I really identify. So on the consumer side, you have your standard three point five millimeter sometimes called one eighth inch because it's really metric or metric or imperial. Still still the same size though. This is what you see for your you know, usually you see for your headphones, uh, for your whether it's for your phone or for something else, or connecting your computer to speakers. For example, the computer out is going to be at three point five millimeter jack. The other consumer type you'll you'll see, especially in old door equipment, is R C A UM. Which are those two usually you have If it's a stereo signal, you have two connectors or one one is white, one is red for left and right. But these both of these consumer types are always going to be unbalanced due to the nature of them. So on the pro side, you have quarter inch cables kind of like your one eight three point five millimeter cable, but just supersized. Uh. And you have XLR cables. The XLR cables is what you see from connecting microphones primarily. UM, it's it's a little bit different. It's a three pin it's a three pin connector. So with XLR, it's a three pin connector where you have positive, negative, and ground much like you have on on a tippering sleeve, or you have positive, negative and ground. Yeah, I have the microphone I am speaking into for recording is an XLR microphone. Actually the microphone that Steve is hearing me on, however, is a USB microphone, which is one of the other types you might run into for those that that connect directly to a computer. UM, and that one is the reason why I'm using too Dear listeners is because our original set up, Steve could not hear me, and while that would have been an interesting podcast, we decided ultimately that being able to hear one another was it was probably the best choice. So yeah, the USB microphones, those are really popular these days because they tend to be relatively inexpensive and they're incredibly easy to use. They, you know, for the people who don't want to have to deal with, um lots of tweaking of audio levels, then it's it's kind of plug and play with some variations. I mean, most of them have a couple of different settings where you can choose, Like especially the condenser based ones have different settings you can choose so you can determine what fields they can record from, whether it's omnidirectional or not. But in general, I I like the XLR ones a lot more. Uh, just it's um it tends to be a bit more of a an investment just for all the stuff that you're gonna need for you know you don't. Yeah, Yeah, that's the great thing about USB. You have the microphone, you connect the USB cable to your computer, you're done. So it has that digital or that analog to digital converter rather built in. It has a crean built in. UM, with an XLR microphone, you're gonna need more equipment. You're gonna need a mixer or an audio interface to bring that up to to bring that microphone level up to line level, and then something to whether it's a computer or something else, to digitize that signal. USB does all of that. Yeah. So for those of us who who like the simpler life, it's it's a it's a real benefit. Um. One of the wonderful things that I can rely upon is the fact that I work for how stuff works, and we have an audio podcast recording studio, and all of this stuff gets set up for me. So I really live in the lap of luxury as far as that's concerned. But if you're really doing it on your own, these are the sort of things you just you know, the basics that you need to know. It's not that you necessarily have to go and take a full course in audio engineering, but knowing some simple basic rules of thumb to follow will really guide you in the right the right direction for you to have really good audio quality. So U, I really appreciate you coming on the show and and I don't Oh yeah, absolutely, I'll probably have you on again. We'll talk about something completely unrelated to audio engineering. It'll maybe be a discussion about your favorite type of of starship in the Star Trek universe, and your answer will be USS Reliant because that's the best. Uh. Clearly you've put a lot of thoughts. I will, yeah, USS Reliant is my favorite starship in Star Trek. So not related at all to sound engineering, but I felt that it was on my chest and I needed to express it. It's unrelated, yes, uh so, So Steve, where can people find your work? If they they they've heard the stuff that sounds amazing, they want to know more about what you do? Where can they go? Gosh, I'm I'm all over the internet? Uh geat cred witch Jonathan mentioned at the top of the show, you can find over at geak cred dot net. You can kind of get in touch with me through Steve Rickyberg dot com or follow me on Twitter at Steve ricky Berg to see what I'm up to. Fantastic, Steve, thank you so much again, and listeners, I'm so thrilled this is. This has been a grand experiment having one of my buddies, uh distantly recording as I record so that you listeners can have the greatest experience possible. Now, if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's someone I should interview or a topic that you've always wanted to hear more about. Maybe it's a type of technology, or a company or a personality in tech, let me know. Send me a message. My email address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. My handle at all three is tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again. Releases for more on this and thousands of other topics because it how staff works dot com.

Get in text with technology with text stuff from dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and today I have a good friend on the show with me, Steve ricka Berg. Say hello Steve. Hello Internet. So Steve, you do several things in the Internet world, and including a show that that you did for quite some time. Are you still doing Geek Credit or is that just on it's on hiatus. I'm hoping to bring it back soon, but yeah, it's it's been a while since I put out a new episode. Yeah. So. Geek Cred is a series that where Steve will interview various people in the geek sphere, and for episode forty three, I was one off, but episode three I was the I was the the the subject. I was grilled mercilessly by Steve and told all my secrets. So if you to hear the secrets of Jonathan Strickland, go check out geet Cred episode forty three and check out the rest while you're at it, because they are awesome shows. And I don't know how you landed so many amazing guests. You're more charming than I am. But the reason why I asked Steve on is that I got a listener mail and I immediately thought of Steve as the person to pull on here and talk about things. So here's the mail that I received, And I apologize a listener, I have lost your name because you sent the email before the great Terrible email crash of September two, fourteen UH, in which all of the old tech stuff emails got wiped out Willie and or Nilly, So I apologize. I do not have your name, but I do have the content of your email. And here we go. You guys having tech stuff touched on a lot of this stuff, but I don't think there's really been one on audio recording from start to finish. I think it could be pretty interesting to hear tech stuffs take on this and be extremely useful to people wanting to get into and know stuff about how audio is captured. So Steve is an audio producer, audio engineer extraordinaire UH and I have had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with him at Dragon Con twice now about audio production, where I get to play the person who doesn't know anything and Steve gets to play the person who knows everything, because that's who we are. So that's why I've had Steve on and we've worked it out and kind of covered the entire audio production one oh one idea for this podcast. So to start, we were thinking about going into setting up the whole idea of audio equipment from the microphone all the way to the actual recording hardware and software. So the microphone is the starting point really, and there are several different kinds out there, So Steve, can you run us through what are the basic recording micro phones such your average person is going to encounter? Sure? Yeah, there are two real main varieties you see, and and the difference is really just how they how they convert sound waves into an electrical signal. And by microphone varieties, I really mean how they vary by their transducer, which is to say, how they convert air pressure into an electrical signal or by air pressure like we usually just call it, you know, sound. Um, So there are two types, like I said, condenser and dynamic microphones, and and they're really usually seen in very different types of uses or environments. So the first is a condenser microphone, which is sometimes called a capacitor because it essentially has a big capacitor requires power to work. So you have a charged plate which acts as the capacitor, and what happens is the voltage changes by vibration in the air, by the air pressure. So this is really in stark contrast to the way a dynamic microphone works, which works via induction. So you have a magnet and when sound hits the magnet generated there's a magnetic field, and so one sound hits it, it it generates the signal. So practically, what's what's the difference here. So condensers as a rule, tend to be a lot more sensitive. So you'll see condensers used in things like recording studios for music or or things like that, where it's usually a very controlled environment. Because the downside of a condenser is that it's also very sensitive, so it can pick up all sorts of other stuff you don't want. And a dynamic is in fact, i'm using a dynamic microphone right now. A dynamic doesn't require power, which makes it a little bit more universally usable, but it's not as sensitive. Um. The nice thing about dynamics is they're also very rugged. Um. When you see dynamics used in broadcasting and podcasting as well as in live sound, you can actually be Venerable SM fifty eight, which is kind of the standard that all microphones are certainly uh dynamic microphones are measured against. You know, forty years into its lifespan is kind of and for being so rugged, you can pound nails with it and the microphone will still work like it did on when it was brand new. Yeah. This is um something that I learned the hard way when I was looking at microphones for my own use, my earliest microphone that I had, uh keeping in mind, like I didn't have any expertise in this area. I I knew some stuff, largely due to the work of folks like Steve who had very patiently taught me things despite my my ignorance. Um. But I got a conductor mike first, and I realized that the tiniest sounds would get picked up by this microphone, things like my dog running across the floor. I could hear the toe nails clicking on the hardwood. Um. And or if someone dropped a coin in the house and it was three rooms away, we got Yeah, I got picked up. And so it was one of those things where if I if I really wanted to get a soundscape of a really controlled environment, so I'm setting this thing up. That would have been a fantastic tool. But for someone who just wants to talk into a microphone, Um, then the dynamic microphones seem to be the most useful to me. Sure, Yeah, there's there's very good practical reason why dynamic microphones, at least in the US are pretty much a standard for for radio and for broadcasting. Yeah. Now there's more about microphones, the just dynamic versus condenser, right, Yes, besides that simple delineation, I I do want to mention real quick, there are other types of microphones. These are the two most common. Um. There's even a subset of condensers which is electric condenser microphones, which is what usually see in consumer electronics. So your your phone's microphone or your headsets microphone as an electric condenser because those are really cheap and easy to manufacture. You also have other types like ribbons used for high and REQ and there are actually a multiple multitude of types of microphones, but these two are really the ones you're going to see if you're going to do any recording yourself. It's really picking between these two types, right. Uh, Then you have to consider what what style of mike as it. How is it picking up sound? Where is it pulling sound from? Is it directional or not? Yeah, I mean you have the pickup or or the polar pattern. Nice way to understand this is to look at a graph of the of the pickup pattern. For example, an omnidirectional picks up in three sixty degrees. It's all all picks up sound from all directions equally um but in a in a directional microphone, for example, the most common form of that is a cardioid microphone. Cardioid isn't heart because it looks like a you know, simple heart shape upside down. So so what what that shows that it rejects some of the sound from the sides and from the rear and focuses more on the sound coming from the front of the microphone. Right. So again, depending upon the use of your mic, you would want a specific type. So for example, with me talking into this microphone here, I really want to limit where sound can come from and be picked up by the microphone because anything that's extraneous from me talking is going to be distracting. But in other environments you might want to have that coverage. So, for example, if I were doing a podcast with a group of friends and we were sitting around a table and omnidirectional microphone just to pick up that natural conversation could be perfectly legitimate. So we've got the microphones, we've got the basis there and what they do and what their their differences are. Uh. You mentioned that condenser microphones need to have a power source, and one of the questions we received was, uh, to clarify what phantom power is. Now, does it mean that the microphone is haunted? Uh? Maybe I don't know. Um, phantom power is is quite simply. The standard is is a forty eight vole signal. This can be provided via an external battery if you're out recording in the field, but most commonly it's transmitted through the microphone cable from the mixer or the audio interface. That's that can provide the phantom power to allow the microphone to work, so you don't need any external equipment. But that's that's really all it is. It's a forty eight vol power. Well that's good. See, so now we know that that is the power source that keeps the condenser microphone going, the one that the condenser microphone requires for it to operate. Simply because of the basic mechanism through which it converts air pressure, fundamental principle, the way it works. Yes, yeah, and uh, I like how you moved into all of that too, because it's it. It is good for us to remember that sound is a physical thing. It's molecules that are bouncing against each other and eventually making contact with your ear drum, which moves some little celia like finger project actions inside your ear, and then that gets interpreted as sound in our brains. So it's interesting to think that the microphone is doing something similar, except in this case it's converting it into an electric current as opposed to a signal that our brain interprets. It actually has to go through that conversion process again when you're ready to play the sound back in whatever you know way. You're doing that with whatever kind of speaker you're using. But it's interesting to keep that in mind as well. So now that we've covered the basics, we've covered the polar patterns, I have to ask you another question that was posed by the listener about the idea of balanced versus unbalanced cables. I don't know what that means, sure, sure, balanced versus unbalanced? Okay, and most in most cables you have either to conductor or three conductor cables, so you have you know, tip or sleeve would your mono unbalanced cable tip ring or sleeve could be a stereo unbalanced cable or a mono balanced cable. Now the difference between balanced and unbalances effectively comes down to on a balanced cable, you have that because you have it twice, you have it phase reversed. It really limits any outside interference because the microphone cable can otherwise kind of act as a nintenna picking up all sorts of electromagnetic noise that's in your environment that you might not hear um normally, but you would it would make it into the recording. So balanced cables aren't the end of the world. I mean, most consumer gear is all unbalanced. It's just you want to limit the run with with her is unbalanced. Rather most consumer gear the advantage of balances you can do a long run and not have to worry about getting all that extra noise got you. Well, that makes sense. I mean, we've seen that in lots of different forms of electronics with various cables. And one of the dangers you run in is if you have a cable with poor shielding, then you can a lot of interference that way. Um and uh, I mean I remember using really inexpensive earbuds for example, the would pick up interference from radio sources like a cell phone, and you get that terrible did it did it? Sound? Time? One would go off? All right, Well, then we've covered the cables. Let me ask you about one of the settings. Did I find on microphones the microphone gain? Yes, And that really kind of brings us into microphone level versus line level. Yeah, because they're a microphone level comes in much lower than your standard line level. You know, a microphone gets that extra to bring it up to line level. So that's where you have the microphone gain, which which is too How much gain you're going to need for a given microphone varies one by its type. Condensers need less gain typically than dynamics, for example, because dynamics are passive and just. But each microphone is different in know as far as how much game you'll need to get it to a proper line level. Cool. Now, we also have the concept of a recording level, where you're trying to set a level for making sure that you get a nice sound out of what you're trying to record. You don't want to have any peaks that are going to go beyond that recording level, because then you get this terrible distorted sound. And so one of the questions that was sent in was why are things recorded in negative decibels? And to really understand that, first we need to remember that decibels, Uh, that's a relative scale. We often think of decibels as being kind of a certain scale, that five decibel sound, a twenty decibel sound, of twenty five decibel sound, that these are these are hard and fast numbers, but it really is relative and it's lagarithmic. So the deciples are really meant to describe a relationship between two different things, and and decibels are not just for sound either, but we use it four sounds specifically, but you you could use it to describe the intensity of two different signals, and the decibels kind of describe the gap that's between the two, how much more or less intense one signal is compared to the other one. So when we get to the idea of negative decibels, it doesn't mean that it is negative loud, right, You can't you can't you can't have a negative amount of sound where it would be This kind of descripted conversation makes me think that if we were in spinal tap right now, it would be the most confusing conversation to the band. While going negative decibels, we want it, we want it to be more louder. It would make no sense to them. But the idea of the negative is so that you can set those parameters where if you go beyond those parameters, that's where you run into trouble. Do I have that right? Yeah? I mean I I do want to kind of preface this is like you said, descibel can be used for all sorts of things, and there are all sorts of different standards even within audio recording related to decibels. When you're talking about you know, negative decibels, that's usually referring to dB full scale or dBFS, which is what we use in the digital realm. But you also have you know, d d V or as an V for voltage, which is what you see usually in the analog world. So it gets even more confusing because zero, you know, a zero dB VU like you'd see an analog, is actually equivalent to negative eight ten dB full scale, So it can get a little bit hard to wrap your head around if you're expecting you know, one you know, you see it's like, I'm right at perfect zero d dB on my mixer, but wait, and why is it coming in this low It's it's designed to be able to have that extra headroom because in the analog world, you could go above zero dB, it would thicken up the sound, but sometimes that that high frequency distorced, that subtle high frequency distortion was was desirable. But in the digital world, zero dB is kind of like the speed of light. You can't go above that, or like over exposing a photo on a digital camera where it's just all blown out white. It's the same thing. Anything above zero dB, it just can't there's no you know, you can't go past the speed of light. Anything beyond that it just can't handle, right, So that's where you would get into, you know, really awful digital artifacts in the in the recorded sound and why you would want to have that set. So, just for a general rule of thumb, what what do you usually look for, like, what how do you usually set your levels for recording? What do you think is a good kind of uh scale to look at? Sure, Yeah, I mean, of course, because you can't go above zero dB. You want to make sure your signal is high enough, but you still want to have enough headroom for that variation. Um, A great rule of thumb is just negative peak between negati of twelve and negative six or or somewhere around there, so that if you get a little more excited and get a little louder, you're you're hopefully leaving enough headroom so that you're not going to clip which clip clip or go above zero Right. So, uh, if you've ever watched a video where someone does suddenly go from one level of volume to a much greater level of volume, I'm thinking of several Let's plays that I've watched where they were playing pt the trailer that's for Silent Hills. That's a terrifying trailer. And I've seen people are watched videos where people started screaming and then you get the terrible clipping because they weren't anticipating. This kind of essentially makes this kind of ear bleeding distortion that you don't want to listen to. Right, Yeah, that's a general rule of thumb is you want to avoid that. So similar to this, we have the concept of equalization e Q and the various frequencies. I know that anyone who had a good stereo back in the eighties had that series of sliders that they could choose to play with for the different frequencies. And uh, you know, everyone had their own secret sauce and what they thought was important. But no one on the just the basic consumer level seemed to really appreciate what those those different sliders were for. Um. But when it boils down to it, it really comes down to essentially a volume more intensity knob for sounds that occur within a certain frequency range. Right, yeah, absolutely, um, Because I remember the range of human hearing is approximately twenty hurts to twenty thousand hurts at least if you don't you know, usually for younger people, the older you get, you tend to lose some of those higher for frequencies naturally, or if you've been to too many loud concerts, um or on the low and like twenty hurts, that's usually solo. It's actually subaudible, but you feel it, so you're still you're still kind of experiencing that when the sound frequency is that low. UM. So you know, the mids if you're if you're doing any equalization. You know, the mid level isn't gonna be ten thousand hurts because human hearing is is logarithmic. So usually when you see mids um you might see you know, if you're dusting the midsics, you're gonna be you know, two point five kill hurts hurts for example. Well, that's an important thing also to keep in mind. But what I love is that you are essentially having control over these various ranges of frequencies. So that's why the base slider is really what's doing is it's boosting the signal, boosting the intensity of any sound wave that falls in that frequency. It's not that it magically inserts boost a base where there was no base before. There has to have been a signal at that frequency for something to get played at all essentially Alloueder volume or recorded at allouder volume. Um. So, because I had friends, I mean I remember back in in school where I friends who would their magic sauce was just to turn that base slider all the way up to ten and say this is gonna be amazing, And then they get disappointed, and I'd say, well, you know, you you gotta you gotta have some sound waves in that frequency range for anything to have happened. So, uh, that's you know, another little a little misconception i'd like to clear up. And then we get into something that frankly tends to to make my head swim when we start talking about the concept of samples and bit rate and bit depth. So this is the digital audio world. This is this is really where I think a lot of our listeners fall into people who want to record, because digital recording equipment is very easy to get hold of, um even just very basic equipment that is good enough for you know, your average stuff that you want to do. Maybe if you're not going for a truly professional level recording, you can get away with a lot of In fact, a lot of the stuff that's on the consumer market that's not very expensive, can and under the right condition, sound like professional level recording. But this is where we start talking about the amount of information you're packing into a file, because when you get down to it, that's what digital that's what digital recording is all about. It's recording things in sequences of zeros and ones, and eventually that starts to take up file space. So with analog signals, one of the things to keep in mind is that the sounds we produce, the waves we produce, are continuous and they're variable, but we have to process that, uh, and in order to for it to become digital. Digital is not all about these continuous waves. Instead, a digital file ends up sampling that wave. And by sampling, you can think of it kind of like a snapshot, a very quick photograph of one particular part of that wave. And so each sample is a quantity is quantities to a finite number of bits, and what was once a continuous wave of sound now gets represented as that series of of bits of zeros and ones, And uh, really what comes down to it is how many times do you sample that wave? What's the frequency of your sampling? That kind of determines the resolution of the file. So if you weren't sampling it very frequently, you would have a pretty poor quality sounding uh file. It would end up being um well, less fidelity. I guess you could say, like, uh, the quality for telephone calls and cell phone calls is fairly low because you just have to have it be high enough so that the average person can understand what the other person is saying. For something like a recorded medium like c D s you want it much higher, right, Okay, So this is where we get into the idea of bit depth. That's the number of bits within a sample. So this is really the sample resolution. And you've got different types of bit sampling rates. So CD audio uses sixteen bits per sample, blu ray goes to twenty four bits per sample. And this is where you're able to represent more subtle differences, uh in the level of the sound, as opposed to trying to flatten everything out. That's part of it anyway. Sampling rate will refer to the number of samples of an analog signal taken every second. So a continuous wave uh is going through you need to digitize it. You're really just capturing those specific moments. And this is where I had a note and and I'm glad that you were able to uh clarify this because it was a little confusing to me. You mentioned the range of human hearing goes from around twenty hurts to twenty thousand hurts. Uh, But when you get to the sam full rate of CD sampling, it's at forty four point one killer hurts. Now can you explain why that is? Yeah, just due to the way digital audio works. Or just the way sound works. You have since we have positive and negative pressure because it's a wave, so in this case you have positive and minus for those each of those values so effectively with a forty four point one kill hurt sample rate, they're frequent. The possible frequency range that can reproduce is going to be half, so it's gonna be two and fifty hurts or right around the limit of human hearing. So that's really that that that really opened up my eyes because I had read some descriptions about this but didn't really grasp it until you had clarified. So I'm very thankful to have you on the show. Not to say there aren't reasons for going above that sample rate UM, but it's usually more specialized us as you might because you there will be some getting it's real complicated stuff, but there will be something you can't have some a least seeing some artifacts in those very high frequency So sometimes for recording where fidelity is you know, ultimate, they might record at a higher sample rate UM or or sometimes you'll see for sound design they'll record at a higher sample rate because I'm gonna slow it down so much to get that you know, alien otherworldly sound that you need that extra those extra samples for it to work, for it to work. So in in terms of like a digital photograph, this would be like wanting to have more megapixels because you plan to eventually blow up that that picture too many times its original great analogy. Yeah, So one of the things I saw was that you can find sampling rates hitting levels around a hundred and ninety two kill a hurts. That's way higher than what you find in the c D sampling rate. And one of the thought processes behind this is that it captures ultrasonic frequencies when you start getting into that that level, and those ultrasonic frequencies, uh, those aren't perceptible to us on their own, We wouldn't be able to hear them. This would be at a frequency far above human hearing. However, they can affect some other signals that we do here. This is called intermodulation distortion, so that's when inaudible parts of the sound spectrum start to interact with audible parts. What's interesting to me is that this is not something that you find present during the actual live performance of the sound. It is truly an artifact of the digitizing process. But it might be a desirable one depending upon the effect you're trying to achieve. So to me, it's interesting that you're recording sound that technically is is kind of not there, at least not it's not perceptible to you in the live performance of the recording, but then you can hear the effect once you're listening back to the recording. Before we move on, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor, and our sponsor is Little Bits. A Little Bits is the easiest and most extensive way to learn and prototype with electronics. So they're making hardware limitless with an award winning, ever growing library of electronic modules. And they range from the very simple like power or sensors or led light, to the very complex such as wireless modules or programmable modules. And there are more than sixty modules and trillions of billions of combinations that are possible. It moves electronics from the hands of experts to the hands of everyone, and they're used by makers, artists, designers, engineers, students and podcast hosts. They sent me a kit I got to experiment with it. The first thing I built was a joy buzzer. Is really simple. I used a power module, a couple of wire modules, a button and a buzzer and they link up magnetically. Nothing could be easier. You don't have to do any soldering, you don't have to do any wiring. It's all built for you and really you just let your imagination take control. Well, little bits is offering new customers twenty dollars off your first kit, So go to little bits dot com and enter the promo code text stuff when you place your order and you'll receive twenty dollars off your first kit, plus free shipping to the United States. So little bits dot com and don't forget that promo code text stuff when you place your order. All right, So we talked about sample rate. Then you have bit rate. That's the amount of information conveyed or process per unit of time. So a kill a bit per second would be a bit rate that's not a good one, but it would be one uh, but a high quality bit rate would be closer to it, like a d kill a bits per second um. And the maximum supported by the MP three format is three kill a bits per second. So there's a formula for figuring out the bit rate, which is the bit rate is equal to the sample rate times the bit depth. Times the number of channels recorded, because you can have more than one channel of sound being recorded at once. So if you were recording in stereo, you're using an audio CD with the sample rate of forty four point one killer hurts a bit depth of sixteen, you've got the stereo so therefore it's two channels. You would multiply four thousand, one hundred times sixteen times two, which, uh, running out of fingers, one million, four thousand, two hundred bits per second, so that'd be one you know, one thousand, four hundred eleven point to kill a bits per second, one point for megabits per second. Yeah, that's a lot, and that's uncompressed audio, mind you. But but I do think you mentioned this, But I do want to be clear, it's important to not confuse bit depth, which we talked about earlier, with bit rate. Those are two very separate that related, you know, but very separate terms. Right. Bit bit rate depends in part on bit depth along with the sample rate and how many channels you're recording. But they are two different concepts, so don't confuse the two. Even though they both have bit in the name. Uh, they are two different things. So Steve, if you were going to record, say podcast that you wanted to to send out there you had access to, you know, your general consumer level technology. What what would be the the rate you would suggest people record at. What what do you think is a good target to aim at? Sure um forty four point one kill hurt since the Sampar rate I would go with because you really don't need more, especially for podcasting. It's just the human voice, so there isn't you know, It's not like you're recording a you know, dense musical soundscape or something, right, unless you've got a bunch of Gregorian monks chanting in the background or something that would be a podcast I would listen to. Possibly I'm working on it, but I've only found one monk and uh he's not He's not the singing type. So as as far as bit depth, I mean, most consumer stuff records that sixteen bit. Some will go to twenty four bit, which is where you see most pro gear. Um. There is a benefit to going to twenty four bit because there are more essentially that the I we talked about with bit depth, the more bits there are, the more values there are to represent changes in volume. So it's a finer resolution, but sixteen bit is still perfectly serviceable if that's all you can do so with this kind of information. This sort of also plays into the conversation of how MP three's, especially early MP three's, how they started to change the nature of recording in a way, because, like you say, you know, when you have when you have less information in your file, you have to balance that out, you have to figure out what's being kept, and you know, especially for a compressed sound file formats uh And one of the things that the MP three file format would do is look for things that that the algorithm said would be outside of human range of hearing and just cut it on entirely. So I am curious, Steve. I know that this isn't in the notes, but I'm curious as to your thoughts on that subject. Well, the type of compression we're talking about here is is lossy compression. You have lost list compression, which is more akin to like a ZIP file for example, where you uncompressed and everything is the exact same as it was with with MP three. It's lossy or really you can think of this a lot like a gift or or a JPEG, where it's compressing it by throwing away some of that information that it's not quite as important. So you can still see what the images. You can still here what's what was recorded, but it's using psychoacoustics to throw away less important stuff to be able to make that file size a lot smaller. Yeah. So, now if you were going to listen to music, if you were going to say, I want to purchase a digital file of a song, what file format do you choose? Honestly, even as an audio engineer, I don't see as much of a benefit for for lossless. Now they're not that there isn't a benefit you know there, you know you're getting a pristine recording when it's lossless, when it's in Flak or Apple lossless, which which is what a lot of really hardcore audio files will turn will turn to. But honestly, for me, I did that whole lossle thing for a while, But at this point, as long as it's a decent bit rate, I'll go with you know, MP three or a a C so that you know, two six kill a bit. You know a a C you get from iTunes is perfectly serviceable to me for listening purposes. Yeah, I I feel the same way, Uh, and I feel that since I've got you on and you can't go until I conclude the episode, and it's got me locked in a cage, yeah, I effectively have you ust me to Uh So, here's here's the next questions. It's we can start looking at some myths around audio engineering for the audio files out in the audience. The folks who who are looking to have a nice sound system to listen to things on. What about those super high premium cables, do they really have the benefit of other more basic cables And a word no, certainly for digital cable. If it's a you know it's digital, it's gonna work or it's not gonna work. There isn't really much of a metal ground analog. You can make an argument. But those over those you know, super expending that sixty monster cable isn't going to be significantly different from that five dollar store brand cable, certainly, right, Especially if you're talking about something where you know it's got decent shielding on it, you're not gonna have to worry about interference through that, because electromagnetic interference can happen if you don't have good shielding on your cable. But most cables Now, even the the bargain ones have decent shielding on them, it's not that difficult to implement. UM. I feel the same way on this subject as well. It's one of those things where you might be able to with the proper UH sensors detect minute differences in analog cables like super high premium versus your basic cables. But that's beyond human perception definitely. So okay, well again we're gonna go with another one here, analog versus digital media formats. Are you a vinyl guy? Are you going to listen to your eight tracks? C d s? Just digital files? What's what's up? Can of worms there? I'm I'm a digital guy, but that's the generation I am. But you do bring up a good topic. Is you know you have some audio files that still cling to their vinyl and I do understand why because due to the nature of those it produced produces high frequency distortion, which makes it pleasurable to listen to. So I understand why there's still that love for vinyl other than just simple nostalgia, which I get too. UM, But you can kind of simulate that UM through effects on a digital recording to kind of get that same effect. I have a lot of vinyl at my house, although I don't currently have a working turntable, so that's kind of it's just sort of keeping up space right now. But but I I have also felt that the vinyl experience, it's almost more like it's a personalized experience to the listener in the sense that vinyl albums, the more you listen to them, the more they will develop somewhere over the course of their existence, and that actually changes the quality of the sound. Whether it's the wear and tear on the needle or it's the wear and tear on the vinyl album itself, that changes the quality of the sound, and that can become part of your experience. It doesn't necessarily make the song better or worse, it makes it a different experience, and I think that's part of what the charm is. Uh. There are also people who claim that the sound from vinyl is a warmer sound, but I'm not entirely certain what that's supposed to mean, because most people find it difficult to articulate what a warm sound is versus one that isn't. And I've also read some great studies where people were put into rooms to listen to music not told whether or not it was going to be an analog source versus a digital source. And if it's a double blinded test, it seems like most people can't tell the difference. It's it's just too subtle for for we mirror mortals. Even if it's the exact same source signal, the difference between analog versus digital is really hard to tell. So just busting some myths out there, folks, to help you guys out if you're interested in either recording or you just want to set up a night listening environment. Uh, Steve, is there anything else you would like to cover as far as the the audio recording one oh one set up? Sure? One. One thing we skipped over is connect cable connectors. We talked about unbalanced versus a balanced cable and the significance of that. But you're gonna see different types of connectors for connecting your your audio and will vary depending on whether it's professional used or more consumer used. So there are four main types that I really identify. So on the consumer side, you have your standard three point five millimeter sometimes called one eighth inch because it's really metric or metric or imperial. Still still the same size though. This is what you see for your you know, usually you see for your headphones, uh, for your whether it's for your phone or for something else, or connecting your computer to speakers. For example, the computer out is going to be at three point five millimeter jack. The other consumer type you'll you'll see, especially in old door equipment, is R C A UM. Which are those two usually you have If it's a stereo signal, you have two connectors or one one is white, one is red for left and right. But these both of these consumer types are always going to be unbalanced due to the nature of them. So on the pro side, you have quarter inch cables kind of like your one eight three point five millimeter cable, but just supersized. Uh. And you have XLR cables. The XLR cables is what you see from connecting microphones primarily. UM, it's it's a little bit different. It's a three pin it's a three pin connector. So with XLR, it's a three pin connector where you have positive, negative, and ground much like you have on on a tippering sleeve, or you have positive, negative and ground. Yeah, I have the microphone I am speaking into for recording is an XLR microphone. Actually the microphone that Steve is hearing me on, however, is a USB microphone, which is one of the other types you might run into for those that that connect directly to a computer. UM, and that one is the reason why I'm using too Dear listeners is because our original set up, Steve could not hear me, and while that would have been an interesting podcast, we decided ultimately that being able to hear one another was it was probably the best choice. So yeah, the USB microphones, those are really popular these days because they tend to be relatively inexpensive and they're incredibly easy to use. They, you know, for the people who don't want to have to deal with, um lots of tweaking of audio levels, then it's it's kind of plug and play with some variations. I mean, most of them have a couple of different settings where you can choose, Like especially the condenser based ones have different settings you can choose so you can determine what fields they can record from, whether it's omnidirectional or not. But in general, I I like the XLR ones a lot more. Uh, just it's um it tends to be a bit more of a an investment just for all the stuff that you're gonna need for you know you don't. Yeah, Yeah, that's the great thing about USB. You have the microphone, you connect the USB cable to your computer, you're done. So it has that digital or that analog to digital converter rather built in. It has a crean built in. UM, with an XLR microphone, you're gonna need more equipment. You're gonna need a mixer or an audio interface to bring that up to to bring that microphone level up to line level, and then something to whether it's a computer or something else, to digitize that signal. USB does all of that. Yeah. So for those of us who who like the simpler life, it's it's a it's a real benefit. Um. One of the wonderful things that I can rely upon is the fact that I work for how stuff works, and we have an audio podcast recording studio, and all of this stuff gets set up for me. So I really live in the lap of luxury as far as that's concerned. But if you're really doing it on your own, these are the sort of things you just you know, the basics that you need to know. It's not that you necessarily have to go and take a full course in audio engineering, but knowing some simple basic rules of thumb to follow will really guide you in the right the right direction for you to have really good audio quality. So U, I really appreciate you coming on the show and and I don't Oh yeah, absolutely, I'll probably have you on again. We'll talk about something completely unrelated to audio engineering. It'll maybe be a discussion about your favorite type of of starship in the Star Trek universe, and your answer will be USS Reliant because that's the best. Uh. Clearly you've put a lot of thoughts. I will, yeah, USS Reliant is my favorite starship in Star Trek. So not related at all to sound engineering, but I felt that it was on my chest and I needed to express it. It's unrelated, yes, uh so, So Steve, where can people find your work? If they they they've heard the stuff that sounds amazing, they want to know more about what you do? Where can they go? Gosh, I'm I'm all over the internet? Uh geat cred witch Jonathan mentioned at the top of the show, you can find over at geak cred dot net. You can kind of get in touch with me through Steve Rickyberg dot com or follow me on Twitter at Steve ricky Berg to see what I'm up to. Fantastic, Steve, thank you so much again, and listeners, I'm so thrilled this is. This has been a grand experiment having one of my buddies, uh distantly recording as I record so that you listeners can have the greatest experience possible. Now, if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's someone I should interview or a topic that you've always wanted to hear more about. Maybe it's a type of technology, or a company or a personality in tech, let me know. Send me a message. My email address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. My handle at all three is tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again. Releases for more on this and thousands of other topics because it how staff works dot com.