I traveled to Chicago a week ago and thought I would record two of my podcasts from my hotel room. Big mistake and EPIC FAIL!!
I didn’t test out anything prior to leaving. I just figured everything would work! Hahahaha. I was dead wrong. The equipment I brought was a Zoom F2 Field Recorder and my Microsoft Surface Go. I also had my Pixel 3 and the necessary cables to connect everything together. Little did I know the TRRS cable I have did absolutely nothing in getting audio from my phone into my Surface Go. Also, connecting the Zoom F2 to my Surface Go using the audio out from the Zoom F2 to the microphone/headphone jack in the Surface Go didn’t work. In essence I had no way to get audio from my devices into my computer unless I record and transfer over USB.
It was too much work. I had maybe two hours to record and I already spent a good 45 minutes finding out nothing worked. So, I recorded one podcast directly into the Zoom F2, uploaded that via USB to the Surface Go, then edited it together in Audacity. I hate editing so much and I wasn’t prepared to do it this way. It took forever to import the intro music and cut it all together. I don’t know how professional podcasters spend so much time editing when I can’t stand simple importation and insertion of clips before and after.
I always record “live to tape” so to speak. No edits all blemishes and mistakes for all to hear. I’m not a professional podcaster nor do I pretend to be. I’m doing this to learn about the medium, podcasting 2.0, and how streaming payments are going to work. I believe streaming payments for live and recorded content is the future of media consumption. It’s a great way to remove the middlemen from the transactions.
Next time around will I have to pack my PodMic and my Zoom Podtrak P4? I hope not. I like to travel light. I’m going to actually do some work this time to figure out how to mobile podcast with the equipment I want to bring. Hopefully I can make it work.
By the way, did you listen to the last episode of Podcasting 2.0? There’s a whole lot of stuff coming down the pipe. There was also a great episode of The New Media Show where Todd & Rob debate Tanner Campbell on RSS, its future, and the big platforms (namely Spotify). Personally I would like to see the continuation of RSS. What Adam Curry and Dave Jones, amongst others, are doing to extend the functionality of RSS and what the new podcast apps are doing to implement them is nothing short of magic. In just a year’s time they’ve implemented transcripts, location, chapters, etc. Making podcasting richer with a fuller experience inside the independent apps. When the value block is finished and implemented there will be nothing standing in between a creator of content, whatever that content may be, and the consumer of that content.
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