Whilst driving to work today I had to keep altering the volume to hear Chad’s wise comments… TR clearly have a great set up with the sound, but it seemed off in this episode.
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when I’m watching them while training with the fan on, they’re all quiet… It’d be nice to have them turn up the gain a bit for that. I didn’t notice anything on the last podcast though.
I do know that if they aren’t close to their mics the volume drops off quickly. That may have been the case last week
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Concur. I often find @chad harder to pick out than @Jonathan or @Nate_Pearson but on #196 is was especially noticeable. I listen in my car and had the phone and car stereo volume right up to hear. Likewise, I find the attack when the louder sounds on the podcast happen drives the autogain down and it takes a second or two to catch up. It’s no big deal, but I’d appreciate a bit more dynamic volume control.
@Jonathan - as a bit of a comms geek, could you enlighten us to the audio set up you use to record the podcast?
Agreed on this. I only do the podcast as well and just imagine Chad lounging back in his chair way far from the microphone. It doesn’t seem like that would be the case, but that’s what it sounds like.
I saw on another thread that they know it is an issue and are working on a solution to get the volume equalized.
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Yeah, Production quality was a bit off this episode. I could barely hear Chad. Nate and Jonathon’s voices were fine but the volume ebbed and flowed a lot. Especially Chad.
Chad is actually quieter 
Thanks for the feedback on the audio issues. In testing, all was well, but Chad has a tendency to fluctuate greatly in terms of his projection once we stream live.
We’ve recently switched out almost our entire setup and have more latitude to fix issues like this, so it should get better every week.
For the curious, here is our current setup:
Audio
- Heil PR40 shockmount/clamp to table
- XLR cable
- Yamaha MG12XU Mixer (with analog recorder for redundancy)
- USB cable
- Pushing audio to Logic Pro X (podcast) and OBS (livestream)
Video
- Sony a6500 (recording natively)
- HDMI cable
- Pushing to OBS (streaming and recording for redundancy)
Our producer is able to independently monitor the audio from the mixer and the livestream with this setup.
We do minimal post processing to the audio, but it is a key part of our process. We use Auphonic for that purpose.
We previously just used a Scarlett 18i20 interface to pass the signal through via USB, but the inability to independently EQ for the livestream became too problematic (hence the move to the MG12XU mixer.
The problem we are currently up against is a particular quirk that drops the audio levels from the mixer when transmitted via USB. We’ve done a few workarounds but audio quality has been sacrificed. I’m hunting down a more permanent solution that allows us to maintain crystal clear audio as we speak.
In terms of why Chad being quiet this week wasn’t something we could change, at this point with our temporary workaround we were maxed out on Chad’s gain before excessive noise was introduced.
We won’t have a typical in-studio podcast for a couple weeks since we’ll be traveling to 24HOP and Clif Bar Racing’s team camp, so we’ll have it all sorted by then.
You guys can also heckle Chad and tell him to ‘speak up!’
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Stick a mic on Chad or move all the mics away from Nate 
Or use duck tape to attach Chad’s head to the table and then point a microphone at him.
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Those little sotto voce remarks are often the killer lines which crack me up, to be fair. I imagine Chad + a beer is hilarious. Wouldn’t want to be the subject of his ire!
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I’ve just tested out a solution that I’m considering a “Plan B”, and it worked well. That said, hopefully the Plan A will work even better.
Stay tuned!
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Have you looked into compressors at all? They can help limit the spikes in volume, and helps to even things out. Available in both software and hardware formats. Just a thought!
Thanks for all the effort you guys put into the podcast - I listen live every week!
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Yep! We are applying adequate compression through our mixer. 
Good sound starts at the source. You can only take so much gain before introducing excessive noise into the signal chain. Good mic technique and sufficient volume will go a long way! You can always turn the gain down.
I hate it when a vocalist nearly whispers into the mic but keeps asking for me to turn them up in their ears.
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Can I request for a decent bump in volume across the board (on YouTube)…Love watching the podcast whilst training- but always struggle to hear it over the noise of trainer and fan!!! I currently have laptop on full volume and phone playing podcast at same time for extra volume (fun syncing the two so sound in sync!) and still struggle to hear it.
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