calling up the internet

November 12, 2007 4:02 PM

Has anyone had any success doing radio-quality interviews with Skype or Vonage?

Has anyone been really successful in getting broadcast-quality audio from an internet phone service like Skype or Vonage? And if so, how did you capture the audio, and in what form?

For the last three weeks, I have been increasingly frustrated trying to use the expensive JK Audio Broadcast Host that my office gave to me to do phone interviews. I am at the end of my rope in getting a phone line to work with the little box and am out of options, as we are now facing a shortened timeframe for program delivery each week.

For technical note: I am broadcasting on AM radio and my broadcast delivery medium is 44.1 16bit mono wave.

posted by parmanparman to media & arts (8 comments total)

Have you listened to the MeFi podcast? We use Skype, Skype recorder and some post processing with either GarageBand or Audacity, I can't remember. With the exception of the bandwidth issues (my side is lossy when I'm scrolling my laptop because I don't have a very large upload pipe) I think it's not bad. Mathowie's got a fancy microphone and I have a regular Logitech headset.
posted by jessamyn at 4:14 PM on November 12, 2007

I've been interviewed on Skype for a radio broadcast, and it sounded fine - probably better quality than over a telephone actually. But since I was the interviewee rather than the interviewer, I can't tell you how it was done.
posted by Jimbob at 4:52 PM on November 12, 2007

JimBob, is that broadcast online somewhere that I can check it out?
posted by parmanparman at 5:03 PM on November 12, 2007

Hey Parmanparman - how's the show going?

We've talked about using it at my place of employment - not much has come from that, but I think that's more to do with red tape than audio quality. So here's my personal opinion.

The problem with using Skype/Vonage/others isn't sound quality - I've recently had great-sounding conversations with a friend of mine in Taipei (also using skype). The problem is the unpredictability of the line - you never know when the person you're talking to is going to disappear into a mess of aliasing and network dropouts.

However, I've got the feeling that you're doing only prerecorded stuff. My take on it would be this - do it, at least for a while. If you run into network issues, get the person to give their answer again. I think all told, you're looking at a better situation than using a phone line. You'll still have crap sound (if they're using a phone line instead of Skype), but it will probably be easier than what you've got.
posted by god hates math at 5:13 PM on November 12, 2007

For the record, This Week in Tech (TWiT) uses Skype and it (usually) sounds great.
posted by MrHappyGoLucky at 5:20 PM on November 12, 2007

I was on an episode of TWiT recently, and they record it via Skype. Leo details how he does it here or you can record the call using Pamela, or a virtual routing cable system like VAC. We use this for recording cell phones and it works well.

As to the quality thing: I've not had great problems as long as the internet connection is pretty fast and isn't being heavily used. You are at the mercy of the Internet, tho, and problems can occur.
posted by baggers at 5:22 PM on November 12, 2007

The TWiT show does sound really good, I think I am going to give it a go. I might need to buy some new headphones. Otherwise, there's only success or failure to contend with. It's a lot better than schlepping around the SF Bay Area in a '02 VW Golf doing interviews in person while doing a show on living a green lifestyle.
posted by parmanparman at 7:40 PM on November 12, 2007

I've had better luck with other VoIP apps than Skype (in particular Wengo). Skype seems to have a tendency to slurp as much CPU and net bandwidth as it possibly can, which is troublesome when you're doing an interview live and also sending the final broadcast out through the same net connection. This tends to end up with the previously-mentioned unreliable line problems.

A sound device can only record on one channel at a time, so if you only have one sound device you will have to configure it to use the soundcard mixer (‘Stereo mix’/‘Wave mix’/‘What u hear’, depending on sound card) channel, both to record from and to send on your telephony app. The disadvantage is that the interviewee will hear their own voice echoed back to them, which can be off-putting. (And if they have the same setup at their end, or a loudspeaker echoing back into the mic, you can get terrible feedback loops. In conference calls, if any one participant has it set up like this, there will be pain.)

To do it cleanly without this echo, you will need two sound devices, one recording from a microphone and the other mixing together the microphone, the output from the VoIP app, and any background music or other noises you want. This can be:

- two sound cards (or one sound card, plus the typical built-in sound on a PC motherboard), chaining one's output jack to the other's line-in

- two PCs chained in the same way. Has the advantage that if the PC engaged in telephony has a CPU/HD access bottleneck it does not interrupt the recording/casting

- one sound card plus software (such as VAC+AudioRepeater under Windows or JACK routing in Linux). The copying of audio from one device to another requires more CPU and introduces more latency, particularly under Windows

- one sound card and a USB microphone (which acts as a separate audio device), again with the same software repeating issues

If you're not doing it live it's much easier, you can use something like Pamela or just spit the single sound card output into an MD recorder, or MP3 player that can record WAV from line in, or something.
posted by BobInce at 3:51 AM on November 13, 2007