.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Use the i-Sound Pro recorder to beef up your radio chops
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz has done a lot of radio in my years as Computing Unplugged’s editor-in-chief, but we think the recent rash of appearances has been something of a personal record. The thing is, while doing radio is fun, it also requires some degree of skill. And that skill requires practice. The more radio you do, the better you’ll be at it. And the better you are at it, the more often you’ll be asked back by hosts and the more radio you’ll do.
.OTHER
I’ve done a lot of radio in my years as Computing Unplugged’s editor-in-chief, but I think the recent rash of appearances has been something of a personal record. In the last three weeks, I’ve been on something like 12 different radio stations all across America (and one in Canada). I also did Fox News TV, an ABC TV affiliate in Orlando and San Francisco, and an NBC TV affiliate in Indianapolis.
Some of these radio appearances involved getting up around 5am (which, for the record is hours before noon, a time I consider far more suited to coherent conversation). Virtually all of them were about an article I’d written in FrontLine Security Magazine called [[http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/d935d279#/d935d279/36|"The Dark Side of Social Networking"]]. It’s a worthy read and it got a lot of on-air media attention.
Back in the mid-1990s, I’d done a bunch of radio after my book, The Flexible Enterprise came out. But then I stayed off the air for probably 13 or 14 years. I was definitely rusty. But when [[http://www.emailsgone.com|Where Have All The Emails Gone?]] came out at the end of 2007, it became clear I’d have to dust off the pipes and get ready for some more on-air time.
The thing is, while doing radio is fun, it also requires some degree of skill. And that skill requires practice. The more radio you do, the better you’ll be at it. And the better you are at it, the more often you’ll be asked back by hosts and the more radio you’ll do.
So, while one way to get good at it is to simply do more shows, there’s another way that can provide an enormous benefit (if you can handle listening to yourself). That’s using the [[http://www.abyssmedia.com/mp3recorder/index.shtml|i-Sound Pro recorder]] (great product) from AbyssMedia (terrible name).
Here’s what I do. Most radio stations webcast their programs as well as broadcast them over the air. But most don’t offer the ability to download the broadcasts after they’ve played. If, like me, you tend to do radio all across the country, there’s no way to record the broadcasts off the air. But you can record them off the Web.
And that’s where the i-Sound program, shown in Figure A, comes in.
.FIGPAIR A Use i-Sound to record Web radio.
The i-Sound program records pretty much any streaming audio that your computer can play. I have a computer set up in the ZATZ lab that has iSound on it. Before each program, I go into the lab and launch Internet Explorer. I specifically use IE for this because many on-air radio stations have really terrible Web sites and while they stream audio, they do so with some of the nastiest plug-ins you might imagine (almost all of which like IE and stall intermittently in Firefox).
Once the lab machine is launched, and I’ve navigated to the station’s Web site and found the "listen live" button (which is often incredibly well-hiddden), I start the computer listening to the program. I usually do this about 10 minutes or so before I go on the air.
One note: I use the lab computer for a couple of reasons. First, it has no speakers, so there’s no chance of the broadcast audio feedback-looping through my headset to the station. Second, if the audio plug-in from a given radio station is particularly destructive (and some have been), I can easily reformat the computer and reload an image.
At this point, the Web-based player is running, there’s a few minutes before the broadcast, and it’s time to load i-Sound. I launch the program, hit record, give it a filename, and set it and forget it. I go into my office, make sure the on-the-air sign is on the door, and do me some fine radio.
Once the program is over, I stop i-Sound, it writes a nice MP3 file, and I have a perfect audio copy of my program. And this is where I can increase my radio chops. I listen to the radio program, often with others here at ZATZ, take notes on where I made mistakes (embarrassing, in front of other people, but invaluable), get suggestions on where I could improve, learn where I took too long or was too meandering while answering a question, learn where I didn’t modulate my voice right, and on and on.
i-Sound allows me to debrief a broadcast with the actual audio of the broadcast, and that’s a very big win. Whether you’re doing on-the-air broadcasting, podcasting, or just recording some Internet radio, i-Sound is a solid program with a no-frills interface that’s never failed me. We give it a 4-out-of-5.
.RATING 4
Oh, and if you happen to want to listen to me, I’ll be on 88.9FM WDNA in Miami with Kaufman and Co., Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 11:20am. You can listen to them online at [[http://www.wdna.org/|WDNA.org]]. If you’re reading this after the broadcast, you can usually find my upcoming appearances on my [[http://www.davidgewirtz.com/radio|Appearances page]] or follow me on Twitter at [[http://www.Twitter.com/DavidGewirtz|http://www.Twitter.com/DavidGewirtz]].
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
Read [[http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/d935d279#/d935d279/36|"The Dark Side of Social Networking"]].
Learn more about the [[http://www.abyssmedia.com/mp3recorder/index.shtml|i-Sound Pro recorder]].
Listen to [[http://www.wdna.org/|WDNA.org]].
Listen to me on the radio by visiting my [[http://www.davidgewirtz.com/radio|Appearances page]].
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
