IFAS Podcast in Crisis - Time To Make Some Decisions

I can sympathise because, frankly, there's little more brain-numbing than sifting thru audio files to make them match in terms of level, or more particularly, quality.
As well as disparate file types, i always find that the problems are always intelligibilty of speech and poor signal/noise ratio that'll give rise to hiss. That can be sorted, but with hard work and some experience needed.
In addition, other factors like using compression and limiters will make it appear more "radio-like" and professional.
Ultimately, is it worth it?
If there are the downloads to justify its existence then it might be worth looking at more seriously to turn out a better product that'll be valuable over a longer period of time.
In that case a few collaborators who know what they're doing can take turns to help.
But I haven't heard that many home-made podcasts that make me want to listen to them again. Very, very few people have got the ability to get information across in an interesting way, especially without the visuals, and I've far heard too many droning voices reading from scripts that bring me right back to drowsy afternoons in school.

Unfortunately I'm not very good with audio and stuff like that so I can't be much help with stitching a show together. All I can offer is to provide the skynotes peice each month. I can certainly see where Bart's coming from on this. I too would be interested to see how many people listen each month. That should determine if it is viable in its current format.

One suggestion. Would it be possible to provide the content we normally associate with the podcast in some kind of a wiki section on the IFAS site. That way everyone could add their own bits rather than relying on one person to shoulder the job of putting it all together. What I mean is more of an astro-zine rather than a podcast. That also might encourage more people to get involved.

Just my 2 cent.

I've been sound engineering for over 25 years on a professional basis, and I regularly put music and audio for entire shows together, and I mean staged musical shows as well as radio shows, so I'm prepared to stitch the audio together and do the necessary normalising/editing/dehissing/glitch removal to ensure quality and consistency.
Again, it just remains to see if it's justifiable to begin with.
Listening to the recent IFAS podcasts, they're pretty good.
At a critical level, speech just needs to be a tad slower than it is, and some EQing and limiting done to level the contributions out more, along with the removal of the odd pop and click.
How easy is it to get contributions for the podcast?
Bart's obviously been doing this solo for a while, and that gets demoralising after a while,as it's quite a bit to do.
Perhaps several people taking turns each month might help spread the load, ensuring that no-one gets fed-up doing it.
Dave's e-zine idea might be better, as it's easier to find things visually than by scanning audio, but once again, rather than people just loading stuff up, having someone to sub-edit it, correct and pare it down would help get it to a more concise and professional product.
Bart's obviously been doing this solo for a while, and that gets demoralising.
Perhaps several people taking turns might help spread the load, ensuring that no-one gets fed-up doing it.

I'm just thinking out loud here but is there some way of doing a live podcast?

I'm just thinking out loud here but is there some way of doing a live podcast?

www.talkshoe.com

Seanie, if you're game to take on the production work, consider it yours

Yeah, I'll step up to the plate and fill in while you can't Bart. I have all the techie stuff here to do it.