macCompanion's Venture into Podcasting

By Wayne LeFevre

As some of you may, or may not know, macCompanion has been producing an audio version of our monthly issues since September of 2006. Until last month, when I had to take a few weeks off due to an illness, this was done with a combination of real and synthesized speech. I wasn't real keen on using the synthesized speech, but a combination of Cepstral and Acapela 3rd party voices sounded much better than Apple's Tiger voices. Of course, you could spend hours tweaking each word and paragraph and get a pretty decent sounding output. This course of action would be ideal if you were having the computer saying the same things over and over, such as in a telephone system.

The magazines audiocast, though perhaps not the best sounding in the world of podcasts, still can be listen-able if you could not read or hadn't the time to read the online or PDF version. I'm still not happy with it and have been experimenting of late to try to make it easier to listen to. One positive note in using synthesized voices is that one person can use many voices to break up what could be a monotonous hour. Even still, as those who make their own podcasts can attest, this isn't something to take lightly and takes an incredible amount of time. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the books I've read say that you can do a half-hour podcast in about an hour depending on post-production time. I can do it in two to three days. OK, granted so far I've been having to take at least a minimum of a half to and hour per column to transfer into synthesized speech, depending on the writer and how many abbreviations or non-standard words or acronym's used. So what are the options?

One that I have been tinkering around with lately is using my voice to read the articles. Of course, the problem with that is that it's just one voice, and trying to make it sound like it's not just being read is very difficult, though it is and it does. February columns edition gave me an opportunity for my daughter and I to make a 'Cast Noir play with Rick Sutcliff's fine article, since it was written that way. That was actually quite fun to do.

Another idea that would be ideal and very interesting, but I've been hesitant to put forward, is have the authors send in audio of their own columns. There would be resistance, of course. For one, that would just place another burden on our volunteer contributors. The next problem could be the fact that some authors simply might not have the ability to record a session on their own. It's also sometimes very dicey approaching and dealing with artists of any kind, especially those who volunteer their work. Almost akin to approaching a minefield, one misstep and, well, boom. As we can unfortunately attest, one misunderstanding or something taken out of context can have someone take their talents elsewhere, and everyone loses.

So I come to you, dear readers, to help make macCompanion better. To give feedback to what we are doing, or trying to do. So far the magazines that have podcasts mostly all do the same thing, weekly recaps of Apple related news. Any "fan" such as myself, and I'm sure some of you, usually know most of the days news within minutes of waking every morning. Thanks, of course, to RSS, various newsites, and Mac OS Ken. A staple of every fan’s daily routines. So I would like to know, what would you like to hear? The columns? Detailed or perhaps summaries of the reviews? Or shall we stay the course? macCompanion is a great magazine, as it's my intention to make it even better, but I need your help.

To help out, send audiocast comments about to: feedback@maccompanion.com,

with AUDIOCAST as the only entry in the Subject of the email.

Thanks.

Wayne