Clarion Magazine's Podcasts

Clarion Magazine's Podcasts

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What's a Planet Clarion Podcast, you ask? In short, it's an internet radio show for Clarion developers. Basically we're talking about audio programming in MP3 format, which means that all you really need to do is click on one of the links below to download and listen to Planet Clarion. The term podcasting was coined to describe the download of these kinds of programs to the Apple iPod, but you don't need an iPod to listen to Planet Clarion. Just click on the links below.

If you want to automatically download the feed instead of coming to this web page and clicking on the links, try some of the RSS software listed at iPodder.org. Point the RSS reader of your choice at our Planet Clarion RSS feed:

http://www.clarionmag.com/planetclarion.rss

Comments? Send us an email

Planet Clarion is hosted by Dave Harms, Clarion Magazine's editor, and Andrew Guidroz II, your favorite Cajun.

Planet Clarion for June 30, 2005

Track	Start	Length	Size	Description
Download or stream (Free Access)	00:00:00	47:00:00	16913 K	SoftVelocity president Bob Zaunere is back on Planet Clarion. Andrew and Dave talk with Bob about the ConDev AVIs and what they really mean, what's involved in creating the new IDE, and the differences between Win32 and .NET screen formatters.
Individual tracks
Track 1	00:00:00	00:01:53	664K	Intro
Track 2	00:01:53	00:24:16	8535K	Z discusses the inner workings of the new IDE, and the missing context of the ConDev AVIs (which were never intended for public release)
Track 3	00:26:09	00:11:41	4113K	Window controls under Win32 vs .NET, and a controversial statement or two about the Clarion.NET window structure.
Track 4	00:37:51	00:09:07	3208K	Andrew and Dave mull over Z's comments, and Dave talks about the new Clarion books and ClarionMag's summer schedule.

[Last 5 podcasts] [All podcasts]

Freedom to distribute podcasts

You are free to distribute public access podcasts from Clarion Magazine, provided you do not modify those podcasts, and you do not charge any fees for the podcasts. In other words, if you want to put a podcast up on your server, feel free.

You may not, however, distribute individual tracks without express permission from Clarion Magazine.

Production notes and Skype suggestions

A number of listeners have asked how we record Planet Clarion. While all anyone really needs to record a podcast is a microphone, a PC, and some recording software, our setup is a little bit more complicated, mainly because we (Andrew and Dave) live 1700 miles apart. It's all made possible by Skype, a free Internet phone service, which we highly recommend. The human ear can detect sounds in the frequency range of about 50 Hz (cycles per second) to 20,000 Hz; Skype transmits frequencies from 50 to 8000 Hz, which is pretty much the range of human speech, as compared to the plain old telephone service (POTS) which has a relatively narrow range of 300 Hz to 3300 Hz.

Dave records the Skype conversation on his PC, in two tracks, using Sony Vegas; one track is Dave's microphone, and the other is Andrew via Skype. We originally intended to record Andrew's microphone on his PC as well, but the Skype recording was good enough that we just ran with that. The two-track approach makes it possible to compensate for differences in microphones, sound quality, and sound levels. Among other tools, Dave uses the Endorphin plugin (via the VST-DX Wrapper, since Vegas does not support VST plugins natively).

We both use headsets rather than standalone microphones. Dave is geeked up with an AKG HS200, and Andrew uses an Altec Lansing AHS 502, which is a reasonably-priced, good quality headset. We recommend the Altec Lansing products for anyone wanting to get started with Skype. If you're not sure which is the best Altec Lansing (or other manufacturer's) model in your area, find out what the local gamers like to use, and you'll probably be in good shape. Make sure whatever you buy will work with your sound card - if you want to go high end, it's more likely that your headset will need a pre-amp between you and the sound card. Also while you can use Skype with a microphone and speakers, we don't recommend that setup. It's too easy for the microphone to pick up sound from the speakers. You may think everything's fine, but the person at the other end will hear an echo. A headset removes this problem, and it also keeps the microphone a constant distance from your mouth, giving you more freedom of movement (especially if it's a wireless headset).

If you are considering a USB headset, keep in mind that these sometimes have greater latency than a regular headset/sound card combination. There's always some delay between the time a signal is generated by the microphone and the time the hardware finishes processing, and of course it also takes time to transmit the signal to the person at the other end of your Skype conversation. You want to keep latency to a minimum.

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Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942