052 - Gain Staging Part 2 Reaching the Signal Chain Out of Your Reach

How do you ensure the best gain settings when you don't have access to your entire signal chain? This happens when using Zoom or Skype when when we have to rely on apps that deny access to our guests mic gain. 

Let start exploring ways to control our guests' volume levels using the concept of Mix-Minus.

Examples of hardware with Mix-Minus capability:

1. Zoom Podtrak P4 (native mix-minus) 

2. Zoom H4N Digital Recorder. (Hacking required)

3. Zoom H5 Digital Recorder (Hacking required)

4. Zoom H6 Digital Recorder. (Hacking required - this is what I use)

5. Zoom Podtrak P8 (native mix-minus) 

6. Rode Rodecaster Pro (native mix-minus) 

7. Pretty much most mixing decks. 

PRODUCTION NOTES

Recording Mic: Zoom LMF-2 Lavalier mic

Recording device : Zoom F2 32 bit float Field Recorder

Recording location: Dining table

Recording format: WAV (32 bit float mono)

Editing app (and EQ) : Audacity

Sound Treatment: Auphonic Productions at Auphonic.com

Auphonic.com settings [to output as a 16bit mono WAV file]: Adaptive Leveler (on), Loudness Normalization (Loudness Target -19 LUFS ), Filtering (on), Noise and Hum Reduction (Reduction Amount: Auto), Sample rate: 44.1kHz

I uploaded the resulting WAV file to Anchor.fm to host the file and added the music from their free music stock.

Episode art: Canva

Anchor automatically converts the WAV file into a 128kbps, stereo, .m4a file

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