Technical tour of Skidrow Studios with caller Q&A

Thank you. Yeah. So, this is something I've been wanting to do for a while. There's not going to be a whole lot of people interested in this, but maybe a few. Basically, I want to talk about what we do here at Skid Row Studios, why we're different. Maybe get a little technical, not too much. But I think when you think of the word podcast, there's a lot of assumptions you make. And I don't know how it got that way. I guess because of the accessibility of making your own podcast. And it was kind of... I think early on it was marketed as, you know, hey, all you need is a laptop and a microphone and you can do this thing. And you and four of your friends are going to listen. And you're going to think that you're really funny or smart or interesting. Maybe you are. Some good storytellers out there. But the majority of the podcasts out there. Are pretty useless. Pretty boring. And. I'm not saying that, you know. Everything that we do here at Skid Row Studios is gold. But I do think that what we offer. The people that want to do their shows here is. An environment where. You really feel like you're producing a radio program. We give you all the tools and all the bells and whistles that a regular radio studio has. And when I talk about it. I tell people it's a radio studio. I don't really. Say the word podcast. I don't like that word because of the connotations that are associated with it. But. You know, to go over some of the things we have here that I think are. Pretty unique. When you hear the word podcast or Internet radio. We have a separate control room. We have a. Talk room with six mics. We have a little lobby area where people can hang out and. Guests can wait until they're ready to go on the show. And, you know, we use good equipment. Mic wise. We have. Three. RE320. The RE320 is fairly new from Electro Voice. It's. A. How do they say it? Competitively priced. Broadcast microphone. Similar to the Electro Voice RE20. And the Electro Voice RE27. Comes in at about $300. We have an RE27. And. A. Which is. Probably the. The. De facto standard in terms of broadcast microphones. When I. Got a visit to KFI radio. In Los Angeles. The whole studio was using nothing but RE27. And RE27 probably comes in at around $450. For one mic. And the. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. close to the RE27 and the RE20 in terms of broadcast standard mics. You can recognize it by its strange cylinder-looking shape, and sometimes it has this big windscreen on it, a big puffy windscreen. It comes with two different windscreens. I'm using the smaller one right now. I think it adds a little more dynamics to the voice. The big windscreen kind of flattens it out a little bit. But, you know, NPR uses Shure SM7Bs, KCRW, KPFK here in Los Angeles. I was able... I was able to go visit their studios. Nothing but Shure SM7Bs in that studio. And then... We kind of have the oddball mic, and it's my favorite mic. I think the hosts sound great on it. It's a Beyerdynamic M99. And I have not heard of any studios using this microphone. I think it's a really good microphone for broadcast. The only reason I got it is because I heard a mic shootout, a broadcast mic shootout on the internet. And they did a comparison of probably like 10 different mics that are used within the broadcast world. And I just thought this Beyerd just sounded beautiful. You have to do... You don't have to do very much with it. It's... It deals well with people speaking off-axis. Um... That's one thing that we always have problems with here is people come into the studio and... And it's odd to me. They come in, they talk very far away from the mic. Or they won't talk directly into the mic. They'll talk to the side. And, um... Especially the RE, the EVREs. Especially the EVREs. The 320... The 27 that we have. They don't deal very well with being off-axis. If you go off-axis with this mic... Um... You get super quiet. And there's a purpose behind that. It's because the mics are designed to not pick up ambient noise or things happening slightly adjacent to them. And that's on purpose. Um... But people... People don't, um... Don't understand that when they come in here. And... Myself or Nick or Mindy are fighting to get people to talk closer to the mic. And... And they don't know that the mic arms move. It's... It's funny. Just the little quirks that you notice when you see people come through here who maybe have never been on radio before. But even singers and bands will come in here and they'll talk really far away from the mic. And I don't know what the... Maybe there's psychological reasons because when people come in here it's more of a conversationalist setting. Um... They're being interviewed or something. So... Engaged in conversation they become unaware of the mic. And... And maybe that's the reason why people kind of move away. Or don't talk directly into the mic. They're looking at the person who's interviewing them. And it's... It's almost like, get this mic out of my face. I'm trying to have a conversation. Um... So I assume that's... That's what it is psychologically. Okay. Um... Moving from the talk room mics. That's six mics total. Um... Staying in that room to explain all the stuff. Um... Let's talk a little bit more of some of our equipment. Um... Headphone amplifiers. We're using Henry Engineering... Um... A multi-phones system. What's really nice about this system is that it... It... Has a number of features. The pods... There's a pod per microphone. Um... Everything's powered over... Your standard ethernet cable. So in the control room... We have the... The main unit. Um... And then through ethernet... We connect all the pods. And everything's powered over our... Over ethernet. So we don't have to put a power adapter on each one of these modules. Which is pretty nice. Um... The multi-phones allows you to create talkback zones. Um... The multi-phones allows you to create talkback zones. What this does is... It gives the control room... The ability to... Talk back into someone's headphones. Um... For example... Vince is doing a show... And he doesn't notice that there's a caller. I can push a button on the multi-phones... Uh... Controller here in the control room... And talk just to Vince in his headphones. And it doesn't go on the air... And nobody else can hear it. So I can feed him little notes. If I want to talk to everyone else... Um... I push another button on the main controller here... And my voice... And my voice... Over my mic in the control room goes to everyone else. So I can push a button and say... Move your mic closer. No one can hear you. And that doesn't go on the air. And... People can hear that in their headphones. Um... Unfortunately... Uh... One of the side effects of that is that... They don't realize that... What you're saying is... Only... Going to their headphones. So... Sometimes... Um... I'll push the button... Um... Talk to whatever host is on the line... I'll say, hey, you got a phone call. And they won't hear me correctly and they'll say... What'd you say? What? Oh, oh... We have a phone call? And it just doesn't sound good on the air. And... Not quite sure... How to solve that problem other than... Trying to get people... Um... Kind of used to... You know, the things that we're going to go on the air for... And the things that we're just going to say over the talkback. It'd be nice if there... I know professional radio studios... Will have lights... To indicate different types of things... So a light will go on... If it's the talkback versus on air... Um... One thing that they can do that I don't know if... If they realize is that when I'm using the... The Henry Engineering... Multiphones talkback... Um... I'm not turning on the control room mic... Um... And... We have an on air light... It actually says recording because they sent me the wrong cover plate... But... It only goes on when we're on the air... In the control room... So a host can realize that... If they hear me in their headphones... And they don't see that light on... I'm talking to them through talkback... So that's one way of doing it... And then... Um... What else do we have in the talkroom... Um... Oh, by the way, the Henry Engineering headphone controllers... Uh... Give you an on off switch so you can turn your mic off completely... You can... You can turn on the cough back button... Which is a momentary switch... Um... If you're coughing you can push that... Although... It's kind of pointless in our room because we have enough mics... And they're close enough together that... Um... Someone coughing is going to get picked up... Unless it's... Unless they're in the room by themselves... Which is rare for most of our shows... Most of our shows have... A host and a co-host... Or a room full of guests... Or bands or whatever... Um... It's rare that there's only one person in the room... Which... Which is another thing that I know is... Is kind of different from regular radio... Most stations that I go to... You have a host... And uh... That's the only guy that's in the room... But uh... You know... We're different here... We have a lot of different people coming through here all the time... Anyway... It absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely absolutely Here is the full mix. So that's pretty much the Henry Engineering headphone distribution that we do here. It was a very expensive piece of equipment. But I haven't seen anything that does exactly what it does and is as efficient as it is. I haven't had any problems with this unit at all. The guy who makes it is actually local here in Los Angeles. The manufacturer, the designer is up in Sierra Madre, which is pretty cool. Even though I couldn't buy direct from him, it's cool that they're local. Moving on, we have really good headphones. We have AKGs. The specific model number is K271MK2s. What's unique about these headphones is that when you're not wearing them, there's some kind of sensor in them that knows whether they're on your head or not. And when you're not wearing them, it cuts the audio. The nice thing about this is... In the broadcast world, if you're always wearing headphones, if you take your headphones off for whatever reason and a mic is hot, you get your headphones too close to the microphone, you're going to get feedback. These headphones help prevent that because as soon as it comes off your head, the audio is cut and there's not going to be any feedback. So we have those everywhere, control room, all six stations in the talk room. We got a really good deal on these headphones. Joel found something on eBay, some guy got a ridiculous price on these headphones. They're not the best sounding headphones. I would say they're a little... They're cloudy a bit, if that's a term. But for what we do... And how good we need it to sound, you know, people hear... The most important thing is they just are able to hear what they're doing and they're able to hear their clips and music. It doesn't have to sound amazing in their headphones here. It's more important that we have that feature that prevents feedback than it is for these to sound like truly amazing headphones. If you want truly amazing headphones, you're going to pay a lot of money. For Grados or something like that. I think Grado makes headphones that have like oak wood on them and shit, and they're like $3,000 or something like that. Just not necessary here. Moving on from that, we have... Nice cough. No cough button in the control room. No cough button in the control room. Fuck it. We have a computer, the talkroom computer, and it's a dual monitor system. The show host can use this computer to look up things on the internet, do whatever they want. They can also use it to play sound clips, and it'll go... The output from that computer goes to an audio interface that then goes to our board in the control room. So they can play whatever they want off that machine, and it'll go on the air. The other thing we use it for is the call-in status. And there's a little web page, a web interface to our call system, which I'll get into more later. That's actually another thing that we have that I think is fairly unique. But I'll get into that later. But the host can see the status of our caller hybrid to see whether someone's on the air or not. So that's the talkroom computer. I've been thinking that we need... It would be nice to have one more machine in that room for a co-host. But a lot of people are bringing in their laptops to do research, and we have... I guess this goes into the final piece of the talkroom, is audio interface. We have a Focusrite Sapphire Pro 40 8-channel audio interface, Firewire audio interface. I got one of these a long time ago. It was kind of one of the first things I purchased when I was getting into this. And, you know, I had... And, you know, you go through a lot of different phases when you're getting into a new project. And, you know, I realized that you always start off in the beginning, and it's not because I want to start in the beginning. It's just that you learn so much in the process. You know, when I started this, I thought, oh, all I need is an audio interface and a computer. And I'm going to be the podcast master. And that's all I need. And then you start to learn, like, how the professionals do it. And you... There's always phases in terms... Even in terms of the equipment, when you... If you think, oh, I got the best thing there is, and then you realize, oh, this is like beginner shit compared to what's really out there, or what the big stations are using, or what professional broadcasting industry uses. And you really start off just having no idea. I have zero background in broadcast, as I don't think anybody that does shows here has any kind of broadcast background. And I like that. I guess it has its upsides and downsides. I think we look at things in a different way. Simply because we haven't been influenced by the corporate machine that is terrestrial radio. But, you know, obviously, it also means that we're all starting from scratch, and we're making things up as we go. But that's fine. I mean, I kind of... don't see that as a downside either so much, other than, you know, taking more time to learn how to do something properly. But we have this audio interface in the talkroom, and we can use this for whatever. This is what the talkroom computer plays sound through when bands come in, and we need to mic up a band or do a direct input for whatever equipment it is they're bringing in, be it turntables for a DJ or guitars for a band, or we want to hook up a condenser mic to mic the room when a band is trying to play live in the talkroom. We can use this interface and control all the levels in that room, and then basically take the mix from that, and... send it out to the console. That is pretty much the talkroom. Oh, we have a TV monitor in here, and we use the TV monitor primarily to display a countdown timer for each one of the shows. When we do live shows, it... starts exactly on time at the top of the hour, and we time out the shows exactly so the hosts know exactly when to quit. I know this is something that terrestrial radio does a little bit better than we do. They're able to time things out perfectly and get in all their radio spots, and they're very flexible in terms of, you know, whether they start right on the minute or five minutes or before or after. And the thing that they know that I don't know is how do they synchronize with their recordings. We have... We have to do things on a timed basis because the only way that I can automate the recordings that we use to put up as podcasts, on iTunes and what have you, various places, is to... The only way I can synchronize that is to use the built-in scheduler on our recorder. And I know that there are ways through a serial interface on the recorder to trigger certain types of events that we could probably do via the computer and the automation software on the computer in the control room. But right now, this... I'm not quite ready to try to hook up a serial interface and do all the work that's necessary. So this works pretty good right now. It just means that people have to be on a timer and they have to watch that time. So we use the talkroom monitor to display a timer to keep everything sane. So it's synchronized. Now, this... This screen, it's just a flat-screen TV hung on the wall. The cool thing about it is we're using it as a second display to our control room computer. And what's cool is that we're using a wireless HDMI transmitter. And when I first got this TV, I thought, if they only had wireless HDMI transmitters, this would work great. And I just had no idea that they actually existed. So I went to Best Buy and bought this thing. And sure enough, all I do is take the HDMI output from the control room computer, plug it into this transceiver, plug another transceiver into the TV in the talkroom, and the display from the control room computer ends up in the talkroom. So we can control all that from the control room, which is pretty cool. Never saw that at a studio either. And sometimes we can put different things up on the screen. If a guest is in... You know, for example, last night, Chisholm Worthington was in the studio, and while he was playing one of his songs, I threw up one of his YouTube videos on the talkroom TV just to kind of go along with the theme and make it more fun for the hosts and guests that are in the talkroom. So that's the TV, and that is everything in the talkroom. Now let's move on to the control room and get into details as to kind of how everything is hooked together and some of the pros and cons of our current configuration. We have the control room computer. The control room computer runs... It's got two main functions. It runs Nicecast, which Nicecast is a piece of software that takes our audio that passes through the computer and pushes it up to our live stream. That's how we do our live broadcasting. Everything we do here is live. What I'm doing right now is live, even though I hope nobody's actually listening right now, but it's live if people are out there. Nicecast takes our audio stream and puts it up on the Internet. The second thing the control room computer does is it runs our automation software. Now we run Max here. That's another thing that just is not seen in your standard radio studios. The Windows market has pretty much locked up automation software for radio studios. And we use Max because myself and Joel, our background, we're computer geeks. We've been in the computer Internet industry for a long time. And most Unix geeks that I know use a Mac because it's easy for them to launch a terminal program and get a Unix shell and use it like they would a Unix machine but still have some of the advantages of a polished operating system with supported software. So we use Max, and that may, you know, if a guy came in here to do some consulting, he'd probably say get rid of the Max. But we use an automation software called Radio Logic. It's one out of maybe three radio automation pieces that I found for the Mac. And it's by far the best one. The other two are kind of hacks. And the other one I know of looks more like just regular DJing. It's a little bit more of a DJ software. But this software is designed to run as much like what you would find in a terrestrial radio station or a big corporate radio station. It allows you to do scheduling. It allows you to run radio spots. And the other nice feature is that it interacts nicely with iTunes. So we can create playlists in iTunes and use it within the automation software. We don't have to have a separate music library, which is nice because most of the other software packages force you to kind of duplicate your library or have your library in a proprietary database. Where this Radio Logic, because it's Mac and it works directly with iTunes, you know, anything we import into iTunes or anything we purchase on the iTunes Store or whatever is immediately, will be available for us in our automation software, which is pretty nice. And the scheduler, the scheduler took some getting used to and there was a bit of a learning curve for me with the scheduler. But I'm getting better at it all the time. It's really powerful. It has a lot of features. But it is a bit of a learning curve. And some of the documentation is a little misleading. I mean, it's, the documentation is clearly written by the guy who developed it and it's great software. But, you know, if you've ever developed software or worked in that world, writing your own documentation sometimes isn't great because you make a lot of assumptions based on things that you know because you're the guy who coded it. So sometimes you won't go back and sometimes you won't go into depth on a subject that, that other people might need a little more background on. Anyway, things run 24-7 here. Nicecast, our live streaming runs all day, all night. Our automation software, for the most part, plays repeats, queues up our live shows, inserts our radio spots and any commercials we have. Right now we have promo spots for all the other shows. So in between shows, we have a few minutes usually or one to two minutes to fill those gaps with, with radio spots. It also handles choosing random tracks from a playlist in iTunes. So, you know, right now, it's set up so it will play three radio spots. You know, I got an ad for More Music Radio Pod, Piñata Hour and Love Bite. It'll choose those randomly and just throw them in, play those. And then if there's still time after the promo spots played before the next program or the next repeat program, it will fill that gap with music from a designated playlist. And it works out pretty well. Still getting used to it. Still some fine tuning. But right now, things are pretty seamless. The only thing that we have to interrupt is when, if we have to interrupt the scheduler, we have to do it for live shows because like I said, those have to start right on time and end at a specific time to get to the show. And then we have a specific time to allow us to automate the recording of those shows. So that's the Control Room Computer. And, you know, we use it for other things to edit sound clips and whatever. I have the output from the Control Room Computer going to another Sapphire Pro 40 audio interface. The cool thing is that I was able to use one audio interface and create two separate stereo channels off the Control Room Computer. So what's cool about that is that I can say our automation software goes through this channel on our board. And on our broadcast console in the Control Room, there is a fader for DJ, which is the automation software, and there's a fader for control room and control room. And then there's a fader for the control room. So I can play music in iTunes, say I'm previewing something, I can put the iTunes channel on the cue on the broadcast console, which means that I can hear it through a little speaker in the Control Room, but it does not go on the air. It's cued. I can preview a song. I can load up a YouTube clip. I can completely ignore the show going on. I can play music on the broadcast console. I can play music on the broadcast console and watch a movie and play it through the cue computer. Not that I would ever do that because I pay attention to all our shows fully without an ounce of deviating from total focus on what's going on. That's not true at all. But that's how we have things set up so we can have a lot of fun. We can cue up music and preview things. Separate channel for the automation software and for everything else. Pretty much it's the automation software on one channel and then everything else on a separate channel. Then we have what's next? I mean there's just so much. We can talk about our console, I guess. We have a very basic Wheatstone console. It's from Wheatstone's kind of affordable pricing company called Audio Arts Engineering. Consoles are expensive. Really expensive. So when I first got into this and I made the decision, yeah, I'm going to build this like a radio studio and not like a laptop and a USB microphone, I needed to decide on a console that was affordable. To be honest, this is pretty much the most basic console that you can buy for under four grand. I think this was $3,500 for this Audio Arts Engineering console. It's called the Air 3. It's got 12 faders. It's got a control room, or a talk room talkback. It's got a headphone potentiometer, a studio potentiometer for playing the broadcast in the studio or the talk room. It's got AB channels. It's got two program buses. And it's got a mix minus channel for callers. And that's pretty much it. You know, it does things like controls the on-air light. We also have the talk room talkback hooked up. So I built a little Radio Shack box with a momentary switch in it. And made that box connect via quarter inch TS connector. And people in the talk room can push that button and talk into the host mic and will hear it over the console's cue speaker. So if the host wants to talk back without going on the air, he or she can do that. They have to remember though that their mic cannot be turned on in the control room. If their mic is on and they're on the air and they push that button it's just going to go on the air. So usually what you want to do as a host is wait for a music break or signal to us through the control room window turn off my mic, I need to tell you something. Usually it works out though. The host waits until a break or something to talk to us. So that's the console. Let's go on to the rack. The rack has a lot of really cool things in it. We start at the top. We have Duro loudness meters. Duro, another local company, they're up in the valley. The first time I saw Duro meters is when I was watching a guy named Mark Jensen who does a he was a major influence in the decision to go the radio studio route. And he basically does the same thing. He's a voice over guy with a lot of broadcast experience. And he you look him up on YouTube, he does videos and podcasts and bass and basically he just talks about broadcast equipment and voice over equipment and all day and he loves that. Is someone calling? Nobody's supposed to be listening to this. Hello? Hello? How you doing? How's it going? Good, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Good, good. Who's calling? My name is Ricky. Ricky, what's going on? Not much. I was just curious. You guys are talking a lot about the studio. It sounds very cool. I'm trying to keep up. I'm wondering what would be a good studio for a beginner who wants to start a podcast. Where's a good place to start without spending too much money? And I really love the show and I like the technical details you guys use. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I'm kind of doing this impromptu. This wasn't planned. But I always wanted to kind of get some of the technical details out about our studio and just get it recorded. But yeah, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, myself included, people are very interested in the exact specifications of the hardware. Like I know myself, I like to know, sure you guys have Macs, but what is, you know, what kind of power can the USB port put in? Well, I can tell you our situation. We run a Mac Mini, the latest Mac Mini. As far as USB goes, the only thing we use USB for in our studio is hooking up USB sticks when guests come in to bring their tracks. Okay, so mostly firewire then, right? Exactly. The audio interface that I use, the Focusrite Sapphire Pro 40 is a firewire interface. And the interesting thing related to this, and maybe somebody out there can tell me why this is, but our console, our mixer in the control room actually has a USB channel. So we could hook up our computer directly to a USB channel on our console, but I noticed a major decrease in audio quality when I used USB versus the firewire interface. And I don't know if that's just because the firewire interface has more bandwidth than our USB interface on the console, but it was enough for me to not use the USB interface on our console at all. Yeah, definitely. I think firewire is the way to go, just because USB is a little slow. I know USB 3.0, they've got it on the retinas and stuff, but I think firewire is definitely the way to go. Especially for production. And unfortunately, firewire is going to become a standard of the past, and I'm waiting for all these these, uh, what's the new interface on the Mac now? Thunderbolt. Oh man, Thunderbolt, yeah, yeah, Thunderbolt. It's just like, until they come out with a new, cooler word, pretty much, like Apple Archangel, instant. I'm seeing no, I'm not really seeing a lot of Thunderbolt devices, or at least I haven't heard of any. I guess there's a few disk arrays and stuff out there that are Thunderbolt, but, and displays, but I haven't heard of any, you know, it's not hitting the market, like, I guess it took firewire a while, I don't know. Yeah, and I think too, because it's like Apple hardware, you know what I mean? Like, I think they kinda own it. Yeah. So they sit on it for a while, and they, and then like, they're like, okay, now you guys can make like MIDI controllers, surfaces that are Thunderbolt, and I mean it's like totally instant, it's thick, but until they allow other people to use it, it's, you know, it's like just an Apple thing, so I don't know, it's kinda weird. Yeah. So, so, I don't wanna forget your original question, No, man, I, basically, I'm just starting out, I just recently actually came from PCs, um, I used a very basic PC setup, and I was just wondering, in your opinion, what do you think would be the best software slash hardware combination, like, under a thousand dollars, to start out, not necessarily to do a podcast, but to just produce and to make quality audio, what would you say? Well, um, for under a thousand dollars, um, you are already have the computer, correct? Yeah. You have a PC that you're already gonna use, um, that's powerful enough to do whatever software you want, right? Well, I just, I just got a brand new MacBook Pro. That's why I asked. Okay, okay. Because I'm, I recently switched to Mac, and I'm very curious, because I prefer the operating system, like, you guys are talking about Unix, like, solid, so I'm just curious what you think is, uh, is a good starting point. Now, now, okay, couple more questions. When you say produce things, do you want to produce radio-like shows, or, or, or are you thinking about producing music, or something else? Or, or do you want to primarily do talking? Not primarily talking. I'd like to mix the two. Um, I do, do like to mix music, and, uh, I'd like to have a nice microphone that could handle, you know, having music in the background. Right now, my PC setup is totally, you know, crap. But, um, I think kind of a mixed multimedia, kind of diversity show, you know, anything goes. Just curious what I can do with, you know, the most variety as possible, I guess. So, you know, I, I can only speak to the things that, that I've used personally, obviously, but, um, I would spend the money on the audio interface and the microphone. Um, as far as software goes, I mean, if, if you're aware of open source and, and, you know, you're, you're into that sort of thing, or at least thinking about it, um, I, I use, uh, Audacity, which is, uh, an open source, uh, sound editing utility, and I do everything through Audacity. And there's tons of free plug-ins, um, there's a great, uh, compressor plug-in for Audacity that I, I process a lot of our, our spots and our, our, um, promos and things like that through Audacity, and I, I use Audacity for everything. And... Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. And, and just look up Audacity, um, it'll pop right up. Yeah. Now, as far as mics, um... Yeah. You know, I, I, I think for a, a good dynamic mic, you're gonna pay around 300 bucks. If you, if you go with a Shure SM7B, that's about $350 just for the mic. Yeah. You can't go wrong with that mic. It, it's versatile. You can use it for broadcast, you can use it for micing, uh, instruments or amps or, or anything like that. Um, that's a really great mic. If you don't wanna go quite that expensive, then, then for, for the mics that I've used, the, the RE320, the Electro-Voice RE320 is a really nice mic. Um, and that comes in at around 300 bucks. Well, I have a question. Um, cause I've been looking at, um, because obviously if, if I do use, use those mics, I'd need like a preamp or something. How do you feel about USB and denser mics? I've been looking at like the Blue Tiki, I mean is it just like, crappy hardware? Is, you know what I mean? Like is it worth it to go full on condenser or dynamic or? Well, you, you probably don't wanna get a condenser mic if you're going to be, you, think of it this way, and someone who's a much better audio engineer than, than myself explained it to me this way, uh, a condenser mic is more like your eardrum, so um, when you put a condenser mic in a room, it's going to pick up things in the same way that your, that your ear does. And so, um, it's good for applications where you want to mic an entire room, um, you want to, to pick up, um, um, like a, a choir or something like that. Um, it's, it's not so good for, for broadcast, um, unless unless you can absolutely isolate the room that you're in and make it absolutely quiet. I tried using a condenser mic, um, early on just because when I first started doing this thing, um, I had some condenser mics from years ago and it was the only mics I had and I was trying to use this and things just sounded terrible because it, it picked up a pin drop, you know, and, and, uh, very sensitive and you got a lot of ambient noise in there. Um, uh, uh, dynamic mic, um, will uh, deflect most sound that is around it. So, I, I can give you an example while we're on the phone. I'm on an Electro-Voice RE20. I'm talking directly into the mic right now, but now if I just talk slightly to the left, hello, hello? Yeah, I can hear it, I can hear it. It kind of muffles it out. Yeah, and, and, and that was just me, like, turning my head slightly, so, so it, it deflects things that are behind or around it pretty well. Okay. Whereas, like, a condenser would have probably picked that up. It would have picked it up. Along with, like, Cricut gellar in the background. Exactly. And it would, it would pick up my laptop running right next to me and, and, you know, me playing with change on this table right now and things like that. Cool. That's great, man, because I was honestly, I, I've heard so much about condenser mics and everybody's like, get a condenser mic, so it's good to know, and I'm just coming into it from the beginning. So, honestly, um, that helps a lot. Like, kind of now I know, like, you know, dynamic is probably more the way to go for what I want to do, so that actually helps. Yeah, and, and you, you will see broadcasters in the radio world using condenser mics, but the only time that they're going to use those condenser mics is if they're completely isolated in a sound booth, and they know that absolutely no sound is going to get in. Um, the, the, the advantage of the, the condenser mics is that, that you have a lot more, um, uh, headroom with a condenser mic and you don't have to drive your preamp quite as hard, um, because it's, you know, it's powered by phantom power. It's got 48 volts of electricity going to it to kind of amplify it. But, uh, unless you can completely isolate, um, I would go with a dynamic mic. Okay. Yeah, yeah, understood, man. And I, I can't afford, you know, a, a tiny little studio room even just with egg crates or whatever, so. I'm probably going to go with dynamic, so, um, Cool. Yeah, that helps me a lot. I've been looking at, um, different mo- you know, interfaces, audio interfaces, and really the microphone is where I was caught up. I, I appreciate the advice. That, that helps me out a lot. There, there's a, go on YouTube and look up this guy, um, it's called New Media Gear. And the guy, the guy that produces these little videos, his name's Mark Jensen, and it, it's one of the guys that really got me into it in the beginning. Um, this guy, you, you can go through his videos and hear him test, you know, 50 different mics. And, um, he's got a lot of great information on there. And this guy's a broadcast expert. I mean, he, he sounds great. Um, so go check that guy out and, and just do a little research on different mics. My, you know, I, I hate to get religious about it, but, um, because I'm, you know, kind of into radio, you know, I am into radio and I'm, I'm more into broadcast, I, the USB mics don't, don't do it for me. Um, there's something that feels kind of, uh, wrong about, about those mics. I don't... Right. And I, I can understand that too. It, it felt a little wrong and I, you know, especially my first mic, I, probably, I feel like buying a, a USB mic would kind of be cheating and I'd never really get that quality that I want. Yeah. So... I, I would... That Electro that you were talking about, that sounds, I mean, it sounds really good, so... Yeah, this, this is the RE-20, um, that I'm talking on right now and it is by far the, uh, the standard in broadcast radio. Um, the RE-320, which just came out recently, is, is kind of the less expensive version, but we use three of those here and, and they still sound great, so... Cool. Yeah. That comes in at 300 bucks. I would spend the money on the audio interface and the preamp. Um, these focus rates that I use right now, the Pro40, um, it's kind of, it, it, I believe it's considered like last year's model already, but this, this, uh, audio interface you can get now for like 300 to, to 350. And it's got eight channels on it. Right. And it's Focusrite, which is a pretty good company. Focusrite? What's the, the model? Just one more time? Sapphire Pro40. Alright. I got three of them. Oh, man. Nice. Yeah, I'll be definitely checking that out. Cool, man. Um, cool, man, yeah, I appreciate it. Real good talking to you guys. I love, I love the podcast. Uh, Kazoo actually got me started on it. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot for, uh, listening and, uh, and call back again sometime. Yeah, I will. You guys take care and, uh, have a good weekend, yeah? You too. Alright, thanks. Bye. Thanks. Cool. I did not, uh, expect a caller. I, uh, it's Friday night here in Los Angeles and most of our, uh, listeners are in the area out doing, uh, much cooler shit than I'm doing right now. But, uh, I appreciate the caller and, uh, that's very cool. Where was I? Um, I'm just gonna try to get through this rack. Um, I can't believe I've been talking for an hour already. But I'm gonna go through the rack and just kinda explain what each piece does. Um, some of these things are, are common, you know, kind of, uh, rack equipment that you'd find in, in, uh, a, um, guitar rig or, or a live audio rig and then other, other pieces that we have here are definitely more, uh, broadcast specific. Um, but I think I was talking about the durometers, these loudness meters and these, these are level meters, um, and I, I can't even begin to understand the majority of what these meters are capable of. Um, what we use them primarily for is getting a good gauge at, at what our levels are and that's pretty much it. But I know that these meters are capable of doing things like, uh, detecting, uh, stereo separation and, um, uh, imbalances and, and channels and things like that and, um, you, you can, you can have a whole degree in engineering on just how to use these level meters. Um, but for us it's simple, um, it has a, uh, the ability to, uh, kinda pause, uh, peak levels and we just try to keep that somewhere around, um, 3 to 6, um, dB. And if we're in that range, if, if, uh, we're, if we're anywhere between 2 and 11, we're okay. Um, if we're going over that then we're starting to clip and we're probably adding some distortion to our, our signal. Um, but, um, that's all we use the durometers for. Uh, these things were expensive. I think I paid 900 bucks for the, the pair. Of these durometers. And just look up Doro. It's D-O-R-R O-U-G-H. Um, again, another local Los Angeles company up in the, uh, the, the valley somewhere. Then, going down the line, uh, we def, we have a piece of equipment that is definitely broadcast specific. Uh, this is made by a company called Vorsis. V-O-R-S-I-S. And Vorsis is a, uh, uh, subsidiary or sister company to Wheatstone. Um, Wheatstone is the famous broadcast company that, you know, pretty much exists in every radio studio in the country, uh, either a console or some other equipment. Um, Wheatstone has, uh, is probably one of the biggest names in broadcast equipment. Um, but we have the Vorsis VP8 Plus digital audio processor. Um, I've heard people in broadcast refer to this as a final processor. I forget where I heard that, but it makes sense. Um, this processor is what really gives us our overall sound. And, um, all our, our audio, uh, goes through this processor before it goes live and before it gets recorded by our, our recorder. Now, um, took a lot of time to play with this thing. Uh, it's got a software interface that requires Windows, so, uh, I had to find a copy of Windows and install it in a virtual machine just to control this thing. Um, I went back and forth with Wheatstone a few times to get some tips on how to tune this thing up and, and it's still one of those, uh, it's got way too many knobs kind of piece of a piece of equipment. It's really, um, there's, there's it's unlimited as to what you can do and, uh, it will emulate, um, broadcast basically. Right now we have it in FM HD mode and it's got a multiband compressor, it's got an automatic gain control, um, it's got limiters, um, it's, it's got a whole bunch of really neat toys and knobs to tweak. Um, and anybody out there who is an audio engineer that, um, uh, maybe has a broadcast background or maybe has experience with Vorsys, uh, the VPA Plus final processor, I'd love to hear from you because this is one of those things where, where I could tweak it all day and, and still not be completely satisfied. Right now I'm pretty happy with it but I still feel like there's, there's more that could be done there. Um, couple things to note about this, um, the digital output from the VPA goes directly into our recorder. Uh, we have a Marantz uh, PMD 560, or 580, um, that's a Marantz PMD 580 and the AES output from our, our audio processor goes directly into the AES input on our digital audio recorder. Um, the analog output from the VPA is what connects to our control room computer that feeds our live signal. So, I just have, um, it's just, uh, XLR output from the analog into a stereo eighth inch jack that goes into our control room computer. And this is what Nicecast uses to send our live audio stream. So, um, going down the line, uh, is our Marantz PMD 580 digital audio recorder. Um, I've seen this very unit in most of the stations that I have had the chance to visit. Um, it's, it's a great piece of equipment, has a web interface to it, um, and has a scheduler built into the software. The scheduler allows us to, um, you know, do just that. Create a schedule of our live programs. So we put in the time that our live program starts, a file name, you know, what day it is, uh, is it weekly, daily, um, it has a bunch of parameters to basically schedule things, and this ties back to why we need to, um, do our live shows on a very specific schedule. Um, so it syncs up with our recorder. Our recorder starts, the live show starts at the same time, we capture the whole show, recorder stops at a, at a predetermined time, and, uh, there we go. Um, the Marantz has a really nice feature that allows you to automatically upload files over a Windows share. And, this, one of the things I want to stress is that, um, you know, with my computer background and with my Unix background, I try to automate as much as I possibly can, and that's, that's something that's carried over with me from the Unix world. Um, in the Unix world, if you can replace it with a five line shell script, you probably should, because you're gonna save yourself a lot of time in the long run. And I'm trying to use that mentality here in the radio studio, um, mainly because it takes a lot of time to do this stuff by hand. If I couldn't automate, it would take me a week to get a show posted. Um, or to even just process it and turn it into an MP3. But, um, Marantz made this nice feature that allows the unit to automatically upload a file over a Windows share, or in the Unix world we would call it a Samba share. And we have a Unix computer in the control room that does a number of things. Um, not only acts as our network gateway, but acts as a Windows share for our recorder. Um, here's some cool, cool tricks that I, I did. Um, in the Unix side, when the file gets written to the Unix computer, it's a Linux box running CentOS, if you want to know the details on, on the, the Linux side. Um, Linux has a, the ability to, um, monitor its file system via the core of the operating system. And so, I wrote a little program that when the file gets uploaded from our recorder, the Unix computer says, oh, hey, I got a new file sitting here. What, what do you want me to do with it? And, and I run a script. This is all completely automated. Um, it detects a new file, and then it starts to process that file. And, and we record in, in WAV format off the recorder, just cause, cause, uh, we want those pristine files that are, are, uh, before any kind of MP3 conversion. Or anything like that. Because there is loss no matter what. So we want those pristine, uh, files intact so we can use them and cut them up or do whatever we want to with them and, and we have the highest quality audio available to us when we want to use it. If we just recorded directly to MP3, um, you know, we could probably save a lot of steps, but we'd never have that pristine audio quality, um, off the, the 44.1 WAV file that, that we record on the recorder. But, you know, the file gets uploaded, it automatically gets processed in Unix. Um, I use LAME. LAME is a open source MP3 encoder. Um, um, to go through the whole process of the file, um, it's actually kind of funny. We do, we do a number of things. First thing we do is, uh, we run the audio file through a utility called SOX. S-O-X. And SOX is a Unix sound utility that's been around forever. Um, the reason we run it through SOX is in case there's any dead air at the beginning or the end of the file, we process it through SOX, which allows you to remove silence from the file. Um, and this makes things tight. Um, if you've ever listened to the More Music Radio pod, um, Vince likes to be really late. Um, it's kind of his thing. And, uh, sometimes, you know, we got dead air just cause Vince didn't make it to the studio yet. Um, at the very least what SOX will do is remove that dead air from the beginning or the end of the file before it gets processed. After that, um, we run, um, the utility through LAME. And LAME is a, uh, mp3 conversion. Um, uh, this is really, really bad, uh, standards for the radio, but I have to, uh, answer this message. Um... Awesome. I'm a professional. Um, and then after, uh, LAME processes the file, um, the same script that, that, uh, does all this stuff then uploads it to our servers. Automatically. So, we've gotten to the point now where after we do a live show, I don't really have to do anything with the file. It's completely automated and gets uploaded to the server. The only thing I have to do manually at this point, and I'm still trying to find an intelligent way to get around this, is post it to our website. Um, we use WordPress as a framework, um, for our RSS feeds and our podcast feeds, um, that iTunes uses and our iPhone app uses and, and, um, we still have to do that part manually, which is annoying, but also pretty hard to avoid. Um, the show hosts send me a show description for, for that night's show, and, you know, I, I can't, I'm, I'm not good enough yet to, uh, write a, a audio analyzer to automatically generate a show summary. That'd be really cool, but I'm not that good. Um, I probably know people that could do that actually, but, um, they don't want to waste their time doing that for me. Um, so, um, I hope that explains the, the, uh, kind of the file process from the recorder. Um, um, probably skipping a bunch of things, but anybody out there who has any specific questions, feel free to call in, uh, 800-893-9562 is the number. Didn't expect any live listeners, but I, I, I was surprised on that one, so that's pretty cool. Um, next in the rack is the Focusrite, uh, audio interface, the Sapphire Pro 40. Um, I explained this a little earlier, but the only thing this is really used for at this point is, is the two audio channels coming out of our control room computer for our automation software sound, and for our everything else. And they're on separate channels, uh, and separate faders on our console. After that, we have the JK Audio Innkeeper 2 Digital Hybrid. This is the piece of equipment that's responsible for handling our phone calls. And our whole phone system is actually pretty cool. Um, most radio stations will pay thousands and thousands of dollars for a, uh, Telos, uh, is probably the most popular company. They'll pay for Telos, which will give them a call screening system, and and, uh, all kinds of bells and whistles, um, to manage their phone calls. Um, we hired a programmer, well, I can't even say hired, the guy just did it for free, um, which still blows my mind. And we use open source phone, um, trunking systems. We have a, a, um, Asterix system. And Asterix is an open source PBX uh, system. There's a company we pay to host our Asterix instance. I'm sure it's just on some virtual host out there somewhere. I think we pay 20 bucks a month for Asterix. And we pay maybe another 20 a month for our, uh, SIP provider. Um, when you get into Voice over IP, um, you need someone that, um, is able to connect your number to, uh, your software. And, and we have a SIP provider. We use a company called VoIP VoIP dot com. And it's very inexpensive. We have our 800 number tied to, um, VoIP VoIP dot com. And then we have our open source Asterix PBX system tied into our SIP provider. And, um, I hope that's not too confusing. But the point is, is that we're running an 800 number. We have call screening capability. We have, uh, phone status capability. Uh, we can get voicemails. We have a menuing system. You know, press 1 for the More Music Radio pod. Press 2 for this. And press 8 to go on the air. I forget what the numbers are. But the point is, is that we have all these different things and we're probably paying between 40 and 50 bucks a month for a full blown phone system. And there is no way that, uh, the large radio stations they're paying probably thousands a month for their phone system. Um, and that initial cost of their phone hybrid, the thing that handles the actual connection into their studio, um, that system probably cost 5 to 8 grand alone. Um, so we did this, um, using mostly open source tools, um, and some intelligent programmers and we can screen calls. We can put in notes and information. We get their caller ID. It's all recorded into a MySQL database. We can go back and search that database for past callers. Um, we got all that stuff. And we can take two calls on the air simultaneously and conference them together. Um, most of the time we just have one of our lines open at a time. Um, experience wise, um, and this is probably just due to lack of practice or or really talking about it, but people get confused real easily when you have two callers on the air at the same time. Really, we need a host to be like, you know, he has to set it up and say they're talking about some topic that, uh, somebody calls and hey, I think you're a, you're a fucking asshole you don't know what you're talking about. And then we got another caller that calls in and says I think the guy on the phone right now is an asshole. And then we have to tell the host, hey, we have another call who disagrees with the first caller. Make sure you introduce them in a way that, uh, they realize they're both on the air at the same time. Cause when you just throw two people in the air at the same time, it just causes mass confusion. One guy thinks you're talking to him when you're really talking to the other guy. And so most of the time we just have the second line disabled. Which we can all do through a web interface. The nice thing about it being a web interface for a phone system is that any, um, anybody within the studio can look at the phone status and we can have a call screener who's sitting here taking calls and doing screening before they pass it on to the air. Um, the control room guy, the board op can uh, look at it and most importantly the show host sees it on his screen. So he knows when there's a call on the air and when he should say, hey, you're welcome to pinata hour. You're on the air, you know, that kind of stuff. So that's our phone hybrid. Um, also we can we can call out through this hybrid. Um, which, you know, is probably obvious to most people but we had a lot of fun last night on the More Music Radio pod doing a bunch of prank calls. We called a bunch of dominoes and all that kind of stuff and just did we're acting stupid but it was fun. Um, check that out on our Facebook page by the way, a couple of calls. Um, but going down the line on the rack, I'm trying to get through this. Um, we have the Air Tools voice processor 2X. Um, 2X because it's two channels. Um, this is a a voice processor or a mic processor made by Symmetric. And, um, it's a nice little rack mount unit that, uh, um, I think it costs around $1200 for this one piece. Um, and, uh, this controls our host mic and the mic right next to it. So that's the Bayer dynamic mic and the, uh, Shure SM7B is on this voice processor. And this allows you to add compression and, uh, has what's called a de-esser. So if you make a lot of S sounds, it'll make the S's not quite as sharp. Um, it will allow you to EQ the voice, create a bunch of presets, um, it also gives you phantom power if you do have a connection. It's a really um, denser mic that you want to use. Um, and it's also, uh, controlled by a piece of Windows software. So, um, but, you know, again, it's one of those tons of knobs type, type of toys where, uh, you could tweak that thing all day. I think, uh, we got the host mic sounding pretty good. I attribute a lot of that to the mic itself. But we do um, the other nice thing is, is, um, it's got, uh, a limiter and an exciter on it. Um, it's kinda like compression in a way, but, um, it'll allow you to cut out a lot of ambient noise. So, unless someone's talking to the mic at a regular volume, it'll kinda go quiet like a noise gate, I guess you would call it in like the guitar world. Um, so we don't pick up a lot of ambient noise. Then, below the AirTools voice processor, we have two more voice processors. These voice processors are made by Vorsys. And these are the Vorsys M2s. So, two units, a total of four channels, along with the AirTools and the Vorsys that covers all of our mics in the talkroom. That's six channels total of voice processing. And the Vorsys, um, I went with the Vorsys after the AirTools. Just because a lot of really good reviews, and I wanted to try something different. Um, the other mics aren't quite as good as the host or co-host mics. Um, so I wanted something that would kinda compensate. So I got the slightly better processors. And these things are beautiful. They're only controlled via software. They have no buttons on them at all. Um, but again, it's they, they will do tons of things. And I probably haven't even scratched the surface, but I've played around with it enough that I think it sounds decent. Um, I probably never say, man, this sounds perfect, because I'm always trying to get that better sound. And the only way you do that is to learn more about your equipment, and um, keep, keep on playing with it. Maybe one day, but, you know, it's like trying to attain the supreme. You know, you, you'll never really get to that point of, of just saying, I'll, I'll never have to touch this again. Um, right below that I have a standard, uh, DBX, uh, 1066 compressor limiter gate. The only thing that this thing is used for at this point, the way that I have it hooked up is it will allow me to do what's sometimes referred to as ducking. Um, or side-chaining. Um, I'm using the side, uh, the side-chain, uh, input on this compressor, so if a host is talking, what this compressor will do, and it, it, let me back up. If a host is talking and music is playing through the DJ, what this will do is it will automatically lower the level of the music so the, the announcer, the host, isn't competing with the music. Um, the way that we enable this is that we actually have the second program bus on our console running into the compressor. So if I want to turn this on, all I have to do is turn on program bus channel 2 for whatever mic I want to use as the trigger to lower the music, and it will, it will lower the music automatically. And it kind of just ducks down that's why they call it ducking, and, and then it raises up again when, when the uh, announcer stops talking. Now, I think it's cool um, to automatically duck, and a lot of the broadcasts that I hear use this, this feature, um, and I think it sounds good. You never want the announcer to be competing with the music. It's terrible when music is too loud, and, and I'm guilty of it, um, as well, but sometimes um, it's the music's too loud, and you can't hear what the, the announcer's saying, and that's super annoying to anybody that's listening. Um, but um, I like using it, other people don't. They say they don't like the, the way that it kind of goes in and out, um, and maybe to a host that sounds strange, um, because you know, the music is playing at a volume, they say something on the mic, it, it ducks down, it gets quiet, as soon as they stop, it comes up again. Now, I can adjust the, the threshold of the release, um, and the attack on the compressor, so it will come up much slower, but this doesn't get used a lot. I wish it got used more, but, you know, if the host doesn't like it, they don't like it. It's there if they want it. Um, and that! So, um, I think that kind of concludes the rack. The rest of the rack is dedicated to networking equipment. Um, we have our, our internet connection, we have a 2 megabit up and down, um, ethernet over copper connection, which we pay way too much for, and it doesn't perform nearly as well as we had hoped it would. It's enough bandwidth for our live stream, and, um, some tricks to kind of make sure that our, our bandwidth is, uh, allocated properly to things that need it. Um, we use what's called QOS, or quality of service, um, which allows us to kind of shape our bandwidth and dedicate most of our bandwidth to our live stream, um, but overall this bandwidth isn't what I had hoped it would be, and we just found out that Time Warner is able to offer cable in here, and you'd think that something, you know, like ethernet over copper, uh, a synchronous connection, um, would be desirable over cable, but reality is, is that cable is so fast now and so much cheaper that we'd be much better off just doing a, an asynchronous, uh, cable connection, cause it's 50 meg down and 5 up, and that's 3 more megs than what we have allocated right now. Um, we have a, a 24 port switch that everything plugs into, like I said, most of our equipment, well, I don't know if I did say this, but most of our equipment on some level is networked, or has a web interface, our phone hybrid has a web interface, our recorder has a web interface, our processors have interfaces through Windows, so, um, a lot of ethernet cables running into this switch to, uh, cover all of our our toys. Um, and then we just have our, our gateway machine, it's just a little Linux box with a, an SSD drive in it, um, and like an Atom processor, very low powered, but it, it runs our, our gateway connection to the internet, and also does, uh, our audio processing, um, just cause it's the only dedicated Linux box we have in the studio. Um, and then we just have a bunch of disks for backups and storage. That is pretty much the control room. There's tons of things that I probably left out. Um, it's, it's been great, uh, talking about this stuff. I'm great. I had a caller, had no idea. Thanks a lot for calling in, caller. Um, and I'll probably do a little bit more of this, maybe go into detail, or maybe if you hear this podcast and you want to know something specific, um, or want me to go into detail on something, you know, send email to info at skidrowstudios.com or, or, uh, leave us a message on our Facebook page. Um, uh, facebook, uh, dot com slash skidrowstudios. Um, follow us on Twitter. Check out our various podcasts on iTunes. We have tons of shows now. Um, and, and let us know what you think. This is the, the geek side of things, but, um, you know, it's fun to talk about this stuff. If, if you're a geek like me. So, uh, thanks a lot. Have a good night. I'm going to King Eddie's Saloon, and I'm gonna get drunk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.