We discussed a number of different options. We could use a cell-phone conferencing feature, but we judged them to have inadequate sound quality to pick up the conversation in a large conference room. We could purchase a new phone and run a long telephone line to our fax line, the one direct outside line that was working (because it was bypassing our internal PBX system). But that was still judged to have too many risks (using a new phone during an event).

So we resorted to Skype. I plugged a laptop into our sound system:

• line-out on the laptop plugged into an input on the mixer
• microphone input on the laptop plugged into the auxiliary output of the mixer

It worked surprisingly well. The teleconference participants got the direct sound connection from our sound system, resulting in very high sound quality to them. And their speech was routed through our sound system and broadcast over the loudspeaker system, so that all the conference participants — whether they were in-room or on the telephone line — could hear each other.

The one improvement I think I will try to make next time it to get a mixer that has two separate, individually controllable output channels. Our existing mixer had two outputs — main and control room — but when the volume on main was turned down, it also turned down the control room. So there was no effective way to eliminate line chatter from the remote end. This was a problem at one point: one telephone participate started chatting with what was presumably someone in here office, for all the conferenece to hear. This problem could be avoided with two individual outputs: the sound technician could monitor it the mix on headphones, for example. The technician could then instantly mute the telephone output whenever needed.

It’s amazing what one can do with a little ingenuity and a few audio cables.

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Happy New Year everyone! Blessings to you this year.

(Photo is originally from 2009 Fourth of July celebration on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.)

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NYTimes Year in Review

The above is just a sample — click through to see the entire chart.

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Early Recordings

So here’s what we did. At first, we purchased an Olympus DS-30 digital voice recorder (~$100). The Olympus has a great microphone in it with a bunch of different recording settings. We chose the high quality (HQ) mono — we didn’t need stereo for what were going to be voice recordings. (I just learned that the Olympus can be programmed to turn on and start recording at preset times. Very handy, and I’ll show you why in a subsequent post.)

Eliminating Distractions with Directional Microphones

We used the recorder as-is very successfully for about a year. But the Olympus has an omnidirectional microphone, meaning it would pick up sound from anywhere in the room. That means lot’s of distracting noises were picked up — coughing, paper rustling, doors shutting, etc. So we upgraded to some directional microphones, which accept sound only from one direction. When they are pointed at a presenter, they pick up his or her voice well but they reject sound that comes from “off axis” (meaning sound from the side or behind a microphone).

We chose Shure 81A microphones, for about $100 each. They were connected to a Behringer xxx mixer, about $80, which provides the phantom power to the microphones and let’s us record more than one guest at a time. The Behringer mixer can handle up to 2 mics at a time, though the company also offers models that handle more. The microphones were plugged into the mixer, with the output from teh mixer then plugged into the microphone input on the Olympus recorder (notice we are still using the Olympus to record, but we are using an external microphone rather than teh Olympus’s built-in mic).

The difference in the sound recording was immediately apparent. Not only were distracting coughs significantly reduced, but the sound quality of the presenters’ voices was richer and deeper. The sound felt much more human, while the previous sound felt tinny and far away.

The Setup

The setup for the whole system is surprisingly simple. The mics are placed on the table, and they are connected to the mixer inputs with XLR cable. We purchased a cheap cable floor cover to run the cable over the carpet. The outputs on the mixer go to

1. The amplifier for our ceiling speakers
2. The Olympus recorder

The mixer has a separate volume knob for the speakers (labeled “main mix”) and the recorder (“control room”). This works to get the output level right for both the loudspeakers and the recorder.

After Recording — Post Processing

Recording is only the first part; the second part of voice production is post-procesing, where we make the audio sound as good as possible.

For post-processing the sound, I used the free, open-source program Audacity to edit my sound files. Audacity is very capable and can export to MP3 (with the addition of the LAME library). The Olympus recorder only records in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format, but with the beta version of Audacity 1.3.x, you can open WMA files with the optional FFMpeg decoder.

Once the audio is imported into Audacity, I cut out some from the beginning and end, and added a prerecorded track (about 30 seconds long) at the beginning with a little music and a voice saying “This is a recording of the East-West Center in Washington. Copyright 2009.” This track is the same on every file. By having the same intro to each file, brand consistency is established, similar to the opening track of a TV program or radio show.

So the post-processing process from beginning to end is:

1. Record audio using Olympus recorder
2. Plug Olympus into computer and download audio file to computer
3. Open the file in Audacity
4. Make adjustments to audio, including raising the volume if needed
5. Add title audio track
6. Export from Audacity to MP3 format (using 32kps mono)
7. Upload MP3 file to web server

Conclusion

If you’re just recording from your computer desktop, I would suggest a nice large-diaphragm microphone with a USB connection. That will allow you to get great sound quality without the hassle of needing a mixer. One model is:

• Blue Microphones Snowball USB Condenser Microphone — about $100

Hopefully this helps someone put together some really professional sound recordings of live events for relatively little money.

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The article essentially lays out how there are two different groups called “Taliban” that the U.S. is fighting in Afghanistan, with quite different motivations and constituencies:

At the core of the tangle are the two Taliban movements, Afghan and Pakistani. They share an ideology and a dominant Pashtun ethnicity, but they have such different histories, structures and goals that the common name may be more misleading than illuminating, some regional specialists say.

… Though both groups threaten American interests, the Afghan Taliban — the word Taliban means “religious students” — are the primary enemy, mounting attacks daily against the 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan. Washington’s biggest fear is that if the Afghan Taliban overrun the country, they could invite Al Qaeda’s leaders back from their Pakistani hide-out.

It’s no surprise that the most dangerous group is the one that was ousted by the American invasion in 2001 — that group has the most to gain from a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan:

… The Afghan Taliban, whose group is by far the older of the two forces, have been led by Mullah Muhammad Omar since he founded the movement in 1994. They seeks to regain the power they held over most of Afghanistan before being ousted by the American invasion of 2001.

… By comparison, he said, the Pakistani Taliban were a far looser coalition, united mainly by their enmity toward the Pakistani government. They emerged formally only in 2007 as a separate force led by Baitullah Mehsud under the name Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Students’ Movement of Pakistan.

Of course, things are further confused because of the porous border between the two countries:

…most leaders of the Afghan Taliban are based in Pakistan, directing their forces from hide-outs across the border. Mullah Omar and his top deputies are believed to be in or around the southern Pakistani city of Quetta. Two other major factions in the Afghan insurgency are led by veteran Afghan warlords, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who are in Pakistan’s tribal areas, where the Pakistan Taliban is strongest.

Al Qaeda’s leaders, including Mr. bin Laden, are believed to be hiding in the same tribal areas of Pakistan. While it has been weakened by American missile strikes, the terrorist network nonetheless is believed to have provided support for the Pakistani Taliban’s strikes against the Pakistani government.

The article mentions that the Afghanistan-Pakistan area has so many ethnic, historical, political and geo-strategic complexities that it is confusing even for experts. That makes it is extremely difficult for the layperson to understand what is going on there, and in the U.S. war there. Nonetheless, with U.S. lives on the line, and more troops to enter the area soon, we owe it to ourselves and the country to understand what we can.

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Along the beach in Washington

Pictures from our trip to Washington state.

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Maybe now I’ll have time for some National Geographic magazine reading. The last issue I’ve finished is probably April.

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