New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @kissthehippouk Arcila from Colombia today. Tasting notes are “Blackberry jam, mango, pineapple”.
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @kissthehippouk San Juan from Nicaragua today. Tasting notes are “Butterscotch, milk chocolate, poached peach”.
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @kissthehippouk Winter Warmer Blend from Colombia today. Tasting notes are “Blackberry jam, caramel, chocolate cake”.
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @squaremile Karambi from Rwanda today. Tasting notes are “Peach, blackcurrant, syrupy”.
Back to it now the forest is less swampy. Ouch.
“This was more effort than usual” says Strava, which isn’t surprising given I’ve not moved from my desk in a month 😬
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @Volcano_Coffee Finca Marilandia from Guatemala today. Tasting notes are “Green apples, milk chocolate, gooseberry”.
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @Volcano_Coffee Diego Robelo from Costa Rica today. Tasting notes are “Lemon, maple syrup, vanilla”.
For reasons I can’t adequately explain, we have acquired Junior Cluedo in Italian (instructions only Italian) and it’s the only thing the child wants to play.
We don’t speak any Italian.
The Taycan really is a spectacular-looking car. Might even prefer it in this dark blue to the launch colour white.
Not mine, sadly.
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @crosbycoffeeltd Mahango from Uganda today. Tasting notes are “Black cherry, honey, apricot”.
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @Volcano_Coffee Bifdu Gudina from Ethiopia today. Tasting notes are “Gooseberry, lime, blackcurrant”.
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @Volcano_Coffee Las Brumas from El Salvador today. Tasting notes are “Apples, stone fruit, hazelnuts”.
Hooray! My Volcano Coffee Works order arrived just as we completely ran out. My first order is a random selection - looking forward to trying it.
How to replace Ecamm Call Recorder with Audio Hijack for podcasting
If you’re a podcaster anxious about Ecamm Call Recorder being unsupported in future (or just unhappy with having to reinstall it after every Skype update) and all hosts are Mac users, I recommend Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack for podcasting via Zoom. Zoom can record audio itself but this approach is higher-quality and more reliable.
Each host installs Audio Hijack and configures this identical workflow:
Some configuration notes:
- Input Device: If your device supports multiple inputs (or stereo inputs) and you are using a normal (mono) microphone select it for both left and right channels.
- Recorders: File format is a personal / editing workflow preference, but if you choose MP3 ensure you change ‘Bit Rate Mode’ to ‘Constant Bitrate’ as that’s what you’ll be publishing in.
- Application: Turn off ‘Include audio input’ (or you’ll hear yourself twice) and turn on ‘Fill playback gaps with silence’.
This workflow creates 2 recordings per host: a ‘solo’ recording to give to your editor and a ‘mix-down’ of what each host heard (themselves in high quality, the other hosts in ‘Zoom quality’). You should never need the 2nd one but it’s useful when things go wrong to re-align tracks in the edit.
Note that the same audio interface should be used for microphone input and listening via headphones - this means each host can use direct monitoring to hear their own voice without the latency (delay) of routing it via your Mac, which gives a disconcerting echo effect.
We’ve now used this approach for many episodes of 361 and it’s been brilliantly reliable.
We only experienced one gotcha early on… Audio Hijack’s preferences screen lets you set audio processing on a scale between ‘low latency’ and ‘more reliable’.
Changing this (even if all hosts used the same setting) caused significant audio drift. The default (middle position) kept everything aligned for up to 90mins in our recordings. Don’t touch it.
Some follow-up questions:
Is this setup specific to Zoom? No, it should work on any video calling app, but we opted for Zoom as it works well in the regions our hosts live in and was something we all already used for other purposes.
How should I configure the audio settings in Zoom? Configure them as you would for a call that wasn’t a podcast. I leave Zoom’s audio settings as ‘Same as System’ and set the Mac to use my external audio interface in System Preferences → Sound.
What if I use a USB microphone? So long as your USB microphone has a headphone output for direct monitoring (all the popular ones do) and you use that, this will work if you select the mic as input and output.
When I start Audio Hijack I can’t hear people on the Zoom call any more, why? This workflow intercepts audio from the Zoom application and it won’t start routing it back to your audio device until recording is started. Start recording as soon as you open Audio Hijack and you’ll hear the call correctly.
Audio Hijack can do EQ, noise reduction and other clever stuff - where should I put that in this workflow? I’d recommend against that since this podcast is going to be edited later and that’s a better time to tweak things. If you also want to stream live and record, one host would add any audio clean-up and streaming blocks to the right of the mix-down track recorder.
This is a brain dump in case it helps people reading today’s news about Ecamm. Please contact me if you’ve questions - I’m happy to help if I can.
It’s difficult to context switch from podcasting to work Skype calls…
I’ve just announced to colleagues that I’d put ‘the link in the show notes’ 🤦♂️
Trying a new setup - 2 x 4K portrait screens switching between 2 devices. Love the excellent Aerial screensaver which plays across both. Also bias lighting is 👌 for reducing eye strain.
New Bellingcat book just landed in the post. Very excited to read it (if I can remember how to read anything linger than a tweet now).
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @TheGBswhatwhat Boater from Honduras today. Tasting notes are “Butterscotch, Lemon Acidity, Nutty Finish”.
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @squaremile Recolectores from Colombia today. Tasting notes are “Tangerine, Honey, Dried Mango”.
New ☕ coffee day!
Opening the @assemblyroast Oscar Murgas from El Salvador today. Tasting notes are “Ripe stone fruits, Marzipan, Sweet”.
