Talking Drupal #535 - Podcast Recording

Nic: This is talking Drupal, a weekly chat about web design and development from a group of people with one thing in common. We love Drupal.

This is episode 535 podcast recording. On today's show, we are talking about recording podcasts, the tech use and how Drupal can help with our guests.

Stephen Cross. We'll also cover chosen as our module of the week. Welcome to Talking Drupal. Our guest today is Stephen Cross. Steven is the founder and past co-host of Talking Drupal, and recent founder of Second Signal Media. Stephen, welcome back to the show and thank you for joining us.

Stephen: Hey, thanks for having me.

Nic: I'm Nick Laflin, founder at nLightened Development. And hey, my cos are as usual. John Picozzi, solution architect at EPAM.

John: Hey everyone,

Nic: and joining us for the next four weeks as guest host Andy Giles, co-founder at Drip Yard. Andy is a veteran web developer and Drupal specialist. In 2012, he founded Blue Oak Interactive, a development and consulting agency focused on complex Drupal site builds, particularly in e-commerce and data pipelines.

In 2025, he partnered with Mike Herschel to launch Drip Yard, a premium Drupal theme designed to reduce the cost of ownership and enhance the developer experience for modern Drupal projects. Welcome to the show and thank you for joining us. Alright, excited to be here and now to talk about our module of the week.

Let's turn it over to Martin Anderson Klutz, a principal solutions engineer at Acquia, and a maintainer of a number of Drupal modules and recipes of his own Merton. What do you have first this week?

Martin: Thanks Nick. Have you ever wanted to give users on your Drupal site a more intuitive of alternative to native HTML multi-select widgets?

There's a module for that. It's called Chosen, and it was created in July of 2011 by Shad cn, but recent releases are by Ballant. NGI of Hungary does have 3.0 6, 4 3 and 5.03 versions available. The last of which works with Drupal 10.2 or 11. It is actively maintained, has security coverage and test coverage, and has 221 open issues, four of which are bugs against the five point X branch.

And according to drupal.org, it is in use by almost 38,000 sites. Now with the chosen module enabled, your Drupal site will selectively replace select elements with a more intuitive widget leveraging the chosen library. The modules configuration, you can specify how many options should trigger chosen and also specify form field selectors to explicitly include or exclude the three active branches of the module reflect usage of different forks of the chosen library.

Notably the five point x versions of the module, use a fork that no longer requires jQuery and allows chosen to be enabled for mobile devices. In addition to the module configuration, you can also force a custom forms select element to use the chosen library simply by adding the chosen select class to the form array.

Now, back in episode 4 0 9 of this show, we talked about tag gify, which in some ways is similar, but is designed specifically to work with ND reference fields. That makes it less general purpose, though taxify does also include some additional capabilities such as being able to include labels or icons on results based on a property of each result.

Now, years ago, I used to use another popular project called select two for turning multi-select into list boxes that included a search filter. That project relied on a library that required jQuery, but is no longer compatible with current versions or supportive versions of Drake jQuery. So select two has been officially replaced by Tag Gify, but Chosen could also be useful if your field is not an entity reference.

There are a variety of similar modules. You can also look at, including choices, JS, select Eyes, solidify, and so on. But chosen is by far the most widely used, even if you're only looking at numbers for the five point X branch. So let's talk about Chosen.

Nic: Yeah, this is a, a great, a great low module. I've used it on a couple of projects. I don't know why it's not, I don't know why. It's not like one of my kind of default go-tos, though. I feel like I, each time I use it, I have to kind of rediscover it for some reason. But yeah, it's a, it's a nice improvement.

John: I. I agree, I agree with that statement. I do enjoy chosen. I think it does help does help clean up, you know, multiselect quite a bit. It makes it a lot easier for folks. Even I think this was in the talking Drupal channel of Drupal Slack, but we were talking about Metatag. We talked about Metatag on, on last week's show.

Yep. And somebody brought up the point that you can, you can actually select which meta tag fields show up on your, on your content types. And then there was some back and forth and Martin suggested maybe using, chosen for that that interface to, to clean it up a bit and provided some screenshots that really, really made it look nice.

I have run into instances though where modules require chosen and then it, it, I don't know, it kind of doesn't jive with you know, latest versions of Drupal or the module itself doesn't implement it in the best way and it kind of feels broken. So I feel like sometimes it could get, like a bad wrap is hard to use because of, of, of those sorts of things.

But no, over overall I do definitely think it helps improve you know, especially for really long lists of, of stuff helps you kind of get, get to what you need and, and select it and it makes it very clear and, and, and that, you know, you. If you're doing the right thing.

Martin: Yeah. I wonder if some of the issues that you've seen where it doesn't work quite correctly could be sort of legacy issues back when it relied on jQuery and sometimes if it needed a different version of jQuery than the library supported that sometimes you could run into issues that way.

Mm-hmm. I will say, I noticed that for the installation instructions in the module, it sort of asks you to paste a like a separate endpoint into your composer, JSON, for it to pull down the library if you're going to use Composer to require it. Or it does also provide a DR command that you can use to sort of just do that in a single command if you don't wanna do the copy and paste.

There are other modules that actually create a project specifically for basically a dependent. Version of the library itself. So like, full calendar io and I know there's one other one that Juergen Haas maintains that, that use the, that approach, which actually makes it easier because you can just do everything with sort of the single composer require.

But just be aware that there is kind of that additional step when you install it. But the other thing that I kind of wonder about, I mean, it's great to see some of these same ca capabilities being brought back without the jQuery dependency. Yeah. You wonder if somebody's has worked on a similar kind of solution, but maybe leveraging some of the HTMX capabilities that are now built into Drupal.

So it'd be interesting to see if something like that exists out in the wild.

Stephen: Hey, Martin, you mentioned that it doesn't work with entity references, but I believe it works with entity references like terms, and that's an entity reference.

Martin: Yeah, no, I meant the opposite. So I meant that Tag Gify only works with entity references, whereas Chosen should work with any, any kind of field.

I was just saying it's probably more use like Tag Gify, particularly being in Drupal CMS is, is, you know, a very robust solution and, and works really well. But yeah, is is specific only for entity references, whereas Chosen can be used for everything.

Andy: Got it. Do you know if the new version of Chosen will pull from like the backend of report, or is it just load a select list and then use JavaScript to replace it?

Martin: I don't know that friend.

Andy: Yeah, I used to use Chosen and then I switched to Select too, and I'm, I'm excited to see that this is picked back up and I'm gonna have to try it out again. I,

Nic: I, one, one last thing to point out by the way is that it, not only are each of the branches talking about different kind of updates of Chosen, it's different forks, like, like all JU projects, somebody created it.

And then abandoned it and stopped updating it. Somebody else forked it and became the canonical version. And so ver you know, version three was the original. Version four was a fork, version five is a new fork. So you, you'll probably wanna, if you do use chosen and there's a new update, you probably wanna do a general dependency evaluation again and make sure that you're, you're comfortable with the whichever feature fork is used there.

But that's common in the, in the node in the text. Martin,

John: any and any signs that they're going to be creating a version or, or updating the current version to support HTX?

Martin: It's a good question. I will say I haven't dug that deep into the issue queue. I suspect that it would be more, if somebody else, let's say, created another fork potentially of, hmm. The chosen library that was built to work on top of HTMX. My hunch would be that it's probably more likely that somebody's kind of built a whole new project that provides a similar capability leveraging HTMX.

And then at that point, probably somebody would have to make a new Drupal library or Drupal module to pull in that library. But that's kind of speculation on my part at this point. So there you go.

Nic: Alright, bar, thank you as always. You found a great module of the week to talk about. I could not believe that we haven't covered this in 535 episodes.

But yeah, and, and like John said, we kind of had a discussion about this in the talking drupal slack which I think shows the, the real power of this project. Right on. so how can folks connect to suggest the module of the week?

Martin: Well, listeners can certainly be like Michael Harris who hopped onto the talking Drupal channel, Drupal Slack, and you know, got going a really engaged discussion about last week's module of the week.

So we're always happy to get suggestions for module of the week in that channel. Or folks can reach out to me directly as man clue on all of the Drupal and social channels.

Nic: Awesome. See you next week. See you then.

Second. Okay.

Alright, Steven it's always a pleasure to have you back on. Can you tell us a little bit about what you've been up to? You know, what is, what is Second Signal Media?

Stephen: So, that's a good question. I'm trying to figure that out a little bit. I could tell you a little history of it. First and foremost, I'm still a Drupal developer.

That's where I, you know, my bread and butter comes from. I love doing it. But I've also had this love for podcasting and YouTube videos and all this stuff for quite a while, as you guys know. Hanging around me a little bit. And about a year ago, maybe a little bit longer ago I started working with some people to help them out with podcasting and creating videos and, and things like that.

And probably, maybe about six months ago I said, you know what? Maybe I ought to formalize this a little bit more than I have. And that's kinda where sec second signal came from. So kind like my focus on it as really sort of a part-time gig right now is really just helping people who have a message or a story and get it out there and using current technology to do that.

It's such a great advantage today for people to share their stories on YouTube and Spotify and just get their message out there. And a lot of people don't have the knowledge, the time, the desire to figure out the technical side of it. And that's kind of where I like to step in. So that, that's what it is.

I'm having fun doing it. I've been paying more attention to it in the last six months and trying to get some things going. So I'll see, you know, I'll see where it goes.

John: So, I mean, I think that you bring up a a great point here. Obviously our show today is about podcast recording, right? And I'm gonna ask in a minute what, what you think that means or what it means today?

'cause it's probably morphed quite a bit since, you know, it kind of came on the scene so many years ago. But I think a lot of what we're gonna talk about today has the ability to not just be about podcasts, right? It's really about any sort of recording, whether it's audio or video. so anyway, my point, Steven, is like, a lot of what we're gonna talk about today doesn't necessarily have to just be about podcasting, right. Or recording a podcast. You could, you could put a YouTube video up or any of the other mediums you just talked about. Would you agree with that?

Stephen: Yeah, I was, I was kind of interested to see how you titled this show as podcast recording. I guess it's a, it's a good anchor in terms of a discussion and people get what this is gonna be about. But in today's world, I mean, I would never recommend anyone just doing an audio podcast. It doesn't make sense anymore.

Video is the place to start and delivering also audio is great. Not necessary, but it's, it's a way to go.

John: So let's, let's dig in a little bit around like podcasting specifically. Sure. Like podcasting is obviously grown, changed over, over the years. Like what do you think podcasting means today?

Like to you specifically? Well, do you know how

Stephen: many podcasts there are?

John: I mean,

Stephen: gazillions more than 10. I did some search

it's 4.5, million podcasts out there. That's a lot,

I think your question, John, was what does podcasting mean to me? Like, what is it, right?

John: Yeah. Like what is it like, I don't know. I feel like it's, it means different things to today than it did, did when, you know, podcast first came on the scene.

So, I mean, I, I guess I wanna set the stage as to like, what are we, what, what, what does it mean to us today?

Stephen: Yeah. So in terms of our discussion today, let's call podcasting creating content, video and audio that comes out on a regular basis. Let's keep it as simple as that. Because I, I think that's an anchor.

There's a lot of people that listen to audio only podcasts. I'm one of them. I still do that. Yep. But I would say that I've shifted more probably to video than audio. Really. Which is interesting, and it's not that I watch everything 'cause I, I still just listen to a bunch of video podcasts, but, but they're coming out in video and I like to listen.

Right. So, yeah. There's always the option there.

Nic: Yeah. We, we obviously produce both. I think the majority of our audience is audio first and the podcast that I listen to outside of this one. I listen to audio only too, but this probably because of how I do it. I do it when I'm walking the dog or cleaning the house or something.

Right. It's kind of hard to watch a video when you're, you're doing that kind of task. So Yeah. For, for me, they're still audio first, but I think you're right. Most people watch them.

Stephen: And this show today, I mean there, there really are three podcasters on this call, right? You guys are podcasters. You know, you've got me, because that's what they tell me.

You've got me as the guest today. But I mean, you guys have just as many episodes, actually more than I do as hosting a podcast.

Nic: Yeah, I, well, I think that's another interesting thing though too. Like, there's different, there's very different types of podcasts, right? Like we have an interview style podcast, right?

It's pretty free form. There is obviously editing, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, but, you know, it's a very different setup than something like, you know, I think the first really, really big podcast that people heard about was Serial. I dunno if you guys remember, remember that It was a short form, eight episodes, true Crime.

They pro, I can't imagine how much time they put into those eight episodes, right? I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hundred hours per episode, including research and all that kind of stuff, right? And. Retaking, whereas hours, there's maybe a one x time, like the amount of time you hear is, I, we probably spend just as much time editing maybe twice as much.

But a, a typical podcast is something like what an an hour per 10 minutes of content or something so it's, it's, it's a very different style of podcast, I think.

Stephen: And, I think I would also include not just people doing these regular podcasts, but like I take Andy and his drip yard company, now they're starting to produce some videos on, you know, how to do something with their theme.

If they start producing those, I mean, on a regular basis, that is a show, not really necessarily a podcast, but it's. At the end of the day, it's the same thing, right? It's someone sharing their knowledge about something online. And I really like a broader concept than just, you know, calling something a podcast and it has to have so many episodes and it has to come so regularly.

I think it's much more broad than that.

John: All right. I'm, I'm getting the feeling that I misnamed the show. It should have been like no content digital content recording or something like that, but I think we're all on the same page, right? Sure. We're, we're gonna talk about how you record it and, and, and send it out to the masses.

Andy: The format we did was, I guess more a webinar. But Steven's been instrumental in helping us. We've done two at this point, and they were hugely successful. You know, he was more of like an orchestrator of the whole thing or like a, you know, producer kind of thing where, you know, he's making sure that people come in and out at the right times and that the questions are, you know, flowing through the session.

So, more than just like your traditional like podcast. I think there's a, a lot that goes into it. And that kinda leads us into our next question. It's like, what tech do you use when you're orchestrating these things?

Stephen: Yeah. So what tech, that's such a broad, that's such a broad question. So yeah. I guess

Andy: start with like hardware first.

Stephen: Yeah. So in today's world, really are no hardware restrictions. Most people, if you go to YouTube and you. Look at a number of those channels that are out there that are very successful. A lot of 'em are using browser based tools to do all their recording, all their editing and to produce the shows.

So, the essence of what you need today is you need a microphone, you need a camera, probably some basic lighting and a computer. We were laughing a few minutes ago about, you know, could you use Linux to do this? And absolutely can. Linux has a browser and there's no limitation on the tools you can use in a Chrome browser basically, that will do all this kind of stuff.

John: So. Follow up here. Yeah. On, on that. Right. So did when you started, right, so obviously we're at episode 5 35, you started this thing from Episode Zero, right? Was the tech the same back then? It is, it is now. No, I'm assuming now.

Stephen: No, but you, you know, talking Drupal wasn't my first podcast either. I don't know, even if you know that.

I do, I do. I've listened to your other podcast.

Okay. Alright.

It was, I think eight episodes. So I never even hit the, the 10 mark, which I think is an important one. And it was with my daughter. It was called Liberty and Justice for All, and she was in fifth grade and we were talking about the upcoming election.

And I think if you go to stephen cross.com, those episodes might be there somewhere. I don't, I don't remember if I recently put them back up there. I've changed that with sight so many times. But that's the first time I did it. And that was, I. Basically with an Apple computer using garage band and a microphone.

And that's where it started. And then when we started this show, it wasn't much different than that. Right. Except we started, we started with video H Hangout. Yeah, Google Hangouts. So we started with doing a video show, which is kind of crazy if you think about it. Was that 14 years ago? 2013.

Yeah. And I recorded those shows to a digital recorder as well. So we always had a backup. So we weren't relying on the Google platform. And we did that for a long time.

John: So. So it sounds like, going back to, to Andy's question, right? We've kind of moved away from those hardware things and moved more into like the, hey, if you have a computer and an internet connection, there's some sort of web-based software you can use to kind of like record, record this thing if you need to, right?

Yeah. Just like the rest of the world, right?

Nic: So if somebody's starting now 2026, what's the recommended minimum that they need to do? Like what, what's the recommended? Because you, you can go crazy and buy, like you said, like you can, you just kind of need a mic. You need a camera. You can go out and buy the best of the best top of the line, look at all the big streamers and get a, you know, figure, figure, all that.

What's the kind of bare minimum, because. Should they use, should they have an external mic? Should they have a lapel?

Stephen: Yeah, so I would, I would recommend having a hard mic, like we have, like, I think all of us are using right now. You can spend $50 to $300 to get something decent. I can give some recommendations of things.

And when you say

John: Steven, when you say a hard mic, you mean like an external microphone? External, yeah. That's not in your computer.

Stephen: Yeah. External microphone. Don't use your, don't use your Apple. See here, here's the problem. This is, this is what you get into when you start looking online. Most podcasts don't make it past three episodes or 10 episodes, right?

So before, before you even get into the recording piece, do you have a show? You know, sketch out 50 episodes, make sure you've got content for 50 episodes written on a piece of paper 50. I would say 50. Really? If you can't come up, I would

Nic: say fif, I think 15.

Stephen: If you can't come up with a list of 50 ideas,

John: you're

Stephen: not

John: gonna stick with this thing.

And I mean, to qu to quantify that, right? They're not fully fleshed out ideas. No. They're like, just like, Hey, we're gonna talk about this and this and this, and this and this. Right?

Stephen: And if you can't stretch your brain to come up with 50 items, you're probably not gonna stick around very long. If you come up with 15 ideas, you're probably not gonna come go past episode three.

So, so if you're, you could start out with something like your, your earbuds and use your phone and you could do that stuff to get yourself rolling.

Nic: Hmm. Yeah. But

Stephen: if you have, if you've gotten past that point, and you're gonna be somewhat serious, you need a mic. You could get XLR I would recommend getting an XLR MIC versus a USB mic.

I don't know if we wanna get into what the differences are, but that's what I would recommend doing to that point. Then you also need an audio interface into your computer to plug the XLR mic into so you can get those for a hundred bucks. You can get a good decent XLR mic for a hundred to $200 a camera, because now I'm gonna say you don't go audio, own audio only.

You can start with a webcam and there's a lot of great webcams out there that you can start with. I, I'm looking right now, are we all using webcams? That's my guess. So you can get into one of those for one to $200. So now you're talking five to $600 to get the basic stuff you need. Maybe a couple of lights.

I don't know if anyone has lights now. I think John has one. Nick has one. I have one and can't tell if's lit up or not. He's not, but it looks great. I.

Nic: Mine's pretty washed out. The view looks

Stephen: fine.

Nic: Mine's pretty washed out 'cause the snow outside is pretty good on the light, and I didn't put up the curtains, but, but yeah.

John: So, so it sounds like if I'm, if I'm hearing you right, it, it sounds like, hey, if you're like, Hey, I wanna start a podcast or a YouTube channel or something, right? Come up with your content, make sure you have enough content to kind of support the, support, the effort. And then you could get started with your first, you know, couple episodes with, you know, some, some pretty basic equipment.

Maybe a, a set of apple earbuds and a, and, you know, a, a laptop. And then once you kind of like committed to it, you could grow for, you know, a couple hundred bucks. Yeah. You could, you could get a pretty decent setup to be able to record a podcast.

Nic: Just, just to, just to level set. I mean, I think I'm on my third or fourth iteration when we started the podcast.

My audio was a built in mic with my headset, and I recorded from Starbucks half the time because oh,

John: we're gonna talk about the best environments to record from a little bit, a little bit later. So,

Nic: yeah, so, so you really, so what you don't want do is you don't want to use like your AirPod mic or your phone mic or something.

You, you wanna use something that's a little bit more dedicated. You'll, there, the tooling out there for cleaning up audio is far better now than it was 15 years ago. But if the better input, the better the output. So, I think you can probably get away with even more bare bones than, than the 500. But you'll, you'll wanna get past that fairly quickly within the first five or 10 episodes, probably.

Audio quality really starts to matter at that point. But

John: it's also a pretty iterative, iterative process. Like you can always, you can always keep getting better as, as, as, and that's kind of what we've done as, as you go, all. So let's, let's talk about common mistakes. 'cause like, you know, everybody, you know, loves to hear a good, a good horror story, right?

So, Steven, when you're advising your, you know, your clients and the people you're working with on recording, recording content what are some of like the most common mistakes people make and, and how can they avoid them?

Stephen: I think the biggest mistake is fear. It's not a technical mistake. I think the technical mistakes can be overcome.

I think someone who's never sat in front of a microphone and turned a camera on and decided that they were gonna talk for 30 minutes, that's very challenging to do. And I think fear and worrying about making mistakes. Probably the biggest blocker. We, when re we record this episode, we don't do a lot of editing, right.

We edit for very little. Yeah. Part of the reason we can do that is because you, you two guys as hosts have experience and you're comfortable in front of the microphone, and we can see sometimes that guests are not as comfortable as, as you two guys are. But so you carry the show on, but I don't know if you've ever tried to create a podcast on your own by yourself with just your voice.

It's gonna suck for a while. It, and when I say fear, that's okay. It's okay. Yeah. Yeah. The, the best way to create a great podcast is to just do it and do it for a long time, and it's gonna take a while to get comfortable with it. I did an exercise with someone about eight months ago. This was, this is a, was still is, this is a CEO of a company.

And it's a nonprofit. And I was talking with them about, they were putting out these like two minute com, almost like commercial stuff on YouTube. It was shot by a third party edited and looked really polished, but they weren't getting any traction at all on these things. And it's because they weren't genuine, right?

They were just like, sort of commercials that were a minute long and stuff about their organization. And I suggested to them that, you know, you want PE people give to people. People buy from people. Yeah. So why don't the CEO, instead of spending weeks creating these one or two minute ads, how about if you just start to put out a 10, 5, 10 minute update about the organization on a regular basis?

Now that person was comfortable standing and doing a commercial reading from a teleprompter. Memorizing words is way more difficult for them to sit and just give an update and a camera by themselves. So what we did was we put together a little program for 30 days where the person, I set up a list of things that they should do for 30 days in front of a camera.

They record it, no one ever sees it by them. And it was about creating a pattern every day for started is like two minutes, and then got all the way up to 15 minutes. At the end of the 30 days at the person was just, I had prompts for them to read. Like very first day was who, who are you just record it.

Yeah. Second day was, tell me about your family. Third day was, you know, you go on and on over 30 days. At the end of the 30 days. She was super comfortable now recording now. It was time that she could, on a regular basis, stop putting out these videos and she would just record 'em at her desk and start to put out these videos on social media about the updates for the company, what was going on in her organization, and it's made a difference for them, not that now they started to make a lot more money, but she's visible.

In the organization in a way that she was never visible before. Yeah, it was, she was always visible behind this like commercial thing and now she's a real person. And I said a few minutes ago, people buy from people, right? Yeah. They buy from companies that they believe in and trust. There's a great opportunity these days through YouTube and Spotify and podcasting and, and demo videos and webinars to create a connection with your audience before you ever meet them.

John: I mean, I think it's interesting that you, you answered the question in that way because it, it, it definitely makes a ton of sense. Like if you are, if you are nervous, not comfortable, like it's gonna, it's gonna show. Personally, I don't know if anybody else talks to themselves or talks to themselves in the shower, but that's kind of like a lot of, a lot of where my prep happens.

But i'm wondering like, as far as common mistakes go, do you also see a lot of people that like over, over prepare? And what I mean by that is they come with like a $500 microphone, a sound mixer you know, all of these lights, all this stuff, and they're like, okay, I'm ready to go. And then you're kind of like, Ugh, this is nope, not gonna work.

Yeah.

Stephen: I, I'm the classic person to do that, which is I spend a lot of time and effort preparing for the thing to avoid starting to do the thing. And any of the businesses I've been involved with, I mean, I think I've done a lot of that. But, and yeah, John, you kind of hit it on the head. And that exercise that I suggested for that CEO is what I suggest to a lot of people now is that's a way to get comfortable.

You just need to get over that hump. And I think people have a, once they're comfortable talking to themselves, they get a lot more comfortable talking, you know, to the world.

John: And then they're not, they're not maybe going out and buying all of the extra stuff that they think will provide for a better, a better recording or a better experience.

Stephen: Yeah. I, I would suggest people do this kind of exercise I'm talking about without buying anything. Yeah. You don't need to buy a thing.

Nic: Mm-hmm.

Stephen: And if you can talk to yourself and get up to 20 minutes with a couple of prompts, you're ready to roll at that point.

Nic: Yeah. I, I, I have a couple things that I think people probably commonly make as, as mistakes when they're getting started too, which is one I suspect a lot of people do when they're starting is they're very excited.

They record five or six episodes in one go and then plan to edit them later. And don't, and they underestimate. I mean, we have very minimal editing and it's still probably the most work that I do each week on, on a single thing, right? So I, I think having a schedule early where it's like you record one day, you edit some other day, whether you're weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever, like you don't try to bulk until you figure out what workflow works for you.

Don't try to bulk record and bulk edit. You'll, you'll burn yourself out too quick. It's better to have a concrete schedule that you can follow. And that helps for so many things. It helps to make sure that you're not doing huge amounts of effort. And then you have a looming deadline where you have to record 10 episodes again or something.

It means that your audience has a schedule and know when to expect the next episode. It's much easier to build, I mean. Even us, if we look at our numbers, we skipped this, this week. We didn't have an episode, and two weeks ago we didn't have an episode. I, I for Thanksgiving rather, we didn't have an episode.

And you know, we, we don't do this purely for the numbers, but it, it is noticeable the the, the dip at that point. You know, having a concrete schedule that's kind of fixed is, is hugely important in, in podcasting.

Stephen: So I think, I think your point is regular. You want to come out on a regular basis if you can.

Yeah,

Nic: yeah. Whatever that schedule is.

Stephen: To your point of editing, I'm advising people to not edit.

Nic: Oh, interesting.

Stephen: I, I think a better frame of mind of mind, and I'm talking about you're doing these videos to connect with people. They don't need a per, they don't need or want a perfect sliced thing. Yeah. I mean, one take is the, if you can get to one take and you can, if you practice, you know yourself, you're not gonna edit. Yeah. I think there's a lot of editing done on this show because you know you're gonna edit, but if you knew you weren't gonna edit, I think there would be a lot less editing, if that makes any sense. That's good point. Yeah, so yeah, I try to advise people. Yeah, you might wanna do some light editing like we do, maybe to get rid of some of the gaps, but don't clean up your mistakes.

I mean, yeah.

John: I mean, people are human. Yeah, human. I mean, that's Nick, please continue to clean up my mistakes.

Nic: It's interesting.

Andy: Yeah. Yeah. So we talked a little bit about equipment and somebody mentioned starting their podcast in a, a Starbucks, but like what kind of environment? Would you recommend to me? We're all obviously coming from our home office or whatever here somebody else started as loud as possible.

Just be as loud and distracting as possible. Well, and, and for the equipment, I would say we talked about mics, I would recommend from like my recording background to go with a dynamic mic. Yeah. Starting out, just because it's not gonna pick up, you know, the neighbor running his lawnmower and all the reflections in the room and that kind of stuff.

But yeah, I think kind of what, what do you recommend for

Stephen: Yeah, I, so, so I recommend dynamic Mike. Absolutely. In terms of the environment, I always just say a quiet space, hardwired equipment and those distractions I don't, I don't take it much further than that for the kinds of work that I'm doing.

I'm not trying to help people create studio environments. As you can see from my basement wall behind me. But and, and you can improve that over time. You can, you know, the people with the most successful shows have spent a lot of time and energy in terms of making the environment look nice.

I think Andy, you win for us here. But yeah, I would just say a quiet space is, is the most that you need. And I dunno, does anyone have any, anything else to add to that?

Nic: A quiet space or, or a quick, a quick finger on the mute button.

John: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it goes along with kind of the comfort thing you were talking about earlier, right?

So, I mean, everybody, everybody here seems to have a pretty quiet environment right now. Nick has recorded the show from a Starbucks. I've recorded the show from a Starbucks. Like sometimes, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do, right? You know, we record one show a year where everybody's in a hotel room at DrupalCon.

So like, there's definitely you can definitely get a quality recording from a lot of, a lot of different places. But I think it, I think it really comes down to again, that comfort, right? So like, if you know, like, you know, if you know you're in your space, you know, you know it's gonna be quiet. Great. The no distractions thing, I mean, I have kids and there was a, a, a good year there where they were home all the time because of, of you know, COVID.

So. There was no guarantee that it was gonna be a distraction free environment. But I think it comes with, as you were saying, Steven, like getting comfortable with, with the speaking, you can kind of get comfortable with those, those interruptions and you can kind of either play, play into them, right? Or you can you know, you can, you can be prepared to kind of handle them better when they do happen.

Right?

Stephen: I also like to take, tell people to create a space for what they're doing. I mean, they don't need a studio, but a space that you know is the space that you're gonna use to record put you in the right mindset too. The same place all the time. The equipment kind of looking the same, configured the same is a benefit.

Sometimes people don't have that luxury but if you do, you know, create whatever your recording space is, it's a good way to go. Closets have been very common place to, to record. I've seen,

Nic: I've seen quite a few. I would say one, I I kind of wanna circle back to one of the things that you should set out too.

It's a common mistake. What's your goal with the podcast too, right? And maybe set realistic expectations, right? It takes time to build an audience. If you already have an audience, maybe it'll be a little faster, but find out what your goal is. Like, are you trying to get a following? Are you trying to just make yourself be a thought leader in a particular topic?

Are you just trying to find interesting conversations? What are, what are your goals? And I think most of the things that we're saying are, are recommendations, but they really should be secondary to your goals. Like, if your audio quality isn't perfect, that's usually not, unless that's your goal. You know, that's probably not the end of the world.

The first. 10 episodes or so. As long as you're continually improving and you have your expectations set correctly, I think most things can be made to work too.

John: I mean, I, I yes, yes and no. Right. I think, you know, something Steven taught me early on, and, and I think Nick tries to, tries to, to echo this as much as possible, is like, especially because we started as an audio podcast, I think the audio is important.

And if somebody is listening to this in their car or even on YouTube, you know, at their, at their desk, right? The audio quality is definitely. Important, right? So you wanna make sure you're providing good audio, right? But again, it's like one of those things that you can improve on time after time.

It's not something that you like have to get right the, the first time, but you should definitely, I don't know. I personally feel like we should, you should definitely strive to provide that good audio because it's gonna, it's gonna make it enjoyable for folks to listen to.

Andy: Yeah. And I think I was gonna say, go ahead, Andy.

In addition to the gear, which is obviously not the biggest concern is like doing a little bit of research into how to record audio at the proper levels. How to maybe use a compressor, a limiter to keep your voice consistent so that if they're in the car listening to it, you can hear it. It's not dipping out.

Those kinds of things. I think the, the research into just a little bit of that kind of stuff is pretty important. More so important initially than what Mike you have and things like that. Yeah,

Nic: yeah. Like, yeah, from my perspective, art equality is, is, yeah, it's about legibility. Maybe that's not the right word.

'cause that's for reading. Right. But it's, can you understand what the people are saying? Is there interference? Is there too much crosstalk? And I mean, that's the most important piece. The only podcast I've ever turned off are ones where there, there's one mic for like five people in the middle of a table and you can barely hear any of them.

And there's like static or hit, right? You, you, you don't wanna do that. But if there's an occasional pop or an occasional, you know, sound from the background or something. Yeah. I don't think that's the end of the world.

John: I would agree. And there have been instances where I've shot off podcasts. 'cause I'm like, this is painful to listen to.

I can't, I can't do it. But I agree, I agree with, with everything you just said. So

Nic: now, now that I handle this part, it feels like I'm asking myself this question, but I want to hear from your perspective because if, if we're being honest, even though I do the editing, I do a lot of the workflow. Steven, you're still the one that innovates whenever we change part of our procedure, even if I'm the one, you know, editing the show at this point, that always comes from you.

So can you give a quick overview of your current recommendation for your ideal recording workflow? From when you start the recording until you're uploading the finished product?

Stephen: For you, for us,

John: or for what

Stephen: I recommend to someone else in j In in general? No,

John: like, well, what you'd recommend for somebody else, like,

Stephen: So from before, before recording, I think show notes are critical.

Having an outline, I mean, every show starts with an outline. We probably do it better than a lot of people, believe it or not, from what I see out there. So I think a a show notes are good from the point when you hit record. There's so many, there's so many points here. It's like what we haven't talked about, like what are you recording into?

What is the software? You are using all this stuff. So let's assume you have recorded it. Then you need to edit it if you're gonna do some editing and what are you gonna edit it in? This is, this is such a open question, Nick, and what are you uploading it to? Where is it going? Okay, let, let's start with

Nic: let, let, let's start with a simple thing.

Where do you recommend when you're starting a conversation with somebody who's thinking about doing a podcast, they're completely greenfield. Where do you recommend their recording sources?

Stephen: Where, where the audio sits, right? Where the recording sits? Is that what you're asking? Yeah.

Nic: Like, do they, should they use Zoom?

Should they use, oh, and some other program? Should they use, how, how should they record the actual podcast itself?

Stephen: Yeah. Okay. That's a good question. I'm pausing here because a, again, it depends. So if you're a Mac person and you're doing a, a video,

I'm gonna pause here again. So you could edit this or you could leave it. It's more human if you just leave it. Well, that's what, that's what this is such a loaded, this is such a loaded question. So I don't wanna come across recommending. So I use Z CAM to record everything. Okay. That's a Mac only application.

I love it for lots of reasons. I can do local recording, I can do remote recording for people which is. I try to focus doing services for people. So that's what I would recommend someone to purchase. It's not a cheap product. It's not a free product, so, but that's what I would recommend doing.

Zoom is a, is a fantastic option for recording things even on your own. Why? Because it records it for you. It records it either locally, it records it on the cloud and it probably has the best noise cancellation for background noise in any of the products you use. Yeah, it's, it's fantastic for that.

Us like today we're using OBS is another great solution. It's open source product and you can, anyone can download it on any platform. It works across all the platforms and it records your audio and video. So I think those are options that are all good for you.

John: So, just wanna, I wanna talk a little bit about Andy earlier mentioned kind of, some of the, the work that you're doing with him at Drip Yard.

You also worked to help, help us record our 500th episode and we had like a, you know, three, four hour marathon session with people kind of waiting in a waiting room and virtual waiting room, air quotes. And, you know, that was using, I think was using EAM, right? And we were, we were kind of moving people in and out and that, that sort of thing.

Stephen: Yeah, that was an interesting, so EAM works a couple of different ways. EAM is a Mac only software but it has a really tight integration with Zoom. So really it was Zoom that all the guests were interfacing with. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you remember that or not. Yeah. So they have a very tight integration with there.

So basically this product can take, takes the Zoom video and Zoom audio and feeds it into ECA as independent pieces. And then inside of EAMI glue that stuff together to create the presentation very similar to what we're doing today with OBS.

Nic: Hmm.

Stephen: And that's how we did it. And we basically used Zoom's capabilities so people are comfortable with Zoom.

Right. So they come into the room, we kept them over there, and then as p as someone came into the show, I would move them out of the Zoom area and into the ECA view.

Nic: Hmm.

Stephen: And turn on that camera. That was the first time I had done something with that many people. I don't, I haven't done anything with that many people again, but I'd, I'd like to.

John: Interesting. Okay. So if I'm hearing you right, yeah. The, so Zoom was kind of the vehicle for the, for the video and the audio and, and maybe the, maybe partial, partial recording, but EAM was more of the, the production utility of you being able to bring people on and, and make sure that the shot, if you will, was, was what you wanted to capture right in the recording.

Stephen: Yeah. And it, and it's exactly what we're doing now. So we're using Video Ninja to capture the video and the audio from you guys, and it's, and OBS is pulling those separate feeds into what's getting recorded on the next machine.

John: Got it. And, and listeners, we'll, we'll put some of these things into the show notes so you can kind of look at these, these tools and services to make sure you know, to, to fi figure out what you wanna use.

But going back to like bare bones, super basic, I'm just getting started, right? I could very easily use, you know, my Mac laptop and Zoom to, to get a recording of me solo or me and some friends kind of recording our first our first go at a, at a podcast,

Stephen: right? Yeah. I think that, I think that's a good way to go.

There's, there's lots of page services you can, that, that recipe that I just talked about where Zoom, integrating with Ecamm, there's services out there now that do all that for you in a browser. A lot of people use those. Riverside is one and some other names are escaping my mind right now, but they're great services for that kind of stuff.

Andy: Yeah. So the last question was around, back to sound quality and things that we could do to improve the sound quality if we're, you know, in a substandard environment such as our home office or whatever.

And I'll, I'll also throw in, do you have any like, free AI tools that you've seen for, like, cleaning up audio or, or doing things that, you know, may be more mundane?

Stephen: Yeah, so, what I've found is that you. You get what you pay for with it. And I do have a blog post. We'll put it in the I'll put it in the show notes that compares some, some audio feed, some cleanup tools.

Most video and audio editors now have a way to clean up the audio and clean up background noise and improve the audio overall. And I found that the ones that are free work, they don't work as well as the ones that you've paid for. We use a tool for this show called Onic. They've been around for a while.

It's a service that you upload your fi audio file tune, it gives it back to you or a video file and it gives it back to you with the audio cleaned up. And that really works really well. It's not very expensive. You pay per minute basically is what you pay for, I think at the end of the day. But all, most editing tools have some sort level of.

Some sort of AI tools to clean things. And they're all called AI tools now, right? Before AI was here, there were still tools that did this. And they'll, they'll clean up the pops, they'll clean up the background noise. The best thing is, is if you can get the, is clean or quiet from the beginning and less work those tools do.

'cause they can only make it as good as the original audio recording. They can clean some stuff out, but as soon as they start cleaning stuff out, you start to lose some of the quality of the audio.

John: So you can, you can essentially over, over quality your audio basically. Overprocessed, yeah. There you go.

Yeah. Overprocessed. That's a better, and,

Stephen: and Andy, you must have some recommendations in this area now.

Andy: Sure, yeah. I use I don't, I don't know if it's used in podcasting much. I think some, but like I use a program called Isotope Rx, which is like a tool for repairing audio. Removing background noise, basically all the things you just said.

I think the biggest thing to, like you said is, is the source going in? Get your signal to noise ratio, right? Where your, you know, signal is well above the noise floor. 'Cause when you're using those tools to start removing noise, it'll actually start removing the signal with it. And then you sound like a robot, right?

John: We might have buried the lead here, Andy, but do you wanna tell the listeners why you know so much about audio? Everything? Sure.

Andy: Yeah. So I my passion is recording music. And so I've been doing that for, I don't know, 20 or 25 years, something like that. And so I, my thing that I post to YouTube is called Secret Sounds and we record bands in Asheville, North Carolina.

Basically assemble a recording studio in a vintage clothing store, capture a performance, and then, you know, post it similar to like a tiny desk. So. Okay, so

Nic: I, I'll have some questions after the show. So, so Andy

Stephen: knows far more about audio recording than anyone on this pho on this show right now.

John: I will, I will probably, I'm gonna hedge a, hedge a guest here that music recording is probably way more intense on the audio quality than podcast recording because like you, you wanna, you wanna like, you wanna make sure you catch every, every note there as where, you know, with a podcast like you know, it's just a bunch of goofballs talking, right?

Andy: Yeah. I I'd say the biggest point to that would be like a multi mic situation. You're recording a drum set and so you have, you know, eight mics all point at the same thing. You've got phase cancellation noise, you've got game staging, a whole, whole mess of stuff. So

John: that is definitely a topic for a different show.

Exactly.

Nic: Well Steven, thank you for joining us. It's always a pleasure to have you on and it's always great to talk about podcasting.

Stephen: It's fun to be here. I'm always kind of here lurking in the background working on the newsletter for talking Drupal, trying to get some people to record on the Talking Drupal Cafe Show, which we didn't talk about today at all.

But if you're interested in, you have something to say to the Drupal community, it's a great way to do it. We have a excellent episode that when you're hearing this, had it came out already this one coming out as we record, this is coming out in two days. What's that?

Nic: Who, who are the guests?

Stephen: You'll have to check.

I'm not gonna say who it is. Okay. So I want you to go and look. But it's a great episode. It's it's related to nonprofits and Drupal Cons summit coming up in Chicago about nonprofits. Very cool.

John: If you have questions or feedback, reach out to talking Drupal on the socials with the handle talking Drupal or by email with [email protected].

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Nic: Alright, Stephen, if our listeners wanted to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Stephen: Go to second, second. Signal Media. I have a contact button there, or you could just hit me up on Drupal Slack. Stephen Cross with a pH.

Andy: And

Stephen: Andy, how about

Andy: you? Yep. Drip yard.com or Andy G 5,000.

Awesome. And how about you, John?

John: You can find me [email protected] or on all the socials and drupal.org at John Zi. Or if you wanna learn more about eam, you can find us at EPA dot.

Nic: And you can find me pretty much everywhere at Nsb Band N-I-C-X-V-A-N.

John: And if you've enjoyed listening, we've enjoyed talking, talking, talking.

This is my new Year's resolution. I'm gonna try to spice up the outro every time I do it, so we'll see.