Disruptive Conversations

Nice to see The Levelator getting coverage in the Make magazine website.  Knowing of my interest in podcasting audio quality, a Blue Box listener sent me the note about this posting in Make, which was great to see.  I've actually been a huge fan of the The Levelator ever since Doug Kaye, Michael Geoghegan and Paul Figgiani released it through their Gigavox company.  It's done wonders with some interviews I have recorded. 

If you aren't aware of it, the Levelator is basically a tool to do most all of the audio post-production you need to do on a podcast or other audio file.  The Gigavox team wrote it for their own usage so that they could level out the different audio levels in podcasts they were producing.  They were then kind enough to release it to the broader community - and we have all benefited from that.

For me, where the tool is most useful is with field-recorded interviews or podcasts that are recorded via a conference call.  When I'm doing my own podcasts, my audio setup is such that I can control the audio levels of myself and a partner.  But field interviews often have varying levels of audio, sometimes purely by mic placement.  And conference calls?  Either on a traditional audio bridge or by using a tool like Skype?  Audio levels can be way off between the speakers.  And from a production point-of-view on my end, all of those people are one track coming into my recording rig (with my microphone being the other).  So, yes, I could do all the audio post-production to make it sound great.... or I could simply export it to a WAV file, drag and drop it on the Levelator window... and listen to the generally outstanding result.

If you are doing podcasts, or any other kind of audio production, the Levelator is definitely worth checking out.