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General Discussion / A Wild Quiz Appears!

« on: July 22, 2014, 12:04:09 am »

http://www.playbuzz.com/gregs/can-we-guess-who-you-are-in-only-20-questions

Take it and post your results below!  If you feel extra-froggy, you can even make corrections much as I had to!

Male, Mid 50’s Early 30's
Here is our best guess at who you are:
1. You are male.
2. You are currently in your mid fifties early thirties, still working hard and enjoying every minute of it.
3. You are starting to go bald gray, but you don't care about it as much as you thought you would when you were younger. You still have your goodish looks, your gray hazel eyes and your sense of humor.
4. You have a beautiful loving family parents, great life-long friends and guildmates, even the doctor is happy with your annual check up!
5. Things are generally good, and you just wish they'll stay that way for much, much longer.

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General Discussion / Starfire's audio quality is about to get a boost!

« on: April 03, 2014, 04:31:12 am »

So, as I'm sure any of you who've listened to the Watchcast know, I've had major issues where my microphone drops some of my audio at random.  The only explanation I have for it is a crappy microphone on my headset.

Now, I'm more than willing to spend money when it's necessary and not too much.  My eventual goal is to get a studio-quality condenser mic, but I don't have the money for that right now, and I certainly don't have the money for a proper arm and shock mount for it!  It turns out that the USB microphone from Rock Band works great on PCs.  It's actually a pretty solid condenser mic.  It's not quite studio quality, but for what I do, it's good enough for now!

So problem solved, right?  Not exactly...

I have to hold the microphone in my hand.

To give you an example of how much that hurt, Flessas and I spent about 2 hours on Tuesday recording.  I had to hold the microphone for 2 hours.  My arm cramped so bad from that.

So Starfire needs a mic stand.  $100 from Amazon for a nice adjustable arm stand, $20 or so for a "universal" shock mount (keeps the microphone from picking up vibrations on the desk it's mounted to), and $10 for a pop filter.  No, I don't think I'm going to throw down the cost of 2 AAA titles for that, thank you very much!

Walmart has an adjustable desk lamp on clearance for $6.  I ordered it tonight for store pickup.  There's a hardware store right next to Walmart around here.  I'm going to get a 2" PVC coupler, remove the lamp portion from the arm, cut notches in the coupler for rubber bands, and DIY my own arm and shock mount.  I could DIY the pop filter too, but $10 is cheap enough I can justify buying one instead of making one for nearly the same price.

Total price for my audio upgrade will be around $20.  I really can't wait to get started!